Read Online Strife: Hidden Book Four by Colleen Vanderlinden - Free Book Online Page B

whatever they’d been broadcasting. Jumpy, dark video. Fire.
    And a winged, flying figure, cackling and throwing fire into storefronts along Hayes. I’d recognize the wings, the skinny, scrawny frame anywhere.
    I saw them every time I looked in the mirror.
    I put my hands over my face, stared at the television as the video showed her, me, throw another fire blast into a storefront, and the building erupted in flames, and I/she laughed.
    “Oh god,” I said, felt my knees buckle, and then Nain was there, catching me, holding me up. I couldn’t stop staring at the screen. They played the video again, and I listened as the very obviously shaken female newscaster spoke.
    “For those of you just joining us, we’ve obtained this amateur video from the site of the fires we reported along Hayes earlier this morning. I… I don’t know how to explain what I’m seeing. I’ve watched it almost a dozen times now, and I can’t make myself believe this. We’ve verified that this was raw video, shot directly from the phone of a passer-by as this happened. It appears to be a winged woman…” She trailed off, and the rest of the video played out in silence.
    Nain’s arm was still around me, hand on my waist, holding me up and comforting me at the same time. I stared as the video started again. They had Jones on the line, and he said he was as confused as everyone else, and that the Detroit Police Department was looking into it. We watched the video as they looped it again, now talking about whether it was staged or not. The consensus seemed to be: how?
    Then there was a knock at my front door, and Ada went to answer it. Jones and Jamie walked in, and he was staring at me.
    “What the hell, Angel?” he said. “Tell me you have an evil doppelganger out there. Give me something.”
    I didn’t answer, stared at the screen again. I heard Nain give him a very general explanation: something had happened to me in the Nether, and I’d had what seemed like a malicious spirit or something inside me now since I’d come home. That I’d been fighting it for control. That this was what happened when it won.
    E came up to me, took my hand.
    “And what am I supposed to do with that? Is it going to take control again?”
    “I hope not,” I said, finally looking at him. Didn’t know what else to tell him. Heard from his frenzied, frightened, angry thoughts that he was considering arresting me. And if I heard it, Nain heard it, too.
    “You do that, and we are going to have a big fucking problem with one another. You don't want me for an enemy,” Nain told him, and when I glanced up at him, his eyes were glowing red.
    Time to maybe make it clear what he was dealing with. “Even if you could arrest me, you saw what happened at the jail when I got you and Nain out. There’s not a cell in existence that can hold me,” I told him. He stared at me, and I felt fear. He seemed deflated. “And here’s another thing. You can’t kill me. Nothing can kill me. Someone might be lucky enough to get a killing shot in. I’ll come back. Over and over and over again. I’ve done it already.”
    He was staring at me. His daughter was watching me with a mix of fear and awe on her face. Nain still stood beside me, large hand on my waist. I pushed his hand away, though I hated to admit that I felt better with it there.
    “Was anybody hurt?” I asked Jones.
    He shook his head. “Most of those storefronts were abandoned. DFD got the fire out quick enough.”
    “Why would it do that?” Ada asked, watching me with concern, as if the thing inside would take control at any moment and kill them all.
    I shrugged. “I think maybe it was trying to make a point,” I said.
    “Which was?” Jones asked.
    “That when it gains control, I won’t even know it’s happening. And that it can do pretty much whatever it wants.”
    Fear rolled over me, from just about everyone in the room. Except Nain, who was just pissed off. Soon, everyone was talking, in small