Breathless (10 page)

Maybe that one wasn’t a smart idea.

The point is that I’ve tried everything to get my big brother in this little room to unchain me so I can save the world, and he hasn’t even said one word to me.

I heard him talking to someone behind his locked door. I guess it’s locked. I don’t suppose it would mean anything if it wasn’t. Not like I can break these chains or anything.

I used to could.

Oh, there was a time I could’ve broken these chains. Easy. Child’s play. It’s very difficult going from that thing that can destroy people, can talk people into killing themselves (not my finest moment if I have to be honest), and get into people’s minds to this… this… human. This body that can die and hurt. That, even though I can’t see, I can tell that I’ve gotten bruises on my wrists from trying to break out of my chains and failing.

Failing.

Miserably.

It’s dark.

It’s cold.

It’s miserable.

I’m weak.

I’ve always hated being weak.

I never thought Lucien would get the upper hand on me.

I’ve very ashamed that he did.

He cooked me breakfast? How did I not see right thought that?

He was nice to me. After everything I’ve done to him… not just as a human, not just as his brother, but as the demon Hart… and I expected everything to just be all right. To just be okay and go back to the way it was before.

Am I really that naïve?

I used to tell Gracen she was the naïve one. The one who didn’t know anything about the world. The slow person who wouldn’t know anything about anything unless she was told, and even then she was as slow as Christmas.

I didn’t believe any of that. Not really. I always thought Gracen was the smartest person I’d ever met…. Well, I mean she could be dense at times. We all can I suppose. Like when she forgot to charge her phone before we left for vacation once, and we got lost because we had no GPS… demon senses be damned, sometimes a thing just gets lost. And the time I trusted my brother to cook us a nice meal and didn’t even think about it being a trap.

I’m a moron.

A complete and utter moron.

I never thought Lucien would do anything like this to me. Not after he realized we were brothers. I guess I sort of wanted to go back to how it was before. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? I mean before the hate and anger and resentment. You know, when we were like… eight.

Maybe the big brother in my dreams, the one I miss so badly is just one that I never actually knew. Maybe it wasn’t our relationship. Maybe, just maybe, it was something I made up. I want that relationship with my brother, the closeness, the friend. I don’t know if we can get there again.

I don’t know if we ever were there.

Truth be told, I don’t know if Lucien is even here in the house with me. He could be long gone for all I know. Not like I could stop him.

I can’t stop him or Seth. I’m just a damn human chained to a wall. Watching the world end around him though a little window too small to crawl out of.

I swear I’ll break my wrists to get out of these freakin’ chains!

“You son of a bitch. You have no right!” I scream. I’m well beyond mad. Well behind any type of rage imaginable. I want him to let me out… now. I pull at my chains, hurting my wrists, but I don’t care.

“Let me out!” I lean against the wall, more like collapse against it. Defeated. I’m out of air. I’m out of options. I can only see when the lightning lights up the sky, which is pretty terrifying actually. Lightning shouldn’t be purple. It just shouldn’t. Sweat pours from my forehead, and I wipe it away with the inside of my elbow. I can’t see how I’m sweating and freezing at the same time. My luck… I’m getting the flu or something worse.

I seem to recall feeling a bit sickly in the army around Christmas. I don’t remember if I ever got over it.

Exhausted, hoarse, tired, I lean my head back against the cool wall and shut my eyes. I listen for any sign that Lucien is outside the door, upstairs, anything. I hear nothing but the thunder outside, which sounds like trumpets, and my own breathing.

My own breathing.

It sounds so strange.

It feels even stranger.

My old tired body relaxes, and my eyes become heavy. I flutter them open, but it is impossible to tell if I’m awake or asleep. It’s so dark. It’s so …

“Hart.”

A woman’s voice. Not just a woman’s voice, but
her
voice.

A voice I haven’t heard in so long.

I have to be dreaming…

“Not dreaming, Hart. Or should I call you Jessup?”

A soft yellow light fills my sight, and I open my eyes to see what’s doing it. The lamp is on at the same place Lucien was sitting before, only the light isn’t as harsh. The light doesn’t hurt my eyes nearly as much. Maybe I’m dreaming… no matter what she says.

“You never did believe me.” She smiles sadly.

Her.

Colleen.

She looks just as I remember. Long brown hair in ringlets, ever so perfect. They fall around her shoulders in a beautiful cascade. It’s pulled partway up behind her ears, and little curls fall around her entirely too white face. Her lips are barely visible. Her eyes are a milky white color. Not the same white as Gracen emits from time to time, but more of a cloudy color. Like an older person with cataracts.

Colleen never got to be old. I saw to that.

She has on a long white lacy dress that goes up from the floor and stops right under her neck. She still has the flowers in her hair. She looks exactly how she did when she died.

I wish she didn’t.

“What are you doing here?” Normally I would say something snarky. It’s who I am. Snarky would be a good thing to be. Except there’s nothing snarky coming to mind at the moment. And I don’t want to be that way with her. I don’t know if I’m dreaming or if I’m seeing a ghost or if Gracen did something and it wasn’t only me and Lucien who crawled out of our grave. But Colleen is here. I can see her. I wish I could reach out and touch her. Just one more time.

“I think the better question is what are you doing here?” She smiles at me warmly. She should never smile at me.

“My stupid brother locked me in here. No big deal.” I show her my chains. Like she can do anything about it. Who knows, though? She got herself in here. Maybe she can get us both out. “You’re dead,” I say ever so helpfully.

“So are you. Technically.”

“Touché. What are you doing here?” I can’t imagine she can do anything important like help me. It’s probably my crazy brain doing what my crazy brain does when it’s gone crazy… God, I sound like Gracen.

“She’s why I’m here actually. Gracen.” Colleen stands and walks toward the middle of the room. The light goes with her. It wasn’t coming from the light at all. It was coming from her.

“What about her? Do you know something that can help?” I want to say so many things to her—to Colleen. I need first and foremost to say I’m sorry. It’s my fault all of this happened to her. I need her to know how sorry I am… I need…

“It isn’t about what you need, Hart. It’s about what the world needs.”

“Why do you call me Hart?” Because that’s the logical question right now. “You never called me Hart.”

“It’s what you like to go by now, right? I’ve watched you… for many years. I’ve watched the man you’ve become.”

I want to die.

I’ve felt pretty shitty about myself for the past few days, every since the whole hey, guess what… your brother didn’t shoot you. But that was nothing compared to this. Colleen saw me. She’s watched me. All this time. She saw the thing I became.

I never wanted that for her.

I never wanted to become this thing, to be honest. Ever.

And she’s seen me at my worst.

I lick my lips because they have become so incredibly dry. “Colleen, listen. I know you must hate me. You have every right.”

“I don’t hate you.” She tilts her head like I have seventeen eyes and stares at me. “I could never hate you.”

“Then I know this is a dream, because the real Colleen would never say any of that to me.”

DreamColleen kneels in front of me. I can smell her… not decaying. Lavender. She smells like lavender. Just like Gracen used to smell.

“I don’t hate you. I never have. I never could. Do I like what happened? No. Do I wish it was different? Yes. But—”

“Do you know?” I cut in. My already raspy voice cracks, and I have to fight back tears. Funny how I was never really an emotional person when I was first human. Now it seems all I do is try to keep from crying. I’m a mess. Must be my hormones. “Do you know what I did to Lucien? That I killed him.”

She looks down, averting my eyes. “I know.”

I bite my lip and blink back those damn tears. “Then how…” Stupid freaking sniffles. “How can you say that nothing is my fault? How can you say that I’m a good man when all the evidence points to me being a bastard in every since of the word?”

Colleen reaches toward me… her hand flows through mine, and my bones feel more chilled than before. She seems sad that she can’t touch me. I feel the same way.

“This is just a dream, Jessup, if you’d rather I call you that. When you wake up, you’ll convince yourself that I was never here. That I never talked to you.” She leans over and her barely there lips slide over my cheek, leaving a trail of chill bumps in their wake. “That I never kissed you. You will convince yourself because that’s the type of person you are, Jessup Hart Blackwell. And you’re right. It is a dream. But you are also wrong because I truly am here. I’m here right now with you. And I have a message.”

“What kind of message?” I don’t want to shut my eyes. If I do, I’m afraid she’ll go away.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so calm.

My body is relaxing.

Relaxing.

Relaxing.

My breathing is easing.

The weight I’ve carried on my shoulders for so long is fading.

Fading away.

Fading…

Fading.

I hear Lucien yelling my name.

I don’t care.

I’m with Colleen.

In a dream, but still. With Colleen.

And for the first time since whenever, I feel… at peace. “I’m watching out for Gracen. I saw her. I saw her soul, her spirit.” I try to move, but I can’t. I’m too tired. I can’t even keep my eyes open.

“You rest now, and I’ll watch out for her. I promise. I’ll bring her back here with me, and we can come up with a plan, together. It’ll be all right, Jessup. I promise you that.”

Just like that.

The warmth is gone.

The light is gone.

The feeling is gone.

The calmness is gone.

I’m being shaken, rather violently, by I’m assuming, if I could see, my brother. He has his massive hands clamped to my shoulders, shaking and shaking until I’m pretty sure my brain is going to explode through my eye sockets.

“Hart, snap out of it! Hart!”

“Stop it!” I try to push him off, but the stupid chains won’t let me, so I kick him instead. Next time, chain my legs too, idiot. “Stop shaking me. I’m fine.”

“You aren’t fine.” He moves the lamp away so it’s not blinding me. Small favors and all that. “You weren’t breathing.”

“What? No… yes I was. I was just dreaming.”

You won’t believe I was here. You’ll say you were dreaming. And you are. But I am here. I am…

“No, you were busy not breathing and scaring me half to death.” He slides down the wall next to me, and there we are shoulder to shoulder.

“Ain’t this a Hallmark moment?”

“It’s something.” Then Lucien gets very quiet and very interested in his fingernails. Not something I like to see. “Did you really mean it, or were you just saying anything to get me in here and let you out?”

“Depends. Which part?” I said so many things. Some I meant. Some I didn’t. I suppose they all have a little bit of the truth thrown in there for… something.

“About Colleen. Are you sorry about what you did to Colleen?”

I don’t even have to think or hesitate. “Yes. You have no idea.”

He seems to accept my answer. I don’t know if he accepts my apology, though. “Unchain me. Let me go so we can get to Gracen.” I mean Gracen’s spirit like DreamColleen said. Lucien doesn’t take it that way. Nor should he.

“What do you expect to happen when you do find her?”

“I expect to talk some sense into her. Make her stop. Make her fight what’s going on inside her and stop this madness. I expect to get her back.”

Lucien shakes his head. I don’t like it when he shakes his head. Add that to the list of things Lucien does that I don’t like.

“Let’s say I let you out? What then? What if you find her but can’t stop her with your considerable charm? What then? Are you prepared for what might come next? Are you prepared for the fact that Seth might find, if we are incredibly lucky, some way to destroy her… are you prepared to do what has to be done even if it means killing the person you love more than anything in this world?”

I turn toward Lucien and look him directly in the eyes. “Yes.”

I don’t flinch.

I don’t hesitate.

It isn’t the first time I’ve lied to my brother.

It won’t be the last.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Gracen

T
HEY SAY YOU CAN’T GO HOME
again. For my part, I wish it were true. I don’t want to be here. I’d rather be out there on the street with those souls or whatever coming after me like I did this to them. I guess to them it looks like I did. I look like the thing that destroyed them… save for the black hair and big ole wings on her back.

She’s pretty scary.

And she’s standing in my living room.

Well, my living room in the apartment I share with Sam.

And she’s looking right at me.

And she’s smirking.

Smirking at me.

I don’t say anything. I don’t even know for sure if she can see me, but if she can’t, I’d be surprised because she sure looks like she can see… something… with her big ole white eyes and terrifying grimace. Grimace is a good word. Much better than smirk.

She’s grimacing in my direction.

I just stay still in case she’s not looking at me.

I can live in denial.