Forsaken (The Netherworlde Series) (3 page)

You’re unmarked,
Nemamiah had told him. It hadn’t made any sense. Nothing made sense to Jason all of a sudden. He stumbled about in a clumsy, bewildered semicircle, staring at the vacant shell of what had, only earlier that night, been his bar.

When he heard a dog growling, a low and menacing sound, guttural and close at hand, he froze, his eyes flying wide. He heard a quick scrabbling of claws against the dusty wooden floors and saw a blur of movement darting out of the shadows to his left. He threw up his arms just as a large dog, heavy and shaggy coated, leaped at him, sinking its teeth just above his elbow and sending him crashing to the floor.

“Barton,” a woman cried, but the dog, unfazed, snarled around its greedy mouthful of Jason’s arm and began to shake its head, furiously embedding its teeth all the more deeply. Jason tried to cover his head, to use his arms as a shield to protect his face, and drew his knees up to guard his vulnerable groin.

“Barton, get off him. Let go!” Jason felt the dog’s jaws slacken, then slip away as the woman hauled it backward by the collar. It began to bark now, a thick, ferocious sound as it strained against her grasp, struggling to reach him again.

“This is private property,” the woman cried. “You get out of here right now, mister, I mean it. Or I’ll sic my dog on you again!”

Her voice was shrill, warbling with fright, but still he recognized it. Jason lowered his hands hesitantly, squinting against a bright flashlight beam aimed directly at his face. “Sam?”

Oh, thank God,
he thought, shuddering with sudden, indescribable relief.
Maybe I’m not going crazy after all.

“Sam…it…it’s me,” he said, holding out his hand, trying vainly to block the glare.

He heard a
clunk!
as the flashlight clattered to the ground, leaving him blinking against little dancing pinpoints of residual glow. The beam now cut a diagonal across the floor, as if deliberately following his footsteps in the dust, illuminating his path from the corridor.

“Jason?” Sam said, her voice tremulous and barely audible over the insistent, incessant barking.

Where did that dog come from?
he wondered dazedly.

“Oh my God,” Sam said, and when she leaned over and picked up the flashlight, her hand was shaking. Her entire body was shaking, as a matter of fact, and the light bobbed and bounced off the floor, the wall, off Jason and the ceiling. “It’s not possible,” she said over and over again, nearly a moan. “It…oh my God, it can’t be…it’s not possible!”

When he moved, sitting up, pain stabbed through his shoulder, and he grimaced, clutching the bloody wound in his chest. Now blood streamed from his forearm too, the deep incisions where the dog’s teeth had hit their marks.

She sounds like she’s seen a ghost,
he thought, and when the flashlight beam swept momentarily across her face, he could see that her dark eyes were enormous and round, her mouth ajar, her skin ashen as if with shock.

“Sam?” he whispered, frightened now, because she looked frightened to see him, terrified in fact, something he had no accounting for. None whatsoever.

“It’s not possible,” she whimpered again, shaking her head. “Oh…oh, my God, you…Jason, you’re dead!”
CHAPTER TWO

They’d met in the bar. Sam had come in one night with a large bachelorette party, a group of boisterous young women who had crowded into that very corner of the room, laughing and singing and downing round after round of mixed drinks and celebratory cocktails.

Sam had ordered the first of these, having waded through the typical Saturday night throng to approach the bar. Jason had been working on one end, his regular bartender, Eddie, had been hustling on the other, and even together, they’d had a hard time keeping up with the busy demand for drinks and draughts. And then he’d seen her, a stunning brunette with brown eyes and a gauzy cream-colored peasant blouse cut low enough to provide a demure yet provocative peek at her cleavage.

As a career bartender, Jason had seen more than his fair share of beautiful women. Women liked bartenders, or more specifically, they liked to
fuck
bartenders. He’d pretty much had his pick of young, nubile hotties who’d packed into Sully’s on any given weekend, and pick them he had. But all at once, when he’d seen Samantha, he’d immediately forgotten them all. He’d forgotten how busy the bar was, how loud the overlapping din of live music and raucous conversation had been, never mind the running litany of pending drink orders in his mind that had yet to be filled, and the half dozen more besides that were currently being shouted out at him from patrons crowding the bar.

He’d stared in dumbstruck amazement at Sam, flustered for what was likely the first time in his entire life. “I’d like to get some drinks, please,” she’d called out to him, teetering on her tiptoes as she balanced on the bar’s brass foot rail and leaned over.

Blinking to snap out of his reverie, he’d managed a smile. “Well, then, you’ve come to the right place,” he’d said, holding up the bottle of Bloodhorse bourbon that had, to that moment, been dangling impotently in his hand. “I happen to make them.”

Her mouth had unfurled in the breathtakingly beautiful smile that was now quite familiar to him, that still stole his breath whenever he saw it as much as it had that first time.

She’d given him her credit card to run a tab, but he hadn’t charged her, not for that first round or any of the subsequent ones. The bachelorette party had been large, and even with his overhead, he’d wound up losing several hundred dollars by giving them their drinks for free, but it hadn’t mattered. Sam had a good time. But when the sizeable charge she’d thought she’d incurred still hadn’t shown up on her bank account two weeks after the party, she’d returned to Sully’s on a Monday afternoon, statement in hand, and a quizzical expression on her face.

“I’d like to speak to the manager, please,” she’d said. Jason had been unloading an order of beer, heavy boxes in which bottles clattered and clanged together as he stacked them against a dolly for transit to his walk-in cooler. He’d blinked at her, dumbstruck all over again, and she smiled, recognizing him. “Oh, hey. I don’t know if you’ll remember me or not, but I was in here a couple of weeks ago, a Saturday night, with a bunch of—”

“No, I remember,” he said, adding to himself,
How could I forget you?

She hadn’t been wearing any makeup that day, and her hair had been drawn back loosely in a ponytail. No fancy clothes or jewelry for a night on the town, she’d worn a plain old sweatshirt and blue jeans.

She’d been stunning.

“You know, nothing ever showed up on my credit card,” she said, giving the paper in her hand a little demonstrative flap. “For the drinks, I mean. I know sometimes it takes a while for stuff to go through, but I called the bank and they said there wasn’t even anything pending.”

Jason shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.”

“But I…I thought…” She blinked at him in bewildered if not somewhat suspicious surprise. “I want to make sure the drinks were paid for.”

Fifteen hundred dollars worth of a lot, to the best of his recollection. Sam and her twenty friends had liked top-shelf brands and plenty of them.

“It’s all right,” he told her.

Again, her expression grew wary. “Won’t you get in trouble if your boss finds out?”

“Oh, sure,” said the bartender, Eddie, as he passed by, wheeling a large dolly full of beer crates. He’d overheard this last, and to judge by his smirk, found it amusing, and cut Jason a sideways glance. “He’s a real asshole, the boss.”

Jason laughed, but Sam grew anxious. “I don’t want to get you in trouble,” she said, reaching for her pocket, pulling out a small change purse. “Here.” She unzipped the purse and pulled out her credit card. “Run it again. You can do that, can’t—”

He’d walked her out to her car. They stood on the sidewalk beside her Jeep, facing each other in a comfortable proximity that had suggested the attraction he felt for her was reciprocated.

“This is your bar, isn’t it?” she asked, with a quick glance at Sully’s, then back up at him again. Her brow arched slightly, in tandem with the uplift of the corner of her mouth. “You’re the asshole owner.”

He laughed. “I prefer to be called the prick manager myself.”

When she’d laughed along with him, he’d fallen in love with her, hook, line, sinker and all that other bullshit. There had been no doubt at all, not in his mind or his heart.
I’m going to marry this girl someday,
he’d thought.

“Thank you, then,” Sam had told him, reaching out and hooking his hand with her fingertips. “For the drinks that night. I wish you’d let me pay you.”

“Not necessary,” he interjected.

A small, aggravated crease formed between her brows, yet she continued to smile. “I wasn’t finished.” He laughed, holding up his hands in concession and she went on, “I meant, I wish you’d let me pay you
back
for the drinks. Buy you dinner or something.”

Jason had cocked his brow. “Are you asking me on a date?”

Still that wry smile, her lips pressed together, a soft seam he’d longed to lean down and kiss. “I guess maybe I am. Are you accepting?”

Loose strands of her dark hair had worked loose of her ponytail in the light breeze, flapping into her face. He’d reached out with his free hand to brush that wayward hair back behind her ear.
I’m going to marry this girl someday,
he’d thought again.

“I guess maybe I am,” he’d told her out loud.

****

This has to be a joke,
Jason thought, leaning heavily against Sam as he shuffled through the front door of the upstairs apartment above the bar. It was his apartment, but like the tavern below, nothing but the floor plan was remotely recognizable to him. His hand-me-down furniture was gone—the metal-framed futon with faded black upholstery, the ugly standing chrome lamp that Sam had always teased about being “circa 1980s chic.” The oversized wooden crates he’d stacked for a TV stand, arranged horizontally for a coffee table and upturned vertically on either end of the futon were gone, along with his bookshelves and stereo, his drafting table and computer, the faded and threadbare Oriental rug that had covered the hardwood floor.

“Here,” Sam murmured, easing him down against a stack of cardboard boxes that had been stacked everywhere, as if someone was either in the process of moving in or moving out. She cut a glance down his torso toward his groin, because he was naked and bleeding. “I’ll…uh…get you something…”

Tearing her eyes away, she hurried over to a box that had already been opened. She dug around until she found what she was looking for, a large, dark blue wool blanket. She hurried back to his side and wrapped it around him, drawing it tightly together so he could clutch it beneath his chin. “Here,” she said again gently.

The dog sat nearby watching them. It hadn’t tried to attack Jason again, but its lips would occasionally wrinkle back to reveal its teeth, and it would utter a little sound that would start off as a growl and then end in a short, rasping sort of
whoof,
more an expulsion of air than a bark, it’s way of saying
I’ve got my eye on you, pal.

This has got to be a joke,
Jason thought again, looking helplessly around while Sam turned again, darting down the hallway toward the bathroom.
They moved my stuff while I was out in the alley—Eddie and David and the rest of them—packed up all of the tables downstairs, shoved it all into the storeroom somehow, maybe the kitchen. Then they came up here and packed my furniture, everything. Just one big practical joke.

Except being stabbed wasn’t anyone’s idea of a joke, Jason thought, wincing as he eased the blanket back from his shoulder, trying to get a look at his wound. The electricity hadn’t been working downstairs but was on in the apartment, and by the orange glow of a nearby lamp, he could see that he’d suffered one seriously gruesome injury. The fissure in his flesh was wide and ragged, the blood-crusted edges puckered in an oval like crude lips, the exposed meat beneath bright red and spongy. He was still bleeding heavily, and when Sam returned, carrying a first aid kit in her hand, she gasped, her eyes wide.

“What happened?” She fell to her knees and threw open the kit, ransacking it until she found a large gauze dressing pad. Using her teeth, she bit into the paper wrapping and tore it open. “Oh, God, who did this to you?”

“A man…in the alley,” he murmured, jerking and sucking in a hurting breath as she pressed the pad against his shoulder. “He had a gun. I mean a sword. I…I mean…” With a frown he pressed the heel of his hand to his brow as his head swam. “I can’t remember.”

“Hold this,” Sam whispered, close enough to feel her breath against his face, to her smell her perfume. This, at least, remained familiar and the same, Estee Lauder’s Pleasures. “I’ll go get some water. We need to stop the bleeding.”

He nodded, draping his hand against hers, holding the bandage in place. They stayed this way for a long moment, during which Sam’s rapid-fire, frantic breathing drew to a complete and silent stop, and then she stood again, pulling away from his touch.

“Just hold it,” she said, winding her way once more through the maze of boxes and ducking into the galley-sized kitchen. He heard more clanging, then the rush of water pouring full-blast from the tap. When she returned, carrying a large pot between her hands and sloshing a trail of water in her wake, the dog rose to its feet, its tongue lolling out of the corner of its mouth, its tail wagging expectantly.