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“Nurse Drew asked me to come up and ask if you wanted to place a coffee order. She’s getting ready to go on break and needs a coffee,” I said without skipping a beat. How the fuck I pulled that out of nowhere without a reason I’d never know, but it worked.
“Oh my goodness, she’s too sweet. Can you tell her to grab me a mocha latte? Susie is down the hall in room seven, go ahead and grab hers, too, I have a patient to deal with down the hall.”
She ran off and disappeared in a room, and I snuck down the hall in the direction of the staircase.
“You know they’ll be angry at you for this,” Roman warned. “I can’t save you from punishment.”
“I don’t need saving, Roman. Go back to our floor, I don’t need help,” I said. It wasn’t harsh, just truthful. My mind was far too focused on reaching… something.
Down deep in my mind, I knew that was a cruel thing to say to a protector like Roman, but it was as if my body was functioning on autopilot. As if I were merely a puppet and someone else was pulling my strings.
Kind of like when I went to the roof that first time.
Roman didn’t follow me any longer, he retreated to the elevator, and I couldn’t blame him.
He had Hiro to protect first and foremost, and he couldn’t exactly do that in trouble.
He’d be putting them both right in Vane’s office.
There were no interruptions as I made my way through the floor, up the stairwell, and pushed open the roof door. It would have been easier if the other floors had access to the fire escape, but I guess they couldn’t monitor us here like they could the elevator.
Not to mention free roaming patients did not need access to the roof in general. That was a liability waiting to happen.
Vane thought his threats were enough to keep me from breaking the rules again. Even the threat of solitary couldn’t cut through the trance, though.
The moment I was outside, the door slammed behind me. The feeling was gone now, and I panicked, turning and trying to pull it open to no avail.
“It won’t work until I allow it.” The woman’s voice had the same familiarity I’d felt at the sight of Helheim, and I knew that I was finally hearing the voice of the woman I saw in the garden.
Hel.
Her tone was strong, yet feminine. It demanded my attention effortlessly.
“Hel?” I questioned as I turned around to face her. She was hauntingly beautiful. Indescribably terrifying, too.
Half of her face was a skeleton, blue runes etched into the bone itself as fire burned within the empty spaces, much like Monty and the other demons.
The other half of her face was beautiful. She had model-like looks and her pale face was accented in the same blue as the demon’s fire and the brief flashes of her realm I’d seen.
As far as aesthetics went, she was killing it. This omega knew she was gorgeous. The dress she wore flowed around her, made of white and silver fabric that billowed as she walked forward. There was no denying she was a goddess, everything about her otherworldly.
“Yes, Harlow,” she answered with a smile that might have been kind on anyone else but the skeletal face shifting made it downright unnerving. “I think we have some things to discuss.”
“Like why I was drawn up here?” I started but she cut me off with a dismissive wave of her hand.
“That was me. How much do you know?” It was frustrating that she was so quick to talk over me, but I had a feeling Hel wasn’t someone I wanted to piss off so I answered.
“That I’m crazy? That demons are real and you’re allowing them to feed here on these patients?” As I said the last part my anger flared and manifested in my tone.
“For a reason,” she said. “The humans are unharmed and don’t remember it. No harm done.”
“That’s a lie, I was warned not to go out at night, and I know from their reactions, other patients know what’s going on,” I argued.
“Watch your tone. Champion or not, I won’t tolerate your attitude,” she warned in an icy voice. I glared back at her, unperturbed, and was met with a sudden laugh. “Yes, I chose well.”
“Chose what?” I asked. “None of what you are saying makes sense. I may need to up my meds.”
The fact I was facing a supposed ruler of a realm I didn’t even think really existed was enough of a testament that I was on a psychotic spiral or something. The demons already didn’t make sense, but this?
