The Soulkeepers Series, Part Two (Books 4-6)

by Ching, G. P.

  Lillian sighed. They’d reached the alley behind the row of abandoned buildings near Sanctuary. She placed a finger over her lips, reminding Jacob they were in the quiet zone. Surveying the area, she skirted down the alley toward Sanctuary. The entrance to their basement camp was through a rectory with an underground passageway to the church basement. Jacob jogged to keep up with her. Once safely inside where Cheveyo waited for them, Lillian stopped and listened. It was procedure. All three team members must leave and return to Sanctuary together and ensure they were not followed.

  In silence, the three listened and waited, senses tuned in for anything with black skin that might have trailed them home. Jacob couldn’t trust his ability to smell a Watcher since he was covered in black blood, but he listened. The only sound was the wind blowing past the creaky rectory entrance. He remembered how he’d had to fix that door after he’d tore it off its hinges trying to get to Malini. Maybe he needed to tighten a few screws. At least the lock still worked, even though it would be useless against a Watcher who wanted in. It was the holy water they’d soaked the door in that might keep the real baddies out.

  “Clear,” Cheveyo said first.

  “Clear,” Jacob repeated.

  Lillian listened with her eyes closed for one second more before confirming. “Clear.”

  Cheveyo ran for the stairs to Sanctuary.

  “I expect you to believe in her,” Lillian continued. “I believe in her too. I just don’t believe in Cord, and I don’t think we should ever make the mistake of trusting a former minion of Lucifer.”

  Jacob jogged down the stairs, stripping off his blood-covered clothing and dumping it in the basket they kept for quarantine at the bottom. “I’ll see what I can do. But I’m telling you, Malini has her own mind. She’s not going to change her opinion because of me or anyone else.”

  Chapter 3

  Cord

  Bonnie rested Hope in the crease of her lap and engulfed her tiny hands inside her fists. The baby’s alabaster fingers squeezed her thumbs with a healthy grip. “Hope-ho-ho-ho-Hope,” Bonnie cooed. Hope squealed, legs kicking and mouth bending into a toothless smile. Bonnie loved the moments when Hope made her forget that she lived in a basement of a church during the apocalypse.

  Hope coughed, and then coughed again. Bonnie sat her up and patted her back. She spit up into the rag in Bonnie’s hand.

  “We need to talk.” Malini’s shadow crept over her, causing Bonnie to look up. The Healer was pissed—arms akimbo, jaw set.

  “Yeah. I think you need to heal Hope. She keeps coughing up her formula.”

  “Grace says babies do that sometimes. That’s not what I need to talk to you about.”

  “Then what?”

  “You, torturing Cord.” The accusation snapped like a whip between them.

  Bonnie tossed the rag on the floor and lifted Hope to her shoulder. She stood so that she was eye to eye with Malini. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Come with me.” Malini took her by the elbow and forced her into the kitchen. Past the stainless-steel countertops and industrial appliances was a deep, walk-in pantry with a steel-grate door housing a massive padlock. Behind the door, a black-haired, blue-eyed angel glowed faintly, fluffy white wings drooping from his back. Cord.

  Malini pointed at the tray of food placed a few feet from the door. Vegetarian. That’s what angels could eat. Meat made him gag or vomit. She’d figured it out the hard way.

  “You said I was responsible for feeding the angel. I fed the angel,” Bonnie said.

  “Cord, please attempt to eat the food Bonnie has prepared for you,” Malini said, sweeping her bangs behind her ear.

  Cord approached the door with a sigh, reaching through the grate for the tray. His fingers fell short of their goal. He tried a different hole, lower to the floor. Even lying on the cold tile and pressing his arm through to the point of his shoulder, his fingertips barely brushed the edge of the offered tray.

  “What do you have to say for yourself?” Malini stared at Bonnie accusingly.

  Bonnie didn’t flinch. She stroked the back of Hope’s now sleeping head on her shoulder, searching her brain for an excuse. “I didn’t want to get too close. I don’t trust him—as I’ve told you time and time again. He tried to kill me. He shredded my face.” Bonnie pointed to her fully healed cheek.

  “It’s cruel, Bonnie. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that he’s lost weight. You barely give him enough to eat as it is, and now you leave it out of his reach? If I hadn’t stopped in here, he wouldn’t get anything at all.”

  “So what? What good is he sitting in this pantry? He may look like an angel, but he’s a Watcher, Malini. Lucifer’s second. We should have killed him the moment he showed his face here.”

  “And you are going to enforce that opinion by starving him?”

  Bonnie shrugged. “He’s the enemy. No one except you thinks we will ever be able to use him. How is letting him rot in this pantry better than executing him?”

  Cord retracted his arm and retreated to the wastelands of the empty pantry as if Bonnie’s words had injured him. He wrapped his wings around himself, burrowing into an inner world of feathers.

  Malini took a step toward Bonnie until their noses almost touched. Her silky, black A-line bob framed her face, bordering a stare that turned from brown to black with her anger. “Listen to me, Bonnie. I don’t know what your problem is with Cord. You know as well as I do that, if he were working for Lucifer, we would have suffered the consequences by now. I’ve made the decision to keep him here for a reason.”

  “Fine. Get someone else to feed him.”

  “No.” Malini’s jaw clenched. “You need to do it.”

  “Why?” Bonnie’s icy voice was edged with anger. Hope wriggled on her shoulder at the sound.

  “Because my Healer wisdom tells me it’s the way it has to be.”

  Bonnie snorted derisively, removing the red stone from her neck and tossing it at Malini, who caught it before it could strike her face. “I’ll pass on your Healer wisdom. Thanks.”

  Malini wrapped her fingers around the stone, forming a fist. “Back down, Bonnie.”

  Using Hope as a shield against the fury rolling off Malini, Bonnie tried to cross the kitchen for the door. Malini planted one hand on her chest and stopped her short.

  “Push the tray where he can reach it,” she said through clenched teeth.

  Bonnie jerked away and stepped to the tray. With Hope still nestled on her shoulder, she kicked. The meal skidded into the grate, toppling the bowls. Cereal and fruit sprayed across the floor of the pantry.

  Obviously starving, Cord snatched a slice of banana from the tile and began to eat.

  Malini shot Bonnie a deadly look and grabbed a rag from the counter. “Cord, wait. I’ll get you some clean food. Don’t eat off the floor.” She moved for the locked door.

  Bonnie wasn’t about to stick around to watch her clean up the mess. She shot out of the kitchen and into the living area, planning to take Hope to the church foyer, where she could be alone.

  A commotion from the stairwell cut off her progress.

  “Quota in the bag,” Cheveyo said, wiping black goo off his face with a towel. Jacob and Lillian came in behind him. All three paraded in front of her on their way to the bathrooms to get cleaned up.

  Once they were out of earshot, a sharp tug on her elbow spun her around. Surprisingly, it wasn’t Malini but Bonnie’s twin sister, Samantha, and she didn’t look happy. “Why are you giving Malini such a hard time about feeding Cord? I heard you yelling all the way out here. Doesn’t she have enough to worry about without babysitting you and our stupid angel prisoner?”

  “Just the point, Sam. Why are we keeping an angel prisoner when we can barely care for ourselves? Why me? Why do I have to feed him?”

  “Why not you? Malini says it’s important. She’s the Healer. Her role as a Soulkeeper is to choose for the greater good. Why can’t you just trust in that?”
<
br />   “Because.” Bonnie sighed. “I do trust Malini okay, completely. It’s not about her.”

  “Then why?” Sam jerked her elbow again, demanding the truth. Hope began to fuss on her shoulder and turned her head to look at Samantha.

  “You’re upsetting Hope,” Bonnie said.

  Samantha arched one red eyebrow. It was useless to resist. Her twin could practically read her mind thanks to their metaphysical connection. Their Soulkeeper powers didn’t just give them the ability to share mass and copy others’ appearances; they shared thoughts and feelings in a way only they could understand. By the look she wore, she’d caught the scent of insincerity and would hound Bonnie until she broke.

  With a deep sigh, Bonnie resigned herself to share her innermost secret. “He makes me really uncomfortable,” she whispered.

  “I think, if he were dangerous, something would have happened by now.”

  “No, not because he was a Watcher.”

  “Then why?”

  Bonnie glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one else was listening. “Because he keeps saying he thinks I changed him. He says he looked at me and, abracadabra, he was an angel.”

  Eyebrows descending, Samantha processed that for a moment. “We don’t actually know what changed him. It seems like a sort of sweet thing to say.”

  Bonnie shook her head. “No, it isn’t. It’s manipulative. He almost killed me on that stairwell in the Harrington building. Do you remember how he shredded my face? I’m lucky to be alive.”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, he looked straight at me then, and he didn’t change. I’ve reminded him of this repeatedly.”

  “And?”

  “He still looks at me like … like I saved him.” Bonnie spat out the last words and pressed her lips into a straight line.

  Slowly, Samantha nodded. “I think I understand.”

  Bonnie breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I understand that you are not afraid of Cord. You don’t really believe that he is still a Watcher or somehow working for Lucifer.” Samantha pointed one tapered finger toward her chest. “You’re afraid that he is saved. You are afraid he’s been redeemed.”

  “What?” Bonnie shook her head.

  “You don’t want him to be an angel because that would mean he has been forgiven by God even after all of the bad stuff he did, especially to you.”

  Bonnie turned her back on her sister, but Samantha didn’t stop.

  “You want Cord to pay for what he did to you, but if he’s a changed man, you can’t exact your revenge. Worse, it means that God has forgiven him for all the evil he brought down upon all of us, and that’s not okay with you. The idea that you might have been the vessel for his redemption is the worst possible slap in your face, because you want to see him pay.”

  Bonnie’s eyes darted around the room. She shifted from foot to foot, her sister’s words sinking in. “So what?” Bonnie said, voice rising. “So I hate him for almost killing me. No, I don’t want him to be redeemed, and I don’t want him to be forgiven. He remembers, you know. He remembers all the bad things he has done. He’s the same person, no matter his current intentions. You’re right, I do think he should pay, redeemed or not. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Because it’s not God’s plan for him or Malini’s. How long should he pay, Bon-bell? How long should he be starved, ironically locked in an empty pantry of all places, before we give him a chance?”

  “Oh, I’m all for letting him out,” Bonnie murmured.

  “You are?”

  “Yeah. In order to kill him.” Bonnie handed Samantha the baby and headed for the door. She needed some air.

  * * * * *

  “What are you doing in here?” Jacob asked Malini. After he’d showered, he was hoping to catch some Zs but was disappointed to find she wasn’t in bed. They’d shared a bed since coming to Sanctuary. It wasn’t sexual. All of the Soulkeepers slept in one room by necessity. There was no privacy. People slept wherever they found comfort, and for the two of them, it just worked out to be in the same place, even with all of their clothes on.

  Malini not being in bed meant trouble. When the Healer couldn’t sleep, it was a bad sign. He’d tracked her down to the kitchen, where she was watching Cord eat through the bars of the pantry.

  “Bonnie hasn’t been feeding Cord,” she said. “She was starving him on purpose, Jacob. I just want to make sure he gets a decent meal. I’m afraid if I leave him alone, she’ll find a way to take his food from him.”

  Jacob rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “I think there’s something you should know.”

  “What?”

  “She’s not the only one who would prefer Cord starve to death.”

  Malini turned a horrified visage in Jacob’s direction.

  “Okay, no one actually said they wanted him dead.” Jacob held up his hands in mock surrender. “I was exaggerating. But public opinion is he should stay locked up—that we can never trust him.”

  “Who said this?”

  “My mom, but she says everyone is talking about it.”

  Her hands balled into fists. “Behind my back.”

  “Malini—”

  “What, Jacob? What reasoning does ‘everyone’ give for leaving part of the third gift locked in a pantry?”

  Jacob frowned. “Listen, people are just confused about what he is. Angel or not, he has a Watcher’s history. He’s a liability. He’s an unknown risk.”

  She rubbed her forehead as if she had a headache. “My instincts tell me we need him. I think we are supposed to let him out. I think he’s supposed to be part of the team.”

  “He could mean the death of us all.” Jacob pointed at the steel grate. “What if the only thing keeping us safe is the door to that pantry? What if you’re wrong?”

  A red-hot blush crept over Malini’s face. “I. Don’t. Know.” She turned on her heel and burst from the kitchen.

  Jacob crossed his arms over his chest. “That went well,” he said under his breath.

  Chapter 4

  The Fourth Curse

  High above the city of Chicago, Damien answered Lucifer’s call, arriving at the door to the largest penthouse in the world as if he was coming home to a long-lost friend. From the moment he was ushered into the place, he reveled in the reek of money and greed, his vice of choice. He could smell it here in the leather grain of the furniture, the rich woods, the high-end appliances. Even the carpet oozed luxury and affluence.

  “Welcome, Damien,” Lucifer said toward the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city.

  Why wouldn’t Lucifer turn to face him? Damien didn’t ask, and he certainly wasn’t going to confront the Devil on his manners. Next to Lucifer, the blonde Watcher, Auriel, stood with her back to the view. She exposed her teeth in what Damien presumed was a smile, but the envy wafting from the female could rival Levi’s.

  “Yes, welcome,” Auriel said.

  “I am here alone as requested,” Damien said. “My brothers are waiting for me in the place you’ve given us to stay.”

  “Comfortable, I presume,” Lucifer said without removing his eyes from the twinkling city lights.

  “Much smaller than this place.”

  “As it should be,” Auriel snapped. “Who are you to have a grander home than Lucifer?”

  With a wave of his hand, Lucifer dismissed her comment. “We have work to do.”

  The pout that crossed her face before she was able to disguise it made Damien grin.

  “Where should we start?” he asked.

  “Your brothers. I have positions for each of them.”

  Damien sighed. “Each of them? You must know that Asher finds it difficult to focus with all of the new … human delights, and Levi will not be easy to keep happy.” In fact, Levi spent hours or days brooding over his place in the universe, and Asher often disappeared for days at a time.

  “Believe me, they can’t be any worse than what we have today.”

  Au
riel visibly cringed.

  “You can tell your brothers, I have carefully considered their skills for select and privileged roles in our ranks. You, of course, will be responsible for keeping them in line. I have full faith in your abilities.”

  Auriel’s mouth dropped open, but Lucifer did not acknowledge her reaction. Her jealousy pleased Damien, his innate voracity for wealth transferring to the Devil’s attention.

  “What do you have in mind?” Damien asked.

  “For Levi, a job worthy of envy. He will command my legion. He will have ultimate power and responsibility for the other Watchers. This was Cord’s position before he disappeared, and it has been woefully neglected as of late. My army is in need of a heavy hand.” Lucifer turned his head to throw a pointed look at Auriel.

  Damien straightened. “Perfect.” The highest position was the only position for Levi, although he supposed his brother would find something to be envious of in time.

  “Asher is a different matter entirely.” Lucifer pivoted, finally, from the windows, pointing a finger in his direction. “How does he feel about politics?”

  Damien rubbed a hand over his chest and sighed. Who knew what Asher was feeling? His lustful motivations were fleeting and varied. Still, pessimism would not do to close this deal. “They say politicians make strange bedfellows. Perhaps Asher would enjoy politics.”

  “Good. I will name him to the Council for the Eradication of the Unholy. I may have additional use for him in the future.”

  Damien nodded. “It’s a good fit. And what of me?”

  “That depends on you, Damien.”

  Damien eyed Lucifer suspiciously, waiting for an explanation. None was immediately offered.

  “Auriel, I believe we’ve waited long enough to release the fourth curse, don’t you?”

  The blonde Watcher batted her lashes as if she were just waking up from a long nap. “Yes, My Lord.”

  “What do you think my fourth curse should be?” Lucifer asked.

  “I think—” Auriel started.

  “Not you, Auriel. I’m asking Damien.”

  Auriel slunk back, turning her crossed arms toward the wall of windows, her scowl reflecting in the dark skyline of the city.