Heaven & Hell, page 1
part #7 of The Gallows Series Series
Heaven & Hell
(A Gallows Novel)
SHARON STEVENSON
Copyright
Sharon Stevenson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Copyright © Sharon Stevenson 2017
All rights reserved. Thank you for buying an authorized edition and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning or distributing any part of it in any form without permission of the author.
This book is a work of fiction and includes the creation of fictional towns. Any resemblance to real persons or places is purely coincidental.
Cover art by Indie Designz
http://indiedesignz.com
Formatting by Polgarus Studios
http://www.polgarusstudio.com
To Graham
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Excerpt: Reality Ruptured
Also by Sharon Stevenson
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Chapter One
Dev gawked at him, the friend who’d come back from the dead. Dredd’s stare was intense; the dark circles under his eyes making his irises seem a deeper shade of green. His face was thinner, with sharper angles, and his biceps looked bigger than ever. The short haircut made his muscular, tattooed body appear a whole lot more imposing. He’d never realised how much the long dreadlocks had softened the guy’s image. He swallowed and turned to Sarah.
His newly appointed girlfriend wasn’t doing any better with the situation than he was. Her bright blue eyes were wide and her smile had frozen in place. Her slender body was tense.
Dev held back the instinct to rub at her shoulders in an attempt to relax her. He folded his arms, feeling insanely awkward. He supposed it could have been worse. They could have been half naked on the couch when the guy knocked on the door.
“Isn’t anyone going to invite me in?” Dredd sounded amused.
Shivers shot up Dev’s spine. He wasn’t sure what it was that made him aware of it, but suddenly he knew there was a lot more wrong with his old friend than just an extreme haircut.
Sarah’s soft gasp told him his instincts were right. “What did you do?” Her voice barely raised above a whisper. Dev caught the quiver of her lips as she frowned at Dredd.
“We need to talk,” he said, not moving to enter the house.
Dev wondered if it was true that vampires couldn’t enter homes of the living. He blinked as he realised what he’d just thought. “Is he…” He couldn’t finish. It was too crazy. There was just no way.
Sarah’s stare hadn’t budged from Dredd, and his gaze hadn’t moved from her spooked face. His green eyes were definitely darker than they had been; it wasn’t just a trick of the light. His subdued smile was giving Dev the creeps. It took a second to realise what was so wrong about it. It wasn’t reaching his eyes. He wasn’t amused in the slightest. He was pissed off.
“How could you?” Sarah’s voice was back and her tone was one he’d never heard before; it was deadly, uncompromising. She stalked forward and pushed Dredd backwards with enough force to send him tumbling back down the porch steps. “What the hell were you thinking?” She was screaming at him now, stepping outside after him, her hands curling into fists by her sides.
Dredd sprung back to his feet, inhumanly fast. He grabbed Sarah’s shoulder as she launched a punch. Dev watched in horror as his two closest friends in the world fell to the ground together, locked in a struggle that was both furious and uncomfortably intimate. They moved in a super-fast blur. Sarah was attacking, while Dredd fended her punches off. He was just lucky she didn’t have a stake on her. Dev rushed into the house, torn over whether to raid Sarah’s weapons stash under her bed, or grab her sword from the rack. Considering he couldn’t actually see her sword, he darted up to her room. Reaching under the bed, he opened her secret weapons storage. He pulled out two stakes and closed the hatch again. Ignoring the splinter he felt catching his skin, he ran down the stairs and dashed outside.
Dredd was on top of Sarah, pinning her arms by her sides and breathing heavily. Why is he breathing? He doesn’t need to breathe. It was all Dev could think about. He frowned at his old friend. The guy was gazing down at Sarah in that same obsessive way he’d always looked at her, like she was his possession. Dev didn’t dare look at Sarah’s face right now. He kept his eyes on Dredd. “Get off of her.”
Dredd glanced up briefly and laughed. “Get real.”
Dev shrugged. “You asked for it, man.” He threw the stake as if he knew what he was doing. It didn’t even come close to hitting Dredd, but it didn’t have to.
Sarah used the distraction he’d provided to break free from Dredd’s grasp, pushing and rolling out from under him. Dev threw the second stake the instant she found her feet and she grabbed it out of the air and positioned it over her ex-fiancés chest within the space of a single heartbeat.
Dredd looked down again, wincing. “Can you let me explain?”
Sarah pushed him off, hitting him with the iciest look Dev had ever seen on her pretty face. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“I did this for you,” he said, as if he expected her to understand.
Sarah stormed up the steps and grabbed Dev’s hand, wordlessly leading him into the house. She slammed the door shut and locked it behind them.
Dev watched her switch off the living room light. She was actually trying to piss Dredd off. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea…”
“I don’t care,” she snapped. “How the hell could he do this?”
Dev kept his mouth shut. The answer had been obvious before it even fell from Dredd’s mouth. She didn’t need to hear it a second time. He didn’t want to be the messenger she shot up.
She paced the room, rubbing at her head, before slumping onto the sofa. She was staring into space when he risked kneeling down in front of her.
“Is he a vampire?” He knew it already, but seeing the anger sparking in Sarah’s eyes at his question confirmed it. He still wasn’t sure how he’d worked it out on his own.
She nodded. “He’s still out there. I can sense him now. If I could have done that when he was human…” She shook her head, gathering a cushion to her and hugging it tightly. “I don’t understand it, Dev. He can’t know what he’s done.”
Dev didn’t know what to say. He’d known what it was like to be inside a vampire’s body and it wasn’t pleasant. There was a demon in there with Dredd. Was his friend even the one in the driver’s seat?
“We don’t really know what happened,” he said, slowly. “Maybe we should hear him out.” It felt wrong even as he said it. He cringed as she raised an eyebrow at him. “Okay, bad idea. So what now?”
“Well, you’ll need to stay over,” she told him, smiling wryly.
“No shit,” he said, with a smile that broadened as hers warmed up. “I’ll take the couch.”
“The date doesn’t matter,” she told him.
He wasn’t sure what she meant until she kissed him. He broke away reluctantly just as she started to pull him closer.
“It matters,” he said, sighing softly. “I want to get this right.”
She gazed at him and for a split second he wasn’t sure how she was going to react. He was being an idiot. He knew he should just give her whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted it.
She drew him another wry smile. “I promise not to touch you up if you promise not to hog the bed.”
He smiled. “Promise you’ll wear something totally unsexy and I might be in.”
She nodded and he got up, pulling her to her feet. She darted past him, grinning before she rushed up the stairs. Playful Sarah was far more fun than Angsty Sarah. He’d thought he was done seeing the latter, but apparently it was something Dredd brought out in her. He was just glad she could still switch back to indulging her playful side, even after the messed up shit that had just landed on her doorstep.
He headed up the stairs only after seriously considering wedging the armchair in front of the door. He shook off the temptation, knowing it was useless. It wasn’t like a chair would do much to stop a vampire anyway. He’d be sleeping next to the best vampire protection he could get.
He got to Sarah’s room and his jaw dropped.
She was naked. One hand on her hip, and she was smiling playfully. Her clothes were in a pile at her feet.
“That’s the opposite of what you promised.” He couldn’t quite make it sound like a complaint.
She rolled her eyes and held out her hand. “Give me your t-shirt.”
He hauled off the short sleeved t-shirt he was wearing on top of a long sleeved one.
“Ta-da! Unsexy.”
He shook his head. “You have no idea how to not be sexy. You look hot. Plus I know you’re not wearing underwear. Do you want me to actually sleep tonight?”
She snorted and shrugged. Bending to rifle through a drawer, the t-shirt shifted and he was given another decidedly stimulating peek at her naked ass. “Fuck,” he whispered, pulling at his hair. He had no idea how he was supposed to sleep next to her without thinking dirty thoughts. How he’d managed it for months on end before she showed an interest in him was mindboggling now.
She straightened and pulled on a pair of grey trackie bottoms. All they did was cover her up more. He knew how good she looked under them. Sleeping next to her was still going to be torture.
She raised an eyebrow. “Better?”
“Aye, thanks,” he said, smiling wryly as she slipped past him, to go to the bathroom, he assumed. Hauling off his long sleeved t-shirt, he considered sleeping in his jeans. Even though it was pretty cold he couldn’t do it. He’d be sweating his balls off within an hour. It was no use; he was going to have to take them off. He shoved them quickly to the floor and stepped out of them.
His plan to be in bed before Sarah got back into the room was paused as he moved past the bed, as if his feet had a mind of their own. He went to the window, a weird, instinctive feeling drawing him there. Whatever the hell was going on with him lately, he was starting to realise it wasn’t going to just stop. Knowing for sure his old friend was a vampire now had only been the start. He pulled back the curtain.
Dredd was standing in Sarah’s back garden, leaning against a tree. He glanced up; probably catching the movement in the window. He smiled up at Dev, and it was that pissed off smile, no hint of amusement included. Dev let the curtain fall. His reason for not being able to sleep had been altered by the time he got into bed beside Sarah. He wrapped his arms around her and closed his eyes anyway.
Chapter Two
It was five in the morning when something hit the window. Sarah awoke with a gasp. She was trapped by Dev’s arm and the twisted sheets. The trackie bottoms weren’t helping either. Her legs were actually sweating. Trackers didn’t sweat, at least they weren’t supposed to. But apparently they did if they were bonded to demons. War had tried to visit her in her dreams. She’d closed the door every time he tried to barge through it. She knew what it meant. She was in some kind of danger. The bond was working to try and keep her safe. Right now it wasn’t much of a comfort. She’d do anything to have it broken, if only it would let her break it. Groaning, she disentangled herself, first from her best friend and then from the sheets.
Whatever had hit the window hadn’t been big enough to shatter or crack the glass. That was a relief. She looked out, seeing a figure moving away. It was getting closer to sunrise. Ray had to know he couldn’t lurk around outside the house when the sun was up. Not now.
Her stomach lurched. The shock of what he’d done hadn’t passed. When he’d left her that note she’d never suspected for a moment that he might be going off to get himself turned into one of the monsters she hunted. If anything she’d assumed it had to be some kind of family thing he didn’t want to tell her about. He’d always been reluctant to talk about his parents. She sighed, heading down the stairs when she could no longer detect the scent of vampire. Not just any vampire. Her ex-fiancé.
Whatever he’d thrown at the window had to be lying out there on the back porch. It was probably just a rock. If he’d wanted to get her attention though, it seemed like there were easier ways than waiting outside for hours and then throwing a rock at her window.
She headed into the kitchen, stopping at the sink and pouring herself a glass of water. She sat down at the table and waited. Once the sun actually rose, she’d go out there and see what he’d thrown. She hoped it wasn’t another note. Knowing why he’d done what he had wasn’t going to help.
He’d clearly never believed her every time she’d told him she loved him just the way he was. She’d told him over and over again that he didn’t need to change for her. He’d gone ahead and done it anyway. Even thinking about it made her angry.
She drank the glass of water slowly, wondering what the hell she was going to do. She wasn’t going to make the same mistake she’d made with Ben. No matter what her feelings had been for Ray, she wasn’t going to kill his maker. He’d made this choice on his own. Freeing him would cause complications she didn’t want to have to deal with. It was bad enough that her brother was about to leave, and she was going to be partnered with that psycho-bitch Melissa Carling.
Why the hell did Ray have to come back now?
As soon as the sky brightened outside, she got up and unlocked the back door. The little black device lying on the ground was remarkably unbroken. She picked up her phone, wondering how in the hell Ray had gotten hold of it. He had to have been at Dev’s house, she realised. That was where she’d left it. It was switched on and when she unlocked it she found it opened on a text message from Dev.
“Shit,” she swore. It was obvious she’d slept with Dev from the message and Ray had clearly read it.
Going back inside, she locked the door and leaned against it. Guilt bit at her. What Ray had done was unforgivable, but she hadn’t known that when she decided to give up on him. She’d done something just as awful in Ray’s eyes as he had in hers. There was no way they’d ever forgive one and other, and Dev was caught right in the middle. Ray wasn’t human now. His angry outbursts wouldn’t be limited to throwing things at his friend. She was going to have to protect Dev from the vampire.
She left the house when she knew the café would be open. Bringing back everything she needed to make a big breakfast, she threw herself into the task the second she got back into the kitchen, wondering if she’d need to go and wake Shaun herself or if he’d smell the food. The second batch of bacon and sausages were frying when he stalked into the room with a loud yawn.
“I smell a fry-up,” her brother said.
She turned and caught him snatching up a slice of toast. “Can’t get anything past you, bucket-gut.”
“Is this for me?” He was talking with his mouth full, like usual.
“Can’t send you off to protect a fairy princess on an empty stomach,” she told him.
He picked up the plates of meat and buttered toast she’d already put out and headed to the table. Her gutsy brother was cramming bacon filled toasted sandwiches into his mouth mere seconds later.
She moved away from the frying pan to take a 2-litre bottle of Irn-Bru out of the fridge and put it in front of him. His hand went right for it. He’d barely swallowed the last bite of his food before he started guzzling the fizzy juice down as if he hadn’t had a drop to drink in days. The insanely loud belch he issued when he put the bottle back down made her shake her head.
“I’ll take that as a thank you,” she said. “You might want to try and tone down those particular ‘thank you’s’ when you move in with your soul-mate though.”
He snorted. “She’s not…”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “I bet that stone would have a place to land now if you took the test again though.”
“I barely know her. Anyway, where’s your permanent shadow? I need to have a talk with him before I leave.”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s sleeping and you’re not giving him the talk.”
“I’m not leaving here without making sure he knows what I’ll do…”
“Do you really think I can’t take care of myself?” She was trying not to get too annoyed. It was the last day she’d see her brother for hell knew how long. She didn’t want to be pissed off with him before he left.
“You’re still bonded to a demon,” he reminded. “I just don’t want to have to worry when I’m away.”
