Forsaken (29 page)

I found an old wagon, sitting lonely
out in the middle of a field. I crawled up onto the front driver’s
seat and just sat and watched as the sun set, the stars flickered
into view, and the moon phased into the sky. A warm breeze picked
up, ruffling my unruly hair. The air smelled sweet, like grass and
wheat. It helped to calm my senses just a bit.

The events of the last few hours
replayed in my mind and I wondered what had happened to everyone.
We had set out as a group of three, on this insane mission to make
the leader of the condemned return to hell. And now here the
remnants were, only myself left to make Cole go somewhere he
obviously didn’t want to go.

Thoughts of Alex dominated my mind. I
missed him already, felt pained with how badly I wanted him here
with me again. I hoped he had found his mother in time though. He
needed to know her. I only hoped she had cleaned up her life since
the last time she had seen her son, when he was only a few weeks
old.

As I recalled seeing Emily standing at
the window, blood dripping to the floor from her wrists, I felt
sick. I still couldn’t understand her actions, the ones that were
actually her own. I still hoped she would be okay though. I didn’t
want to lose my best friend. She was the only one who understood my
twisted past. I had to trust that Cormack had gotten her to help
before it was too late.

The conversation Cole and I had about
Jane came back to me. He had said how Jane had forsaken him. Now he
had forsaken Emily. That was all Emily wanted, was a man who would
love her as intensely as Alex loved me. Cole had wanted a woman who
was now long dead and would never have him. I wanted Alex to marry
me but he refused. And Alex was being pulled into the world of the
dead. We were all forsaken.

I suddenly felt very alone and in
despair.

CHAPTER TWENTY

ALEX

My insides were a knotted mess as I
ran up to the deserted building. I wanted to throw up, thinking
maybe that would help clear out the sick feeling that was seeping
into every corner of my body. If only my stomach hadn’t been empty
for the last six months.

The building was falling apart and
looked like it was infested with all kinds of disgusting rodents
and diseases. A section of the roof was caved in and I could see
mold growing inside one of the windows. It looked exactly like the
kind of building drugs would have been made in.

I checked the front door and found it
bolted shut. Checking to make sure no one was around to see, I
punched a clean hole through the metal surface and unlocked it from
the inside. It couldn’t have squealed louder as I pushed it open.
If there was anyone else in the building I had given them plenty of
warning to clear out if they didn’t want to be found.

The smell hit me like a punch in the
gut when I walked in and would have been enough to make a normal
person puke right then and there. A mix of mold, human waste and
what I assumed was drugs. I couldn’t be sure. Somehow I had managed
to stay away from that stuff so I couldn’t tell.

The room I walked into was devoid of
life other than the mouse I saw scamper under a mildewed blanket. I
could hear the sound of water dripping inside a wall. Extending my
senses, I heard what I was looking for.

Less than two seconds later I was up
the stairs and into what at one point had probably been a bedroom.
Lying sprawled on the floor was a woman and next to her was a
crusty looking syringe.

“
Caroline!” I shouted as I
gathered her up in my arms and shook her. Her eyes opened slightly
but wouldn’t focus on anything. They just rolled around in her
head.

“
Caroline, you stay with
me!” I shouted as I picked her tiny frame up in my arms. I was
afraid she would snap at just the movement of being picked up. She
was all skin and bones.

She smelled heavily of cigarette smoke
and faintly of vomit. She looked like she hadn’t bathed in a few
weeks. Her clothes were torn and crusted.

“
Caroline you’ve got to
stay with me!” I screamed. Panic surged through me as her breathing
became more and more faint. The sound of her heart beating started
coming more infrequently. She was dying, fast.

I didn’t even care if anyone saw me
moving the way I did. While I managed to keep the wings contained,
I was moving faster than it should have been possible. I didn’t
care, I had to get this woman to the hospital or she was going to
be dead in just a few minutes. The deserted parts of town gave way
into habitation as my feet barely pounded the pavement.

“
Someone help me!” I
yelled as I burst through the doors of the emergency room. A male
nurse jumped two feet in the air at my shouts. A lot of the stares
I was getting used to, and one hundred twenty-four seconds later,
Caroline was being wheeled into a room.

I collapsed into a chair in the
waiting room and hung my head. My entire frame trembled slightly,
my nerves trying to go a million directions all at once. I was
going to crack any second.

I didn’t know what I expected to find
when I went to save Caroline. Cole had only indicated that if I
didn’t get to her within an hour she would be joining our world and
coming to his side. As evil as Cole was, I knew he hadn’t done this
to her. She’s done this to herself. My grandparents had hinted at
an addiction, had never had anything good to say about her. So why
had I had any hopes of finding a woman who would be fit to be my
mother? I should have known better than to hope. I’d gone my whole
life without a mother, why would I hope to gain one now?

A war raged within me as I watched the
sun go down outside. Jessica and Cormack would have reached Cole
and Emily by this point. What was happening? Was Jessica safe? Was
Emily? It was driving me mad that I had no way of reaching anyone.
I’d buy Jessica a cell phone first thing when we got
home.

I wouldn’t let the
thoughts of
if
we
got home surface.

The thought of Jessica in the same
room as Cole again made my blood boil. I didn’t even realize I
crushed the arm of the chair I was sitting in.

“
Mr. Wright?” a woman
asked as she came into the waiting room.
Who else would I be?
I thought to
myself.
There’s no one else in
here.
Instead of snapping at the woman, I
just nodded.

“
You can go back and see
your mother now,” she said as she indicated for me to follow
her.

My emotions twisted all the more,
having someone else call that woman my mother. No one had ever
talked about my mother in reference of going to see her.

The nurse took me to a room and left
me alone there. I paused in the door. I could just leave right now.
She was under medical supervision and she should survive. Letting
myself hope further that she would become a woman I would be proud
to call my mother was obviously stupid. I could spare myself a lot
of heartache if I just left right now and didn’t let this mess of a
human into my life. I was already dealing with enough right
now.

I took a deep breath and stepped over
the threshold. I closed the door behind me.

She seemed to be asleep but I wasn’t
positive as I walked to her side and just stared at her face. She
was still filthy, her eyes looking like they were sinking into her
head. Her skin looked leathered and pocked. Her hair seemed to be
thinning and looked brittle.

Looking in this woman’s face, I felt
ashamed. I suddenly wasn’t sure I wanted her to wake up and find me
here. I wasn’t sure I wanted to meet her. What good was it going to
do? She hadn’t wanted to be a part of my life for these past
twenty-three years, why should I force her to be a part of it
now?

My stomach jumped into my throat as
her eyes fluttered open, piercing blue orbs looking up at me that
confirmed who she was. They were exactly like mine had
been.

Her brow furrowed as she stared at my
face, her eyes probing and searching. “Alex?” she whispered
finally.

I couldn’t say anything, only nodded.
I wasn’t surprised she recognized who I was. I’d been told hundreds
of times how much I looked like my father.

Her face hardened, the furrows in her
face no longer confused but angry looking. “What are you doing
here? How did you find me?”

I was taken aback at her abruptness. I
hadn’t expected harsh words to come from the woman who I had just
saved from crossing into the land of the dead. “I…” I stammered.
“You were nearly dead. I brought you to the hospital.”

“
How did you find me?” she
said again, her voice a little less harsh this time.

“
Um, I can’t really say
how,” I struggled to answer. “What does it matter?”

Surprisingly this seemed to be a good
enough answer for her. I supposed to a drug addict it was. “Yeah,
well, maybe you should have just left me there.”

“
I couldn’t just let you
die,” I said quietly as I backed up two steps and took a seat in a
chair. “You’re not getting off that easily.”

We both just sat there, glaring at
each other through the dim light. Neither of us knew what words to
say. What did you say to the son you never wanted but who had just
saved your life, even if you didn’t care about it? What do you say
to the woman who gave birth to you and then abandoned you and your
father for more than twenty years?

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

JESSICA

I did not leave the wagon all night
and by the time the sun started to work its way back into the sky I
felt stiff but determined. I wasn’t going to let Cole bully me or
scare me away. One way or another, he was going to go back to the
world of the dead.

The grass in the fields came up above
my waist as I walked back toward the house. The sun shone brightly
and danced off Cole’s wings as he walked toward me. They looked
more metallic than white in the light, distorted versions of what
they should have been. They looked broken and twisted. Yet still
menacing. As Cole stopped just five feet from me, a feather floated
softly to the ground.

“
I want to make a deal,” I
said, my tone confident, reflective of how I actually felt inside
for once. “I will listen to whatever you have to say, go with you
wherever you want me to go. But you have to make me a
promise.”

“
And what might that be?”
he asked, his voice surprisingly not mocking as I expected it to
be.

“
That you’ll go back to
where you belong.”

Cole just stared at me with those
black orbs for several long moments. I tried to interpret the
emotions I saw running through them. Resignation, despair,
understanding, frustration. I couldn’t quite tell.

“
We’ll see how things play
out,” Cole answered, not promising anything.

“
Fine,” I agreed. At least
he hadn’t said no.

“
Come with me,” he said as
he turned and started walking.

Silence fell on us as we walked
through the swaying grasses. I trailed behind Cole, watching him as
he moved. How was it possible for a creature to be so beautiful and
terrifying at the same time? Even though I had watched Alex almost
nonstop for the last few months, I still stared in wonder as I
watched Cole move. But the wings were wretched to look at. There
were wide gaps between many of the feathers, evidence of how many
of them he had lost. Even as we walked through the fields, another
fell softly to the ground. I bent briefly to pick it up.

We approached a barn, its walls
tilting and part of the roof rotted away. Cole walked up to an
ancient looking tree just ten feet from it. Many of its branches
were touching the roof of the barn, threatening to push it
over.

Cole looked up at the tree as he laid
a hand on its rough surface. He walked around it once, looking
closely at its surface. He finally stopped at a certain spot. He
traced his fingers over it tenderly.

I walked to his side to see what he
was looking at. At about Cole’s eye level there was something
carved into the bark.

C & J

Forever

“
Cole and Jane,” I said
softly as I looked at the cruel letters.

“
Forever,” Cole said so
quietly I could barely even hear it. “I could never have Jane, even
in the afterlife. She’d done enough to be granted blue eyes,
despite all the transgressions she’s committed with me. Forever
indeed.”

I recalled the letters between Cole
and Jane. Jane had spoken of a night they had spent together in the
barn. I had little doubt this was that barn. They had marked their
special place with their initials.

“
It seems ironic,” Cole
said as he backed away from the tree a few steps. “That this was
the place my life both began and ended.”

My brow furrowed as I looked at him,
wondering what he meant.

“
From what my mother tells
me, I was conceived under this very tree. My father was just about
to inherit the Emerson estate. They married just months after that.
I was born not long after.