Charade (Heven and Hell #2)(40)
Author: Cambria Hebert

I stepped over an old television set with a busted screen, glass crunching beneath my feet as I made my way to where I heard the noise.

“Who’s there?” I said again, my voice coming out hushed.

A shuffling and strangled sound followed and I knew. I rushed behind a wooden armoire tilted on its side and stopped.

Logan was there and it wasn’t pretty.

He was tucked against the wall, his knees pulled up against his chest as if he were trying to make himself as small as possible. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and his arms were up over his head, covering his ears and he was rocking himself back and forth.

My chest tightened and emotion welled up inside me. He looked so… so… broken. “Logan,” I whispered, hoarse.

He looked up, his face was streaked with tears and his hair was wild, standing on end. “Sam?”

I knelt down in front of him, ignoring the way the glass cut into my knees. “Bud, what happened?”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” I said, reaching out toward him, grabbing his wrist. “Who did this… did they hurt you?” My eyes scanned the store for traces of the people responsible.

A sob caught in his throat as more tears leaked from his eyes. He nodded.

Rage and adrenaline burned through me. Whoever hurt him was going to pay… I was going to see to it personally. I yanked him forward and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. “Hey, it’s all right now.”

Logan took a shuddering breath and wrapped his arms tightly around me. Guilt, sour and heavy, draped over me. This was my fault. I left him alone, unprotected, and now he was hurt.

I pulled him back to look at his tear streaked face. “Which way did the thugs go, Logan?”

His eyes dropped to the floor. “You don’t understand,”

“Understand what?”

“There were no people that did this.”

“Of course there were, Logan. Look at this place. You said you saw them. You said they… hurt you.”

“It hurts now… after…” he said, sobbing again.

“Logan,” I said firmly, giving him a shake. “What the hell are you talking about?”

He looked up, straight into my eyes. “It was me, Sam. I did this.”

“No,” I said, gripping his arms. “You couldn’t have.”

“Yes. I did. And it isn’t the first time.”

“What are you talking about?” I released him and stood.

“Before I came here… before I shifted I would get so mad sometimes… I just wanted to destroy something. To rip it apart. I thought once I found you, it would stop. It did stop, until now.”

I knew that Logan was prone to having “fits.” I knew that he was angry that he was a hellhound but this… I looked around me at the massive destruction. This went beyond being angry. I was about to ask him why he didn’t tell me about this when he said,

“I guess you’re going to kick me out now.” The way he said it, so defeated, so lost, made a rough sound lodge in the back of my throat. I swallowed it down, ignoring it.

I knelt back in front of him once again. “I’m not kicking you out, Logan.”

“You aren’t?” He wiped at his eyes and blinked up at me.

“No. You’re my brother. I’m here for you. There’s nothing that you could do to make me send you away.” Like they did to me. Like our parents.

He stood and, in his haste, he tripped over debris and fell forward. I caught him and he wrapped his arms around me again and squeezed. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened. I was asleep and when I woke up I was here… in this mess.”

My body stilled. “You mean you don’t remember doing this?”

He pulled away. “No.”

“Then how do you know you did?”

“I just do, okay?” He turned away.

My eyes went straight to a set of scratches across his lower back. They were red and swollen and matted with dried blood. “What happened to your back?”

He shrugged.

I grabbed his shoulder and turned him to face me. “No, it’s not okay. What aren’t you telling me?”

His shoulders drooped. “Sometimes I go to sleep in one place and wake up somewhere else… I can never remember anything.”

I nodded, slowly trying not to show my extreme alarm. This wasn’t normal. I never heard of another hellhound behaving this way before.

“Sam?”

“I’m not sending you away, Logan. We’re going to figure this out. Me and you.”

It looked like he might cry again so I started moving to the front of the store. “Come on, I gotta call the landlord.”

Logan gasped. “You can’t! He’ll know I did it!”

I pivoted in the wreckage. “No. He won’t. I’m gonna call and tell him we heard some noise and when I came down here, I found the place like this.”

“You’re gonna lie?”

“Yeah. You weren’t here. You stayed upstairs in the apartment the whole time. You didn’t see anything. Got it?”

He nodded.

“Stick to that and everything will be fine.” I started walking again. “Now, come on. You need to get upstairs before people start to wake up and begin moving around and I need the phone.” When Heven and I formed the Mindbond I ditched my cell because there was no point in having it anymore, but now, I really needed to think about getting a pair of cell phones so Logan and I could keep in contact when I was at work and with Heven. I sighed. One more bill to pay.

The landlord Mr. Cartney was here within minutes after I called him and the police showed up just after. Logan had showered, put on clean clothes, and was sitting in front of the TV with a bowl of cereal when I went downstairs to meet them. I made sure the door was latched this time.

The police and Mr. Cartney were already standing amongst the damage, shaking their heads when I walked in the room.

“Who did this, Sam?” Mr. Cartney asked when he saw me.

“I wish I knew. I wish I had seen them,” I lied; the regret in my voice wasn’t hard to fake because I wasn’t faking. I felt immense regret.

“You’re the tenant upstairs?” one of the officers asked.

“Yes, sir.” I looked him straight in the eye so he could see that I had nothing to hide.

“Can we ask you a few questions?”

“Of course, I didn’t see much. I was upstairs asleep when I heard some noise. At first I didn’t think anything of it, but then I heard something shatter and I decided to get up and look. This is what I found.”