Soul Stealer (2 page)

She was a freak in some ways.

After her shower she made herself a breakfast of toast in Vinnie’s Scandinavian-designed and rarely-used kitchen. He’d started coffee for her, but by this point the heating plate had turned off and it was stone cold.

This morning was the first time he’d broached the subject of moving in together. As she glanced around his sleek and masculine-styled furniture choices, she had the same feeling of apprehension she’d had initially. She loved her cramped and stuffy apartment, her worn and mismatched furniture; she loved it all because it was hers and she’d bought it and put it there and made it all fit.

And she loved Vinnie. Ferociously, comfortably, like a best friend
and
as a lover. She fancied spending every waking moment with him, even if it was limited because of the job he had. So why did the thought of moving in here make her palms sweat?

Big decisions. Big change. She wasn’t good with either one of those concepts.

Plus there was Claudia, her best friend across the hall. That apartment was what had made them friends. If she moved, would she still see Claudia? People always say they’ll keep in touch but they rarely do. And there was one more incident that bonded them together. Iola couldn’t let her mind go there, not at this moment at least. It was a faded and fuzzy memory of an event where she was sure she had been in grave danger, but really didn’t remember anything else. And time was making her memory grainier still.

Thoughts of Claudia still made her feel guilty for no good reason. Her friend thought she was in love with her. That distinction made Iola uncomfortable. Iola knew Claudia desired her, loved her, and was as faithful and loyal a friend as anyone could want. Iola just didn’t feel that way about her. Sure, she’d had moments of wondering what it would be like to be with Claudia, and had even kissed her once. That was before Vinnie. And now, all around, it was awkward. It seemed like Claudia and Vinnie got along very well. Maybe it was just Iola’s issue, not theirs.

Probably; she excelled at making issues out of everything.

It was always biting. The jaw tingled with the need to sink its teeth into meat and tear at it. Chew it. Swallow from necessity then repeat.

Blood would fill his mouth, tangy and coppery, wonderfully warm. Fluid and real; the opposite of what he was at that moment.

The last time he’d held solid form was ages ago, yet he could remember the carnal thrill of taking something smooth and unmarred and ruining it with his own teeth. Souls went down smoother, sure, but that was just energy for the metaphysical batteries. Until he was stable he only had dark dreams and memories of far-away places.

These were moist, green, tropical and lush locations where they sacrificed young women with fair hair and skin to keep him from stealing the souls of the entire community.  Virgins volunteered for the honour of dying for the greater good. Rumor was his bite brought orgasmic pleasure at the moment of death.

Not true in the least. It hurt. He felt their pain as he tore into that tender skin, hardly touched by sun. They screamed and it only made him more ravenous. He tore with clenched teeth and the straining of his own neck muscles. The blood would spurt and spray all over their thin white shifts, running hot down his neck and chest. His face was completely wet with it, and the victim would be gasping, eyes pleading for death. When they were mad with the need to pass he would let his mind wander in to theirs, finding that spark inside that drove the whole mechanism of their human bodies. He tore it out by the root, and that’s when death occurred.

The dark-skinned tribes of small jungle islands used to give gold and chocolate. In return he’d take their killers and rapists in their sleep. It was punishment for evil-doers, and they kept paying him for it until he would become tired of the climate and move on. In the North they didn’t do sacrifices. So instead he was the Arctic boogeyman; a tale to caution people on how dangerous it was to wander away alone in the coldest of the cold and dark months. He couldn’t be picky on what he ate there: he took anything he found for months then headed for the equator to thaw his hungering body.

But lately every time he tried to solidify, starting with a few souls taken here and there, growing his power slowly but surely, he lost the will to keep going. He would scatter again to the winds of time, blown away to linger and wait for the urge to hit him again. Months and months of existing off of souls was no way to thrive. It was a difficult hill to crest; he needed blood. He wanted the meat.

Maybe this time. If he held the memory of that food as a goal for going through with all the work of becoming fixed in the world, maybe he could see it through this time.

That first soul had been lovely. So pure, sweet. Completely untainted. How d
elicious the young ones were … Their flesh was even better.

Yes, the souls were necessary; they were the vegetables that kept him healthy and going. But next to that he had to have the living, breathing, bleeding and still wriggling meat to make it all worthwhile. He only
lived once every few millennia. He had to make it worth the effort.

Chapter Two

Constable Trevor Vance stepped over the threshold, hearing the sounds of a camera in the other room. The apartment was stuffy, like all the windows had been closed for days. The air was actually thick enough to have its own R-rating.

It was terribly disconcerting, especially as he entered the living room.

His nerves were all clamoring to get away from that room. It took all his resolve to stay, even though it was his job to stay.

The girl was on the floor, lying across the threshold of the kitchen’s linoleum floor, halfway into the living room on the beige sculpted carpet. She was dressed for lounging, with thin cotton pajama bottoms and a spaghetti-strap tank top.

She looked like she’d just fallen casually to her side, fainted. But her eyes were wide and wild, staring up at the ceiling.

She was dead with no visible trauma. No bruises. Not even stiff yet because the police had been responding to a mischief call she herself had phoned in. They had found her very quickly.

No one else had been in the apartment. The only sign that anything had gone down was the splintered apartment door.

“Who turned the lights on?” Vance asked another uniform in the living room.

“I did,” he replied, eyes on the figure on the floor. “I tripped over her. Couldn’t see anything. The switch next to the front door didn’t work. I had to turn the one on in here.” He indicated the light plate on the wall in the living room.

“And no one else was here.”

“Nope. The TV was on, volume was pretty low.”

“Looks like she was ready for bed.”

“Or studying.” The uniform pointed to a text book open on the coffee table.

Vance just nodded, watching the coroner’s assistants load the body in to the body bag. They’d put bags over her hands, but he was pretty sure there wouldn’t be anything under her nails. There was nothing here but a very young, very dead girl.

“Found some ID,” another uniform said from the kitchen. “Looks like she just started university. Her class list is here, along with a brand spanking-new student ID card.”

The laminated card travelled from the uniform’s gloved hand to his. Melody Sinclair. 18 years old, almost 19. Pretty smile.

And so young.

Vance shook his head and gave the card back. “This is a pickler, isn’t it?”

The other constable put the card back where he found it.  “No one heard or saw anything until we were trying to get in the building.”

“Door was left open, right?”

He nodded. “Wide open. No footprint on the paint indicating it was kicked, but it had to be.”

Vance took a step closer, letting his voice drop to a conspirer’s level.  “Does this place feel … wrong to you?”

The guy – Scott was his last name – frowned. “How do you mean?”

“When you first got here, was it … hard for you to walk in?”

Scott swallowed hard, and there was a slight flicker of understanding. “Like … a bad intuition. Yeah. Totally.”

“I can still feel it.” Vance turned as the body bag was zipped up. “Like something just walked over my grave. I gotta get the hell out of here.”

Voro could feel Raphael’s trepidation beside him. The guy was genuinely freaking out with worry that Voro might do something unthinkable in front of Saint Peter.

The dude behind the desk in front of them was shuffling papers, apologizing for not being ready for their meeting. He quickly signed something, handed it to the male novice behind his left shoulder and then greeted them both with a smile, folding his hands in front of him, ready to deal out a decision.

Voro was used to having no idea where he would end up. And this time was no different, just more existential. His mortal form was dead and decaying on the other side, and the forces that had forged it were likely not on his side anymore. Due to an odd twist of fate having everything to do with self-sacrifice, here he was on the sunny side of the clouds, chilling his heels while they decided what to do with him.

It had been five months now. It was becoming apparent that they had no idea what to do with him.

“Voro,” the older man said, smiling nicely enough. “How are you finding our accommodations? Still satisfactory?”

Voro couldn’t lie to this guy. Found that out the first day. Peter really did know all; he just couldn’t do anything about it all. And Voro wasn’t about to drop this guy just for being friendly. Peter could kick ass better than most pro wrestlers.

“Things are quite to my liking, sir.”

Peter gave a slight shake of the head. “Nine novices in one week.”

Shit. This again.

“We know that free will is always in question, but the spirits of our novices are fragile. After lying with you once one poor girl tried to kill herself for the debauchery she’d committed.”

Beginner’s mistake. They couldn’t die.

“Sir, with all due respect, I don’t want to come in your house and just start wrecking the place. They come to me.”

Peter smiled. “Free will.”

Voro was confused. “Exactly.”

“I’m talking about yours. You can turn them away, you know.”

Voro stopped himself from rolling his eyes. “Peter, can I ask you a question?”

“Please don’t,” Raphael said softly beside him.

Voro ignored him. “Have you ever fucked anything?”

The question hung in the room like the passing of gas.  No one moved, but at least Peter wasn’t enraged or embarrassed. He just took off his glasses and set them on his ink blotter. “What the hell are you talking about?”

That’s the closest anyone around here would come to cussing on this side. Voro was instantly impressed.

“I’m just saying, if you’ve never had sex, how can you tell me that I could always just say no?” He made it sound like the preposterous suggestion that it truly was.

“Some good and decent part of you should take a moment, look upon their youth and innocence, and realize that for them the physical act is love. And for you … it’s an itch.”

“Good and decent part of me? You’ve seen my birth certificate, right?”

Peter smiled indulgently. “Good and decent would be the traits that saved the life and honour of a
frustro
.”

At the word Voro had to look down at his feet, bare in their flip-flops, and realized that maybe he was ridiculous after all.

“See Voro? You can’t even deny it. So the next time one of our novices loses sight of her virtue, please keep in mind your dear Iola.”

“She was never my dear,” he insisted.

Voro noticed when Raphael closed his eyes. He recognized the tone, apparently.

“She was a biological trap sprung to catch me, and I did exactly as expected. That’s not free will, either.”

Peter leveled a gaze at him, losing the affable expression. “Instead of condemning her to spend her days wallowing in your brand of filth you ended your six-hundred year existence of fucking and sin eating.”

“Just like expected,” Voro finished for him, not even catching the cuss word that time.

“No. Not at all like expected. She could have just killed you. Or the
decipio
could have done it.”

“This was better … for her,” he was actually getting choked up. Damn it.

“That’s almost something like love.”

“No. It was basically a potion, wasn’t it?”

Peter sighed. “There is no witchcraft. If the trap plays out the way it’s meant you go back to Hell, and those two live a natural life where they either deal with what happens or they don’t.”

“No.”

Peter’s frown deepened. “I beg your pardon?”

Raphael actually grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?”

“If a Sin Eater is slain by the
decipio
, the
decipio
then kills the
frustro
.”

Peter gave pause. “Sometimes.”

“Too big a chance. So I ended the whole stupid thing. And here we are. Tell me again how well this whole thing worked out?”

Peter put his gla
sses back on. “You know, Voro, we
will
find a use for you eventually. But just remember that we can either make this pleasant or not. It’s not like you can go home again, is it?”

Shoes made slapping sounds in the hallway, and Patrice Jenkins felt the relief immediately but didn’t let up on the hold she had on her patient. He was gnashing his teeth, trying to throw her off, but she had more experience restraining people than he did in the art of breaking free.

She breathed evenly, avoiding eye contact. In this particular case eye contact always sent this guy over the line from violent into completely psychotic.

The orderlies burst through the doorway, knowing the drill instantly. They got the patient’s hands into the straps first, but the legs put up more of a fight.

As two men the size of refrigerators wrestled the remaining limbs in to the straps she prepared the sedative with steady hands. This guy was a sad case, and these fits were getting further and further apart. He was rational and almost sweet when he was calm. Who knew what had set this episode off? Hopefully it wouldn’t set back his treatment too far.

As the sedative raced through his veins he stopped screaming, and after a moment, his body relaxed and he stopped straining against the leather straps. His breathing calmed, eyes sliding closed slowly.

Patrice thanked the orderlies and cleaned up the snack she’d been bringing him that he had sent flying across the room. Then she collected the wrapping from the sharp she’d had to use on him. The sharp itself she deposited in to the biohazard container in the hall.

Patrice returned to the patient’s side, some motherly instinct making her put a hand on his forehead. In reaction to her touch, his face turned towards her but his eyes stayed shut.

“Oh Charlie,” she said softly and sympathetically. “Please rest well.”

He swallowed, then he peeked out at her from drooping lids. “I can’t,” he said, sounding like his mouth wasn’t working the way he wanted it to.

“Of course you can, honey. We’re here to take care of you, remember that. We’re your friends.”

He shook his head just slightly. “Damned,” he croaked weakly.

He always said that. She’d heard it many times and it still broke her heart.

Charles Goodwin had done awful, violent and horrifying things. But she’d heard his back story, and even after these infrequent rages she couldn’t imagine him being capable of such atrocities. They kept a watchful eye at all times but the most he’d ever done was bat her hand away when she handed him food he didn’t want.

For a homicidal schizophrenic he seemed quite harmless.

Alarms sounded again and she frowned. When the room number was paged she sighed and turned back the way she’d bee
n, headed for Charlie’s neighbor’s room.

When these two men had first been admitted their attacks were always linked, but it hadn’t happened for months now. Charlie may have been sweet, but Jasper McKay was another story. He had none of Charlie’s innocence, and something about him always made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. He’d never been violent or menacing, but the guy was cold.

Patrice was always more comfortable when she wasn’t left alone with Jasper. Now she had two orderlies restraining McKay while she took his vitals. She nodded that he was stable, and they were trying to talk the man down while she readied the sedative. She avoided McKay’s eyes as she injected the mixture, only exhaling when his body stopped jerking and convulsing. She didn’t linger with this one. The room was ten degrees colder than the rest of the ward for some reason, and it took about fifteen minutes before her goose bumps wore off.

“Jesus Bauer, take it easy,” Jimenez said, lowering his hands and blockers. “You really trying to take a round out of me?”

Claudia dropped her fists, smiling. “Can’t take a few punches from a girl?”

He crossed the ring, picking up his water bottle and taking a swig. “You’ve been at this for over an hour. I can only take so much. What’s up?”

She joined him, sitting down on the canvas and taking a pull on her own water bottle. “Megan dumped me. Came to her senses.”

Jimenez shook his head. “Bitches are crazy, Bauer. Might as well learn to like the schlong. We really are the simpler sex.”

She snorted water out her nose, which delighted him.

Jimenez could have been a professional boxer, but instead he’d gotten in to a fist fight at 21 and killed a guy in a bar brawl. Now his “prime” was past but he still made money training fighters and teaching women’s self-defense. She’d met him through some of the guys on the force, all saying he was a good guy. He’d just made a stupid mistake when he was still young and aggressive.

She held up her water bottle and he touched his to hers briefly. “To bitches,” she toasted.