Lightning Seeker
Viking Soul Book 2
By Rachel Medhurst
Another god in the mix, another Fallen One to kill.
Cults, Witches and Dark Creatures, all out to get me. However, something is different now. Some of the powerful leaders of the underworld are going missing, which brings my attention to the Hagalaz Cult. I'm investigating their claim that they're descendants of the most powerful Norse god of all time. Are they the ones rotting the underworld from the inside out?
Please note that the author is English so spelling is in British English.
Copyright © 2017 by Rachel Medhurst
This book is dedicated to Sallyann
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Contents
1 – Close to the Darkness
2 – Jack, the Informant
3 – Releasing the Need
4 – Tale of Odin’s Tale
5 – Taken Ransom
6 –Trygger to the Rescue
7 – Truth Untold
8 – Ever the Gentleman
9 – Freya’s Visit
10 – Taken Hostage
11 – Lost Memories Returned
12 – Dancing Distraction
13 – Enemy Encounters
14 – Acid Teardrops
Book 3 – Storm Guardian
Acknowledgements
Author
Copyright
1
Close to the Darkness
THE HEAVY BREATHING resounded around the brick building…and, it wasn’t the good kind. My heartbeat pounded in my head, almost drowning out the suspicious sound. I leant against the wall, my shoulder pressed against the brickwork. Waiting.
“I know you’re there,” the Dark Crawler shouted, a small high pitched laugh following his sentence.
My night had started promising. It had been a month since I had killed my hundredth and ninety sixth Fallen One. I had taken some time to relax and focus on training Chloe, but that small break had come crashing to a halt when I received a phone call an hour ago.
“Might as well come out and get your pet.”
A grunt filtered to me, followed by a stifled scream. Thrusting from my safe space behind a wall, I slowly entered the outhouse. It was a huge building, old and dilapidated. A great place for a stinking dark soul to live.
Wrinkling my nose, I resisted the urge to gag when the rotting smell of the Dark Crawler drifted up my nostrils. My steps were slow, measured, as the dim light flickered overhead. Before me lay rows of wooden racks. Mostly empty now, but they made a great formation to hide behind.
There was a clearing ahead. I could just make out the shadow of the human host of the evil spirit. He stood off to the left. He must have been able to smell me to know that I was there. I was surprised, I was probably almost as dark as him nowadays. The Crawlers used their sense of smell when light people were nearby, and I was sure I didn’t radiate that quality anymore.
The Dark Crawler ahead must have been in his host for a while. The longer they inhabited a human body, the more it rotted from the inside out, releasing the most putrid scent.
“If you don’t hurry, I’m going to jump into this pretty boy.” The laugh came again as the shadow moved slightly.
Taking a deep breath, I kept my gun aimed out in front of me and edged towards the end of the aisle. If I made one wrong move, my best friend would be a Dark Crawler. Although he probably had one of the blackest of human souls, he didn’t deserve to die that way.
“What do you want?” I asked as they came into view.
Jack was on the floor, his hands tied behind his back and duct tape over his mouth. His eyes widened but his shoulders relaxed when he caught sight of me.
“Well, well…the great Thunder Hunter.” The Dark Crawler was in a male body. His eyes bulged, as if he were high on drugs.
I knew better. He was ready for his next fix of human life. He would do anything to keep the light in his current human body so he could live. Oh, how I relished the idea of sending him back to Helheim.
“Come, come,” he gestured, his dainty hands waving for me to join them.
My gun was aimed at his chest as he shuffled nearer to Jack. I took a step, wanting nothing more than to plunge my dagger into his chest. I had to wait. If I made a wrong move, he would jump into Jack. And, the only way to get rid of an evil spirit from a human body was to kill them.
“Tell me what you want,” I bit through my teeth.
The Dark Crawler regarded me, his head tilting to the side. His eyes were black, even the white part of the eyeball. He was ready to shift, ready to start again. It must be wearisome to have to keep changing lives. Being someone new every year or so.
“I want you. I figured if you let me take your body in exchange for your vile friend, not only will I be strong and immortal…I’ll have the favour of Loki too. Because eventually, I’ll kill your body off…and you will finally be gone from the world.”
He was clever, I had to give him that. No other dark creature had ever tried to bargain with me before. Certainly not for my body. Although, it wasn’t as exciting as it sounded.
“I have to give you credit…?” I waited for him to tell me his name.
His small feet shuffled, his grin splitting his average looking face. The mousey hair on his head was thinning and his teeth were yellow from lack of…life force. He had probably been quite a handsome man before the spirit got hold of him.
“My name doesn’t matter. What do you say? How badly do you want your friend back?”
Glancing at Jack, I raised my eyebrows. “Well, to be honest, he is an annoying bastard. Maybe you would improve him.”
My contact glared at me, his eyebrows pulling low over his eyes. For the first time, Jack’s usually perfectly coifed hair was a mess. Blood coated his temple where it had dribbled out from under his hairline. I guessed it was from the injury that caused him to scream a moment ago.
“Ha! Well, I would like to indulge your fantasy of destroying your annoying friend, but I fear that you’re bluffing. In which case, I would like to conclude our bargain.” He coughed, spitting on the ground when a glob of blood came into his mouth.
My lips screwed up in disgust. Why were the Dark Crawlers so painstakingly unsophisticated? It was as if they wiped the intelligent humans they inhabited and became uneducated morons.
“I’m not sure you’re going to get what you want today.” I gestured at Jack with my gun. “So, you better let him go before I shoot you.”
The man laughed, bending over as the reaction caused the host’s body to cough its guts up. “Shooting me won’t help, I’ll just jump into-”
A warm breeze passed my ear, making me duck to the side. The Dark Crawler flew back against the nearest wooden shelf, crashing to the ground. The ball of golden magic had come out of nowhere, hitting him directly in the head.
“Get him!” Chloe.
The little bitch had followed me when I told her not to. Running to the man, I grabbed my dagger out of my inside pocket. He threw his head back, his eyes starting to roll up. Jumping, I thrust the blade down, straight into his heart. He spluttered, his whole body shaking. His eyes focused on me as blood spurted from his mouth.
“You wanker!”
A sharp wind whipped around us as his dark soul was collected by something invisible and taken back to Helheim. My Valkyrie never came for the normal spirits, they were too below her station. She only ever transported those going to Valhalla or Fólkvangr.
The host’s body slumped to the ground, his eyes clos
ed and the stink of him wafting up as his arse hit the hard floor. I held a hand over my mouth, not quite able to stop the retch that almost made me sick.
“Jack,” I heard Chloe say behind me. “Are you okay?”
Turning, I watched as she bent down and ripped the tape off his mouth. He howled, his head hitting the ground where he reacted so…girly. “Ouch, bitchhhhh….”
“I just saved your life!” Chloe barked, backing away from Jack and clicking her fingers.
Rusty came trotting in, his dark eyes looking at us before he sat next to his owner. Bending down, I untied Jack’s hands before straightening.
“What the fuck was that about? You almost hit me!” My temper was simmering just under the surface.
The woman was going to kill me one day. I sometimes wondered if she had been pretending to be a descendant of Freya’s all along. She certainly acted like one of Loki’s lot most of the time.
“You were dragging your feet,” Chloe said, waving her hand in dismissal.
Jack clambered up, his hands brushing the dust off his jeans before he checked the cut on his head. The male was vainer than a catwalk model. Bloody man.
“When I tell you to stay at home, I mean stay at home. It’s about time you got your own place.” My words were sharp as I strode past her.
She put a hand out to stop my retreat. Jack followed quickly on my heels, not daring to look back at the body that stunk up the whole place.
“What do we do with him?” Chloe pointed at the previous Dark Crawler.
Glancing over my shoulder, I frowned. “Nothing.”
Going to move again, I gritted my teeth when she stared, her gaze boring into me. “You’re just going to leave that poor man there?”
Jack scoffed, his hands reaching out to grasp the edge of my shirt. “Trygger never worries about the leftovers.”
“Leftovers? As in…a man who was possessed and now his body is a rotting mess because of an evil spirit. You call that a leftover?”
The grimace on Chloe’s face was pretty deserved when she put it like that. To be honest, I had never thought about the bodies. There had been so many of them, they became a distant memory on my way to more important things. Namely, the other Fallen Ones.
“Well, if you care that much, that can be your new job. Dispose of the bodies so no one finds them.” Pleased with my conclusion, I moved past her before she could go on.
Clearing her throat loudly, she called out when I ignored her and kept going. “I’m not going to discard them! They’re people. Shouldn’t their families know that they’re dead?”
Jack laughed at the same time I did. Chloe’s running footsteps came closer. Looking behind us, we both started to run when we saw the heat in her eyes. The bright red of her cheeks warned us of her fury.
“Wait!”
We were both faster than her, although that was mainly because I dragged Jack with me. He held his hand to his head, groaning about a headache or something.
“How the hell did you get caught, anyway?” I asked as I shoved him into my car.
Chloe caught up with us, Rusty by her side. That was the good thing about that dog, I could always trust him to look after her. Even when I was there, he stuck close to her.
“I felt like walking…or fucking…on the edge…”
It had been a while since I had cringed so often in such a short amount of time. Nothing Jack did surprised me, usually.
“Are you saying that you…did you…? That’s necrophilia!” Chloe blurted.
A burst of laughter escaped me as Jack slumped on the backseat, his head hanging. Chloe let Rusty in the boot before joining me in the front. My car was matte black with changeable number plates. I had a whole stock of them in the apartment. There was nothing like keeping my identity safe in a world where quite a few people wanted me dead.
Putting my foot down, I finally took a deep breath. The air was fresh as I wound down the window and blasted the car clear of the lingering smell of dead flesh.
“Did you actually…?” I couldn’t help the question, it was morbid curiosity.
I glanced into the rear-view mirror as Jack shook his head. “Nah, I only courted the idea for a second before I came to my senses. It was too late by then. I’m such a prick, ain’t I?”
Both Chloe and I nodded in agreement. There was one small thing about the incident on my mind. “How did he know that he could use you to get to me? Did you tell him who I was?”
The drop of Jack’s gaze made it very clear that he was guilty. On one hand that was a good thing. It wouldn’t do for the crawlers to know who I was all by themselves. However, it seemed my friend had broken my trust.
“He tricked me…I…” His sentence trailed off as his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he fell back against the seat.
Chloe looked around, her hand reaching out to grab his knee. “Jack!”
“It’s okay, he’s probably got concussion. He was hit around the head before I got there.” Clearing my throat, I turned my attention to her. “You do know that I’m going to have to teach you a lesson?”
Her lips turned up into a snarl as she let go of Jack and sat forward again. “Firstly, how do you know it’s just a concussion? Secondly, you’re welcome…”
Snorting, I leant my elbow on the ledge of the door while I scratched the stubble on my jaw.
Earlier, the text had come in from Jack’s phone, but I could tell by the tone of the message it wasn’t him. He had asked me to meet him at the abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of London.
I hadn’t told Chloe where it was. That was a very good point. How had she known where to find us? “Firstly,” I said in a fake high pitched voice. “…it serves him right if anything more is wrong with him. He’ll have more than a concussion to worry about when I’m finished with him. Secondly…” I went back to my normal voice. “…How the fuck did you find us?”
For the first time in a while her face lit up in a genuine smile. There were two people…and a dog…in my life. And, both of them had betrayed me in one way or another in the last hour. No wonder I didn’t trust anyone.
“I tracked you.”
Well, shit. Chloe had explained how she had found the Fallen One a month ago. She had used photos to identify her. She then hacked into the national database to research all the records of the woman, who just so happened to host one of the evilest spirits in the world. She wasn’t one hundred percent sure that it was her, but she’d claimed she had a gut feeling it was. And, she was right.
“You’re going to have to show me your tracking skills.”
It was my way of praising the one skill she had mastered. Okay, so she might have helped me by hitting the Dark Crawler with magic, but I would have just shot him anyway. Why she felt the need to help me, I didn’t know. I hadn’t survived a millennia for nothing. A simple Dark Crawler was easy for me to kill.
“I will. But, only if you thank me for helping back there.”
The car pulled into the side of my building. The factory had recently shut down, leaving me the quiet of the day as well as the night. It had been discerning two weeks ago when the noise of the daytime work had come to an end. The property was going up for sale soon. I couldn’t wait to buy the whole place.
“Chloe, I had control on it. I would have killed him easily.” I looked at her, sad that she thought I was that useless.
A small noise left her throat before she turned in her seat to face me. “But, it’s not so easy for me. Trygger…that was the first time I really…helped.”
Suddenly getting her meaning, I leant my skull against the headrest. Jack was still out cold in the back. Served him right. Chloe wanted me to acknowledge that she had done well. It did take a lot of courage to do what she had done. Even if she did ignore my orders.
“Okay, firstly…”
“Stop with the firstly, etc.” She giggled.
Nodding, I faced her. “I’m pissed that you didn’t listen to me when I told you to stay at home. You
’re like a child, pushing the boundaries to see how far I’ll let you go.”
Her face screwed up at just the right time, proving my point. “Wait, I-”
“I haven’t finished,” I interrupted. “The reason I don’t let you come to these things yet, is because you’ve only been training for just over a month. You need time. But…you hit your target well.”
“Thank you,” she muttered.
I paused, waiting for the backlash, the tantrum, the disagreement. It didn’t come. Instead, she climbed out of the car and retrieved Rusty before going up the steps that lined the side of the building and disappearing into our home.
“Now to deal with you, you snidey bastard.”
Getting out, I shivered as I left Jack in the back of the vehicle. It was a cold evening; we were even due a frost. Jack would wake up freezing his arse off…and I hoped his bollocks too.
2
Jack, the Informant
“SHOW ME HOW it’s done.” I grabbed the spare chair, plonking it next to the computer desk.
Chloe stared, her eyes looking straight into me. Looking away, I tapped the keyboard to bring the computer to life.
“I can’t believe you didn’t keep up with the times.” She tutted, typing something in the search bar before bringing up a document she had typed out.
Scanning the words, I gave up when none of them made sense to me. It was computer speak. Websites and codes that I had no clue about.
“I do keep up with the times. I know how to use a computer.”
“He just knows how to search for escort services and take-aways.” Jack offered his opinion as he came into Chloe’s room.
Rusty got to his feet to say hello. The dog had become used to the regular visits from my friend. In fact, since Chloe had been in our life, he had been around a lot more than usual.
“How’s your bollo-?”
“Trygger!” Chloe snapped, hitting my leg.
Lightning Seeker: Viking Soul Book 2 (Viking Soul Series) Page 1
