Soul Catcher (13 page)

“Don’t put me off.”

“It really doesn’t matter, okay. It was just the truth, and I was offended for you by what my dad said. He’s hateful. I was retaliating.” They walked on in silence, although he hoped Ethan was still looking for the Watchers because he wasn’t seeing anything through his fog of emotions. Mind racing with unexamined thoughts, Dane followed robotically.

After a good six blocks, Ethan stopped short again. This time, he turned so sharply that Dane almost walked into him. He lifted his sunglasses and grabbed Dane’s upper arms.

“I’m only going to say this once, so listen up,” he muttered.

Dane swallowed, blood pounding in his ears.

“I think you told your parents because you wanted to gauge their reaction. Now, you might have done that because you don’t want to be a farmer when you grow up, or maybe you don’t want to deal with your father’s illness, and you wanted to push them away. But there’s another reason you might’ve done it.”

“What?” Dane’s voice cracked.

Ethan seemed to notice for the first time that his fingers were digging into Dane’s arms. He took a small step back, releasing his shoulders. “I’m your friend. We’ve been friends since the day I nursed you back to health in Eden. I’ll always be your friend. But God help me, Dane, if I have to find out you’re gay from someone else, I’m going to kick your ass.” He gave him a push in the chest and turned on his heel.

“Wha—?” Dane started quietly, but Ethan was half a block ahead already. Of course he wasn’t gay. He couldn’t be gay. No Michaels in history had ever been homosexual. Why would Ethan think he was gay? Unless, Ethan was attracted to him. It made sense. They’d spent a lot of time together, and there were feelings, special feelings. Feelings he didn’t really understand. But Dane couldn’t think about that because being like Ethan wasn’t an option. It wasn’t who he was supposed to be. Not that it was wrong. He wasn’t a homophobe or anything. He supported Ethan, after all.

He tried to catch up with Ethan to explain but stopped short when he realized he wasn’t sure what he would say. His brain was filled with half sentences. How could he make him understand?

“Going somewhere?” The voice of his worst nightmare rained down from above. Auriel dropped from a fire escape onto the sidewalk beside him.

Dane tried to scream. Nothing came out but air. He turned to run, but her hand snatched his wrist, holding him to her. Ice water pumped through his veins. Auriel was the Watcher who’d influenced him sophomore year and tortured him in Hell. Not again. “Get away from me.” In a panic, he twisted his weight, forcing her backward into the sun. Watchers hated the sun; it drained their powers.

To his horror, she didn’t release his arm. Instead, she paused in the light, basking in the golden rays. “I’ve eaten well recently. Even the sun can’t bring me down.”

“Ethan!” Finally, his voice cooperated.

Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Ethan’s horrified expression, too late. Auriel folded him into her body and raced down the alley away from Ethan. She was ridiculously strong. Within her grasp, buildings flew by in a blur, her superhuman speed making him all but invisible to the passersby on the street. When the Desert Days Motel came into view, he thought he must be hallucinating from the terror. Was it possible she was taking him back to the same motel they’d started from, the one place no Soulkeepers would be because they were all out looking for the Watchers? She halted her run near the pool, conveniently empty of guests, and muscled him up the stairs to the second level.

“What do you want from me?” Dane whimpered. “If you’re going to kill me, get it over with.”

“Oh no, I have bigger plans for you, human.” She pushed open the door to room twenty and thrust Dane inside.

Coming from the bright Arizona sun, Dane’s eyes struggled to adjust to the dark room, but the rank scent of death and decay hit him immediately. He blinked to adjust his vision. When his sight returned, he screamed and backed against the wall.

“Jesus!”

“Not here at the moment,” Auriel said. “Haven’t seen him in ages.”

Flies buzzed around the gray and bloated body on the bed. The obviously dead boy’s eyes had glazed over—open, milky, staring toward the door. What had he been waiting for?

“Touch him,” Auriel commanded.

Dane glanced at her and then at the dead boy. “No!”

She laughed. “Oh, come on, Dane. Don’t you want to meet the new Soulkeeper?”

That brought his head around. Auriel was positively giddy. She’d killed Cheveyo, and now she wanted to torture Dane by making him touch the body. He shook his head and pressed himself against the wall.

Auriel snatched his wrist, squeezed until he yelped in pain, and dragged him toward the bed. “As much as I’d love to play the ‘I don’t want to’ game with you, we are running out of time. Touch him!”

“Please, no.” He dug in his heels to no avail. His fingers moved closer and closer to the gray boy’s face. The corpse moved. A cloudy eye rolled in the boy’s head, and a finger twitched.

Dane flailed, fighting with everything he had. He expected he would pass out soon from fear. Instead, his entire body lurched, and a weird calm gripped him from the inside out. Everything slowed. A fly buzzed by, the wings stirring up dust in the air. His breath came and went in long draws.

She lowered his hand, and his palm connected with the dead boy’s face.

Worms. That’s what it felt like. The wriggly crawl of a million tiny bugs writhed through his fingers, inside his wrist, up his shoulder, and rooted in his brain. His body shivered. Auriel released his wrist.

It worked
, a voice said from inside his head.

“It worked?” Dane repeated, although as a question. He furrowed his brow at the new weight inside his head.

What the hell?
the boy’s voice said, panicked now.

“Don’t be so surprised, Cheveyo,” Auriel said. “I told you I would bring you a new body. Now we wait for lover boy and put our plan into motion.”

The boy’s scream inside Dane’s head came on like the worst migraine he’d ever had.

Bait and Switch

D
ane couldn’t comprehend what was going on, but based on experience, knew better than to ask Auriel. In the back of his brain, something—the voice, the boy—twisted like a sheet in the wind. The soul screamed painfully loud, but as Dane concentrated, he imagined a door in his mind’s eye—a big, heavy, steel door. He imagined himself pulling it closed, and when it was entirely shut, he was alone in his head again. A thought crossed his mind that it was not supposed to be this way, that Auriel had another plan for him gone wrong. But the idea was gelatin, jiggling and formless in his cranium, rendered moot by his pressing anxiety. He would remain silent and play along.

“He’s here,” Auriel said around a face-splitting grin. “Remember, Cheveyo, follow the plan. I will come to you again before they take you.”

The door blew in, torn off its hinges, and slammed against the far wall. Dane shielded his eyes from the resulting barrage of splintered wood. When he lowered his hand again, Ethan stood in the gaping hole, eyes as black as his t-shirt, jaw clenched, and hands balled into fists. A menacing wind coursed through the room.

“I will end you,” Ethan bellowed at Auriel. The splintered wood shot across the room at her along with a barrage of Eden’s throwing stars.

With a smirk, Auriel grabbed the dead boy and twisted into a column of black smoke. Boy and Watcher dissolved. The weapons landed harmlessly in the wall behind where she’d stood, cutting through the sulfur stench that lingered there.

“Are you okay?” Ethan was on him in an instant. He ran his hands down Dane’s arms, checked his face, his neck. “Did she hurt you? My God, you’re pale.”

“I’m fine.” Dane grabbed Ethan’s wrists to ease his inspection. The feel of his hands skimming over his skin was too intense. He couldn’t handle it. “I’m okay.”

Ghosts fleeted across Ethan’s dark eyes, tortured memories or visions gone unspoken.

Before he had time to think what he was doing, Dane pulled his friend into a tight embrace. “It’s going to be okay, Ethan. She’s gone.” Slowly, the tension bled from his shoulders.

“I thought you were taken, or worse, dead,” Ethan muttered. He whipped around toward the bed and grabbed his forehead. “Shit, the Watcher took Cheveyo.”

Cheveyo?
Dane stepped away from Ethan and rubbed his temples. A splitting headache was coming on again, the voice inside him pounding on the steel door. Maybe this thing, this soul inside his head,
was
Cheveyo, but right now it felt like a tumor. He didn’t want to alarm Ethan, but he needed help.

“What’s going on, Dane?” Ethan asked nervously.

“I need to see Grace. Now.”

“She’s patrolling. Can it wait?”

“No.”

“Come on, man. What’s going on? Don’t leave me in the dark here.”

The jackhammer in his skull wasn’t getting any quieter. “I don’t think Auriel took Cheveyo.”

“What? But we just saw—”

“He’s inside my head!” Dane yelled. Everything sounded muffled by the throbbing pain in his cranium. “Cheveyo is trapped inside my head.”

The corners of Ethan’s mouth tugged downward into a grimace. “You’re slurring your words.”

No time to think about that. Dane listed sideways. Ethan lurched forward, catching him in his arms before his head could hit the floor.

“Dane? Dane!”

He couldn’t answer. He closed his eyes against the pain and allowed Ethan to carry him from the room.

* * * * *

Dane awoke staring at the stained ceiling of a motel room. His head didn’t hurt as terribly anymore, although his mind fogged over like he’d overdosed on cold medicine. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

Through the closed door, Ethan’s muffled voice filtered in, barely audible. “Grace, you gotta come now. Pull everyone in. We’ve seen the Watcher. Yeah, I know...Yeah, I know. But we think we’ve found Cheveyo...No, I can’t...Grace, something has happened to Dane. Just trust me, all right? Come back to the motel room.”

In his just-woken state, relaxed and renewed, the door inside his mind was easier to see. Well, not
see
so much as sense. Mentally, he pulled the heavy steel back. “Are you still in my head?” Dane said out loud.

Yes.

“Who are you?”

My name is Cheveyo Kikmongwi. The voice sounded tired, resigned
.

“We’ve been looking all over for you, Cheveyo. We’re going to help you.”

Please don’t hurt me.

“I’m not going to hurt you. We’ve been trying to find you, to bring you home.”

What are you talking about?

“You’re a Soulkeeper. I should let Grace explain. She’s better at this than I am. While we wait for her, care to clarify how you ended up in my head?”

Not supposed to be this way,
Cheveyo sobbed.
She’s going to hurt me if she finds out.

“How was it supposed to be?”

No answer.

“Cheveyo?”

She warned me about you.

“What are you talking about? Warned you? About what?”

The boy retreated deeper into Dane’s mind. Why was he so afraid?

“What were you doing with Auriel, anyway?”

Auriel?

“The Watcher you were with.”

She’s a Kachina, a spirit of the underworld.

“You say tomato, I say to-mah-to. She’s a Watcher. A demon. Certifiably evil.”

Cheveyo twisted at the back of his skull.

“Judging by the way Auriel let us go, I’m guessing you were supposed to be in control instead of trapped inside my head.”

No answer, but the slippery twist stilled.

“Don’t clam up now. We are literally in this together, dude.”

With a click of the key turning in the lock, the door opened, and Ethan entered. “Hey, how are you feeling? You passed out.”

“Crowded. Cheveyo is inside my head. Auriel must’ve poisoned his mind; he said she warned him about me. I think he was supposed to possess me, but instead, somehow, I’m in control. He might be influenced or something. He doesn’t know he’s a Soulkeeper.”

Ethan grimaced.

“You don’t believe me?”

“No, I do. I can smell it. You smell different...like a Soulkeeper.”

“I didn’t know Soulkeepers had a smell.” Dane cautiously sat up, surprised his head didn’t get any worse from the change in position.

“Yeah. You know how Watchers smell like sulfur when they’re not masked in illusion?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Soulkeepers smell like sunlight and honey. You’ve never noticed before?”

Now that he stopped to think about it, yeah, he had noticed. But the Soulkeepers were his friends and, in Eden, sunshine came with the territory. The aroma was something he took for granted.

“I just thought it was you.” Dane smirked.

A hint of a smile teased Ethan’s lips, then grew into an infectious laugh. “Yeah, it’s my sunlight and honey bodywash.”

Suddenly uncomfortable, Dane changed the subject. “Is Grace coming?”

“She’s on her way.”

“Good.”

“So what’s he saying, anyway? Why’d he try to possess you?”

“I’m not sure. He won’t talk to me. He’s fighting me.”

“Why? Did you tell him he’s a Soulkeeper?”

“Yeah, but he’s confused, and like I said, maybe influenced.”

The metal on metal clack of the lock opening heralded Grace’s arrival. Light washed over the room, carving out her ample silhouette in the opening door. “What’s happened? There are policemen downstairs. They’ve cordoned off one of the motel rooms.”

They motioned for her to sit down and told her everything, from Dane’s capture to his rescue, his possession, and Auriel’s smoky departure. Her frown grew more pronounced with every word. Wringing her hands, she stood and paced the room.

“Ethan, did you touch anything? Any fingerprints?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“Dane?”

“Just the dead boy and Auriel. Nothing in the room.”

“Excellent.”

“Did you find out the dead boy’s name?”