Soulless (The Heartless Series Book 2) (7 page)

“Sweetheart, I know you don’t know much about any of this, so let me explain it to you as slowly as I can. The world out there—” he points out the window where the eclipse is taken over the sunlight “—went to shit. Let’s just be frank about it. The Hell gate opened and things got out. Demons and other creatures I don’t even want to
think
about escaped. I--my brother--closed it before everything got out, but honey, a lot of stuff did. Scary things. Nightmare things.

“These demons weren’t even the worst of it.
They
aren’t the worst. The worst is out there. Outside that door. The things out there, Gracen, you have no idea. Things that will
try
to hurt you if they get a chance. They might not succeed, but it won’t stop them from coming after you. You have to be strong.” He runs his fingers through Sam’s hair. “Look, you were hurt. You needed blood. You couldn’t heal without it, and I knew that I didn’t have enough blood in me to heal you. So I did what I had to do. Do you really think it was that hard to get this many demons?”

I want to say yes. I shake my head no.

“No, it wasn’t. Demons are a dime dozen out there now. There’s been an eclipse going on for three days. People, the not so lucky ones who aren’t the suits for demons, are freaking out. Running. Hiding. It’s bad. Everything stopped on that day. There’s been no more school. No more businesses open. A few of the chains tried to stay open that first day, but people raided them. From what I can tell from the news, the humans have killed more people than the demons ever thought of… so far.”

I slump down on the bottom step and pull my legs toward my chest. Three days. The world died in three days. Here I thought we’d saved it.

“And it’ll just get worse. I promise you that. Unless we keep our heads together and don’t do anything stupid. The Hell gate is closed. That’s a very good thing. No other demons can get out. That means the more demons and things I kill, the more likely the world will go back to normal and write this off as a case of mass hysteria.”

“Do you really believe that?” Because I needed to.

“I have to,” he says simply.

I take a second to process everything. I understand it in as much as I can. Demons. Possession. Freaked out humans. Darkness. Confusion.

Me.

“So, you are a demon-hunting good guy?”

He shakes his head. “A disappointment to my kind. If only my mother could see me now…”

“I’m sure she’d be proud.” I smile.

He doesn’t. “You have no idea.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

H
ART LEANS HIS HEAD BACK AGAINST
the couch cushions. He rubs his temples like he has a headache. I have news for him; we all do.

I’m not sure what to do.

There are dead bodies in my living room, my kitchen, and who knows where else. I want to run upstairs. I want to run outside. I want to run over and hug up to Sam—who isn’t Sam.

Instead of doing any of that, my body sort of goes on autopilot. It won’t move. Truthfully, I don’t know how to make myself move. Where would I go? What would I do?

I want my mommy.

That thought snaps me out of it. It’s like a punch to the gut, and all the air is forced out of my lungs. It hurts, physically hurts, to think about my mother. I want to go home and be with her. No, we hadn’t parted on good terms the last time I’d been there, but that would be okay. Who cares about the past now? And, I suppose, she was right. Sam Asher wasn’t a good boyfriend for me.

My mother’s name is Ruby. She’s beautiful and smart. I don’t think I look much like her. Then again, I don’t think I look much like Seth, my angel father, either. She’s also very strongly opinionated and has told me how it was a time or two.

She didn’t want me to move out.

She most certainly didn’t want me to move in with Sam.

She didn’t want me to go to college at Crimson Ridge…

“Get away,” she’d said. “Do something with your life.”

I didn’t listen. I told her it was because UTCR had the best campus for my particular field of study. In reality, I had to change my initial major to go here—not that Mama knows that. Originally, I wanted to study biology or nutrition. I wasn’t sure which, but UTCR doesn’t have a program for that. So, I switched to teaching. All so I could go to college with Sam.

I’d been an idiot.

An.

Idiot.

I can’t stop loving him, though.

I want to stop loving him because he’s not really him.

I want the dead bodies out of my living room.

I want the world to go back to normal.

I want…

I want…

When had this all become about me?

Redheaded Gabriel is dead.

Lucien is in Hell.

People are dying.

It’s not all about me. None of it is about me.

Except I sort of guess it is. I’m the cornerstone, sad as it is. I can make things much, much worse.

I wonder if I can make things much, much better.

“Gracen?” Hart is staring at me like he’s afraid I’m either going to pass out or have some kind of nervous breakdown.

I have news for him… it could go either way.

“I’m fine,” I say and have to laugh. I’m fine is what I used to tell Tina when she messaged me. I’d lie and say it because I’d never truly been fine. I’d be having some sort of crisis, or I’d had a fight with Sam. Something… anything… but I wouldn’t be fine.

Funny how when the world ends, it puts things into perspective. All those things I worried about before. All those tests and anxiety I had over Sam saying something stupid or not being good enough for him—or worrying about our future. I wasted all that time. Because, truth be told, we don’t have a future.

None of us.

It’s only a matter of time before it all ends.

I can feel it inside, whispering to me. It’ll be over soon. Everything.

I know it as clearly as I know my own name. I’m Gracen. The world is ending.

Facts.

Basic. Simple facts.

My mind is swarming, and all I want is my mother. I want the mother who tucked me in when I was little and read me bedtime stories. It wasn’t like she was the most traditional mother. She’d been kind of thrown into it. Kind of nothing—she had been thrown into it. A young mother. Nineteen when I was born. In college. The University of Tennessee—Crimson Ridge. Met a man. Slept with a man. Got pregnant by a man.

Only the man wasn’t a man, was he?

He was, and still is, one of the most powerful of the Heavenly hosts.

Such is life.

“My mother used to check my closet.” Once I say the words, I instantly know I shouldn’t have. I can’t talk about my mother to Hart. He’ll know about my dream, even if he can’t read my mind anymore. He’ll find out about it, and he’ll use it against me somehow. I know him… at least I think I do.

“What are you talking about?” He sits up, puts his elbows on his knees and looks up at me with a very raised brow.

I know he’s worried. He shouldn’t be. Not that I’m not falling apart on the inside, because I am. I so am. But he shouldn’t be worried because he’s Hart Blackwell. He’s a demon, and demons don’t care. The bodies in my living room are a testament to that.

“I just… never mind.” I rake my fingers through my hair, which, I realize, isn’t near as dirty or messy or filled with dried blood as one would imagine a person would have after being unconscious. “You gave me a shower.”

“Focus!” He orders. “Damn, you’ve been all over the place since you woke up, and I get it, yeah, your mind has to be a jumbled pile of poo, but you’ve got to focus. It’s the only way we’re going to make it through this.”

“Thought you said I wasn’t going to anyway.” I smile sadly. I’m probably the only person who doesn’t want to make it through.

He sighs and tilts his head to the side. I’m pretty sure he’s had it with me and my crazy brain. Hate to tell him he made my crazy brain, so it’s all totally his fault. “Your mother. Why did you say you had her check your closet at night?”

I shrug, suddenly defensive. “You were there. You remember.”

“I never tucked you in. That seemed… gross.”

“Even for a demon.” I’m slightly amused. It feels wrong to be slightly amused, to be honest, in this type of situation with the bodies and the blood and the apocalypse and the demons.

“We have standards.” He winks and settles back against the couch cushions. It was his spot when he was Sam. Guess some things never change. “And remember, I never lost my humanity.”

“Oh yeah.” I scoff. “You were a real humanitarian.”

He glares. “I could’ve been much worse. What happened in your nightmares, that wasn’t me, remember? I had no control over it… doesn’t mean I didn’t like certain parts of it, but…”

“Yeah, don’t want to talk about that.” I don’t. I so don’t. If it were any other Sunday afternoon, we’d be sitting on the couch watching football. Sam played it. I loved to watch it. We were a match made in… well, not Heaven that’s for sure. As it is, I scoot around Gabriel’s body and plop in the chair no one ever really sits in because my chair has the body of a middle-aged woman in it.

All houses have
that
chair. The chair no one really uses. It just sits there like the black sheep of chairs. Or the chair picked last at dodgeball. It’s just sitting there, waiting to be used, waiting to be put in the game, waiting to fulfill its potential—but nothing. Day after day it just waits. Until one day, demons invade the earth, and its dreams of butt comfort are realized.

I realize Hart is staring at me. He blinks a few times, and I happen to wonder if I’ve said any of that out loud.

“Why did you bring up your mother?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Yes you do.”

Pushy jerk. “I’ve just been thinking about her.” Not a total lie. “I miss her. Want to go home. All that.”

“Interesting.” The fact that he doesn’t come back with some snarky remark concerns me greatly.

“It really isn’t.” And since I don’t want to talk about my mother anymore, I say, “We have to tell their parents.”

“Who?” I think he genuinely doesn’t know. I bet he hasn’t even considered the possibility that they might be on some missing person’s report somewhere.

“The bodies, Hart. The bodies. You know, the ones in our living room. We have to tell their parents. People will be missing them.” I get so sick thinking about that. How all these people died, died for me, died to keep me alive, died because demons came from Hell and possessed them, died for so many reasons and none of them, none of them, are their own fault.

Doesn’t seem fair.

“Are you suggesting we make a mass haul to the police department?” He picks the knife up off the table and fingers it in his left hand.

The swirls engraved on the metal catch my eye, and I’d give anything to be able to read it. I’m sure it means something. It feels like it’s on the tip of my tongue, the translation, the words. Like something is scratching in the very back, the very dark spaces, of my mind, telling me what the symbols mean and I can’t… make… it… come… out. It feels like a wall is blocking them from the rest of my brain, which is stupid I know, but that’s what it feels like. A mental block is what I think the cool kids call it.

“Their families need to know.” I’m very stern about this fact. If there is one good thing I can do, it is to tell those poor families not to set a place for their loved one at Christmas or Easter or even have hope that they’ll see him or her again. Hope can be a powerful thing. Hope can hurt more than any torture or any knife wound or any broken trust. You want to hurt someone, hurt them very badly, give them hope. Now that I think about it, hope is what Seth gave Hart to make him follow Seth’s plan for the last two hundred years.

Hart.

I can’t imagine how Hart is feeling. I don’t want to imagine.

I don’t want to care.

“And then do what? Huh? Let’s say we tell the families. Do you think they’ll believe us?”

“You said the world had gone to hell in the last three days. Maybe we can say you’re a big bad demon fighter and you saved them by getting rid of the demon and sending their souls to Heaven.”

…

…

…

I keep waiting for an answer. I don’t get one.

“I mean… you know, they need to know.” That’s all I can really say. The families need to know. They need to not get their hopes up every time someone knocks on their door.

“Say they do believe us. Say they are all on board with the demons-are-real thing, which, if you watch the news, people are starting to believe. Nobody really knows what’s going on, and it’s pretty crazy outside. Scary crazy.”

For Hart to be afraid of something, it makes the hairs on my arms stand up. I always thought of him as not afraid of anything. The big bad who put other big bads to shame. Now I see him for what he is, and I can’t believe I’ve been scared of him for all these years.

Coward.

“They—”

“Have to know. I know. You keep saying it, but you aren’t listening. I get it. You feel bad. I’d be worried if you didn’t, but trust me when I say these people… they were already dead.”

I don’t understand. I don’t have to say anything for Hart to catch that.

“Look, demons are nasty things. I can say that because I am one. Do you really think they would have let those poor bastards go if we asked nicely? No. They would’ve laughed in my face or ripped my head off, neither of which would’ve helped you. We are vultures. Actually, leeches is more accurate. We latch on to a body, a vessel, and we pretty much make it our bitch until the day it dies of old age. Bullets won’t kill a demon inside a human body. Won’t even phase it. Not even decapitation will do the trick, but normally the demon will leave on its own to keep from being a big pile of cut apart pieces.”

“Lovely.” Such a more interesting lesson than anything I’ve learned in college so far.

“Right?” He clearly doesn’t get my sarcasm. “The body can die, but the only thing that will kill the demon inside is this.” He shows me the knife. “They say it was forged by God himself.”

“Do you believe that?” Cause I want to. It would be cool, though I wouldn’t know how Hart got it. From Seth I suppose, but how… It would be nice to get the full story. I’m thinking I won’t.