Soulless (The Heartless Series Book 2) (3 page)

He looks away.

“You’ve been getting blood from other demons.” I lie back and shut my eyes, willing this all to go away. Why it feels like a betrayal to me, I’m not sure. It shouldn’t. One demon’s blood was as sick and twisted to ingest as another’s, but at least I know Hart. Strange as it is, I know him. He’s been with me, well, since the beginning. Might as well drink the blood of the demon you know…

This can’t be my life.

“It’s not like I’ve been whoring you out or anything. I was nice and brought the blood to you.”

“And what d
emon
would willingly give their blood to me. To an abomination who, if you haven’t thought about it, will have both Heaven and Hell on her butt.”

“You have a nice butt.”

I’ll kill him.

In poker, they call it a tell. Something someone does when either he or she is lying or nervous. Hart has a tell. He can’t look at me when he’s fixing to lie or tell me something I don’t want to hear. Oh, I want to hear. I want to hear it all.

“Where did you get the blood, Hart?”

He rolls over me, hesitating slightly when he’s directly above me. Then, just like that, he’s on the floor, picking up the trash bag with all the little water bottles in it. All those little water bottles. Once filled with blood. What in the world did I do? He clears his throat. I don’t think I’m going to like this.

“I wouldn’t go downstairs if I were you.”

“Hart!” I scream at him, but he’s already left my room.

“Don’t go downstairs!” He yells back.

Yup, first thing I’m gonna do when I turn completely is go downstairs and kill him.

CHAPTER THREE

S
AM HAS HIS HANDS IN MINE
, lazily stroking my fingers with his. The sun isn’t as warm today, and I feel the coldness creeping in again, like I had before the demon blood.

I look up at him to ask what’s really going on. Why we are dressed like Walton’s Mountain rejects? Why we never go to the house? Why we always stay here in this one place? But when my eyes meet his, every word I can think of freezes in my throat.

Sam.

My Sam.

He’s so beautiful, if one used beautiful to describe a man. If one did, Sam would meet every requirement, check every box.

Sam, my Sam.

“Stay with me.” He whispers, his fingers leave mine and follow the curves of my skin down my arms. I giggle when they touch the tender spot behind my arm. He keeps going. Keeps staring at me. Keeps holding my gaze in his. “Stay with me.”

Yes. I want to stay with him. I’d stay with him forever. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. It’s all I want now. We can be together, here. Get married. Raise our kids. Take care of our grandkids. We can do anything we want as long as we’re together.

As long as I am Gracen and he is Sam and the world doesn’t disappear around us.

I don’t answer right away. It’s a simple yes, but yes seems so wrong. Like the word itself is too simple. Too plain for everything I mean for it to say.

Yes, I’ll stay with you.

Yes, I’ll love you forever.

Yes, I’ll be a good wife.

Yes, I want to have children with you.

Yes, you are my world.

Yes.

Yes…

I can see the reflection of storm clouds in his eyes before I notice the sky above me getting dark.

“Hart!” A woman yells in the distance. I can’t see her. Not fully. But I can see her wild red curls blowing in the wind. She’s dressed like us too. Her long skirt blows around her ankles.

Sam sits up. So do I.

Sam pales and his eyes grow wide. He focuses on the woman, not blinking. I don’t even know if he’s breathing. “Hart Blackwell. You come home to your mother right this instant. We are waiting for you. We’re all waiting!”

“Who is she?” I ask and grab his hand.

He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t blink. He only squeezes my hand tighter.

CHAPTER FOUR

I
WAKE UP WITH A START
and fall back against my pillows with a pain-filled scream followed by a my-insides-are-falling-out groan. My stomach is on fire, and I roll onto my side to try to keep some pressure off of it. Who knew getting stabbed would be this painful—probably everybody in the world, yeah, but still. It hurts. It. Hurts.

I hear footsteps and in no time Hart, wearing Sam’s body, is on the bed next to me. “Gracen, what happened? What did you do?” He asks, his hands grasp my shoulders and try to force me on my back so I can look at him.

There is no way on God’s green earth that I can do that. “Oww.” I say as lights flicker in my vision. Either a disco has invaded my brain or I’m fixing to have a migraine.

Or worse.

Like a slap to the side of my head, Hart disappears, and I’m not in my room anymore. I’m standing in an alleyway. One of those dark, creepy ones no one should ever be caught dead in. The sky is black over me, no stars, no moon, nothing. I look down at my watch and shake it. It is only one in the afternoon. Why is it dark?

Rats scuttle around the sides of the building, behind a trashcan, and disappears into a hole that leads—somewhere. I don’t really know where I am. I’ve never seen this place before, or at least I don’t think I have.

Something seems familiar, though. Something I can’t place. I smell pizza, which isn’t an awesome thing to smell in an alleyway with a dumpster not five feet from you.

But this is familiar. It feels like home. Like I’ve seen it before--or been there before. Something.

The dumpster catches my attention, as does the river of blood flowing from it toward me.

No… not toward me. It started with me. Footsteps. My footsteps make a path from me to whatever is hiding in the darkness of the dumpster.

I don’t want to look. I don’t. There’s no telling what I’ll see, and I know I won’t like it.

Still, I have to know.

There is so much blood. What if someone is hurt? I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try to help.

I blink and I’m there, beside the dumpster. I don’t even have to move. Just think about it and boom, there I am. I should probably dwell on that impossibility some, but it doesn’t seem important in the scheme of things.

The blood leads here.

The footsteps.

Mine.

I squat down and squint into the darkness, afraid of what I’ll see. Honestly, afraid of what I won’t see.

Big eyes stare up at me, big green ones that remind me of my own. For the first eighteen years of my life, I looked into those eyes every day. Her golden hair is matted to her head with dried blood, and her face is a rainbow of red, black, gray, green, and purple bruises. She’s slumped with her back against the wall, her legs bent back. Her arms have fallen to the side. I think her back is broken.

Blood oozes down the slit in her neck.

A hole is in the middle of her chest where her heart used to be.

She’s not dead.

“Stay with me,” she whispers, the bloody trail runs thicker with every word.

“Mama.” I reach out to her, determined to help. I can. I can fix it. I know I can. “Mama, who hurt you?”

“You did.” She coughs, splattering blood all over me.

“Mama!” I scream her name, crawling to get to her. I can fix it. I know I can. I can fix anything if I just try hard enough. I claw at her, trying to reach her, trying to fix her, but something it holding me back. Something I can’t get away from. It’s like it’s holding my waist, keeping me in place while I scratch and dig my fingernails into the concrete to get to my mother.

My eyes are shut. I can feel them shut. But I can see perfectly.

My mother is dying.

She’s dying in the alleyway of a street I don’t recognize, like a stray dog.

And I did it.

She said I did.

CHAPTER FIVE

“
G
RACEN, STOP.
J
UST STOP.”
I
HEAR HIM
. Sam. He’s calling to me, trying to get me to snap out of it, but I can’t stop staring at my mother.

“Why? I didn’t. I didn’t hurt you. I wouldn’t.” I try to help her, but my arms won’t move. Why won’t my arms move?

“Yes, you will.” She breathed heavily, a new trail of blood rolls down the crease of her mouth. “You’ll kill someone you love. You already did.” Her head lulls to the side, and I fall down beside her, thankful to have the iron grips on my arms gone. I pull her lifeless body into me and rock her, crying into her hair.

I didn’t do this.

I know I didn’t.

I wouldn’t.

I love my mother. I love her more than anything in the world, even though it might not appear that way as of late. I wouldn’t hurt her. So why did she say I did?

I gently lay her on the ground and tilt her head back. “Somebody help me!” I scream, my voice hoarse. “Please!”

“Gracen, stop!” I hear Sam say. Sam can shut it. I have more important things to do than listen to him talking in my head.

“Mama, please… Mama, please.” I say, pumping her chest thirty times before I give her two breaths. Thirty and two. Thirty and two. It’s what they taught us in CPR. It won’t help. She doesn’t even have a heart to pump, but I have to try. I can’t just let her die.

I hear laughing, deep male laughing, so I look up.

It’s Professor Mitchell—Seth. And he’s got a smile from ear to ear like he’s been giving the greatest gift ever given. “I told you, my sweet, sweet daughter. You killed your mother.”

Stars fall across the black sky. Purple lightening streaks through the clouds. “Now, you’ll kill the world.”

I
’VE NEVER HAD SUCH
a powerful headache.

I throw my hands over my temples and fight everything I have within me not to throw up. Even though my eyes are closed, I know exactly where I am—in my room. I can feel the soft mattress (with just the right lumps) under me, my pillow behind me, the soft hum of the air conditioner, and most of all, I feel Hart’s arms around me. He has me pulled to his chest, and he’s rocking me, telling me to stop whatever fit I’m having.

It’s over.

I don’t see anything now but red and blue lights dancing in my vision. I don’t feel anything except for my head trying to murder me.

It was a dream.

A nightmare.

No way was that a vision.

None.

A vision implied that it would happen, and I know for a fact that it’ll never happen. I won’t kill my mother, no matter what. That’s the one thing I can control in all of this. I might not be able to control who I am or who my father was, but I can control this. And I will control it. I will…

“I’m okay.” I tell Hart and try to lean back. He’s having none of it. He holds me tighter, and I don’t know what to think about it. This is the guy who used to torture me every night. Now he’s acting like he’s my boyfriend.

Of course, he also technically
is
my boyfriend since I’m dating Sam.

“Owww…” I groan loudly and double over against him. My head hurts so bad, and I feel the trickle of blood running down my nose.

Hart sees it too. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Without waiting for me to say yes, no, or kiss my butt, Hart picks me up into his arms and carries me Rhett Butler style out my door, down the hallway, and into our way to bright bathroom. Why in the world does it have to be so bright? Was it always this bright? I want to crawl under the covers and never, ever come out again.

Hart places my hands on the vanity, I guess so I won’t do a swan dive into the toilet, and gets a rag. While he’s getting it wet, I take the time to look in the mirror.

I can’t see myself exactly, not perfectly. My eyes hate me at the moment, and the migraine from hell is trying to kill me, but I can see enough.

Up until whenever the world ended for me, my hair had been blond like my mother’s. Then over the last few weeks, it had turned darker with some gray strands peeking through.

Now… now it’s jet black with streaks of gray thrown in like some goth wannabe. I’m not a goth wannabe. I like my blond hair and my natural highlights and everything else that has to do with me. I don’t want this.

Because my hair is so dark now, my skin looks whiter than Casper’s. My eyes have turned brown, and I swear the irises have gotten bigger, though I refuse to even fathom the possibility of that.

My reflection takes my mind off of the most important thing… well, the most important
things
. One, my headache, which seems to have subsided a bit. And two, the fact that I killed my mother.

No, I didn’t kill her. She’s alive and well in the next town over.

But it felt so real.

Just like those dreams with Hart—the ones where I saw the girls who were going to die. The girls I killed.

Just like those dreams with Sam—and now the new woman invading them.

They all feel so damn real.

Hart leans me back and dabs the white washcloth underneath my nose. Because this is extremely weird, I take the rag from him and dab my own nose. For a split second, I swear he looks like I’ve just taken his puppy away, like he’d actually wanted to help me. That made no sense, though. Not really. Then I figured it was all part of his plan, whatever plan that was. He had to have a plan, so this was probably part of it.