Love Beyond Sanity (6 page)

None of that mattered now. The truth was it had been extremely convenient for Sebastian when Gabriel had stopped hanging around, filling Alexa's mind with doubt about him. No, he couldn't have the key to the whole plan disappearing into the bayou tonight.

He crossed the room as if he contemplated his words. Alexa's eyes followed him as he moved. "Has he told you what has gone wrong between us? We are, after all, brothers, and you know how important family is to me."

Or rather she knew how much he pretended family meant to him. A former foster care child, Alexa craved family above all things. So that's what he'd given her. But Gabriel hadn't believed it, or at least he didn't anymore.

"No, Gabe has been rather tight lipped about the whole thing." Alexa shook her head. "It's like he goes out of his way not to mention it."

No one would ever accuse Gabriel of being stupid. The only reason Sebastian had left him alive was for Alexa. If she were no longer on his side he'd end both of them and it wouldn't be pleasant. He watched as she tucked her brown hair behind her ears, observing him with serious, sable eyes.

Sebastian sat down on the couch's arm. He drummed his fingers on the couch side. "Maybe I should tell you, Lex. But I don't like to talk about others, especially people who I care about, who I still hope can change their way."

"What did Gabriel do?" Alexa stood up, her hands on her hips. "What did Gabriel do?" she repeated.

He needed to go carefully into these stormy waters. Gabriel and Alexa had come up through the foster system together. They'd clung to each other, knowing only the other one could understand their oddities, the things that made them different from regular people. Sebastian had used all of that when he'd made his parents adopt them. He considered himself lucky they weren't soul mates or he'd never have gotten this far. They would have been too solid.

"Do you remember a few months ago how we went to Maine to find those people that are using their energy to destroy other people's lives and how they strangely got away?"

It still vexed him that Kal and that woman, Isabelle, had bested him, but he knew now how powerful they'd grown. That was why things couldn't be allowed to continue as they were. He was going to take action, and Alexa was not going to St. Tammany parish.

Alexa nodded. "Of course I remember. That terrible cult in Maine." It helped that Alexa didn't think very highly of 'Yankees'. Human distinctions puzzled him sometimes.

"Yep, that's the one. You remember Kal? Their leader who I tried to reason with? The one who shot me with electricity? Well, he somehow recruited Gabriel, convinced him of terrible things, and has gotten Gabriel to spy for him. He's been looking for a way to recruit
you
ever since. He knows that I know. That's why he stays away from me and why he wants you to go with him to the North Shore. So he can try to convince you he's right. He's been brainwashed."

Alexa's mouth hung open as her eyes darted back and forth. He rose and took two steps towards her. "If he's brainwashed—if they've infected him with their awfulness—then we need to help him, Bastian, not
abandon
him."

She said abandon like she said the word toxic or terrorist. He would use this to his advantage. She was so easily manipulated.

"I wouldn't dream of harming Gabriel. Why do you think I've left him alone? I haven't brought him here for a detoxification. You know the risk of that. I would never put Gabriel in any situation where there could be any risk at all. Night after night, day after day, I've racked my brain, desperate to figure something out. I want to help Gabe and I thought perhaps I could spare you the pain of having to know about any of this." He looked down as if he felt forlorn.

"Sebastian." Alexa sounded horrified. "You can't be expected to handle these things by yourself. That's what family is for. I'm going to help you. We won't lose Gabriel to them. Even if I have to go up there to that god-forsaken place and drag them down here to release him."

This next part was pivotal. Sebastian looked at her hard. The battle for Alexa's soul was coming fast. "And if it takes more than that, Alexa? What if we have to do something that on a normal basis we would both never consider? I don't want misconstrued ideas here. I'm talking about killing them. What if
that
is what it takes?"

Alexa stood still, as far as he could tell she barely breathed. "I would do whatever I needed to do to save you and Gabriel. But I would want, of course, to see if there was another way first."

"I just need to know that we're on the same page, darling."

"Let me think on this for a while. I'll come up with a solution, and in the meantime I'll put off going to Gabriel's for a little while so I can figure out the best way to handle this."

Her desire for space was one of the things he knew well, and so, like the dutiful brother he was, he nodded and walked into the kitchen. He wanted a drink and it wasn't of the liquid offering. Problem was they couldn't keep losing household staff. Someone was bound to notice that the people who worked for them all ended up dead.

This particular body would have to be dumped creatively. She smelled so good and he wasn't even sure of her name. The upstairs maid. Her skin was the color of lightly mixed milk chocolate. He wanted to lick it. But there was no time for that. If he didn't get a soul soon he would start to lose his façade.
Not yet.

He took the wooden staircase two steps at a time but stayed light on his feet. There would be no use giving himself away before he was ready. Sniffing the air, he caught her scent. It was the pine needles and jasmine. There was nowhere in the New Orleans area where she would have come into contact with pine needles so it must have been some sort of bath soap. No worries. He had taken the souls of foul smelling men. A beautiful, pine-scented woman would be a nice change.

She was in Gabriel's old bedroom; he turned left and walked down the long hallway. Quietly he opened the door. She stood with a feather duster individually dusting each and every book on Gabriel's shelf. He suppressed a shudder. There was nothing more interesting on that shelf than science fiction. Blah.

"Hello, my dear." She spun around and gasped as she started to smile. He never let her finish her thought. Within seconds, she was in his arms, secured in his strong embrace as he stripped her of her will to fight. Humans were so easy. They never fought him. Never even understood they were doomed.

Her body quivered under his embrace as he sucked in deep breaths through his nose. Her soul came to him without hesitation and the empty shell that was her body went limp in his arms. His prey could not live without their souls. It was humorous that a lot of them questioned whether the soul was real or a thing of myth. All the better for him or he might have a harder time getting them.

She tasted like the jasmine he'd smelled but the pine was stirringly absent. Oh well. He dropped her and she hit the ground, her heart stopped, and her brain no longer transmitted signals. He hoped whatever religious deity she believed in didn't forsake her. It wasn't his problem whether she'd been a good person or a bad one, whether or not she'd been forgiven before she died. She was done. She'd been his dinner.

It was noble.

Somehow.

He looked down at the floor as he decided on a plan for disposing of the shell. To her left stood a bottle of pine scented cleaning product. A-ha. The pine needles scent. The cleaning products. It made sense.

The stirring of a slight wind in the room brought a tingle to the back of his mind that spoke of home. He shook his head.
Sister
. His sister was
here
. He flung around and there she was. Shocked, he didn't respond to her presence right away. She looked good. But then she'd always had a way of finding the best shells in the dimensions she occupied.

What was she doing here? This place was
his
. He'd been summoned by the Outsiders, he'd defeated them, been born into a human body, and been working his plan ever since.

She smirked and walked forward. "Quite the little set up you have here brother. It's comfy-cozy." She looked around with a dismissive air to her eyes. "I can see why this whole thing is taking so long. You're
too
comfortable here."

He tried to keep his expression bored. One hint of aggravation would lead to an all out war between the two of them. That would get in the way of all of the lovely souls on the planet being enslaved to him and ultimately devoured for his amusement and nourishment.

"This isn't taking longer than I predicted. When the pesky Outsiders first summoned me here, I told all of you it was a thirty to forty year job. You can't get any more productive than me. I had killed off all but a portion of the Outsiders before I had lived a year in this body."

She nodded and stepped forward. "That is true. It was quite impressive. But the last twenty-eight years have been an utter disaster."

"
They vanished
." Sebastian took a deep breath and tried not to push fire through his eyes. "Abraxas sent the children off into the open and the only three who even knew they were Outsiders vanished with Veli Destrand, who is dead, I might add,
thanks to me
."

"I wasn't here one day when I found my own Outsider. I have him captured."

Sebastian narrowed his eyes. She had what? "Who do you have?"

"Who cares what its human name is? Jason something, um, Jason Randall. He's a body-controller."

Tucking his hands behind his neck, he tried to hide his excitement but feared she could hear his pulse rate rise. "You have a body controller? He can actually manipulate and control others from the inside, out?" He turned his back on his sister and walked to the bed. Turning around, he smiled. "Give him to me." He could use that right now.

"No, he's mine. Put the idea out of your head, unless you're going to give me your two Outsiders."

Now she'd made him mad. Feeling the flames, he knew his eyes glowed red and he didn't try to stop them. "What are you even doing here?"

"I've decided this dimension was deserving of a little competition, and I'm tired of watching you bumble around, so I've decided to come in and take over. I'm going to control this dimension and you can just leave it."

If he could, he'd blow her up right now. But then he would have, as the humans said, let the cat out of the bag. "If you want to compete, Sister, I'm always up for it." It had been a while since they'd had a really good smack-down, break-everything-around-them, kill-the-competition match of powers.

"Good. Then we agree whichever one of us captures and kills the most Outsiders wins. We'll fry them all up at the end as food."

That worked for him. Especially because she didn't know anything about the island where the four, now five, Outsiders lived. He knew where it was. Not to mention he had Alexa, and hell, Gabriel, if he was desperate.

"I'm winning. I have two. You have one."

"For now. It's only a matter of time. I am, after all, twice the evil being you are."

They would see about that. He'd spent too much time planning to have sister's presence make him fail. Everything would fall into place and he'd eliminate his sister in the process. His day couldn't have gotten better.

* * * *

Floating, which was an all together new sensation for him, outside of his old bedroom window; Gabriel could hardly believe his eyes. He'd know Sebastian was very bad. What he had done to that poor girl and now this new bit with his 'sister' put him in a whole new category.

There were many questions that needed answers and he wished beyond anything that he could just rip Alexa out of there. But he'd have to bide his time. If he wasn't careful, they'd both be dead, and then Sebastian would be left to do whatever horrible thing he had planned.

No, he'd have to be patient.

And find out exactly what it meant to be an Outsider because despite what Sebastian thought, he did not
have
him. And soon he wouldn't have Alexa. He had not saved her over and over again when they were children to lose her to this.

The girl was his sister, blood or no blood. He wouldn't leave her to this monster.

Now that he'd learned he could float, he'd have to find out what other little tricks he had up his sleeve. Maybe he too could blow up a person from the inside out. Or perhaps he just needed to find this Jason person and release him from his prison.

Chapter Four

If she ever had to be hospitalized for a mental illness, and truthfully, she might not be too far removed from it these days, Charma decided she'd like it to be at this place. The internet site she'd perused before leaving home had said when a patient or a visitor made it past the front gate they would see that
Shadow Pines
sat on sixty-five acres of green sculpted landscape sporting everything from landscaped rest areas to exercise paths.

The outside of the building was constructed with curb appeal in mind. The tan and grey bricks, which came together at the top of the building ending in a large pointed roof reminded Charma of an English manor.

The whole facility felt more like a country club than a medical facility.

"Name."

The guard, who she would guess to be about fifty-years old with grey hair and a potbelly, stuck his head out the glass window of his booth to stare at them. Charma closed her eyes and searched his soul. He'd been divorced for five years, and never saw his kids. They'd rather be with their stepfather who was some sort of extreme sports athlete. His nights were spent in front of the television eating as he contemplated his existence and every once in a while thought about ending it. And his name… was…

She needed his name, so she dug deeper.