Faith (Soul Savers Book 7) (17 page)

“BREE!”
I screamed again as I flew after her, but she was gone.

My heart hammered
against my ribs as my stomach sank away. I landed back on the land
bridge, trying to catch a breath but unable to. What had I done? She
shouldn’t have been here! I should have remembered Stacey’s
story about the faeries disappearing. Did Satan have her now?
Crap!
I should have known better than to let her come this far with me.
What was going to happen to her? Tears stung my eyes at the possible
answers, all of them evil. She was in Hell. And it was all my fault.
She had probably known better herself and had come anyway, but I
could have stopped her. Maybe. I could have at least tried, if I’d
only been thinking. Instead, war had probably claimed another
casualty. A war I’d refused to fight anymore, yet it continued
on, taking people I loved.

I wouldn’t let
her efforts be in vain. I wouldn’t let it take Tristan, too.

I dove off the land
bridge, farther down into Hell, the burning lake coming closer by the
half-second. At the last moment, I veered up and soared across it,
searching for my Tristan. I felt out for him with my mind at first,
but my telepathy only worked down here when Satan wanted it to, so I
pressed my fingers to the faerie stone in my chest and reached out
with my soul instead, hoping it would find its mate.

I so did not want to
have to face Satan, but when the wails and howls of souls filled my
ears again, I wasn’t sure which was worse. Horrific images
began to flash in and out of my vision. The deep agony of all of the
souls in the lake were like three-ton blocks of cement, weighing me
down.

“Did you missss
me that much?” a slithery voice hissed in my head.

I ignored him, focusing
my search on my husband.
There
. My soul caught it—our
connection—and pulled me to the right and down. I followed the
sensation, skimming over the lake barely out of reach of the hands
that extended from the burning lava, grabbing for me. When I thought
I was about to careen into a stone wall, I saw the opening. I flew
through the pitch-black tunnel that came to a dead end where a
flaming monster had cornered my husband.

At least, my soul
recognized my husband, but my eyes did not. His large self was
crouched into a ball, as though he tried to make himself as small as
possible. His arms were folded over his head, and his eyes squeezed
tightly closed. The blazing sword I’d thrown at him lay
discarded to the side. The sight of my powerful warrior cowering from
this beast broke my heart and infuriated me at the same time.

“Tristan!”
I yelled, and his eyes popped open. He looked at me, showing
recognition and love at first, but then his face filled with the most
tortured look I’d ever seen.

“No.” His
voice was hoarse, sounding like he’d been shouting for a long
time. “Alexis, not you, too. Get out of here. Go!”

His words came weakly,
lacking any energy or power.

“No. Not without
you.” I lunged for him at the same time the fiery beast did.

Tristan’s eyes
widened, and he shook his head vehemently.

“Go, Alexis,”
he yelled as he sprang to his feet with sudden energy. If the fear of
something happening to me sparked fight back into him, I was okay
with that. “Get out before he gets you, too!”

I landed in front of
him. “Not without you.”

“I can’t!
Their pain is too much. I need to be here. To take it from them.”

“What—?”

The beast behind me
sucked in a deep breath, and I spun as it blew it out. I expected
fire to rage, but instead, only sound did. The sound of thousands of
people screaming for mercy, for help, for their lives.

“I caused that,”
Tristan said through a clenched jaw. “It’s mine to bear.
I have to take their pain.”

Full understanding of
what both Bree and he had meant nearly brought me to my knees with
sadness. His guilt over his past life as a Daemoni warrior anchored
him to this spot here in Hell, and he didn’t even want to fight
it. He wanted to take on the agony from the souls here, as though
doing so would lessen theirs.

I couldn’t
remember how many times I’d told him that he needed to forgive
himself, and I thought at one point he actually had. Apparently,
though, he’d only been hiding the guilt from me, and doing
everything he could to be good and right and overcome the horrors
he’d committed.

“Tristan, this—”
I flicked my hand at the monster “—it’s not real.
Those aren’t the people you hurt or killed. Their pain has been
relieved. You
can’t
take this on.”

“I must.”

“But you can’t.”

“I deserve it.”

“No! You don’t.”

His tortured expression
deepened, breaking my heart. “I see them and feel them all
around me, Alexis. Their cries for mercy. I only want to give that to
them. Mercy and peace.”

“But you can’t!
Not the souls here, Tristan. They chose their damnation here. The
damned are the ones you hear, not the ones you think. Look, it’s
not even real.” I kicked the fiery sword I’d given to him
off the ground, and it flew into my hand. I swung at the beast in
front of me, severing its head. The cries surrounding us ceased. Only
those in the distance remained. “See? It’s not real.
They’re
not real. You’re letting the guilt bog you
down. Letting
Satan
get to you.”

He stared at the
flaming monster as it collected its head and disappeared.

“Come on. Let’s
get you out of here.” I grabbed Tristan’s hand as I
prepared to lift off.

But he wouldn’t
budge. “I can’t. This is where I belong.”

I spun on him, my eyes
wide. I stepped right up against him, feeling the coldness his soul
had become. My hands clamped onto the sides of his face.

“You listen to
me. You are stronger than this. You are better than this. You
overcame all of this, and you’ve been forgiven.
Everybody
has forgiven you, Tristan. Everyone but yourself. And I need you to
do that right now.” I pulled his face down to me and pressed my
lips to his. “You are a man of love and kindness and
righteousness. You are my rock, my everything, and I need you. Dorian
needs you. I need you to believe in us, in our love.”

He stared into my eyes,
his full of bewilderment and more pain. He shook his head slowly. “He
says I belong here.”

“Who?
Satan?
”
I shook my head. “Are you going to believe him, or are you
going to believe me? Your wife, your love, your
soul mate
?
You’re always telling me to have faith, Tristan. So tell me,
where does
yours
lie?”

His brows pushed
together. A spark lit up his eyes. After blinking a few times, his
eyes, his mind, his whole self seemed to clear. He straightened up,
breaking the hold I had on his gaze, and rose to his full height,
pulling his shoulders back and nodding. Now
this
was my man.

“Ready to fight
our way out of here?” I asked as two Demons came soaring at us.

“Damn straight.”

I swung the sword at
the first Demon, expecting to decapitate it immediately. This time,
however, the blade went through the Demon, but had no effect, as
though it only sliced through air. I tried again, and the same thing.

“Throw it here,”
Tristan said, holding one hand out as his other fist slammed into the
second Demon’s temple, making it recoil.

They both attacked him,
ignoring me. I tried to use my powers, but they were ineffective on
the Demons, so I punched and kicked. My fists and feet went right
through them. Meanwhile, Tristan landed blow after blow, while they
did the same to him. At the same time, screams and wails ripped out
of their throats, full of despair and guilt. One’s voice
sounded like mine. And I realized: these were his Demons to slay.
Nobody else could do it for him.

So I flew out of the
way, silently cheering him on while I could only watch the battle in
the glow of the fiery weapons. I didn’t even realize as the
darkness started to fall over me, until it was nearly blinding. Cries
for help sounded distant at first, but then everywhere around me, on
top of me, within me. My head filled with the sobs, my vision with
nightmarish images, and my soul with a heavy grief that weighed me
down. To the floor, into the ground. At the last moment, when I
thought I was going to fall through, my eyes locked with Tristan’s,
and I knew I had to fight this. He’d come here for me, and he’d
stay for me if I didn’t battle my way out of here.

I heaved myself up to
my hands and knees and struggled against the invisible weight that
tried to push me down as I rose to my feet. Tristan had defeated one
of his Demons, but still fought fiercely with the other one. When
we’d locked gazes, though, the Demon had noticed. Its black,
inky eyes had flown to me, before returning to Tristan. Now, as I
barely regained my balance, still struggling to breathe, it swung
around with its fiery sword arcing around and down. And I remembered
what Tristan had said so many years ago:
You are my weakness
.

I also recalled Bree’s
words:
If you die here, nobody can save you.

My hand flew to my
chest, the pain as the blade cut from my right shoulder to barely
missing my heart searing at first, and then blossoming into full-on
burn that seemed to explode like the bombs on Earth. My lungs
expelled the air they held and refused to pull any more in. I wanted
to scream with the pain, but my throat was too tight to let any sound
pass. Gray crept in on the edges of my vision, and I stumbled
forward. My hand dropped down to catch me, landing on a rock. No, not
a rock. A head. The Demon’s head.

“Let’s get
out of here,” Tristan said, wrapping his arm around my waist.

I tried to answer, but
only gasps came out.
I … can’t.
I didn’t
know if he could hear my mind-talk.

“
Where’s
your faith, Lex?
”

Unlike the other times
I’d been asked, his question didn’t infuriate me. Because
at this moment, I knew exactly where my faith lay. In us. In our
love. Together we could conquer anything, and today, that would be
Hell.

Although I could barely
breathe, I bit back the pain and wrapped my arms around Tristan’s
neck. Then my wings lifted us into the air, and we flew through the
tunnel, out to the fiery lake. A whole swarm of Demons greeted us
with an enormous, lava-dripping snake behind them. I beat against the
air harder, pushing us upward. Every move of my wings pulled at the
wound in my chest, tearing it open further, but I pressed on.

The Demons attacked,
and Tristan fought them one-armed with the sword blazing in Hellfire
while I struggled to lift us higher. The snake rose in front of me
and breathed out fire. I dipped us down, barely missing the flames,
and then swerved us around its head before it tried again. Tristan
must have severed a Demon arm because a sword came flying at me. I
caught it, just in time as the snake’s head lifted to meet my
gaze. I swung out, slicing through its liquid eye as I gave my wings
a hard push against the air.

A piercing screech
followed us up. Heat engulfed us as the snake exhaled another breath.
I beat my hardened wings frantically while swinging the sword at the
Demons who came near. One caught my blade with its mace and jerked it
out of my hand. At the same time, another knocked Tristan’s
sword free, too. Without weapons, our only hope was to escape. By the
time we reached the bridge where I’d lost Tristan last time,
though, I could barely force myself to go on. The wound, the flying,
and the fighting had drained my energy. The slash in my chest not
only burned from heat, but sharp icicles filled my lungs and heart.
The souls of Hell were like anchors chained to my chest and pulling
me down.

“Tristan,”
I croaked.

“You can do this,
ma lykita
.”

I gave him a weak nod.
“For us.”

But the harder I tried
to lift us up into the blackness that led to the Otherworld, the more
Hell dragged me down. The hotter and colder the wound in my chest
burned. As much as my wings fought to fly us upward, we went nowhere.
With a deep, feral growl, I gave my wings every bit of energy I had
to push us up and away. But we only hung in the air, like a kite
losing its uplift and about to dive for the ground. I looked Tristan
in his eyes with the gold around the pupil and the outside of the
irises a deep emerald green reflecting the glow of fire around us.
They were void of any fire within them, though. Instead, they were
filled with complete trust and confidence in me.

“I’m …
sorry,” I said as we began to fall.

The defeat, the loss,
the acceptance of yet another failure of mine was so much worse than
the pain. I closed my eyes, unable to look him in the face a second
longer. I’d tried so hard to save him, to save us both, but as
usual, I wasn’t enough.

“
Believe in
love.
”

The whisper was so
quiet in my mind, I almost missed it. But it was enough to give me
one last surge of strength. With only sheer will and perseverance—and
the love of my soul in my arms—to power me, we shot upwards,
into the blackness, toward the Otherworld.