Soul Taker

by William Massa

  Vesper didn’t have the answers to those questions, but she had a feeling she’d be receiving them soon enough.

  She took one final, longing look at her Ducati, turned back to the entrance of the witch’s warehouse, and stepped across the threshold.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I fought back a wave of fear as Asmadina held up the Hexblade, her eyes shiny with the thrill of future bloodshed.

  With a groan, I strained against the powerful hold the golem had on me, but it was a pointless effort. The golem tightened its grip on my arms, my tendons stretched to the breaking point.

  Flesh and bone was no match for stone and magic.

  As the blade closed in, my mind flashed back to the moment in the temple, fifteen years earlier, when I realized who my father really was. He’d worn a similar expression of religious fanaticism that day.

  Unlike Dad, the Daughter of Darkness served no one but herself. She wasn’t seeking to incur any favors from dark deities—she was after power, plain and simple. The magic contained within my father’s bones would be hers. In her mind, the deed was already done. That’s how sociopaths and narcissists like Asmadina operated.

  I held her icy gaze as light sparkled on the knife’s blade. I’d struck down countless enemies with the athame, and I felt a sad sense of irony that Asmadina would turn my weapon against me.

  The sorceress began to caress my chest with the tip of the knife. One by one, she popped the buttons of my silk shirt, exposing the bare skin below. In another time and place, it might have been kinky.

  The blade pressed against my skin, cold to the touch.

  “What are you waiting for? Get it over with—”

  The words died on my lips as Asmodina made a quick, shallow cut. Blood immediately started to flow.

  As my heaving chest ran red, she waved at the golem, and the creature lifted me into the air like a weightless mannequin.

  I sturggled in the golem's iron grip as it spun me toward the open casket. A mixture of horror and revulsion gripped me as the golem dumped my flailing form into the waiting glass coffin.

  I landed right next to my father’s skeleton, eye to eye with the skull of the man who, at one point in my life, had meant the world to me.

  Drops of my blood spattered the bones, and the skull lit up with spectral green light.

  The horror of it was too much. A scream exploded from my throat as the golem pulled the transparent lid over the coffin with a screech.

  I turned away from the remains and peered up at Asmadina as she loomed over the sarcophagus, my father’s sacrificial knife in hand, now streaked in red.

  Despite my terrible predicament, I also felt the strangest sense of relief. I had feared Asmadina would open up my throat and let me bleed out like a stuck pig. As long as I was still alive, there might be some way to salvage this disaster.

  Or not.

  A beat later, I understood why she had opted for a less gory and dramatic approach to the bloodletting. The skeleton next to me stirred, the eerie light spreading from the skull to the rest of the body. A bony hand twitched and shuddered, grasping at the air.

  Raw panic swept my mind.

  In the years following my father’s death, I’d always wished I could have a face-to-face with the man. I wanted to look into his eyes as I questioned him about his crimes. I wanted him to shed the mask of the loving, caring, charming father, wanted to see the real man, and stare straight into his black soul. I’d struggled for years to reconcile those two conflicting images I had of my father.

  As a student of abnormal psychology, his duality puzzled me. On one side, the perfect dad; on the other, the malevolent cult leader. Which one was the mask? Or were they both false, and something even darker lurked underneath?

  As the skull’s hollow sockets ignited with supernatural life, I suddenly felt less eager to have a chat with my papa.

  Panic flooded my mind as the full horror sank in. Fuck, I was trapped in a coffin with my dead father. And this necromantic bitch was about to bring him back from the dead.

  My bulging eyes flicked back to Asmadina. Her features radiated ecstatic joy, basking in my mounting terror. The witch was having a grand old time as my sanity came unmoored.

  I pounded against the walls of the glass coffin, screams erupting from my throat. My efforts backfired as more of my blood hit the glass. Almost instantly, the glyphs and ruins etched in the coffin’s surface lit up.

  Fuck, the ritual was progressing to its next phase.

  A sharp pain shot through the cut in my chest. With horror, I realized that one of my father’s skeletal hands had dug its bony fingers deeper into my wound while the other hand closed around my neck. He now held me in a macabre embrace. Bones pulsed with waves of energy and then turned crimson, almost as if the skeletal digits had become syringes draining my blood.

  I guess that’s why a small cut was enough. The Daughter of Darkness was letting Mason Kane drain me at his own pace.

  I stared into those glowering sockets, saw the first sign of tissue forming over the bleached bones. I didn’t detect any humanity in the living skeleton’s glare, only a bottomless hunger and need. Did my father recognize me after all these years? Did his rotten soul give a shit that his resurrection would come at the cost of his only son’s life?

  All I knew was that I was fading fast. A quick glance at my hands told me my time was running out. The skin had turned a dull, wrinkled gray color. My body was literally shriveling up. I caught a hint of a reflection of my sunken, prematurely wizened features in the coffin’s glass walls. I felt like I was staring at a stranger. I must’ve aged twenty years over the last few minutes.

  I desperately tried to get away from the resurrected skeleton, an impossible task in the confined space. Making matters even worse, I sensed it growing stronger, the bony arms thickening with the first layers of muscle and skin. The pressure against my chest wound increased as the terrible revenant ravenously feasted on my blood.

  Mason Kane was returning to the world of the living while I was edging toward oblivion. I'd failed to stop the greatest threat to Los Angeles since my father’s cult terrorized the city.

  And I hadn’t even said goodbye to Vesper.

  The deepening smile on Asmadina’s face spoke volumes. Already, she was tapping into Mason Kane’s growing power. Her skin looked almost luminous as if she was lit from within.

  And that meant my time was almost up.

  The corpse which I shared a coffin with tightened its steely hold, pinning me below its body. The thing reminded me think of a melting wax figure, the remnants of a human form made from blistered strands of flesh. There were no features yet, just a vaguely humanoid mold that was growing around the skeleton. The thin layer of meat glistened and pulsed. It was sickening to watch, but I didn’t dare shut my eyes and rob myself of even a moment of life.

  My fading gaze weakly combed the warehouse. Father Cabrera stood on the other side of a barricade made from random junk, a helpless spectator forced to bear witness to my demise. He eyed me sadly, his helplessness palpable.

  At least somebody would say a prayer over my body when this was over.

  And then I spotted another figure emerge from the mass of antiques. I gasped in surprise, my brain unwilling to accept what my eyes were seeing.

  I had to be hallucinating because the person creeping up on Asmadina and her pet golem was none other than Vesper.

  And she was pointing a Glock right at the witch!

  Chapter Twenty

  When Vesper had turned seventeen, she landed a job at a vintage record store. She was madly in love with her digital music collection, but there was undeniable magic to holding a yellowed record sleeve in your hands. The larger vinyl format and its packaging gave the music weight and heft, gravitas, making it feel more important somehow.

  Like the customers who frequented the store, she loved combing through the collection, feeling like a musical archeologist questing for long-lost treasures. When she inhaled
the dust from an unsorted box of vinyl that needed to be priced, the modern world would recede, and she traveled decades back when music really seemed to matter.

  She experienced a very similar sensation as she took in the sprawling storage facility. The past was alive and well within these walls—a living, breathing presence. It should have been terrifying, but Vesper felt the urge to dive in and pick the place clean of its loot. She spotted a super-cute rocking chair and had to remind herself why she was here.

  Gun up and ready, she advanced through a narrow passageway lined with old furniture. As she edged into the surreal wasteland of antiques, she began to make out voices. A woman and a man. He didn’t sound happy.

  Then she heard a sharp scream and instantly recognized it as Simon’s voice.

  Her pulse quickened in tandem with her pace. As Simon cried out again, she broke into a sprint.

  Had she come to this far only to arrive too late? If Simon was already past all help, then there was nothing she could do here but get herself killed, too. Maybe she should just go…

  No, Vesper wouldn’t let doubt paralyze her. Jaw set, she continued to follow the nightmarish sounds through the maze of relics.

  A little up ahead, she made out a woman and a tall, nude man. As she drew closer, her blood chilled. The woman was Asmadina, the Daughter of Darkness. And the man wasn't a man at all but a monstrous presence without a face. The creature flexed and shifted its liquid stone form. Bizarrely, a priest stood nearby. The trio’s collective attention was focused on an object that remained tantalizingly hidden from view.

  Drawing closer, Vesper realized the item in question was a glass coffin. Inside, she made out two vague human outlines. Asmadina loomed over it, basking in the crimson glow of the glowing glyphs etched into the glass. Vesper had seen that kind of expression before. She looked like she was mainlining her favorite drug, her eyes gleaming with unbridled pleasure.

  Vesper finally understood how she’d been able to enter the warehouse without the sorceress noticing her presence. Whatever was happening here, it was taking up all of Asmadina’s bandwidth.

  Should have slammed an energy drink, bitch, Vesper thought.

  She pulled her attention away from Asmadina and focused on the glowing glass coffin. She hoped to gain a better look at the shadowy figures trapped inside—although she already had a terrible idea of what she would find.

  One of the figures in the coffin turned its face toward her, confirming her suspicion. Simon Kane was staring back at her, his haunted features aged decades by whatever magic was playing out here. Even though he was an old man now, Vesper still recognized him. Her heart ached to see him like this.

  At least he’s alive, she told herself.

  Then she realized there was someone—or, more accurately, something—else in the coffin with him, a creature that couldn’t possibly be human.

  As the monstrous presence grabbed Simon again, pulling him down into an unholy embrace, Vesper’s Glock came up. She had learned enough about occult rituals over the last year to know that they were tricky things. One mispronounced word or a gesture that was off by just a hair could spoil the whole thing.

  But that didn’t always mean the spell fizzled out. Sometimes it exploded instead.

  Would destroying the sarcophagus interrupt the ritual and reverse its horrific effects… or would it make matters even worse? If she was wrong, a destructive wave of supernatural energy could envelop the warehouse and disintegrate everything living in its path. It had happened before in some books she’d studied from Simon’s library.

  It was risky, too risky. But she had to make a move before it was too late.

  She eyed Asmadina. The woman was a black magic sorceress, but she was still just a person. Could Vesper shoot another human being?

  Remember what this so-called human being has done. What she did to you. What she’s doing to Simon right now.

  Vesper said a silent prayer, narrowed her eyes, and squeezed the trigger.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  There was a flash of a muzzle, and a circle of red erupted on Asmadina’s stomach. She recoiled in shock. I heard no screams, no gunfire—the coffin had hermetically sealed off the outside world. All I could do was watch the eerily silent movie spooling out before me.

  Three more gunshots followed. The impact of the successive blasts sent the Daughter of Darkness reeling backward, and she at last let go of my father’s knife.

  Then Vesper leveled the pistol in my direction. Next thing I knew, the glass coffin shattered as one of the blessed bullets found its target.

  Thatta girl! Shooting the coffin had screwed up the resurrection spell. It’s exactly what I would have done, and pride flared in my aching chest. I knew how much it must have cost my agoraphobic assistant to come here.

  I twisted my head and saw the thing that was trying to become my father staggering to its twitchy feet. The creature was still more skeleton than flesh and blood. Like some scarecrow made of withered layers of muscle over bone, the thing stumbled forward. It seemed lost and confused, caught between life and death. I almost felt sorry for it.

  I tried to get up, but I could barely move. Even though the creature had stopped draining my soul, I felt broken, an older man before my time, my body not obeying the commands of my brain.

  At least not at first.

  But then the skeleton man began to shed his flesh. The half-formed face collapsed as the magic left the corpse. The thing took three wobbly steps and then crumpled into a pile of bones.

  Meanwhile, my strength returned and my withered skin began to fill out and regain its normal color. As my life force returned to my body, so did my energy and vitality. I slowly began to feel like myself again.

  My gaze turned to the golem, which was now lurching toward Vesper. My assistant took a shaky step backward, her arms raised as if she could shield herself. Why wasn’t she shooting it?

  Shit, the Glock had to be empty.

  Horror stifled my breath when I realized Vesper was defenseless against the giant monster. She bravely stood her ground, but her eyes radiated fear.

  Without conscious thought, I reached for the Hexblade Asmadina had dropped. I flung it with all my strength at the golem. My father’s magical blade cut through the air and found its target.

  It tore into the golem’s back, and the monster wailed in inhuman agony. Bullseye!

  The creature took one, two more steps as a magical fire consumed its massive form. A second later, nothing of the beast remained. The power of the Hexblade had purified the world of its black-magic stain.

  Even though I was still unsteady on my feet, I felt like a million bucks compared to a few moments earlier. I rushed toward Vesper. I had a million questions but started with the most important one.

  “You okay?”

  To my relief, she nodded, her eyes still big and mouth trembling slightly. I could tell she was in shock. Unlike me, Vesper had never had to shoot anyone before. Nor had she ever stared down a raging golem. I guess there’s a first time for everything.

  I found myself struggling to find the right words. There could only be one reason for Vesper’s presence in the warehouse, and it made me choke up with emotion. She’d overcome her fear because I was in trouble.

  This woman had saved my life, no doubt about it. I wanted to engulf her in a bear hug, but we weren’t in the clear yet. So I did the next best thing.

  “You did good. Thanks for saving my sorry ass.”

  We smiled at each other for a beat. It was a smile filled with respect and friendship—and maybe the promise of something more. But that would have to wait. There was still the matter of the woman who’d tried to turn me into a three-course meal for my undead father.

  I expected to find the witch bleeding out on the floor. Multiple bullets had hit Asmadina, after all. But as I searched the area, I found a pool of blood but no trace of a body.

  Damn it, she’d gotten away. Wounded, hurt, but far from being defeated.

&nbs
p; Father Cabrera fought his way through the wall of junk to join us, burning urgency in his haunted features.

  “We have to get out of here before she returns. Hurry!”

  I shot the priest a dark look. If there was a chance we could end this now, we should seize it. I didn’t want to let Asmadina escape. I regarded the trail of blood leading down another aisle of antiques.

  “She’s wounded. We may not get such an opportunity again,” I said. “I’m going after her.”

  “There is no time,” the exorcist said, his eyes bulging. “Look around you. For years, she’s kept an iron grip on the horrors imprisoned within these walls. They sense her power has weakened. And they want out.”

  I took stock of the warehouse. Father Cabrera was right. Wherever I turned, Asmadina’s collection was shaking and rattling, each item a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. This place was about to experience the spiritual equivalent of a nuclear blast, and I sure as hell didn’t want to wait around to see it happen.

  I nodded at Cabrera and Vesper. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  I didn’t have to say it twice. We all exploded into motion and ran toward the exit. Earlier on, when I’d first entered the warehouse, the maze had moved and shifted whenever I would try to make a go for the door—but not now. Vesper might not have killed the witch, but she had weakened Asmadina’s power. It didn’t help that the ritual to resurrect my father had failed. The magical backlash from an interrupted ritual would knock anyone on their ass.

  The spell trapping us in this godforsaken hellhole was coming undone—or so I hoped.

  The walls of antiques quivered as we passed, but the rage contained within these cursed occult items was reserved for the sorceress. Dust showered from the ceiling, and furniture began to tear itself into kindling. A giant globe erupted into a thousand pieces. Breaking glass mixed with the sound of splintering wood.

  Where was Asmadina in this chaos? It took all my self-control to keep moving toward the door. I wanted to turn around, to finish her here and now. But then I thought of my friends. Vesper and Cabrera needed me to make sure we got out safely. The priest had been through hell, and my assistant was in danger of going catatonic from shock.