Forsaken

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."