Sapphire: A Paranormal Romance (41 page)

Devlin: "If
we do this, there's no turning back.  Not for any of us.  Do you understand? 
You can't decide tomorrow that you’re going to pin this on us.  If you do that,
you're a dead man.  I will see to it.  Understand?"

Jesse nodded.

Devlin and Jesse
stared at each other for a moment longer and then they both nodded.  They
slowly walked back to where Sapphire lay, still moaning and bleeding from her
eyes, nose, and ears.  Her hands moved feebly, but her legs remained twisted
beneath her.

Devlin: "Quit
your bawling.  Get up and help us bury her."

Devlin's friend:
"You are not serious.  Jesus, Dev.  She's still alive.  We can't bury her
alive."

The blow from
Devlin was fast and immediate.  One moment he was staring down at Sapphire's
body, and the next he had balled his fist and hit the man directly in the
mouth.  His friend went down as if strings had been cut, spitting blood and
teeth.  He was gasping, choking.  Devlin turned his attention on his other
sniveling friend.

Devlin: "Do I
have to hit you, too?  Get up."

The other young
man agreed, tears streaming down his face.  He wiped his nose and managed to
get to his feet.  The first friend spit blood onto the ground and managed to
stagger to his feet, as well.  Devlin stared at both of them, pinning each one
with his eyes for several moments before he finally released his fists.

Jesse: "Let's
do this now, before she wakes up."

Devlin: "No
one ever speaks of this.  Do you all understand?  Jesse gets it, but I need to
make sure you punks do, as well.  If anyone speaks of this, and I mean anyone,
then you'll end up here next to her.  And you won't have the benefit of being
knocked unconscious.  Do you understand?"

He stared at them
again.  First the one with the bloody mouth nodded.  Then the next.  Then
Devlin.

Devlin: "Grab
an arm or leg.  Let's get her into the hole."

All of them moved
on her now.  Sapphire didn’t appear to wake up, but she moaned loudly when they
each grabbed one of her limbs and lifted her.  They dragged her a short way and
dropped her into the hole they had made.  Then Jesse stood over the hole and
began shoveling the mud and dirt over Sapphire's body.  Only when the mud and
dirt reached her face did Sapphire's eyes flutter.  It was only for a moment,
and then they closed again.  Her hands moved a bit, as if she was trying to bat
away the clods of dirt and mud, but it was feeble and weak.

Then, after a
moment, Devlin stepped in and began shoving more and more dirt and mud over
her.  The other two joined in until the hole was filled and there was a slight
mound of mud and dirt in its place.  They all stood there, breathing heavily,
for a long time, as if waiting.  The one friend who had been kneeling and
weeping started doing so again.  He began praying softly, begging for
forgiveness.

Devlin: "Shut
up.  There's no forgiving this.  We’ll go to Hell for this, so stop begging and
stop sniveling."

His friend wept
more softly.  The other one stood there with his hand up to his mouth,
bleeding.  He said nothing.  Jesse's eyes looked wild.

Jesse: "What
will you do about your car?"

Devlin: "I'll
tell my father I hit a deer or something.  He'll believe it.  He'll pay to get
it fixed.  Hell, he may even buy me a new one."

Devlin turned and
looked down at Jesse.  He appeared to want to say more, perhaps ask, again,
what Jesse had been doing with Sapphire.  Instead, he reached out and touched
Jesse's shoulder and then turned around, walking back up the muddy bank.  His
two friends stood there for another moment and then walked past Jesse silently,
saying nothing. 

Jesse stood there
in the silence, staring at the mound he had just made.  After an eternity he
knelt down and bowed his head.  He wept, clasping his hands together in
supplication.

Jesse: "I'm
sorry.  Forgive me.  Please.  Forgive me."

He prayed,
apparently to the young woman he had just murdered in the most brutal and awful
way possible, asking for her forgiveness for a long time.  Then, after a while,
he slowly stood up, made a half-hearted attempt to brush the dirt off of his
pants, and walked back across the embankment. After that the area was quiet,
save for the insects still buzzing in the trees, and perhaps a frog croaking
somewhere in the night.

Jimmy felt
something like tears spring to his eyes as he watched, perhaps if he had had a
real body, they would have been tears, but what flowed from his ethereal form,
he had no idea..  If he had had a body, he would have retched.  He would have
vomited.  He would have screamed.  Since he had no true body, he did nothing. 
Around him, the images swirled, and then they were gone.  He was standing in
front of Sapphire again.  Her eyes were wet, or appeared wet, as if she had
been weeping.

"I'm
sorry," Jimmy whispered.

"Shhhh,"
Sapphire said, and her arms enfolded him.  She pulled his head to her
shoulder.  "Shhhh.  You weren't even born yet, Jimmy.  There was nothing
you could have done."

Jimmy wept against
her shoulder, despite not having tears or actual eyes.  He wept for a while and
then pulled away to look at her.

"What
happened to them?" he asked.  "How did they get away with it?"

"It all came
back to me, including the parts I couldn’t have possibly known," Sapphire
smiled.  "It turns out you really can know everything you've always wanted
to know once you're dead.  It just takes time."

Jimmy smiled back.

"Devlin was
right," Sapphire said.  "His father bought his story and bought him a
new car.  Devlin and Jesse were no longer enemies after that.  They realized
that they would need to keep an eye on the other two.  Devlin supported his one
friend, the same one he punched in the mouth, when that friend expressed an
interest in running for office.  With that kind of support, and once he was
elevated to that level, he was no longer a threat.  Devlin employed the other
friend, eventually putting him in charge of an entire factory.  Devlin also
owns the mortgage on the man's home.  He had his silence secured."

Sapphire seemed to
sigh, as if she still had breath and lungs.

"After that,
they just lived with the guilt," Sapphire said.  "You can learn to
live with a lot, it seems, once you achieve success.  And once Devlin secured
all of the power in Knorr, he had everything he needed to make sure the story
was never told.  When urban legends of me by the side of the road cropped up,
he made sure that there was always someone to denounce the validity of them and
make sure it stayed a legend."

She looked at
Jimmy.

"Until you
came along," she said.

Jimmy leaned in
and they kissed.  Or, to be truthful, they did whatever passed as a kiss
between two beings now seemingly composed of pure energy.

"What do we
do now?" Jimmy asked.  "What's happened to my body?"

Sapphire gestured
at the air around them.  Suddenly a huge section of the swirling mists and
vapor that comprised the atmosphere began to shimmer.  A circle appeared with a
moving image inside it, and it took Jimmy several seconds to realize he was
watching Jesse and Stan from behind and that they were in Jesse's car.

"How did you
do that?" Jimmy asked.

Sapphire smiled. 
"You and I could bend reality when you were in a physical form.  And doing
so nearly killed you.  That's because a human body can only take so much.  Now,
however, you're pure energy.  We can do even more now, Jimmy.  We can reach
right into the living world and shape it as we want.  We can even shape this
world."

Sapphire's smile
seemed to get even larger.

"We can do
anything," she said.

Jimmy held up a
hand.  "We need to stop them.  They need to pay for what they've done and
they need to be stopped before they try to hurt my mom, Tabitha, or
Warren."

"Where are we
going?" Stan said from the image in front of Jimmy and Sapphire.

"We're going
to bury him with the woman he says he loves," Jesse said.  The anger in
his voice was evident, and he was gripping the steering wheel as if he thought
it might fly off somewhere.

"I think he's
jealous," Sapphire said.  "He's jealous of you and me."

"Great,"
Jimmy said.  "Another victim of love, that's me."

"Why are we
going there?" Stan asked.  "They just found that skull there.  There
are going to be cops and stuff all over the place.  Don't you think they'll
notice a new grave dug right beside it?"

Jesse waved a hand
as if impatient.  "We won't bury them right next to each other.  We'll
find a spot that they won't find."

"I still
think we should take him to an incinerator," Stan said.  "My dad
owned one.  I could get in there and we could burn him up.  They'd never find
him."

"WE ARE
BURYING HIM NEXT TO SAPPHIRE!" Jesse screamed, turning his head to look at
Stan.  His eyes were twitching like crazy and spittle flew from his lips and trailed
down his chin.  It was then that Jimmy knew for certain that Jesse had
completely lost his mind.  He was officially over-the-edge insane.  "If
you mention the incinerator one more time, I'll bury you right beside him.  I
did not hand your father that pen and tell him it was best for him to kill
himself just to have his sniveling son ruin everything."

Stan shut up. 
Whether or not he was affected by what Jesse had just said, Jimmy couldn’t
tell.  He didn't seem to be upset, which made Jimmy think that Stan knew about
Jesse and, perhaps, had even encouraged him to goad his unstable father into
killing himself. 

"They want to
be together," Jesse said, and then let out a laugh.  "Fine.  If she
wants him, she can have him."

"He's
completely insane," Jimmy said.  "There's no telling how many people
he'll kill or how far he'll go if we don't stop him."

"Let's
wait," Sapphire said.  "Don't you think that spot beside the river
would be the perfect place to end this?"

Jimmy nodded and
returned her smile.  He could feel the power running through his
consciousness.  It was so much stronger than it had been when he was in
physical form.  He felt like he could rend stars and hurtle them through space,
or create entire universes.  Some part of him knew that it was too much power
for any entity to have, but he didn't care.  If he wanted to, he could reach
out and turn Jesse and Stan into dust.  However, that was not what he wanted. 
No, he wanted Jesse to see what Jimmy and Sapphire had become.  He wanted both
of them to see that no matter what they tried, or how many lives they tried to
ruin and destroy, that they had failed.  That Sapphire and Jimmy had triumphed.

Jimmy and Sapphire
watched as the two drove.  Neither of them spoke again.  Jesse kept reaching up
to his head and rubbing his eye.  He also tugged at his hair, pulling out
handfuls of it without seeming to notice.  Stan just sat there, staring out the
passenger window, seemingly oblivious to the world.  Jimmy wondered if Stan
might also have gone over the edge, perhaps on the brink of total catatonia.

Ahead of them the
road unfurled as they wound around the corners and curves that made up the
twisted roads in and around Knorr.  Jesse was driving sensibly, trying to drive
fast, but not so fast that he would attract attention.  They soon reached the
bridge.  The road was empty like always.  Jesse pulled over as far as he could,
attempting to hide the car behind shrubbery.  It was a half-hearted effort.

Jesse put the car
in park and he and Stan got out.

Jimmy waved his
hand and the image changed. 

Now Sapphire and
Jimmy were outside the car, watching as Stan and Jesse got out and went to the
trunk.  Jesse opened the trunk, and then he and Stan reached inside and pulled
out a bundle that appeared to be wrapped in some kind of tarp. 

After a moment
Jimmy realized that the tarp was tablecloths from the banquet hall above the
library.  Jimmy also realized that he was looking at his own body.  Needless to
say, he felt very surreal and felt vertigo overtake him.

The two men
grabbed the bundle and Stan led the way, walking backwards as they headed down
the embankment.  Jesse gave the road a cursory glance, almost appearing to dare
the world to send a car down the road to try and stop him.  Jimmy could see
that the pistol was still in his belt.  Jimmy figured that anyone who came
within Jesse's range was going to end up with a bullet in him.  Or her.

Jimmy and Sapphire
watched as Jesse and Stan dragged the bundle down the embankment.  They stopped
near the water, but farther down from where Sapphire had been found.  Jesse and
Stan dropped the body and then Jesse returned to the car, rooting around in the
trunk, and then emerged with a couple of shovels and other digging tools. 
Apparently he had learned from his experience with Sapphire and had decided not
to dig the hole with his hands.

They watched as
Jesse made his way back down the wet and muddy embankment and then handed one
of the shovels to Stan.  Stan stood there for a moment, staring at the tool in
his hand as if he had never seen the thing before.