Soulless (The Heartless Series Book 2) (22 page)

Up next, I plan on kicking a puppy… just because.

“I knew I’d seen that before, and I didn’t know why. So when I got in the car and saw your phone, I checked it because I’m a dick, saw it was her, saw her profile, saw how clingy she was, and put two and four together.”

“Doesn’t mean anything.” She shakes her head so that her newly black wisps of hair—the ones that escape her ponytail—shake around her face. A streak of gray falls toward her shoulder. I want to push it back behind her ear. I want to smack myself for thinking that.

“It means Tina is either part of it or…”

“Or what?”

Why did she have to ask? Why can’t she figure it out? “Or she’s been Seth this entire time.”

I think Gracen has had her limit of shocks and surprises. She doesn’t go numb like she did in the hotel room, thank the Lord, but she does get very… very quiet. I don’t like when she’s quiet. She keeps saying how she wishes things would go back to how they’d been before. She’s not the only one.

The distance between the houses grows shorter and shorter until they are replaced by businesses and red lights. Prospect isn’t an entirely big town. It’s bigger than it had been back in the day, but still, by today’s standards, very, very small. It has a movie theater, a train depot, about seventeen businesses (some chain, most local). It has a library, two high schools, seven banks, and twenty-seven churches of all demonations. The oldest being Prospect Free Will, the church my father served as pastor in 1853. I’m from Prospect originally. I don’t think Gracen knows that. I don’t think she’d care.

Prospect is about an hour away from Murfreesboro where the Stones River Battle happened. That’s where I’m buried. So much history in this one little area.

“I lived in Prospect.” This tension needs to be carved and gotten rid of now.

She doesn’t answer. She’s looking out the window, and I have a feeling her thoughts aren’t a million miles away but on her family a few minutes away. I know she feels a lot of guilt. I can feel it rolling off her. I wonder if she can feel mine.

If she doesn’t want to talk, fine, but I do. “I lived in Prospect all my life. Prospect. The War. Then Hell. Seems a natural progression, don’t you think?”

Not even a smirk at my joke. “Anyway, I was born about two miles up the road there. Mother used to say that you could hear me crying all the way in town. Said I embarrassed her…” She said a lot of things after she wasn’t my mother anymore. She said she hated me, never wanted more than Lucien, that he was her favorite, that she wished I’d died instead of him, that she was so disappointed that I killed my brother. I’m disappointed too. He would have had a full life if not for me. A full life with Colleen if I hadn’t butted in.

“You know I hate myself, right?” That gets her attention, and she finally faces my direction. That’s good because I surprised myself admitting it. What do I have to lose now, right? All those things I’ve been bottling up inside me, I might as well let out. Everything will be over soon.

“I didn’t think demons did that.” Thank you, Lord, for conversation.

“They don’t, but I have my humanity, remember? I’m not like other demons.”

I wish she would’ve answered that. I want to know what she thinks about me, though I can pretty much figure it out. She hates me. No other way around it.

I do hate myself. I hate what I’ve done. Who I’ve hurt. I want to elaborate on it. I feel the words bubble up from my stomach, from my soul—though I suppose all I am is a soul. I can’t make them come out.

We are back to awkward silence.

“Fine.” Gracen sighs. “I’ll bite because you obviously want me to. Why do you hate yourself?”

“For everything.” Simple. Easy. It’s so much more than that.

“Demons do bad. Sort of the job description.” Is she really trying to make me feel better?

“Not just that.” I press the gas to get through a yellow light before it turns red. “I hate myself for what I did before I turned. Before I died. I wasn’t exactly an upstanding citizen.”

“Awww… say it ain’t so.” She smiles. Actually smiles. I wish I could always make her smile.

I wish she had an always.

I feel like I’m driving her to her death. I guess I am. She doesn’t seem to care. I do.

“Right? You see me and think, ‘Hey, that guy is an upstanding citizen’.”

“Exactly.” That smile. It might be the death of me.

“Why are you telling me this?”

The million-dollar question. “I just think someone should know. I know I’ve given you a hard time the last… well, forever. I know I’ve said some things that have set you back and made you feel bad about yourself. For that I’m sorry. And I’m sorry for how I treated Lucien when we were human. I’m sorry for taking Colleen from him. I’m sorry for being responsible for our mother’s death. I’m sorry for believing Seth. I’m sorry for shooting Lucien at Stones River.” Once the apologies start coming, I can’t stop them. It feels like the end, this drive. We are going toward something, and I know for a fact nothing will be the same afterwards.

We are heading toward fate. Toward something we know nothing about, not really. All I know is what Seth’s book said. Who knows if that’s true? He might have left it there as a decoy. For me to read it and come into this fight all half-assed and cocky. Now I’m nervous. And I’m the one who wants to turn and go the other direction.

Instead, I make a hard right turn, with Gracen yelling at me, and pull into Sage Cemetery right off the main strip. It has an old iron fence and a gate with the name of the cemetery over it. They’re open, thankfully, so I drive on the dirt road all the way through the tombstones. Newer ones in front, and the older ones—ones from my era—in the back. I don’t cut the engine until I’m under a weeping willow tree in the very back. Colleen is buried there.

I put her there myself.

“What are you—”

“I can’t do this again.” I cut her off. My hands are shaking. My voice is shaking. My phone is vibrating in my pocket, and I know it’s Amelia asking where the hell I am. I’m late. I don’t care. I need to say this. It’s my last chance to say any of this.

“Can’t do what? Why are we here? You said…”

“Screw what I said. They can wait. If they didn’t hurt Lucien last night, they won’t today. They need you too much for that.”

“So I’m bait?”

Did she not know this? Had she not put two and two together? “A pawn. Not bait.”

She opens her mouth to say something, and I place my finger over it to stop her. I don’t keep it there long because I know she could rip it off if she wanted. Especially once I get finished doing what I have to do. “Listen to me. Just listen. I can’t do this. I can’t take you to your mother’s house knowing you’re going there to die.”

“I don’t want to die.” She says almost in defensive mode. “But to live would kill the world. Doesn’t seem right.”

“None of it does.” I know my time is running out. My phone is vibrating again. They are getting pissed. I pull it out of my jeans and think of chucking it like I did Gracen’s.

“Amelia?” she asks.

I nod. “They want to know where we are and why we aren’t there yet.”

She bites her lip. “I sort of want to know the same thing.”

My heart feels like it’s going to beat out of my chest. Everything feels like it’s weighing down on me. Times like this, I would give anything to have lost my humanity. Stupid revenge. Stupid everything. I’m a moron. A stupid, crappy moron.

“I lied to you before. At the hotel. I lied. I can’t do it.”

Her eyes widen. I’ve lied to her for years. I guess she thought this time would be different, and it really was, but I can’t… I can’t.

“Lied about what?”

“I can’t do it, sweetheart. I can’t kill you…”

“Hart.” She sits up straighter in her chair, and her eyes leave mine.

“I mean it. I can’t do it. I can’t. It’s not… I try to tell myself that it’s just because I’ve spent so much time with you these last years. I try to tell myself that it’s remorse and humanity and whatever for not being able to do what you’ve asked me to do.”

“What you’ve promised to do.” She cuts in. She looks terrified. I feel the same way. Her only peace, her only play, has been that I would take care of her. Now I am throwing that away.

“You can’t make me promise that.” I feel the tears stinging my eyes. If I could turn off my damn humanity, I would. This is stupid. “You deserve better. You deserve a life.”

I take her hand in mine. They are tiny little things. Delicate and fragile. This is the girl who is going to destroy the world? Really?

“You have to promise me, Gracen. I’m serious. No matter what, promise me you won’t give up.”

For the first time on this entire trip, a tear falls down her cheek. Now, we match. “I’ll hurt so many people. I’ve got darkness inside me, Hart. Real, freakin’ scary, darkness. You know what I can do. You know I can’t control it.”

My phone vibrates again. We’re running out of time. I point toward Colleen’s grave. “Colleen Channing. She didn’t think she had a choice either. To be fair, I suppose she had too many. I did that to her… I’m the reason she’s dead, and I can’t do that again.”

“What did you do to her?”

“Doesn’t matter. All that matters is for you to understand that you have a choice. You have a big choice, and I don’t want you going in there today thinking you don’t. We give you demon blood. You at least go in with a fighting chance, and you fight, Gracen. You fight. We all have darkness inside us. Everybody does. You can fight it. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met.”

“I have to be to put up with you.” A ghost of a smile pulls on her lip. I do the same in return.

“No matter what, love, I need you to promise me, give me your word, that you won’t give up. That you will fight. You are
not
giving up on me today. You aren’t. I won’t let you.”

I don’t wait for an answer. I take the demon-killing knife, the only thing that can hurt me besides Gracen, and slide it over my wrist. I know she won’t be able to resist. The smell will drive her mad until she takes it. She can drain me dry for all I care if it’ll help her. She needs all the help she can get.

“Drink it. You need to be strong.”

Gracen looks at it as the red blood drips down my arm. Her eyes dilate, and I know she won’t be able to resist. Slowly she puts her hands on my arm, drawing it toward her. Her eyes watch every particle as it escapes my arm and drips toward her.

Drip.

Drip.

I know it’s singing to her. Begging her to drink. I’m willing her both with my mind and my heart. Please drink it. Please be strong. “Amelia is powerful. She will be able to get inside your mind if you don’t drink it.” As if she needed an extra incentive.

Gracen takes my arm, and she gently pushes it away. “No.”

“No?” No… no… no… please don’t do this to me.

“No. If I’m going into this thing to fight, like you want, then I’m going in as much of a human as I can be.”

“Humans are weak. Humans can’t fight against a higher class demon and a high ranking angel. You’ll fail before you start.”

“Those are my terms. Take it or leave it.”

It’s then that I understand what’s going on. No matter how much I’ve pleaded, how much I’ve cried, it has done little good. This isn’t a meet-up to Gracen. This isn’t to get my brother back. This is a suicide mission for her.

There’s nothing I can do to stop her.

Another text.

I’m going to kill them all.

I turn the key, and my car roars to life. I don’t speak to Gracen as we leave the cemetery, not as we pass my father’s tombstone, nor my mother’s. I don’t say anything through the streets of Prospect as people go about their busy days. They have no idea the world is about to end—or that this girl beside me is heading home to give her life so others can keep on living. No one will ever know.

Sad fact about history. So many people do extraordinary things and no one ever knows.

I don’t speak when we get to the other side of town and turn up the gravel road to Gracen’s mom’s house.

I don’t speak when I turn the ignition off.

I don’t speak when I get out of the car and slam the door.

I don’t speak when we get to the door and I knock.

“You promised,” Gracen whispers in my ear.

I don’t speak.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

GRACEN

A
FTER HE KNOCKS ON THE DOOR,
Hart takes my hand. I don’t have time to say anything or pull it away or kick him before the door opens, and there, standing in all her glory, is Aunt Willow.

But it’s not Aunt Willow. Truth be told, I’ve never gotten to talk to my Aunt Willow. Ever. When I was growing up, Aunt Willow was possessed by Hart Blackwell, the demon currently holding my hand. After he left her, she went insane and into a mental hospital, where she never spoke a word that I’m aware. And now, Amelia has her. My poor aunt. Pulled in so many different directions.

“And she’s still in here.” Amelia grins.

I forgot… she can hear exactly what I’m thinking. She is much more powerful than Hart, or I assume her to be. Maybe I should have taken Hart up on that blood after all. Kept her out of my head.

I’m a moron.

Amelia laughs. “Come on in, you two. You’re a little late.”

“Car trouble,” Hart says as he walks in before me. He keeps my hand secure in his. Is he holding my hand to keep me calm or to keep himself calm? Could go either way.

“Ahhhh… car trouble. A night in the honeymoon suite at the Darby motel. You certainly had an exciting day, didn’t you, son?” The words dripped motherly sarcasm. Hart’s hand flinches in mine, and I grip his harder to keep him focused. We have one job. Get Lucien back. Once that happens, and if I can, I kill Amelia with the knife, then we’ll deal with the rest.

We never talked about offing Amelia. Hell, we never talked about what we’d do after we got Lucien free. I think it was just too much for us to consider.

Now, we’re in a pickle because of it.

Amelia leads us through the living room. It isn’t like I remember. Papers and magazines and food containers are tossed all around. My mother always kept a tidy house. Always. Even to a fault, in my opinion.