Breathless (2 page)

A hand grasps my shoulder and pulls me back.

I’m pinned down on the ground before I can fully comprehend what’s going on. I can’t see what’s holding me down, but I know it can’t be my brother. I claw at its face to try to get up, but my hands are pinned down over my head, and I can’t make my legs move.

I’m trapped.

The lightning fills the sky.

For a split second, I can see.

For a split second, I wish I couldn’t.

CHAPTER FOUR

Hart

“
L
ET ME GO!”
I
PULL MY
hands as hard as I can to get them away from his, but he’s strong for an old fogie, and I can’t move an inch. This isn’t going well, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. Damn human body.

“Come on, Hart. Lost your edge?” Seth Mitchell… the freakin’ angel I hate… smirks down at me. I’ll kill him. That seems like the thing to do. If I could move, or if I knew how to do it. “I hear it comes with being human.”

I hate being human.

Hate.

A few times in my incredibly long life, I thought about being human again. I sort of squandered my twenty years on this earth as a human the first time, and I always thought—when I could think—that if I had my time to do over again, I’d do it differently. I’d be a better human. I wouldn’t hurt people. I wouldn’t hurt my brother. I would fight the rage. I’d be a good upstanding citizen.

So here I am, human again, with a second chance because of a girl who stupidly loved me, and the only thing I can think of is killing Seth. Murder. Revenge.

Maybe that’s all I’m good for.

It kills me, but I stop struggling. I’m tired. He’s strong. Sort of defeats the purpose of fighting if I can’t even move. I could spit on him. It might not do anything, but it would make me feel better.

“You have no idea what you’ve done.” He glares down at me, pushing me down into the mud. I’ll never get clean at this rate. The lightning lights up his eyes.

“What I’ve done? How about what
you’ve
done? She’s your daughter.” Like I have to remind him. Maybe not, but it’s good to throw it in his face. “You made her. This is all your fault.”

His grip on my wrists eases just enough for me to jerk myself loose and kick him off me. I stand, ready to fight, ready to do something. I’m not sure what yet. Where the hell is my brother? It would be nice to have an extra hand in this here fight.

Seth scoots back on the ground and stares up at me. “You’re right. It’s my fault. And I’m going to fix it.”

“Let me guess. You need my help to do it.” It makes sense. The way he showed up out of the blue. The way he knew where we were. He needs my help. He wants to team up to take down Gracen—to take
her
down. I don’t want to think of her as the girl I love. I can’t. It hurts, and I can’t afford to hurt.

“No.” Seth stands and wipes the mud from his hands. Rain drips down his hair, onto his nose, and off the tip. “You need
my
help. Why else would you have prayed to me?”

Of all the… “I didn’t—” Then I see Lucien standing in the distance. His hands are clasped in front of him. His head is bowed low. “Lucien.”

His eyes meet mine. It’s all he has to do. He doesn’t even have to say anything, but he seems to feel the need to elaborate. “We have to stop her, Hart. You know that. We can’t help her without someone on our side.”

“And you picked Seth.” I grit through my teeth. “Seth… Seth. Of all the damn angels in Heaven, you chose him?”

“I always knew I liked your brother.” Seth gloats and runs his fingers through his soaked hair. “You may not want to admit this, son, but you need me. You have an abomination ready to destroy everything. You have a demon for a mother who will do anything to protect said Abomination so that will happen. And what do you two humans have? Nothing. No powers. No tricks. You are useless. Helpless. You need me, Hart. You need me. I’m all you’ve got.”

I have so many things I want to say. So many things I need to say. My fist balls up by my side because it has something it wants to say too. Seth set me up. He tried to kill me. Tried to use me to open Hell because he has a beef with God. And now he wants me to trust him?

“You don’t have to trust me,” Seth says, smiling.

I’m sure I deserve this torture.

“But know we have the same enemy and the same end game. And, if you haven’t noticed, I’m the only one of your friends who still has powers. So… suck it up buttercup. It’s me, you, and your brother. Here to save the world.” He turns and walks away, stopping only to pat Lucien on the shoulder before they both head toward the one little light in all the darkness.

The world is screwed.

CHAPTER FIVE

Hart

I
F
I
KNEW HOW TO KILL
Seth Mitchell, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

I wish I knew.

I’d give anything to put him out of my misery.

Because people call me evil, but truth be told, some of the most evil people in the world are the ones who hide behind righteousness. Who hide behind good and God and all that other stuff that makes them feel better than anybody else in the world. It makes them feel superior. Seth not only feels superior, he truly, truly believes it.

I can tell by the way he walks. He has the stick-up-my-butt-thing down pat. It doesn’t matter that he nearly let Hell come into the world. It doesn’t matter that he let Amelia out. Nope, it doesn’t even matter that he had sex with a human woman and made the thing that will destroy the world.

The thing that I love.

The thing that apparently loves me—unless something else happened that I can’t remember after my lights went out. It’s possible. I hope that’s what happened. She couldn’t love me—

I’m veering.

Anyway, Seth still doesn’t seem to care about any of that. I think he has a plan. I’m sure someone like him always has a plan. A back up plan A, B, Z… A10. Things like him always do.

I wish I did.

So even though I want Seth dead, I sort of admire his determination. He’s had the same revenge plan for way longer than I ever did, and he hasn’t given up yet—that’s determination.

Through the rain and lightning, I swear he smirks. I don’t know if he can read my thoughts. I don’t care if he does.

Also, this being human again, so far, isn’t all that grand.

Just saying.

Lucien is sitting on the porch of what turns out to be a really old farmhouse when we get there. Lucky guy, out of the rain.

He doesn’t look lucky, though. He looks like he’s going to be sick. I can imagine he is. It’s been one hell of a day, literally.

For me, I’m just happy to get out of that stupid rain. What is left of my Confederate uniform is pretty well soaked, and I hope that inside this really old house in the middle of nowhere there are clothes. I don’t even care if they smell at this point. I just want inside. I want clothes. I want to be warm.

I’m lucky. I got to be inside Sam—and Willow. I felt human temperatures and emotions and all that unpleasantness. I felt…

I shut my eyes and let out a long breath. I felt things I never should have felt.

I felt
lots
of things I never should have felt.

Love for starters.

Lust, okay, maybe I should have felt lust. Any man, human or otherwise, couldn’t be around Gracen Sullivan and not feel lust. She never knew that about herself, what she could do to me, what she could do to other men. I knew. I could read their minds. And every one of those men, every one, got a visit from some terrifying nightmare that night. Strangely, none of those men ever came around Gracen again. Smart men.

She was mine.

She was always mine.

Not in the romantic sense.

But in the…

I don’t even know what I’m saying.

I’m not even sure I know what I’m feeling except that I’m cold, freezing, and wet, the angel I hate is by my side, and the brother I killed is sitting on the steps shivering.

I should probably tell him I’m sorry.

Later.

“I’ll check to make sure no one’s home,” Seth says before he disappears into the house, or so I assume.

“I never noticed how annoying that is.” I sit next to Lucien and start what I believe will be the most uncomfortable awkward silence ever in the history of the world.

And that’s saying something.

What can I say to him? Really? He would’ve had a life if it weren’t for me. I killed him. Me. I’m the reason he’s been dead all these years. I’m the reason he jumped into Hell. I’m the reason he was tortured. I’m the reason he turned into whatever he was turned into. I’m the reason he’s here now.

And, truth be told, I’m the reason his life sucked as a human.

Our mother never loved me…

“She turned,” he says much too simply. That about sums it up. In the most basic of words, she turned. So many other things in that sentence, though. So many things and feelings and hurts and regrets. God, so many regrets.

She turned.

Yeah. And I helped her.

“In a nutshell.” I say. I wish I had a stick or something to fiddle with while we sit and wait for Seth to come back. I can’t stand being still. I can’t stand being awkward. I can’t stand a lot of things.

“What happened? I don’t remember a whole lot.”

Oh goodie. I get to tell him everything. Everything I don’t even want to think about. Things I don’t want him to know about.

Lucien is still my big brother. He’s still someone I love, though I’ve not shown it in the last, well, ever. I don’t want to hurt him.

No, that’s not true. That’s not the real reason. I don’t want him to know what I’ve done.

I don’t want him to be disappointed in me.

I can’t help it. I laugh.

It’s not even a little laugh. It’s a big hardy laugh that I can’t stop.

Lucien’s eyebrows rise very high on his forehead, and he blinks a few times. I can’t stop laughing. I just can’t…

“Have you entirely lost your sanity?”

“It’s possible I never had any to lose.” I try to stop it. There is absolutely nothing to be laughing about. Nothing. But it just won’t stop.

I don’t want my brother disappointed in me? Seriously? All he
can
be is disappointed in me. There’s nothing else. I’ve been nothing but a disappointment to him my entire life. Even before I killed him.

The laughter fades away.

I’ve always known I killed him. Obviously. I used to be proud of that fact. I used to want him to pay for killing me.

But he didn’t kill me.

I just found that out a few days ago.

And it’s just hitting me.

I killed him.

I took everything away from him because of hate and anger.

I was a monster way before I was a demon.

Back when I was Sam—on a few occasions when I was weak and tired—I used to dream about being human again. How great it would be. How I would do things right. How things would be much simpler. I always thought it was because I didn’t want to be a monster anymore. I didn’t want to get inside Gracen’s head anymore. And I didn’t want to hurt her. But the real kicker is that I was less of a monster then than I was as a human. I always hurt the people I love.

Always.

Our mother had a reason for hating me.

I wasn’t a good son.

I wasn’t a good brother.

I wasn’t a good anything.

I kill the people I love.

Fact.

It’s not me being sad or depressing or anything. I do. I kill them. I killed Colleen and my brother—I killed our mother. And I killed Gracen, even when I tried to save her. Even when I thought I was doing the right thing.

“Jess,” Lucien says in his brotherly worried tone.

He reaches out to pat me on the shoulder, but I move before he can. I don’t stop moving until my back is against the house and my arms are crossed tightly over my chest.

He can’t comfort me. I don’t deserve it. Ugh. I hate this! I hate it! I’m Hart Blackwell. I’m a demon, or I was until whatever happened and I turned into… this. All of this self-loathing is not going to do anyone any good. I know that.

But looking over at my big brother who has stood up and has his hands in his worn pockets with his shoulders slumped, I can do nothing but hate myself.

“Look, Jess—I mean, Hart. That’ll take some getting used to.” He laughs lightly. There is nothing light about any of this. “I don’t really know what’s going on, but I know we have to put the past behind us and work together to fix it.”

“You didn’t break it.” My voice cracks, and it makes me flinch. I want to be strong and brave and sarcastic. Damn, I want to be sarcastic. But I can’t. It feels like I’m falling apart and all my walls are falling down. It’ll take something very strong to force them back up.

“You didn’t break it either.” Lucien, always the big brother, tries to reassure me. I know he’s trying to help. It’s only making things worse.

I bite my lip because there is so much I want to say, so much I need to say. I feel the tears stinging my eyes, but I don’t want to cry. Mainly I don’t want to cry in front of Seth, wherever he is. As much as I will it not to happen, a tear falls down my cheek. Lightning flashes overhead, and I can see by Lucien’s expression that he notices the stupid rogue tear.

Oh good.

As if today can get any worse.

“I’m…” My leg starts shaking, and my entire insides feel like they are going to explode. I have to get this out, but it’s stuck. It’s just one word. One little word that can’t possibly mean what it needs to mean—or take away everything I’ve done.

“Lucien, I’m s—”

“Good news.” The front door opens, and Seth’s ugly head sticks out. “No one home. That light was, well I don’t know what it was, but no one is here. Come on in… unless you need a few more girly feeling moments out here.”

Lucien looks at me like he wants me to finish what I have to say.

I want to—God, I want to.

I can’t.

“We’re done here.” I push past Seth and into the dark safety of the house. I don’t stop until I’m as far as I can go. There is a door to my right at the edge of the kitchen, so I open it and then slam it behind me.