Page 40 of Deceiver

“Where is my son?”

The voice is eerie but clear as day.

“Oh, is that you, Horror? Keagan’s not your son. He was Harold’s son, but Harold is dead.”

“No,” the voice says. “Bring my son back.”

“Like I said, not your son. Not gonna happen.”

“I will kill you.”

“No, you won’t. You don’t know what a Soul Chaser is, do you?”

I hear nothing, but I feel the coolness in the room increase.

“This happens every time. Maybe you should have done a little more research before you escaped. My sole purpose is to get you back where you belong, and that means far away from Keagan and anybody else in this realm. So you can make it easy and go willingly, or you can make it hard. Doesn’t matter to me. I kind of like it when it’s hard.”

“Fuck you.” The voice is loud enough to rattle the windows around me.

“You can be pissed, but it’s not going to change anything.”

“Bring me Keagan,” the voice says.

“Yeah, no. We’ve been over this. You’re not getting close to Keagan.”

“I can go where he is,” the voice says. “Just like I did earlier.”

I perk up at that. “What? What do you mean?”

The voice makes an odd sound, like a chuckle, and I finally see the outline of a body shimmering before me.

“My son is special,” the voice continues. “I wish I’d known it sooner, but it’s good enough that I know it now. He’s going to help me finish my mission, and you are not going to get in my way. I’ve killed before, and I’ll kill again.”

An unusual shiver moves down my spine. It isn’t often that a Horror can alarm me, but this one certainly does. There’s something so sinister about the delivery of his words and his intent. All I know is that it’s now even more important that I get some protection for Keagan to keep this Horror away from him.

“Think whatever you want, Horror, but you’re going back to the Below, where you belong, and I’m willing to do whatever I have to for that to happen.”

“Whatever, mortal. I’m not afraid of you. You have no power over me.”

“First of all, I’m not mortal, and yeah, actually, I do have power over you.” It’s time to try another tactic. “You know, if Harold really loved his son, he’d let him go.”

There’s a noticeable silence filling the room.

“Oh, did I hit a nerve?” Folding my arms across my chest, I continue. “Is it even possible for you to try and be a decent father now, when you abandoned him in life?”

“Shut up,” the voice says. “You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know what Keagan told me.”

“He’s just confused. He was too young to understand.”

“I’m not so sure about that. It’s pretty easy to understand. If your father is absent, even from a young age, you can figure that one out.”

“It’s not what you think.” The outline before me becomes a little stronger.

Interesting. The angrier the Horror gets, the more I’m able to see him.

“You don’t know what the circumstances were.”