The Lurkers Within: (A Havenwood Falls Novella)

by Danielle Bannister

  The tendril squeezed around me one more time, and I knew it had just cracked another rib.

  “Well, this is embarrassing. You seem to have drained us. Another soul to feast upon should do the trick, though. Perhaps someone strong and youthful, and good with a camera?”

  Harper.

  “No!” my raspy voice choked out, but it was too late. The Indrori had already dissipated through the floorboards, leaving me as emotionally drained as if I had been gutted like a deer.

  The Indrori was taking away everything that mattered to me before it took my life. They were making me suffer the way they felt my kind had made them suffer. And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

  Chapter 12

  Alone in the house once again, I waited for a surge of energy to kick in. An adrenaline rush or something. This was my last opportunity to get out of here and try to save Harper and everyone else in Havenwood Falls, but I couldn’t move. It felt like I was sitting in a pool of mud up to my neck. Their touch had drained me, much like I had drained them.

  This was what Adam must have felt in his final moments. He, too, just sat there and let the Indrori take his soul. I understood now that it wasn’t because he didn’t want to fight the Indrori off, but because he literally couldn’t. The hold that single tendril had on me was too strong. I couldn’t imagine the pain of the Indrori’s full form on me. I felt as though I was being burned alive. Even now, my skin was still hot where the tendril had coiled around me.

  “Tasha!” A small but mighty voice pierced my mind. It was so faint, I thought I’d imagined it.

  “Har-per?” My voice was thin. “Stay . . . away. Get . . . out.” There was so much I wanted to say, but I didn’t have the ability to do it.

  “Save your voice. I heard your screams. I know you’re hurt. I got your message loud and clear. I’ve been trying to get back into the house, but the Indrori is making it really hard. I might not be able to get back in just yet, but I can still help you from out here. The Court is rallying supernaturals. Right now, we have to get you out of there. I tried to cage the Indrori on my own while it was attacking you, but I couldn’t make him budge.”

  I tried to reply, to tell her that she needed to stay far away from here. She seemed to understand what I was about to say, because she answered my unspoken protest.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not anywhere near the house, but my ability—I can force demonic spirits to do my bidding, but this thing—it’s too strong. The only way to save you is to get you out of there. But I need your help. How do you recover a soul? How do we bring you back to the human realm?”

  If I had been able to laugh, I would have. The only way to recover my soul was with the help of another Recoverer. And the Indrori had wiped all of them out.

  “Not possible. Save your . . . self,” I gasped. Didn’t she understand the danger she was in? That they all were in?

  “Maybe Octavia can help?”

  “Who?” I’d never heard of a Recoverer by that name, so it must have been one of her people, though it did sound vaguely familiar in some far away way.

  “Octavia. She’s a necromancer. She can bring back the dead. She’s on probation, and she’s not supposed to use her powers, but the Court could make an exception.”

  “No. Leave me. Save . . . self.”

  “I’m not leaving you to die! Roman will be there soon, Tasha. He’ll know what to do. Stay with me.”

  I tried to shake my head even though she couldn’t see the gesture. Roman wasn’t going to help; he was the jackass that wanted me gone.

  “Roman, traitor. In on it.”

  “You think Roman Bishop wanted you killed by this thing? He’s an asshole, sure, but he’s on the coven’s High Council. He’s been helping more than anyone to try to figure out a way to get you out. He went outside our original plan, because he has zero patience, but if he sent you in there alone, he had to have a reason.”

  As she spoke to me, the pain around my torso intensified. My flesh felt like it was burning. I cried out in pain. “Ah, God! Help me.” I panted between waves of agony. “It’s burning.”

  “Burning?” I heard Harper screech. “Where is the fire? What is burning?”

  “Me. Skin. Burning. Everywhere. Harper. Hide. He’s coming . . . you.” I tried to focus my brain on getting Harper to safety, but the pain was too great. I tried to pinpoint what part of my body was hurting the most, but it really did feel like it was all over. My torso, my back, the base of my neck, even my Garden of Eden was burning. Wait. The pain mirrored the exact location of my tattoo.

  What the hell?

  I looked down at myself and noticed distinct orange glowing inside my aura. In fact, it looked like about ten scales of my tattoo along my midsection were glowing. Judging by the pain in other places, I was willing to bet there were glowing scales there, too.

  “Harper,” I croaked. “My tattoo . . . is glowing.”

  For several minutes there was no answer from Harper as I stared at the vibrant scales etched into my skin. Trying to focus on each spot of pain, I was guessing there were about twenty or so glowing patches spread around my body, but all within the confines of the tattoo. Was the Indrori branding me? Burning their dark energy into my flesh? Was this how it was going to end? In a blaze straight into Hell?

  “Tasha,” Harper said. “Listen to me carefully. When did you get your tattoo?”

  When did I get my tattoo? What the hell did that have to do with anything? I was used to people asking about my ink because it was so unique, and because I had a knack for showing it off, but I couldn’t see how knowing when I got it made any difference.

  “It’s probably nothing, but Roman is on the phone with me, and he’s asking.”

  “Long time ago,” I spat out between throbs of pain. Jesus, this hurt.

  “Tasha . . . Roman said . . .” Her voice shook, which meant it couldn’t be good news. “He said you are the trap.”

  I must have been losing my mind, because that statement made no sense. This was the end. It was likely a matter of minutes now before my brain turned into mush.

  “Tasha, listen to me,” Harper urged, trying to hold my attention, but it was waning by the second. I was so drained. “Roman needs to know why you got your tattoo.”

  These were probably my last moments left in this world, and Roman wanted to talk about my tattoo?

  “To . . . cover gross . . . birthmarks,” I said through gritted teeth. “More each year. Ah, fuck, this hurts!”

  That’s when I saw the telltale purple of the Indrori seep into the room. They were in the house, just below me now.

  “Those weren’t birthmarks, Tasha. Roman says they were ghosts you trapped. Wait, what?” I heard the confusion in Harper’s voice as she relayed Roman’s message to me.

  “No. I used traps.” I couldn’t believe these were going to be my final words, an argument about the fundamentals of how I did my job.

  “He said, ‘Then why can no one else use the traps but you?’ Tasha! You sent me in there knowing the trap wouldn’t work for me?” she asked.

  Whoops. Wait, I hadn’t told her about the trap issue. Or Roman for that matter. Only my team members and Agent Duncan knew that. Roman must have bewitched Duncan or something to extract the information. Of course he did. Fucker.

  “Tasha . . . those dark spots that showed up on your skin . . . Roman said they aren’t all ink. The scales are the souls you’ve captured. They are trapped in your skin. You. Are. The. Trap.”

  As more and more purple smoke wafted into the room, I pondered what she said. Was it true? Is that why Adam could never figure out where the souls went from my traps? Was that why my skin felt like it was on fire now, because I had just absorbed some of the Indrori’s demonic spirits?

  I watched as the Indrori formed into one mass and couldn’t help but notice that it didn’t seem quite as large as it had moments ago. Maybe that was just my mind latching on to one last shred of hope.

  Still, if I
really was the trap, then this game was about to get interesting.

  “You must be quite proud of yourself, Agent Young,” the Indrori spat as he merged closer to me.

  “Very,” I said, my voice surprisingly strong now. If what Harper told me was true, this jackass was about to go down. If not, I was. Either way, this was going to end. Now.

  “How did you warn the girl I was coming? I’m dying to know your secret.”

  “Guess that’s just one of the many surprises there are about me that you will never know.”

  “Agent Young, there is nothing that I don’t know about you. And once you are merged with me, there is nothing that will stand in our way. Not even your precious Collector.”

  I didn’t know anything about a Collector, and right now I didn’t care. All that mattered was how much I could egg this thing on and get it closer to me.

  “You talk a big talk for a dead spirit floating.”

  The Indrori moved closer to me. Its form split again into a long tendril, and I suddenly realized I had no idea how to fight this thing.

  “What do I do?” I shouted to Harper. In all the confusion and acceptance that I might be the weapon Roman said I was, I didn’t actually think to ask how to use it.

  “Tasha, he doesn’t know. That’s why he sent you in with the Indrori in the first place. He wanted to see your power in action. He wanted to know how you did it himself.” I could hear the tears in her voice. “I am so sorry. Look, I’ve left a message with Addie. She can help. I’m on my way with or without her. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Great. I was to be a guinea pig for Roman’s twisted sense of curiosity. Why didn’t that surprise me? He was exactly the sort of guy who would throw me into a death pit to see how I’d manage. Jackass. And now Harper was on her way into this mess, and dragging another stranger in, too, but it would be too late.

  “What do you do?” the Indrori asked, echoing the question I had posed to Harper. “You die, Agent Young. You die.”

  With that, the tendril coiled again around my aura, covering the faded blue of my aura with their own evil hue. All at once, I was paralyzed again. My soul was bending to their will. Crushing pain. Burning. Agony. I knew, even without looking, that I was glowing again. There was one difference, though. I wasn’t scared anymore. This time, I understood the reason for the pain. Like I never had before.

  In the past, whenever I took down a ghost, there was always a “kickback” from the trap—a heat that radiated off the gun. I realized now that it wasn’t the gun. It was me. I was absorbing the aura’s soul. Their energy was burned into my flesh. Just like Roman said. I was the trap. It hurt so much now simply because I was absorbing so many souls at once.

  The longer the Indrori held me, the faster they would be caged. That knowledge sent a surge of energy through me. I didn’t need to do anything but accept and receive their souls into my flesh.

  “What . . . what are you doing?” the Indrori sputtered after a few minutes. They must have felt the shift in energy.

  “Winning.” I smiled.

  The Indrori seemed to sense what I was doing, because he tried to release the tendril, but he couldn’t. Unbeknownst to me, I had latched my own aura onto the Indrori. I was in control now.

  Whatever I was doing simply by staying in contact with the Indrori was working, because his coloring was growing less intense by the minute. The sheer size was diminishing as well with each passing second. What used to fill up the entire bedroom now only commanded a fourth of it.

  Now that I wasn’t closing my eyes against the pain, I could see what was happening. Soul by soul, they were leaving the Indrori and filling the spots on my skin.

  “Stop! Let me go!” a voice cried out that wasn’t the Indrori, or at least, not the same voice I’d been accustomed to. This was one singular voice. An older woman, by the sound of it.

  Her blue aura was screaming at me, and I realized her soul wasn’t demonic, but there was nothing I could do to reverse what my body was doing on its own.

  “What is happening?”

  “Don’t send me back!”

  “Wait! No! Please!”

  “Tasha!”

  More pleas came, each time a different voice. Some were hostile, and some were confused, many of them victims in a game they wanted no part of. Some were evil through and through, judging by their color, but others—I could sense some were innocents. I felt conflicted about trapping them, but there was nothing I could do. Another force had taken over, and it wasn’t going to stop until the job was done.

  “Leave her alone!” a voice boomed. It was Harper. Beside her stood a massive lion. Like, a legit lion. With fucking wings on its back. The roar of it rattled the room.

  “Meet Desi,” Harper said.

  Lion or not, neither of them was a match for this much energy.

  “I . . . got this,” I gasped. “Get out!” There was no way I could stop what I was doing to save Harper or her pet. I needed her to save herself. The Indrori seemed to swell against the challenge. It was too late. I could feel my grip weakening.

  I screamed out to warn her as a bright flash of light filled my eyes. It turned the whole room white, and then there was nothing. Nothing left of the Indrori. Nothing left in the room. And most troublesome, nothing left of Harper. Unable to hold on to rational thought, I felt my eyelids close, and my body fall hard against the floor.

  Chapter 13

  When I awoke, it was to the sound of voices spoken in hushed tones. There was an odd buzzing in my ears, as though I’d just been through an explosion, or had been dropped on my head from a great height. Everything hurt.

  “Hey, I think she’s waking up.” I felt a hand wrap around mine and knew without opening my eyes that it was Eduardo. I’d know the feel of those strong hands anywhere on my body. I felt my lips curl into a smile. The Indrori didn’t kill him. It was a bluff. Thank you, God.

  “Tasha?” I didn’t recognize the female voice.

  My eyes squinted open as the brightness of the sun blinded my senses. Jesus, it was bright in here. When I was able to focus, I looked down at Eduardo’s hand in mine. I could feel his hand in mine. It was warm as it held me. His touch was warm. I was warm. And solid.

  “How—how am I touching you?”

  Eduardo smiled, but looked over to the girl sitting on the other side of me.

  I turned to her, as though she could make sense of it all. Was I no longer in the spirit realm? Was I dead? Was this Heaven? It certainly was bright enough to be, though I would have thought Heaven would have come with a lot less pain. “Who are you? Where’s Harper?”

  “I’m Addie—Addie Beaumont. I came as soon as I got Harper’s message.” She gave me a weak smile that didn’t reach her eyes behind black-framed glasses. Like Harper, she wore an oversized hoodie and jeans. Unlike Harper, she had a piercing in her nose, and tattoos peeked between several bands of bracelets and where her sleeves rode up. Something about her made me like her instantly. “We were worried about you.”

  “Where is Harper?” I said again, this time slowly. I still didn’t know who this woman was or why she was here or how I was even back in the human realm without the aid of a Recoverer.

  “We were hoping you could tell us that?” a deep voice asked. Roman appeared beside Addie, and I tried to lunge for him. I instantly regretted it as pain shot through my rib cage.

  “Easy, babe,” Eduardo soothed. I let him push me back into the bed, not because I agreed that I needed to rein it in, but because I had no other choice. I was dizzy from the pain I’d just caused myself. The way my head was currently spinning, I would likely fall to the floor if I tried to stand up.

  As I lay back, I noticed I had been changed into my normal clothes. Black slacks, black bra, and my white blouse. Eduardo must have helped me, because I didn’t remember dressing myself. I didn’t remember anything after latching myself onto the Indrori.

  “What happened? Why am I so weak?” I croaked. Every muscle in my body
felt swollen. No. That’s the wrong way to describe it. I felt full. To the point of exploding out of my skin.

  “Well, I’m guessing you have several broken ribs and extensive internal bruising, but I think your discomfort is a result of more than your physical injuries,” Addie said.

  Eduardo and I looked up at her, waiting for her to explain.

  “I’ve been trying to communicate with some of the spirits trapped inside of you—” Addie began.

  “Wait, you can hear them—inside my skin?” I looked down at my shirt and pushed it aside to look at my tattoo. Every single scale on my skin appeared to be filled in. “Holy shit,” I whispered.

  “Not in the same way Harper can. I’m a witch and a hellhound shifter, and since the spirits are denizens of Hell, I have other ways. They’re confused and angry—that’s all I can discern. Judging by your color and weak pulse,” she said, leaning in to check my complexion, “I’m going to guess that having this many souls trapped on you is not great for your health.”

  “Ya think? God, I feel like I need to be juiced, like that Violet kid in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” My head was spinning from all this new information. Like what the hell a hellhound was.

  Roman let out a huff. “That’s it. She needs to go to the Infernum and release them,” he said.

  “Oh, now he cares about saving me,” I said, flopping back onto the bed, feeling nauseous. “Seriously, guys. Where is Harper? She was there trying to fight off the Indrori one minute, there was a flash of light, then poof—both she and the Indrori were gone, and I somehow am back here feeling like a beached whale. What the fuck happened?”

  “We have people working on Harper’s whereabouts. Trust me, we are just as curious about where she went as you are. Right now, we need to worry about you.”

  I looked up and saw a woman walk into the room. She was an older lady, dressed in a dark business suit, her blond hair in a chignon.

  “You found us,” Roman said.

  “Of course I did,” the woman replied.