Forsaken (The Netherworlde Series) (10 page)

Then the bright landscape of Seattle was abruptly swallowed whole by shadows as he felt that peculiar sense of weightlessness again, like his body was dissipating into smoke. After a long moment in which he blinked dumbly at the floor, trying to let his eyes adjust to the sudden unexpected gloom, he realized he was back somehow, in the bathroom at Sully’s again.

“What the…?” he gasped, and then he smelled the overpowering, gagging stench of human waste. He heard a damp, sodden squishing and saw something looming against the backdrop of light from the partially opened door. Whatever had attacked him was still there and was coming straight for him again.

“Get back,” he cried, swinging his arm up, moving reflexively, his finger folding inward against the pistol trigger. The gun fired, the roar deafening, trapped in the tiny confines of the restroom. Jason staggered back, banging into the wall and crashing down hard onto his ass, his legs splayed clumsily in front of him.

The earthen creature shattered upon the bullet’s impact, sending a heavy shower of mud, shit and shredded, soggy toilet paper tumbling down against his calves and the floor. Jason uttered a disgusted cry, kicking away from the mess, scrambling clumsily to his feet again. He pressed himself back against the bathroom wall, gasping wildly for breath, holding the gun out in front of him, his hand shaking uncontrollably.

“Jason!”

The bathroom door burst open wide, spilling in a broad swath of pale light, and Jason shrank, squinting, leveling the gun at the doorway. He realized who it was before his finger closed against the trigger—
Oh, Jesus!
—and the gun fell from his hand, clattering against the floor.

“Sam,” he gasped. She stood at the threshold, her hand still against the door, holding it open, her eyes wide, her expression stricken. She’d seen the pistol, seen it pointed at her face, and she stared at him now as she would have a stranger, a mixture of horror and shock in her face.

Jesus Christ, I almost shot her!

“Sam, I…I…” he stammered. “Please, I…”

The electrical and HVAC contractors came running up to the doorway. “You okay, lady?” one of them cried, while the other, his voice shrill with panic and overlapping, exclaimed, “We heard a gunshot!”

“It’s all right,” Sam said, backing away from the door, still looking at Jason in that bewildered, mistrusting way. “I’m all right, really.”

Oh, God,
Jason thought, tangling his fingers in his hair again.
What have I done? I could have killed her. What’s wrong with me?
CHAPTER SEVEN

“Where did you get the gun?”

The contractors were gone. Jason and Sam were alone in the vacant tavern. He’d gone back to his apartment and changed his clothes, returning to the bar to find her waiting for him, arms folded across her chest. The pistol now sat on top of the bar, bathed in sunlight from the doorway, its silver frame nearly aglow. The smell of gun smoke lingered in the air even now, faint but pungent.

“I found it,” he said, which wasn’t a complete lie. Wherever it had come from, the gun was very real. If nothing else that had taken place in the last hour made any sense, that, at least, did.

Sam looked skeptical at this and he shook his head. “I did. Earlier, while you were in the kitchen. It was my dad’s. He kept one hidden underneath the bar. For emergencies, he said. It’s hard to find it, reach it, unless you know where to look. It must have gotten left behind when the pub closed.”

“Yeah.” She nodded once, dubious. “Must have.”

He wanted to tell her to truth but kept biting it back because he knew she wouldn’t believe him. There was no way.

What am I going to say? “Sam, for the last five years, I’ve apparently been in Seattle…at least until Nemamiah stabbed me and killed the Wyrm that was in my head. It had been controlling me, along with this shadow-thing that’s inside me too, a demon called an Eidolon. The Eidolon’s still in there and that’s what your dog keeps barking at, what brought me here. Because it can move itself anywhere instantaneously, I guess, and me along with it. Both it and the Wyrm were put inside me by this crazy tattooed guy named Sitri…only I don’t think he’s a man at all. Oh, and don’t even ask about the gigantic scorpions. They’re called Goblins and the smell of blood gets them all hot and bothered. Trust me on that one.”

She’ll never believe me,
he thought in dismay.
Hell, I don’t even believe myself.

“I don’t want a loaded gun in here,” she said, her voice brittle edged. She lifted the gleaming pistol in hand and ejected the clip. Using the pad of her thumb, she pushed the remaining bullets out of the cartridge and they bounced noisily against the bar. She slapped the empty clip back into the pistol, then offered it back to him, unloaded and butt-first. “It’s your dad’s. I know you want to have it. But I’m keeping the bullets.”

“I wouldn’t have shot you.” Shamefaced and with hunched shoulders, he took the gun from her. He held it at his side, dangling in his hand, heavy and impotent.

“I don’t know that,” she said, collecting the five remaining bullets and stuffing them into the hip pocket of her jeans. When he looked up at her, hurt by this, she frowned. “I don’t know you anymore, Jason.”

He blinked, recoiling as if she’d slapped him, because for all the world, it felt like she just had. “Yes, you do. Of course you do.”

“Where have you been for five years?” she demanded. “Was it someplace where you felt like you had to carry a gun with you? Because the Jason I knew didn’t.”

“Sam,” he pleaded. “I didn’t—you just…”

“You didn’t even look like yourself when I came into that bathroom. For a second, it was like your eyes weren’t even
human
, like they’d gone black or something. I thought you were going to shoot me.”

“It was an accident…” he began.

“An accident?” she cried. “What if you’d pulled the trigger?” She stared at him as if he had lost his mind, her eyes wide and round. “I don’t know what I was thinking, letting you stay here. I don’t know what’s happened to you. Hell, I don’t even know if it’s really even
you.
”

As she stormed past him, marching down the hallway toward the back exit, he saw tears in her eyes, just beginning to cut narrow, glistening streaks down her cheeks.

“Sam.” He caught her by the elbow and held on tightly, even though she flapped her arm angrily and tried to dislodge him. “It’s me.”

“Jason, stop,” she said as he pulled her against him, making her dance clumsily on her tiptoes for a moment as her breasts and belly pushed against him. “Let me go.”

“Sam, please,” he begged. “Nothing makes any sense and I just… Please, I swear to God it’s me. I’ll do anything to prove it. Please believe me.”

The gun clattered to the floor as he brought his other hand up, caressing her cheek. “Please, Sam,” he breathed, leaning toward her. He kissed her with desperate fervency, pressing his mouth against hers. She stiffened against him in reflexive uncertainty, clapping her hands against his chest to try to push him back.

“Jason, stop,” she whispered.

“I love you, Sam.” He meant to keep saying it until she believed it, until she trusted it—and him. He kissed her again, caressing her tongue with his own, closing his mouth over hers, feeling her relax against him. Her fingers gripped his sleeves lightly as the kiss deepened. A soft sound, a murmur of pleasure, escaped her, and again, when his lips trailed to her throat.

She tilted her head in unspoken invitation, draping her hand in her hair to guide him. He could smell her, the sweetness of her perfume trapped in the minutia of space between them, fanned to heady intensity by the sudden swelling heat of her body.

“We…shouldn’t do this,” she murmured, but when he pulled her T-shirt hem up, she didn’t stop him. When he pushed the underwire cup of her bra out of his way, she didn’t protest. His mouth lowered to her nipple, sliding it between his teeth, encircling it his tongue, and she gripped his hair until he felt the strain in his scalp, her breath more frantic now, her pulse racing.

She helped him shove her jeans away from her hips, her panties down toward her knees. He could smell the musky fragrance of her arousal, and when he slipped his hand between her thighs, his fingertips delving past the tangle of curls at her groin, he felt her wet, intense heat.

She moaned as he touched her here, moving his fingers against her slick folds, exploring her. She pulled against his hair, dragging his lips away from her breast and back to her own. She kissed him openmouthed and urgent, undulating her hips away from the wall to match the rhythm of his hand, grinding herself against him.

Her hands moved, traveling down his arms, falling to his waist, and then she pushed his sweatpants down. He was aroused, acutely, painfully so, and the pants caught on the outward swell of him. When she shoved them past, she touched him here, first toying lightly, then closing her fingers firmly around him, making him utter a low groan.

Nose to nose, gasping and trembling, they looked at each other in the dark hallway. Then Sam caught his hair again and kissed him. When she shifted her weight, kicking off her pants, then braced herself against the far wall of the corridor and hopped up, he caught her bare buttocks in his hands, supporting her slight form easily. Her long legs wrapped around his midriff, and with no further invitation needed, Jason pressed the tip of his straining, aching need against her, then pushed his way easily inside in one thrust, burying himself to the base.

She came almost instantly, as if she’d been anticipating this, wanting it, wanting
him
. He felt her body tighten against him rhythmically, pulsating against him, gripping him. Her fingernails clenched, digging little crescent-shaped depressions into the meat of his arms.

He filled her over and over, her legs locked around his middle, her thighs open wide. Her breasts pressed into him, bare and exposed, and he jerked up his T-shirt so he could feel her skin against his. Again and again, he pushed her back into the wall, driving into her with fervent strokes, and she climaxed again, harder this time.

He came inside her, gripping her hips fiercely and pushing deep, sucking in a sharp, hoarse breath as pleasure shuddered through him, nearly paralyzing him.

When it was over, she kept her legs wrapped about him, her arms twined around his neck, and tucked her head against his shoulder. He could still feel her heartbeat, the racing patter slowing to a less frantic cadence. He could smell her hair, feel its silken softness against his face and he canted his head slightly and kissed her ear. “I love you,” he whispered.

“Oh, God!” Sam was away from him in an instant, her feet dropping to the floor, her arms unwrapping from his neck. She pushed past him, fumbling with her clothes.

“Anybody home?” the man called, his voice closer now.

“Who is that?” Jason asked as Sam hurriedly jerked her jeans back up.

“My priest,” she hissed with something akin to horror. With both hands, she swatted and smoothed her hair, tucking it back behind her ears. “Stay here,” she whispered in hushed, harsh command as she brushed past him and hurried down the corridor.

“But Sam…” Jason began in protest, because he had a sudden strange feeling, an icy, ominous sort of sensation. All at once, he wanted to grab her by the arm and stop her, hard enough to hurt her if need be.
He’s not a priest. I don’t know what he is, but he’s not human.

But she flapped his hand away when he tried and shot him a warning glance. “I said
stay put.
” As she turned away, that look of severity abruptly shifted to a strained smile. “Father Darrow, hi,” he heard her exclaim. “I wasn’t expecting you today.”

He could hear her and the man, Father Darrow, speaking together in quiet voices, and edged closer to the doorway to listen. Risking a peek around the door frame, he saw Sam facing a young man dressed in the traditional garb of a Roman Catholic priest: black shirt with starched white clerical collar, black slacks. He wore a wool overcoat against the morning chill, with gloves that he took off while Jason watched, tucking each in the front pockets of his jacket. “Don’t mean to interrupt,” he was saying, his mouth spread in an affable smile.

He glanced away from Sam’s face toward the doorway, as if taking notice of Jason, and for a split second, before Jason could scramble back in recoil, the priest’s gray eyes locked on him, nearly tangible. Again, Jason felt that frigid chill, the creeping sensation in his skin. More than just as if the priest had seen Jason, in that moment, it felt to him like the priest had
known
him, recognized him somehow, even though his face and name, Darrow, were wholly unfamiliar to him.

Jason shrank back into the shadows of the corridor and pressed himself against the wall, holding his breath.

“I know you’ve got a lot on your plate with this place,” the priest said, and this time, when Sam laughed, it sounded more relaxed and natural.

“What makes you say that?” she asked, and now the priest laughed with her. Jason peeked again around the edge of the doorway. “Really, Father Darrow. I don’t mind. I’m looking forward to it, as a matter of fact.”

“Gabriel,” the priest told her with a smile. His eyes cut past her shoulder and pinned Jason again. “I told you, it’s just Gabriel.” He glanced back at Sam and smiled. “I won’t keep you. I just wanted to drop off those notes from the board about the luncheon. We really appreciate you catering it.”

“I really appreciate you paying me to,” Sam replied with a laugh. She walked abreast of Gabriel as he turned for the door, pulling out his gloves from his pockets.

“I’ll see you and Dean this Sunday for Mass?” Gabriel asked.

“I…uh…we’ll do our best, Father…
er
,
I mean, Gabriel,” Sam said.

The priest, Gabriel, spared one more glance over his shoulder at Jason, and this time, Jason could have sworn his eyes had turned white. For a moment, he was paralyzed, remembering Nemamiah in the alley, how his eyes had been aglow like that, filled with a fire that had crackled and snapped in the air around him.