Forfeit Souls (The Ennead Book 1) (9 page)

I looked toward him stoically and shrugged, “just bored,” I lied.

“Mike couldn’t handle his first show. He went nuts and combusted. It took him two days to calm down enough to turn his flames off.” His laugh still retained the hissing quality of his dragon persona.

“Yeah? Well there’s not a lot that Mike and I have in common.” I stared into the darkness, waiting for Jack and Sasha to be done. “That boy’s got a lot to learn.”

Carlo laughed derisively, “he is fifty years older than you.”

“When he starts acting like it, I’ll treat him differently.” I said, matching the derision that Carlo’s tone had held. I saw his approving nod in my peripheral vision.

When Jack and Sasha joined us on the wall I looked back and saw two piles of burning trash amidst the snowy alley, each topped with a desiccated body of the drunkards. The girl, however, was left lying in the middle of the alley waiting to be found, a light layer of snow already forming on top of her prostrate figure.

“I’ve got one more stop before I can head home,” Carlo said to the others and they both nodded.

“As do I,” Jack said in a strangely pensive voice.

Sasha nodded and added, “Me too.”

The way they said it was as though they had errands to run. My mind immediately jumped to imagining Carlo running to the chemist, Jack to the grocer and Sasha picking up the dry cleaning. I bit my tongue to keep from laughing.

“You can make it home on your own, right kid?” Jack asked, planting his enormous hand on my shoulder. It was another one of those moments where I felt like he was treating me as though I was his little brother.

“No worries,” I said, and I watched all three of them burst into flames and vanish. “I just have another stop before I make it back too.” I said to the empty alley below me.

I visualized the flower shop that I knew well. My mum’s birthday and mother’s day found me there at least twice a year, and within and instant I was in the darkened room. Opening the refrigerator doors, I pulled out a large bouquet of red roses. The perfume of the shop was nauseating, and I wondered how people could work in them.

Pinching flowers wasn’t the noblest thing to do, but it wasn’t like I had any money. I laughed at the thought I had to pop over to Hawaii and find as many plumeria flowers as I could handle and fill her room with them.

I thought back to the time that our families had met on the island of Maui. How happy she had been there, how much she loved the small flowers. I hadn’t realized that I loved her until that trip, but I was far from willing to admit it to myself, much less her.

I knew that Ellie would be asleep. She’d be back at her parents’ house again. I’d slip in unnoticed and leave them on the desk next to her bedroom window for her to find tomorrow morning. It would be my final gesture, the one time I could see her in death. I knew that it was wrong of me to sneak into her room while she was sleeping, but I didn’t have many other choices. I wasn’t left to my own devices very often, so I doubted I would have another chance to get away.

I closed my eyes and thought of the family. I whispered her last name,
Ellerbee
, but when I opened my eyes, I was not in the family home as I had expected. I was in a place I had been only once before; the family’s cemetery.

It was located on her grandmother’s farm in Oregon. On a hill above a wide flowing river that I’d never asked the name of – or, if I had I couldn’t remember it now. I stood beneath the massive Myrtle Tree that sat on the northern border of the cemetery and looked up toward the embankment that held the only tombstone I had ever paid attention to. But there were new markers next to it.

I looked down to my feet realizing just how much of a mistake I had made… my thoughts must have taken me to the highest concentration of Ellerbees, and this would definitely be the place. I walked up to her father’s grave, about to leave when I saw the names on the stone in front of me.
Martha and Frederick Ellerbee
.

Her mother had died
? I was dumbfounded by this new development. Her father had died years ago. But the tombstone next to it,
Todd
, her younger brother, confused me even more. There was only one more tombstone that was new like the two in front of me. 

I sunk to my knees as I read her name, engraved into the dark marble. She had died the same night that I had been changed to a reaper. She had never made it home.

I should have stopped her. I never should have let her leave like that. I felt the distress welling in my chest. How could I have let her go? I felt anger and heat building in me. I was so upset that I couldn’t see straight. I felt the flames as they threatened to emerge from my skin and I clenched my fists tightly together to keep from combusting.

I looked through blurred eyes at the darkening night sky for answers, but found none. There were only a few that could tell me what had happened to her, and I doubted that they would be willing to divulge any information. They would say it was for my own good, that I shouldn’t dwell on my human past. That was the answer I received when I asked Gallu about Ellie.
She had to have known
.

I punched my fist downward into the ground, leaving a round divot in the soft earth by her grave. I knelt there for a long time, and it began to rain. I let the water wash down my face, and stared absently as it filled the hole my fist made. The cold rain did little for the fire that raged within me.

There were so many questions that flooded my mind, and yet I was frozen with rage. My death was completely and utterly inconsequential when compared to Ellie’s. She was possibly the one person I had known that I could have honestly said did not deserve, even in the smallest, most minuscule of sense, to die. I would have had no problem hunting down any other person in the world, to take their soul, to take their life, but Ellie... Ellie’s death; I would have vehemently protested. I would have fought any of the Asakku to keep her alive. Even if it meant that Jack would send me to the hereafter.

What if they had known that? What if they had taken her soul before it was time because they knew that I would have a violent reaction to their taking it, if I were aware. I thought of how fragile she seemed, how unmistakably beautiful she was, and now she was gone, buried deep underneath the earth, fodder for worms. It was an injustice that I felt I would have to avenge. Her killer would be punished.

I couldn’t stay here any longer. I laid the roses, which had been glued to my palm, on her grave and disappeared in a burst of flames, leaving the graveyard empty once again.

Back in my room, I laid on the hard shelf that served as my bed. Thoughts raced through my mind and I stared at my reflection in the ceiling for a long time. The conversation that Jack and Carlo had came back to me. Jack had gone out after a girl the night I had been taken. My head swam with the possibility that he had gone out after Ellie. I would find out what I could, but I would do as I was told until then. I couldn’t avenge her if I was destroyed.

The first order of business was to find Jack. He would probably be the most forthcoming. He would at least be the most readable.

-Joellen-

Opening my eyes to the grey light that crept through the white eyelet curtains of the room, I smiled and stretched my arms over my head. I swung my legs out of bed, thankful for my thick wool socks as my feet touched the hardwood floor, and went to the window. It was overcast and a slight drizzle was coming down. I saw a black taxi pull away from the curb and looked out across the Thames. I don’t think the smile that was covering my face would ever leave it.

My first day in London.

Mrs. Peppery, the adorable old woman who ran the small bed and breakfast I was staying in, did little all day other than to do her best to make sure her guests were comfortable. It didn’t matter which guest, just so long as she was busy. She referred to it as her calling in life. 

She had told me all about moving to London from the devastatingly small town of Hyannis, Nebraska shortly after her husband died so that she could open up this establishment.

She was a lot sturdier than she seemed. The stout woman was coming out of the door from the kitchen with her hands full. A basket of scones in one and several jars of jams and jellies precariously balanced in the other. I had noticed from the time I arrived, that she bustled this way and that, occasionally wiping her hand on her apron. 

“Good morning Jo,” she said with her trademark smile. “I hope you slept well. Mr. Greene said he slept horridly, tossed and turned all night. And there was some sort of commotion out on the street, the old man’s probably just imagining things.”

“Don’t worry Nan,” she insisted on being called this. “There’s not much that can wake me once I’ve gone to sleep.” I thought back to the thunderstorms in the Pacific Northwest, and to other people’s accounts of them sounding like a fully loaded semi trucks and trailers falling on their roofs. I had never been awakened by them.

“That’s good Love; now go get something to eat before it’s all gone.” She gingerly pushed me toward the dining room.

I wasn’t as worried about the food being gone as she was, but apparently, I should have been. I walked into the dining room and saw that all of her rooms must have been full. There was a large table in the center of the room and only one seat left at it. The other eleven chairs were taken.

There was a family of four it looked like, a man and woman talking hurriedly in French, while the two children– who could not have been much older than seven – sat between them and quietly ate.

I sat next to the small man that Nan had introduced me to the evening before. Mr. Greene was a retired Naval Captain who certainly didn’t seem to have his sea legs anymore. He was emaciated and frail, his wrinkled skin looked like olive toned crepe paper – as though even the smallest pressure could tear it.

“Good morning, Jo,” he said good naturedly. He had been rather grumpy the night before. “Did you hear the commotion last night?” He shook his head in dismay. “It sounded as though there was a horrendous dog fight outside.”

“I didn’t,” I replied as I reached for a scone and halved it, buttering the warm inside.

“I can’t imagine how any of you slept through it.” He said it loud enough that I was certain he wished for the others at the table to join in.

“I’m sure that it was just a pack of strays.” Mrs. Peppery said, walking in with a new basket of scones and a bowl of grapes. “They’ve no doubt moved on by now.”

I quietly sipped a glass of orange juice as I observed Mr. Greene’s indignation at the lovable old woman’s dismissal of the noise.

“Do you not recall the number of animal attacks the city’s been having in the past few months?” His question was rhetorical, but Mrs. Peppery opened her mouth as though she were about to retort, and Mr. Greene continued, “it only seems right that we keep an eye out for stray packs so they cannot do any harm to innocent young people out on the street.”

I popped a grape into my mouth and my eyes traveled from Mr. Greene to Mrs. Peppery – all of the eyes at the table did so. Her face was beet red.

“Are you implying, Mr. Greene, that I want those attacks to go on?”

“All that I am saying is that perhaps the authorities should have been notified.” He placed a hand on my shoulder and I froze as he continued. “What if it was our dear Joanna that was attacked?”

“For your information Mr. Greene,” she was not pleased, “I did contact the authorities, and I, of all people, want to be sure that nothing happens to
Joellen
.” She said the proper elongation of my name with a cold edge.

The entire table went silent and Mr. Greene got up from it without a word, hobbled past Mrs. Peppery while relying heavily on his cane. Mrs. Peppery huffed off after him, but the room was silent for a short while longer.

I focused on my scone, lemon poppy seed, one of my favorite varieties, and spent the next several minutes in deep concentration of the scone. It was my first scone in England after all.

“Which one got it right?” A heavily accented, French voice from my right asked.

It was the French woman who asked, but all eyes were on me. “I’m sorry?” I asked as I swallowed a piece of the scone.

“They both called you something different.” She said smiling slightly, “which one was correct?”

Oh, she wanted to know my name
, “it’s Joellen, but I prefer Jo.” I had never been comfortable with talking to strangers, and European strangers were no exception.

I wasn’t able to take another bite before she asked, “and you’re from America?”

“Yeah, Oregon.” I didn’t know why she was so interested in me, but I wasn’t going to be rude.

“What brings you to London, and all alone?” her husband asked as he piled another portion of kipper onto his plate, amidst the crumbs of his scone.

“I’m just here on vacation; and I have some friends in London.” I desperately hoped that would be the end of it.

Thankfully it was. There was a commotion in the front room which thankfully drew their attention away from me. I finished off my scone quickly as they all got up to see what the hubbub was. I wrapped up a second scone and handful of grapes, and quickly escaped up the back stairwell to my room.

I was here to explore the city; I didn’t have time to waste with quibbles and questions. I looked at my watch. It was ten in the morning, which meant I had eight hours to enjoy the city before I had to be at the cocktail party.

But what to see first? I had a full week to explore, but I didn’t want to miss anything. I looked at the notebook that I had laid on top of my bag the night before. The page that faced me held a long list of the things I wanted to see: Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London… the list was two columns long.

I pulled my hair back into a long ponytail. There was no getting around the frizz that the day’s drizzle would incur, and as I left the room, I pushed my arms through the long sleeves of my charcoal-grey pea coat.

My first day in London flew by in a blur. I had been on the London Eye and seen Big Ben before lunch and loved every minute of the rainy English day, but I was very thankful that the small café I walked into for lunch was warm and dry. The girl behind the counter was melancholy as she took my order and handed me my soy latte.

I sat at a small table near the fireplace that crackled in the corner. It was nice to dry off from the damp air that pervaded through my thick layers. I sipped slowly on my coffee, letting the warm hazelnut liquid fight away the chill.

I began reading the paper – someone had left it on the seat next to mine – the front page held a story about the restoration of a bridge that I had never heard of, but what caught my eye was a story that took up the very small section in the bottom right corner of the front page.

Ghastly Murder in the East End

Dreadful Mutilation of a Woman.

During the early hours of yesterday morning a woman was brutally murdered in the most revolting and fiendish of manners. This is the third occurrence in this neighborhood and the character of the mutilation leaves very little doubt that the murderer has been the same in all three crimes.

These ghastly murders bear too close of a resemblance to those that took place in late eighteen-eighty-eight when Jack the Ripper stalked London. Could Jack be back?

The short snippet wasn’t much, there weren’t names or any other details that would have given me a clue as to how severe this murderer was, but the short article still sent a shiver up my spine, and I jumped when the melancholy waitress placed the plate of quiche down in front of me. She just looked at me as though I was crazy before returning to her magazine behind the cash register.

I needed to stop scaring myself. It was altogether too easy to do. The slightest noise in the dark and my imagination would whirl toward every possibility – usually negative. My mind would turn shadows into creatures from the depths of Hell that sought to drag me back with them to the fiery depths.

I focused on my quiche instead, quickly devouring it, before I finished off the last of my coffee. I looked up once or twice and saw the waitress eyeing me suspiciously. Was my behavior earlier that strange to her? Her behavior only meant that I wasn’t going to leave her as big of a tip as I normally would… granted, this was Europe, so I didn’t really know the tipping procedure here.

When I stepped out into the cold of the mid-day rain, I quickly opened my umbrella. The light patter of the raindrops on the thin fabric that served as my cover was quite soothing. I held my hand up to hail a taxi. That’s when my eyes locked with his. He was tall and dark. I would have guessed Greek. He stood in the shadow of an awning and the hair rose on the back of my neck. He had affixed me with a murderous gaze, but all of that was secondary. The first thing I noticed, the trait that caused my stomach to knot, was his eyes. They seemed to glow bright red in the shadow. There was no iris; no pupil. There was only the red.

He let out a feral snarl as the taxi pulled to a stop in front of me, blocking him from view. I climbed in hastily, and looked out the driver-side rear window. He was gone. Perhaps my imagination was giving me more lurid things to fret about.

I tried to put the thoughts away; the fears were harder to file away. I had almost calmed myself down by the time the driver pulled up in front of the bed and breakfast, but my fears flooded back when I turned to close the door and saw the same man across the street. His eyes were now hidden by dark sunglasses that were far from necessary under the gloom of the rainclouds.

I quickly hurried up the steps toward the closest thing to safety I had in this country.

“Are you back already?” Mrs. Peppery asked as I walked through the door.

“Yeah,” I said with a smile, trying not to sound as freaked out as I felt. “I’ve got plenty of time to explore the city.”

“Oh, yes.” Realization dawned across her face. “You have that cocktail party with the Bennett’s tonight.” The wrinkles of her face smoothed out as she smiled widely. “I do hope that you have fun.”

“I’m sure I will.” I smiled back as I hurried up the stairs.

My room was still locked and everything was still in its proper place, I went to the window to see if the man was still there. Moving the white curtains slightly I looked to where he had been. He was gone. The entire street was void of activity, other than one car that had just turned down the lane.

I shivered and tried once again to push the thoughts from my mind. I had to laugh, I was just being paranoid – as usual.

I put my hand up; hailing the black cab that was making its way down the lane. The taxis were definitely one of my favorite things about traveling in London.

Edith and Robert Bennett were family friends, I had only seen them on the few occasions they had visited my mother and father, but I had seen pictures of their fabulous flat and was more than excited to see it in person.

When the black taxi pulled up in front of the three story brick building, I almost worried that I had the wrong address. But the numbers next to the door were the same as the ones that Edith had given me earlier on the phone.  I paid the driver and gave him what I considered to be a sizeable tip, but I wasn’t completely used to the exchange rate yet. I just assumed that I could halve everything and be pretty close to the cost in USD.

The windows on all three stories were lit and I could see faint shadows moving behind them. I walked up the concrete steps and knocked on the wooden door.

“Jo!” the petite blonde woman squealed as she quickly embraced me.

It had been a very long time since I had seen Edie and Bob, but they hadn’t changed a bit. Edie was still the tiny blond woman I could remember from back when I was five years old, and her husband, I could assume, was still the towering man he had been with his bushy mustache, though they were both beginning to grey around the temples.

“Hi, Edie,” I said as I hugged the small woman back. I had surpassed her height shortly after I had turned thirteen and she had always teased be about being a giant, something that I found quite comical as I was only five feet and five inches tall.

Bob’s head was visible as it poked out from around the corner. “Glad to see you made it across the pond!” his voice was still the joyful booming voice I remembered. “Edie, introduce her to the rest of the gang.”