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The Damned Series Book 3
Soul: a Paranormal Ghost Romance (Damned Series Book 3)
How bad can bad get?
Pretty damn bad. That’s the conclusion Cassie Hunter draws, and it’s quite easy to reach. Not only is she the embodiment of a powerful portal that can open dimensions of reality, but she has accidentally unleashed an entity so dark it is annihilating thousands of souls right in front of her eyes.
The darkness is intent on Cassie’s destruction, but she must stay alive to protect the innocent. Cassie and detective Elliot Stone find themselves in a desperate corner, condemned to make an impossible choice that will forever change the human world.
Besides that, Cassie can’t touch the man she loves. An unknown entity has taken up residence inside her. And she won’t survive long enough to tell Elliot how much she loves him.
Soul is the third instalment in the Damned series. Follow Cassie on her journey through perilous dimensions of reality to fight for the love of her life.
Soul
Chapter One
“You did what?” Words exploded from my mouth, riding a wave of horrified incredulity as I stared at my sister. She was weak and prostrate, splayed helplessly in the hospital bed having just risen from the dead, but that was no excuse.
She’d agreed to restore her life by abiding by the same Gift — this damned curse — both my mother and I had to endure. We both could see ghosts although they preferred to be called Spirits. I termed them souls in transit. Not only could we see them, we interacted with them. Saved them from floating listlessly upon the earth for eternity and sent them into their hard-won afterlife. This was the same Gift my mother had tried to ignore for the past twenty years. They'd moved to the back of beyond, kilometres not only from the dead but also from the living. She'd only returned to Melbourne when I’d received a bump on the head and my Angel-Carer, Ariel, had gifted me the Sight for the second time in my life.
My mother had been responsible for closing my eyes to the dead when I’d been a child. Lara never had the gift, and it was something she’d yearned for even though I told her it was not all it was cracked up to be. So now, after a trip into the Grey-Mists, narrowly missing being sucked into an afterlife and enduring a near-death experience, Laura had chosen to come back to life with the Sight. The one thing that had damned our family since the beginning of remembered time.
“You’re a bloody idiot!” My hands shook as I wiped them over my face, feeling so, so weary.
“You’ll get over it, Cassie. It’s better this way, the both of us having the Gift.” She was so weak her voice was nothing but a feathery whisper.
That didn’t save her from my anger. I wished I could knock out that gleam of ignorant excitement in her eyes. “You don’t know what you’ve done.”
If there’s one thing I would have wished for my sister, it was that she never had what I had. Or that she could see what I could see. It had driven my mother insane. It was driving me insane. I didn’t think Laura would fare that much better after a time.
“But I can see Elliot now. Talk to him and he can talk to me. Just like a regular person.” Laura’s gaze swept from my face to Elliot’s. My boyfriend come ghost.
I glanced at him and his intense, knowing green gaze settled onto mine. Tense lines around his eyes and mouth no doubt reflected my own. Elliot would agree with me. In this decision, my sister had done a totally stupid thing.
Elliot was the only person stopping me from a steady spiral into insanity. My one saving grace and the man I’d fallen deeply in love, but could never have a future with. How could you have a future with a ghost? There was no ‘until death do us part’, ‘for sickness and in health’. He’d already bypassed all that kind of stuff the living had to contend with.
Now that I was back in my body and out of the Grey-Mists, I could no more feel him than the air that brushed my skin. I could never have him. Not the way I wanted. Not in the flesh; in my life and in my bed.
I ignored the immediate stab of pain in my heart and trained my gaze back on my senseless twit of a sister. “Did you stop to think how this was going to impact on me? What about Mum and Dad?”
“I can help you now! You and Mum.”
“No!” I couldn’t keep the fury from my voice, “You wanted this for your own reasons. You’re jealous of Mum. Of me!”
Laura scoffed, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I approached the bed, laying my bunched up fists on the mattress and leaning over her, “The only reason I’m not slapping you silly at the moment is the fact you’ve been dead for a week. I’ll give you a few days to recover before killing you. Again.”
“Girls!” Dad said, his voice straining to rise over ours.
Laura turned narrowed eyes on me. “I’ve seen dead people and they’re just like you and me only without bodies. Face it, Cassie, you don’t want me to have the Gift because that would make you less special.”
I huffed a derisive sound. “There’s nothing special about this Gift. It’s hell. Just ask Mum. She couldn’t control it. I can’t either, so what makes you think you’re going to be any different?”
Laura rose a shaky finger and pointed at Elliot. “You have Elliot!”
“And who has Mum got? No-one!”
“Girls! That’s enough!” Dad said a second time, only louder. I ignored him again. Laura did too.
“I don’t see any Angel helper for you here, do you? Look around, Laura. You’re going to be just like Mum and you’re going to have to face this alone.” I gestured around the room with open arms. There was a frail sound of someone clearing their throat and I spun around to face a tiny woman of about eighty-years-old dressed in a surgical gown. The gown swamped her and gathered about her hunched shoulders.
“Excuse me, dear, but I can’t seem to find my surgeon.” She placed arthritic fingers to her forehead, “I’m due for surgery…well, I think I am … I seem to have lost my way. Could you help me find my husband? He’ll know what to do.”
In the distance, a voice called the emergency drill over the intercom. A nurse rushed past the open doorway. I crossed my arms over my chest and looked down at Laura. “Well, smart arse, you have your first dead person, what are you going to do now?” The little old woman sounded like she was choking. I threw her a look over my shoulder, “Relax lady, you can’t choke. You’re already dead.”
“Cassie!” Both Mum and Elliot spoke at the same time, but I was too fired up to listen to heed the warning in their tone. Elliot moved close to the old woman, putting his arm about her delicate shoulders, speaking to her in a hushed tone and turning her away from us.
“So, Laura. Do something! Help her.”
“Cassandra, that is quite enough.” Mum cut in. “I would have thought you of all people would be on my side, Mum. You don’t want me to see them and I sure as hell didn’t think you’d want Laura to either, but here she is of her own wishes. Don’t you have anything to say to her?”
Dad moved towards Mum and put his arm around her shoulders, “Your mother has had a shock this week, Cassie. She thought…we both thought…that we’d lost both our daughters. Don’t put any more stress on her than she’s already under.”
“I don’t mean to interrupt. You’re involved in a family discussion,” the old woman said.
“Oh, you’re not interrupting…well, actually you are, but that’s something my stupid sister will have to put up with now. Constant interruptions. It won’t matter what you’re doing, the dead don’t care, they’ll just keep coming and coming. There are seven billion people on the planet, Laura. Did you think of that? Seven billion people coming to you for help because they’re dead and they’re too stupid to know!”
“I’ll help…I can help you,” Laura said to the old woman as she struggled onto her elbows. “Don’t be afraid. I’ve spent the past week being dead, and it’s not so bad.”
I gaped at my sister, “You thin
k that’s helping her?”
“It’s going to be all right. I’ll take you to the light,” Elliot said.
“But…my husband. He needs me. I can’t leave. What will happen to him?” The old woman started to cry. I gestured to the old woman, looking at Laura, “See? They don’t want to go. They’ll make persistent pains of themselves. You asked for the Gift, Laura, but you didn’t think to ask for assistance to help you with it from the Angel, did you? Elliot can’t do it all. He’s got his own problems to contend with, let alone with the fresh ones you’ve brought with you with your selfish decision.”
The gleam of excitement dulled in Laura’s eyes. Her head sunk back into the pillow. If it was possible, the ashen colour of her skin drained more. No-one said a word. Silence pressed heavy on my chest.
“Exactly,” I said. No words said more than any could. I brushed past my parents, Elliot, and the old woman, pausing at the door, “You think she’s okay? That you can help her? You know there’s a lot worse out there, Laura. What happens when the Soul-Eaters come for you again and you don’t have anyone on the other side to help you? Will you still think your Gift is a good idea?”
I rushed down the hallway, heedless that I still wore the hospital gown I’d woken up in. I could have been naked, and I wouldn’t have cared at this moment. I ignored questioning eyes and confused faces that I knew only I could see. I stifled a shudder, wrapping my arms tighter around me. God only knew how I was going to be able to work in this hospital again. God knew how I was ever going to get the life I once had back. Intrinsically, I knew that would never happen. I would never have my old life back. I wasn’t the same person I once was.
The death I tried so hard for people to avoid was only just the beginning.
I pushed into the safety of my office and locked the door. I breathed the familiar smell in deeply, but the breath stuck halfway in my lungs when I remembered that although this was familiar, it was no longer a haven. I’d locked the door, but I could never lock out the dead.
I flopped down in my chair, vision unfocussed. A sense of helplessness swallowed me and hot tears welled from my eyes. I flicked it away, but that only served to break the damned walls behind my eyelids. Tears flowed down my cheeks and I let them fall unchecked. I hunched over and rested my forehead on my forearms on the desk.
“Cassie?”
I sniffed loudly. Yep, with the lock on the door, only the dead could enter. Ghosts didn't need doors. I didn’t have to pick my head up to know who come so silently into the room. “I’ve made her life miserable.”
“It was Laura’s decision. Not yours,” Elliot said.
I sighed, sat up and sank the back of my head against the chair. “I just wanted to save her. She had a choice for her life. Now she doesn’t.”
Elliot sat on the edge of his desk, the Fedora slanted slightly lower over his left eye. He was dressed in the same clothes I’d first seen him in. The only clothing he would ever wear while he was stuck in limbo. A formal dove-grey three-piece suit, starched white shirt, stiff tie, trench-coat, and Fedora. Dressed in the clothes he died in. The police uniform of the last century police detective. His gaze spoke of tiredness, but there was a special connection that was only there for me and I latched onto it. It was the only thing I could actually feel from him since we couldn’t physically touch each other.
“Did you help the lady?” I sniffed.
“I did. She’s gone.”
I yearned to have him pull me into his arms, kiss me, make love to me just like he'd done in the Black Johns world. I studied his face, the sharp angles shadowed by the rim of his hat. “We should have stayed there.”
A frown puckered his brows, “Where?”
“Black Johns world. At least I could touch you there. Feel you.” I gestured toward him, then towards myself, “There’s…no hope.” My voice ended with a squeak, a hiccup and a fresh flow of tears.
He took the hat off his head. His short, police-regulation haircut spiked in all directions. How I wanted to run my fingers through those spikes. And I had. But couldn’t anymore. Not here. Not while I was alive, and he was dead. “Is that why you’re beating yourself up about Laura?”
I tore a tissue from the box on my desk, blew my nose and tossed the crumpled mess into the bin at my feet, “Why did she do it, Elliot? She knows how miserable this Gift made my life. Look at my mother. Hell, if she could have moved to Mars to escape it, she would have. I want to touch you so badly I can’t stand it!”
Agony washed over his face, “We’ll get through this, Cassie.” “That’s what we always say, but look at us, Elliot. I thought that if we defeated Black John, Ariel…she might have changed you somehow. So we could be together. But she hasn’t and we’re worse off than we ever were.”
Elliot slid from the desk to rest on his haunches at my side, fingers playing with his hat as he twirled it listlessly. “If I could change anything, it would be that I could properly be at your side.”
“But that’s the point, Elliot. I’ve asked and asked and she wipes me off with things like she can’t oppose free will. But look what she did for Laura. She gave her the Sight because it was her will. Well, I want you, Elliot. That’s my free will and so far she’s done nothing about it. Zippo!”
Elliot’s head drooped downwards. Tension hammered off the stiff line of his shoulders, “If it could be any other way, know that I would have it so.” His head rose, eyes shining, “I meant what I told you when we were in Black Johns world.”
He’d told me he loved me. I hadn’t said anything back to him.
And he was still in love with his dead wife.
I felt the same way about him. I’d fallen desperately in love with him against my better judgement. But love wasn’t logical. Or timely. Or rational. The heart, it seemed, didn’t listen to the mind.
If it had, I would have ignored Elliot the moment I’d first seen him. I’d have pretended I didn’t see him. It would have saved a lot of heartache. Not to mention my sister wouldn’t have died and come back to life because of me.
She wouldn’t have this damned Gift.
Mum and Dad would be safe in the middle of the outback.
I would be saving people’s lives instead of aiding their death. I wanted to tell him that I felt the same way. That I was so desperately in love with him I was hurting inside, my guts twisted and my heart was squeezing so tight I was sure it couldn’t pump any blood in my body. But I just looked at him, mind blank, words frozen. I couldn’t say a thing because what was there to say. It wouldn’t make any difference to our circumstances.
Unless I died and we could traverse the Grey-Mists for eternity. Caught in limbo because we love each other. It wasn’t fair, and I was totally pissed off that we were stuck like this. Literally caught between life and death.
Elliot wouldn’t want my life to end because of him. He’d made that very clear. If I told Elliot how I felt about him, then he’d be stuck in limbo because of me, waiting at my side, stuck in nothingness, helping people to their afterlife, but never able to find his. He deserved more than that. He deserved to move on because if we couldn’t be together that was the next best thing.
The pain in my heart held me immobile for a breathtaking moment. I sucked in a deep breath before I pushed words out. “I…can’t say it back to you, Elliot.”
I watched agony cross his face before his features re-schooled with concentrated practise. “I understand.” His voice was low, broken.
I wanted to explain why I couldn’t, but that would only make it worse. That would give him hope and that’s something we didn’t have. Not anymore. Not after what we’d been through. Not with an Angel’s broken promise.
So I simply nodded and hoped his pain might end soon. “I’m going to end this curse, Elliot. Rid it from my family now and forever. It causes nothing but grief and pain.” I looked away because I was a coward. Because I didn’t want to see the torture I knew I was inflicting on him. Because he would see it mirrored on my face and that wo
uld give him false hope.
Chapter Two
The gang was here. My parents. Laura. Elliot. Yay for me. Thadius would join us as soon as he opened the door. I gazed up at the gargoyles head as everyone grouped around me on Thadius’ front porch, “You probably knew we were going to be here before we did, Thadius.”
“Hey Thadius,” Laura smiled and waved at the gargoyle head in the centre of the door. She was still too pale for my liking, having signed herself out of the hospital against my wishes, but part of me agreed with her. Whatever we’d let out of the Light-Portal in Black John’s world wasn’t going to step aside and wait while she recovered from death.
“Good morning, Cassandra…Laura.” Thadius’ voice that sounded from the gargoyle's mouth squeaked when he said Laura’s name and I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes. He would, no doubt, see it.
Thadius had a crush on Laura but the two of them had skirted around the issue since I’d known of his existence, which hadn’t really been that long, time-wise, but it felt like eternity emotionally considering everything that had happened. I had yet to receive a reasonable explanation of how my sister actually knew the people she did although her job as a paranormal journalist had opened up a whole community I’d never normally come face to face with working as a doctor.
That was another corner of my nice little organised world that had been turned upside-down since Ariel had ‘gifted’ me with the Sight. It had been weeks since I’d practised and had sent all of my patients to college doctors. Until I had this damned Curse under control, there was no way I could do the job I was born to do and loved. I wanted to save people’s lives, not have to deal with them in death.
Laura had introduced her ‘friend’ Thadius to me when I helped Henry, a patient of mine who’d died prematurely. I still had an inquest hanging over my head on that little issue as well. All because I helped the dead.
Spirit Page 15
