by Gwynn White
Beware the Soul Stalkers! Her blood froze as the rhythmic tones came rushing back to mind. That’s not the firefighter’s voice. Panic erupted again inside her head. She scanned the van’s interior, her heart knocking against her ribs. Someone had lifted her before the firefighters arrived. Someone who knew she was in danger. But in danger from what exactly? Soul Stalkers weren’t real, were they? The shadows on the freeway and in the fire! Heart pounding, she drove her fingernails deep into her palms. Were those shifting masses of darkness the Soul Stalkers?
The burning pang in her palms hit hard and she gasped. Turning over her hands, she stared incredulously at the purplish half-moons indented like craters and gulped back a sob.
“Are you okay, ma’am? Take a deep breath for me,” instructed the paramedic. “I’m gonna need for you not to buck the tubing.”
She gripped the medic’s sleeve. “I can feel—everything.”
The medic widened his eyes and nodded, already busy with his dispatch. “…twenty-nine-year-old female accident victim, spine precautions, CO2 of thirty-four percent …”
She opened and closed her fists repeatedly, her mind racing, giddy with relief. The shock must have temporarily paralyzed her. She flexed her toes and stared up at the yellow grip bar that ran the length of the van. A huge burden lifted from her shoulders. Her injuries were nowhere near as life-threatening as she had thought. She still couldn’t remember her name, but concussion was nothing compared to the threat of quadriplegia. She exhaled a long, shallow breath. She wanted to believe everything was going to be all right now, but she couldn’t shake a lingering sense of foreboding. Someone, or something, forced her off the road. And that truck was part of it. Whatever deadly game had begun today, she wanted out.
The ambulance doors swung wide, daylight jerking her out of a shallow sleep. She snapped her eyes open, her disordered thoughts scrambling to find some sequence in the confusion. Her clothes clung to her, wet from the sweaty terror of her ordeal. As the medics wheeled her through the emergency room doors and into a triage station, she flexed her fingers and pressed her nails into her palms again, reassured by the familiar stinging sensation. I’m still okay!
“I’m Dr. Harrigan and I’ll be taking care of you,” said a thin, balding man. He gave a few directions to the trauma team and leaned over her gurney. “Can you tell me your name?”
Her stomach muscles tensed. She studied the embroidered title on the doctor’s coat. Unease descended again like a cold bank of fog as she tried in vain to remember her name. The answer was locked inside but she couldn’t access it. If only she could give in to the panic, arch her back and scream until the dust settled in her brain. Maybe then she could think straight and figure out the answer to this question.
She tried to shake her head, but her neck brace didn’t budge. “I don’t remember.” She watched the doctor’s reaction, swallowing back the trepidation surfing up her throat. “Is it temporary—the amnesia?”
“It’s normal under these circumstances,” he said, scribbling something on her chart. The nurse at his side smiled benignly, looking through her as though she wasn’t a real person. She squeezed her eyes shut and cursed the trucker. What is my name? The last time she’d felt this frustrated and at a loss for answers, she was eight years old, watching her mother roll down the driveway with her matching suitcases bungeed to the cargo rack of the family car.
“You’ve been through an extremely traumatic event,” said the doctor, looking up from her chart. “So you can expect to experience some confusion, anxiety, fear even, over the next forty-eight hours while your brain comes to terms with the trauma.”
“I think my brain’s still jiggling,” she replied, attempting a weak smile. “I’m encountering all of the above.” The worst part was the crushing fear that someone had tried to kill her. If only she could believe the shadows were harmless specters of her imagination, and not Soul Stalkers. If the stranger’s warning had any merit, she should be very afraid. There was a warrant out for her life, and it hadn’t been issued by a flesh and blood municipality.
The doctor drew his brows together. “Your vitals check out great. You probably just have a mild concussion, but we’ll run some more tests to be safe.” He exited the room, and an ER nurse pushed a saline drip trolley alongside her bed. “Your father’s outside. I’ll let him in when I’m done here.”
Moments later, a familiar six-foot-two frame hunkered over her bed. “Kyra!” He leaned down, his face lanced with concern, and kissed her forehead. “Honey, are you all right?”
Kyra! Of course! Kyra Williams. How could she have forgotten? It was so obvious, so comforting. She let out a low, relieved breath and smiled up at her dad. “I’m fine.” She gave the neck brace a tug. “No injuries. It’s just a precaution.”
“What happened?”
She looked away, feigning a moment of reflection. There was no easy way to explain what had gone down without sounding crazy. And how much of it had really happened? Had she been paralyzed and then inexplicably healed?
“I guess I lost control. I … don’t know.” She slid him a sheepish glance. “Honestly, it was all over in seconds.” Her heart thumped. She wasn’t being entirely honest. But then, the truth wasn’t black and white to begin with, more like scrambled gray.
“You’re safe, sweetheart. That’s all that matters. Good thing no one else was involved.”
Kyra flashed him an empty smile. But someone else was involved. Someone had run her off the freeway and almost killed her.
“Do you want me to call Brian?”
“No, he’s in Europe on business. How did you know I was here?”
“The hospital got my number from your phone.”
“They found my purse?”
“Must have,” he said, with a shrug. “I’ll go find out.”
He returned a few minutes later clutching her purse under his arm. “It’s not pretty,” he said, holding it out to her.
Kyra caught her breath as she reached for her Louis Vuitton handbag. The once-flawless Italian leather was a leprous membrane of nicks. Below the brass clasp gaped a four-inch gash. “Investment piece,” the sales consultant called it when she rang up the staggering total. Kyra let out a disgusted snort. “It’s ruined, just like my SUV.” She ran her fingers over the disfigured leather. “At least the car’s insured.”
“It’s just a purse, honey.”
The loss ate at her more than she cared to let on. The soft, expensive leather had eased an ache inside her, that insatiable hankering to be somebody. Her mother hadn’t thought she was worth hanging around for, but other people would. She’d worked hard to make sure of it. “You’re either first class, or you’re not,” her boyfriend, Brian liked to point out. The Louis Vuitton had been a pledge of faith in her lucrative future, as Buffington’s first female Vice President of Marketing. And that would just be the start.
Kyra slipped her finger through the gash in the leather and a fist of anger gripped her insides. Homeless women schlepped around better-looking castoffs. That scumbag trucker deserved to rot. He had ruined everything. She’d missed her chance to close the most important deal of her life this morning. Besides the bonus she’d been counting on netting from the deal, her promotion was at stake. Gripping her purse, she flinched as a dark, intrusive energy coiled around her thoughts. He does deserve to rot, doesn’t he? Her heartbeat clattered like footsteps racing down a wooden staircase as the thought twisted inside her. She stared down at the scripted logo gleaming from the clasp of her Louis Vuitton, and froze. No! Shrieking with fear, she flung the purse to the ground, sending the contents slithering over the floor in all directions. The intertwined “L” and “V” on the clasp of the bag had transposed itself into the glinting, calligraphic letters “SS.”
Kyra’s dad stared at her, whey-faced, as if some unfamiliar creature had slipped into her skin and hurled her purse in a random act of insanity.
“Honey, what’s wrong?” His voice was barely audible over t
he loud beeping of the monitors.
Her heart had bolted like a greyhound out of the starting gate when she’d seen the serpentine letters gleaming up at her from the clasp. She inhaled slowly and exhaled. Had her eyes tricked her? After all, she was beyond exhausted, still reeling from shock.
A nurse hurried around the curtain and checked the hookups. “Okay, calm down and breathe for me. Atta girl.” She rubbed Kyra’s arm as she adjusted a drip line. “Doing any better?”
Kyra cleared her throat and took a deep breath. “Yeah. I ... had a flashback. It spooked me.” She gestured to the bag on the floor, flexing her fingers to mask the tremor in her hand. “Dad, can I see that again, please.”
“Honey, it’s just a ruined purse,” he said, reaching for it. “Maybe the leather shop can repair it.”
Kyra shook her head. “That’s not it. I keep getting these strange—thoughts.”
“It’s the concussion, like the doctor said.” Her father handed the bag over to her before kneeling down to gather up the contents scattered across the floor. “Try and relax. The car, the purse—it’s just stuff. None of it matters.”
She ran her index finger slowly over the intricate “L” superimposed on a “V.” It wasn’t just the concussion—she was losing it. This viral fear of the Soul Stalkers was feeding on her mind like a flesh-eating piranha. And fear made you imagine things.
What she needed was time alone to clear her head and think everything through. The quicker she got out of here, the better.
The trill of her dad’s phone jarred her back to the moment.
“Yeah, no injuries, Jim. But she’s—” Her dad shot a quick glance in her direction.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Williams,” interrupted the nurse. “You’ll have to wait outside until we’re done with the remaining tests.” She escorted him out, briefing him on hospital cell phone policy as they marched away.
Kyra studied the perfect squares of the ceiling tiles. She’d rewound every scene a dozen times, but she kept going back to the mystifying stranger who had carried her far away from the burning wreckage until the firefighters arrived. Snatched her from the Soul Stalkers. Had she encountered an angel? After all, the stranger had tampered with the material world, right before her eyes. But angels flying in and rescuing people wasn’t the kind of stuff that happened in real life. At least not the perfectly calibrated life she led that ordinarily excluded stalking spirits from the unseen world.
If she had been rescued by an angel, it stood to reason the Soul Stalkers he’d warned her about were out there too. Good always had an evil counterpart. But why were they trying to kill her? Were they connected to the accident? Someone had tried to run her off the road this morning, but was there more to it than that? Kyra squeezed her eyes shut and rolled her head from side to side to release her neck from the iron grip of her shoulders. If there was a supernatural element to the accident, prosecuting the guilty party was going to prove a whole lot more difficult than nailing a trucker who’d fallen asleep at the wheel.
Her head pounded. The missing truck bothered her. She still couldn’t shake the feeling she was overlooking something important about the truck. But what? If only she could stick with a coherent thought long enough, she might be able to put together the pieces of the puzzle. Better yet, maybe she would wake up from this whole nightmare and find herself back on the I-95, en route to work to close the deal that would guarantee her Don’s job.
“Your scans all checked out fine,” said Dr. Harrigan, as he strode back into the room, clutching a file. “We’ll keep you here tonight for observation as a precaution.” He hesitated, fingering his chin. “How’s the memory? Does Kyra Williams ring a bell?”
She nodded. “Yes, I recognized my name right away when my father said it.”
“Excellent.” He pointed to the chair in the corner of the room where the Louis Vuitton lay slumped. “Is that your purse?”
Kyra gave a halfhearted nod.
“Why don’t you take a few minutes and go through your things. Looking at items you’re familiar with can be helpful after a concussion.”
The nurse set the purse down on the bed and pressed the remote, raising her into a sitting position. Struggling to curb her trepidation, Kyra lifted the bag and undid the clasp. It looked normal enough, apart from the grime. She dug around for her wallet, flipped it open, and studied the familiar face on her driver’s license.
“Cute picture,” grinned the nurse.
“Guess I’m lucky it’s not all that’s left of me.”
“I’ll say. Somebody wanted you alive!”
Or, somebody wanted me dead.
Kyra slept in spurts, disrupted by the rubber-soled night patrols and the incessant slideshow in her head. When she did fall asleep, her dreams played out in jumbled clips of lights and sounds, darkness and silence. Locking her seatbelt in place, turning the key in the ignition. And then—the seemingly innocuous detail that had eluded her all along, the peculiarity that she hadn’t been able to put her finger on, the one thing about the truck that was simply wrong.
There was no one behind the wheel!
She woke in a sweat, sure she was choking on the chalky fumes again. The IV in her arm pinched her skin, and she groaned, sick of the terror that attached itself like a leech every time she tumbled into sleep. A phantom truck! She squinted and rolled over, shielding her face from the intense light. Did they have to keep the place lit up like a Christmas tree all night long? She turned her head and the muscles in her eyelids twitched. An unfamiliar red-haired nurse stood by her bed.
“I’m Barbara,” said the nurse, patting her arm. “Are you all right? You were muttering away like an auctioneer.”
Kyra peered groggily at the nurse through half-opened lids. She didn’t remember seeing her before. She must be part of the night shift.
“Awake to unseen things.” Barbara smiled. “You keep repeating it.”
Kyra shook her head. Was this a joke? Her nerves were already frayed and now Nurse Nutso had woken her up to heckle her some more.
“You said something else.” Barbara leaned a hip against the side of Kyra’s bed. “He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.” She straightened up and smoothed out the sheets, tucking them in tighter. “Sort of like what happened to you.”
Kyra’s heart convulsed in her chest. “What are you talking about?”
Barbara paused at the door. “They didn’t take you, did they? We intervened. It’s not your time.”
Kyra twisted around in the bed, trying to free her limbs from the cotton cocoon. “Who’s they? And who are you?”
A shadow crossed the wall but there was no response. Barbara had disappeared.
The End
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Chasing the Star Garden
Melanie Karsak
Chasing the Star Garden @ 2013 Melanie Karsak
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All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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This is a work of fiction. References to historical people, organizations, events, places, and establishments are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is inve
stigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Chasing the Star Garden
An opium-addicted beauty. An exiled poet. An ancient treasure about to fall into the wrong hands.
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Top 10 Finisher: Best Steampunk Novel of 2013, Preditors & Editors Reader's Poll
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Chasing the Star Garden is a B.R.A.G. Medallion® recipient for excellence in writing.
London, 1823.It has been one of the worst days in Lily Stargazer's life. She lost the London leg of the World Airship Grand Prix. A harlequin shoved a kaleidoscope down her pants, told her to fly to Venice, then threw himself from her airship tower. And her lover, Lord Byron, is living in exile abroad. What's a girl to do? For Lily, the answer is easy: drink absinthe and smoke opium.
Lily's efforts to drown her problems fail miserably, and she soon finds herself at the heart of an ancient mystery which has her running from her past and chasing true love along the way.
Chapter One
I was going to lose—again. I gripped the brass handles on the wheel and turned the airship sharply port. The tiller vibrated in protest making the wheel shake and my wrist bones ache. Bracing my knees against the spokes, I tore off my brown leather gloves to get a better feel. The metal handgrips were smooth and cold. My fingers tingled from the chill.
“Easy,” I whispered to the Stargazer. I looked up from my position at the wheelstand, past the ropes, burner basket, and balloon, toward the clouds. They were drifting slowly left in a periwinkle blue sky. There’d be an updraft as we passed over the green-brown waters of the canal near Buckingham House. I locked the wheel and jumped from the wheelstand onto the deck of the gondola and looked over the rail. The canal waters were a hundred feet away. I ran back to the wheel and steadied the ship. If I caught the updraft, it would propel me up and forward and give me an edge.
