Torment (Soul Savers Book 6) (38 page)

“Thanks, Carlie,”
I said. “It’s good to see you. Bye, Sheree. See you
soon.”

Her fingers twitched in
a little wave. When they carried her away, Blossom and Jax following,
I had to bite my lip to keep the tears at bay. Char let out a worried
sigh.

“You should go
with them,” I said to her. “Keep them shielded, just in
case.”

“They’ll
still be on holy grounds. And I’m not leaving you. Nobody else
is here to protect you.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m
on sacred grounds, too. I’ll be fine.” I pressed my hand
to my belly, knowing Char probably worried more about the baby’s
safety since she knew I’d fight her about my own. “We’ll
both be fine.”

“I’m sure
we all will. But I’m not taking any chances.” She walked
around and gave Alys a hug. “You’re looking good, girl.
Sorry I couldn’t do that before.”

“That …
was insane out there,” Alys said. “It happened so fast.
She just took off …”

Char stopped her with a
hand on the vamp’s shoulder. “We can’t control
them. We can only try to lead them, and you did the best you could.”

Alys blew out a heavy
breath and nodded. Then she looked at me, down at my belly, up at my
face, and squinted. “Are you …?”

I nodded, and she let
out a squeal as she hugged me. Once again, I pretended to be happy
about it.

The chatter of girls’
voices came down the long hall.

“We’re
going to stay in a dorm,” Heather said as she led the rest of
the girls and Dorian toward us, walking ahead with a little spring in
her step. She slowed when she saw Alys by my side, though. I wasn’t
sure, but I thought the last time she might have seen the vampire was
when she and Lesley had been trying to turn the girl into one.

“Alys is one of
us now,” I said.

Heather nodded as she
walked toward us. “She must be if she’s here, right?”

I thought she’d
be a little more wary than that. She
should
have been a little
more wary. Sometimes I worried about the girl and her comfort level
among monsters.

“It’s so
weird that you knew that Carlie chick before,” Heather
continued while we waited for the rest of her group to join us.
Dorian really dragged his feet behind the girls.

“Yeah, it’s
a small world,” I said, snorting at the understatement. Carlie,
James, Lesley, Alys … who else from my past would end up here?
The rhetorical question made me frown. I wasn’t sure how many
other people were alive anymore.

“So,”
Heather said, “I guess this is like the headquarters building
now. They said there’s a big auditorium upstairs where they
gather for meetings and stuff. The dorms are next door. And here I
thought the end of the world meant I’d never know what it was
like to live in a dorm.”

“Way to see the
bright side, kid,” Charlotte muttered.

This campus seemed like
the perfect place for escape when the Daemoni attacked, but obviously
not too many people thought of it, because we didn’t pass a
single person on the short walk to the residence hall. We entered the
massive stone building through an archway, and when we walked the
hallway, we had a hard time determining which rooms were already
claimed. Every one looked like someone had been there recently. As
though the students had had no chance to pack or anything, but had
run away in a panic. Perhaps they had. We’d been cut off from
the rest of the world, making our way across freakin’ Siberia,
when civilization fell, so I only had my imagination for how people
had reacted.

I wondered if we could
have made any difference if we’d been more in the middle of it
all. Probably not. So far, it seemed like I’d only made things
worse. For every step forward I thought we were making, we were
pushed back two or three by Lucas and his army.

The girls settled on
two adjoining rooms, and Dorian and I entered the next set of double
rooms. They were boys’ rooms—and smelled like it. Even
Dorian wrinkled his nose.

“This is gross,”
he said. So we crossed the hall to another pair that had belonged to
girls. He looked around at the bra hanging on chair back and a box of
tampons sitting on a dresser. “Ugh. This is even worse.”

I picked up the bra and
the tampons and anything else “gross” I could find and
tossed them all into the closet. “Better?”

He shrugged as he
dropped onto a bed made with a hot-pink-and-zebra-print comforter.

“At least it
doesn’t stink.”

He nodded as Sasha
crawled out of his coat and curled into his lap. “It’s
fine.”

“But you’re
not.” I sat on the bed next to him. His mood hadn’t
changed since we’d left the motel room, but he didn’t
respond. I glanced out the window. “You can see where Dad is
from here.”

He barely looked up to
see. “I feel bad for Noah. He shouldn’t be locked up like
that. It’s not fair.”

“Dorian, we
talked about this already. We’re going to try to convert him.”

“He doesn’t
belong here, Mom.” He sighed and stared at Sasha’s back
as he dug his fingers into her thick fur. “Neither do I.”

“Little Man, I
know it sucks to have to be in a girls’ room, but the whole
world sucks right now. You have a safe place to stay, though. There’s
food. And I’m sure there are people somewhere.”

“I don’t
get along with people.”

“What about
Heather? You get along with her.”

He ignored me. “I
don’t belong here, Mom. Not with Normans and not with the
Amadis. Not even with you and Dad.”

“Dorian,” I
gasped, and I moved closer to him and wrapped my arms around his
stiff shoulders. Sasha moved over to my lap and licked my arm. “Don’t
ever say that. You belong right here with Dad and me. Wherever we are
is where you should be.”

He didn’t respond
at first, but then said, “Nobody wants me here.”

“I do! Dad does.
Uncle Owen, Blossom … and Heather—”

“Haven’t
you noticed? Heather doesn’t give a crap about me anymore.”

“Of course she
does!”

He shrugged my arms off
of him. “Not really. She barely even talks to me. Treats me
like I’m a totally different person than I used to be. And I
am.”

“No, Dorian—”

He pulled completely
away and jumped off the bed then turned to face me. He lifted his
arms out and flicked his hands toward himself.

“Look at me, Mom.
Really look at me! I
am
different. Different than the kid I
was. Different from all of you. I’m not Norman. I’m not
Amadis.” He tossed his hand toward the window. “I’m
more like Noah than anyone.”

Shaking my head in
denial, I moved Sasha to the bed and stood in front of my son. I
placed my hands on each side of his face and tilted it down, forcing
him to look at me.

“You
are
Amadis, Dorian. You are my son. Don’t you ever forget that. You
are
nothing
like them.”

“Do you really
believe that?” he seethed, his eyes hard as he glared at me,
his nostrils flaring. “Do you seriously fool yourself with that
bullshit? Or do you know deep down inside that I’m
exactly
like him?”

“Dorian,” I
whispered.

He yanked himself free
from my grip and glared at me. When he spoke, his voice came quieter
and more forlorn than a child his age should ever sound. “He
doesn’t belong here. I don’t, either. We both know it.
You
just have to admit it.”

He strode out of the
room, Sasha on his heels, and I could only stand there, staring after
him with tears spilling over my cheeks. He didn’t even talk
like a child anymore. His words, his tone … the despair in his
voice. He spoke as though
he
carried the weight of the world
on his shoulders.

He sounded like me.

And it was up to me to
keep him protected. To keep him safe from the clutches of the
Daemoni. Those six months earlier this year had been excruciating,
and now I feared I was about to lose him for good.

After all, I was losing
everybody else. Why not him, too?

“Dorian!” I
yelled as I ran out of the room after him.

“Let him go.”
Char placed a hand on my shoulder to stop me in the corridor, and my
whole body sort of sank. “He won’t go far, but he wants
to be alone.”

I scrubbed at the tears
on my face. “You heard?”

She frowned. “I’m
sorry, Alexis. I know you don’t want to hear it, but he’s
kind of right.”

I shook my head. “I
won’t accept it. There has to be a way to stop it.”

With that thought, I
strode down the hall toward the door, down the steps, across the
driveway, and through the gate with Char keeping pace next to me. We
entered the townhome where Tristan, Owen, and Vanessa had brought
Noah, and I took the stairs two at a time to the front bedroom. I
found them in there with Noah spread eagle on a four-poster bed, his
wrists and ankles magically bound to it. I frowned, remembering what
it’d felt like not too long ago to be held against my will.
Maybe Dorian was right about it not being fair. But I didn’t
care at the moment.

“How do we break
the curse?” I demanded of Noah.

He lifted his head off
the pillow, peered at me and smirked. That was his only answer.

“Tell me how to
save my son, damn it!”

He only stared at me
with the stupid half-smile that probably made some girls’
panties melt, but irritated me. I wanted to throw myself at him and
beat the answers out of his arrogant ass. With anger, fear, and
despair about Dorian roiling through me, constraining myself from
doing so took every bit of self-control I possessed.

“Where are the
rest of the Summoned?” I asked, my fists clenched at my side,
and now he looked away from me. “You know, don’t you?”

He didn’t answer
me. I asked him more questions about the curse and the Summoned, and
he ignored every one. After pacing the room several times, I joined
Tristan, who leaned against the wall opposite the bed. Vanessa was
perched on the edge of the large wooden dresser, picking at her
cuticles. Owen sat in a reading chair next to some bookshelves. We
all stared ruthlessly at Noah. He didn’t bother fighting
against the invisible constraints, but only lay there.

“Why do you want
to know?” he asked a good thirty minutes later.

“Know what?”
Tristan asked.

“About Santa
Claus’s naughty and nice list,” Noah snarked. “About
the Summoned, Seth. What do you think?”

“So we can free
them, too,” I said.

Noah’s gaze came
to me, and he seemed to really look at me for the first time. “Why
would you even bother?”

I shrugged. “Lots
of reasons. Like winning this war.”

He chuckled. “You
can’t
win. There’s no place for
good
in a
war.”

“Well, we all
know that nobody here is
entirely
good, don’t we?”
I pushed myself away from the wall and took a step closer to him.
Something flickered in his eyes. He seemed to appreciate that
statement of truth. “But we can all choose to do the right
thing. And you, Noah, know that what Lucas is doing to all of the
Summoned and their children is
not
right. Even for evil.”

“So what are you
going to do? Take control yourself and
force
them to be good?”

I ignored his mocking
tone. “We’re going to remove the stones from them just
like we did you and let them make their own decisions. If they want
to be good, then we’ll help them.”

He let out an
honest-to-God laugh now. “Don’t you understand, stupid
girl? You
can’t
convert us. Not me. Not any of us. We’re
cursed!”

I tilted my head. “Then
tell me how to break it.”

He didn’t answer.

I threw my arms in the
air. “We’ll figure it out on our own then. We
will
break it.”

Noah sighed. “It’s
not up to you, Alexis. Not even the matriarch of the oh-so-wonderful
Amadis can break it. You can’t even order it to be done. But
even if you could … even if it
was
up to you … I
don’t think you could make that decision.”

I narrowed my eyes and
stepped even closer to him. “You don’t know me or what
kind of decisions I’m willing to make to protect my son.”

“That’s
just it,” he said, holding my gaze. “You’re not
strong enough to break the curse. Not mentally or emotionally. You
would never do what needs to be done.”

I glared at him for a
long, drawn-out moment. His brow lifted as I did, but then he broke
our connection and looked away, his mouth clamped shut. All kinds of
emotions and questions ran through me, but I wouldn’t let him
see any of them. I turned on my heel and strode for the door.

“They’re
under The Mall,” he said when I reached the doorway. I paused
and looked over my shoulder at him. “The Summoned, their
descendants … all of them. Hidden in the underground tunnels.”

Owen and Tristan both
stood up, straightening themselves with attention.

“You’re
sure?” Tristan asked.

“That’s
where they’d had me, still controlling those English soldiers
from here. Until they used me as bait to pull you in, then tried to
burn me to a crisp before I could tell you.”

“Why should we
believe you?” Owen asked.

Noah rolled his eyes.
“You don’t have to. But what if I’m telling the
truth? What’s the risk worth to you? To the Amadis? To
humanity?”

I tried poking into his
mind and barely caught a glimpse of his memory before my own brain
cut it off. From what I could tell, he told the truth about being
there, but that didn’t mean the others still were. Maybe this
was another trap—Lucas or the sorcerers trying to reel us in
again. Maybe he was even part of it, lying about their attempted
murder of him. Unfortunately, I couldn’t reach those thoughts
with my worthless power. And he was right. The Amadis counted on us
to accomplish this mission. All of humanity was at stake. The risk
would be worth it.