Forsaken (The Netherworlde Series)

by Sara Reinke

  “The only trickster here is you,” Sam said angrily, and he blinked at her, looking visibly wounded.

  “I trusted Sarea,” he said. “I never would have let Jason leave if I hadn’t. I didn’t know about her deal with Sitri.”

  “It’s not the place of the Elohim to judge,” Nemamiah said. He kept shaking his head, staring off into space, dazed and in shock, although whether more from blood loss or by what had happened, it was hard to tell. He glanced over at Gabriel and Jason with a pleading expression. “Never has been. Never will be. I don’t understand why she’d do this.” With a pointed glare in Jason’s direction, he said, “Nor do I understand how you were able to vanquish her without a talismanic weapon in your hand.”

  “I think I know,” Gabriel murmured, glancing at Jason as he pulled on a clean shirt. “What’s that on his shoulder?”

  Jason glanced toward his back, remembering. “The triquetra.”

  “It’s a tattoo,” Gabriel said, raising his brows, although whether impressed or intimidated, Jason couldn’t tell. “There’s your answer, Nemamiah.” Jason thought of the way the triquetra mark had burned when he had thrust his hand through Sarea’s chest. It had never occurred to him that the tattoo might have given him some preternatural ability, however, and had, in fact, ultimately helped him to save his own soul.

  “What?” Nemamiah shook his head. “That’s impossible. The triquetra only works if inscribed on a weapon. If a tattoo could do that, every Elohim or Nephilim would have one.”

  “But Jason’s not every Elohim or Nephilim,” Gabriel reminded quietly, his gaze grave. “He’s different than the rest of us. He’s both. His whole body is a talismanic weapon now.”

  Mentioning the tattoo made Jason cut a glance toward a clock on the nearby wall. It was now shortly after two o’clock in the morning. “Where’s Mei?” he asked.

  “Who?” Gabriel asked.

  “The girl who was with us earlier,” Jason said. “She and Dean went to the hospital to get some medicine for you. But she should have been back by now. Shit.” Gabriel had put his gun aside on the couch near Jason. Jason grabbed it in hand now and turned to Sam. “We need to find her.”

  “Let’s call Dean first,” she said, and when he frowned, she added, “You don’t know that something’s wrong, not for sure. Maybe it just took longer than Dean thought to fill the prescription.”

  Jason glanced at Gabriel. “Do you have a phone I can use?”

  It took nearly a half dozen rings before Dean answered his cell. His voice was groggy and hoarse, little more than a sleepy growl, and when he realized it was Jason on the other end of the line, his disposition didn’t improve in the slightest. “How the hell should I know where she is?” he asked, irritably. “She took off on me hours ago. I told her to wait at the smoking patio with Bear while I got the pills from the pharmacy.”

  Jason blinked in surprise. “Bear?”

  “Yeah, Bear. You didn’t seriously think I wouldn’t call the police, did you? Or at least him? You shot a priest, for Christ’s sake.”

  “No, I didn’t.” Jason frowned.

  “You’re running around with some little druggie whore…”

  “Mei’s not a whore.”

  “No? Well, I got sick of waiting on her ass, in any case. She was gone by the time I got the pills. Bear said she’d gone to take a piss or something and never came back. I gave him the antibiotics and asked if he’d mind to stay a bit longer, see if she showed back up. What happened after that, I have no clue.”

  Jason hung up the phone, fuming, then turned to Sam. “What’s Bear’s cell phone number?” Puzzled, she gave it to him, but when he tried to call, it rolled immediately over to voice mail. “Damn it,” he muttered, slapping the phone back in its cradle.

  “What’s going on?” Sam asked, draping her hand against his arm, her eyes round with worry.

  “He’s not answering,” Jason said. If anything had happened—if Sitri or another of the Nephilim had come after him or Mei, Bear would have tried to defend himself. But even if he had his gun with him, it wouldn’t do any good, not without talismanic bullets. They would have been sitting ducks.

  “Damn it,” he said again. “I think Bear’s in trouble too. Come on.” Gritting his teeth against a swell of pain, he rose to his feet and reached for Sam’s hand. “We’ve got to get over to the hospital, see if we can find them.”

  “Wait,” Gabriel said, catching Jason by the arm. “What about our deal?”

  “It’s off,” Jason told him drily. Sarea’s words still stood out in his mind: Don’t you want to know where Gabriel was on the night you died? 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.

  Which meant Gabriel was to blame, at least in part, for everything that had happened to him, the complete and absolutely mess that had become his life.

  I’m sorry, Gabriel, but I don’t trust you anymore, he thought. I can’t.

  Grabbing Sam’s hand, he dissolved into shadow form, vanishing into thin air, right before the priest’s eyes, taking Sam along with him. Through the Eidolon’s powers, they slipped through the rectory walls and out into the night, traveling swiftly, nearly instantaneously across more than two dozen blocks to reach Midtown Hospital.

  He touched down in an alley between the hospital and one of its numerous neighboring medical annexes, coalescing from incorporeal to solid form once more. Sam stumbled beside him, and he heard the sharp, startled intake of her breath. He hadn’t told her what he was doing, much less what to expect, and she turned to him now, eyes wide, her mouth agape.

  “What just happened?” she gasped. Looking owlishly around, she gasped again, realizing. “We’re at the hospital!”

  “Yeah.” He nodded grimly. “I know.”

  “But…but how?” she sputtered.

  “The Eidolon,” he said. “That’s how it travels. Come on. We need to hurry. Gabriel said other Celestials can track me when I use its powers.” And I’m in no shape to fight them if they do, he added to himself.

  Together, they made their way around the outside perimeter of the main hospital building, heading for a small hedge-framed patio area in a remote rear corner. The last of a straggling few smokers finished braving the chilly night air for a drag upon their arrival and brushed past them, silhouettes among the shadows, as they headed back indoors.

  “I don’t see them,” Jason said with a frown, sweeping his gaze across the empty wrought-iron tables bathed in a pale circumference of light from an overhead security light.

  “Bear hates cigarette smoke,” Sam said. “Maybe he went into the hospital to wait for her. Or he offered to walk with her somewhere, grab a bite to eat. You know how he is.”

  “Yeah.” And he knew how Mei was too—never one to pass up a free meal. He’d been trying to convince himself that he was worrying for nothing, and this scenario seemed plausible enough. Sitri was waiting for me in the Netherworlde earlier, he thought. There’s no way he could have found Mei and Bear and did something, hurt them, took them, and then made it back in time to meet Sarea.

  “I saw a payphone outside the emergency room entrance,” he said. “Let’s go try to give Bear a call.”

  “Wait.” He’d started to walk past her, but she caught his arm. “Gabriel said something about a deal right before we left. What deal?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, shaking his head. “Right now we need to find Mei.”

  Sam frowned. “What deal, Jason?”

  She wasn’t going to drop the matter. He could tell by the stubborn cleft between her brows, that damn bullheaded, hands-on-her-hips stance he simultaneously found sexy and annoying as hell because they didn’t have time to argue. Not if Mei was in trouble.

  “If she’s with Bear, then she’s okay for now,” Sam said, as if reading his mind. “At least for another five minutes.”

  She was right, and he k
new it.

  “What deal?” she said.

  “All right.” Holding up his hands in reluctant concession, he told her the truth—the bargain that Nemamiah had brokered with the Ophanim to free his soul from the Eidolon. As he spoke, her eyes grew wider and wider, first in surprise, then disbelief, then in heartache.

  “You said you wouldn’t leave me again,” she whispered, wounded.

  “I know,” he said, taking her by the hands. “Listen, Sam, it made sense at the time, the way Gabriel explained it. I thought I was doing the right thing—not just for me, but for us, for you.” She stared at him in stricken confusion and he tried to explain. “These past five years, you’ve learned to move on. You’ve built a new life and a”—it pained him to say it, but he forced himself to choke out the words—“and a new love with Dean.”

  “Jason,” she began, but he interrupted her.

  “Maybe it’s not the same as what we have, but you care about him, Sam. And he cares about you. He can give you the world, all the things I never could…and never can.”

  Her brows lifted. “Oh, God, Jason, is that what you think?”

  She clapped her free hand to his face and pulled him near, kissing him fiercely. “Dean’s been good to me since you died,” she said as they drew apart. “He’s been good for me. But he could never take your place. And he’s always known it.” With a smile, she caressed his face. “I don’t want the world. I only want you.”

  Jason heard a loud, startling boom and felt a sharp, sudden snap of wind. Sam uttered a quick, quiet cry, jerking like a marionette wrenched abruptly by the strings. Likewise, as if those strings had just been severed, she began to crumple, and he reached for her, catching her as she slumped heavily, lifelessly toward the ground.

  “Sam?” Even though he could smell smoke in the air, acrid and lingering, for a bewildered moment, he didn’t realize what had happened. Everything around him abruptly slowed to a crawl. Sam wilted in his arms, and he felt something hot and wet on his hands. When he looked, he saw blood, a bright scarlet stain spreading in rapid circumference against the pale fabric of her sweater. In that moment, Jason felt his heart twist to a shuddering, painful standstill, his breath tangle in his lungs. How he summoned any voice at all was beyond him, but he managed, screaming her name, scraping his throat raw in horrified anguish.

  “Sam!”

  Another thunderous report of gunfire, and he felt a searing pain as something struck him in the head hard enough to knock him off balance. He fell to the ground, still cradling Sam to his chest, landing on top of her in a clumsy sprawl. In bewildered surprise, he reached for the back of his head, feeling a meaty indentation in his scalp, his hair wet with blood.

  Shot, he realized, stunned, as he turned now and saw who was standing at the entrance to the patio—who had just shot both him and Sam with a pistol he still clasped in his outstretched hand.

  “It’s a shame, really,” he heard Bear remark as he stepped out of the shadows and into the dim light, dragging Mei along with him in a choke hold. Her hands had been duct taped together behind her and a thick strip of duct tape had been forced over her mouth. Bear had his forearm hooked beneath her chin, holding her against him, forcing her in stumbling, mewling tow.

  “You know, these city smoking ordinances make businesses put these patios and whatnot so far out in the middle of nowhere,” he said. “Anything can happen to you out here. And no one would be the wiser.”

  He gave Mei a forceful shove and she staggered forward, free of him. She fell to her knees, then crawled toward Jason, her eyes round and terrified.

  Bear walked over and looked down at Sam’s sprawled and motionless form. “A beautiful young woman cut down in the prime of her life, a doctor’s sweetheart, no less,” he said. “Caught in the unfortunate cross fire of a love triangle gone wrong.”

  He leveled the pistol, taking aim for Mei’s head, and she screamed, muffled and strained, around the tape covering her mouth.

  “No!” Jason cried, forcing himself to move despite the pain. He scrambled to his hands and knees, then dived at her, tackling her just as Bear fired again. The bullet, meant for Mei’s temple, instead plowed into the meat of Jason’s shoulder, wrenching an agonized cry from him.

  He’d landed hard against her, and her head had hit the pavement hard. She’d knocked the senses from herself and he watched her eyes roll, then her eyelids flutter closed. Like her, he could feel his mind wanting to swim away from him, caught in the ebbing flow of some powerful, unseen tide, and he struggled to stay conscious. Because he’ll kill her if I don’t.

  “You go to see your ex, but your junkie girlfriend follows.” Untroubled by the missed shot, Bear walked around the table and knelt next to Jason, reaching into his own back pocket as he did, pulling out a handkerchief.

  “She sees you together, gets pissed off, shoots you both. And when she’s finished, she decides to do herself in too.” He snapped the hankie like a magician about to perform a trick, unfurling it. “Voila, we’ve got ourselves a scenario. Especially after I wipe down the stock and stick the gun in her hand. It will be a quick investigation, conclusions quickly drawn, because with no survivors, there’s no one to prosecute, no one to care. And besides…”

  He dropped a wink. “They’ll want to hurry things along, spare me any more heartache, seeing as how I’m the grieving uncle and all. So this will all be wrapped up nice and quick.”

  “Don’t…” Jason groaned, biting back another cry as Bear hauled him roughly by the collar, dragging him off Mei so he could get clean kill shots at each of them. “God…please…why are you doing this?”

  Bear’s expression remained stoic, stony and unmoved. “Because Sammi’s worth thirteen and a half million dollars,” he said. “Do you have any idea what it’s like, being the conservator of a trust that size? To have that much money within your reach and never able to spend a goddamn dime of it on yourself? All those years spent accounting for every nickel, every dime—proving every last fucking penny went to something for Sammi. Always for her.”

  “She loves you,” Jason cried. “You…you’re the only father she’s really known, Bear.”

  “Father?” Bear spat the word out, his brows furrowed. “I was her goddamn butler. Her chauffeur, accountant, maid—I was a fucking slave to her and that money!”

  He grabbed Jason by the hair, wrenching his head back so he could seethe into his ear. “But it all becomes mine, every last dime, when she’s dead. Which was supposed to happen five years ago, until you fucked things up for me.”

  Jason remembered the night he’d been shot. He’d walked Bear to the door of the bar, had locked up behind him.

  Good luck, kid, Bear had told Jason with an affable smile, because he’d known that Jason had meant to propose that night to Sam.

  He must have gone out to the alley and waited for Sam to leave, to go home for the night, Jason thought. He meant to make it look like a robbery, only I went out to her Jeep instead. He didn’t recognize me in the dark, in the rain…

  “I thought you were Sammi.” With a disgusted grunt, Bear shoved Jason facedown, back into the pavement. “You were supposed to be Sammi.”

  Jason stared at him, stricken, wondering how he’d never seen it before, how he could have missed the hatred and rage simmering so manically behind Bear’s eyes.

  “I was going to let it all go, call things even, forget about it, but then you came back. You called my marker for me, kid,” Bear told him. “If you’d put two and two together, remembered what happened that night…what I did…” Bear shook his head. “I can’t take that chance. But I guess some good did come out of it in the end.” He pointed his gun at Jason again and folded his finger against the trigger. “You’ve given me this perfect chance to get the money, after all.”

  The booming gunfire echoed like distant thunder off rows of parked cars in the nearby lot, bouncing off building walls before dissipating skyward and dissolving into the night. The bullet, meant for the side of J
ason’s head, slammed instead into the pavement, plowing out chunks and shards of broken cement upon impact, as Jason shifted into shadow form, letting the Eidolon slip him formlessly, effortlessly into the ground beneath him.

  “What the fuck—” Bear exclaimed in sputtering, breathless shock.

  Still ghostlike and silent, Jason breached the surface behind him, rising out of the concrete and reaching out, planting his phantom hands against the burly man’s shoulder. He dived down again, passing back into the ground, this time taking Bear with him, at least part of the way.

  He turned loose of Bear halfway down, leaving the older man to solidify once more while he remained incorporeal. Bear was instantly bisected at the rib cage, with half of his body buried beneath the ground, the other cleaved by the concrete patio floor. He dropped the gun as Jason returned to the surface directly in front of him. He rematerialized on his hands and knees, eye to eye with Bear, who stared at him, stricken and ashen.

  “What…what the hell are you…?” he croaked, a thin rivulet of blood burbling up from his lips, spilling down his chin.

  “I’m a Wraith,” Jason told him, adding in grim promise, “and I’ll see you in hell.”

  The top half of Bear’s body fell backward against the pavement, hitting with a heavy, sodden thud. Jason could see the severed stump of his spine; then all of his innards promptly moved outward, spilling against the concrete in a steaming heap of entrails and organs. Blood began pooling in a broad diameter around him, dark and gleaming in the lamplight.

  Jason stumbled to his feet, then rushed over to Sam. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered, gathering her in his arms, cradling her limp form against him. He could hear her breath wheezing moistly, rattling and spattering blood in a thin, fine spray with every sodden exhalation. Her parka was soaked with blood, the dark stain dotted with little bits of downy stuffing.

  “I’m here,” he whispered, brushing her hair back from her face, choking on his tears. “I’m here, Sam, I’m right here.”