Her Soul to Take (Souls Trilogy) Read online

  “Film, huh?” said Jeremiah. “Need any actors for upcoming projects?”

  I laughed nervously, but Inaya spared me from answering as she said, “Tell them about your YouTube channel! Your investigations!”

  “Investigations?” Victoria rested her chin on her palm. “Are you, like, a detective?”

  I smiled tightly, bracing for the incoming weird looks. “Well, kind of. I do vlogs, talk about local legends, creepy stories...I do paranormal investigations.”

  “She’s a ghost hunter,” Inaya said.

  I was relieved to see both Jeremiah and Victoria look intrigued, instead of repulsed. "Oh, yeah?" Jeremiah leaned forward on the bench. "Have you caught stuff on camera? Ghosts?”

  "I mean, I've caught some weird voices. Orbs, shadows." I shrugged, and plopped down on the bench beside Inaya. “I’m still hoping for that big sighting: a full body apparition, or, shit, I’d take some vaguely human-shaped mist.”

  “Well, you’ve come to the right place for spooky shit.” Victoria narrowed her eyes as she looked at me, her nails tapping on her vape. “You were born around here, right? Like, your family is from here?”

  I nodded. “Yep. My dad’s side, the Lawsons. They’d lived here for, hell, probably a century.”

  “Just like our family.” Victoria smiled, but the expression seemed a little too tight to be real. Weird. “Then you probably already have an idea of just how interesting this place can be. Ghosts, poltergeists, demons, cryptids" — she glanced to the side, behind me, toward Calgary Hall — “even murders now, apparently."

  The five of us glanced back. Calgary Hall would have looked so normal if it wasn’t for all that caution tape, and the painfully hot asshole standing guard in front of it. I hurriedly turned back around.

  “Rumor is they’re just keeping the building closed because they can’t get all the bloodstains out of the stone,” Victoria said. “Some freshmen found the body and called the cops. He was a sophomore — ”

  “Junior,” Jeremiah corrected. “Marcus was a Junior.”

  “Okay, yeah, Junior, whatever," Victoria waved him off. "A guy named Marcus Kynes. He was stabbed eight times — "

  "Nine times," Jeremiah interjected.

  "Ugh, God, Jerry, would you let me say it? He was stabbed nine times. There was blood everywhere, the kid's body was just destroyed. Someone even got a video."

  "Of the murder?" I gasped.

  "Oh, no. No one knows who did it...or at least, they’re not giving names yet." She smirked. "No, they got a video of the body when it was found, before the cops showed up. It was so gross.”

  “I have it saved on my phone if you want to see it,” said Jeremiah, pulling out the device. “It’s crazy how much blood there is in people.”

  “Oh my God, you guys, don’t be so disgusting!” said Inaya, shoving Jeremiah’s phone away as he leaned forward to show me. “Too soon, okay, way too soon. The poor kid is barely in the ground.”

  Jeremiah sat back, staring at his phone in such a way that my morbid curiosity only increased. “He must’ve really pissed someone off,” he muttered. “Right in the middle of the hall.”

  I dared another glance back. Right there in that unassuming old building, someone’s life had come to its brutal end. Why? What could spur such a rage to stab a person nine times?

  I frowned. The security guard, Leon, was still standing at the foot of the building’s steps, and I noticed the students walking past gave him a wide berth. Even from all the way across the quad, as I pushed my glasses up my nose, I could have sworn he was looking at me. At that distance, his pale green eyes caught the light peeking through the clouds and flashed, like gold leaf caught in the sun.

  In French, there’s a phrase for the random urge to jump from high places, the irrational desire to swerve into traffic despite imminent destruction: l'appel du vide, the call of the void. Those sudden feral impulses tend to be shoved away immediately, but humans still experience them. What if you jumped? What if you touched the fire? What if? What if?

  When I looked at him, staring at me, the void called.

  What if?

  “Oh, shit. I gotta get to class.” Inaya jumped up, staring at the time on her phone. She gave me a quick hug, and Trent helped her gather her things before he took her hand to walk her to class. “I’ll see you guys later! Rae, text me, we gotta do something fun soon.”

  “Investigation!” I called after her. “We need to go somewhere haunted; I need content!”

  “Rae, what’s your number?” Victoria pulled out her phone, the sparkling blue case sporting a dangling silver crown charm. “That way I can give you a heads-up if there’s anything fun going on.” She gave me a sweet smile. “I know it can be intimidating making new friends.”

  I gave her my number, glad to see her so willing to be friendly. Out of the corner of my eye as I rattled off my digits, I noticed Jeremiah typing at the same time on his phone. I could have been wrong, but it seemed like he took my number too.

  When I turned to head for my next class, my eyes swept along the sidewalk in front of Calgary Hall, but this time, Leon was gone.

  There was only so long I could jack off in that vile concrete room before I began to feel more than a little feral. Demons have needs: the drive to hunt pleasure, to seek stimulation, is as necessary as food and water to a human. So as much as I hated the man, when Kent told me I was to guard the university campus when the semester started, I could have kissed his goddamn boots.

  Could have. I didn’t. But it had been far too many years since I’d felt so free.

  Kent’s sacrifice hadn’t just stirred his God. It had awakened the Eld, the ancient beasts of the forest who were sustained only by blood, magic, and pain. The God’s awakening was making them restless, and soon enough they would begin to creep from the darkest depths of the forest to hunt.

  Kent didn’t need panic sweeping through Abelaum. It was my duty to keep the Eld away from the students, away from town. I was to dispose of the beasts when I found them, which wasn’t an easy task, but it wasn’t as if I could refuse Kent’s orders. I’d gladly kill any Eld I laid eyes on if it meant having their hunting grounds for myself.

  The Eld would consume the flesh of humans if they could, but I would consume them in another way. Through pleasure, pain, and blood. Corruption. Temptation. Utterly perverse intoxication. Humans were the most pitifully willing prey. Too many of them lived such constrained lives, binding themselves to moralities that only served to limit their enjoyment of their short mortal existence.

  Offer one an easy path to perversion, tempt them with pleasure’s darkest desires, and they made for easy prey. A feast of curious college students had been put before me, and I intended to eat well.

  They were all wary, at first. Primal instinct told them what their eyes did not: I was dangerous. A predator. They kept their distance from me even when they couldn’t keep their eyes from roaming over me. It meant that the steps up to Calgary Hall’s closed doors, where I had set up my primary post to watch everyone milling across the quad, remained vacant.

  Until she skipped up the steps without a care in the world, wide-eyed, vibrating with energy, smelling of sage and mint and warm skin.

  She didn’t even glance in my direction, as if whatever primal instinct that drove her fellow students was utterly vacant from her, the feral guardian for self-preservation shrugging its shoulders and letting the little thing run wild. She was little — in stature but not in energy. She had a large camera held close beneath her chin, as if she was ready to lift it to her eye at any moment. Her black denim jacket looked too large, as did the leather boots on her feet and the stuffed book bag she carried. She wasn’t tall enough to reach my shoulder, but beneath her oversized jacket I spotted the pleasing curve of her breasts, her hips, thighs that begged to be gripped and left bruised.

  Heat flushed through me. If I wasn’t careful, if I let myself give in too quickly to that need to hunt, to pursue, to tempt, my human disguise
would slip and these poor mortals wouldn’t just be giving me space — they’d be running, screaming.

  But I wasn’t about to let her simply walk away.

  “Are you fucking lost?”

  She turned slowly, wide brown eyes now narrowed, to look me over skeptically from behind thick-rimmed glasses. Her eyes lingered, her body’s sudden flood of nervous hormones turning the air pungently sweet.

  Perfect.

  “Not lost. It’s hard to miss the bright yellow tape pasted across the scene of a murder.”

  She’d tried to sound bothered, but her tone shot up in pitch and betrayed her lie. She was nervous, intrigued. Just frightened enough to be wary. The bitchy smile she plastered on those black-painted lips was yet another falsehood.

  I rather liked liars. It meant they were afraid of telling the truth, and I loved making humans face their fears.

  I smiled back, and it seemed to awaken that sleepy primal guardian of hers. Instinct finally kicked a bit more fear into her as she caught a glimpse of my teeth. She probably saw them a bit sharper than she should have, but I was excited, and maintaining a “normal” human appearance was difficult.

  “Oh, good, you didn’t miss the tape. Then I’ll take it that you just can’t read, since you decided to hang around.”

  Would she push back, despite that instinct to flee? There was something vicious in her stance, like a cornered cat prepared to fight. She was sizing me up, her eyes moving slowly over me. A bitchy attitude couldn’t mask fear, and it couldn’t mask desire. Her voice grew sharper, just a little bit more desperate. “I’m pretty sure the tape says Caution, not Stay Back 20 Feet. I don’t see a sign telling me to stay away.”

  There was a spark of hellfire in her. Bratty. Brave. Oh, I liked that.

  Have you ever wondered why humans buy their dogs toys that squeak? It’s because the squeak mimics the sound of an animal fighting for its life, and the dog gets excited.

  Sometimes those squeaky, desperate sounds of struggle just make a predator want to bite even more.

  Her face fell as I climbed the steps toward her. She folded her arms and shuffled her feet into a wider stance as I stood over her and leaned down. We demons couldn’t control the minds of humans, but we could nudge them. We could implant influences to stir feelings or sensations. Easy enough to ignore if a human tried, but not when they were so distracted as she was.

  Her eyes kept wandering, naughty little thing. I nudged her mind just enough to let her imagine a subtle squeeze around her neck.

  “What’s your name?”

  She was fidgeting now. Nervous, aroused, confused. If I’d touched her, she might have combusted, and that was exactly how I wanted it. The pursuit was no fun if the victim wasn’t willing, and the longer she lingered in the tease of it, the temptation, the more curious she’d be.

  “Alex.”

  Liar.

  “No. It’s not.” A little bit more of a squeeze, a little more of a nudge. I did love making brats quiver — certain former lovers would attest that it was because I was a brat myself, but those former lovers would be wrong. I only gave her mind a push, and her imagination did the rest. Confusion flickered across her face, and she gulped. A curious mind would begin to wander in the direction of dark lusts, the sins they’d tried to hide. What were hers?

  “It’s Raelynn,” she said, and this time, she wasn’t lying. “If you’re going to be such a dick about it, I’ll just leave then.”

  Raelynn. It suited her, felt right for her. Satisfied, I widened the gap between us and stepped aside, giving her an easy escape. She hurried down the steps, body tight and tense, her scent wafting over me again.

  “Watch where you wander, girl,” I said. “Curiosity can get you in trouble.”

  Her shoulders tensed even more. She flipped her short hair over her shoulder, stomping her boots across the grass as if I’d just ruined her morning.

  Brats need to learn their lessons somehow, don’t they?

  I didn’t push her. I just nudged her mind in the direction it was apt to go anyway. Unfortunately for her, she was already rather clumsy.

  Her feet tangled, and the jolt made the strap on her bag snap. Books tumbled across the grass and papers settled into lingering puddles, her coffee burst and sent its contents dribbling everywhere. I had to clench my jaw to hold back the laughter that wanted to come out. Posted up directly in front of the steps she’d just left, I folded my arms and watched her attempt to crouch down in her skirt, one hand awkwardly clutching the back of it to keep it down. Her head twitched back, curious eyes searching, and they met mine for only a brief moment before she looked away again.

  She looked even cuter with her freckled cheeks reddened in embarrassment.

  Her friend came to collect her, and they left together. I watched her walk across the quad, but my eyes narrowed as she reached her group and sat down. The Hadleighs — what in Lucifer’s name was she doing with the Hadleighs? I’d never seen her with them before. Did she even have any idea who they were? What they were capable of?

  It didn’t matter. It shouldn’t have mattered. She’d be my prey regardless. But the peculiar urge to warn her needled at the back of my mind. It was an urge I quickly shoved away. I hadn’t earned a reputation as a guardian, I was known only for one thing among human kind.

  I was a killer. A hunter. Not a protector. Not even for tiny mortal girls with no sense of self-preservation.

  It was evening when I found her again. I’d gotten away from the monotony of the quad for a while and walked through one of the far corners of the campus. Benches and tables were scattered under the trees, where students sat hunched over their laptops. I recognized her immediately, sitting cross-legged at a picnic table with her laptop open in front of her. There was now a massive knot in the strap of her book bag, and she had yet another coffee in her right hand. Did this girl run entirely on caffeine? No wonder her heart rate was so high.

  Maybe I’d make it a little higher.

  I lingered behind her, just out of her line of sight. Her internet browser was open to a webpage with the title Mass Deaths, Madness, and Cryptids: Abelaum’s Creepy History. She rubbed her eyes before she went back to reading and highlighted a passage that she copied and pasted into another document.

  Abelaum is host to a menagerie of haunted locales and historical monuments, it read. One such place is St Thaddeus Church, located one mile from the infamous White Pine mine shaft, where the survivors of the 1899 disaster were freed.

  What the hell was she looking into St. Thaddeus for?

  “History homework already?”

  She jumped at the sound of my voice, and turned her head to look up at me. That nervous glance, the uptick in her heart rate, the rapid blink before she looked away — it was enough to make me suck in my breath and hold it in an effort not to move in any closer.

  I’d been locked away far too long if a mere glance from a human was having me feel this way.

  But I’d had plenty of glances. Plenty of longing looks. It was her gaze. Her scent. Tempting me. I wasn’t usually the tempted one.

  “How do you know it’s for history?” she muttered. She turned the laptop slightly, as if to hide the screen from me, and her hand clenched on her lap. Maybe I’d get to see that little bit of hellfire come out in her again. Her hackles were already raised.

  I shrugged, sauntering over to the table to lean against it, my shadow looming over her. Fuck, she smelled good. Warm blood, mint and sage, coffee and something like granola. This girl was flat-out dangerous to be around. “Just a guess. Maybe you like researching condemned churches for fun.”

  She slammed her laptop shut. The glare she directed toward me brought a smile to my face. “Are you fucking lost?” she said, echoing my earlier words to her. So much sass in such a small body.

  “Unfriendly little thing, aren’t you?” I said. “I patrol the whole campus, doll. It’s my job to check secluded corners.”

  “Okay, well, patrol away. That way,
preferably.” She made a show of pulling out her phone and turning her back to me, but she was just idly scrolling through text messages. As if she could dismiss me that easily. It was too fun to watch her squirm to leave now.

  But besides the fun of it, unease had grown in me to see her looking into that damned church. She was already spending time with the Hadleighs, which was bad enough, but something told me this woman didn’t have the slightest clue what she was meddling with.

  “You’re not from here, are you?” Even if they didn’t know the true nature of it, locals would steer clear of St. Thaddeus and White Pine. Too many legends. Too many stories.

  “Why do you say that?” she said suspiciously, slowly turning back to me. At least she was wary. She needed to turn that wariness on her little friend group.

  I shrugged, and tucked my hands into the pockets of my pants. “Oh, I don’t know. You smell different.”

  “I smell different? What does Southern California smell like, hmm? Brush fires and avocado toast?” She ended her outburst with a wince, as if she regretted giving that little bit of information away. Flustered, she shoved her laptop into her bag and got up, keeping her back turned to me. Her skirt brushed against her thighs and her movement flooded me not just with another whiff of her shampoo, but a faint and far more primal scent.

  I grinned wider. Stubborn little thing, resisting her own arousal. That was why she was trying so hard not to look at me. She stalked off, bag slung hurriedly over her shoulder, boots stomping. I lingered near the table, but called, “I can’t say St. Thaddeus makes for a good tourist attraction. I’d stay away from the church, if I were you.”

  That made her stop. She whirled back around, snapping, “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were the campus guard. Are you the church guard too?”

  Goddamn, every time she snapped it had my mind spiraling into all the ways I could turn those snippy words into moans. I should have been more focused on that, rather than whatever white knight crusade had me saying bullshit like, “It’s a dangerous place. Condemned, locked. Any local would know better than to visit there.”