The Protect Her Box Set: Parts 7-9 (12 page)

The shivers began but somehow I managed to plaster a small smirk across my face. “You got it.”

Bruno took my wrist and dug the knife’s point into his palm and then joined our bloody hands together into a tight fist. I didn’t realize until it was too late that our blood comingled over the relic, and I gasped.

“If you betray me, you forfeit everything. Your life. The Necromancer’s life. His soul. Your soul. I will give it to Eva myself, and you will live the rest of your life in eternal torture in the ether. No one will come for you. You will burn.”

I had to trust in Riley’s ability to take care of himself if this all went south. He would find a way to protect himself. Maybe he could even find a way to save me. He always found a way. But we had to be together.

“What are we waiting around here for?” I asked. “I have work to do.”

CHAPTER THREE –
RILEY

I felt like shit. As my eyes opened, I groaned at the light as it hit my pupils, and I closed them again. I wasn’t sure what the hell I must have drunk the night before, but it had to have been a doozy of a party. Then I shot upward as all the memories flooded back.

“Paige!”

“Shhhh, you are going to rip your stitches.” I felt the gentle push against my shoulders sending me backward onto the cot. My mother’s face hovered into view above me. “You’ve been in and out for hours. I was worried that you weren’t going to wake up at all. That wound is…bad. It’s infected, but I did the best I could to clean it up.”

“Paige?” Her name came out closer to a croak, and I wondered if it was even understandable. My throat felt raw as if I had been screaming for days. A shiver rippled through my body, but I could feel sweat pooling on my brow. How was it possible to be so hot and so cold at the same time?

“You need to rest,” she said. She moved toward my waist, and then pulled a light blanket up from where it must have fallen in my abrupt upward movement.

I started to get up again, but the wave of nausea pulled me back onto my back. “I need to find Paige. She’s alone with Proctor.”

“You aren’t going to be able to do anything in your current state,” my mother said. Her voice was firm. “That girl isn’t who you think she is. I didn’t want to say anything earlier, but the demons talk. They’ve been talking about her for a long time.”

I started to shake my head and then stopped when I realized the movement made the rolling sensations in my stomach worse. Paige told me that there were things about her past that she wasn’t proud of, but that was a long time ago. Three years of amnesia had changed her. “She’s not like that. Not anymore.”

“How do you even know?” she clucked as she straightened the blanket around me again. “You always let girls lead you around by your nose. Do you remember Kelsey Whitfield?”

I hadn’t thought about Kelsey Whitfield in years. There was a reason for that. I brought my hand up to wipe my face as drops of liquid slid down the side of my temples. My skin burned. I didn’t need to be a doctor to know that something was seriously wrong. I couldn’t feel any further pain from the wound in my side, but I wasn’t sure that was a good thing. It was as if my lower body was numb.

“Paige isn’t Kelsey Whitfield, and I’m not fourteen years old,” I said. “Knowing what I know now, I am pretty sure that Kelsey Whitfield was possessed by a demon.”

“She was a horrible person,” my mother agreed. She knelt down on the floor beside my cot. Her face was drawn in concern. “I knew it the moment that I met her. She looked at you the way a cat looks at a mouse. It was all about how she could use you. She didn’t care about you. But you couldn’t see it. She blinded you with her pretty blue eyes and dazzling smile.” She leaned closer to me. “And then she ripped your heart out and stomped on it for all the school to see. You told her your secret about being able to see things other people couldn’t see. She told everyone you were crazy.”

This definitely wasn’t the first real conversation that I would have planned to have with my formerly-dead-to-me mother. “I don’t want to talk about Kelsey Whitfield, Mom. I don’t care about Kelsey Whitfield. At the end of the day, she did me a favor. She taught me that I couldn’t trust people. Ever. That’s irrelevant now. I just want to know where Paige is and make sure she’s safe.”

“Of course, she’s safe,” she sniffed. She reached down, and I saw that she had a small washcloth in her hand. She wiped my brow with it, and the cool water felt like heaven against my burning skin.

I felt my thoughts getting fuzzy again. I forced myself to focus. “What do you mean by that? How do you know she’s safe?”

“Do you think that Bruno would let anything happen to his favorite pet? Nobody would dare touch a hair on her head.”

I caught my mother’s wrist to stop her from touching my forehead again even as I twisted my body so that I braced my weight on my elbow into an awkward half-sit. “Bruno’s pet? What are you talking about?”

She wasn’t looking at me anymore though. She stared at my hand. Circled around her wrist, it looked immense. I realized that I could feel every bone. Her arms were so thin that I thought I could simply twist it, and it would break. I released my fingers and felt a wave of shame. I had grabbed my mother in aggression. I was officially going to be up for worst son of the year. I thought that I won that award five years running if not more at this point.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I took a deep breath. “I don’t know what came over me,” Actually though, I did. I wasn’t about to listen to any shit about Paige. Not from my mother, not from anyone. “I don’t know what you think you know or heard about Paige, but that’s not her. That’s not who she is. I know her. Trust me.”

My mother blinked at me. Then she scooted away from me, and I felt a chasm of something awkward and unspeakable open between us. I made my legs bend and then moved forward to the edge of the cot. Ignoring the waves of nausea, I swung my legs around so that my feet settled on the floor.

I saw that my mother was about to say something else when I heard the creak of door hinges coming from the far corner of the room. It was as if a halo encircled her as I saw Paige stumble forward into the room. I was on my feet and across the room to catch her, but I had forgotten about my own condition. I caught her in my arms, but I didn’t have the strength to keep us both upright.

Paige cried out in alarm as we both went down into a pile on the floor. I landed hard on my wounded side and hissed. My lower body wasn’t numb anymore. Now it felt like it was on fire. I wasn’t sure how my mother had managed to stitch it up, but it didn’t matter. I was pretty sure that I had ripped it open again. Paige’s body landed on top of me, but she rolled off me before I even felt the full impact. Her reflexes were getting faster.

“Riley!” Her arms wrapped around my neck, and I bit back a groan. It was pleasure and pain in one. I managed to move one of my arms around her waist, but that was all I could force my body to do. It was already protesting my sudden movement across the room. “Riley, what’s wrong?”

“He’s dying.” I heard my mother’s voice say from somewhere behind us. “He’s dying because he keeps putting himself in the way of those who are after you. This is your fault.”

I heard Paige’s gasp at the harshness of my mother’s words. Paige had no frame of reference, and I could only assume that five years of hell and a demon possession had tainted my mother. I wasn’t sure how it couldn’t. It wasn’t like her to be so bitter.

“Help me sit up,” I said. “Let me look at you.”

“I’m fine,” Paige said as she hooked her shoulder under my arm. I felt movement on my other side and found my mother helping to hoist me upward.

A moment later, I was sitting on the edge of the cot again after my mother directed our efforts. I leaned back and slouched against the wall. It was cool against my back. I wanted to close my eyes and sleep, but it wasn’t the time. Both women hovered close to me, and I watched Paige bite her bottom lip as she looked me over. I felt the wetness on my side. I looked down, and saw that the white bandage that my mother had placed over my wound was almost all red.

I reached out my hand out toward Paige. She took it and moved to sit on the cot next to me. I saw the lines of worry on her face, and it made me feel bad to know that I was the cause of it. She had enough on her plate. I didn’t want to be a further burden. Her eyes wandered back down to my side.

“That’s where Benjamin stabbed you.” It wasn’t a question.

“It’s just a flesh wound,” I said trying to add a joking tone to my voice. It wasn’t lost on me that no one laughed. My mother stood several feet away from me. She had her arms wrapped around her waist. She wasn’t looking at me though. She was glaring at Paige. “Mom,” I said. I snapped my fingers, and my mother jumped. “Mom, this is Paige Matthews. Paige, this is my mom. Joanna Stone.”

It wasn’t the way I ever planned to introduce the woman that I loved to my mother. Of course, I never thought I’d have the chance to do it at all once I thought she was dead. It was momentous in a way. I wasn’t going to let a little thing like dying rob me of this moment.

Paige’s face turned toward my mother. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Stone.” I saw her try to smile. She was doing her best to put on her brave face for me, and that made me love her even more.

Before my mother could open her mouth, I squeezed Paige’s fingers and then pulled her closer to me. Then I put my arm around her. “Mom, this is important, so I need you to listen to me.”

There was a short pause, and I felt Paige stiffen next to me. She might not know exactly what was going on, but she had to sense the tension in the room between us.

“Of course, Riley.” My mother seemed intent on not acknowledging Paige.

“I know that you loved my father deeply,” I said. I saw my mother’s face soften at the mention of my father, and then her fingers went to her ring. It was good to see that hadn’t changed. “You never told me the whole story of what happened between you and why he left, and I guess it doesn’t matter now. But you told me that the moment you met him, you knew that you loved him. It was something that you had never felt before, and you never wanted to marry again because loving him and being loved by him ruined you for anyone else.” Tears shown in my mother’s eyes, but I didn’t stop. “I admit that I didn’t believe you. I thought that you were weak and soft. I thought that it was impossible to care about someone so deeply that you would say something as crazy as you were ruined for anyone else. Until a week ago.”

I looked at Paige and found her face was upturned toward me. Staring into the depths of her blue eyes, I almost forgot that my mother was there at all. “I met a woman who brought out feelings that I had never felt before. I got to know her better, and I realized that she was as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside. There was a connection between us that I couldn’t explain to you even if I tried. I just know that this is something that is meant to be. If I make it through this thing, no,
when
I make it through this thing, I want her to be beside me and in my life forever. If she’ll have me.”

Paige’s eyes widened. She had tears in her eyes as well. She reached up and placed her hand on the side of my face. “Riley, shhhh. You’re delirious.”

“No,” I shook my head. “In case I’m not making myself perfectly clear, I want you to marry me.” It was my mother’s turn to gasp. “I know it’s crazy. We’re sitting in a cell in Hell. I’m guessing that Proctor took the relic away from you. I’m guessing that he’s planning to get rid of us all soon. But when you have something worth fighting for, you can always win. You have my promise that I’m going to try, and it isn’t delirium. I want you to be my wife.”

The tears were openly streaming down Paige’s face. I saw something else there that didn’t make sense. Pain.

“Riley. I can’t. Not yet.”

The pain I felt in my chest at her words were worse than the physical pain when Benjamin stabbed me. I pulled away from her. “So you’re saying no?” It had never occurred to me that she would turn me down. Not after everything that we had shared. Not after everything that I had done for her. “This is some kind of sick joke, isn’t it?”

“I’m not saying no. I’m saying you’re sick. We need to get you better first. Then we can talk about the rest,” Paige said. “Let’s focus on getting out of here first.” She reached out toward me, but I moved away from her.

“No!” I said. I felt lightheaded, and then the shivers began again. I watched her stand up in alarm.

My mother was at my side pushed on my shoulders sending me back onto the cot. I didn’t want to go, but my muscles felt like they were nothing more than mush. I couldn’t resist. What I was able to do was turn enough so that I faced the wall. The blanket appeared covering my body once again. I barely noticed.

Whatever light that I thought might exist for me at the end of the tunnel had been snuffed out. It was as if the last week ceased to exist to me. The darkness overwhelmed my thoughts and emotions once more.

CHAPTER FOUR –
PAIGE

My heart ached as I watched Riley turn away from me. I had no idea that he had was even thinking about proposing to me. I wanted to scream yes from the top of my lungs, but I carried a secret that threatened everything between us. I had to keep him safe, and the only way that I knew to do that was to push him away so that he didn’t get too close. If he wasn’t speaking to me, then I couldn’t pry into his life to find out what Bruno wanted to know. It bought time for both of us.

I felt fingers dig into my arm, and then Riley’s mother dragged me back across the room. She was surprisingly strong for such a small woman. I flapped my arm to get her to let me go, but her grip was iron tight. She slammed her palm flat on the door.

“Open the door! This one needs her own cell. She doesn’t belong in here.”

I didn’t expect the door to open, but I heard the click in the lock. I barely had a chance to look back over my shoulder as I was hauled out into the hallway. Riley hadn’t turned over. I had no idea if he was even conscious. I needed to stay near him.

The door closed before I could even blink, and I realized that if I didn’t do something quickly, the situation was going to get even more awkward.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I hissed. “He needs me. I can heal him.”

Joanna rolled her eyes, and then pointed at the dark Wiccan standing on either side of the door. “This is a magic free zone, and I’m pretty sure you knew that the moment you were tossed in there with us. If you had been able to heal him, and wanted to heal him, you would have done it already.”

“I didn’t know how badly he was injured.” That much was true. I felt a deep pit of fear in my stomach. Riley had looked horrible. His condition had deteriorated substantially since we were separated just a few hours before.

“He doesn’t want you here,” Joanna said. “Here I thought I was going to have to convince him that you were trash, but you did the job for me. I guess I should thank you.”

“He’s delirious and sick,” I said. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying. I wasn’t going to take advantage of him in that state. That wouldn’t have been right.” That was what I was going to keep telling myself anyway. I had to convince her that I wasn’t a threat to Riley so that she’d let me stay. I was walking a fine line. The lies were piling up too fast and furious for me to catch up. I was rusty and out of practice.

Joanna stared at me. I sensed that she didn’t believe a single word that I was saying. “He believes that you loved him enough to marry him. I saw it in his eyes. That wasn’t delirium or sickness. He’s sacrificed for you. He’s bled for you. You don’t do that for someone that you don’t think is worthy. He’s been wrong about you all along, and hopefully now he can see it.”

As if I needed to be reminded of everything that Riley had done for me. This was my sacrifice for him, but I wasn’t sure that he would ever know it. “I do love him.” I didn’t see any reason not to tell her the truth of that fact. “That is why I want what is best for him. Let me stay and help. We’ll need to talk when he feels better.”

“He’s not going to feel better,” Joanna spat. “I’ve already told you. He’s dying. He’s dying because he’s a knuckle brained fool just like his father. He doesn’t know when to stop, or anything about the concept of self-preservation.”

I knew even less about Riley’s father than I did about the woman standing in front of me. I was curious about her. If Elder Flynn of the Hopekee Indian tribe was to be believed, Riley’s father was part of their people. Somewhere along the way, he had encountered Riley’s mother. They had two children, and then he disappeared. Riley’s necromancer abilities came from his father’s side of the family. But Joanna had known about the other world of demons and angels well before the first manifestation of Riley’s abilities. She was the one who brought Riley to Sister Alice for the required training that he needed.

From what little that Riley shared with me and Klein during our travels, it sounded like Joanna had always wanted to forget about anything that didn’t fit into the perfect box of normal. The fact that her son became a necromancer must have shattered her world.

“Riley is a good man,” I said slowly. “He puts others before himself. That’s admirable and courageous.”

Joanna shook her head with a small smile. “You two are quite a pair. Both so eager for love that you are willing to look past the things that made you who you are today.”

That wasn’t what I expected to hear. I was pretty sure that she was talking more about Riley’s deeds than mine. I stiffened. “I know what I’ve seen.”

“An anomaly,” Joanna said. “Why do you think there are guards outside this room?”

“To keep me and Riley from touching magic.”

“My son, although mortal, has made quite a reputation for himself here in Hell,” Joanna said. She lowered her voice. “He’s made a lot of enemies. I’ve heard about all of it in excruciating detail. Things a mother should never have to hear about her son. It isn’t safe for him to be here. They are there for his protection.”

The thought that Hell could be safe for anyone was amusing to me for some reason. I pitched my voice equally low. “Then I want to get him away from here.”

“There is no escape for him or for you,” Joanna said. Her facial expression fell to one of distant neutrality. “I’m allowed to nurse him only because Bruno isn’t ready for him to die quite yet.”

“Why would he keep him alive?” I decided to play dumb. I was sure that if Joanna knew what Bruno wanted to know, he would have found it out already. He had Joanna and Riley’s sister, Gabrielle, in his clutches for the last five years.

“Secrets upon secrets,” Joanna said. Her voice was distant, and her eyes glassed over. “Everyone’s got their secrets. Don’t they?”

It wasn’t safe to talk to Joanna. I had no way to tell if there was still a demon inside of her. It was easy to forget, but despite the relatively normal appearance of the surroundings, we were in Hell. There were things lurking in the shadows that would swallow me whole if I let my guard down.

“I’d like to get back to Riley,” I said. I moved past Joanna and stood in front of the door. “This is where I’m supposed to be.” I wasn’t surprised when the guards moved to open the door again. This was where Bruno expected me to be, and so even if Joanna tried to take me somewhere else, I had no doubt that this is where I’d end up. It was comforting to know in a way, because it was also the only place that I wanted to be.

“He has done nothing but suffer since the day he met you,” Joanna said. Her voice had hardened once again. “Is this how you show someone that you love him? By continuing to make him suffer? How long do you think it will take him to realize that and for him to decide he wants nothing more to do with you? Why make it harder on yourself when you know that is the inevitable end?”

I escaped inside the room and pulled the door shut behind me. I wasn’t going to let her see how her words had affected me. I put my hand on my stomach as I bit my lip to hold back the sobs. I was breaking. I didn’t have it in me any longer to be so cruel. It wasn’t who I was anymore, and she was right. Riley had done everything for me when he barely knew me. He had been better off without me. I knew that. It was just a matter of time before he figured it out too.

I saw his still form on the cot, and I moved to cross the room to go to him. A shadow detached itself from the wall and drifted in front of me. I stopped as I saw the glowing eyes materialize just before a pretty face that so closely resembled Riley’s that I knew her immediately even though I had only seen her once before. I sucked in a breath. It was Riley’s sister Gabrielle, but she wasn’t alone in her body. For a moment, I wondered how she had gotten into the room. I had been just outside the whole time. Then I remembered that I wasn’t dealing with a normal human. I was dealing with a demon-possessed human, and that was a completely different ball game.

“What do you want?” I asked. I forced my tone to be even. Without the ability to access any magic, I was a sitting duck if she decided to attack me. My hands curled at my sides. I didn’t want to hurt her, but I’d find a way to defend myself if I had to.

“I wanted to check on my brother. I heard that here was here, and he was sick,” Gabrielle said. Her voice contained a grating edge that carried with it an age far beyond her years.

“I don’t believe that he is your brother,” I said. “Do demons even have siblings?”

The woman blinked, and the glowing orbs disappeared to be replaced by jade green eyes that matched Riley’s. It crossed my mind that Riley and his sister must have inherited that physical trait from their father, because Joanna’s eyes were chocolate brown. “Are you even going to lecture me on the topic of kin? You left your family to die while you ran away. You didn’t even try to save them.”

Images rose in my mind unbidden. They were fragments of memories that I had blocked out for years. I remembered the ugly yellow Formica floor and the tired table and chairs that sat in the corner of our small kitchen. I came home early that spring afternoon. I wasn’t feeling well, so I decided to skip my after school soccer practice. The first thing that registered were the red drops on the floor that started near the kitchen sink and moved across the room to the other side of the refrigerator near the door to the basement. I remembered seeing my father’s torso lying on that ugly floor as his body was pulled through the door. His eyes caught mine in those last moments before his body disappeared, and he mouthed one word to me.

“RUN.”

The next thing I remembered, I was out in the heat of the setting sun wondering what had happened. I blocked it all out. The screams. The howls of something completely unholy as it did things to my parents. Those sounds haunted my nightmares for years.

I found the note in my pocket hours later when I stopped at the convenience store across town wondering what had happened and what I was going to do next. It was a simple note in my father’s scrawl, but it sent chills down my spine.

Don’t you dare come back here. Ever. You can’t help us. You will only end up dead or worse. Call Greg. 754.325.4402 He will help you. No matter what, know that we will always love you. We always did.

It was the last message I ever received from my parents. I was fourteen years old. Homeless. Defenseless. Rudderless. Somehow I defied the odds and survived, but that survival came at a high cost to my sanity and my soul.

I couldn’t help but wonder if my parents’ souls had taken up residence somewhere in Hell that day. They might have tried to make it right, but for the first part of my life they had planned to give my body to Eva. That was twisted shit. But after everything I had done since that day, surely mine was damned to spend eternity there as well.