Charade (27 page)

Sam

I stared up at the ceiling, frustration welling up inside me. How the hell was I going to get into Heven’s mind, find the thread the Dream Walker used, and destroy it? Earlier, Airis had been so busy trying to conceal Heven from her father that she didn’t stop to answer any of my questions. She just flung “use your Mindbond” at me and that was all. I snorted, not that I was that surprised. Airis wasn’t much help at all for anything these days. I wanted to be Heven’s guardian; the job filled me with purpose and pride. I knew that it wasn’t going to be easy, but I couldn’t help but feel like Airis was just using me as a means to an end. As someone to protect her asset and that she didn’t really care about how I went about it.

I brushed the thought away. It didn’t matter what Airis thought of me. What mattered is that I was supposed to be protecting Heven, and right now, there was a demon—a Dream Walker—in her head that was causing her pain.

Hate churned inside me. I felt the darkness that was part of the hellhound rising up, trying to take control. I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted to rip him apart. I hadn’t felt this violent since I faced off with China for the last time. The time I killed her.

Just like I would kill the Dream Walker.

But I had to figure out how to get to him first. I had to figure out how to sever the hold that he had on Heven’s mind.

Carefully, I slid my shoulder out from beneath her head and rolled to the side, looking down at her sleeping face. Blond hair fell over her forehead and I brushed it away, noting that even in sleep, she did not look relaxed.
I’m going to fix this.
I told her. If I hadn’t insisted she learn to swim, that demon wouldn’t have gotten a hold of her at all.

But that wasn’t true. This would have happened one way or another. I had a feeling that I wouldn’t have been able to stop this. The hound in me has been restless, unsettled, knowing that there are undercurrents at play that we didn’t understand. Knowing that there is a charade somehow going on around us—I just haven’t been able to see past it. Not yet anyway.

But before I stripped away the charade, I had to first tear away the thread that was left in Heven’s mind. I looked back at her sleeping face. She had been through so much that I didn’t have the heart to tell her I had no clue how to get that thing out of her mind. She depended on me, trusted me.

I blew out a breath and forced my body to relax. Being angry and hateful wasn’t going to help me get to sleep or even get into her mind. The Mindbond gave me a great deal of access to her, but I didn’t think the bond we shared would allow me to walk straight into her mind.

Yet, that demon had done it.

How?

Heven had been unconscious. Airis said that she had to be for him to get in. So I guess it would be easiest for me now as she slept. I felt like I was taking advantage of her as she slept, but I had no choice. Besides, she knew what I was doing, so I wasn’t exactly busting in uninvited.

I would just have to trust that the Mindbond we shared was enough of an opening to let me in.

The only way I would know was if I tried it.

I exhaled and wrapped my arms around her, something inside me easing at the way she shifted toward me, completely trusting me, even in sleep. I closed my eyes. She smelled good… like strawberries. As I relaxed, I opened up the Mindbond as far as I could, dropping any barrier that I might hold up to keep my thoughts my own.

Let me in, Heven. Open up,
I urged with my mind.

I felt her mind give way, and instead of pushing in, I backed out slightly. The last thing I wanted to do was scare her or hurt her. That would only make this harder.

So I lay there, taking even breaths and counting her heartbeat, feeling her chest rise and fall as air moved through her lungs. After a short while, I began to talk to her, murmur thoughts from my mind to hers. She sighed and snuggled closer and I knew that this was the moment I needed to act.

With closed eyes, I pushed my mind and my thoughts out toward her, feeling the bond we shared and the invisible wall where it stopped. I kept pushing—gently—continuing to tell Heven that she was safe and that I loved her, and I felt the wall give way as I entered a part of Heven’s mind I never had before.

I was assaulted.

*   *   *

The human mind is a complex thing. I always thought that our Mindbond was something extremely unique. Something that completely opened up Heven to me. And in so many ways, it was. But I had no idea how much of her mind was still closed off. I almost felt like I was tangled in a spider web in the dark. I resisted the urge to shake, to fight off the spidery threads that brushed against me, afraid that I would somehow hurt Heven.

I never imagined the inside of Heven’s mind to be a dark place. She’s such a bright spot in my life, and while I knew she faced a lot of challenges and had been through so much, I never once believed that it hampered who she truly was.

I still didn’t.

I focused and tried to make out what was in the darkness. There was nothing there.

Heven.
I spoke her name, a mere whisper from my mind to hers, testing her response.

She didn’t make a sound; she didn’t speak a word, yet I was overwhelmed.

Assaulted by feelings, by thoughts, and by images. Suddenly, the darkness gave way to a curtain of light and I felt as if I were watching a movie. A movie in which I was the star.

It was a memory.

We were at Bubble Maineia, sitting in a corner. I knew the place had been packed, but seeing this from her side, I hardly noticed anyone else but… me. I watched myself lift the chocolate drink to my lips and take a pull from the straw and the feeling of longing with a touch of lust swept over me. She wished that my lips were on her instead of the straw. I saw my lips moving, but didn’t hear the words; then I laughed. Joy and happiness rained over me and I felt the breath leave my chest a little.

I knew that Heven loved me. I felt it every day. I saw it in her eyes. But this. This was more than I imagined. To see myself through someone else’s eyes, to feel what she felt without her emotions mixing with mine was… it was the purest feeling I have ever known.

The memory died away and I was once again left in the dark. I stood there, the threads of her mind brushing against me and feeling extremely precious. Something caught my eye… a glint of gold. There, where the memory had replayed in front of me, was a shimmering golden thread.

Our
thread.

I recognized it immediately. It was part of me too, and as I watched it grow and elongate, it stretched toward me. My first instinct was to move away, to not disturb the thread that helped to bind us together. What if it broke? But the closer it got, the warmer I began to feel and I couldn’t help myself. I reached out and wrapped a finger around the thin gold.

It was much, much stronger than I thought it would be. It looked fine and delicate, shimmering gold in the dark, but it felt like steel. I tugged at it and it didn’t so much as move. On instinct, I moved closer until I felt a warm glow pour throughout my mind and spread to each of my limbs.

Our connection was growing, solidifying.

She was
mine.

The hellhound in me growled in possession and satisfaction. The human side of me realized that I was being archaic, but the animal in me didn’t care.

As the connection of our thread washed over me and strengthened, a million other threads and chords revealed themselves to me. Every single one was a color of its own. It was beautiful. They illuminated the darkness and revealed to me who I always knew Heven was.

Absolutely stunning.

But I wasn’t here to be in awe of her true inner beauty. I was here to get rid of what didn’t belong. I began to make my way through the millions of sparkling threads, carefully navigating them, only touching them when necessary and with the utmost care. When I did touch one, I got a sensation of what the thread was for.

The blue thread seemed to store the words to all her favorite songs. The green thread was for her love of nature. I came to a thread that was duller than the rest; it didn’t glimmer like the others. My adrenaline surged. I found it! To be sure, I reached out and wrapped my palm around it.

It wasn’t the thread the Dream Walker left behind. But it was the thread that seemed to hold her physical pain. The minute my hand wrapped around it, I got an intense pain in the back of my skull. I dropped the thread like a live wire and swore.

Is that what he was doing to her? Is that the kind of pain she has been walking around with?

It ended now.

As stunning as they were, I tuned out all the other threads. I stopped thinking all together and I
felt
. Heven’s mind was a pure place, so I searched until I felt a glimmer of something that just didn’t seem to belong. I moved in that direction, no longer needing to watch out for the other threads. It’s like my mind knew where to go and how to get there.

When I reached the spot where I felt the thread should be, I expected to see it, looking like an intruder, sticking out like a sore thumb.

But the space was empty.

I made a sound of frustration. It should be here!

I felt as if I was standing right next to it. My skin prickled with the sickness of it. The hound in me was restless, urging to get out, to defeat the presence it had detected all along.

I knew it was here. It must be camouflaged.

How did you destroy something you couldn’t see?

I began to move forward, not giving up the search when a humming sound filled my ears. My insides began to vibrate and I cringed. Suddenly, I felt as if I was being electrocuted and I was blasted backward to fall through the darkness.

*   *   *

Damn
it. No matter how hard I tried, the thread was just out of reach. It was there, yet invisible. I sat up in the bed, pushing at the covers, irritated that I had been so close only to be knocked out of her head. Not only was the Dream Walker’s thread camouflaged, but it was somehow protected.

If I could only see it, I knew I could take the pain of tearing it away. And there would be pain. The hairs on my arms and legs were still standing from being blasted only moments before. There was a fine tremor in my hands and I felt slightly sick.

I turned back to the bed and looked down at Heven. I would endure just about any pain to take away what was being done to her.

I knew what I had to do. I didn’t like it, but it was the only way.

I leaned down and pressed a kiss to her temple, then stood, moving away from the bed. It made me sick to know that with every step I took away from her, the easier it would be for her mind to be invaded. But the only way I was going to destroy that thread was to see it, and I knew that I would be able to see it if the demon was using it.

I backed away from the bed, toward the opposite side of the room. Heven shifted and made a small sound. I kept moving until my back pressed against the wall. I slid down slowly to sit on the floor and rest my head in my hands.

I did everything I could to relax, to open up my mind. When Heven made a strangled sound, my muscles clenched, but I stayed where I was and pushed my mind out to hers. I had no problem getting back to the place I had been before.

But this time something was different. I felt it the moment my mind touched hers.

He was here.

Heven

Thick, oppressive air made me cough. My eyes sprang open and I knew instantly where I was. There could only be one place as desolate as this.

It could only mean one thing.

Sam was having trouble finding or breaking the thread that allowed the Dream Walker into my head. I wondered where he was, because if our theory was right, in order for me to be here, Sam was not in bed with me. It was useless to try to wake up. So I began walking. The land was dry and unfertile, depressing and crass. I knew now why those sentenced here were like they were.
A product of their environment.
It seemed like such a waste. I understood the meaning of Hell, the point of it. Hell was a place for sinners unrepentant for their deeds and a punishment for those that didn’t believe in God and Heaven. But sending those kinds of souls here wasn’t really solving anything, was it? Wasn’t it like encouraging the behavior that sent them here in the first place? Like, ‘you don’t deserve to go to Heaven, so go to Hell and continue to act in sin.’ How did that solve anything? Should the demons here really be allowed to just wreak havoc at all times and cause pain and suffering to those on Earth? Where was the leadership—the rule?

My thoughts were interrupted when the ground beneath my feet began to rumble. Something was coming. I looked around for somewhere to hide, knowing that anything that made the ground shake like this was
not
something I wanted to see me, but there was nowhere to go. It didn’t matter anyway because it appeared beside me in a matter of seconds.

“We meet again,” the Dream Walker said, acting as though I was out for a morning stroll and he just happened upon me while out for a ride. I would tell him how ridiculous he was if I wasn’t so afraid.

He wasn’t alone.

He was riding a huge horse. Only it wasn’t really a horse. It was half horse, half man: a centaur. Something that I thought only existed in folklore and legends. You would think by now I would have known better. Apparently, anything was possible these days.

The centaur was outrageously huge with the body and legs of a giant stallion, but where the head should be was the torso of a man. He was the size of an ogre with a muscled chest and thick arms corded with veins. His head looked human, but he had long, black hair that flowed behind him like a mane. His jaw was large and jutted out, matching the way his forehead did. His eyes were small, beady and too far apart. They looked upon me with hatred and lust and I struggled not to squirm under the venom directed at me. How had the Dream Walker conquered such a vile beast and tamed it enough to ride?