Charade (Heven and Hell #2)(3)
Author: Cambria Hebert

“You smell like him,” Sam said, his voice hard, drawing me out of my thoughts and tugging my eyes back to his face. “What was Cole doing at the hair salon?”

“Getting a perm and some highlights.” I giggled. Sam didn’t seem amused. I let out an exasperated breath. “He works at the grocery store next door!” I demanded. Who cared anyway? Sam let out a gruff sound and then muttered something about Cole always being around, but I wasn’t listening. I was staring at the water again. Something wasn’t right.

Something was slithering closer to the shore, and the way it moved along the surface of the water half-in, half-out was creepy and odd. I watched as its long tail propelled it faster. Its skin was bumpy and green like a crocodile’s. Except we didn’t have crocodiles in Maine. “Sam,” I whispered, but Sam was still muttering and making noise about Cole.

I watched as the thing rose completely out of the water, standing on two legs, and I gasped. In one fluid motion, Sam turned, tucking me behind him. I thought I heard him sigh before his back went ramrod straight and his body began to quiver.

I peeked around him to look. It was a crocodile. At least half of it was. The other half was a man. From the waist down, the crocodile man was green and scaly with a long, curving tail and wide feet tipped with sharp claws. From the waist up, he had skin that was olive toned and shiny with slime. His fingers were gnarled and crooked, and he didn’t stand straight, but hunched over like his short reptile legs couldn’t support his weight. His face was more disturbing than his half-man, half-reptile body. His nose was overly long and hooked, and his eyes were a flat-black color that stared at me with a surprising amount of hatred, considering how vacant they looked. His skin was not smooth, but rough, suggesting scales where there were none. He had no eyebrows. In fact, he had no hair at all and his aura was white.

All these things had white auras.

The absolute worst color an aura could be.

“Go hide in the office,” Sam told me, not taking his eyes off the advancing creature.

I stifled the urge to argue. He knew how I felt about hiding while he took on all the danger. I splayed my palm along his back, spreading my fingers wide, while I debated my options.

Please, Hev. Don’t make me worry.

I exhaled and stepped out from behind him to run toward the rental shack. Now wasn’t the time to argue. The creature let out a long, loud hiss, planted himself firmly on his short crocodile legs, and tossed his tail in my direction. To my horror, he had a tail like Gumby that stretched with the force of his throw and I stared, frozen, as the thing wrapped around my feet and began to tug me closer.

His scales were slimy like his skin.

With a roar, Sam, now a sleek black hellhound, pounced and used his razor-sharp claws to sever the thing’s tail. The crocodile man screamed in anger or agony, I couldn’t tell, and he fell forward to land on all fours. I watched in horror as it scurried across the ground toward me. I shivered because it moved like a spider. Sam wasn’t having any of it and rushed forward, landing directly on top of him as the demon thrashed about. A long tongue darted out of his mouth and began to wind around Sam’s neck. Panic built up in me as I struggled to escape the tail, which was still wrapped around me amazingly tight. I struggled for what seemed like hours, desperately wanting to be free to help Sam.

I heard a sharp tearing sound and looked up just in time to see the creature’s head splash into the lake.

I stopped struggling.

It was over.

I couldn’t stop the tears that slipped down my face, so I settled for swiping them away quickly, hoping Sam wouldn’t have to see them.

He came to me, his skin slick with sweat and slime from the creature, his pair of running shorts hastily pulled on backwards. I managed to get one foot untangled from the crocodile tail and was fighting with the other. Sam reached down, gently removing my hands and then grabbed the tail and yanked. It gave way, curling around his arm. He made a disgusted sound and jogged to the lake, throwing it out into the center, following the creature’s horrid face, where it sank out of sight.

“Are you all right?” he asked, returning to my side to run his hands over me, checking for injuries that weren’t there.

“I’m fine.”

He kept checking.

“Sam.” I took hold of his hands and squeezed. “I’m not hurt.”

His shoulders slumped as he pulled me close, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “I never meant to allow it to touch you,” he said. “It’s tail…”

I shuddered. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” he said and pulled me along with him into the shack where he pulled a T-shirt out of his backpack and shrugged it on. “Where’s the scroll?” he asked in a clipped tone.

I grimaced and pulled it from my bag.

He groaned. “Heven, I told you to stop carrying it around everywhere with you.”

“I can’t just leave it at home,” I protested. “Gran was home. What if something went there for it?”

“Just give it to me.”

“I can’t.” I felt like it belonged to me.

He groaned again and swiped his hand through his already messy dark-blond hair. It stood out all over his head. “You know I’ll protect it.”

I knew he would protect the scroll. With his life. All the more reason that I couldn’t give it to him. It would put an even bigger target on his back. Then there was the other reason I didn’t want him to have it…

“Heven?” He did a great job disguising the vulnerability in his voice. I would have never known it was there without the Mindbond.

I closed the distance between us, forgetting the conversation and momentarily letting go of my fear for his safety; my only thought was to soothe and reassure him. “I trust you.” I moved forward, cupping his face in my hands. “Of course, I do,” I murmured, lifting my chin until I could reach his lips with mine.

He accepted my kisses and returned them with a fervor that boiled my blood. It was enough to erase away the past few horrible moments.

“Then why won’t you let me have it?” His finger trailed down the length of my nose.

I guess my kissing wasn’t as good as his because he deftly stayed on topic. I sighed and pulled away. “I don’t want you in danger and…”

“And,” he prompted.

“I’m attached to it, okay?” I flung the words at him, exasperated.

His lips lifted in a silent smile.