Faith (Soul Savers Book 7) (30 page)

“Ye of little
faith,” Owen said as he clipped his walkie-talkie to his belt.
I’d only noticed him talking into it out of the corner of my
eye. “It’s not just us here. There are people and Amadis
around the world.”

I rolled my eyes and
snorted. “Bullshit. Tristan and I have been around this world.
You’re the first and only souls we’ve found that don’t
belong to the Daemoni and their
volunteer
servants.”

“You’re
wrong, Alexis. Let’s go see Mum, and you’ll see proof. A
messenger has just arrived.”

As we headed back to
the front of The Loft, I reached my mind out to find the new
arrival’s signature in the same room we’d been in earlier
at the Intake section, and I frowned. Robin, the were-falcon who I’d
kicked off my council, was with Char.

“Ms. Alexis?”
Robin’s greeting was a mix between a chirp and a squawk when I
walked through the doorway, and she immediately dropped to a knee
with her head bowed.

I entered the command
post farther and tilted my head as I studied her. Was she kissing up
to me now? She’d been one of Rina’s council members to
put Tristan on trial, and then when I took reign, she hadn’t
exactly been supportive. She’d questioned my methods and
abilities too much for me to feel comfortable with keeping her on my
council, so I’d dismissed her, along with a handful of others.
And now here she was, bowing to me. I wasn’t sure what to make
of it. Her thoughts matched her actions, but she’d expect me to
check them and would prepare for it, so that didn’t mean much.

“Please, get up.”
I circled around her to Charlotte’s side.

Robin rose to her feet,
but rather than look down her long nose at me with her round, beady
eyes as she usually did, she gazed at the floor.

“I’m very
happy you’re safe and sound,” she said quietly. She
paused, but as if she’d been waiting to say her next words for
a long time, they came bursting out of her. “And I apologize
greatly for my actions before. I should have believed in you.”

I let out a harrumph.
“But you were right. I failed.”

Her head snapped up,
and she looked at me with widened eyes. “You saved the Norman
soldiers. You did exactly what you said you’d do. What needed
to be done to protect the Normans.”

“Protect them?
They were far from protected. And I haven’t stopped Lucas and
the Daemoni. Human lives have been lost. Amadis, too. The world is
only worse.”

“Well, the war
continues, but that’s how war is. It must get worse before it
can get better. You told us that. And you will have victory in the
end.”

I narrowed my eyes and
gnawed on my bottom lip.
Who was this woman, and what happened to
the real Robin?
I would have asked if I hadn’t been able to
feel her very authentic mind signature. She was definitely Robin the
were-falcon who’d once served on the Amadis Council.

“So you have news
for us?” Owen asked as he turned one of the plastic chairs
around and sat on it backwards, propping his elbows on the table in
front of him.

“Wait another
minute before you start,” Char said to Robin. “We’re
not all here. I’ve sent relief for Blossom and Sheree so they
can join us.”

A few minutes later, my
team had assembled around the U-shape of conference tables in the
command post.
My. Team
. Just thinking the two words lifted my
heart after so many months of thinking I’d never see them
again. Of thinking they were dead. This room, with its cheap, plastic
furniture and whiteboard-covered walls, was a far cry from the grand
room of the Amadis Council Hall, but we were all here. That’s
all that mattered now. Tristan and I stood with Charlotte and Robin
at the front of the room, and I looked at each of their faces—Blossom
and Jax, Vanessa and Owen, Sheree—and smiled, fighting tears of
happiness to have us reunited.

“Stupid
hormones,” I muttered as everyone watched me wipe my eyes,
earning a chuckle.

“So have you
found anything since the last time you were here?” Charlotte
asked Robin, whose gaze had jumped to my midsection. Tristan and I
quickly moved over to lean against the front of the closest table so
she could face us all at once, and I self-consciously wrapped my arms
over my belly.

“I’ve found
several groups of Normans and Amadis spread through the United
States,” she announced, and I gasped.

“Alive and …
normal?” Tristan asked. “Not possessed or serving the
Daemoni?”

“Not including
them, yes,” Robin answered. “There are many of those, but
there are also many pockets of people in hiding, just like those
here. Many are in underground, sealed-off compounds like this. In
some areas, they’ve been able to go to the surface for short
amounts of time, so I was able to find them. A lot have Amadis mages
keeping them cloaked and protected.”

“Wow,” I
breathed, but then the air caught in my lungs. “Dorian?”

The word came out as a
demand, and Robin bit her thin lip. I wanted to shake her.

“Have you seen
Dorian anywhere?” Tristan asked.

She shook her head. “I
thought he …” She looked at Char, Owen, and Vanessa
before her gaze came back to us. “He left … right?”

“We don’t
know where he is,” I said. “There’s no evidence
he’s crossed over to them yet, but we found no trace of him
either.”

“I did overhear a
couple of Daemoni say he was with a faerie. I don’t know where,
though. They also said Lucas is waiting on Dorian, because he can’t
force his decision. So there’s nothing for the Daemoni to do
right now, but enjoy their victory. And that’s exactly what
they seem to be doing.”

A faerie?
Was
that what the matriarchs had meant by a neutral party? Wasn’t
that just dandy. We could only hope the faerie was actually unbiased
and didn’t have Daemoni leanings. Maybe Dorian would even fall
for the faerie magic and never want to leave. If only that were a
real possibility, but I highly doubted it. Too much was at stake. He
was probably with a male faerie for that very reason. At least he
wasn’t with Lucas. Yet. At least he was alive. As far as we
knew.

I sighed, fighting back
more tears. Damn hormones. “How many people? Norman and
Amadis?”

Robin lifted her broad
shoulder in a shrug. “It’s hard to say. I’ve found
a few larger groups like this one that are a mix of Norman and
Amadis. And a lot more smaller ones that are one or the other. The
ones with Amadis who can spend longer times on the surface say their
groups grow every day as they find new survivors or Daemoni who want
to convert.”

I straightened up at
this. “Have you happened to have found one in Arizona? In a big
cave?”

“Oh, yes, that’s
one of the largest groups. How’d you know?”

“Um …
rumors … the Angels … you know.” She didn’t
need to know everything, but it couldn’t have been that
surprising that I’d heard from the Angels. She knew Rina used
to receive messages.

She cocked her head for
a moment, eyeing me, but appeared to dismiss whatever question she
had. “Well, the Arizona group has a whole network of connected
caves. They’re pretty established and constantly growing.”

“Really?”
Huh.

She shifted her weight
on her bird-thin, jeans-clad legs, and nodded. “I’m sure
there are many, many more. It’s difficult to scope areas out
very well when you’re a target as the only bird in the sky, so
I know I’ve missed some. And I’ve flown as far south as
Mexico, where another Amadis were-falcon has been searching. There
are more in Central and South America, which means there must be
groups all over the world.”

Now I shook my head,
and my shoulders dropped as I slumped against the table again.
“Tristan and I have been all over Europe and Africa. There was
nobody except Daemoni.”

“Are you sure?”
Robin asked. “They’re hiding very well, for good reason.
Deep underground.”

I tapped my finger
against my temple. “We searched with more than our eyes and
ears. I found nobody’s thoughts. Until Owen and Vanessa found
us, I truly thought Tristan and I were the only ones left on Earth.”

“But if they’re
shielded and cloaked, you can’t hear their minds, right?”
Owen asked. “Did you detect the hundreds of people here?”

“Well …
no,” I admitted as I rubbed my chin. “But you and
Charlotte put up the strongest cloaks. And not all of the groups have
Amadis at all, right, Robin?”

“A few don’t.
The really tiny clusters of Normans. But the Amadis are out looking
for them and bringing them to the larger groups that
are
cloaked.”

“So how many are
we talking about? What are the estimates for survivors?”
Tristan asked.

Robin squinted her
little eyes as she appeared to be doing math in her head. “At
least a couple million Normans in the Americas. So probably a few
hundred million worldwide?”

I gasped audibly. “You
really think so?”

I wasn’t sure how
I felt about this news. That was a few hundred million more than I’d
thought had survived, even when Mom, Rina, and Cassandra had tried to
convince me otherwise, but that meant over six billion lives had been
lost. All in a matter of weeks.

“Considering what
I’ve found so far, and what others have found, yes, I do,”
Robin answered me.

“Does that
include the Daemoni’s slaves and the Normans they’d put
in the farms?” Vanessa asked.

“Farms?”
Robin asked. “You mean the concentration camps?”

Vanessa nodded.
“They’re using those people for food. Harvesting them.”

Robin scowled and shook
her head. “No, it doesn’t. But I think tens of thousands
of those Normans are alive, too.”

“And if the
Daemoni were truly farming them, there might be many pregnant women
under their control,” Blossom said.

“
Seriously?
”
I asked.
Wow. Just wow
. Where was everyone, though?

Tristan rubbed his hand
over the back of his head. “It makes sense. There are dozens of
government compounds around the world that are nuclear safe. They
each hold thousands of people. Then you think about all of the
individual shelters like this one.”

“Brogan said he
had over one-and-a-half million customers,” Char said. “Those
are people who were prepared for catastrophes.”

I recalled the scenes
Cassandra had shown me while I was in the Otherworld—glimpses
through the veil of Normans who had survived. She hadn’t been
exaggerating at all. In fact, she’d downplayed just how many
people were still alive. People whose souls were worth fighting for.

And babies’
souls, too?

Of course, I’d
known about the Norman farms, so I knew the Daemoni had kept some
Normans somewhere. Victor had told us they were nice and safe—from
the bombs, anyway. I’d figured they were the ones serving the
Daemoni voluntarily now, but I hadn’t considered the
possibility of babies. Of another generation who’d either be
controlled by the Daemoni … or could rebuild this world.

Their future was
possibly up to us. This news changed everything.

“What
about Amadis? How many survived?” Tristan asked, and my eyes
flew to Robin.

She didn’t
hesitate to count this time. “A few thousand. Maybe ten or
twelve?”

“And Daemoni?”
Sheree asked.

“All of them,”
Vanessa muttered. “They knew it was coming.”

Robin nodded. “They
were prepared. Their numbers are about the same as they were.”

“Over half a
million then,” Tristan said, and my heart sank. “And they
have the Demons now, too.”

“More Demons than
Daemoni,” Robin reported. “Most of them are hiding in
Norman skins.”

Now my heart fell
through the floor. All hope that had been building in the last
several hours had been dashed to nothing in mere seconds.

“There’s no
way,” I murmured.

“No way for
what?” Blossom asked.

“No way to beat
them. Ten thousand Amadis versus over a million of them?” I
shook my head.

“There are the
Normans—” Vanessa started.

I looked at her with
disbelief. “We’re talking the Daemoni and the Demons. I’m
not putting the Normans against them. That would be asking them to
commit suicide.”

“Many of them are
trained,” Owen said. “The hunters, to start with. They do
well against the Daemoni.”

“What?” I
turned on him. “When they’re five or ten on one?”

Owen shrugged. “We
could hit those numbers.”

My brow shot up. “There
are that many hunters?”

“No, but we can
train other Normans,” he insisted. “Look at all of the
people in the Training rooms here.”

“We’re not
doing that. This is
our
war. We’re not putting them in
that situation.”

“It’s their
world, too,
ma lykita
,” Tristan said. “Maybe they
should at least get a say in it.”