Soul Taker

by William Massa

  One of her lackeys handed her a leather-bound tome. Caroline flipped it open and began reciting passages from the hideous book. Its leather-wrapped boards expanded and contracted like a living heart as the foreign words flowed from her black-painted lips.

  I heaved against the ropes with all my strength, but to no avail. Caroline’s two male servants laughed at my pointless struggle. Like a fly in a spider’s web, there was no escape for me.

  Caroline’s voice continued to echo through the vast cave. Words spoken in a language older than time filled the air. The flames above me danced wildly, animated in some strange way by the alien utterances pouring from my ex-girlfriend’s lips.

  Did she truly understand the meaning of the spell she was reciting? I very much doubted it.

  The knife in Caroline’s hand gleamed in hungry anticipation. As soon as she completed reciting her spell, the blade would make acquaintance with my quivering flesh. She’d crushed my heart, and now she planned to drive several inches of steel through it.

  I had to do something. There had to be a way out of this nightmare.

  As I wracked my gray matter for an answer, Caroline completed the recital of the spell. Without warning, she brought the blade down at me.

  For a split second, I was thirteen again and looking at my father plunging the athame toward his hapless female victim. And then the illusion shattered, replaced by cold pain. Sharp steel sank into my pliable flesh like it was butter. An icy sensation exploded through my belly, followed by spreading heat. I stared at the knife sticking from my gut. The wound was already oozing red.

  The real pain came when Caroline withdrew the blade, and the blood started to flow in earnest.

  “Lords of Darkness, masters of chaos, prince of lies, please accept our first offering. I offer you the son of the man who failed you!”

  Her eyes gleamed as she waved the red-covered knife at the shadowy cave. Blood drops speckled the altar near my head, and out of the corner of my eye I saw them change color, turning black. An electric hum started to build in the darkness, swiftly increasing in intensity.

  Caroline kept flicking the scarlet drops, lost in the ritual. I noticed her two followers turn a shade paler, a feat I would have thought impossible for Caroline’s albino-skinned lover.

  And then I saw the red fog forming at the edge of the cavern.

  Somehow the magic of Caroline’s words, combined with the power of the blood offering, had summoned this thing. Even though Caroline was a true believer, I guessed that her lackeys had seen the ritual as nothing more than a murderous game, a little bloody fun to distract them from their wretched, mundane lives. But this was no game. The darkness was real. And my ex had set something in motion here that I doubted she truly understood. Or knew how to control. Unlike my father, she was a dilettante toying with forces beyond her understanding.

  The red fog intensified with each passing second. Caroline’s lips trembled with a mixture of terror and excitement.

  The crimson cloud was approaching.

  Strangely enough, a deep calm had fallen over me. I barely paid attention to the blood trickling from my gut. Fear was reduced to a dull background chatter in my fading mind. I had spent countless nightmares in this temple. The place had haunted me for six long years. In a weird way, those terrible dreams had prepared me for the one I was now living through.

  The swirling fog drew closer and began to encircle us. The red cloud billowed menacingly, thick tendrils of scarlet condensation reaching out like the hands of Hell. And hidden deep within the smoky redness, shadowy movement. Dark silhouettes passed through the blood mist. A strange, insectile shriek pierced the cave. It emanated from the cloud of red.

  We weren’t alone any longer.

  With lightning speed a shadowy blur exploded from the undulating cloud and snatched Scarecrow Guy. The strange shape whisked the gaunt occultist into the fog and he vanished from view without even having time to let out a scream.

  “David!” Caroline cried out. A heartbeat later, her lover’s cry of agony shredded the cave, followed by the sound of breaking bones. Whatever lurked in the red fog had turned on Caroline and her followers.

  I wasn’t all that surprised. One didn’t fuck around with black magic. Practicing magic, casting spells, starting rituals—that stuff was no fucking joke. Get a single detail wrong and the consequences could be deadly, as Caroline was about to discover firsthand.

  “What’s happening?” her musclebound cohort asked, unable to hide his horror. The occultist received his answer a moment later when a second shadow creature dragged him off into the red mist. His terror-filled scream quickly died down.

  The fog seemed to turn a shade redder, almost as if it was absorbing the blood it had spilled. The cloud encircled us, a living, hungry beast demanding to feed. Caroline and I were next.

  “Untie me,” I hissed, doing my best not to show my desperation. “Perhaps I can reason with the demon.”

  My words felt stale even to myself. But I had to convince Caroline that Mason Kane’s son might have some pull here. Ultimately, my blood had opened the doorway for these otherworldly forces to enter our reality. Maybe I could close it, too.

  “What are you talking about?”

  I racked my brain for whatever magical knowledge I’d picked up over the years. Despite having avoided occult literature like the plague during my teens, I knew enough from my childhood to bullshit Caroline.

  “I know a spell that can stop this,” I said. “I can save us!”

  For a heartbeat, I almost convinced myself that Caroline might consider my offer. Then her eyes lit up with something startlingly like hate, and the knife turned toward my heart.

  So much for that idea.

  “Back off or the son of Mason Kane dies today!”

  I groaned inwardly. In the end, Caroline was a goth kid infatuated with the darkness, a far cry from a full-blooded black sorcerer. She wasn’t in the same league as my father. Did she believe these creatures were attacking her because they wanted to protect me? The notion seemed ridiculous. I was nobody. I had turned my back on my father’s horrific legacy a long time ago.

  Unfortunately, Caroline appeared far beyond reason. Just my luck.

  A band of red fog shot out at her like a ghostly tentacle. Lightning fast, the undulating scarlet arm wrapped around her knife hand and she let go of the sparkling blade. A split-second later, the demonic creature whisked her into the billowing cloud of death.

  As she vanished with a scream that broke my heart despite her betrayal, my father’s knife landed right next to me on the altar. Hope flared as my fingers strained against the ropes to reach the blade.

  Call it a miracle or an incredible stroke of good luck, but I got ahold of the knife. I stifled a whoop of joy and went to work on the ropes, angling the blade to saw at the fabric. While the demons turned Caroline into their plaything, I focused on my restraints.

  Freeing my left hand proved to be the most challenging. Fortunately for me—and not so fortunate for Caroline—the monsters in the mist were taking their sweet time with her. They were dragging out her suffering. I wished I felt pity and sadness, but a part of me had gone cold and blocked out her haunting cries, my mind preoccupied with my own survival.

  One limb at a time, the blood-caked athame cut through the restraints. About a minute later, I was free and back on my feet. I spun around, seeking an escape.

  The only way out of this place was through the thickening mist. And I had a strong feeling how my escape attempt would play out.

  Fuck.

  I inhaled sharply, my face dripping sweat.

  I bit my lips, tasted acid in the back of my throat, and balled my hands into frustrated fists. What to do? Was there anything I could do?

  Something stirred in the fog. Caroline’s tortured screams had mercifully died down. She’d paid the ultimate price for her sick fascination with the supernatural. Later, if I survived, maybe I could feel sorry for her.

  I backed away
from the massive cloud of death closing in on me.

  The air crackled with evil energy.

  My heart felt like it was about to explode in my chest.

  I recoiled, head swiveling. I held up my father’s sacrificial blade in an act of desperation. The shadowy creature didn’t seem impressed, judging by the shrieking laughter. To the beast, I might as well have threatened it with a toothpick.

  It turns out the demon in the darkness was dead wrong.

  As I would soon discover, the Hexblade had served as a white magic weapon against evil for centuries, until my father got his hands on it and perverted its original purpose. I knew none of this when my fingers tightened around the blade’s handle. All I understood was that demons were closing in and the five inches of steel was my best and only weapon against whatever nightmare lurked in that red fog.

  The clouds of condensation swirled and parted, then spat out a massive shape. The demon looked like some red-skinned, faceless bodybuilder, yet moved with the grace and speed of a ninja despite its bulk. The creature had no eyes or any other facial features I could make out. Then the thing’s massive form slammed into me and pinned me on the altar. The head of the faceless monster split open into a giant maw big enough to swallow my upper torso. Jagged shark teeth closed in on me. The demon’s hands sported ebony claws, sharp and eager to tear me apart.

  I honestly don’t remember bringing up the athame. I don’t remember driving all five inches of the knife into the creature’s heart. All I remember is the beast’s guttural howls suddenly drowning out my adrenaline-fueled screams. I stared with shocked disbelief at the handle of the athame sticking out of the monster’s chest and watched in terrified awe as the creature’s skin ignited with a green-blue light. Its howls of agony became louder, pitiful almost, and then things went supernova and the monster burst apart.

  The demon didn’t like the taste of the athame, that much was certain. I had no idea if the knife’s magic had destroyed the creature or merely sent it straight back into the pit it crawled out of. The demon beast was gone, and that’s what really mattered.

  The fog shimmered and retreated. The temple returned to normal, or at least as normal as it ever could be.

  Time stretched as I just lay on the altar, my breath coming in shallow bursts, the knife clutched tightly in my hand, an instrument of my father’s evil now transformed into a protective talisman.

  And then I rose, blinking back tears of relief and betrayal.

  There was no sign of the monster I’d slain. No sign of Caroline or her two cohorts, either, except for some blood splattered across the cave walls.

  The preternatural fog had greedily swallowed their remains when it dispersed from our reality.

  I took a few wobbly steps. My belly hurt, but the bleeding had slowed. It throbbed with pain, but I figured no organs were damaged or I would be in far worse shape. Caroline had made that first cut with precision. She hadn’t intended to kill during the initial phase of the ritual, merely signal to the forces of darkness that she was someone to be taken seriously.

  I guess her ploy worked. The Void had taken notice, but in a slightly different way than she expected.

  I staggered out of the cave, knife in hand.

  Struggled up the dimly lit staircase that led back into my father’s library.

  Five minutes later, I emerged from the darkness. Early morning sunlight shafted into the library. I must have been out for hours before Caroline set the ritual in motion.

  How could I have been so blind to her true intentions? I doubted that I would ever let my guard down again.

  My world was a place of shadows and deception, of unanswered questions and unsolved mysteries. I was Simon Kane, the son of the monster. But perhaps I'd become known for something else one day. Something better.

  Looking at the knife, a sense of unlimited possibilities hit me.

  I could find a different path. Make my own destiny.

  In that moment, I vowed to devote my life to fighting the darkness my father had embraced. And I would use his own knife to stave off the nightmares.

  I was the son of a villain. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t become a hero.

  I wasn’t cursed to follow in my father’s footsteps.

  As I took in the endless shelves of leather-bound occult books, I knew my life would never be the same. Before running into Caroline, I’d been lost, a young man searching for his way in the world. She told me that coming back here would provide me with answers I was seeking. Her words rang through my mind: “You can’t keep running. Confront your demons.”

  And I had, albeit in a slightly different way than Caroline had imagined.

  There were monsters out there. Dad had been one of them. The beast that attacked me in the temple was another. And there were more such things out there, of that I was certain. Creatures that didn’t belong in this world, who preyed on the weak, the innocent.

  There was no one who could stop these things.

  No one except me.

  Flooded with a sudden sense of purpose and mission, I turned my attention to the stacks of books. A library of darkness, filled with secrets and, hopefully, also some answers.

  If I planned to keep the world safe from the nightmares, I’d have to get better acquainted with them. Fast.

  There was a lot of work to do.

  I randomly pulled out a book and took a seat in a nearby leather recliner. And, in the early dawn light, I started to read.

  I was nineteen years old. And I finally knew what I’d do with the rest of my life.

  Chapter Four

  Present day, 10 years and over a hundred paranormal cases later.

  Fuck, time flies when you’re hunting nightmares.

  Early sunlight lanced the living room of my Malibu mansion, which doubled as the command center of my paranormal investigation operation. Even though it was barely past eight o’clock in the morning, my assistant Dakota Vesper had already been hard at work at a large antique table brimming with computers, newspapers, magazine articles and stacks of books.

  You would be shocked at how much paperwork monster hunting generates.

  She’d taken a short break from her duties and was listening intently to my treacherous trip down memory lane. I downed the last sip of my Maker’s Mark on the rocks. The alcohol burned down my throat—talk about a breakfast of champions.

  This was the first time I’d ever told anyone about what happened during those early dark days of being back in Los Angeles. I’d never shared the second great betrayal of my life with anyone before. Never trusted anyone enough to tell them about Caroline.

  My assistant studied me in grave silence. I found it easy talking to Vesper, which probably explained why she was my right-hand woman—and how we cohabitated at my Malibu mansion without driving each other crazy. The immense size of the property didn’t hurt, either.

  Who am I, you ask? My name is Simon Kane. I’m twenty-nine years old, and I hunt nightmares. The press has nicknamed me the Paranormalist, and the term has stuck. Even I’ve accepted it. Monsters, demons, evil spirits—I’ve faced them all since the day I found my father’s sacrificial knife and discovered its magical properties.

  Why was I spilling my heart to my assistant? Less than twenty hours earlier, someone had dug up Mason Kane’s coffin and stolen his remains. Mind you, despite Dad’s dark fame among true-crime aficionados, only a handful of folks knew where his body was buried. The authorities kept the site a secret to avoid the attention of any potential new followers of my father’s dark teachings.

  A wise decision, considering what happened yesterday.

  Despite all the efforts by the authorities to keep the burial site secret, someone had learned the location of my father’s grave. They’d cleaned out the coffin, leaving behind a Tarot deck that I hadn’t seen since my thirteenth birthday.

  What were they planning to do with the earthly remains of a black sorcerer? I wish I had the answer, but I doubted that they were up to anything go
od.

  I stared at the cards of the Major Arcana splayed out on the coffee table before me. My gaze kept turning to the unnumbered card of The Fool. It perfectly summed up how I felt. Someone was playing a game, and I wasn’t amused. I balled my fists in helpless rage, an emotion I seemed to experience more and more as of late.

  Vesper leaned closer and reassuringly touched my arm. Her eyes glittered with deep emotion, affected by my tale. I guess she could relate. Like myself, she’d tasted cruel betrayal at the hands of a lover. Her ex-boyfriend had sold her to a devil-worshipping biker cult to pay for his meth habit. I was the one who saved her life and gave her a new home, a new purpose.

  The occult had burned us both over the years. It probably explained why we got along, and why our working relationship had so far proven to be quite successful. Most impressively—at least for me—we somehow kept our relationship platonic. Despite an undercurrent of mutual attraction, we were both too smart (or too scared) to act on it. We made better friends and partners than lovers, or so we both liked to believe.

  I took in her delicate but intense features, an ethereal beauty enhanced by her daytime goth make-up, black clothing and dyed blue hair. She reminded me of Caroline, which might explain both my simmering attraction and my hesitation to take things further.

  Weirdly enough, Vesper was the first woman I had trusted since that betrayal ten years earlier. Perhaps because I’d saved her life and witnessed first-hand how vulnerable she was in the wake of that harrowing experience. Even to this day, one year after her nightmarish ordeal with the satanic biker gang, she rarely ventured beyond the walls of my Malibu mansion. She wasn’t quite an agoraphobic, but it was merely a matter of degrees.

  My sprawling property had become both her home and workplace, a fortress that shielded her from the dangers of the outside world. Not only did the mansion boast the best electronic security system money could buy, but it also had a complex system of magical protective wards that kept the denizens of the dark side at bay. I didn’t practice magic myself (I’d seen how that worked out for my father) but I drew on its protective properties from time to time, when necessary.