Soul Protector (28 page)

The houses were large
family-sized terraces and years ago the area would have been a
lively place, but at some point over the last ten years the
inhabitants had moved out and, other than a lone dog barking
incessantly in the distance, there were no signs of life. No
children playing, no traffic noise and no birds singing. It was a
few shades darker here than the rest of London, it seemed even the
sunlight couldn’t be bothered to filter through properly.

I’d heard rumours that night
time brought with it a steady stream of drug dealers and
prostitutes but by day this place was a ghost town, and it was
incredibly eerie.

Terry parked outside a row of
dilapidated terraces at the far end of the street. I hung back and
parked behind an old
beige car with a brown vinyl
roof, smashed brake lights and a wire coat hanger for an
aerial.

Dressed in his shirt, tie and
trousers, Terry stood out like a sore thumb and I watched,
mesmerised, as he walked down some steps and disappeared into one
of the derelict houses. There was no way I was going to follow him
in. I got out my phone and tried ringing Tom to give him the
address, but there was no signal.
Damn.

I sat and tapped out a text
giving him the rough location, but telling him I would meet him by
the local park, a few streets away. It was a slightly better area,
and I knew I would feel safer hanging around there. I pushed the
send button and held my breath. When a failure message pinged back
at me I sighed and chucked the phone on the passenger seat. I would
have to follow Plan C instead and head straight to Tom’s.

I turned the keys in the
ignition, and just as the engine jumped to life, my car door was
wrenched open. Before I could react a hand grabbed the keys out of
the ignition.

I twisted my head to be faced
with a thick-set man with flaky skin and greasy hair.

“What the hell are you doing
here?” he said, his face only inches from mine. I almost gagged at
the smell of his breath.

“I-I got a bit lost.”

“Did you now,
Gracie
?

He knows my name
?

“Or could it be that you
followed Terry here, and now you’re off to alert the monitors that
you’ve found us?”

I held my breath as he leaned
past me and grabbed my phone off the passenger seat. He launched it
out the car and I watched in horror as it smashed into tiny pieces
on the road.

“Right young lady, you’re
coming with me,” he said, grabbing my arm with one hand, and my
hair with the other. Pain tore through my scalp as he dragged
me.

“Get off,” I screamed, trying
to kick him as he took me in the direction of the house Terry had
just entered.

He laughed. “Scream all you
like, nobody cares. It’s just us CSPs round here.”

He dragged me through an
archway that linked two overgrown gardens, and shoved me hard
against the wall. Pain splintered through my shoulder.

“Please, just let me go,” I
said, panting. “I won’t say anything.”

He put his face close to mine,
and with every word he spoke I felt his saliva hitting my face.
“You think I’m going to trust you? Don’t make me laugh.”

His features turned more
hostile and he grabbed my neck, closing his fingers round my
throat. I grasped at them, trying to claw him off me, but I was
sweaty and couldn’t get a good grip.

I looked into his cold, dark
eyes and felt my body grow weaker. My legs gave way and I slid down
the wall and onto the floor. He knelt down with me, his hands
squeezing tighter all the time.

Despite panic flooding my
senses, I felt overwhelmed with sadness as an image of Mum filtered
into my head. I imagined her despair when someone told her I was
missing. My poor mum, after everything she’d been through.

Anger pulsed through my veins,
giving me a surge of strength. I managed to kick out hard,
connecting with the thug’s shin and making him swear. I twisted my
body away from him and tried again to wrench his hands from my
neck.

But he was much stronger than
me. The more I resisted, the tighter he squeezed. I looked into his
eyes and saw pleasure reflected back at me. He was enjoying it.

I tried to gasp for breath as
the fight inside me faded. The edge of my vision started to go
fuzzy and I had the sensation of floating away. I knew there was
nothing more I could do and let myself go, resigned to my fate. But
instead of slipping away, I felt something slam into my side. My
knees smacked the hard mud as I was thrown to the ground.

My throat was raw and my lungs
felt like they were on fire. Gradually I managed to suck in small
quantities of the air I so desperately needed. It took me a while
to recover my senses and become aware of the scuffle going on
beside me. Still gasping, I managed to heave myself into a sitting
position. I drew in a sharp and painful breath.

The fight next to me stopped
and there was blood everywhere. It was the thug’s blood. Sitting
next to him, leaning against the wall panting, was Terry with a
bloody knife in his hand. I didn’t know whether to be grateful he
had just saved my life, or scared that I was so close to an armed
CSP.

~~~

CHAPTER 22

.

Revelations

.

“Gracie, are you okay?” His
voice was breathless.

“I think so,” I croaked. “You…
you just saved my life.”

“It was the least I could do,”
he replied, closing his eyes and shaking his head.

We sat there in silence for a
while, both stunned by the events that had played out.

Terry was the first to make a
move. He stood up and moved closer to me. He hesitated before
sitting down at my side. I shuddered. He followed my gaze to the
knife in his hand and quickly shoved it in his pocket out of
sight.

“Please, Gracie, you don’t need
to be scared of me. I’m not going to hurt you.”

I studied him for a few
seconds, trying to weigh him up. He
seemed
calm. Surely if
he’d gone to the trouble of killing my attacker, he didn’t intend
to harm me?

“Who are you, really?” I asked,
patting the tender neck on my skin, “and why are you in Terry’s
body?”

He squeezed his lips into a
tight smile before taking a deep breath. “This may come as a
surprise to you, Gracie…” he said, reaching his hand towards me. I
refused to take it. He flinched at the rejection, but took a deep
breath and carried on. “My real name is Brian. Brian Nicholls.”

His eyes lingered on my face,
watching for my reaction. I struggled to let the reality of the
words sink in, and as they did I narrowed my eyes and glared at
him.

“You mean… as in Brian
Nicholls,
my Dad
?”

He nodded slowly.

My hand flew up to my scar, and
I shook my head. “No… No way… My dad is
dead
.”

He opened his mouth to respond,
but I just watched his lips moving, unable to comprehend anything
else he said. I slid up the wall and scrambled to my feet. I needed
to get away from him and his lies. I launched myself in the
direction of the arch that would lead me back out into the street.
But he was faster than me. He jumped up and grabbed my arms,
forcing me to a standstill.

His voice came calm and gentle.
“It’s okay, Gracie. You’re safe, I promise you.”

I stopped resisting. I was
battered and weak from the earlier incident. I had nothing
left.

“I know it’s a shock love, but
I really am your dad. You have to believe me.”

He gently turned me round to
face him.

“You can’t be…” I said,
catching my breath. My vision was blurred through tears. “…my dad’s
been dead for years.”

He let me cry for a while, and
when he spoke, his voice came out in a half-whisper.

“I know I’ve let you down kid,
in the worst possible way… you, your mum, and Michelle. But I
promise you I would never do anything to hurt any of you now.”

At the mention of Mum and
Michelle, something inside me snapped and I glared at him. “If you
ever go near them again, I will kill you.”

“Gracie, love, please let me
explain.”

I shook my head. I owed him
nothing.

“I know how you must feel about
me, but please, at least give me five minutes and I promise I’ll
walk away after if you want me to. You really do need to know this
love.”

I looked up at him, unsure of
my next move. My head was spinning with all the chaos.

“Please, Gracie, I promise I’ll
never ask you for anything again.”

I sank back against the wall
and closed my eyes.

“Thank you,” he said
quietly.

He cleared his throat. “You’ve
got to understand, I never knew what I was… what I now know you
are.”

He studied me for a moment
trying to gauge my expression, but I had no intention of making
this easy for him.

He sighed and carried on. “You
know, when I first came back into your life, I dropped so many
hints about being a Soul Protector, but you never picked up on any
of them. I was convinced you didn’t have the gift.”

“
Gift
? This is not a
gift. It’s an affliction.”

He looked at me and nodded
sadly.

“My life was pretty normal
until I was about eighteen. I knew who I was, and where I was
going, which isn’t bad for a teenager.” He forced a small laugh.
When I didn’t join in, he dropped his smile, straightened up and
carried on.

“Everything changed when I was
mucking about with my mates one day. Me and Taff were
play-fighting. Taff had the most gorgeous girlfriend, Daphne, and I
often wished I could swap places with him. Anyway, he tried to trip
me up, so I spun round and got him in a head-lock and somehow I
managed to switch into his body. I can still remember how shocked I
was. It was terrifying and I didn’t even know if I was going to be
able to switch back.”

I shivered, as I thought of the
similarity to my own introduction to switching.

“To cut a long story short, it
took me a couple of times before I knew how to do it properly, but
even then I was still freaked out by the whole thing. I needed to
confide in someone, try to make sense of it all, you know? I tried
telling a couple of my mates, but they took the mickey. They all
thought I was a weirdo.” He arched an eyebrow, and I wondered if
that was something else I’d inherited from him.

“So I had this special power,
no-one believed me and I had no-one to share it with. I became
obsessed with finding out more details, why it was happening and
stuff.”

He stopped talking for a moment
and let out a long sigh.

“While I was looking through a
box of old photos and paperwork in the loft, I found my birth
certificate. That’s when I found out the people I called mum and
dad were my adopted parents. I had to read it over and over until
it sank in. I couldn’t believe they never told me. I found out
later the adoption wasn’t exactly legal.
Mum
and
Dad
were actually neighbours who took me in when my own parents died. I
was just a baby.” He paused, waiting for me to catch up.

“So, one of your real parents
would have been a Soul Protector. They never got the chance to tell
you?”

He nodded. “I didn’t know that
then, of course. Just finding out my parents had been lying to me
was all too much, I couldn’t handle it. I ended up drinking to get
me through the day. Soon I was having a drink just to get me out of
bed,” he said, shaking his head.

“Grandma and Granddad Nicholls
tried hard to straighten me out, but how could they know what they
were dealing with? I ended up stealing from them to buy the booze.
That’s how low I sunk, Gracie.”

His eyes started to fill up at
the memory, and he frowned as he tried to hold in the emotion. I
shifted my gaze, allowing him to discreetly wipe away the evidence.
He blew out a deep breath and when I turned back, his expression
had softened.

“One day I was in the pub, on
my own as usual, when a young woman walked in. She was beautiful,
Gracie. She had a smile that lit up the room.”

He began staring into the
middle distance and a smile played on the corners of his mouth.

“She came over and talked to me
and it was like a breath of fresh air. She made me forget all about
the crap that was going on.”

He looked back at me. “That
woman was your mum.”

I felt the hairs on the back of
my neck prickle. I didn’t like to think of him being anywhere near
her.

“She was amazing. Within weeks
I’d proposed, and for some strange reason, she accepted. Being with
her made me forget my problems and I gave up drinking altogether.
After a few short months she fell pregnant, and when you were born
I was the happiest man in the world...”

I felt tears of my own starting
to pool.

“…and then three-and-a-half
years later Michelle arrived. That should have been our
happily-ever-after, but with a baby and a three year old to look
after, your poor mum was run ragged. Instead of helping her, I
resented the fact she wasn’t there for me as much.” His face
creased, as if he was in pain.

“I know I should have been man
enough, but I needed all her time and attention to keep me on the
straight and narrow. After all she’d done for me I should have been
helping her for a change. Instead I started to pop down the pub of
an evening.”

“So you started drinking
again?”

“I know. I was an idiot. Before
I knew it I was right back to square one.” A solitary tear was
snaking its way down his cheek, but he didn’t seem bothered
now.

“I’m so ashamed of what I did
to her, Gracie, and to you kids.”

I started to chew my lip.

“You have to understand I would
never have laid a finger on any of you sober, but when I drank, I
turned into an animal. I couldn’t even remember what I’d done to
your Mum sometimes, not until she rang me from hospital anyway. I
wanted to take my life so many times when I found out how badly I’d
beaten her…”