by Lizzy Ford
See No
Hidden Evil #2
Lizzy Ford
Cover design by Lizzy Ford
www.LizzyFord.com
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See No copyright ©2017 by Lizzy Ford
www.LizzyFord.com
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Smashwords Edition
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Published by Kettlecorn Press
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Cover design copyright © 2017 by Lizzy Ford
www.LizzyFord.com
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Photography copyright © 2013 by @iconogenic via Fotolia
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All rights reserved.
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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
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This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events; to real people, living or dead; or to real locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Also By Lizzy Ford
About the Author
One
One month later
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Shanti George sat on the beach, listening to the waves race towards her before they retreated toward the ocean. The cold Atlantic nibbled at her toes. She smiled, unable to imagine what the color of the ocean would be, or how large it was. These things could never prevent her from enjoying the flavorful breeze or chilly water.
She drew a deep breath. “I have to go. The tide is coming in.”
No answer came. None would. The body beside her had been dead for several hours. Shanti trailed her fingers over the familiar features of her friend and guardian, a spirit guide named Julie.
“I hope you are in heaven,” Shanti added. She picked up the velvet dice pouch Julie had in her pocket and the two knives Julie always carried with her. “I shouldn’t have let you go out alone. I can take care of myself. I should have taken care of you, too.”
Despondent, Shanti lingered, not wanting to leave her guardian alone, even when she knew Julie had been dead for half a day at least. Their hiding place had come under attack shortly after the clock struck twelve noon. While Shanti couldn’t tell night from day, she identified the differences in air temperature and the chime assigned to the hourly reminders Julie had programmed into her phone.
Julie had left to draw out the attackers, leaving Shanti hidden, alone. She had heard a series of gunshots and smelled the gunpowder in the air, meaning the gun battle didn’t happen far from their hiding place at the beach. When the spirit guide didn’t return, Shanti had followed the direction of the sounds and used her guide stick to search the beach.
According to her ring tone, it was four in the morning when she found Julie’s body.
“Plan B,” Shanti murmured.
She rose and snapped open her guide stick. She started up the beach, paused to orient herself when her guide stick tapped cement, and began walking slowly until she reached a curb and beyond it, a sidewalk. With her other hand, she clutched the stones in the velvet pouch. There were five: one for each of the other three gatekeepers like her, one cold enough to suck her energy out of her body, one that alternated between warm and cool, and hers – a smooth stone that felt warm, happy, even on a day when she had no reason to be either.
Shanti was one of three incarnated angels charged with protecting the stones capable of locating and opening a gateway to Hell. The stones had awakened several weeks ago after being cool and dormant her whole life – and for the extent of time since Creation. She didn’t understand what the dual stone meant, but she innately understood it wasn’t a good sign. It beckoned her north, likely towards its source.
“Todd,” Shanti called softly when she reached the intersection closest to the beach. The lazy beach town was quiet this time of morning. Her heightened senses picked up on the brush of a hand against jeans, and Shanti turned towards the sound. Todd’s energy was agitated, his aura flashing between orange and green. “I’m ready.”
“How do you do that?” he muttered. Her unwilling companion slammed a car door shut unhappily and rattled the handcuffs securing him to the steering wheel.
Shanti circled the car and opened her door before sliding into the passenger’s seat.
“North,” she directed him.
“That’s it? Just north?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t keep me prisoner forever! I have a family that’ll be looking for me soon.”
His aura burst into a rainbow colors, an indicator he was lying. “You don’t have a family, Todd,” Shanti chided. “And you don’t have a job or anywhere legitimate to be, or you wouldn’t be stalking me.”
“This,” he rattled the handcuffs, “will get you thrown in jail.”
“No one’s going to believe a sweet little blind girl beat up and then tied up someone of your size. Or maybe you want to tell them you’re a Satanist spying on me and see how that goes?”
Todd cursed and put the car into gear. “You weren’t supposed to know that, either.”
Shanti pulled on her seatbelt and settled back against the seat.
“How did you know?” he asked reluctantly.
“Consider me Sherlock Holmes when it comes to using energy and my other senses to deduce where I am and what’s around me. I learned to put together puzzles long ago. You aren’t the first person to hunt me down, and Julie wasn’t my first guide. I won’t survive, if I’m not aware of danger,” she replied.
“Fleek, I guess,” he allowed, confirming her suspicion he was in his late teens or early twenties, young enough to use the slang and old enough to be as muscular as he was. “Still doesn’t explain how you can tell I’m a Satanist.”
Shanti smiled. Some secrets were better left unspoken. She may have been blind, but she was far from helpless, and the man driving her towards Washington DC didn’t need to know her whole story.
“People tend to underestimate those of us who are physically challenged,” she replied.
“I learned that lesson.”
“How’s the leg?”
“Probably broken.”
“Be good, and I’ll make sure you get to the hospital when we arrive.”
Todd was silent, skulking, if she had to guess. He was the kind of meathead who relied on his size and physical strength to intimidate. When they had no effect – such as on a woman who couldn’t see them – he had no backup plan. He was a grunt for the Satanist movement, not a thinker, which meant he couldn’t know about the stones in her pocket. No one who did would ever send brawn without brains to collect. He’d be easier to control than an independent thinker, for which Shanti was unusually grateful.
Already, she missed Julie, who had been Shanti’s favorite guide by far. Smart as a whip, strong and sarcastic
, Julie was also ruthless and had never questioned Shanti’s abilities or doubted her, as most people did upon meeting the disabled.
Julie was good people.
“I have to decide whether or not to let you go after this trip,” Shanti mused aloud.
“I didn’t kill that bitch. I told you.”
“I know. But you didn’t stop them either.”
“Why would I?” Todd grumbled. “They got her out of the way.”
“And you continue to claim they were guides?” Shanti asked, not for the first time.
“They were guides. They weren’t my people. I was told to watch and not engage. Three of them came out of nowhere and ambushed that bitch –”
“– Julie!”
“Whatever. Ambushed Julie on the beach. They beat her up, then tried to question her, and she chose suicide by firing squad instead of answering.”
Shanti had never heard of spirit guides killing another guide. Todd’s voice and energy gave no signs that he was lying. He believed what he was saying to be true, even if Shanti remained skeptical.
Then again, she hadn’t known much about the guide corps at all before they found her a few years ago. She was born knowing her mission and never had a need for support. In the past five years, she’d been assigned three guides for protection, and all three had been murdered. Something was different this era of guarding the stones. Even so, she had never met anyone else within the guide group outside those assigned to her, and none of her guides would fill her in on what was going on.
“What are you? Fifth gen? Sixth?” Todd asked.
“Fifth,” Shanti answered. Her connection to the Other Side was a trickle. She had been an angel prior to being incarnated. With each life lived in the human world, her connection to the Other Side became weaker.
“A blind fifth gen?” Todd sounded confused. “Then why are you important?”
“Drive, Todd.”
Her cranky driver obeyed.
Unable to tell north from south, Shanti was forced to trust her companion to take her towards the unknown beacon that had become more insistent since Julie died.
Two
Nathan, spirit guide and caseworker for incarnated angels, lay handcuffed to a bed in a swanky hotel room, where he’d spent the past two weeks. His shoulder ached from the awkward position, and he wore briefs but nothing else. Outside the room, Zyra – the head of the radical 3G – and one of her lieutenants spoke too quietly for him to make out their words.
His thoughts, however, weren’t on how uncomfortable he was, Zyra’s naked body, or the situation he’d voluntarily walked into. Of everyone who could have been on his mind, he was thinking about Pedro, the oldest – and most bizarre – of the angels in existence, who ran the angel corps, guardian angel corps and possibly, headed up the Archangels, too, though Nathan had never thought to ask.
That was the problem, he realized. He didn’t ask enough questions. He assumed he knew everything already.
It had never been an issue before now, when he found himself questioning more than whether or not Pedro was in charge of everything on the Other Side. Nathan had brushed off every insult he’d ever received, content with who he was and what he did. He was generally an asshole and also the only spirit guide in history that incarnated angels always sought out when they were in trouble. Because he was that damn good.
I used to be, he thought. He began to think some of those insults he had heard over the past three millennia could possibly be accurate. Was he selfish? Had he not spent enough time considering the feelings of others? When it came to an incarnated angel, he put them first.
Humans? Other guides?
Never.
He had never had a reason to question himself before the events of last month, when he’d chosen to murder his soul mate rather than explore different solutions to help her.
Was he rethinking his actions, because he had ultimately failed for the first time in his spirit guide career? Or … because he began to suspect there should have been a different solution, and if he were a less selfish, less arrogant person, he would have put more effort into finding it? It could be argued that pride was the worst sin of all, and he was a perfect example of what happened when this sin overtook someone’s judgment.
Who kills their soul mate? He’d been asking this question several times a day. In the heat of the moment, with the fate of the world at stake, he’d done what he thought was right.
His primary responsibility was to protect those who needed it. If he were half the man he believed himself to be, he would’ve found some other solution to the Kaylee dilemma. Yes, she was connected to the first Horseman of the apocalypse who hoped to take his true form when the initial gateway to Hell was opened.
Kaylee was also an incarnated archangel and Nathan’s soul mate. She should have been first on his list of people to protect, not the one innocent person on the planet he decided to kill. He’d always found a way to help those strangers he was charged with helping and he’d put far less effort into his soul mate than he ever had a random incarnated angel or spirit guide.
The brutal truth made it hard for him to sleep and impossible for him to focus on anything except for redeeming himself by finding and helping her.
Which brought his thoughts around to Pedro. The head of the angel corps had made a token attempt to remind Nathan of the spirit guide creed before providing him with the insight into how long Kaylee had to die in order to free Shadowman from her. Pedro, who revered free will, had likely told Nathan what he wanted to hear, for reasons Nathan would probably never understand. Maybe Kaylee’s death was inevitable, or maybe, this played into some greater purpose.
If Nathan had asked the question differently, would he have received a different response from the cagey angel? He wanted to think Pedro would never condemn an archangel to the kind of death Kaylee suffered from or the circumstances of how she’d been brought back to life.
Nathan rested his head against the headboard of the bed. He hated not knowing the bigger picture, hated the feeling of doubting himself. Before Kaylee, he had never had a reason to question his actions or the thought process behind them.
After three thousand years, he had stopped caring. This was no surprise. But had he let his jaded outlook hinder his ability to do his job, the one thing he was good at in life? Had he stopped trying, too?
The door opened.
“One last test,” his ex-wife, Zyra, said, smiling. “I’m satisfied you’re here for the right reasons.” Her eyes swept over his form. “But my crew needs proof.”
Proving himself to her had consisted of sex – tons of it. Nathan had to make her believe he was there for her as much as her cause. Three thousand years gave him plenty of time to perfect lovemaking, and he’d been able to shut Kaylee out of his thoughts as he fucked his ex. He’d spent a month pleasing Zyra in every way he knew possible and the rest of his days cuffed to a bed.
It didn’t feel right – but it was for a greater purpose. He’d messed up once. He wasn’t going to again.
“What’s the test?” he asked and lifted his head.
“You’ll see.” She tossed him the keys to the cuffs. “As much as I hate to say this, put on some clothes.”
Nathan felt … nothing. He already knew what he was capable of, and had recently discovered how far he was willing to go to do what was right. He’d already passed rock bottom and was still falling, but it no longer mattered. He’d taken the one life he shouldn’t have. Nothing Zyra asked of him would ever be worse than what he’d done.
Nathan freed himself and stretched with a grimace. His arm was either numb or aching most days. He dropped to the floor to do a few pushups, reminding his sore shoulder how to move. When it felt less stiff, he stood and changed into the dark clothing worn by Zyra’s Greater Good Group, which consisted of disgruntled spirit guides who preferred a more direct, more aggressive strategy when it came to dispatching evil from this world. The angel corps respected free will.
3G
did not. They preferred to kill an innocent than allow evil to walk free.
Over the years, Nathan had often found himself agreeing with their philosophy. Why allow a dangerous person to hurt others, when the angels already knew about the darkness inside this person and potentially, what was going to happen? Why let bad things happen at all?
Nathan had respected the angels’ decisions, whereas Zyra had not only questioned them but broken away from her duty and formed an enforcement group, one that wanted Kaylee dead.
The angels had allowed him to have free will in how he chose to handle Kaylee. They’d allowed 3G to form, because it, too, was a demonstration of free will. While Nathan would never try to speak for the angels, he began to think he had an idea of why the angel corps played the role of bystanders rather than enforcers.
Free will could destroy the world.
It could also save it.
He finished dressing and exited the hotel room into the hallway, where four of Zyra’s largest men waited. Their weapons were hidden from view, but he had no doubt they were all packing. They eyed him suspiciously. Zyra was nowhere in sight.
Nathan smiled. He had never been intimidated by anyone, and he wasn’t about to start today. “Let’s go, boys,” he said.
Two of them began walking, escorting him down the hallway, past quiet hotel rooms and towards the elevators. The other two followed.
They entered the elevator and rode to the ground floor. The men escorted him past the front desk, their formation spacing out some, so as not to catch the attention of the hotel employees. They continued out of the hotel, hopped into a van, and drove down the street.
Nathan ignored the route they took. For the time being, he had no intention of being anywhere except for where Zyra wanted him to be.
The van spirited them southwest, away from the DC area, and into rural Virginia. It left the highway and half an hour later, turned down a narrow, two-lane road lined on both sides by trees whose brilliant autumn leaves edged the road and filled the gutters. The branches were almost bare, with only a few tough leaves clinging to their perches overhead.
