Tirade

by Cambria Hebert

  “Yeah.”

  “Did any of its blood get on you?”

  “A little.”

  “What about that cut on your neck?”

  “No, that’s fine. A scratch.”

  She made a sound. “I’ll get my salve. Go shower.”

  Cole appeared at my side. “I’ll help you upstairs.”

  “I don’t need help.” I refused his hand.

  “Yes, you do.” I looked up at the sincere sorrow in his voice.

  “What is it?”

  “You’re about to be very sick.”

  “What? Why?” Even as he said it, I knew.

  “Remember all those bites I had in Italy?”

  I nodded.

  He opened the door and ushered me inside. “Their saliva made me sick.”

  “I barely got any on me, nothing like the bites you had.”

  “Yeah, but the blood got on you, on your open wound.”

  “So?”

  “Their blood is like poison, Hev.”

  I let that sink in. “Just great,” I muttered.

  Upstairs, Cole leaned in the doorway as I gathered clean clothes for my shower. He watched silently, like he was ready for me to fall. Before going into the bathroom, I stopped and spoke. “I don’t have time to get sick. I’ve already wasted five days training and trying to think of a way to get Sam out. I can’t afford to lose any more time.”

  He came forward to lay a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. It was meant to be reassuring and comforting. It wasn’t any of those things. I pulled away.

  “Give me ten minutes. Then we have a plan to make.”

  By the time I got out of the shower, I was shivering and running a fever. My limbs felt weak and my stomach danced summersaults. Gemma was sitting on my bed. When I entered, she got up without a word and handed me a glass of orange juice.

  “Drink it,” she ordered. Then she grabbed my arm and began coating the burns in a rich salve. It was cool against my heated skin. I lifted the juice and took a long drink, but it tasted gross. I was about to spit it back in the glass when Gemma pinned me with a look. I swallowed.

  “What is that stuff?” I half gagged.

  Logan appeared in my bedroom door, teetering at the threshold. I could tell by his indecision that he wasn’t sure if he would be welcomed or not.

  “Hey, Logan,” I said, taking my chance to set the offending drink down on the bedside table. I waived him in with the arm Gemma wasn’t holding. “Come on in.”

  “Hey, man,” Cole said from the chair he perched himself in as Logan walked farther into the room. “How’s it going?”

  “I’m good,” he answered, then looked at me. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I had a run in with a demon,” I said, not bothering to sugarcoat it. I wanted his respect and I wouldn’t get it by talking to him like he was five years old.

  I watched him swallow. “A demon?”

  “Yes, on my way home from visiting my mom. But don’t worry, I killed it.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, but some of its blood got on me and now I don’t feel so hot.”

  “Does Sam know?” Logan asked, shuffling from foot to foot.

  I patted the bed with my hand so he would sit down, ignoring the question. Gemma capped the salve and picked up my glass. “It will make you feel better; drink it.”

  “It works. Do what she says,” Cole said from the desk chair.

  Gemma smiled. “I had to force his down his throat. The big baby.”

  “I was ten times worse than she is!” Cole defended himself.

  “I know.” Gemma’s eyes clouded over at the mention of how sick Cole had been after being attacked by a swarm of demons.

  I grabbed the glass and downed the juice. Logan was watching so I avoided any kind of face, even though I wanted to make one because that stuff was horrible. I lay down on the bed, propping myself up on the pillows. “How long until that stuff works?”

  “Depends on how much venom got in you.”

  “Not much,” I said. “I should be fine soon.”

  Gemma didn’t look convinced, but I was and that was all that mattered. I glanced back at Logan. “Mind if we take a rain check on the ice cream?”

  He nodded. “Gran asked me if I wanted to go shopping with her.”

  “You should go. Stock up on more candy.” I smiled.

  He didn’t return the smile. He just looked at me, frowning. “Sam doesn’t know, does he?”

  I sighed. I guess ignoring his earlier question hadn’t worked. “No. I didn’t tell him.”

  Logan thought about my words for a minute, but to my surprise, he just nodded and said, “You’re going to be okay?”

  There was genuine worry in his voice and it made me think that maybe all my effort with him was paying off. “Of course. Don’t worry about me.”

  He got up from the bed, straightening his bad joints slowly, and went toward the door. Cole held up his hand for a high five, which Logan slapped him, but he glanced back at me before leaving. “Get me some candy too. Anything chocolate.”

  He smiled, then disappeared from sight. Out in the hall, he began to cough. It sounded like there was fluid in his lungs. I let my head fall back on the pillows and looked at Gemma. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “How long has he been coughing like that?”

  “First time I heard him today. But it’s been off and on.”

  “I don’t know how much more I can do for him. Healing him only seems to help for a little while.”

  “I know.” I sighed and shut my eyes. After a few moments I said, “I’ve been thinking. If I kill Hecate, would her magic die with her? You know, the spell that created the force field?”

  “You can’t kill Hecate.” Gemma said.

  “Maybe not alone but with the dagger…”

  “You misunderstand. Hecate can’t die. She’s eternal.”

  “Eternal?” Cole asked.

  “Immortal, whatever you want to call it. It’s the reason she can be in hell without losing her soul.”

  “I thought that was because she was evil and had no soul.” I snorted.

  “That too,” Gemma agreed. “But she isn’t a demon.”

  I stared at the ceiling, trying to push back the frustration I felt. Every idea I had turned out to be useless. “Any ideas on how we break down the force field?”

  “What about Kimber?” Cole said.

  “What about her?” I opened my eyes and looked at my brother.

  “She’s a witch. She could cast a spell to weaken the barrier.” I wondered if he noticed the way Gemma tensed at the mention of his ex-girlfriend. He didn’t act like he noticed and I wasn’t about to point it out. It wasn’t important anyway.

  “She’s also trapped in hell and her soul separated from her body.” I reminded him. I stopped thinking of Kimber as my best friend weeks ago, but I still felt beyond horrible for what was happening to her.

  “What if we put her soul back in her body?”

  “Can we even do that?” I asked, skeptically

  “In my books, it says a soul can be convinced to return to the body it was separated from,” Gemma answered.

  “What do you mean convinced?” Cole asked.

  Gemma nodded and turned to look at my brother. “Once a soul separates from a body, it usually just floats off into hell until it’s corrupted and turns into something vile like one of those demons that keep showing up. The body it came from usually just dies.”

  “We saw Kimber. She isn’t dead,” Cole said.

  Gemma’s back muscles tightened slightly and I thought again about how talking about Kimber was making her feel. “I’m sure she didn’t look like herself,” she said tersely.

  Cole seemed to sit up a little straighter at Gemma’s short reply, but he kept his face impassive. “She looked like hell.”

  Gemma snorted.

  I didn’t have time for them to act like this, so I reached out and touched Gemma’s arm. She
turned back to me abruptly. “You have a fever!”

  I waved off her worry. “I’m fine. Hecate put some spell on her cell to keep her alive and her soul from drifting away.”

  “How did she seem… mentally?” Gemma asked.

  I thought back. Kimber had helped us get out of there—she gave us the Lucent Marble when we thought it was lost. “She definitely isn’t the same, but I think there’s still some of her left.”

  “That’s a good sign.” Gemma nodded.

  “How is that a good sign?” Cole asked.

  Gemma turned to look at him. “Usually, once a soul spends a lot of time out of a body down in hell, it turns completely evil.”

  “No. She won’t.” Cole shook his head spastically. “She’s not evil. All we have to do is convince her soul to get back in her body.”

  “It won’t be easy,” Gemma warned. “Her soul has been free for a while now. It isn’t going to want to be forced back inside her body, which has probably been deteriorating.”

  “But it’s still her soul. Wouldn’t it want to go home?” I asked, leaning back on the pillows.

  Usually, her long dark hair was pulled up in a ponytail, but today it was down, waving around her face and it brushed against her cheek when she shook her head. “Souls are very fickle. They’re easily influenced. They tend to take on characteristics of their environment. A soul that has been floating around in hell would not want to go back to being reined in.”

  “So we offer it something that it might not be able to have if it was left on its own,” I said.

  “Like what?” Gemma asked.

  “I’ll think of something,” I muttered, feeling dizzy.

  “Wouldn’t it be kind of bad for Kimber if we forced her corrupted soul back into her body? Wouldn’t it just corrupt her?” Cole asked, pulling his lip with his thumb and forefinger.

  “She won’t be the same person as before, but being in the same cell with her might be a good thing because it probably isn’t completely corrupted.” Gemma allowed.

  “She changed the minute she made a deal with Hecate,” I spat. “Besides, having a soul is better than not having one at all.”

  We all fell into silence. Gemma was probably wondering if Cole was still in love with Kimber. Cole was probably wondering what he said to make me yell, and I was lying there desperately trying not to vomit.

  What a group we made.

  “So that’s what we’ll do, then,” I said, forcing the way I felt to the back of my mind. “When we get down there, we’ll convince Kimber’s soul to get back into her body and then she can cast some spell to make the force fields disappear.”

  Gemma cleared her throat. “Whatever magic your friend has, it’s no match for Hecate’s.”

  “She’s not my friend, not anymore,” I said quickly. “And you’re probably right—but she should be strong enough to cast a spell to maybe weaken whatever spell Hecate cast, then Sam can break out.”

  “I thought you said he’s weak from exhaustion and injured,” Cole said and Gemma looked at him sharply.

  “Then, I’ll break it down,” I said simply.

  Cole looked like he might argue but I held up my hand, stopping him. “I don’t want to hear it. I’m getting Sam out of there and that’s all there is to it.”

  “You should get some sleep,” Gemma said, getting up from the bed. “I’ll come back later to see how you’re feeling.”

  Suddenly, it was hard to keep my eyes open so I just nodded.

  A few moments later, I was startled by the sound of Gemma asking Cole if he was coming. I thought they had already left.

  “I don’t want to leave her like this,” he whispered.

  “Yeah, okay,” Gemma said. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Cole.” My throat felt like it was on fire and the word sounded hoarse and gruff.

  He was at my side in an instant, his hands cool against my heated skin as he pushed a few strands of damp hair off my forehead. “What do you need?”

  “Go… be with Gemma.”

  “I’m going to hang with you.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I know what you’re feeling right now.”

  “Not as bad as you were,” I said as I started to shiver with cold.

  I felt the heavy weight of a blanket settle over me. The weight was unpleasant, but the warmth outweighed my discomfort so I didn’t protest. “Get some sleep,” Cole said softly.

  “Cole”—I reached for him and he put his hand in mine—“be with her while you have the chance. You never know when it might be gone.”

  My eyes were closed but I felt his aura shift, turn into anxiety and doubt. “Go,” I told him. “I wanna be alone with Sam.”

  He hesitated only a minute before tucking the blanket around me farther and then stepping away from the bed. “We’ll just be downstairs. If you need anything, yell.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Tell Sam I said to hang in there.”

  I didn’t respond but sank farther into the covers and let my mind reach out to Sam. I wanted to be with him so desperately that I opened my mind too much, too fast and he was no doubt bombarded with what was going on with me. Almost as soon as I felt our connection, anxiety and fear flooded into me.

  Heven? What’s wrong?

  Not feeling so great is all.

  I feel a burning in my arm. What happened?

  I didn’t want to lie, and he was already freaked out, so I told him the truth. I had a run in with a demon. His spit got on me, then some of his blood, and it burned me.

  A deep yearning and a desperate anger flowed through me and it actually eclipsed some of my own pain. I could feel him fighting the urge to launch himself at the force field again, but he and I both knew that he couldn’t break out. After a few charged moments, he seemed to relax a bit.

  What happened with the demon?

  Nothing. I killed it.

  You killed it? Fresh fear stabbed me anew, but I ignored it.

  Yes, and it’s just a small burn.

  You’re in pain.

  We were all in some kind of pain. I was tired of thinking about it. I was thinking of taking a nap.

  I wasn’t worried about going to sleep. I fought sleep when I first came home from hell, in fear that Beelzebub (also known to me as the Dream Walker) would get into my head while I slept, but I can only not sleep for so long. Eventually, I fell asleep. And he never came.

  Sleep would be good for you.

  Want to link up?

  I don’t know if I can settle down enough.

  Would you try?

  Anything for you.

  At first, I thought maybe he wasn’t going to be able to relax, but I kept my mind completely open while sending out loving thoughts and waited. Eventually, I felt him soften and I hurried to picture him lying beside me on the bed. In my mind, he wasn’t wearing a shirt and I ran my hand over his smooth, taut stomach muscles. His skin was warm to the touch and his chest rose and fell with every breath he took. A small groan echoed through my mind and I smiled. I wasn’t really touching him, but we were linked so closely I knew he could almost feel my touch. And while it didn’t seem like much, it was all we had and it was everything.

  He laid his palm over my hand and lifted it to his lips, pressing a kiss to the inside of my wrist before settling my arm back around him and gathering me close. Suddenly, the too-heavy blanket felt perfect and I pretended it was really him wrapping his body around mine.

  Gradually, the shaking of my muscles slowed and then subsided. I was left feeling completely exhausted.

  Feeling better?

  Yes.

  Good. Get some sleep.

  Want to stay like this with you.

  I won’t let go. I’ll keep you here. I wasn’t sure if he would be able to do that or not, but I was fading fast and I knew I wouldn’t last much longer. Something niggled at the back of my brain and I roused myself enough to remember I wanted to ask him something.

  Do you ever t
alk to your old roommates?

  The question was random and momentarily startled him. I felt some of our link slip away so I made a small sound of protest and he came back, wrapping me in his mind. Why would you ask me that?