Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 93412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
“Me? I took this filthy beast’s black soul,” Abaddon said through his teeth and stepped onto the burning cigarette. He released the limp body, which dropped to the carpet like a sack full of root vegetables, and only then had a look at the fresh burn on his forearm.
Despite the death he’d just witnessed, Gabriel still jumped off the sofa, extinguishing his own cig, and rushed over to the creature whose origin he wasn’t sure of anymore.
“Let me see.” He grabbed a tissue from the doctor’s desk and wet it in a half-drank glass of water. “I don’t understand anymore. I took my morning pills. I… I think you’re really here,” he added, his voice breaking as he dabbed the burn on the arm that felt too real to be a mirage.
Abaddon’s chest rose as he inhaled, letting him take care of the fresh wound. “Of course I’m real. How else would I have killed two men and made love to you, all in one morning?” he asked in a voice that was so matter of fact it brought heat to Gabriel’s cheeks despite the corpse lying just a pace away.
Gabriel’s brain was twisting into the shape of the infinity symbol, but all thoughts led him back to the angel sent by God in answer to Gabriel’s prayers.
But if Abaddon was real then he hadn’t imagined his childhood torture.
He’d been hurt in despicable ways by people who then lied to him for years.
Gabriel’s insides cooked.
“No, no, no, no, I just need to find more of my pills, and this will all go away!” He stepped over the doctor’s body in his dash to the cupboard at the back, where his medicines always came from.
Abaddon muttered something as he leaned over the dead man, but Gabriel didn’t care at this point. This craziness needed to end.
Breathless, he turned the little key and opened the wooden door, faced with a small selection of pharmaceuticals. Most of them could have been found in the average person’s medicine cupboard, but the contents of the bottom shelf had Gabriel’s stomach dropping.
An empty medicine bottle marked with his name and the usual dosage of antipsychotics stood next to a large plastic tub containing the same red pills Gabriel had been taking every day since... forever. The label did not match his prescription.
It was placebo. Or sugar pills, as the label helpfully added.
He turned to Abaddon, haunted by what his finding implied. A deep buzz at the base of his skull came with throbbing heat.
“The meds. They’re not real,” he choked out. “But you are. And this is.” He pointed to Dr. Rogers as he remembered joking with Abaddon over Watson’s bloodied corpse earlier that morning. Now he itched for another shower.
Struggling to breathe, he once more checked the jar of pills.
Still placebo.
“But if I’m not mentally ill, if I’m not delusional—” Then he’d been tortured as a child by those closest to him. His heart beat so fast, but it still couldn’t catch up with his brain. “Why would they do that?” he screeched, and collapsed to the floor.
The walls of the office closed in on him like the messengers of impending doom, and in response, his throat tightened too, reducing his breathing capacity to a space so narrow that his brain was getting fuzzy already. He tried to massage his Adam’s apple in vain hope it would help, but it did nothing.
Curling into a ball, Gabriel rested his forehead on the carpet but closed his eyes the moment Dr. Roger’s face came into view, staring at him with bulging eyes. A blood vessel had popped in one of them, creating an additional, crooked pupil that watched Gabriel from beyond the veil of death.
Feet tapped against the floor, and moments later, a warm hand settled on Gabriel’s back.
“It’s okay, I’m with you,” Abaddon said in the softest of voices. “Breathe.”
He counted while stroking Gabriel’s back and took big inhales that seemed like an impossibility to attempt. But regardless of the murder he’d just committed, Abaddon’s presence had a calming effect on Gabriel. After a while, he was able to tune into the instructions and stop choking on the air in his own throat.
As the reality sank in, it became increasingly clear his delusions were memories, and he fell back to his ass, feeling like that extinguished cigarette next to him.
“Explain this to me again,” he asked Abaddon, exhausted beyond measure.
Abaddon moved his hand to rest on Gabe’s nape. “There were six of them, and they hurt you during a ritual meant to summon me. You were to be the fifth of six child sacrifices they’d planned in that cycle,” Abaddon said softly.
Gabriel frowned, lured into the casual touch like a love-starved puppy. He did remember. Father John had instructed that he and five other children be temporarily separated from others for reasons he no longer remembered. They’d been on a strict diet of “cleansing” foods, and after that enforced fast, the kids had been taken away one by one. Only he had returned.