Souls & Spectres: The Spectral Chronicles: Book 1

by Heather Wendlowsky

  My prayers are fruitless. Soleil’s eye’s snap open, and immediately her screams of pain fill the room. She can’t even speak. Aurora keeps working, more quickly and insistently now that Soleil’s awake. Aurora places her finger in a wrap that tracks her pulse and oxygen levels. She looks at the levels, and shoots me a worried look. I look down, and am terrified at what I see. How is she even alive? I don’t even realize I’m crying until I’m leaning over Soleil’s face.

  “I’m so, so sorry, angel,” my voice is thick from tears, “I should have protected you better. I won’t let this happen again. Please, my love, stay with me.” Her eyes dart back and forth as if searching for me. For the tiniest moment, she focuses on me, and I see a serene look pass over her face. Then, she’s unconscious again.

  “She’s got no pulse!” Aurora shouts, “Move over, Reese!” Wren pulls me out of the way, and Aurora immediately begins life-saving measures. I sink to my knees, shaking with sobs and fear while Aurora works. Wren goes down with me, keeping his arm around me in comfort. After an eternity, Aurora looks over at us. “She’s back,” she confirms breathlessly. I yell out a sob of relief, and Wren tightens his hold on me.

  The two of us sit like that for hours while Aurora cleans and mends all of Soleil’s wounds. By the time she’s done, the majority of Soleil’s wounds have closed, and others are almost healed, even her bad shoulder. Aurora packs up her things, and walks over to us looking exhausted. We shoot to our feet, and I look at her anxiously.

  “She’s through the worst of it now,” she confirms, “I’ll come check on her tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, Aurora,” I respond, “Anytime you need anything, consider it done.” She gives me a soft smile.

  “I’ll walk out with you,” Wren says to Aurora. He looks back at me. “You going to be okay, Reese?”

  “Thanks to you and your sister, I will be,” I promise. He smiles and gives me one more pat on the shoulder. The two siblings then turn and leave. I walk over to where Soleil is fast asleep on my bed. She has a new IV in her arm to give her some fluids and medications for infection and pain Aurora covered her in a blanket so I can’t see the majority of her wounds, but from the ones I can see, she looks better already. Aurora also cleaned her skin, so she’s no longer an unrecognizable red. Wow, I seriously owe Aurora big time for this one.

  Her hair is still a bloody, matted mess, so I decide to be at least slightly helpful. I go into my bathroom and find a comb and some hairspray. I quickly go back into the bedroom, afraid to leave her alone for even the smallest amount of time. She’s still asleep in the big bed. I walk around to the far side of the bed and climb in next to her. Ever so gently, I cup the back of her head and slowly lift it. I pull all her hair out from underneath her, and place her head back on the pillow. I pull the leather tie she had in her hair out, and splay her hair across the pillow. I start by spraying her hair with the cleaning spray. I let it sit, then follow it with a detangling spray. I spend the next hour slowly working my way through clumps of dried blood and gnarls of hair. Her hair is so long and thick that the bottles of hairspray are nearly empty by the time I’m done, but her hair is once again soft and shiny. Hair clean, I get a new hairtie and methodically twist her long hair into a simple bun atop her head to keep the stray tresses from getting into her wounds. Where her hair was laid out across the pillow is a new halo of red from blood that soaked into the pillowcase. I lay beside her and make a silent promise to the universe to keep her safe, just as I drift off to sleep.

  Chapter 23

  Soleil

  Sunlight illuminates my eyelids, slowly pulling me from sleep. I blink against the sun and look around. I’m in a huge bedroom. The far wall is lined with bookshelves and a tv. The door to one side of the wall opens into a room with chairs and a couch. On the other side of the shelves is a door that looks into a bathroom. I turn my head toward the offending light and see the entire far wall is made of glass. The view out the window overlooks a canyon of rainbow striations. Over the edge flows a waterfall, and I can see a city skyline on the horizon.

  My eyes continue to travel until they land on a sleeping form beside me. The man beside me is undoubtedly the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen: long lashes touch his defined cheekbones, and stubble lines his hard jaw. Then, I register his deep tan skin and white curly hair. Mont Tienent… Suddenly, my mind is bombarded with fragmented images of a Mont Tienent woman slicing me, and the people watching in gleeful silence in the background.

  My eyes widen, and I launch out of the bed and onto the floor with a scream. The Mont Tienent man’s eyes shoot open and lock on my face in alarm. “Soleil!” he exclaims as he jumps out of the bed, “It’s okay, you’re safe now!” He walks toward me, and I push myself back across the floor into a corner. My eyes frantically search the room for any means of escape or something I could use as a weapon. I look down and see an IV in my arm. I rip it out, and wield the needle as a makeshift knife. I pull the blanket up further over my naked body. Why am I naked? What did he do?

  The man has stopped by the end of the bed, and is looking at me as if I was a wild animal. A door bangs against the wall I’m pressed against, and the man looks up in relief as a Mont Tienent woman walks in. She’s not the same as the one from my memories. This woman is much younger, maybe in her late twenties, and her long platinum hair is in an intricate braid down her back. She wears doctor’s whites and holds a medic’s bag, so I imagine she is responsible for the needle in my hand.

  “Aurora, thank god,” the man sighs in relief, “She just woke up and started screaming. It’s as if she doesn’t know me.” Should I know him? The woman- Aurora, I guess?- looks over to wear I cower in the corner. She sets the bag down on the ground slowly, and takes a couple hesitant steps toward me. I press myself further into the wall and extend the needle out in front of me. She’s going to take me back to the other woman. I won’t let her.

  “Soleil, my name is Aurora,” she says softly, “I’m Wren’s sister. I treated your wounds last night when Reese and Wren brought you in. Do you remember that?” I consider her words carefully. The names she gives sound familiar, but there’s nothing beyond that. Keeping the needle extended in front of me, I look down at my skin. The blood and gashes I saw on myself in those broken memories are now thin lines, nearly gone from view. She just treated these last night? They look like they’ve been healing for years.

  She must be lying. I stare back up at her with a hardened look. She’s with the other woman. She wants me to trust her so she can lure me back to the chains and pain.

  “Aurora, what is happening?” the man demands. For the briefest moment, his distress makes my heart pang. I don’t want him to be sad. I shake my head to clear the thoughts. He wants to hurt me. He doesn’t deserve my sympathy.

  Aurora is still focused on me. “Soleil, do you know who that is?” She points to the man standing by the bed. I look at the man’s beautiful face, marred with a mix of hope and fear. Not daring to take my eyes off of him, I slowly shake my head “no.” The man lets out a choked gasp and he sits back on the bed he and I shared just minutes earlier. He radiates sorrow, and I’m again hit with a fleeting feeling of regret that I had upset him. Then it’s gone, and I’m back to the defense.

  “Why doesn’t my Soulmate remember me?” the man whispers to Aurora. She sighs and looks at me.

  “Reese, can you wait in the sitting room?” she requests. He immediately opens his mouth to protest, but she holds up a hand. “I need to examine her, and I think your presence is going to disrupt that.” She and him look at me in confirmation, and I give a slight nod. Anything to get him out. I could probably overpower Aurora, but this Reese person is clearly out of my league. He looks between Aurora and I for a moment, and then sighs in defeat. He walks across the bedroom, my needle pointed at him the entire time, and finally exits into the sitting room I noticed before. The door closes behind him, but doesn’t latch. Probably so he can hear if I try to escape.

  With him gone,
Aurora sits on the floor about ten feet from me. “Okay, Soleil,” she starts, “I know you’re scared, but I promise you, we will not allow any harm to fall to you. The people who hurt you are not here, and that man,” she points to the ajar door, “would die to keep them away from you.” I’m not sure if it’s the sincerity in her voice or the fact that she’s a doctor and can do no harm, but I tentatively nod and lower my needle. She breathes a small sigh of relief. “Can you tell me what you do remember, honey?” Aurora asks.

  I consider her question carefully, wanting to remember but not trying to trigger the violent memories that live in my head. “I am Private Soleil Fiore of Geochroma,” a voice croaks from my mouth. I clear my throat, and go on. “I was rescued from an illegal soul finding ring nearly two years ago.” A small piece of information flickers in my mind. “I was the only living victim to be saved.” I pause for a moment, testing the taste of the words. Deciding they are correct, I continue, “I stayed in a government safe house, where I met my best friend, Juniper.” I relax a bit when her name comes to mind. I’m flooded with happy memories of the redhead. It gives me the confidence to dig a little deeper. “We had been serving Geochroma for a few months when we moved the camp to the border between Geochroma and Mont Tien. We were trying to move farther away from a Thalassi company nearby.” Things are starting to get fuzzy, so I squint in concentration. “The first morning at our new encampment, there was a Resonation, so we got the rest of the day off. Juniper took a nap, so I went looking for a place to bathe. I found a pool, and while I was cleaning up, I stepped off an underwater ledge.” A throbbing starts in my head as I push deeper. “I was drowning… And then-” Images flash in quick succession through my brain of the man she called Reese, then the woman in the dark room and her pain. I grasp my head and gasp in pain.

  “Soleil?” Aurora says urgently from her spot across the room. I hold my hand up to keep her at bay while I recover.

  “It’s all just bits and pieces after that,” I gasp through the pounding in my head.

  “Okay, deep breaths,” Aurora coaxes, “You’re safe now. Nobody here is going to hurt you.” I follow her instructions, and the pain slowly fades. When I feel sufficiently recovered, I look up at her and nod. “I know this might be hard, but I need to check you over to make sure your wounds are healing properly.”

  She sits in silence as a million emotions shoot through me: fear, anger, suspicion, until I finally calm myself enough to nod. I slowly stand, and Aurora matches my movements. “Wherever you’re comfortable,” she ushers around the room. I contemplate for a moment, and decide to sit back on the bed. As I lower myself onto the comforter, I can see it is saturated with dried blood. I quickly look away, not trying to trigger any painful memories.

  Aurora spends the next half an hour gently assessing the skinny scars across my body, occasionally adding a spray of antiseptic and other things from her bag. Pleased with her work, she stands and turns to a door against the same wall as the bed that I hadn’t noticed earlier. She opens it and I hear some rummaging and banging. Eventually, she comes out holding some clean clothes. I let out a little huff of relief that I’d have something other than this stupid blanket to cover me. She places the clothes on a clean spot of the bed next to me.

  “Everything is healing wonderfully, even some of your older scars!” she informs me, “These should fit you well enough. I’m going to let you change and update Reese on your mending. When you’re done, just come get us and we will discuss our next steps, okay?”

  I nod mutely and she leaves me alone in the opulent bedroom. I quickly pull on the navy blue long sleeve shirt and soft light gray joggers. I don’t want to be caught naked if this turns out to have been a trap. The pants are undeniably big, but luckily they have a tie around the waist, so I pull it as tight as it will go and knot it in place. I gaze around the room, and my eyes land once again on the bathroom. I walk through the door into a bathroom bigger than my old company bunk, and pull the door closed behind me. The floor is made from a white marble, and the walls are a lovely blue. A large stained glass window of a beach stands overtop a huge jacuzzi tub. Across the room from that is a shower with so many showerheads at different levels and various buttons that I dare not even try to figure it out.

  I use the facilities and splash water on my face from the waterfall sink. I look up at my reflection in the mirror and inspect myself. Green eyes stare back at me. My hair looks surprisingly clean, and it’s in an unfamiliar styled bun on top of my head. In the overhead mirror lights, I can see the scars Aurora worked so hard to eradicate covering me. She said they would fade into nothing over the next day or two, and I’m immensely grateful that the reminders from the blocked memories will soon be erased.

  Feeling a bit calmer and refreshed, I take a deep breath and walk out of the bathroom. Heads immediately swivel to look at me. Without thinking, I slam the bathroom door shut and lock the door behind me. They’re back for me.

  Chapter 24

  Icarus

  I sit with my head in my hands in the sitting room Aurora banished me to while she tries to figure out what’s wrong with Soleil. Everything just plays on a loop in my mind. When she woke up screaming, I thought she was just having a nightmare. But when I saw her face, I knew something was wrong. I was lucky that Aurora picked that time to check in on us. Otherwise, I don’t know what I would have done.

  I left the door open the tiniest bit so I could hear what was going on. Not that I don’t trust Aurora to tell me the truth, but I just want to hear everything firsthand. I listen to Aurora guide her through what memories she still holds. She remembers everything… except me. My heart shatters. I feel like the air has been knocked out of me. I fall off my chair and sit on the floor, knees pulled to my chest. I stay there like that, even when I hear the main door open and two sets of footsteps walk in.

  “Reese!” I hear Wren’s startled voice close to my ear. A hand lands on my shoulder. “Reese, what’s wrong? Talk to us,” Wren insists. I can’t speak. I just shake my head, not able to so much as look at him. This is my fault. I never should have brought her here.

  “Wren, I thought you said Aurora fixed her!” Juniper’s voice yells, “What is going on? Where is Sol?” Thankfully, I’m not forced to answer her, as Aurora chooses that second to walk in from the bedroom, closing the door behind her. I’m on my feet in half a second, searching her face for answers.

  “Good, you’re all here, so I only have to say this once,” Aurora starts, “Soleil is experiencing symptoms of dissociative amnesia, a condition stemming from her brain trying to protect her from the trauma she’s experienced.”

  “I don’t understand!” Juniper exclaims, “Does she not even know who she is? Who I am?”

  Aurora shakes her head. “She knows everything about her life leading up to the past two weeks,” she confirms, “The last thing she seems to remember was drowning in a pool in a Mont Tien forest.”

  “So, she remembers everything up until she met Reese,” Juniper whispers and throws me an alarmed look.

  “Aurora,” I look her in the eyes, wanting the full truth, “Is this permanent?”

  “Difficult to say,” she sighs, “Most patients with this disorder are able to eventually regain their memories and make a full recovery, but there are some that never do. Right now, we need to make sure she feels safe and relaxed. Then maybe she can start to recover some memories. We will know more over the next few days.”

  I fall back in the chair I was sitting in earlier. “This is my fault,” I whisper, “I knew I shouldn’t have taken her here. But I was selfish and brought her straight to my parents.”

  Wren kneels in front of me and I look up from my hands. “Reese, listen to me very closely,” he states in the most serious tone I’ve ever heard from my friend, “This is not your fault. This is your mother and father’s fault.” I shake my head and start to look down, but he grabs the sides of my face and forces me to look back at him. “No. Don’t do that. What happened is
not your fault. We can’t change the past, but we can make a better future. We can keep this from happening again.”

  Aurora cracks the door to the bedroom open, and looks back at us. “I think she’s in the bathroom,” she murmurs, “We can go in and wait for her. I want to reintroduce her to Reese and Wren, and I think having Juniper there would be the best way to go about it.”

  Aurora walks in, followed by Juniper, then Wren, and finally, me. I’m still contemplating Wren’s words when I look down at the bed we were sharing just an hour ago. Her side is covered in blood, and the red halo is still present on the pillow. I rip the comforter off and toss it and the stained pillow out of sight into the closet. There’s no way I will allow this to happen again. To anyone.

  I look up at Wren with a new fury burning in my eyes. “We have to kill them.” The weight of those five words hangs in the air, and everyone stares at me in alarm. “You said we can keep this from happening again,” I take a step toward Wren, “That’s the only way. Not just to protect Soleil, but what do you think is going to happen to you or Aurora or Juniper at one misstep?” The more I say, the more confident I feel about the decision. “Soleil almost died, Wren. Actually, she did die. Her heart stopped. Aurora had to bring her back. It took less than five minutes of meeting my parents for them to take her.”

  I’m cut off by the door to the bathroom creaking open. Soleil stands in the doorway wearing one of my navy blue shirts and gray joggers tied tight at the waist. Her hair is still in the bun I put it in last night. Even though she’s healed drastically, the light glints off of the healing scars on her face and neck. Soleil looks around in alarm at the sudden onslaught of attention. She immediately slams the door shut. I hear the click of the lock moving into place. Juniper runs to the door and starts talking through the dark brown wood, trying to get through to Soleil.