Blood King (Spirit Seeker Book 1)

by Amber K. Bryant

  Soon Sybille had achieved a trance state that would have made Elis jealous. In that state, hidden roads were unveiled. Paths that reached beyond Sybille’s consciousness, beyond the Now World, opened for her. The challenge wasn’t in finding a path; it was in choosing which one to walk down. The road to the disincarnate world where disembodied spirits dwelled was one she was familiar with. As odd as it may be, it was a path she herself had built.

  What she wanted to do now would take a great deal more deliberation. She let thoughts of the Low come and go. Thoughts of Nathanial Atkins, Crave as a user inhaled it, damaged minds and broken bodies. A land of rambling brooks and deep virgin forests. The Low with its relentless pulsations, constantly wearing away at the minds of its human inhabitants until they decided to take drugs before the craziness hit. Not that the drugs would stop the insanity; it would simply make them care less that it was happening.

  She let these thoughts flow, let everything Devin had told her surface. She clung, not to a rock or crystal for guidance, but to the picture of Raelyn Vargas that Devin kept in his wallet. In it, she appeared with a big toothy grin. Young, sweet, innocent. She was everything the Low had taken away from her.

  Eyes closed, Sybille held the photo in her cupped hands and she pushed herself along the path she hoped would lead where she needed to go. She pushed Raelyn forward with her, first a fifteen-year-old girl running away from her past, then a few steps down the road. Sixteen-year-old Raelyn taking refuge from that past by obliterating her present. She walked with her as her health deteriorated, as the addiction grew, and she remained by her side when the fragility of her human existence ended so that a new life with a new addiction could begin. Before she knew it, Sybille was there with Devin as he let her feed from him.

  The path Sybille walked was on fire, Raelyn’s spirit dancing in the flames. Sybille witnessed Raelyn’s death through a haze of thick smoke.

  And then?

  Resurrection.

  Perhaps it was her connection to Devin that opened the past up to her in such a clear way. It wasn’t normally like that, not at all. Things were usually more jumbled and a lot less detailed. Yet, ten years went by and Sybille was still on the same trajectory. Raelyn had faded—to where, Sybille couldn’t say. All she knew was that she hadn’t left the Now World the night Devin set her trailer on fire. She was still here, somewhere.

  Now it was Nathanial Atkins she saw. She traveled with him down a murky path. From what she could gather, he’d killed the thirster who’d run the Crave ring before him. His own rule was brutal, with more human deaths than had occurred in all the time the thirsters had dominated the Low.

  Her mind spun, Atkin’s obsessive desire for control and his rotting teeth making her want to break her trance long enough to puke. Never had her glimpses of the past been so focused, so coherent. This wasn’t the time to give up. She forced herself to stay on the path long enough until Devin appeared, bearing a heavy dose of guilt along with that Crave-Strike killer combo package of his and again, the death/not-death of a bloodthirster.

  That brought her to the present, the most malleable of time. It was being experienced now, now, now. It, in fact, had no time. If she was to see into the future, something that didn’t exist, it was the present that would have to be manipulated. The best she could hope for was to see the most likely possibility. It was inadequate, but it was better than nothing, which was pretty much what they were currently working with.

  She took the now and she folded it like a shirt. Sleeves smoothed and turned inward, everything bent in half and half again. A neat square of overlapping fabric.

  Sybille reached for the strongest overlap and, hoping that it would show her something, she folded herself into it.

  Nate was in his customary spot, hunched over the dining room table, when Elis returned from running his bazillion errands. While the spirit mumbled to himself about a beautiful white dress and how sorry he was for bringing someone he called Mary to “that bad place,” Devin lay on the couch in the living room, a red and orange granny square blanket spread over him. Neither spirit nor human were present enough to acknowledge Elis’ return. He climbed the stairs and ventured down the hallway, shopping bags in hand, surprising himself when he knew Sybille’s room was the third door on the right. It appeared he remembered more from his dreamtime spirit travels than he realized.

  He found her sitting up in bed, reading another one of those trashy historical romances she loved so much. He tossed several bags onto the bed in front of her. “It wasn’t easy, but I got you everything on your list.”

  Sybille dropped her book and with a gasp started rummaging through what he’d brought. “Even the chocolate bar? Where is it?”

  He reached into a red sack and handed it to her. “I had to go to half a dozen places to find this.”

  “They have them at Organic Market.”

  Elis went still. “Yeah, I discovered that. After searching for it at five other stores first. You know, you could have told me where I’d be able to find it before I left.”

  “Oh my god.” Ignoring him, she tore open the wrapper and bit into it. “Nommm. It’s so good, thank you.”

  “Don’t you have to save that for your, you know, your clairvoyance session?”

  She licked her lips and took another bite. “No, I just really like these. They’re my favorite.”

  Elis did his best to keep his jaw from dropping. An old cartoon came to his mind wherein a character was so angry, steam blew out of his ears. “Are you serious? You didn’t need this impossible-to-find organic vegan fair-trade Wildlife Federation certified free-ranged chili chocolate for your fortunetelling?”

  “I really don’t care for the term fortunetelling. There are a lot of negative stereotypes associated with that word.”

  “Such as doing psychic work in exchange for pay?”

  “Well…” She shifted under the covers. Even with a mound of pillows supporting her, Elis was betting her back was still sore.

  He sat on the edge of her bed. “You know, you and me, we’re not as different as you may think.”

  “Please. We’re completely different.”

  “Why? We both give people what they want. We both provide comfort for the bereaved. We both put on a show in exchange for money.”

  Sybille rolled her eyes. “Fine, Elis, we’re two peas in a pod.”

  He smiled. A moment of silence followed, a moment in which Elis became aware that they were alone together in her room, both sitting on her bed, Elis no longer just an ethereal presence.

  Ignoring where his thoughts were starting to linger, he dumped out the rest of the contents from their bags. “Let me know when you’re ready to get started. I’d love to understand how you utilize these items. Would you like me to lay them out in some sort of ritualistic pattern?”

  “The coffee can go in the right-hand cabinet above the dishwasher. Pile the candles and matches on the kitchen table. I’ll put them away later. Let’s see, that crystal can go in my mom’s study. She’ll be thrilled to have it—loves all that crystal magic lore. Oh, and the ‘fortunetelling—’” She gave the word air quotes with the hand that wasn’t still clenched around the remains of the chocolate bar. “I already did that.”

  “You what?”

  Wiggling her fingers, she made her voice quiver like the narrator of an old black and white horror flick. “I already glimpsed into the future.”

  Elis paused a moment, trying to make sure a logical sentence escaped his lips rather than a slew of semi-coherent obscenities. “What was the point in me getting this stuff? It took me all afternoon!”

  “The point was that it took you all afternoon. I needed peace and quiet.”

  “You could have just asked me to leave.”

  “And you would have left without a fight? Or would you have insisted you could stay without causing any problems?”

  She had him there. “But didn’t you need that crystal to open your third eye?”

  Sybille’s
cheeks dimpled as she grinned. “You’ve been talking to Larkin at The Psychic Palace, haven’t you? Isn’t she a sweetheart?”

  “Sybille!”

  “I already have a phenacite. I bought it from Larkin a while back because her landlord upped her lease. Even though our budget is tight, I can’t stand to see that place close. They have the best incense in Port Everan.” She flicked a bit of fuzz off her robe and took another bite of chocolate. “Anyways, I never use it. My mother carries at least three different kinds on her at all times but to me, crystals don’t do much. I like having them around because they’re pretty, but that’s about all they are. They’re just rocks. Pretty rocks.”

  “Do you know how much that pretty rock cost me?”

  “Think of it as good karma. Larkin is saving up to attend yoga teacher training in Bali next spring!”

  Elis sighed. “You really are unbelievable.”

  “Not the first time I’ve heard that.”

  “The word I used was ‘impossible,’ which you are too, by the way.”

  Sybille laughed and then a moment of silence filled the room again. Elis’ head spun. She had already had her vision, or whatever she wanted to call it. Was she going to tell him about it or keep it to herself?

  “So, about that fortunetelling of yours…did you see anything?”

  Sybille put down the now-empty candy bar wrapper, her face grown solemn. “I did. I saw our future, clear as day.”

  He waited for her to continue. “Well?”

  She leaned in towards him, eyes wide, voice hushed. She gripped his hand.

  “Elis, we’re all going to die.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  For many months, Juliana had thought about finding him. Maybe she would devise a way to punish him or at least ask him why he had run away. As she stewed in her discontent, she remembered fondly the time before he left. There had been something calming and beautiful about the purposefulness of Juliana’s existence during the years when she had been searching for Elis’ spirit. After so many decades of floating along directionless, having a mission provided her with a solace she hadn’t thought was possible in the Now World.

  Now she was floating again, floating and wondering what the point of it all was. Elis, both the beast and the soul, had rejected her offering. That left her in the same predicament she’d found herself in since she’d been killed by that priest as a young woman—she was trapped. Her existence was torturous in its tedium. There was no drive and almost no spark remaining, but still she existed. It was like being put in suspended animation without the advantage of unconsciousness.

  The only thing she could do to break out of her stasis was to find Elis, and yet she hesitated. She had wanted his bloodthirster dead so badly, but now that bloodthirster was more than just a monster. Was it wrong to kill him if his soul existed alongside his beast? The spirit had been an innocent, like her. She had felt a kinship with him. Juliana deliberated, changing her mind again and again. Two years went by and she was no closer to deciding what to do.

  Then the shift occurred.

  It came upon her without warning, a cruel certainty spreading through her ethereal body. Juliana was merely a disincarnate spirit, but if she’d occupied a physical form, her gut would have twisted, her heart would have ached.

  Something had changed. Something had broken. It wasn’t until she’d felt in her metaphorical bones a severing of her bond with Elis that she realized she’d still had a strong attachment to him. She experienced that bond’s absence like a death—not the kind of death she’d suffered as a young woman, but the kind that most people knew. Something final. A point of no return.

  Elis still walked the world. He drank his microwaved blood, he paced his floors. This she knew, but she also knew that the love he’d maintained for her, carried all these years since she’d plunged a stake into her own heart and even after she’d tried to kill him, was finally, irrevocably…gone.

  There must be a reason for this shift, but damned if she knew what it was.

  Juliana had her purpose then. She made her decision.

  Elis needed to be found. He was guilty of so many wrongs, she had a million reasons to justify what she wanted to do to him, both to the beast and the spirit who had chosen to align with evil. She would locate Elis and discover the reason why he had stopped loving her. When she found out what that reason was, she would make sure it was destroyed along with him.

  Humans possessed the ability to help Juliana. This was unfortunate—not that they could help her, but that they were human. The more years that separated Juliana from her humanity, the more she felt a gulf of indifference bordering on loathing for that species. They were weak, succumbing to diseases both of the body and the mind. In a certain regard, it could be said that all spirits were imprisoned as long as the hearts of their physical bodies remained beating. Every soul on earth was trapped, just like she was.

  These were her darkest thoughts, the thoughts that arose when Elis’ betrayal came to mind. What good were any of them, really? The Juliana of years past would never have thought in these terms. That Juliana, the one searching for Elis’ spirit, was a hopeful Juliana, a spirit who still believed everything could be set right. She had loved and admired people. They were still kin to her.

  Now, they were only a means to an end. Eventually, they wouldn’t even be that, but at present, she still needed them. Laurence wouldn’t help her anymore. His experience with Elis had left him frightened and useless. She’d pestered him endlessly, but it did no good. He couldn’t be swayed.

  “What happened is meant to be,” Laurence told her. He poured himself another shot of bourbon and downed it. “We must accept it. His end will come when the Universe wills it. I’ll have no part in it. Not anymore.”

  Juliana had rolled her eyes. Stupid man with his stupid Universe wills it crap. What about her will? What about what was fair, what was moral?

  If she’d been able to, she’d have upended a few tables, taken a knife from his kitchen and bled him until he agreed to help her. She could do none of this. All she could do was float around, screaming and moaning and gliding through him, something he particularly loathed.

  In the end, she’d left him to seek out someone with less understanding of the situation. Someone who she could tell her story to and who could receive that story without bias, someone who’d have no reason to think that she wasn’t anything but completely right.

  Finding that someone wasn’t easy. Juliana, despite her determination, was still a spirit, and an old spirit at that. Not to mention that she was a bit of an unusual case, what with her choosing to stick around in the Now World even after her bloodthirster had perished. All she was, really, was thought. Ceaseless consciousness. It would have driven lesser spirits to insanity, but Juliana was no lesser spirit. She was a spirit with renewed determination. She wouldn’t give up until this was over.

  Few humans possessed the ability to connect with spirits. Those that could often fled from their gift, terrified by it, drowning it in liquor and other mind-altering substances. The rest embraced it. These were the people she was looking for. They practiced their talent by reaching out into the ether, where the spirits who had not passed on dwelt, purposely putting themselves at risk to connect with the disincarnate.

  Juliana was even closer to these people than other spirits. She’d been called from the ether for over one hundred years now. She was able exist amongst humans. Only the thinnest of veils separated them from her, and anyone with a capacity to call spirits would be able to see her, no ritual or meditation or magic spells necessary.

  If there had been more of these spiritual savants, as she liked to think of them, it would have been quite easy to find someone to help her, but they were needles in a haystack. All she could do was float and float and float and hope to run into one of them, the way she had with Laurence.

  The playground was still crowded with children, despite the briskness of the November afternoon. It had been raining for days, bu
t now the storm had passed, making way for brilliant, frigid skies. Or so Juliana imagined them to be. The children were well bundled, except for a few who had escaped their homes in shorts and t-shirts, ill-prepared for the weather. It was amazing to her that so many of these creatures made it to adulthood.

  As Juliana passed by, she stopped to stare at the screaming, laughing throng. No playgrounds existed when she was a child, but still she remembered what it had been like to play. She’d found a stick once and used it to sketch patterns in the dirt until her father had caught her and beat her with it for neglecting her chores. The next day, she’d found another stick and drew with it again, only this time, she’d been careful to rub out the images with her feet before her parents noticed.

  Amongst the clueless, happy children at the playground was a girl of five or six in a fluffy pink coat and a knitted hat with bunny ears. The girl, chasing a friend in a game of tag, stopped abruptly, her dark eyes set upon Juliana.

  Juliana glanced behind her but there wasn’t so much as a squirrel that could have caught the girl’s attention. She hadn’t expected to find one so young, not that it was too surprising. Children could be just as perceptive as adults, if not more so.

  Juliana floated over to the girl, who stared at her, unflinching.

  “Well now, little girl, I bet you didn’t expect to see someone like me here.”

  The girl shook her head. She wasn’t scared, but she was cautious. Rightly so.

  “Do you know what I am?”

  This time the girl nodded. “You’re one of them.”

  “One of them?”

  “My mommy tells me not to play with you until I’m older.”

  “And do you always do what your mommy says?”

  She giggled, but then her face hardened. “Are you a bad one?”

  “Whatever could make you think that?” Juliana smiled, hoping that her tone and countenance came across as benign woodland fairy rather than demoness of the night. “In fact, I’m here because I’m hoping to find one of the bad ones. He’s dangerous, you see, and I want to take him away so that he won’t be able to hurt anyone. Would a bad spirit want to help get rid of the bad guys?”