Breathless (6 page)

If only He would hear and respond. I doubt it, though. Lucien has demon blood in him. He mixed his with mine, and I don’t know if that got overridden when we became human, but I’d doubt it.

If Lucien wants to believe, that’s fine. He’s seen Heaven. I’ve seen Hell.

I don’t want to go back.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Hart

I
CAN’T REMEMBER A BETTER MEAL.

Seriously.

Who knew my brother was such a good cook. I know I didn’t.

He must have picked up some pointers in the human world.

I can cook.

I mean, I’m fairly good at grilled cheese, the occasional fried egg.

I make a mean meatloaf.

How random is that?

We finish up and my stomach, my poor stomach that hasn’t had anything in it in years, feels like it’s going to explode. So much for keeping my awesome figure if I continue. I’ll just end up a before picture in one of those weight loss infomercials I used to watch while Gracen slept. Ugh.

I miss watching her sleep.

I don’t miss hurting her.

I hated the things she had me do.

I hated them.

I hated myself for having to do it…

Again with the whining!

“Eat some more.” Lucien tries to hand me a bowl of scrambled eggs, but I hold my hand up. If I have to look at food again, my poor stomach might revolt. And it’ll be messy.

Shiver.

“No… no. I’m full. I can’t even stand to look at food.”

The sky is still dark outside. The purple lightning is still flashing.

We’re eating in a nice cheery kitchen, in a house we don’t own, but it’s nice. Homey. The kitchen isn’t one of those modern things people tend to love on HGTV. Yeah, I admit to watching it when Gracen wasn’t around. They would all buy old houses for the charm and then put in this super modern kitchen, which didn’t work for the time or the feel of the house. This kitchen isn’t old. I can tell by the state of the appliances, but it fits the farmhouse. There is a big white sink under the big window overlooking, well, darkness. There is a white stove that looks like it would fit in the 40s. A really cool retro refrigerator.

I have to laugh at myself calling anything retro.

I’m the oldest thing here.

Well, Lucien is.

I’m the second oldest thing here.

Retro.

Antique.

Ancient.

I fit all those labels.

I also fit the worst label of all… evil former demon who killed his brother.

Yay for labels.

My stomach is full, and my eyes are tired. A nap would be lovely, but I can’t. I’ve been sleeping for over one hundred years, or this body has at least. I need to get out and find Gracen. Stop her from doing something stupid.

Stop her from hurting herself.

I scoot the chair back and start to stand when Lucien does the same. When I say he does the same, I mean he makes the same motion, but with much more force than me. He’s so adamant and quick that it makes me flinch like one of those jump-scares in horror games.

Yes, I love to play horror games.

I don’t find that surprising.

What I do find surprising is how quickly Lucien is up on his feet and begging me to sit back down.

“Have another biscuit,” he says.

“Eat some more bacon,” he says.

“Come on, brother, have something else,” he says.

And I just keep staring because obviously something isn’t right with him.

Granted, he just crawled out of his grave a few hours ago, and that has to mess with your noodle.

And the whole Hell thing…

But he’s acting incredibly weird.

Like incredibly.

Like… something is going on.

Something I do believe I need to know about. “What’s up with you?” I say because I’m tactful.

“Nothing.” He gives a nervous laugh and sits back down in his chair.

Nervous laughs. Not a good thing.

“Nothing? Really? So everything’s hunky dory? Everything’s all right?”

He glares at me. “No, Hart. Everything is not all right. The world is ending, and I’m an angel and should be out protecting it, but instead I’m here with you—as a human. Nothing is all right about that.”

“Well, tell me how you really feel.” I sit back down with a plop and lean back in the chair. I resist the urge to put my hands behind my head. That might be pushing it with him.

Would be kinda comfortable, though.

“I’m serious, Hart. Look, the last three days have been terrible. They have. It’s been…”

“Bad,” I say for him because it’s the only word that truly fits. It doesn’t do it justice. Bad… what kind of word is bad? It doesn’t show anything. Doesn’t prove how bad it really was. But it’s a word we can both agree on because we can both relate. It was bad.

“Yeah, bad. But before that, Hart. Before that, we had our differences, and I sent you back to Hell more times than I can count, but—”

“Wait a minute.” I sit up and hold my finger in the air. Let’s not get carried away. “You did not send me to Hell more times than you can count. Unless you can’t count higher than four.”

His eyes sparkle. “Oh, please. I sent you back so many times. You never won. Never. And those girls who committed suicide, that was because I didn’t know it was you until it was too late.”

And here I’d almost forgotten about them.

All young girls I drove crazy to keep Lucien and all of Heaven off Gracen’s abomination trail. More things to feel bad about.

Though technically I didn’t kill them…

Oh, who am I kidding? Their blood is still on my hands. I’m still the last face they saw before they—okay, I don’t want to think about this anymore.

“Four times, Lucien. You sent me back four times.” Four times he was stronger than me. Four times I could’ve killed him but didn’t. He’s my big brother, and I had a job.

That’s what I always told myself. It was my job. That’s the reason I didn’t kill him when I had the chance. My job was to keep a semi-low profile. Not do any more than a regular run-of-the-mill demon, and regular run-of-the-mill demons have run-ins with regular run-of-the-mill angels all the time. The angels mostly sent the demons to Hell for a time-out. Sometimes the demon sent the angel back to Heaven to do the walk of shame.

Occasionally, and I mean on rare occasions, either an angel would kill a demon or a demon would kill an angel.

That’s when headlines would be made.

Those are things that can start a war.

Those are things that get you noticed.

So, I did what every good demon did that kept revenge close to his heart on his angelic brother, I didn’t kill him. I kept him alive. Sometimes I sent him back to Heaven. Most of the time he sent me back to Hell. And all the while I kept saying it was because I didn’t want to hurt the mission. I didn’t want to cause too much attention to myself. I wanted to be the model demon citizen. I wanted to cause havoc, but only enough so Heaven didn’t majorly notice me.

I told myself then it was because I knew Gracen Sullivan was coming along and I’d have to keep watch over her for Seth.

That’s why I told myself I couldn’t hurt Lucien, because I didn’t want to hurt the mission.

It wasn’t completely true.

I knew it then.

I know it now.

The reason I didn’t kill Lucien is because I didn’t want to hurt him, not really. No matter how much I thought I did, how much I told myself I did. It was never about hurting him. It was always about why. Why had he killed me?

And the rub is that he hadn’t.

He didn’t shoot me.

He came to warn me.

And I shot him for his efforts.

Because I couldn’t believe my brother would be running to save me.

Because I believed that he’d kill me.

That I deserved it.

And I did.

I do.

“The Sioux Falls Incident.” I hold up my finger. “Nashville, 1981. World’s Fair—don’t remember the year. Los Angeles, 1994.”

Those were the ones I remembered.

He holds up his own index finger. “Crimson Ridge, 1998”

“Oh, yeah.” Okay, I’d forgotten that one. To be fair, that girl wasn’t my fault. She was really sad, I was really upset over something else, my brain just went weird, and her brain connected… it was a whole thing. “I let you send me back that time. I didn’t even put up a fight.”

“Sure.” He scoffs and leans back in his chair.
He
puts his hands behind his head. Loser. “I’m sure you didn’t try to fight at all. You just let me send you back.”

I shrug. “Why would I fight?”

He doesn’t seem convinced.

“Fine. I was having a blue period. You didn’t remember me. Seth hadn’t done his master plan or whatever, and I was getting impatient. I figured what the hell, literally.”

And we are back to uncomfortable silence.

Perfect.

Speaking of… “Seth, where did he go?”

Lucien looks away. His tell. His number one tell. This can’t be good.

“Lucien. What is Seth doing?”

“How should I know? I’m not his keeper.” He stands and takes the plates to the sink. He starts to scrap the few morsels we didn’t eat into the slightly small white bin.

Uh-huh. I knew something was going on earlier, and I just sort of ignored it. Now, I don’t have to ignore it. “Lucien. What’s going on?”

“Paranoid much?” He plops the dish into the sink, which already has sudsy water. Bubbles float up and around the room. Interesting.

“Evasive much?” I counter coolly. “You know something.”

“I don’t.”

He won’t look at me.

Another plate goes plop in the sink, and he comes back to the table to get another two. I jerk what was once the sausage plate away from him and take it for ransom. Information for the plate.

Fair trade.

“You know where he is, don’t you?”

His reluctance to answer tells me everything I need to know. “Damn it, Lucien! You know he’s not the good guy. You know he’s the enemy. Shit, four days ago
you
tried to kill him.”

“Things change.” He shrugs and must decide my sausage plate isn’t of importance, because he grabs the one with the biscuits.

Of all the… “Things… for the love of Pete, Seth doesn’t change. He has a plan. He always has a plan and that plan generally isn’t good for anybody. Remember that time when he planned on, oh I don’t know, opening the Hell gate and allowing every evil thing in the world to have free reign.”

“I remember,” he says simply. I hate simply. I hate how Lucien’s posture has changed. I hate how his shoulders have rounded again. I hate everything. I hate it all.

“Yeah, well remember when he blackmailed me. Remember when he held you hostage so I’d bring his daughter to him. Any of that ringing any bells?”

“Look, I get it. Seth is bad news. I see your point, and I accept it.” He slides some food off the plate and into the trash. He puts the dish in the sink and grabs for another one. We are having a very domesticated argument.

“So you aren’t planning on doing anything stupid with him?” I’m hoping for Lucien to turn around and give me a very firm no. To look me straight in the eyes and deny anything going on between the two of them. After all, Seth has to be Heaven’s most wanted. If not for him, Gracen would’ve never been made, the Hell gate never would’ve been opened, the sun would be out, and everybody would be going on with their little lives not knowing that one girl could have killed them all.

I want this to happen.

It doesn’t.

“No, I’m not working with him. Are you crazy?” Lucien doesn’t turn. He doesn’t look me in the eyes. He doesn’t do anything I need him to do. I can tell he’s lying. I could always tell. Well, not as good then, but I can now. One thing I’m pretty good at is reading people, and I can read Lucien like a book.

He’s lying to me.

My heart starts beating so hard in my chest that I feel like I’m going to pass out. I can hear the thumping in my ears, and I start to feel dizzy. This isn’t supposed to be happening. He’s not supposed to be teaming up with Seth.

It’s him and me against the world.

Or so I wanted it to be.

At one time.

My breathing becomes labored.

I can’t handle this.

Why does the human body have to make you feel so much worse about things? Why does it like to fight against itself? Because that’s stupid. You’d think your body would be with you. Would fight the good fight. Keep you calm. Keep you sane and normal and centered. You wouldn’t think that it would go off on a tangent by making your chest feel heavy, your throat feel dry, your heart beat in your ears, and every part of your skin want to just run in different directions.

That’s how I feel right now.

It’s a stupid feeling.

It’s an incredibly powerful feeling.

Hart the big bad demon… reduced to this.

I don’t close my eyes because I don’t want Lucien to know I’m having a little mental breakdown. I do take a few deep breaths, though. I breathe in. I breathe out. I breathe in. I breathe out.

I picture myself in a field.

Our old field.

At our old house.

I imagine being there with Gracen like in our dreams.

I imagine the sun on my face.

I imagine a cool breeze making everything okay.

I imagine my brother is
not
working with a crazy angel.

I imagine my girlfriend is
not
the most evil thing in the world.

This isn’t helping.

“You’re working with him.” It isn’t even a question. It doesn’t need to be. I have no doubts in my mind.

“No.” He scoffs and wipes another plate of scraps into the trashcan. I’ll kick that trashcan when all of this is over.

“Don’t lie to me.”

He slams a dish so hard into the sink that the bubbles come up and water splashes on the floor. This will go well.

“I’m not lying to you, Hart.” He spins around and his angry eyes meet mine.

Oh yeah, buddy, we are fixing to have a fight.

Game on.

This has been building for years.

Not just with the whole Seth and Gracen situation, not with the I-shot-him thing, not even with the Colleen thing. It’s been going on for as long as I can remember.