Forsaken (The Netherworlde Series)

by Sara Reinke

  The Hounds began to shriek hoarsely, like frightened monkeys, while the Goblin that had attacked Jason uttered a high-pitched, alarmed buzzing sound that within seconds had other scorpions scuttling and scrambling out of crevices and alcoves, rushing to surround them in a broad, cautious circumference, pincers poised, stingers raised.

  Jason watched Sitri hold up his hands, not as much in surrender as concession. “Why are we fighting?” he asked in a saccharin-sweet voice. “We’re supposed to be friends, you and I. Or at least on reasonably amenable terms.”

  “Then put a Wyrm in his head and finish this, friend,” Sarea seethed, not averting her aim.

  “All right.” Sitri nodded. “If you insist.”

  He turned around and Jason could see the tattoos on his body start to move, creeping and crawling against his skin. One in particular began to work its way free, ballooning beneath the surface of Sitri’s flesh like an enormous, swelling boil just below his navel. He could hear the ripping sound as it began to tear through Sitri’s flesh, the Wyrm gnashing its teeth, gnawing its way to freedom. When it worked itself loose, it fell with a heavy, sodden plop to the ground. Using the fingerlike projections framing its head, it began to pull itself along the coarse, pebbled ground, wriggling its ashen body to gain momentum. As it drew closer, Jason heard its teeth chattering eagerly, the ring of its mouth opening and closing, gobbling in nearly giddy anticipation.

  No, Jason wanted to scream, straining with every ounce of effort and energy he possessed to break his paralysis, to will his leaden, immobilized body to move, to fight back. No, no, no, goddamn it! No!

  As if it knew what was happening, understood Jason’s stark terror, his desperation and helplessness, the Eidolon suddenly surged inside him, coursing through his veins. His body might have been crippled by the Goblin’s venom, but the Eidolon had no form of its own. When it shuddered through him, overwhelming him, seizing in his limbs and wrestling the reins of conscious control away from him, it brought with it its imperviousness, its invulnerability.

  All at once, he could move again, his limbs infused with the strength of the Eidolon, and when the tentacles of the Wyrm groped for purchase against his ear, he reached up and grabbed it, wrapping his fingers fiercely around its cold, flaccid form. It screeched, a high-pitched, frantic sound; then he crushed it against his palm. It burst like an overripe tomato, splattering him with tarry black ooze.

  In an instant, he was on his feet. Sitri whirled toward him, and Sarea cried out, her eyes wide, mouth agape in stunned surprise. Jason dissipated into shadow form, rematerializing directly in front of her, hovering momentarily in midair, half-human, half-shadow, long enough and solid enough to drive his fist into her face, knocking her off her feet. The gun flew out of her fingers and hit the ground, and immediately the Goblins surged forward, hiding it from view beneath their scuttling, scrambling feet. Even though Jason tried to slip among them, back in his shadow form again, he couldn’t get to it, couldn’t coalesce long enough to reach between their constantly moving bodies.

  He pulled himself back together, solid once more, ahead of the surging frontline of scorpions, and stood facing off against Sitri.

  “Well done.” Sitri met Jason’s gaze evenly, smiling, and began to clap in a slow, mocking cadence. “But now what are you going to do? The Eidolon can’t leave the Netherworlde on its own.”

  What? Jason glanced around, alarmed. The Goblins continued to scuttle forward, closing in around them, narrowing the circle of open space between them in tightening increments with every passing moment. Shit!

  “Oh.” Sitri let this simple sound drag out for a long moment, his brows raised as if sympathetically. “I see. You didn’t know that, did you? It can only teleport itself around one specific plane, this one or the mortal realm. So in other words, you’re stuck here.” He smiled again sweetly and nodded at Sarea’s fallen form. “You just knocked out the only ride you had back to the other side.”

  A soft chittering sound from his immediate left made Jason whirl in startled surprise. A Goblin had crept up on him, its claws opened, poised to attack. Jason immediately dissipated, springing back into solid form behind the massive scorpion. He grabbed it by the barbed, bulbous end of its tail and used the strength of the Eidolon to wrench it in a tight, abrupt circle. He heard the thick plate of the Goblin’s exoskeleton crack and splinter, the meat beneath squelching moistly as it ripped loose. The creature screeched, flapping its heavy claws as Jason tore the stinger segment away from its abdomen. More black ichor sprayed in a grisly fountain.

  Just as his own blood so long ago had, so, too, did the Goblin’s wound apparently attract and excite its fellows. As it blundered about in wild, reeling circles, the other scorpions abandoned their interest in Jason and began converging on it. They chattered eagerly, scampering and crawling, and within moments, the injured Goblin disappeared in a swarm of pincers and stingers, screaming as they attacked.

  Jason had shifted to shadow and abandoned it, leaving the severed end of its tail to fall heavily among the surging Goblins, fresh meat to fuel their sudden frenzy. When he solidified again, he heard the whisper of spindly legs against the cold, hard ground behind him, then one of the Goblins grabbed him by the neck, its broad claw clamping about him from behind, snuffing his breath to a sharp, painful halt.

  Another caught him by the arm, and together they hauled Jason backward. Their stingers couldn’t immobilize the Eidolon, but that didn’t make them any less formidable weapons. He screamed as the scorpions began to strike him over and over, goring his stomach, torso and spine with the hooked barbs. In desperate instinct, he shifted again into the shadow form of the Eidolon.

  He reappeared only a few feet away and immediately crumpled onto his hands and knees, gasping for breath. The stingers had gouged open a deep series of wounds and he clapped his hand against his gut, struggling to stand. Already, the Goblins had turned and were scuttling quickly toward him. Within seconds, they’d be on him again.

  “All right,” he whispered to the Eidolon inside him, because he could still feel it pulsating like some kind of second heartbeat, a thrumming sensation rippling through his entire body. He didn’t have a weapon, nothing he could use against the Goblins except for its strength and ferocity, its instinct to kill. I need to cut this bastard loose, all the way loose. Everything it’s got.

  “Come on,” he seethed to it. “Wake up and take over. Come on. I’m all yours.”

  As the Goblins converged, he dissipated into shadow, not to seek escape this time, but to rematerialize right in the middle of the swarm. When the Eidolon overpowered him, he felt his mind slip into the same trancelike fugue that had possessed him in the wax museum. With a hoarse cry that was more feral than anything human, he tore into the Goblins, blocking and ducking strikes from their stingers, plowing his fists through tough outer hulls to punch into tail segments and legs, cleaving a methodical, brutal path through the throng. Again and again, he’d disappear, then return. They were fast, impossibly fast, but the Eidolon could move him in the blink of an eye. Within moments, more than a dozen of the creatures lay sprawled and slain against the lunar landscape, and the rest beat a hasty retreat, scuttling and scrambling back into crevices and corners.

  Not through yet, Jason thought, limping in a clumsy, staggering arc, watching them run with cautious surprise. A stinger had struck him high along his rib cage and must have punctured a lung, because his chest felt heavy and his breathing had grown laborious. He could tasted blood in his mouth, feel it dribbling down his chin in a thick, steady stream. They’ll be back, sons of bitches…they’ll regroup and—

  An arm clamped heavily, furiously around Jason’s throat from behind, pinning him in a choke hold—Sitri. Before he could shift again and escape the Nephilim’s grasp, Jason felt a sudden searing pain in the middle of his back. It ripped through him like fire, then tore through his gut, and the business end of Sitri’s sword—the tip smeared now with Jason’s blood—thrust out just below th
e rim of his rib cage, shoved through the breadth of Jason’s torso.

  Jason screamed, his voice echoing across the broad expanse of desolate plain. When his knees failed him and he crumpled, Sitri grabbed him roughly by the back of his head and shoved him face-first to the ground. Jason shrieked again, hoarse and agonized as Sitri shoved against the sword hilt, ramming the blade not only farther through his body, but into the ground beneath him as well, pinning him to the earth like a stag beetle caught in a collector’s case.

  “When are you going to learn?” Sitri planted his knee against the back of Jason’s neck, holding him supine against the dirt. “There’s no escape. There’s no place you can run to, no place you can hide. Don’t you get it by now, you stupid fuck?”

  He shoved against the pommel, forcing the blade deeper, and Jason cried out, choked on blood now, his voice strangled.

  “You,” Sitri seethed, “belong”—again, he shoved; now blood spattered in a thick, steady stream from Jason’s mouth—“to me!”

  His words stirred something inside Jason, deeper even than the Eidolon. His mind flooded all at once with humiliation, shame and rage, everything he’d been forced to suffer at Sitri’s hands or commands, all the abuse and torment he’d been made to endure. With a low, furious cry that rose from the pit of his gut and out of his throat, Jason shoved his hands against the dirt and reared up onto his knees, wrenching the sword point out of the ground.

  Despite the searing pain this caused, Jason gritted his teeth and slammed the back of his head into Sitri’s face. He heard a wet, grinding crunch and felt Sitri’s nose splinter upon impact. With a startled grunt, Sitri stumbled back, his weight falling away from the sword.

  Jason grasped the blood-smeared length of the blade with his hands and tried to push it out of him, back the way it had come, but couldn’t manage more than a couple of inches before the subsequent agony left him doubled over, breathless and reeling once more. When Sitri lunged at him, grabbing him from behind in a taut choke hold, Jason shifted into shadow, whipping backward. He could bring objects or people with him into his incorporeal state, as he had with Mei or his pistol from Seattle, and while at first he didn’t in order to dislodge the sword, as soon as it was out of him, he caught hold of the hilt, slipping with it in shadow form through Sitri’s body.

  Passing through Sitri was like stepping through a frigid draft. Once on the other side, Jason coalesced to face the back of Sitri’s head, the sword between them, the tip now resting against Sitri’s spine, the hilt now clasped in Jason’s hands. Sitri had a moment of stunned, if not bewildered realization to glance over his shoulder and meet Jason’s eyes.

  “I don’t belong to anyone,” Jason seethed, then rammed the blade forward, punching through Sitri’s rib cage from behind, spearing through his heart.

  Sitri’s mouth opened and a thin stream of blood suddenly burbled past his lips, spilling down his chin, standing out in stark contrast to his alabaster skin. “You…you can’t…” he croaked. Then his skin and hair, his entire form, began to sag and run like melting tallow.

  Sitri screamed, his voice ripping up octaves, growing agonized and shrill. His flesh blackened around the sword’s point of impact as if the steel burned him somehow, a scorched circumference that spread outward, tainting Sitri’s skin, swallowing his tattoos in darkness. The centipedes, scarabs and spiders all tried desperately to escape and Sitri’s flesh heaved and rippled as they squirmed beneath the surface, trying to tear their way free.

  Sitri crumpled forward, crashing face-first to the ground. Here, he began to jerk and writhe, no longer shrieking, his voice reduced to an inarticulate, strangled garble of sounds. His fingertips scratched and clawed at the dirt as he convulsed. His tongue lolled out of his mouth and saliva clung to his lips in a thick, rabid froth.

  “Gllluuuuunnnnggghhh!” His eyes rolled wildly in their sockets like those of a horse trapped in a barn fire. His face began to blister, large, bubbling pustules that would then split open, spattering first pus, then blood, then as the rest of the skin on his body began to rive open too, a spill of thick, tarlike ooze. The rich, pungent stink of decaying meat sent Jason stumbling back in disgusted recoil.

  “Glllunnngghhh!” Sitri pawed desperately at him, even as his fingers disintegrated away to the bone, decades worth of rot seemingly occurring within milliseconds. Within moments, there was nothing left of Sitri but a blackened heap of sludge that slowly bubbled down to a thin, curdled foam against the dirt.

  Jason waited. They always came back. He’d seen enough horror movies in his lifetime to know that as soon as the hero let his guard down, thinking the psycho with the demonstrated penchant for ax-murdering nubile blonds was killed, he was as good as dead himself.

  Because they never stay down, he thought. Picking the sword up out of the ooze, he used the tip to poke the gelatinous mound that marked Sitri’s remains. At this tentative prodding, the entire thing slopped sideways with a moist splatter. He could see the glint of silver among the black, soupy mess—metal studs and gilded rings, all of Sitri’s piercings with nothing left now to impale.

  A long moment passed, then another, then another. Jason didn’t even realize he was holding his breath until he felt the uncomfortable strain of doing so; then he uttered a long, shuddering exhalation, a hoarse, warbling laugh.

  Dead. Jason stumbled back, the sword dropping impotently at his side. He’s really dead.

  “I’ll be goddamned,” he whispered and he laughed again. “I killed the son of a bitch.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Exhausted and hurting, Jason crumpled to his knees, his body caked and dripping with gore, the sword still clenched in his hand. “Back off now,” he whispered, closing his eyes, because the Eidolon still surged inside him, churning like the ocean during a Category Five hurricane. It didn’t want to relinquish control. It wasn’t yet ready and was resisting his best efforts to try. “Come on,” he whispered, forcing his hand to move, his fingers to loosen their viselike grasp on the sword hilt. “You’re all right. Everything’s okay. Back off now.”

  He stood, staggering, letting the sword fall to the ground. Keeping a hand pressed to his stomach, he limped over to where Sarea remained sprawled and knocked out on the ground. Leaning over, sucking in a pained breath through his teeth, he lifted her fallen revolver in hand—a massive ..44 Magnum straight out of an old Dirty Harry movie.

  “Hey.” He kicked her, a tentative nudge with his foot. She groaned, rocking her head from side to side, her brows crimping slightly.

  “Hey.” He kicked her again, harder this time, and when her eyes flew open, they were ablaze with crackling, snapping white fire.

  “No way.” Jason made a point of drawing the hammer back with his thumb, aiming the target site at the center of her forehead. “Not this time, bitch. You shoot me, I shoot you. Quid quid quo and all that.”

  After a long, stubborn moment, the fire dampened and her eyes returned to normal. Her gaze cut past him, sweeping the bloody landscape in visible bewilderment and surprise. “Where is—”

  “Sitri?” Jason supplied. “Dead. The party’s over. You slept through it all.” He motioned with the gun for her to get up. “Now it’s time to go home.”

  Blood had crusted under her nose from where he’d punched her, smeared all down the side of her cheek and chin. She brushed her fingertips against it now, wincing slightly as she staggered to her feet. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re going to bring me back,” Jason told her. “Back to the city, back to Gabriel’s apartment.” He didn’t know if Gabriel had been involved in this little setup or not, but didn’t really give a damn. “You’re going to do it right now.”

  Sarea managed a contemptuous smile as she flipped her hair back from her face. “And why am I going to do that?”

  “Because I’m going to shoot your sorry ass if you don’t,” Jason said drily. “Back on the mortal plane, I’ll give you a fighting chance, a full day’s head start, befo
re I hunt you down and plug a bullet through your skull.”

  “How generous of you.”

  “It’s the least you deserve,” Jason snapped. “Gabriel said you were supposed to be good—like angels, he told me. You were supposed to help me.”

  Her thin, icy smile widened. “Gabriel is a fine one to talk,” she said. “Since he’s the reason you’re here to begin with.” When Jason blinked, the aim of the gun wavering, she laughed. “Haven’t you ever wondered how Sitri managed to get a hold of your soul in the first place when it’s a gatekeeper’s responsibility—Gabriel’s, in your case—to have delivered you to the Netherworlde?”

  Her brow arched with cool contempt. “You ask me, you’ve wound up where you belonged all the while. It’s no surprise to me that the Eidolon bound itself so deeply to you. It sees the same things in your nature that I did the night you died. The two of you were a perfect match.”

  “Shut up.” Jason frowned, leveling the gun again, his face flushed with shame and rage. “You don’t know anything about me, so shut up.”

  “Don’t you want to know where Gabriel was on the night you died?” Sarea asked sweetly. “While you were lying in the emergency room with a bullet in your skull, he was exactly where you left him tonight, in his little rectory apartment, passed out drunk on his couch. That’s the story of his life, his afterlife, anyway. For the better part of the last two thousand years, he’s been drunk.”

  Jason closed the slim margin of space between them in two broad, angry strides, then shoved the barrel of the gun to her temple. “I said shut your mouth.”

  “Sometimes an evil deed is a necessary one—isn’t that what he told you?” Sarea looked up at him. “For the good of the mortal plain and all of mankind, that’s what he tells himself anyway, so he can sleep at night, and for once, I’m inclined to believe him.”