Masquerade (52 page)

“
Long time no see,” the boy
said.

“
Logan.” Sam
murmured.

“
In the flesh.”

Sam grinned and rushed
forward, scooping the boy up in a bear hug. He came to my
side,
grinning, when he put the boy down.
“Heven, this is Logan.”

“
Logan,”
I said, giving him a little wave. I felt a little recognition at
his face but wasn’t fast enough to put two and two
together
.
I leaned in close to Sam to whisper, “Who is
Logan?”

Sam laughed. “My brother.”

Chapter
Thirty

Heven

“
Your brother!” I rushed
forward to greet him, but something stopped me from throwing my
arms around him in a big hug. Instead I threw out my hand. “Hi! I’m
Heven.”

Logan returned my
handshake with a shy smile.

“
So you are Sam’s younger
brother. I have heard a lot about you.”

“
Man! You have gotten so
big! You’re going to be as tall as me soon!” Sam said, smiling.
“What are you, like, thirteen now?”

“
Fourteen and a half,”
Logan corrected.

I saw pain flash through Sam’s eyes,
but he recovered and smiled. “Yeah, fourteen and a
half.”

“
I went to that place Mom
and Dad rented for you…” Logan said. Then, more quietly he said,
“I’ve been looking for you for a while.”

“
Yeah?” Sam asked, concern
masking his features. “Something wrong? Mom?”

I noticed he didn’t ask about his
dad.

“
Mom’s good. She really
misses you.”

Sam didn’t react to that. Then I
realized something. Something I couldn’t believe; I hadn’t noticed
right away…

“
So why are you looking for
me?” Sam asked.

“
Uh…” Logan slid a glance
at me then turned back to his brother.

He doesn’t have an aura,
Sam.

Sam jerked like he’d been shot. “You –
you’re not…”

Logan nodded. “I’m like you
now.”

“
No,” Sam
gasped.

“
Can’t you tell?” Logan
asked.

Sam’s muscles bunched beneath his
shirt. I wanted to go to him, but I knew he wouldn’t want that
right now. He gave a curt nod to his brother then said, “It wasn’t
supposed to be both of us.”

“
It is.”

“
That’s not possible,” Sam
said.

“
Guess we have more screwed
up genes than we thought.”

“
I’m sorry,” Sam said,
truly meaning his words.

I took a chance and went to Sam’s
side, reaching my hand toward his. He took it, grasping
hard.

“
Who’s she?” Logan asked,
looking at me.

“
Heven is my
girlfriend.”

Logan was surprised by this. His eyes
widened and his lips parted. “Does she…?”

“
She knows,” Sam
nodded.

Logan looked at me. His eyes were
darker than Sam’s, so was his hair. He was also shorter and
thinner, but I had a feeling he would be filling out
soon.

“
How long have you been
looking for me?” Sam asked him.

“
About six
months.”

Sam sucked in a breath. “I should’ve
called you…”

Logan hurried to say, “Dad wouldn’t
have allowed that.”

Sam stood there, in shock and
regret.

“
We were just about to go
get some pizza. Want to come? You guys can catch up.”

“
I’m starving,” Logan
said.

Sam chuckled. It was a good sound and
eased some of the tension that was inside me. “Let’s
go.”

I bent to pick up the box,
trying to settle what was left of my nerves. I didn’t want Sam to
pick up on them
.
At all
.
Sam
made a sound and hauled the box out of my hands. I
smiled.

He kissed my nose.

“
Gross,” Logan
complained.

Sam laughed.

For some reason I didn’t really feel
like laughing.

Sam

My baby brother was like me. The
thought made me sick. I accept what I am, I accept the hellhound in
me…I even kind of like the stuff I can do. But would I choose this?
I don’t think so. And I certainly would never want this life for
Logan.

They cast him out. My parents did to
him what they did to me. I would expect that of my rigid, cold
father…but not my mother. I told myself that the only reason she
agreed to my leaving was because she was afraid for her youngest
son. I told myself that if I had been an only child, she would have
gone against my father and fought for me to stay.

Now I knew I was wrong.

She hadn’t loved me at all.

She cast Logan out just like me, both
her sons. How could anyone be so cruel?

I glanced over at him, sitting on a
bunch of hay with his one bag of possessions. He had grown bigger
in the past two years. He was taller, leaner and looked more like a
man than a boy. How much I had missed.

A vivid memory, swift and strong,
flashed into my head. We were outside in the yard having a sword
fight with big sticks and laughing. He seemed so much smaller then,
much more innocent. It made me feel sick to know that most of his
innocence was now gone.

“
So, what happened, Logan?”
I asked, sitting down in the barn loft across from him. Below, the
horses shifted restlessly.

He shrugged and sat down the
flashlight he had been flicking on and off. “Pretty much what
happened with you.”

He flicked his dark brown eyes up to
me but then returned them to the floor, shuffling his feet in the
hay. “I just changed one day, Mom freaked out and Dad got all
pissed. He said it made him mad that both his sons would have such
weak genes.”

“
There’s no way that the
court would have emancipated you at the age of
fourteen.”

“
They didn’t.” He said, his
voice low. “I ran away.”

“
You did what?” I could
help the way my voice raised in shock. “Why would you do that,
Logan? If they were going to let you stay…”

Logan didn’t look up at me when he
spoke. “Mom probably would have let me stay; I heard her and dad
fighting all the time. She was never the same after you left…she
cried all the time.”

His words left a hollow feeling in the
pit of my stomach. Maybe I had been wrong, maybe Mom did love
me…

“
Anyway, I couldn’t stand
the way they fought all the time, the way dad tried to ignore me.
So I left. I figured they wouldn’t miss me anyway.”

“
Logan, you have to call
them. They are probably worried
–
they’ve probably been looking for
you.”

“
They aren’t looking for
me. Do you really think dad would call the cops and admit that a
son of his ran away? Sure, Mom’s upset, but she won’t go against
Dad.”

“
You don’t know
that.”

“
Yeah, I do.” Finally he
looked up. His face showed the misery he had been trying to hide.
“I followed her one day. She went to the school and told them that
I was visiting grandma and grandpa for the rest of the year. They
don’t care, Sam. I thought you would understand.”

I sighed. “I do
understand.”

“
I’m not going back there,
you can’t make me.” He said, his chin jutting out.

“
I’m not going to make you.
You can stay here with me.” I wondered how I was going to protect
Heven from whatever she needed protected from and take care of my
little brother. But he was my family, family that I thought I would
never see again. He needed me. He probably was confused and knew
next to nothing about being a hellhound. This was my chance to help
him and get some of the family back I thought I lost.

“
You’re living in a barn?”
Logan asked.

I laughed. “No, we can move
into my new apartment tomorrow. I…uh…I stay here with
Heven every night…in her room.”

Logan made a face. “How
long have you had a girlfriend?”

“
For a while now. She’s
really great, Logan. You’re going to like her too.”

“
I guess
she is pretty hot.” Logan said with a
smile
.

I widened my eyes in mock
horror. “Thinking of making a play for my girl?” I said, then
grabbed up a handful of hay and tossed it at him. “Better watch
out, little bro.”

“
Whatever.” He laughed,
dodging the flying hay.

“
Have you been alone the
last six months?” I asked, dreading the answer wondering how he
survived this long.

“
Yeah. I went to the
apartment that dad rented you when you first left…but you weren’t
there. I’ve been looking for you ever since.”

I ran a hand through my hair thinking
how stupid I had been for not trying to keep in touch with him. I
could have found a way to see him, to at least get word to him
about where I was. I never imagined, not in a million years that he
would end up like me. “I’m sorry; I should have kept in
touch.”

“
I don’t blame you. I’m
just glad I found you.” He rubbed at his eyes with his palms, and I
prayed he didn’t start crying.

I had let him down.

From here on out I told myself I would
be here for him.

“
It was pretty tough, huh?
To be alone?”

He shrugged and dropped his hands away
from his face. I was relieved to see that he wasn’t crying. “It
wasn’t that bad. I had some money…I took it from dad before I
left.” He glanced at me, looking a little embarrassed.

I nodded. “You needed it more than he
did.”

Logan seemed to relax at my
understanding and then continued talking. “I moved around a lot,
trying to find you. Then this one night in Portland…I ran into this
woman who said she knew you.”

Horror filled me. “What was her
name?”

“
China. She said she was
like us and that she knew where you lived.”

“
Did she hurt you?” I
asked, leaning toward him, grabbing his arm.

“
What? No. Why would she?
She seemed nice. She gave me your address, told me where I could
find you.”

I relaxed and released his arm. “She
wasn’t nice Logan.”

“
So you do know
her?”

“
I did. She’s not around
anymore.” I hesitated to elaborate on the fact that I was the one
who killed her. I was supposed to be making him feel safe, not
scared.

“
Where’d she
go?”

“
I’m not sure,” I lied,
feeling horrible for doing it. “Out of town.”

“
Oh.” He seemed a little
let down.

I moved over to sit next to him. “We
don’t need her around anyway, bud. I’ll teach you everything you
wanted to know and you’ll be fine.”

“
I don’t want to know
anything!” he cried, catching me off guard. Down below Jasper
whinnied his discomfort.

“
What do you
mean?”

“
I don’t want to be like
this! I don’t care about it. I just want to forget that part of
me.”

“
You can’t just forget it,
Logan. You have to learn to accept it, you don’t have to like it,
but you do have to accept it and learn how to control it if you
don’t want it to take you over.”

“
I can control it just
fine.” He said, stubborn.

“
Okay, cool. We don’t have
to talk about that right now.” I was scared of running him off.
Clearly my brother wasn’t as accepting of himself as I was. I guess
I could understand that. He’d run away from home because our
parents wouldn’t accept him, and he has been alone on the streets
for six months, searching for me. I thought that right now my time
would be better spent trying to rebuild our relationship before I
tried to make him accept that he was a hellhound.

Logan stared at the floor, mutinous
and silent. I sighed. I had no idea what to do or say. I wondered
what Heven was doing. I imagined her in room brushing out her long,
silky hair and suddenly I wanted to be there. I wanted to run my
fingers through the softness of that hair and listen to the sound
of her heart beating. I glanced at the screen of my cell. It was
late. She was probably asleep by now.

I reached into the hay and fished
around, coming out with a bag. My stash from when I was sleeping up
here to be closer to Heven. “Here, look what I got.”

Logan took the bag I was holding out.
It was filled with power bars and some candy and a couple of comic
books. “Have you read this one yet?” I reached in the bag to grab
the book and held out the latest X-Men comic.

“
No! Awesome!” A grin split
his face as he ripped from my fingers. “This is so cool.” He put
the comic in his lap and reached in to grab a couple of candy bars
and a bag of M&M’s.