Forsaken (21 page)

ALEX

As soon as Jessica was out
of sight, I lost it. It was stupid and pointless but I plowed my
fist into the wall. I barely even felt it as currents of
electricity raced up my arm. Great, now I was going to have to fix
the sheetrock
and
call an electrician.

I went inside and slammed the door
closed behind me. I flipped the TV on in an effort to distract
myself but turned it off less than thirty seconds later. I nearly
punched the screen out for no good reason.

I leaned against the wall, slid down
and buried my face in my hands. What was I doing? I kept telling
myself that I couldn’t marry Jessica because I wouldn’t do that
only to possibly be taken away the next day. But why? Jessica had
told me dozens of times that she didn’t care, she’d take anything
we could get. My holding back wasn’t making her happy. It was
making her totally miserable. It certainly wasn’t making me
happy.

So why was I holding back?

My shoulders suddenly felt lighter as
my thoughts resolved. I was going to do it. Today. As soon as
Jessica walked back through the door. I would drop down on one knee
and I would ask Jessica to marry me.

I got to my feet, excitement coursing
through my system. I felt relieved that we were finally going to
move past all the depression and hurt. Damn the consequences. Damn
whatever might happen tomorrow.

As I reached into my pocket for the
box I had carried around for the last few months, I felt something
else vibrate and pulled my cell phone out. The screen display said
I had just received a new text message.

Yet again my stomach felt like it was
hollowing out as I read it.

I couldn’t ask Jessica to marry me.
Not only because it could crush her, but because there were worse
things that could happen to me than just being pulled back into the
afterlife permanently. They could still do horrible things to
Jessica once I was gone. They could torture her, just as they did
me, for the location of a certain dark angel.

JESSICA

I wondered if this was what shock felt
like. I couldn’t remember actually walking into the house and
closing the door behind me. I didn’t even realize that Alex had
walked into the room and had said something to me. “Jessica?” he
said, a look of concern on his face. “Is something
wrong?”

His voice sounded far away and muffled
as I tried to clear the suddenly dead feeling from my head. “Yeah,
no, I…” I said as I shook my head, closing my eyes deliberately
before I opened them again. I then realized that Alex was extending
his cell phone to me. He must have said something earlier about it
that I hadn’t heard. “Sorry, what did you say?”

Alex’s face was a mess of emotions as
he looked at me. “I just got this a few minutes ago. I think you
should take a look at it.”

I took the phone from him, wondering
what he could be talking about. It appeared to be a text message
and I noted the name of the sender was Emily’s.

Tell Jessica that I’m
fine.

She can stop
calling.

I found Cole.

I finally have what she
does.

I blanched as I read Cole’s name and
my knees felt weak. The dreams I had been having of him lately
flooded my memory.

Emily was
with
him.

Without realizing what I was doing, I
pushed the call button and held the phone to my ear.

“
I already tried,” Alex
said. “It just went straight to her voicemail.”

He was right; that was all I
got.

“
Why?” I stammered. “I
don’t… Why would she go after Cole? She knows what he’s capable of.
He branded her too, hundreds of times. Why would she go to
him?”

I looked up at Alex and was surprised
to see that he looked… almost angry. His jaw was clenched tightly
and his fists were balled up. It took me a moment to understand his
reaction. Alex had been pulled back into the afterlife and tortured
for Cole’s location. He hadn’t known but apparently Emily did or
had found it out.

“
How’d she find him?” I
said softly. “Where is he?”

Alex didn’t say anything, just shook
his head, his lips pursed in a thin line.

Neither of us said much else the rest
of the night. I could tell Alex was furious, and while I couldn’t
blame him for feeling angry in general, I didn’t exactly think it
should be directed at Emily. Maybe that was because I too had known
where Cole was for a while.

My last conversation with Emily
haunted me as I recalled it. Emily was jealous of what Alex and I
had. She wanted someone to love her the way she thought only an
angel could love someone. And so she had gone and found the only
other angel she knew of.

I sent Alex out that night, claiming
to want some ice cream. As soon as he was out of the house I went
into my closet and unburied the last letter Cole had left for
me.

I took a deep breath as I sat on my
bed with it in my hands. How many days had it been that I’d been
too afraid to open it?

My hands wanted to shake as I tore the
envelope open and pulled the single sheet of paper out. It took
every ounce of strength I had to unfold the page.

Good-bye, Jessica.
Eventually we all have to face our demons. I’ve gone to face mine.
Perhaps someday I can help you face yours.

X

I had never felt so emotionally
exhausted as I climbed into bed that night. My emotions had been
pulled in too many directions. First with being angry with Alex,
being terrified of what Alex might not be telling me, and the
revelation of Cole and Emily was just too much. And what was Cole’s
letter supposed to mean?

I should have known better than to
think that sleep might bring some sort of relief for me.

I had another nightmare of Cole that
night. This one however was distinctly different from the others.
This time everything was modern, the clothing, the music that
played in the background, the way people talked. The biggest, most
horrifying difference however was that this time I knew the woman
Cole strangled in the end. It was Emily.

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

JESSICA

Cole’s house looked exactly the same
as it did when I had been there last. The glass was still broken in
the back door where Alex had punched it out in order to get in.
There was evidence of water damage from the rain getting in but
other than that, the front area looked the same. I wondered if Cole
had even come in it when he had come back to stalk me.

There were no good memories attached
to this house. I had been held a dying captive here for over a
week. I had nearly killed myself within these walls,
twice.

This house was about the
last place on earth I wanted to go back to, but I had to do this. I
knew I had to find Cole,
now
, and I didn’t know where else to
start looking for clues as to where he might have gone. Emily
obviously wasn’t going to answer her phone, unaware of what might
possibly be looming in her future. I had to find something to point
me in the right direction. I didn’t know how much time I had, if
any. If the nightmares I had been having were real, Emily could
already be dead.

I wandered down the hall to my left.
The first door I tried was a bathroom, completely empty of
anything, no soap, shampoo, or even toilet paper. The second door
revealed a bedroom, also empty of absolutely anything other than a
double sized bed, made up with stark white sheets, pillowcases, and
comforter. I knew what was going to be behind door number three
before I even opened it. I had seen into it once before, all part
of a terrifying chain of events.

I knew what was going to be in the
room but I wasn’t prepared for the state it was going to be in.
Books had been pulled off their shelves, files emptied and dumped
on the floor, CD cases lying open and cracked. The place had been
ransacked. Someone else had been here before I had and I knew it
wasn’t Cole who had done this.

It seemed that if there was going to
be any clue as to where Cole might have ran to, it would be in this
room. Apparently someone else had thought that as well. There was
only one other person who would have tried to find Cole.
Emily.

Not knowing exactly what I was looking
for, I started sifting through the mess. I started by picking up
the CD cases. I didn’t see anything that might give me any clues. I
didn’t recognize any of the band names, I wasn’t into screamer
rock. I next started into the books, quickly flipping through them,
looking for anything that might help me. Cole had quite a
collection of classics, written from the time period he had lived
in. He also possessed volumes of poetry from people I had never
heard of. I wondered why he had bothered getting them. He had only
been back in the world of the living for a few months.

I couldn’t make any sense of most of
the documents I sorted through. Some looked legal like they were
possibly closing documents on this house, his shiny black sports
car, a house full of furniture. Nothing looked helpful as I cleared
page after page from the floor.

A small feeling of hope surged in my
veins when I saw the ancient looking leather bound book half buried
on the desk. I had seen it before, just briefly. Cole had been
pouring over it the day I had seen his brand and realized his true
identity. My hands shook and my insides quivered as I ran my hand
over its worn and cracked surface.

Some sort of crest had
been tooled into its cover and I could barely make out the word at
the top.
Emerson.

I opened the cover and began thumbing
through its pages. It was an extensive family tree, filled with
names, dates, and places. I finally found Cole’s name, written
below Marcus Emerson and Annabell Florence’s. Cole had apparently
been an only child. I felt mixed emotions that the line ended
there, knowing that Cole’s blood had in fact been carried
on.

The following pages contained maps,
drawings of property boundaries, leases of real estate and a lot of
other information I had to hope would lead me to where I was now
sure Cole would be.

It seemed so clear and simple where
Cole had gone. Home. He’d gone to face his demons.

I just couldn’t understand where any
of these places were supposed to be. The entire Emerson legacy was
bound on paper before me but I had no idea where any of it
was.

I was about to close the book when I
noticed that there was still more. In the final few pages there was
yet another family tree, written in ink that looked much newer and
fresher than the rest of it all. The name at the very beginning
took me a moment to process and understand who it must have
been.

William Anthony.

Cole’s illegitimate son.

I still didn’t know Cole’s lover’s
first name but I now knew her last.

There were no places written with
these names, but dates spread down through seven generations. I
didn’t recognize any of the names but at the bottom, when the dates
reached years the final people could have still been alive, Cole
had penned in

No connection.

I didn’t understand what it meant but
it didn’t matter. I closed the book and put it under my arm. I
would take it home and Alex would help me figure out where the
Emerson estate was. He had traveled around the world; perhaps he
would see something that would otherwise never mean anything to
me.

I don’t know why I did it. I had no
reason to and I regretted it the second after my feet met flat
ground.

I walked with shaking knees down the
stairs, descending into the shadowy second floor. As I did, dark
memories surfaced, feelings I didn’t want to remember flooded my
mind.

The bottom floor was smaller than the
rest of the house. To my left at the bottom of the stairs was a
small theater room, to my right was a bathroom. Straight in front
of me was a windowless bedroom.

I flipped the light on in the bedroom
and froze in the doorway.

It looked exactly the same as when I
had run out of the room six or so months before. The sheetrock was
buckled in all over the room. I winced as I recalled the way Cole
had thrown Alex’s body against the walls. The sound of all the
breaks echoed in my brain. Spatters of blood stained the light
colored carpet everywhere. There was a pool of it where it had
drained out of Alex’s nose after he hadn’t been able to
move.

One break in the sheetrock held my
eyes locked. It was the smallest one but the most significant. Alex
told Cole that he had made a deal, his life for mine. As Cole
realized he could never have me, he had slammed Alex’s head against
the wall.

I recalled seeing how Cole’s knuckles
turned white as he squeezed Alex’s neck.

And then the snap as he broke Alex’s
neck. And killed him.

I squeezed my eyes closed, holding my
hands over my stomach. Why had I come here?