Cait’s eyes welled up, a lonely tear rolling down her cheek. This was an extremist cult killing, and the perpetrators had to be stopped, because this murder was about to be the first of many.
“His name’s James. And his soul’s wandering. He came to me last night. The poor child’s drifting in no-man’s-land, lost.”
“Tell me more,” said Jools.
Cait’s calling to help cleanse James’s tarnished and wandering soul is continued in the third book in this series, The Assassin’s Apprentice. Unlock the mystery of Cait’s journey as she wanders between the corporeal world and the Otherworld while traveling the globe in her search for the murderous and illusive secret sect, Brethren of the True Believers. Cait becomes involved in a terrorist plot and ends up battling the Cosa Nostra in Sicily. Click here and start reading today!
The Assassin’s Apprentice - Book #2
“Cait . . . Cait . . . I’m lost. I want to go home,” whispered James in a veiled voice. The frightened fourteen-year-old’s pleas were inside her head, his soft words appearing then gently fading as if they were spoken into a velvet-lined chamber.
“He’s coming for me again. Help me . . . please,” the child’s voice begged.
“No, no . . .” Cait screamed, her voice edgy and brittle. “Get away from James. He’s not yours, he’s mine.”
Cait was back in the Otherworld, floating in the same foreboding black void where she had desperately fought off the Gatekeeper just days ago. But this time the beast had crossed over from the other side to reclaim James’s wandering soul that was currently hidden under Cait’s protective mantle.
Thrashing her arms around as if in a pitched battle with her tormentor, Cait shot bolt upright, bathed in a lather of cold sweat, opening her eyes to the warmth and security of her own bedroom.
She’d been having an all-too-realistic nightmare.
Or was it another vision?
THIRTY-SIX HOURS EARLIER
“Cait . . . Cait, I need you.” The hauntingly mantra-like voice was calling her, over and over.
The young boy’s pleading words had become a regular occurrence for the past few nights, ever since Cait had stumbled across Rose’s email about her lost young son, James, that Cait’s reporter contact, Robert Macillicuddy, had forwarded to her a week ago.
Sent from my iPad
From:
Date: 28 January at 11:05:17 am AEDT
To:
Subject: My missing son James
Dear Mr. Macillicuddy,
I have just read your recent article “Our Missing Children” in the Australian Tribune about the apparent abduction and then disappearance over the past few years of young adolescent children. This is a terrible and shocking indictment on society. What is wrong with these people?
I am at my wits’ end to see something done about this tragic crime, as for me it is all too close to home. My 14-year-old son James is one of those missing children. Seven and a half months ago he was abducted on his way home from school. The last anyone saw him was when he was riding his bicycle after he left his school grounds.
The police found his bike dumped around the corner from where we live, but that’s all they have to go by. We haven’t seen him since and the police have no leads, as there were no witnesses to James’s abduction. He’s just gone.
James’s disappearance has striking similarities with the abductions that you highlighted in your article, hence this email.
I am fraught with worry and don’t have anyone to turn to. Can you suggest anything here, or help out in any way? I somehow have to find closure on this, and hopefully, God willing, get my son back alive.
Kind regards,
Rose Smith
Macillicuddy had been following Cait’s own case on and off for the past two years. He’d first made acquaintances with her when he wrote several feature articles in the Australian Tribune in which Cait was a prominent player. What he had soon learned after interviewing Cait several times was that she seemed to have some kind of unexplained psychic ability. It was a mystery to him, as he was very much a nuts-and-bolts type of guy who only dealt with cold hard facts, but regardless, there was just something about Cait that constantly niggled away at him.
And besides, with all the trauma Cait had been through over the past twenty-four months—her lover being brutally and senselessly murdered; the distress of subsequently being kidnapped and badly injured; that strange death of her abductor—she had somehow managed to avoid being emotionally scarred and grown into such a caring and thoughtful person.
Well, in Macillicuddy’s eyes at least.
Then there were also the off-the-record comments that had fed back through the grapevine about Cait’s uncanny abilities to see things and predict events. Certainly nothing that could be reported as fact and included in a police report. But after her lucky escape from her violent abduction, Cait’s insights and paranormal visions had apparently managed to guide the investigating officers to her kidnappers when all else had failed.
Plus, there was the unexplained hospitalization of her attacker. How did Cait, a slight young woman weighing one hundred and fifteen pounds, manage to overcome such a brutal beast of a man? And single-handed. When the police rescued Cait, she was mostly unharmed, with a chipped tooth and bloody lip from being nicked with a blade, but her assailant had to be urgently transported to the ICU with life-threatening injuries.
He was a mental and physical wreck.
Gray clouds of doubt hung over the case, as it was impossible for Cait to have triumphed over the thug, but the police had conveniently let their doubts slide. He was a well-known, low-life bikie drug dealer they had unsuccessfully been trying to nail for years, and if Cait had managed to lead them to him, well, so much the better.
Unknowingly, Cait actually did the police a big favor by taking the thug off the streets for good.
So, in light of Rose’s desperation, Macillicuddy thought nothing ventured, nothing gained, and forwarded her email on to Cait. Stranger things had happened. He knew that Cait had an altruistic side, so just maybe she could shed some light on a case going nowhere fast, as it looked like Rose needed all the help and support she could get . . . from this world, or the other, wherever and whatever that was.
“Mia, come on. Fetch the stick,” Cait playfully said to her faithful border collie. Well, if truth be known, her father’s dog actually, as Mia had quickly latched on to G as the leader of the pack. But regardless, Cait was still a top-tier pack member.
In fact, when Cait was attacked last year Mia had jumped in and tried to defend her, biting Cait’s assailant on the ankles before the thug kicked Mia so hard that he shattered two of her ribs, winding her and sending her whimpering off to attend to her master G, who had just been king hit and was lying bloodied and motionless on the ground.
So dog and mistress had a bond, and today they were just chilling and enjoying the beauty of the day. They were in St Kilda Botanical Gardens, soaking up the energy of a beautiful lazy Melbourne summer’s day. Cait was lying in the shade under a huge Moreton Bay fig tree, and Mia was wearing out the grass as she ran around and around, chasing possum smells and barking at a noisy flock of squawking multicolored rainbow lorikeets as they took off out of the tall palm tree they had been feeding on.
Cait lazily closed her large, glacier blue eyes and succumbed to the moment. Lost in a world of vacant thoughts, she indulged her fantasies and let her mind drift to wherever it wanted to go.
Ah, the smell of freshly mown grass. It’s just so summer, thought Cait, her olfactory senses pleasantly stimulated by the green smell hanging in the humid air, carried along by the gentle eight-knot southerly breeze. The background symphony of the high leaves rustling in the towering trees completed the picture.
It was one of those magic, cloudless powder blue sky days that had to be enjoyed.
The warming rays of the sun were like a cosmic connection for Cait as t
hey filtered through the leaves of the trees, leaving leopard-like spots of yellow-white light wherever they landed. She felt plugged in to the universe, her soul energized.
As Cait drifted, lost in her thoughts, she became aware of a fuzzy vagueness invading her mind.
“Cait, Cait, come to us,” the soft, melodic words drifting in from the Otherworld whispered to her on the warming breeze.
“We’re here around you, everywhere but nowhere. Come find us.”
Cait opened her eyes and stared vacantly into the distance, noticing how the world had strangely sharpened, the images in front of her taking on a crisp, ethereal life form.
“Listen to the voice, Cait. It’s James. He’s stuck, wandering in a halfway world. He needs you.”
Cait’s ancient grandmothers were calling her from the Otherworld.
A soft warmth enveloped Cait, totally distinct from the balminess of the day, creeping up on her, cocooning her, wrapping her in an eerie glow that gradually took over her psyche. Opening her eyes again, Cait found she was detached from her body, hovering, looking down on her physical self that was still sitting under the tree. She took in the garden vista and saw Mia friskily running around, smiling, returning to the person under the tree for a pat, then running off again, barking.
Cait was aware of the moment, but not in it.
She gazed around in awe as the leaves of the trees started individually glowing a radiance that was life itself; a shimmering aura of white and green light enshrouded the trunk of the giant Moreton Bay fig she was sitting under; the grass morphed into a flickering velvet magic carpet; the birds overhead ceased to squawk and instead were speaking to each other in a language Cait understood; the hum of the busy bees became deafening as they flittered from flower to flower, pollinating life itself.
Returning to her physical self, Cait reached out and ran her hand through the air, a golden sparkle resembling a sprinkling of fairy dust tracing the movement of her arm.
“Help me, Cait. I’m lost,” called the voice again, but this time from the ether around her instead of in her head.
Cait looked up through the glittering silver veil that was occupying a space in front of her and watched in awe as James crystallized.
“James, James . . . I hear you,” whispered Cait, words she wasn’t aware of speaking but knew she was uttering, words from the Otherworld that her ancient shamanic grandmothers were prompting her with.
“You’re trapped aren’t you, you poor child,” Cait muttered in the softest of dulcet tones, perceptible only to the spirits of the world she was currently visiting. James was there but not there at the same time, hovering at an indeterminable distance like a 3-D hologram, maybe right next to her, maybe in the distance. He was just there. She knew it was the boy. There was no doubt in her mind. And he was stuck, cosseted inside a shimmering, ghostly womb.
“Follow me, Cait. Come,” James pleaded softly. “Come with me, please.”
A wraithlike hand reached out to Cait, translucent but with form, with color but no color; a smoky vapor moving and changing shape fluidly, lengthening and shortening. Cait let go of the now and let her mind be taken. Drifting to another dimension, she left her physical self behind in the mortal world to be guarded by Mia.
Cait felt her very soul being pulled deeper and deeper into an astral plane that was cold and damp, black and foreboding. A frightening place that had no dimension, no boundaries, only a deafening silence that screamed at her like the sound of a thousand banshees wailing, all calling to be set free at once.
“This is the home of lost souls, Cait. The halfway point between heaven and hell,” Cait’s grandmothers silently whispered to her. “This is where James is wandering, lost.
“But beware of the Gatekeeper. He’s the guardian of this evil place. Be careful. Be strong.”
“Help me, Cait. Help me get home,” pleaded the frightened voice from the ether.
Then Cait heard the screaming. A haunting resonance of a million lost souls, all pleading to be set free so they could continue their journey to the other side, a cacophony of guttural sounds becoming unbearably loud and real.
The blackness thickened, the atmosphere around her closing in, enveloping her, crushing her. Cait felt like she was in an infinite vacuum with no beginning, no end, unable to breathe, unable to escape.
Trapped.
“Ahh . . .” Cait screamed.
“I can’t breathe. I’m stuck. Help me!” she said, her last words lingering eerily in the darkness of this terrible place, trying to echo back to her, but instead soaking into the nothingness.
“What’s going on?” she cried, but no one heard. She was alone, speaking only to herself.
Cait felt—sensed—rather than saw the horror of the beast looming in the void. It was rushing, coming straight for her, an evil coldness about it that would freeze water in a scorching hot desert. Cait knew instinctively that she was in its sights. She was an intruder in this terrifying underworld—this realm of lost souls—where this dreadful beast was the lord and master, and he wanted her. He was about to capture her soul, to add it to James’s along with all his other desperate captives who were destined to spend an eternity in the awfulness of this halfway hell.
This was a place with only a one-way ticket in. No returns possible.
“Cait, Cait, fight the beast. It’s the Gatekeeper. You have to beat it,” whispered her grandmothers. “Look at it. Don’t run. Stare it down. You have the power.”
Just at that point Cait suddenly felt herself flying backward, being pushed along by a massive force, as if she had been hit head-on by a fully loaded Mack truck traveling at warp speed. Her insides were being ripped out, organ by vital organ. She was burning, on fire. And failing rapidly. The beast had violently entered Cait’s body and was playing games inside her, enjoying the torture.
Then as quickly as the Gatekeeper had invaded her space, it exited painfully through her back.
Cait was devoid of reaction. She was spent. Paralyzed with . . . fear?
“No,” she screamed, “you won’t beat me!” Her grandmothers’ words played over and over in her head like a stuck gramophone record.
She sensed the beast about to attack again, but she knew that this time it would be the kill shot. The Gatekeeper was about to claim her soul and drag it into the abyss.
Cait’s mouth involuntarily opened and words formed, loud, harsh and guttural, the source coming from another world—a long-forgotten world of mystical Gaelic spells forcefully poured forth—an Otherworld bricht—taking over the black abyss with their sheer power, dominating the space with their absolute intensity:
“Trí bás úaim rohuccaiter!”
(May three deaths be taken from me!)
“Trí áes dom dorataiter!”
(May three ages be given to me!)
“Secht tonna tacid dom dorodailter!”
(May seven waves of fortune be granted to me!)
“Begone,” Cait bellowed with a booming resonance. “Turn back and leave. By the power and protection of my forebears, your evil can’t touch me. I am one with the universe, and the universe is me.”
Cait raised her straightened right arm, and turning her hand upward and outward, directed all her energy through her palm and out toward the attacking beast as it rushed forward. Standing her ground, Cait felt the forces of evil hit her then part, rushing around her body and joining up behind her back.
“No,” yelled Cait. “Now leave this place.”
The Keeper of Lost Souls was beaten. Overcome.
For now.
His vile presence gathered form and then dematerialized, returning to its dark abode to fight another day.
“Come with me, James. Rest under my protective mantle. I’ll guide and guard you,” implored Cait to the shimmering image beside her. “Stay in my dreams and you’ll be safe.”
“Mia, Mia, oh my beautiful Mia, what’s been happening?” said Cait as she opened her eyes, looking around to confirm what world she h
ad landed in. It was still a magnificent summer’s day. Cait’s faithful dog had just jumped on top of her, knocking her backward, and was currently straddling her, pawing at her shoulder and furiously licking Cait’s face.
“What’s wrong, Mum?” Mia seemed to be saying with that sixth sense animals have. “I was worried about you.”
But all was good. Cait had returned from the Otherworld, body intact. She pushed her Ray-Bans up the bridge of her nose and looked around.
“Mia, I’m just so tired,” yawned Cait, wincing.
Cait reached down and scratched her stomach.
“Ah,” she exclaimed, a twinge of pain shooting upward from her torso. Lifting her white light cotton top, Cait stared down at a large red welt running across her honey-colored tanned stomach and up her side, ending somewhere high on her back.
She gently traced the angry bruise with the fingertips of her left hand. The wound was raw, inflamed and grotesque, but freezing to her touch.
A parting gift from the Gatekeeper.
“Mum, The Gift came to me again this morning,” Cait said to Jools, a serious note to her voice. The two of them had just moved outside to escape the muggy heat inside their house and were about to sit in the shade at the outdoor setting in their backyard. They needed some girl time, and a mother-daughter catch-up at the end of the day fit the bill before her father G and her brother Dec got home. Jools had just brought out a pitcher of iced water with a bunch of sliced lemons floating on top between clinking ice cubes.
“Pick some fresh mint in the pot behind you over there and throw it in the water,” said Jools as she placed the water and two chilled glass tumblers on the table.
“Mum, did you hear what I just said?”
The Cait Lennox Box Set Page 51
