by L. L Hunter
“That was…” he swallowed, obviously lost for words.
“Incredible? Amazing? Breath stealing?”
“All of the above.” He kissed me again, but I had to push him away. I placed a hand on his chest and pushed him back against the shelving.
“I’d love to, but we have to find your soul, remember?”
“I almost forgot. You distracted me.”
I wanted to tell him he distracted me as well, but a bright bluish white light up ahead distracted us.
“What is…?”
“That?” I finished for him. We edged closer to the light emanating from the far end of the library.
“Where is it coming from?” Asher asked as we broke into a run.
The shelves of old books seemed to go forever. I wanted to see what kind of books they were, but the light stole our attention. When we rounded the last corner, we saw the source of the light.
“There’s another room!” We picked up our pace. I ran at the door. It was translucent glass so the bluish white light couldn’t travel all the way through and wasn’t that bright up close. But I wondered why it seemed so bright back at the other end of the library?
“Eden, There’s a key pad thingy.”
“Damn!”
“Try it; you could have access, seeing as you’re now a reaper.”
“You’re right.” I flashed him a smile a walked up to the security pad. The keypad looked more like an iPad encased in a transparent plastic case. I flipped the plastic case up and placed my palm against the screen of the security pad. I felt it vibrate and hum with life underneath my hand. A light the colour of the one coming from behind the door shone up between my fingers almost blinding me.
“Does that mean you have access?”
“I don’t know. Has the door opened yet?” I asked. Asher walked over to the door and stood in front of it.
“Nope. No go.”
I concentrated on the light and my hand sitting on top of it. What was I supposed to do? Then all of a sudden, the glass door opened with a whoosh.
“You did it! What did you do?”
“I don’t know. I just concentrated on my hand,” I shrugged.
“It must have worked. Come on, I don’t think it’ll stay open for long.” I took my hand away from the touch pad and followed Asher through the door.
Chapter Eighteen
Asher
As we entered the glowing room, I knew there was no going back. There never was with Eden. Damn this girl drove me crazy. She poked her tongue out at me. Yep. Definitely crazy. I was crazy, and she was crazy. Match made in hell.
Eden
I knew it was the soul room as soon as I stepped over the threshold. I could hear screaming everywhere. I felt the urge to cover my ears with my hands but then Asher would probably drag me out of here. I couldn’t show fear in front of him. Instead, I listened to the screaming as we walked deeper into the room. The soul room looked like a library, but instead of books stocking the shelves, there were glass jars filled with ghostly, glowing souls. I walked over to a jar and picked it up. The soul started jumping and banging on the side of the jar like an insect stuck in a container, desperate for freedom. I stared at it. I was at a loss.
“What do I do, Asher? How do I know which one is yours?”
“They’re in alphabetical order.”
“What?” I was puzzled until I walked over to where Asher had gone. He was standing near the end of a row of shelves staring at a plaque.
“A to H.” I read. “Last names or first?”
Asher picked up a jar and studied it. “Last.”
“Asher!”
“What?”
“Be careful.” The soul started going crazy inside the jar he was holding. It began flitting around so fast the whole jar started to vibrate and I was afraid he might drop it and release the soul. I quickly took it from him and put it back on the shelf.
“What was that?”
“That soul had some sort of reaction to you. Do you know that person?”
“No.”
“Come on. We need to hurry. Abraham will notice I’m missing soon.” I tugged on Asher’s sleeve to pull him down the first isle. When we reached the second isle, I had a sudden terrible realisation that I didn’t know Asher’s last name!
“Uh, Asher?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s your last name? I just remembered you never told me.”
He chuckled. “Sorry, I forgot. It’s Christien.”
“Christien… we’ve passed it!” I spun around so fast that I crashed right into Asher’s chest. A wave of deja vu hit me and we were back outside my room at the Michaelite Sanctuary.
“Oh, I… sorry.”
He smiled down at me. “It’s okay. How about we slow down a little?”
“No. We can’t slow down. Abraham could come in here at any minute. We have to grab your soul and run.”
He took my hands and squeezed them tight. “We have a moment.”
“No, we…” my protests were cut short by his lips on mine. I tried to pull away but he only pulled me closer and held me tighter. When his fingers found their way into my hair, all my tension seeped into them and I relaxed, falling further under his spell. We must have walked backwards subconsciously into the shelving because one minute we were locked in each other’s embrace and the next, slivers of glass and souls were raining down around us.
I pushed Asher away. “Oh no! What have we done?”
The shelves were rocking and glass soul jars were falling and smashing down on either side of us, letting their occupants escape.
“Quick! Eden, my soul!”
I knew we didn’t have much time. We ran back towards the C’s and after scanning the shelves for several long minutes we finally found Christien hidden way up on the top. And on the left, I spotted the name I was after. A. Christien. Asher’s soul. But we had a problem. It was on the top shelf, which was about four metres off the ground and there was no ladder.
“What do we do?” I asked, frantically scanning my surroundings for a ladder or something to climb on.
“I’ll climb.” He offered.
“No! It isn’t safe. Remember what that first soul did to you, how it reacted?”
“Eden. I’m already dead. I’ll be fine.” He pushed my hair away from my face, which had stuck to my sweaty forehead and kissed me there. I didn’t like it, but someone had to climb the shelves.
“Okay. Be careful.”
He gave me a small, reassuring smile and started to climb. Before he was even half way up, the shelves began to wobble and shake. More souls began falling.
“Asher! Quick!”
As he quickened his pace, I knew something was wrong when he began leaning back towards me. The shelf he was on was starting to tilt this way.
“Asher!” It all seemed to happen in slow motion. As the shelf began to topple over towards me, Asher lost his footing and slipped, dislodging several jars in the process.
“Eden! Eden, catch my soul!”
Suddenly, nothing else mattered. Everything went silent. The only thing I could hear was Asher’s voice.
“Eden! Eden, catch my soul!” He was yelling at me to catch his soul. I looked up and saw it was falling. Asher’s jar was about to break and his soul set free. Not if I had anything to do with it. I walked backwards, hands up like I was about to catch a baseball, but my foot slipped on a shard of glass and I began falling, too.
“Eden!” I heard Asher screaming in the distance.
As my butt hit the ground and more glass rained down around me, I realised I was holding something in my hands. I looked down and noticed a soul jar with the name A. Christien printed on it. I had done it. I caught Asher’s soul! But where was Asher? I looked around but noticed he wasn’t on the floor with me.
“Asher?”
“Up here.” I looked up and saw legs flailing and kicking around in the air above me. I laughed. He had managed to jump onto the adjacent shelve and hang on.
“Can you climb down?”
“I… yes.”
Chapter Nineteen
Asher
Climbing down was a lot more difficult than I expected. I had to watch each place where my foot went. Every now and then, I looked down to where Eden was sitting. She was holding my soul jar, turning it around in her hands. We had done it. We had gotten my soul back. But that was the easy part. The hard part would be getting out of here.
When my sneaker touched the ground, I was glad. I turned around to face Eden and offered her my hand. She smiled up at me with that ever so sexy smile that drove me crazy, and I took it. I helped her to her feet and looked down at my soul in her hands.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“I… I don’t know. I don’t know how to get a soul back into a body.”
“Maybe we need to raid that library out there?” I suggested, pointing my thumb in the direction of the door from which we came.
She looked at me and smiled. “Okay. But we need to hurry.”
Eden
We had the soul. But that was only one part of the puzzle. We had a bigger problem on our hands. I realised I didn’t know how to get a soul back into a body. I don’t know if it could be done. The Grim Reaper, or The Angel of Death as he was also called, took souls. He didn’t give them back. But if Asher were correct, then there would be a book out in Abraham’s forbidden library that would tell me how to do it. But we had to hurry. We didn’t have all day. Abraham could walk in at any moment and find us. Then we would be even more screwed.
Still gripping the soul jar, Asher and I ran back to the door of the Soul Room. There was a similar keypad on this side. Holding the jar in one hand, I flipped up the plastic cover and pushed my palm against the screen. The touchpad buzzed to life and vibrated. I waited a few seconds and concentrated on my hand again like last time, and a second later, the door whooshed open.
“You’re becoming a pro at that.” Said Asher.
“It’s nothing. Come on.”
The air inside the library was colder then I remembered. Had someone turned the air conditioning on?
“Is it cold in here, or is it just me?” Asher said.
“It’s cold in here.” I exhaled and saw my breath in front of me in a cloud of mist. “Let’s find that book and get out of here.”
We searched every row of the library quickly but thoroughly. First, checking the subject and then individual titles.
When we reached the Reaping section, Asher found a book entitled “Soul reaping and other demonic Incantations.”
“Demonic incantations?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at the title.
“Well, he is technically a demon. And so are you.”
“What? I am not a demon!”
“I mean no offence. But think about it. Why would you have a trait such as the touch of death if you weren’t part demon?”
“Because God decided to play a trick and give it to me when I was born.”
“God doesn’t do those sorts of things. It’s in your blood.”
“How come you know so much?”
“Because I had to study it.”
I stepped away from him for a moment and considered the possibility. Could I really be part demon?
“It’s possible.” I spoke aloud.
“What is?”
“That I am part demon. I mean my father… being who he is. I know they drink demon blood.”
I realised I suddenly hated my father very much.
“But Eden, if you are part demon, then you can say some of these demon incantations.”
I spun back around to glare at him. “Are you serious? I can’t say those.”
“You can at least try. It’s probably the only chance we’ve got.”
I exhaled. “Very well. I’ll try. If it doesn’t work then we’ll have to try something else.”
“Okay.”
I walked towards him, took the demon book from him, and opened it to the contents page. As soon as I opened it, a blast of cold air rushed out and hit me in the face. I snapped the book shut.
“What the heck!”
“What happened?”
“Air just came out of the book!”
“That’s… weird.”
“You can say that again.” I decided to try again. I sat down on the floor, placing the soul jar beside me and re-opened the book. Air rushed out again but it wasn’t a shock this time. I scanned the contents page and was astounded as to what some of the words said. There were things like, sending a demon to hell, sending a Nephilim to hell, or reaping a soul and what shocked me the most, stealing a trait. I realised there was a second page so I turned it and my heart flipped when I found what I was looking for.
“Yes!”
“You found it?”
“Yes. Here it is, ‘Returning a soul’. Page 401.” I flipped to page 401 and as soon as I saw the body of text, my heart sank into my gut.
“What? What is it?”
“It’s in another language.”
“Demonic?”
“Or Latin, I’m not sure.”
“Let me see. I’ve studied Latin.” I handed the book over to him as he sat down beside me.
“Of course you have.” I watched him as his eyes scanned the page. Could he get any cuter? After a moment, he looked back at me, passing me the book.
“Not Latin?”
“Nope. It’s Demonic. I can’t speak it. Speaking Demonic is forbidden for us Michaelites.”
I studied the page and as I did, something stirred inside me, which I couldn’t explain. It was as if a hand had reached inside me and flipped on a switch inside my brain. In a matter of moments, I could clearly understand what was written in front of me. I began to read in English.
“To return a soul that was once reaped you must return it by the means in which it were reaped.”
“What the heck does that mean? Sounds like a riddle.” Said Asher. Confusion covered his face and it covered mine, too. He was right. It did sound like a riddle.
“The means in which it were reaped. Think about it. How was your soul removed?”
“You touched me and I died?”
“Exactly.”
His eyes widened. “So, to get my soul back into my body, you must touch me?”
“I think so.”
He chuckled. “But haven’t you been touching me this whole time?”
I playfully punched his arm as I began laughing as well. “I don’t think it means that, silly.”
“Oh.”
“But we can try.”
I put the book down and picked up the soul jar.
“I’m going to open the lid.”
“Wait!”
“What, don’t you want your soul back?”
“I do. It’s just…”
“Just, what?”
“Someone’s coming.” He whispered.
Confused, I listened. And sure enough, footsteps were approaching. Someone else was in the library with us.
Chapter Twenty
Asher
We were so close to freedom I could taste it. That was until we heard the footsteps. I should’ve known something wasn’t right when we entered the library. The temperature was several degrees lower than it was when we first came in here. Eden and I glanced at each other as if it were for the last time.
That was when we heard his voice.
Eden
His voice. His. Abraham’s. He was in here with us. And he was mad.
“Eden? Where are you?” he said, saying my name slowly, dragging out the E.
“Asher! We have to go!” I said in a loud whisper, hopefully not loud enough for Abraham to hear me. Asher nodded and we rose to our feet. I handed Asher the book and he slipped in back on the shelf while I carried his soul. Then we were on the move. I slipped the soul sphere around my neck and concealed it under my top as we jogged. Before putting the demon book back I had quickly slipped Asher’s soul into an empty soul sphere. We made it to the end of t
he isle before Asher pulled me down to squat behind the stack of shelves at the end.
“What are we doing? We need…”
He silenced me by putting a finger to my lips. “Ssh. Listen.” He whispered.
I listened and then I could hear it. His footsteps were approaching.
“Eden. I told you not to come in here. It’s time for your training.” After a few more minutes of utterly frightening silence, he spoke again, this time cursing.
“You little… Eden! I know you’re in here, dammit. There’s a Goddamn mess in my library!”
I couldn’t help but smirk. I glanced at Asher and he was smiling, too. But the smirk was soon replaced with a look of fear in his eyes.
“Asher, what…” He was looking at something behind me. I turned to follow his gaze and my stomach almost leaped into my throat. Abraham was standing right behind me leaning against a bookshelf.
“Holy shit.”
“Yes, this is some holy shit.”
“Abraham. You scared us.”
“Eden. What did I say about coming in here?”
“Did you tell me not to come in here? Oh, I seem to have forgotten.”
Abraham rolled his eyes. “You are so much like your father. Always the same damn sarcasm.”
“Look,” I said, standing up so I could at least meet some of his height. I would not let him intimidate me. “I am not my father. So stop comparing me to him. And I never chose to be your stupid apprentice.”