Tattered Souls (Broken Souls Book 1)

by Richard Hein

  Worst of all, I recognized it.

  Kate let out a hiss, her shriek of terror unable to break through the paralyzed muscles of her throat. Daniel whispered an oath as he stumbled forward, taking two tries to grab at Kate’s shoulder. My eyes locked on the two dozen dark voids that watched us. My heart gave a little flutter and seized hard as my skin washed cold.

  “Run, Kate,” I said through numb lips. “Run!” I turned and found my companions already crossing over toward Mrs. MacIntyre’s house. The panicked signals in my brain tore down through my body through my legs, and I shambled after them. My body switched to auto-pilot as my brain checked out. I’d underestimated Band Shirt and Swim Trunks, and now the odds twisted away from our favor entirely. I twirled through Mrs. MacIntyre’s rhododendron bush, hardly feeling at the branches clawing at me. If I slowed now, far worse would dig into my flesh.

  “Next yard,” I shouted, gesturing with the bronze knife in my hand. A shadow swept overhead as one of the two creatures sailed through the air from one roof to another. “Keep going.”

  The three of us hopped the next low wall and crossed yard after yard, dodging expensive patio furniture and one early morning sprinkler system. Thankfully there were no dogs. People in places like this kept their dogs in purses, not in yards. Kate and Daniel started to climb down the short wall that dropped down to the sidewalk on the far side of the block from our pursuers. Too tame for my tastes with the denizens of hell on our heels. I hurled myself without breaking stride, sailing across half the sidewalk and landing almost to the street. I stumbled, the shock of impact reminding my knees I wasn’t as young as Daniel, and straightened right in front of a tall stranger in a field jacket much like I used to wear.

  The man’s head was tilted around as he lit a cigarette from a Zippo, slow and careful puffs kindling the cherry brighter. He flicked the lighter closed with a practiced twirl and secreted it away into a pocket as his eyes swept over the three of us. Long and unkempt ashen hair cascaded along his back, whipped by a gentle breeze I couldn’t feel. His growth of beard looked worse than mine, but his eyes… they were focused and saw everything at once in a single blink. My laugh was genuine as I clapped him on the shoulder and motioned for the others to crowd in.

  This was going to be good.

  “There’s not enough running, Samuel,” Kate gasped, hand pressed to her side. The stranger regarded her with those unwavering eyes, and a hush fell over her. She stilled, as if she’d forgotten to be winded. He took a long drag on his cigarette, head drifting back as he let loose a cloud of smoke.

  Daniel fidgeted back and forth, slapping his baton against his palm. His eyes flicked between the man in the jacket and myself with growing concern. “Samuel?”

  I held up a staying hand and gave him a smile.

  Cries from the Entities grew distant, more anguished. The wind kicked up, rustling branches in the neatly planted trees beside the street, but soon the sounds of the demons were lost to the overcast Seattle morning. The silent man cocked his head, nodded once and turned to me.

  “Gone,” he said. “The little shits won’t risk seeing if my mission was with them.” There was no particular inflection, no accent to speak of. It wasn’t bland, but it didn’t leave much of an impression either. It washed over the senses like a gentle tide, covering the rocks and then gone the next moment. I found my smile growing.

  “It’s good to see you, Michael,” I said, offering out a hand. It held the dagger I’d taken from Kate. His eyes flicked to it, and he arched a grizzled eyebrow at me. I stuffed it into a jacket pocket and stuck my hand out once more. He stared at it with the same curiosity as a moment ago, but shook it with a crushing grip.

  “I’m sure you know Kate and Daniel,” I said, gesturing at my confused companions. “This is our literal Deus ex Machina of the day, Michael.”

  I paused for a couple of moments for dramatic effect. You need to have a little showmanship. Michael puffed on his cigarette without looking at us, eyes drifting down the street, and tapped ash close to my shoulder.

  “The Archangel Michael.”

  Kate crossed her arms and took a step closer. “He seems….” She hesitated, pressed a hand to her forehead, and shook it. “Why does he look like a guy that should be panhandling down on I-5?”

  Michael dropped his cigarette, rubbed it out with his boot, and reached forward with a single finger, tilting Kate’s eyes up to meet his. She shivered. A cape of blinding golden energy unfurled behind him. I staggered back, shielding my eyes from the glare. I could hear bells and a symphony of horns at the back of my mind, faint but powerful, like that perfect dream you clawed desperately to hold onto when waking and never want to forget. It fanned out to the sides, looking so much like ethereal wings woven from sunlight, and the haggard angles of his face faded for a heartbeat before we were standing in the street with a weathered man in his later years once more.

  “Oh sweet shit,” Kate whispered.

  “Hello,” he said, in that same neutral tone, though there was a note of amusement that echoed at the end. His finger slid along Kate’s chin and he took a step back. He nodded at Daniel.

  “Oh. Uh. Hello. I guess it’s good you happened along,” Daniel said. His voice wavered like he was six years younger and had asked his first girl out on a date.

  Michael shrugged and turned away. “See, if they’d pressed, you’d have been proper screwed,” he said as he began walking up the sidewalk. “I wouldn’t have stopped them. I’m not here for you, so I’m not allowed to interfere. I’d have just watched while they tore you apart and wore your innards as party hats. I gambled that my presence would keep them away. Just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

  My stomach sent a telegram to my brain, asking for permission to empty. Permission denied.

  For the moment. Ugh.

  “You need a lift,” he said without question. He stopped beside a beautiful car that probably dated to the fifties, pristinely maintained and made in a way that looked like water droplets swept back by a great speed. Hot damn. It even had suicide doors. Kate gave a whistle of approval as she walked around the waiting sex-symbol, eyes drinking in the dusty blue color. Okay, fine, it was a tiny bit cooler than my primer gray pile of scrap and insurance liability half a block away. “I suppose I can manage that much.”

  I crossed my arms. “Not that I’m not grateful, but how is that not interfering?”

  Michael shrugged. “I’m leaving this place. You’re leaving this place. Might as well ride together. Those shits won’t be back so I’m not changing anything.” Michael gestured at the car. “Or you could walk your lazy ass back home. Suits me fine.”

  “Fifties BMW?” Kate said. “501, right?”

  “Baroque Angel,” Michael said with a wolfish grin, pulling open the rear passenger door for her. Daniel slid in up front. “See, I bought it when it first came out.”

  I opened the door behind the driver, but Michael walked around and calmly pushed it free of my hand. His strength was immense, a gorilla smacking away candy from a child. His eyes met mine. “We’ve worked together once, Samuel. I know the depths of your soul.”

  “Okay?” I drew out the syllable.

  “I am one of the seven angels who have stood and served before the Glory of the Lord. I am the right hand of God. I say this to you now — watch the fucking leather.”

  I swallowed and nodded as I slid in beside Kate. She flashed me a reassuring smile as the Archangel started the vehicle up. We turned the corner, heading back down along the main road. There lay the mangled and tortured remains of my car. Purple smoke swirled from the broken husk. I winced. It could probably be fixed, but I was certainly going to field a call from Seattle’s finest in short order. The days of the OFC covering incidents like this for me were over.

  Kate’s hand pressed against my shoulder. I glanced at her, thankful for the reassurance, but her eyes were looking past me, at her brother’s house. Ah, right. There were more important things than my car. I
reached up and hesitated. Hell. We’d faced demons together. I gave her hand a single awkward pat, but she didn’t notice.

  As we drove past, I saw Jessica standing in one of the windows of her house, staring down with a drawn and pale face. I couldn’t blame her. What would she tell herself about what she’d seen today? How much had she really witnessed?

  I settled back against the seat, crossing my arms and letting my thoughts pool into me. If I was really going to stick with this, it was time for a change in tactics.

  Chapter 8

  I watched the dance of cars on the Interstate, the familiar weave of aggressive drivers and timid folk both, the twirl of steel and plastic as they hurtled along with their boring and mundane lives. I snorted, forehead pressed to the window, watching an older VW bus fall behind as the Archangel roared along. The whiplash always got me. One minute you’re kicking in a door and clawing to keep your sanity against the things that whispered in nightmares and obliterated rational thought. Twenty minutes later you’d be pulling into the parking lot of a convenience store, pissed that they’d burned the coffee again and that it was a five minute wait for the delicious cheese corndogs to finish cooking. You’d be stuffing delicious processed meat into your mouth, and the absurdity of it would hit you, the juxtaposition of the two extremes.

  Beside me, Kate laughed, a low continuous chuckle that never quite died away. You couldn’t help but laugh like that, given the twisting mix of everything. Was it a healthy ‘that was crazy’ laugh, though, or the manic sort as you plunged into the abyss?

  I was all out of the first sort of laughter. Eventually, you do certain things that burn that part of your soul away.

  “How are you doing?” I asked, having to pitch my voice loud above the throaty roar of the boat we were sailing around in. Her eyes met mine, and I could see the cracks there, little chips in the reality she’d shaped around herself for her entire life. She was holding it together, far better than I had my first time, but fractures have a way of going unseen until that pressure busts it all wide open. This wasn’t a good time to play strong. She had to be it.

  “You were asking me that in the back of an angel’s car,” she said. “I don’t think there’s any response I can give that really sums it all up. Do you?”

  “‘When you only saw one set of footprints, it was then that I gave you a ride in my vintage BMW?’” I misquoted.

  A little color returned to her face as her grin widened. “Maybe that,” she agreed. She turned and glanced out the window with a sigh. One hand scrubbed at her forehead like she was trying to grind the flesh and bone away. I let her sit in silence for a moment, certain more was coming. Well, relative quiet. The engine growled like a pack of angry lions and I could hear Daniel giving the angel in the driver’s seat the full brunt of his inquisitive mind. Michael didn’t seem to mind, answering as he whipped the wheel from side to side, passing cars left and right at a speed that would have been reckless even if the rain had stopped. Once or twice I bounced my head against the window as the Archangel switched lanes too fast.

  “He needs to slow down,” Kate muttered. “God, please, slower.”

  “You okay?” I asked. “You look like you’re trying to drill into your head for oil.”

  “Headache again,” she grunted. “It’ll pass.” There was a lingering pause, a pregnant breath that grew between us. “Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  Kate waved a vague hand. “All this. I don’t know. I just… Thank you, you know? My… my dad always said people never said it enough.” Her hand found mine and gave it a squeeze. I jumped a little at the foreign contact, and stared at her fingers clasped around mine. It felt strange. It was such an alien concept to me these days, like cups. Why would you pour liquid into another container to drink from, when you already had a container that held it in the first place?

  Her fingers slipped away, and for a moment, strange or not, I missed it.

  “They’re so unaware,” she said quietly. “Like I was. It’s all different now, isn’t it?”

  “The world is the same as it always was. You just know a little more about it. Think of it like learning about a foreign country. Belize always existed, somewhere half a world away. It could almost be mythical until you actually interact with it. You don’t know anything about it personally, just what you learn from the web or other people.” I frowned. “I mean, I assume you don’t. You could be a Belizeologist or something.”

  “I’m fine, Samuel. It’s just like waking up and finding out that the sun rises in the west and always has. It’s a paradigm shift.”

  “I’m here if you need a clutch.” I rubbed at the back of my head. “I’ve been through it too, once. It gets easier.”

  “Does it?” She turned back to face me. “I gather it didn’t end well for you.”

  I didn’t flinch. I didn’t turn away. I also didn’t need to answer that. For once, the memories stayed locked away, fingers of them tickling at the back of my mind but staying clear of my consciousness. “Sometimes it doesn’t end well, no. You’ve seen a bit of stuff that’s out there, and there’s far, far worse lurking between the cushions of the universes.”

  “What about him?” she whispered, throwing a furtive glance up at our angelic driver as she leaned in. When she turned to face me, our eyes were just inches apart. I could feel the heat radiating off of her. I swallowed. Blue eyes watched me, magnified by the dark shroud of her hair and the lenses of her glasses. Right then, I could see whole universes of questions springing up within them. “Entities are bad mojo, right?”

  “Ultra bad mojo,” I agreed, hardly able to find my voice.

  “So where does Michael and God fit in?” she said, voice a murmur. “I got the impression that everything beyond our universe was dark and sinister and waiting to dine on my soul. I was never very religious, and given I’ve already had most of what I believe in shaken up, how do I know he’s not going to rip out my still-beating heart?”

  My throat went dry, feeling like I’d shoveled heaping buckets of kitty litter into it. “Well, first,” I said, looking down at the floor of the car and pitching my voice low so Daniel couldn’t hear, “someone I once knew had the same thought. If God and his Merry Men were on the decent side of things, didn’t that mean that there were others out there that could be okay? Beneficial even? That maybe magic could be used safely if the other end of the connection found one of these universes.”

  Kate’s eyebrows went up. “And?”

  My fingers dug into my leg, a familiar dull ache scraping at my heart. “The short answer is no. There’s an infinite number of realities and all the inhabitants are utter dicks of the highest degree. We found… nothing good out there.” Rain started pattering down, the sideways driving gale that springs up without warning but never quite seems to wash away the grime and problems. It pinged against the roof and drove tiny rivulets down the windows. The angel in the front didn’t bother to flip on the wipers. It suited my mood just fine.

  “Second, there’s no point in whispering,” I said in a small voice. I talked as quietly as I could to prove a point. “Michael knows everything we are saying.”

  The angel’s fist lifted in a thumb’s up, though his eyes never strayed from the road.

  “Are you kidding me?” Kate said, completely deadpan as she straightened. “Do I need to invest in some kryptonite?”

  “See, as a major worker for my employer, I can see the future,” Michael said. He reached up and adjusted the rear view mirror until his gray eyes were visible, and as he spoke, those piercing orbs never wavered from Kate. Like, at all. The road and the drive were lost to the conversation. I swallowed and wished there was a handle I could grab or a roll cage around me. I was fairly certain that his precognition meant that he was somehow able to drive, sensing the future as it happened, but it didn’t mean I didn’t get the heebie-jeebies. “While I’m on the clock, anyway. As long as I’m in this universe, I can see all paths that pertain to my work.” The co
rners around his eyes crinkled, and for a moment, that ageless face seemed very old and tired, the weight of ages bearing down and marking skin that was as much a mask as the demons we’d left behind.

  A car in the lane to the right of us hammered on the horn and laid on the brakes as Michael wrenched on the wheel, whipping us across into the space it had just occupied and past into the off ramp. I snapped my head around to watch the driver of the vehicle now behind us use a few colorful gestures probably not in the official American Sign Language handbook and felt a nervous bubble of laughter force its way up to me.

  The right hand of God was a real crappy driver.

  “Please slow down,” Kate groaned. “Please, please slow down.” Kate’s face swam through various shades of colors that would be cruel and unusual punishment to put in a crayon box.

  The vehicle slowed.

  Kate took a slow breath, nodded to herself and grabbed at two front seats. She hauled herself forward, practically flinging her body into the front of the mini tank we were in. It rocked way more than I liked while the extra-universal driver was looking everywhere except for the road. “You know what happened to my brother, then.” Her voice was strained with fear, but determined.

  “Just the crap that pertains to my job,” Michael said. “That’s it.”

  Kate wavered there, halfway between the sections of the car, looking as if she wanted to argue with the right hand of God, but she gave a single sharp nod and slumped back beside me.

  “Except you were there today,” Daniel added. “Uh, I doubt you believe in coincidences, sir.”

  Sir. That was cute. Give him a bow tie and a camera and he could be Jimmy Olsen to Michael’s Superman.

  “Extra-universal creatures of that particular crunchy flavor are a bit in my jurisdiction, and I happened to be in Seattle,” Michael said, his grin flashing teeth. “After the last time I did business with Samuel, I figured bailing his ass out of figurative hell wasn’t bending the rules too much.”