Damian came up to me. He whispered, "Jason's crying in the shower."
I sighed. Great, just what I needed, another crisis. But I didn't ask questions. I just knocked on the door of the bathroom. "Jason, you all right?"
He didn't answer me. "Jason?"
"I'm all right, Anita." His voice, even over the shower sounded strained. I'd never really heard him cry before, but that's what it sounded like, a voice thick with tears.
I pressed the top of my head to the door and sighed. I did not need this tonight. But Jason was my friend, and who else was I going to send in to comfort him? Damian had come to me with it. Zane didn't seem the hand-holding type, and Cherry, well ... if I was going to send another woman into comfort him, it seemed cowardly. Asher? Naw.
I knocked on the door again. "Jason, can I come in for a minute?"
Silence. If he'd been feeling anywhere near okay, he'd have made some kind of joke about me finally seeing him in the shower. That he didn't tease me at all was a bad sign.
"Jason, can I come in ... please?"
"Come in," he said finally.
I opened the door and the warm air fogged around me. I closed the door behind me. The room was soft and thick with warmth. It was hot, the moisture beading on every surface as if he'd cranked the shower up to as hot as it would go. Hot as it would go was enough to scald the flesh from your bones, if you were human.
The light left his shadow on the white shower curtain. He wasn't standing. He was sitting on the floor of the shower, huddled.
I moved the towel from the lid of the stool and sat down with it in my lap. "What's wrong?"
He took a deep sobbing breath, and even over the shower I could hear him weeping. Crying didn't cover it, weeping.
I wanted to see him while I talked to him, and I didn't want to see him naked. Choices, choices.
"Talk to me, Jason. What's wrong?"
"I can't get it off me. I can't get clean."
"You mean metaphorically speaking or literally?" I asked.
"It's all over me and I can't get it off."
I was being a coward and a prude. I reached a hand for the curtain and slowly drew it back until I could see him without splashing the entire bathroom with water.
Jason had his knees drawn up tight to his chest, arms locked around them. The heat from the water was enough to make me draw back. His skin had turned a nice cherry pink but that was it. I'd have had blisters or worse by now.
There were clinging patches of black goo on his back. The back of one arm had a patch on it. He'd scrubbed and boiled himself nearly raw and couldn't get clean.
He stared straight ahead at the faucets, rocking ever so slightly. "I was okay until I got in the shower and it wouldn't come off. Then I kept seeing those two vampires in Branson. I thought about Yvette, watching her rot. But it's the two in Branson. I can still feel their hands on me, Anita. Sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the day in a cold sweat, remembering."
In Branson, Missouri we'd taken on the local Master of the City. She'd had two young women that she was going to torture unless we gave her some of us to torture. They'd suggested that if Jason made love to two of the female vamps they would let one of the girls go. I think he'd enjoyed it, at first, but then they'd started to rot.
Jason had struggled away from them, crawling against the wall. His bare chest was covered in bits of their flesh. A strand of something thick and heavy slid slowly down his neck onto his chest. He batted at it like you would swat at a spider that you found crawling along your skin. He was pressed into the black wall with his pants nearly to his thighs.
The blond rolled off her back and crawled towards him, reaching a hand out that was nothing but bones with bits of dried flesh. She seemed to be decaying in dry ground. The brunette was wet. She lay back on the floor, and some dark fluid rushed out from her to pool beneath her body. She'd undone her own leather shirt, and her breasts were like heavy bags of fluid.
"I'm ready for you," the brunette said. Her voice was still clear and solid. No human voice should have come out of those rotting lips.
The blond grabbed Jason's arm and he screamed.
I shook my head trying to clear the memory. It had haunted my dreams for a while just witnessing it. But for Jason it had become his private phobia. One of the Council's flunkies had been one of the rotting ones. She'd tortured him, too, because she liked how very, very afraid he was of her. Yvette's little torment had only happened about two months ago. Tonight's fun and games had been far too close to home.
I took off the wrist sheaths and laid them on the back of the stool. The fact that I was wearing the wrist sheaths when I should have been getting ready for bed said something about my own paranoia. The heat from the water as I reached for the knob was almost frightening. Years of being told, don't touch, hot. I knew that fire killed wereanimals, but apparently heat didn't. I turned the knob until the temperature was something I could touch.
Jason started to shiver almost as soon as the water began to cool. Frankly, I was amazed that the cabin's hot water heater had kept up this long. The floor was wet and the water soaked into the legs of my jeans. I had another pair I could change into.
I found the bar of soap but the washrag was black. I threw it into the sink and got the last clean one. I'd have to remember to ask for extra towels. I should have done that anyway.
Jason finally looked at me, a slow turning of his head. His blue eyes looked almost glassy, as if he were slipping into his own version of shock. "I can't go through it again, Anita. I can't."
I soaped the clean washrag until it squished white suds. I touched his back and he flinched. I would have given almost anything in that moment if he had grabbed for me, or teased, or even made a pass. Anything to let me know he was okay. Instead he sat there naked and wet and miserable. It made my throat tight, but damn it if I cried, I was afraid I wouldn't stop. I was in here to comfort Jason not to make him comfort me.
Worse yet, I couldn't get it off his back. It had been hard enough to get off my own skin, but the extra hour Jason had sat around waiting for me to finish my shower had turned the fluid into glue. I finally resorted to using my fingernails, glad that I'd refused Cherry's offer of fingernail polish. I would have chipped it all to hell. I scraped it off a piece at a time with my fingers while the hot water ran and Jason shivered. But it wasn't the cold that made him shiver. I was so hot in the moist heat, I didn't feel well.
I'd cleaned everything but one last patch low on his back, very low. It was like the fluid had soaked into the band of his pants, low enough that the curve of buttocks started just below the patch. I was squeamish about that one. Because, though Jason seemed unaware that he was nude, I was very aware of it.
I was also having trouble keeping the oversized T-shirt I'd put on for bed from getting wet. Normally I wouldn't have cared but I'd forgotten to pack a second nightshirt. I finally turned the shower off and adjusted the temperature on the faucets so I had water without having to try and dodge the shower.
I moved back to Jason and started peeling that last patch off his skin. I tried talking to get my mind off of where my hands were. "We killed all the vampires, Jason. It's okay."
He shook his head. "Not Barnaby. We missed him, and he was their creator. I can't stand the thought of him touching me, Anita. I can't do this again."
"Then go home, Jason. Take the jet and get out."
"I won't desert you," he said. His gaze stayed on my face for a moment. "And it's not just because Jean-Claude wouldn't like it."
"I know that," I said. "But all I can do is swear to you that if it is within my power to protect you from Barnaby, I will."