Faith (Soul Savers Book 7) by Kristie Cook

where she was needed most—at the top levels of
Amadis leadership. Dressed in Martin’s body, everybody trusted
her. Katerina, Sophia, their servants. If Martin sent supplies to the
kitchen staff at the safe house where Alexis stayed during her
pregnancy, nobody would question it. If those supplies were
ingredients for her breakfast, in they would go without a second
thought. If those ingredients were enchanted to attach to an extra X
chromosome, and cursed to obliterate the fetus in utero, nobody would
even know. Nobody did know. The circumstances of her labor—the
unusual amount of blood loss that caused Alexis to lose
consciousness—they blamed on natural causes. They were
delusional in their security. Martin hadn’t gone within a
thousand-mile proximity to Alexis, yet Kali had succeeded in killing
her child. Your child. For me. Alexis would have been better
off with children from anyone but you. Kali’s son would have
been a better choice for the Amadis. But you just couldn’t help
yourself, could you?”
    Murderous red filled my
vision. Every muscle pulled taut. When a Demon flew at me, I thrilled
for the fight.
    “It’s your
fault.” Alexis’s voice came from the Demon. Its form
morphed into her shape. I hesitated. “ Your fault that
the Amadis didn’t have another daughter. Why did you have to
ruin my life, Tristan? Or should I call you Seth ? You’re
selfish and evil! You don’t deserve to be married to me. You
don’t deserve to father my children. Look at all of the horrors
you’ve committed!”
    Alexis’s image
disappeared. The Demon’s mouth with her voice pouring out of it
opened wide. It exhaled a colorful smoke that became another vision.
No, not a vision. A window onto the Earthly realm. Showing Dorian and
Noah. Dorian leaving Noah. Dorian saying goodbye as he headed out to
find Lucas.
    “LIES!” I
bellowed.
    Satan chuckled. “Oh,
I’m afraid not.”
    “He’s going
because of you, Seth,” Demon-Alexis said. “IT’S
ALL. YOUR. FAULT!”
    Her accusations grew,
and she shouted an unending list of the many ways I’d hurt her
and our son. How I’d caused the fall of the Amadis and the
world. How I’d failed her and everyone else.
    “ Have you
been forgiven for these trespasses against others?” Satan
drawled. “For the sins you’ve committed against your own
wife and children?”
    “I died because
of you. Our baby girl, too. You weren’t there to save us!”
Alexis’s voice continued, and that was the one that broke me.
The vision of holding her damaged, lifeless body as our baby bled out
of her brought me to my knees.
    Easily catching my
reaction, Satan pounded me with that one. Never let me forget it. The
vision blinded me as the Demon’s fists and club beat at me, its
voice—Alexis’s voice—driving home the pain I’d
caused her and our children until they became a cry. Her sobs. Her
keens of despair. And I wailed along with her.
    At some point, another
Demon arrived, carrying the voices of all the others I’d hurt
and killed. The ones I thought I’d been forgiven for, but
didn’t know anymore. I could no longer believe in that
possibility. How could one person cause so much agony to so many
other people, including those he supposedly loved, and be forgiven?
How could I be absolved for the many, many atrocious sins I’d
committed?
    “Impossible,”
I moaned along with the others.
    There was no way. I
didn’t deserve to be pardoned. I didn’t deserve to be
anywhere but here. I only deserved to listen to these Demons with
their howls and whimpers, their accusations, the guilt they hurled at
me that stuck like black on tar. I deserved to suffer the pain, to
relive the agony of my soul mate’s death forever and ever.
    I belonged right here.
In Hell. For eternity.

 

Chapter 7
     

     
    I awoke
with a start, my arms and legs spread out to catch myself and my
heart pounding in my throat. The sensation of falling backwards for a
great distance lingered from my dream. I