“Somebody better start explaining.” Cole said and grabbed Heven’s wrist.
Something in me snapped. He might be her brother, but he needed to keep his hands to himself. I yanked him away and we went rolling in the grass. Cole landed a solid punch to my jaw and Heven called out. We ignored her and continued fighting. I had been wanting to hammer this guy for months now. I tossed him off me, enjoying the sickening thud his body made when it hit the ground, and then I pounced on him, landing a punch to his jaw.
“Sam! Stop it!” Heven yelled. Her fear slammed into me and it drew me up short. Pummeling her brother in front of her wasn’t a good idea.
I got off him and began walking away, but Cole got up and charged me, hooking his arms around my waist only for me to flip him back on the ground. “Don’t make me knock you out,” I snarled close to his face.
“If you aren’t going to do something, then I am.” I heard Heven say to Gemma.
“Let them get it out of their systems. Clearly, they have been waiting for a chance to fight.”
Heven snorted. “Since they met.”
“It makes sense.” I saw Gemma shrug when I pushed away from Cole. Like an idiot he came at me again.
Heven made a sound and jumped between us. Cole wasn’t expecting Heven’s sudden appearance and he tripped, trying not to plow into her and fell to the side. He lay on his back staring up at me breathing hard, his dark hair falling onto his forehead. I smirked. Heven smacked me in the stomach.
“Are you okay?” she asked Cole. He sat up and nodded.
He had a bloody lip.
Heven whirled on me. “You could have hurt him! I thought that things were better since we found out he’s my brother!”
“Don’t ever get in the middle of a fight like that again,” I said mildly. She glared. But I smiled and said, Things are better. I don’t want to kill him anymore, just punch him.
Heven was not amused. “Better be careful or I might punch you,” she muttered.
I grinned. I liked a feisty woman.
“You fight well,” Gemma was telling Cole as he got to his feet. “You should train with us.”
“Are you kidding? He kicked my ass.”
The guy got points for taking it like a man.
Gemma laughed. It made Cole smile. Gemma turned to Heven. “You should tell him.”
“I agree.” Heven nodded and glared at me practically daring me to argue.
They were right. He’d seen too much for him to just accept some generic explanation. Plus there were other advantages of letting Cole in on the secret.
It’s a good idea. He can watch out for you when I’m not around. I might not like him, but I know I can trust him.
Heven beamed with happiness and I figured this would get me out of kicking Cole’s butt a few minutes ago.
“I’ll come back tomorrow. We’ll meet here. Bring Cole,” Gemma told us. She began tossing the weapons into the bag she brought. Cole bent to help her, picking up her dagger. The one that no one was allowed to touch but her. I waited for her to react, but she just smiled, plucked it out of his hand, slid it into some sort of strap on her thigh, then tossed the bag of weapons over her shoulder and began to walk away.
I got a threat and Cole got a smile. Interesting.
“We can’t tomorrow. We have a meeting at school about our trip to Italy,” Heven hurried to tell Gemma. A meeting I forgot about until now. I wanted to train. I needed to. Today taught me how much I had to learn and I needed to learn it ASAP.
“I’ll meet you later, after the meeting,” I said, hoping she would agree. Hoping she would forget about Cole coming along.
“I’ll see you both then, late afternoon.”
So much for that idea.
“Wait,” Cole called after her.
“See you tomorrow,” she called without looking back.
Then she was gone.
Literally vanishing from sight.
It took us all a minute to recover from her abrupt disappearance, but then Cole was looking at Heven. “You have major explaining to do.”
Heven was staring after Gemma with a frown on her face.
What is it? I asked.
Gemma left before giving a few explanations of her own. Like, why exactly my brother’s aura isn’t like anyone else’s.
I stared at the spot that Gemma disappeared from. That was a good question, something I wouldn’t mind knowing the answer to either.
* * *
My muscles were screaming. I knew I would be sore after that training session with Gemma yesterday, but I didn’t know I would be this sore. My legs protested as I stepped down from my truck and I stood there on the sidewalk, stretching out my back muscles before climbing the stairs to the front door. The meeting at the school for the Italy trip was later this morning, but I wanted to come home and see Logan before I had to be there. My keys jangled together as I pulled them out of my pocket and lifted them to the lock on the door. But when I went to insert the key, the door swung open. It hadn’t been latched. It hadn’t been locked. What the hell was Logan thinking not closing and locking the door at night?
Why would he even need to open the door? It was late when I left to go back to Hev’s last night and I made sure it was shut and locked behind me. He had been sleeping…
“Logan?” I said, stepping inside the apartment, pausing to close the door and turn the lock.
There were no lights on and nothing looked disturbed. It didn’t take me but a glance to know he wasn’t in the apartment. There were no rooms to search except the bathroom, which I ran to and threw open the door. Empty. I looked around for some kind of note—some kind of sign about where he might be. There wasn’t one.
The entire apartment was empty.
My stomach twisted. I sank down onto the couch and stared at the floor. Where was he? Did I leave him alone too much? Was he mad because I didn’t “fix” him like he thought I could?
Did he run away?
I had to find him! I raced to the door, throwing it open and rushing down the stairs. It was still really early so the streets would be empty. If he was still in the area, he wouldn’t be too hard to track down.
I debated whether to go on foot or by truck… I could move faster on foot, my senses able to pick up his scent if he were nearby but what if he was hurt? I might need the truck.
I rushed toward the truck when something caught my eye. The door to the second-hand store I lived above was ajar. It was too early for the store to be open.
Logan.
Instead of bursting through the door like I wanted to, I pushed it open and stepped in, calling out. “Is anyone here?”
Then my eyes fell on the contents of the store and I froze.
It was completely destroyed.
A swear leaked from my lips as I took another step inside, stepping over a busted mirror and lamp. A noise from the back of the store caught my attention and I pivoted toward it. “Hello?”
I couldn’t see anyone because the destruction was so great. Overturned furniture, racks of clothing and broken glass were everywhere. The glass case that used to be at the front of the store was now shattered, its steel frame was tilted and leaning against the wall in the back.
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 fa
ce 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.”
The officer nodded and scrawled notes in his note pad while his partner walked around with a camera snapping pictures. He asked about a million questions, but it was about the same ten, just asked in different ways. I gave the same answers every single time.
I was asleep. I heard noises. After a few minutes I came downstairs. We were in our apartment all night, me and my brother, who is visiting. He didn’t come downstairs when the noises started because I wouldn’t let him. He knew nothing. He saw nothing. I wished I could do more.
No one seemed to doubt me. After the officers were satisfied, they gave me a card and told me to call if I thought of anything else. I wouldn’t call. I pretended I would. Then Mr. Cartney laid his hand on my shoulder and thanked me for calling him and the police. He thanked me for “scaring off the intruders with my presence.”
“I wish I could have done more,” I said, looking over the damage with regret. “You don’t deserve something like this.”
“It’s okay, son,” Mr. Cartney said. No one had called me that in a long time. It made me feel guilty about my lies because he was a nice man that didn’t deserve to be lied to.
But it was him or my brother.
It wasn’t a hard choice.
“I have insurance. Once I get this place cleaned up and new inventory to sell I’ll be back in business.”
“If there is anything I can do, please let me know.”
“Thank you, but you’ve done enough. Most people would have ignored it and not even called the police. I can’t thank you enough.”
I didn’t say anything else as I let myself out of the store and into the morning sun. He was right. I had done enough. He just didn’t realize that none of it was good.
* * *
Just before I let myself back into the apartment, Heven’s voice floated through my mind.
Everything okay where you are?
Yes, everything is fine, I said, lying again.
Sorry.
Don’t be sorry, I get it. And I did, I mind dialed her all the time just to make sure she was okay. It was exactly why I lied to her about what was going on. She didn’t need any more to deal with right now. Besides, she was already uneasy around Logan
and this would just make it worse. It was hard to juggle things—responsibilities—and I was tired. I let myself back into the apartment and Logan looked at me with stricken eyes.
“Everything is fine. They don’t suspect you.”
He let out the breath he had been holding. “I’m so sorry.”
“I know you are.” I sat down next to him on the couch. “How long has this been going on, Logan?”
“Since before I ran away from home.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I thought that it had stopped. I thought that being here with you would make it better. It did for a while…”
He thought I had the answers to everything because I was a hellhound. I didn’t want to tell him that I had been figuring it out as I went, and that the things he was doing didn’t seem normal to me.
“There have been times that you remember, uh, getting mad?” Maybe he was just sleepwalking, maybe he thought that he was responsible and he really wasn’t.
“Yeah. I trashed the bathroom at home before I left. I got into a fight at school and I trashed the place you first lived when you moved out of our house.”
I swallowed, trying to show no reaction to the things he was saying. I wanted him to feel comfortable talking to me.
“The kids at school deserved it,” he muttered.
“What kids?”
He looked away, ashamed.
“Logan,” I pressed, grabbing his shoulder.
He shrugged me off. “Brent and his crew.”
“The jocks? They were giving you problems? They never had before.”
He looked at me and then it hit me. The reason he never got picked on was because of me.
When I was there, I must have been protecting him. No one ever messed with me. Well, one kid did once… but he never did again. I never realized that it was me that kept the bullies away from Logan too.
And then I left.
And he was fresh meat.
I didn’t think I could feel any worse than I had earlier when I found him crying in the mess. I was wrong. I failed my brother. My parents might have stopped loving me. They might have abandoned me, but Logan never did. He was a victim in all this, just like me.
Charade (Heven and Hell #2) Page 15