Heartless (The Heartless Series) (21 page)

"Those girls?"

"I told you your power couldn't be contained. It had to get out one way or another. So when you were asleep, it got out."

"I didn't know them." And I didn't…

Danika—my lab partner in Chemistry freshman year. We got an F on our midterm because she went partying instead of her half of the assignment.

Meg—girl I knew senior year. She laughed at my shirt once. It wasn't as fancy as hers.

Shelley—in the line at the cafeteria last week, she cut in front of me like I wasn't even there… like I didn't even exist.

Madison—Madison.

"Madison's not dead." Hart shrugs. "So… I lied once. Sue me."

Oh God.

I'm a murderer. I remember! I remember now.

Hart doesn't acknowledge my breakdown. "It hasn't been easy. Not at all. I've had to leave a few times and torment other girls so Lucien wouldn't know any better."

"Those girls who killed themselves."

He nods. "All those times your Aunt Willow had to go on trips or vacations or whatever."

"You were her? You were… inside my aunt?"

His face scrunches. "When you put it that way, it seems dirty."

I slam my hand on the table and stand. When I do, the world starts to spin. Hart stands and grabs my arm to steady me. I slap it away. "Calm down, sweetheart. Chill. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm telling you everything Lucien was afraid to tell you. He was afraid you'd crack if you knew. He didn't think you could handle it. Don't prove him right. You are stronger than that. What matters is that this is part of your gift. This is who you are. You see visions. You try to help."

"I kill people!" I scream. My voice shakes.

"Only because you didn't know how to control it. You… the
real
you… You are pure. You are good. You are the key. And I've kept you that way. I've taken care of you. For years, I've taken care of you. Watched over you. I've made sure you've stayed on the straight and narrow. Which hasn't always been fun, let me tell you. I did well until this last week when you went rogue. But that was your power growing because the signs are converging. What's inside you has been begging to come out. It was only a matter of time." His fingers gently side over my cheeks. It's almost intimate, and I'm reminded of all those times I made out with him on the couch. The things we did—practically everything except sex. Sam never wanted sex.

"Oh, I wanted it," he voice is thick, and, dare I say, lusty. "But I knew I couldn't have it. It was my job to keep you good. Keep you pure. He'd have killed me if I'd screwed it up—pun intended."

"Who?"

Hart's eyes narrow. "Your father."

"My…" This makes no sense. None… I stand because the anxiety has taken over, and there's no way I can sit there anymore. My eyes catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror behind the plates in the hutch. I'm pale. Exceptionally pale. My lips are red. Stained from the wine… stained from the… blood.

My eyes are black. No white. No green. No pupils. All black.

All…

I shut my eyes and pray for them to be normal again. It's just a trick. Just a magic trick. That's all. Everything is okay… everything is…

I open my eyes again. Black. My eyes are completely black. I look like…

"A demon." Hart so nicely puts it. "Pure demons' eyes are black, or so I hear. Not that I've ever seen one."

"Why now… why not before?" As if that was the big question here.

"Because… you didn't have enough demon blood in you then."

That's what it was. That's what I'd been drinking. Not wine. Not all of it. Blood.

"My blood." Hart adds, all smug. He takes my hand in his, gripping so tightly it takes me away from focusing on my eyes and staring at him.

From far away, I hear knocking. Like someone is trying to get inside the house. Not sure who it would be, though. No one would want to see me. I'm a nobody.

"We have to go. We're meeting someone. Someone very special."

The knocking gets louder. I turn my head and see Lucien through the window of the door. He's pounding away. The symbols on those old weird paintings Sam had insisted we put on the doors a few weeks ago light up. Holy Hell! Holy. Hell.

"Angel warding. He can't get in." Hart says. Which is good, because he'd just try to stop us. He can't stop us. He'll try, but he will fail. I can't wait to watch him fail. That's my reward for all of this."

Hart turns me and takes both of my hands in his. "You never thought you were special. But you are. You're the most important person on this planet. You're the chosen one. You're the one who is going to open Hell, Gracen. You are going to help me get my revenge. If there were any other way…" He brings my knuckles to his lips. "Congratulations, love. You are the key to the Apocalypse."

Chapter Twenty-Four

I
WAKE UP IN A PIT.

In a real, deep in the earth, rocks everywhere, pit. I can see thanks to about fifty torches lit along the walls. Reminds me of some sort of Indiana Jones movie.

I wish it was a movie.

It's hot. Like incredibly hot. Like next to a volcano hot. I can actually feel the heat, which is a strange sensation. For eighteen years, I've been cold. I just thought I was, what my mom used to call, cold natured. I always thought it was more than that, though. Not this—not demon and Hell and Heaven stuff, but something. It never mattered how many shirts, blankets, or slippers I put on. Inside, I was always cold. Always freezing. Never warm.

Now, I'm warm. I'm sweating. I feel… normal. Lord, help me, I feel normal. Like this is the way I'm supposed to feel. Like everything inside me has finally been put into place. It was the blood. I know it. Now that I think about it, I can still taste the metal on my tongue. I can still feel it sliding down my throat, filling my belly.

Demon blood.

"Drink enough of it, and you become a demon, you know, if you are cursed." Hart says next to me. He's crouching down, hitting a rock with a stick. Such a typical thing to do. Like a normal dude who just happens to be a demon.

"You look like you." I say, looking into Hart Blackwell's big, puppy dog (if that puppy dog was a big scary Doberman) eyes. There is a scar on his left cheek just like he has in dream world.

He shrugs. "This close to a Hell gate, I can be myself." He points to the body crumpled on the floor to his right. Sam. The boy I've loved—well, the dude I lived with for a few years—is lying there like a sack of potatoes. He's dead. He's been dead this entire time.

"So sad… he doesn't even have a name. No one even missed him." That might be the saddest part of this. Yeah, I remember everything he said to me. I remember everything he called me. I remember what he told me about my online friend, Tina—Tina! I bet she thinks I've fallen off the face of the Earth. I guess I have.

Turns out, Sam was just a guy. Just someone who was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone who died, and no one would have cared about him. No one DID care about him. Except I did… once.

"Don't feel bad for him." Hart says. He doesn't sound as triumphant as I thought he would. He doesn't even seem that happy. I figured he'd be jumping up and down, all joyful that he had his key, and he'd get to bring Hell to the Earth and get his revenge on his brother. He'd done his job, so why did he look like his puppy died?

I know I shouldn't care. I should be trying to find a way out. The rational part of me knows the truth, though. I'm not getting out of here. No way. I have no idea where I am. I'm underground. It's not like there is an elevator that says, "Push here… go up."

I'm stuck. Stuck with him. This is it for me.

I'm going to die.

Simple as that.

Then again, was I ever supposed to live?

An abomination. That's what Hart called me. Abomination. A pure demon.

If I'd never been born, then the world wouldn't have ended. "You should have let my mother get rid of me."

"Don't be too hard on yourself," Hart pokes a rock with the stick. "If it weren't you, it would be somebody else. This was always the plan. With our without you. Just the way of the world. You can't stop it. You can just
not
fight it."

"Then what are we waiting for? Kill me and get it over with." My voice echoes through the cavern. How far down were we anyway?

He shakes his head, and his lip twitches. "Can't. Not yet. The gang's not all here. They need to hurry up, though."

This is going to take forever. There goes my plan for a nice, swift death. "Is it going to hurt? When you kill me to open the gate?" Then, a very unpleasant thought hit me. My heart speeds up, my legs give way, and I plop on a rock next to Hart, who actually looked startled. "Are you going to do what you do to me in my dreams every night? Is that why you did it? To prepare me for this? Are you going to tie me down? Torture me? Cut out my organs, because I don't think I can…" I can't finish my sentence.

I don't want to cry in front of Hart. I don't. But I can't help it. This is too much. I'm a demon. A freakin' demon! And so far I have no special powers of being a demon other than killing people in my sleep. I'm worthless. No, I take that back. I'm very worthwhile to the evil dudes in the world. The people who want to end the world and unleash Hell love me. At least there's that.

Hart does something I never actually expected him to do. He reaches over and places his hand on mine. I flinch back. I don't want him touching me. I don't deserve any sort of comfort after what I've done.

I'm a murderer.

And not after everything he's done to me. He fed me demon blood. He helped turn me into this thing. He gave me nightmares. He pretended to be my aunt… my boyfriend. I hate him!

I hate him.

He takes a deep breath and pulls out the knife. I figure it's for me. I guess something has happened and our time is up, even though I don't see anybody else coming at the moment.

"Relax. This isn't for you. I'm bored." He opens the blade and, to my utmost surprise, starts to whittle the stick he's been messing with.

"You whittle?" Color me shocked.

"Yeah." He smiles. Hart, the real Hart, has dimples too. It reminds me of Sam, and that makes me sad. "Nothing much else to do when I was little. Back in my day we didn't have magical boxes with moving pictures or phones that can connect to anyone anytime without even a cord attached to them. We wanted to talk to someone long distance, we yelled at them."

Hart as a human seems to have a sense of humor. I laugh. I can't help it. Stress. I blame it on stress. I shouldn't even be sitting next to him. I should be on the other side of the cavern, ignoring him, trying to find a way out—but then again, what is the point? This is my destiny, right? This is why I'm here. Why I was born into the world? "Back in my day…" I say with my best old man curmudgeon-y accent.

"Exactly." He whittles a strip of bark from the stick. "Plus, it keeps me practiced for when I skin people in Hell."

And there it went.

"I'm kidding." He hits me on the shoulder. I don't hit him back. Evil. Hart Blackwell is evil.

"Who are we waiting on? How many party goers does it take to kill a girl and open a gate?"

He shakes his head and pulls his knife back over the stick. A piece of bark falls in a perfect spiral onto the floor. "Soon. Why? Ready to get this over with?"

"Why shouldn't I? Why prolong it?"

Hart stops what he's doing. He drops the stick and lowers the knife. "You have taken this pretty well actually. I have to admit, I was afraid I'd tell you and you'd try to run off or kill yourself or something stupid like that. Or you'd have a mental break down. Cry. Scream. Hit me. Something. But you've been eerily calm. Why?"

"Why?" I didn't know why. "Would you rather I did all those things?"

"No… no… it's not that. It's just surprising, that's all."

"Maybe you did a good job of preparing me for this?" I shrug, thinking of all the ways he'd hurt me in the past. Sure it had been in my dreams, but I sort of got used to it. Sad, to be used to that much pain. Except in my dreams, I always knew I could wake up. Here, there is no waking up. My only hope, my only way out, is for Lucien to show up and take care of Hart. That's it. My one hope is an angel who I'm not even sure likes me.

"Lucien doesn't like anybody." Hart stands and wipes the dirt from the back of his pants. His phone's in his hand and he's texting someone. Texting. Great reception to be so far down in the world. "Spell. It's a spell. It makes cell phone reception automatic."

"Good to know." I'd always wondered how that worked. My phone carrier needed to get that mojo. Not that I cared anymore. Not like I'd ever live to make another phone call. "And can you please stop reading my mind. It's creepy."

"I can't help it. We are sort of connected now."

"Connected." I don't like the sound of that. I don't want to be connected to Hart.

"Yeah. You needed extra juice to get you fully demonized. I've been giving you my blood for years. Since you were a baby."

I shiver and turn my head. My stomach turns. Ick. Ick. Ick…

"Oh, you like it. Admit it. Stop being a baby about it."

"I'm not being a baby about it." Though I totally am, but… blood! "It's blood, Hart. Blood. Like… blood!"

"And you've been drinking it since you were born, darlin'. You just didn't know it."

My stomach may never recover. "Ugh…"

"Oh stop it. It kept you alive. If you don't have it, you'll die. Simple as that. It isn't a choice. If I hadn't been looking out for you, you wouldn't have made it. Your mom sure wouldn't have known what you needed. Don't think the doctors would have thought to give you demon blood."

"Blood is one thing. But demon blood… demon blood… your blood."

"You're welcome." He actually sounds sincere. Like he's almost proud he'd kept me alive.

It's a strange feeling. To have to be grateful to the person/thing who tried to kill you—who is going to kill you. I made it eighteen years. I wouldn't have done that without Hart. And I wouldn't even be on this earth without the angel who slept with my mother.