Soul Savers: Faith Part 23

"You want me to bring my little army of ten thousand Amadis, join them with maybe fifty thousand Normans, if there are even that many, and what? Hang out until the Daemoni attack? Or wait. You probably want us to march into the valley first and then just stand there, facing that." I flicked my hand toward the Daemoni camps in the distance.

Rina bowed her head. "This is what you must do."

"That's absurd!"

"Trust us, Alexis," Mom said. "Follow our instructions, obey the Angels, and you will defeat Lucas."

I let out a dark chuckle. "This is ludicrous. What's the rest of the plan, Mom? Give me something other than this insanity. Something for me and my troops to believe in."

"That is the plan, honey. That is all we know. Follow it, and you will be victorious."

"And what about Dorian?"

Something flickered in her eyes, and the corners of her lips twitched, but she censored any true emotion. "Let him serve his purpose, and always remember, he decides the fate of his soul. n.o.body else."

"It is time." Rina tilted her head in another bow. "Remember, Alexis. Believe in what you cannot see with your eyes, what you do not know in your mind, but nonetheless feel in your heart and soul."

And with that, they disappeared.

I turned toward Tristan who leaned against the trunk with a confident glint in his eyes.

"Do you have any idea what the h.e.l.l that was supposed to mean?" I demanded.

One side of his mouth quirked up. "Somebody has a plan, but hasn't revealed it yet."

"Well, that's freakin' helpful." I hopped up to the next branch to try to gain a better view of the surrounding area. The pace of the Daemoni coming this way seemed to have increased-both in their speed and their numbers. "So what's your plan? Because theirs sucks."

"My plan is to follow theirs."

"You can't be serious." I looked over my shoulder and down at him. He appeared to be completely serious.

"First of all, they're our commanders. You may be the leader of the army here on Earth, but we serve the Angels. We obey their orders."

"Orders that will get us all slaughtered?"

He straightened up and stepped away from the trunk. He rested his arms on another branch in front of him, putting his head nearly level with mine. "I'm sorry, ma lykita, but I have no other plan. You're right. We'll be severely outnumbered and out-powered. I see no other solutions except retreating, which is not an option if we want to stop Lucas and save Dorian. We'll have to trust that there's more to their plan. You heard them-it's the only way we'll win."

"There must be something else." I scowled as I wedged myself between branches and watched the Daemoni and Demons below, trying to figure out why they came here to this particular place. What were they doing? Were they also preparing for war? But why would they be? As far as they were concerned, they had their victory. I reached out for a couple of minds in range and recoiled at the evil thoughts filling them. Thankfully, they weren't completely clear, fuzzed over by inebriation. They matched the sounds that traveled up the mountain to our ears-songs and cheers, noises of celebration.

"I'm not learning anything here," I finally told Tristan after we watched for a while. "I don't really want to, but we'll have to move closer to get any good intelligence to take back."

"Our best intelligence came from Rina and Sophia," he replied. "They told us everything we need to know."

I rolled my eyes. "Everything they said is ridiculous. If I can even bring myself to obey their orders, I won't be the blind leading the blind into this."

I ran along the branch until I could launch myself into the air without catching my wings on spindly branches and icicles. I shot straight up, higher than the Demons flew, although their attention remained focused downward. Tristan followed me as I moved closer to the center of the valley, while remaining high and on the western fringe. As though they'd purposefully built their camps this way, a wide circle in the heart of the valley remained clear of everything but snow. The main thought I could grasp among them echoed Rina's words. "It's time" rippled over the Daemoni below as they began to crowd toward the expanse in the middle.

Tristan and I hovered about halfway up the mountain above them, watching as the crowd began to part directly across the clearing from us. The mind signature approaching the center elicited an involuntary growl from my throat, but when I couldn't find the mind that I thought would be with him, foreboding and hope battled within me. Where was Dorian? Had he changed his mind and escaped? Or was he being held captive somewhere, such as with the Ancients? Was he nearby and cloaked, or was he soaring away to safety, perhaps even looking for Tristan and me?

We should look for Dorian, I told Tristan at the same time Lucas produced a ball of orange fire between his palms. Curiosity froze me in place. He spread his hands wide, growing the flames until they surrounded him, and then he rose a few feet above the ground, floating like he had when he'd cornered us at the Capitol building.

"What the h.e.l.l?" I breathed.

Lucas's voice boomed over the valley. "Indeed. It is time, my faithful children."

He glided over the snow to the center of the clearing, and with a flourish, lifted his arms upward. Underneath him, the snow and ground began falling inward, at first in a tight circle, as though a drain had opened in a tub. The spiral grew quickly, though, sucking away the earth and snow, and within minutes, a sinkhole at least fifty feet in diameter yawned open like a gaping mouth. Lucas, still wrapped in a fireball, swooshed around the sinkhole, corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g down into its pit, and then zoomed upward. The entire s.p.a.ce filled with fire.

The Daemoni cheered before their voices fell into a low chant, and they stomped their feet in rhythm. Shaman continued beating their drums, and caught up in the excitement, Weres began transforming, the wolves howling a background chorus.

"The Ancients are coming," Lucas said, his voice reverberating across the valley floor and up the mountains. "Soon, our lord will be here. For now, let us welcome the rest of our brethren who have been trapped in the Otherworld for millennia too long."

The orchestra of voices, stomps, drums, and howls grew louder as Lucas lifted his arms again, like a conductor signaling the crescendo. The wind suddenly picked up, whooshing against my ears and knocking me off-balance as it blew in every direction, but mostly upward. Lightning cracked across the sky, illuminating low, dark gray clouds. Snowflakes the size of saucers began to fall over the valley, sizzling in the pit of fire, where the flames grew larger and jumped higher. An orange glow lit up the area nearly bright as day, reflecting off the thousands of faces and the sides of the snow-covered mountains.

A large and dark object shot out of the pit, high into the air before soaring across the valley and slamming into a mountainside. The chunk of black ice shattered, the sound resonating across the land, and a Demon burst out of it. Many more followed at quick and regular intervals, as though shot out of a cannon from the bottom of the pit, like the fireworks that blast several b.a.l.l.s into the air, one right after the other. They all careened into the surrounding mountains and exploded, freeing the Demons inside.

Dozens of them.

Hundreds of them.

Thousands.

"The veil has dropped," Lucas yelled over the ruckus. "Soon, we open the Gates to h.e.l.l."

Chapter 22.

My heart thundered against my ribs. "Oh my G.o.d."

I turned in midair to face Tristan, but a large body soared toward us in my peripheral vision. Tristan grabbed my hand and took off. Like rockets shooting through the air, we flew toward the south end of the valley, back to where we'd been before when Mom and Rina spoke with us. I'd called their instructions absurd then. I'd had no idea just how ludicrous and dangerous they really were.

Whether it grew bored or had been called back, the Demon that had been chasing us turned away and returned toward the fire pit that resembled too much for my liking the lake of fire in h.e.l.l. No other Demons chased after us. Not even Lucas paid us any attention, though surely he was aware of our presence. He obviously didn't care about us anymore. He didn't need to.

Tristan and I flew wide circles around the area, searching for Dorian, but when I couldn't find his signature, we a.s.sumed he was cloaked. So we returned to the same tree we'd been in before and watched the ceremony or celebration or whatever you'd call the horror playing out below in the valley. The hours stretched into the next day, I thought, although it was hard to tell because the sun never rose.

"It's too late in the year for constant darkness," Tristan murmured at one point. "There should be several hours of daylight by now."

"So they're doing this?" I glanced up at the starless sky where huge, low clouds hung.

He did, too. "The pending storm wouldn't make it this dark."

"There's hardly any smoke rising from the fire pit," I noted.

He looked down at me with dark eyes. "It's the evil energy rising from h.e.l.l, blocking out the light."

I recalled the thick black of nothingness in h.e.l.l, and a shudder racked through me.

Demons continued shooting out of the pit, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and those in the Earthly realm kept on with their party. Lucas disappeared, although I sensed him nearby in a large tent. Unfortunately-or maybe fortunately-Dorian was not in there with him, as far as I could determine. We kept waiting for something new to happen, to see if we could figure out what came next, but nothing ever did. Lucas kept his thoughts guarded, signaling that he knew I was close, so I didn't know what "soon" meant to him when he'd made his statement about opening the Gates of h.e.l.l.

"This is pointless," I said to Tristan after a few more hours. "We should be looking for Dorian more instead of wasting our time here. I'm not learning anything from their minds that are drunk on evil except that Satan is coming. Maybe we can stop-"

"Alexis." The familiar male voice sounded in my head, and it didn't belong to Tristan.

"Owen?" I gasped. Tristan lifted a brow, and both of us spun on our respective branches, searching.

"There." Tristan pointed to the very s.p.a.ce on the side of the other mountain where Mom had said to gather my people.

Apparently, I didn't have to gather them. They were coming all on their own.

"Oh, no!"

We flew off the tree and swooped that way, where Owen stood in the clearing and others were appearing out of nowhere, coming through his portal. Charlotte, Blossom, Vanessa, a tiger I knew as Sheree, Jax in human form, Sonya, Alys, and Brogan ... and more people pouring through the opening. Dozens at first, but the crowd quickly grew into hundreds of Amadis. Then Owen disappeared for a moment before coming through a new opening, bringing more bodies, and then he disappeared once again.

Tristan and I landed on the ridge above them so we could see both them and the Daemoni. When they saw our wings spread out, people below gasped, and murmurs floated over the crowd, which continued to grow. And not only with Amadis. I spotted Heather, Teah, Teal, and other Normans at the front, and then Kristen, Olivia, and more from the London cell of A.K.'s Angels came through a new portal, followed by Ammi and Terrence, two vampires who could still be considered newborns.

Our people talked excitedly among themselves as they gathered into groups, climbed trees, and perched themselves on boulders.

This is bad. I glanced over at the valley where the Daemoni continued their celebration while yet more Demons flew from the pit of fire. So bad.

"Guess we know what Rina meant when she said the wheels were in motion," Tristan said. "Apparently, your army was already on its way."

"On their way to their deaths," I muttered. "What are we going to do?"

"I'd say we're going to battle." Although he didn't yell the words, he didn't quite whisper them, either.

A cheer rose up among the crowd-those with inhuman senses apparently having heard Tristan's declaration. They were insane. Anger grew within me bigger and louder than them, filling my ears with the flow of my own hot blood. I launched myself into the air. Which only made them cheer louder. I flew a circle around them-a tight circle because, although more came through the portals, my army was not very large. Not large at all.

As my circle brought me to face Lucas's Demons across the valley, a boulder of emotions slammed into my chest, taking my breath. The extreme difference in sizes between the two armies was terrifying. I swooped back to face my people, and rather than a growing crowd, I found only dead bodies littered over the clearing, crimson staining the snow. NO! I mentally screamed to myself as I squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them again, the crowd below me had returned to normal, psyching themselves up for battle. But every time I looked at the Daemoni and back at my people, mine were all dead.

Visions like I'd had before. Premonitions, no doubt.

What were you thinking, bringing them here? I silently yelled at Owen who seemed to have finished creating the dozens of portals.

"Following orders," he replied simply.

Not mine!

"No. Theirs."

Whose? I dropped down next to him, my fists on my hips and my eyes hard as I glared at him. I give the orders, Owen. You're sworn to obey me, and I do not want this.

He leaned his head back and stared at the sky. "But they do. And I'm sworn to them over you."

Although I knew nothing was there, my gaze swept upward anyway. The clouds, Owen? The stars behind them? What the h.e.l.l is wrong with you?

"Funny. What the h.e.l.l is wrong you? The Angels, Alexis. The Heavenly Host. Whatever you want to call them. You know, those people we work for?"

I ignored his sarcasm. The Angels told you to bring these people to their deaths? Or do you mean Rina and Mom?

He looked over at me with hands rested low on his hips. "Did you see them? We didn't exactly get a visit. Just a ... feeling."

I grabbed my head with both hands and my fingers tangled into my hair. You came here on a freakin' feeling?

"Yep. Right here." He spread his hand out over his stomach. "In the gut. We all had it. And it looks like we were right to follow it."

I stared at him, my jaw clenching. My fists balled, shaking with the need to punch him.

Send them back!

"No. We're here to fight and to win."

We're going to die. Not even your shields can protect us against the black magic over there. We will lose.

His lips curled up in a confident, almost c.o.c.ky grin. "Don't you know? Good always wins."

And he gave me a wink. A wink!

I returned it with a blank stare, feeling the same as I had one of the very first times he'd stated that to me-standing on the porch of the beach house in the Keys when I'd learned exactly what the Daemoni were and that they'd declared Provocation against my people. The words had felt like a slap in the face then, when I'd believed the Daemoni had already won because they had Tristan. The sting felt just as real now.

You've lost your f.u.c.king mind, Owen. We've lost before we've begun. Thousands compared to their hundreds of thousands. Fifty of them for each one of us.

Gasps and murmurs broke out over the crowd, voices filled with excitement rather than concern. Fingers pointed in various directions as whispers were exchanged. What was wrong with them? They acted like they were at a party! Even my team chatted giddily. They'd all drunk the Kool-Aid.

Owen glanced around at the mountainsides and then his neck craned as though he tried to peek at the Daemoni's camps in the valley, but there was no way he could see them from here. Then he gave me a casual shrug. "Nah. We'll be fine."

Tristan dropped down beside me, and they fist b.u.mped. Fist b.u.mped! What was wrong with them? A deadly battle loomed over us, and they acted like we'd already won. As though blood wouldn't be shed and lives lost. Anger, frustration, and most of all fear for these people rushed through my veins. My head snapped backward when a Demon soared over us.

"We need to get out of here. Lucas's minion just spotted us."

"We need to wait for our orders," Tristan said.

I spun to face him. "I just gave orders!"

"But you aren't following our orders."

My rage teetered on the edge of an explosion as my team gathered closer. I glared at each of their faces in turn, and they all stared back.

"We can do this, Princess," Jax said as he rubbed his hand over his bald head.

"It's what we do," Owen agreed.

"Win or lose, we have to try," Blossom said from Jax's side before giving me an encouraging smile.