Forsaken (18 page)

“
Nice going though, Jess,”
she chuckled as she walked into her room. “They don’t come better
sculpted than that.”

I could only smile uncomfortably as I
tried to tug my shirt down over my head.

JESSICA

I stared back at my reflection in the
perfectly calm ocean water, searching my face. There was something
hidden inside of me that wasn’t really a part of me. It was
different than me. It felt like an enemy.

My mind replayed over all the things
that were happening lately. What was it about me that drew Cole
out? Why didn’t I bleed the other day? Why was I so scared to look
in the mirror these days?

What was wrong with
me?

I splashed my hand through the water,
sending endless ripples crashing across my reflection. My chest
felt tight as I straightened and looked out over the water. The
islands were perfectly visible today.

I turned and started running through
the trees.

What is wrong with
me?
I repeated that question over and over
in my mind. It rushed around me in a maddening circle, showing me
no answers.

The ground became a green and brown
blur beneath my feet and I didn’t even see my surroundings as they
whipped by. I wanted to out run it all, to leave all the
impossibilities and insanities behind. I’d had enough of it
all.

The next second there was nothing but
air beneath my feet.

The next the Earth came crashing
against my body.

All the air was forced out of my lungs
as I slammed to the rocky ground. I rolled onto my side, my eyes
struggling to focus on anything. I was confused at first. There was
a huge rock wall that rose up to the side of me. It took me a
moment to realize that I had run right off the edge of the
twenty-five or so foot cliff.

I pulled myself up, wincing as every
part of my body screamed at me. I shook the debris out of my
tangled hair. Looking back up to the top of the cliff, I swallowed
hard. I should have easily broken both of my legs, at least one of
my arms, and done plenty more damage.

As I did an assessment of how I felt,
I realized I felt perfectly fine.

I climbed to my feet. The pain faded
away and I started walking again.

Perfectly fine. That was the wrong
description. I felt like I freak. I didn’t feel human. There was
something terribly, horribly wrong with me.

How long had I been like
this and not noticed? I had known something was different since I
had nearly died but had
this
been the “different”?

My head spun and I suddenly wondered
if I even could pass out. My feet stumbled, one in front of the
other, back in the direction of the house. Before long I was
running again. The trees fell away behind me in a green and brown
blur. Literally. I felt like I was flying, except that my feet were
still pounding the springy earth beneath me.

I came to the river that flowed out of
the lake and crossed it in one bounding leap. My feet felt light,
my entire frame moving with a grace that felt foreign to me. I
didn’t even realize I was close to home until I shot across the
narrow road and crashed into something both soft and hard at the
same time.

“
What the…” the something
shouted as we crashed onto the driveway. I then realized that the
something was Alex.

Pain exploded from my forearm and as I
looked down at it my stomach rolled when I saw that it looked like
a cheese grater had been taken to my skin, little pieces of rock
and dirt embedded into it. Despite everything that had happened in
the last five minutes, I was still horrified when no blood
surfaced. It closed up in just a few seconds, the gravel dropping
to the ground.

I looked up into Alex’s face, his eyes
staring wide at my arm. I looked away quickly, pushing myself up to
my feet.

“
You want to explain what
just happened?” he said as he too stood up.

“
What are you talking
about?” I said lamely as I walked toward the front door.

“
Excuse me?” he said as he
followed. “Are you going to just pretend you weren’t moving at the
speed of a rocket and that you suddenly seem to have regenerative
powers?”

My bottom lip started trembling as I
opened the front door and stepped inside. Alex silently closed it
behind me, his frame standing near enough I could feel his body
warmth against my skin.

“
Well?” he said, his tone
softer now.

“
Yeah,” I said, my voice
cracking as I did. “Yeah, I am going to pretend that it didn’t
happen.”

“
Hey,” he said softly as
he placed a hand on my shoulder and turned me around to face him.
When he saw the tears that had finally broke from my eyes, he
wrapped his arms around me. “What’s going on?”

“
I don’t know, Alex,” I
said, my voice cracking again. At least I could still cry. “I don’t
really want to talk about it. Enough is already wrong right
now.”

“
You sure?”

I just nodded my head, unable to say
anything else.

ALEX

I felt a little irritated at all the
people that were on the road around the lake these days. There were
so many of them as I drove to the freeway on my way to meet up with
Rod. I enjoyed the quiet lifestyle I had become accustomed to and
they were infringing on my new world. It was strange that they all
bothered me. I was from Southern California, where there were
millions of people. I had always liked people. Now they just stared
open mouthed and tried to reason why I looked the way I
did.

I tried to reason what I had just
seen. What Jessica had just done was impossible. She had been
moving almost as fast as I did. She had crashed into me like a
torpedo. I still wasn’t even sure if her skin had healed like I
thought it did or if that was just something my imagination had
made up. Maybe I had gotten a concussion when she knocked me
down.

I knew I hadn’t though. I couldn’t get
a concussion.

What Jessica had done scared me beyond
belief. Something was wrong with her. And it wasn’t just what I had
seen her do today. She still didn’t eat much, maybe a meal a day.
If I forced her. I wondered if she even still needed to. And she
still only slept every other night, at the most.

I knew my limits and what
I was capable of but I also knew
what
I was. I was dead, I was an
angel.

I wasn’t so sure what Jessica
was.

How much of her was human and how much
of her was dead and more like myself, I didn’t want to know. The
things she was capable of though proved she was probably more angel
than human. I didn’t think she even realized this herself. She had
no idea how close she had come to death. How much had she
transitioned before I stopped it?

An involuntary shudder rippled through
me at this thought. I had been so close to losing her. When I had
found the gun she had been about to use on herself my world started
crumbling apart. I probably would have used it on myself had
Jessica taken herself out of this world.

Surprisingly, the decision I made to
trade my life for hers was easy to make. I was going to lose her
one way or another. She was going to die; there was no question
about that. I had expected to have to move onto the afterlife when
I made the trade, so either way I was going to lose her. I would
forever be grateful for this extra time we had been
granted.

Everything changed after that horrific
day though. I knew the things Jessica was capable of before it all
happened was impossible. Before I died, she still shouldn’t have
been able to survive on as little sleep. She didn’t used to eat
often either. Everything had been so much more enhanced after
though. While I had freed her of the nightmares she was still far
from normal. She might not have realized I noticed, but I knew she
was stronger than any man I had ever met. And her senses were
closer to mine than a human’s.

There was something else that was off
about Jessica since that day. I couldn’t pinpoint it exactly. When
I looked at her there was something that was different about her
than everyone else I knew. Not just all the things that I already
knew were different. Something else about her had changed but I
wasn’t sure what.

And that was the part that terrified
me the most.

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

JESSICA

I hung the phone up and gave a
frustrated sigh.

Where was she?

Panic was starting to eat me up. It
had now been a full month since I had seen Emily. I still had no
idea where she had gone to. I’d been calling her phone three times
a day lately, never getting anything but her voicemail.

“
Hey, Jessica?” Austin’s
voice came from behind me. I turned around, trying to get my face
composed.

“
Rita just asked if I’d
take this order up to some old lady who lives up in Ferndale. She
said you could go with me if you wanted.”

“
It is a little dead,” I
said as I looked around the bookshop. It was completely empty
besides the three of us.

Austin chuckled. “You want to
come?”

I hesitated for a moment, hoping he
wouldn’t read anything he shouldn’t into this. “Sure.”

We let Rita know we were leaving and
headed out to the parking lot. We paused in a momentary awkward
second, unsure of what car to take.

“
We can take my car but we
will have to stop for gas on the way. I’m almost empty,” I said as
we stood there.

“
Let’s just take mine
then. I’ve got a full tank.”

I slid into the passenger seat,
pushing aside the food wrappers that were scattered on the floor.
It smelled just a little off inside. I tried not to wrinkle my
nose.

“
Sorry,” Austin’s face
flooded with red. “I was going to clean it out yesterday. Guess I
kinda’ forgot.”

“
Don’t worry about it,” I
said, giving a half smile.

He put the key in the ignition and
went to start the car. It gave a high pitched squeal but didn’t
turn over.

“
Maybe we should just take
the GTO,” I said as I pointed in the direction of my car. “Yours
isn’t really seaming up to the job today.”

“
No, it’s okay,” he said.
I heard the undertones of frustration and embarrassment. “Just give
it a second.”

He was right. The next try it jumped
to life, though the high squeal didn’t die away. We pulled out of
the parking lot and headed toward the freeway.

“
Thanks for coming with
me,” Austin said as he turned his blinker on and merged into the
flow of the light traffic. “I’ve taken an order into this lady
before for Rita. I was stuck there for nearly two hours while she
ranted on and on about I’m not even sure what.”

“
So you tricked me?” I
said in mock horror. “You’re going to let her take me prisoner
too?”

“
Not going down by
myself,” he chuckled as he glanced over at me. “Like they say,
misery loves company.”

I gave an awkward smile. I had always
applied that expression to the condemned angels.

“
So have you heard from
your friend that’s been missing?” Austin asked, his eyes focused on
the road in front of him.

I shook my head. “I’m getting really
worried about her. No one has heard from her for over a month
now.”

“
Have you talked to her
family yet?”

“
Emily isn’t close with
them,” I said awkwardly. That was the understatement of the decade.
“They don’t talk.”

“
Well, have you filed a
missing person’s report?”

I shook my head again. “She’s got kind
of a shady past. It would only get Emily in even more trouble to
get the police involved.”

“
What, like, she’s a
fugitive?” Austin asked with a chuckle as he gave me a disbelieving
glance.

“
Sort of,” I said as I
looked out the window. Wow. I’d said way too much. How stupid was
I?

“
That’s kind of hot,” he
said with a hint of amusement in his voice.

“
Okay, change of subj…
Austin watch out!” I screamed.

It all happened so fast but I didn’t
miss a single detail. The semi-truck in front of us had suddenly
slammed on its breaks, causing the trailer behind it to jackknife
across both freeway lanes. Austin swerved to the right to avoid
hitting it but there was no prayer.

The front left side of Austin’s car
slammed into the trailer. The car was suddenly airborne and I saw
alternating views of freeway and open fields of the countryside as
we flipped.

One second I watched as Austin was
catapulted out the driver’s side window that had been rolled
down.

The next second everything turned
black and very quiet.

ALEX

I set the dusting rag down and went to
grab my cell phone off the counter as it rang. I didn’t recognize
the number.