The Soulkeepers Box Set

by G. P. Ching

  The Soulkeepers Series

  Part One, Books 1-3

  G.P. Ching

  Carpe Luna Publishing

  Books by G.P. Ching

  The Soulkeepers Series

  Part One

  The Soulkeepers, Book 1

  Weaving Destiny, Book 2

  Return to Eden, Book 3

  Part Two

  Soul Catcher, Book 4

  Lost Eden, Book 5

  The Last Soulkeeper, Book 6

  Other Books by G.P. Ching

  Grounded

  The Soulkeepers: The Soulkeepers series, Book 1

  Copyright © G.P. Ching, 2011, 2012

  Published by Carpe Luna, Ltd., PO Box 5932, Bloomington, IL 61701

  www.carpeluna.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.

  Fifth Edition November 2012

  eISBN: 978-0-9852367-1-7

  Cover art by Adam Bedore at Anjin Design.

  www.anjindesign.com

  Photograph copyright Red Glass Sphere (isolated) © Kompaniets Tara and Handsome Young Man in Hood © Nejron Photo. Licensed through Shutterstock images.

  www.shutterstock.com

  Formatting by Polgarus Studio.

  www.polgarusstudio.com

  v 3.0

  Chapter 1

  The Boy Who Died

  Death lived up to Jacob’s expectations.

  The day he died was sunny, as it was most days on the island of Oahu where he lived. Only a few miles away, bikini-clad tourists stretched out on the sand of Waikiki beach. While they toasted themselves golden brown, Jacob lay on a steel surgical table, broken and bleeding. He’d heard that when a person died they saw a tunnel that ended in a bright light. If the person moved toward the light, God or some already deceased loved one like a great-grandmother would meet them on the other side. Jacob didn’t believe it. He’d accepted that everything would end in black nothingness and, for him, it did. What he didn’t expect was that the end was just the beginning.

  The light returned. His eyes fluttered open against bright white and a face emerged from the radiance, materializing from the void. A rumbling voice called him by name. “Jacob. Jacob, can you hear me?” Behind the voice was the clink-clank of metal hitting metal and a smell like a copper penny soaked in Clorox.

  “I think he’s coming ’round,” the voice said from behind a green surgical mask. Soulful brown eyes came into focus. Spikes of pain stabbed through Jacob’s head and chest and he realized the man in scrubs was shaking him. He wanted to tell the man to stop, but a plastic dome pressed over his face. As he fought against the plastic, the tubes connected to his arm slapped against the metal pole near the gurney.

  “Relax, my man,” the face said, pressing Jacob’s arms to his sides. “The mask has to stay on. It’s oxygen and you need it.”

  In his confused state, Jacob couldn’t understand who the green man was. All he knew was pressure and pain, like he’d been torn apart and put back together.

  “Jacob, take a deep breath. Come on, kid, breathe.”

  Of its own volition, the air went in. The air went out. The pain made the air rattle in his mouth.

  “That’s it. A few more like that, Jacob. Slow and deep. Can you understand me?” the green man asked.

  “Yes,” Jacob tried to say, but his voice was nothing but a rough whisper, muffled by the oxygen mask.

  “Are you in pain?”

  He tried to say yes again but the word dissolved in his throat. He nodded slightly, too, in case the green man hadn’t heard.

  “Okay, just relax. I’m going to give you some morphine.” The green man held up a syringe with some clear liquid in it, and then locked it onto the tube in Jacob’s arm. He pressed the plunger and Jacob felt a cold ribbon twist into his vein. The pain ebbed. The light dimmed. On the ceiling there were tiles, foam squares in a steel grid that he guessed hid the wires and pipes up there. He counted the squares as he floated away, thinking of the wires and pipes under his own skin carrying the green man’s juice to all his fingers and toes.

  When the darkness swallowed him again, all the thinking his exhausted, numbed-out, maybe-damaged brain could produce was a vague feeling that he’d forgotten something. The missing thought was an irritation at the back of his skull. The more he concentrated on it, the more the memory slipped from his grasp, an oily shoelace through languid fingers.

  Chapter 2

  The Uncle Who Wasn’t

  The sound of footsteps woke Jacob in his hospital bed. He was annoyed that the nurses kept waking him up. All he wanted to do was sleep, but as it turned out hospitals were not a good place to rest.

  Without opening his eyes, he said, “I’m not hungry and I don’t need another pain pill.”

  A gruff voice answered him from the side of the bed. “That’s good because I don’t have either of those things.”

  Jacob’s lids flipped open. A stranger sat in the uncomfortable-looking chair next to his hospital bed, the pads of his fingers pressed together under his chin.

  “Who are you?” Jacob asked.

  “I’m your Uncle John. John Laudner,” the man said. He leaned forward and extended a calloused palm.

  Jacob did not take the man’s hand. “You’ve made a mistake. I don’t have an uncle and my last name isn’t Laudner. It’s Lau.”

  The man pursed his lips, his green eyes shifting to the hospital floor. He sat back in his chair, opening his mouth as if to say something and then closing it again. At last he lowered his hands, linking them at his waist. “There’s no easy way to tell you this, Jacob. I am your uncle. I am the brother of Charles Lau, formerly known as Charlie Laudner. Your father changed his name before you were born.”

  Jacob licked his parched lips and reached for the cup of water the nurse had left him. He sucked greedily on the straw before speaking. “I’ve never even heard of you.”

  “It’s a long story. You lived far away. After your father died, well, it never seemed like the right time to introduce myself.”

  “So why are you here now?”

  “Jacob, do you remember anything about the accident?”

  Jacob closed his eyes. The truth was, his brain did have an explanation for what had happened, but it was ludicrous. The memory was so far-fetched he could only believe his imagination had stitched it together to fill in the gaps. “No. I told the doctors, the last thing I remember was fighting with my mom that morning in our apartment. I don’t even remember getting into the car with her.”

  “She’s missing, Jacob.”

  “Missing?” he said, sitting up in bed despite the pain. “But she must’ve been in the car with me. How could they have rescued me and not her?”

  “You were inside the car when they found it. She wasn’t.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Your blood was on the inside of the car, Jacob. Hers was on the outside.”

  She’d had a gun. She’d been standing next to the door. He shook his head, ignoring the thought. It was a false memory, brought on by emotional and physical trauma. What had the doctor called it? Auditory and visual hallucinations: the brain’s way of making sense of the damage it incurred when his skull collided with the windshield.

  “How is that possible?”

  “They think, maybe, you were driving.”

  “I don’t have a driver�
��s license.”

  John stood up and approached the bed. He unsnapped the arm of the hospital gown Jacob was wearing, pulling it down slightly. Then he tipped up the hideaway mirror on the overbed table. The bruise that arced across Jacob’s chest looked like the top half of a large circle … or a steering wheel. He traced the edge with his finger, a rainbow of purple-hued skin. A chill ran up his spine.

  “Did I hit her?”

  John returned the thin fabric to its place. “The police don’t think so, Jacob. Her blood was on the passenger side door, not the hood of the car. You were found in a heavily wooded area of Manoa Falls. It’s only a few miles from your apartment. They think, after the accident, your mom got out of the car to get help.”

  You’d followed her there. You’d had a fight and you wanted to apologize.

  “I don’t remember,” Jacob said, but a more truthful answer would have been that the memory he had couldn’t be real. It was nonsense.

  “It’s normal that you don’t. The doc says people often block out extreme circumstances. It’s your brain’s way of protecting you from reliving the trauma.”

  “And then what? Where did she go?”

  John’s face contorted. His voice strained with emotion when he answered. “There have been abductions in the area. Nine women went missing in the last year; six were found dead. Murdered. There were signs of a struggle where they found you.”

  Jacob’s blood froze in his veins. “Are you saying, my mom might have been abducted, or worse, killed?”

  “They don’t know for sure. I’m sorry, Jacob.”

  A tear escaped down his cheek and he wiped it away with his bare hand. It had been a long time since he’d allowed himself to cry. He wasn’t about to start now. He’d survived by following two very important rules: don’t feel anything and don’t expect anything from anyone. To distract himself, he concentrated on the specifics of what happened. Why in the world would he have driven his mother’s car?

  The creature was coming for you. Your mom tried to fight it. He ignored the rogue thought. “What did I hit, anyway?”

  John repositioned himself in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “Nobody knows, Jacob. The front of the car is damaged like you hit a tree or something but they found the Toyota in the middle of the road. There wasn’t anything in front of the car. They were hoping you could remember because no one has any idea what could’ve happened. They thought maybe the damage occurred earlier and then you drove to the scene … but the car isn’t operational and your wounds were fresh when they found you. “

  “What happens now? Are they going to search for her?”

  “Yes. There’s already a group combing through Manoa Falls.”

  “I want to help.” Only the irritating tug of Jacob’s IV kept him from bounding out of bed.

  “There’s nothing you can do, Jacob. The doctor says you’ll be in here for another week and then…”

  “And then what?”

  “The social worker says you need to come home with me.”

  “With you? I don’t even know you.”

  “I am your nearest kin.”

  “Where do you even live?”

  “Paris.”

  “Paris … France?”

  “No, a different Paris. Paris, Illinois. You have an Aunt Carolyn and a cousin, Katrina. They’re waiting for us at home.”

  Home. The word annoyed Jacob. When he heard the word home, he thought of his apartment and the house he’d lived in before his dad died. He thought of how the smell of his favorite adobo chicken would fill the kitchen when his mom made it. He saw the faces of his mother and his father, bound to one another in some almost magical way. Home meant a sanctuary, as common and taken for granted as the sun rising in the morning. Wherever John was taking Jacob, it sure as hell wasn’t home.

  A wave of exhaustion overcame him. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Do I have a choice about this?” he croaked.

  There was a long stretch of silence. “No,” the man said. The word was a guillotine.

  It’s for the best. You’re not safe here.

  Jacob closed his eyes. If he squeezed them shut tight enough, maybe his supposed uncle and the rest of the world would go away. A numb calm crept over him as he gave himself over to the future, unable to fight what would be, unable to care anymore. It crossed his mind that another person might pray in a situation like this, but Jacob didn’t. Who would he pray to? If there was one thing his fifteen years of life had taught him, it was that there was nothing above him but sky. To believe in God would mean believing that He had allowed the tragedy that was Jacob’s life in the first place. He didn’t want to know a God who made a war then killed off people’s fathers in it. No, Jacob was sure he was alone in this. Alone with an uncle he’d never even met.

  Chapter 3

  The Memory

  Jacob lands in a crouch, knee deep in ferns and bromeliads, shoulder to shoulder with bamboo. Wet leaves brush against his arms and legs as he turns in a circle. There is no path here but he’s familiar with the trees. He is sure he’s been here before.

  Dark clouds roll in overhead, faster than in real life, and the forest grows dim under their ominous bellies. Panic swells in his chest. Jacob launches himself into the forest. He darts through the trees, casting frantic looks over his shoulder.

  Up ahead, the forest opens and Jacob watches a car climb a gravel roadway. It is his mother’s. The faded blue Toyota Celica is unmistakable. From the driver’s seat, she emerges, but she is not the woman he remembers arguing with that morning. He has never seen this Lillian Lau, a strong soldier of a woman in a long-sleeved black T-shirt and military pants. The hilt of a knife glints from a sheath on her leg. Her jet-black hair is swept up into a ponytail and her brown eyes are deadly serious. She is staring in the opposite direction, frowning at a particularly dark stretch of forest. She reaches across her body and draws a gun from a holster under her arm.

  “MOM!”

  “Jacob?” She turns toward him. Her face pales. Her eyes grow wide with terror. “Run, Jacob! RUN!” she yells, and that’s when he notices it behind her. At first he can’t actually see it but he can feel it. He can smell it—sulfur and something sweet. And although he doesn’t know exactly what it is, he hates it with every fiber of his being.

  “Behind you,” he calls out. She moves to the front of the car and points her gun at the darkness that emerges from the trees, flowing forward like oil in water. It is a horrific abomination—scaly black skin, enormous leathery wings, and yellow eyes that lock on his mother. It’s the sight of its talons that makes him run faster.

  Crack. Crack. Bullets fly from the gun but the creature melts into the thick ripple it was when it oozed from the woods. It shifts right and his mom’s eyes track it until it disappears again. Without lowering her gun, she feels for the knife on her leg. Jacob reaches the car.

  “GET. IN. NOW,” she commands.

  He obeys, sliding in behind the steering wheel. That’s when he realizes the car is still running. The keys dangle from the ignition.

  Never taking her eyes off the woods, she backs toward the passenger side door. He thinks she will crawl in next to him and they will escape whatever this is.

  Lightning-quick talons rip across her chest. Jacob screams as blood sprays the window … his mother’s blood. Somehow, she is able to sink the knife into the shoulder of the beast before she drops. The creature backs away from her body with an ethereal howl that makes Jacob’s hair stand on end.

  It rears back in pain, placing itself in front of the vehicle. On instinct, Jacob slams the Toyota into drive and pounds on the accelerator. The hood crumples accordion style as he collides with the thing. He sees a flash of blood on glass … his blood.

  And then there is nothing but the tunnel, the light, and the man in the green mask.

  Chapter 4

  The Girl Next Door

  Three weeks later, Paris, Illinois…

  Jacob busied himself
stacking wood in the shape of a pyramid within the brick walls of the Laudners’ fireplace. The house smelled like dust and dried flowers. Building a fire was a welcome distraction but he also hoped the smell of burning oak would improve the stale air.

  “That looks mighty professional. Where’d you learn to build a fire like that?” Uncle John said from behind him.

  “My dad,” Jacob responded.

  “Wouldn’t have thought there’d be much opportunity, growing up in Hawaii and all.”

  Jacob glanced toward John as he brought a match toward the kindling and watched the flames lick up the logs. He didn’t respond.

  “You can hardly tell you were in an accident anymore. Your hair covers the scar. How’s the one on your chest?”

  “Healing,” Jacob said.

  “It’s a miracle you didn’t break anything.”

  Moving from his place beside the flames to one of the two sage green recliners that faced the fire in the Laudners’ living room, Jacob didn’t respond to John’s comment. While it was true from the outside he didn’t appear injured, on the inside he was damaged. He wasn’t sleeping well and sometimes the memory would come back as vivid as if it was happening all over again. The doctors said his symptoms could happen with a traumatic head injury, but knowing his condition was normal wasn’t much of a comfort.

  “I have some people cleaning out the apartment,” John said, sitting down in the other recliner. “The boxes should be here in a week or two.”