Breathless (21 page)

Gracen

“
Y
OU WANT ME TO
turn back time to the second week of this semester?”

Seth nods. “Further if you can. You rewind as far as you can and then…”

“Then what?”

Lucien

“
W
HAT HAPPENS NEXT?
W
HAT’S
she supposed to do after she turns time back?”

“She makes sure the Abomination can never be made. Period.” I watch as Seth pulls out my heart and drops it into the bowl, mixing it with Hart’s blood, mixing it with his. “She takes this knife, the knife Hart has hidden under his bed back in the past, and she stabs herself in the heart. If she isn’t alive, she can’t turn into the Abomination and kill us all. Gracen doesn’t want to hurt anybody else. She will sacrifice herself for the greater good. It’s the only way.”

Gracen

H
ART TAKES A DEEP
breath and bites his lip. I think he’s trying to hold in tears. “Then… you…” He reaches for my hand, and even though we don’t touch, he keeps his hands on mine. “You take the knife, the demon-killing knife. I have it hidden under my bed. You get the knife… You get it, and you find me.”

“Hart… no.”

He nods and looks me right in the eyes. “You find me, Gracen, and you stab me in the heart with it. You take me out of the picture so I won’t feed you all that demon blood. I won’t help Seth get his revenge on God, and you won’t turn into the Abomination. It’s the only way, sweetheart. The only way.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Hart

I
DIDN’T THINK MY HEART WOULD
beat this hard.

Truth be told, I never thought my heart would beat again, and now that it is, I’m pretty sure it’s going to beat out of my chest.

I hate lying.

I take that back. I don’t hate lying. And I don’t honestly hate lying to Gracen. It might make me a bastard, even more than I already am, but I don’t mind lying to her. I’ve done it for years. She believed me this long, why shouldn’t she now?

Why should she now? That’s the better question.

No, what I hate, what I’m worried about, is that she’ll question things and start to put two and two together in her mind. Yeah, I say it’s the only way the world can be saved. I’m damn sure there’s no way I’ll ever go on without her. It’s unacceptable. My brother is dead. I can’t live without her too.

It’s not healthy.

It’ s not right.

But it is what it is.

I’m a mess.

I accept that.

What I can’t accept is the way Gracen is looking at me, with the tears filling her eyes, and the way her mouth is hanging slightly open. I can see that she’s trying to work out if I’m telling the truth or if there’s another way around it.

Another way, like doing Seth’s idea.

I refuse to allow her to consider Seth’s idea. There’s no me without her. Plain and simple.

“That can’t…” She pauses long enough to bite her lip, that lip I’d give anything to touch one more time. “That can’t be the only way.”

She’s thinking too much. It isn’t good. She can’t think. She has to react. If she thinks, she’ll do something stupid.

It isn’t a knock on her or women or whatever. It’s the truth, the truth about Gracen. She’ll always do whatever she has to do to protect everyone else. She wanted to sacrifice herself so she wouldn’t turn into the Abomination. It’s the kind of person she is, so I’m taking a chance telling her this. I also know that it’s my only chance.

I agree with Seth. We have to do this. I’m on board. He doesn’t know that I’m taking the scenic route, though.

I’m okay with dying. I’m not okay with losing her.

“Seth said that it has to be this way. He said it’s the only way to reset it. He said you go back as far as you can possibly go. Then, you take my knife, and you slide it through my roguishly handsome chest.” I try to make light of this, I’m not sure why. Gracen isn’t taking it well.

“I don’t think this is funny.”

“No. It’s not. I’m sorry. It’s not. I just… I don’t like sad goodbyes.”

I cringe right after I say it. When the word goodbye comes out of my mouth, Gracen starts shaking her head and a little whimper comes out of her mouth. I’m pretty sure she’s going to cry. I can’t have that.

“No, baby. No. I don’t mean… I wish I could freakin’ hug you.”

My arms ache to hold her, to pull her to me and tell her everything will be all right, that I’ll be going to a better place, but I know I won’t be, and she knows I won’t be. I don’t deserve a better place, though I would like to go to Heaven someday—just to see what Lucien sees in it. I don’t see that in the cards. I see… I don’t know what I see. Hell again, I suppose. Hell and pain. Home.

At least I’ll know Gracen is okay. That she didn’t sacrifice herself for the world or for me. I’ll know no matter what corner of Hell I fall in, I’ll know she’s okay.

I hope to God I remember her.

Seth promised.

It was my one condition.

Please let him not lie about that.

“I’m not going to kill you.” A tear falls down her cheek. She’s fighting it. I wouldn’t expect anything less.

“You have to. I won’t remember anything.” Please let her believe me. I’m doing an awful lot of praying today. I don’t know if it’s going anywhere. I don’t know if God can hear me or if He cares what an ex-demon says. I have to try though. I don’t know what else to do.

I guess even demons pray when they don’t know what else to do.

I don’t know what else to do.

Please let her believe me.

Please let me remember.

Please don’t let the Abomination do something horrible before we get ready.

“When you go back in time, however far back you can go, I won’t remember you. You’ll be the only one who’ll remember anything that’s happened. Cliché, yeah. I know. I’m sorry, but it is what it is. You’ll have all the Abomination’s powers, but I’m not sure how long you’re going to be able to hold them, so you have to act quickly when you get in her… in your body… no hesitation. No goodbyes. You use your power. You go back. And you take care of me. Do you understand? I won’t remember this. I won’t remember any of what has happened the last few weeks.

“I won’t remember that I love you.”

I pause as I let those words fade through the air.

I know it’s very much implied that I love her, and even from the sheer fact that she turned into the Abomination, it means that she loves me. But I’ve never actually said it—not to anyone conscious. Not even Colleen, and I thought I loved her. I thought I loved her so much.

And I guess I did in my own way.

Gracen’s breath catches. “That’s why I can’t.”

Stupid restrictions! I want to grab her by her shoulders and shake some sense into her. “You don’t have a choice, Gracen! Don’t you get that? If you don’t do this, everybody will die. Everybody. That jerk you’re going to kill, he isn’t me. I swear, he’s not the man I am now. When you turn back time, and you have to, I’ll be gone. The man that’s standing in front of you right now will be gone. The demon, he’ll be there in Sam’s body. He’ll figure something is wrong really quick, because he’s smart like that, and he’ll try to stop you. The bad thing, Gracen, is I don’t know if you’ll still have your powers or not. The point of this is to stop you from getting them. So when you go back and you stop… you’ll be human.”

Human Gracen. God, I miss her.

“You can’t hesitate. Not for a second. When this starts, you have to do it. No stumbling. You take over your body. You turn back time. You reset the clock. You turn human, and by God, you stab the hell out of me. Remember me now as the person you… the person you care about. Don’t think about the demon. The demon deserves to die for what he did to you. You’re getting justice for everything he… everything
I
did to you.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t. I swear I won’t remember any of this. These last few minutes with you, it’s all I’ll remember. When you go back, and you have to go back—it’s the only way—I won’t be the man I am now. I won’t be the thing that has grown to love you so much. Trust me when I say this… that thing has it coming.

“So, you have to promise me, Gracen. You promise me that when you get there, you don’t try to find this Hart in Sam’s body. He’s not there, and that Hart will overpower you if you try. He’s a demon. Powerful. Scary. Remember, he doesn’t know you know he’s taken over Sam. He’s still playing the part. Playing you.”

“You make it sound like you are two different people.”

I smile. I want to make it easier on her, so I lie. Truth be told, I’ve loved her ever since I became Sam. I loved her, and I took care of her. She can’t know that, though. Especially not now. She has a job to do, and I have to keep Seth from telling her the truth before it all goes down. That should be easy… not.

“We’re two different people. For one, I’m human now.” I totally hate being human. “And two…”

The earth starts to shake, not like in those romance novels when the earth shakes from some sort of magical moment. This earth shaking is an actual earth shaking, an earthquake. Purple and pink lightning streaks through the sky, lighting everything up like an incredibly screwed up Fourth of July.

“It’s time.” It doesn’t take a genius to know that whatever the Abomination is doing, it’s the big finale. The end. Kaput. Now or never.

“No… there’s not enough time!” Gracen screams through the wind, which is whipping her hair around her head even in the Abyss.

“It has to be, sweetheart.” There’s never enough time. We wasted so much time.

“Get in here! Now!” Seth screams out the screen door. He’s holding the bowl I gave him, and his hands are covered with blood. His blood. My brother’s blood. My blood.

“Time’s up! We have to do this now!”

Gracen looks up at me, and I can see her shaking. Tears are rolling, and I want so desperately to wipe them away. “See you on the other side?”

I have to be brave and strong and all that other stuff I don’t want to be. I want to break down and let her know that this is killing me. I can’t. I have to be strong so she can be strong. So she can kill me. So she can…

Lightning strikes the tree behind me, sending a limb crashing to my side. I jump out of the way, but not before it hits me on the shoulder and makes me fall to the ground. Son of a…

“Sic finem mundi. Sic finem mundi. In mundo odio habuerunt me gratis. Et mundus spernit me. Ego enim dabo vobis timere aliquid
.”

Latin, I’m assuming it’s Latin, echoes through the clouds like a booming voice. When she speaks, the Abomination in Gracen’s voice, lightning fills the sky and thunder crashes.

“Sic finem mundi. Sic finem mundi. In mundo odio habuerunt me gratis. Et mundus spernit me. Ego enim dabo vobis timere aliquid.”

“Time’s up! Seth, do it!”

“No!” Gracen screams at Seth, but he’s already rubbing his finger through the bowl and saying some words I don’t understand. I think it’s a spell. I don’t know. I don’t care. He’s running toward us, stirring, speaking… maybe even praying.

“I can’t do this.” She kneels beside me. I have to be strong… I have to. “I can’t. You know me. I screw everything up.”

I refuse to let my voice shake. “Gracen Sullivan, you are the strongest person I’ve ever known. I know that. You had to be strong to put up with me all those years. Anyone would’ve cracked, but you didn’t. You hung around, and you made it. You can do this. I believe in you. You can do so much good in the world. You can have a great life and lots of adventures. You can grow old, and you can die in your bed when you are a hundred and eleven with all those kids and grandkids. But you can’t do that unless you do this. You can’t do that unless you take away the chance for you to become the Abomination. You cannot hesitate. You cannot second guess yourself. You cannot
not
do this.”

Seth is about a yard from us. His eyes are glowing blue. Bright white light is filtering through his skin.

“You can do this.”

Gracen bends down and places her forehead on mine. “I love you, you know?”