Forsaken (The Netherworlde Series) (15 page)

“Sam.” He caught her by the hands, trying to draw her gaze. “Listen to me. It’s all right.”

“But there’s blood on me,” she whimpered, and when he drew her into his arms, she fell against him, her sob-choked breath hot against his neck.

“It’s all right,” he whispered, stroking his hand against her hair. “It’s going to be okay, Sam. I promise.”

****

By the time they returned to the apartment, she’d calmed down. A little too much, in fact. She unlocked the outer door dead bolt and climbed the stairs behind the building with a sort of mechanical detachment, her expression stoic, her eyes distant. Barton had been happy to see her, bouncing up and down, jostling against her legs and causing her to stumble, but she didn’t pay any attention to the dog, not even when it caught sight of Jason in the apartment doorway and growled.

“Who was that man?”

Sam went into the kitchen, and after a moment of silence, Jason jumped, startled by a loud, hollow
pop
as she cracked open the bottle of celebratory champagne Dean had delivered the night before. Because he’d dropped it on the floor, never a good thing for a carbonated beverage kept sealed and under pressure, the champagne promptly flooded out of the mouth of the bottle in a thick, spurting foam that had spattered all over the linoleum and her shoes.

She offered him some and he accepted. He never drank much by habit, but at that moment, a drink sounded like as good an idea as any. Sam rinsed out their coffee cups from that morning, filled each to the brim, then took both mugs and bottle with her as she sat down in a chair, draping her legs indelicately over the side.

“Is he the one who stabbed you?” she asked, officially having drained the first cup and topping off her second. When he still didn’t answer, caught off guard by the questions as he sat across from her on an oversized box, she frowned. “The guy at the platform. The one who was killed. Is he the one who stabbed you night before last, this…Jeremiah?”

“Nemamiah,” Jason corrected gently. “No. He’s not.”

For his part, he was into his second mug of champagne too, and already, he could feel it affecting him, a slight and not at all unpleasant sensation of light-headedness, a tingling warmth in his gut as each mouthful pooled in his belly.

He looked down at the floor, the shadow beneath his feet. For the moment, at least, it lay dormant and still, inert and innocuous, like a shadow was supposed to. “I think he wanted to bring me back,” he said at length, his voice quiet.

Sam’s frown deepened. “Back where?”

He looked up at her, his mind and tongue loosened from the wine. “I think he wanted me to bring me back to hell.”

It was a statement so frank and abrupt, it fell heavily in the air between them, nearly leaden. He wanted tell her the truth, trust in her now, because he felt like he was going crazy with so many secrets all to himself, and none of them making any sense.

She blinked at him for a long moment, her dark eyes round, the cup halfway raised to her mouth. “To hell,” she repeated finally.

He nodded.

“Oh, Jason, come on.” She swung her legs back down to the floor, then stood, wobbling momentarily, feeling the effects of the champagne. “Now you’re just making fun of me.”

“What?”

“I told you I was going back to church again. You think that’s funny? I found a lot of comfort in that after you were gone. I know you always thought it was a load of crap, but—”

“No, I didn’t,” he said, wounded.

“But that doesn’t mean there isn’t any merit to it,” Sam finished. “You can think it’s childish and silly if you want to, but I’ve spent a lot of sleepless nights wondering what you went through on the night you died, wondering if you’d been in pain, if you’d been scared, all the things I’ve worried for years about my parents. It made me feel better. It brought me some peace to think that maybe, just maybe, you all were in heaven. If not some place with pearly gates and angels and all that crap, then at least some place safe, where you wouldn’t feel scared anymore or hurt or sad.”

Her voice had grown tearful, but her brows furrowed stubbornly and she didn’t break down this time. “I don’t know where you’ve been,” she said. “I don’t know what happened to you, if you got hooked on drugs or something, maybe that guy was your dealer or…or your pimp…”

“What?” He shook his head. “No, Sam, that’s—”

“I don’t know but I can’t help you, Jason, unless you let me. Unless you trust me.”

He stood, reaching for her. “Sam,” he pleaded. “I
do
trust you.”

“Then tell me the truth!” she exclaimed. “Tell me what happened to you. Bear took your fingerprints this morning but he told me they didn’t match up to your records. They didn’t match up to anyone’s records, because
you don’t have any.
No fingerprints, Jason. Bear told me that’s not possible, not unless they got burned off somehow or surgically changed. Did somebody do that to you? To your fingertips?”

Jason looked down at his hands. When he didn’t answer, she marched over to him and grabbed him by the sleeve, shaking him roughly. “Tell me what happened to you!”

He met her gaze plainly, took a deep breath, then jumped in feetfirst and told her the truth, everything from the moment he remembered first waking up in the Netherworlde. He told her about Sitri, the Goblins and Wyrms, the sewage thing in the bathroom downstairs. He told her about Seattle and the gun, the strange marks engraved on each bullet cartridge. He told her about the shadow inside him—the Eidolon—the creeping coldness that seemed to feed on fear, the thing that had apparently changed him inside and out, made him a Wraith.

“I don’t think anything can hurt us, not for long anyway, unless it has that mark on it, that Celtic knot.” He pushed up the sleeve on his sweater, showing her his forearm. “See? This is where Barton bit me. This morning when I took the bandages off, all the wounds were gone. I don’t think Sitri died when the train hit him. He
couldn’t
. He’ll wait until he’s healed and then he’ll come after me again. He—”

His voice cut short as Sam slapped him in the face with enough raw, angry force to snap his cheek toward his opposing shoulder, leaving a hot, stinging red patch spanning from his temple to his jaw. He gasped in surprise, drawing his hand to his aching cheek, his eyes wide.

“Get out,” Sam said, her voice trembling angrily.

“What?” Jason stared at her, wounded and confused.

“Get out of my apartment,” Sam said. “I hope to God you don’t believe one word of what you just told me, because if you do, you need some serious help. You’re on drugs or you’ve lost your mind, suffered brain damage, something. Whatever the reason, you’re scaring me. Today was a horrible mistake and I want you to go.”

He didn’t know which hurt him the most, when she said
I want you to go
or
today was a horrible mistake.

She grabbed the leash off a nearby box top and caught Barton by the collar, clipping it into place. “Bear’s going to be getting off work, here in another hour. He can help you find a place, a halfway house maybe or a shelter. I don’t know. I don’t care. But you can’t stay here.”

“Sam, please,” Jason said as she opened the apartment door. “Please don’t do this.”

She stared at him, her expression unreadable, her hand firmly closed about the loop of the leash. Without another word, she turned and left the apartment, jerking the dog in tow and slamming the door behind her.

****

Left alone and to his own devices, Jason polished off the rest of the champagne. It was a large bottle, 1.5 liters, and by the time it was empty, the last drop drained, Jason was staggering, slurring, dizzy drunk.

She doesn’t believe me,
he thought in dismay, tripping over boxes and floundering into walls as he stumbled down the corridor to the bedroom. He had to laugh, because if he didn’t, he’d burst into tears like a girl stood up for the prom.
Can’t really blame her for that. Shit, I don’t believe it myself.

“Brain damage,” he muttered, Sam’s words echoing in his mind.

You’re on drugs or you’ve lost your mind, suffered brain damage, something.

“That’s it,” he said, although thanks to the alcohol, this came out as
Thassss it.
“Just like Bear said. My brain’s been turned into hamburger.”

Once across the bedroom threshold, he stumbled headlong into more boxes, sending them crashing to the floor, their contents spilling. Jason fell with them, toppling to his knees, gritting his teeth against a sharp cry as he caught himself on his hands, sending pain spearing through his injured shoulder.

He heard the tinkling of glass breaking as the box hit the floor and, still wincing, he reached for the nearest newspaper-wrapped bundle that had fallen out. He could tell by the feel of the contents that it was a framed photograph. Holding it gingerly, swaying back and forth like some kind of cartoon snake-charming swami, he peeled back the taped edge of newspaper.

There is no us,
she’d told him, and here was his proof, plain and irrefutable—a photograph of Sam and Dean.
That died five years ago with you.

She was riding on Dean’s back piggyback-style, her arms coiled around his neck, his hands hooked beneath her knees, keeping her perched aloft. Both of them were laughing together on the beach near the surf, with the unmistakable wharf of Holiday Island in the background.

Good old Dean, everything I wasn’t…everything I’m not. Rich, educated, successful,
he thought as he stared down at the picture. His thumb settled against a sliver of glass from the splinter frame, pressing hard enough against it to break the skin. He didn’t feel it, but when he swept his thumb against the surface of the picture, as if hoping to clear away some illusion or mistake, he left a discernablediscernible smear of bright red blood.

How long was I gone before you let him take my place, Sam? Was it that easy to forget about me? What happened to crying at least once a week over me? The five years of sleepless nights?

“It sure doesn’t look like you’ve lost any sleep here,” he said and then, with a hoarse, angry, anguished cry, he hurled the photograph across the room. It smashed into the far wall, glass and frame shattering.

Jason grabbed the next paper-bound package and found another picture of Sam and Dean. In it, the two of them stood by a Christmas tree, arm in arm, but to Jason’s heart, it may as well have been a live broadcast of the two of them making love, of Dean pounding away while Sam clawed at his back, writhing as she came.

“Goddamn it,” he yelled, sending this picture crashing into the wall too. Then the next one, and the next, and now he staggered to his feet and began digging through the boxes, finding more and more pictures, sending all of them in rapid-fire and furious succession careening across the room. “You stole my life,” he screamed at Dean’s photos. “
You stole my goddamn life!
”

He crumpled to his knees. “You son of a bitch,” he whispered, clapping his hand over his face, mindless of the dozens of thin, shallow cuts along his fingers and palm. He shuddered, then began to cry. “You stole my life.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN

Jason felt hands pawing lightly against him, patting his pockets, traveling from his chest to his hips and from there to his ass, drawing him from a deep, dreamless sleep.

“Get back.” He reached for the gun tucked at the small of his back, hidden beneath the overlapping edges of shirt, sweater and coat he’d stolen from Dean’s closet. His voice was a croak, his breath frosted and luminescent in the moonlight as he jerked the Beretta loose and leveled it at whoever was trying to pick his pockets.

“Take it easy.” Soft footsteps skittered in the damp sand and loose gravel as the person scrambled back. Shortly after smashing Sam’s photographs, Jason had left the apartment. He’d taken a small duffel bag with him, stuffed with Dean’s clothes, the box of doughnuts from Sam’s kitchen, and a bottle of chardonnay he’d found in Sam’s refrigerator. He’d wandered the streets restlessly, aimlessly, until long after nightfall, and then he’d taken refuge beneath one of the north piers along the waterfront. The roar of the surf was loud, the cold, metallic stink of the saltwater omnipresent, and the chill in the air was amplified a thousandfold along the lip of the sea. Here, beneath the towering latticework of lumber and steel, flanked by barnacle-encrusted pilings, he’d found a place where the water had receded for the night and he could hunker down, swallow about half the bottle of wine, then sleep.

Others had sought sanctuary here too. Dozens of the city’s derelict population stood gathered together in loose-knit clusters. Some passed pipes, needles or bottles around, others huddled in close quarters for warmth, while others still had built small lean-tos or other shelters out of blankets and cardboard boxes. A select few had built fires out of driftwood or trash, and against this dim and somewhat distant backdrop of glow, the person who had approached him was little more than silhouette. Between the slim build, the soft touch and the sound of the voice, he judged it to be a girl.

“I thought you were dead,” she said. “I was just checking to be sure.”

“Well, I’m not,” he growled, not lowering the gun. He was still mostly drunk and besides that, he was cold, and his aim wavered clumsily, along with his vision. Struggling to draw aim on what now appeared to be a quartet of shadows, he said, “Go on. Get out of here.”

“Man,” said the girl with a laugh. “You’re pretty fucked up, aren’t you? You got any more?”

“More what?”

She stepped closer to him, then folded her legs beneath her, squatting into his line of sight. In the fluttering orange glow of the nearest campfire, he saw her face swim murkily in and out of focus. She was young, of Asian descent, with the left side of her hair dyed a pale shade of blond
and the right left its natural, dark hue.