Good thing, because whether he agreed or not that I"d regained my strength and health, I was leaving today. Using one of the bottles of water and a blanket we"d found in the village that we"d no longer need, we did our best to clean up and then dress in our fighting leathers.
"Where do we start?" I asked as I laced up my boots.
"I think we find Noah."
"He"s the last we know who"s seen him," I agreed. "But how? Where? If you"re right that it"s December, he could be anywhere by now, with or without Dorian."
He pulled on a t-shirt he"d found yesterday after our ... escapades. "One guess would be Noah would go to his homeland of Italy."
"Okay then. I guess we head there."
A few minutes later, we stood outside the demolished Amadis council hall one last time before launching into the crisp air. Flying several hundred feet over Earth, alongside my man, and a deep blue sky above us, should have been an incredible experience. Although the wind blew through my hair and against my cheeks in the same way, riding a motorcycle didn"t come close to comparing to this feeling of freedom and thrilling release. But the beauty of the day was ruined by the way the sun"s yellow rays shone brightly down only to fall flat on an iron-black sea and a gray Earth below. The peace was suffocating, because the feeling of being the only two people on Earth was more than an illusion. It was our reality.
I watched the ground with eagle eyes, searching for any sign of life just in case, but as expected, I saw none. No fish in the sea. No birds in the sky with us. No fishing boats out for the restaurants" catch of the day. Once we flew over land, no restaurants open or people to go to them for a night out. Not even a green leaf on a tree or a blade of gra.s.s. Granted, if Tristan was right, winter might have set in, but Greece had a mild climate. It shouldn"t look like a thin layer of dirty snow had stained everything an ugly gray.
The smaller villages we flew over showed wear and tear, but most buildings remained standing. Still, though, no people. Not a single mind signature to be found. No cars or buses traveling on the roads or trains chugging through the countryside. Trucks didn"t carry goods from source to consumer. As the villages became suburbs and the suburbs the city of Athens, my breath caught at the sight. Half of the city was blackened from fire, and the rest destroyed. The ancient structures had been demolished. A greenish haze hovered over the city with an acrid smell that burnt my nose and eyes.
My heart sank at the sight of such loss. Such overwhelming loss. Millions of people should have been living their lives, going to work or coming home, shopping for food, picking up children from school, walking dogs, visiting the Parthenon ... going about their normal days or enjoying their long awaited and much deserved vacations.
So much beauty and history ... so many people ... gone, I thought to Tristan.
He didn"t answer, but swooped closer to me, slid his wing over mine so he could reach my outstretched hand, and gave it a squeeze. Then he pulled me along, farther west.
You"re sure about Italy? I asked him as Athens disappeared behind us. What if Satan lied to us? What if what he showed us were mere deceptions? What if both Noah and Dorian died in the bombs with the rest of the world?
"Did you see Dorian in Heaven?"
I frowned. They told me he didn"t belong there.
"And he doesn"t belong in h.e.l.l, so he can only be here, somewhere on Earth."
That was pretty much what I"d concluded before, too, but I wasn"t sure I trusted Mom, Rina, and Ca.s.sandra anymore. Or anyone else, really. Especially when it came to Dorian.
"Italy is the closest option of where Noah could be," Tristan continued, "so we may as well check there first. Keep your mind open."
Without the millions of Norman signatures filling my head, my mind could reach much farther than usual, allowing us to do a quick sweep over southern Italy. Every now and then, I picked up on some mind signatures, especially as we approached Rome. All Daemoni, but none Noah.
We headed north from there, flying nonstop until we hit a snowstorm over the Alps. We tried to press on, but the wind gusts kept flipping me over and I"d careen into Tristan. Even he had a hard time fighting the wind, and when we flew over a castle still standing on a mountainside, we dipped down to check it out. No mind signatures were around for as far as my sense could reach.
The castle apparently had been a hotel most recently, and no guests or caretakers had stuck around, although it was far from any city that had been bombed. We gained entry through a side door into the modern, industrialized kitchen, and found a couple of bottles of soda water and wine, some jars of olives, anchovies, and artichoke hearts, and a box of crackers-the only non-perishables in a place that had probably served gourmet meals made with the freshest of ingredients. The rest of the food left behind stunk up the place, and we hurried beyond, through a fancy dining room and into a beautiful sitting room. Well, it was probably beautiful at one time. Now, it was as gray and ashy as the rest of the world.
"I can"t believe this place is so untouched," I mused as I brushed my hand over an antique coffee table, flinging a plume of dust into the air, before I set down the ingredients for our dinner. "This would have been a good place to flee from the Daemoni, so they must have left to take shelter from the fallout."
"Actually, there"s a ski resort not too far from here, and you know how the Daemoni like to prey on vacationers." Tristan picked up an antique goblet and rubbed a coating of gray ash off with his thumb, exposing a smudge of gold underneath.
"So not a good place for refuge?"
He studied the cup for a moment and put it down. "No, not good for Normans. Or if any had come here, it"d be the first place the Daemoni would hunt and harvest for their human farms."
"I wonder where they are." I meandered around the room for a quick inspection, trailing my fingers through the dust on the spines of books that sat on a bookshelf spanning an entire wall. "Surely the Daemoni did something with the Normans to protect their food source from the nuclear fallout."
"I"m sure those camps were strategically placed near bunkers," Tristan said. "But I don"t think those were nuclear bombs. Not all of them."
I looked over my shoulder at him. "We saw the mushroom clouds when Lucas was boasting about what he"d done."
"Any large impact can create a mushroom cloud. The damage we"ve seen doesn"t make sense." He picked up a piece of cut wood from the stack next to the fireplace and blew across it. A cloud of gray dust rose and scattered. "Here, for example. There weren"t enough nuclear bombs in the world to hit every town or even small city. Targets would have been chosen strategically. There"s no reason there would be fallout way out here in the mountains, in the middle of nowhere."
"Couldn"t the wind have carried it?"
He shook his head as he placed the wood in the hearth and reached for another piece. "Normal nuclear fallout wouldn"t be like this. Not covering everything so completely and evenly. The thoroughness is unnatural."
I brushed a layer of thick dust off the camelback sofa, sat down, and leaned my elbows on my knees. "You think it"s supernatural?"
"I think Lucas and his sorcerers, maybe even the Ancients themselves, did something, yes. It looks like they tried to scrub out every bit of life-form on Earth. Except, of course, for the ones they specifically chose to save for their own purposes."
I dropped my chin in my hand and sighed. "Not try. They did."
Tristan lit the pile of wood with his hand, and the fire caught quickly. The flames cast their orange light on half of his face while the other half remained in darkness as he looked at me.
"I don"t think so. I think humans are more resourceful and more resilient than the Daemoni know. And so is this world. Life will come back from this, if we can give it the chance it needs."
I pursed my lips together as I began opening jars for our supper, staying silent on the matter. Nothing we"d seen so far had given me any hope. In fact, the desolate landscape that had pa.s.sed below us today had only strengthened my belief that nothing good remained in this world. The lack of mind signatures confirmed what I"d believed all along.
The blanket of nickel-gray snow we woke up to the next morning did nothing to change my mind.
We flew over all of Austria and then to Prague, which looked even worse than it had when we"d been there before. We continued on to Berlin and farther north, until we came to the sea. I found pockets of Daemoni mind signatures, but no Norman life.
Are you sure Noah wouldn"t have gone to Hades? I asked Tristan, not for the first time.
"Positive. He had no interest in Hades, like most of the Summoned once they realized Lucas had no intention of giving them any real power. Some went rogue, like Edmund, and the rest scattered, doing their own thing. They created their own little empires, taking over small towns or leading gangs and mafias. But Noah just disappeared. We crossed paths a few times before I left, and there are a couple of places we can still check. I think we should go west and south before we head east toward Hades." He banked to the left as he finished.
But as we made the turn, something caught my mind just ahead in a large German town that wasn"t quite a city.
No, not something. Someone.
Tristan, there"s a Norman down there!
We dropped to the ground a mile outside of the town and hid our wings before running the rest of the way. As we approached, she didn"t move at first. The girl, in her early twenties, sat on the curb with her jeans-clad legs stretched out into the street, her feet rocking side to side on the heels of her Converse All-Stars. One gloved hand held her blue, puffy winter coat together while the other lifted a cigarette to her lips. Curly locks of black hair stuck out of her knit hat. We were almost close enough to touch her when she finally looked in our direction.
Her cheeks were sunken in and her skin, which had probably once been a pretty coffee tone, was a sickly pallor. Her light brown eyes, ringed in purple, opened wide when she saw us, her pupils dilated unnaturally large for being out in the sun. She jumped to her feet and ran.
"Wait!" I called after her, but she sprinted down the street and around the corner. "Let"s go. There"s probably more."
For the first time since before my trip to the Otherworld, I held a little bit of hope. If this human could be out here in the air without succ.u.mbing to the fallout, then others could, too. Maybe Tristan had been right last night. Maybe there was a chance for this world.
We jogged after the girl, and up ahead, I sensed the many mind signatures. A mixture of them-Norman and Daemoni.
I think it"s a camp, I said to Tristan as we rounded the corner. The block was short, ending at a large building that looked like a mall. The girl disappeared inside. We stopped jogging, but continued heading down the street.
"I sense a couple dozen Daemoni inside," he said. "Any others around?"
I reached out with my mind and then shook my head. We can take these.
But I"d no sooner spoken the words when several more minds popped into the area, surrounding us. Except, not all were Daemoni. Not enough mind signatures accounted for the physical bodies on the roofs above and the sidewalks to our sides. The extras looked Norman, but they had no thoughts for me to grasp. And on closer look, they all had the same, inhuman eyes-no irises, no pupils, not even whites. Their eyes black with flames dancing in them, like Tristan"s used to be when the monster inside him had tried to take over his soul. These were Demons, wearing human bodies.
The door to the mall ahead of us swung open, and the Norman girl in the blue coat came running out, tugging at the hand of a dark-haired vampire. She spoke something in German.
"She says we tried to kill her," Tristan said quietly. The vampire leaned down and pressed his mouth close to her ear. "He"s promising to take care of her."
The girl looked up at him and smiled as his tongue traced the line of her jaw. Her coat had fallen open, exposing bite marks all over her throat and chest. Other Normans came out of the building, also sporting scars and also hanging onto more vampires. Tristan and I exchanged a sideways glance. Our one communication before I shot Amadis power at the Demons, and he paralyzed the vamps in mid-motion as they"d made their move to attack. The Demons poofed away, and I turned my palm toward a female bloodsucker.
A Norman stopped me, his voice pleading as he spoke to me in German. I looked at him with disbelief, noticing the fresh wounds on his throat.
"Ich liebe sie," he said, and I didn"t know much German, but I knew that meant he loved her.
"They"re blood slaves," Tristan murmured, before speaking to them in German. The man answered him, shaking his head. "He says that"s his wife. She was before she was turned, and she still is. This is her nest. They"re all claiming to be family."
"They"re not Amadis," I said.
Tristan shook his head. "Not at all."
"So they"re using these Normans."
"Retters!" a woman said, and her thought translated to "saviors." My head snapped toward her with another spark of hope, thinking she meant Tristan and me, but she jabbed at the vampires to each side of her. "Safe."
And my heart sank. This was exactly what Lucas had wanted-the Normans to believe the Daemoni would save them and take care of them.
Tristan said more in German, and the man responded, eliciting a harsh breath out of him. "They don"t believe we can help them. They said the nest saved them right before the bombs and has kept them safe all this time. They want to give them their blood. They claim it"s no different than cooking dinner for their families."
I opened my mouth to ask him what we should do when gunfire ratted through the street, coming from the doors to the mall. Several Normans dropped to the ground, pulling their vampires down with them. More Daemoni and Demons appeared around us.
After scanning the minds of several people, I knew there was nothing we could do. These Normans wanted to serve the Daemoni. They truly believed what they were doing was right. And since none of them stopped the shooters, they obviously didn"t want us there. Didn"t want our help. They had masters and caretakers and were perfectly fine with that.
Tristan gave me a nod, and we rocketed into the air, exposing our wings to wrap around our bodies, blocking the bullets still spraying toward us. Once we were high enough, we spread our wings and soared toward the southwest, flying for hours. No matter how far we flew, though, I couldn"t get away from the images of the Normans and their perforated throats. Those were the people I"d failed when Lucas had claimed his victory. Those were the people who needed my help, but I had no idea how to give it. Especially when they didn"t want it.
We spent the night in a cathedral outside of Paris after sensing only Daemoni in the city. I began to believe that the Normans Ca.s.sandra had shown me through the veil either didn"t exist or now served the Daemoni. Or had been ma.s.sacred, as I"d predicted. My hope that had dared to spark earlier was once again snuffed out, and my heart felt so heavy in my chest, I was surprised I could even lift it off the ground to fly.
Where are we headed now? I asked Tristan the next morning as he steered us in a southwesterly direction.
"Noah once had a hideout in Morocco," he said, the only explanation he gave.
We flew for hours over gray land, then over charcoal-gray sea that swallowed the sunlight rather than reflected it, and then over more gray land that should have been the color of sand. Even the deserts of Africa had been scorched of any beauty. And there were no signs of life anywhere, not even Daemoni. Not until I could see the ocean far ahead did I sense a lone mind signature.
The singularity of it made my heart sink.
He"s here, I told Tristan. Noah. But not Dorian.
I led him as I followed the mind signature to where the edge of land met the ocean. Cliffs overlooked the beach, some jutting out into the water in unique arched formations that had probably been breathtaking before, but the monotone colors and strange shapes made me feel as though we were on an alien planet. We landed on the gray sand and hid our wings.
Up there. I focused on a point about halfway up the cliff where there was an opening in the stone. Tristan nodded, and we both sprang up there together, landing at the entrance to a cave deep enough that I couldn"t see the far walls.
"Noah," Tristan called.
No reply came, but I felt him nearby.
"We"re not here to hurt you," I said, although I sensed no fear from him. More like misery. We stepped farther inside so our eyes could adjust better to the shadowy darkness.
"I know why you"re here. I"m not ignorant." Noah"s deep, throaty voice came from our right, at about the two o"clock position, and we both turned in that direction. A large figure moved in the shadows. "But you"re too late. Dorian"s long gone."
My throat went dry, although logically, I"d already known Dorian wasn"t here. The finality of Noah"s voice felt as though he carved the words into my heart.
"Where then?" I asked, sure I didn"t really want to know, although deep down, I already did.
"He should be to Hades by now."
My eyes fell closed, and my jaw snapped shut as the lump in my throat muted me.
"When?" Tristan demanded, his voice steel-hard.
"We parted ways in Prague a while ago. That"s as far as I would go. I don"t know exactly how long it"s been-a few weeks, maybe a month or two. I came here to get away from the others."
"And you just let him go?" I asked, my voice found again and coming out as a near shout. "You let a little boy travel to Hades by himself?"
Noah scoffed. "He"s not exactly a little boy. And I"m sure he wasn"t alone. This was all his doing, but many have been waiting for him. He probably had a royal escort."
"I was trying to save you!" I yelled at him. "I helped you! And this is what you do in return?"
Noah stepped out of the shadows completely, revealing himself, wearing only leather pants and combat boots, his broad chest bare and his long, wavy brown hair reaching his shoulders. His lip curled up in a sneer as he looked down his nose at me with hazel eyes, the scar in one eyebrow looking extra severe. "How many times do I have to tell you? You can"t save me. But Dorian could have had a chance."
My ears p.r.i.c.ked at the use of the past tense. "What do you mean had?"
With four long strides, he crossed the cavern and stood at the entrance, making us turn to see him, a silhouette against the light outside. "He should have been there by now. So either he never made it, or he didn"t break the curse."
"What do you mean? How do you know?"
He turned and glared at me with narrowed, red eyes, his nostrils flaring and his hands fisting. "Because everything inside me is fighting to kill you."
The look in his eyes was far more frightening than Tristan"s had ever been. Tristan had been resisting the monster inside him for years before he came near me, and he"d already been converted. Noah had nothing but whatever self-control he might have possessed. Which probably wasn"t much.
Tristan stepped in front of me, his arm out protectively. "What makes you think he could break the curse?"
"What difference does it make? I was obviously wrong. Kali lied."
"Of course she did," I muttered. "And now because of you, my son is in Hades."
"We need to know what she told him," Tristan persisted.
Noah growled. "She told him about how Eris cursed all of Ca.s.sandra"s male descendants, so that they would all bow down to Jordan"s direct line. Since Dorian descends from them both, Kali surmised that the curse can stop with him, but only if he gives himself willingly. At least, that"s what she told Dorian and he told me. It must have been her lure to reel him in to the Daemoni."