Tirade (Heven and Hell #3)
Author: Cambria Hebert

Chapter One

Sam

Seconds feel like hours, minutes feel like days and days… Days feel like eternity.

Being a prisoner of hell sucks. Endlessly.

All day long I pace inside this dark, tiny, cell… And I think. The thing about the dark is that it takes away distractions. Distractions that allowed me to ignore all the things I wanted to ignore. I liked myself better when I didn’t have to think. How easy it is to act without thinking, to let your feelings guide you. I’ve done a lot of reacting to my situation—to Heven’s situation. I’ve done a lot of things I would like to forget. But forgetting isn’t an option when all you can do is think. Unfortunately, thinking changes things.

It changes you.

My reaction the first time I laid eyes on Heven was so strong—so all-encompassing that she was all I saw—all I wanted to see. But time’s passed… And while I still love her like that first day, it’s grown deeper and stronger. She’s grown stronger. She doesn’t need me to do the things I’ve done in the past because we can fight together.

Only we aren’t together. I’m stuck in this hole and she’s up there facing God knows what. I’ve never been helpless before. I’ve never needed a rescue. I’m not supposed to be weak. I’m the strong one. I always knew Heven was strong. I just never thought it was me she was going to have to be strong for.

Heven

On the outskirts of the orchard lies a long divot in the ground, a long, winding dent that swivels in the earth. If it wasn’t dry, I would call it the perfect place for a curving stream. In this divot, a single apple tree grew, its twisting limbs stretching into the sky, reaching out like gnarled fingers trying to grasp its prey. The sky seemed to ignore the demands of the brittle branches while it turned a peachy pink in the early twilight hours.

It was beside this tree that I lay hidden.

But I was not afraid.

Pressing my ear to the earth, which felt cool and smooth against my skin, I concentrated with everything in me. My eyes narrowed, the only indication my tense, waiting body gave that I knew someone was headed this way.

It took them longer than I thought to find me.

I closed my eyes and did something that came as easily to me as breathing. I conjured a perfect image of Sam in my mind. He was so real and breathtaking sitting right there behind my eyes that, for a moment, he took my breath away. This was the real reason I was lying here. He was the reason for everything I did these days. Well, him and revenge for everything that’s been done to everyone I love. Gripping the daggers in each palm, I waited, coiled and ready to face my opponents.

One, two, three…

I leapt out of the ground with all the force I possessed and caught the first attacker by surprise.

Exactly as I planned.

The muffled curse made my lips curve in a sadistic sort of smile as I launched myself, daggers extended, straight forward. My boot landed solid in my opponent’s chest and we went down. Both my daggers tore into the earth on either side of my attacker’s head, missing the skull by mere centimeters.

Our eyes met.

The person under me smiled.

I remained as I was. Never let your guard down. I reminded myself.

“Very good,” Gemma said, motioning for me to let her up.

I did so without turning my back or relaxing my stance. She laughed as she got to her feet. But I knew it was a ruse, an attempt to get me to let down my guard.

I spun on my heel and threw a boot out, my foot connecting with something solid. He went down with a curse, but I didn’t stop there. I brought my hand down in a chopping motion across the new assailant’s back and heard a groan. Keeping with my momentum, I kicked out my other foot underneath his ribcage and sent him all the way to the grass. A steel dagger sank into the ground right beside his face.

“I win.”

Cole rolled to his back. His face was red and streaked with dirt. “Damn, Heven.”

I toed the thick padding he wore around his body to protect him from my attack. He laughed when I first suggested he wear it.

He wasn’t laughing now.

“I told you,” I said, pulling the dagger up and wiping off the dirt on my pants. “I’m not playing around.”

“I see that,” he said, getting to his feet.

“I’m ready,” I stated and turned to Gemma. There was humor in her wide grey eyes.

“One perfect fight doesn’t make you ready for war.”

One perfect fight was all I needed. I pushed myself hard these last few days, further than I ever thought I could go. I wasn’t about to let up now.

“I’m ready,” I told her again, my body language dared her to defy me.

“It’s your funeral,” she stated, shrugging.

I ignored Cole’s sharp indrawn breath and began walking back to the orchard.

As long as it wasn’t Sam’s funeral, I didn’t care.

*

My arms shook and burned, yet I refused to stop. I refused to give up. When I hit my desired number, I wanted to collapse on the ground, but I didn’t. Instead, I stood, shaking my arms out a little. Cole had followed me back to the orchard and stood over me with his arms crossed over his chest, staring at me in disapproving silence. In a strange way, his foul mood only made me more determined.

“How many was that?” he asked, disgruntled.

“I’m surprised you didn’t count,” I answered, mildly amused.

“Counting how many push-ups you can do is not what I call a good time.”

Yet, he stood over me while I did them every day. I lifted a brow and he scowled. “Twenty-two,” I said, then sighed. Tomorrow I would do twenty-five. I bent and scooped up the daggers I had been working with earlier and carried them over to Gemma and her never-ending bag of weapons.

I threw everything in the bag, stopping when I got to the last dagger. It was a little heavier than the others, but otherwise, it looked the same. It was fashioned out of solid steel and was tarnished and scuffed from repeated use. It wasn’t as pretty as the enchanted dagger Gemma gave to Cole to carry when we were in Italy. The one that somehow housed the pure, bright light of heaven and saved our butts more than once. I should’ve known it was special the first time I saw it with its jeweled handle and rainbow-colored gemstone at its base. Yet, I hadn’t realized what it was capable of until my photographic memory pulled up an image of it from an ancient drawing in the Catacomb of San Sebastiano when we were in Rome. Turns out when you stab the dagger into something and press the gem, a blinding white light is released, so powerful it destroys whatever is being stabbed from the inside out.