Forsaken (6 page)

I touched his cheek; a desperate attempt at rekindling memories of actual love, even if only for nostalgia’s sake. If my rotten, stone heart had ever actually felt real love for another non-relative human being, it would’ve been Michael Petersen. It was likely--in reality, probable--that fact would never change. My skin touched his. He nuzzled against my hand and I held the horror deep in my gut. As we came together his face shifted, like a ripple in water. Black holes where his eyes should’ve been, shadows and sharp features acted like an overlay of a rotting skull on my lover’s face. A flash of a memory hit me; Cyrus and his rotting face churned my stomach.

“I love you,” he said with no lips through bony teeth and gums and kissed my palm, leaving behind a bloody imprint.

Squealing, I jerked my hand away. I shoved my hand under my other arm, hiding the evidence. His eyes narrowed and I knew I was busted. How in the fuck was I supposed to explain auditory hallucinations, let alone seeing my ex-boyfriend’s face taken over by a dead guy? There was no way what I was experiencing was a simple side effect of mystical concoctions.

“What the fuck was that?” Mike probed.

I just shook my head. His face had shifted back to its rugged handsomeness. I didn’t know what to say. Something had found its way to him, and my heart sank. The idea of not having him in my world was more heart-rending than I could comprehend. In the face of death, I recognized my own faults and realized what I could truly lose if I lost him for real.

“Lovers lost to love burn in the deepest ring of Hell.”

The evil voice hissed again. Mike was going to die. He was going to die because of me, just like Tatum. Desperate, I planted my hands on either side of his face, pressed my lips to his and tried not to cry. The closer he was to me the more in danger he’d be. My paranoia was one hundred percent warranted. Cyrus had said it; Lupe confirmed it. I didn’t need to know everything about the world to know what I had to do. Dylan Hart could be a cold-hearted bitch, but in the grand scheme of things, when it came right down to it, she was one loyal motherfucker and would go to the ends of the Earth for the small number of people she gave a shit about. She also talked about herself in the third person.

I love you.
I didn’t let myself say it, but those words screamed in my head with the desperation of a thousand broken hearts.

My throat burned with the need to cry. He had to go. I’d dragged him into the vampire bullshit with my need for his insider information and used his love for me to get it. I’d used him for my personal gain and, in the end, got us both fucked. I loved him, no matter how much I could lie to myself, and I’d done that to him. I was the worst monster I could imagine, and I deserved everything I had coming to me.

I let go of his face. “Get out,” I said, imagining I was talking to every nasty little thing out there waiting for me to let it in. 

“What?” His confusion was soul crushing.

“Leave. I don’t want you.” I left the bed and pulled open my bedroom door. He didn’t move. “
Leave,
” I growled.

“Dylan, what’s going on?” He was stoned and rightly confused. He wasn’t going to get it. He never would if I wasn’t a stone-cold bitch. Loyal to the bitter end.

My chin quivered. “This was a mistake.” His mouth fell into a frown which nearly touched the floor. “I want you to leave.” My voice shook. Had he been sober, he would’ve never bought my stunt.

He stood and met me at the door. “Baby,” he said, more a question than a statement. “Hey,” he rubbed his hand along my shoulder and left it cupped around the back of my neck. I didn’t stop him. His eyes searched my face for a hint of anything loving, but I didn’t look him in the eye. I couldn’t. If I did, I’d give in and let him stay with me. He held my face like I had his and pushed his mouth to mine.

“Follow your loins to the pits of Hell, cher.”

A new and all-too-familiar voice rang through. Azelie’s airy tone filled my head. I shoved at Mike, but he refused to let me go. I felt his shoulders bounce in the beginnings of a sob. His lips pressed against mine, shoving the tender skin into my teeth. It hurt, but I didn’t want him to stop kissing me. I wanted to save his life. I shoved hard, and he stopped kissing me but held tightly to my waist.

“Stop!
Leave
,” I said again, my voice a breathy bellow.

Mike slid to his knees, his hands clasped around my thighs. The blue of his eyes were a stark contrast to the red streaks in the whites. “Please, baby. Please,” he begged. “I just need you to love me.” The sickening part was I did. There weren’t very many parts of me that didn’t love him, in fact. Proving my love to him took more than three words and a promise. It was going to take guts I didn’t think I had.

“You are so fucking pathetic,” I said. I felt bile roll up my throat. I didn’t know why I’d said
that
. I didn’t mean that. He was acting ridiculous, but I was forced to be a total bitch. I’d have driven me to the brink of insanity, too.

He looked at me as if I’d ripped his heart out and showed it to him. I felt like the devil himself had crawled up from my innards and spilled that hate from my lips. I swallowed back my heartache and shook him off my legs. He tugged in a heavy, rugged breath. He was going to cry. He was going to cry over me, again.

“Then stay. I’ll leave. Maybe you can cry to my mom when she gets home.” I shrugged apathetically and left him on his knees, pleading for my love on my mother’s shag carpet.

There is a special place in Hell for people like me. Now, where’d I leave that ugly pink basket?

Chapter 5

I didn’t really have anywhere to go. I’d left Mike on his knees in the only refuge I had left. My mom would be out until God knew when, so she was indisposed, and luckily so. As much as I didn’t want Mike in on my madness, I sure as hell couldn’t have my mom in the mix. She was pure. Well, she’d yet to be touched by the underworld, anyway.

My chest bounced with a sob the second I closed the car door. I cranked it over and out came a screeching cry from my throat. It started just fine as it always did. I put my hands on the steering wheel and squeezed, but I couldn’t bring my foot to the pedal to leave. Snot and tears soaked my face in a matter of seconds. All the horror and sadness which had hit my life finally came pouring out in a sickening show of mucus and pathetic sobbing.

A strip of light caught the corner of my eye. Mike stood in my mom’s doorway. His eyes met mine and I slammed my foot on the gas. A long, heavy whine pushed through my gritted teeth. I heard Mike bellow my name a second before I zoomed off. My heart split in two and fell flopping into my lap.

I drove. The sun had set and the moon was full and high in the sky, casting shadows across every tree and fence I passed. My head played over the shadows, giving each a grinning face and white eyes. As I left the neighborhood and headed to the freeway, every pedestrian became a villain. Images of dead things flittered by on street corners and in the windows of houses I passed. I saw danger in everything that didn’t matter. The power Lupe had promised seemed more like a curse –a curse of paranoia. Cyrus had said knowledge wasn’t always power. In this case, it may have been a huge mistake.

I drove mindlessly for too long before I realized where I was heading. I merged onto the 10 and didn’t bother to stop myself. The big sign above the freeway read ‘Culver City ten miles’. I shook my head and cursed my own subconscious.

“She’s dead, you fucking idiot!” I yelled at myself.
What can she do for you now?

When the exit for Tatum’s house came into view, I flipped my signal on and made my way off the freeway. For whatever reason, my head had decided to take me to the one place I would be alone. I didn’t know if that meant I was heading toward death or solitude. There was a tiny, sick part of me which was ready for the former.

Tatum’s little pink house came into view. Her porch light was on, as if she were home. Maybe she was. Maybe that was where I’d find her. Maybe that overpriced two-bedroom was what waited at the other end of my white hallway.

I pulled into the driveway like I would have any other day of the week. The lights inside were off. No flicker of a television through the curtains. Just an empty porch and a sad little dying plant on the sill beside the door.

I took in a gulp of air and forced my lungs to stop quivering with my tears. Sniffing back the last lingering bits of snot, I made my way up her walkway. The spare key was right where it always was. I turned the knob and pushed the door open, not knowing what to expect on the other side.

My feet wouldn’t move, so I stood frozen in Tatum’s doorway. The darkened house was stone quiet; not even a ticking clock in the distance. Dead, for all intents and purposes. A blue light blinked on the cable box showing the only signs of life.

“Marco?” My voice quivered. Silence.

A noisy exhale escaped my lungs and sent me to my knees. The hardwood floor reminded me just how heavy I was with an echoing thud. My head fell into my hands and I sobbed. I sat on my heels and cried like I’d never cried in my life.

When I thought I could lie down on the floor and never leave, my feet went numb. The choice then was to get up and shake it off or lie down and let whatever wanted me come and get it. I pulled my feet from under me and fell to my butt.

I hadn’t turned on a light or even shut the door before I fell to the floor. The porch bulb spilled dim light into Tatum’s small living room, but I didn’t need it; I could navigate her house blindfolded if need be. Scooting back a few feet to lean against the wall, I reached above my head and flipped the switch. The room filled with soft light. Using my half-dead foot, I reached across the doorway and pulled the door closed with my toe. It shut and instantly I felt alone. More alone than I’d ever felt.

Tatum wasn’t there, neither was my sanity or my salvation. Just another place of memories stolen away by tragedy. I’d grown used to living in a house full of memories after my dad died, but this was different.
I
stole these memories. This was
my
fault.

I rolled my teary eyes and shook my head. I had a tendency to be self-deprecating, but I’d never felt so completely helpless with guilt. I could lie to everyone around me. Shit, I could even lie to myself for a while, but when the world slowed down and gave the crazy a chance to escape, there was no denying that I was truly and unequivocally fucked in the head.

“Get your ass up off this fucking floor, you pathetic piece of shit,” I said to myself, jaw set tight. “Either you’re going to live and fight, or you’re going to lie down and let whatever is out there waiting come and take you.” I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the wall.
Get up.

I huffed and pushed my way up the wall. Death sounded scary and giving up wasn’t really my thing, so it looked as though for the moment I had chosen the fight. No one had been in Tatum’s house since she’d left it to meet me at LAX for our flight to New Orleans. It explained why everything was off and locked tight. The smell became musty and pungent the closer I got to the kitchen.

I followed my nose to the sink where I found a deli cup with a lid sitting in the center. The smell was foul and almost turned my stomach. I puffed out air and peeled the lid off the cup. A rank smell I could only associate with the scent of an old pad, mid-cycle, in August heat for three days wafted up my nose, and jerked-off my gag reflex.

“Ah!” My face scrunched automatically and I shoved the lid back on the container, spilling it in the process. I pulled my shirt over my nose and looked over the edge of the sink into the blood-soaked basin. “Why the fuck is there a cup of blood in your sink, weirdo?” I asked my friend who may or may not have been able to hear me. She didn’t answer anyway.

I thought about washing it down, then thought again. If the cops were coming for me they’d surely check out her house eventually. My fingerprints on a cup of blood in her sink might appear fishy, no matter how innocent that particular aspect of her death may have been.

“Wash it, dummy.”
I couldn’t quite tell if it was Tatum I heard or my own head telling me what to do, but I listened.

I turned on the sink as hot as I could make it. “Why is there blood in here in the first place?” I grumbled and sudsed up a paper towel—no need to muck up a perfectly non-incriminating, highly absorbent sponge—and scrubbed at the sink until my fingers wrinkled.

The cup was clean when I shoved it to the bottom of the trashcan. I didn’t pull the bag out; it needed to look like no one had been in the house fucking around. I dried off the counter with yet another paper towel. The kitchen wasn’t spotless, but there was no stinky, rancid blood to be found. Turning off the kitchen light, I went to the half-bath just off the main hallway. One by one, I flushed the bloody pick-a-size towels. It was extensive, but I didn’t have room for failure. With all the precaution over beasties, it was easy to overlook the everyday dangers. Like multiple homicide charges.

When all traces of me in the house were gone, I took one last tour, ending up in Tatum’s bedroom. It smelled like her. I closed my eyes and tried to bring up a memory, any memory of her and me in that house. Nothing specific came to mind and it hurt my heart. My head was so full of so many other things it felt like my life was getting lost in the mess.

My girl would never be back. It was the last time I’d stand in that room. As I stood there, one memory came through: the last time I’d stood alone in the dark in Tatum’s bedroom. Someone had come in and taken her, leaving the room a mess and scaring the shit out of me. I thought that was the worst that could happen. It was the worst thing to happen to me in my adult life, until I walked into a little voodoo shop on a random New Orleans street.

“Bye,” I said and lifted my hand a bit for a wave.

I didn’t know what I was saying bye to, but it felt good to finally say it and actually mean it. I wanted to stay, to climb into her fluffy bed and sleep for days. Knowing my luck, I’d be caught in bed like Goldie Locks. Only my bear would carry a gun and likely a warrant.

When I got to the door, I hesitated. I stopped for just a moment and closed my eyes. Letting my breaths come slowly, I tried to open myself up, tried to walk through the door Lupe had opened, but only for one last grasp at the astral straw.

“If you’re ever going to help me, please do it now. I’m here. I’m listening.” I talked to Tatum and hoped nothing else answered.

I waited for a handful of breaths. Nothing. The air was dead, so to speak. She wasn’t there. Nothing was there but my brewing paranoia and me. Wherever she
went
, she never made it home. I palmed the spare key, leaving jagged, stinging marks in my sweaty skin. Shaking my head and trying to lose the overwhelming feeling of loss, I decided to leave the dead house while I still had the balls.

Tatum wasn’t there, so there was no reason for me to be. I was sure I’d have to come back to that place to clear out her shit and take care of all her final whatevers eventually. I’d have to pick a casket and choose a burial spot, and all the other fuckery that coincided with death that my nearly three-decade-old brain couldn’t handle. It seemed like a job for someone older and more experienced. My heart broke at the thought. She was murdered, so of course there would be an investigation and that would take time, but in the end, she was still dead. Death is an end to a life only for the dead. I heard once that death is for the living, and standing in the middle of my dead best friend’s living room I realized how true that notion really was.

I let out a long, heavy breath and opened the front door. The porch light illuminated an unfamiliar, rugged face. I yelped and jumped back. My first instinct was to slam the door and I followed it without question. The door thundered when it made contact with the jamb. Quickly, I flipped over the deadbolt and slid the chain home. My heart punched against my ribs in a desperate attempt to escape and find a mellower host.

“Miss?” The man called to me from the other side of the door in a deep baritone.

“What do you want?” My voice was rushed and obviously panicked. My suspicion was boiling over, and thoughts of murderous callers and beastly demons scampering about on the unsafe side of the door danced in my head.

“Miss, my name is Leonard Colorado. I’m a detective with the New Orleans Police Department here on behalf of Orleans Parish Sheriff’s office. I’m here about a Tatum Price,” a deep, southern drawl bellowed through the door.

My heart sank to my shoes. They’d found me. I wasn’t ready. I was supposed to be on a conference call with Mike at the butt-crack of dawn, not face to face with a detective in the middle of the night in the home of the murder victim he was investigating.

“Yes?” I squeaked and cleared my throat.

“Would you mind opening the door?” His accent proved his origin. Southern, and quite obviously Louisiana.

Trying to play off my frantic door slamming, I asked him, “Can you show me your badge?” I opened the square metal door, which acted as a massive peephole. The floral grate on the outside blocked most of my view, but his credentials were legit, or an excellent hallucination.

I closed the tiny metal door and let out a calming breath before opening the big wooden one. My face wouldn’t do anything but look solemn, but I guessed that was fine. I’d rather look like a girl who just lost a friend and not a terrified suspect.

“Miss, Detective Colorado.” He stuck a large, dark-brown hand in my direction. His expression was endearing and didn’t show any signs of suspicion.

“Sir.” I smiled a tiny bit. “That’s quite a name.” I didn’t know what else to say. It was the truth. The only truth he was going to get.

“And you are?”

“Oh, sorry, I’m Dylan Hart.” He nodded and acted as though he knew exactly who I was. “I wasn’t expecting a detective at the door. I wasn’t expecting anyone really. Sorry.” I pointed at the open door and he waved it off. His cordial demeanor was off-putting. I wasn’t used to anyone so calm. “Scared me,” I mumbled and looked away.

He cleared his throat. “May I come in?”

“Yeah. Yeah, come on in.” I invited him into a house which wasn’t mine. When he crossed the threshold, I wondered if that was a myth, too. I made a mental note to check with Cyrus.

The light in the living room was on, but the rest of the house was dark. The detective stood in the center of the room, nearly taking up the space with his girth. A rotund belly pushed against the single button on his tan blazer. His dark skin didn’t look a day over forty, but I wondered if that was accurate. Spots of graying, curly hair cropped close around his ears helped solidify that suspicion.

“I’m sorry I scared you. I didn’t expect anyone to be here. I was told the vi-" He stopped and pinched his thick lips between his teeth. “Miss Price lived alone.”

I nodded and shoved the word ‘victim’ from my head. “She does. I just…” I sighed. “I just needed to be near her again.” It was true, but the tone I held pulled me that much further from the ring of usual suspects. He nodded and I continued, “I am having a hard time with…her passing.”