Tirade

by Cambria Hebert

  Heven caught the box and opened it, standing in front of The Devourer. “Sneeze,” she told it.

  I didn’t think it would work. But the dragon seemed to understand and he did exactly what she said. He sneezed. The blackened soul of Beelzebub shot out and landed in the box. Heven slammed the lid shut and gripped it in her hands. “Good boy,” she told the dragon and patted it on the nose.

  The Devourer made a sound and then flew away.

  “Let’s go,” Heven said and we all made our way to the dungeon.

  “Kimber,” I called when we approached her cell. “We’re here to break you out.”

  Kimber appeared in the door and stared at Hecate, who was wrinkled and weak in Riley’s arms. “What happened to her? And who are you?” Kimber said, looking at Riley.

  “We need your cell,” Riley said by way of greeting.

  Kimber crossed her arms.

  Heven stepped forward. “We found a way to bind Hecate’s power’s and trap Beelzebub in your cell. You need to put your soul back in your body so you can come out.”

  “I can’t come out.” She protested.

  “Yes, you can.” I reminded her. “Beelzebub said you were free. You just have to get your soul.”

  “How?”

  Heven grabbed an unlit torch from the wall and stared at it until it roared to life with flames. I stared at her until she turned to me. “Power of the sun,” she said. I nodded, remembering what Ana said. The sun was essentially a giant ball of flames so it made sense that an affinity for fire would be the power of the sun.

  Heven held the torch up to the cell entrance so we could see farther into the chamber. Her soul was suspended against the far wall. I watched as Heven unlatched the door and stepped inside. “Hev,” I said, reaching out to her.

  “It’s okay,” she said softly and brushed her fingertips against mine.

  She walked toward Kimber’s soul slowly and then stopped in front of it. I watched her as she took a deep breath and then exhaled. She stared right at the soul, and I could hear the thoughts circle through her mind.

  You are safe. You are calm. Go back into your host.

  She repeated the mantra in her head slowly as she stared at the soul. I wasn’t sure what she was doing and I didn’t think it would work, but then something happened. The soul seemed to shudder and then began to move. Heven held up the hand that wasn’t gripping the torch and moved it toward Kimber who was standing there watching in awe.

  We all watched as the soul went toward Kimber and then absorbed into her body. Kimber stumbled back as her soul reentered her body. She gasped and fell to her knees.

  Heven lowered her hand and smiled.

  Several moments went by and then she looked up. “Well, that feels better.” Then she looked up at Heven and said, “Who are you?”

  Heven looked at me, then back at Kimber. “I’m the Soul Reaper.”

  Riley was the first to break the silence. He walked right into the cell and dumped Hecate onto the hard floor. She moaned. Heven took the box that held Beelzebub and sat it in the corner and then walked away, returning to my side.

  We all watched as Kimber took a tentative step outside the cell and then she smiled.

  I slammed the door shut, the metal making a loud clattering sound. Hecate aroused and saw what we were doing. “You can’t keep us in here forever!” she cried as she got to her feet.

  I pulled Heven back away from the cell door when Hecate came forward and lifted her hands trying to use her magic to open the door.

  Nothing happened.

  “Think it will hold Beelzebub?” Heven worried. “I didn’t feel anything when I walked in and out of it.”

  As she spoke, the box burst open and Beelzebub’s soul flung up toward the ceiling and bounced off. Then it shot toward the cell door and we all held our breath. I felt sick satisfaction when the soul bounced back into the room when it hit the cell doors.

  “I’d say it works,” Riley said.

  “Stand back,” Heven said and we all moved back. I watched in awe once again as the girl I loved seemed to center herself as a wall of flames burst up around the cell. Then she turned and looked at the three of us as we stared. She shrugged. “Just a little added security.”

  Gone was the insecure girl that would hide and cringe at the slightest of noise. Gone was the girl who didn’t think she was strong enough to face her fears. This girl had strength that matched our greatest of enemies. This girl was no longer shy and timid, but powerful and confident. My chest swelled with love for everything she had been and everything she had become.

  This girl was mine.

  Heven

  It didn’t seem right that Earth looked the same as we left it only hours before. Because everything was changed.

  Nothing would be the same again.

  We had all suffered. Pain, betrayal and loss were emotions that cut deep and changed a person irrevocably. Death left a nasty stain on a person’s soul. And I would know… being that I was the Soul Reaper.

  I wasn’t exactly sure what it meant, other than making me even more wanted by Beelzebub and probably every single prince of hell down there. But I also knew that I was meant for this. This might not have been the exact path I was to take, but this was the path I chose. I could do this.

  We could do this.

  I looked over at Sam, who was holding his brother’s lifeless body in his lap. The sorrow that he wore cloaked him and I understood his pain. He deserved to mourn his brother. His brother deserved the respect of a funeral and I was going to make sure he got it. He looked up at me and I gave him a small smile, reaching out my hand and entwining it with his.

  Riley pulled the Jeep onto the road that lead to Gran’s and stopped. He looked in the rearview mirror at me and I shook my head. “Keep driving. Right up to the house.”

  “But Gran,” Cole protested from the front seat and Gemma turned in his lap to look at me.

  “I’m done lying,” I said as Riley drove toward the house.

  “Heven?” Sam said, his voice questioning.

  “It’ll be okay. Bring Logan,” I said as I climbed out of the Jeep. Gran met us at the door as I was walking up the steps, my friends, my allies, behind me.

  “Heven?” Gran said, taking in my horrible appearance, the people she didn’t know and finally Sam, who was cradling his brother in his arms. She looked up at me with tears in her eyes.

  “We have to talk, Gran. There are things you need to know.”

  Gran stood there a moment and then slowly opened the door. “And there are things I need to tell you.”

  Epilogue

  Riley

  I burst through the castle door with enthusiasm. “Honey, I’m home!”

  The place was dark and smelled of stale death. I blinked my eyes, trying to hurry their adjustment to the dark. Every time I had been in this place, it was so dark I didn’t really even know what it looked like.

  There was a torch hanging on the wall and I grabbed it, setting it on fire with a lighter I pulled out of my pocket. The foyer around me illuminated and for once, I got to see what this place looked like. The walls were black unpolished granite and sconces filled with oil lined them. I lit those too, and the room actually looked bright.

  I turned and looked back at the massive front door. It was black iron. Embedded in silver on the back was a large skull and crossbones. The door was flanked with black urns. Probably filled with dead people.

  There was a black wooden console table against the wall coated in thick dust. It sat atop a floor made up of granite tiles in alternating colors of black and white.

  I was a little disappointed there weren’t bodies everywhere. “You’d think a guy would be greeted at the door,” I muttered.

  As if on cue, a demon shorter than Heven stepped into the room. He was wearing a little suit with a black bowtie and carried an empty silver tray. He seemed startled to see me standing in the foyer.

  “The master is not at home,” he said, looking point
edly at the door. He was bald, his skin was unnaturally white and his ears were too large for his head.

  I pounced and threw the demon up against the wall, sending the silver tray clattering to the floor. “The master is standing right here.” I growled.

  “W-what happened to the old master?”

  “I disposed of him,” I said, getting into the demon’s face, clutching at his shirt and pinning him against the wall.

  “He can’t die,” the demon retorted. I held the flaming torch right up to the demon’s face and its white skin seemed to melt away. The demon struggled, trying to get away, but I held him firm.

  “I put him somewhere and he isn’t coming back. Maybe you can hear the witch’s screams in the basement?” I dropped the torch and ignored the flames as they licked up the demon’s leg.

  “Any more questions?”

  “No, sir,” the demon murmured, watching the flames reach out and burn up my leg. It didn’t hurt and my skin was not melting as his was. When he looked up, there was real fear in his eyes.

  I smiled. “Good, now go clean something. This place looks like shit.” I shoved him away from me and picked up the tray to throw it at him. The demon cowered and scurried away, only for me to yank him back.

  I got down into his face, let my eyes flash silver and growled.

  “And spread the word there’s a new ruler in town.”

  Cambria Hebert grew up in a small town in rural Maryland. She is married to a United States Marine and has lived in South Carolina, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and back to Pennsylvania again. She is the mother of two young children with big personalities, is in love with Starbucks (give the girl a latte!) and she is obsessed with werewolves. Cambria also has an irrational fear of chickens (Ewww! Gross) and she loves to watch Vampire Diaries and Teen Wolf. Her favorite book genre is YA paranormal, and she can be found stalking that section at her local bookstore. You can find her never doing math. It makes her head hurt.

  Cambria is the author of the Heven and Hell series, a young adult paranormal book series. The series begins with Before, a short story prequel and is followed by the first novel in the series Masquerade and is followed by Between (A Heven and Hell novella), Charade (Heven and Hell #2), Bewitched (A Heven and Hell novella) and Tirade (Heven and Hell #3). The final titles in the series will be released in 2013.

  You can find Cambria on Facebook, Good Reads, Twitter, Pinterest and her website http://www.cambriahebert.com for her latest crazy antics and the scoop on all things Heven and Hell.

  To further your reading enjoyment, please turn the page for an excerpt of

  Dark Summer, a young adult paranormal novel by bestselling author Lizzy Ford.

  Excerpt from Dark Summer

  by Lizzy Ford

  Chapter One

  Summer stepped off the stuffy bus, at once struck by the smog-free air and towering pine trees of the northern Idaho town. The sun shone gentler here than in her native Los Angeles, and the heat of noon was pleasant.

  The bus driver pulled her bags from the storage compartment under the bus and left them beside her. She didn’t meet his eyes, not wanting to tell him she had no tip money. The orphanage had paid for her trip via Greyhound and given her a meager ten dollars a day for food.

  “My sister lives up here. She tells everyone to avoid the forest after dark,” the bus driver said cheerfully.

  Summer sneaked a look at him. He didn’t look upset at her for not tipping, and he said nothing else about his odd warning. He boarded the bus with a smile, and the lumbering vehicle merged back onto the single, two lane road hedged by pine trees running through Priest Lake, Idaho. She looked at the run down school in whose parking lot she stood. It was closed down for the summer, the cement of the parking lot cracked and the field behind overgrown with grass.

  A warm breeze swept by her. It smelled of trees and burning wood. Something else was in the air, something that tickled her body from the inside out. The breeze seemed to return and swirl around her, lifting the hem of her shirt and jeans. She pushed her top down self-consciously.

  “Ignore that.”

  She looked up into the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen. The teen walking towards her from the street was around seventeen with breeze-ruffled brown hair and eyes as clear and teal as footage of the Caribbean she’d seen on TV. His smile was bright and friendly, his skin and facial features indicating he was of Native American heritage. Around six feet tall, he’d begun to fill out, and his arms were muscular in the snug T-shirt he wore.

  “You’ll understand in a few days. This isn’t a normal town.”

  She couldn’t find her voice. Aware of how hard she was staring at him, she looked away as heat spread across her face.

  “I’m Beck, the good half of the Turner twins. You’ll hear about us, I’m sure. You have a name?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Well, what is it?” he asked with another of his infectious smiles.

  “Summer,” she whispered.

  “Welcome, Summer.” He extended his hand.

  She hesitated then shook her head, withdrawing.

  “No worries,” he said. “But, just so you know, whatever your gift is, it’s okay here. We all have them.”

  Summer looked up at him again, surprised.

  “Come on. I was supposed to get my driver’s license last spring, but, well, stuff happens. If I had known I’d be stuck walking to and from here picking up new people all summer long, I would’ve gotten it,” he said with a sigh. He reached forward to take her suitcase and began walking towards the road.

  She followed, curious about his statement about a town of gifted people.

  “We all live at the boarding school,” Beck continued. He grunted as he lifted her suitcase from the parking lot onto the road. “Do you play any sports?”

  “No.”

  “Cheerleader?”

  “No.”

  “Band?”

  “No.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Nothing really.” Except get ridiculed and kicked out of school after school for being different. She hadn’t had time to learn a sport, not when she switched schools every other month. The orphanage had run out of schools to send her to in Los Angeles and Orange County and banished her here. Beck wouldn’t call her magick a gift when he saw what it did and how little she could control it. It acted out everywhere she went, sometimes knocking over full rooms of people as if they were shoved by an invisible hand and sometimes doing much more damage, like the fire two schools ago.

  Summer looked straight up at the sky, marveling at the tall trees lining the road. The road itself looked worn and run down like the school, with faded lane lines and potholes filled with grass. The forest seemed to be trying to reclaim the human invasion. It had swallowed what might’ve one time been a sidewalk alongside the road and replaced it with orange, waist high tiger lilies and white daisies. Birds were loud without the constant drone of LA traffic.

  She liked the feel of nature. Its subtle magick hummed in the air around her. Her eyes went to the forest again. She caught the movement of grasses and branches as someone with bright auburn hair darted from the gutter into the forest. Summer squinted, trying to see into the woods. She sensed someone there but saw no one.

  Beck’s soft laughter drew her attention. He was a good twenty feet ahead of her. She’d stopped in place and gotten lost in her head.

  “Come on!” he said and began walking again.

  Summer hurried to catch up, embarrassed at what the handsome boy might think of her after just five minutes with her. She always made the worst impressions. Staring at the ground, she focused on ignoring the woody magick and just walking. Like a normal person. Like someone who wasn’t cursed with magick in her blood.

  They walked farther than she expected, past a small string of ranch style houses, driveways to hidden homes, and a tiny strip mall with a convenience market, gas station and realtor’s office. They kept walking until the road forked an
d the forest closed in on either side once again.

  At last, they reached a dirt road leading off the paved street into the forest. Beck said a few curse words that made her blush as he struggled to roll her suitcase on the dirt road. Summer watched, amused, before her eyes went to the trees. They were so tall, their tops almost met in the middle of the sky above her.

  Beck’s loudest curse yet drew her eyes to him again. He shoved the suitcase onto its side, his earlier good humor turned into frustration.

  “I’ll bring one of the guys back to help me,” he said. “I’ll take you there first.”