The Lost Soul Trilogy (Primani Book 5)

by Laurie Olerich

  Stay back! It’s Xarchi. Killian’s warning came to me.

  What about these people?

  Stay out of it. His eyes slammed mine from across the room, and I backed up again.

  The brawl started in earnest then. I tried to stay out of the way and watched from my wall. I wanted to see everything at once, but it was impossible. Mob Guy was punching some little black-haired thug in the face while Red Hair was thrown over the flimsy bar. The impact shattered the top of the bar, and he fell to the floor in a crash of plywood. People scrambled to get out of the way and several people pushed out the doors. Beer bottles were flying everywhere. One woman ran screaming into the bathroom. The sentries came running in as soon as the screaming people made it outside. There was even more confusion now. One of the thugs pulled out a knife and was stalking Mob Guy. Another guy was getting his butt kicked by the bartender who hit him across the back with a glass beer pitcher and slammed his face into a table. Blood spurted out his nose. Gross.

  As several more men, and a few women, joined in on both sides, the violence got worse. More knives glinted in the dim light as the bloodlust escalated. Blood splatters made the floor slippery, and a woman fell hard as she tried to run out the door. One of the demons grabbed her and tore off her arm. He grinned evilly at Sean as he tossed her arm aside like trash.

  Sean flashed his own feral smile and palmed a silver blade in his right hand. With his left, he gestured for the demon to come closer. The demon’s grin widened, and he lunged into Sean. With lightning fast reflexes, Sean sidestepped the lunge and whipped around with the knife extended. With a triumphant snarl, he buried the blade in the demon’s back. The high-pitched scream raised every hair on my body. With a final vicious shove, Sean jammed the blade up to its hilt. As the demon arced backwards, he pressed his boot against its back and shoved it off of the blade. The demon twitched for a second before turning to ash.

  The band finally stopped playing and the grunts of pain and crash of chairs breaking echoed loudly in the silence. The fighting was spreading across the entire room now, and I had to duck a chair that someone threw. The chair landed in the middle of the drum set with a huge crash. Cymbals went flying. Barely missing Missy’s head, another chair tore a hole through one of the big speakers. Missy jumped up and ran over to me. She carried a small knife and palmed it. I loaded the Sig, and we waited. Two big bodies tumbled across a table and knocked Aiden and Jimmy, the bass player, onto the ground. That was the last straw.

  Aiden swore, “Fuck it, I’m in!” The rest of the guys dove in too.

  It was pure chaos. The humans were joyfully trying to kill each other with anything they could get their hands on. The demons were another story altogether. They knew exactly who the Primani were. They weren’t afraid but they warily approached Killian and Sean. Judging by their expressions, they knew what they were up against. Xarchi must be the meanest looking demon. His human facade was crumbling with his rage and his real features were showing through. The human skin seemed to melt away. He was covered with bloody red scales and had yellow reptilian eyes. He grinned at the screaming people and several sets of filthy fangs were clearly visible. My knees buckled. Holy shit!

  He was the biggest and strongest so Killian and Sean were both trying to stop him. They stood side by side with silver blades lifted. Dec was facing one of the lesser demons. The demon was trying to hit Dec with an arc of flames, but he kept missing. He didn’t realize Dec kept teleporting out of the way. Roaring with frustration, he began shooting fireballs everywhere. As a result, several people were burned, and the carpet was smoldering in one corner. Acrid white smoke started to fill the room.

  I looked up to see one of the losers threatening me with a wicked-looking switchblade. I dodged behind a table and shoved it at his stomach. He feinted around to the other side and grabbed my arm. Reaching for anything, I broke a guitar over his face. Letting go of my arm, he fell back. Missy shouted a warning, and I looked up just in time to see him coming at me again. His face was dripping blood from several cuts and probably a broken nose. His eyes were murderous as he stalked me with the knife. I was backed into the corner. I wasn’t sure I could kick the knife out of his hands. I looked around wildly for a different weapon, but there was nothing. Resigned, I pointed the Sig and pulled the trigger. Several people stopped to look. Most didn’t. My attacker fell to his knees with an expression of surprise on his face. A bloody hand reached down and plucked a guitar pick out of his cheek.

  “I can still use that,” Jimmy grunted. He jammed it into his pocket and went to help Aiden.

  I gasped for some oxygen and looked for Sean. He was still battling Xarchi with Killian. I grimaced as I saw the burns. Both had been hit but were ignoring the pain. They were concentrating fiercely on their prey. They had him backed into a corner. What were they doing though? Xarchi was missing an arm and dripping black fluid all over the floor. He bellowed with rage and threw another fireball. Killian dove to the side and rolled to his feet. His back was to me so I couldn’t see what he did next, but he lifted his hand and a blinding light hit Xarchi in the chest. He doubled over with a roar. I strained to get a better view when a body sent me flying into a speaker. That hurt, a lot. I groaned and carefully pulled myself up. The speaker was history. The body that hit me belonged to the bass player. He sat up and shook his head. He was bleeding from a deep gash above one eye, but the rest of his face was okay. He grinned at me, showing a missing front tooth. Oops, okay, not completely okay.

  A lot of the action was dying down now. Most of the human thugs had either killed each other or knocked each other senseless. There were bodies sprawled all over the place. A few people were still fighting though. I took a quick inventory. Dec had evidently destroyed his demon because it was gone and Dec was covered in ash. How did I miss that? He stood ready to jump in if Killian or Sean needed him.

  Bleeding heavily from his nose, one of the guitarists swung the last usable pool stick across Skinhead’s head with a crack. The stick broke off into two directions, and Skinhead fell over like a tree. Aiden staggered over to the wall and collapsed against it. He’d just ended his fight by slamming the guy’s head into the nearest wall. He was breathing hard but still amped up on adrenaline. He gave me an unfocused sort of happy nod. Geez, men were stupid! He sagged to his knees. That’s when I saw the blood. His black t-shirt was soaked, and it was dripping down his leg.

  “I’m fine,” he protested.

  “Oh, right.” I peeled up the sticky shirt to find a nice big gash in his side. It must’ve been some knife. He hadn’t even felt it. I hoped the other guy looked worse. I dragged my sweater over my head and used my tee shirt as a bandage. It was clean at least.

  “Jimmy? Help me!” Maybe he could keep pressure on this for Aiden.

  “Mica! Look out!” Dec yelled at me.

  Startled, I looked up just in time to see the third demon getting ready to throw a fireball at me. I threw myself to the side just as it landed. The reek of sulfur hit me, but I wasn’t on fire. I took a look at my patient. He wasn’t on fire either. Good for him. He had enough problems.

  The demon wasn’t doing too well though. While focused on me, he didn’t notice the drummer and Missy sneaking up on him. When he released the fireball, the drummer jammed a drumstick into his eye. Enraged, the demon bellowed, the sound echoing above the chaos. His nasty eye was dripping yellow fluid all down his face. Two things happened at once. He spotted Missy just as she jumped up and kicked him in the back with a pretty impressive move. Both feet hit him, and he toppled onto his face. The drumstick went through the back of his head with a crunch. At the same time Missy kicked him, Dec jumped in and hit him with a fine blue light between the eyes. A split second after hitting the floor, the demon exploded in a cloud of ash.

  Stunned, no one moved for a minute. Dec took over and got us moving. We had to get out of there before the cops showed up.

  “Dec, what about the band? Everything they own is trashed!” I felt really bad
about the guitar I smashed.

  “Don’t worry about that now. They’ll be okay. I’m going to see if there are any survivors. We need intel.”

  I’d almost forgotten our original mission. We still needed to know what was going on with the demons, and who was working with them. I hurried over to talk to what was left of RockHard!

  They looked like combat survivors but were happy enough. Nothing like a good brawl to get the blood flowing… Aiden was awake but finally lying down. Jimmy was keeping pressure on the bandage. He probably had a broken nose, but the rest of him looked untouched. The drummer had a split lip and both hands were bloodied. I think one of his pinky fingers was broken. It stuck out at a right angle. Missy, like me, didn’t get hit in the face tonight. This was a new experience for me since I always get hit in the face! She was limping and had a couple of huge bruises on her arms though. She was also liberally dusted with demon ash and it was already starting to burn. She was scratching at it. Finally, I looked around for the Scottish dude. What happened to him? I didn’t see him and started to worry.

  “Where’s kilt guy?” I asked Missy.

  With a sigh, she gestured to the right. What on earth?

  “Dude, what are you wearing?” He seemed to be wearing a… napkin? No, tablecloth.

  Moving stiffly, he joined the rest of us. I stifled a laugh. Missy snorted. I bit my lip. He was wrapped in a tablecloth and cradled something dark in his hand.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Instead of answering, he sadly held up the remains of his kilt. There weren’t a lot of remains. It was a very small kilt with lots of burned edges.

  Chapter 23: An Assortment of Vows

  “ARE YOU SURE this is a good idea? What if they need your help?” I asked for the third time. I was jogging to keep up with Dec.

  He didn’t slow down. Exasperated, he said, “Sean and Killian have destroyed more demons than I have. They don’t need my help with that. Stop worrying. You’re messing up my concentration.”

  The man we were tailing was moving surprisingly fast for someone who recently left a bar brawl. I guess he was knocked out early on and slept through it. He tried to slip out the door during the confusion, but Dec had spotted him just as we were about to leave. I wanted to help Sean, but Dec dragged me with him. So now we were tailing one of the thugs from a block behind. The man hadn’t seen us so he must be an amateur. We weren’t that good at hiding.

  After several zigzags, I lost track of our direction. We hugged the shadows and followed the man to a bridge. He stopped at the base of the bridge to catch his breath. His back was to me, but I could clearly see him in the streetlight. He was wearing a Devil’s hockey jersey and a red skull cap.

  As I caught my breath too, I pointed a thumb at the guy. “He has no taste in hockey teams.”

  Dec gave me a confused look and hushed me. Apparently he had no taste in hockey teams either.

  The area around the bridge was industrial and rundown. In the harsh winter light, it looked bare and abandoned. There were metal buildings surrounded by chain link fences clustered here and there. Parking lots were empty and rutted with packed snow. There were no trees or anything remotely vegetable in nature. Probably it was really ugly in the daylight. We hung back because there was little cover. Our luck held though. Our man was more worried about getting into a dilapidated warehouse than making sure he wasn’t followed. As he slipped through a gate, Dec tugged me behind the cab of an 18-wheeler parked in the lot. The warehouse was fabricated metal and the color was washed out in the poor light. It had an abandoned feel to it except for the security lights discreetly mounted on the corners. Ah. Someone didn’t want to be surprised. Where there are lights, there might be cameras. I made myself smaller behind the truck. We crouched and watched, and watched, and watched some more. Nothing moved.

  “I hate to say this, but I have to pee. How much longer?”

  After looking at his watch, he said, “We should get back anyway. We’re not going in by ourselves, and the others are wondering what’s going on.” He laughed softly at my surprised expression as he scooped me into his arms.

  Our re-entry was much smoother than the last time I’d traveled. Instead of tumbling to the floor in a pile of body parts, we arrived in the living room exactly as we left the warehouse. As before, I didn’t notice the movement and was still protesting when I realized we had an audience. I stopped in mid-sentence as Dec set me back on my feet.

  Alex dismissed me immediately and sent me to bed. Guess I wasn’t in the inner circle just yet. I should’ve been unconscious as soon as I hit the pillow. But I tossed and turned instead. Where were the others? Were they okay? What happened to the demons? Where was Sean? When I did finally fall asleep, I dreamed vividly and came awake with adrenaline surging through me. I lay shaking with the last fuzzy images from the dream fading into the dark. I was left only with a crushing feeling of loss. I tried to hold onto the dream, but it was gone. There was nothing for me to see. It was 5:00 and still very dark outside. Frustrated with the dream, I jumped into a hot shower and got dressed. It was going to be a long day.

  I was surprised to find Raphael in the kitchen. He poured me a cup of coffee and sat down. We chatted about the brawl at Dump and the warehouse. He was interested in what I sensed there. Sensed? Hmm. “I didn’t sense anything. It was dark, cold… I didn’t sense anything weird.”

  “You must have. You may not have mastered your abilities, but they won’t go away. They’ll get stronger as you mature. Even now your senses will pick up impressions and send them to your brain. It’s up to you to weed out the important information from the endless flow of mundane items. We’ve got nothing special to do right now. Why don’t we work on that?”

  For the next hour, he patiently grilled me on every minute of last night. I was surprised by how much I absorbed unconsciously. By emptying my mind of the mundane images, things like weather, food smells, car horns, and people’s conversations, I was able to retrieve memories relating to what he wanted to know about. I described the faces of the sentries in minute detail. I was able to recall that the thugs in the bar spoke with a strange accent. I don’t remember noticing that while we were at Dump. After more thought, I recalled the looks of recognition between the Mob Guy and Skinhead. They ignored each outwardly, but they knew each other. Were they working together? Whose interests did they represent? What did they want from the demons?

  Satisfied with my progress, Raphael gave me a fatherly smile and told me to go wake up the others. We had a lot to do today, and it was already 7:00. Feeling lighter somehow, I hopped up and set off to wake up the guys. They were sharing a suite that was beautifully decorated with black and white paintings and deep blue walls. Whoever decorated this place had a thing for blue, but the effect was lovely. I hovered in the doorway, marveling at the three bodies sleeping in front of me. I hated to wake them. Sean grimaced and flung out an arm. He’s dreaming again. I wish I knew what he dreamed about. He was making me crazy with his secrets. He mumbled something I couldn’t understand and inhaled sharply. Okay, that’s enough. It was time to wake them up. I cleared my throat. Killian sat up instantly, his eyes zeroed in on my face, hand wrapped around the haft of a knife. The sheet fell to his waist. My eyes followed the movement and got stuck. Whoa! Yum! He was all carved muscles and tan skin. He was perfect. With his face and this body… No woman would stand a chance if he actually cared enough to be charming.

  Dragging my eyes away, I licked my bottom lip, and announced, “Uh, it’s time to get up. Raphael wants you in the kitchen.”

  For once, he didn’t comment on my thoughts. Instead, he gave me a sardonic smile and swung his legs off the bed. Flustered, I scuttled over to Sean. He was awake and frowning at me. In fairness, he also looked perfect. He had a beautiful body too, but I was used to it. A naked Killian was a mind-blowing shock.

  The morning meeting took a few hours, but everyone thought we were ready by the time we were done. The plan was simple. Later
tonight, we would go to the warehouse and three Primani would slip inside to investigate. Killian was leading the operation and went over the plan again and again until we knew it by heart. I would play lookout on one end of the parking lot. James would play lookout on the other end of the access road. I was taking my Sig in case I was attacked. Sean and I were going over minor details now. I sat very still as Sean fitted me with a tiny earpiece.

  “This will help us keep in touch with you. We’ll be silent most of the time, but if something happens we’ll let you know. Same goes for you. Don’t use the mic unless you have an emergency. We don’t want to be distracted once we’re inside. Got it?” He stepped back to look at his work.

  My hair covered the tiny mic. Sean insisted I put on body armor for tonight. It was very lightweight, but I felt ridiculous wearing it. He adjusted it once more and declared me ready. We had a few hours to kill before it was time to go. I needed some quiet time. In my room, I stripped off my clothes and sat cross-legged on the floor to meditate. I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing. I cleared my mind and thought of my happy place. The tiny clear pool was surrounded with purple orchids and tendrils of mist. Dripping tropical plants hid the pool from prying eyes. I pictured myself standing in the pool with the small waterfall sluicing over my bare shoulders. Relaxing my shoulders, I took another deep breath. The waterfall was warm, and the air was sweet. I was very relaxed now and let my head droop.

  A wisp of cool air washed over my wet shoulders. I whipped my head around to see someone else. His look of shock must have mirrored my own. Our eyes met. I couldn’t move if I’d wanted to. He approached me slowly as if I would bolt and run away. I trembled but didn’t move.

  “You’re so beautiful. I didn’t see it before.”

  And then he kissed me for the first time.

  “Babe? Are you decent?” Sean’s voice brought me back to the physical world. He closed the door with a click.