“Yeah, or desperation to kill me,” I said quietly.
“That, too. And when Benjamin matures, your visions will be even stronger. No wonder he’s scared. There’ll be nowhere he can hide that you and Ben won’t be able to find him or his workers.”
“Why don’t you have visions?”
“I do occasionally,” Chay answered. “If you’re not around or if one of the group is in danger. But they’re not like yours.”
“Let’s go home and change. I smell.”
Chay laughed. “Okay, but this time, you stay in the car.”
“Promise.” I said, smiling. I had abso-frickin-lutely no intention of staying in the car.
***
I changed quickly, brushing my teeth and squirting on a little perfume just in case I had a lingering smell of ode d’vomit. Then we drove to Chay’s house. He got out of the car and pointed at me. “Stay,” he ordered.
“I’m not a dog.”
Chay rolled his eyes. “I’m very aware you aren’t a dog. That’s why you need to stay here.”
I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay.”
As soon as he went into the house and closed the door, I got out of the car and followed him inside. I made my way down the hallway to his room, leaned my shoulder against the doorframe, and watched him.
He pulled his shirt over his head with one hand and unbuttoned his jeans. He’d just pulled them slightly over his hips when I walked into the room and skimmed my nails across the width of his naked broad shoulders, watching his muscles contract.
Whoa, just touching him sends the butterflies in my stomach into a frenzy.
“Milayna.” Chay sighed.
Walking around to face him, I let my nails trail across his skin again. I glided my hands over his chest. I could feel his breath quicken, his heart sped up, matching mine. Reaching up, I pulled his face to me. He kissed me gently, almost tentatively. The kiss quickly turned from gentle to rough, demanding.
He lifted me, holding me close to him. I wrapped my arms around his neck—my legs around his waist. He stumbled to the bed, knocking over a pile of books on his desk, bumping into his nightstand and knocking the lamp over. It fell to the floor with a crash, glass splintering in all directions. His lips never left mine. His tongue glided over mine in a sensual dance.
We fell on the bed. He straddled me, sliding his hands up my sides, pushing my shirt up slowly. I arched my back, an invitation. As I raised my arms above my head, he slipped the shirt over my head and pushed it off my arms. With one hand, he held my arms above my head. With the other, he unbuttoned my jeans… his hand dipping down just far enough to make me call out his name. He smiled against my lips.
Reaching behind me, he undid the clasp of my bra. He bent his head and kissed me tenderly, sweetly, achingly. When he raised his head, his eyes held a silent question. In answer, I lifted my head and brushed my lips against his. He moaned deep in his throat, rolling to his back, pulling me on top of him. I straddled him. His hands below the waistband of my jeans, resting on my naked hips, he started to push them down when we heard the garage door open.
“Oh shit, get dressed,” he said, throwing my clothes at me.
I quickly pulled on my bra and shirt, running out to the living room and grabbing a magazine off the coffee table. Folding my feet under me, I thumbed through the magazine. When Mr. and Mrs. Roberts walked through the door, they seemed happy to see me and, most importantly, didn’t suspect that their son and I came very close to having mad monkey sex in his bedroom.
“Hi, Milayna, how are you?”
“Good, thank you, Mrs. Roberts,” I said with a smile.
“I thought you and Chay were going out today?” she asked with a slight frown.
“Oh, we are. Chay just needed to change clothes. Some woman at the diner threw up and it splashed on Chay’s leg,” I said, wrinkling my nose.
“Ew, that’s gross. I guess I’d want to change, too.”
I laughed.
I’m going to die a freakin’ virgin.
It was a hot day. Well, maybe not hot, but for October in eastern Michigan, it was downright balmy. It was a perfect day for a picnic, and that was what Chay and I were going to do. We were taking advantage of the time we had before the winter semester started and we’d both be in college.
“Are you going back to the university in Ann Arbor?” Chay looked at me. He was stretched out on his side across the blanket. His elbow was bent and his head rested in his hand. He looked so comfortable, so at ease, while I had butterflies threatening to stage a mutiny and take over my stomach permanently. Things were twisted out of place, my breathing was way too quick and shallow, and my heart was racing. I was far from comfortable or at ease. I might have had a minor stroke or heart attack… something. Because my body was all over the crazy train.
“That depends,” I answered.
“On?”
“Where you’re planning to go.”
“Does that mean you want to go where I am or you are going to run in the opposite direction?” he asked with a laugh.
I grabbed a handful of colorful leaves and threw them at him. “You know I want to go where you are. We had a plan if you remember.”
“I remember,” he murmured. “I was wondering if you did and if it was still the plan.”
“Of course it is.” I picked up his hand and laced his fingers with mine. Bringing his hand to my lips, I brushed them over the top before laying my cheek against it. “I only went away to school because I thought a change of scenery would help me forget and move on.”
“Did it?”
I sighed and let go of his hand. “Nope. Just made me homesick.”
Purple. Quilts. Hot, so hot.
“Milayna? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I just had a flash of images, but they didn’t make any sense. But they may soon so we should enjoy our time together now. We may be on a vision quest later.” I smiled.
“A vision quest?” He laughed.
“Okay, um, a vision mission?”
Chay laughed and shook his head.
“A vision…”
His lips covered mine. Thoughts of naming our visions flew out of my brain and focused only on him, what his lips were doing to mine, and what his tongue… oh, my, what his tongue was doing. Oh, yeah.
***
Chay and I sat together in a theater, waiting for the movie to start.
“It’s freezing in here.” I snuggled closer to Chay. “It’s October in Michigan, and it feels like they have the air conditioning on. It’s crazy.”
Chay pulled me closer to him and chuckled. “It’s not all bad.”
I sat snuggled close to Chay while the previews played. I felt sweat building under my hair and trickling down my back. It beaded across my forehead. I tried to sit up, but Chay tightened his grip on me.
I pushed against him. “Let go.”
He looked at me, the corners of his mouth turning down. “What’s wrong?” I tore the sweater I was wearing over my head. Chay grabbed the hem of the T-shirt I wore beneath and held it so it didn’t get pulled off with the sweater. “Are you okay?”
“I’m so hot.” I fanned myself with my hands.
“A few seconds ago, you were complaining that you were cold.”
“Well, now I’m saying it’s too hot!” I snapped.
Purple. Hot. Wheelchair. Quilts.
“Okay.” Chay held his hands up in surrender. “I always knew you were hot, just sayin’.” He winked at me.
I smiled. “Sorry I snapped.” I gulped down some of my iced Coke.
He shrugged his shoulder. “No problem. You know, you’re going to float outta here, guzzling your pop like that.” He gave me a lazy grin, leaned back in his chair, and watched me.
I rolled the cold cup across my forehead and then my chest. “Stop watching me like that. Perv.”
Chay laughed, and the guy behind us shushed him.
I lifted my hair and fanned my neck beneath it. “It�
�s so hot in here. Aren’t you hot?”
“No, I’m fine.” He felt my face and frowned. “You’re burning up. Vision?”
“I don’t know. I keep have flashes of the same images. Something is happening, but there isn’t enough.”
“Give it time. They always give you the information you need when you need it,” Chay said.
“Not always. They didn’t give me enough information about the lady at the Waterway,” I said quietly.
The Waterway was a big tourist attraction in our small town on one of the Great Lakes. Chay and I were there exploring for the day. When the day was over and everyone was leaving, I had a vision of a woman in a green shirt and a tour bus. I didn’t know what exactly was going to happen, but I knew I needed to find the woman. After a frantic search through the never-ending crowd of tourists, I finally found her. Just as I approached her, she was hit by a tour bus, flung over the railing of the bridge we were standing on, hitting the water below. She died. Everyone told me there was nothing I could have done—that I’d done everything right. But I still blamed myself. If I’d been faster, if I’d yelled out to her instead of walking to her, if I’d… well, there were a lot of ifs.
“You did—”
“Everything I could, I know,” I said.
“Azazel was trying to scare you with his strength, but he’s not stronger than you anymore. You’re eighteen; your powers have matured. Your visions are stronger than his influence,” Chay reminded me.
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“Huh?”
“You’re right.”
“Wait—what did you say?”
I laughed. “You. Are. Right. But apparently you’re deaf.”
He tickled my side and I laughed harder, pushing his hands away. “Stop it,” I said through giggles. “The movie is starting.”
“Thank you,” the man behind us grumbled.
I looked at Chay and smiled. He grinned back at me, and my heart did a little cartwheel right before it skipped a few dozen beats.
He chuckled and gave me a quick kiss. We settled in to watch the movie… and the vision started full force.
The color purple flew at me, and I jumped. The theater grew hotter than it already was. The air was so heated that I had trouble breathing. It was as though the heat sucked the oxygen out of the room.
Wheelchairs and quilts flew past my eyes against the purple backdrop. But it wasn’t until the purple folded, twisted, and scrunched into a couch that I knew what the vision was telling me.
I shot out of my seat. “Grams!”
Chay was on his feet instantly. With his hand on the small of my back, he guided me out of the theater. Chay drove the short distance to my grandmother’s senior citizens’ apartment complex. As soon as I opened the building’s heavy glass door, I knew something was wrong. Something terrible lurked in the overheated air. Something unnatural.
Something evil.
I could feel it as soon as I stepped over the threshold. It crawled over me like a million fire ants biting and stinging my flesh. It burrowed like worms under my skin and flowed through my veins, swept along with my blood. It coagulated in my heart, making the beats painful.
“It’s too hot in here.” I walked into the towering great room with the floor-to-ceiling fireplace and overstuffed chairs where families could visit with their loved ones. “Oh, no. Chay, call an ambulance.” I turned to my left and then my right. “Call a lot of them.”
The residents lay unconscious on the furniture and floor. Some were slumped over in their wheelchairs.
I ran down the hall leading to the residents’ apartments.
“Milayna, wait,” Chay called after me.
“No. I need to check on Grams.”
He caught up to me and grabbed my hand. “Let me do it.”
“Why?” And then it hit me. “Some of them are dead, aren’t they? No.” I shook my head, taking a step away from him. “No, I don’t feel that. I don’t feel them dead.” He didn’t say anything, just looked at me. I jerked from his grasp and ran as fast as I could, trying to ignore the people I saw laying in the hallway, telling myself they weren’t really dead, just passed out from the heat. I already felt the effects of it. I was lightheaded, my mouth dry and my limbs heavy.
I was out of breath when I reached her apartment. Stupidly, I knocked on the door. I knew she wouldn’t answer. None of the residents we’d seen so far had been conscious. She wouldn’t be either.
I tried the doorknob. “Shit! It’s hot.” I looked at Chay. “Heat. Brann,” I whispered. “If it’s like the night with Mae, he’ll be in there.”
“We can’t wait, Milayna,” Chay said, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “It’s getting hotter.”
I bent down, took the dagger out of the holder at my ankle, and pushed it under my sleeve. “Okay.” I nodded.
Chay rammed the door, and it gave way. He stumbled into the room. It was twice as hot inside Grams’ apartment as it was in the hallway, and my heart plummeted. If people were dead in the cooler areas of the building, it didn’t look good for my grams and that pissed me off.
If Brann thought it would break me, he had made a horrible miscalculation. If something, anything, happened to my grams, he was going to pay.
We walked into Grams’ apartment. There was a small hallway when you first walked in, just wide enough to fit her wheelchair. Two closets were off the hallway, a small coat closet and a larger storage closet.
At the end of the hall, the walls fell away to a big, airy great room. The living, dining, and kitchen were all combined. To the right was a door that led to the bedroom and bath. I looked in the bedroom. My grandmother lay on her old, wrought-iron bed.
In the middle of the living area sat my favorite thing in Grams’ apartment. Her vintage, velvet, purple couch. That night, my favorite couch held a surprise. He looked a lot like his brother. The same greasy film covered his peculiar red skin. He stared at me with eerie, yellow eyes that seemed to glow like neon. White hair was slicked back with so much goo that large sections clumped together. The same stench of sulfur and rot clung to his clothing. Definitely related.
“Well, if it isn’t the little demon slayer herself. I see you brought your trusty sidekick with you.”
“Hello, Brann.”
“Hmm, been studying I see. I like a smart woman. Unfortunately for you and poor Grams in there, I didn’t like it when they killed my brother,” Brann screeched.
“Oh, my. Who killed your brother?” I asked.
He cocked his greasy, white head and looked at me. “Surely you don’t expect me to believe you’re that stupid, Milayna. Or maybe you’re so cocky you think you’re just that smart. Either way, we both know who killed my brother.”
“I didn’t know there were five of you. I’ve heard you called the Four Brothers. I assumed there were only four of you,” I said, trying to look confused. I must have been convincing.
“What are you talking about? Of course there are only four of us, you little twit. Hence the name,” Brann yelled.
“Then what does me killing Abaddon have to do with you?”
“Nothing!”
“Wait, then I’m confused.” I put one hand on my hip and bit my lower lip.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Brann accused quietly. Somehow, that was more threatening than when he yelled—kind of like when my mom stopped yelling when she was mad and started whispering. We all knew hell was about to break loose. I was afraid the same was about to happen with Brann. He stood and walked slowly to stand in front of me. Chay circled around behind him. “You killed Vann.”
“Yeah, and he screamed like a little girl, too.” I smiled.
Chay grabbed Brann’s arms and yanked them behind him, pushing his chest out. I let the dagger drop from beneath my sleeve and raised it above him.
“Give your brother my regards,” I said. Thrusting the dagger down, I plunged it into his chest. Brann screamed a mouthful of obscenities. A black, oily su
bstance oozed around the knife.
“I think you missed,” Chay said calmly.
“Looks like.” I yanked the knife out and buried it deep in Brann’s chest again. Still, he didn’t turn into black ash like he was supposed to. “Damn it, are you really a demon?”
“Maybe he has a birth defect or something,” Chay said, grunting from holding the struggling demon in place. I rolled my eyes.
“Demons are made, not born. Like angels,” I said.
“Then how can they be brothers?” He looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “Hold still and stop breathing on me. You stink,” Chay muttered to Brann just before he jammed his elbow into the side of his head.
“Boy, you are so going to regret this and so is your pretty little girlfriend…”
“Oh, shut up.” Chay bent Brann forward and slammed his head against the dining room table.
“They’re brothers the same way my dad and Uncle Rory are. Stop moving him around. I can’t get a good stab in.” I was stabbing the demon over and over and still hadn’t found its flippin’ heart.
“Then why do the Four Brothers look so much alike?”
“Huh. Good question. We’ll try the other side. Maybe it’s like that mirror-twin syndrome we studied in biology. Oh, never mind, you weren’t here then.” I stabbed the demon on the opposite side and with one last, very colorful remark, he turned to a plume of black ash.
I shoved the dagger in the holder at my ankle, with two more brothers and Azazel out to kill me, I wasn’t letting that thing out of my sight for a second, and ran into the bedroom where my grams lay on the bed.
“Chay, bring a cold cloth. Please.”
I heard the water running and him rummaging through the drawers in the kitchen for a dishcloth to use. Then I heard a string of violent curses, followed by the opening and slamming of the refrigerator and freezer doors.
“What’s wrong?”
“The water has been heated from Brann, and the refrigerator and freezer has overheated so there’s nothing cold in them either,” he said, running his hand through his hair.
“Alright. It’s gotta be at least triple digits in here. Much hotter than it is outside. Let’s open all the windows we can and let some cool air in.”
The Innocent Page 17