The Vessels

by Anna Elias

  Avani looked at him, direct, deliberate. “I needed to say goodbye.”

  “To him?” Doc flared, anger souring her expression.

  “To my horse.”

  Doc and Sam both laughed.

  “But Sonny showed up.”

  Doc’s smile faded.

  “And?” Sam prodded.

  AVANI

  Avani shifted, grateful for the brush of cold air across the back of her neck. Sonny’s hands had felt right in hers, good even, and his touch sparked possibilities she did not want to consider. Regret stabbed again at her inability to forgive him, especially with such a perfect opportunity. The Spirit warmed, and Avani knew the right time would come. “We shared closure.” She looked around, scanning the fire, woods, and shoreline. “Where’s Tal? And Link?”

  “They should return any moment,” Doc replied.

  “Aaron?” Sam asked.

  Blaze scanned his device. “GPS still has him near San Francisco, but ...” He looked up. “His dot is moving out over the Pacific. Maybe he’s in a boat?”

  Sam closed his eyes. Lines of worry pinched his brow.

  Dread shrouded Avani like a veil of ice. The grandmother’s Spirit grew warmer and more vibrant, as if everything were going to be fine.

  “Keep trying his cell,” Liam told Blaze. “The ship can’t wait for long once it arrives.”

  His words barely faded when another owl screeched, the ground shook in time with the drums, and Prism Lake stirred from below. Green luminescence glowed inside the black water, the surface roiled and frothed in the moonlight, and the forged ship began to rise from murky depths.

  Blaze ran toward Sam holding out his phone. “Sam. It’s him. It’s Aaron.”

  Sam grabbed the cell and shoved it to his ear. “Aaron? Where are you? Are you all right?”

  The Spirit amplified everything inside Avani, as if the phone were a bullhorn.

  She heard Aaron moan from the other end. “Go ... see ... family.”

  Sam’s panic hit her like an earthquake. “No. Aaron, wait. We can help. Where are you?”

  Chief Black closed his eyes and Avani saw the color-based spiritual connections he reopened to each Vessel. The familiar blue, red, and green lights shimmered bright and constant, just like the dots on Blaze’s device. She’d wondered why those particular colors had been chosen when the Spirit helped her understand their core element connections: blue meant water for Tal; red equaled fire for Link; green indicated earth for Avani. A cold darkness dimmed Aaron’s yellow, air-related light. It flickered like a broken bulb, then disappeared into darkness. Within seconds, the black void burst into a tunnel of light.

  Avani did not understand, but Chief Black did, and his face reflected sorrow. The grandmother’s Spirit, however, swelled with an intense sense of peace that told Avani everything was as it should be and Aaron had gone home.

  Chief Black returned to the group. He placed a hand on Sam’s shoulder and shook his head.

  “No,” Sam begged. “Please.” He turned away and yelled into the phone. “Aaron. Answer me. We can help you. Aaron!”

  Out on the lake, the ancient ship came to rest on the churning surface. The Anaho danced and chanted, shooting sparks high overhead. The ship’s metal plank extended, its hatch spun open and brilliant white light burst from inside. The faint smell of jasmine filled the air.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  AARON

  Aaron flew into starry darkness and away from the lights of San Francisco. Eric ripped and tore at his insides, but Aaron set his focus on the calm winds, the clear sky, and the silver moonlight sparkling across the water. The night was perfect for flying.

  He locked his mind on those times he’d flown from Seattle to Alaska, Vancouver, or Whidbey, Orcas and other islands in the nearby San Juan archipelago. Seattle’s skyline, with its tall unique Space Needle, would fade into the distance as he crossed the Cascade Mountains or traversed the waters of Puget Sound and the northern Pacific, often seeing the orca pods when they returned each summer.

  Aaron coughed up blood as Eric pounded his lungs. He spat out the rusty iron taste and trained his thoughts on Shellie.

  When she’d come home on leave this past Christmas, he’d flown them across the San Juan Islands and the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Canada’s Victoria Island. They’d stayed at the Empress Hotel, exploring various sites in town each morning while indulging in the Victorian tradition of high tea inside the hotel’s majestic lobby every afternoon.

  She’d worn his favorite, low-cut black dress to their one expensive, celebratory dinner, and her skin hinted of musk, clove, and crisp pears. That trip had marked one of their happiest and most romantic getaways and was most likely where they had conceived their daughter.

  Aaron spat out more blood and anger sparked again at Shellie’s loss, at the waste. Eric paused to encourage this, but Aaron flipped that pain to pleasure by setting his mind on places he’d flown with Shellie: along the rocky western U.S. coast from Bellingham to San Diego; across the vast and varied United States to New York, New Orleans, and Arizona’s Grand Canyon; over rich wilderness in Canada, and across the southern border to pristine beaches and ancient historical sites in Mexico, Belize, and Brazil.

  Eric pummeled each happy thought, but Aaron clung to them in spite of the agony. Having the skills to fly, combined with access to planes he shared with friends, and chances to pilot architectural charters paid for by wealthy, willing clients, had given him, and sometimes Shellie, nearly limitless travel opportunities around North and South America.

  A crushing blow deflated Aaron’s lungs. Blood ran sticky and warm from his nose and covered the front of his shirt.

  He gagged and wheezed, but leveled his gaze over the dark void. His parents had died on a flight to Europe, crashing one kilometer from their destined airport. He had been twenty-two, the only child of a close-knit, fun-loving family. Their loss had taken years to overcome. With no siblings, few cousins, and no close relatives, Aaron had learned to fly. He’d logged hundreds of hours in every small plane possible, pushing each to its extreme in hopes of suffering their same fate.

  Not only had he survived, but in one of those ironic life twists, the more hours he’d logged tempting death in the air, and the more experience he’d garnered chasing the Grim Reaper across the skies, the more he’d fallen in love with flying. What hadn’t killed him had made him better, and it became another bond he shared with Shellie.

  Aaron coughed up hunks of tissue, and his heart fluttered in Eric’s grip, fighting to beat despite the suffocating force. He smiled. This Rogue’s killing him made dying that much easier.

  Incensed, Eric snapped a thighbone in half. Aaron screamed as pain exploded from his leg.

  Shellie. Sweet Shellie. Beautiful Shellie. She hadn’t had the patience for lessons and had no interest in becoming a pilot, but she’d loved going up. Her laugh echoed in his ear again, a ring of joyful encouragement every time he’d banked, dipped, and dove. Especially when Joe had flown with them. Her older brother had hated heights, as well as the sensation of soaring without control, and Shellie had never tired of torturing him.

  Blackness started closing in and the plane sputtered on thinning fumes. Aaron slammed the wheel forward. He secured it in place with bungee cords and started to dive.

  Nooo! Eric screamed. He cracked Aaron’s collarbone and shoved a shard up through his skin.

  Aaron roared in pain and fixed his thoughts on home. Joe. Their latest job on Whidbey Island. He’d flown them over and back almost daily, saving time on the ferry and hours in the car. They’d discovered restaurants, shops, nature trails. Shellie would have loved it. Aaron had been planning their fifth wedding anniversary trip when the Casualty Notification Officer arrived to tell him Shellie had died.

  Eric shattered Aaron’s arm and pain burst like fireworks before his brain shut off the nerves and slipped him toward peaceful darkness.

  He smiled. Shellie waited for him, as did their child. He was
ready.

  He pressed the throttle to full power, using the last dregs of fuel and slammed the plane into the Pacific. The wings cracked off, the wheels ripped away, and the propeller spun wildly across the waves. The cockpit imploded, plunging Aaron’s remains and Eric’s trapped Spirit through the cold, dark depths, to a final resting place on the ocean floor.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  TAL

  The ship’s phosphorescence turned Prism Lake into an eerie green cloud. Moonlight painted the craft’s metal skin a shimmering white, and orange firelight licked at it from shore.

  Doc was still checking Link when the air glowed green and whipped like a tiny tornado. Tal arrived, knees bent and body crouched on the ground as if studying something in the soil. The air stilled, the green light vanished, and Tal waited for the cells in her organs, bones, and muscles to settle back into place.

  She stood. Doc scanned her vitals.

  Link put a hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”

  Emerald flecks sparkled in her brown eyes, and her tattoo shimmered indigo, green, and violet. Tal studied Link and Avani, breathing to ease her queasy stomach. “Don’t know about you, but that kind of travel gets tough after a while.”

  Doc pocketed her stethoscope. “It’s mystifying how you three test perfectly normal when you are anything but. As if nothing strange is hidden in there at all.”

  Tal spotted Sam on the shore. Blaze gently pried a cell phone from his hand. She sensed a heavy loss, but her Spirit pulsed in gentle waves, as if Sam’s suffering was unnecessary.

  Before Tal could ask, metal clanked on the ship, and Captain Hugh emerged. He walked across the foaming water to join them, his ebony locks playing in the wind and his Royal Navy coat billowing around his black leather boots.

  His eyes beamed like sapphires. “Welcome back. How was your first journey?”

  “Intense,” Link said. “And amazing.”

  “I never knew love like this,” Tal said. “Even as a mother. It’s so pure and unconditional, no matter what painful things anyone says or does.”

  “It’s like us at our best,” Avani added.

  “It is us as intended,” Captain Hugh clarified. “But difficult to achieve in human form, especially in one lifetime.”

  “We get more than one?” Blaze yelped with excitement. “This one has pretty much sucked until now.”

  The others smiled. Captain Hugh eyed Tal. “Are you ready?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want the feeling to end.”

  “Me either,” Link agreed. “Although I wouldn’t mind getting a guy next time.”

  Valerie twitched, making him squirm.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled. The others laughed.

  “Spirits choose,” Captain Hugh reminded. “That’s why it works.”

  “What about Aaron?” Sam walked over to join them.

  Tal tensed at the pain edging his voice. “What do you mean? What happened to Aaron?”

  Liam met Sam’s gaze and the air crackled like small bolts of lightning. “A Rogue Spirit found him, and sought his help, but Aaron had the choice. He could have said no.”

  Sam looked away.

  Tal cleared her throat. “Where is he?”

  “Aaron is in Elysium,” Captain Hugh answered.

  “Wait. What?” Link staggered. “You mean he’s ...”

  “Dead?” Tal spat the word. Darleen’s Spirit swelled with calm, easing Tal’s tight shoulders and igniting the green flecks in her eyes. Tal noticed the same thing happening with Link and Avani. Their irises shimmered and the tension softened in their faces.

  “He’s with his family,” Avani stated with her Spirit’s confidence.

  Tal felt the same from Darleen.

  Captain Hugh nodded.

  “It wasn’t ... He didn’t try to ...” Sam let the question go.

  Captain Hugh cupped Sam’s shoulder, his eyes level and kind. “If Aaron had taken on the Spirit for selfish reasons, or if he had crashed that plane for any purpose other than stopping the Rogue and saving others, he would not be with his family.”

  Sam nodded. Worry lines ebbed from his forehead.

  Tal wished she could share some of Darleen’s tranquility—give Sam a taste of the peace that passes human understanding.

  “Who was this Rogue?” Doc asked. “In life, I mean.”

  “Eric Bonner,” Captain Hugh said. “A serial killer whose Spirit returned twice before. Both times he failed, and both times his Vessels used the coin to summon Spirit Guard and extract him before he could hurt anyone. This third chance was his last. He was forced to choose Sanjay, the strongest Vessel among all the Programs, in hopes of completing his purpose.” Captain Hugh paused. “Sanjay put up a good fight, but Eric killed him and hijacked different bodies to escape.”

  “Bodies?” Tal frowned. “To do what?”

  “During his life, Eric killed eighteen women, using different names each time,” Liam replied. “This last woman, the one in San Francisco, is the only mother he became involved with, and she’s the one who took his life.”

  “So, he wanted revenge,” Blaze said.

  “Yes. Mary killed him by accident, trying to defend her infant daughter.”

  “Did he ... find them?” Avani asked.

  “Mary and Sophie both survived.” Liam looked at Sam. “Thanks to Aaron.”

  Sam removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

  Tal’s confusion swirled. “But how did the Spirit get in? Without the ceremony, I mean?”

  “Could it happen to us?” Link asked.

  “Rogues are rare,” Captain Hugh replied. “They begin like other Spirits, returning to find loved ones and right wrongs or seek forgiveness. But once inside, and connected again to human feelings and emotions, the hurt from their past reignites. Though we choose Vessels who have overcome their darkest moments, conquered their inner demons, and allowed their soul to fill that void, they are still human. As the Spirits enter, their former sins and frailties return. That darkness grows more intense the longer they stay.”

  “That’s why you limit the journeys,” Tal realized.

  He nodded.

  Sam put his glasses back on. “No child is born a killer. So, what happened to Eric?”

  “Abuse, neglect, one foster home after another,” Captain Hugh said. “He never considered himself good enough to fit in, and he blamed the world for it. When Eric was finally adopted, he resented the family’s older, natural child and became angry and bitter. When friends rejected him, he bullied them. When girls rejected him, he hurt them.”

  Tal’s gut coiled in spite of Darleen’s calm. She’d seen this time and again in the criminals she and Jake had arrested. Most came from a broken or abusive home, void of love, care, and basic human decency. The truth was, many of the people they’d taken in or been forced to take down would have made great Vessels given the chance. And even if they’d chosen not to participate, most would have jumped at the chance to have their childhood horrors erased.

  “He fell in love with his high school sweetheart, but she met someone else,” Captain Hugh told them. “He couldn’t get her back, so, he killed her. When the next girlfriend spurned him, he did the same. Then the next. No matter how fleeting the relationship, Eric would kill them in the end. Hiding their bodies and getting away with their murders became his greatest power, his highest achievement, the one thing he did better than anyone else.”

  “And you allowed him to return?” Doc cringed, repulsed.

  “The Program allows each Spirit three chances,” Chief Black said. “To make things right and earn Elysium where all suffering ends.”

  “Every soul is sacred,” Liam added. “And every sin is redeemable.”

  “I would expect that to be true if the Spirit meant it,” Doc countered. “Obviously, this one did not.”

  The air sizzled again with Liam’s invisible energy, refreshing and clean like spray from a waterfall.

  “Spirits always mean it when they firs
t come, even this one, even the third time,” Captain Hugh explained. “They return as pure as when they were born. But the flesh can change them, especially the weaker Spirits, like Eric. Sanjay had powerful control over his body, his emotions, his feelings. It’s why he was chosen. But Eric did not and being in flesh again brought back all that pain and anger.”

  “Did Sanjay die trying to reach Diego’s Program?” Sam asked.

  Liam nodded. “Once Blaze found his body, we uncovered Eric’s path. He used two non-Vessels to get here. We found what remained of the first, a Bolivian rescue worker, at the bottom of the ocean near Rio. The second man, a fishing guide from Brazil, would have died had Aaron not taken the Rogue from him.”

  Sam studied his hands. Doc put an arm around him.

  “That guide is okay?” Avani asked.

  A breeze shook the trees and danced inside the fire. Tal didn’t know if it was Avani’s background, upbringing, or the age of her old soul to begin with, but she was the one Vessel most at ease with this craziness.

  “He’ll be fine,” Liam replied, “but he won’t remember much of anything beyond booking charters in Rio.”

  Tal’s detective instincts kicked in. “So how come this Rogue took Aaron to other places? Why not just go to San Francisco, find the woman and get it over with?”

  “He tried with the fishing guide,” Captain Hugh said. “That’s where the Spirit Guard found him. They were bringing him here when he escaped. Eric had become immensely strong at that point, infused as he was from the two humans he’d hijacked. He transported here in the guide’s body, found Aaron, and used him to apologize to a few more families.”

  “Why bother?” Tal asked. A coyote howled in the distance.

  “In part to gain Aaron’s trust but mostly to avoid capture.”

  Sam rolled tension from his neck. “Where is Eric now?”

  “The Lot.” The sapphire glow dimmed in Captain Hugh’s eyes. “Where he’ll stay.”

  “Forever?” Sam asked.

  He nodded.