Breathless (17 page)

“Change it to what? Your destiny? Is that why you brought me down here?” I know I should move away. I don’t have a soul or a heart, so moving back should be easy. I’m not attached to this woman in any sort of way. She’s Gracen’s family—Hart’s, not mine.

Not…

Amelia touches my cheek, and I instinctively lean into her touch and shut my eyes. I don’t know what’s going on, but just for a split second I want to feel whole, loved, complete. I haven’t cared about anything since my soul left; that annoying, whining little Gracen who never stood up for herself and would do anything to make people like her. And now here I am, allowing Amelia to manipulate me.

Because I know deep down that’s what she’s doing. She manipulating me so I will do what she wants. And what she wants is for me to open the Hell gate, let everything down there out so she can rule over them all.

Big career goals, this one.

I know her plan.

I know she’s using me.

I can’t seem to care.

I place my hand on top of hers gently and open my eyes.

“What do you want me to do?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Gracen

“
W
HAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?”

The old tree we are standing under looks exactly like the old tree I used to dream about. Except now I can’t see the whole picture. Only what the lantern will allow me to see. I never thought I’d miss the sun so much. The sun… Oatmeal… my body.

I miss a lot of things.

I miss being about to touch things. Funny how people take that for granted until they no longer have the ability to touch anything. I’m standing here with Hart, but I’m not. It’s like we’re in two different dimensions. I suppose we are.

He’s in the real world. Leaning against the tree, breaking a twig into a bunch of little pieces, and looking up at the dark, cloud-covered sky like it holds some sort of key to the universe.

I’m in the Abyss. Everything is the same, black and white and gray. Everything is distorted just a tad. Just enough to make me feel uneasy. Course, I think I’d feel uneasy anyway. I don’t know where Seth went. That’s not true. I know where he went. He went to get the book. What he’ll do with it, I don’t know. For all I know I could be standing here talking to Hart when, boom, I’m cast somewhere else and destroyed.

It makes me sad to think about it.

But if it saves the world, who am I to complain?

Me.

My feelings for Hart.

They don’t matter in the big picture.

People are dying.

If I can stop it, no matter the cost, I have to do it. There’s no other way around it. Do I want to leave Hart? No. Not when I’m just now realizing my feelings for him—those feelings I never actually realized until it was too late. We have things we need to talk about, things I’m pretty sure neither of us want to talk about, not with however long we have in this world. But we need to talk about them—it—whatever is going on between us. It has to be addressed and realized before we can deal with all the rest.

I have to know that Hart is willing to do whatever it takes to take down the Abomination, even letting me go. He made me a promise once that he wouldn’t let me kill my mother. I took it to mean that he would kill me first. Turns out, he had other ideas.

Things like that can’t happen when we go after the Abomination. We have to be on the same page, even if that page is the saddest, most painful in the book.

“Hart…”

“Don’t.” He stops me before I can say anything else. He’s still breaking the twig into small pieces.

“Hart, we have to talk.”

“Talk about what? There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Nothing… nothing to talk about? I killed you, Hart!”

Hart flinches but doesn’t say a word. Whatever wall he’s putting up, whatever game he’s playing, it needs to end and end now. It doesn’t do anybody any good, and who knows how much time we have left.

If I could grab him and shake him, I would. “Damn it, Hart. Talk to me! Please.”

He throws the remaining microscopic part of the twig on the ground and finally looks me dead in the eyes. His gaze is white hot, electric, terrified. “What do you want me to say, huh? You took Seth’s side over mine.”

“Seth is the only way we can stop the Abomination. You know that.”

“What I also know is that he doesn’t give two shits about you. He could, right at this very moment, be doing something stupid the book told him to do. There’s no telling what’s going to happen to you, and you don’t even care!”

“I don’t care!” I didn’t mean to yell. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my time with Hart yelling at him. Seems to be where we are, though. Maybe yelling at him is easier than facing whatever we have between us.

“And that’s the problem, Gracen. In a nutshell, that’s our problem.” Hart is breathing heavy, and he’s looking down at me like it physically hurts him to do so. “You are much too good for this world, do you know that? You… You would sacrifice yourself—hell, you already did, if I hadn’t screwed it up—so others could live. You don’t want to be alive if it means hurting other people in the process.”

“What exactly are you saying? Because I’m not following.”

He takes a deep breath and reaches out toward my face. His fingers tickle as they pass through my skin. He sighs as tears fill his eyes, and he pulls his hand away.

“You may be okay with sacrificing yourself for others. But I’m not okay with losing you.”

I stare at him, unable to form words. I have lots of words, lots of things going around my mind. Mainly how this isn’t right. How we can’t have these feelings for each other. He tortured me. Hurt me…

He kept me safe.

He kept my family safe.

He took care of me.

He never hurt me outside my dreams, and even then, it was my own brain doing what my crazy brain did.

This is all too fast, too quick. How could a stupid curse know I love someone before I did? I can’t love him.

I can’t…

He runs his fingers through my skin again, and I shiver. I want more than anything to reach out and touch him, actually touch him. Like I did with the glass when I wanted him and Seth to shut up.

“I can’t put myself above the others, Hart. I just can’t. If I can save them, then I have to. I couldn’t live with myself otherwise.”

I swear a tear is about to drop from his eye. It’s strange talking to Hart like this, in his Hart body. I don’t know what happened, and I don’t know how he’s alive, but I’m grateful for it.

“And I can’t lose you again. So I guess we are at an impasse.”

“Not really. Just two people talking about the same thing. Just one of them being more stubborn than the other.”

His lip quirks. “Don’t talk so bad about yourself. You aren’t that stubborn.”

It’s nice to see him joking. Reminds me of Sam before Sam went weird. I loved that about Sam. He could get me smiling when no one else could. He could make me want to smile when I didn’t think I had anything to smile about. Guess Hart can do the same thing.

He suddenly gets very quiet. I don’t like it when that happens. It isn’t normal for Hart not to have something to say. “What’s wrong?” Like there aren’t a million things wrong right now.

He shakes his head and looks everywhere but in my eyes. “Hart, tell me. This isn’t the time to keep secrets or baggage or anything else. We have to be honest with each other.”

“You saw Colleen.” He finally looks at me. His voice is strained.

It’s my turn to look away. “I did. In the Abyss. She seems… I can see why you loved her. She’s special.”

He smiles sadly. “Yes, she is. She was…” He clears his throat and kicks some dirt with the toe of his shoe. “Did she tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“Tell you about me? About the reason she died?” Nervous energy pulses off of him, almost too thick to breathe.

I shake my head. “No. She didn’t tell me anything. And it doesn’t matter now anyway. What happened back then is in the past.”

He scoffs. “In the past… Gracen, it could happen again. I can’t lose you like I lost her… I can’t. If you wonder why I can’t watch you sacrifice yourself, that’s why. I can’t lose someone else I…”

He stops his sentence abruptly. I assume he was going to say love, but I could be wrong. We don’t have time to dwell on this. I wish Colleen had given me a message to give him. Something to make him feel better about everything. Then again, Hart seems to be so full of self-loathing, I wonder if anything she could say would make him feel better.

The best thing to do is to move on, not talk about Colleen and the past anymore. We need to talk about stopping the Abomination so we can have a future.

“It’s strange, seeing you like this.” It’s my best idea to change the subject.

“This?”

“In your Hart body. Your real Hart body. Was there not… never mind.” I don’t think I want to ask him that… I don’t think I want to know.

“Was there not what?”

His eyes are twinkling, and I can tell he’d much rather talk about this than talking about Colleen or how we are going to destroy the Abomination. I feel the same way. I’d rather talk about this too, but the simple fact is that no matter how much we try to ignore it, the Abomination will always be there. Like a time bomb. We have no idea how long we have before she goes off, and I think we should make the best of our time by making plans.

However, I really just want to relax. Stop fighting. Stop talking about the past and Colleen, even if that makes me a bitch. Just be… here… for a few minutes. Here while I try to sort out my crazy feelings for Hart, who may or may not be a zombie.

Think about it.

“Was there not… um… residual damage from being buried all that time?” There. I asked. Now it’s up to him to figure out what the heck I mean.

“Um… No? I crawled out of the ground this way. Well, I mean dirtier. Took the clothes from a farmhouse. No big deal.”

“And you’ve eaten?”

He narrows his eyes. “Yes…” he draws out. “Why?”

“Just wondering what sort of thing you are now, that’s all.” That’s all… when in the world did everything get so screwy that “I just want to know if you are a zombie” is a normal part of a conversation?

“I ate normal food. I took a normal shower. No demon blood. No human blood. No nothing. For all I can figure, I’m human again. I’m… me.”

“And Lucien’s Lucien.”

I didn’t mean to make him worry about his brother, but one mention of him and it was like a switch went off in Hart’s mind. “I haven’t seen him in a few minutes.” He stares through me and into the house. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this.

“I should check on him.” He moves.

I move.

I don’t mean to move. I mean, I do. I move so he can get by me, and he moves so he can get around me, but the way he stepped to the side and I stepped to the side caused him to step right through me.

Not just through me, but inside me. Like we stop at the exact same spot at the exact same time.

I freeze.

He freezes.

We just sort of stand there. Connected but not.

Feeling each other, but not.

Warm.

I feel warm, and it’s strange because all I’ve felt since I became a soul was cold. Just like I had at the beginning. Cold.

But standing here with Hart, I’m warm. It’s like a wave that is traveling through me. Warm. Calm. Happy.

I can see things too.

Things in color.

I can see the house, even though my back is to it, and I realize that I’m seeing through his eyes.

He blinks.

I blink.

He’s warm.

I’m warm.

I can feel his heart beating.

Something I never thought I’d feel.

The real heartbeat of the real Hart Blackwell.

I can feel his breathing. It feels so strange to feel breathing, though I suppose it’s because I don’t have to anymore.

I don’t, and he does.

This isn’t how I thought our lives would turn out.

I guess that’s a good thing because if I had imagined it, it would’ve meant I was insane. No normal person would dream up a world like this.

Why would they?

“Gracen?” I hear Hart, but not with my ears. It might not make sense. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t. I don’t hear him like normal. I hear him in my head like I used to when he was a demon.

“How are you doing that?” I think back.

“I’m not doing anything. I’m just… this is weird.”

“Understatement.” I laugh, and the sound comes out of his mouth.

Whoa.

“Stop that!” he says in my mind.

I can’t help but laugh, and again it comes from his lips. “Don’t like being controlled by someone else?”

I can hear him sigh. “We can’t stay like this forever, you know? I don’t think I can move.”

Hart’s nose feels itchy so I reach up and scratch it. Holy cow, I moved it! I moved his hand!

“Did you feel that? Did you feel it!”

“Feel what? My nose was itching so I scratched it.”

“No… no that’s not what happened. I moved it. Me.”

Hart breathes harder. “Gracen, it wasn’t you. It was me. I swear it. Now as much as I love being inside you, all puns implied, I need to go and check on my brother. Are you going to be okay if we separate?”

“Pft. Sure. I don’t need you.” I am a totally non-convincing liar. I shut my eyes and get ready for the bitter cold to bite me in the butt again.

“Sorry, but I need to get to my brother. I need….”

His voice trails off followed by a very quiet, “What the hell?”

I open my eyes and expect to be looking at the business end of a tree. Instead, I’m standing in the living room, still inside Hart. “How did you do that?”

“I have no idea,” I say before I step out of him to avoid transporting us to Roanoke or something. Just as I expected, the cold hits me hard when I’m not connected to him anymore. I turn and look at me, and he’s giving me the same exact worried expression he’s given me on so many occasions. I wish I could make everything better for him. I wish I could promise that everything would be okay. But I can’t.

I can’t even lie to myself about that.

I think we see Lucien at the same time. He’s slumped over on the couch, just like we’d left him. But there is something very different about him. Something…