Touched by Darkness – An Urban Fantasy Romance (Book 1, The Sentinel Series)

by Catherine Spangler

  “Luz, get Alex out of the house now!” she ordered. “Go to Doris. If that—that thing follows you, call the police. I’m going to find Damien Morgan.”

  “Him? He is probably the cause of this. El trajo la fantasma en esta casa. ” Luz went into another spate of rapid Spanish.

  “Luz!” Kara shouted, wrenching the truck over to the side of the road. “Just get Alex over to Doris’s house. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  She shoved the gear stick into park, dumped her purse’s contents on the passenger seat, her hands shaking. “It’s got to be here. I know it’s here,” she muttered, shoveling through the items, looking for Damien’s card.

  There! She snatched it up, trying to slow her pounding heart as she punched in the numbers. Then she put the truck in gear and roared it back onto the road, pressing the phone to her left ear as she floored the accelerator.

  It seemed like an eternity before the line rang, once, twice. “Pick up!” Kara tried to keep her attention on the road, but all she could think of was Alex. Three rings, four…“Answer, damn it!”

  The connection clicked. “Morgan.”

  “I need your help. Luz says there’s a discarnate entity at my house. It’s after Alex.”

  There was a pause. “Kara?”

  “Yes! I need you at my house. You’re the only one who can help.”

  “A discarnate entity?” he asked, sounding incredulous. “What happened to draw one?”

  “I don’t know! Please come! I can’t handle this.” She was starting to feel as hysterical as she sounded.

  “All right. Calm down. I’ll be there as soon I can. Where are you?”

  “I’m—God, I can’t think. I’m about a mile from home. I told Luz to take Alex to the neighbor on the north side.”

  “Good,” he said. “Go straight to your neighbor’s, and I’ll meet you there. Do not go into your house, or let anyone else go in. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  He disconnected without another word. Kara drew a deep breath, felt a little more in control. She might not like having to call on a Sentinel, but if a Belian was involved, she needed Damien’s help. He was far more powerful than a human male, and more capable of handling anything supernatural.

  She made that last mile in record time, heaving a sigh of sheer relief when she saw Luz and Alex in the doorway of Doris’s house, standing behind her glass storm door. The fist around her heart finally loosened, and she slammed the truck door and ran up the driveway and the steps. “Alex!”

  “Mom!” He flew out the door and into her arms. She held him tightly, thankful he was all right. Trembling, he clung to her. “Mom, it was freaky.”

  “It’s okay. You’re safe now.” She looked over his shoulder at Luz’s pale face. She’d never seen Luz look so shaken.

  “Here now,” Doris said briskly, coming from behind Luz and holding the storm door open. “You come on inside and get out of that cold air.” She hustled them into her immaculate living room with its contemporary, simple furniture in soothing neutrals, and burgundy Oriental rug over a gleaming hardwood floor. Lush green plants thrived in the large bay window, and the scent of baking cookies wafted through the house. “Have a seat, and I’ll make some hot chocolate.”

  She paused, looked from Luz to Kara. “You sure I don’t need to call anyone?”

  Kara didn’t know what Luz had told Doris, but was grateful the older woman wasn’t asking a lot of questions. She shook her head. “I already did. He’s going to check the house.”

  Doris nodded and went to the kitchen. Kara sank onto the couch with Alex, who still clung tightly to her. “What happened, sweetie?”

  “I was in my room, just—” he paused, looked at Luz, and a strange expression crossed his face. “Doin’ stuff.”

  Kara was instantly suspicious, but simply said, “Then what?”

  “Then it felt…” He glanced at Luz again. “It felt weird. Then one of my books fell off the shelf. Then a poster fell down.” He looked up at Kara, his eyes troubled. “It was my Captain Picard poster.”

  The priorities of a little boy. She hugged him again. “Oh sweetie, that’s okay. We’ll put it back up or get another one. What happened then?”

  “I started calling for Luz and she came. She saw stuff happen, too.”

  Kara looked at Luz, who nodded her confirmation. A chill went down Kara’s spine. “At least both of you are all right,” she said. “And Mr. Morgan is coming over to try to figure out what’s going on.”

  “I do not know why you would call that man,” Luz muttered. “He’s probably the cause of it.”

  “Luz, don’t say such things!” Kara said sharply. “I don’t believe that.”

  “Do you think he’ll be able to fix it, Mom?” Alex looked at her solemnly. “Because, he’s…you know.”

  “I think he can help,” she said neutrally.

  Doris returned with a tray bearing four cups of hot chocolate and a plateful of cookies. “Here we go.” She set the tray on the elaborately carved cherry wood coffee table. “Something hot to chase away the chills—in more ways than one.”

  She handed them each a mug of steaming hot chocolate and napkins and cookies before settling down in a big wing chair with her own mug. “Mine’s sugar free,” she informed Kara with a smile and took a sip. “Got to watch the carbohydrate intake.”

  “How’s the new insulin dosage working?” Kara asked.

  “Just fine. I feel great.”

  “Mrs. Burgess, do you believe in ghosts?” Alex asked.

  Doris considered thoughtfully. “Well, I don’t know for sure. But I do think there are a lot of unexplained and unusual things in the world, don’t you?”

  He nodded. “Socks disappear in our dryer all the time, and Mom says there must be a black hole behind it.”

  Doris laughed. “Out of the mouths of babes.”

  “I’m not a baby,” Alex protested.

  “Of course not. You’re a fine young man.” Doris held out the plate of cookies. “Have another cookie. They always make things better, don’t you think?”

  Alex happily took another. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Kara finally felt some warmth seeping back into her body. She sank back with a tired sigh. “We’ve definitely had some strange experiences lately.” She reached out and mussed Alex’s hair, needing to touch him again. “But we’re going to get back to normal real soon. Right, champ?”

  “Right, Mom,” he dutifully replied, but she heard the doubt in his voice.

  She steered the conversation away from ghostly topics, and Luz and Doris took her cue, instead talking about the annual bake sale at the town hall, which raised funds for senior citizen programs.

  “Are you still coming over tomorrow to help me make cakes?” Doris asked.

  Alex looked at Kara, who nodded. “I’m coming, too,” she said, once again reminded of her concerns about a Belian taking possession of a body, and cursing fate—and Damien—for bringing doubt and distrust into her life.

  “Cool,” Alex said. He loved helping Doris in her kitchen, partly because he got to sample the goods.

  A brisk rapping on the front door alerted them to Damien’s arrival. Doris’s eyes widened when she opened the door and saw him. He filled the doorway, an imposing figure in his duster with his hair banded back, and his dark glasses giving him a menacing appearance. He didn’t remove the glasses and was brief but courteous with Doris, refusing her offer to come in.

  “I need for Kara and Alex to come with me,” he said. He looked at Luz. “And you, as well.”

  Stepping back he held the storm door open. Luz took Alex’s hand. “Come, hijo, we will see if our fantasma is gone.”

  Alex drew back. “I don’t want to go home,” he whispered.

  “I’m sure it is all right now. Yes?” Luz stared at Damien, who gave a curt nod. “There, you see? The arrogant man has assured us all is well.” She swept past Damien, pulling Alex with her.

  Squar
ing her shoulders, Kara walked to the door. She gave Doris a quick hug. “Thank you for letting us barge in on you like this. I’m sure—” She hesitated, hating to lie, but feeling it prudent to play this down. “I’m sure that whatever happened at our house was nothing.”

  “And I’m sure you’re in very good hands.” Doris gave Damien another look, leaned close, and whispered, “What a specimen! Now that’s the type of hunk I was talking about the other day.”

  “Oh, uh, no.” Kara drew back. “He— I— It’s not what you think. He’s just an…associate.”

  Doris looked at her over the rim of her glasses. “Whatever you say.”

  “Thank you again,” Kara said, well aware that Damien possessed superhuman hearing and had probably heard every whispered word. “You’re always here when we need you, and it means a lot.”

  “Any time.” Doris stepped back. “I know you usually work until four. Is five o’clock tomorrow afternoon a good time for you and Alex?”

  “Sounds great.”

  “See you then.” Doris smiled at Damien. “Good-bye, Mr. Morgan.”

  He nodded and closed the storm door behind Kara. “Is it safe to go home?” she asked in a low voice.

  “I wouldn’t allow you to return if it wasn’t.” He turned and strode after Luz and Alex.

  She got her truck and drove it back to the house, while the other three walked over. When she pulled into the driveway, she saw Max was in the fenced back yard. He stood at the gate, barking to let them know he didn’t appreciate being left behind. She told him to hush and joined the others on the front porch.

  They entered the house, Damien going first, then Kara. Alex and Luz entered warily behind them, looking toward the hallway leading to the bedrooms. Alex moved a few steps closer to Damien. While Kara hated being dependent on Damien in any way, she had to admit she was glad he was here. She knew he wouldn’t let anyone—or anything—harm them while he was around.

  Damien took off his sunglasses and slid them into a pocket, then removed the duster and tossed it on the sofa. “Take the boy into the kitchen until I call you,” he instructed Luz. He looked down at Alex and the harsh granite of his face seemed to soften a fraction. “It’s all right to be here now. Your ghost is gone.”

  Face pale, eyes wide, Alex stared up at him. “Will it come back?” he asked, his young voice quavering.

  “We’ll work on that later. You go to the kitchen with Luz and wait there.” Damien turned to Kara. “You come with me.”

  She put her purse on the end table, apprehension tingling through her. She didn’t like being frightened in her own home, or knowing that Alex might not be safe there. So she focused on Damien’s attitude instead.

  “Boy, you sure know how to influence people and win friends,” she muttered, unbuttoning her jacket as she followed him down the hall.

  Beside Alex’s bedroom door, he turned to face her. “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning you’re rude and abrupt. You snap out orders like a general. Has it ever occurred to you that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar?”

  The corners of his sensual mouth twitched ever so slightly. “Now why would I want to catch flies? Pesky things.”

  Kara was taken aback. Had she just detected a trace of humor? Surely not. Most Sentinels were deadly serious at all times, and Damien appeared to be straight from the master mold. She pulled her attention back to the ghost. “Now what?”

  “No we go in and let you ‘see’ Alex’s visitor.”

  Her heart leaped in her chest and she took a quick step back. “Oh, no. I am not doing a conduction.”

  “I’m not asking you to,” he said, exasperation evident in his tone. “This was not a Belian, but it was a discarnate entity. I didn’t sense any malevolence, though, no evil. I’m not sure what it was doing here.”

  Relief flowed through Kara. She felt like she’d been on an emotional roller coaster the past four days; first on a peak of tension and fear, then plummeting to a valley of respite or at least the feeling another fire had been put out—if only temporarily—then starting back up the stressful, frightening slope again.

  “Is the thing really gone?” she asked.

  “For now.” He opened Alex’s door. “Come on.”

  She followed and observed the signs of chaos that went beyond a young boy’s normal messiness: books knocked onto the floor, the Captain Picard poster lying on the bed, some of Alex’s framed soccer award certificates hanging askew on the walls.

  “Do you feel anything?” Damien asked. “See anything?”

  Reluctantly, she sent out tentative mental feelers as she looked around the room. “No.”

  He held out his left hand. “Give me your hand.”

  “I don’t know if I want—”

  “Damn it, Kara, I know you’re not a coward. Give me your hand.”

  She took a deep breath, placed her hand in his, and felt the static electrical shock of touching him. “Now what?”

  “Close your eyes. Use your other sight.”

  She closed her eyes, but she didn’t want to tap into that dark part of her that she had always despised, that ability to see actual events in her dreams. She’d worked at walling it up all her life.

  In addition, the sexual energy from her physical contact with Damien was slapping at her. Her body tingled and her breasts felt heavy. She tried to pull away, but he tightened his grasp.

  “Just go with it, Kara. Ignore the physical sensations, and focus on the nonphysical.”

  Resigned, she did her best to push away the sexual energy; to open her senses to the other energies in the room. In her mental vision, tendrils of gray fog swirled and snaked, luring her deeper into an unfamiliar dimension. The fog began to dissipate, and she “saw” Alex’s room, only it was distorted, as if she were looking at it through a camera lens.

  A flash to the right caught her attention, a trail of light in a zigzag pattern along the walls. It looked similar the pattern Tinkerbell had made in Peter Pan.

  Then she realized the light was still moving, in streaks that would end one place and then begin again in a different location. There were also flashes of light, these more like the pattern of light made by fireflies at dusk in the summer. A faint humming sound permeated her mind.

  She tightened her grip on Damien’s hand. “What’s happening?”

  “Our energy link is allowing you to see what I see.”

  She was so startled, her eyes flew open, and the images vanished. Instead, Damien filled her field of vision, big and solid, dressed in a royal blue sweater over black slacks. “You’re conducting for me?” she asked.

  “No. The conductor/Sentinel link enables our energies to merge, but this isn’t a conduction. That, as you know, involves the third eye, which all humans have, but few can access. In a conduction, the third eyes of both the Sentinel and the conductor are activated, and the individual powers of each are merged and then magnified exponentially. You’re not seeing through your third eye right now, you’re seeing through mine. There’s no expansion of energies through the chakras, and therefore no magnification.”

  She should have realized that, from the simple fact that the sexual surge was absent. She simply felt the pull of the sensual energies that always occurred when Sentinels and conductors were in close proximity. “So what did I just see?”

  “You saw the energy trail left behind by the entity. Much the same way you see the remaining vapor trails of jets in the sky. Because it was in spirit form rather than physical, you won’t see any clear images. Did you feel anything dark or threatening?”

  “No,” she said slowly, trying to recall what she’d actually felt. “It didn’t feel good or bad, it was just…there.”

  “You’d have known if it was a Belian. The negative energy would have been very strong. That’s why I believe this was a benign entity. Sometimes you can also smell things, usually unpleasant.”

  She hadn’t noticed any odd odors, although now she p
icked up Damien’s scent—that same soap and sandalwood blend that permeated his duster. He smelled enticing, probably a side effect of the sexual energies swirling between them. There were definite disadvantages to heightened awareness and senses, she decided.

  “No unpleasant smells,” she said, shaking off her wayward thoughts.

  “Another indication this being was benign. Did you hear anything?”

  He was instructing her, she realized, broadening her knowledge of supernatural occurrences, something Richard had never done. “Yes. I heard a faint buzzing sound—not like a bug, but almost like the sizzle of electricity.”

  “A good description. That was the sound the entity’s movements created.”

  “But you said it’s gone. How could I hear it?”

  “From the residual energy left by the sound. What you just saw and heard was facilitated by a psychic vision.”

  She had to think about that. “Your psychic vision?” Comprehension dawned. “I was seeing what you see when you’re following a psychic trail?”

  Approval flashed in his eyes. “Right. Our energy link allowed you to see my vision.”

  “Amazing,” she murmured. She’d never gone with Richard on one of his preliminary tracking sessions, where he gathered initial data from a BCS, the Sentinel term for a Belian crime scene. She’d only participated in the conductions that followed later, and could be done from any location, using the initial psychic signature of the Belian that Richard had extracted from the crime scene, and stored in his own psyche.

  “I wanted you to see and hear what I did,” Damien explained. “I think you can learn to do this on your own, and it will help you if the entity comes back.”

  “But I don’t have Sentinel abilities.”

  “No, but I suspect your psychic abilities are very strong, or would be if you didn’t repress them.”

  She didn’t want to dwell on abilities she considered a curse; she was far more concerned about the ghost. “Do you think that thing will come back?”

  He shrugged. “I have no idea. I don’t know why it was here in the first place. I suspect it was drawn here.”

  Kara felt a sinking sensation. “By Alex?”

  “Most likely. Why don’t we find out?”

  Shaken, she followed him to the kitchen. Luz, bless her, had Alex working on his homework at the table while she started dinner. Kara smelled chicken baking, saw the makings of a fresh salad in the large glass bowl on the counter.