Soul Dealers

by D. N. Leo

  Zach’s eyes darkened, but he said nothing.

  “So let’s make a deal. You don’t ask me about my unusual business, and I won’t ask you about yours. Deal?”

  Zach didn’t answer the question.

  “Deal or no deal, Zach?”

  He looked straight into her eyes, and she felt a pang of guilt for not telling him the truth.

  “I need your help,” he said, “so how about this—I won’t ask you about your secret business, but you can ask me. I’ll tell you what I can. Then I need you to help me find Dan. Psychic or not, you can sense him, and I can’t. I can’t let anything happen to him. Not only because he’s my best friend, but also because I need to take him to a place where he’ll play a very important role. Many lives depend on this.”

  She stared at him. “That’s low, Zach.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “I’ll let you know after I get dressed.” She stood and went into the bathroom.

  When Mya entered the bathroom, she switched on her deity vision. She shuffled through the files in her mind.

  “Oh no, no, no!” She wanted to pound her head against the wall. Zach’s file had come up overnight after she had fallen asleep.

  He had come back to Earth, and his profile was now flagged. But he wasn’t on the file of those she should protect—he was on the list that was destined to die. This was top profile, and effectively, in earthly terms, his case was now beyond her pay scale. If she went out of her way to save him, the consequences would be unimaginable.

  Was this Ishtar’s ultimatum?

  She just realized that the biggest mistake she had made in the last thousand years wasn’t signing that contract with her Goddess without reading the fine print but allowing Zach, a human, to become too important to her.

  Chapter 13

  She switched off her deity mode, got dressed, and went out to the living room. Her body and her mind were numbed by the new information. She knew he was going to die, and she wasn’t allowed to save him. Even if she decided to break the rules and save him, as she did all the time, she could never be certain that she was capable of doing so. Most of the time, individuals on the dead list were killed by forces much stronger than her minor deity power.

  “I’m going with you,” she said dryly and headed toward the door.

  “Don’t you want to know where we’re going?”

  “You can fill me in on the way.”

  “Yes, but—”

  Mya raised an eyebrow.

  Zach sighed. “I don’t want you to feel obliged to go.”

  “You have to work a lot harder to make me do things I don’t want to do, Zach. We should go before I change my mind.” She turned on her heel and exited the room. Zach followed.

  Zach zoomed along the highway on his motorbike like there was no tomorrow. Although Mya didn’t have a problem with speed, her stomach nevertheless quivered. She tried to hang on to her organs to be sure they stayed where they belonged.

  Zach’s cell phone buzzed in his pocket.

  “Do you want me to take the call?” Mya asked.

  “Check the caller ID.”

  Mya pulled the phone out and checked. “It’s Chloe,” she said, feeling her stomach sink.

  Chloe was Zach’s childhood sweetheart. In terms of looks, she was flawless with a perfect oval face, full lips, striking eyes, sunny blonde hair, and a model-tall body. In terms of career, she was a successful fashion designer. And in terms of sentimental connection with Zach, well, according to her file, Zach had never been with another girl.

  “Do you want to take the call?”

  Zach shook his head. Mya let the call go to voice mail.

  “She left a message. Do you want to listen?”

  Zach shook his head again.

  Mya heard the skidding sound of tires on the road, and at the same time, an engine roared. Zach heard it, too. On a side street, a small truck headed straight for them as if navigated by someone who had been lying in wait for them. The truck had already been speeding and had gained momentum before they reached the street.

  Zach was calm as steel. He did not swerve the motorbike but accelerated. The truck missed them and continued to skid and fishtail across the road. Mya didn’t have to look to know that the nasty sounds they left behind were accidents occurring like falling dominos, one after the other.

  “Should we stop and check?” Mya asked.

  Zach nodded. He made a U-turn and drove toward the crash site. It was chaos. The truck had hit a light pole, making it fall over. The pole had hit the front of a furniture shop. People had gotten out of their cars to check out the scene. A man standing next to an SUV was on the phone to emergency. The hood of a small Hyundai was squashed into the back of a minivan in front of it. With the hood pushed back and up, the Hyundai looked as if it was about to sneeze. The young female driver appeared unharmed and was on her phone as well.

  Zach parked the motorbike and walked toward the truck. He could see no driver in the cab. He looked inside, and his face turned as white as a sheet. Mya darted over to take a look. Zach pulled at her elbow,

  “Don’t,” he said. He tried to pull her away, but she shrugged off his grip and peeked in.

  On the driver’s seat was a puddle of black substance. In the puddle, wormlike creatures the size of small lizards swam and slithered around. The steamy stench in the cab nauseated Mya. She reeled away from the truck and didn’t realize she was leaning into Zach’s supporting arms. Zach took her to the side of the street. She pressed her palm against a light pole and willed herself not to vomit. After a while, she calmed down.

  Zach held her shoulders and asked, “Are you all right now?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m sorry you saw that. I didn’t expect them to bring it here. Nasty sons of bitches,” Zach grumbled.

  “What do you mean? Who are you talking about?”

  “I—”

  There was a whoosh, and a bullet hit Zach’s shoulder, sending him staggering back a few steps. Then he dove, pulling Mya with him to the ground and covering her with his body. Another bullet hit the light pole next to where she had just stood.

  Chapter 14

  The fear he would die in front of her clawed at her heart. It wasn’t a matter of how but when. If Ishtar wouldn’t allow her to save Zach, it was cruel to make her watch him die.

  Wait. Ishtar wasn’t making her watch—she had chosen to be here. The reason she was with Zach was because it was the fastest way to save Dan. Ishtar only required her to save Dan, so that meant every action she took and every decision she made might change the sequence of events. She might be able to get Zach off the dead list without directly saving him.

  Zach grabbed at his wound. Blood seeped out through the gaps between his fingers. He winced but looked more annoyed than in pain. “If that’s the best you can do, I feel sorry for your asses,” Zach muttered, looking off into the distance.

  Mya followed his gaze. The shadows of four men darted into an empty loading zone on a back street. Zach clenched his teeth and tightened his jaw. “There are four of them, Zach, if you’re going to do what you’re thinking.”

  “Only four of them?” Zach winked at her then turned and charged toward the shadows.

  Mya followed.

  “Mya, you should stay here.”

  “What if more of them come while you’re chasing those four?”

  He looked around and nodded. “Okay, follow me, but stay behind me at all times. Can you do that?”

  Mya nodded.

  They approached an abandoned port. The shops at the front were no longer in operation, thus the back streets were deserted. It was dark. The walls were full of graffiti, some good and some bad like the tattoos you might get on a drunken night only to regret them the next day.

  Zach pushed Mya into a corner between two large dumpsters. “Stay here. Don’t move, no matter what happens.”

  He darted across an open space toward an industrial bin. Bullets rained after him.
He caught another bullet but kept going. The four shadows followed Zach. He raced past two bins, and they shot at him again. Zach was hit once more. He slowed down and then sped up again, running across another exposed area. The four men came out of hiding and charged straight at him with their guns. They shot at him, and he fell to the floor and stayed down, sprawled on the ground, motionless.

  The men approached him. When they were close, Zach sprung to his feet. He lifted his jacket and pulled out two golden daggers.

  “Greetings from Eudaiz,” he said and smirked.

  With lightning speed, he swung the two daggers. Before the four men could blink, their body parts were scattered across the floor. The bodies quickly dissolved into black pools on the ground.

  “If you want me dead, then send real soldiers,” Zach muttered to himself. Then he tucked his daggers away and went for Mya. He found her where he’d left her. She leaned against the wall and stared at him.

  “They weren’t men, Mya. I didn’t kill four men in front of you.”

  “I’m not shocked if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “But you almost fainted before.”

  “I don’t like worms.”

  Zach nodded. “Fair enough.” Then he winced and shifted his left shoulder.

  “You were shot,” Mya panicked. “You were shot before, and now you have even more injuries.”

  Zach nodded. “Yeah, another one in the shoulder and two in my back. They aren’t fatal. I’ll be fine.”

  “You have four bullets in your body. We’ve got to get you to the hospital.”

  “I can’t go to the hospital.”

  “You can’t, or you won’t?”

  He shook his head.

  “Any ordinary human would have done a face plant right now with four bullets in his body. What are you, Zach, if you’re not a machine?”

  “I’m still human, Mya.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Still? You’re either human or you’re not.”

  “Let’s just say I have a special power—some kind of energy. These bullets won’t kill me. If we go back to my apartment and you take the bullets out, I’ll be as good as new with a little rest. As I promised, I’ll tell you more. But not now. We have to leave before more of them come.”

  Mya nodded. They headed back toward Zach’s motorbike.

  “You’re not thinking of driving this, are you?” Mya spoke, eyeing the blood seeping from Zach’s wounds.

  “Huh?” Zach was a bit dazed from the blood loss.

  Mya grabbed the helmet. “Can you hang on until we get to your apartment? I don’t want you to fall onto the road.”

  “You—”

  “Yes, I can drive a motorbike. Do you have a problem with that?”

  A smile came across Zach’s sinfully handsome but tired face. “No, on the contrary, if you can handle this beast, I can certainly hang on.”

  Chapter 15

  In the apartment, Zach took off his jacket and his shirt and tossed them onto the table. Mya opened the first-aid box they had bought on the way back and fumbled with its contents as she tried to control her surge of hormones at the sight of a shirtless Zach.

  “What will you need for the pain?” she asked.

  Zach went to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of scotch from the cabinet above the kitchen bench.

  “I’ll need some of that, too,” Mya said dryly, snatching the bottle out of Zach’s hand and taking a swig.

  Zach cocked an eyebrow.

  She smiled and said, “Good stuff” then turned and went into the living room.

  Zach followed her and settled on the sofa. He took a sip from the bottle.

  “What’s that?” Mya pointed at a red scar that looked like a thumbprint on Zach’s inner right forearm, close to his elbow.

  “It’s a birthmark,” he said.

  “You ready?” Mya asked.

  He nodded.

  Mya started cutting into his flesh just deep enough to get the bullet out. She knew it had to hurt like hell, but Zach didn’t even wince. He just continued to sip from the bottle.

  “When you killed those things that turned into puddles of black sludge and worms, you said ‘greetings from Eudaiz.’ What’s Eudaiz?”

  There was a brief moment of hesitation, then Zach said, “It’s the place where I live now.”

  She knew as soon as she heard him say it that it wasn’t on Earth. She thought Zach must feel really odd talking about it. But nothing was weirder than her background.

  She removed the bullets and cleaned the blood off of his back. As soon as he stood up, a knife flew in through the window and slashed his side. He pushed her aside into a corner of the room. A shadow darted through the window and rolled on the floor. A man stood up, and without a word, he attacked Zach.

  Zach darted to the table where he had dropped his jacket and his daggers and grabbed the weapons. Zach and the man fought. Mya had had no idea Zach was so good in hand-to-hand combat. The man was obviously a professional, but after a few rounds, he started to lose ground to Zach. He ducked to the side, and the next thing Mya knew, he had dragged her out in front of him and had pressed a knife to her throat.

  “Let her go,” Zach growled.

  “One slice of my knife, and I’ll detach her head from her neck. Now put your daggers down. Take your wrist unit off and give it to me.”

  Zach didn’t hesitate. He dropped the daggers and took the watch he was wearing off, throwing it toward the attacker. When the man was distracted by the watch, Mya swiveled, ducked, and elbowed him.

  She twisted out of his grip and fled. But she made it only two steps before he grabbed her again. Zach interfered with a kick, but because of the tight space in the living room, they all struggled and stumbled into the broken furniture.

  The man went for the weak link every time, and unfortunately, it was her. She fell to the floor. He gave Zach a kick, sending Zach backward, and then jumped toward her with his knife, stabbing at her in a downward motion.

  She had seen and been involved in many ritual fights in the last thousand years and had many times been at the pointy end of a knife. If she switched to her deity mode right now, she might be able to get out of the situation as she’d done several hundred times before. But this time, she thought it might be too late.

  He could have taken her out, but he had slowed his attack by a fraction of a second. He was intentionally giving Zach an opportunity to attack him.

  She wanted to call out to Zach, but she was too slow.

  Zach fell right into the man’s trap and tried to grab him from behind.

  The assailant immediately swiveled around, turned the knife toward Zach, and slashed through his birthmark. Zach staggered back, clutching his wound. The four bullets hadn’t done much damage, but this simple cut left him speechless. He slumped to his knees, and the blood drained from his face.

  The man smirked. He was so confident that Zach wouldn’t be able to move that he turned his back on him to look at Mya. “Mya Portman, congratulations! You tried to save someone you shouldn’t have, and now you’re about to lose him. Your boss won’t be happy about this. Let me finish him for you.”

  She roared. “I didn’t try to save him. But I will now.” She no longer cared what she should or shouldn’t do.

  Her deity mode was on instantly. Her second best skill as a deity was her hand-to-hand combat technique—she sometimes referred to it as scuffling. She was a hell of a fighter—the best in court in her time. Ishtar would never house anyone without a talent.

  Mya twirled around, and in a short moment, before the man could blink, she had thrown him to the floor so hard she heard his bones crack. Then she pulled him up to his feet and pressed him against the wall. She grabbed his knife and pointed it between his eyes. The man closed his eyes, waiting for the blade to penetrate his skull.

  She stopped.

  More than a thousand years on duty, and she had never killed an unarmed and defeated man. She released him.

  “What�
��s your name?”

  “Lucas Hine. Thank you for letting me go.”

  “Don’t thank me too soon. There won’t be a next time. Drop the watch and go.”

  Lucas nodded, dropped the watch to the floor, and fled the scene immediately. She wanted to question him more, but she had Zach to tend to. He was her priority.

  Zach lay on the ground in silence. What ran out from the gash on his arm wasn’t blood but a semi-transparent silvery substance. Whatever it was, losing it was weakening him by the second. She rushed over, grabbed the medical box, and rummaged through it for bandages.

  “My wrist unit.” Zach’s voice was barely audible, but she heard him. She scrambled to the center of the room where Lucas had dropped the watch and brought it back to Zach. When she placed it into his hand, he pressed his thumb onto the screen. Something seemed to activate on the device.

  “Ayana,” Zach whispered, propping himself up on his elbows.

  “Do you need to sit up?” She touched his shoulder, trying to help him sit up.

  “Leave me here, Mya…”

  “No.”

  “Leave now…”

  “Hell no.”

  A beam of light appeared in the middle of the room, coming from above like a spotlight on a stage. Zach flopped to the floor on his back, totally out of it. The light moved in their direction. She could feel the vibration of energy from it. The floor shook.

  She leaned over and lay on top of Zach, covering him as much as she could, and waited for something to happen.

  Chapter 16

  Dan scrambled to his feet after a guard threw him into a dark cell like he was a rag doll. He hated being handled. He had been on his phone at the art exhibition center when he saw Zach and Mya running toward him. He was being extra cautious after the fire the day before. Someone or something was setting traps for Zach, and he knew it.