Lost Eden (The Soulkeepers) (20 page)

“Thank God Malini forced us to take these from Eden,” Ghost said, holding up a blessed hatchet. “I thought packing the duffle bags was a pain at the time but …” He motioned toward the body.

Lillian clutched her shoulder and winced painfully. “I’ve been hit.”

Gripping her shirtsleeve, Ethan ripped away the cloth to expose the wound. The injury was festering but shallow. “It’s the size of a quarter. You’ll need healing.”

“It can wait. Painful son of a bitch, but I’ll survive. You need my help.”

Ethan nodded. “Fourth floor, Ghost.”

“I’ll pop up there to make sure there aren’t more of these hanging around.” He broke apart.

Ethan stepped over the body and helped Lillian do the same. “Can you run?”

“Lower body is fine,” she said through a tight smile.

He broke into a jog, up one flight, then two, three. Ethan stopped outside the door to the fourth floor. “I don’t like this. Ghost is taking too long.”

Lillian nodded her head and flattened herself against the wall next to the door. Ethan unzipped the pocket in his backpack that held his weapons and reached for the knob.

“Come on you bastards!” Ghost’s voice yelled on the other side of the door.

Ethan yanked, entering a hallway of horrors. Hellhounds! The black, oily creatures had Ghost cornered. One crept across the ceiling toward the Soulkeeper, defying gravity. But why didn’t Ghost poof out of there.

“Ethan, behind you!” Ghost yelled.

The throwing stars soared from Ethan’s backpack, straight into a hellhound. Lillian’s kick soared past his ear, knocking the wounded black beast off its trajectory and saving Ethan’s head. It yelped and crumpled to the floor.

“Thanks,” Ethan said.

“No problem.”

Ghost appeared beside him. “They’re guarding every door. The Watchers must know one of these apartments is yours.”

Back-to-back, the three Soulkeepers moved into the hallway, Lillian with dagger in hand, Ghost with the hatchet, and Ethan with a backpack full of sharp metal stars. The hellhounds closed in.

“My apartment is 407. Do we run for it or kill these things?”

Ghost shook his head. “Oh, I plan to kill these things, even if we thought we could make it to the door.”

“Agreed,” Lillian said. “Can’t leave them to roam the streets.”

“Six,” Ghost said. “Two each.”

Ethan focused on an extra large hound growling at him from the corner. The thing opened its mouth and a whip-like tongue made of fire snapped near his nose. The creature lowered itself, ready to pounce.

“If I kill more than two, I win,” Ethan said.

Whoosh.
The nasty black dog leapt, all claws and flashing teeth. Ethan pushed with one part of his mind and projected a star with another. The thing jerked sideways in midair and yelped as the star collided with its jugular. The metal hissed and smoked, embedded in the dog’s flesh.

Where had the second gone? Ethan twirled, searching for his second attacker.
Smack.
A black body
landed on his head. He slapped the linoleum face-first, sliding forward with the weight of the creature. Facedown, he couldn’t make eye contact to use his telekinesis to push the thing away. The hellhound’s claws slashed near his shoulders. Luckily, the backpack he was wearing was taking the brunt of the attack.

The backpack! Turning his head, he concentrated on the corner of a throwing star peeking from the pocket. He propelled it in the direction of the hellhound on his back. The beast howled and reared up. Ethan rolled out from under the thing, scrambled to his feet, and directed another two stars at the creature’s head out of panic. The force was enough to decapitate the hound. If that wasn’t enough to soak him in black blood, the first hound effectively exploded from his injuries, finishing the job.

Ethan turned to help the others, only to find they were similarly doused in oily black blood. Nothing was left of the hellhounds but a large, dark slick. “Well, that was fun,” Ethan deadpanned.

“Dane’s gonna love that shiner,” Ghost said, pointing to Ethan’s left eye. He could already feel it start to swell.

Lillian peeked under the fabric covering her injured shoulder. The sore was now the size of a baseball. “Can we get on with this boys? I need Malini.”

Ghost hugged his chest. “I agree. I’m feeling a little drained myself.”

“Right. Let’s do this.” Ethan fished his keys out of his shredded backpack and unlocked the door to 407. The smell of rotting cheese and sweaty feet smacked them in the face.

“Just as I left it,” Ethan said, coughing. He crossed the living room and opened a window. “Of course the food and garbage weren’t rotting back then.”

Lillian retrieved two folded duffle bags from her pack. “Where do we start?”

* * * * *

B
y the time Ethan arrived at the truck stop with three of six duffle bags full of cash, Lillian’s wound had spread the length of her arm and up to her ear. Malini rushed to her side and worked her healing magic within the privacy of the van. Jacob was ready with a giant Styrofoam cup full of water to help Malini recover. Ghost, relatively unscathed, volunteered to pack the bags of money into the other van while Ethan waited outside the van for his turn to be healed.

“Nice shiner,” Bonnie said, sidling up to him around the side of the van. “Do you need some ice while you’re waiting?”

“Nah.”

“He wants me to see the damage for sympathy,” Dane said, grinning. He eyed the black mess still dripping off Ethan. “I’ll give you the sympathy, but if you think I’m going to kiss it better, you’re sadly mistaken.”

Ethan offered a half-hearted pout. Crossing his arms over his chest, he turned his back on Dane for effect, and found himself staring at the side of the van. “Hey, do you think we should cover up the Laudner logo?”

“Oh my God,” Bonnie said, hands on her hips. “Can you imagine if we drove into the city in this? How did we not notice before? We have to tell Malini.”

“Tell me what?” Malini jumped down from the van and approached Ethan, hand reaching for his eye.

“The vans. We’ve got to cover up the logo. They know Jacob’s last name,” Ethan said.

Malini planted a kiss on his cheek, next to his now fully healed eye. “Good catch.”

“But what do we do about it?” Dane asked. “We’ve gotta cover this up.”

Jacob and Lillian exited the back of the van and closed the doors. “Cover what up?” they asked in unison.

Bonnie pointed at the side of the van.

Jacob scanned the parking lot, and then squinted toward the restaurant. “I got this.”

New Beginnings

F
rom her place in the passenger’s seat of the massive RV, Malini searched deep for a way to comfort Gideon. She came up empty. He had a point, but it wasn’t as if any of them had a choice.

“This is wrong. Completely and utterly wrong,” Gideon said.

“Relax, Gid,” Jacob said from his perch on the counter next to the stove. “We left a note with the keys to the vans. They both have full tanks of gas. This RV is way bigger than that family needed anyway.”

Lillian turned the massive wheel to exit onto the interstate. “Think of it as commandeering the vehicle. Soulkeepers are like Watcher police. We needed it to do our job.”

Abigail placed an arm around her husband. “He’s lived thousands of years as an angel. Moral gray areas are hard for him.”

“We stole an RV!” Gideon said, spreading his hands. “You shall not steal. What part of that is gray?”

“The part where we give it back when we’re done saving the world,” Jacob said, his head inside the mini-fridge. “Hey, there are sandwiches!”

Ghost, who’d been snuggling with Samantha on the couch, jumped up to join Jacob in his pursuit of an evening meal. Gideon tossed up his hands and retreated to the back bedroom.

Abigail followed. “We’re just going to go lie down for a minute.”

Malini returned her attention to the hum of the road. It didn’t make her happy to have to steal or borrow an RV. But she was beginning to realize Jacob was right. It was a new world, an evil world. She didn’t have the luxury of moral absolutes. The Soulkeepers had to survive and doing so meant they must evolve. As the Healer, her job was to choose for the greatest good. Taking the RV provided the greatest good, and that was all there was to it.

As the sun made a slow escape from the winter sky, she thought of Lee, and her eyes misted. When they got where they were going, wherever that was, she’d make sure to hold a proper memorial for him. The Soulkeepers had lost so much. Too much. She needed to make sure their new home was safe and secure. What would happen when Abigail’s baby came? She rubbed her temples. So many questions. So much responsibility.

Leaning back in her chair, she closed her eyes and cleared her mind. She needed help, and there was only one place she could get it, but strong emotion was not a good conduit to the In Between. She crashed into Fatima’s villa, metaphysically shredded, as if her soul had traveled through broken glass to get there. She groaned.

“It’s about time you visited,” Fatima said, pulling her up by her shoulders. “Do you know what’s happening down there?”

In the blink of an eye, she was out on the hillside, standing in front of the blindfolded angel statue—the scorekeeper. Henry and Mara, materialized beside her.

“I can hardly keep up with the dead,” Henry said. “I’ve never seen such devastation. It’s worse than the Holocaust.”

“I—” Malini started.

Mara grabbed her arm roughly. “My power over Time won’t work. Lucifer’s curses are somehow immune from my tampering. I couldn’t help Lee, Malini, and I won’t be able to help you.” She released Malini’s arm looking frustrated and vulnerable.

“I don’t know what to say. We are doing the best we can, but none of us knows what will come next or when.”

“You’ve got to do better,” Fatima said. Her graceful fingers pointed at the scorekeeper. The scales had shifted, and Lucifer was in the lead by a long shot.

“Oh no,” Malini said. “How do we stop it?”

“We don’t know,” Mara said.

Fatima sighed. “I did find something today. Something that might help. But it’s dangerous. It could be a trick.”

“Show me.”

The landscape folded again, and they were back inside Fatima’s villa. “Lucifer has been living on Earth for several months now, running a major corporation. Everything he does impacts people’s lives. We know where he lives now, and where he works. We know his closest associates are Auriel and Cord.”

“So.”

“So yesterday, I wove this.” She pulled out a roll of fabric. In truth, Malini had noticed the bolt when she’d arrived. The fabric was black and white, a standout in the infinite warehouse full of colored cloth.

“What is this? Why doesn’t it have any color?”

“Think of it as a photo negative. I usually weave the fabric of fate, lives intertwining, people interacting with people. This fabric shows endings. It focuses not on life but on death, on dead ends, on empty souls, darkness.”

“You wove the empty space between lives.” Malini could see it now. Each thread in this negative was a life but there was a missing thread, an empty space that ran through the entire tapestry like a repeating missed stitch.

“Lucifer has no soul and leaves no thread. But when he’s living on Earth, he leaves a hole.”

“A hole I can follow. A hole I can project.”

Fatima smiled. “This is how Abigail’s guide in the red stone, the oldest, wisest part of yourself, knew Eden was compromised. Maybe you
can
foretell what Lucifer will do next, Malini.”

Malini ran her hand over the fabric, following the empty thread with her finger. She grinned and straightened her backbone. “Thank you, Fatima. This helps more than you know.”

“Don’t thank me yet. This is an unproven method. I’ve never made anything like this before. I’m not sure we can trust it.”

“We have to. It’s all we’ve got.” Concentrating, Malini focused on the tattered lives that ended at Lucifer’s empty space. The safest place was where Lucifer had already been. She found a cluster of rerouted and tangled threads and ran her fingertips over the pattern again and again, until she could see the scene in her head. Quickly, she rewrapped the bolt and returned the fabric to the empty spot.

She hugged Fatima and said her goodbyes before falling back into reality.

“Don’t disappoint us,” Fate yelled through the ether.

Malini landed with a jolt in the captain’s chair of the RV, eyes opening to a dark road leading into a major city. Chicago. The road out of the city was stop and go traffic, but going in, there was nothing but road ahead of her.

“Welcome back,” Lillian whispered. Sounds of snoring filtered through the cabin.

“I know where we’re going to stay,” Malini said.

Lillian did a double take. “Really?”

“Absolutely.” Malini told her the address.

“You’re the boss.” Lillian tapped the turn signal and exited to a new beginning.

* * * * *

T
he front doors to the ornate church were barricaded shut, the lawn scorched, the outer walls crumbling. Only a quarter of the sign was still standing. It read
St. P.
Whatever came after the P was in a pile of rubble on the lawn. Even in the darkness Malini knew this was the place. Her entire body rang with the rightness of it. This church was a historic fixture in Chicago until the Watcher occupation.

She’d seen what the monsters had done to the people here. The church was close to the Harrington building. That meant it had to go. Can’t have a congregation of good people around mucking up Lucifer’s evil plans. The church was likely the first on Cord’s hit list.

What Malini saw when she read the tapestry was that the congregation had gathered here when they began to see the Watchers. What safer place to hide from demons than a church? But it was not safe. Cord attacked. The church burned. People died. Others ran. And while the structure was still standing, the people who made this building a church were gone.

However, Malini could see the place for what it was, underestimated and underutilized. “Pull around back.”