Her Soul to Take (Souls Trilogy #1)
Harley Laroux
Dedication
To My Husband.
My light in the darkness.
“Blood has been spilled in Its name. It is awake.”
I’d felt the stirring before he announced it. Damned mortals always stating the obvious, as if I couldn’t feel the ground trembling and the old roots tensing – tensing, like a body preparing to be hit. As if I couldn’t hear the whispers growing louder in the dark, tendrils of ancient, incomprehensible thought reaching out and prodding for vulnerabilities.
The concrete surrounding me – burying me alive – couldn’t hide the disturbance. I didn’t need Kent’s pompous ass strutting in here, making declarations as if I was supposed to grovel at the news. Seated cross-legged in my wretched binding circle, sharpening my nails against the concrete floor, I barely gave him more than a glance when he came into the room with his cronies in tow. At his declaration, I merely grunted, and that hardly seemed to satisfy him.
“Did you hear me, demon?” he snapped, and his fingers tightened upon the leather surface of his grimoire. That damned worn-out book was always in his grip, the hammer he had raised over my head. A non-magical man like Kent couldn’t control me without his little spell book.
“I heard you.” I sighed heavily, and leaned back so I could tap my nails upon the floor. “Pardon me for not jumping in joy, Kenny-boy. The fact that you’re here to gloat about your old God stretching Its limbs only tells me It hasn’t woken up enough to give you all that delicious power you seek.” His expression darkened dangerously, and I knew I was walking the edge of enticing him to hurt me.
Captivity was so endlessly boring that seeing how far I could push my master before pain resulted had become a real thrill.
I shrugged. “So, you’re here with a task. Here to send me off on some petty errand before locking me in the dark again. Thrilling.”
Kent’s knuckles had gone white. He had a certain aristocratic look about him; he would have been just as at home in Victorian London as he was mingling among Seattle’s business elite. Dark gray suit, a subtle pinstripe on his black tie, perfectly cut and combed gray hair. He was as muted as Washington’s cloudy skies, and about as unpredictable in his moods.
“I would save your strength for the work ahead, demon,” he said, his voice tight, rage barely restrained. “Rather than wasting it on that petty tongue of yours. Unless you’d like me to rip it out again?”
There was a snicker from one of the white-cloaked figures behind him, and I glowered but kept my mouth shut. Kent had them wear the cloaks and the stag skull masks, but I knew the two faceless beings that accompanied him down here were his adult spawns. Victoria, smelling of bitter artificial vanilla fragrance and all the chemicals in her makeup. And Jeremiah, reeking of cheap body spray and hair gel.
“Tonight, at midnight, you will go to Westchurch Cemetery. You will go silently and ensure no one detects you along the way. There, find the grave of Marcus Kynes. Dig up his body, and refill the grave. Then bring his body to White Pine. Is that understood?”
I rather liked my tongue in my mouth. Growing a new one was nasty business. “Understood.”
There was no clock in that wretched little room, but I could feel midnight arrive nonetheless. The world changed slightly, moving just a little closer to the boundary separating it from Heaven and Hell. Midnight always made me feel good, as did finally stretching my legs and leaving the binding circle.
Kent kept me in that circle so often he’d had it carved into the floor. Like his father, and his grandfather before him, Kent feared that if he released me from his service when he had no immediate need of me, I would somehow manage to escape from him forever. A lovely thought, but an unlikely outcome. Kent had the grimoire, the only remaining record of my name on the Earth. He alone could summon me because of it.
I suppose he also feared that, in my considerable amount of hatred for him, I’d bend the rules and seek vengeance by murdering him and his entire family after being dismissed from his service. Again, a lovely thought, and a far more likely outcome. I’d risk the wrath of my superiors in Hell if it meant being able to demolish this whole family.
But it had been over a century, and in all that time I’d been in service to the Hadleigh family. It was impressive, honestly — no one else had ever managed to keep me in captivity for so long without losing their lives. There was a good reason there was only one remaining record of my name. Summoners throughout the years had learned quickly that I wasn’t an easy one to command, and thought it best to discourage summoning me at all.
I’d left a trail of dead magicians in my wake, and was eager to add a few more.
The night was cold and foggy, the pines dripping with dew. Westchurch Cemetery was surrounded by trees, all but invisible from the quiet road that ran alongside it. Rows of headstones, some over a century old, lined the wide untrimmed lawn. It didn’t take me long to find Marcus. The plot of disturbed dirt gave him away, his grave freshly filled. A flat, simple headstone marked him.
Marcus Kynes. Twenty-one years old. The “spilled blood” that had awakened Hadleigh’s God. Odd that Marcus had been buried at all. A sacrifice was meant to be done in the cathedral, with the corpse offered up immediately – or offered alive, if possible, for God to toy with at Its leisure. The fact that Marcus had been buried seemed messy.