Stolen (Edgefield Slayers Book 2)

by Laken Cane

  Afterward, they picked up John before driving Maggie home.

  “I’m making your favorite dinner,” Krista told Maggie when the girl called her on her way home.

  Maggie groaned. “Ma. What did I do? Can’t you just ground me?”

  Krista snorted, then grinned. “Okay, okay. I’m reheating your favorite dinner. Asa actually cooked it.”

  “Whew. Thank God!”

  “Grandpa and grandma coming in?”

  “Grandpa wants to know if Asa is there.”

  “No, but you can tell him his daughter is here.”

  “Grandma wants to know if Luke is there.” Maggie paused. “I might want to know that as well.”

  “You’re all ridiculous,” Krista replied, and she couldn’t help but laugh.

  “We’re here,” Maggie said.

  Krista heard car doors slam as she turned the stove off. “Just in time. Everything is ready. I think—”

  “Hey.”

  Something in Maggie’s voice made Krista’s heart stutter. “Mags?” She heard a thump and figured Maggie dropped her phone, and she was already racing toward the front door when Beth started screaming.

  She nearly ripped the door off its hinges when she jerked it open, her hands full of whirling red power, and her screams joined her mother’s as she leaped off the porch and saw Vogdris.

  He held Maggie high against him and she hung like a rag doll, and his mouth was buried against her neck. Streams of blood dropped to the ground to splat upon Krista’s unmoving father, and her mother continued to scream as she battered the soul-stealing demon with ineffectual human fists.

  “Move,” Krista screamed, and without hesitating, Beth leaped out of the way.

  But Vogdris had Maggie as a shield, and Krista couldn’t hit him without hitting the girl. She tried to run around behind him and blast him from the back, but he turned with her, and then, still holding Maggie, he ran. He dropped her when he was too far for Krista to hurt him, and he disappeared.

  Krista ran to where Maggie lay, sobbing, sobbing. She fell to her knees, her flesh grinding against sharp stones, and dragged her daughter into her arms. “God,” she cried.

  Her mother stumbled to her, her face pasty pale, her cell phone in her hand. “Help,” she yelled. “No, no, no…”

  Maggie was empty. Just…empty.

  Vogdris had stolen her soul. He’d found Krista’s house, and he’d taken her daughter. What would she give him to return the child’s soul?

  Anything. Everything.

  Neighbors began to slip out of their homes, horrified, terrified, disbelieving. “Little Maggie?” one of them said. “Little Maggie?”

  Talon was the first one to arrive. “I heard the call,” he whispered, and fell to his knees beside Krista. “Oh, God, Krista. Tell me what to do.”

  Krista, half mad, threw back her head and screamed for the one person she believed could fix things. The one person who could save her daughter. “Rafael!”

  He didn’t come. Not then.

  Asa did, and then Luke, and then Barbie.

  And last, Stella.

  No one could do a fucking thing.

  Asa lifted Maggie’s body into his arms, gently, his eyes dark and terrible, and carried her to the house.

  “Krista—” Luke started, but she didn’t wait to hear his words.

  She knew what she had to do. Her head was buzzing, and her vision was dark and fuzzy around the edges, and her hands were bleeding. But she ran with a single-minded grimness, ran all the way to the Old River Bar and Grill—the place of badness.

  When the bouncer started to get in her way, to stop her, she held up her hands, showed him the red power dancing along her knuckles like electricity, and he looked her in the eye and backed down.

  And she roared through the bar, grabbing men and women alike, sinking her teeth into whatever part she reached first, and ripping their souls from their bodies. She became the monster.

  In the end, when she burst from the bar, she was no longer Krista, demon slayer. Not really. And stolen souls flew around her, endlessly screaming. She did not need to steal innocence—she simply needed to steal souls the way she’d stolen the ability from Vogdris. She would kill him, and she would free Maggie. Nothing else mattered.

  Nothing.

  The strength she had was indescribable. The power was unbelievable. The darkness was overwhelming. She was the evil she’d fought for so very long.

  She didn’t give a fuck.

  But someone did.

  “Get out of my way, Rafael,” she said, when he stepped into her path.

  His eyes were so full of rage that she, even in her condition, could not look into them. “What have you done?” His voice was like thunder from the worst storm that had ever existed.

  She had no time for his anger. She released a ball of magic in warning—it knocked a six-foot-deep hole in the street upon which he stood. “The next one will break every bone in your body,” she told him. “Don’t try to stop me.”

  “I won’t try to do anything,” he said, judgment thick in his voice. He curled his lip in contempt, lifted his hands, and began to shift.

  The air from his change hit her with a blast of frost so cold she was encased, for one agonizing moment, in ice. But she exploded out of it, sending frozen fragments of sharp spikes through the air.

  And for the first time in her life, she saw an angel in his true form.

  He hung in midair, huge, white wings whooshing slowly, his muscled body completely naked, long, silver hair wrapping around him, a glowing aura like a second skin moving with him, part of him.

  Oh, he was terrible. Terrible in his rage, his pureness, his beauty.

  He looked at her with silver eyes that held her transfixed even as inside, she screamed at herself to move, to save Maggie, to run…

  And he began to release the souls she’d stolen.

  He ripped them from her, and each one was like stripping flesh from her bones. She screamed, and tried to run, tried to faint, tried to fall, but he would not let her.

  She’d thought she was powerful. She’d thought Vogdris was powerful.

  How stupid she’d been.

  He took all the souls, and they flew back to their bodies, and she could only stand and wait for her punishment. Her weakened body shook and shuddered and trembled, and finally, her legs gave out and she sank to her knees before him, half mad.

  He spoke, and his voice was like a hammer, battering her mind.

  “Your power was given to your light. It will be taken from your darkness.”

  He’d stripped her of the souls, and then, he began to strip her of her power.

  In the end, he knelt beside her prone body and smoothed her hair off her face. “You knew better. Be grateful I was permitted to let you live.”

  Then he stood and strode away, leaving her to her fate. To her despair. To her grief. She couldn’t even get angry. She was too empty.

  The humans she’d attacked could get angry, though, and when one walked by, sobbing and swearing, and saw her, he kicked her in the head. She didn’t move, didn’t shoot him down with magic, didn’t sling a blade at his heart, and they all figured out pretty quickly that she was powerless. That she was hopeless.

  But as they began to punish her for hurting them, she feared they would kill her, so she dragged herself to her feet and lurched away. She couldn’t die before she put everything she had into saving her child.

  She’d never been without her magic. She stumbled through back streets and alleys, completely hollow. She spotted a hybrid, the green glow of his eyes bright like toxic waste, lurking in someone’s backyard. She held her hands up, and with a yelp of fear, he raced away.

  She had no magic. All she had was the threat of her magic.

  And that would not work on Vogdris. That would not get Maggie back. But then…maybe nothing would. If Rafael had left her the souls, she could have taken Vogdris down. She could have killed him.

  Rafael wouldn’t. Tr
iganoth was missing. The slayers couldn’t handle the soul-stealer. Vogdris had won. He would go back to the red-dark, battle his king, and maybe he’d win. Maybe he’d die.

  As Maggie would die.

  It had all been for nothing. The years of battling the darkness, fighting the evil, protecting the humans. All she wanted was for Maggie to be safe. To be with her.

  Dazed, she wandered down a back alley between two rows of houses and stumbled into a pothole. She didn’t make a sound as she felt her ankle twist, but down she went. She stayed there, head hanging, her entire body racked with pain. When she’d stolen the souls it had done something bad to her mind. And when Rafael had wrenched them away from her, it had done something to her body. Then he’d ripped her power away from her, and all those things together had damaged her, maybe beyond help.

  She’d left home without a cell phone, a blade, or a gun. She was too battered and weak to walk another step. Perhaps if she just rested for a minute, she’d regain some strength. She toppled over and closed her eyes.

  Then her mind blanked and she fell into blessed, numb oblivion.

  27

  “Krista,” Rafael said, and there was something in his voice that made her heart hurt.

  “Yes?”

  He held out his hand. Just stood there with his hand out, nothing in his eyes, no smile, no words.

  She came to abruptly and sat up. She was still in the street, still empty inside, still half-dead, and Rafael wasn’t there. But the echoes of his voice hung in her mind.

  A scream drifted through the air, dim and distant, and it was that scream that punctured the bubble surrounding her. Suddenly every sound in the city seemed to crash in upon her—traffic and voices and buzzes and barking and roars—and she gasped and jumped to her feet, heart beating wildly.

  She lurched across the street, lost her balance and fell once again, but she was down for only a few seconds. Rafael might have taken her magic, but she wasn’t dead, and Maggie would need her.

  She couldn’t lie in the street while her mind wafted away. There was work to do. Vogdris could not have her daughter.

  If Maggie died, Krista would die with her as she attempted to free the girl. And with her determination finally larger than her terror, she limped toward home. She needed her slayers. They loved Maggie, too. They would absolutely do everything they could to free her. To free all the children.

  She stopped walking as her mind truly cleared, and she realized something. Vogdris had taken Maggie for a reason.

  He wanted Krista. He wanted her soul.

  She just had to figure out how to make that trade. She couldn’t just hand herself over—he’d keep them both.

  Feeling stronger, she cut across to Main Street, then jogged down the sidewalk toward a couple of women carrying shopping bags. “Excuse me. May I use your phone?”

  The woman on the left dug for her phone without taking her fascinated stare from Krista’s face. “Are you okay, Ms. Lennox?”

  “Just need to use your phone.” She lifted the back of her hand to rub an itch on her forehead, and it came away bloody. Come to think of it, her head hurt like a son of a bitch. “And some aspirin, if you’ve got it.”

  “I’ve got something better than aspirin,” the other woman said. “Should we call the police? You look like someone just beat the shit out of you.” She pulled a bottle from her bag and tapped a tablet into her palm. “This will make you feel better. Open.”

  Krista opened her mouth and the woman deposited a pill into her mouth as the other woman handed her a cell phone. She wiped her fingers on her pants, but still manage to smear blood all over the cell phone’s screen. “Ugh,” she said. “Sorry about that.”

  Asa answered, his voice so strong and strained and filled with worry that it took her a minute to find her words. “Hello,” he said again. Then, “Krista?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s me, Asa. I’ll be on the corner of Oak and Seventh. Can you come?”

  “Krista,” he murmured. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

  She handed the woman back her phone and hurried to the street corner, almost unable to wait for Asa to arrive. She stood like a stone, her hand on her chest, her stare constantly sweeping the street, waiting, waiting.

  And finally, he drove up to the sidewalk, slammed on the brakes, then jumped out of the car. Luke was with him, and they strode toward her, both with equally grim faces. She’d never been so glad to see anyone in her life.

  She wrapped one arm around Luke’s neck and one around Asa’s, sobbing quietly. She would get hold of herself, but she needed a minute. At last, she pulled away.

  “He’ll trade her for me,” she told them. “I just need to find him.”

  “Kris,” Luke started. “You need to—”

  “No,” she said. “No. I only need to do one thing. Find the soul-stealing motherfucker who took my daughter.”

  “What happened to you?” Asa asked.

  She self consciously smoothed her hair, as though that might help. “Is it obvious? Will Vogdris know?”

  Asa and Luke looked at each other. “Know what, Kris?” Luke’s voice was careful.

  She realized they couldn’t see her lack of power, though she felt the absence with every fiber of her being. “Rafael stripped my power,” she said, her voice heavy with tears. “He took my power.”

  Luke, who would truly understand the horror of that statement, took a step back, his face draining of color. “He wouldn’t dare steal a slayer’s power,” he said. “He wouldn’t dare.”

  “He’s an angel,” she said. “And he did dare.”

  Asa clenched his fists. “Why?”

  She dropped her gaze, unable to look at either one of them. “I went crazy. I walked into the Old River and I stole a dozen souls. When I came out, Rafael was waiting. And he was…he was so angry.”

  “Kris,” Luke murmured, horrified. “You did not.”

  She could only nod.

  “How?” Asa asked. “You’re not a demon. You’re not a soul-stealer. You can’t just walk into a place and start snatching souls.” He was nearly as angry as Rafael, but for different reasons. His rage was not with her.

  Luke frowned. “He’s right. How the fuck did you steal anyone’s soul?” He was relieved, because he thought she’d simply lost her mind. She hadn’t stolen souls, which would have been so much worse.

  But she had.

  “When Vogdris vomited power on me. I absorbed it. I took some of him. It was just…” She pounded on her chest. “In here. I knew I could.”

  “It’s impossible,” Luke said flatly.

  “It’s not.” She hesitated, then remembered something. “Rafael knew. He knew there was a chance I’d do something awful. He’d warned me not to give in to the darkness.” She lifted her gaze to them. “But I did give in, and he has punished me by taking my power.”

  It hadn’t really sunk in yet. Or maybe she was just so worried about Maggie that something as awful as losing her power could not compete.

  “Come on.” Asa took her arm gently. “Luke, you drive. I’ll get her patched up.”

  Luke nodded and took her other arm. “What does it feel like?”

  “There are no words,” she whispered. “The closest I can come is to tell you that I am vastly empty. I am less.”

  He shuddered. “God. I’m sorry, sweetheart. We’ll get it back. When I see that bastard, I’ll make sure you get it back.” His voice was grim and full of promise.

  But she’d seen Rafael as his angel.

  No one could make him do a damn thing.

  28

  Luke left her at her house under the care of Asa, and he and Talon went to look for Vogdris—and Rafael.

  Krista’s father was in the hospital and Beth was with him, though she’d assured Krista over the phone that he would be fine.

  Stella had gone home to see what she could do with her dozens of computers and cyberspace connections, vowing to figure out a way to get Maggie back.r />
  Beth rushed into the house not long after she’d spoken to Krista on the phone. John was stable, and she was terrified that Krista was not. “Something in your voice,” she murmured, holding Krista as tightly as she could. “It terrified me.” Then she occupied herself by taking care of her daughter, bursting into loud sobs every few minutes. “You need to eat,” she said, finally, and Krista didn’t argue.

  Krista ate everything Beth put in front of her. She had to rebuild her strength because she would absolutely go after Vogdris, and she would offer him her soul in exchange for the others.

  And she would have to fight.

  Fight without power.

  She couldn’t think much about it because it was too overwhelming. Too hopeless. She was likely going to be taken, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t fight for her freedom once Vogdris gulped her down.

  She would not give up. Not ever.

  “Asa,” she murmured. She held out her hand and he went at once to sit beside her, already resigned. He knew what she would do for her daughter.

  Beth had gone into the kitchen and left Asa and Krista alone in the living room, and though Asa knew what would happen, Krista’s mother had no idea.

  “Wait for Luke,” he murmured, leaning his forehead against hers. “If he can find Rafael—”

  “No. Rafael won’t allow Luke to find him, and he won’t return my power just because Luke threatens him. And every second that goes by is a second that Maggie is suffering. I can’t let that happen, Asa.”

  He closed his eyes. “I know.”

  She drew back and wiped her eyes. “But do not for one second believe that I won’t fight my way free once he’s taken me. I will come back to Maggie. I will come back to you.”

  “I wish he’d take me instead.”

  She took his face in her hands, then pressed her lips to his. “You’re one of the best things that ever happened to Maggie and me. I know you’ll take care of her.” She hesitated. “What did you do with Michael?”

  He studied her for a few seconds. “We nearly killed him.”