Forsaken

CHAPTER THREE

Jason dreamed of the stink of the gun barrel, hot and metallic, the hiss of its muzzle as it pressed deeply against the rain-soaked skin of his temple. He opened his eyes, dazed with pain, seeing a silhouette standing over him, hunched down, arm extended.

"No," he groaned, his voice little more than a sodden, blood-choked croak.

Don't kill me, he thought, his mind fading toward unconsciousness. Please. I was going to ask Sam to marry me.

He heard a distinctive click as the pistol hammer drew back, and closed his eyes, body tensed with terrified anticipation.

Please don't, he thought, and then he heard a loud, echoing boom.

***

He dreamed of darkness, of Sam's face emerging from a fog of shadows to look down at him, her eyes round, her face ashen. "Jason," he heard her saying, over and over, as rain continued to fall around her, spilling, diamond-like and infused with streetlight, down toward his face. She was crying, her body shuddering as she hunched over him, trying to shield him with her body from the downpour. "Oh...oh, God, Jason!"

From somewhere close by, he could hear his friend Eddie, the bartender, his voice ragged and hoarse. "I don't know! He's been shot, for Christ's sake, we need an ambulance here!"

The darkness swallowed him again, but he emerged once more, briefly, to blink up at a blinding light aimed directly into his face. Dozens of silhouetted forms darted around him, moving this way and that with a flurry of activity and a dizzying, overlapping cacophony of voices.

"Get an OR prepped and give me one milligram atropine by IV push, stat," he heard a man bark out, as a face he dimly recognized—Dean Abbott, Sam's friend—leaned into his immediate view. "I need an ultrasound in here to confirm cardiac tamponade."

Within moments, though, this frenetic atmosphere quieted as shadows engulfed Jason once more. He heard a pulsating beep that abruptly faded to a solitary, droning note.

"He's coding," Dean shouted from somewhere, unseen, overhead. "Give me epinephrine, intracardiac, stat!"

Then, after another frenzied moment of clamor, silence.

***

"It's a shame, isn't it?"

Jason dreamed of another voice, of looking up and seeing someone lean over him again. There was a mark on the man's forehead like a burn, a blackened depression in the shape of a wide V in stark contrast to his alabaster skin. His ears were pierced, a series of silver bands running up the outermost curve of his lobe, and he wore the slim hint of a goatee bridging his lower lip and the cleft of his chin. His mouth was wide, his lips thin, one corner lifting in a crooked, sly sort of smile.

"This boy's life abounded with mediocrity and sin," the man remarked, reaching down to stroke Jason's face in a nearly tender gesture. "Whether his own, or through that which he provoked, inspired or otherwise provided to others."

At first, Jason couldn't remember or tell where he was, but as his surroundings swam more clearly into view, he recognized the lights overhead, the cabinets just within his view. The hospital. He remembered being in the hospital, and there he apparently remained, although of Dean Abbott and the other doctors and nurses, the harried activity that had gone on around them, there was no neither sound nor sign.

The man's touch was cold, his fingertips like ice, but Jason couldn't pull away, couldn't summon his voice to cry out in protest. He felt paralyzed, unable to as much as bat an eyelash, immobilized and cold, lying supine on a gurney.

"Fucking, fighting, filling beer mugs and failure," the man said, still smiling. "That's all this boy has ever known. And yet, he'll go on to an eternal reward likely greater than anything you'll ever enjoy. It doesn't seem fair, does it?"

A woman leaned into Jason's view, but he couldn't make out her face because of the glare—not from the light overhead, but from the woman herself. Her hair, skin, her entire form seemed to radiate bright light, so dazzling, it was nearly painful to behold. "No, Sitri," he heard her say to the man beside her. "It doesn't."

***

He sat up with a hoarse cry and found himself in a queen-size bed, blankets tangled around his waist. Sam stood at his bedside, a tray in her hands with a coffee mug atop, the tail end of a tea bag dangling over the white ceramic lip. She shied back, tea sloshing out of the cup, startled by his cry, his sudden, violent motion.

"Jason!" She set the tray aside on a night table and sat against the edge of the bed, reaching for him. "Jason, it's all right."

He was in his bedroom in his apartment. He recognized the bank of windows to his right now, the red brick walls and exposed beams cutting perpendicular planes across the ceiling. "God," he whispered, and when Sam touched his arm, he leaned against her, letting her embrace him as he shuddered. "I had the worst nightmare."

I dreamed I was dead. Oh, God, Sam, I dreamed that someone shot me in the head and I died. The bar was gone, our apartment gone, my life was gone and you didn't love me anymore.

"It's all right," she murmured, and he looked up, the tip of his nose brushing hers.

It was a dream, he told himself, touching her cheeks, holding her face between his hands, pressing his brow against hers. It was just a dream and it's over now.

"Jason," she said, trying to draw away from him.

"I love you," he breathed, kissing her mouth. He meant to pull her down to the bed and make love to her, to hook his fingers beneath the waistbands of her sweatpants and panties, jerk them down from her hips and bury himself in her warmth. All at once, he needed that, needed her, to be near her, inside her, if only to drive away the lingering, haunting memories of his nightmares, to prove to himself that they were really over. He wanted to taste her, touch her, explore every inch of her long, lean body with his mouth and hands, to cement in his mind what was real and important and necessary to him.

She placed her hands over his, her grip firm. "Jason, stop." When she pulled back, he blinked at her in surprised confusion.

And then he saw the boxes behind her, the suitcases, the furniture he'd never seen before. "No," he whispered, aghast, looking down at himself to find bandages against his chest.

"No," he groaned again, shaking his head. Even Sam's brows lifted with gentle sympathy and she moved to brush his hair back from his brow. No, no, no, oh, God, no!

"Listen to me," she said.

"No." Jason pushed her hands away, scooted back from her against the bed. He forked his fingers through his hair, gritted his teeth, clamped his eyes shut. It can't be true, it can't be. I must be losing my mind.

He felt Sam's hand light against him again and opened his eyes, looking at her. "What's happening to me?" he whispered.

"I don't know." There were tears in her large, dark eyes again, as if her heart, like his, was breaking. "But I'm going to help you. I'm going to find out. I promise, Jason. I promise."