by Chloe Garner
He pulled them out of his pocket and handed them to her.
“Three houses down, this side of the fence row, there’s an abandoned house,” she said. “I’ll help you get over this fence, but you’ve got a couple to go.” She looked down at Caroline, but he couldn’t read her face. “It may not be dignified, but we’ll get her out.”
“I sent Sam…”
“I know,” she said. “I’ll get him first.”
He jumped to grab the top of the privacy fence of the next house down, then let himself back down.
“No signs of life over there,” he said. She nodded.
“I can’t lift her, but I can hold her. If you can get her up to the top of the fence…”
He nodded and picked up the woman’s cool body and Samantha helped him lift her over his head. He got her shoulder and her hip onto the top of the fence and Samantha braced herself underneath to hold her.
“Go,” she said. He did a chin up on the fence and rolled over the top of it, landing softly and reaching up to take Caroline. He set her down and peered through the fence at the corner.
“I’ll meet you as soon as I can,” Samantha said, putting her fingers through the gap. He touched them.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For being you.”
He waited a second, listening to her soft footsteps as she left, then picked Caroline up again. He really didn’t want to toss her over the fence like any piece of luggage. He looked down at her.
“I’ve got you,” he said softly. He looked around and found a gate on the far side of the fence. It was higher risk that someone would see him, but it was worth it to him. He picked Caroline up again, trying not to notice how her body was stiffening, and carried her over to the gate. Just a simple latch.
He let himself out and leaned against the fence, appreciating the increasing darkness of the evening as he watched. This street didn’t have as many lights on. Behind him, he could smell smoke as the wraith house began to burn. In the distance he could hear sirens. Two houses more? Or three? He looked around quickly, making a decision. He dropped Caroline’s feet and put her arm over his shoulder, grabbing hold of the far side of her belt to hold her up against him. Her feet dragged on the ground, but it would make it two houses. He walked out to the sidewalk and quickly down the street, turning at the house with the broken windows.
He sat in the shadow of overgrown landscaping bushes and waited.
With Caroline.
He tried not to look at her, but it was impossible to just ignore it. The woman he had eaten lunch with was sitting on the ground next to him getting cold. They had gone after her stomach. Were pulling parts out of her as Sam and Jason chased Samantha down the stairs. Samantha had cut through them like a wall of wind, and Jason had cleared the ones first at the back of the room and then at the front as she made her way. Forty-five seconds, maybe a minute. He had been too busy to notice what Sam had done, but there had been no gunshots from his brother. Jason refused to think about what Sam had been looking at.
The screaming had stopped before they had hit the door. Jason swallowed bile. He hoped that had been when she had died.
Samantha had checked her. She couldn’t have just acknowledged that there was no way Caroline was still alive. She had knelt over the woman and put her hand on her chest and closed her eyes. That had been when Sam had sunk to the stairs, hands over his face. Samantha had pulled Caroline’s eyes closed and straightened her shirt, then disappeared back up the stairs.
Jason wondered for a minute if he should have been worried about leaving a trail across the yards, but mentally shrugged, exhausted. There was nothing for them to find. Nothing for them to track. Just another body, no different from the pile Jason had left, as far as they would be concerned. He looked over at Caroline, impulsively pulling her hair off her face.
“I’m sorry,” he said. That was all. It was all he could do.
Headlights swept the front of the next house over as the Cruiser pulled up the driveway. Jason held out a hand in the beam and it stopped. Samantha got out and opened the back hatch. She had cleared an aisle down the middle of the back and laid a blanket across it. She took Caroline’s shoulders and helped him lay her down. Sam was in the passenger seat, staring woodenly forward. When Jason looked up at Samantha, he realized she had been crying. He closed the hatch and Samantha climbed into the back seat as he got into the driver’s seat, adjusted it, and drove away.
<><><>
“Abby,” Samantha said as Jason drove. “Help me.”
<><><>
There was a teenager waiting at the hotel for them. Jason drew his gun, and the kid watched him, bored. He looked at Samantha.
“Abby sent me. Paid upfront.”
“Sam,” Samantha said, opening his door. “Do you remember Trigger?”
Sam shook his head.
“He works for Nuri. He’s a messenger. He’s going to take Caroline home.”
“I don’t know how you people do things, but we’re not handing her over to some kid,” Jason said.
“He’s a demon,” Samantha said.
“Oh, that helps.”
“Jason,” Samantha said, her voice even and authoritative. He looked at her. “This is all I’ve got. Right here. I can’t make it any further.” She looked at Sam. “He… I don’t know what’s going to happen with him, when I go over the edge. If your sense of duty requires that you drive her back to North Dakota, that’s fine, but I can’t come. I can’t do that.”
Sam straightened and put his hands on her shoulders.
“This is how it should be,” he said.
“What?” Jason asked. Sam shook his head.
“Jason… Jason, I can’t do it, either. I can’t. I mean…” He shook his head, then rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Jason, I was so frustrated at her. It was… The sex was great and she was great and…”
“She wanted you to meet her parents,” Jason said. Sam nodded.
“And I will. Probably. Someday. But not like this.” He looked lost. “Jason, it wasn’t going to go anywhere. It wasn’t going to last. I can’t pretend like it was more than it was.” He struggled for a moment, then looked at Jason again. “I’m going to go call her parents. I’ll leave it up to them.”
As Sam left, Samantha slowly dropped to one knee, resting her forehead against her knee. Jason stood, unable to find anything to say to her. He heard her breath come in raw jags, and she finally lifted her head. Her eyes were wet with tears. She looked at the kid.
“You are working for him. Do whatever he says in addition to your agreements with Abby,” she said, then let herself into the room. Jason stared at him and Trigger stared back.
“How old are you?” Jason asked.
“As old as the rest of them,” Trigger answered.
“Why do you look like you’re seventeen?”
“Tradeoffs,” Trigger said, a smile spreading across his face.
“Are you gray?” Jason asked, remembering the words Samantha used. The kid nodded. “And if I let you take…” he couldn’t bring himself to use her name, “the body, you’ll be respectful and take good care of it?”
“Dude, I’m bound by so many vows right now I couldn’t spit sideways.”
Jason frowned and Trigger grinned again.
“Abby paid for my time. You know the kind of stuff that chick has seen? She knows every trick in the book. I’ll take good care of your friend.”
“And you’ll be nice to her parents?”
“I’ve moved bodies before,” Trigger said. “They don’t want you to talk to them. Just be quiet and act sad.”
Sam returned, wiping his eyes with the backs of his hands.
“They want Trigger to bring her,” he said. Trigger stood and walked toward the Cruiser.
“You don’t have to help me if you don’t want,” he said.
“I just need one minute,” Sam said. Trigger nodded and leaned against another car
.
“Take all the time you want.”
Jason couldn’t watch his brother say goodbye. He looked at Trigger.
“Let me know before you leave,” he said, and let himself into the hotel room. Samantha was sitting on the end of the bed, staring off into space.
“You okay, Sam?” he asked. She didn’t answer. He pulled his shirt and pants off, not caring if she watched, and wadded them into a ball. He’d burn them somewhere else, but for now he threw them into a corner and went to find clean clothes in his bag. Someone knocked on the door and he went to open it. Sam’s eyes were red, but he looked in control.
“It’s time,” he said. Jason turned to say something to Samantha, but Sam put his hand on Jason’s arm and shook his head.
“She’s not here right now.”
The back of the Cruiser was closed and Trigger was sitting in the driver’s seat of a delivery van.
“It’s refrigerated,” Sam said. “And he said he can drive until he gets there. He won’t need to stop.”
“That’s good,” Jason said, finding himself hoarse.
“Yeah,” Sam said. They watched as Trigger pulled out of the parking spot and drove away.
“You okay?” Jason asked. He looked at Sam, and the side of Sam’s face twitched.
“I feel awful,” he said.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“No. I feel awful that I don’t feel that bad. I’d be shredded right now if that were Krista. Or Kara. You know? But Caroline… I’m just sad.” Sam looked at him. “I feel awful because I don’t feel like my life just changed.”
Jason scratched the back of his head.
“I’m not going to say you shouldn’t be okay,” he said.
“Honestly?” Sam said. “I think Sam’s taking it worse than I am.”
Jason looked over his shoulder.
“Yeah. Why is that?”
“I don’t know. She blames herself for everything. Any time something goes wrong.”
“She thinks this is her fault?”
Sam was watching her, shaking his head slowly.
“I don’t know. I don’t think she’s thinking anything right now.”
“What should we do?”
“Watch her, I guess. I don’t know.”
He frowned.
“She didn’t come back.”
“What does that mean?” Jason asked. Sam ran to Samantha’s side and knelt, looking at her.
“She went across and didn’t come back,” he said. “She’s never gone this long.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ve been across,” Sam said. “Go after her.”
“I don’t know how,” Jason said. Sam’s eyes were wide.
“Do it. Go find her. Something’s wrong.”
Jason sat down next to Samantha and frowned, glancing at Sam. Sam was panicked.
He took her face between his hands and kissed her, not thinking, just… trying to find the sensation of being pulled across that he had felt before. Closed his eyes harder, searching, grasping…
She looked down at him, eyes red where they should have been blue, hair streaming behind her in an updraft of hot air. Her dress was singed along the bottom hem and had orange and red swirls of color up through her hips. Jason looked down to find that his pants had similar flame markings through his knees. He was sitting on a scorched red stone. He stood and looked around for the paradise he had seen here before, but the world was consumed in flame.
“You don’t belong here,” she said, her voice the sound of an angry wind.
“Sam’s worried about you. What’s going on?” he asked.
She flung her arm at him and screamed.
“Go!”
He found himself in the hotel again, Sam staring at him. He shook his head.
“I don’t know what’s she’s doing,” he said.
“What?” Sam asked. Jason shook his head, stunned.
“It was all flames,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Go back,” Sam said. “Don’t leave her alone.”
“She doesn’t want me there,” Jason said.
“So?”
He kissed her again, pushing his sense of self back across.
She looked over at him, dress gray, eyes dull blue, from where she sat on the edge of the rock. The surface was covered in gray ash and the sky was open and black. Jason stood. The earth was split and torn, curving away quickly to leave only the space of the original paradise, broken and ashed like the surface of the moon.
“What’s going on?” he asked. She looked up at him, then back out over the waste land.
“I don’t know how you’re here,” she said.
“I just… pushed through,” he said.
“That’s the word the demons use for possession,” she said. “Strange.”
“Sam, what happened?”
“I’m angry,” she said, voice carrying no tone at all to support the statement. “This is what I do.”
“What happened?”
She looked up at the black sky.
“I destroyed it.”
“Why? How?”
She looked up at him, mouth twisted in the slightest of smiles.
“I razed it, then I torched it, then I called meteors from the sky and I broke it. Because I’m angry.”
“You can do that?”
“It’s my head,” she said.
“What now?” Jason asked, sitting down next to her.
“Now I do crazy things and am angry all the time until it heals.”
“How long have you been here?” he asked.
“Six months, give or take.”
“Why?”
She snorted softly.
“This is how I grieve.”
“Every time?”
“When it’s important.”
“Caroline was this important?”
“She made Sam happy, and… Yes, she was this important.”
“You hated her,” Jason said.
“I did not.”
“Oh, come on, don’t tell me you wouldn’t have spit in her Cheerios.”
She looked out over the destruction.
“You know that?”
“Everyone knew that?”
“Even her?”
“Probably.”
“That’s why,” she said.
“What?”
“That’s why I have to grieve her.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Jason said. In a twisted way, it might have, but he wasn’t going to give her credit for it. She shrugged. “You’ve done this before?”
“When Justin died. And when Sam died.”
“But you brought Sam back,” Jason said.
“After I destroyed this place,” she told him.
“So you’re going to be crazy demon-killing Sam again for a while, then,” Jason said. She nodded slowly, breathing through her mouth and not looking at him.
“Probably.”
“Maybe Sam and I will just take a few weeks off.”
“I need Sam to find demons for me,” she said.
“Find your own demons,” he said. “Come back with me. You’re just wallowing here. Sam’s worried.”
“It’s a difference of two seconds,” Samantha said. “He can stand the suspense.”
“Come back with me.”
“You’re kissing me right now, aren’t you?”
“Only way I knew how to cross.”
“How did you know I hadn’t crossed to hellside?”
“Didn’t,” Jason said. “Didn’t even think of it.”
“No, you just invaded my head to see if I was hiding in here.”
“You aren’t hiding. You’re sulking.”
“I’m grieving,” she said.
“Maybe you were, maybe you weren’t,” Jason said. “But now you’re just sitting here feeling sorry for yourself.”
“That isn’t helping,” she said. “You can
’t shame me into a better attitude.”
“Sorry. It works on Sam.”
She looked at him sideways.
“Sorry,” he said again. “Come back with me.”
She stood and brushed loose ash off of her dress.
“Okay,” she said, “but don’t expect… me.”
“I can expect whatever I want,” Jason said. She closed her eyes and dropped her head to one side.
“My stubborn friend,” she said. “Thank you.”
He took her hand.
“Let’s go.”
<><><>
Samantha kept her eyes closed as Jason backed away, feeling for broken pieces. They were floating around out there, frenzied shards, but she might be able to avoid them for just a little while. Sam was close. Hand on her knee, he was right next to her, mind right up against hers.
“Stop,” she said.
“Why?” he asked. It wasn’t about what she had said. It was about what she had done. She wondered how much he had been able to tell. Shards started drifting dangerously close and she resisted the instinct to jerk away.
“Stop it,” she said. “You’re upset. Stop looking at me.”
“I need to know you’re okay,” he said. She opened her eyes, remembering.
“Hot blood,” she said, pulling free. He mentally jerked. She needed the pain. It proved she was still human.
She drew Lahn out of her sheath and started playing her fingers along the sharp edges of the blade.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Jason said. “We’ve all had our close calls. It’s just odds.”
She felt the ridges of her fingerprints grate over the blade edge. One slight motion along the blade rather than across, and her skin would be open. She touched her fingertips to the blade and each other in a random, accelerating pattern.
“Stop,” Sam said. Samantha looked at him, thumb resting on the blade with uncomfortable, frightening pressure.
“She’s dead,” Samantha said. “I didn’t stop it.”
“I didn’t either,” he said.
Her responsibility was disproportionate. That was the rule of things. Carter would have held her blameless. Jason would consider her to have held some responsibility, but no more than himself. Sam, she wasn’t sure. He might have considered Caroline more his responsibility than Samantha’s. They were all wrong. She was the strongest. The most capable. The most willing. She had failed. She dragged her thumb across Lahn’s concave back blade, tapping the point with her pinky.