My Soul to Keep

by Sharie Kohler

  Stepping from the vehicle, she zipped up her heavy white-and-tan camo parka—perfect cover against the wasteland that swallowed her. She removed a long leather scabbard from the backseat. The saber inside was honed to deadly sharpness, able to cut through flesh and bone like softened butter. Sliding the strap over her shoulder, she faced the lonely landscape. Perfect isolation. A slow smile curled her lips. Tresa wouldn’t expect her.

  She pulled her fur-lined hood over her head, and the subzero winds had little effect on her as she set out with sure strides. The beast simmered inside her, just beneath the surface, protecting her from the cold, keeping the freeze at bay.

  Instinct hummed through her, propelling her forward. Her boots crunched over loose snow and dead rock as she moved in quickly, her body taut and quivering as her legs worked fast, at a near run. Tundra air buffeted her. She welcomed the bite of cold on her face, never felt more alive and awake.

  Before cresting the top of the rise, she dropped and belly-crawled over burning-cold ground. Unzipping her backpack, she pulled out her infrared heat goggles and put them on, tugging her long ponytail free of the strap. Shaking her dark, choppy bangs back from her eyes, she looked through the goggles to the sprawling lodge below. A steady stream of smoke rose from the chimney, assuring her that it was occupied.

  “There’s my girl,” she murmured. Aside from the glow of the burning fireplace, she easily identified a lone figure through the walls, marking the blurry red silhouette. Tresa.

  The pulse at her throat raced. Her skin snapped and shivered, the beast in her prowling with excitement, stirring up heat like sparking embers, eager to break free and unleash itself on the demon witch responsible for the lycan curse. For so much death and mayhem over the last two thousand years. For Gervaise.

  “Let’s do this,” she announced to herself, her voice thick already behind her teeth. She readjusted her infrared goggles.

  Her target was in the back of the house, lounging on something. Maybe asleep on a bed or couch. Sliding the sword from its scabbard, Sorcha flexed her fingers around the leather grip with an easy familiarity. She’d trained and practiced long hours with the blade ever since Gervaise’s death.

  Dropping the scabbard in the snow, she left it behind and advanced on the house, her boots cracking over icy earth as she moved with the stealth of a stalking predator. The witch hadn’t moved. Her pulsing red figure still reclined in the back of the house.

  Sorcha’s palms grew damp inside her leather gloves. She stopped at the front door and listened for a moment to the howling winds. Holding her breath, she tried the doorknob. It turned. Of course. Who would bother locking doors all the way out here?

  Soft music wafted on the air as she stepped inside the lodge, sword brandished, at the ready in front of her. She eased her foot down, wincing as it creaked on the wood floor.

  Swallowing against her tightening throat, she assessed the comfortably appointed room. A fire crackled in a hearth large enough for a body to stand inside. The furniture was oversized, brimming with bulky pillows. It looked like someone’s vacation retreat. A pot bubbled on the stove in the open kitchen overlooking the living area. She sniffed the savory aroma of meat and vegetables. Stew?

  She clenched her teeth until her jaw ached, refusing to let herself be lulled by the domestic scene. Tresa lurked in the next room, a demon witch who needed to be put down like a rabid dog. And then Sorcha would have what she really craved, what she was really after—a confrontation with the demon who’d orchestrated Gervaise’s death.

  She moved toward the bedroom. Through the wall, she eyed the shape of a female glowing several shades of red as her heat levels varied.

  Sorcha’s pulse thumped wildly in her neck as she took careful steps over the wood floor. She paused at the sudden creak beneath her, the old wood betraying her yet again. Her heart a loud pounding in her ears, she shot a glance down at her boots, holding her breath. When she looked back up, her heart seized altogether.

  The hazy red figure had vanished.

  Shit! Where did she go?

  She dragged a deep breath inside her smoldering lungs and reminded herself that she was dealing with a powerful witch who had all manner of magic at her disposal … and an especially brutal demon guiding her. Of course this wouldn’t be easy.

  Sorcha moved forward another step. At the threshold, she peered inside the room. Nothing. Empty space stared back at her. Her gaze narrowed on a chaise longue where a book sat faceup, forgotten. A page fluttered, undecided about which direction to fall.

  She held still and listened. Felt. Scented the air. Let her beast find its way from deep within her.

  Something was different. The air felt charged. Crackled around her like an electrical storm.

  An odor clung to the room, definitely not human, but not beast, not like her. Not even like the witches she had interrogated in her quest to find Gervaise’s killer.

  This scent was different from the woodsy aroma of a witch—at least any witch she had met. It was acrid, like a recently snuffed-out match.

  Then she felt it. Breath on her neck.

  Her skin snapped, burst like wildfire. Her bones pulled, scorched down to the marrow. Primal and animal, her beast emerged to answer the threat.

  Flexing her hand around the leather grip of her sword, she turned.

  JONAH GUIDED THE CHOPPER over the desolate landscape. He held the controls with both hands as a sudden moaning wind shook the aircraft, hoping he wasn’t too late, that he hadn’t flown all this way simply to fail. Failure wasn’t a possibility.

  He checked his coordinates and then assessed the frozen wasteland beneath him. He didn’t dare set down too close to the dwelling. Not unless he wanted to alert Tresa and the woman hunting her of his arrival.

  He acted with cold calculation, refusing to let his thoughts stray too long to the woman he was sent to kill. To be fair, he would try to make her see reason first. Give her that chance at least. If she failed to listen, he would do what needed to be done. Even as tasteless as he found taking an innocent life—the life of someone who believed she was doing something good, something right, by killing a demon witch—her death could mean the future of the world.

  Serving Ivo, he’d killed plenty. All lycans, though. He shook his head, shoving off the distasteful memory. Killing was killing. It blackened his soul, dragged him down. Now, years later, he could admit he’d stayed with Ivo for one reason. Sorcha.

  The hero worship in her young eyes had held him prisoner. Innocent eyes for all the evil and corruption that surrounded her, hungry to pull her in. True, he had been the intended vehicle for that corruption. Her father fully expected him to ruin her, to drag her into the darkness and shatter her youth.

  Of course he’d refused. Maybe he would have surrendered to the temptation someday, but he never had the chance. Her father’s madness had killed her first.

  He winced, hating the thought of that night in Istanbul. The explosion that lit up the air, turned the ink sky red.

  Why should he think of that now? Here? On the brink of a mission that bore such importance for all. Humans, witches, lycans, dovenatus. No one would be immune if this demon was unleashed.

  A dark voice shivered through him, insidious as the cold wind seeping into the chopper’s cockpit and penetrating his layers of clothing, into his very bones.

  Because you might kill a woman. A human … vulnerable, as Sorcha had been. A woman who probably thought she was doing a good thing taking down a demon witch.

  Banishing the thought before it softened him, stealing him from his purpose, he lowered the aircraft onto the barren landscape. The skids bounced as he set the chopper down. The blades slowed their frenzy to a dull beat.

  Killing the engine, he gathered his gear and set out, forgetting the past and wrapping his head around what lay ahead of him.

  He covered ground in good time, his long legs pumping hard. The white-and-brown landscape, both soft and hard, whipped past in a blur. Wind floated o
ver the land like something alive, crawling, frozen curls of white seeking something, just as he was.

  Soon the house came into view. A sprawling lodge with smoke streaming from the chimney. He reached inside his bulky jacket and pulled his gun free.

  SORCHA STARED AT THE witch who had killed her husband. Even if it was at the behest of a demon, it had been her hands that tore Gervaise apart. Sorcha pulse stuttered, slowed to a choking halt as her gaze drifted to the female’s pale, slim fingers … as though she expected to see Gervaise’s blood still there, a stain never to be washed clean.

  “Tresa.” Her lips moved numbly around the name. A sweeping cold filled her, shriveling her veins. Every wound, every pain she’d ever known, suddenly ripped open, tender and raw again.

  Standing before the two-thousand-year-old witch responsible for her every sorrow, she felt dizzy, almost as if she stood outside her own body. Her father’s face flashed before her eyes. As did all the lycans she’d ever crossed paths with. She relived the memory of their cruelty, their brutal power. Tresa was responsible for all of them.

  The demon witch was beautiful in a strange, otherworldly way. Even in a cream-colored fisherman’s sweater and dark jeans, she looked extraordinary, out of place and time. Her hair gleamed, blue-black as a raven’s wing, the ends cut bluntly, stopping just past her shoulders. Buff, fur-lined boots encased her long legs up to the knees. Her eyes gleamed whiskey-gold, catlike in a face that was sharply cut, exotic. Pure and ancient.

  Those finely arched brows winged high. “You know my name.”

  “Yes,” Sorcha hissed, thinking again of her demented father and the lycan army he had amassed before his death. The destruction he had wrought. Countless deaths and misery. This witch had brought all that on the world. Death and misery and destruction. And not to be forgotten—Gervaise. Vengeance would taste sweet. She would make this bitch and her demon suffer for all they had done.

  Somehow, intricately woven in her head, was the not entirely reasonable belief that this witch and her demon were responsible for Jonah’s death, too. The agents that had blown up their building only existed because of Tresa, after all.

  Tresa’s expression turned bemused. “It’s been a long time since anyone has spoken my name.”

  No denial then. It was the only validation Sorcha needed. She’d found her target. With a triumphant shout, she let her blade fly, brought the razor tip inches from the creamy throat peeping over the high-necked sweater, stopping a fraction of a second before making contact.

  Tresa didn’t even flinch with the blade’s tip at her throat. She simply stared at Sorcha with her whiskey-warm eyes. As if a sword placed at her throat was an everyday occurrence. “You don’t want to do that.”

  “Oh, but I do.” Sorcha flexed her fingers around her leather grip and wondered why her palms were sweating inside her gloves. She inched her face closer. “I’ve dreamed of meeting you, of watching you die. You killed my husband.”

  Finally, she would end it. She licked her lips and tried to still her suddenly shaking hands. Tried not to think about how very human the witch appeared. Not a monster at all.

  “Did I?” Tresa asked in a voice laced with an indefinable accent. “I’m sorry for that.”

  The words enraged Sorcha, increased her loathing. “You’re sorry? He’s dead. You viciously murdered him … and you’re sorry?”

  “I have little memory of the things I’ve done under possession.”

  “You mean you’re not possessed right now? Your demon isn’t … here right now? He’s gone?”

  Tresa’s lips pulled tight in a frown. “He’s never truly gone. I’m bound to him, but yes, presently he’s not here.”

  “But once you’re dead, I imagine he’ll surface.”

  The witch smiled without mirth. “Even as much as demons abhor the cold, yes, if I were killed, he would instantly materialize. But you don’t wish to do that.”

  “Oh, I think I should like that very much,” Sorcha growled, her words distorted through her thickening teeth.

  “You’re not human,” the witch announced, looking at her intently with her fiery gaze, her nostrils flaring slightly, as if she scented Sorcha’s unnatural origins.

  Sorcha resisted the temptation to touch her face, to feel whether she had fully transformed. Her emotions ran high, and she’d never been very good at wielding control over her inner beast.

  “That’s right, I’m not. I’m a creation of your making.”

  “Ah.” Tresa nodded, her sleek, dark hair moving fluidly over her shoulders. “Not full lycan, though. Some relief, I suppose.”

  Considering her loneliness since Gervaise’s death, it was hard to imagine anything good about being a species that walked on the fringes of two worlds, never belonging in either. Relief? What a joke. There was little relief in her solitude, her isolation from mankind, from … anyone. Trapped in her cursed existence. No real friends. Only strangers for lovers because that was all she could ever allow a man to be. On the rare occasion she had let a man into her bed, it was always temporary. A fleeting satisfaction of the flesh to fill the emptiness. She never permitted more. She couldn’t allow that. All she ever had was Gervaise.

  Thoughts of her husband tightened her throat. “Why?” she whispered hoarsely. “Why did you have to kill him?”

  “I didn’t have a choice—”

  “But you did once. Long ago, when you decided to sell your soul to a demon bastard.”

  Tresa gave a single hard nod, her features tightening. “Yes. I did do that.”

  Sorcha sank her blade a fraction closer, readying it to slay her.

  “Heed me,” Tresa continued. “I’m many things, but never a liar. Even when it might be good for me.” Her eyes flashed and Sorcha suspected she was remembering something else, thinking of a time when a lie had hurt her. Those whiskey-gold eyes narrowed. “Kill me, and you’ll know true regret. The kind I’ve lived with for two thousand years. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. You don’t wish to free my demon.”

  Sorcha’s brow creased, certain it wasn’t human decency she heard in the witch’s voice. It couldn’t be that. Tresa couldn’t possess a scrap of humanity. “Rest easy. I’ll dispatch your demon to hell fast on your heels.”

  Just then, the witch’s head cocked sharply to the side. She closed her eyes as if she were listening to something. Or someone.

  Not about to let her establish a connection with her demon—that would make her harder to kill—Sorcha dug the blade deeper. Blood swelled around the point. “Stop that. Open your eyes.”

  The blood continued to pool, more black than red, but Tresa didn’t wince, didn’t even seem to feel the pain at all. Finally, the witch opened her eyes. “You must go. He’s coming.” As stoically as she stood, her voice betrayed her, trembling to a vibrating chord on the air. “God help us, he’s coming.”

  Sorcha didn’t miss the irony that a witch in service to a demon asked for God’s help.

  Anxiety surged through her despite herself, despite the fact that he was the reason she had come here. “Let him come,” she hissed.

  “Quickly, flee, go. Once he’s here, I can’t stop—”

  “Your demon,” Sorcha finished. “I get it. Bring him on. Let him see his precious witch destroyed—”

  “No.” Tresa shook her head fiercely, her voice angry now. “You don’t understand. He wants you to kill me and free him. You can’t kill me!”

  “Wanna bet?” Sorcha leaned forward, adding pressure. Black-red blood ran, a steady river down her throat, staining her sweater.

  A shutter fell over Tresa’s face, banking the glow in her eyes, making them appear dull, lifeless.

  With blood running thickly down the column of her neck, she looked to a point over Sorcha’s shoulder. Lips barely moving, she croaked, “It’s too late. He’s here.”

  Sorcha followed her gaze and looked. Nothing was there.

  Well, almost nothing.

  The wind outside grew louder, howling like a
beast. The air in the house seemed to darken, thicken with swelling shadows. She shivered with a foreboding sense of awareness. The temperature inside the lodge rose several degrees, as if someone had tossed more logs onto the fire.

  “Go,” Tresa hissed, her face pale and drawn. Her lips trembled, as if it took her very will to speak, to spit out the words. “Run.”

  Sorcha’s beast stirred, awake and alert on a primal level.

  Suddenly the shadows converged into one great cyclone of air. Tresa screamed as she was enveloped in the dark gust. Her body and arms were flung backward, as if struck with the force of a truck.

  Her scream faded, dwindled to a prolonged hiss, like a drop of water on a hot stove.

  Sorcha watched, grasping the fact that the shadow was no trick of light. No shadow at all.

  The demon she hunted was back and bent on reclaiming his witch.

  Tresa twisted and writhed, devoured within the dark, whirling shadow.

  Finally, she stilled. Faced Sorcha.

  Now she resembled the dark, evil entity that Sorcha had expected to find here. She stood taller. Those lovely whiskey eyes were gone, swallowed up in a sea of black that sent a chill straight to Sorcha’s heart.

  Eyes wide and aching in her face, Sorcha focused on Tresa’s bloodied throat, peeking above the collar’s edge. It had to be the throat. Decapitation was the only way.

  Before she lost her chance, before the demon intensified his hold on Tresa and proved harder to kill, Sorcha pulled back her arm and brought her saber down in a flashing arc of steel.

  Air hissed as her sword fell, descending toward Tresa’s neck.

  Sorcha’s arm jerked, caught hard on something. A cry ripped loose from her throat. Her shoulder constricted, her muscles pulling and straining to bring down her sword.

  Her heart froze in her too-tight chest. She glanced up at her blade, suspended above Tresa’s head, locked, motionless. Her gaze flitted up, resting on the strong, masculine hand clamped over her own hand, squeezing her fingers until the blood ceased to flow. The rough-looking knuckles whitened, not loosening despite her effort to pull free.