Love Beyond Sanity

  She'd picked up enough from Charma's mind when she probed for fears to gather that was how her kinsmen referred to her. It was good to be back, and it felt wonderful to have so much power. Casually, she strolled into a patient's room. Her brother was so adept at eating human souls. Personally, she felt very little compulsion to do so.

  It was such a messy endeavor. You never knew how much of the mortal got left inside of you. 'Sebastian' had ingested way too many. As far as she was concerned, she would fix this whole thing without needing to feed and be back home before she began to feel the hunger.

  Self-loathing was a great name for her.

  She bent down as she ripped the metal bar from the patient's bed. The comatose individual didn't budge. She guessed her victim was about sixty. The little man had, according to his chart that she quickly perused, been in one hospital bed or another for the majority of his life. She shook her head. Human understanding of their minds was so limited.

  Blowing a piece of hair out of her eyes, she leaned down and placed her hand on his forehead. The little man opened his eyes, and she waited until his vision cleared.

  Blinking several times, he looked around. "Where am I?" His voice sounded scratchy, and she wondered when the last time he'd spoken had been. Oh well, she couldn't care less when it came down to it.

  "I feel terribly sorry for you. In no way will these pesky creatures ever be able to heal you. Lying on this bed," she stroked the side of his face. "You have bed sores and your muscles long ago atrophied. Someone in your family is rich and guilt ridden, or you wouldn't be in such a nice place."

  The man shook his head. "I don't understand."

  "Of course not." Gripping his neck, she turned his head violently until she felt his brittle bones break under her hands. The crunch as the last one succumbed to the force of her pressure was satisfying, and she grinned knowing that she still looked as flawless as if she'd just been applying lipstick, not ending a life. The more she killed, the stronger she got. Now she was feeling much better.

  "Say hello to your Maker for me. He knows who I am."

  * * * *

  Eden was so sick of being stuck in the chair. Once she regained use of her limbs, she was going to make someone pay for what happened to her. In no way was she kidding herself, she knew exactly where to lay the blame—the feet of her mother—the deranged, sick woman, who had thrown her in this so-called mental health institution and left her to rot.

  She hadn't been causing anyone any problems, had listened to all the warnings that they'd thrown at her and had kept 'the god-damn visions' all to herself. She hadn't informed Mrs. Kilpatrick that her cat was about to die. Nope, she'd let the poor animal get run over without a word. Every day she'd done everything that had been asked of her on the farm. When she'd grown old enough to leave, she hadn't. Not because she hadn't wanted to. No, because she'd definitely thought they needed her help. Things seemed to grow better under her hands, and the animals thrived. It wasn't like she'd been desperate to go back to her father's estate in any case.

  The walls there felt like they wanted to eat her alive.

  Every day for the three years of her childhood she'd spent in that house had felt like an eternity. How could she explain to anyone that trapping her inside was the equivalent of locking a regular person in the trunk of a car? There was no way to do so when she was supposed to act normal so as not to embarrass her father.

  Oh, yes. When the drugs wore off, there would be hell to pay for this.

  Mentally shaking her head, because she couldn't physically, she felt tears form in her eyes. Who was she kidding? It wasn't possible for her to hurt anyone. Never had been or she would have done it before they put her where no one would ever again hear her cry.

  Except someone had. Two people, actually. A woman had come into her room and taken her out. Something about her energy had been so familiar, like coming home, or rather what she imagined coming home should feel like. Not like what coming home had been like for Eden. No, completely different than that.

  And then Charma had come. The angel had actually entered her mind and spoken with her. Eden wasn't even sure how that was possible, and she was dying to have it explained.

  Before she'd left her in the lobby, Charma had whispered in her mind that she'd be back soon. Eden couldn't be sure how much time had passed, but she was counting on the woman to keep her promise.

  A shiver travelled up her back, and the intuition she'd never doubted went on alert. Something was watching her, examining her, trying to decide what she was.

  A flash blinded her and for once, she didn't fight the onslaught of the vision. There was no one around to scream at or judge her.

  A man's face formed before her eyes. Slender, high cheekbones, close-cut brown hair. Some people might find him attractive but Eden wanted to flinch.

  His eyes were dead.

  He had no soul.

  And he wanted hers.

  She tried to swallow the saliva that pooled in her mouth and was glad when she could. That meant some muscle control was returning.

  Eden, listen to me very carefully.

  If she could have gasped she would have. Someone spoke to her, and she had no idea who it was. It was a voice she'd never heard before, ever. Male, she would swear it was the sweetest tones she'd imagined possible. Musical and singsong in a way she would have called hypnotic if she were at all susceptible to that sort of thing.

  Laughter filled her mind. That might be a good way to describe me. You can answer me.

  How are you doing this?

  Not important. What is important is that the creature you sense coming for you is about to enter the room. We need to make you very unappealing to him, and it's going to hurt like hell.

  She would do anything the voice wanted. Desperation filled her veins and crept up her back. Eden wanted to see this man.

  No, you don't, sweet Eden. He paused, and for a moment she thought he'd left. Brace yourself.

  A seizing pain formed in Eden's stomach followed by electrical currents that shot up to her neck. Unable to move, she wanted to scream from the need to rub her back.

  Shh. It'll be over soon.

  The door to the room slammed open, and the man from her vision stalked in. Demon. She wasn't sure how she knew but then that went with most things for her. Knowing things without explanation was an everyday occurrence.

  Stalking to her, the demon looked down at her form and pursed his lips. "Who let you live past childhood?"

  What the hell was he talking about? Did she look that terrible? Suddenly all of her desires to see the bodiless voice disappeared. Maybe no one should ever see her again.

  Don't be ridiculous. We altered your appearance remember? One thing we can count on with this one is his vanity. Let's hope he holds onto it.

  "I am not going to sully my hands on you."

  A crash in the hall sounded, and the vain creature of the damned looked up. He backtracked fast. Eden wished she could take a deep breath.

  Hello?

  No one answered her query, and she sighed. Had she imagined the whole thing? Although she'd been mostly alone her entire life, she'd never felt more bereft than she did at that very moment.

  One tear slipped from her left eye.

  * * * *

  Gabriel flipped the channels on his television set for the hundredth time and glanced out the window. Grey clouds seen at twenty-thousand-feet were all that greeted him. Every once in a while the plane would become turbulent enough that he needed to close his eyes.

  It was so unfair. He could make anyone else fly through space and arrive wherever he wanted to put him or her, but he still had to travel by car or airplane if he wanted to go anywhere he couldn't walk.

  There was no getting around the truth. He hated flying and not in the way that most people disliked it—he found it physically draining to even step near an airplane. It was as if the experience affected him on a cellular level. For hours after his feet hit the tarmac he would have a
headache.

  Only this time there would be no taking a painkiller and sleeping it off. No. He had work to do. Sebastian was in New Jersey, and terrorizing the very people Gabriel needed to find. That meant he was going to have to interfere in this somehow and probably, in the process, alert Sebastian to just how much he could actually do.

  So much for his stealth and secretiveness. A situation like this called for full frontal attack.

  The plane jiggled and he hit the call button to get the flight attendant's attention. He needed a goddamn drink.

  * * * *

  Marina ran hard to keep up with Drew. She wondered if he even remembered she was with him. The whole thing seemed like a bad nightmare. On one hand, she'd spent months wanting Drew to reappear so she could do things differently this time. On the other, this wasn't at all how she pictured their reunion.

  "Drew wait. We have to stop."

  She grasped at his shoulder and wasn't surprised he didn't have an ounce of sweat on him. Marina, by contrast, could stay in shape easily but was obviously not made for the same level of battle.

  "Do you need to rest?" What was it about his voice that made her insides melt? He hardly ever spoke and this was the first time he'd spoken directly to her.

  "No, I don't need a rest and that's totally condescending. I need some answers before I follow you any further. What are we doing? Where are we going? And why did we separate from Charma and Jason?"

  Drew ran a hand through his brown hair, his blue eyes flaming with what she could only guess was anger. "I don't have time to hold your hand through this, Marina. A demon out there wants all of our blood. The best way of getting away from it this time is to divide and conquer. Jason and Charma will go their own way and meet up with us outside when I deposit you in the car."

  A strong pain formed in Marina's chest. So he was planning on leaving her again. Refusing to give in to the hurt his words caused she raised a defiant eyebrow. "I'm not yours to deposit anywhere."

  He took two steps towards her and touched her hair. Shivers ran up and down her spine. She suddenly couldn't breathe. "Aren't you?"

  Using all of her force, she knocked his hand away from her hair. No matter what she might feel, she wouldn't let him know. Everyone had an issue, and hers happened to be abandonment. He didn't need to understand that. Not since it was turning out he behaved so badly towards her.

  "No. I'm not all that interested in a prophecy that took place before I was born." Liar. She smiled, hoping he couldn't read her falsehood on her face. "And since you took off the last time, I'm now completely disinterested in the subject of soul mates. So, no, you don't get to have anything to do with my decision making."

  Drew sighed, losing some of his bravado. "I'm so relieved. Thank God. I thought you were going to be a problem. Now that you've told me you're not interested, we can just get away from this demon. I won't have to pretend there's something between us just to get you to cooperate."

  She felt like someone had driven a nail through her small intestines. Not only was he not romantically inclined towards her, now it appeared he was happy that she had pretended not to care a hoot about him. Marina could have laughed at the horrendousness of what he just said if she hadn't been biting her tongue so hard it had started to bleed.

  "Why did we have to let this particular demon chase us?" Drew seemed preoccupied with the things. If she could get him talking maybe she could get control of the tears waiting to overflow her eyes.

  "Let's just say it doesn't like me. I'm the most qualified here to get away from it."

  Suddenly overwhelmed with intense nausea, Marina fell to her knees. Her head spun. Gripping her forehead, she tried to understand what was happening. It was one of them. Someone she loved was in trouble and she needed to help. Only once before had this ever happened, and it hadn't been this awful of an attack. She'd hid it and no one had known it occurred when the Darkness took Kal.

  Who was hurt?

  Who was it?

  Charma's face swam in front of her eyes. Marina jumped up, and nearly knocked Drew over. His arms came around her.

  "What's wrong? Did it get you? Is it here?"

  He looked frantically left then right. She shook her head, unable to make sense of what he said as her entire focus turned to Charma.

  "Have to go."

  "What?" He yanked her forward.

  "Let me go. Charma needs me."

  "Charma has Jason. We need to keep looking for an exit."

  "That's not how it works, Drew." It was the first time she'd said his name to him directly, and the word felt like music on her tongue. She ignored it. "We're all family. She found me when I was five-years-old, and I called to the universe to save me. Veli travelled across the globe to get me out of an orphanage based on her say-so alone, and she was only five herself. You may prefer to live your life all on your own but we take care of each other. If Jason was able to handle whatever happened then I wouldn't have gotten the signal that she needed help."

  "Shit, Marina." Drew threw his hands in the air. "I need to get you out of here."

  "What you want is not my problem."

  She pulled her arm away and ran towards stairs she saw in the distance. Not even sure how she knew where she was going, she knew she had to get up two flights to reach Charma.

  Marina nearly fell over when Drew's arm yanked her backwards. "Fine. But you're not going alone." She opened her mouth to tell him where he could take his attitude, but he pointed his finger at her. "Don't argue. You do what you have to do for Charma. I'll keep you safe. Then I'm getting you out of here."

  "You know what?" She stared him straight in his crystal-blue eyes, wanting him to see just how serious she was. "You better decide what you want Drew. I'm either someone you care to know or I'm not. But I'm not putting up with this."

  Turning on her heel, Marina continued up the dark stairwell.

  * * * *

  Jason put Charma down in a patient's abandoned room. No one was there, which was lucky because he would have tossed whoever was in the bed out the window to get Charma laid down.

  She was out cold. Her lips were pursed, and he could see her eyeballs moving around below her closed lids. He shook her gently. "Charma can you hear me?"

  No response.

  "Shit."

  He needed to know if she was physically okay. Reaching down, he placed his hand over her abdomen and tried to 'scan' her body with his mind. He felt no compulsion to send energy into her body as he had with Drew and decided that must mean that, at least for now, her physical self was intact.

  Charma can you hear me?

  Using his mind, he pushed as hard as he could into her subconscious hoping she would answer through their telepathic link. When silence still held a few moments later, he forced himself to push away the emptiness it created in him. With only their few brief touches earlier, he was surprised to see how much she had already filled his soul with her presence.

  Charma, answer me.

  He fisted his hands at his sides and moved away from the bed abruptly. "Listen to me." He shouted and didn't care if every demon in every universe heard him. "If she dies, I will raise hell here the likes of which no one can imagine. Destiny or no destiny to save the world, if she dies, it all ends here."

  Chapter Fourteen

  "Charma, open your eyes. Can you hear me?" Struggling against the headache that threatened to destroy her from the inside out, she managed to open her eyes.

  "Jason?"

  She knew it wasn't his voice, but where was he? Had the demon gotten him?

  "There she goes again." Now that voice she knew. Leonardo. She wrenched her eyes open and looked around. Gasping, she realized she was back in her bedroom in Maine.

  "How did I get here?" She grabbed her head. How much time had she lost since Self-loathing struck her with all of that electricity?

  Her bed jostled as Isabelle sat down on it. The other woman crossed her hands over her lips and gazed up at Kal before looking back down a
t Charma. Quickly, Charma did a count of who was in the room. Isabelle, Leonardo, Kal and an unknown man who stared at her. Who was he? Short and somewhat stout, his face was worn like he had spent too much time in the sun. Laugh lines that didn't look at all pleasant on him were deeply etched into his tight skin. Charma swallowed. She didn't like him at all.

  Isabelle rubbed her leg through the beige blanket that covered the bed. "You never left here, honey."

  She shook her head. Never before had she wanted a blanket off her so much. Something was terribly wrong.

  "No. The last thing I remember was that I was still in New Jersey."

  "Charma," The man she didn't know mispronounced her name and sat down on the bed next to Isabelle. "We're trying to work with you here. Your brothers are very concerned."

  Brothers?

  "Ever since your father died last year from a heart attack and Kal married Isabelle, you have been losing more and more touch with reality. Just a few days ago, you stopped talking all together."

  Charma's pulse pounded hard. This was nonsense. She looked back and forth from Leonardo to Kal, and then Isabelle. "Really?"

  She reached out to touch Isabelle's mind but nothing opened up for her. Not a thought or a feeling. Nothing. It was as if she couldn't reach her at all.

  "Yes, that's right." The man nodded, his stare screamed condescension. "My name is Dr. Stanley. You don't seem to remember me from one episode to the next."

  This was all starting to feel strikingly familiar. Hadn't she just had to pull Jason out of his own mind?

  "I see, Dr. Stanley." She paused. It was important that she get control of this situation. "Would it be okay if I sat up?"

  The doctor nodded and moved back slightly. Charma pulled herself back and ran her hands through her hair. The sensation nearly had her jumping out of her skin. It had grown back. She stared down at the blonde strands that hung down past her shoulders. No, this much she could be sure about. She had cut most of it off just weeks ago. There was no way she could have imagined that.