Forsaken (5 page)

Without another thought, my feet made their move to run in the opposite direction. Only a few steps in, the slick, syrupy life force, which had made its way underfoot, caused my already-clumsy feet to lose traction and slip ass-first to the floor. Red splatters hit the white walls and seemed to be closing in on me, soaking through my pants to the skin. I’d slammed into the puddle of blood next to Tatum’s body, my head hitting last, thankfully. My eyes closed in pain. When I opened them, they fell on Tatum’s slender fingers. Her plastic bracelet only inches from my face read Dylan Hart. My head took a second to try and comprehend what I was seeing.

In that moment, the scurrying sound reached my blood-soaked feet. Without looking, I pulled my heavy body up and over the naked one behind me. I pushed myself to my feet as soon as I could and faced my beastly stalker.

“What do you want?” I screamed at the black figure now standing on the other side of my dead best friend.

A wide smile spread across the space where a face should have been. It raised its long finger and pointed at me. With every movement it made, a scurrying ticking sound followed, like a horror movie spider clicking along a surface.

“Over my dead body!” I yelled. The shadow lunged at me. I had no weapon, nothing to protect myself with but the body at my feet. I grabbed the only thing I could. Tatum’s blonde hair clung to my hands in a sticky, slopping mess.

“Or mine,” the severed head in my hand spoke.

I yelped and hurled Tatum’s head at the shadow that was now pulling itself over her body. It hit the core of the thing and bounced off, hitting the wall that seemed even closer than before. It was a solid being, not a shadow like it appeared.

“What’s happening?” I screamed in confusion. I’d asked for every minute of my torment, but none of it made any sense. The thing stalking me in my stark-white vision stood before me, nothing between us.

The grin appeared again and I didn’t stick around to see what was coming next. I turned on my sticky heels and booked it toward whatever the fuck was at the other end of the hallway. My feet slapped the floor, each step seeming to stick more than the last. My breath came heavy and sharp. Smoking and cheeseburgers ensured I’d never make it out alive if it came down to a foot race.

The walls felt like they were nearly touching my shoulders. Bottlenecking the further I ran, the hallway seemed to be an enemy with an agenda instead of just a space where I was surely losing my fucking mind. Ticking and shuffling echoed through the space and tickled the hairs on my neck. I used my hands to feel along the walls. They were moving, squeezing together inch by inch until my fat ass couldn’t go any further.

I turned to the side to squeeze through but the pressure was too much and forced me to stop. “Fuck, I want to wake up! This is bullshit!”

The walls tightened until I was forced to turn back the way I came. I pulled myself from the narrow space and turned to face my stalker head-on. There was no other option.

I turned, nose to nose with the thing that wanted only me. Green eyes stared back at me, a wide grin spread across her face. “What…?” I was more confused than I’d been in the months since I’d begun my journey. I looked into the face of my enemy, and she was me.

Cold hit my face in a gust that filled my lungs, and I closed my eyes against it. The frigid temperature stole my breath and for a second, I panicked. My arms flung out, grasping for anything. Suddenly, my lungs filled with air and I sat up with a loud, guttural inhale. My eyes were wide and struggling to take in the dim space.

My heart thudding in my chest, I huffed air in and out trying to comprehend the terror I’d narrowly escaped. Lupe clucked her tongue and fiddled with something, clicking and shuffling. I swallowed hard. My eyes focused finally on the old woman. I hadn’t left my spot on the floor.

“
Mija
, you’re so loud.” She shook her head. I felt like she was talking to someone else. Her tone didn’t really match our relationship status.

Breathy, I said, “What… in the fuck… was that?”

“Not what you thought?”

I felt my hair, wild and jutting out in all directions. “How am I empowered? All you accomplished was scaring the shit out of me.” I smoothed my mop down with shaking hands and pulled it back into a sloppy bun.

She laughed one sharp noise. “I did nothing but send you into your own mind. If you were scared, it is only yourself you are scared of.”

What she said was absolutely true. I’d always been more afraid of my own bullshit than anyone else’s. But we weren’t talking about insecurities and self-assurance; we were talking about things my brain couldn’t even imagine, let alone drum up in some sort of spirit quest. “I saw myself,” I admitted, hoping she could elaborate on why.

“You have already touched the darkness that waits. I opened your mind to accepting it all. Once you’re in touch, you will have power,” she said around her smoking cigar.

“What does that even mean?” I groaned and let my body fall back to the floor.

“You are the key to your own salvation.” She stopped for a minute and snuffed out her tiny stump of a cigar. “In your mind, you’re the worst monster you can imagine.”

She didn’t know about Tatum. She didn’t know about anything I’d done. Yet, she was more right than she could ever know. “I’m just a fucking loon.” I draped my arm over my face. I’d been terrified to admit that fear to anyone else, and it felt good to say it aloud to someone living.

“You’re many things; the sooner you realize this the sooner you’ll find your power.” She shuffled her stupid cards.

“Now I have to go
find
this power? I thought that’s what you gave me!” I sat up on my elbows and glared at her.

She shook her head. “I gave you an open door. It’s up to you to walk through it.”

“Good idea.” I pushed to my feet on shaky legs. I wanted to be at home, in my bed, under my covers, hiding from everything I now knew existed. If I was the worst monster my head could find, it terrified me to imagine what more was out there. I needed to get Lupe her payment, because power wouldn’t do shit; I needed protection. “Tell me what I owe you so I can get the fuck out of this place. The faster I can go, the faster I can get whatever ridiculous thing you want from me. I’m going to need that protection portion of our agreement, like yesterday.”

“I don’t have time for your pride to break,” she said, flipping another card over and laying it precariously onto her lap. Whatever game she had going on with those cards had held her interest for far too long. “I trust we are the same. Not women who need too many words or sugar-coated explanations.” She was right. “What I
need
from you is as simple as the air you’re breathing.” My gut clenched at the idea of an even trade. “I need the blood of Cyrus Atossa.”

Huh?
My jaw dropped. I could not imagine why she needed it, and there was a huge part of me that didn’t really care. Cyrus seemed perfectly capable of handling the world he loved to protect so damn much. A trade was one thing, but harvesting blood from someone I considered a friend all in the name of my own survival?

“Yes,” I answered. “I can do that.” The look which crossed her face could only be described as fear. As if she was afraid of my quick response. “I will not be killing anyone. I’d sooner kill you, in fact. But I
will
get you your blood.” I didn’t even bother to ask why. At the time, it really didn’t matter.

Her jowls wiggled when she nodded approvingly. She dug around on a shelf within her reach and pulled out a glass jar, which had probably once held pickles or the like. “Bring it back warm,” she demanded and stuck her old hand out for me to take the jar.

“I’ll be back with the blood.” She made a noise in her throat and handed me the mystical blood receptacle. “To the top?” I joked.

She closed her one eye and nodded once. I swallowed hard and nodded back. My back pooled sweat under the metal of my gun, and I fought the urge to wipe it away with my t-shirt. I took the jar and hesitated. I didn’t want to leave, not really. I wanted the comfort of home, but my head told me Lupe’s botanica was the safest place I could be. With one last motivational nod, I turned and shuffled away on terrified legs.

“Ms. Hart.” I turned around at the doorway. “Don’t bring guns into my store.” She struck a match and lit a fresh cigar. “I don’t like ‘em,” she puffed. My eyes went wide. I nodded and hustled through the curtains.

Any worry I’d had of the grandson, whose name I was quite certain I’d never actually known, ratting me out was gone. If he mentioned my giving him a gun, he’d have to answer to his grandma for accepting it in the first place. It didn’t stop him from fucking with me in retaliation, but he wasn’t the one I was afraid of anyway.

The nameless grandson stood behind the counter, both hands spread wide against the yellowing top. A uniformed officer stood on the public side of it. The officer looked in my direction, confused. I smiled sweetly at the cop, hiding every ounce of fear and deception I possibly could in that one gesture. The grandson stared a hole in the side of my head. I turned my smile on him and he glared at me. He knew what I’d done. Whatever had warranted the police was none of my business. I had my own unlawful existence to contend with.

“Excuse me, officer,” I said politely when I walked behind the cop. The space was tight and he had to step forward, closer to the counter, to let me pass.

I couldn’t get the fuck out of there fast enough. The door jingled when I pushed through it and marked my apprehensive freedom. The grandson watched me walk out the door and get in to my car and the officer watched because of that. Before the officer could get the chance to become suspicious, I pulled the sweaty pistol from my waistband and shoved it into a crumpled, grease-stained take-out bag, jamming it into the garbage pile in the backseat. Just in case he decided to follow me.

Paranoia, welcome home. Your room is just how you left it.

Fall had officially set in, bringing the night earlier with it. Regardless of the time change, I’d been unconscious in the back room of a random bontanica in the dead center of East Los Angeles for the better part of the day, and I had nothing to show for it but an empty pickle jar and nervous bubble guts. I slid my sunglasses over my tired eyes and cranked the old bitch over; she started right up. The sun was setting and flashing a stripe of glowing red and pink smog across the sky. Southern California sunsets.
Gross
.

The officer’s cruiser sat parked behind my Geo. I didn’t know why he was there and I didn’t want to know. Not only had I sliced up a few noggins in the recent past, but I was also an accomplice to a beheading in that very establishment. Getting home and as far away from that place as possible was the best choice I’d made to date. Using my signal, I pulled away from the curb as legally as I possibly could. The moment I was off that street and on the freeway, I gunned it for home.

Paranoia was making itself at home in my psyche. I blamed my lack of answers, allies, and weaponry. Not to mention an abundance of dead things. I wasn’t crazy; the world around me was. On that scale, I was the sanest motherfucker I knew.

And that’s a horrifying thought.

Chapter 4

I hadn’t been home twenty minutes and I already wanted to leave. My mom was gone, off doing mom stuff. I had her ancient cellphone to temporarily replace the one which had mysteriously disappeared on my trip to find Tatum in New Orleans, so there was no contacting her. Turned out, alone was not a good place for me it seemed, no matter how badly my independent head wanted that.

Shoes off, pants unbuttoned, I shuffled into my room and shut the door. The only solace I’d found since coming back from my weekend in Hell had been searching my room for long-lost goodies. Along with my dad’s ring, I’d found a stash of condoms from Planned Parenthood and a handful of pictures I’d sworn to Tatum were destroyed. I debated more than once since finding them on making good on that promise.

Flopping down on my bed, I pulled out the box which held my long lost friend, marijuana. The serene calm it brought with it was the only thing I’d discovered which masked the pain that festered in my core. Plus, life was so much more fun under the influence. My mom being gone allowed the smoke-fest to commence unhindered.

Half a joint in, I heard the front door open and close.
Shit
. I shuffled my stash around and butted out the smoldering weed. My heart raced; I felt sixteen again. I sat and waited for my mom to barrel through the door and lecture me on the use of drugs in her house. A hypocrite if I’d ever seen one. The woman could drink most men under the table, but she’d never admit to it unless there was a bottle of tequila in her face. 

I waited and nothing came, so my stoned brain questioned what it had heard. It was possible I’d imagined it. It was also possible it wasn’t my mom who had come through the front door. Regardless, I was far too high to deal with anything fucked at that moment. I listened hard and heard movement in the hall. Whoever had come in was headed my way. I sat on the edge of my bed, looking around myself over and over again hoping something amazing would pop up and offer me its services as a weapon. Of course, that didn’t happen, and in the time it took me to figure that out, the knob of my door turned.

“
Boo
,” a voice said over my shoulder. It didn’t sound like Tatum, but she’d been the only non-corporeal voice I’d heard so there was no reason to assume otherwise.

“Stop fucking with me,” I said, assuming also it was her rustling around in the house.

The knob turned over and the door pushed open. An awkward eek passed my lips and I threw my fists up as if I were in a turn-of-the-century bar brawl.

Put ‘em up. Put ‘em up. What do I want? Courage.

The door swung to the wall and Mike stood in the doorway to my bedroom. The crooked smile on his face instantly stopped my ridiculous fists of fury I’d been showing off. His faded jeans and aged Bon Jovi t-shirt reminded me of a time long before headless things and vampires. A time long before
Detective
Michael Petersen, in fact, when it was as simple as a band shirt and a case of beer. If he’d been standing there with a box of PBR, I may have very easily been swayed to the dark side.

“How stoned are you right now?” he asked, laughing as he shoved his hands in his pockets.

I rolled my surely bloodshot eyes. “What else am I supposed to do?”

He laughed and ran a thick hand over his perpetually messy hair, which somehow always looked intentional. “I can think of a few things that don’t include illicit drug use.”

“Shut the fuck up, Mike. You used to score pot off the dealers you’d hauled into the clink not a week before. You’re no angel,
Detective
. That badge doesn’t make you a good guy; just a guy with a suit and a gun.” I sparked up again, pulled a drag, and puffed out rings in his direction.

“You’re going to piss your mom off,” he threatened.

I’d already done enough of that, and most of it was on account of him. “I don’t care.” I let my head hit the headboard and closed my eyes. “I need to move my stuff out of my apartment.” It wasn’t a question, or a request for help; just a general statement in hopes he might volunteer his brawn and his roomy vehicle.

“You can put it in my garage.” He volunteered all right, just not what I was hoping to gain.

“I can put it
here
,” I insisted yet again.

“There’s extra room at my place. Two of them, actually,” he hinted.

“I’m going to stay here for just a little while until I can get a new place. My stuff will be fine in the garage.” I took one last toke before butting it into the metal lid of the tin I’d been flicking my ashes into.

Mike closed his eyes and took a long, frustrated breath. “Fine.” He met my eyes. “Gimme that.” He sat on the foot of my bed and took the joint right from my fingers.

“What about your precious badge?” I laughed when I damn well shouldn’t have. It was the glory of the high. I could be as fucked in the head as I wanted to be, but I was going to laugh about it.

He let out billowing smoke. “Does any of that shit even matter?” He was starting to sound like me. Seeing as though I was the worst monster I could imagine, that wasn’t a good thing.

“Not as far as I can see.” I laid back and he put everything away for me.

I stared at the ceiling while Mike slyly wormed his way to lie next to me. His skin smelled like it always had; a smell I’d probably recognize until the day I died. I hadn’t seen him outside his usual uniform of suit and gun in quite a while, so lying next to him without a firearm between us seemed like a foreign experience. If I hadn’t been stoned, the silence might have been awkward. As it was, I wasn’t really in the moment anyway.

“What are we doing?” he asked quietly.

“I’m surviving. I have no idea what the fuck you’re doing.”
Probably getting yourself killed eventually.

“Most of the time I don’t either. Right now, I’m just trying to get your attention.” I felt him look at me.

“You have my attention. I’m talking to you, aren’t I?” I looked at him finally. He looked more desperate than anything else, and that scared me. I didn’t have room for desperation. Desperation bred insecurities, and there was no room for shit like that when death was involved.

“Are you here? Really? Because it doesn’t seem like it.” He didn’t let me answer. “You’ve hardly said a word to me since we got back from…I get it; I’m fucked up, too, but I need you to let me help you. It’s only been a few days, and the New Orleans detectives have already been in touch with my office. They know we were there. I tried to call you, repeatedly, and you wouldn’t talk to me.” Technically, he’d called a phone I couldn’t answer, repeatedly. When he called the house I was in the shower. Every time. “So, here I am. We have an appointment for a phone conference tomorrow morning. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

“In the morning?” I shouted.
Fuck that.

“I tried to call you. Look, they’re coming for you either way. With me, at least you’ve got a chance.”

“So, you’re telling me I’m going to prison? I could go to prison for killing, but not really, my best friend and possibly the d’Entremonte tribe. Shit, even Malcolm by that sense. Jesus, Mike.” I covered my face with my hands. I didn’t know what else to do, and I was about to start crying.

“No. I’m saying I’m going to do everything I can to stop that from happening.” I trusted that he would. I just didn’t know if it would do any good.

“You were there,” I whined through my hands. “I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t…” I shook my head and let my watery eyes focus on his.

“I know.” He rubbed his big hand over the top of my head. “I know. I watched it all and I still can’t believe what I saw. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I don’t think I’d believe it, even coming from you. Cyrus is an asshole, but I really get the feeling he’s not full of shit. My life, everything in it, all seems like bullshit. How are people, just plain old people like you and me, supposed to cope with shit like this? How do we wake up in the morning and decide to live a normal, go-to-work-come-home life?”

Illicit drug use
.

“I don’t really think I am. Ever.” It was a valid life choice under the circumstances.

“Just don’t leave me,” he whispered.

“Are you high?” I laughed. “Where would I go?”

“I mean, don’t go and decide to join up with Cyrus and the fang gang and leave me in your dust. I want you…with me. I want you with me all the time.” He was going there. To the place he’d certainly go any time he got the chance.

I sighed. While things had changed for the
awkward
for Mike and me, it didn’t change the fact that we were both broken up and accomplices in multiple murders. “Look, Mike, I–"

His mouth plowed into mine, scaring the crap out of me. I pushed at his shoulders, but he didn’t stop. The moment brought me back to the first time his lips had ever touched mine: perfection wrapped up in passion, slapped with an awkward bow. It took just a few seconds for kissing to become a real thing. He kissed me and I kissed him back. I was in no mood for sex, no matter how neglected I’d been in that department, and was not about to let the situation escalate. Kissing was, however, a delightful distraction from reality.

Mike moved his body to lay half on mine, and the weight of him reminded me of days gone by. A teensy piece, deep down, said,
oh, this is happening
. The rest of me couldn’t stop thinking about my new life as a human Ouija board.

“Ouija board. Like you’d ever lower yourself to communing with the damned,”
piped in the not-quite-Tatum voice.

It was the first time she’d said anything which made any sort of sense. She talked like she was the messenger spirit from some hokey movie, but it was rational. Regardless, it was the last thing I wanted to hear. Trying to ignore the logical ghost voice echoing in my head, I shoved my tongue into Mike’s mouth in a desperate attempt to drown out her nagging any way possible.

I felt mania creep up my moral staircase. It was by luck that I wasn’t already locked away in some sense. I would eventually end up either in the nuthouse or the big house. With the way my life was headed, insanity was inevitable, and I’d already knocked off enough people to send me away for a very long time. Medication would surely become a necessity if I couldn’t shake the constant worry of institutionalization, which alone was enough to drive a girl over the edge. Not to mention the nervous shits.

Mike’s thick body lay against me. His leg pulled on mine and he moved to lay between my thighs. Since he’d kneed me in the vagina after being busted by my mom in the shower together, I’d tried to ignore the lingering memories of so many other times in the shower. Down-and-dirty type things aside, I missed kissing him more than I’d ever admit to anyone.

He moved his mouth from mine and made his way kissing along my neck as I closed my eyes. I felt bad, like I was leading him on. Deep down, I knew I could never really make it work. Not with all I’d seen and done. I didn’t think I could
make it happen
with much for a long time.

“Guilty, guilty, pretty girl.”

The ghostly voice wasn’t as familiar as it had been. I couldn’t tell if I was losing my touch or losing my shit. I opened my eyes and quickly glanced to my left where the voice had come from–nothing, as usual. Mike nuzzled playfully into my neck. I pressed my cheek to his, ignoring the otherworldly shit which was surely about to make itself a pest. His prickly, day-old beard scrubbed against my cheek and sent a tingle across the skin in a way that only a man’s beard can.

My eyes slid across the stark ceiling. Above Mike’s strong shoulder something caught my eye. I blinked twice to be sure I wasn’t seeing things in a weed-induced sex tizzy. It was grainy at first, like what I was seeing was made up of dust. My heart thudded in my chest. Mike slid his hands under my shirt and up my sides. He was approaching a point of no return. I needed him to stop but didn’t want his hands anywhere but on me. The grainy image came together in a murky mass of waves and shadows. I refused to close my eyes, refused to blink. White-eyes and a grinning smile, something not of the living, loomed over his shoulder. Similar to the black beastie that’d chased me through the white hallway, but it wasn’t me I was looking at. It was obviously something far worse.

Mike’s heavy body pressed eagerly against mine as the thing peering over his shoulder snarled and nipped in my direction. I let out a yelp and Mike apologized and kissed me. I didn’t want to stop looking at the monster on his back, but I didn’t want him to know I was
seeing
that monster, either. I closed my eyes, hoping it was just a lingering side effect of whatever mystical drug cocktail Lupe had given me. When I opened them, the thing was gone.

I shook off the fear that threatened to takeover. Allowing myself to be in the moment yet again, I kissed Mike back. After a full minute of uninterrupted snogging, I pushed my hip into his. He got the hint and let me shove him off me and onto his back. Throbbing shoulder or not, I’d never be able to physically overpower him if he didn’t want me to. Needing control of the situation, I flung my thick leg over his body and straddled his lap. He smiled a stoned and horny grin, his blue eyes twinkling and glossy. I wanted him. I just wanted to be normal. Before everything. Before vampires, and voodoo, and dammit before
Detective
Mike.