Deception - Episode 3 (Lost Souls)

by Laurel O'Donnell

  ~ ~ ~

  Christian sat in the audience of the theater, watching the practice. Sam had fazed to talk to her friend, Todd. This gave Christian a moment to try his hand at talking to Rose. He waited for her to appear. He didn’t have to wait long. She appeared on the stage, glaring at him. One of the stagehands walked right through her. She dissolved in a shimmer and then reappeared in the audience.

  Christian stood.

  She shifted forward, moving instantly across the distance of ten rows of seats.

  “Rose,” Christian greeted. “I’m not here to harm you. I want to help you.”

  “You’re with those two.”

  Christian nodded. “We want to help you. We want to help your mother. If you tell us where your body is, we can help the police find it. That will give your mother closure.”

  “No,” Rose snapped. “I’m not done.”

  “Rose, she’s in pain. We can help her. We can help you.”

  “You want to help me? Bring me Jack Withering.”

  “Jack Withering?”

  “When I have him, I’ll show you were my body is.”

  Christian scowled. “Why do you want this Jack Withering?”

  “He’s the one who killed me. I want to do to him what he did to me.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Time was getting away from him and Ben knew the longer he was away, the more worried Sam would be. He knew he had to check in. He fazed into Lucas’s apartment. The afternoon sun illuminated the room in a warm glow.

  It was empty.

  He sat heavily on the couch. It was good to get a break. His entire body was weary and he was weak. He had been drained and recharged so many times he lost count. He just needed a moment to catch his breath.

  He closed his eyes.

  When he opened them, it was dark. For a moment, he panicked. He hadn’t realized he was that tired! Cora would be worried. He needed to get back to her.

  “You look like Hell.”

  Ben stood, and spun. Damien lounged against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest, his dark hair falling to his shoulders and hanging over his face. Ben bent his knees, ready to attack.

  Damien chuckled. “You’re in no shape to be threatening me.”

  Ben knew he was right. Just the little movement of getting off the couch sent his head aching. But he wasn’t going to tell a Changed that. “What do you want?”

  Damien moved away from the wall and took a step toward Ben.

  Ben backed up. If he attacked him, Ben would not be able to fend him off.

  “Don’t be fooled by her. All Changed are evil.”

  “Then why should I trust what you say?” Ben growled.

  Damien grinned. His black eyes shimmered. “You shouldn’t. But I think Sam would tell you the same thing.”

  “Don’t,” Ben snarled. “Don’t tell me what my sister would say.”

  “You mean my wife?”

  “Not anymore.”

  Damien straightened, his hands dropping to his sides. His jaw clenched and his black eyes narrowed. “I’m not here to talk about Sam. I’m here to warn you. Stay away from Cora. She is not what she seems.”

  “And you are? You’re exactly the same as Cora.”

  “Who better to know her so well?” Damien walked past Ben to the kitchen. He touched the iron skillet on the counter.

  “Cora’s not like you,” Ben argued. She couldn’t be. He wouldn’t let her be.

  Damien looked at Ben. “You can’t save her.”

  Ben pulled out his dagger and lunged at Damien. He landed hard on the floor. But it wasn’t his inability to grab Damien that surprised him; it was the speed at which Damien moved. One moment, Damien had been before him, the next he was across the room near the window. Damien hadn’t fazed. It had been too fast to be fazing.

  Damien smiled. “Any more than you can beat me.”

  Ben scowled. The attempt to strike at Damien had taken a lot out of him. He turned over to a sitting position.

  Damien moved again. In one second, he stood before the window, in the next he was before Ben, leaning close. “Use what little brains you have. Stop playing games with Cora.”

  Damien glanced toward the window. Then he vanished.

  Sam and Christian suddenly appeared.

  Ben forced himself to his feet. He couldn’t let Sam see him so weak.

  When she spotted him, her brow furrowed. “What were you doing on the floor?”

  Ben shrugged. “Thinking.” He couldn’t tell Sam Damien had just been there. She would want to know what he wanted. And he promised Cora he wouldn’t tell her. Ben had a queasy, uneasy feeling deep down. He knew he couldn’t tell Sam because maybe Damien was right. Maybe Sam would not want him to help Cora. Not the way he was helping her, that was for certain.

  “Thinking?” Sam echoed in disbelief. “That must have been some thinking to knock you flat.”

  “I was sitting,” Ben argued.

  “What happened to you?” Christian wondered.

  Ben was becoming self-conscious at the way they were staring at him. He bowed his head. “I was looking for Cora. I checked the movie houses –”

  “No. I’m talking about the way you look. I know Souls are pale, but you are ghostly.”

  Sam took a step toward him. “And you have huge black rings under your eyes like you are exhausted.”

  Ben nodded. “I am tired.”

  “I thought Souls don’t get tired,” Christian mused, looking to Sam for affirmation.

  “They don’t,” Sam said, staring at Ben. “And your lips –”

  Ben held up his hands. “Alright. Alright. I get the picture. I haven’t been feeling like myself lately. I guess I don’t look like myself either. I just need to rest.”

  Sam and Christian stared at Ben.

  Ben knew it was a mistake to come here. It would have been better if he finished up with Cora and then returned. This questioning was giving him a headache. He rubbed his head and sat on the couch.

  “I guess any help from you is out of the question. Not that you’ve been much help lately.”

  “Alright, Sam. I’m sorry I haven’t been around. But Cora is more important than all of this.”

  Sam put her hands on her hips. “Really? Christian and I figured out what Rose wants.”

  Christian crossed his arms. “Rose knows where her body is, but doesn’t want it found. She wants revenge.”

  “On who?” Ben asked.

  “Jack Withering.”

  Ben leaned back on the couch. He didn’t really care. He only cared about helping Cora.

  “Are you listening, Ben?” Sam asked. She sat on the arm of the couch. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing. I’m going to look for Cora.”

  “Ben.” Sam reached out and grabbed his arm.

  “I’ll be back by tomorrow night.”

  “We need you there, Ben. Rose is a very aggressive soul. She might hurt this Jack Withering.”

  “I said I’d be back.” Ben yanked his arm away and fazed.

  ~ ~ ~

  Sam shook her head, leaning back against the couch. She was much too tense to sit. They had waited until morning for Esme to awaken before giving her the task of finding this Jack Withering, or at least finding a face to put to the name so they could find him.

  Esme typed away on the computer.

  “Say we find this Jack Withering,” Sam wondered. “What are we going to do with him? We can’t give him to her.”

  Christian shook his head. “We agree on that. She’ll kill him.”

  Lucas turned from Esme and the computer to look at them. “Why don’t you just walk away?”

  Walk away? Leave without helping Rose? Sam stared at the floor for a long moment. How she would love to walk away. This wasn’t their usual battle with the Changed. It wasn’t so cut and dry. And Ben. He needed to get away from Youngstown for a while. Maybe then he wouldn’t look so…sickly. There was one reason Sam didn’t leave… “It’s the mother.”<
br />
  “Rose’s mother?” Christian asked, frowning.

  Sam nodded. “She has a right to know what happened to her daughter.” Sam could only imagine her own mother’s pain after she, Ben and Cora had died. She didn’t want to envision how much more her mother’s pain would have been if she had simply disappeared.

  Christian looked out the window and then nodded in agreement. “You would think Rose would want that, too.”

  “I think part of Rose likes when her mother comes to the theater. It’s a connection to her previous life. A very sad connection, but a connection nonetheless.”

  “So she wants to complete her revenge before she lets her mother have peace? That’s kind of sick.”

  Sam looked at him. She opened her mouth to respond, but Esme called, “I found him!”

  Sam and Christian moved over to the computer desk where Esme sat.

  A newspaper title was at the top of the page ‘Youngstown Courier.’ A man’s picture was on the side. He had dark hair and a thick mustache.

  Shock soared through Sam.

  Lucas put his hand over the box and asked, “Are you sure that’s him?”

  Esme nodded. She pointed to the screen, reading, “Hit by a car. It happened several years ago.”

  “Jack Withering is dead,” Christian said as they stared at his obituary photograph.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Dead?” Rose sat heavily in one of the chairs of the theater near the stage.

  Sam leaned against the stage. “He was killed in a car accident several years ago.”

  Christian stood in the aisle beside Rose. “We’re really sorry, Rose. We know how much finding him meant to you.”

  Rose shook her head. “Sorry?” She looked up at them. “Are you sure it’s him?”

  Christian nodded. “We’re sure.”

  “He’s been dead all this time.” Her jaw clenched and she shook her head. Then, she looked up at them. “I’ve been waiting all this time?” Her hands curved over the arms of the chair. “He’ll never be punished for what he did to me?”

  Sam and Christian remained silent, watching.

  Her eyes narrowed in anger. Her jaw clenched tighter. “I’m trapped like this for no reason? Forever?”

  “I am too, Rose,” Christian said gently. He knelt beside her. “I stayed for my daughter, but now I’m trapped here forever. Just like you.”

  “Come with us, Rose,” Sam said. “Don’t stay here alone.”

  “No! I don’t want to go with you! I don’t want to be like you! Go away! Leave me be!”

  “We can help you,” Sam told her. “You don’t have to be alone.”

  But Rose vanished.

  ~ ~ ~

  Lucas was pacing before the brown couch when they returned to his apartment. He whirled on them. “Where have you been?”

  “With Rose.” Sam explained. “What’s wrong?”

  “A Changed was here. Look, I don’t mind helping you,” he said to Sam, “but I’m not going to be your message boy.”

  Sam scowled. “What are you talking about?”

  “He said his name was Damien.”

  Sam straightened slightly.

  “He wants to talk to you. He said to meet him by your car.”

  Sam shook her head. “I have no intention of talking to him.”

  Lucas grabbed her arm. “He said if you didn’t meet him, he’d come back here. I don’t want him anywhere near Esme.”

  As if summoned, his human stumbled down the hallway wearing socks and a long nightshirt. Esme yawned.

  Sam didn’t think Damien would hurt Esme or Lucas, but she hadn’t thought he’d kill coach Fredericks, either. “Fine.”

  “No way,” Christian said. “Ben would kill me if I let you go.”

  “Then consider yourself dead.” She smiled and vanished.

  ~ ~ ~

  Ben lay on the regen table, staring at the ceiling. When he was regenerating, Cora disappeared. Ben wasn’t sure where she went, and he was too tired to ask. He glanced at the meter. Almost full, yet he still felt so drained.

  Cora fazed back. “I’ve been at the hospital, checking up on the dying woman. She’s close, Ben. So close! It’s perfect timing. Like it was meant to be.”

  He hadn’t seen her looking this lively since…well, since they had died six hundred years ago. Had she really held him and Sam responsible? All this time? “Cora.”

  She looked at him.

  Her eyes were large, and even though they were completely black, Ben saw the spark of hope there.

  She stepped toward him. “Are you ready? Do you have more for me?”

  Dread slithered up Ben’s spine. She was like an addict. Always hungry. Single minded. Always wanting more. Ben nodded. “I’m at full power.”

  She stepped forward anxiously.

  “Do you blame me as much as you blame Sam?”

  Cora stopped. “For what?”

  “For making you stay. For making you become a Soul.”

  Cora tilted her head sympathetically and boosted herself onto the table beside Ben. “Of course not. You stayed for Sam. It was all her fault.”

  “But I could have gone with you instead.”

  “No you couldn’t have. You couldn’t have left Sam anymore than she could have left Damien.”

  It was true. He couldn’t have left Sam. Just like he couldn’t leave Cora now.

  “Can I have it now?” Cora asked.

  Ben nodded. He couldn’t deny her.

  ~ ~ ~

  Sam fazed to her car. She was glad to see Damien wasn’t near it. He lounged against the brick wall in the alley with that infamous masculinity. His head was bowed and his long dark hair hung over his face, shielding it. How many times had she seen him like this? The past came searing back, so long ago. He wore different clothing back then, but it was the same pose.

  Sam mentally shook herself and clenched her jaw. Damien wasn’t the same man. Her husband would never have killed that human so coldly. She thought of the horrible tragedy surrounding coach Frederick’s death, then quickly put aside the memory of their failure to save the human. “I’m starting to think you’re following me.”

  “I am.”

  The timbre of his voice sent chills down her body. She had always reacted to his deep voice with anticipation. “Why?”

  “You’re the only one who knows how to blast Changed who have made the Jump. You’re the only one using that technique to stop them.”

  Sam nodded. “That’s right. You don’t like us blasting your friends.”

  “They are no friends of mine.”

  “But you want us to stop.”

  Damien lifted his head and pinned her with his black eyes. “I don’t want you to blast them. Go ahead and kill them like you used to, I don’t care. Just don’t blast them.”

  Sam narrowed her eyes. Perhaps the other Changed were not his friends, but he still belonged with that race of hideous monsters. Damien was of the same grotesque stock now. “You’re out of luck. We’re going to keep blasting them. We’re going to save the humans and kill the Changed.”

  Damien jerked away from the wall.

  A rush of power surged through Sam and her muscles tensed in preparation.

  Damien’s gaze swept her and he released a breath as he relaxed.

  The moment of power disappeared. Sam cocked her head in confusion.

  A small smile crept over his lips. “You always knew how to get me angry.”

  “You didn’t have to kill that human. He was a coach. He was a father.”

  “You were blasting him. I warned you not to.”

  Sam’s jaw clenched. “Tell me you did it because he was doomed anyway. Tell me you did it to save his family from scandal and humiliation.” That was the argument she, Ben and Christian had. Kill the man to save the family. She wanted to know Damien had that moral dilemma too, that he hadn’t killed the human just because he didn’t want her to blast the Changed.

  Damien grinned softly. “I’ll tell you
that, if you want me to.”

  Part of Sam cried out for her lost love because he was a monster now. He no longer cared for life. “Thanks for straightening me out in that matter.” She began to faze.

  Damien was suddenly before her, grabbing her wrist. He was so fast! And even more shocking…somehow he was able to grab her wrist during her faze.

  “I’m not done talking to you.”

  “How did you do that?” No one had ever interrupted her faze like that before. She never even knew such a thing was possible.

  “I can do a lot of things now,” he said.

  She yanked at her hand, but he held it firmly. Then, he tugged her against him, his arm circling behind her, holding her close. His chest was firm just like she remembered. He was too much like she remembered, like she wanted him to be. Her gaze moved over his face. “Going to drain me again?”

  Those lips, a sensual slash on his face, curled in amusement. “You’d like it too much.”

  She felt herself melting against him, her body instantly warming to his hold. She fought the feelings. Not my husband, she told herself. Her jaw clenched.

  He lifted a hand and wiped a strand of her hair back from her cheek. Small blue electrical shocks danced between his fingers and her cheek. “Life is different for me now, Sammie,” he whispered.

  Yes! You’re a monster, she wanted to scream at him. She knew his morals, the morals that had been so filled with honor and pride, were now corrupted with evil.

  “I’m so glad I’ve found you.”

  Shocked, the fight dissolved from Sam. What did he mean by that? Was he truly glad? Her gaze traveled over his face. Everything about his features was so comfortingly familiar…except for his eyes. Except for those damned black eyes.

  “You have to stop him, Sam,” he whispered, drawing close to her.

  Stop him? Their noses were so close they almost touched. Was he talking about himself? She didn’t want to stop him. Her mind scattered at his closeness. Her husband. A Changed. How could she not resist him? How could her mind be so muddled, so confused? How could her fingers be touching his shoulder, pulling him close? It was so obvious. He was a fiend. A horrible, evil, Changed.