“Nothing. This is Grim’s woods,” I replied as Jackal followed me up the steps. I faded outside of the castle so that he would port into the same spot. I was a bitch, but I wanted him to at least have time to absorb what I was making him do. I figured walking up these long ass steps would do the trick. Ya know, give him time to process his hatred of me some more. “He made it to look like this.”
Ruby and River roared above us. No doubt getting a whiff of the new power flooding the woods. To my surprise, Jackal didn’t bother to glimpse at them, completely unaffected by the twin dragons.
His words, however, surprised me. “They’re very protective.”
“Who?” He raised his head upward, and I chuckled. “Oh, Ruby and River? How would you know?”
“They’re warning me as we talk right now,” came his response.
“You can understand them?” I asked incredulously. I thought Payne was the only one who could understand dragons.
He nodded. “I can understand any animal and become any of them I choose.” He drifted off, and I caught him staring at me. “It’s humans and demons who I don’t understand.”
I tilted my head, acknowledging him. “You’re a puzzle, Jackal, but let’s call you Jack, shall we? Simpler. Kind of like the way you wish things were.” He clenched his jaw in response, and I relented. For now. “What don’t you understand?”
“Everything,” he responded immediately. “I don’t understand why anyone wants to live through all these involuntary things like pain, sickness…” His gaze fell on me, then he averted his eyes rather quickly. He didn’t elaborate.
“What I don’t understand is how you think those impressions aren’t your own?” I stopped at the top of the steps and faced him. He mirrored my actions. “When you’re in pain, that is your pain, no one else’s. When you’re mad or sad, that’s your reaction to whatever it is. Accept it, Jack. Maybe you haven’t experienced it for yourself, but I know you’ve lived long enough to see it.” Confusion and heaviness settled in his eyes. “People live despite all these involuntary things as you call them.”
Without saying another word, I left him to wonder what I meant. When he lowered his head and sulked, I thought he might know. We resumed our ascent, and Barron greeted us at the door. Before we stepped inside, he gave a grunt and an icy glare as he scanned Jackal.
Mom rounded the corner with a smile. “Been wondering why I haven’t seen you in the last two days.” Her eyes moved behind me, and her shoulders slumped. “Oh, Maureen, what did you do?”
“Jackal,” Dad’s voice caught my attention as he faded into the room. He studied the entity beside me. “We finally meet after all these years.”
“Not that I had a choice in the matter,” Jackal responded, and I rolled my eyes. “What is this about?”
“We need your help,” Sebastian answered as the rest of my siblings faded into the room. I sensed Payne’s presence as well.
“This is Jackal?” Joy cocked her head to the side. “I don’t know. For some reason, I expected an animal or something.”
“He has no problem becoming an animal,” Barron remarked dryly, rubbing his own neck as if remembering what Jackal did. “I still owe you for that.” Barron’s eyes gleamed as he watched Jackal.
“So, you’re the one I cleaned up after so long ago,” Dad began, and we all waited. He placed his hands in his pants pockets, and the two entities sized up each other. “Do you know how many lives I’ve ascended because of you?”
“I don’t keep track of what I’ve done.” Jackal’s tone was clipped. I turned around and saw he was clutching his chest again. My heart rate increased at the sight. Something about it almost made me feel sad—I didn’t understand why. Once again, I heard hundreds of hearts beating against his chest. He winced and straightened. “You judge me for what I’ve done, but I did what I was meant to do.”
“You’re saying you were meant to place famine and disease in the human world?” Mom was on edge, her feet evenly spaced apart like she was bracing herself for something.
“Love.” Dad turned to Mom, and she relented. “He was created for that reason, just like Fear was created to spread fear and death. It’s true. But no longer.”
“You’re right,” Jackal agreed. “I have no interest in doing the Devil’s bidding anymore. All I care about is getting this collar off of me and going back to sleep.”
“I’m afraid that isn’t what I meant,” Dad furrowed his brows in determined slants. I could sense Jackal tensing behind me. “See, I’m going to need your help, and you don’t appear to be someone that would give it.”
“And now that Maureen has made you her lap dog, she can make you do whatever she wants.” August finished Dad’s thought with a smirk.
I tilted my head when I saw Sebastian walk toward Jackal. The fool placed his arm around Jackal’s neck and beamed. “That means you’re working for the good guys now.” He patted his shoulder. “Congratulations.”
One second Sebastian was grinning like the goof he was, and in the next Jackal grabbed the top of his shirt and slung my brother to the ground.
“Jackal!” I hissed.
“It’s fine,” Sebastian groaned as he got up. He faced Jackal with a grim expression. “We don’t have to be enemies. You don’t seem evil. You don’t appear evil. You look lost.” My brother might seem like a fool sometimes, but he was simply an easygoing guy. He took everything with a smile, and he missed nothing because of it. I scrutinized Jackal anew, trying to see what Sebastian uncovered so quickly. The entity before us looked murderous. His gaze held Sebastian’s with venom, but maybe, there was something else there. Uncertainty. Confusion. Pain. I didn’t know which.
Then again, I didn’t know Jackal at all. He seemed tormented by something. Maybe it was wrong for me to bring him here… to subject him to our duties, to have collared him in the first place. But when thinking of all the helpless lives at stake and dying right now because of this plague, I steeled my nerves and decided someone had to make choices even if it was slightly wrong—wrong to control ones will and to goad them, but I was helpless already to my own curse. Even if I knew in my head, it wasn’t all black and white with Jackal, that there was truly something more beneath his pained bright green eyes and his history of pestilence, I couldn’t call a cease fire with him. Not with pride.
“Barron said you never tried to reverse your powers, but could you try?” Sebastian asked him, knocking me from my harrowing thoughts.
“Why would I?”
“Did you need a reason to drop your plagues everywhere?” I countered. His attention snapped to me. A thin thread of patience and control always seemed to hover between us.
“I had a reason.”
“Why are we even bothering to ask?” Prudence piped in. “Some will never want to do good. He wasn’t created with virtue in his DNA.”
“Enough.” Dad raked his finger through his hair and sighed. “Regardless, we’re going to need him to try to reverse a disaster. The human world needs him.”
“You heard the old man.” August strode toward Jackal and me. “Come on. I’ll take him to the human world.”
I caught August by the arm as he tried to walk past me. “I don’t think so,” I told him. August stared down at me. “I’ll take him. I’m the only one who can control him.”
“At least take Barron with you,” August murmured.
“I got it,” I snapped back.
August exhaled, holding up his hands in surrender for a second before ruffling my hair. I smacked his hand away. “You got it, we know. But you’re not alone. Not even with your sin.” In typical August fashion, he faked a yawn and made a break for it. He could only handle so much tender stuff at a time. “I’ll drop into the human world once I get my shit straightened out at the casino.”
“Are you sure you don’t want us going with you, Maureen?” It was Joy who asked.
I shook my head and peered over my shoulder at Jackal who was already watching me. “Let’s go, Ja
ck.”
Chapter 7
Jackal
“Will you chill?” Maureen huffed as we walked out of Grim’s castle.
Not only was I angry, I was uncomfortable. The one hundred and thirty-seven hearts beat furiously out of sync in my chest. They rang in my ears, rattling my teeth. The human world was in dishevel—seasons were out of whack because of the looming fate. Famine and disease were taking over even the healthiest places. Water was disappearing. Food was slowly being contaminated. The hearts knew that now thanks to Grim. His presence was the tipping point for them. It wasn’t my fault, so many villages were hurting this time, but they wouldn’t let me forget their deaths had been my fault.
Instead of feeding me memories, they were almost furious in their need to pound in my chest until their anger bled into me, becoming mine. They weren’t settled nor were they trying to hurt me. It was something equally worse though. I had a driving need to do something, go somewhere. But why? What for? What did they want from me?
Their anger slowly turned into resolve. Resolve for what? I wish I knew why a trickle of desperation in the form of my churning gut made me want to do whatever it was they wanted so they’d stop feeling so, so pained. I did not like this helpless sensation…like I couldn’t do anything. I was stronger than most, yet in this moment it was like I was stranded in the middle of a blocked room without a way to exit—completely hopeless to soothe my rolling stomach.
Maureen stopped abruptly, and I slammed into her. My weight threw her off balance but she was nimble like a cat and regained her footing. Lines of hate marred her face when she twisted toward me. “How many hearts do you have?”
“I don’t even know if I have one,” I responded honestly. I was so consumed by the one hundred and thirty-seven that I couldn’t argue with her.
“I don’t believe you. Before you mentioned mine being louder than yours.”
Had I worded it like that? Claimed them for my own? She examined my chest. I grabbed her wrist just as she reached out to touch it.
“I hear all of them.”
My eyes widened. “You can hear them too?” I asked disbelieving.
“You said you didn’t even know if you had one.” Her words were accusing.
“Those aren’t mine.”
Her eyebrows pinched together. “I don’t understand. You stole them?”
I laughed. “Stole them? I wish them gone. No, Maureen, the one hundred and thirty-seven are my curse.”
“One hundred and thirty-seven?”
“One hundred and thirty-seven hearts.”
I couldn’t prevent her from reaching out and palming my chest this time. Her long fingers were oddly soothing. “So many…” She said in awe. “They can’t all be in there.” She tilted her head as she studied my chest. The lavender invaded my nostrils. I let it. For now. “You said it was a curse. Like ghosts inside your chest cavity?”
“They are,” I assured her. “They haunt me every second I’m awake.”
Maureen’s features softened. The hard edges of her venom I was so acquainted with dissipated and I saw something new—something less harsh. Something almost forgiving.
“They’re the reason you want to go back to sleep.” I swallowed yet admitted nothing. “Why are you cursed?”
“I released a plague on a witch’s village. Back then, villages weren’t huge because humanity was spread out all over the world. The settlement I wiped out was considered big back then… One hundred and thirty-seven people died because of my disease. The witch cursed me with all of them.”
“She wanted you to feel their pain and agony?”
It was suddenly hard to admit to her that I was a being incapable of emotions. That it was only now that I could feel like a human. I wanted nothing more than to not have them again, but the thought of Maureen knowing that I couldn’t process passions and excitements… For some reason, I did not want her to know.
“Yes, she wanted me to understand what they went through.”
She dropped her hand. “Well, do you?”
“She made sure of that.”
“You don’t understand completely.” Her shoulders slumped. She turned away from me. I didn’t like it. I was starting to see that there were a great many things that I did not like. Maureen’s disappointment was one of those things.
She faded without another word, and I was left to follow her into the human world. “How so?” I growled the moment I ported to her.
I stiffened as my senses went haywire. Strange fumes filled the air, blaring noises chased one another, and everything was so loud. I tore my gaze from her and took in my surroundings. This was the human world? I didn’t recognize it. The smoke came from all the things moving on their own. The buildings were enormous. Some were made of mostly crystal and transparent while others were shiny.
“Some places are worse than this,” she whispered. I was still trying to figure out what was wrong. I sensed nothing to give me a clue.
Maureen faded again, and I followed. I knew what she meant the moment I stepped in the sick-place beside her. The disease was everywhere. This sickness was nothing like what I enacted. Maureen passed through a door like a ghost. Curiosity overwhelmed my irritation as she dragged me around. She stopped at the bed of an elderly man. His body, barely clinging to life, was riddled with illness. The rancid smell of failing organs filled my nostrils. It was already rotting the man. His flesh was pale except for the festering yellow blisters all over his skin. “This is a hospital—in case you’re not familiar with the word it’s a ward for the sick… They’re calling it the second Black Death—a highly contagious virus. They haven’t found a vaccine, and it’s not responding to antibiotics. Nothing works. Humans don’t understand that the disease isn’t supposed to be cured.” She crossed her arms, lips in a flat, somber expression. She lifted her gaze to mine. “The end, you might say, is already here. Soon, this will be everywhere.” Her eyes softened. “Reapers can’t fight this kind of enemy.”
The world was ending. Maureen did not seem like the kind of creature to admit that she couldn’t do something. For that, I gave the man a second glimpse in the bed. “Let me guess, you want me to try to cure him?”
She exhaled. “I’m asking first.”
All so that they could keep their eternal lives? “You want to live that badly?” I jeered.
“Yes, I want to live!” She dropped her arms and stepped closer.
Lavender pulled me in. Every time she came close, that scent momentarily snagged my thoughts, rendering me useless. Fortunately, the invasion lasted mere seconds.
“Not only that,” Maureen continues, “but this world we’re in right now, is filled with so many good people. People who deserve to live. It’s one thing not to care for the adults. But how can you be okay with the loss of a child, or for Heaven’s sake, a newborn?”
I didn’t want to understand, but the hearts suddenly showed me. The pain in my chest intensified as the memory assaulted me.
“Help me!”
I tumbled over a log on the way inside the Elder’s tent. My body burned, my joints ached, my teeth bled and burned like they might pop out, but my child—my child. He wasn’t breathing! The sickness was stealing him away. I couldn’t lose him. “Please, help…” I stumbled not being able to catch myself this time as I fell with my baby boy in my arms. I pushed myself off of him with what strength I had left and gasped at what I saw once I lifted my head. The Elder was dead, lying several feet from my child and me. I whimpered as I pulled my child closer. “I’m sorry,” I cried, but no tears came. I was already too exhausted to do much more than scoot to my child. But when I cradled my head to his chest and heard no heartbeat, I begged for the sickness to claim me sooner.
I blinked rapidly as the memory faded. I glimpsed down at my hands in horror. I was the one that brought the plague upon them. Falling to my knees, I took a few deep breaths.
Why? I didn’t choose to be an abomination. I was created with a job to do, and I did it. But w
hy did every life I claimed cause so much pain?
“It’s because you have a guilty conscience,” Maureen confirmed.
Her voice forced my eyes open. “What?” I sputtered. Had I spoken aloud? What did I say?
“Jack, you had no heart of your own, did you?” Her words were filled with awe. Or maybe it was shock. I couldn’t tell.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“That’s why emotions are new to you.”
“They’re not new,” I denied. “I saw enough from watching humans.” I dropped my head in defeat.
She pulled me up with her hands. “Yeah, but seeing and experiencing are different.” Why was her expression gentle, almost caring? The soft pout of her lips was alluring.
I jerked away from her soft grip. She kept her hand lifted for a moment before frowning and lowering it.
“I’ve been aware for a while now,” I said.
“The witch wanted you to understand being human. She must have discovered you had no heart, so she gave you theirs.” My truths were causing her lips to twitch upward.
I grabbed my head. “Stop trying to figure out the witch’s actions. She cursed me. Her goal was to make me miserable.”
The pain dulled right about the time my anger rose. Maureen’s smirk was going to make me tear the entire building down. What was with this woman and her need to take pleasure in my discomfort?
I pinched my eyes shut, seeking calmness. “Maureen…” I growled.
“Are you gonna try or not?” She was done with me. Her attention was back on the dying man.
With a grunt, I focused on the task at hand. “Undo what’s been done?” I asked incredulously and observed the man. My eyes saw past his flesh. His liver was dried up while his lungs struggled to inflate. “His organs are already shutting down.”
“Then try something. If this one doesn’t work, we’ll go to a newly infected person.”
“It’s not going to work,” I said as I thrust my plague outward and into the man. There was a beeping noise from the machine attached to him.
“You’re killing him!” she shouted.
Jackal's Pride (Seven Deadly Book 2) Page 8
