“I’ll still be surprised. No one’s ever thrown a party for me before, so it’ll still be cool. Try to make sure she don’t go crazy with everything?” She didn’t need anything fancy, or elaborate. She didn’t need a party at all, but if Vinnie wanted it…
“I’ll do my best,” Andy assured her. “But you know Vinnie.”
“Yeah.” Casey managed a tiny smile. “She’s got a good heart.” Too good.
“That’s my sister.” Andy chuckled again and moved to the door. “She’s glad you decided to stay. We’re all glad. Despite the rocky start.”
Rocky start— the nice way of putting it. She wasn’t sure if she’d want to be friends with someone who pistol-whipped her on their first meeting, but Vinnie was a different sort. Casey shrugged. “Yeah, well, the town sorta grew on me. The people too. It’s strange but—” Something Andy said before came back to her. “I think I’m starting to fit in a bit with the normally strange crowd.”
Andy smiled at that. “Told you you’d get it sooner or later.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Casey bit the inside of her lip, then gestured with the journal. “Uh, thanks again. For everything.” Usually, those were hollow words—just something people said—but this time, she meant it. She really meant it.
“You’re welcome,” Andy said, on her way out the door. “Enjoy your painting. I still say you should go with blue.”
“Yeah.” Casey looked back at the half painted wall. It was a happy color, bright and warm. It fit the room. It fit her new life. “I dunno,” she said after a minute. “I think I like the yellow after all.”
Andy
It took some effort, but Andy found the demon when no one else could. She had her visions to thank for that. They’d been unusually clear lately, which helped… but also worried her. She tried not to think too much about it. She operated on instinct and intuition more often than not these days. When things calmed down, she’d look into it.
If things calmed down.
He had set up shop, ironically, above a shop. The old comic store had been closed for the last few weeks—an event Andy noted coincided with his arrival. She made a mental note to look up the shop’s owner soon. The sobering thought knotted her stomach. Instinct told her he was already dead, and most likely had been for some time. The sobering thought knotted her stomach.
The steps at the back of the comic store led to the second-floor apartment. The door only took a small push of power to slide the deadbolt out of place. Andy inched the door open and held her breath.
Light spilled across a tiled kitchen floor. The sound of a television sitcom played at a low volume from the other room. The laugh track followed as she took her first couple of steps inside the apartment.
The table and chairs were to one side of the room. Paper plates, take-out boxes, old food, and dishes piled high on every surface. Something smelled sour and fetid. Andy covered her nose. First thing first—that shit had to go.
She found the source of the smell quickly—old milk left to sit out on the cluttered counter. She sent it outside with a wave of her hand but the kitchen would need a good cleaning.
Andy followed the sound of recorded voices and laughter and found him.
The demon sat on the floor with his back pressed to the couch. There were books, comics, and magazines spread out on the coffee table in front of him. There were piles of reading material on the couch and stacked on the floor beside him. One large book balanced on his bent knees. Every second or half-second, the demon turned a page. His dark eyes darted back and forth to catch every line, every word. The glow from the television illuminated the fine features of his face. He still had a full beard, untrimmed, but he’d tied back his long hair.
He seemed harmless. Human.
The last Andy had seen of him, a month ago, he’d been blood-soaked and confused. He was not harmless and neither were the shadows, pooled black around him. He may have looked human, but he most certainly was not.
Still, she kept her distance. Lingering in the doorway, Andy observed as he went through page after page. A particularly raucous laugh brought his attention up and he stared at the screen. His eyes went back and forth, rapidly taking in the program. Other than the movement of his eyes, he remained motionless.
And then he laughed.
It was ill-timed, out of place, too loud. Odd. He no longer stared at the television nor his book, but at her. His eyes were brown, not black as he studied her. He appeared lucid and calm and that made her wary.
He pulled himself from the floor with slow, exaggerated movements. Never once did he look away from her. An odor trailed him as he neared—ozone and cold winter air. Sharp smells. Black pajama bottoms and a sleeveless shirt suited him far better than bloody rags. He’d dressed more for comfort than fashion.
Her heart pounded too fast and loud but she didn’t move, not even when he invaded her space and stood a half-foot from her. She didn’t flinch when he leaned in, only set her jaw and met his stare.
The demon searched her face before his gaze shifted and looked just to the right of her. His eyes focused, but they seemed far away. He didn’t look at her but through her.
“You’re watching my aura,” she whispered. Neoma did that sometimes.
He said nothing. His hand came up as if to touch her, touch her aura. He stopped short and his fingertips hovered near her cheek. “Your soul’s bruised. I can see it.” His voice turned softer than she expected, and with more than a touch of awe. His fingers curled slowly back to his palm.
Something pulled. Something tugged at her as if connected by a string. It was weird, uncomfortable. Andy jerked back from the invading sensation. “Stop that.”
His eyes cut back to her face.“Do you know how beautiful it is? Your soul. How beautiful you are?”
“I’ve been told.” Men and women often commented on her beauty, but no one had ever commented as such on her aura, her soul. Humans and most Others couldn’t see them. Andy edged back from him. He didn’t advance.
With a distance between them, Andy leaned against the door frame. In the depths of his eyes, she saw pain, just as she had the first time she found him. And she could feel that pain—a deep gaping wound that hollowed her chest and made a home there. She inhaled sharply. His stare held her. Was it some kind of hypnosis? Could he mesmerize people? She knew so little of him. Against all caution, he fascinated her.
“What made your soul so bruised, hmm? Or who? What or who—and how?”
“Stop that,” Andy warned again. She was aware of how close he was, how dark the room had grown. The shadows moved closer.
He dropped his hand and the feeling vanished. “Can’t, love. Can’t stop it. Comes to me as breathin’ does to you. Can’t live without it.” Again, his dark eyes shifted to her aura. They lingered briefly this time before he studied her face. They narrowed with sudden suspicion and scrutiny. “Why’re you here?”
“A vision,” she confessed, but it was so much more than that. Curiosity and excitement, as well as a sense of duty and responsibility. Her blood summoned him. She couldn’t stop thinking of him. It came as certainly as the gut feeling. She could not explain it, much less understand it.
A slow smile worked its way across his face. “Visions. And somethin’ else.”
Andy wasn’t at all surprised. If he could read auras of course he could see that something else drove her. There was no hiding the true self from an empath—or a demon.
“Yeah, and maybe something else—but don’t ask me what because I have no clue.”
His intense stare unnerved her. Not often did Andy feel so vulnerable or uncomfortable beneath a gaze. Not even the intensity of Mason’s stares bothered her this much. She tossed her hair back over her shoulder and feigned nonchalance. “How do you do that? See auras and souls? Don’t tell me it’s a demon thing because I know some demons and that doesn’t come standard.”
For a brief moment, the demon stared at her uncomprehendingly. Then he spoke. “Soultaker.”
Fuck.
They were the stuff of myth and legend, of history long past. Dynamic demons who took their power from the souls they consumed. It was said they were near-extinct, rare to encounter—if they existed at all. Most tales of them were make-believe, made-up boogie man stories to scare folks.
He still wore a grin, somewhat subdued, while he followed her aura. “Ah, so you have heard of me,” he murmured.
“Heard of your kind, yeah. You’re dangerous.”
“So are you, love.”
Another thrill of excitement ran through her. Gods. “You got me there, demon guy,” she managed to say.
“Demon guy. I like that.”
“Well, I have to call you something.”
He chuckled then stared at the ceiling. “Oh, I’ll come up with a name or somethin’. Eventually. A proper thing to call me.”
“You haven’t remembered your name?”
“Not as such.”
“Okay, let me get this right—” she said. “You’re a soultaker—currently unnamed. Immortal, I assume.”
“Yes.”
“From hell?”
At that, he smiled. “Close ‘nough.”
“The Hallowed Circle Coven summoned you. Why?” That must be why her vision called her here, to know the truth, to find some sense in why it all happened. “Why did they summon you?”
Why did it take my blood?
The demon sneered. “Should I bloody know? Don’t even know m’own name.”
Heat flared to her cheeks. “Did they summon you for shits and giggles? To sow chaos and disorder? To fuck everything up for us?”
The demon shook his head. “Dunno. Haven’t been summoned for a long time.” He clutched the side of his head. He pulled at his hair, grasped it so tightly she thought he might rip it from his scalp.
The change came so fast to his demeanor, she couldn’t comprehend it. When he stumbled back against the kitchen counter, Andy rushed to his side. “Hey, hey! Stop that.”
He slid to the floor and drew his knees to his chest. The floor around him turned black from the shadows’ presence. She became hyper-aware of them as she crouched next to the demon. She swallowed down her fear and ignored the pulsing of the shadows. They could lash out at her at any moment, but Andy took the risk.
Her fingers pressed to his cold wrist—the left one—but whatever mark she’d glimpsed there all those nights before had gone. No mysterious tattoo-looking thing, leaving Andy to think she imagined it. She thought to find some resistance, but he allowed her to remove his hand from his hair.
“I dunno,” he repeated. The distress in his voice hurt her. “They pulled me outta hell and I dunno why. Everyone’s gotta have a reason, yeah? Can’t somethin’ just… be?” He looked at her, large eyes rimmed with red. Tears shone but didn’t fall. “Let me be. M’not—m’not goin’ back there. Not ever.”
Her heart jumped into her throat. A trick, she thought. Deceit. Mason’s warnings came back to her. Intuition told her otherwise. This was genuine emotion. Something in the demon’s tortured gaze held her and she sighed.
Godsdamn it.
Before she could say anything, the soultaker let out a breath. He grabbed her wrist and held it tightly. The power beneath his skin spoke of a strength that could crush bones without thought. Terrifying and… exciting. She didn’t pull away.
“Don’t go,” he whispered. “Don’t go. And don’t make ‘em send me back.” He licked his lips. “Just—just stay.”
This was why the vision brought her here. This was why. She knew it. Her gut knew it.
She offered the soultaker a small smile. She slid her hand over his and held it. Andy had already made up her mind. The moment she stepped into the apartment, she’d already known what she’d do. There was no question.
“I’ll stay.”
The Soultaker
Much Later
The Witching Hour
The shop was a curious sort of place. Quiet. Dark. It smelled of ink and paper and new books. Superheroes had been painted upon the exposed brick wall with speech bubbles cleverly advertising merchandise. Everywhere he turned, popular culture stared at him. So fascinating and quaint.
He liked it. He could be quite comfortable here.
Andy had stayed hours longer than he’d anticipated before other obligations claimed her. She murmured apologies, assurances, tying her lovely red hair back from her face. Her aura flashed brightly in her sincerity. She meant it. Every word.
A witch apologizing to him. Imagine that! A New Age indeed.
She would be back, she’d said. Tonight or tomorrow. Until then, he’d occupy himself with his acclimation. And forget, for the moment, that he’d suffered anything at all.
He learned it had been roughly two hundred years since he left Earth. So much had changed in that time, so many advances in technology. The sleepy burg he terrorized gleefully in the 1800s had become a burgeoning community of witches, vampires, and demons. Others, they called them.
Who would’ve known the town would become so accepting of his kind when they’d fought tooth and nail to banish him? How disappointing that he’d missed the town’s most progressive developments. Of course, it never would’ve come to pass had he never been banished.
History had gotten skewed at some point down the line, but he’d been here when New Ashton was simply Ashtown and witches hid from persecution. There was no one else left alive who remembered such things—at least, no one he wanted to meet again. He’d missed so much, but he could not turn back the clock. He could only read and watch and see and learn all he could of the past two centuries.
And oh, the things he learned! The world had grown, connected by endless seas of information. He did his best to soak up every iota he could. Compared to the nothingness of his last two hundred years, he would be happy to drown in it.
The comic books rose ever higher in their pile on the floor beside him. The demon consumed one after the other, stacking the ones he’d finished in their untidy perch by the shop’s counter. Before long, he’d read all there was here, every book and tablet and story. He’d watch every television program, every movie, and he’d find more.
The 1980‘s—that seemed like such a fun era. Oh, and the latter fifty years of the 1800s. So many developments! And wars! So many wars since then, both big and small! The Second World War particularly interested him.
Invasion.
He felt it immediately. Something pressed into his space, breaking apart the air surrounding him and the shop. The Shadows sensed it too and They moved, languidly at first, then alert and aware.
“Nothin’ of concern, m’sure,” he murmured to Them. They were a protective lot, but he didn’t need protecting—not at this particular moment. Yet the Shadows were bound to him and he to Them. Their survival depended upon his own. Symbiotic.
He felt it again—a tingle. Magic of some sort. He tore his eyes away from the page, listening, sensing. Andy, he hoped, but no. The magic didn’t feel like hers, nor did the soul that created such magic.
The Shadows whispered. Soon.
Yes, it would be soon, wouldn’t it? Whoever they were, they were only testing the waters now, poking around with their dark magic. They wouldn’t catch him unawares. He was too old for that.
A silent arrival, this intrusion. There wasn’t even a pop or a tell-tale scent left behind. Oh, they were good at making themselves scarce, weren’t they? Covering their tracks so he’d be none the wiser.
Brilliant.
He turned the page of the comic, eyes cast down upon the colorful pages. To his right, the Shadows darkened. They were as still as statues, never drawing more attention than necessary. He moved, crossing his legs, appearing comfortable and unaware, while his honed senses sought out the intruder.
The aura resonated with strength. He’d say old, but there were few things so old as himself. Aged. Mature. Curiosity exuded from it, a
nd something else as well. Something stronger and ill-hidden.
Fear.
It lashed at him, waves of it, striking against his back and giving him a delightful little tingle. Despite his feigned nonchalance, a smile grew across his lips. Oh, scared little fools. This would be too easy.
He inclined his head only slightly and the Shadows understood. They always understood. They chose to obey this time, jumping to the command like perfect soldiers. They snapped out, whipping toward the figure at the center of the shop. They struck sharply, latching onto wrists, arms, ankles, waist. They coiled around the throat and mouth.
Fear spiked. The room pulsed with it. Only once it reached a delicious crescendo did he turn to finally view who so dared seek him out.
An elder, perhaps seventy years old, or older. With witches, it was hard to tell—longevity and all that. Dumpy and small, with gray hair that had once been some pale shade of brown, possibly blonde, she didn’t seem imposing at all. Her hazel eyes were wide in surprise and fear. She struggled against the bonds in which the Shadows had ensnared her. She couldn’t speak with Their darkness tight against her mouth and nose.
Oh, she probably couldn’t breathe either. Right. Mortals and their fragility.
Killing her would be delightful, yes, but then he’d never know why she came, why she intruded. Besides, he preferred basking in her fear rather than snuffing it out with blood spilled across the floor.
Answers and fear first. He’d kill her after.
“Release her,” he said, unfolding his crossed legs. He stood tall and watched. The Shadows hesitated a fraction of a moment before They complied. They slipped away as quickly as They’d attacked. They pooled at his feet once more and snaked up his leg.
“I believe they call it trespassin’, love. S’a crime, if I’m rememberin’ right. Few things have stayed the same over the centuries.” Of course, this property wasn’t his, strictly speaking. But trespassing on the trespasser? There was something to that too.
She stood her ground despite the fear, chin raised high. She tugged down her rumpled sweater with a sharp pull. “Keep your minions at bay, soultaker.”
Witch Way: The New Ashton Chronicles Page 19
