Torment (Soul Savers Book 6)

Soul Savers Series

Book Six

Kristie Cook

Ang’dora Productions, LLC

Punta Gorda, Florida

Torment Summary

He’ll torment her soul until she breaks…and humanity
until it falls.

When
the Daemoni expose their existence to the human race, all Hell breaks
loose. Literally. Not only do they walk the world freely, attacking
at will, but they’ve infiltrated the highest levels of power in
the human world. World War III erupts between countries and species,
with Lucas, leader of evil on Earth, orchestrating it all. He even
possesses direct control of thousands of human soldiers’ minds,
putting himself in position to take over humanity.

Alexis,
still young and inexperienced, must lead the Angels’ army to
war. But every step she takes is trumped by Lucas, who
single-handedly turns the humans against her Amadis. When Alexis and
Tristan top every country’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists,
they are forced to go underground to fight this war. And their first
mission is to free the human soldiers by breaking the link that
allows Lucas to control them.

But
the Four Horsemen have apparently arrived, bringing the world into
the apocalypse. Can Alexis and the Amadis prevent Lucas from taking
over humanity? Or is he truly the Antichrist, and the events
tormenting the world part of an age-old prophecy that can’t be
stopped?

This
highly anticipated sixth book of the Soul Savers Series will leave
readers in shock, begging for the final installment,
Faith
.

— Soul Savers Series —

www.SoulSaversSeries.com

Promise

Purpose

Devotion

Power

Wrath

Torment

Faith

Genesis: A Soul Savers Novella

Wonder: A Soul Savers Collection of Holiday Short Stories & Recipes

— The Book of Phoenix Series —

www.TheBookofPhoenix.com

The Space Between

The Space Beyond

The Space Within

Copyright © 2014 by Kristie Cook

All rights reserved.

Published by

Ang’dora Productions, LLC

Punta Gorda, FL

Mailing Address:

24123 Peachland Blvd C4-148

Port Charlotte, FL 33954

Ang’dora Productions and associated logos are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of Ang’dora Productions, LLC

Cover design by Brenda Pandos; Photo by Regina Wamba

Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of
this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of
the owner of this book.

Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted
materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only
authorized editions.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters and events are
either products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-939859-14-3 (Print)

ISBN 978-1-939859-13-6 (ePub)

First Edition January 2015

Printed in the United States of America

For You, My Reader

Automatic gunfire beat
out a staccato rhythm all around me. Thunder punctuated it with a
loud bass sound, followed by a streak of lightning that illuminated
the cracks carved into the sky and the ancient structure looming
nearby. A steady rain fell, pelting my skin and drenching my hair,
plastering the strands to my head.

One word drowned out
the cacophony of the storm. One scream that lifted the hairs on the
back of my neck.

“
ALEXIS!
”

One image that pushed
everything else out of focus.

Auburn hair that looked
nearly black from being soaked. Almond-shaped, brown eyes even larger
than normal. Olive-toned skin washed out, blanched by the rain. A
small and curvy, yet fit body.

Just like me.

She lunged and reached
out, as though to save me from the danger.

But it was her body
being peppered with the bullets. Her body that jerked and twitched
with each hit. Her body that collapsed as her arms still lifted
toward me, her voice again calling my name.

“
MOM!
”

The word became lodged
in my throat. My mouth opened wide to let the scream out. But I had
no force to make it heard. I had no power to propel my body forward.
I could only stand there, unable to do anything but watch the blood
mix with the rain and stain her shirt with rivers of red.

My breath caught
audibly, and my hand clapped over my chest, my heart pounding against
it with the force of Thor’s hammer. I squeezed my eyes shut and
opened them again.

My bedroom surrounded
me, the misty gray of pre-dawn light leaking through the doorway to
the balcony, the sheer curtain barely fluttering before it. I sat in
my bed, sweat dripping down my back, trying to catch my breath.

I didn’t know if
you could call that a recurring nightmare, considering I hadn’t
been sleeping. Sleep rarely blessed me with its presence since we
returned from that fatal night three weeks and four days ago. I only
came to bed at night because it was what people did. So I lay here in
the dark, letting my body regenerate as best as it could, wishing
sleep would wrap me in its peace and take me away from this world at
least for a couple of hours. But too many thoughts and memories raced
through my consciousness to allow it to shut down. Especially this
particular scene. It was a nightmare, yes, but not one I could ever
wake from.

The vision of my
mother’s death replayed in my mind day and night with just the
smallest of triggers, leaving me with the same questions every time.

Why did I only stand
there, stupid and useless? Why didn’t I do anything?

The same answers came
along with them: I was too inexperienced, too ignorant to expect such
shockingly cruel behavior even from our enemy, too naïve to
think my sperm-donor would murder the only woman who’d ever
loved him, and too slow to act. I was not
enough
yet. Not fast
enough, not smart enough, not experienced enough. Not enough of
anything to be where I was now—especially not enough to be
matriarch of the Amadis.

The large body under
the sheets next to me stirred, and a warm, calming palm slid up my
spine. I swiped at my cheeks, making sure they’d remained dry.
I didn’t want him to know if I’d been crying. Except for
one major breakdown behind closed doors, tears usually eluded me
these days, and this morning was no exception. His hand gently
gripped my shoulder, and his thumb rubbed circles into the back of my
neck, massaging the ever-present knot.

“I’m sorry
I woke you,” I whispered as I turned my head slightly to look
over my shoulder. “Again.”

His torso twisted
toward me, rustling the sheet, and his other arm snaked across my
belly. He pulled me down to him, nestling my head under his chin and
curling his body protectively around mine.

“I don’t
mind,” Tristan murmured, his lovely voice husky with sleep as
he pulled me closer.

“You don’t
get much more sleep than I do, though.”

“Don’t
worry about me, my love. I am always here for you, by your side,
shouldering your pain with you.”

Now my eyes stung, and
I blinked rapidly while drawing in a jagged breath. I lived with the
agony of Rina’s and Sophia’s deaths causing fresh breaks
in my heart every day, but I didn’t cry. The waking nightmare
made me gasp for air with its horrific and unending awfulness, but I
didn’t cry. The loss and what it meant for me, the Amadis, the
world, often paralyzed me, but I didn’t cry. Kindness, though …
the kindness of others always came close to breaking me. And Tristan,
of course, had been nothing but kind and gentle, patient and
comforting, and most of all loving. He was my rock, and I needed him
to keep me anchored when the tumultuous waters of life tossed me in
all directions, threatening to sweep me away.

I pressed my lips
against his bare, muscular chest, letting them linger for a long
moment, and then I pulled away, wiggling out of the circle of his
powerful arms.

“You’re
leaving me?” he asked, his voice soft and half-asleep.

“I’m going
to the cliff. You try to get more sleep.”

His breaths came in a
steady rhythm by the time I’d dressed in yoga pants and a
hoodie and stuffed my feet into running shoes. I pushed the sheer
curtain aside, stepped onto the balcony, and inhaled a deep breath of
the cool, salty air of a mid-September morning in the Greek Islands.
Then I sprang from the third-story balcony. Even the deer on the edge
of the woods didn’t hear me as I landed softly on the balls of
my feet. After a quick wave to the vampire guard standing watch on
this side of the building, I pulled my hood over my head and took off
in a sprint, past the training gym behind the mansion and through the
woods.

I ran three miles
straight east, through the forest and across the northern edge of
Amadis Island, to where the cliffs dropped to the sea. The woods were
still dark and unusually quiet as I sprinted through them. I only
sensed animal mind signatures, so if any Weres or vamps had been out
for the night, they were gone now, back at home in the village eight
miles away at the south end of the island. When I burst out of the
tree line, the sky hadn’t lightened at all since I’d
left—it had only been a minute or so—and it was still a
dark gray. I stood on the edge of the cliff, listening to the waves
crash against the bottom and staring straight outward as the breeze
lifted and tossed my hair, and I saw what was no longer there.

Their bodies lay
side-by-side, two so tiny and one larger, all of them painfully still
on the grandiose pyre built for the triple funeral and decorated with
beautiful greenery and flowers. Mom’s and Rina’s hair
were arranged in up-dos, and they wore their traditional Amadis
dresses, both in royal purple. Although she’d only been the
matriarch for five minutes, I had decreed that Mom deserved to wear
the leader’s color rather than the lighter plum shade that
represented the matriarch’s second. I’d also ensured
Winston, her one true love who’d also died that night, lay by
her side. Their arms were neatly arranged so their hands came
together on their stomachs, and their eyes were closed. The peace the
whole display showed clashed with the emotions that stormed through
me.

A crowd of about as
many Amadis as could possibly fit on the island—at least five
times the normal population of 637—had gathered behind Tristan,
Dorian, and me to say farewell to their leaders. Several people cried
and sniffled, including Charlotte and Julia, and I thought Solomon,
too, all who stood right behind us. Others, like Ophelia, the witch
who had served as Rina’s head of household for over a century,
sobbed loudly.

I’d held
Tristan’s hand as he lit the pyre with fire from his palm. My
power contributed to lifting the huge wooden dais from the ground and
sending it over the cliff’s edge, where it hung in midair. My
throat tightened, and I choked on the sobs building their way up,
forcing me to say my good-byes silently. The flames licked higher,
sending black plumes into the air, until they swallowed their bodies.
Then the entire thing disappeared as the Angels accepted my
grandmother, my mom, and her soul mate to the Otherworld.

I drew in a long breath
as the vision faded away and blew it out slowly. This nightmare
wasn’t quite as horrific as the one at the abbey, but the
memory of their funeral a few weeks ago remained just as fresh and
painful. I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat and jumped
off the hundred-foot cliff.

About a fifth of the
way down, I swung my body inward and landed on a three-foot-wide
ledge that jutted out two feet from the cliff side. I’d only
recently noticed it, although we’d held many funerals on the
cliff straight above, and nobody had ever mentioned the ledge that
was almost like an altar down here. Perhaps nobody had actually
discovered it before or maybe only matriarchs could see it, but I
found it to be the most secluded and peaceful place to spend time
alone. I hadn’t ventured into the Sacred Archives yet, which
would also be peaceful, I knew, but they didn’t provide this
view.