S.P.I.R.I.T (12 page)

My brain couldn’t seem to function, thinking of the next step in CPR, but my heart knew exactly what to do as I leaned down and placed my lips against his. Fire and lightening flashed before my eyes as our lips connected. He arched up towards me as his lungs filled with life. His hand gripped my hair as he tried to breathe and kiss me back at the same time. Slowly, I released him, staring down into his eyes, which held the spark of fire in them and the flashes of his inner storm.

“Your eyes,” he whispered as his breathing quickened.

“Yeah,” I smiled. “Yours too.”

A smiled played on his lips as he shook his head and blinked his eyes several times, clearing out the emotions in them as they faded back into the dark pools. I kissed his forehead, as I cradled him in my arms, while he sought to make sure all of his limbs were working. The electric current in them made them tingle, and every time he touched me, I felt the faintest of shocks.

“What the hell was that thing?” he whispered, moving the fingers of his hand individually and then clenched them together.

“Our demon,” I replied, and placed my cheek against his head. “Yours from the basement, mine from the woods.”

“But he said that you were supposed to come with him.” He sighed, and shook his head. At that moment, I realized that Zander hadn’t been as protected from the vial voice of the demon, but he had heard it through me, and that made my stomach turn. He sat up and turned in my direction, brushing my cheek with his fingers. “Listen, baby, you can’t keep me from everything.”

“I can try,” I whispered, as my voice broke and the tears ran down my cheeks.

He smiled, brushing the wetness from my skin and shook his head. “I’m a big boy; I’ve been doing this a long time. I wasn’t expecting the voice that first time, but I can grow accustom pretty quickly, so stop trying to protect me, and let me protect you.”

“Who was he? Why did he say that I was supposed to come with him?” I sighed and shook my head. “This thing just keeps getting blown open wider and wider and I’m getting a little irritated with it!”

“We’ll figure it out,” he replied quietly and sighed, closing his eyes as he rested his head against the wall. The door flew open and Captain Everett looked around the room, his gun drawn and a half-eaten donut in his hand. “You’re a little late!”

“No!” I snapped and got up, slowly pulling Zander to his feet. “From the Maytag repairman, Everett! Yes, from a ghost, and not only a ghost, but apparently the one who wrote the little love note on the wall in the kitchen!”

“Baby, calm down,” Zander whispered as the tips of my hair began to flutter off my back.

I glanced over at him and took a deep breath, then moved passed the old man and his two sidekicks and walked into the living room. Walters was standing at the kitchen counter pouring sugar and creamer into several different cups and then he turned to me, a white powered mustache across his upper lip. He smiled, offered me a cup and I shook my head, taking the warm Styrofoam and stepping out the door.

The cool breeze of the morning air swept across my face, cooling the fire that burned within me. Then I looked up at the multicolored sky as the sun rose higher, casting an orange glow above the trees. Sunrise was the only good thing I remembered about my childhood. The sunrise meant the end of the terrifying nights that I spent curled up under the covers of my bed, and I closed my eyes to take in the warmth.

I smiled as soon as I felt it, the telltale pulse of Zander as he stepped quietly out the door, coffee in hand. He quietly sat down on the two-foot high wall of stone slabs that my thighs leaned against.

“I’m sorry, but it’s like a freaking school trip for these guys,” I muttered angrily as I kept my eyes tightly shut. “Do they even take this seriously?”

“When it comes down to it, yeah, they’re the best there is.” I opened my eyes and looked over at him, coffee in one hand, chocolate frosted donut in the other, and I smiled.

“I think they have a bit of hero worship for you.” I grinned and watched him cough as he swallowed the hot coffee that he had just taken a sip of.

“Oh yeah,” he laughed. “How so?”

“Well, to say the least, you are the best looking one of the bunch, not to mention at the moment you have the undivided attention of a girl, whom they have all been scolded at for staring at, innocently, and you seem to have the run of the operation,” I replied, the smile in my voice, as I slipped my hands in my pockets and leaned back on the large SUV that sat behind me. “Thank you, Zander.”

“For what?” he inquired, quite confused.

“For saving my ass from being trampled, handcuffed, beaten up by a ghoul in a cave and oh yeah, for the little heroics in the bedroom with the gun.” I smiled, looking at him as he glanced around.

“Good point, but I’m not sure I was totally prepared for your advances at that moment. I thought you were just doing it to take me out of the current problem, which was me about to go hysterical.” Zander laughed at this and nodded with agreement.

“To tell you the truth, I wanted to do that the moment I had you backed up against the tree, the first time you stopped on the hill. God, the temptation was awful,” he said, rolling his eyes. I couldn’t help but laugh at the face he made and I shook my head. “So what about now, how should I go about helping you with your hysterics?”

“Hum,” I laughed. “As much as I would like to tell you to take me into the bedroom, after what just happened, I think we might just need to go and get this done and over with. My heart is racing, my stress is up, and I can tell that there is a storm in you that is brewing so fiercely that, at some point, it’s going to open up on top of us.”

“Wow, you really are very good at reading me.” He sighed and stood, setting his coffee down on the wall as he walked over. Gently he pushed my hair back from my shoulders, and out of my eyes, and then he rubbed my upper arms. “You have got to be the bravest woman I have ever met.”

“Not brave, just scared shitless and wishing it was over.” I huffed out a breath, grabbing the waist of his jeans. “You’ve helped, whether you know it or not. You’ve helped me fight through the urge to crawl under the nearest rock and hide until it was done.”

“It’s not helping,” he whispered; his hands resting on my neck, as his thumb traced my cheekbones. “It’s caring too much to let you get hurt. You don’t know what you do to me, Samantha. From the first moment I saw you, you were mine.”

I smiled as he leaned down, words caught in my throat. As his lips touched mine, as the fire and the storm twirled together, the door to the house burst open and the five other men in Zander’s unit came screaming out the door, weapons in hand, screeching a war cry to end all wars. All I wanted to do was cry.

12

The black men’s boot cut jeans fit tighter in some areas that I would have rather had loose, but considering they were my only option, I had no choice but to accept the fact that my bottom would be a target for every male eye on the team. They fit fine in the length, and I was able to pull them over my black boots hiding the fact that they touched three-quarters up my calf. The tee shirt was tight, and I started to wonder just what size they had decided to put me in, and after discussing it, go a size smaller.

It fit me like a glove, stretching to round over my breast and curve at my waist, showing off my shape. But I wasn’t there to be ogled over, I was there to settle the past with whatever strange things were going on. There was a slight knock at the door, and I glanced over it as I pulled my hair up in a pony-tale.

“Why do you knock, I can feel you through the door?” I questioned, smiling, but it came out with an irritated sound. Zander slipped in, gazing over my apparel. Then he closed the door and leaned against the wall with his shoulder, arms crossed in front of him.

“Ha ha, you know I think they did this on purpose.” I used my hand and modeled the black OPS outfit as if I were walking the runway.

“I know what we’re going in for, trust me, I can feel it down to my bones. Bitching about clothes just gives me something else to think about!” I snapped, and quietly sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“Sam, you haven’t done anything wrong. It’s a natural response to what’s on right now. I’m surprised you’re not terrified,” he said, shaking his head.

“I am,” I admitted, sitting down on the bed behind me. I ran a hand over the ponytail my hair was secured in and shrugged. “But, I need this; I need to know what comes next. Everything, right from the start, has led up to this point. It’s time to find out what happens now.”

“Okay.” He reached out a hand. “Let’s go see what’s next.”

Together we walked out of the room, and into where the rest of the team was sitting. Daniels stood up, looked over at the kitchen table and gestured his head to the assortment of goodies that were there waiting for me.

I walked over, more than curious to see what kind of gadgets ghost hunters of this kind played with. He held up a little orange box with a meter within its plastic window.

“An EMF meter, for those of us who don’t have audio or visual communication skills, this can detect the presence of the little bastards for us. It reads the electro-magnetic fields around the area. When it goes off, there’s a good chance there’s a spook about.” He tapped it and put it down on the table, picking up the next toy, a small camera with a monitor attached. “A thermal scanner picks up cold spots where we can’t physically see it. Human’s come up red, and most specters come up blue.”

“Most?” I inquired.

“We’ve run into some who give off heat,” Harris replied, shrugging. “That’s where this little thing comes in handy.”

He held up the same device but with a microphone applied to the top of its monitor. Curious, I took it in my hands to look it over.

“Not just any gun,” Zander explained, as he stood and walked over. With his hand out, Daniels set a unique bullet down into the middle of his palm and Zander brought it closer to me. “The shells are pure copper, which conducts electricity. Inside is basically a battery. When the shell is fired from the rifle, the force of it triggers the mechanism inside and begins the conduction of power cells.”

“Once the thing strikes, the shells blasts into a million tiny electrically charged bombs that fry the demon from the inside,” Harris finished. “The types of spooks we fight aren’t the transparent ones. They have solid body mass and form.”

“And you do this enough to have a specialized weapon to kill them with?” I inquired, watching them all nod. “Oh.”

“No more show and tell, let’s get this ball rolling!” Everett spoke up, having gotten a new cigar to stick out of his mouth.

Zander smiled at the annoyance in my eyes as I looked at the brown wrapped cigar. “At least he’s not killing us all by lighting it.”

“He’s like a kid with an oral fixation problem,” I said as I watched him bob it up and down between his teeth.

Zander laughed and handed me my black coat. “Come on.”

The SUV felt like a tank, bumping along the paved roads through town as the motor hummed with the loudness of a jet engine. Zander leaned over to whisper in my ear, but the only thing I felt was his warm breath on my neck and the pulse as his hand took mine.

You don’t need to whisper,
I joked.

Hey, I’m trying to make it look convincing; besides, I enjoy being this close to you.
He laughed, which made goose bumps run up my arms.
Listen, in the collar of your jacket is a microphone and a transmitter. You can talk and hear me through this.
With our connection, we don’t need it, but if we are separated, use it to contact the rest of the team. One of the boys will come to you if you need them, if I can’t make it.

It’s going to be strange stepping into my parents’ home with six of you.
I smiled, making it look as though I was whispering back.

No, babe, you’re only going in the front door with me, the rest of them will find their own way in. Everett stays out here at command and Walters runs the computers, keeping track of all of us and where we pick up spirits.