Soulless (The Heartless Series Book 2) (5 page)

Not.

Die.

I remember last week when my biggest worry was getting to Professor Mitchell’s class on time. Oh, how those days are long gone. Gone like the Professor. I wonder if the angels caught up with him, if they killed him. Do angels kill
things
? They sure wanted to kill me.

All the thinking about angels makes me think about Lucien. I haven’t asked Hart about Lucien much because I don’t know how Hart will react. I suppose I should, but what do I say?
Sorry the brother angel you’ve hated all this time fell into Hell.
We need to talk about it, except I figure Hart wants to talk about it about as much as I do… which is none.

Honestly, I just want to sleep.

I’m so tired. Everything hurts. I broke the world. I want to ignore it.

Tina has messaged me about fifteen times with dates going back three days. She’s getting increasingly worried about me. Her last message says:
The world has gone to hell… CALL ME!

That’s a bold move for Tina since I’ve never called her in my life, and I know we both hate phones. Hate with a fiery passion.

I hesitate with my fingers over the keyboard, not really sure what to tell her. I want to ask what she means by “it’s gone to hell.” Surely not literally. And second, how do you tell someone what you are when what you are is the most evil creature that has ever been created, or will be after she fully turns?

Sam used to say, back when he was Sam, that once people knew me, the real me, they wouldn’t like me. I remember the fight when he told me that as clear as yesterday. I was in my room, sitting at my computer desk working on some assignment, and he just came in mad—and drunk. He started spouting off about decency and humanity and his mother, which I didn’t really understand because I liked his mother for the most part. I don’t know if she liked me, but that’s beside the point. He talked about his mother and whatever; I don’t think I was listening very much. I was too busy talking to Tina.

Then, out of the blue, he started yelling about how I wasn’t who I said I was, who I thought I was, and how when people really got to know me, they’d hate me. I wouldn’t have any friends if they knew how heartless I was inside, how soulless I was. If they knew how black my insides really were, they would run the other way.

That was the first night I noticed something was very, very different about him.

It wasn’t the last.

Anyway, I hold my fingers over the keys, trying to think of anything to say.
Hi
sounds too empty, too blah, too jovial for the torture I’ve been put through, the torture I’ll put the world through. I can’t say, “Hey! Sorry, I’ve been busy opening the gates of Hell, how’s California treating you?”

Or… “Hey, you know those boyfriend problems I’ve been having? Well, don’t worry about them. There is no Sam! Only Hart. Hooray!”

Hallmark doesn’t make a card for this. Facebook doesn’t suggest a status for it. It doesn’t fit in 140 characters for Twitter. What it is… what I am… what has happened, it can’t be explained.

“What?” Hart says from my doorway, and I jump like I’ve been shot. Ouch! “What, you yelled for me?”

“Like five minutes ago.” I huff and slam my computer shut. I’ll pretend to be cross at Hart because it’s just easier that way. I don’t want him to know I’m glad he’s around, glad anybody is around. At least with Hart I don’t have to explain anything. He knows what I am. He knows what he is, and never the twain shall meet.

He shrugs and shows me a knife in his hand. “Been busy.”

That blade. I know that blade. I see it every time I close my eyes, or I did before. It has carvings on it. Pretty, wonderful carvings around the blade, which are all parts of symbols that flow around the knife, like a river with many branches.

If it didn’t cut into me every night, I’d love it.

But it should not be in the real world.

Hart tilts the knife so that it glints in the soft lamplight from the one light in my room, a little white lamp with a purple shade and a pull string with a butterfly as a handle. I’ve had it since I was two. Aunt Willow gave it to me.

“Yeah, probably not happy to see this again.”

“Can’t say I am.” I can’t help it. I shudder back against my pillows and clench my fist in the comforter. It’s either that or take off through the closed window, in my pajamas, in the middle of daytime darkness, into God knows what…

“It’s mine. Well, I mean it’s Seth’s. He gave it to me when I first got out of Hell. Sort of a welcome back to Earth present.”

“That’s… nice.” I don’t know what else to say. It’s far from nice, and it’s from something I want in my house. It needs to be buried somewhere… preferable in Hart’s heart. I keep reminding myself that this nice and sweet guy, who looks just like Sam and acts like he did before he changed, isn’t real. Inside, he’s a demon. An evil thing who has tortured me for years, who has made me think I was crazy, who drove my aunt crazy…

“Can you fix her?” I say before I think.

Once the words are out and I see his confused expression, I want to take it back. No, I don’t want to take it back. It is a very valid question, but I don’t think it’s what we need to discuss now. Since I’ve woken up, my entire life has felt like one big run-on stream of consciousness. Everything is so jumbled, and I’d love for Hart to sit down and explain everything that’s happened in the last three days all at once. No more throwing things together to understand. Hart is keeping things from me. I know he is.

Why?

What had happened for him not to want to tell me? Why is the world black in the afternoon? What exactly happened to his brother?

I don’t ask any of that. I just ask if he could fix
her
. There are so many hers in the world, that I’m assuming are in this possible Apocalyptic mess, but I know Hart understands who I’m talking about. Instead of admitting it like a man, his mouth twitches and his eyes turn hard, making the red glint brighter.

“Who?”

“You know who.”

“I know we have a hell of a lot more things to worry about in the world besides her.” He wipes the knife with a rag, turning it from white to red. I smell the blood and my mouth waters.

I hate myself for it.

Hart obviously notices my reaction because he goes from anger to a big smirking jerk in less than two seconds flat. “You want it, don’t ya baby?” He sounds like a seventies’ porn star, not that I know what that exactly sounds like. Okay, maybe that one time…

“Don’t change the subject.”

“You did. Not me. You and your supersensitive demon blood bloodhound nose you got going. I’m surprised you haven’t smelled it before now.”

“It’s not the smell.” It’s about seventy-five percent the truth. It’s not the smell, not really. I can smell the sweet scent of iron and awesomeness and, yeah, I want it. But it’s also the visual. The red dripping from the blade. The way it smears the white cloth.

I want it.

God help me, I want it, and, like I said, I hate myself for it.

Last week, I wanted steaks and cheeseburgers. Hell, during my junior year in high school, I thought about becoming vegan for all of a day. Now this… now the blood, demon blood—it makes something inside me wake up.

The room dims in my vision, even though it was pretty dim to start with, and all I can focus on is the rag, the blood, and my heartbeat in my ears as I want it. More than that, I need it. I. Need. It.

I need…

I have to fight it. He can’t know.

“You can’t hide it from me.” He smirks brighter. I guess he’s happy to have the conversation of Aunt Willow out of the way for the moment. I have news for him. It ain’t.

“I’m not hiding anything.”

“You are.”

“I’m not.” I could admit defeat like an adult and move on with my life, but apparently, I want to act like a stubborn two-year-old. I even cross my arms and lean back against my pillow to prove my point. The point that I’m not lying when I totally am.

No matter how much I don’t want it. No matter how much I believe it changes me into a monster. I know deep down that I have to drink it, or I’ll die. Guess that goes back to the whole would-the-world-be-better-off-without-me thing.

“Sweetheart, your eyes are black. Like black. Like no whites at all. That’s what happens when you feed.”

“Ewww…” Both from the fact that my eyes become all demony and because for three days, while I’ve been unconscious, Hart Blackwell has been feeding me.

“Beggars can’t be picky.” He leans on the doorway, and his smirk fades fairly quickly. “No.”

Huh? “No what?”

He bites his lip and lets out a long breath, looking the blade over like it holds all the secrets of the universe on it. After all, it has those symbols carved on it. For all I know, they are ancient symbols that tell how the world was created, how it will end… and who killed Kennedy.

“No, I can’t fix your Aunt Willow. I wish I could. I’m sorry.”

I expect to be sad or mad. I expect, like any normal person, that I’d be the least bit angry. And I am. I’m furious at him, and still… I laugh. It surprises even me when the first beats of laughter erupt, and I nearly fall over. It isn’t until my stab wound starts to make itself known that I try to stop.

Hart hasn’t moved this entire time. He keeps looking at me like I have fifteen eyeballs and seven heads. Maybe I do. If my eyes are black from the blood lust—again, ewww—then why wouldn’t I sprout fifteen heads or seven noses? Who knows what an actual abomination looks like? Angels in the book of Revelation aren’t exactly known for their beauty. Lots of heads. Lots of mouths. Lots of ugly things I don’t even want to think about.

The laughter won’t stop.

I’m pretty sure I’ve lost whatever’s left of my mind.

“I’m sorry?” I laugh through the tears. I can barely see between the tears and the black eyes. Black eyes are a pain. Good to know.

“That’s what I said. I’m sorry.”

I laugh harder.

“Have you finally gone crazy? Cause you picked a fine time. Guess it fits the world, though.”

Thinking about the world sobers me up, but I still have a hard time keeping my laughter to myself. It comes out in little hiccups that burn my throat and hurt my stab wound. Stupid stab wound. Stupid knife. Stupid Seth. Stupid Hart. Stupid world.

Stupid me.

“You’re sorry? The great Hart Blackwell, who has not only driven me crazy and done things to me… and the same Hart Blackwell who possessed my aunt and lived with me until I was sixteen… The guy who drove my aunt so crazy she has to live in a mental institution is sorry.” The longer I talk, the less jovial I am and the more venom comes out. With every word, I can feel the fire rising within me, fire that will need to come out eventually.

He shrugs. He actually, freakin, shrugs. “I’m a demon.”

I glare. Just one little glare. One little glare that I feel from the tip of my head to the bottom of my feet. I feel the fire in my stomach grow so hot I can’t hold it inside, and the shadowy tunnel in my vision turns red. Next thing I know, I hear a thud and Hart is halfway up the wall, his toes way off the floor, and his face—Sam’s face—is turning an interesting shade of red. The same shade as the red I see in my vision, now that I think about it. He’s dropped the knife, and he has his hands over his throat like someone is choking him, squeezing the life out of him.

As for me, I feel a tingling in my toes. That’s how it starts. The longer and harder I picture myself squeezing Hart’s little neck, though, the more powerful the feeling becomes. It’s like energy moving through me—a trickle at first, and then a full on mountain of marbles rolling around inside, building and building, faster and faster, meeting at my stomach, fueled by the fire in my belly.

I smile.

This power… it’s euphoric.

My eyes flutter, and I take the time to enjoy it. Enjoy the feeling of not having a care in the world, of all the nervousness just drifting away as the tingles, the orgasmic feeling, course through me. I raise my hand out to him, my eyes still fluttering, and gently curl my fingers ever so slowly, but I put every bit of fire I have inside me in it. Hart gulps against the wall, fighting off the invisible hand holding him in place.

It’s fun, having this reversal. He’s tortured me for so long, made me afraid. Now, I’m even more powerful than him. I can snap his neck if I want, maybe even send him back to Hell. Truthfully, I have no idea what my powers can do, and that should scare me.

But it doesn’t.

It feels too good.

Like I’m free.

Like every particle inside of me is humming, singing, for the first time—living.

My eyes shut, and for a second, a brief second, I give into it. The feeling. The power. Nothing can stop me. I’m an abomination, right? I’m powerful. I’m strong. I’m the thing even the angels and demons fear. Or I will be whenever I fully turn.

If I’m this strong now, I can’t imagine what will happen whenever I do the last thing, whatever that may be, to change completely.

I can feel it.

The powerfulness of the demon blood mixing with angel blood in my DNA. It’s addicting, and I want more and more…

I want to hurt Hart.

I want to hurt him for hurting me.

I want to destroy him.

I want to destroy the world.

I am the world.

My eyes dart open, and I lower my hand, releasing Hart who crumbles to the floor. What did I do? What did I do! I sit up on my knees—not caring how bad it hurts and noticing that, for once, it doesn’t hurt—and rock.

Oh God, I enjoyed that.

I enjoyed hurting him.

It was powerful.

It was addicting.

It took me over until I couldn’t find Gracen anymore, just it, just the thing that wanted revenge, filled with hate and loathing.

Evil.

It was evil.

I can still feel remnants of it in my mind, telling me to stop being a baby, to embrace it again. Hell, drink more demon blood and see what I can really do.

It’s whispering to me, wanting out, that part of me that is the Abomination, the dormant part that’s been with me all these years, the part I didn’t know about.

The part that is more evil than anything I’ve never heard about before.