Soulless (The Heartless Series Book 2) (19 page)

Numb.

“How do you want it over? Huh? Kill yourself? We decided that was a bad idea, remember?”

“You said I can’t die.”

“You can’t!”

Two hands clamp on my shoulders and spin me around until I’m facing him. He’s so close. I should fight him back. I should do something. Instead, I stand there. I feel nothing. I am nothing.

“You can’t die, Gracen. Don’t you see that?”

“Why?” I sound so tired.

“Because you can’t leave me!”

From the way his eyes widen and he lets me go, I don’t think he meant to say it. Don’t leave him… don’t leave him.

“I’ve lost too much already.” He adds like he needs to. Like that will help anything.

“You want me alive to get your brother back. That’s all.”

“No.”

“You are trading me for him.”

“No.” He shakes his head, faster and faster each time I accuse him of something I know to be true.

He needs me to get Lucien. He admitted it. So the whole
he cares
thing, I know it’s an act. He doesn’t care about me. I’m a means to an end.

“Yes, Hart. I get it. You feel bad about your brother. You want to save him. I want to save him too.” I never had anything against Lucien. He seemed nice enough, and as a matter of fact, he’s my guardian angel. How can I not save my guardian angel? What kind of person has to save their guardian angel? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t he be saving me?

The answer is simple.

Some people. Some things in the world can’t be saved. I’m one of those things.

“It’s not like that, and you know it.” Hart steps toward me and places his hand gently on my cheek. A small fire, a little flicker of something, fills my belly. I want to feel something.

I want to not be numb.

“I’ll help you get your brother.” I barely whisper. Hart rubs his thumb gently over my skin, and I close my eyes. It’s soothing. Comforting. And for a split second, I forget who I’m with. I forget everything.

Because I can’t care.

The little fire flickers inside me.

I recognize it.

Hope.

A most dangerous thing.

“Don’t think that I’m only doing this for my brother. I’m not. I swear. I need… I want you to be okay. I’ve grown… attached to you.”

Funny way to put it.

Thousands of things run through my mind. All sorts of things to say, things I should say, things I want to say. I close my eyes tighter, enjoying the feeling of his thumb against my cheek. Enjoying the feeling of something. I don’t want to be dead inside, but that’s how I feel.

“What does it matter?” The words come out before I can think about what I’m saying. Opening up to Hart is more than likely a bad thing. He will use it against me in some way. Or he will manipulate me.

In any case, I say it. I wait for his answer.

“What does what matter?”

I chuckle sadly. “Any of it. Life. Living. Being with you. I’m already dead on the inside.”

“No.”

“I am. I have been for a long time. You’ve been inside my brain. You know it’s true. I’m not… right. My feelings are all over the map. Anger and rage one minute and then nothing. I feel nothing. It should scare the hell out of me. It doesn’t. I don’t care that I don’t care. I’m already dead on the inside, Hart. So don’t waste a minute worrying about me or caring, if you do.” I move away so his hand falls from my face. Just like that, the one good feeling I’ve had is gone. Good. Sometimes feeling is a bad thing. It can get you in trouble.

“I’ll help you get your brother. I’ll do whatever you need me to do to save him. But in the end, before I turn, before I kill someone I love, before I kill my mother, please take the knife and kill me first. I’m begging you.”

He staggers back, and his hand falls to his side. “Don’t ask me to do that.”

“You’re a demon.” I paste on a smirk. “It shouldn’t be too difficult for you to kill me.”

“Just because I can doesn’t mean I want to.” Hart Blackwell has killed me every night in my dreams for years—all but those five years he left me alone. He’s killed me numerous times in numerous ways, and now when I need him the most, he hesitates.

“I don’t want to die.” I try to smile. Sadness tries to fight through the numbness and tears sting my eyes. I hope they fall. “I want to live and grow old and have fifteen grandkids and fourteen cats on our farm by the lake.” I can imagine it. Sam and me… our little cabin.

Stay with me.

“I’m only eighteen years old, Hart. This isn’t what I wanted for my life. At all. I want to be normal. It’s what I’ve always wanted. It’s not going to happen though. I know that now. I have a bigger purpose, and that purpose is to
not
kill the world. Inside I’m already dead.” I wish a tear would fall to fight off the deadness inside. Something to prove to myself that I’m wrong. That I’m not dead already. That I do have a soul. A heart. A purpose.

The tears don’t come.

I bite my lip and take a deep breath. “Sometimes to save the world, you have to sacrifice yourself.”

“Gracen.” His voice is low, and he’s staring into my eyes. “You are not a damn superhero. You are a girl. A girl. You don’t have to sacrifice yourself to save the world. There is another way. There has to be. When we go to Prospect, when we get Lucien back, we’ll figure it out. I swear it.”

“Promise me you won’t let me kill my mother.” It’s my one request. Simple. Easy. It should be easy for anyone else. It’s my biggest fear. That something I do will kill her.

“You won’t kill her.” His nostrils flare like Sam’s used to when we played poker. He’s bluffing. Or lying. Sam never was a good liar. Actually, maybe he was a better liar than I ever gave him credit for.

“I had a vision.” It’s my turn to be honest. He’s been honest about his brother and his mother. Time for me to do the same.

“A vision? Like before with those girls?”

“Yeah, only it was about my mother. And I kill her. Seth was there, and he told me that I did exactly what I had to do. What I was made for. Hart, you read it in the book. I’m supposed to kill someone I care about. Someone I love. I saw what I did to my mother. I saw it. I refuse to do that. So you have to promise me something. In order for me to go with you and get your brother back, you have to promise me, cross your heart and all that, that you won’t let me hurt my mother. That you will kill me before I do.”

“Gracen…”

“Please!” I beg. I’m not above begging now. The numbness is fading and fear is taking over. I know what I said about wanting to feel. I was wrong. This isn’t something I want to feel. My heart is beating in my ears, and it takes everything I have not to run.

Hart’s head tilts to the side and his lips twitch. I wish I could read inside his mind. I wish so many things. Mainly, I wish he’d say something.

“I won’t go with you if you don’t promise me. I’ll find the knife and do it myself.” A threat. Good. I’m sure that’s the best way to go in this situation.

His eyes narrow. “So, either I promise to keep you from hurting your mother in exchange for helping me get Lucien back, or you off yourself tonight?”

“Seems like it.” Never in a million years did I ever think this would be my life. A bargain like this… it’s a no win for me. Or a win/win if you really think about it. I die either way. I can’t hurt anybody either way. It’s all I want. Maybe not all I want, but all I can ask for.

Hart’s jaw clenches, and he fidgets on one foot. I assume he’s weighing the pros and cons of all this. In my opinion, there’s nothing to think about. One way he gets his brother. The other, he has no shot. Only a corpse to clean up sooner rather than later.

“I promise.” He doesn’t take his eyes off mine. I might not be able cry, but he can. A tear falls down his cheek.

“You promise what?” I have to be certain he isn’t going to back out of this deal. He owes me this. He owes me much more, but most definitely this.

“I promise I won’t let you hurt your mother.”

There. We’ve come to an agreement. “Good.” I say as I turn and head into the bathroom.

Once inside, I lock the door behind me and slide to the floor. I’ve just had a demon agree to stop me from killing my mother, from turning into something I can’t control into something that will destroy the world. I’ve just sealed my fate. There is no turning back now. This time tomorrow I’ll be dead.

I’m trying to find the will to care.

I feel it.

One tiny voice inside my head. One tiny feeling where my heart and soul should be. One tiny piece of something I shouldn’t have.

Hope.

I hope he does it quick.

I hope it doesn’t hurt.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

HART

I
HELD HER ALL NIGHT.

We didn’t speak after she came out of the bathroom. Her eyes, eyes I assumed would be wet with tears, were dry as deserts. She grabbed her bag, changed her clothes into plaid black and pink pajama bottoms and an old black shirt. I’ve seen her wear it many times.

I’ve never watched her change before.

She turned her back to me so I couldn’t see, and I suppose I shouldn’t even look. I don’t deserve to look or see anything having to do with her.

I’m a man after all… I have eyes. And she’s beautiful.

Gracen has never been what I’d call a traditional beauty. Not like Colleen. Colleen was the type of girl who would win beauty pageants in today’s time. As it were, back in my day, she won the heart of all the men in town. I know she won mine and my brother’s. Never good for two brothers to fall for the same girl.

Never.

Anyway, Gracen isn’t like Colleen. Her hair, once beautiful and golden, is now pitch black. Gray streaks run through it in highlights. An omen of what’s to come. The darkness taking over inside her.

At one time her eyes were green.

Now, they are nearly black with a hint of red, just like mine. I wonder what color her eyes will be when she turns… if she turns… if I allow it.

She’s right. I know it. Doesn’t mean I want to believe it or do it. The smart thing would be to stick the knife in her while she’s sleeping. Get rid of the threat to the world. No one would know. The world would go on. People would wake up in the morning, drink their coffee, fight on Facebook, and go on about their miserable mundane lives, not knowing that a little eighteen-year-old girl saved them all.

That was sad.

I can’t do it, though. Not only because they have Lucien. Not only because I need to make it right by him. Hell, I can think of another way to get him back. I’m me after all. I’m not an inept idiot.

But the longer I keep her with me, the longer I keep her fighting even after she’s given up, the better. The more likely she won’t die. The more likely that she won’t want to die.

After she changes, she crawls into bed without a word. She pulls the covers up to her chin, and within minutes, she’s asleep, leaving me awake and alone to listen to her breathing, to watch as her chest rises and falls, to hear the little sound she makes when she sleeps, halfway between a snore and a breath. I’ve listened to her breathing before. Only she doesn’t know it. I used to stand outside her door, like a creepy stalker, and watch her sleep back when I was Sam and she loved me. I enjoyed the time when I didn’t have to get inside her mind and hurt her. I liked just being with her, watching her, wishing I could be Sam. Wishing it was all real.

But it wasn’t.

And now it’s caught up with me.

While Gracen catches up on some much-needed sleep, I grab Seth’s book, while I lie next to her in the bed, and read.

It’s a thick book, I dare say thicker than a large print Bible, so I imagine there’s some way to help her written in it.

I wonder, as I flip the pages, if it’s a heavenly book or one from Hell. Heavenly, more than likely, since Seth had it. But how can something like me touch something from Heaven?

It makes no sense.

None of this does, truth be told.

I find a passage about the weapons of Heaven:

About how the Abomination will kill someone she loves.

About fallen angels.

About the things at the bottom of Hell.

About a cage that suspends in the air right above the pit where they keep the souls no one can ever see, the things so vile that even Hell is afraid of them.

About the Abomination.

About the end of the world.

About how the angel blood, the demon blood, and the human blood will combine into a force so powerful that only the heart of a human can fix it.

I don’t think I can make Gracen eat a human heart if that’s what it means, no matter how hungry she might be or how she’ll look after she turns.

I won’t ever know because I’m going to keep that from happening.

That vision was only a dream. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t like before. Just a dream of a scared girl not wanting to hurt her mother.

That’s all…

That’s all.

That’s all I can accept.

I read all night, trying to find something that can help Gracen. If I could find it, then maybe she wouldn’t have to be so numb to it all. Maybe I can give her hope.

Hope, like my mother gave me in Hell.

Hope, like Seth gave me on the battlefield.

Hope to get revenge on my brother.

Hope to end it all.

Maybe I’m the one who has too much hope.

Maybe this is a lost cause.

I fall asleep with the book in my lap and Gracen snuggled to the crook of my arm. I don’t think she realized she did it. Sometime in the night, she scooted closer to me, and who am I to move her?

There might not be any answers I can find in this huge book of useless information, but I know I can do something to help her.

She’s weak.

She hasn’t had blood in hours.

I should wake her up and give her some of mine so she’ll be ready to fight when the sun comes up.

Instead, I use the opportunity to give her something she needs, something I’ve put in her mind for the last three days when I can sneak in it, something I wish were true.

I close my eyes, hold her close, and imagine my farm from when I was human. There is a house. A dead tree. Lots of tall grass. And a lake. Gracen and I are by the lake. The wind is picking up.