Soul Catcher

by Bridger, Leigh

  “Gimme,” the bane gurgled.

  It snatched for my pad and pencil as I frantically jerked them back. The little fucker sprang upwards like a kangaroo, flashing thick thighs and powerful feet. He ripped my pad and pencil from my hands.

  The bane chortled as it leapt away, carrying my only defense.

  Swoosh.

  The sound of wings right overhead. Huge ones. Large enough to carry a Volkswagen.

  I flattened my back to the cold glass of a shop door. The alcove was deep and narrow. Good hiding, but I couldn’t see what was happening on the street. The wings settled to earth with a fluttering noise. After that, just a tingling silence.

  I strained my ears.

  Click. Ka-click. Ka-click.

  Large claws clicking softly on concrete.

  Sweating in the spring darkness, I stared at the windows across the street. They reflected the streetlights; they reflected my dark doorway.

  And then they reflected the emerging twin profiles, the stalking crouch, the glittering yellow eyes and flaring, sniffing nostrils of two lion-like monsters. Hunting me. Hunting me.

  I couldn’t see them clearly. Just glimmers and shadows. But it was enough to make my guts shrivel.

  I lifted the knife and looked at it. Ten razor-sharp inches of ridiculously hopeless steel. No drawing pad, just this. If I really was a soul catcher—something special—why didn’t the job come with a learning curve that gave me a fighting chance to fight hell like hell?

  I stepped out of the alcove. I felt the heavy weight of loneliness on my chest. Everybody said I just needed to ask for help; all right, I’d test that theory. I tilted my head back and called loudly, “My name is Livia Belane. I’m a . . . soul catcher. If there are any good spirits around who’d like to cover my back, I’d really appreciate it.”

  No answer. No flashing sirens, no spiritual cavalry riding to the rescue.

  The giant bird-cats instantly swiveled their malevolent heads my way. I squinted at them, trying to make out more details. Soul catchers have a gift for seeing banes and demons, boons and pogs and angels, too, in perfect, living detail, or so everyone kept telling me. Obviously I still wasn’t up to par; my shivering mind backed away.

  I braced my feet apart and balanced for action. Slowly, with all the menace Dante had taught me in one of his combat classes, I swirled the knife through the air in front of me. “Here, kitty, kitty,” I called in a shaking voice.

  They leapt. I dodged behind a lamp post as a massive paw swiped at me. Metal cracked. Sparks spewed. The light crashed to the pavement. I lunged forward. I stabbed the knife into the griffin’s paw. Blood spurted.

  Okay, so I could wound them just as they could wound me. Even if it was only an illusion. My encounter with the tentacled bane at the gallery had shown how the illusion worked: The bane would trick me into hurting myself. So the griffins were hoping for . . . what? That I’d run blindly into a storm drain, plunge headfirst through a shop window, or my heart would explode from the overwhelming terror and effort of the fight?

  The thing drew back, howling, but its companion opened its fanged mouth and uttered a shriek that hurt my ears. The sound was a cross between an enraged roar and the scream of a hawk.

  And then it pounced. The tip of its huge muzzle rammed me in the stomach. I hit the pavement with my lungs knocked empty and no time to breathe. I managed to hold onto the knife and swing it quickly enough to slash the thing’s open mouth. Its gray tongue split from the tip to the root. Blood gushed over me.

  See them, I commanded myself. Dammit, use your skills. Don’t let these sorry-ass predators punk you. Man up.

  See them.

  I shut my eyes then opened them.

  I looked up at vivid white fangs as long as my forearm. They were closing over me, coming down . . .

  “Up, up, Livvie get up with you now!” Ian shouted. He snared me by one arm and pulled. I scrambled as he half-lifted, half-dragged me up the sidewalk. The hawk rose in the air, dodging the first griffin’s enraged swipes.

  The second one advanced on us, crouching. Its slit tongue had suddenly healed. The red handle of Ian’s fire ax flashed in the corner of my vision as he lifted it. The griffin’s yellow eyes tracked the movement, and his pace slowed. We backed up the sidewalk. The griffin took one careful step forward for every step we took backwards.

  Dante ran up, an elegantly lethal figure wielding a sword, of all things. “I’ll hold them off. Run.”

  A prim male voice spoke out of nowhere. “Well, honestly, I’ve opened a door for you people. Are you waiting for an engraved invitation?”

  I looked around wildly. Across the street, below the colorful art deco façade of the old Woolworth’s department store, now an arts and crafts gallery, a pair of double glass doors stood open among the gleaming windows of the ground floor.

  Ian swung me toward the store. “Run. I’ll be right behind you.”

  I bolted. Dante and Ian’s heavy footsteps echoed on my heels, along with the rhythm of the griffin’s claws.

  When I burst inside the open doors of what had once been Asheville’s most gloriously elegant five-and-dime, I whirled around with my knife ready. A griffin planted one paw on one of the doors, blocking it. Ian got between him and the doorway, his ax posed over his head, both big hands wrapped tightly around the end of its long handle. Dante shouldered up beside him, the sword raised.

  Both griffins crouched, ready to jump.

  “Banish the bastards, Livia,” Ian yelled over his shoulder. “If you can see them full and clear, all you have to do is speak the words. They’re banes, not as powerful as demons! You can draw pictures of ’em if you’re a mind to but you do no’ have to do it that way. Just banish ’em with words!”

  “What words?”

  “Whatever you believe in! If you’ve got the faith in yourself, you can do it! When I fling the ax, you shout to the beasties! Tell them to scat!”

  Ian’s broad back—Greg Lindholm’s well-muscled, bodybuilding back—flexed then surged. The ax flew end over end.

  I flung out my hands as if waving dual wands. “Go the fuck away!”

  The ax sank between the griffin’s eyes.

  Both griffins vaporized. They literally exploded in a gush of dark, sparkling energy. But as they went, the one nearest us swung a paw. It slapped Ian across the chest. The impact knocked him inside the doorway. He slammed into a massive metal sculpture and slumped to the marble floor at the top of the old department store’s wide terrazzo staircase.

  Dante ducked inside. The glass doors closed graciously behind him. The dead bolt slid into place. It was over.

  The only other sound was the three of us dragging air into our lungs. Outside, the streetlamp stood back in place, Ian’s ax lay where it had fallen on the pavement, my knife lay just outside the doors, and no ethereal griffin blood stained the sidewalks.

  Inside, however, I realized that my hands, clutching Ian’s shirtfront, were growing wet and sticky. Ian made a wheezing sound.

  I scrambled around in front of him. “Turn on a light, please,” I yelled.

  “Give me a moment, will you?” the Woolworth pog answered. “I only have two hands.” The pog spoke in an arch, uptown drawl, the voice of the perfectly unflappable manager of a white-glove world where ladies had once sipped cherry cokes at the soda fountain and the sales clerks suggested just the right face powder at the cosmetics counter. He stepped down from a tall, abstract painting, a geometric collision of brilliantly colored shapes, not human in form, but somehow giving the distinct impression that he looked at us down an aquiline nose.

  A section of the overhead lights flickered to life.

  “We’ve got a problem,” Dante said.

  Ian’s shirt was ripped and bloody. He looked at me through eyes slitted with pain. He managed a sardonic smile. “I believe the bastard nicked me just a wee bit.”

  My hands shook as I jerked at the shirt buttons. Dante squatted beside me. “This is bad, Livia. He’s been
hurt by a large bane. Like the welt you got the other night. He doesn’t have the power to ignore it or heal it instantly. Not without your help.”

  I opened the shirt. A trio of deep gashes ran from Ian’s left collarbone diagonally to his right ribcage. Blood poured from them. I could see the red meat of his chest muscles. I flattened my hands on the wounds. Blood trickled between my fingers. I straddled him with one foot down on the wide surface of the stairs’ first descending step and the other leg curled under me along his hip. I met his eyes. “Do you believe I can do this?”

  “Ay, love,” he whispered. “I’ve always believed in you.”

  I bent my head and shut my eyes. Paint them, trap them, burn them. Banish the wounds they make.

  “You might give me a kiss,” Ian whispered hoarsely. “It could help.”

  Without opening my eyes I pressed my lips to his. Greg Lindholm’s lips were about the only part of his body that hadn’t hurt me. Ian, not Greg, kissed me back. It was sweet, tender. No tongue.

  “Good work, Livia,” Dante shouted. “You did it.”

  I opened my eyes. Ian was fine. His shirt lay open on his chest, but not torn and not bloody. His chest and belly had returned to the sleek, six-packed icon of man-muscle they’d been before. “Livia,” he said softly. “I’ve waited more’n two centuries for you to kiss me again. It was worth gettin’ slashed open.”

  I climbed off him, stood up, and backed away. I gave Dante a hard glare. “Were his wounds gone before he asked me to kiss him?”

  Dante looked away innocently. I swiveled my gaze to Ian. “You cheated.”

  His face hardened. “You want to complain about me weaseling you for a simple kiss after you nearly got us all killed?”

  “I didn’t ask you to come after me. I wanted to leave. I knew I’d probably die. I tried to do what’s best for you and everyone else. I’m a death sentence for all of you.”

  He got to his feet. Anger pulsed in the air. “Can you not understand that this isn’t just about you? Do you not ken that soul catchers are God’s own fighters in a war between the good and the evil of this world and others? Do you not ken that a soul catcher such as you and a soul hunter such as me have to work together, along with other fine souls—” he swung a hand at Dante—“who’ve devoted themselves to the battle? When you go it alone, you put us all in more danger, not less.”

  “From everything I’ve been able to learn so far, you keep deserting me.”

  Ian began forcefully buttoning his shirt. “I do no’ make that choice. My soul does. As does yours.”

  “Bullshit. I don’t believe you. I don’t believe I’ve made you forget me in life after life. I suspect you’ve been trying to forget me. Otherwise, you’d remember more than just that one life in the seventeen hundreds.”

  Dante got between us. “The life you had together back then was obviously a crucial one. Nothing’s been the same since then. You’ll have to find out why. It’s important to know.”

  Ian thrust a finger at me. “Ay, it’s been since then that you’ve run from me like a coward. Ever since.”

  “People, people, enough,” the Woolworth pog interjected, shuffling its gaudy jumble of colors. “I have a store to open in a few hours. I don’t have time to officiate over marital feuds. Good night.” The doors opened slowly. “I’ve asked someone to escort you all to your car. Have a nice evening. Please shop with us again soon.”

  Outside the open doors, a large, shadowy figure began to form, towering higher than the door frames. As it deepened from a shimmering mist into a pale blue image with glowing white edges it fluffed and folded its magnificent wings. It landed gently on the sidewalk.

  “Come with me,” it called in a soft, feminine voice. “You’ll be safe on the walk to your car.”

  “Who is she?” Dante asked me. “I can just glimpse the wings.”

  “She’s a big class o’ boon, that’s for sure,” Ian added, sounding grim and tired. “At least you’ve made one friend, Livia. Speak to her.”

  I stepped outside slowly. The shadowy form looked down at me. “Do you really want to see me, Livia?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you shall.”

  She came to life. I stared up at her calm, classic face, her robes, her wings. She wore a whimsical little star on the crown of her head, as if it were a Christmas tree topper. I gasped. “You’re the bronze angel in front of the city art museum.”

  “Yes,” she said, with a beatific smile. “Thank you for the lovely drawings you made of me when you first came to Asheville, Livia. The cards you drew for tourists to buy? I like being drawn in bright pastel colors. I feel that colorful. You see me the way I feel. I do so like being blue with white trim, instead of plain bronze.”

  Even angels have their vanities. Go figure. “You’re much prettier in person,” I assured her.

  She escorted us to Dante’s Jeep. Ian and I kept our distance from each other. Between the city’s tall buildings, a quiet, starlit night looked down on us. Under the soft glow of street lamps, Asheville’s many architectural beings watched us pass. Gargoyles and carved faces, bestiaries on marble posts. I studied them shrewdly, looking for movement. Several times, I’m sure I saw heads nod, as if bowing to me. “We’re being watched,” I announced. “But it seems friendly.”

  “The word is spreading,” the angel confirmed. “A soul catcher and soul hunter are on duty.”

  I’d never look at the city the same way, again.

  8

  The walls of the artist’s forge were made of scrapped tin and rusty metal billboards. An electric bellows kept the coals glowing. Outside the forge’s screened door was a fenced yard filled with junked cars and piles of useful metal widgets. The work area shared space with mechanized tools and welding gear. Hanging, finished, on long steel shanks, were the artist’s modern craft creations: curlicued towel hooks, ornamental door knockers, goose-necked hangers for kitchen pots.

  Ian, dressed in jeans, a faded football jersey and an asbestos-lined welding apron, tapped a hammer on an ax blade.

  We stood around him, enthralled.

  “And so,” he continued in the cheerful tone of a born storyteller, “there I stood in the smithy shed, me and little Squirrel, and every time that boy-o would chirp and twitter, the birds would come about like pieces of candy with wings. I’d never seen such a sight! Now, aye, comin’ across on the ship from the old country I’d seen a tame bird called a parrot sit on the captain’s shoulder, but I n’er expected to see little parrots in these Carolina mountains, not coming down to chat with Squirrel that way.”

  I swayed, suddenly a little dizzy from the smoke and the heady effect of Ian’s sweaty blacksmithing. I shut my eyes.

  When I opened them, sparks flew against the dark walls of the forge and floated through the cracks between the massive logs, open to daylight. Their firefly light shimmered on the glaze of sweat along Ian’s bare arms. Errant sparks spewed outward through a wide log doorway, where dozens of small, parakeet-sized birds, unbelievably colorful and exotic, chattered on the limbs of a massive oak tree. I had never seen anything like those birds in the Appalachians.

  Ian’s lean and sunburned arm, flecked with old burn scars and also the evidence of childhood pox marks, flashed up and down, wielding a thick hammer. The hammer clanged on a glowing ax head, which Ian held with tongs atop a crude stump of iron. A small boy with Cherokee features and shaggy black hair, naked except for a buckskin loin cloth, grinned as he pumped the bellows that fed a bed of glowing coals in a large iron pot.

  Ian grinned back at him. “Steady, Squirrel lad, that’s the way. Good work.”

  Squirrel peered outside the cracks in the shed and uttered a long trill. The birds chattered happily, in return.

  Clang tap. Clang tap. Ian hammered the red-hot ax head each time then bounced the hammer onto the anvil. A hypnotic rhythm, the heave and thrust. My eyes watered from the smoke and the charred scent of the coals, but I strained not to miss a single move he made.


  He was irresistibly masculine. He wore no shirt, only thin, sweat-stained britches and a heavy leather apron that protected him from chest to knees. The britches clung to his hips and thighs and outlined the muscles and the crack of his ass, and a very fine ass it was. He brushed a fight-scarred knuckle over his thick, dark brows and flung sweat into the coals, where it sizzled. A spark settled on his hair, and he laughed and shook his head like a tall dog. The musky stink of singed fur wafted into the air. His hair, long and brown-black, was tied back with a dirty piece of string. Soot smeared his skin.

  He had been a helluva blacksmith. And the most handsome, compelling, desirable man I had ever seen in this life or, I felt sure, any other.

  I blinked and the image snapped back to now.

  “You all right?” Gigi asked, putting a cool little hand on my forearm. “You’re pink and sweaty.”

  “It’s just the heat,” I said, and took a deep breath, smoke and all. “Ian, those . . . birds you remember. Does anyone know what they were?”

  “Carolina parakeets,” Sarah said wistfully. “The only parrot species found in this part of the country. Beautiful little budgies with green bodies and yellow heads. They were prized for their feathers, unfortunately.”

  My heart sank. “They’re extinct?”

  Charles nodded. “Yes. The last ones died in the early 1900’s.”

  Ian looked at me, frowning. “Extinct?” He rolled the word on his tongue. “That does no’ sound good.”

  I nodded. “It means people slaughtered all of them.”

  His frown deepened. “Demons and banes were behind such waste, I’ll guarantee it.”

  “What about human choice?” I asked. “Don’t we have free will?”

  “Aye, Livia. Free to be evil or good. Do not go around thinkin’ demons are outside of us. I myself believe they are part of us, like the shadow we cast in the sun.”