Soul Snatcher

by annie nadine

  “I did not know it was you. I just felt a hand grab me and it was frightening and confusing and I had no idea what was going to happen,” she rambled her words before they could spill into a teary mess.

  Seeing that she needed to be rescued, he leaned down and kissed her. Her words were cut off but she didn’t care. After he broke the kiss she looked up at him a little dazed.

  “Annie, please. Do not apologise for doing the only thing you could do to protect yourself,” he insisted.

  “Can you just know that I did not intend to hurt you?” She almost pleaded.

  He looked into her sorry eyes and felt guilty. He was the terror to so many lives and here he was holding the only thing that ever meant anything to him, while others would never have their loved ones again. His conviction to leave flared in his soul and he almost left, with no intention to return, but then if he left would it hurt her too much? He was stuck between what he wanted to do and what he thought he deserved. He deserved to leave and live forever with the pain of losing Annie but she did not deserve the pain it would cause her. How she cared for him astounded him but he knew it would hurt her if he left, even if it was for her own good.

  Maybe in time she would ask him to leave, maybe he should make her want him to leave? But after so many lives hurt he did not think he could hold the weight of another hurting soul on his shoulders, especially the heavy burden of pain from the one he loved. The selfishness of not wanting to carry more guilt was overridden with the unfailing desire to ensure Annie never had to live through any more hurt than she already had.

  “I know,” he acknowledged her apology, keeping his internal war easily masked by his love for her. She rested her head back on his chest and looked away again to allow him to continue his story.

  “So knowing what I knew and feeling what I felt, I went out and used my abilities against everyone. I was unstoppable and I knew I could do anything I wanted. For a time I simply tormented humans, slowly making them feel as if they were going insane. But the more I let my hatred fester, and the more I focused on the despicableness of man, I soon started taking the lives of others. When I looked at each soul I ignored any goodness there was and focused on their downfalls. Soon all I could see was the corrupt parts of them and it reminded me of Eli.” He paused for a time as he thought about what really drove his loathing. “I think what I truly hated was myself.” It was the first time he had ever confessed the thought to anyone and it made him feel exposed. “Eli had come to kill a monster before he knew I was one and I hated him for it…but I turned into what he expected. I found myself to be the most despicable of all but I could not die…when I saw another soul with any faults I killed them because I could not rid the world of me. Even when those faults were merely human nature, with nothing sinister behind them.” Annie remained quiet through his confession, she had wanted to know but it was surreal listening to his story. “My self-loathing was soon covered by focusing on the depraved qualities of others and I found it easy to judge them for things I was guilty of. But I did not kill to try and rid the world of evil, I killed because I hated…everyone and everything.”

  Annie flinched from his words and he felt it but he knew he had to be honest, however much his instinct urged him to deceive.

  “How many?” She asked trying to hide the fear in her voice. She didn’t think Baden would hurt her but then again she hadn’t really known him for long. He swallowed back the fear of telling her and forced himself to speak.

  “I stopped counting at eighty,” he said and the room was filled with a silence so deathly it felt as if the toll would increase right then. With heavy arms Annie pushed herself up on his chest and leaned on him. She looked right into his face and searched it for any sign of the creature he once was.

  “What time frame was this attained in?” She asked seemingly emotionlessly, she was shocked numb. If there was ever a time that Baden wanted to force someone to see his side it was right now but something inside of him would not allow him to.

  “Three years,” he said, his voice coming out as a whisper. He lay there under Annie’s glare feeling as if it would crush him into nothing.

  “How many more do you think there were?” She asked breathlessly, not realising that the horror was obvious in her voice. Her face had become pale and there was not a hint of expression there.

  “Maybe another fifty...possibly more.” The words came out hoarse.

  Somehow her face dropped even more and it looked as if she was about to pass out. For a moment she felt utterly gutted. Over a hundred people, he had killed more than a hundred people. She had been warned about what he was but it didn’t stop the shock. Try as he might, his eyes filled with tears as the fear of losing her, along with the disgust he saw on her face, covered him. He tried to blink them away but failed so he turned his head to hide his face.

  This was the moment she had to either choose Baden or walk away. She had to decide whether she could be with someone who had done the things he had done. Could she look at him every day knowing what he was?

  But she could see he wasn’t that anymore, he was different. Even if no one else could see the goodness in him, she could. He had made catastrophic mistakes and hurt many people, and she wasn’t excusing him for that, but who can tell the heart how to feel? Should she look at him for who he had been in the past or who he was now?

  And as crazy as it might seem, she knew that she wanted him. If she was going to be with him then there was no going back. She would support him and trust him and most of all, believe the best in him. She wanted to bring out who he truly was because she knew he was good. Why she had lost her heart so easily to him was beyond her but now that she had, she was willing to give everything she was to him.

  She touched his cheek gently and tried to softly turn his face back to her but he resisted. Instead she leaned against him and nestled her face into his. When he felt her skin against his he turned from the surprise of it and looked at her. She kept her hand against his cheek and watched him, their faces close enough to kiss. And to his surprise he saw love there.

  “Annie, please. Do not forgive me so easily,” he said trying to convince her that he was no good for her. He saw the unconditional love she had in her soul and it hurt him to see it. He had never seen a soul that could love beyond reason, as hers did, and when he had seen her for the first time it caused his hate to stumble and fall away. It exposed what he was to his own eyes.

  “Baden, you do not tell me what to do,” she said sternly. “You are not the same.”

  “I have gone too far to be forgiven,” he argued.

  “That is only your opinion,” she said fiercely. He stopped any rebuttal he had planned and just stared at her. “You are different and though the mistakes of the past cannot be changed, your choices now can change your future,” she said with obvious faith in him.

  Lifting his hand very slowly Baden placed it against hers on his cheek and took it in his grasp. He looked at it closely as if for inspection instead of looking at her. He couldn’t face her, he knew he didn’t deserve her love or forgiveness and he was avoiding having to accept it.

  “I love you,” she said.

  Baden darted his eyes towards her in spite of his efforts. He was sure of the words she had said but he was unsure of how she laid there looking at him with any measure of affection, let alone love.

  The tears that had been welling spilled onto his face and she used her hand in his to wipe them away as best she could. His tears ran onto both of their hands as the surprise induced silence drew out longer. After blinking away the tears, he gave up trying to understand her and how she was the way she was. Leaning down he kissed her, letting his gratefulness and care spill into her and before it was enough she pulled away and smiled. She wanted to see his face.

  “Why are you smiling?” He asked curiously, his tears starting to dry.

  “Because of you,” she answered. Somehow she had become the strong, sure one and he was left vulnerable and under her i
nfluence.

  “I am sorry,” he said and she knew he was talking about his past actions. She just nodded in understanding. “I love you,” he said and it brought another smile to her face but again she just nodded.

  “Tell me more,” she asked feeling like there was nothing else he could say that would turn her away. Before he could say anything she remembered what Micah had told her about Baden. Looking at their clasping hands she asked the only other question that might change everything. “Micah told me you have stolen a soul before.”

  The small amount of peace that had started to grow in his soul was soon snuffed out with the realisation that he was going to have to tell her about that. Something he had tried so hard to forget because even when he was at his worst he thought it was one of the most disgraceful things he had ever done. Somehow he knew this would be the thing that made the difference and he hated Micah with a passion. But most of all he hated himself.

  “I have stolen…one.” He paused then found no use in drawing it out. “She was seventeen and flighty. She was a little plain compared to most and she knew it so it was easy to make her fall in love with me and with the first kiss…it was over,” he said watching Annie’s face. “I have never done it before or after that.” She was still looking away from him but she knew he was watching her, reading her.

  He didn’t tell her how horrible it was to steal a soul. After you kill someone the sound of the soul rings out and then there is nothing. When you steal their soul, though the person’s body is left lifeless instantly, their soul lingers inside of you. It is a constant echo within you. It knows what you have done, that you have taken what was not yours and it tears away at your own soul. It fills you with an everlasting burden of remorse for what you have taken and it becomes a burden, heavier than guilt. Their soul is a constant torment that gnaws at you and reduces you to a hollow shell for as long as it remains within you.

  “Why did you do it? You do not need anything to live,” she asked as evenly as she could.

  “I wanted to see if I could,” he answered, disgusted with himself. “I tried to return it to her but it did nothing but leave me and she still died.” He told her, not because he wanted to sound more humane but because he had truly regretted it and had never confessed to anyone how it pained him. He didn’t know how anyone could stand the feeling of someone else’s soul burdening their own inside of them. Not even he could take it and he was deemed the worst of the worst.

  Annie remembered from the book she had read, that a snatcher had the choice to expel a soul from them once it was taken but it was not known if they could return it. I guess now they knew.

  “Have you ever…been…intimate with…anyone?” She let the sentence trail off. She supposed after everything it wasn’t the worst thing he could have done but she still wanted to know.

  “I could not look at any human without being filled with hate. They all reminded me of vermin and I did all I could to keep them away from me,” he said. She looked at him to see the honesty on his face. A simple no would have sufficed as the answer but despite the detail, she felt relieved. Silly really, considering the circumstance.

  When he was young, his mother had taught him to be careful who he chose as he had the responsibility as a tracker to find a suitable companion to have children with. When he was turned it didn’t matter anymore but choosing to abstain made him feel as if he wasn’t as bad as he could be, even though it seemed small in comparison to what he had done. He had been more preoccupied with revenge anyway, compared to anything else. Mankind was despicable to him and his hatred towards people filled any space for urges. After seeing their filthy soul the thought of touching one in such a way had made him sick to his stomach.

  Baden wanted to ask her if she had but he felt it would be an insult to ask someone as lovely as Annie.

  “Well…” she said sheepishly. “I have not,” she confessed as if she had been reading his thoughts. The tension between them changed from cautious to desire and it was hard to practice self-control but Annie wanted to know more. She needed to before she could give that to him. So before the situation got out of hand, like it had last night, she spoke. “Why did you come back here?”

  “I came here to confront Eli. I had been taunting him with correspondence for years and thought it was time to deal with the situation,” he said with a little angst in his voice.

  “What happened?” She tried to hide her worry of his reason for returning but he felt it.

  “When I first arrived I was walking into town through one of the back fields when I sensed something peculiar. I followed the scent because it was unlike anything else I had ever felt and I was not entirely sure what it was. It consumed all of my senses and I thought it would drive me insane if I did not find the source. It turned out to be your soul drifting along the wind to me, in all its loveliness. I found you speaking with Eli at the markets but you became a little distracting and I was soon side tracked from my intent.” A small smile came across his face at his understatement.

  For a moment she was left without words, she could barely even breathe! No one had ever described her in such a way and it made her heart do things it never had before. If she could have formed words she would have tried to express how she felt about him but she was momentarily mute. In the silence she remembered back to when he said he found her in the graveyard on his way to leave town.

  “Then you ran away from me?” She asked finally finding her words, trying to make sense of it. If it was her in his situation she would have run straight to someone who made her feel like that. He laughed a little at her understandable confusion.

  “When I saw you it felt like I was turned inside out,” he explained. “I had come to kill my brother but then I found you. As hard as I looked I could not see anything but beauty within you and I started to question what I had done to others. I could not take the confrontation within myself and so…yes, I ran away.” His face turned solemn unexpectedly. “I was quite a way out of town when I heard you in the cemetery. As soon as I realised there was a snatcher there I ran back as fast as I could.” The fear of the moment still plagued him as he thought back. His words made her think of the snatcher that tried to kill her.

  “What did you do to the snatcher that attacked me?” She asked finding it hard to remember anything about the night other than Baden.

  “I killed him, he was about to kill you,” he reasoned thinking this was obvious and justifiable.

  “So you stabbed him in the cemetery?” She clarified.

  “No, I killed him,” he said. She felt more confused than before. Reading the look on her face he answered her unspoken question. “I am assuming that Eli did not tell you that a tracker-turned-snatcher does not need any utensil to take the life of another snatcher...or anyone for that matter?”

  “No, he seems to have missed a few details in some of his stories,” she said a little disgruntled. What else had Eli been keeping from her? She thought of Micah who had revealed some of the details about Baden to her. “Tell me, how do you know Micah?” Baden’s face dropped at his name and he had to contain his anger.

  “I had spent some time with him for a small period but it ended on unpleasant terms,” Baden explained vaguely. He had never liked Micah in the slightest. Micah had always posed as if he was trying to help Baden but it was obvious he had some ulterior motive behind it, he just couldn’t figure out what it was.

  “He said he would see you during the night,” she prompted him to continue.

  “Yes, I refused to come back to town so he ventured to me. On our first encounter I had met him randomly but somehow I think he sought me out,” Baden mused aloud.

  Annie began to think of Baden’s life and it made her wonder more about the story of how he had been created. Before she could ask about it a look of frustration came over his face.

  “What is it?” She asked concerned.

  “Eli is coming,” he said with disdain. He saw the disappointment in Annie’s eyes and felt comf
orted that she felt the same. “I will return tonight,” he promised with a kiss to her forehead.

  “Where will you go?” She wondered as he stood to leave. Keeping hold of her hand he carefully pulled her off the bed with him.

  “Where I have been since knowing of you.” He walked her over to the window and pointed to the cluster of trees below her room.

  She smiled knowing that he would be so close. Suddenly she realised that he probably had heard everything that went on in the house, including her and Eli’s close friendship. She looked beside her to him and he gave a knowing smile, trying to hide his unease at Eli and Annie’s closeness. Before another word was said Eli knocked at the door.

  “Coming,” she called as she kept her eyes on Baden. He bent down and whispered in her ear.

  “Until next time.” He brushed his lips against hers then he was gone. She touched her lips softly where his had been and looked down to the trees to try and spot him. She had completely forgotten that Eli was waiting for her, so when he knocked again she jumped out of her revelry and ran to answer the door.