Page 15 of Deceiver (Soul Chasers #2)

Wilder

A fter leaving Keagan at my house, I make the short drive back to Beverly to check on the status of his house.

By the time I pull into his driveway, I think I have a fairly solid plan in place.

I’ll get a read on all the activity in his house, see if there are any low-level spirits I can deal with easily, and then I’ll call Calliope and see what we can do to help Keagan with his problem.

Between all that, I have to figure out how to banish the Horror.

But if the Horror managed to get the other spirits on its side, that’s going to make my task even more challenging.

I put the car in park, exit, and make my way inside the house. I’m stunned by the destruction around me. It seems that while we’ve been away, the spirits have been having a good time. Just about every book or decorative item has been knocked off the shelves and is lying on the floor.

The energy in the room is thick, and there’s a palpable hostility to it that is unnerving. I rub my forehead. None of this makes sense. I don’t understand how these other spirits got through in the first place or why there’s hostility. It’s just not supposed to be this way.

I walk through the house, surveying all the damage. I’m really not looking forward to telling Keagan what’s happened since we left yesterday, but obviously I’ll have to.

In the kitchen, the cabinets hang open with dishes and glasses shattered on the counters and floor. There are even claw marks on the drywall. What in the hell?

Right now, the house is silent, and I’d bet the spirits were more active at night and are now regaining energy. It’s a good opportunity for me to see if I can do anything to get rid of them.

I make my way up the stairs and back into Keagan’s bedroom, where I last saw the Horror, but it’s eerily quiet, almost as if it’s not here anymore, except I can still feel some lingering energy.

I glance up at the ceiling, noting only a tiny swirl of light.

“Where are you, Horror?” I say out loud, hoping to antagonize it into making an appearance.

But again, I’m met with silence.

“I took Keagan away from here,” I announce, gazing up at the ceiling, “You’re not going to get near him again.”

Nothing happens, which is actually concerning. There’s no way a Horror went back to the Below on its own. So that means…

The sound of crashing glass gets my attention, and I turn to glance over my shoulder.

It’s coming from downstairs.

I hurry in that direction, finding a mirror on the floor that was on the entryway wall when I entered.

“Show yourselves, spirits,” I say aloud, but still, nothing happens. “Come on. You want to show off? Show off in front of me. Let me see you, unless you’re afraid to deal with me.”

Nothing happens except the air around me turning frigid.

“Is that you, Horror?”

Once again, silence. This is so unusual. Normally a Horror can’t wait to flex its power.

As I start to walk up the stairs again, my body feels heavy, my legs like trudging through wet sand. Okay, they won’t show themselves, but I’m definitely feeling their presence.

“Hey, so you guys can’t stay here, and you know that.” I look around the room, hoping to catch sight of one of them, but there’s nothing. The only way I know they’re here is from the coolness in the room. Someone without my skill set wouldn’t even notice anything was off.

“I’m not leaving, so you might as well face me.”

Nothing.

I walk to the chair by the window and sit down in it, waiting patiently for something to happen.

And finally, it does.

“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.”

“I don’t really care what they were, and neither does Keagan. A boy needs his father, and Harold wasn’t there for him, and now he’s dead.”

“I am not dead. I am in a different place.”

“That place is called death.”

“Then why am I here? Why can I talk to you? Why can I see you? Why can I see Keagan?”

“Because you’re a fucking ghost. That doesn’t mean you’re alive. It means you’re stuck between realms.”

“I’m not stuck! I chose this.”

“Semantics. The thing is, you don’t belong here, and I’m not gonna let you stay. I’m not gonna let you get to Keagan. So again, you can make this easy, give me your underworld name, and off we go, or you can make it hard. Your choice.”

The Horror doesn’t say anything, but I still feel its presence, even as it flickers in and out of my sight.

It’s losing power, expending too much energy to engage with me, which is a good sign.

That means he really doesn’t have that much power to manifest yet, which will keep him from hurting Keagan. Hopefully.

I do need to figure out what he meant about visiting Keagan.

If he can do that, if he’s not anchored to one place, it’s going to make him a lot harder to get rid of.

If he can figure out how to get from one place to another in the astral realm, that’s gonna make my job that much more difficult. But not impossible.

I stand up, rubbing my hands together. “Listen, Horror, the time has come for you to go back. If you make me chase you, I will. I’m relentless, and there’s no way you’re getting away from me.”

“We’ll see about that.”

And then it’s gone.

The sudden temperature change in the room is noticeable. I’m irritated, but at the same time, at least I understand a little bit more about the Horror than I did when I got here.

I guess I’ll leave. My time is likely better spent calling Calliope than trying to handle the other spirits that escaped the underworld.

For now, I need to make sure Keagan is protected.

After leaving the house and returning to my car, I pull my phone out of my pocket and dial Calliope.

“Wilder!” Her voice is as chipper as always. “How the heck are you?”

“I have a problem.”

“I figured as much. Lay it on me.”

“My latest target has some kind of attraction to the spirit world.”

“Attraction?”

“Yes, and I don’t mean he’s attracted. I mean he’s attracting.”

“Oh,” she says. “He’s attracting spirits?”

“Exactly. I know this because he’s interacted with a spirit board on two different occasions, which has caused some problems.”

“Oh, no, did he summon something he shouldn’t have?”

“Well, yes, because we shouldn’t summon anything, but to be specific, he was trying to summon his father and a whole bunch of other spirits snuck through.

He also had a reading with a medium who told him that she had to shut the session down early because there were too many spirits trying to bust through.

Something is attracting these spirits to him, and I need to know if there’s anything we can do about that.

Is there a spell we can help him with? Is there a reason it’s happening?

Is there anything we can do to make it stop? ”

“Ooh, okay, this is a juicy one. It does happen, but normally the person is sensitive.”

“Sensitive, meaning?”

“They have abilities, like I do, or like a medium does, or a clairvoyant or a tarot reader. Some kind of supernatural energy surrounds them that draws that world to them. Is he into that stuff? Does he dabble?”

“Not to my knowledge. I think he only started in an attempt to contact his dead father.”

“Why does he need to talk to his father so badly?”

“His father was murdered because he was a suspect in some pretty horrific crimes—serial murder.”

“Oh, that’s unique. Why would he want to summon somebody so evil?”

“Well, because it was never proven, he’s not sure if it’s true or not, and he wanted answers, so he thought this was the way to go about getting them.”

“I see. So he didn’t know this about himself, and now he’s being haunted?”

“Big time. His house is trashed from these rogue spirits that got through, and apparently his father’s spirit is aggressive and really has some kind of plan for Keagan.”

“What do you mean, a plan?”

“I don’t know what it means either, but he didn’t just come here to have a nice father and son bonding day. He’s up to something.”

“You’re calling the Horror he. I’ve never heard you talk like that about a Horror before.”

I drag my fingers through my hair. “Good point. I guess it’s gotten me kind of confused as well. Normally, the Horrors are so, I don’t know, detached, right? But this one still feels more human than it should.”

“Hmm, that’s probably not a good sign, is it?”

“No, I don’t think so. I think it’s gonna be hard to catch.” I blow out a breath. “He also said something about visiting Keagan last night, which means he’s able to transport away from his anchor point.”

“Oh, okay, so maybe we can use the spell that traps him in one location.”

“That might be helpful. Right now, my biggest concern is trying to protect Keagan, the target, from any more physical attacks. Last night, I found him being attacked by a spirit in my house.”

“In your house?”

“Yeah, exactly. I’ve never had that happen, so it must have followed Keagan. I have protections in the guest bedroom, but not in the rest of the house, so I could use your help with that too.”

“Absolutely. Okay, let me consult my grimoire and a few of my coven members to make sure I have the best plan in place, and then I’ll head over to you. Sound good?”

“That’s great, Calliope, thank you.”

“Of course. This is definitely an interesting one.”

“To say the least. I’ll see you soon.”

After hanging up with her, I put the car in reverse and back out of Keagan’s driveway.

Fortunately, from the outside, everything looks peaceful, so it shouldn’t draw too much attention from the neighbors. I’d hate for someone else to go in there—law enforcement or a neighbor—and potentially be hurt by the negative spirits in the house.

Driving back to my place, I let my thoughts go where they want, pondering all the things I need to do to ensure Keagan’s safety, and what tricks I can pull out of my bag to capture this particular Horror.

There’s no way he’s going to give me his underworld name easily, so that means I’m gonna have to force it out of him.

Good times.