Forsaken (The Netherworlde Series) (25 page)

Because of the Eidolon,
he thought as she crumpled against his shoulder. It drew on his fear, and hers.
Maybe it feeds on her addiction too, whatever sort of negative energy that emanates. And maybe when it does, it makes it better for her, at least for a little while.

He held her against him for a long time, rocking her gently in his arms, smoothing her hair back with his hand. “Thanks for telling me the truth,” he said at length.

“Yeah, well.” Her voice was muffled against his shirt. “You owe me.”

Finally, closing his eyes and drawing in a deep breath, Jason said, “You’re right. I do.” He leaned back and she looked at him. “Someone shot me five years ago, Mei. They shot me in the head and I died.”

She blinked in tearful bewilderment and surprise, and he made himself continue, forcing the words out of his mouth until they tumbled loose on their own, everything he remembered, everything he’d come to realize. He was afraid of what she’d think, what she would do or say, fully expecting that she’d think he was crazy, that she’d be frightened of him, like Sam had been. He was terrified of what her reaction would be, but he told her everything anyway. When he was finished, he closed his eyes and braced himself for her rebuke, her disbelief and derision.

“What will happen if they find you again?” she asked instead, drawing his gaze. “That guy, Sitri, and those things he had with him.” Her brows were lifted, her eyes round with worry. “They want to take you back to that place, make you a slave again? That’s why that thing was trying to get inside your head, that Wyrm.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding.

A slave.
He hadn’t thought about it in exactly that term before, but realized she was right, that was exactly what he’d been to Sitri, he and the Eidolon both, and what they would have again if the Wyrm had found its way into Jason’s brain.
Slaves.

“But why?” she asked. “Why do they want you so bad?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I think the Eidolon must be something really powerful, something they can’t control on their own. So they need me to give it a body…a mind they can take over.”

He looked at her plaintively. “I know this sounds crazy.”

She nodded. “It sounds nuts,” she agreed, adding swiftly, “But I believe you. I saw it too, remember? I was there. I know you’re telling the truth.”

Her arms slipped around his neck and he clung to her with a shuddering sigh of abject relief, ridiculously choked up, on the tenuous verge of tears.
I believe you.
Three simple words that suddenly meant the world to him, made him realize how desperate he’d been to hear them.

“There’s something I don’t understand,” Mei said as he drew away. “Why would you have ended up in the place? You called it the…Netherworlde? But it sounds like hell to me, like you were in hell. But I thought only bad people went there. You know, like Hitler or Ted Bundy. You’re not like that…
weren’t
like that. Before, I mean. Were you?”

“No.” He shook his head. Truthfully, that had been in the back of his mind all along too. He hadn’t been an angel, not by the stretch of anyone’s imagination, and true, he’d never gone to church regularly. But he’d tried to be a good person. Aside from the misdemeanor assault rap, the closest he’d come to anything morally abhorrent in his life had been smoking the occasional joint, serving the occasional minor, lying to get the occasional girl to go to bed with him and then lying again when they were through by saying he’d call her.

“Maybe that priest can tell you,” Mei said. “The one from the wax museum?”

“I guess we’ll find out tomorrow,” Jason said. “He said to meet him at the church, Saint Stephen Martyr.”
If he’s still alive,
he added to himself, remembering the pain in Gabriel’s face, the bloody wound in his gut. He met Mei’s gaze. “Thank you for believing me.”

“Thank you for trusting me,” she replied. He stood up but she hooked her hand against his, stopping him before he could walk away. “You and me, we’re square?” she asked, looking up at him, her expression growing hesitant and hopeful. “I mean, it’s all good now, right? We’re okay again.”

“Yeah.” He brushed his hand against the side of her face, a light, fleeting caress. “We’re okay, Mei. I promise.”

****

He bought them Chinese takeout for supper that evening and they sat cross-legged together on the bed, eating straight out of the boxes while watching reruns of
Wheel of Fortune
back to back.

Mei showed him how to use chopsticks. “Hold one like a pencil, here.” She leaned over, moving his fingers against the slim spear of bamboo. “Then take this one like this… Now use your fingertip to move it up and down.”

When he got the hang of it enough to pinch a mouthful of kung pao chicken, she grinned.
“
Ni que shi zuo de hen hao a,
”
she praised in Chinese, adding by way of translation, “You did a good job.”

The sun set and
Wheel of Fortune
gave way to a string of
C.S.I.
spin-offs, then the late-night newscast. After a while, Mei became restless, fidgeting and squirming, then pacing about, chewing on her nails, the figurative long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, but he knew she was lying. She’d told him she wasn’t addicted to heroin, and while that may have been the case, she was obviously hurting for it nonetheless.

He thought of what she’d told him, her words replaying in his mind.
I think about getting high all the time, except when you’re around. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know why, but I don’t need it as bad around you. It’s like you do something somehow and I’m okay for a while.

He’d attributed this to the Eidolon, a side effect of its apparent ability to somehow feed upon negative emotions, fear in particular.

“Hey,” he said as she cut a diagonal path across the room for at least the ten -thousandth time. When she glanced at him, he motioned with his hand. “Come here.”

Mei walked back to the bed and he scooted over in unspoken invitation. She stretched out beside him, hesitantly at first, her body stiff as he wrapped his arm around her and drew her near.

“I know.” He pressed his cheek against the crown of her head, closed his eyes and tried to will the Eidolon to stir inside him. As its icy presence filtered through his veins, he could feel it drawing on Mei’s need. It wasn’t anywhere near as powerful as feeding from the strip club owner, Pops’’s fear had been, but again, it felt visceral, almost sexual in terms of gratification. The tremors in Mei’s body began to wane, then disappeared altogether, as did the tension in her slender form. With each passing moment, she relaxed against him all the more, her breath growing long, slow and deep.

Back off now.
He opened his eyes, looking up at the ceiling. Mei and Sam had told him his eyes turned black whenever the Eidolon came over him, and it seemed to him that he could see it now, its indelible shadow clouding his line of sight. For the moment, anyway, it had drawn the raw brunt of Mei’s heroin need from her, but it remained hungry and restless, longing for more. He’d unleashed it without considering how he might recall it when it was done, and leaned his head back now, closing his eyes, the tendons bridging his neck and shoulders tensing now as he clenched his fists and struggled to rein it in.

Back off now,
he thought, repeating this mantra over and over until at last, he felt the Eidolon receding inside him. He knew it was gone when the leaden coldness inside him began to subside. He let out a long sigh, not realizing until that moment that he’d been holding his breath. When he looked up at the ceiling again, the shade of gloom was gone.

I did it,
he thought in amazement.
I turned it on, then off again. I actually controlled it.

“Are you all right?”

He’d thought Mei had fallen asleep, and the sound of her quiet voice startled him, Glancing down, he found her looking at him, her brows lifted, her dark eyes concerned.

It was her turn to laugh. “I’d like to see that,” she remarked, slapping him lightly, playfully on the stomach. When she left her hand here, draped against his abdomen, he didn’t think anything of it. But as her fingers began to move, slipping down below his navel, creeping over the waistband of his jeans, it occurred to him the movement might have been more than innocent on her part. And when she touched him through the denim of his jeans, first gripping, then stroking him gently but firmly, his eyes widened in surprise.

“Stop,” he whispered, catching her hand with his own. He heard her breath cut short in surprise, and she froze against him. “Don’t do that.”

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was small and warbling, as if she hovered on the brink of tears. “Jason, I’m sorry. Please, I…I didn’t mean…”

She sat up and he could hear the soft, fluttering sounds of her breathing as she hiccupped against tears. “I’m sorry.”

Every man she’d ever met in her entire life, with the likely exception of her father, had used her in one way or another for sex. She didn’t know how to express fondness or gratitude any other way and he realized this.

“Mei, listen to me.” He could see her eyes glistening with soft reflected light, and he tucked his fingertips beneath her chin, tilting her face up. “You’re a beautiful girl,” he began.

She rolled her eyes and slapped his hand away. “Oh, God, here we go.”

“What? You are.” When she flapped her hands in a
whatever
gesture, he caught her chin again, redirecting her gaze to meet his own. “You are. Any guy would be lucky to have you around. I know I am.” His smile faltered. “But I can’t do that. I can’t be with you, not like that. I’m sorry.”

“Because you think I’m a kid.” She pushed his hand away again.

“No.
” He hooked her by the fingers, slipping his own through hers. “Because I’m still in love with Sam.” Forlornly, in his mind, he added,
A
nd I always will be.
CHAPTER NINETEEN

The aroma of coffee brewing stirred him to consciousness some time later, and when he opened his eyes a slim, squinting margin, he saw pale gray daylight. He sat up with a groan, still somewhat groggy and more than a little disoriented. The little motel room was empty, the curtains slightly opened. The TV was on, the volume turned almost all the way silent, and on the bureau across from the bed, a little four-cup coffeemaker sat with its red light ablaze, a filled pot resting on its miniature burner.

“Mei?”

Jason crawled out of bed, sucking in a sharp breath through his teeth, his hand darting for his shoulder.

“Mei?” he called again, limping over to the vanity. The bathroom door stood partially ajar. It was dark beyond the threshold, but he rapped lightly against it just in case. “Mei? You in there?”

She wasn’t, and he didn’t have the foggiest idea where she might have gone. There was no sign of her, no note, no clues, nothing, and for a moment, he felt panicked.

Where did she go?
he wondered in alarm. His shoes were beside the bed, and he sat down hurriedly to cram his feet into them.
Did Sitri find us, follow us somehow? Jesus, what if something’s happened to her? What if Sitri came while I was sleeping and took her?

“I thought something had happened to you. I thought you were in trouble, that Sitri had…” His voice faltered and he frowned. “Why are you laughing?”

She struggled, pressing her lips together, but was unable to suppress a giggle. “You’re cute when you’re worried, you know that?”

“Damn it, Mei, I’m not…” he began, but his voice faltered when someone stepped into the opened doorway behind her—a woman, slender, beautiful and poignantly, painfully known to him. “Sam,” he gasped.

“Jason!” Her voice choked with tears; he could see them in her eyes, a thin, glimmering sheen.

“Surprise,” Mei offered with a bashful sort of smile as Sam rushed forward, hands outstretched, falling against him. Clinging to him, she shuddered, a barely restrained sob.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “I…I don’t…” He blinked at her stupidly as she drew back, her tears spilling. “How did you find me?”

“Your friend found
me
,” Sam replied, and when he turned to Mei in surprise, she looked away, sheepish but smiling. “She came to the apartment this morning. Said you’d showed her where the bar was.” She touched his face, stroking his cheek, caressing his mouth. “I’ve been so worried about you…so scared…”