Blood King (Spirit Seeker Book 1)

by Amber K. Bryant

  Annoyed with her lack of focus, she made her mind reach further into the ether. She brought it back, then stretched it out again.

  She shouldn’t have let him interfere with her work in such a short amount of time. Perhaps she hadn’t even been trying to contact a spirit, an honest-to-goodness in-need money-making spirit, but instead had been lazy in her attempts, hoping that instead of them, she’d find Elis working his suave way into her mind.

  Just the suggestion that this was a possibility was enough to make her livid.

  She dipped into the ether a fourth time, a fifth, each attempt more impatient than the last. Finally, on her sixth trip, something caught.

  When she returned to herself, she did not return alone.

  Her prospective client had been trapped in the ether for over one hundred years. He’d been in his early thirties when he was turned. In his human life, he’d made his way in the world as a logger. Tall and brawny, his legs were as sturdy as the tree trunks he’d spent his days chopping down.

  “Your bloodthirster must be terrifying.” She could only imagine the horror a beast his size could inflict on the world.

  “I need you to find him.” Much to Sybille’s surprise, her big, strong bear of a spirit chose that moment to fall to the ground, weeping until his unkempt beard was drenched with tears. “I need you to stop him. I’ve been waiting for someone to stop him for so long.”

  She made the call to Devin, who was there within twenty minutes. The spirit hovered in the corner while Devin took down the details Sybille related to him. “His name’s Nathanial Atkins. About six-two–wait…he’s correcting me. Fine, fine, whatever… He’s six-three.” She smiled slyly. “You know how you men are, right? Totally pissed if we underestimate your size, even if it’s by just an inch.” She rolled her eyes and Devin chuckled. He might not be able to see spirits, but he was familiar with their peculiarities and a good sport about Sybille’s not-so-subtle, lighthearted jabs at the male species.

  “You’re going to love this, Devin. Guess where the spirit believes his bloodthirster lives?”

  Devin let out a long groan. “Don’t tell me it’s Low Hollow again. Is he sure? I mean, how reliable is this one? He seems kind of off…and by a lot more than one inch.”

  Sybille ignored the string of obscenities the spirit flung in Devin’s direction. “Don’t fool yourself, Devin. If he says his bloodthirster is in a forest northwest of here, then northwest it is. And that means the Low.”

  Devin nodded as he finished jotting down some notes. “All right. I’ll see what I can find out and then I’ll head up that way in the morning. God, I fucking hate Low Hollow, though. Why does it always have to be there?”

  “Not always. Seventy-three percent, last I checked my records.” Sybille sighed. “You know how it is. His kind are there and there are lots of trees. This one likes trees.”

  Devin stood to leave. “I’ll let you know when I’m close so you can plan the show. You inform the Patron yet?”

  She batted her lashes at him. “You’re always my first call, Devin.”

  “Don’t I wish that were the case.” He took a step towards her, then hesitated, fumbling with the zipper on his leather jacket like it was suddenly of vital importance that it receive his full attention. “You wanna… I don’t know, get drinks, maybe? After this one’s been dealt with?”

  She slapped his arm playfully. “You know I can’t drink.”

  “Right. Coffee then?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Sure.” Hopefully he wouldn’t read too much into her noncommittal response. It had been apparent from Devin’s first day on the job that he’d wanted to have more than just a professional relationship with her. She had to admit, he had a certain Wild West lawman swagger to him that she didn’t particularly dislike. Still, he was their field agent and a good one at that. Competent field agents willing to get their hands dirty weren’t exactly crawling out of the woodwork. Her family needed him to stick around, and Sybille wasn’t about to ruin the good thing they had going with him by complicating their relationship. Whether she liked to think of herself in that light or not, she was a bridge burner.

  “Okay, I’ve got a long night ahead of me.” He shifted back towards the door. Instead of following to see him out, Sybille plopped herself down on the couch and put her feet up. No point in her observing whatever look of longing he may be casting her way right now.

  “Night, Devin. Call me when you have something.”

  With a sigh, he opened the door and slid through it. “Yes, boss.”

  Chapter Six

  The TV showered Sybille’s living room in a sea of mindlessness. She kept it on, switching channels every few seconds, unable to find anything to her liking but unwilling to turn it off altogether. Without it, she’d be alone in her silent house with nothing to compete for her attention but her own brain ticking away a mile a minute. She didn’t want that. Not tonight. She held her thumb over the remote, a brief pause as she came to a channel airing a paranormal reality show. On it, two investigators explored an old hotel purportedly haunted by the ghost of a woman who’d been strangled by her jealous lover. One of the investigators held up an EMF meter, which he claimed was “spiking like crazy.” He turned to the side abruptly, then motioned to his partner.

  “Did you feel that, dude?”

  His partner backed away, breathing hard. “Oh my God, dude! It was like…like a cold hand scraping against my skin!”

  Sybille snorted at the screen. “You don’t know shit about ghosts, do you, dudes?”

  “What are we watching?”

  Her heart did a somersault. Next to her sat Elis, staring at the TV with his head cocked to the side.

  “Is this supposed to be real?”

  “’Supposed’ being the operative word.” She clicked off the television and turned to him. “I thought you weren’t coming this time.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Well, you’re late for one thing, and besides that, I already have a visitor tonight. I never get two spirits at the same time. Never.”

  “Two?”

  Sybille motioned towards the archway that led to her dining room. There the spirit of Nathanial Atkins sat hunched over the table tracing its lace covering as though he was a forensic scientist searching for clues in blood splatter.

  “Say hi, Nate.”

  Nate stirred, glanced over his shoulder at them and raised a hand in greeting before turning back to the tablecloth.

  “You’ll have to excuse him. He’s just a little unused to company after all that time he spent floating around in the ether. You know how it is.”

  “I do, unfortunately.” Elis got off the couch and circled towards the other spirit. “What’s he doing here? What does he want from you?”

  “Haven’t we gone over this before, Elis?” She followed him into the dining room. “I’ve got my field agent searching for his bloodthirster now. If we’re lucky, that bloodthirster will be found and destroyed and Nate here will be moving on in a day or two.”

  Nate smiled, head still lowered. “That would be nice. Thank you, Sybille.”

  Elis stiffened. “You know, hierophant, your callous attitude towards killing is incredibly disturbing and that’s coming from a heartless monster who drains people in order to feed.”

  Sybille crossed her arms, pressing the tips of her fingers into the flesh around her elbows. “I don’t kill anyone, Devin does. And besides that, he’s totally justified. We’re putting your kind down in order to save you from future bad karma.”

  “That’s a lot of guff you’re pedaling. I may not know much about karma, but I was raised in the church and I’m more than familiar with penance. I’m doing that bit right now all on my own, no need for your assistance, love.”

  Sybille leaned against the table. Nate glanced nervously back and forth between them like a little kid watching his parents fight. She gave him a reassuring smile and turned her attention back to Elis. “What would you call
what I do then?”

  “You’re more like a supernatural bounty hunter.”

  “How do you even know what a bounty hunter is? You’ve been out of the loop for hundreds of years.”

  “My bloodthirster hasn’t been. I told you, we’ve been reconnected. I’m him and he’s me, and I was bored enough in the 1990s to watch every episode of a show called ‘Renegades.’”

  “Not familiar with it, but I do like the sound of spiritual bounty hunter. Do go on.”

  Arms crossed to mimic Sybille’s, he stepped in front of her. “You don’t give a damn about the sake of the world—that’s not why you do what you do. Otherwise, you’d pursue us like proper hunters and attempt to eradicate us entirely. No. What you do is…you collect us like wanted criminals and then kill us for money. It doesn’t matter to you whether we’re saints on earth or unrepentant devils. You want to get paid and you justify what you do with the belief that your actions are honorable, maybe even righteous. You make the world a safer place, right? Hell, you’ve even convinced yourself that you’re on our side, sparing us bad karma, saving my kind from further damnation by showing us the sharp end of a pointy stick. As long as you get paid, that is. Otherwise, screw karma; you’re not doing shit.” He nodded like he’d just convinced himself of something. “You know, maybe I should call you a paranormal assassin rather than a bounty hunter.”

  “I know that’s supposed to be an insult, but actually, it sounds pretty awesome.”

  He held his hands up, giving Sybille one of his charming smiles to show that perhaps he wasn’t as put off by her profession as his tirade implied. “There was a time when I would have agreed whole-heartedly with everything that you do. I myself once worked with a man similar to you in order to find my bloodthirster. I believed in, as I called it back then, ‘bringing him to justice.’ Death was more than he deserved, in my mind. That was before.”

  “Before what?”

  Elis paused. Clearly, he was contemplating what he should or shouldn’t say to her. She tapped her fingers on the table as she waited for him to continue, then finally cleared her throat. “Well, Elis?”

  “It’s hard to explain. I’ve already told you what happened, just not how.”

  “Spit it out.”

  “Well, this man, Laurence…he could do what you do and then some.”

  “And then some?” Who the hell was this Laurence guy? Was he one of the Rometty cousins? There were too many to keep track of properly, and she’d never paid much attention to their names. Not that it mattered, but if he was more powerful than she was (doubtful, but still…), that was something to pay attention to.

  “He could call a spirit from the ether, which is the first thing he did for me. Then he had a helper locate my beast—that’s what he called the bloodthirster half of me. The bloodthirster was lured to Laurence and then I was brought back to him. Rejoined. Re-souled. Whatever you want to call it.”

  How many times would she have to shake her head at him? “That’s nonsense. You’ve got to be remembering wrong.”

  “I’m not!” He slammed his fists down on the table, which of course had no effect whatsoever. Ghostly hands slid through lace and wood. He sighed in frustration.

  After letting Elis collect himself for a moment, Sybille waved her fingers in front of his face to bring his attention back to her. “Do you know what a preta is, Elis?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Some sort of hipster pizza?”

  She laughed. “Seriously? I can’t get used to the fact that you know what a pizza is much less a hipster. Anyways, it’s a ghost, a ghost that walks the world desperately hungry; it’s never satiated no matter how much hipster pizza you feed it. It will keep taking more and more from you until it consumes you entirely.”

  “What are you saying? That I am one? It doesn’t sound anything like me.”

  “No, of course it doesn’t...not one little bit. Look, the point is, my family warned me you might be a preta. Please don’t prove them right. I hate it when that happens.”

  There it was again, that smile. But only half of one this time. “I want you to believe me, Sybille.”

  “Why? If what you’re saying is true, you don’t need me.”

  “If I don’t, why am I here? Why do I dream of you every night?” He stepped away and began pacing as he had in her bedroom the first evening he’d appeared to her. “I need you, I just haven’t figured out for what yet.”

  A chill ran down her spine. She couldn’t begin to say if his words thrilled or terrified her. Probably more than a little of both.

  “Look, Elis, what you’re talking about—being back together with your beast—it’s a lot to take in. You probably don’t want to hear this, but if you really are a bloodthirster with a restored spirit, you’re something the world has never seen before. Although there have been stories…”

  He perked up at this. “Stories?”

  “More like cautionary tales, like the grimmest of the Grimm’s’ fairytales.”

  “Are you saying I’m dangerous?”

  “Can you possibly claim you aren’t?”

  “I don’t think I’m so terrible. I was much worse before, trust me.”

  “Yeah, that last bit isn’t going to happen.” She thought back to when Elis had promised he would locate her while in his physical form. Evidently, this hadn’t happened yet, because he was confused or a liar…or possibly a confused liar. Or like he claimed, he legitimately couldn’t remember her during his waking hours.

  Perhaps it was time to find out the truth of this matter for herself.

  “Look, as much as I enjoy these nightly visitations, I think it’s time we meet. In person. I need to know what I’m dealing with here. So, tell me Elis, where can I find this beast with a soul of yours?”

  Locating her client’s hundred-year-old lumberjack bloodthirster was proving more difficult than Sybille had anticipated. Devin called her in the morning with the news that he’d spent most of the night combing the Hierophant Network’s deep web databases, turning up nothing but a few clues that failed to pan out. His plan now was to head up to the Low and meet with a contact, see if she knew something the hierophants didn’t. Convinced she wouldn’t be called upon to perform a spirit possession for the time being, Sybille spent the day at the county fair. That adventure consisted of her eating way too many foods-on-a-stick following a stint as a volunteer for a certain hypnotist’s stage show.

  The whole experience had been illuminating. First, she’d come to determine that deep-fried avocados were an affront to all that is good in the world. At least deep-fried butter was what you expected it to be—unpretentious in its sickening awesomeness. Avocados, on the other hand, were being reduced to an artery-clogging mess to tempt foodies ashamed about their GMO-laden hydrogenated food cravings. It was just wrong.

  And then there was Elis.

  Daytime bloodthirster hypnotist Elis may not have remembered her, but the Elis who invaded her neural pathways each night knew exactly what she’d done at that fair. He made it clear that he was none too happy about it as soon as he showed up that night.

  “You came to see me!”

  “Why the angry face? I came to see you. So what? You told me you’d be there.”

  “Yes, but you toyed with me!” He shook so much she feared he’d give her an aneurism.

  Her stomach growled as it protested the fact that it was being forced to digest her fair fare.

  Had she really done something that Elis could find that offensive? She leaned back in her uncle’s easy chair, finger tapping against her lips as she searched her memories of the day.

  No. This was a case of Elis’ overly sensitive ego running amuck. If he was going to pick a fight with her about this, it was an argument her other spirit houseguest didn’t need to witness. She pushed the foot rest down and extracted herself from the chair’s cushy warmth. “Nate, hang out down here for a bit okay? Watch your stories.”

  Nate’s eyes never left the television and the prim
etime soap opera that played upon it. He leaned forward, entranced by a blond actress with comically smeared mascara. His eyes grew wide as she confronted her emotionally unavailable husband about his affair with their nanny. “I can’t believe he would cheat on Stacey!”

  She left Nate to contemplate Stacey’s predicament, leading Elis up the stairs, down the hall, and into her room. Shutting the door, she turned to him. “I told you yesterday I was going to go find you and so I did.”

  “You found me, sure, but you didn’t tell me anything about who you are, or what your family does to my kind. You left me confused.”

  She clasped her hands together in glee. “Did I?”

  Elis curled his upper lip and glowered at her from where he hovered in the corner.

  “Look, Elis, I needed to see how much you knew. Which was nothing, by the way. Still, you did realize there was something different about me. So, props to you for that.”

  “Obviously. I grasped the fact that I couldn’t hypnotize you.”

  “Because I’m a moron, as you implied.”

  “You knew I knew you weren’t a moron. You understood you had me stumped. That shouldn’t happen. That never happens. How in the hell were you able to resist me?”

  “I need to start recording the things you say.”

  All joking aside, his question was understandable. Mind control wasn’t a skill the majority of bloodthirsters had at their disposal. It was an ability gained over hundreds of years. Elis had probably only been capable of it for a century or so and only adept at it for the last few decades. Once thirsters perfected this ability, it tended to be pretty effing absolute.

  “Speaking of your irresistibility, when exactly did you decide to scam people for a living?”

  “Scam them? I take offense to that. If you knew me better, you’d know how much I despise charlatans. They prey on people’s vulnerabilities.”

  Sybille couldn’t resist grinning. “You should have a conversation with my mother. The two of you could talk for hours about conmen and swindlers and never realize you were drowning in your own irony.”