Her Soul to Take (Souls Trilogy #1)(68)

I was feeling lighter. Happier. Despite the gloomy skies and the clouds rumbling with thunder, I felt like I had some hope.

I could survive this. I’d find a way.

Inaya’s apartment was near the bay, a five-minute drive from my house. Abelaum’s downtown streets glowed warmly, even in the rain. By evening, the bars would be full of students eager to start celebrating their Halloween weekend. I couldn’t help wondering if Leon would be among them, mingling among the unsuspecting, hunting for another soul.

My hands tightened on the steering wheel. He’d spoke of feeling something for me, something that made him want my soul for eternity. Yet he left. He left.

I sighed heavily. He didn’t owe me protection. After all he’d been through, why would I expect him to stay? He’d been a captive here so long, why would he choose to spend his freedom chasing after one disastrous human girl?

He was probably long gone. He’d probably found the grimoire and gone straight back to Hell where he belonged. Good riddance. I didn’t need —

I slammed on the brakes as something darted in front of my car. My head was thrown forward and my entire upper body tensed with the effort not to bang my head against the steering wheel. Panting, I raised my head and pushed my glasses up my nose. My headlights lit the wet road before me, pools of yellow light that glistened with the soft, drizzling rain.

What the hell had I just seen?

The road was empty, but I could have sworn I’d seen something. Something pale as moonlight, humanoid but naked. Long, too long in all the wrong places. Horned — horned like a stag.

But there was nothing there.

I eased off the brake, driving slower now. It must have just been a deer. The illusion that it had a human form was just that: an illusion, my paranoid brain making up frightening things in the woods. Maybe I needed to see a doctor and start taking something for this anxiety. I’d already seen it start to affect my grades —

I stopped again. Something was on the road. Not just one something, but three.

Three tall, pale white figures.

Their necks were too long. Their shoulders drooped and their arms — too long, too thin — hung slack. I couldn’t be sure if they were draped in rags, or if their skin was drooping and wrinkled. Their long legs ended in bizarre, two-pronged hooves, as if they were wearing massive heeled shoes backward on their feet. They stood in the middle of the road, scattered, as if they’d been wandering and my approach had made them pause.

They were all staring at me with milky white eyes, their massive sets of pale antlers strewn with strange, dark, leafy plants — seaweed?

With trembling fingers, I managed to find the button to lock my doors and click it. The sound made them twitch, but otherwise they were completely still. They didn’t sway. Their chests didn’t move with their breath. They could have been stone, if it weren’t for those eyes, staring into my soul.

I couldn’t drive forward without hitting them. They were spread out across the road so I couldn’t pass. I kept hoping to see headlights behind me, or ahead, but the road was empty except for us. My logical brain demanded that I consider them to be just early Halloween revelers, dressed up in really good costumes. Not real. They couldn’t possibly be real.

Then, the one closest to the car moved.

It came slowly, every movement accompanied by a crackling of its joints that I could hear even with my windows rolled up. My knuckles turned white on the wheel. If I didn’t move, maybe I wouldn’t incite it. If I didn’t move, maybe those milky white eyes wouldn’t see me.

It stood right outside my driver door. I stared straight ahead, eyes stinging, whimpers coming with every breath.

What the hell was I supposed to do?

The creature leaned forward, and placed its boney, pale hand against my window. Wetness seeped around its thin fingers, as if it was waterlogged, weeping down the window pane.

Then, from behind the stag skull, it spoke in a harsh whisper that hissed right through the glass, “It waits for you, Raelynn. It waits in the deep dark place.”

I slammed on the gas. I didn’t care if I crunched their boney bodies under my tires, but as my car sped toward them, they leapt out of the way, their speed nothing like the slow, hobbling gait I’d witnessed from the first one. I was swerving, the steering wheel wobbling as my tires struggled with my speed and the wet road. The car bottomed out as I hit the dirt driveway toward the cabin, jostling me as I sped over the bumps and potholes.

I didn’t say a word to Inaya about it when I got back. I explained away my trembling hands with continual complaints of how cold it was. I claimed I was just celebrating the weekend when I poured myself another glass of wine before noon. I wanted to cry. I wanted to hide.

But I had to figure out how to fight.

I wasn’t going to die a sacrifice. I wasn’t going to disappear, forgotten into these godforsaken woods.





I couldn’t leave her. I’d resigned myself to it.

By day, I searched for the grimoire and the witch who’d stolen it. But I returned at night, watching Rae’s cabin in the dark, to make sure the beasts didn’t get too close. They were hungry. So damn hungry, they were crawling out of the ground like maggots the colder and wetter it got. The radio began to crackle with reports of missing hikers, and I knew the beasts were feeding but it wouldn’t keep them occupied for long.

Things were getting worse.