Heartless (The Heartless Series) (25 page)

Seth looks at me and smiles. His entire face has changed. No longer the sort of nerdy history teacher I'd gotten used to, his eyes are dark. His jaw is set. He looks… evil. I know… well, I don't know exactly, but I know something bad is about to happen to me.

"I'm sorry, Hart. I am. But it had to be you." The knife gleans in his hand. The one he shoved in Gracen's heart. "It always had to be you. Thank you for your service, you stupid, arrogant, piss ant of a soul."

He grabs my arm, and I try to push him back. I have powers, after all. I'm a big badass demon I'm a…

"You are a nothing." He grits through his teeth as the knife comes down toward my arm.

"No!" I hear behind me. It's the angel. Lucien.

My brother.

He screams as he runs toward us, his angel sword pulled at the ready. He's two steps too late.

Seth's knife slashes my arm. My blood mixes with Gracen's blood and drips onto the glass. It crumbles as little pieces of the one thing protecting Earth from Hell start to shatter.

It hits me. It's never been about my revenge for Seth. Never been to help me. He needed me! He needed my blood.

Seth looks like a kid on Christmas morning. "The abomination is the key," he says, breathing heavy. Watching as the glass shatters and falls… watching as all those souls in Hell start their assent to the top, crawling, scrapping, wailing. It hurts my ears and I start to shake. I remember Hell. Remember it well. There was a reason I wanted out besides revenge. A very good reason.

Seth looks at me. "A damned soul opens the lock."

A damned soul… a damned soul. This entire time, he hadn't just had me watching over Gracen to keep her pure, to keep her on the straight and narrow so an innocent demon could open the damn doorway. No, he kept me with her so he could watch us both: the lock and the key.

This can't be happening.

One minute Seth is holding my bleeding arm over the pit, and the next, he's gone. He's just gone. I hear a deafening thud and see his body hit the wall on the other side of the pit. He slumps to the side. I don't think he's dead, but what do I know?

With Seth gone, a new enemy stands up to me. His eyes meet mine. His eyes so blue and angelic. So pure and driven. My damn murderer of a brother. "Lucien."

"Hart." He nods. Here we go… Other angels yell at him, and he orders them to stand down, to be ready to fight whatever comes out of the pit. They can't be allowed to leave. They can't.

Ironic to meet on the battlefield again. "You don't know who I am, do you?"

"You're the bastard who made all those girls kill themselves."

I can't deny that. I did. It was Seth's idea. Keep Lucien away from Gracen. Keep the angels busy chasing me so they wouldn't see what was under their noses. Seth's thing—one of their own—not mine.

"I wouldn't sit too high on that horse, Lucien. It wasn't a demon that opened the gate to Hell… one of yours did."

"I know. We've been watching him, too." Lucien pulls his sword up and sticks it to my throat.

Not many things in the world can kill a demon. Seth's knife can. Some spells can exorcise them. That's about it, but an angel's weapon can sure do the trick. I'm not sure what happens to the demons when it strikes, if they die or if they go back to Hell, but neither option sound awesome at the moment.

"You knew? You knew one of your own was a traitor and you—
God
—did nothing?" I yell over the wind and wails.

"We had to be sure. Can't punish someone before they actually do something bad."

I smirk. Of course not. It's hard, looking into his eyes and not thinking about it, not remembering. Not punching him in the nose, for starters.

Lucien nods to one of the other angels, a woman, pretty, intimidating. The angel goes over to Seth and forces him up to standing. He's not dead. Well… look at that. Too bad. "How do I close the gate?" Lucien asks, his sword still resting entirely too close to my throat.

"You don't." Seth's laugh is stopped by a knee to his stomach, and he falls to the ground. "Can't. The innocent soul of the Abomination and a damned soul opened it. There's nothing on Earth that can close it."

The final pieces of glass are falling off. Time is almost up. All of Hell is about to be unleashed. Before that happens, I need Lucien to know. I've waited so long, and I'm not going to be trampled by all these things—I'm not going to let him stab me in the throat getting to them—without him knowing. I've waited too long.

Too bad Seth beat me to it.

"How could you do this to your own daughter?" Lucien asks Seth, who just shrugs.

"Why didn't you stop him then?" Lucien pushes the knife deeper into my skin. I'm not bleeding yet, but it's enough to start sucking my strength away. This isn't going like I had planned.

"You should talk, Lucien." Seth spits back. "I might have killed my daughter, but you are about to kill your brother. How do you like that, you self-righteous moron!"

Lucien twitches. And I feel like every bit of breath I have has been sucked out. I wait. Just like a little brother waiting for his big brother to notice him, and I hate it. After all these years, I still feel like his little brother. I still
am
his little brother, and all I want in these last few minutes on Earth is for him to remember it, too.

"No." Lucien, my brother Lucien Michael Blackwell born September 14, 1839, staggers back. The pressure of the blade eases, and for a minute I think maybe he believes Seth.

Time is running out.

"Yes." Seth pushes the woman angel away like she's nothing and runs up to Lucien who is too late defending himself. Other angels rush him, but Seth obliterates them with a wave of his hand. Seth is powerful, more powerful than even I imagined. We'd all underestimated him. He puts his hands on Lucien's and lights streams out of Seth, down his arm, and into Lucien's eyes.

"I always keep my promises." Seth winks at me. "I'm an angel after all."

By the time I decide maybe I should save Lucien (I have my own revenge to get to after all), Seth lets him go and Lucien falls to his knees. Remnants of whatever Seth did to him shine in his eyes and then disappear.

He looks at me. Really looks at me. And I know. I just… I know.

He remembers.

"Jessup?"

"Hart." I correct. I haven't been Jessup for a very long time. I don't intend to start now.

The final piece of the glass sealing Hell breaks.

A mangled hand reaches out.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I
'M.
A
.
D
AMN.
D
EMON.
A
ND THIS
is the first thing that pops in my mind when I see the hand. When I know what's actually happening, when it hits me that this had never been about revenge or getting what I was due. It was about so much more.

I hadn't even thought about it. Not really. Opening Hell. And here we are. I helped. My blood opened it, and there's no way I know to close it.

Lucien is the only angel left. Seth has smitten all the others. Gracen is dead. Her eyes are fixed on me. My brother is looking at me with tears in his eyes. This is wrong. This is all wrong.

"So you remember?" I've imagined this moment in so many ways. This isn't one of them.

He nods. "I do. We were in battle and…" His eyes glaze over mine and land on the thing coming out of the Hell gate. He jumps to his feet, knocks Seth back, and stabs the thing with his angel sword. The thing, the soul, the very same thing I am, falls back into the hole, screaming the entire way down. Sort of sad, really? It had been so close to escaping. So close.

"You can't stop it." Seth sits up and smiles. "But I'll enjoy sitting here and watching you try. You poor insignificant ant. It was almost too easy… too… easy."

"What?" It comes out barely over a whisper. I'm not sure Seth hears me. It's pretty damn loud in there with all the wind and souls clawing to get out.

"You two." He just keeps right on smiling. "You hate him. Have all these years, and…"

"He killed me!"

Lucien pulls his sword out of another screeching soul and stares at me. "I didn't kill you. You killed me."

"Really,
that's
the story you're going with? You killed me. I saw you. I was running toward you to warn you about an ambush, and you shot me in the stomach!" I feel the same pain and betrayal as I did then, as if it had just happened. I loved my brother—I love my brother—I would've done anything for him, and I did! I had orders, I knew about an ambush and instead of following through with it, I ran to warn him. Because he was my brother. Because I loved him.

"No…" He stands back from the pit, not focused on any of the souls climbing out. He doesn't even look like he cares. Like he's given up on a lost cause. I just hope that lost cause isn't me. "No… that's not what happened. I saw you get shot, and I ran to you. I ran to help you and you pulled out your gun and shot me! That's what happened! That's how it went down, so don't you dare stand there and say I'd ever hurt you, because I wouldn't! You were my little brother! I promised Father I'd take care of you, that if I ever saw you on the battlefield I wouldn't hurt you, that I'd protect you. I saw you running, and that's exactly what I tried to do."

He takes a deep breath, and tears stream down his face. He looks human, too. "I tried, Hart. I tried. I remember now… if I'd known, if I'd remembered, what happened to you, I would've pulled you out of Hell myself before it got this far. I would have. I can't believe… I can't believe you let it go this far."

Why do I feel like I've just been kicked? Why does it feel like everything I've thought about, everything I've known about, everything I've believed for the last decades has all been a lie?

"I know you shot me." The words have a hard time coming out. "He told me you did."

"Who? Who told you?"

Seth stretches his legs out and puts his hands behind his head.

Oh God! Oh God… No. My stomach knots, and I feel sick. I believed him. I believed the angel. I heard the whispering on the battlefield about my brother. And it was all to set this up. All of it. That lying bastard.

I stalk over to him, but Lucien gets in my way. "We can get him later. Right now, we have bigger issues."

"The pit?"

"Yeah, do you really want Hell on Earth?"

We are already too late. More souls have climbed out. I can hear them, though I don't look at them. I don't want to see. I remember what it was like in there. I don't want to go back. "I'm a demon. I'm supposed to want Hell on Earth."

"Oh please. If you liked it so much, you would've stayed there. You wouldn't have taken the deal to get out and come to Earth."

"To get revenge on you."

"No, that's not it. Come on, Hart. Help me fight it. Did Seth ever tell you anything about the gate? How to close it?"

"Bastard didn't even tell me I was part of how to open it. I just knew about her." I point to Gracen.

Her eyes are open.

She's looking at me.

She blinks.

"Gracen?" I turn to Seth who has the fear of God in his eyes. He can see Gracen isn't dead, and by the look on his face, he's terrified. I start to run toward him, but before I can, he snaps his fingers and disappears. Just like that. He's gone. It's just me and my brother, up against closing the friggin' Hell gate.

"Nothing on Earth!" Lucien grabs my shirt like he's had a huge epiphany. "Nothing on Earth!"

"What?"

His eyes light up like he's heard the best news ever. "Seth said nothing on Earth could close the gate. What if it's something not of Earth? What if it's…"

"I'm not dead," I cut off his train of thought. "There was a reason Seth didn't kill me. Some reason, and it had nothing to do with his promise to me about you. It was… I think I can close the gate. Maybe if a damned man's blood can open the gate, it can close it too? Maybe it just takes more of it to close it. Maybe that's why he kept me alive. Killing me would close the gate."

"What? No, that's not what I was talking about."

"I know what you were talking about, Lucien, and it's not going to happen. You are talking about throwing yourself in the hole, right? An angel isn't of this earth, well neither is a demon. You aren't a damned soul, Lucien! And even if you were, do you have any idea what they will do to you in Hell, brother? It's HELL! And you're an angel. Just let me do it. I belong down there." Who knew I could even still feel anything? All that humanity. Finally paid off. "I should be the one to close it. For what I did, for who I hurt. Gracen. Those girls. I deserve to be locked down there. I deserve to never get out."

"No." He grabs me tighter, but I drag him to the side. Souls are coming out hot and heavy now. Before long, the things locked in the inner most bowels will be escaping. That won't be good. "No. You don't. You made a mistake, Hart. One mistake."

"More than one."

"Maybe, but…" He turns me to face him, placing both hands firmly on my shoulders. "I promised to take care of you. I'm not letting you throw yourself into Hell. I just got you back. I'm not losing you again."

"You don't have a choice. I have to do this or the world won't be pleasant. You can't fight that all by yourself. You can't. So, let me do this. Let me make up for all the bad things I did. Please, Lucien. Please."

Of all the ways I thought today would go, I never even entertained this as a possibility. I would willingly go to Hell, not just go to Hell, but jump into the heart of it. And I can imagine the things fighting so hard to get out won't be happy with me when they discover I'm the reason the door closed. Not at all. If I thought my first tour of Hell was bad, I don't want to think about now.

Still, I have to do it.

Revenge means nothing to me. Not anymore. I've held on to it for so long, and for what? Lucien didn't even shoot me. Seth lied. It had all been a lie. All of it, and I can't live with the guilt I feel. Demons aren't supposed to feel guilt and when we do… well, it isn't good.

Humanity for the win.

"I deserve this." I try to smile at Lucien. Tears stream down my face. They aren't blood like Gracen's. She's a pure demon. I'm a nothing. Just a stupid lost soul who trusted an angel.