Protect Her: Part 11 Read online

  “Get on with it then,” Alice finally said. She set her teacup down on the small table next her and turned to face me fully. There was no fear in her eyes. “If you’re here to kill me, then do it. I am not afraid to die.”

  Mystified by her reaction, I stood. “All right, if you are so eager to meet your maker, I’ll get this over with. It’s better for both of us this way.” I moved to stand next to her chair. I let my hand move into the air in front of her chest. She didn’t look up me. She didn’t even flinch. Instead, she stared straight ahead. “Any last words?”

  There was a short pause. “I have many regrets, but I will settle those with God when the time is right. My last words, therefore, are only my wish for you. May you find peace someday, Riley.” Her eyes closed, and I watched as her lips began to move. She was praying.

  That made me angry. I was the one she should have been focused on for all those years. Instead, she turned to God and buried herself in books of mysticism and theology looking for answers where none existed. She said that she cared for me, but it had always been at a distance. That wasn’t the way it was supposed to be when you brought a child into the world. She had failed me, just like so many others.

  “Riley, don’t.” The cracked voice was low and filled with pain.

  “I will make it quick,” I promised.

  “You’ll regret it forever.” The woman pretending to be Paige stood behind the chair looking like an angel from Heaven.

  “You argue for the life of a human?”

  “Take mine instead,” she said. She reached out her hand. Her hair streamed wildly around her shoulders. Her blue eyes searched mine with an intense urgency that confused me. “Finish what you started with me. But leave her alone.”

  Then it was as if something cracked inside of me. I felt it even as another part of me warred to stop the gap before it could get any wider. I had spent the last ten years around demons. There was one thing they wouldn’t do. They wouldn’t sacrifice their life for another; especially not a human. It wasn’t part of their DNA. This woman wasn’t a demon. And if she wasn’t a demon…

  “Paige?” The whispered question fell from my lips.

  She gave me a relieved, tearful smile. She nodded. “Yes, Riley. It’s me.”

  “How?”

  “Take your hand away from Alice’s chest, and I’ll tell you what I know,” she said.

  I looked down and then whipped my hand away. I stared at it and felt the power coursing through it. The magic that had been seconds away from ripping out Alice’s heart. Would I really have done it? Would I have followed through with my threat to kill my own mother?

  I stumbled backward, and the backs of my knees hit the coffee table upending the tray of tea. I heard the sounds of glass shattering as the teapot and cups hit the floor, but they barely registered. Instead, I stared at my hands as unbidden images started to fill my mind.

  Faces. Too many faces. Their expressions were of pain and horror, anger, lust. These were all memories. Memories of people I’d seen, and then the litany of what I’d done began to run through my mind. I moaned even as I slid to the floor. The shards of glass split open my pants and the skin of my knees, but I didn’t care. I welcomed the pain.

  “Riley!” I heard Paige’s exclamation, and then the sound of her feet moving toward me.

  “Stop,” Alice’s voice boomed around my ears, and I reached up to cover them. “Move back.”

  “He needs help!”

  “We will give it to him, but first we have to move out of the line of fire,” Alice said.

  I barely noticed that Alice dragged Paige backward into the hallway; Paige protesting the whole time. I didn’t know what Alice was talking about. Line of fire?

  What the fuck was going on?

  Come back. The gurgling voice emerged from deep in the recesses of my mind.

  “Fuck!” I slammed my hands against the sides of my head harder. “Who said that?”

  You belong with us. Come back.

  “Riley!” I heard Paige’s voice calling out to me. “Riley, I’m right here. Stay with me!"

  There was the sound of a tussle, and then the heavy footsteps pounded on the floorboards again pressing the shards of glass deeper into my knees. In a way, I welcomed it because it felt as if my world had gone off kilter in the deep end of the pool.

  I felt cool hands on the sides of my face. “Riley. Look at me.” I opened my eyes to her, my beautiful blue-eyed angel. She gasped, but she didn’t let go of me. “Who are you talking to, Riley?”

  “I don’t know who it is,” I whispered.

  Yes, you do. Could she hear the voice too?

  “Tell me what it’s saying,” she said. “Tell me what it wants you to do.”

  Kill her. Kill them all. Remember how good it feels? Remember the taste of blood in your mouth when you rip out their hearts and feast on their flesh?

  I moaned. At the mention of blood, I tasted the rusty metallic taste on my tongue. Had I really eaten the hearts of my victims? It was a horrible realization to think that maybe I had.

  “It wants me to kill you,” I said. I didn’t have the strength of will to lie or beat around the bush.

  Her eyes widened, but she didn’t move. “Do you want to kill me?”

  I barely shook my head. “No. I would never hurt you.”

  She smiled at me, although her lips trembled. “That’s good because I would never hurt you either. You have to close that voice out. You can’t listen to it anymore. Do you understand?”

  I did understand, but such a thing was easier said than done. I didn’t know where I ended, and the voice began. Because despite everything it was telling me to do, it was my voice. That was the most terrifying part of all.

  “Stay with me,” Paige repeated. Her hands slid down to my shoulders. She moved closer to me. “Please, Riley. Don’t leave me again.” Then she wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into her embrace.

  I shuddered as the war in my mind waged on, but as I dared to reach my arms up to encircle her waist, I felt the loosening of the other’s hold on my mind. I pushed it back with all my might as I heard Paige’s words murmured in my ear.

  She told me loved me. She apologized for ever doubting me and pushing me away. She forgave me for everything in the past. She had faith that I would be able to choose the right path forward. She wanted to be with me forever.

  A future. A future with Paige that didn’t involve death, darkness, and pain. It was my dream. The dream that I thought was ripped away from me when I watched Adam kill Eva. But it wasn’t the end, because Paige was here. I was wrapped in her arms. She had found me.

  I let out a low sigh of release as I finally felt the other recede. I slammed the door on it in my mind and locked it away. When I opened my eyes, I looked over Paige’s shoulder into the hallway. Alice stood there, and then I saw two figures step up behind her. It was Klein and Viho.

  “I’m okay,” I finally managed to say. “I’m okay.”

  Paige gently loosened her hold on me and pushed backward. Her eyes examined my face as if trying to determine if I was telling the truth. I could hardly blame her. Ten minutes ago, I had tried to kill her. I brushed my hand across her cheek and down her hair. She was real. The time that had passed without her had been a nightmare.

  She smiled at me and then leaned forward to brush her lips against mine. “I’ve missed you,” she said.

  “And I you,” I said. I watched as she slowly got to her feet, and I saw the rips in her jeans. Her knees were bloody. “You’re hurt.”

  “Nothing a few bandages and some antiseptic won’t take care of,” she said. She held her hands down to me. I took them and slowly got to my feet. I wobbled, and she put her shoulder under my arm. “Easy does it,” she said. She propelled me to the couch and eased me down onto it. “I’m not the only one with a pair of bloody knees.”

  I looked down and saw my own wounds. “I’d heal them, but that’s not a power I possess,” I said. I realized that
I had no idea what powers I did or didn’t possess at the moment. Had my beating back of the darkness inside of me diminished any of my abilities? It would remain to be seen.

  Klein, looking more worse for wear than usual, moved into the room and handed Paige a first aid kit from his backpack. “Here. I brought one just in case.”

  Paige took it and smiled at him. “Thanks, Klein.” She looked over her shoulder. “I’m glad you two are okay. I suspect that you and Alice might want to go somewhere and have a chat.”

  I looked at my two parents. Both of them in the same room at the same time. It was another first in my life. It was the first time I had ever seen tears in Alice’s eyes. She and Viho embraced. Then she nodded to the three of us and beckoned Viho toward the kitchen. I suspected there would be more tea in my future.

  “Why don’t you look for a broom and dustpan to clean up this mess while I take care of Riley?” Paige directed Klein.

  “Sure,” he said. I could tell by his expression that he knew the real reason for his errand was to get him out of the room. I was okay with that. I wanted to soak in the lovely image of the woman in front of me. Alive. And smiling at me as if I was the only person in the world.

  I leaned forward even as she began the work of pulling the tiny shards of glass out of my knees. I twisted a piece of her long blonde hair into my fingers. “How?”

  She frowned as she worked, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the glass or my question. “Well, that spell you used to conjure me up from my body? It worked.”

  I remembered the spell. It seemed like that had all happened a lifetime ago. “How long?” My voice was hoarse.

  “It’s been a week,” she said. She grimaced as she pulled out a larger piece of glass. I barely felt it.

  A week. How could it have only been a week? “It feels like it’s been a lot longer than that.” My throat felt parched as if I had been screaming for a long time.

  “I know the feeling,” Paige said. She looked into my eyes. “Riley, are you going to be okay?”

  I put my hand over hers to stop it. I couldn’t help but tell her the truth. She deserved that much. “I don’t know.”

  CHAPTER SIX – PAIGE

  His words were brutal. My dark angel was bloodied and broken in front of me, and I felt like weeping. The only thing I could do was focus on cleaning him up. I had a feeling that if I just left the wounds alone, they would heal on their own. But it gave me something to do.

  I had been on death’s door yet again. However it had happened, I had gotten through to him. I cracked the black exterior around him and thankfully found him still inside. But I sensed from the moment he fell to his knees that we weren’t out of the woods yet. Not even close.

  Looking back down at his knee, I saw a flicker of light beneath our hands. I pulled my hand away and gasped. There was unbroken, fresh skin beneath it. “Did you do that?” I asked.

  Riley shook his head. “No, babe. I’m pretty sure that was all you.”

  I stared at him. “It couldn’t have been me. I mean, I can’t do magic anymore. Not since…I came back.”

  “I suspected this turn of events,” Viho’s voice boomed in the room. Klein appeared in the doorway and made quick work of the glass on the floor before Viho sat down in the seat that Alice had so recently vacated. I had been terrified that Riley was going to kill her. Thank God I was able to convince him not to.

  “Where’s Alice?” Riley asked.

  “I gave your mother some instructions that she is carrying out as we speak,” Viho said.

  “In other words, you’re keeping her away from me,” Riley said with a frown.

  “It would be better if we were all as far away from you as possible as you wrestle with your darkness,” Viho said. “But it is clear that Paige is your tether to this world and the sanity of your former self.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at him triumphantly. “I told you I’d be able to bring him back.” It was juvenile, but I couldn’t help myself.

  “You’ve found the man inside the monster, yes,” Viho said. “But Riley isn’t Riley alone anymore, are you?” The question was directed at Riley.

  Riley grimaced before he put his hands on either side of his head and shook it. “I can feel something else slithering around inside of my head. It’s me, but it’s not. It’s increasingly difficult to shut it out, but I have done it for the time being at least.”

  Alarmed, I turned back to Viho. “I healed him. You knew that I could still do that?”

  “Magical power and energy takes many forms,” Viho said with a slow nod. “Once you are touched by it, it’s just a matter of understanding the ways it might manifest itself again. You are still sensitive to the beings that originate from the other side of the veil. You were touched by magical energy for your entire life. While it might not be the power of a goddess that you are left with, I would have been surprised to find you kept nothing from those experiences.”

  “The power to heal,” I said in a wondering tone. I wrinkled my nose. “That was the first thing that Bruno made me do on my own when I started to learn how to consciously control my magic. I met a demon who told me that he couldn’t use his magic for healing, but I was able to do it.”

  “That’s because the energy required for healing comes from the light,” Riley muttered. “That’s why I told you I couldn’t do it. If I would have given it time, though, my body would have healed itself.” He squinted at me. “You’re human.”

  I shrugged. “I always was human, right? Now, I’m just plain ole vanilla human. Or, at least, I thought I was human before.”

  “You said my spell brought you back. But you didn’t appear to me,” Riley said.

  This was the part that I wasn’t thrilled about telling him. “I know. That’s because Benjamin intercepted my essence. He took me away and offered to take me to Heaven.”

  Riley hissed, and I saw his face darken. I put my hand on his chest. “But he didn’t. When Eva died, I was made corporeal again. Benjamin didn’t know why. He brought me back to Slinky Pete’s, but by then it was too late. You were already gone.”

  “Benjamin,” Riley muttered. “I have a bone to pick with that archangel.” It was clear that his thoughts had turned inward. I couldn’t let that happen, not as long as there was something else in his head that could turn him away from me again.

  “You don’t want to start a war with the archangels,” I said. “You can all be on the same side.”

  “We will never be on the same side,” Riley countered. “They think they are above the letter of what is right and wrong. They are mistaken.”

  “It isn’t for us, any of us, to play the role of judge and jury for those other beings,” Viho said.

  “Speak for yourself,” Riley said. “I have the power to take on a legion of angels.”

  “With your legion of demons?” Viho asked.

  It was a question that hung in the air between them. Riley’s face paled. “I’ve built an army of demons to do my biding.”

  “We know,” I said gently. “We’ve been tracking you trying to find you.”

  “You know, and you still can look at me like that?” Riley asked incredulously.

  “You weren’t yourself,” I replied stubbornly. I got to my feet and put my hand on his shoulder. I looked at Viho and Klein. “We’re here because we want to help you get better.”

  “But we can’t speak for the archangels,” Klein said.

  Riley was on his feet in an instant; his wings spread out behind him as he growled. Klein backpedaled and even though my instinct was to do the same, I didn’t move. Riley was hurt and volatile, and to say that he was on edge would be an understatement.

  “You need to keep your cool,” I said slowly. His eyes blazed as he glared at Klein. “Klein was just reminding me of something else I needed to tell you.” I wanted to kick Klein’s ass at that moment. We didn’t need to dive into all of this until we were sure that Riley was fully present with us.

  “
What else?” Riley asked tersely.

  “Benjamin asked me to let him know when we found you,” I said rushing the words out. “It was a condition of letting me leave the other side of the veil with Viho and Klein. I agreed, but I know that we can work this out with him. No one wants a war here. No one.”

  “You agreed to help the archangel against me?” The words were spoken in a voice closer to a growl.

  “I did what was necessary to extract myself from a sticky situation.”

  “You are fantastically good at that,” Riley said with a sneer.

  I was losing him. The darkness was reeling him back in. I couldn’t let myself be hurt by his words. That’s what the darkness inside of him wanted. If it got rid of me, it could regain full control, and Riley would be lost forever. That was what he had told me earlier. He would be free. Riley didn’t want that, but the darkness inside of him did. I realized that no matter how much I trusted Riley, I was going to have to watch my back.

  “We can’t have a war, Riley,” I said firmly. “All of the souls that you’ve conjured up for your army; you need to let them go. Let them find peace. The demons that you’ve put in human bodies. Send them back to Hell where they belong. Demonstrate your good faith so we have leverage when we talk to Benjamin.”

  “That archangel is at the top of my shit list,” Riley said. He began to pace the room. Thankfully, his wings disappeared. He was calmer now.

  “You don’t have to be BFFs,” Klein offered. He appeared to be trying to make himself part of the wall in the corner of the room. “That’s one person you don’t want as an enemy, though.”

  “I don’t care if he’s an enemy or not. I don’t care if he’s in Heaven or here on earth squirrelled away on his island. I don’t care if he’s spent the last month taking in every lost puppy and kitten on the planet. He’s a menace who needs to be taken down about ten pegs,” Riley snarled.