by S. E. Smith
Dan picked up the photo and placed it back in the folder. “What can you tell me about him?” he asked.
Ashure shrugged and sat back. Dan looked at Ashure’s hands, and he flashed the deputy an irritated glare. Things were only going to get worse. A lost soul was bad enough, but one that had escaped….
“I lost something and Hannibal was working with me to locate it,” he stated.
“What did you lose? Drugs? Money? Guns?” Dan asked.
“A soul,” he replied.
Dan sat back and stared at him in shock. He watched the man shake his head, open his mouth, stop and think, and shake his head again.
“Excuse me? Did you say you lost a soul?” Dan asked.
Ashure nodded. “Yes. It’s the first time that has ever happened, I believe. Of course, I never did get much instruction before Simon gifted me with the Cauldron of Spirits, and I became the Keeper of Lost Souls centuries ago, so I can’t be certain of that,” he explained.
Dan sat forward and glared at him. “I don’t know what kind of magic show you were putting on back at Tonya’s house, but let me tell you something, I take the murder of a member of this community seriously. Now I want answers starting with your real name. Ashure Waves doesn’t exist. I’ve run your name, your face, and your prints through every fucking database in the country, and you aren’t on any of them. I want to know where you’re from, why you’re here, how you know Tonya, and what the fuck happened to Hannibal Grumby,” Dan snapped.
Ashure slowly sat forward and stared into Dan’s eyes. “Be very careful what you ask for, Deputy Dan. You may not like the answers,” he warned.
Dan swallowed but didn’t look away. “I don’t care as long as you give me the truth,” he said.
Ashure sat back and thoughtfully studied Dan. The man clearly cared about what had happened, but would telling him more be a waste of breath? These humans were so resistant to the idea of magic! He wondered if that was the primary reason magic had not flourished here.
“I will tell you everything you wish to know, but you need to be aware that time is of the essence. A lost soul that has killed will be hungry for more blood. The insanity and insatiable hunger will be uncontrollable. The time spent in the Cauldron of Spirits harnesses the deepest, darkest part of a person’s soul and keeps it contained so that it cannot find a new host,” he said.
“You—I thought you said you would tell me the truth,” Dan growled, pushing his chair back and standing up.
Ashure did the same, and his clothes transformed to that of the Pirate King. He heard Dan’s shocked hiss, and the deputy stumbled back against the wall, the folder in his hands falling to the polished concrete floor.
“I am, but I also warned that you might not like it,” Ashure reminded him.
“Who—what are you?” Dan stammered.
“I am Ashure Waves, King of the Pirates and Keeper of Lost Souls. I come from another world—a world where your predecessor, Mike Hallbrook, now resides along with a few other members of your community. After my unexpected journey to your world, I discovered one of the souls I had sequestered in the Cauldron of Spirits had escaped, but it cannot be far from me. It must have followed me to Portland when I went to meet Tonya’s family,” he assessed.
“You’re serious, aren’t you? What about Hannibal? How did he get mixed up in all of this? Did he know—who—what you are?” Dan asked in an incredulous tone.
Ashure waved his hand in aggravation. “Of course I am serious. Short of turning you into a toad, what other proof do you want?” he snapped.
“Can you do that? Turn me into a frog?” Dan asked, taking a precautionary step toward the door.
He couldn’t; his mother’s magic was basically used for making things grow. The little magic he learned from the good witches he had met didn’t include such a spell, but oh how he wanted to. A frog couldn’t be any less useful than this human was. He growled in frustration.
“No. My mother was a Sprite, not a witch. Can you remember that time is of the essence and focus on letting me locate the lost soul before it causes any more deaths?” he demanded.
“Answer my questions,” Dan snapped.
“I had a chance encounter with Hannibal at your local drinking establishment. His table was the only one with a vacant seat. It was obvious that he was disturbed by something. When I inquired about what was bothering him, I discovered that he was friends with Ross Galloway—who, by the way, was extremely happy with the lovely Princess Gem of the Elementals when I last saw him. To make a long story short, Hannibal was aware that Ross was killed by an alien and came back to life here. Anyway, he agreed to help me find my lost soul who, I suspect, unfortunately realized he or she was being followed and killed him,” Ashure finished.
Dan looked at him, lifted his hand and opened his mouth as if he were going to say something, closed his mouth, opened it again, and then shook his head and rubbed his face. Ashure impatiently waited for Dan to absorb everything that he had just explained. He hoped it wouldn’t take too long. He also hoped that Dan, who had grown pale, didn’t pass out.
“Can I ask you something that I’m not quite sure I understand?” Dan inquired with a frown.
“Yes, if it helps us move along with this situation,” Ashure dryly replied.
“If that lost soul has to stay close to you, then doesn’t that mean it would know about Tonya and be close to her as well?” Dan asked.
Ashure stiffened. “How did the Oregon Sheriff’s Department know that I was here?” he asked in a slow, measured tone.
“An anonymous caller,” Dan said before his eyes widened.
“Tonya!” they both hissed at the same time.
24
Tonya stood in a corner next to the kitchen pantry warily watching the two men as they sat at the table devouring the four dozen chocolate chip cookies that she had baked earlier. She hoped they got sick from eating that many cookies. Honestly, she didn’t know what was worse—eating all those cookies or doing it while chugging beer that had to be at least a year old by now.
She laid her hand over the wound on her arm. The bandage felt damp, as if some of the stitches had pulled loose. She didn’t doubt it, considering the abuse that she had suffered so far today.
“I’m still hungry,” Austin said, wiping a hand over the table and scattering cookie crumbs all over the clean floor.
“This is a kitchen, not a barn,” she snapped.
“If it is a kitchen, then you should be able to cook us a meal,” TJ said.
Tonya turned a frigid glare on the younger man. She almost told him to cook his own damn meal, but imagining him destroying the kitchen was too much for her tattered nerves. Besides, preparing a meal meant using knives. One of those might come in handy.
“I have a few things I can make,” she conceded.
She stood and walked over to the refrigerator. A veiled glance at the clock on the wall gave her two important pieces of information. First, she had another two hours before Max and Angela arrived. Second, she had already been held for two long, agonizing hours while Ashure remained locked up on a bogus murder charge.
“What are you making?” Austin demanded.
She opened the refrigerator and looked inside. There wasn’t much to choose from since they had been gone a few days. She had planned to go grocery shopping today. Reaching in, she pulled out a package of bacon, some butter, canned biscuits, and a dozen eggs.
“Breakfast,” she said, turning around with her stash of supplies.
“Make a lot,” he ordered.
Tonya turned to the stove and made a face as she placed the items on the counter beside it. She pulled out the heavy cast-iron skillet and weighed it in her hand. It would make a pretty damn good weapon. Filled with nice hot bacon grease, a toss of the sizzling contents might buy her some time.
Or get me killed faster, she thought.
Opening the drawer next to the stove, she pulled out a long fillet knife. Her fingers had no sooner curled ar
ound the handle than strong fingers wrapped around her wrist. She froze, her heart hammering in her chest. She barely breathed as she opened her fingers, and the knife dropped back into the drawer.
“I would suggest you try cooking breakfast without a knife,” TJ murmured near her ear.
She swallowed and nodded. “Not—not easy to do if you want butter on your biscuits,” she replied.
He released her wrist and slapped her butt. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She hated how her stomach knotted, and her legs trembled.
This is bullshit, Tonya. Pull yourself together and think! You don’t need someone to rescue you, you can do it yourself, she silently chided.
She opened her eyes and set to work making a huge meal. Her mind worked through different scenarios. There were two windows in the bathroom. It was a good ten-foot drop to the ground, but it was mostly sand which would help cushion the fall.
It is better than becoming the filling between two dicks, she thought before she winced at the metaphor.
She planned out her escape while she cooked. She kept looking at the clock, and she swore that time seemed to have slowed down; the minutes took their sweet time ticking by. Thirty minutes later, she placed a bowl containing the scrambled eggs and two plates, one with bacon and the other with biscuits on the table.
Wiping her hands on the sides of her jeans, she bit her lip as the two men filled their plates. She looked out the window. A light rain had begun to fall.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” she blurted out.
Austin looked up at her with a scowl. “I’m eating,” he said.
She nervously wiped her hands on her jeans again before crossing her arms. “I drank a lot of coffee, and you two have been here for three hours. I have to pee. Unless you like the smell of urine with your eggs, I suggest you allow me the decency to go relieve my bladder,” she snapped.
TJ laughed. “I like her. She reminds me of another woman I met,” he said.
“Go piss and come right back,” Austin ordered.
“Thanks—not,” she muttered.
“Tonya—” Austin called when she started to turn away.
She turned back and faced him. “What?”
“We’ll thank you for the delicious breakfast after we’re done,” he promised with a lascivious smile.
The odd, demented glaze in Austin’s eyes made her clench her fists. The insinuation was clear. She had no desire to accept their gratitude. She gave him a brief nod and turned on her heel.
Ashure, I think I know where your missing soul is, she realized with a growing sense of despair.
Ashure followed Dan out of the office. The two deputies and a woman looked up at them with startled expressions. Dan grabbed Ashure’s arm and nodded to the group. One of the men stood up with a frown.
“Is everything okay, Dan?” the man asked.
Dan nodded. “Yes, everything’s fine. I received a call from the Sheriff’s department. There was a bit of a mix up, and I’m taking Ashure with me to clear things up,” he said, opening the door and motioning for Ashure to proceed ahead of him.
“I didn’t see any calls come through,” the woman said.
“When did the guy change into a costume?” one of the deputies muttered.
Ashure shook his head at Dan when the door closed behind them. “You are not a very good liar,” he observed.
Dan shot him a heated glare. “What did you want me to say? Oh, we accidentally arrested an alien instead of a maniac lost soul that’s on a killing spree?” he snapped.
“Well, when you put it like that,” Ashure conceded.
“Just—get in the car,” Dan muttered, waving a hand at his patrol car.
Ashure opened the passenger side door and sat down. Dan hurried around and slid into the driver’s seat. He inserted the key and turned it.
“Seat belt,” Ashure reminded him.
Dan gave him a funny look before he shook his head and pulled his seat belt on. Looking both ways, he pulled out of the parking space in front of the small police department. Ashure was surprised when Dan pressed down hard on the gas pedal, and the car shot forward. Neither Mike’s large vehicle nor Tonya’s small car had this kind of power.
“So, how do you fight a lost soul?” Dan asked as they sped down the highway.
“I need to get close to the body that it occupies. I will pull the soul out, hopefully without destroying the person it has possessed,” he said.
“Well, that sounds easy enough,” Dan dryly retorted.
He briefly looked at Dan and shook his head. “I wish, but he is not going to go peacefully,” he cautioned.
Dan shook his head. “I was being facetious,” he explained.
“Ah, yes. You have a rather difficult sense of humor to understand. It really is hard to distinguish your humor from your dreadfully boring, staid self,” he defended.
“Are you always this—truthful?” Dan demanded.
Ashure laughed. “Yes,” he replied.
It was true. He was so brutally honest that people often thought he was lying. It was funny how that worked. That didn’t mean Ashure never told the occasional fib or let a misconception pass without clarification. Most of the time it wasn’t what was said but how it was presented.
“There’s a car pulling into the driveway,” Dan said.
“It looks like Max and Angela’s,” Ashure grimly replied.
Dan sighed. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” he muttered.
“As do I, Deputy Dan, as do I,” Ashure agreed.
Tonya locked the bathroom door and pulled the stool out from under the small makeup counter. The stool wasn’t tall enough to wedge under the doorknob, but she was able to open the vanity door under the sink next to the door and brace the seat flush against the door while the leg of the stool was pressed into the cabinet.
She wasn’t sure how well it would fare against a few powerful kicks, but it was better than nothing. She climbed up onto the rim of the bathtub and worked her way over to one of the windows that faced the north side. Fortunately for her, new double-pane windows had been installed, so they were quiet and easy to open.
She reached up and undid the two latches. Pushing the window up, she removed the screen and set it aside. Now came the fun part—getting through it. She didn’t want to go head first, but she needed to see exactly what was below the window.
Leaning out, she peered down at the ground. It looked a lot farther than she had thought. On the bright side, she could see that it was mostly sand.
“Better a broken leg than a broken neck,” she muttered.
She smothered a groan as she slid one leg out of the window. It would be an awkward maneuver to get both out without falling since she didn’t have much room to move around on the small space between the wall and the tub. She also had nothing to hold on to that could keep her from falling back into the tub head first.
“You can do this, Tonya. You’ve been in tighter fixes,” she breathed out.
Pressing her back against the window frame and holding onto the top of the window, she pulled her other leg up and balanced on the narrow windowsill. She took several deep breaths before she twisted and slid at the same time.
She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out when her rib cage scraped along the corner of the wood frame of the windowsill. She frantically grabbed for some leverage to keep herself from falling backwards. She continued to slide down since there was nowhere to get a foothold.
At the last second, she dug her fingers into the groove of the window frame. Tears of pain streamed down her cheeks as she held on for a fraction of a second longer until the pain became so intense that she had to let go. She felt weightless for a brief moment before her feet hit the soft sand. She stumbled several steps before she lost her balance and fell backwards.
She didn’t know what hurt worse, her ribs or her hands. Pausing, she did a quick assessment to make sure she hadn’t broken anything and rolled to her hands and kne
es before standing up. A quick glance at her fingers showed that blood was beginning to bead on her fingertips.
She curled her fingers into fists and took off at a run. At the corner of the house, she bit her lip, reached into her front pocket, and pulled out her car key. Behind her, she could hear the sound of wood shattering.
She was almost to her car when she heard the sound of gravel crunching. Her eyes widened when she saw Angela and Max pull in. She skidded to a stop when Austin stepped out from the back of her car, blocking her path.
“No!” she hissed.
She darted to the left only to stop when he raised a gun and shook his head. She moved the end of the key between her fingers and closed her hand to hide it, keeping the pointed end ready for defense. Max had shown her how to use the simplest of items to protect herself. A key could be used to gouge out an eye, stab someone in a vulnerable place, or make a blow hurt enough to allow a person to escape.
She froze where she was, hoping that Max and Angela would see that something was wrong so that they would stop and turn around. Austin must have sensed her fear because he laughed and waved the gun in the air for them to see as he walked over to her. Angela did stop, but she didn’t turn the car around. It felt like her heart rose into her throat when she saw Dan’s patrol car turn in behind Angela and Max.
“It looks like it’s time to party,” Austin chuckled.
She cried out when he gripped her injured arm. He jerked her closer until she was pressed up against him. She looked at the cars. Max slowly exited his vehicle while Angela reclined her seat. She could see Angela wriggling into the back seat where she scooted until she could open the back passenger side door and safely exit the vehicle.
Dan had also exited his car with his gun drawn. She gasped in surprise when she saw Ashure step out from the passenger side. Austin’s fingers dug into her arm as he pulled her in front of him and pressed the gun to her temple.
“Drop the gun!” Dan ordered.
“Really? Do you really think that I would just drop my weapon and give up? No, this is exactly what I was hoping for—an audience unlike any that I’ve had before,” Austin replied. A shudder ran through her when Austin replaced the end of the gun with his lips. He rubbed his mouth against her temple before licking it. “She’s so sweet, isn’t she, Ashure? The feel of her wrapped around me was—” Austin ran his tongue over his lips. “Now that I’ve had a taste, though, I really don’t need another.”