I nodded, and then realized I hadn’t made any hotel reservations. “Oh, shoot. I need to call the hotel. I totally forgot to make a reservation.” As the plane rolled along the runway I pulled my hand from Derek’s to shuffle through my purse, looking for my cell phone.
“Don’t you think about calling a hotel, I’ve got the best suite around.” His dimpled smile struck my heart like an arrow. He tilted his head and raised a brow as though he waited for my response.
Was I supposed to guess what he meant? “Not sure what you’re talking about. Where did you make reservations?” My heart thrummed a snappy beat at the thought he’d taken initiative in reserving a place for me to stay.
He grabbed my hand and lifted it to his lips, gently kissing my palm. “The cottage behind my home is open to you. I had someone come in over the weekend to clean and stock it with a few groceries. I’d actually offer you a room in my home, but I figured you’d turn me down flat.” He kissed my inner wrist and my mouth dropped open in response.
Fireworks shot through all parts of my body from his gentle passion. Then I thought of the cottage, a writer’s dream retreat. I’d adored the building the moment I first saw it nestled in the woods. Part of me liked the idea of being so close to Derek, but the other part of me wondered about the speed of my growing attraction to him. Would I be able to keep from compromising our professional relationship? The kiss at my place had sent me into a dizzying tailspin of wanton feelings and emotions. Derek came across as honorable and caring, but I barely knew him. Other than our short conversation on the way to the airport and what Jenna kept telling me…that he was head over heels for me. Right. For all I knew he could be a womanizer, and all his boyish charms were part of his allure to snag a quick tryst.
What did Jenna actually know about him, only what she saw at the office? She’d never worked one-on-one with him in the past. Plus, he had three brothers, and if they looked anything like he did I could only imagine the kind of competitions they all had when it came to women.
The tip of his tongue slid across the skin of my wrist, his smoldering gaze promised more.
His overall assertiveness gave me the impression our so-called professional relationship might have surpassed into a deeper personal level or was he reeling me in for a good night’s romp? Unsure, I closed my mouth and licked my lips. A little pant escaped. The plane stopped moving. The eight agents seated around us stood to depart. Some of them stared at me, and my face blazed with a flash of heat, but I didn’t pull my hand away from Derek.
He was bent over as if retrieving something from below his seat. His hand clung to mine. He flattened his tongue against my wrist and slid it to the middle of my palm. Bolts of electric charges raced up my arm and shot straight down my center. What the heck is this man doing to me? This was a totally new-to-me side of Derek, perhaps his dark side.
The other agents had collected their overhead stuff and departed off the plane. All I wanted to do was flip my seat back and pant like a love-struck teenager. Good grief.
Derek raised his head, an adolescent grin spread across his face. He dropped my hand on my lap. “Ready?”
I nodded. He had no idea how many ways I was ready. Derek hadn’t been this bold with his desire last week. It threw me off from my game plan at keeping an adequate distance between us. I couldn’t remember any of my limited amount of relationships fueling my passion as Derek had, simply with his dimpled smile.
I pulled my carry-on from under the seat and moved to the aisle. Derek stepped ahead of me and led me out of the plane by grabbing my hand. Once we hit the tarmac, his hand wrapped around my upper arm and he guided me into the FBI hanger at Reagan National Airport. We waited for our luggage then hauled everything out to his SUV in the parking lot and loaded it. Without much two-a.m. traffic, Derek made the drive in about ten minutes to the J. Edgar Hoover Building, better known as the FBI Headquarters. We took the elevator to the lower level morgue.
“Would it be best if I waited outside the morgue?” Derek’s fingers surrounded my upper arm and guided me down the familiar hallway. “Or would you prefer me in there to help with questions for the ghost.”
I noted his “ghost” comment as another acknowledgment of his new belief in the ethereal spirits that roamed the earth plane.
The scent of vanilla filled the air around us, and Jenna appeared, walking along beside me. “I can help with the questions. I don’t think Derek should be there in case his large presence scares the girl’s spirit.”
“Jenna’s here with us. She believes you should stay out of the room for this interview in case the girl might get spooked by a male presence,” I relayed.
His lips pressed tight then relaxed. “Sure, I understand.” He led me through the waiting room, no attendant sitting at the desk. He knocked on the morgue door then cracked it open to peek inside. “Kendra’s here. She requires a moment with the girl’s body. Please show her where to go and then leave the room.” Derek opened the door wider for me to step through. Jenna morphed through the wall into the room.
I recognized one of the two pathologists from last week, surprised anyone would be here at this early hour. A number of covered bodies on tables might be why, or maybe it had to do with the girl’s body.
“This way, Miss Kendra.” He walked me to the table where they’d been working. I was grateful they’d covered the young female teen. Then both doctors walked out and Derek closed the door.
There was a spirit near the sheet-covered body, but the ghost appeared to be in her mid-twenties, dressed in revealing clothes from the late 1970’s or early 1980’s.
“Who’s that?” Jenna’s brows furrowed into a frown.
“Let’s find out.”
The spirit gravitated toward us before we reached her, stopping in front of Jenna. “You here to get me into another body? I expected Queen B’s main squeeze, Buster.” She eyed Jenna. “You don’t look like the soul-sucker type.”
Jenna’s eyes popped wide. She turned to me. “What the hell, Sparky?” Then she gave the apparition the stink-eye. “Are you telling us you took up residence in a child’s body? What the hell happened to this girl’s soul?”
The ghost woman cackled, sounding like an evil witch. “You’re kidding me, right? This girl’s living body was nothing but an empty vessel after the soul-sucker absorbed her light, an open invitation for Queen B’s lot to get back to business as usual.”
Jenna and I looked at each other. I took a deep breath and Jenna stiffened as the realization hit us at the same time. “That girl’s body has harbored this prostitute’s soul and it’s been sexually abused,” Jenna said. “Oh. My. Gods.”
“Well, it isn’t like she knows what happens to her body,” the ghost justified.
My brain worked double-time to understand how and why anyone would take a young teen’s soul, and then Grandma Ellie’s words clicked into place about the soul-sucker, Buster. Young is its favorite. Those beautiful souls in the container truck would give that malevolent spirit energy. Grandma mentioned all of those teen’s souls wore his mark. “We have to figure this out or those girls will go through exactly what this girl did.”
“There’s more children?” The wench cackled again. “Hot damn, I’ll have a new body and the rest of Queen B’s ladies will be back with me soon.”
Jenna grabbed the woman by the shoulder and shook her, pushing her down on the floor. Suddenly the floor opened into a black hole. Jenna and the harlot hovered over the top of it. Dark entities rose to surround the two women, filling the air with the stench of rotten eggs.
“Jenna, think about your safe place. Do it now,” I shouted over the hollow sounds of evil. She’d gotten to her white room of doors before to save herself from Buster. No reason it wouldn’t work again for those nasty entities. “Jenna, hurry.”
She looked at me, fear painted her face pale. Then she closed her eyes and a moment later her spirit shimmered away.
The harlot wrestled with the dark apparitions, screaming
for Buster to come and save her. I froze, unable to tear myself away from the morbid scene. The wicked skirmish lasted less than thirty seconds until her kicking and screaming spirit, held by a multitude of bony-like fingers, sunk into the pitch black. The cavernous opening snapped shut with a thunderous crack. The force of it threw me across the room.
I landed on my rear end, upsetting a small table filled with shiny forensic pathologist tools.
Derek slammed the door open against the wall and ran toward me. “What happened?”
I was breathless, exhausted to the point of feeling faint. When I gathered enough air to inflate my lungs, I said, “There’s something bigger going on here. We need to talk about it with Jenna.” He helped me to stand. My legs shook so hard I thought they wouldn’t hold me. “Hopefully, she saved herself.”
“Was it that malevolent spirit from last week at the hotel?” Derek braced me with his arm around my shoulder. “Dang, woman, you’re shaking so hard your teeth should be chattering.”
The pathologists stepped into the room, and the familiar one asked, “Is everything all right?” His gaze wandered down to the tools spread across the floor. “Oh, my. Are you all right, Miss Kendra?” He rushed over to look in each of my eyes.
“I’m just a little shaken. I certainly didn’t mean to upset your table of instruments. I’m sorry for the inconvenience. Can I pick this up for you?” I bent down to retrieve one of the instruments, letting go of Derek’s arm, and dizziness threw my balance off. I stared at the floor as it rose to meet my face until Derek caught me by the waist.
“Maybe we should go,” he said. His arm secured me upright.
I took a few deep breaths to restore my energy, and then we walked back to the elevator. Malevolent souls seemed to run my batteries down to nothing. Most spirit encounters used to do that to me, but since I’d been hanging around with Jenna so much, it took more spirit activity to deplete my energy to exhaustion level. I’d grown stronger and that would be a good thing for dealing with Buster.
When the elevator doors whooshed open, we entered and then rode up to the ground level where we switched elevators to ride up to the 5th floor. Too early for Darla at the reception desk.
Jenna’s father, Jackson Powers, the FBI Director of the Violent Crimes Unit, stood at the corner of her desk and rushed over when he saw us. He hugged me to him, and whispered, “Jenna’s doing good I hope.”
I nodded and then stepped away. Part of the reason he’d asked me to stay on as an FBI consultant was that I interpreted the communications between Jenna’s spirit and her parents.
“Kendra, I’m so glad you’re back. We certainly need your expertise on this one. Were you able to get anything from the teenaged girl?” Jackson waved for Derek and me to follow him to his office.
Vanilla sweetened the air and I knew Jenna was close. She said, “I don’t think my father is going to understand about malevolent spirits, Sparky. How are you going to tell him about Buster taking girl’s souls and replacing them with 1980’s prostitute’s souls?”
Good question.
Chapter Three
Kendra
Jackson propped himself on the corner of his desk. Derek and I settled into the leather chairs in front of him.
I wished Derek, Jenna, and I had conferred with each other on what to share with Jackson before this meeting. Grandma Ellie wouldn’t have disclosed anything about malevolent entities to him, the same as with me. She never thought I would be dealing with them.
Jenna stood next to her father. “So, what to tell Dad. Hmmm.” Her eyes crinkled at the corners.
“I did not communicate with the child’s ghost, but there was a spirit in the morgue. A prostitute that worked under Bertellia Camilla Gonzolas.” I glanced at Derek, then back toward Jackson.
Jenna was shaking her head to stop me. “Careful, Sparky.”
“The only thing I got from this woman was that these teens are being used like prostitutes.”
“What the hell!” Jackson’s voice boomed as he jumped off the desk, charged around the room as if in attack-mode, and then stopped in front of the window with his back to us. “That girl can’t be any older than twelve or thirteen.” His breath fogged the window. “It takes one sick bastard to abuse a child like that.”
“She swears the girls don’t realize what’s being done to them,” I added.
“How can they not be suffering?” Derek leaned forward in his chair, his jaw muscles flexed up to his temples. “She didn’t confirm the child abuser was Vinny Merretti?”
“No.” I looked at Jenna.
Jackson remained rigid at the window.
“Suggest that we tap into Tory James,” Jenna said. “She’s working undercover as Merretti’s girlfriend for a reason, and we know it wasn’t for the FBI agent killings.” Jenna walked over to stand beside her father near the window.
“Jackson, Jenna suggests that we check with Wilmington Police Department’s Special Task Force Detective, Tory James. She’s working undercover as Vinny’s girlfriend. She might be looking into this already,” I said.
Jackson turned around, his mouth tight. He dropped into his chair and rolled it up to his desk. “Good idea, Jenna,” he said, scanning the room until I pointed at where she stood. “Glad you’re on the case, and that you’re still here with us.” His voice caught for a pause, and then, “I’ll connect with WPD and see if we can personally meet with Ms. James. I’m interested in whatever she’s looking for regarding Merretti. Who knows, we might get lucky.”
I couldn’t imagine the emotional struggle Jackson must be dealing with in regards to Jenna’s death last week, but he appeared to handle the spirit communications with his daughter well.
Derek stood. “Tressa is following up on the truck. Its route and where it originated.” He reached over and patted my shoulder. “Let’s get a little sleep first. I’d like to get Kendra settled into her place.”
“Yes, you do that. I’d like to get something in the works right away.” Jackson walked us to the door. “Come back as soon as you can, and we’ll have a meeting with your team. I should have something lined up for both of you by then.”
We left in silence, and during the whole drive to Derek’s place, neither of us said a word.
As soon as we drove into his driveway and parked near his garage, outside lights popped on, streaming through the window and shining across Derek’s face. He turned to me and said, “So what did you not tell Jackson?”
“You gotta hand it to him, our Derek is a pretty receptive dude.” Jenna snickered from the backseat.
“I didn’t tell him about Buster, the malevolent spirit from the hotel. He’s also known as a soul-sucker.”
“What does that mean?” Derek’s back went rigid straight.
“It means those girls don’t know anything about their abuse because their souls are no longer inside their bodies. The soul-sucker absorbs them as his energy source.” There was no way I would tell him females were his favorite meal, or young girls were like a euphoric dessert. “Bertellia’s prostitutes’ souls have taken up residence inside the empty bodies of the teen girls. They are using them like a vessel.”
Derek’s eyes went to the size of half-dollars. “Are you saying prostitutes live inside those kids?”
“Exactly.”
Derek climbed out of the SUV, and so did I. He went to the back and hauled out my luggage.
“I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around this, Kendra,” Derek stated. “It sounds like something only a fiction writer would come up with as an explanation.”
Wow, what a blow, as if he stabbed a sharp blade directly into my heart and twisted it a million ways at once. Heat blasted across my face and scurried down my neck. Maybe I shared too much, too soon. I didn’t need him doubting me, nor did I need the hurt and frustration sweeping through me right now.
“How does this guy take their souls?” He stared at me, his startling blues went stormy. “Are you telling me this thing we dealt wit
h inside the hotel room could have taken your soul? Or Jenna’s?” He hissed an exaggerated breath, dropping his gaze to the ground and shaking his head.
“Wow, keep it coming, Derek.” Jenna stepped next to me, punching her fists at him like a boxer on steroids. “Now what are you going to tell him? Hopefully, the truth. That both of our souls are marked by that soul-stealing freak for his consumption.”
That wasn’t what I would share with Derek, considering his acknowledgment of what actually happened in the hotel room. He had some understanding of the danger.
“So, what can stop it?” Derek spoke through clenched teeth, bringing me back to his previous questions. He was already overprotective, but what could he possibly do to protect us from Buster?
How would I respond? Clueless as to the extent of Buster’s abilities, but I was sure about what Grandma Ellie said, he could steal Jenna’s and my soul. Plus, a strong intuitive feeling told me in order to destroy that beast we would have to get up-close and personal with it.
“I’m sure I’ll find answers in Grandma Ellie’s journal. It’s the research I told you I still needed to do. I’ll require specific supplies and chants, and maybe someone else’s help.” Someone that knew about malevolent spirits and what it took to destroy them because right now I hung totally out of my realm. I needed to find Buster’s vulnerability, his number one weakness, his achilleas heel.
“All this supply stuff and chanting, that sounds like pagan lore. Are you a witch, Kendra?” He rolled his shoulders and his furrowed gaze melded into mine.
“I like to think of myself as a spiritualist.”
“And what does that mean?” Tension sliced each of his words.
“I believe in a greater good, a Divine Source, God to some.” I tilted my chin up and stood my ground. “We all come with light and our light is what connects each of us to one another.”
Jenna looked from Derek to me as she stood between us, then she said, “I had no idea you had that kind of belief, Sparky. Lisa has a similar belief. The two of you actually have more in common than I first thought.” She appeared thoughtful, and then went invisible, leaving me to think about her significant other while staring at Derek.
Malevolent Page 2
