The Death Skull: Relic Defender, Book 2 (20 page)

Ghosts vaguely shaped like humans, and other shapes he didn’t recognize, drifted by close enough at times he could reach out and touch them. Most ignored the demon and the human—others gave them a cursory glance. Some looked at him with hunger in their eyes, while others’ gazes held a sense of loss. He didn’t know which expression was worse. The one where he felt like, given a chance, the hungry spirits would snuff out his soul or the ones with such deep expressions of hurt and pain his own heart seemed to ache in response. Like the environment, their forms were washed out and flimsy.

“The eidolons,” Mari murmured from his side.

“Are they prisoners?”

“Some,” she said then paused. “But most aren’t. They can pass into the lower spirit realms or the divine realm but they choose not to. They stay here.”

“Why?” That seemed odd. Despite her caution, the Twilight appeared tame and serene. Beyond the apparitions that stared back, did the others hurry in the pursuit of a goal only they knew?

“They have things left undone. Once those spirits have satisfied their desires, they often depart into one of the other realms or back to earth in another body.”

“Reincarnation?”

“Yes.”

At the same moment he heard a low, keening sound, Mari stiffened and her sword appeared in her hand. With the roar of an oncoming train, a dark entity rushed toward them. Even as she held on to his hand, she shouldered him aside as her sword ignited in a blaze of silvery light in the other. The armor caught the glow and reflected it back, making it hard for him to look directly at her.

“Jackson, stay behind me.” Her voice was tight, filled with tension.

Like hell he would. He sidled around her and stood at her side. His own sword materialized in his hands. Just a few seconds to marvel at the magic, then he looked at the oncoming spirit.

Eidolons scattered, even the ones with hunger lingering in the depths of their eyes fled from the dark shadow rushing toward Jackson and Mari. As it approached, a vague shape formed—one with extra appendages, each ending with
 
a wicked claw. Blood-red eyes gleamed from the blackness.

“What the hell is that?” His voice cracked.

“Demon.”

“Here?”

“Yes.”

“Why aren’t we leaving?”

“The demon will only follow and it will come to your world. I don’t think we want to be responsible for a demon on the earthly plane.”

Keening wails came from the dark cloud as the demon neared. Serrated teeth rubbed together like a saw, the edges meant for ripping and tearing. Like the demon Pammon, this creature had four arms, each appendage tipped with a vaguely human hand, including a long, coal-black claw extending about six inches. Wicked looking and lethal.

She hissed in a long breath. “An Allu. Deadly. Don’t let its claws touch you.”

“Great. What big teeth you have, Grandma,” he muttered.

Mari shot him a frown but that was all she had time for because the creature was on them. One claw slashed at her. She met it with a swing of her great sword. The long blade hit the claw with a crystal-clashing sound.

At the same time, another long arm swiped at Jackson. While not as fast as Mari, he met the blow with a clang of his sword. The impact shuddered along his arm. Christ, it felt like he’d struck an iron wall.

While the creature had been occupied with Jackson, Mari had snuck in and scored a mark on the thing’s torso, leaving a deep cut. The demon snarled, spun, and one of its back arms slammed into Mari. She went flying into the air, her hand torn from Jackson’s grasp. Now ignoring Jackson, the demon went after the downed woman.

Without Mari’s touch, the air seemed to solidify around Jackson, pressing in and taking on the feel of a heavy weight against his chest. He gasped, pulling in the thick air. Around him, the Twilight seemed more ominous. Dangerous. As if her presence, the touch of her skin, had been the only thing keeping them at bay, the spirits crept nearer. Ravenous eyes, wide in ghostly faces, lit up the gray with a pulse of yellow light.

Goddamn it.
He wanted to go to Mari but he had his own problems. Fighting to breathe, to ease the discomfort of the heavy air, he held up his sword. The dull blade slowed the eidolons as if they expected it to be a sword like Mari’s, but when they realized it wasn’t, they closed in, surrounding him with swirls of gray. One entity, its mouth open wide enough to dwarf most of its face, lunged at Jackson, its arms stretched to embrace him. He figured that was the opposite of what it wanted to do.

Best get out of its way, son.

Despite the lack of oxygen, he fought through the lethargy and slashed the sword through the spirit to cut it in half. Only it didn’t. The blade passed through the entity, merely swirling the gray a bit. Well hell. This was bad.

“Jackson, get down,” Mari shouted. As the last syllable of the command echoed in his ears, he threw himself to the ground. Or to the substance that made up the ground. It sure as hell wasn’t dirt.

He heard a swishing sound and a small knife punched into the spirit, spitting it like a pig on a rod above a fire. The thing burst into a cloud of heavy particles that reminded him of ash. He rolled over, looked at Mari and completely forgot to breathe.

The fallen angel whirled and spun like a dervish, her golden sword slashing and cutting at the dark demon. Deep gashes covered the black skin, a thick, reddish substance pouring from multiple points. The ends of the angel’s auburn hair not covered by the helmet floated around her head, bringing to his mind the image of a waterfall of silken strands. Her eyes glowed red, her expression fierce and uncompromising. And her wings. By God, her beautiful, flaming wings. They looked nothing like Mikos’s white ones or Asher’s black ones. Mari’s were vaguely wing shaped but flowed like liquid fire.

Jackson barely had time to notice the magnificent warrior angel before the battle was done. A final strike and the demon’s head was cut from its body. Mari faced Jackson, all ferocious beauty. Her eyes widened and at the same moment, a touch of something cold stabbed his arm. Not just cold, but frozen.

Ice burrowed under his skin, sending stabs of agony screaming along his nerves. He gasped and turned his head. One of the hollow-eyed eidolons, taking advantage of his distraction, was at his side, its teeth buried in his arm. The chill moved from the entity’s mouth up Jackson’s triceps into his shoulders. All sensation in his left arm faded. He heard Mari call out and knew she was coming his way, but he also knew she’d never make it before the spirit sucked his body dry of its soul.

A drawing feeling tugged deep within him, then a tearing. The sense of loss filled him. He turned his head and, about a foot away, lay the golden knife that had destroyed the other spirit. With his right arm, he reached for the blade. The coldness was now in his chest, creeping dangerously close to his heart. His grasping fingers closed on the smooth hilt and wrapped around the metal warmed by Mari’s heat.

With the last of his strength, he stabbed the knife at the spirit gnawing on him. The blade passed through its head and out the other side, barely missing his own arm in its journey. The eidolon let go and screamed then, like the other, burst into a cloud of ash.

Jackson fell back and lay still, his chest heaving with the effort to breathe. Mari dropped to her knees beside him, her hair flowing around her face.

“Human,” she called. The echo in her voice made it sound as if she were far away instead of kneeling at his side.

She leaned over him. The silken strands of her hair brushed against his skin. He wanted to turn his head and bury his nose in the heavy mass.
Ah damn it
, he couldn’t even move his neck.

“Jackson, come back,” she murmured and touched his shoulder.

Heat roared through his body and his fingers dug into the ground as his back arched.
Jesus H. Christ, that hurt.
He fell back. Mari took one of his hands and laced her fingers with his. The draining subsided. Good—his soul was still with him but he felt in bad shape. Prickling needles rolled along his nerves, reminding him that he was very much alive.

“Hell, Mari, you just called me Jackson.” He grinned up at her.

For a fleeting moment, a smile flashed across her face, then it faded. “Don’t get used to it, human.”

“Now that’s better.” He winked. “Wouldn’t want me to get the idea you liked me.”

“Not likely.”

Using one of his elbows as a brace while making sure he kept ahold of her hand, he lifted his torso. “Darlin’, that hurts my feelings. I’m a very likeable guy. All the ladies say so.”

She rolled backward into a crouching position not far from where he lay. A frown lined her brow. “I’m sure they do. I am, however, not one of your human females.”

He chuckled. “That’s for damn sure.”

He looked around. The eidolons, now that Mari was back in control, had resumed their positions well away from him and the fallen angel. Eager eyes still stared his way but none made any move toward him. Freaky bastards.

“What the hell was that about, anyway?”

A frown formed two lines between her brows. “It is unusual, but not unheard of, for a lost soul to become a soul stealer.”

“Soul stealer? I’ve heard that term mentioned before. What is that? Some kind of demon?”

“Yes, a lost spirit who cannot find their other half and turns to eating souls to ease the pain.”

“Christ, that thing was eating me?” Even as the words left his mouth, he knew the answer. “Can we get the hell out of here? I’ve seen enough. And you sure as shit can keep your little slice of paradise to yourself.”

Another faint smile tugged at her lips. She nodded and rose to her feet, reversing until she got about two arms’ length from him. With a grunt, he rolled and surged to an upright, if a bit wobbly, position.

Amused violet eyes watched him. He felt as unsteady as a newborn colt. Only her grip on his hand kept him from toppling.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Hell yeah. Next stop, the City of Angels.”

Chapter Fourteen

Catherine opened the front door, stepped through the entrance and immediately felt wrongness in the air. She didn’t see or hear anything—just an eerie sensation rippling along her spine. All appeared as it always did. From the gleaming furniture, polished daily and oiled weekly to keep the high gloss, to the immaculately maintained art and statuary decorating the walls and shelves.

“Angella,” she called. Their housekeeper should have greeted Catherine as soon as she walked in the door.

Angella’s absence, while unusual, was not a reason for concern. Even the heavy silence permeating the house didn’t cause the alarms ringing in Catherine’s head. Other than Angella and their handyman, Peter, her mother had no others working for her. She liked her privacy. Probably didn’t want a house full of staff selling the details of her sordid affairs to the rags.

Off to the right, in the main living room, the bright glow of a fire crackling in the fireplace should have been a cheery sight. A welcoming invitation to settle into one of the deep sofas and read a good book or take an afternoon nap. But the wrongness extended there too. The flames looked menacing, not inviting. Dark threads danced along with the orange and yellow.

She stood in the foyer and looked upward. No sound of feet pacing overhead or the murmur of quiet voices. Her mother was not due to return from Iraq for another two days.

“For goodness sake, Catherine,” she muttered. “Your imagination is working overtime. Angella must have just gone shopping.”

The sound of her own voice cut down on the menace in the air. She shrugged off her coat and hung it in the closet. Under her arm, she tucked her appointment diary, an old-fashioned bound-and-paper kind, despite the fact her mother had given her a tablet for her birthday. Catherine went into the living room and crossed to the oak desk that sat near the large bay window.

She put the diary down on the desk and crossed the floor to stand in front of the glass. Outside, at the far end of the sloping lawn dotted with maples and stately oaks, Peter raked leaves into a pile. The sense of relief she felt at seeing him left her surprised. And foolish. She really let her overactive imagination create a scene of danger. Over the years, she’d learned to trust her feelings, but that didn’t mean her internal spooky radar was always right. The times it had failed had been spectacular and an everlasting source of dismay for her mother.

From an early age, Lillian had cautioned Catherine against letting others know about this “special” ability of hers. She’d never really thought of it that way—more of a problem. Fickle at best sometimes, disturbingly absent at other times. Times when she could have used a “special” gift.

When she’d asked her mother about her biological father, Lillian had waved off the question and told young Catherine her father had been a second-rate actor she’d met in the early stages of her career. She’d never told her daughter whether she’d even loved him. All she’d told her was that her father hadn’t even stayed for her birth. There were no pictures, no memorabilia of the man Lillian claimed Catherine resembled.

But one day, about two years ago, she happened to look across the street from where she got her daily coffee and had seen a dark-haired man with deep-blue eyes and a commanding stance. People moved around him, not brushing up against him as they rushed to wherever they needed to be. He stared straight at her. Her eyes met his for a brief moment before a truck moved between their gazes, and when the truck pulled away he was gone.