Her Soul to Take (Souls Trilogy)

God was calling my name.

The voice sounding in the dark, in the cold, stroking its subtle influence around my skull was not just calling me but summoning me, demanding I answer. It was the voice I’d heard for months, the one that haunted my dreams, my nightmares. It was louder now. It was close.

I couldn’t wake up, but I couldn’t truly sleep. I was trapped in my own body, screaming wordlessly when I heard movement around me, when I felt the pinch of a needle in my arm. They were keeping me unconscious, keeping me helpless. It felt like an eternity had passed…or maybe it was only hours.

All I knew, with a certainty that made every inch of me feel cold, was that I was going to die.

Whatever drug they’d given me kept me calm, but the panic was there. I knew I had to fight, somehow. I had to get back to Leon.

I had to hope Leon had survived.

Slowly, I began to realize I could move my toes again, then my fingers, then at last, my eyes. I was lying on something hard and smooth; metal, perhaps a metal table. My body was strapped down and something was pulled over my head, so even as I opened my eyes, all I could see was darkness.

The panic, held back by the now-faded sedative, slammed into me and I began to scream. I struggled against the straps holding me down, but it only exhausted me to strain against something so immoveable. The immediate shakiness in my limbs told me that it had been at least a day — probably longer — since I’d eaten. Screaming made me breathless, so I fell silent, but adrenaline was rushing through me in painful bursts, my body tingling, my heart racing, my fight-or-flight activated without the ability to do either.

I wriggled around, and realized that I was still wearing all my clothes, including my boots — which my dagger was still tucked into, pressing against my ankle. My phone was no longer in my back pocket, but my lighter was still there, and, if I wasn’t mistaken, the page torn from the grimoire was still there too.

There was still hope. I couldn’t give up yet. I was still armed. I just had to be patient…

But hope and patience were becoming more difficult by the second.

There was a creak, and somewhere in the distance a door slammed shut, followed by heavy footsteps. The steps came closer…closer…there was the soft beep of digits being pressed into a keypad…and the door that opened next sounded as if it was right beside me.

“It’s time, Raelynn. Are you awake?”

The voice wasn’t familiar; it wasn’t Jeremiah. I immediately began to struggle again, wrenching against the straps that held me down. “Help me! Help me, please, please, he’s going to kill me, please —”

The voice laughed softly, chidingly, as if what I’d said was silly. “You don’t need help, Raelynn. You’re going to rest with God. This is a joyous day.”

Cold, sickening dread slammed into me. “No…no, no, no, you can’t, please —”

There were hands on me, and metal pressed around my ankles and clicked into place — some kind of shackles. One wrist was unstrapped, only to be bound in metal cuffs to the other. I kept struggling, but I was still thoroughly restrained when the straps were removed and I was tossed over a hard shoulder, strong arms carrying me, moving up stairs, through more doors, and finally outside.

The fresh air was a relief, even through whatever cloth bag they had pulled over my head. The few drops of cold rain that hit my skin grounded me, and I finally stopped struggling. I had to save my strength. There were crickets chirping, a car engine running — another door opened and I was shoved across smooth leather seats into the warm interior of some large vehicle.

When we started moving, that same fight-or-flight panic gripped me again. I had to stay calm, I had to. I tried to keep track of the vehicle’s turns, I tried to count the minutes as if that would help me figure out where we were going. Whoever was in the vehicle with me wasn’t speaking; Chopin was playing through the stereo, which would have calmed me if I hadn’t been so certain I was being driven to my death.

The memory of Leon lying there, bloodied on the ground, haunted me. He was by far the strongest being I knew, but how could even a demon heal from that? Even at the end, even with no strength left, he’d still tried to fight them off me.

I curled up a little tighter into the seat, biting back the tears. If he lived, would he come for me? Or did Jeremiah have him bound somewhere too, enslaved again, back in that awful concrete room he hated so much? Or had Jeremiah left him there, to die slowly and alone, without the strength to get up again?

The thoughts knotted up my empty stomach, and despite my efforts, tears slipped down my face, dampening the cloth over my head.

We drove for so long that I nearly dozed off, weak with hunger and shaking. The rain was pouring now, pattering against the outside of the vehicle when we finally came to a halt. The engine turned off, and panic flooded me again. I was already struggling when the doors began to open, and someone dragged me out across the street to throw me over their shoulder again.

I screamed as loudly as I could. I yelled, thrashing, struggling until the metal on my wrists and ankles cut into my skin — all of it was useless. I was carried through the rain, the scent of pine and damp earth heavy in the air. Then came the scent of smoke, like a woodfire, and then the sound of a door scraping, wood on wood.

There had been a murmur of voices, but they abruptly fell silent. For a moment I thought I was falling, instead I was set gently on the ground, my legs folded beneath me, and the bag covering my head was pulled off.

I blinked rapidly as my eyes adjusted, taking in the dusty wooden floor beneath me, the leaves scattered around, the dim light — this place was familiar. I raised my head, and my heart felt as if it was clenched by a fist. I was kneeling at the end of a church nave, staring down at two long lines of white cloaked figures in stag skull masks. At the end of the two rows, standing between them, was Jeremiah in his white suit. He stood before a pulpit covered in lit white candles, their wax piled up in dripping heaps around them, adorned with those familiar little trinkets made of fishbones and twigs.

They’d brought me back to St. Thaddeus. The rain poured down through the broken ceiling above, pooling behind the row of silent onlookers. I tried to get up, tried to scramble backward — only to run straight into the legs of the person who’d brought me. He was hooded and cloaked like the rest: faceless, utterly uncaring as I began to scream again. I struggled against him as he forced me to walk between the rows of figures toward Jeremiah. He watched over it all serenely, the one smiling face among so many skulls, somehow the eeriest of all of them.

“You can’t do this!” I was forced to my knees at his feet, my guard holding me down and then wrenching my head back, so I was forced to look up at Jeremiah’s face. The calm expression, the utter disconnect from any emotion — he may as well have been looking at a bug struggling at his feet. My mouth was too dry, or I would have spit in his face.

“Let me go, Jeremiah.” I was breathless, my voice hoarse from the struggle and lack of water.

He just shook his head. “It’s almost over,” he said softly. Then, louder, “Brothers and Sisters, it’s almost at an end! Our long struggle, the culmination of our devotion — before an eternity of faithful devotion to our God. The end of the Age of Man is here. With this, our final sacrifice, we give Earth back to God.”

“Back to God,” the crowd murmured in unison. Jeremiah turned toward the waxy altar behind him, and when he faced me again, he had a slim knife in his hands. He crouched down, and pressed the tip of the knife up under my chin.

“Now, there’s no need for me to hurt you unnecessarily, Raelynn,” he said softly, so softly only I could hear. “But if you struggle, if you fuss, this knife might slip, and this will all be a lot worse than it needs to be.”

“Fuck you,” I hissed, then yelled. “Fuck you! Fuck all of you!”

Jeremiah smiled patiently, then roughly grabbed my shirt, slicing through it with the knife so quickly that the sharp tip nicked my flesh, leaving a long thin line of welling blood down my chest. My guard’s grip on me tightened as I began to squirm, protesting as Jeremiah grabbed my bra and sliced through that too, leaving my chest bare and my ruined clothes hanging off my shoulders.

Goosebumps spread over my skin. I glared at him as he smirked at me, and tried to flinch away as he reached out and flicked one of my tender nipple piercings. “How cute,” he mocked. “I knew there was a freak in you. It really is too bad, Rae. We could have had so much fun, but…” He shrugged. “You’re promised to another. It’s a shame I can’t keep you.”

I was promised to another, but it wasn’t him and it wouldn’t be his evil God. He raised up the knife again and pressed it into my skin. I held my breath, my head going light as I tried to ignore the pain, the dragging burning sensation of him slicing me open.

“Dominus dedit, Dominus abstulit,” he said, and the crowd echoed him: “Dominus dedit, Dominus abstulit!”

I tried not to look down, but I couldn’t help it. The sight of the blood streaking my skin made my vision blur. But I wasn’t going to scream, I wasn’t going to give him the goddamn satisfaction of knowing it hurt. Lines and circles, runes, a language I couldn’t understand — he etched them all into my skin, just like I’d drawn that summoning circle onto these floorboards once. It seemed so long ago now. A lifetime.

Back when I’d thought I was invincible. When I still thought my greatest adventure would be to catch a ghost on camera.

But now, no one would believe what I’d seen. No one would believe the way it was all going to end.

Jeremiah stood, and as he stared down at me, he licked my blood from the edge of his knife, and smiled. “Brothers and Sisters, it’s time. Unchain her, so that she may walk to God.”

My guard gripped me by the arms as another masked figure stepped up and unlocked my wrists and ankles. The freedom renewed my struggling, but between my hunger, dehydration, and blood loss, my fight was weak. I was hauled to my feet and forced to walk, Jeremiah close behind; back between the rows of white-cloaked figures, who closed in and followed behind us. Out the doors of the chapel, into the rain, into the woods. Up a narrow path through the trees, the absolute silence of those following me chilling me to the bone.

The path evened out, and there, set into the hillside among the trees, were the old wooden beams of a mine shaft. More of those fishbone trinkets had been hung around it, words I couldn’t read etched into the wood of the entrance. Jeremiah took my arms and led me away from the guard. His masked followers gathered around, watching as he dragged me toward the entrance, and it was as if the forest itself held its breath.

The shaft was dark, plunging down into nothingness. I stood at the edge, pressing back against Jeremiah, shaking my head.

“Please,” I whispered. “Don’t. Don’t do this.”

I shuddered at the touch of his breath on my ear. “Good-bye, Raelynn. Go now, to God.”

He shoved me down, into the dark.