The Soulkeepers Series, Part Two (Books 4-6)

by Ching, G. P.

  Bonnie pointed at the side of the van.

  Jacob scanned the parking lot, and then squinted toward the restaurant. “I got this.”

  Chapter 25

  New Beginnings

  From her place in the passenger’s seat of the massive RV, Malini searched deep for a way to comfort Gideon. She came up empty. He had a point, but it wasn’t as if any of them had a choice.

  “This is wrong. Completely and utterly wrong,” Gideon said.

  “Relax, Gid,” Jacob said from his perch on the counter next to the stove. “We left a note with the keys to the vans. They both have full tanks of gas. This RV is way bigger than that family needed anyway.”

  Lillian turned the massive wheel to exit onto the interstate. “Think of it as commandeering the vehicle. Soulkeepers are like Watcher police. We needed it to do our job.”

  Abigail placed an arm around her husband. “He’s lived thousands of years as an angel. Moral gray areas are hard for him.”

  “We stole an RV!” Gideon said, spreading his hands. “You shall not steal. What part of that is gray?”

  “The part where we give it back when we’re done saving the world,” Jacob said, his head inside the mini-fridge. “Hey, there are sandwiches!”

  Ghost, who’d been snuggling with Samantha on the couch, jumped up to join Jacob in his pursuit of an evening meal. Gideon tossed up his hands and retreated to the back bedroom.

  Abigail followed. “We’re just going to go lie down for a minute.”

  Malini returned her attention to the hum of the road. It didn’t make her happy to have to steal or borrow an RV. But she was beginning to realize Jacob was right. It was a new world, an evil world. She didn’t have the luxury of moral absolutes. The Soulkeepers had to survive and doing so meant they must evolve. As the Healer, her job was to choose for the greatest good. Taking the RV provided the greatest good, and that was all there was to it.

  As the sun made a slow escape from the winter sky, she thought of Lee, and her eyes misted. When they got where they were going, wherever that was, she’d make sure to hold a proper memorial for him. The Soulkeepers had lost so much. Too much. She needed to make sure their new home was safe and secure. What would happen when Abigail’s baby came? She rubbed her temples. So many questions. So much responsibility.

  Leaning back in her chair, she closed her eyes and cleared her mind. She needed help, and there was only one place she could get it, but strong emotion was not a good conduit to the In Between. She crashed into Fatima’s villa, metaphysically shredded, as if her soul had traveled through broken glass to get there. She groaned.

  “It’s about time you visited,” Fatima said, pulling her up by her shoulders. “Do you know what’s happening down there?”

  In the blink of an eye, she was out on the hillside, standing in front of the blindfolded angel statue—the scorekeeper. Henry and Mara materialized beside her.

  “I can hardly keep up with the dead,” Henry said. “I’ve never seen such devastation. It’s worse than the Holocaust.”

  “I—” Malini started.

  Mara grabbed her arm roughly. “My power over Time won’t work. Lucifer’s curses are somehow immune from my tampering. I couldn’t help Lee, Malini, and I won’t be able to help you.” She released Malini’s arm, looking frustrated and vulnerable.

  “I don’t know what to say. We are doing the best we can, but none of us knows what will come next or when.”

  “You’ve got to do better,” Fatima said. Her graceful fingers pointed at the scorekeeper. The scales had shifted, and Lucifer was in the lead by a long shot.

  “Oh no,” Malini said. “How do we stop it?”

  “We don’t know,” Mara said.

  Fatima sighed. “I did find something today. Something that might help. But it’s dangerous. It could be a trick.”

  “Show me.”

  The landscape folded again, and they were back inside Fatima’s villa. “Lucifer has been living on Earth for several months now, running a major corporation. Everything he does impacts people’s lives. We know where he lives now, and where he works. We know his closest associates are Auriel and Cord.”

  “So.”

  “So yesterday, I wove this.” She pulled out a roll of fabric. In truth, Malini had noticed the bolt when she’d arrived. The fabric was black and white, a standout in the infinite warehouse full of colored cloth.

  “What is this? Why doesn’t it have any color?”

  “Think of it as a photo negative. I usually weave the fabric of fate, lives intertwining, people interacting with people. This fabric shows endings. It focuses not on life but on death, on dead ends, on empty souls, darkness.”

  “You wove the empty space between lives.” Malini could see it now. Each thread in this negative was a life but there was a missing thread, an empty space that ran through the entire tapestry like a repeating missed stitch.

  “Lucifer has no soul and leaves no thread. But when he’s living on Earth, he leaves a hole.”

  “A hole I can follow. A hole I can project.”

  Fatima smiled. “This is how Abigail’s guide in the red stone, the oldest, wisest part of yourself, knew Eden was compromised. Maybe you can foretell what Lucifer will do next, Malini.”

  Malini ran her hand over the fabric, following the empty thread with her finger. She grinned and straightened her backbone. “Thank you, Fatima. This helps more than you know.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. This is an unproven method. I’ve never made anything like this before. I’m not sure we can trust it.”

  “We have to. It’s all we’ve got.” Concentrating, Malini focused on the tattered lives that ended at Lucifer’s empty space. The safest place was where Lucifer had already been. She found a cluster of rerouted and tangled threads and ran her fingertips over the pattern again and again, until she could see the scene in her head. Quickly, she rewrapped the bolt and returned the fabric to the empty spot.

  She hugged Fatima and said her goodbyes before falling back into reality.

  “Don’t disappoint us,” Fate yelled through the ether.

  Malini landed with a jolt in the captain’s chair of the RV, eyes opening to a dark road leading into a major city. Chicago. The road out of the city was stop-and-go traffic, but going in, there was nothing but road ahead of her.

  “Welcome back,” Lillian whispered. Sounds of snoring filtered through the cabin.

  “I know where we’re going to stay,” Malini said.

  Lillian did a double take. “Really?”

  “Absolutely.” Malini told her the address.

  “You’re the boss.” Lillian tapped the turn signal and exited to a new beginning.

  * * * * *

  The front doors to the ornate church were barricaded shut, the lawn scorched, the outer walls crumbling. Only a quarter of the sign was still standing. It read St. P. Whatever came after the P was in a pile of rubble on the lawn. Even in the darkness Malini knew this was the place. Her entire body rang with the rightness of it. This church was a historic fixture in Chicago until the Watcher occupation.

  She’d seen what the monsters had done to the people here. The church was close to the Harrington building. That meant it had to go. Can’t have a congregation of good people around mucking up Lucifer’s evil plans. The church was likely the first on Cord’s hit list.

  What Malini saw when she read the tapestry was that the congregation had gathered here when they began to see the Watchers. What safer place to hide from demons than a church? But it was not safe. Cord attacked. The church burned. People died. Others ran. And while the structure was still standing, the people who made this building a church were gone.

  However, Malini could see the place for what it was, underestimated and underutilized. “Pull around back.”

  Lillian did. When she ran out of road, she simply drove onto the grass behind the church next to a large pile of rubble. The building would provide some cover from the road, but they’d have to do a b
etter job of hiding the RV in the morning.

  “Wake up, everyone. We’re home,” Malini said. She jumped out of the cab and walked to the church’s delivery entrance. Boarded shut. Of course it would be. She yanked at the board but it wouldn’t budge.

  “That building looks like it might be a rectory. Sometimes they’re connected to the church.” Grace rubbed a hand through her matted red curls and blinked her eyes, trying to wake up. “Looks like an old Irish-Catholic place. We belonged to a church like this back in Nebraska. Not as ornate but just as beautiful.”

  “Are we staying here? Like to live?” Samantha asked from the door of the RV.

  Without answering, Malini followed Grace across the courtyard toward the smaller building. The back door was hanging off its hinges. “Good idea, Grace. I think we can get in.” She carefully squeezed through the opening, afraid if she bumped the door it would fall off its frame.

  Inside, the thick darkness blinded her. She patted along the wall for a light switch.

  “I have a gun pointed at your head,” a man’s voice said. “If you don’t want your brains sprayed across the wall behind you, you will slip out the way you came in.”

  Malini froze, as did Grace, who was just outside the door and poorly positioned to help. “Please, sir, we need your help.”

  “No help here. Only death. You want help, you need to leave the city and get as far away from the demons as you can.”

  “But that’s why we’re here,” Malini said, “to kill the demons. They’re called Watchers actually.”

  “You can’t kill those things,” the man said. “I’ve tried.”

  “We know how. We can teach you.”

  A click preceded a warm wash of light. Malini stared at the gun in the man’s hand. Lillian would have known what kind it was, but Malini was never good with guns. Holding the weapon was an elderly man wearing the black clothing and white collar traditionally associated with priests. Hollow cheeks and a thin frame gave the man a sickly appearance.

  “Who are you?”

  Tell him the truth. The voice in her head was not her own. God’s? She wasn’t sure. But she chose to trust the voice.

  “I am a Soulkeeper, a human being chosen by God and genetically gifted to protect other humans from fallen angels.”

  Silence stretched between them, then the man laughed a few times. “I suppose I can’t blame you for going a little crazy. The first time I saw one I thought I was.”

  “You are ill. I can heal you.”

  He snorted. “Thanks for noticing. No, you can’t heal me. No one can. I have cancer.” He jiggled the gun. “Anyway, all of us are risking our lives staying around here.”

  “My name is Malini Gupta. What’s yours?”

  He considered her for a moment. “Father Jonas Raymond.”

  “You can see Watchers?”

  “Yes. Clear as day. Not everyone can, you know. Half the staff and congregation thought the other half had gone mad.” He lowered the gun, set it down on the side of an overturned desk. “They all left. The ones who couldn’t see, to flee the bombings; the ones who could, to flee the demons.”

  “Why did you stay?”

  “Dying anyway. Might as well go down fighting.”

  “I’m glad you stayed. We need your help.” Malini stepped closer, reaching tentatively for the man’s hand. “You know I’m not a Watcher,” she said. “You would see if I was.”

  Father Raymond softened, and finally, slowly, accepted her handshake. Malini poured her healing power into him. Closing her eyes, her gift curled inside the man, tendrils wrapping around the cancer in his liver, sifting through the organ, healing him.

  “What are you doing?” Father Raymond tried to jerk his hand away.

  Malini gripped harder, the rancor of her burning flesh filling the room. The burn traveled up her arm.

  “Dear Lord, you’re on fire!” he yelled.

  “I’m fine,” Malini said through gritted teeth. “Grace, get Jacob.”

  She heard Grace retreat from where she’d been waiting outside the door.

  “Who is that?” Father Raymond asked, but his words floated away unanswered.

  When it was clear to her that her healing was successful, she let go of his hand. His eyes locked onto hers and then trailed to the burn that had spread from her hand to her cheek. At that moment, Jacob ripped the door off its hinges and doused her with water. Very subtle, Jacob.

  “Who are you?” Jacob asked.

  “Father Raymond.”

  “It’s your lucky day, Father Raymond. Whatever it was you had is officially cured. My girlfriend doesn’t heal everyone she meets.”

  “Liver cancer,” Malini said. “And yes, you’re cured.”

  Father Raymond rubbed a spot over his heart, his face glowing with the hope that his miracle was real. He swallowed. “Who are you people? Why are you here?”

  “We need you, Father Raymond, and we need this place. Will you help us? We can pay you, enough that when this is all over, you can restore your church to what it once was.”

  The priest looked up at the ceiling and crossed himself. “What do you need from me?”

  “We need a place to make camp. A place the Watchers won’t expect us to be.”

  “You need sanctuary.”

  “Yes.”

  “How many of you are there?”

  “Twelve.”

  He shook his head. “This isn’t a hotel, but if you’re looking for a place to make camp, I may have something.”

  Malini gathered the others. Father Raymond led them through the rectory, down a flight of stairs to a tunnel that led to a massive basement room. “We used to use this for wedding receptions and potluck dinners. There’s a kitchen, and if you can dig them out, there are beds in the rectory you can use. Bathroom’s over there.”

  Turning in a circle, Malini pictured the place as a campsite. It wasn’t Eden. It wasn’t even comfortable. But it would have to do.

  The others didn’t seem happy about the idea. Samantha leaned on Ghost while Bonnie was openly teary-eyed. Dane and Ethan hovered near the entrance, shoulders slumped. Cheveyo stood in the middle of the room, staring at a blank wall. Abigail rubbed reassuring circles over her swollen belly while Gideon whispered encouraging words in her ear. Ever the practical ones, Grace and Lillian headed straight for the kitchen to take inventory.

  Jacob cleared his throat. “I feel…” He shivered. “There’s something upstairs.” He started for a door at the back of the large room.

  “You don’t want to go up there, son,” Father Raymond said. “It’s not safe. Rubble everywhere.”

  The words fell futilely around Jacob. Malini followed her boyfriend up the stairs into a mess of cracked marble, toppled pews, and broken glass. Statues of Mary, Joseph, and a selection of saints had fallen from their stands and shattered on the floor. Depictions of the Stations of the Cross hung at odd angles from the walls. The marble altar was cracked down the middle. Jacob wove through the mess to the front of the building, the part that must have been the foyer. Malini heard Father Raymond pick his way through the mess behind her.

  “There,” Jacob said, pointing at a large, square marble fixture the size of a hot tub.

  “What is that?” Malini asked.

  “Baptismal font,” Father Raymond said. “We occasionally performed full emersion on adults. It’s filled with holy water.”

  Jacob clapped his hands together and turned smiling eyes on Malini as he approached the edge and sunk a hand. The water rippled like a long lost friend.

  Father Raymond’s eyes widened.

  “This is the place,” Malini said, more certain than ever. “This is our sanctuary.”

  Chapter 26

  Lament

  Malini grunted as she carried her end of the twin-sized mattress she and Jacob had recovered from a half-destroyed room in the rectory. Her biceps burned with the weight and angle of the load. If they could get the bulky object past the staircase, things would get ea
sier.

  “Why can’t we just sleep in the rectory?” Samantha whined from behind her.

  “Because the walls could cave in at any moment,” Ghost said softly from the other end of the mattress they were carrying. “The building is half burned. It’s not structurally safe.”

  “Father Raymond is staying there.”

  “Father Raymond is one man in one small room that survived the damage,” Ghost said.

  Malini was glad Ghost answered her. She was sure her response wouldn’t have been half as patient. One by one, the Soulkeepers had moved the beds, chairs, and other homey accouterments they could dig out from the rectory into the multipurpose room under the church. Slowly, the large open space had taken on new life. Lined up as they were, the beds reminded her of antique pictures she’d seen of orphanages or hospitals. No privacy. No amenities. But better than sleeping on the floor.

  “One, two, three,” Jacob counted, then let the mattress fall on the box spring. As soon as it was in position, Malini flopped on top of it, so tired she barely cared about the poof of dust that rose up from the fabric. Jacob tossed a set of the linens they’d found on top of her. She didn’t move.

  No one said anything about separating the boys from the girls. Then again, it was a moot point. Exhaustion ensured no one would be doing anything but sleeping.

  “I’m going to go make use of the shower,” Samantha said, grabbing her bag. Malini cracked an eye, wondering how she had the energy.

  “Hey, look what we found!” Dane said. He backed into the room holding one end of a huge flat-screen television. Ethan grinned from the other end.

  “So much for believing priests took a vow of poverty,” Ethan said. “We found this thing in the living room.”

  “Excuse me,” Father Raymond said from behind them. “It wasn’t like we each had one. And it was donated to us.”

  Dane shrugged and began setting it up. “Let’s hope the thing still works.”

  “And that the cable’s not cut,” Ethan said.

  Abigail, Grace, and Lillian peeked out of the kitchen and took a seat on the side of one of the beds next to Gideon and Cheveyo as the sound of static filled the room. Ethan punched some buttons and plugged something in, and the screen blinked to life.