Kristie Cook - Purpose

I laughed at his observations. “And I think you got much bigger.”

I squeezed him tighter as I spun him around again. I stopped us to face Tristan. He watched us, a mixed expression of love and trepidation on his face. Dorian became quiet and stared at him wide-eyed.

“That’s my dad,” Dorian whispered in my ear. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes, it is, little man,” I whispered back.

He sucked in his breath noisily. He looked at me, his face lit with the brightest smile, and then jumped out of my arms and ran as fast as he could into Tristan’s. A huge grin spread across Tristan’s face as he scooped Dorian up and held him tightly. I ran over and wrapped my arms around both of my guys. We fell to the ground, all of us laughing and crying at the same time.

At some point during all of this—I hadn’t even noticed when—Owen returned and came to shore.

“Uncle Owen!” Dorian shouted, jumping to his feet and running into Owen’s arms.

“Hey, little buddy.” Owen returned the bear hug.

Tristan and I stood up and brushed ourselves off, then Tristan took my hand and pulled me close to him.

“Uncle Owen, my dad’s here!” Dorian flew back to Tristan, who scooped him up in his free arm. Dorian wrapped his arms around Tristan’s neck and planted a kiss on his cheek. Tristan squeezed my hand and I could feel his joy. My heart would explode if it grew any bigger.

“Hey, Alexis?” Owen said.

I tilted my head. “Yeah?”

He looked at Tristan and back at me. “We always win.”

He stood with Mom and Rina and they all grinned and nodded. I looked at Tristan and Dorian and they beamed, too. And I realized this was my family—Owen, Rina, Mom and my two men. The people I loved. And I was finally Real Alexis, with my Real Tristan. We had suffered through the darkness and emerged into the light, our lives drastically changed forever. But we were all together. Finally.

We did win.

Silence filled the Amadis mansion as Tristan and I headed downstairs after changing into dry clothes. It felt like a museum at night. Well, an ancient museum—the two-story foyer was dark, with the only light coming from torches on the stone walls.

Mom? I didn’t know where to find Mom and Rina and I didn’t think calling her name aloud would be appropriate. She appeared in one of the three arched doorways off the foyer. Tristan and I followed her into a stately sitting room, where Rina waited for us, holding two leather-bound books in her lap. We sat on a brown leather couch in front of the fireplace while Mom sat on another couch next to Rina.

Mom and Rina both smiled warmly at me and Rina began.

“We start with ancient history. As your mother has taught you, in the very beginning, there was rebellion in Heaven. God permanently cast the archangel Lucifer and a third of the angels out of Heaven, sentencing them to Earth and Hell. There has been spiritual warfare waging ever since.

“The outcast angels, now called demons, take many forms and most take no form at all, but are evil spirits. The spirits frighten humans, plant evil thoughts in their minds, tempt them with immorality and sometimes even possess the human body to do their evil deeds. Their goal is to bring human souls to Satan and Hell. God and the angels work through priests, ministers and counselors to cast these demons out and keep them away.” Rina sighed. “Sadly, most humans do not realize there is this ongoing battle for their souls.”

She paused and closed her eyes. I wondered if she prayed for those souls.

After a couple of moments, she continued. “A much smaller number of demons take some kind of human or animal form, such as mages, vampires and shape-shifters. These are the Daemoni. Their purpose is to harm or kill humans, disregarding their souls. They continuously seek more power and, therefore, more members. Growing their army requires human sacrifice—the humans may not actually die, but their lives are forever changed and their souls are at risk.

“Those created demons are the souls the Amadis are responsible for. We cannot do anything about the original demons, the Ancients, but we can still win over the souls of the rest of the Daemoni. We show them how to live responsibly with their abilities and powers and how to control their desires without hurting humans. We bring the goodness out of them and, hopefully, we can lead them to the decision to ultimately save their souls, giving them true immortality. And I believe you know how that is accomplished?”

I nodded. “But how did this become our responsibility? I mean, why us? Who are we?”

“In short, we come from Angels. We are the result of the Daemoni infecting a half-Angel and half-human woman named Cassandra. Although infected, she still only knew love and goodness and she started the Amadis at the direction of the Heavenly Host of Angels.”

“So, we are Angels, but we are also essentially Daemoni?”

Rina shook her head. “Not exactly. There are the Angels, including the original Daemoni, and there are offspring of Angels. We are the offspring. We have Angel blood and we have Daemoni powers. But we are their exact opposites. We are inherently good.”

“And we can bring goodness out of them,” I said, glancing at Tristan.

“Yes, if there is any soul left, we can affect them,” Rina answered.

“And…if there is no soul left?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.

Rina sighed.

“If they are a threat to humans or ourselves…well, sometimes we have to kill them, honey,” Mom answered.

“So the ones at Tristan’s house in Cape Heron that one day, during the storm, you wanted to kill them. They had no souls left?”

“No. Unfortunately, Edmund had given his soul to the Daemoni and they completely destroyed it,” Mom said, her voice heavy with grief.

“Remember when we discussed the rogues back then?” Tristan asked. I nodded, though I barely remembered. “The rogues usually have destroyed souls, which is why they can’t be controlled.”

“So how do you know if they still have a soul?”

“You will learn to sense it,” Rina answered. “If you can feel any love or compassion toward them, they can be saved.”

“And if they show anything like mercy or love, there is hope,” Mom added. “Like Vanessa. She showed feelings for Tristan.”

“Hmph,” Tristan grunted.

“I think that’s lust,” I muttered.

“I don’t know about that. She has a desire to be with someone else, so she still has a soul,” Mom replied.

“And the vampire that threatened me…since he showed mercy, he still has a soul?”

“Yes,” Mom answered. “That’s also why he left when he sensed me and then Owen. He didn’t want to take the chance of us converting him.”

“He brings me to the subject of my books. What is their purpose?”

“Ah, good question,” Rina said. “We will start with more history. You see, up through the eighteen-hundreds, the Daemoni ran rampantly in the human world and humans were very aware and fearful of them. This fear strengthened their faith and helped protect them from being lured into the evil world. Unfortunately, however, the humans killed many innocent people who were not evil or possessed at all. Even those who were real Daemoni were not usually rogues. They still had hope. You would be most familiar with the Salem witches, no?”

I nodded.

“There were many similar incidents around the world. Heaven lost innocent humans, the Amadis lost the ability to convert the souls and the Daemoni lost many of their soldiers. The Daemoni decided to become more covert then. We have an obligation to keep the existence of our people secret, which means keeping the Daemoni secret, too.”