Renegade (48 page)

“Sam! Tell me what’s going on. Where in the hell is Heven?”

I looked over at her. “Gone.”

Her face paled and I watched all the color drain from her skin, making her look as empty inside as I felt. “Watch out!” she screeched, grabbing the handle on her door and pointing to a car traveling right at us.

I jerked the truck to the left, the blasting horn from the oncoming traffic jumpstarting my brain. I swerved out of the path of the car and slammed into a light pole.

The truck’s old metal frame wrapped around it like a wobbly piece of Jell-O. Smoke from the ruined engine filled my nostrils as I lay hunched over the steering wheel, a warm trickle of blood running from my forehead and dripping off my nose.

Drip… drip… drip.

I shot up straight in my seat, my eyes seeking, looking, searching for something.

 For someone.

Beside me Kimber groaned, sitting up and looking at me like I had four heads.

She wasn’t who I was looking for.

I flung open the door and got out, my legs wobbling as I stood there and stared numbly at the totaled truck. Something inside me told me I should be upset. Something told me I actually really loved this old truck.

I ignored that voice and then it died away until all I heard was silence.

People were stopping at the accident, talking to me, holding out their phones. I saw their mouths moving, but I heard nothing.

Someone to my right reached out and touched my arm. I turned to look at them, my eyes knowing exactly who I wanted to see.

But it wasn’t right.

I felt empty.

Kimber materialized beside me, telling people everything was fine, ushering them back their cars. Eventually, I tuned out her voice and whatever she was doing and I started to run, something shiny and red catching my eye, and I stopped, turned.

Someone who stopped to offer us help had a nice car. It was a candy-apple red convertible with a black ragtop. The door was open from where they’d gotten out and ran to help. The engine was running.

I heard the screams of protest from the owner as I got in and put the car in drive. Kimber opened the passenger door and leaned down, staring at me. “What are you doing?”

“Leaving.” I hit the gas and she ran alongside the car before jumping in. Her door slammed shut as I fishtailed around a turn and punched the engine once more.

I didn’t stop.

Why shouldn’t I take this car? Who was going to stop me?

No one.

“Do you have any idea how much magic it’s going to take to clean up the fact you just stole a car?” she screamed at me.

I sped through the streets of Portland, ignoring street signs and traffic lights. Finally, the fountain came into view, the portal to hell.

The portal to revenge.

I sped up, revving the engine and peeling the tires, aiming the car right at the stone fountain. It was like playing a game of chicken with something incapable of leaping out of the way.

Kimber was screaming, punching me in the arm and telling me to stop, but I didn’t. I just kept driving.

 Just when my brain started telling me I was going to crash, the portal sucked us in and the car landed in hell.

I didn’t stop driving.

I hit the gas and tore across the vacant land, pointing the car in the direction of the man I was going to kill.

“What just happened?” she squealed. “Did you just
drive
us into hell?”

Beelzebub’s castle came into view, all towering black granite and obscurity. The car fishtailed when I slammed on the brakes. Dust and ash rose around the car like a cloud.

“Stay here,” I growled at my unwanted passenger and got out and stalked over the drawbridge, throwing open the door and stomping inside. A little demon appeared with a scarred up face. Something about those scars stirred something within me, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. He tried to run when he set his eyes on me, but I grabbed him by the back of the head and slammed him up against the wall.

“Where is he?” I snarled.

“Master Riley isn’t home.”

I had forgotten Riley was living here… That detail had slipped my mind. “Beelzebub. I want to know where Beelzebub is.”

“I haven’t seen him. He isn’t here.”

I drove my fist through the demons back and felt my knuckles hit the wall on the other side of his body. He disintegrated right out of my grip.

If Beelzebub wasn’t home I’d make sure he understood my message when he finally did show up.

I stalked through the house, knocking over furniture, setting things on fire with the torches hanging from the walls. It wasn’t enough.

I wanted more destruction.

I pushed my way into another room and in the center were four very large jugs of gasoline.

I smiled, picking up one and pouring out a very short trail of gas leading to the cans, then I replaced the one I was using and walked toward the door where there was yet another flaming torch. I yanked it off the wall and held it down, catching the trail of gas on fire. I stood there and watched it burn, snaking across the floor, kind of like a game of dominos, except this game was explosive.

When the fire line had a few inches left to burn, I dropped the torch and walked from the room, retracing my steps to the door.

Three.

Two.

One.

The gas cans blew with an incredible force, rocking the house and crumbling granite. I was thrown forward, pieces of wood and rock flying around me. Several pieces hit me, cutting into my arms and cheek, but I ignored the pain and stood up to continue my way out of the castle.

 I walked out of the burning house, stepping through the flames that grabbed at me angrily, persistently, but could do nothing to the man who was fireproof. Besides, my insides were already carnage. There was nothing left of me but skin and bone, and not even that was fun for a fire to destroy.

I walked across the drawbridge, the flames eating it as I walked, and when I stepped onto the ground on the other side of the moat, the wooden boards collapsed, plunging into the black sludge. Several demons that lived in the muck began to shriek as they, too, caught fire, but I didn’t turn back to see. They deserved what they got.

Kimber was standing next to the car, staring at the burning house with shock all over her face.

 I began looking around for something else to destroy when a fast-moving figure came into my line of sight. Dust flew up behind it almost as if it were running away. As it got closer I realized it was a motorcycle and the man driving it was someone I knew.

I stood there and waited, the heat of the explosion at my back, for Riley to arrive. When he did, the bike skidded to a stop and he stared between the castle and me with a wild look in his eyes.

“Did you blow up my castle?” he roared.

I shrugged, my brain going fuzzy again.

Riley looked over at Kimber who was still standing there in shock and climbed off his bike and gave me a hard shove. “Sam! What they hell did you do?”

I stared at him. Something was missing inside me. I couldn’t think. I…

“Sam!” Riley shoved his face as close to mine as he could. “Where’s Heven?”

Heven.

The name brought a streak of clarity like the sun on a cloudy day. How could I have forgotten her name? I focused on Riley, his face coming into focus.

“Heven,” I said, my voice feeling raw and the word ripping from my chest. This wasn’t like the other times when I thought she was dead, the times when I grieved so deeply I thought I might break in two.

That’s how I knew what I was about to say was irrevocably true.

Because only the truth could take away cohesive thought. Only the truth could drive me slowly, madly insane. Only the truth could rip away my lifeline to reality. She was gone and I was on my way out.

Riley grabbed my shoulder, gripping it hard, forcing me to look into his face. “Heven what?”

“She’s dead.”

Riley

Something was wrong.

Sam was standing in front of my castle, my completely destroyed castle, and the look on his face was something I didn’t understand. Kimber was pacing behind us, her face pale and drawn, and I wondered how these two ended up together and what could possibly make the redhead who never shut up speechless. I forgot about Ana for a second as I looked at him, demanding answers, not quite understanding why it seemed he was only half there.

And then he said the words.

Words I didn’t realize would hurt so much when spoken.

Heven was dead.

I stood there for a long time, gripping his shoulder and staring into a far too vacant face, and understood why he looked the way he did. Memories of her flooded my brain—her laughing, rolling her eyes. I could almost feel her smacking me in the ribs when I smirked and said something stupid. I saw her holding up a fork, grinning. I saw her crying and felt the weight of her leaning into me…

Someone like that shouldn’t be dead.

Someone who liked me when everyone else told her not to.

Someone who forgave me for my betrayals.

She never pushed me away.

And now she was gone.

“No,” I told Sam. “No!”

He blinked at me, the inside of his eyes hollow. “The Mindbond is gone. Broken.”

I looked at the castle, no longer seeing it as mine, but seeing it as the home of the man who killed my best friend.

“I’m tearing this place apart until he shows up,” Sam said, drawing my stare. “And then I’m going to spend the rest of the time I have left killing him. Over and over again.”

“I know the next place we can destroy,” I said, looking at the convertible parked nearby. “That your ride?”