My Heart be Damned (32 page)

No time to change my mind, I ran through the open doors and launched myself over the balcony wall and slipped into a dive, statue clutched tightly in both hands. The water was warm when I glided through it. Heated – nice touch. I surfaced, and the crisp night air pinched at my wet skin, making it feel like tiny little pinpricks stabbing at my face.

I swam to the edge and hoisted myself out, eyes sweeping the area to make sure the coast was clear. As soon as I darted around to the side of the mansion, my adrenaline started to lag and everything about my night came rushing back to me. I’d met the Sisterhood! Not even my mother had. And oddly enough, all I wanted to do was run back and tell Marshall.

A sob bubbled in my throat, and I swallowed it down, determined not to cry. Things were never going to work out between us, so in a way this should have been a blessing in disguise. So why was part of me desperately hoping that the Sisterhood was wrong? That there was some kind of explanation?

I stared down at the statue in my hands. It made me think of Marshall. Of how happy he would be once he found out that I had it. Anger flared inside me, and I threw the statue against the wall with as much force as I could muster up. It shattered upon impact, breaking into tiny pieces.

“
Amerie
?”

I spun around, coming face to face with Sam. His hands were shoved in his trouser pockets, and his face was...well, his face was livid. His eyes were fixed to the mess of clay on the ground.

“Was that...” His voice cracked. He shook his head and tried again. “Was that my mum’s statue?”

I didn’t know what to say.

“
Amerie
. Tell me that wasn’t her statue. Tell me that you didn’t just smash the precise thing she’s looked so hard to find. The very thing that is the reason she’s even here tonight!” He stepped forward and grabbed my shoulders, shaking me slightly. I barely even felt it. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Sam, I...” I stopped, knowing there was nothing I could say. How would I begin to explain this? His hands dropped from my shoulders, and I shivered and circled my own arms around my body, trying to seek warmth from them.

“You’re messed up, you know that?” Sam hissed. “You’re worse than messed up. You’re...you’re...well, you’re something so fucking bad that I can’t think of any names.”

“Oh, I have a few names for her,” came a voice from behind him.

My eyes widened as Miranda stepped out of the shadows, the other two Damned still following close behind. Without warning, she swung the blunt end of the axe at Sam’s head, knocking him to the ground. I dropped to his side, feeling for a pulse and sighed in relief when I found one.

I looked up just in time to see the axe coming for my own head. I swayed after the blow, my surroundings looking remarkably distorted, and then everything faded to black.

Chapter Thirty

Cane Hill

Wherever I was, I floated in some kind of black abyss. Until a tug began to lurch me out. I didn’t want to leave. The darkness was nice, empty. I didn’t feel anything. In the abyss, I could well and truly float with no meaningful thoughts to speak of anymore.

My cheeks were sore, and the blackness slowly sucked away, replaced with a fuzzy image of a room in severe disrepair. A hand came towards my face, and on reflex, I blocked it and swung out with my elbow.

“Ouch! Fuck!”

Marshall? I shook my head until my vision cleared and then rolled off the weird kind of bed I’d been lying on. I backed away from him until my legs hit something hard. Another bed. What the hell? I turned in a slow circle, surveying the space.

The room consisted of six beds with plastic covered blue mattresses. Above the beds were metal rods, where torn, cream curtains hung. The beige walls were cracked and filthy. Dirty blue curtains framed the three grimy windows on the far wall and the bare floor was covered in shards of glass and undeterminable stains. Was this some kind of hospital?

“We’re in an old asylum,” Marshall answered, as if reading my thoughts. “A place called Cane Hill. I never thought Seal would hide out here. Security is supposed to be heavy on this place.”

I ignored him. Glass pinched my bare feet, but I couldn’t focus on that right now. Danger was way too close in the form of two different nemeses.

“You’re Damned,” I said.

His face fell. “What?”

“You’re Damned. Or half-Damned, rather.” I fixed my eyes on him, letting the hate inside of me reflect out onto him.

“How...who told you that? It’s not true.” He edged towards me, and I braced myself.

“Don’t lie to me!” I shouted. “All you’ve ever done is lie to me. Be a man and tell me the truth for once.”

“
Amerie
, I’m not lying...”

I grabbed a discarded phone and threw it at his head. He dodged it easily.

“The Sisterhood paid me a little visit,” I hissed, my chest heaving. Something throbbed on my head, and I reached up to touch it. My fingers coming back red.

“The Sisterhood?” Marshall repeated. His face paled. “What did they say?”

“That you need my blood for some kind of ritual to make you immortal,” I shouted, and Marshall flinched.

“
Amerie
, listen.”

“Don’t come near me!” I shouted as he darted around the bed and lunged for me. I broke out of his hold, and slammed my fist so hard into his face that, for a second, I thought I’d smashed right through him.

He staggered back and blood splattered from his nose. But it didn’t take him long to come at me again. I turned to run and slipped on something wet, falling flat on my face. Before I could get up, he was on my back, grabbing my flailing arms and pinning me down with Damned strength.

“Stop struggling,” he demanded. “I need you to be calm and hear me out before you make up your mind.”

“Attacking me is really going to calm me down,” I grunted sarcastically. I threw my head back and connected with his face. He groaned and I elbowed him again in the chest before sliding out from beneath him. As soon as I was on my feet, I ran for the door at the other end of the room.

His shoulder slammed into my back and I fell forward, banging my head on the corner of one of the metal bed frames. The blow reopened my previous head wound, and the mixture of pain dazed me, slowing my reflexes. Hands closed around my shoulders. He threw me onto the mattress. Marshall straddled my waist, holding my hands locked above my head.

“Stop making so much noise!” he hissed. “Do you want them to come down here and tie you up? If they find me in here too, I’m not going to be able to save you. They’ll kill me.”

I laughed bitterly. “Save me? Save my blood for yourself, you mean.”

Marshall sighed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Is anything about you real? Did you ever tell me any truth at all?” I asked, the sadness hitting me again.

His grip never once slacked. “Yes. Mostly everything I told you was real. I acted like myself but…I started off with the intent to deceive you.”

“You’re evil.”

“I’m not. Half-Damned souls aren’t automatically evil.” He paused. “Look, if I let you go, will you promise not to fight me? I need you to understand before anything happens to one of us. Please?”

“Why do you care that I understand your reasoning behind being a prick?”

“Just promise
Amerie
.”

“I promise,” I said, only because it might be my only chance of escape.

His hands loosened, and he pulled me up into a sitting position. Then he stepped back and flopped down on the bed opposite, close enough that he could grab me quickly if I tried to get away.

“I found out what I was when I was sixteen,” he started. “My powers developed exponentially, every year from my childhood, unlike yours. My mum knew what was
happening to me, but she wouldn’t fully explain until she thought I was old enough to handle it.” He ran his hands through his hair. His face was pale, as if he wanted to be sick. “She was raped by one of the Damned. I don’t want to think about how horrible that was. She didn’t know it was possible to fall pregnant from it, but somehow... it happened.”

I held in a gasp, both sorry for what his mother had gone through and still wary of Marshall’s intentions.

“Once she explained everything to me and gave me all the books she had on the Damned and about being a Hunter, I became obsessed with knowing everything there was to know. I trained relentlessly, wanting to embrace my new powers and my Damned and Hunter heritage. But I still didn’t know anything about what I was.

“That’s when I met Albert. Originally, he found rare books for me and then one day, he helped with a text I that I had some trouble deciphering. Imagine my surprise when it said that half-Damned souls don’t survive long in the human world. Thirty years maximum. Then I don’t go to Heaven or Hell. I just... cease to exist.” He stopped and shook his head mournfully. I almost felt sorry for him.

“Albert promised to help me find some way around it. We bonded over late nights poring over texts, and he became like a father to me. Then, one day, I found the answer.”

“My blood,” I guessed.

He nodded. “It didn’t have to be you. Any Hunter would do. The only stipulations were that the body had to be pure, virginal, a bond had to be made from trust, and the sacrifice willing. She had to willingly die for me.”

Blood rushed to my ears, and a dull pounding echoed through my head. “So you picked me? Because I’m a virgin and too trusting for my own good?”

He shrugged. “Albert had nothing to do with the selection. He couldn’t bring himself to help me manipulate an innocent girl. But I was desperate. Oh God,
Amerie
, I was so very desperate. I didn’t want to die. I hung around graveyards for months until I found you. Did you know the Damned could smell how pure blood is? You were so pure that I was practically salivating. I had to make you trust me, to fall for me. And then ask you to sacrifice yourself for me.

“It seemed easy enough. I looked into your past, learned about you, watched you for a while, and used my sources to find out who killed your mum. I didn’t bank on some other Damned needing your blood too. I promised myself that as soon as I helped you defeat Seal, I’d step it up a level. Make you really fall in love with me. But the more time I spent with you, the guiltier I felt. I didn’t want to lose you. I began to think of you differently. You weren’t just my salvation,
Amerie
. You became something else. You were, are, my world. I didn’t want to live past thirty if you weren’t in my life.”

Anger forgotten, tears welled in my eyes, and I dipped my head, not wanting him to see. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Because then you would know I really was a monster.” He crossed the short distance between us and dropped to his knees, grabbing my hands. “Once I realized
how I felt, I tried pushing you away. I tried staying away from you too. In the end, I told myself that I’d help you defeat Seal because I cared about you, and then walk away, never see you again. Because how could I trust myself around you when originally, I’d wanted you to die?”

I bit down on my lip, dreading to ask the question I so desperately needed the answer to. “So, now, if you had to choose, would you choose to be with me or being immortal?”

His head dropped, and he sighed. “I ask myself this every day. And every day, I don’t know the answer. That’s why I can’t be with you.”

“I wouldn’t do it,” I said stubbornly. “I wouldn’t sacrifice myself...not willingly. You don’t have to worry about me, dying for you. I won’t say yes.”

“You would.” He looked up at me, the pain, plain on his face.

“You can’t know that.”

“A friend of mine, a prophet, saw it happen. I’m trying everything I can, to prevent you from falling in love with me. I don’t want to give you the chance to offer your own life for mine. That’s why I’ve been so hot and cold with you.”

I pushed him away from me, jumping to my feet. “Well, guess what, Marshall? Too late!” Tears of frustration poured down my face, and I left them there. “It’s already happened. I care about you so much I can’t think straight. I’ve never felt this way about anyone. I can’t see my life without you in it either.”

“And that’s the problem,” Marshall said, slowly standing up. “Think about the future. I’m closer to thirty every day. I know you,
Amerie
. You’re so passionate, so sensitive, and so pure. You’d want to save me. Just...just listen to me for once. It’s better if we don’t let it get that far. Let’s get out of this alive and...”

“And what, Marshall? Go our separate ways and never see each other again?”

“You said yourself that I’m evil. Ten minutes ago, you fought to get away from me.”

I buried my face in my hands. “Don’t do this, Marshall. I’m...I’m okay with what you are. I know you won’t hurt me.”

He smiled sadly. “But I might let you hurt yourself…”

“No, Marshall, I wouldn’t.”

“Or I might not save you in time…on purpose. One day you might get seriously hurt Hunting. What if my self-preservation kicks in and slows me down just enough to keep me from reaching you in time? I can’t take that risk.”

Neither of us said anything for a few minutes. My heart shattered into thousands of pieces. I dropped my hands from my face and stared down at my shredded dress, at my bare feet. Ruined. Everything was ruined.

“
Amerie
,” Marshall finally said. “I know it’s hard, but we need to focus. We need to get out of here.”

I looked to the windows.

“I got in that way, but we can’t do it again. There’s a reason they’ve left you in this room without tying you up. They have something they know you won’t leave behind.”

I narrowed my eyes in confusion, thinking back to what he could mean. Smashing the statue. Being kidnapped…

“Sam!” I gasped. “Oh my God. Is he okay?”

Marshall nodded. “I think so. After you didn’t show when you were supposed to, I went looking for you. Caught those two Damned dragging both of you into a car, so I followed them here. You smashed the statue, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, they’ve got it. Probably putting it back together as we speak.”

“They don’t have all of it,” I said. “When they knocked Sam out, I knelt next to him to see whether he was okay or not, and I grabbed a piece and put it in my bra.”

Marshall raised an eyebrow, looking slightly impressed. “Nice thinking. Now we just need a plan to get you and Sam out of here alive.”

“Do you know where Sam is?”

“They’re keeping him close.”

And then suddenly, I had an idea. “Do you have your phone with you?”

Marshall nodded and slid it out of his jean pocket. I took it and
dialed
in Chuck’s number. He answered on the first ring.

“’
ello
?” he asked groggily.