Tirade (Heven and Hell #3)(29)
Author: Cambria Hebert

Heven!

Silence.

Heven, please answer me. Tell me what’s happening

“Sam? What’s wrong?” Kimber asked. Her voice seemed so far away.

“Heven,” I said, my voice sounding hoarse. Heven…

Why wasn’t she answering? I had never felt this before… I searched my mind, closing my eyes and trying to link myself as close as I could to her.

It was hard. Harder than ever before. But the link, it was still there. I told myself that was a good thing, but the fact that I couldn’t quite grasp it worried me. Maybe she was asleep? But even in sleep, she would hear me call and answer me.

I called to her again and again, to no avail.

I was trapped here, powerless to know what was happening and tortured with the unknown.

“Sam,” Kimber called, and I looked up. “I’ll try. I’ll try to break it down.”

I watched as she lifted her hands to unleash her power.

Heven

When I opened my eyes, my vision was blurred and the room was dim. There was a dark figure next to me, but I knew I was safe. I could feel the heat radiating from him and I knew it meant only one thing.

“Sam,” I murmured, reaching for him, curling into his chest and burying my face in his neck. My tears felt cold compared the heat of his skin and I pressed even closer. Only his arms didn’t come around me. There was no faint peppermint scent.

This wasn’t Sam.

I yanked back and rubbed at my swollen eyes. His eyes looked pained and for once, slightly vulnerable. “Riley?”

“Sorry I wasn’t who you were expecting.”

I fell back onto the bed, realizing I was in Sam’s tiny rental. I smelled the metallic, bitter scent of blood and memories came flooding back. I shot up, yelling, “Colin!”

“He’s dead,” Riley said flatly.

“How did I get here? I just left him there!”

“I took care of it,” he said quietly. It’s a wonder I heard him speak at all through my panicking, but I did and I stilled.

“You took care of it?”

He sighed. “Yeah.”

“What do you mean?”

“I couldn’t very well let a dead hospital security guard lay on the side of the road with a dagger wound in his chest and his car abandoned. A car with your fingerprints all over it, just sitting out in the open.”

“What did you do?” I asked, afraid.

“Don’t worry. No one will trace it back to you.” He went to the kitchen and pulled out some bottled water and brought me one. “Drink this.”

I downed half the bottle greedily. Then I burped. Riley lifted a brow and sipped at his water politely. I think he did it on purpose to make me feel like a savage.

Like I didn’t feel like one already.

“What did you do?”

“What did you do?” Riley countered.

“You saw.” I lowered my gaze and my stomach rolled. I regretted drinking that water.

“Yeah, I did. You didn’t have a choice.”

I looked up at him. “Yeah, I did.” I shook my head. “Wait. You saw me being attacked and you didn’t help me?”

“I’m not a knight in shining armor like Sam. I wanted to see how you would do in the fight.” He said it like he was bored.

“Are you kidding me? Someone died so you could watch the show?”

“Relax. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to you.”

He said it like that made everything okay. I took an unsteady breath, still in shock over what just happened. Riley took advantage of my silence to keep talking. “The guy attacked you, and from the way he was moving, I would say he wasn’t human.”

“He was,” I said and looked down. My clothes were saturated in dried blood. I catapulted off the bed and ran into the bathroom and threw up in the toilet. I sat there and heaved endlessly until I heard Riley come into the bathroom behind me. I forced myself to get up so he wouldn’t try to help me and I rinsed out my mouth at the sink.

“I need a shower.” I pushed past him to rummage through Sam’s dresser. The bottom drawer was filled with my stuff. Shorts, jeans, T-shirts and clean panties filled the drawer, along with a few toiletries. I grabbed what I wanted, then reached into one of Sam’s drawers and pulled out his favorite T-shirt. I stalked into the bathroom, shut the door without a word to Riley and turned on the shower.

I scrubbed myself until my skin felt raw. I wanted every inch of what happened off me. It was a shame that I couldn’t scrub my mind. Unfortunately, I had a photographic memory and the events of earlier today would haunt me forever.

Maybe my mother was right.

Maybe there was something horribly wrong with me. Maybe I attracted evil. Maybe there was something inside me that evil identified with. I shook my head and stuck it underneath the water that had long ago turned cold. I hadn’t wanted to kill Colin. I tried to get away from him when I sensed something might be wrong. But he kept attacking me.

There had been a demon inside him.

At least I thought there was.

But I’d been wrong. I’d been tricked.

I thought I was doing him a favor by getting the demon out. But there wasn’t a demon and Colin was dead. And he wasn’t coming back. I killed an innocent man.

Beelzebub was back, and this was only the beginning of his tirade.

I should have realized he was messing with me, pushing me, trying to scare me. Colin hadn’t been taken over by a demon. Beelzebub just made it look that way. He made me a killer.

He hadn’t even been back for twenty-four hours and already he was tormenting me. First the dream and now this. Wasn’t what he did to my mother enough? I guess not.

I shut off the water and stepped out, drying myself and pulling on my clothes. When I reached for Sam’s shirt, I brought it to my nose. It still smelled like him. I buried my face in the soft cotton and groaned.

Heven, please, baby… answer me.

Sam?

Relief and fear slammed into me so hard that I nearly fell. I stepped back and sank down onto the toilet. Sam? What’s the matter?

What’s going on? What happened? Are you hurt? Are you okay?

I’m okay, I said, noticing even through my mind the tone of his words seemed strained.

I’ve called out to you so many times. You never answered. I thought…

Grief washed over me and took my breath. I’m so sorry, Sam. I… I tried to think of a way to sugarcoat what happened, but there was no sugarcoating murder. Beelzebub tricked me and I did something horrible. I passed out and I must not have been able to hear you calling for me. I never meant to worry you.