Torment (Soul Savers Book 6) (37 page)

“How are you
here?” he asked. “Behind the gate? This is sacred
grounds.”

“Because I’m
not evil, dumbass,” Vanessa snapped. “We
protect
idiots like you.”

“You’re not
human, though,” the girl said, “of course you’re
evil.”

She twisted and whipped
her body, trying to break free of Vanessa’s hold.

I stepped forward. “You
don’t know what you think you do.”

“We’re
hunters,” the guy snarled. “We know enough.”

Oh, yay. More hunters,
like the ones we’d run into in Russia. I sensed several dozen
Normans beyond the gates, many in the big, gray building ahead of us
with a clock tower that reached above the autumn-colored trees for
the sky. A handful stood out here, by the gate—the other
hunters, I presumed.

The guy had been
appraising our group, his gaze traveling over everyone until it fell
on me for the first time. His black eyes narrowed as they lingered.
Then he let out an unattractive snort-chuckle. I could guarantee his
nose had been broken in the past.

“Alexis,”
he said to me. “The very reason I became a hunter. I knew you
weren’t normal then, and since you haven’t aged more than
a year or two, I was obviously right.”

I cocked my head. “Do
I know you?”

The look he gave me
made my skin crawl. “Oh, you used to know me pretty well.
Babbled on and on, talking my ear off with all your stupid secrets
when all I wanted was a piece of your ass.”

Tristan growled next to
me. I placed a hand on his arm, his muscles tense under my touch.

“Good thing I
didn’t, since you really are a freak. How’s that whore of
a mother of yours, anyway?” the guy asked, and I immediately
knew who he was. Yep, his nose had most definitely been broken in the
past. And I’d been the one to break it.

“James,” I
said, striding closer to him. “How long did it take for you to
heal the last time you said that to me? Do you need a reminder?”

“What the hell,
James?” the girl asked, still squirming in vain as Vanessa held
her, watching us, seemingly bored. “Is this the bitch you’ve
been looking for?”

James lifted his arm
straight up in the air, his hand balled in a fist over his head.
“After she and her mom ran away from the assault charges, the
real monsters showed up, looking for them. Killed my best friend. Or
so I thought. They turned him into a disgusting leech. Then
I
had to kill him. Yeah, this is the bitch. About time.”

As soon as he finished,
his arm chopped downward. Arrows flew from various directions. These
guys weren’t the brightest bulbs in the box. All of their
arrows dropped to the asphalt before hitting any of us.

“Stop!” A
blond woman came running out of the building, sprinting in our
direction. The weird reunion became even weirder. “It’s
Alexis! We told you to leave her alone!”

I’d recognize
that voice anywhere. Besides Tristan, who I hadn’t been able to
figure out that night we met, she was the first person to have been
nice to me in ages. Unlike James, she hadn’t changed much.
Sure, she’d grown older, around thirty now, but still had that
cute girl-next-door look to her.

“Carlie?” I
asked in disbelief.

“It’s
really you!” She looked like she was going to run out to me,
but she stopped at the gate. At the edge of the sacred grounds. She
waved her hand at us. “Come in here where it’s safe!”

“Carlie,”
James snarled.

“This is
my
place,” she snapped at him. “If you don’t like it,
you and your so-called hunters can leave. We don’t need you.
Especially not now.”

I led my team over,
easily crossing onto sacred grounds.

“See?”
Carlie said to James. “I told you they were good. Not all of
these guys are bad. And these,” she ushered Heather, Teah, and
Teal all the way through to stand by her, “are
humans
,
James. And they’re still alive. Taken care of by Alexis and
Tristan here, no doubt.” She held up Heather and Teah’s
arms to show their tattoos. “And they’re part of us.”

James eyed them, then
moved his glare to Sonya, Char, Owen, and me as we stood inside the
gate. The girl stared at us, too, and then relaxed in Vanessa’s
grip as she cut her eyes over to her comrade.

“Let me go,”
she said. “I get it.
He’s
the dumbass.”

Vanessa looked at me,
and I nodded. She released her hold on the self-described hunter, who
strode over to stand by Carlie. Both women crossed their arms over
their chests and glared at James. As did we all.

He jerked himself out
of Vanessa’s loosened hold. “If they kill anyone, Carlie,
that’s on you.”

When the tension in the
air lightened, dozens of people poured out of the building, as though
they’d been watching the whole thing and waiting for it to be
safe. They gathered around us with an almost celebratory air,
corralling us all the way through the gate.

But then we had
trouble.

When Tristan and Jax
tried to walk through with Noah between them, they couldn’t
pull him across the line. He began shouting obscenities, and smoke
rose from his flesh. Little patches of skin peeled away all over his
body, exposing muscles and tendon underneath. Several of the hunters
who’d gathered around us suddenly had their weapons drawn.
Tristan and Jax stepped back, away from the grounds. The rest of us
gathered in front of them.

“Don’t
shoot!” I said, my arms held out protectively.

“I thought you
said you were all good,” James said.

“We’re
working on him,” I admitted.

James shook his head.
“Not good enough. Kill him!”

“NO!” I
yelled before any more arrows flew. “We obviously can’t
bring him on the grounds. Just leave him alone. We’ll take care
of him.
We
know how.”

“And let him
murder how many of our own?” James demanded.

“None. We’ll
keep him locked down.”

“Like I should
believe
your
lying ass.”

The next thing I knew,
Tristan held James by the neck three feet off the ground. “I’ve
had enough of you. You show my wife some damn respect, and maybe
we’ll try to keep you alive. If you don’t, well, then
your death is on
you
.”

James’ eyes
bulged out of his face, and his feet kicked at the air. Tristan
tossed him to the ground.

“Asshole,”
he muttered as he strode back over and relieved Jax from his hold on
Noah. Vanessa held him from the other arm. She’d apparently
moved in when Tristan had let go to give his mine’s-bigger-than-yours
warning to James. “You take the others inside,” Tristan
said to me. “Owen, Vanessa, and I will handle Noah.”

They pulled Noah to the
other side of the street where a row of townhomes stood. The crowd
began to swallow us up, excitement rising again.

And then screams.

Something blurred by
Sonya and me. A couple of Normans who’d been standing in the
street—away from the line of consecration—fell to the
ground, blood gushing from their throats. We spun around, and it
blurred toward us again. Sonya punched her arm out, clotheslining the
vampire. Reddish-blue eyes glared at us from under a curtain of
blonde waves.

“Lesley?”
Sonya asked, in shock.

Where the hell were all
of these people coming from? Had
everyone
we’d ever
known decided to converge on D.C.? Lesley, a vampire who Sonya had
been staying with in Tallahassee after she’d massacred our
mages, bared her fangs in an unfriendly smile. Then she punched Sonya
in the cheek. Sonya returned the swing, but Lesley blurred away, and
Sonya went after her. The two vampires streaked this way and that,
stopping only when one’s fist or foot landed on the other. From
the roof of one of the townhomes, Lesley let out a trill of laughter,
enjoying the game. Then she launched herself off the building. I
lunged for her, but she kicked me in the head, flipped over me, and
landed with a Norman girl in her arms.

“I’m tired
of being so damn
thirsty
,” she growled, and she dove for
the girl’s throat.

The next moment, her
head rolled to the ground. A hunter stood behind her, holding a
bloodied sword. Several people screamed, and others joined them when
two more figures shot out of nowhere, appearing in front of the
hunter. Two women with yellow, cat-like eyes, long, curved fangs, and
claw-like fingernails. Rene and Cruz again. They both hissed at the
hunter, and he ran for the gate. As they crouched down to gather
Lesley’s two separate body parts, their gazes swept over the
crowd. When they landed on me, they hissed again.

“We’ll see
you again soon,” Cruz promised before disappearing with
Lesley’s body, Rene following with the vamp’s head.

Chaos broke out. Above
it all, a wail of “Noooo!” came from down the street.
Another vamp streaked toward us.

“Go!” I
yelled at the Normans, waving my arms frantically at them, and they
ran for the building, a few gathering their injured friends and
helping them across the sacred line.

I held my hands out,
about to shoot my powers, as did Char and Blossom.

“Wait! It’s
me!” The vamp stopped running, showing herself. Nearly six-feet
tall, long blonde hair, and blue eyes I knew.

“It’s
okay,” I breathed, thankful to finally have a break. “She’s
one of us.”

Recognizing Alys from
when we converted her in Charlotte, South Carolina, my team relaxed.

“We need to get
Sheree inside,” Char said after a quick greeting to Alys, and I
nodded.

Sonya and Jax lifted
Sheree and carried her toward the building with Blossom and Dorian
following after. Heather and the other Normans had already gone
inside. I stared after them, pushing my hands through my hair and
wondering what the hell just happened. James and Carlie. Lesley.
Daemoni collecting their fallen? Of course, Lesley wasn’t
necessarily dead for good. She was a vamp, after all, and her torso
hadn’t been fileted like Solomon’s had. The shudder that
wracked up my spine came from both the memory and the craziness that
had just occurred.

Once everyone but Char
had walked off, Alys lifted her hands in the direction of where
Lesley’s blood still pooled on the pavement.

“Shit,” she
said, sounding defeated. “I tried to stop her. I really did,
Alexis.”

“What are you
even doing here?” I asked.

“What are you
doing with
her
?” Char demanded.

Alys sighed. “I’d
found her involved with a vamp nest in Richmond. She’s always
had this wild streak, but she’s good deep down. She still had
hope, and I’d had her convinced to convert. I’ve been
looking for help for days, but I can’t find Amadis anywhere.
Then I sensed you guys here.” She groaned with frustration. “We
were so close! I just made her go too long without drinking. We’ve
been so thirsty.”

Someone in a tree
grunted. An arrow swooshed through the air toward Alys’ head. I
caught it in my hand.

“She’s one
of us,” I snapped again as I threw their stupid arrow back at
them. I took Alys’ arm and dragged her through the gate, onto
the sacred grounds. “See?”

Without waiting for a
response, we strode across the semicircular driveway for the large,
gray, Gothic-style structure ahead of us where everyone else had
gone. Everyone but hunters, who still hid in trees and behind walls.
I wondered how much we could trust them, and hoped no other Amadis
headed this way. Those hunters needed some serious training before
they killed any of us. Assuming they hadn’t already nailed an
Amadis, which they probably had. We’d almost reached the steps
when Carlie ran out to us.

“Your friend is
hurt pretty bad,” she said after we finally managed to give
each other a hug in greeting.

“I know,” I
said miserably. “I don’t know if she’s going to
make it.”

“We have the
hospital,” Carlie said. “Part of it anyway. We have to be
careful so we don’t show signs that we’re here, but we
have access to an operating room and a generator.”

I looked over my
shoulder at Tristan, who stood in the second-floor window of one of
the townhomes, watching us. Probably listening, too.

“With the right
tools, Tristan can at least try—”

“I can do it,”
Carlie said. “I’m a surgeon now. Was, anyway. Finally
finished everything about two months before shit hit the fan.”

I twisted my head to
stare at her. “Really? How’d that happen? When?”

“Second year of
college, after you left. I decided to go pre-med, then came up here
for med school. I’ve been here ever since.”

I grasped her arm. “Do
you think you can save Sheree? She’s not exactly normal.”

Carlie lifted a brow
over her caring blue eyes. “What is she?”

“Um … a
were-tiger?”

Carlie chuckled, and
then shook her head. “I can try.”

“I don’t
know what that means about her anatomy,” I said. “I know
it means she runs hot, so don’t be alarmed unless she gets to
like 120 or something.”

“I’ll do
what I can, Alexis. But I can’t guarantee anything.”

I nodded. “I
know. I’m just asking you to try. Whatever you have to do.”

We entered the building
where Blossom and Jax waited with Sheree just inside. Carlie went off
to find some help, and I squatted down next to Sheree. Her brown eyes
rolled up to look at me, and her purple lips turned slightly upward.

“They’re
going to take care of you,” I said. “You’ll be good
as new in no time.”

Carlie and two men in
their twenties arrived. The guys lifted the door Sheree lay on, ready
to take her away.

“We’ll be
on the other side of campus,” Carlie said to me. “But
don’t worry. I’ll take care of her as best as I can. We
have plenty of room for all of you here. Some food, too. Not an
abundance, but we’re more than happy to share what we have.”