by TJ Adams
Death Unleashed
TJ Adams
Copyright © 2018 by TJ Adams
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover by art4artist Yvonne Less
Contents
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Author’s note
What’s Next
About the Author
Author’s Note
Dear Reader
Thank you for buying Death Sucks book 1 in my Death’s Angel series. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
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1
I raced through the doors of the emergency department and collided with a lady sitting in a wheel chair parked in the wrong place. She frowned up at me with a silent reprimand for being clumsy. The nurse behind the admission desk glanced over with a steely eye then returned to interviewing the lady sitting at the counter. The waiting room was full. There was no way I would take a seat and wait my turn.
I’d made it in record time across town to get here within forty minutes of dad’s phone call. He’d found mom bent over the bathroom sink, pale and dizzy. At dinner, she’d complained of terrible heartburn, then thought she would be sick. When she didn’t return he went looking for her. The paramedics said her pulse was dangerously high, the prognosis, possible heart attack.
Mom was fifty-five. Did that happened to fit woman of fifty-five? She’d always watched her figure, thought about what she ate and exercised regularly. Granted the last year had been very hard on her, with Trinity’s withdrawal and then her death. After Trinity’s death mom sunk into a black hole, but I’d been so caught up in my chase of the supernatural and my own dark stirrings to pay enough attention to how she was coping. I should’ve realized mom’s reassurances she was doing fine were nothing more than empty words used to appease her family.
A male nurse entered from the swing doors and called through the next patient. I rushed to him before he disappeared back behind the swing doors.
“My mother was brought through to emergency about half an hour ago. I wish to see her.”
“Have you spoken to the nurse at the triage desk?”
“There’s a queue.”
“For good reason. Our focus is on the patients. If you take a seat, she will be with you sooner than you think.”
He turned his back to me as a dismissal and ushered the man with him through into the emergency department. I gave them both a head start then followed. On the other side of the doors, I’d expected pandemonium, that’s what emergency meant after all, but the place was relatively quiet.
I spied dad sitting on a chair beside a bed three partitions down from where I stood and hurried over before someone told me to scram.
“Matteo.” He looked drawn and tired as he rose to hug me.
Mom was asleep with an oxygen mask covering her nose and mouth. Various machines beeped and jingled repeatedly beside her.
“How’s she going?”
“It was a heart-attack. She’s hooked up to a drip and all these other devices to monitor her every bodily function. The noisy one is always ringing because her heart rate is too fast, but they’re working to bring it down. But she’s going to pull through. We got her here in time. They want to do some tests to assess the damage to her heart and whatever else they need to know. She’ll be in here a while.”
I squeezed his shoulder. “How are you going?”
He rubbed his eyes. “Shocked. I’m not sure it’s warn off yet.”
“Hope you don’t mind me saying, dad, but you look like you could do with a bed here as well.”
He sighed, the longest, deepest sighed I’d ever heard anyone make. “It’s just one thing after another.” He sat down with a grunt. “It was the stress of Trinity’s death. I should’ve taken better care of her. I could see she wasn’t coping well, but I didn’t know how to help.”
“You had your own grief to deal with. I’m the one who should’ve been looking after both of you. I’m sorry I let you down.”
He patted my thigh. “It’s all too easy to blame ourselves.” He looked at me. “I don’t blame you, and I never expected anything more from you. Neither did your mother. She chose to keep the extent of her grief quiet.” One more pat to my thigh. “Silver lining son, always look for those. At least now this has happened, we can pull together to help her fight her way back from her darkness.”
I looked at mom’s pale, hollow face. When had she lost so much weight? Despite what dad said the guilt drove me back into the hard, plastic chair. I ducked my head to my chest and closed my eyes, but got nothing but berating thoughts about the terrible selfish son I was.
Sitting here thinking these thoughts was nothing but self-pity, which was self-centered. “Do you want a coffee dad?”
“Sure, sounds great.”
I left him looking small and defeated. Despite his brave words, mom’s heart attack shattered him. It was plain to see. She’d been the love of his life. That’s the story Trinity and I had grown up with. Watching him now, I would say it was as true today as it had been the moment they met.
I had to stop someone for directions to the nearest coffee machine and was told the cafeteria, floor one, would still be serving, so I headed for the lift. Now my panic was assuaged I thought of Bounty and how badly I wanted to talk to someone, and that someone was her.
She sounded groggy when she answered. “Hey, it’s late.”
“Sorry, I wasn’t looking at the time.”
“Oh, no it’s not. It’s only nine. I must’ve passed out early. You all right?”
“Depends on your definition of all right?”
“That doesn’t sound promising.”
“Mom had a heart attack.”
“Oh my god. Is she all right?”
“Dad got her to the hospital in time. They say she will make it.”
“You sound defeated.”
“I feel it.”
“Because you’re blaming yourself.”
“I’ve been so lost in this mad chase. I thought what I was chasing was important, but I lost sight of what really matters.”
“What you’ve done was important to Amanda and all those people who were destined to become victims of the Sutekhnese.”
I laughed, but it sounded hollow and failed to make its way to my heart. “What did I do?”
Bounty remained silent. There was nothing she could say because I was not the one who’d helped. It had been her.
“I’ve never seen you do anything selfish. Everything you do is to help others.”
She could say that because she didn’t know about my secret meeting with Claude. That was all about me, no self-sacrifice in that decision.
; “I wish you wouldn’t put me on a pedestal. It’s too far for me to fall.”
“That just goes to show how little you actually know me. I never put people on a pedestal, and I only compliment when warranted.”
The truth of her statement ran through me like lead; at least the part about not really knowing her. It had been four months now since that fateful day in the cemetery. We’d survived situations beyond any human’s reality, and yet, there were so many things I didn’t know about Bounty. After everything and she still kept a lot of herself bottled tight.
“Are you at the hospital now?”
“I’m going to get dad a coffee.”
“Do you want me to come down? I’m more than willing to come.”
“No. You’re in bed. It’s fine. I just wanted to talk to someone.”
“You could come around when you’re finished at the hospital. I don’t care what hour.”
“I may be late. I don’t want to do that to you.”
“I don’t mind, honestly.”
“How about I give you a call tomorrow?”
“I’ll be waiting. And, Matteo, I’m really sorry this has happened. After Trinity…this is the last thing you need.”
“She struggled after Trinity’s death. I just never realized…”
“Can you promise me one thing?”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t blame yourself. Please, just for tonight can you blame the wild swings of fate, the unfairness of destiny, or the cruelty of coincidence. Anything but you. For tonight at least.”
Despite feeling washed out, her words shone a small ray of warmth. It’s what I needed to hear. This is what I needed to feel. Thank god I rang her.
“No promises, but I will try.”
Hmm…I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with that.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
I ended the call as the lift doors opened onto a deserted corridor. Which way do I head? Stupid of me not to ask the way beyond directions to the first floor. I headed left.
My squeaking shoes on the polished floor was the only sound I heard. Weird. Sure, it was nine o’clock at night, but it seemed too quiet for a hospital. Weren’t they normally full of sick people and the staff to tend to them. Perhaps I’d chosen the wrong way.
I spun, thinking to head back the way I’d come, to see a gaping hole of gray where the corridor should be. Instantly alert, my blood shot through my veins like it was racing formula one. Get a grip. I’d been here too many times before, experienced too many altered states to go to pieces. Think, best strategy, continue forward and see where this fractured reality leads me or close my eyes and refuse to budge. No two guesses what I would choose.
I walked forward only to be consumed by the gray. The ground ceased to have meaning. In this place everything looked the same. I stopped, arms out to steady myself while my brain spun loops. With no delineation as to up or down I risked falling. And I would not allow myself to be that vulnerable.
In the mass of gray in front of me something swirled to life. Hazy at first, the thing began to take shape after I’d squinted at it for what seemed like hours. What the hell was it? I couldn’t begin to put a description to what I was seeing.
My steps were tentative, mainly because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to approach, but it was likely I wouldn’t be getting out of here until I confronted the reason for me being here. The closer I got the more mystified I became. This was like nothing I’d seen before, and considering the last four months, that was saying something.
The thing, creature, apparition, moved. I could now make out what appeared to be limbs, long and spindly limbs, super long, totally disproportionate to its body. The crook of the elbow bowed down to its feet. The body was thin and bent, as were the legs, knees kinked outward as if they struggled to take the strain. Most grotesque of all was the head. Sitting atop a straw thin neck was an elongated head. The nose and mouth stretched forward like a snout, but longer, something akin to a horse’s head. The creature turned to stare at me through pitted sockets, great hollow tubes of black. Its head bobbed like a string puppet on its ridiculously thin neck.
“Mortal child, but not so mortal. You’ve come at last.”
I relaxed when I realized it had no teeth. The skin around its gums puckered and caved inward. Because of its missing teeth it spoke with the accent of the toothless aged.
“Do I get the courtesy of knowing what you are?”
It sniggered, not too unlike a cheeky elderly man. “You’re not here to ask questions.”
“Sorry, but that answer leads to an obvious question. What am I here for?”
“To face your defeat.”
“I was unaware there was a competition.”
Its head bobbed about. “No competition that you could possibly win. You are here at my whim.”
“Where is here?”
“Somewhere no mortal flesh can pass. But you are special, which affords you immunity to the ravages that would otherwise keep you out.”
“Does this mean you’re not going to tell me?”
“You’re in the void, immortal child.”
“What did you just say?”
“You are in a place that exists beyond the mortal realm. A place where only the ethereal exist.”
“No. What did you call me?”
“I shall unveil no more secrets. You must listen to me for I have a bargain to make with you. A bargain perhaps not to your liking. And there will be little choice for you to make except that which I present before you.”
Of course they would be a sinister motive for my being here. “Tell me now so we can get this over and done with.”
“They call me the soul snatcher.”
“Is this why you’re hanging around a hospital?”
“I live on the souls of the greedy. I exist because of mortal’s unrelenting obsessions; their inability to relinquish their desires as they near death. It is their yearning for what they cannot have that creates the link between their death and me. It is that yearning that created me. They call me the soul snatcher, but I call myself Wish Giver.”
“Good thing I’m not facing death.”
“Not you. But someone close to you.”
I couldn’t believe I was hearing this.
“I can see by the look on your face you know who I am talking about.”
“But you can’t touch her. Mom is through the worst of it.”
“That is where you are wrong. Your mother has touched the edge of death. That leaves a mark I am able to follow. It weakens the boundary between her world and mine. She is now mine for the taking.”
“My mother was never greedy. She never had desires so big they swallowed her.”
“Is that so.”
“What is it? Tell me.”
“Do you really want to know?”
“No more riddles.”
“Your mother blames herself for what happened to your sister. She is overcome with guilt and grief. She believes she doesn’t deserve to survive. She wishes she could wind back time and change the way things were. She wishes to tell her daughter she is sorry. That is her overwhelming desire, a desire so strong it calls to me.”
The undeniable truth of what the creature said slammed into me like a hammer on a nail.
“I won’t let you take her.”
“And now we come to my bargain. I relinquish my hold on your mother’s soul if you are to give me yours.”
“What?”
“Not an easy decision to make. That is why I am giving your time to make it. Every day for five days I will take four grams of your mother’s soul. That is one gram short of the weight of a human soul. On the sixth day I take the last gram and with that your mother will die. But, if you agree to our little bargain at the end of the fifth day you will take your mother’s place. Your mother will live and you will be mine.”
“Why me?”
“I am chained to this existence. Sucking souls from the desperate and greedy has crea
ted a need of my own. Fueled by human yearning, I find myself longing to be more than what I am. It is only with your abilities can I hope to escape the bounds of my cage.”
“But I have no abilities.”
“Not yet.”
“I don’t need time. I’ll make this deal with you now. There’s no way you’re taking my mother’s soul.”
It waved its long arms about. “But you are not ready. Desires must develop and fester. Only then are the souls worth taking. The soul of a child is nothing to that of an adult. Years of living and the richness of their hunger makes their soul worth more to me. In five days your soul will overflow with want, then I will be able to control it better.”
“No, we do it now. I will not let you punish my mother like this.”
“Tell me, how will you stop me?”
He was right. I was helpless.
“I will surrender my soul. You have my word. Just free my mother.”
“And where will your strong desire come from. No, your mother plays an important part. Four grams a day.”
The rage pounding my heart was driven by my helplessness. If I was different, more than what I was, I could end this now. I’d been turned into a puppet by the jinn and now my mother was held to ransom by this creature. Everyone in the supernatural community knew some secret about me. I just wish to god I knew it to. That way I could put a stop to being the favorite toy, pulled in differing directions by every supernatural that received the memo.
“What will happen to her?”
“She will fade. That is what happens when the soul diminishes. Every day she will be a little less bright, a little less of your world. I’ll leech her soul slowly away and she will feel grateful because she no longer wants to be within the world of the living, not when her daughter was in the world of the dead. She may not be too happy to find herself alive again and then there is the terrible tragedy of losing her other child.”