Page 8 of A Soul’s Curse (Fallen Souls #1)

“Ugh. Well, that sucks.” Ellie found a stool to plop herself onto. She leaned forward, dragging her fingers down her face. “Guess I’ll call it a night, then. If Archie isn’t here, there’s no use—”

“Does something here feel … off to you?” I interjected, searching around the room for the cause of the foreboding feeling that washed over me.

Ellie shook her head. “No. What do you mean?”

“There’s this, like … unsettling feeling that’s been making my skin itch. It’s weird … I know I’m probably being paranoid, but I’ve been looking over my shoulder all day, like someone’s been watching me.” I unzipped my hoodie. “Did you turn up the heat or something? I’m sweating.”

Ellie brushed it off. “You’re in a museum at night with tons of ancient artifacts and no one else around.

I get that creepy feeling all the time. But the heat?

” She was suddenly aware that she was sweating too, pinching her shirt to fan it out.

“It’s like the heat suddenly kicked on in full force. I’ll go adjust the thermostat.”

As soon as Ellie went to investigate, the feeling intensified.

A pressure heavily weighing down on me, pulling at the edges of my mind like a vacuum.

Terror rippled through me as some kind of fractured magic caused my stomach to churn.

A sharp, tearing sound cut through the silence—a shriek like fabric being shredded, but deeper, vibrating through my bones.

Then there was a bright light as someone tore a hole in the magical void, known as the Nether, and two men walked right through it.

“Ellie!” She spun around and took a step back, grabbing the first thing she could find—a pair of forceps. She brandished the poor excuse for a weapon at a man walking toward her with a knife.

“S-stay away!” Ellie’s voice was shaking just as much as her hands. “Who are you?”

“Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Leon, representative of the Arcane Syndicate, and I’m here because you have something of great importance that was stolen from us.

I’ve come to take it back.” He nodded toward the urn.

Leon was a man with a calculating sharpness in his gaze.

He was holding a small, smooth blade etched in runes in his skeletal hands, and he looked like he wasn’t afraid to use it.

Although a wiry man perhaps in his mid-forties, tall with dark hair cropped short, the remnants of scars on his hands and face told me he wasn’t to be underestimated.

“Oh, and my friend here? I doubt he needs an introduction. I think you might recognize him.”

The nausea I felt then had nothing to do with magic, but the severe rage and hatred I had for the man standing next to him.

His hair was a dirty blond, combed neatly and styled with gel.

His clothing was lacking ornamentation but impeccably clean, practical, and just stylish enough to let him pass as someone important.

“James Whitfield,” I seethed. “I should have known you’d show your ugly face again.”

I pressed a hand to my chest, the tingling sensation of my magic taking away the nausea that followed Leon and James here. Then without a second thought, I threw out an attack to our intruders.

James stumbled, hit by the pounding force of my magic. But Leon was completely unaffected. In fact, he chuckled like he actually enjoyed the feeling.

“Ah. You must be the famous Theodore Kingston.” Famous?

He knew who I was? I risked a glance over toward James.

Maybe the bastard really had figured something out.

“You can’t hide from the Syndicate, you know.

We know all about your magic. It’s utterly distasteful yet somehow …

it has a distinct purity to it. Unfortunately for you, my ability to cut through magic means your ability to control death is useless against me …

unless you’re willing to kill me, that is.

But I don’t think you have it in you. You’re not that type of person.

” He placed a hand on James’s shoulder, and the reporter breathed a sigh of relief as Leon’s magic cut through mine and released him from the side effects.

“Now, why don’t we handle this like adults?

Hand over the urn and come with us, and no one has to get hurt. ”

“Do you really think I’d just willingly agree to that?” Without thinking, I grabbed the urn and hugged it to my chest.

“You have no idea how dangerous that urn is. It’s in your best interest to listen to us, Theo,” Leon warned.

“You wanna demonstration of my magic? I can corrode things, you know. I wonder what would happen if I dissolved this sealing rune?” My finger lightly grazed over the zig-zagging rune. It was warm to the touch.

“Don’t even think about it, Theo,” a voice came from behind me.

Something slithered up my arms and legs, an inky magic taking the shape of several snakes hissed as they coiled around my limbs and squeezed.

Archie appeared in the doorway, his hands clenched together as the ink he controlled kept me immobilized.

“It’s nothing personal, Theo. I actually kinda like you.

But my loyalty to the Syndicate is unwavering. ”

“The … what? What are you talking about?” Leon had also mentioned the Arcane Syndicate, but I had never heard the name before.

Panic flooded through me as Archie’s ink squeezed tighter around my chest, the urn pressed tightly in my arms. Blood was pounding through my veins, an unsteady dizziness making it hard to think.

Inches from my nose was the head of a viper, swirling in black except the yellow glow of its eyes.

I knew it was only made from ink, but I was willing to bet its bite was just as deadly as the real thing.

James stepped in front of me, hand slicing through the ink as he lifted my chin with his finger to meet his gaze. “You think your power can really remove that seal?” he asked, his brows raising and his tone not condescending but … skeptical?

“Is that a challenge?” I countered with a smirk.

“Enough of this crap.” Leon wrangled Ellie by a horn.

She squirmed, dropping her forceps as she released a string of obscenities and clawed at the man uselessly.

Even as a demon, with her exceptional strength, she had no experience fighting and the knife Leon held to her throat deterred her from trying.

“We really only wanted the urn, but when Archie told us you were here, too, Theo, we couldn’t pass up on the opportunity.

You’re well known in the demon community.

Did you know that? Theodore Kingston … Their beloved protector and healer.

You’re just who the Syndicate needs on our side. ”

“Huh?” I wheezed. My head felt like it was about to explode when I tried to laugh at the ridiculousness of his statement. They kept speaking about me like I was some sort of god. “I’m no one. You’ve got the wrong—”

Ellie’s shriek cut off my statement, the knife at her throat pulsed with a vibrant blue glow, the runes blazing.

Leon pressed the blade deeper into her neck, although strangely, it didn’t cut her skin.

“I’m feeling generous this evening, so I’ll make you a deal.

” Something told me no one made an honest deal with Leon.

“I promise the Syndicate will get what they want eventually, so we can do this the hard way or the easy way. Hold onto that urn if you want. I don’t care.

But you need to come with us. In exchange, I’ll let your friend go. ”

Ellie jerked against him, uselessly trying to escape. “Theo, I have no idea what’s inside that urn, but don’t you dare—” He yanked her head back, exposing her neck and reinforcing the severity of the situation.

I had no clue what was in the urn, either. But if some secret organization I’ve never heard of attacked me and Ellie to get their hands on it, it certainly wasn’t for anything good.

The options weighed heavily on my mind. My breathing came in short rasps, the struggle becoming more difficult with each squeeze of Archie’s pet snakes.

Weakness caused my knees to buckle, and I eventually lost my balance, crashing into a chair as I fell onto the floor, still tied up and unable to move.

At this rate, I’d pass out and Leon would get what he came for regardless.

And I was under no impression that even if I did what he wanted, he wouldn’t hurt Ellie anyway.

That left me with one remaining option. With my hands still holding the urn tightly under the snake squeezing my chest, I uttered the words to Leon, “Fuck. You.”

At the same time the rune on the urn blazed with a blinding light, Archie’s viper lunged for my neck. Jagged lines of dark ink that formed serrated fangs dug deep into my skin. I screamed as the viper’s venom rushed through my bloodstream, eager to paralyze my limbs.

I pushed my magic harder, keeping my focus on releasing the sealing spell which only sped up the effects of the venom.

Immense heat from the urn scorched through my clothes right down to the skin.

The rune was powerful, just like Ellie had said, but my magic ate away at it like a relentless tide eroding a fragile sandcastle.

Each layer of its defenses crumbled under my touch, unraveling with a satisfying hiss as if it recognized the futility of resisting.

“Have it your way, then,” Leon barked as he spun Ellie around and plunged his knife deep into her chest, my friend’s scream raw and desperate as the sound of her agony lodged deep into my bones.

Disbelief froze my thoughts as I blinked in shock.

She had been stabbed, but there was no blood.

The glow of a bright blue rune was radiating from her chest, and a dense pocket of living magic rippling through the air.

Her pain wasn’t from the wound; her magical essence, her soul, was being ripped from her very core and being drawn into that knife.