The Lost Soul Trilogy (Primani Book 5) (27 page)

Creeped out by the dead guy, I picked my way to another good hiding place. I settled into the spongy wet ground and slowed my breathing. It took a few minutes of concentration, but eventually I could see inside the walls. Well, now, this is cool… I can see
through
the walls. Wow. Methodically, I scanned the second floor. Three dead humans. No Primani and no demons either. The balcony was empty too. Hmm, that was not a good sign. Sean should’ve been up there. I continued my tour down to the first floor. There were five men standing in what probably used to be a living room but now looked like an office. Three of them carried guns, but the other two didn’t. They had a geeky air about them. Hmm, maybe doctors or scientists; I’ll mention them to Killian later. Two demons were leaning against the desk, talking to the men. From the expressions on their faces, they were getting their butts chewed. No one looked happy, but maybe that’s just the normal effect demons have on people. I didn’t see any dead bodies or Sean or Killian.

Okay, now for the basement. I paused for a split second to relax my eyes. This viewing was harder than I thought it would be. My head was aching with the effort and sweat ran in rivers down my back. Rolling my shoulders to loosen them, I closed my eyes and opened them again. After taking a deep breath, I focused on the basement. It was pitch black down there. I strained to see into the darkness. A movement caught my eye. There it was again--a flash of skin. Who was that? The vision wavered and I caught my breath. Focus… Focus. Okay, that’s better. Killian and Sean were on opposite sides of the room setting the charges. Moving like wraiths, they attached the timers to each set of explosives and moved on. Dec played lookout by the stairs.

Something startled me, and the vision vanished like smoke. Moving only my eyes, I studied the woods and strained my ears. There it was again! A stealthy shadow moved outside the corner of my eye. The next flash of lightning illuminated them.

I pressed myself deeper into the mud. Domino scooted backwards under the brush and pressed herself into the mud too. I was trapped here while they moved toward the house. I had to warn the guys.

Killian! This place is surrounded! Don’t come out here!
No response from him. I tried again and again.

Finally, I heard his voice faintly say,
Two minutes. Close your eyes!

Barely breathing, I waited. Two minutes crawled by, but the explosion didn’t come. Another minute went by and still no explosion. Meanwhile, these other men were creeping closer to the house with their weapons raised. Come on, come on, what’s taking so long? My heart was about to jump out of my chest. I closed my eyes and peered into the basement again. My heart nearly stopped. The basement wasn’t dark now. Two demons were lighting it up with fireballs. Dec and Sean stood back to back to block the demons trying to get to Killian. He was setting the final timer. A fireball flew towards his head, but he just ducked and kept working.

With a muffled pop, the first of the explosions went off. I flinched as the light flared behind my eyes. Dec was thrown off balance and fell into a pallet stacked with guns. One of the demons jumped at him and disappeared in the black smoke. One by one, the timers went off, and the explosions rocked the foundation. Oh, my God! Get out of there! What are you waiting for? Sean turned back to reach for Dec who was struggling to push the demon off of him. Separated by flames, Killian yelled at them to go. As they fought for their lives, I held my breath. Horrified, I couldn’t look away. After shoving the burning pallet to the side, Sean grabbed at Dec’s arm just as the big demon aimed one of the strange weapons at Sean’s back. He fired just as the barrels of chemicals exploded in a blinding burst of white light.

I screamed, “Sean!”

With a deafening roar, the house blew apart. The blast was so intense it seared my eyes. Stunned beyond thought, I staggered upright as half of my soul was ripped away. Sean! Oh, my God! No! Still screaming his name, I was barely aware of Dec’s arms around me or our flight away from the men with guns.

Back at the house, I stumbled blindly to our room calling for Sean until Dec finally pulled me into his arms.

“He’s not here, Mica.” The anguish in his eyes confirmed what my heart told me was true.

My eyes streaming bloody tears, I sobbed in his arms until he put me to sleep.

I slept for five days. During which I dreamed continuous nightmares of the last five minutes of Sean. I replayed everything that happened in that basement. Every second played out in slow motion. My brain wouldn’t let it go, and I cried for hours until Raphael came and put me into a deeper sleep. I heard them whispering but refused to wake up.

They were terrified for me because my heart didn’t beat like it should, and my eyes still bled. My skin was bluish and cool. I was too distraught to heal myself and the strange energy that I once shared with Sean was of little use now. I was curled around an icy core of pain and withdrew from the warming energy. I could barely breathe without him.

On day six, Killian returned. The desperation in his voice finally woke me when he insisted on seeing me. Raphael tried to keep him out, but he wasn’t in the mood to listen. He pushed my door open and froze. His expression hardened when he saw the blood in my eyes. He’d been to Hell and back. Covered with soot and blood, he still wore the clothes from the raid. He hadn’t shaved, and his beard was growing in. The worst part was the haunted expression in his eyes. He blamed himself, and it was eating him alive. Exhausted, he fell to his knees next to me.

Brokenly, he said, “I tried, Mica, I tried. I can’t… find him.” He bowed his head against the bed. “Forgive me.”

“It’s not your fault,” I whispered.

He wrapped his arms around me, rocking me as I wept against his shoulder. After a while, his tears slid down my face, and I started to breathe again.

Epilogue:

THE SAD MELODY of the mourning dove seemed appropriate somehow. The delicate bird sang like its heart was broken on the wrought-iron fence behind me. Only half listening to it, I gazed into the fountain as memories drifted through my mind. Wicked blue eyes haunted me today as they had every day since he disappeared. The memories were so real I woke up some nights with his hands on my body only to curl up in loneliness. I could still feel his lips on mine as the rain poured over us in the horrid forest. I shook my head to clear the senseless dreaming. He was gone, and he was never coming back. Knowing it and believing it were two different things. I’ve had a year to come to terms with it, but it still felt wrong. I still didn’t accept the obvious. He just can’t be gone…

In the days following that disastrous raid, I was shattered into a million pieces. If it weren’t for Dec, I would have curled up and slept forever. As it was, his gentle ways gradually brought me out of my stupor and back into the world. Dec had scolded and encouraged me to start living again. Taking me by the hand, he dragged me into the woods to hike and recharge my dead batteries. Even though he hated it, he ran with me until we both dripped with sweat, but I got stronger.

Though no one blamed him, Killian took full responsibility and all of the guilt for Sean’s disappearance. Not eating, not sleeping, he searched endlessly for any signs of Sean. The guilt nearly ate him alive until Zadkiel came to stay with us. He was a godsend, literally. Patiently, he taught us to grieve and to let go of the anger and bitterness. He promised us that things happened for a reason, and we would someday understand. He said letting Sean go would bring me peace again. He said a lot of things that were all probably true. God knows I tried to let Sean go, but my body and soul wouldn’t cooperate. A piece of me had been ripped away, and I still felt un-whole.

The mission in Vermont had destroyed Dagin’s operations and set the chemical weapons development back at least a couple of years. The powers above Alex were thankful for our efforts that day, and we’d been moved to other duties since then. Sure, the mission was a success but at an unthinkable cost. I couldn’t imagine going through that again and refused to use my sight since that day. It was too painful to consider.

Pushing down the pain, I stood to go. Killian was waiting. He watched me with hooded eyes as he leaned against a stone picnic table. I smiled despite the lingering sadness.

“You okay, Princess?” he called. “You look tired.”

“I didn’t sleep much last night,” I explained when I reached him. He lifted my sunglasses and peered into the blue of my eyes.

“Let me help,” he offered for the hundredth time.

“You already have,” I responded with a small smile.

As I turned away from the fountain, I paused. A faint swirl of sparkling gold caught the corner of my eye, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

“Sean?”

###

Call the Lightning

By Laurie Olerich

THERE WASN'T MUCH LEFT. Piles of blackened stone dotted the lot like burial cairns now. The entire house was gone. A small rusted shed leaned sadly to one side. Green vines had begun to swallow it whole. But now on the verge of winter, the vines had shriveled and hardened to brown. They might’ve been the only things holding the shed together.  The garage still stood. Part of it had burned but it wasn’t completely destroyed. The yellow police tape had come loose and waved cheerily from the locked gate at the driveway. Shivering in the cold, I stood with my back to the tree line above the compound and scanned the property for others. Out of habit, really; or maybe my training was paying off and it was an instinct to look for the enemy. Either way, I looked. It was lonely here, in the middle of the mountains, and right on the verge of a winter storm. It would snow soon if I was reading the clouds right. Swollen and grey, they lumbered overhead as the cold wind howled down from Canada.

Even as the first fat snowflakes began to fall, my mind was very far away…remembering, remembering, always remembering. Behind closed eyes, every detail was seared into my memory. The fire had branded the vision into my mind. I
couldn’t
forget that day even if I wanted to. And I didn’t want to. I had to keep it alive. There was meaning to it…something I was supposed to see. But I hadn’t been able to move beyond the horror and pain that hit me as soon as the vision came.  I had to try though, it felt important…So I braced myself again and let the vision come. I flinched as the brilliant light of the first explosions flared behind my eyes. Again the scene played out in slow motion.

I watched as Dec landed against a pallet of guns and one of the demons lunged at him, tumbling them both into the darkness. One by one, the timers went off and the explosions rocked the foundation. The house rumbled ominously as it shifted off of its moorings. Plaster fell from the ceiling in chunks as smoke blackened the basement. They should have left by now but they were still in there. What were they waiting for? I held my breath as Sean turned to help Dec. Separated by flames, Killian yelled at them to go. He could leave but he wouldn’t as long as they were still inside. Horrified and helpless, I couldn’t look away. After shoving the burning pallet to the side, Sean grabbed Dec’s arm as the big demon aimed his weapon at Sean’s back. He fired just as the barrels of chemicals exploded in a blinding burst of white fire.

“Sean!”

With a deafening roar, the house erupted, the blast so intense it seared my eyes.  Stunned and blinded, I staggered upright as half of my soul was ripped away. Sean! Oh, my God! No! Still screaming his name, I was barely aware of Dec’s arms around me or our flight away from the men with guns.

That was a year ago.

Here in the present, I hugged myself as tears washed away the vision. My eyes had healed but my heart was still broken somewhere under the crumbled foundation of this house. My skin prickled and I knew I was no longer alone with my memories.

“Why do you come here?” he asked with a sad smile.

Wiping away the icy tears. I straightened my shoulders. “I could ask you the same question.”

“I come for you.” He reached for my hand.

MY STOMACH GROWLED in bossy demand for food. The aroma of baking bread drifted into the window and my mouth watered in response. Across the street, the night shift was busy running the ovens in the bread factory. My butt was asleep and I had to pee. Stakeouts were overrated.

“God, I’m starving!” I whispered. I dug my hand into my stomach in hopes it would stop growling. It just made me have to pee more.

My partner, Dec, slid a piece of gum across the seat. Oh yeah, that would do it. I stuffed it in my mouth anyway and counted the minutes until we could leave.

He said, “Okay, they should be here any minute if our intel is right. Keep watching the side door and I’ve got the front.”

A shadow moved just outside my line of sight and I shifted my night vision binoculars to the right. There they were. Two men were coming up the cluttered alley and headed into the metal door on the side of the old brick shop. This wasn’t the nicest of neighborhoods and most people would avoid it after dark. We, however, weren’t most people. In fact, I was the only
people
here. My partner wasn’t, strictly speaking, human at all. But he passed himself off as human and his supernatural powers came in handy during fights with thugs. At the moment, we were slouched inside an old crappy pickup truck staking out the brick shop.

I snapped a couple of pictures and said, “Two men headed inside.”

Dec whispered, “Uh-oh, what do we have here? Delivery truck pulling up to the front.”

We watched as four men unloaded several white barrels and some crates from the back of the panel delivery truck. Carefully, I snapped pictures and hoped I was getting their faces in focus.

“Human?” I asked.

“You tell me.”

“Nice try.” I could see into buildings if I tried. The CIA called it
remote viewing;
I called it a curse. I refused to try since Sean’s disappearance a year ago. Some might think having psychic abilities was a gift. I would disagree. It was a curse and I didn’t want any more visions branded into my memory.

He closed his eyes for a moment and muttered, “Humans. I don’t sense anything else.”

We waited until the driver came back to the truck and pulled away and then we followed him. Dec was driving and kept a good distance behind the truck. I knew my job and used the binoculars to keep track of the truck. It was very late now and the streets were empty. We had to stay pretty far behind so the driver wouldn’t notice us. Eventually he pulled up to a grey brick warehouse and parked the truck outside. After finishing his cigarette, he went inside.

“Watch the door. I’ll be right back.” Dec disappeared and reappeared next to the truck.

I stared at the door as he crawled under the truck and attached the tracking device. I held my breath and worried. In a second, he was back in the driver’s seat and we headed back to the farmhouse. Mission accomplished. We were done for the night. It was 2 a.m. by the time we got home. Killian, as usual, was waiting up for us.

“These barrels look familiar. Did you smell anything?” he asked and flipped over the picture he was scrutinizing.

“Yeah, bread,” I answered without thinking.

He didn’t crack a smile. “Bread? Good job, Princess.”

I groaned and rolled my eyes. I wasn’t stupid. Really, I wasn’t. Somehow I always seemed to stick my foot in my mouth when Killian was around. He made me twitchy and kept me off balance. He was the undisputed leader of our group; and yep, he was the boss of me. We were monitoring demon operations in the area and I was trying to help out. It was a combination of police and super-secret agent work. I wasn’t a cop or a secret agent, but I was trained to kill bad guys and had excellent instincts. My intuition was nearly always right and that made me useful. Killian decided whether or not I went on missions or stayed home. So far, I only went on missions he considered safe. Tonight was one of those. Stakeouts were both safe and boring.

Tonight’s stakeout was related to an investigation we started more than a year ago in Manhattan. A pain-in-the-ass demon named Dagin was using his job as an arms dealer to spread chaos and destruction around the planet. According to Killian, that’s what demons did. To further that goal, his evil engineers had developed a weapon that was selling like crazy on the black market and terrorists were putting in orders from all over the world. We had slowed down progress by blowing up a large stockpile of weapons and the research lab in a farmhouse in Vermont earlier this year. That was the first time I used my new powers and worked with Declan, Killian, and Sean.

They call themselves Primani. They’re the good guys: they protect humans and hunt demons. They’re an elite group of warriors with amazing abilities and somehow I’d joined them. In the beginning, I was simply another of Sean’s charges. He was assigned to keep me safe and to correct my destiny. When my mother died, my destiny took a swing off track and he started watching out for me from a distance. That would’ve been enough if it hadn’t been for Scott Flynn. Scott had beaten me half to death. His attack sent my attitude, faith, and destiny into a downward spiral that was apparently unacceptable to the powers that be. Sean had to take a more active role in keeping me safe. It was a simple mission that didn’t stay that way. We fell in love and nothing was the same after that.  My destiny was wrapped up in his and we were connected in ways we were still trying to understand.

Drooping with exhaustion, Dec filled Killian in on the stakeout and we went over the rest of the pictures I took.

“Good shots, Mica. You’re getting good with the camera. We’ll need to follow up with the owner of that truck and keep watching the shop. I don’t like the looks of those barrels.”

Dec offered, “I’ll send the pics to Alex. Maybe he can ID the men we saw tonight. It would help to know who we’re dealing with.”

Alex was Killian’s boss. He ran the entire east coast special operations division. Killian ran our little cell but Alex supervised a dozen of them up and the down the eastern seaboard. He had all of the resources and technology available to investigate people and solve crimes. Probably we had better technology than the CIA. It helped to be supernatural too. Mind reading and teleporting, or traveling as they called it, were very useful when fighting criminals. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the power to teleport so I had to hitch a ride or take a real car.

I yawned hugely. “So can I go to bed now? I’m beat.”

Killian barely glanced up from the stack of pictures but waved me out of the room. Domino trotted after me. The room I shared with Sean was big and airy in the sunniness of the day. At night, however, it was shadowy and empty. I hated being alone in the dark. I kept a small nightlight burning near the closet to keep the shadows at bay. Once upon a time, I had been afraid of the demons in my closet; now I’ve learned there are far scarier demons roaming the streets among us. My closet had little appeal to the demons I’d met so far. Domino, my little Dalmatian, protected me from all things creepy. As we entered the room, she walked a circuit around and paused at the windows and the closet door. Satisfied there were no human or demonic intruders, she hopped up on the bed and curled up on her pillow. With a last brown-eyed glance at me, she yawned hugely and went to sleep with her head between her paws.

I stroked her velvet ears and stared at the ceiling. Her little furry body kept me warm in the big empty bed and I was grateful for her. She was a peace offering from Sean and I smiled at the memory. It was the day he’d finally given up trying to fight his attraction to me. He had remained elusive and secretive still, but he had unbent enough to let me in. From that day forward, Sean was mine and I was his. Domino still wore the St. Christopher medallion around her neck even though it was meant for me. It was his way of saying I needed protecting and I didn’t have the heart to take it off of her collar. It was part of who she was.

The dream came nearly every night now. It was always the same. I walked down an endless hallway filled with many doors. The doors were locked and unmarked. It was quiet and dark. I didn’t feel afraid here. Mostly I felt numb as I drifted through the dream. There was nothing around me and I wondered what the point was. Eventually I heard someone calling my name. At first it was barely a whisper, but it grew louder as I wandered further into the darkness. The voice gained strength until I recognized it. I pressed my ear against the nearest door and listened. The voice came from behind the door. I pulled on the handle but the door wouldn’t open. Louder and louder the voice called me. It was scared and the sound twisted my guts. I pulled on the door until I was exhausted and sagged against it.

There had to be a way inside…