Knowing that my anger was too close to boiling over, I stomped away from the window and demons scattered out of my path. Like they should. I carried the stench of destruction everywhere I walked.
_______
“Imagine my surprise when I found one hanging on the entrance of the casino?” Annoyance layered August’s brittle words as he crumbled up the flyer.
Joy’s round face pinched in confusion. “Is the return of the human festival the Devil’s doing or Harvest’s?” She sat beside me on the couch with Prudence next to her.
“If it’s the Devil, then he’s waited centuries to retaliate after I shut it down.” Mom frowned as she looked to Grim. “Did he ever attend it himself?”
Grim sighed. “I’d never seen him there, but he doesn’t have to be there to know what goes on. The Underworld is his domain. He sees everything. Why do you think I built these woods?”
Mom quirked a brow before rubbing his shoulder. “For privacy?”
“Are you teasing me, love?” Grim tugged her closer.
“What does this mean for the humans?” Joy peered at the floor; brows knitted together.
“Demons will kidnap them and round them up like cattle,” said Prudence as she glanced at Mom. “Was this demon tradition really as bad as you told us?”
Mom’s face paled as she lowered her head, unable to hold anyone’s gaze. It was answer enough.
“We should collect all the portal chips,” August interjected. “That will slow a lot of human trafficking into the Underworld.”
“Times are different now,” I muttered. “Portal chips aren’t the only way to enter the mundane world. How can we watch every single spell caster or opened portal? They outnumber the Reapers three to one.”
My skin rippled. There was always a scorching agony that came along with raging out. It festered inside me all the time. I tried hard to keep it from tipping over, but my fury was too fucking close to the surface.
It was hard to meet with everyone and just listen sometimes. Especially under those kinds of situations.
“Relax, Barron,” Maureen said, fading into the room with Jackal by her side. I glanced over at the playful smirk on her face and eased up a little. My sister, who always had to best everyone, wasn’t around as much as she used to be. She spent most of her time with Jackal. The two traveled into the human world several times a day so that he could heal people from the diseases brought upon by the pending end of the world.
“I said it would ‘slow’ the human trafficking, not stop it completely.” August folded his arms over his chest. “Barron’s always getting his panties in a bunch.”
A vein in my neck jumped. The rippling was back as I glared at him, and with it came the burning sensation of wrath as it flared up.
“Want a Slim Jim, Barron?”
My mind was hazy. It took a second to see Kitty’s outstretched hand. I never recalled her coming into the room which meant my anger had increased. She never gave up food—thanks to the sin of gluttony—so I knew I made her and everyone else wary. Her eyes held a twinkle to them as I inhaled a deep, deep breath and took the Slim Jim from her hand. I tore into the wrapper and bit into the stick quickly, each bite loud and deliberate like the snack was the thing I was mad at.
“Where’s mine?” Prudence asked drearily like she carried a storm cloud over her damn head.
“All out of shares,” Kitty told her, still smiling innocently.
I stared at August. “I’d rage out just to kill you if it weren’t for everyone else being in the way.”
“Yeah?” August’s green eyes darkened. “We can step outside.”
“Enough,” Joy hissed, rubbing her temples.
“I’m here!” Sebastian announced as he faded in.
Something about my brothers… Just seeing their faces pressed on my curse.
My lips tipped upward on one side. “I can’t deal with the Sloth right now. Let me know when it’s decided what we’ll do. I’m fine with a kill fest come the blood moon.”
August’s eyes gleamed as if the idea appealed to him. “For once, I agree with you. So many demons grouped together… Couldn’t have planned it any better.”
Chapter 4
Gwendolyn
I was getting worse, not better.
I had to wear a breathing mask for a few hours the day before, and they made me wear the nasal cannula all night since my oxygen was low at times, especially while sleeping. There was a blue tinge to my nails and skin proving that my heart wasn’t pumping efficiently.
Despite it all, I thought I should go home. I wasn’t as bad off as Helen had originally made it out to be. Why couldn’t I just wheel around my oxygen tank?
It wasn’t like they could keep me in my room.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed, Miss Gwendolyn?” The brunette behind the nurses station crossed her arms with her lips tipped up.
“Is the cute nurse going to be back tonight?” I asked.
Another one chuckled. “Dylan? Yeah, he’ll be here.”
Goody. At least I’d get to flirt with him. He never took me seriously though. None of them did. It was probably for the best. I enjoyed causing a ruckus more than anything. The thought alone filled my gut with an anxious ball of energy. I spent so much time trying not to be a sick person that I feared I ruined my attitude about life, but it was a habit I couldn’t stop.
“How long have you been walking around without your oxygen?” The relentless brunette was on my ass that day.
“I took it off right before I stepped out of my room.” I blinked sweetly.
“Mm-hmm. Let’s check your levels and then get you back on it.” She stood, and I sighed.
I probably needed it. I was out of breath just walking the hall. It wasn’t too bad when I wasn’t moving. Something about being weak made me want to prove otherwise.
So frustrating.
“Come on,” the brunette said, twisting me around and guiding me back to my room.
“I can—”
Panic seized me. I froze, gasped for air, and then gripped my chest. Fierce pain tore into my brittle heart. It had only been two nights since the heart attack.
“Hey, you okay?” she asked, stepping in front of me.
I let some of my weight fall onto her as I stared into the distance, tilting my head to the side so I could see past her.
There.
I swore the dangerous energy I sensed wafting from the figure was coming for me. It terrified me. My arms shook, yet I had this insatiable urge to stumble over and pull the hood back.
I was more self-destructive than I thought.
Closing my eyes, I thought, It’s not real. When I reopened them, the cloaked figure was still there.
Gasping for breath, I pointed. “There.”
The brunette looked behind her. “What is it? Did something scare you?”
Another nurse asked, “Do you need me to call the doctor?”
“Yeah. Alert him,” said the brunette.
“You don’t see it?” I whispered, dropping my hand as the cloaked figure halted in front of a door and glanced in our direction. It was too shadowy beneath the hood to make out a face. Only darkness stared back at me. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman looking at me, but the height and width made me think it was a man.
The hood cocked slightly. He had to be staring directly at me, but the material hanging over his forehead cast too much of a shadow to see a face. My eyes widened like saucers as a dark jean leg emerged. I gulped as the cloaked man slipped through the door like a ghost.
“Come on. Can you make it to your room?” the brunette asked.
I rubbed my temple and met her concerned gaze. “I think I’m seeing things.”
A beeping noise sounded at the nurses station. It must have been bad since Nurse Marsha—according to her name tag—rushed away. “What room?”
Another nurse shouted, “Three-thirteen. It’s Stanley!”
I watched, my jaw going slack, as nurses and docto
rs rushed into the room the cloaked figure had just entered.
They pronounced Stanley dead. Helen heard it walking by the nurses later that day.
______
“Can you stay tonight?” I had an iron grip on Helen’s hand as I lay in bed. “Please.”
She smiled, pulling her hand from mine and patting my hair lovingly. “I would, but I got Denise and Lenny to watch tonight.” Those were her grandkids from her actual daughter, but I wasn’t bitter about it. I adored those two little kids. Between everything the Pattisons had done for me, including the money they’d put into my hospital visits and stays, I could never repay them. I knew they loved me and was lucky that the couple investigated fostering when they did.
Still it would never change the fact that they weren’t really mine. Or the sobering reality that I would have nothing or no one that one hundred percent belonged to me. Just like I could never be someone’s whatever.
When I died, people would mourn me, and then after a while, I’d be forgotten. Someone told me they left me in a dumpster when I was born—likely to die there. But I had been found instead.
Maybe that was why my heart was so broken.
I wanted to forget about my heart, the hospital bed, and the isolation I put myself in. I wanted to be free of my need for cheerfulness. The only way that was ever possible was when I got the chance to skate.
I didn’t care if it was on ice or on rollerblades. I just wanted to spin and fly and soar like I was meant to.
“Let’s find something else for you to watch. I’m sure you’re tired of hearing about New York.” Helen changed the channel from the images of the recent disaster that had taken place in the city. It was almost two weeks since it occurred, and the news stations were still speculating about its cause. Was it a terrorist attack? Some sort of new weaponry the government wasn’t aware of? I couldn’t even imagine what had almost wiped out the city.
It was heartbreaking to listen to the feedback and watch the continuous videos of the event that was more horrific than 9/11. I was glad Helen turned the channel, or else I would have watched unable to look away.
“Do you need anything before I go?” Helen asked as she slipped the remote into my hand.
For you to stay. “No. I’m going to wait on the cute nurse to check on me.”
She chuckled. “The kids want to see you. I’m going to bring them tomorrow.”
“Sounds good,” I mumbled.
“Love you.” She kissed my forehead, and I said the words back.
My nerves crawled beneath my skin as I watched her walk toward the door. The fierce urge to beg her to stay was there, but I sucked on my bottom lip and gripped my blankets instead.
“Want me to turn off the light?” she asked.
“No!” I blurted and then smiled half-heartedly. “I want to see the nurse’s face when he walks in.”
“Turn it off!”
That scratchy country voice spooked me making my heart hurt as it pounded against my ribcage. Sometimes I forgot I had a roommate until the old hateful woman spoke. I heard brief bits and pieces from her doctors and nurses—something about a staph infection—when they redressed her wound. Thankfully, I had also overheard that she was getting released tomorrow. I’d have the room to myself.
Helen shook her head and shut the light off. The room grew eerily quiet the second the door clicked shut, despite the faint sound of whatever was playing on the TV.
Sheesh! Get a grip!
It wasn’t like I was alone. I sighed as the old woman flipped the channel back to the news. The curtain was drawn between us, but I could hear every cough and movement from her bed.
I was sick, but I hated being around sick people even more. I hated the death and disease that came with hospitals. It clung to the surroundings and became a living and breathing entity. I also loathed the sterile smell.
After Helen left, I called Penelope and listened as she gushed on and on about the wedding dress she picked out. It shouldn’t matter. Buying a dress and attending my friend’s wedding. Or that I’d never been able to do more than attend college because Helen thought I was too weak to get a job. The fact that one of my organs was failing was what I should have focused on. But I was still envious and sad all the same.
It sucked to miss out on living while trying to stay alive.
I should have been born a calmer person. Not this, twitchy, never settled being. Maybe then I’d be at peace waiting for a chance to live longer.
But restless me could only think of all the things I could do while I had time. Like skating, hanging out with my friends, getting a job, and finding that perfect boy to kiss while I still had the chance.
Although I hated dying, I thought about death a lot. I thought about all the what ifs. My most favorite was the idea of reincarnation—the notion that we were all continuously reborn. It made trying to figure out why I was leaving the world so soon easier.
Maybe I was a fly in my last life. If that was the case, getting to live for twenty full years was a real treat. But what sucked about reincarnation was you weren’t supposed to remember your past lives. So, I couldn’t appreciate how many more days I had in this life because I couldn’t remember whether I’d been a damn toad or a cricket in my last one.
Oh, well… It was easy to fantasize and entertain all these thoughts of dying when you had nothing else to do. It wasn’t like I had much else to think about stuck there…
The memory of the cloak and hood—the sheer mass and height of whatever lay beneath it—and the dangerous hate vibes that came with it suddenly imprinted on my brain. My eyes darted around the dimly lit room as if he were there with me.
What was he?
I hugged my arms to my chest. Was he just a by-product of my medication? Did he kill the man in three-thirteen named Stanley? I watched him walk straight through that patient’s door.
The nurses hadn’t seen him. What did I see?
Maybe I imagined it. Could someone hallucinate while slowly suffocating?
The old woman coughed, and it spooked me. Feeling ridiculous, I shook my head as if that would make the nonsense vanish.
There no point in being afraid. The person wasn’t there if no one else saw it.
I wish that made sleeping easier, but it didn’t. I tossed and turned while my roommate fell asleep before me. She muted the TV at some point, so I changed the channel to something more pleasant.
At some point I must have dozed off. Around midnight something woke me up.
It wasn’t restlessness. Rather, it was the sensation that someone else was in the room—beside my bed. My muscles tensed. I stayed on my side, waiting and listening for something to breach the silence.
But there was only spine-chilling quiet. It was like being in the shower, scrubba-dub-dubbing away while singing to blaring music, and then out of nowhere the music stopped and an eerie calm took its place. Even the water spraying down would mute and suddenly it would be me against all the ghosts in the world.
My scalp prickled, and the sensation inched down my spine all the way to my toes paralyzing me. Ewww!!
It wasn’t only that… An unseen force disrupted the air in the room and weighed me down. Was I being watched by a furious ghost? What else would explain the anger clinging to everything around me?
I was too petrified to look around, half-hoping that my near-death experience messed with my psyche instead of someone or something standing beside me.
Dragging my blanket down, I slowly peeked over my shoulder. My heart pounded painfully and that might have been the reason it was getting harder to breathe.
The cloaked figure was a dark mass. The light of the TV played shadows against the wall with its shape. I still couldn’t see a face. It was shrouded in too much blackness. Instead of screaming or having another heart attack, I sucked in a shallow breath and hid beneath my covers.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. My fear was warranted. Someone was watching. My fingers shook as I gripped the blanket. I squeezed my
eyes shut as if that would make it go away.
Take that, cloaked figure. If I would die, I felt better not seeing it. Forget running, I could barely breathe. I’d kill myself trying to get away.
“So, you can see me?”
It speaks! And it was a—he! He didn’t sound nice or friendly. His voice was so deep and raspy. It reverberated like it was under water or something.
“Might as well stop hiding,” he barked out. “If you wanted to pretend you couldn’t see me, you shouldn’t have shrieked and buried yourself beneath the blanket the moment you stared up at me.”
Pretend?
I pulled the covers down and peered up at the face I couldn’t see. Jesus, it was a long way up! He was a lot taller up close.
“I’m not pretending. I’m simply refusing to acknowledge your presence.”
His hood tilted. “How is that any different?”
“Simple. Ignoring things are sometimes easier than confronting them.”
“You answered me, so I still don’t follow,” he said impatiently.
Damn. He was right.
“Well, if I had said nothing, you might have let me live.”
Uh-oh. I just gave myself away. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to know that he was there to kill me.
“I have no say in when you live or die,” he said.
My eyes narrowed. “Is this an elaborate prank? Are hospitals allowed to do that to a heart patient?” I sat up and slid my hand down the black material he wore. “They can’t say they don’t see you when I’m touching you!”
“That’s my cloak.”
“I know.” I wanted to make a snide remark but refrained.
“And they can’t see me.” I arched a brow as he spoke. “You shouldn’t either.”
I snickered. “So what? I’m seeing things that aren’t there.” My eyes widened. “Oh, Jesus. Did I die the other night? Is this…” My eyes darted around the room. “Some kind of afterlife where I think I’m alive, but I’m not?”
Before he could reply, I sucked in another breath and slapped a hand over my mouth. I tried to calm down. The gravity of my situation hit hard, and I asked, “Am I in Hell? Is this my punishment? To live eternally trapped in a hospital?”
Conjuring Wrath (Seven Deadly Book 3) Page 2