Unquiet Souls: Project Demon Hunters: Book One

by Pope, Christine

  Michael looked at the camera, not at her, as he spoke. “A far greater proportion of the population has psychic talents than most people think. These talents can lie buried in us, but are then brought out in moments of stress. There was a reason why the demons made Audrey the focus of their earlier attack — they saw some kind of threat in her.”

  She found that claim hard to believe. What did the demons think she was going to do…psychoanalyze them into oblivion?

  But she didn’t bother to contradict him. For some reason, she was drawn away from where he stood, toward the large dressing area, which had a pair of mirrors hanging above a wide, granite-topped vanity, and a door in the wall, which she assumed must lead to a walk-in closet.

  Just looking at the closet was enough to send a cold shiver down her spine. She glanced away from it, toward one of the mirrors. Reflected in it was her face, which looked pale and pinched and tense, as though all the makeup Daniela had so carefully applied a half hour earlier had somehow managed to erase itself.

  That wasn’t the worst, though. Behind her reflected self, Audrey thought she detected a large, shadowy figure growing, coming closer toward her. She startled and looked over her shoulder, but all she could see was Michael walking into the dressing area, Chris and Susan a few paces behind him, recording everything.

  Audrey could feel herself frown as she turned back toward the mirror — only to see a strange, cloudy darkness roiling within it, tendrils reaching out to wrap themselves around the gilded frame. The screeching laughter sounded in her ears again, although, judging by the way she was the only one who flinched and took a terrified step backward, no one else could hear it.

  Behind her, Michael muttered a curse, then came over to stand squarely at her side. “Stand your ground,” he said clearly. Was he enunciating for the cameras even now?

  Stand her ground? She was ready to run and keep on running. But no, she couldn’t do that. She needed to stay here at Michael’s side and pretend to be brave for the cameras.

  “This is not your home,” he went on, now addressing the entity in the mirror. “This is not your place. Go now!”

  The laughter only grew louder, even as the tendrils began to stretch across the wall, reaching for the other mirror, which so far seemed blessedly empty. Since they stood behind Michael and Audrey, she couldn’t see either Susan’s or Chris’s expressions, but she noted how Michael’s eyes narrowed and his shoulders hitched slightly, and wondered if he’d finally heard that inhuman laughter.

  To her dismay, he stepped forward, moving closer to the mirror. She wanted to grab his arm, drag him back, but it felt as though enormously heavy weights held her in place, preventing her from doing anything but watching in horror.

  Slowly, he reached into his pocket and drew out a small vial. Holy water? If Audrey hadn’t been so terrified, every limb cold and as heavy as though her bones had suddenly turned to stone, she might have found herself laughing nervously. Holy water was for horror movies, wasn’t it?

  Apparently, Michael didn’t think so, because he pulled the stopper out of the vial and said, “This place is not yours. You have no claim on it. The light will not allow you here.”

  And he splashed the contents of the vial on the dreadful, smoky figure that clung to the mirror’s frame and the wall next to it.

  For a second, nothing happened. Then the laughter turned to a high-pitched screech, so shrill Audrey thought for sure it had blown out her eardrums, that if she’d had the strength to put her hands up to her ears, her fingertips would have come away smeared with blood. Even as she winced, the frame of the mirror bowed oddly, behaving more as if it was made of rubber than painted hardwood. And then it snapped back into place, the glass it held shattering into a thousand pieces.

  That paralyzing weight now gone from her limbs, Audrey threw up her hands to protect her face, expecting to feel all those tiny shards of glass needling their way into her skin. But even as she tensed against the onslaught, it was gone. She stared at the wall, not sure of what she was seeing, while her heart pounded in her chest and every nerve ending seemed to shrill with an overload of adrenaline.

  The mirror was whole and untouched, as if it had never held that horrible shadow, had never been broken by a supernatural force she couldn’t begin to comprehend.

  Michael turned toward Audrey, smiling slightly. He slipped the now-empty vial into his pocket, then looked past her shoulder to address his crew.

  “You get that?”

  * * *

  They sat at one of the metal tables that bordered the pool. Despite her earlier misgivings about the weather, the sun had come out, was now shining brightly enough that normally Audrey would have taken off the leather jacket she wore, finding it too warm.

  Not now, though. In that particular moment, she wasn’t sure she would ever be warm again. Her hands still shook, and there was a core of cold in her body that the sun couldn’t touch.

  Brooke, the blonde P.A., had fetched them coffee. Chris was off to one side, watching the playback on his video camera and smiling slightly. Audrey didn’t know where Susan, the sound technician, had disappeared to, but she knew if she were in Susan’s place, she would have been well on her way to the least haunted place she could find…preferably one that offered alcohol.

  Michael watched her with some concern. “Are you all right, Audrey?”

  “Define ‘all right.’” She sipped her coffee, wishing someone had thought to slip some whiskey or cognac into it. Even though she didn’t normally drink hard liquor, right then she thought she’d try anything to steady her nerves.

  “It can be a little startling the first time.” He drank some of his own coffee, then set the steel travel mug down on the patio table. “And, to be fair, I wasn’t really expecting something quite that…spectacular.”

  “What were you expecting?” Audrey asked. She didn’t bother to keep the accusation out of her voice; it was pretty clear to her that he’d been keeping some important particulars of this case close to the vest. In order to surprise her, make sure her reactions were genuine?

  Oh, they’d been genuine, all right.

  “I didn’t know for sure.” His eyes met hers, clear, earnest. The sunlight seemed to sparkle in the gold flecks in their depths. “You need to believe that, Audrey. People don’t always keep the best records when it comes to hauntings or possessions. They don’t want others to think they’re crazy. A lot of this stuff gets swept under the rug.”

  “But there were cold spots, and smells, and strange voices.”

  “Yes, all those things. Auditory manifestations are rarely recorded, though.”

  “Did you get them this time?”

  He nodded. “Oh, yes. Susan’s very happy about that.”

  “I’m glad someone is,” Audrey muttered, then took another sip of coffee. “So…what now? I mean, you’ve gotten some pretty spectacular footage, but I don’t see how this brings us any closer to clearing the house of…whatever is in there.”

  “I’ll analyze the footage, consult my library. If necessary, there are a few experts I can call.”

  “I thought you were the expert.”

  Michael gave her a thin smile. “I’m a jack of all trades compared to these guys. But they don’t want to be on camera, don’t want to be known as going on the record. Still, they should be able to offer some insights, if it comes to that.”

  Audrey didn’t bother to hide the hopefulness in her voice. “Does that mean we’re done for the day?”

  “I think so. I told the owners that we’d need to be here for at least two days, possibly three, so we have some time.” Now his gaze was appraising, although not in the way she was used to. “You probably need this time to assess and adjust. It can be hard, coming to terms with the realization that the universe is a much bigger place than you thought.”

  That was one way of putting it. Part of her brain still didn’t want to acknowledge what she’d just seen, was trying to come up with plausible ways that the spect
er in the mirror could have been a trick. Audrey would be the first to admit that she didn’t know a lot about movie magic, but it seemed to her that the shattered mirror and the fog that had boiled out of it would have required some fairly sophisticated practical effects. Yes, it would probably be easy to pull off that sort of thing with CGI, but she’d been there. She’d seen it for herself, heard it. Maybe there was a way to create all those phenomena without resorting to computers, but she didn’t see how.

  Which meant…it was all real?

  “I’m not sure I’m ready to go there quite yet,” she said, then drank some more coffee. It was strong and hot, doing its best to melt the chilly core of dread that seemed to be coiled in her belly.

  Michael’s eyebrows lifted. “Really? After what you just saw?”

  “It was pretty spectacular, but I’m not sure it proves anything. You and your crew could have set all that up to get a rise out of me. Like you said, it looked great on camera.”

  Now he appeared downright angry, golden glints flashing from his eyes, lips thinning. “You don’t really believe I would do something as low as that, do you?”

  “I don’t know,” she said frankly. “Your history makes it pretty clear that you’re not above a bit of showmanship if that’s what it takes to get people to buy your books or DVDs, or subscribe to your YouTube channel.”

  His free hand, the one not holding the mug of coffee, clamped down on the tabletop. “You’re pretty cynical for someone who studied at the Rhine Institute.”

  “Just because parapsychology interests me doesn’t mean I’m willing to believe that demons lurk around every corner,” Audrey shot back. “Scientific exploration of the outer limits of the human mind is a very different thing from believing in some sort of Old Testament version of good and evil, complete with demon hordes.”

  For a long moment, Michael didn’t say anything, although she could tell from the way his chest rose and fell, his tight grip on the handle of his coffee mug, he was still angry. When he spoke, his tone was controlled but cutting. “I would think you’d be one of the first people to recognize there is very great evil in the world.”

  Audrey winced. Then she pushed out her chair and stood. She knew if she stayed there, she might say something she would regret later. As frightening as the day’s events had been, she knew she needed to stick this out, and that certainly wasn’t going to happen if she allowed herself to get in a knock-down argument with Michael Covenant. Still, that didn’t mean she couldn’t leave. He’d already told her they were done for the day.

  “I’m going to call a Lyft,” she said distinctly, then turned on her heel and stalked away.

  He didn’t say anything, or try to stop her.

  Somehow, she knew he wouldn’t.

  Chapter 4

  No one else tried to keep Audrey from leaving, either, which meant Michael must have spoken the truth when he said he needed to take a breather, consult his books, maybe talk to some experts if necessary. She took her purse, which she’d left in the guest house they were using for the wardrobe and makeup room, and then got out her phone, opened the app, and called for a Lyft to come get her. Belatedly, as she was climbing into the driver’s Toyota Camry, she realized that she was still wearing the clothes Kathleen had given her from the show’s wardrobe, but since no one had stopped her, she figured it wasn’t that big a deal.

  Just as well. She didn’t think she could handle the delay.

  It felt strange to walk into her house, look at the little metal clock on the mantel, and realize it was only one-thirty in the afternoon. So much had happened since she left this morning, it felt more like an entire day had passed.

  Now that the sun was out, bright daylight streamed through the windows, gleaming on the restored oak floor. All was quiet except for the ticking of the clock, and the scolding of a pair of jays somewhere in the backyard. A serene, prosaic scene, and yet Audrey still felt cold, even though the T-shirt she wore under her borrowed leather jacket seemed to stick to her skin. She hadn’t realized she was sweating that much.

  Usually, if she had some spare time and needed to relax, she would draw a bath, let herself lie in the warm water and breathe in the scent of her favorite bath bomb — the one with the cucumber/melon scent — and maybe have half a glass of white wine to unwind. Now, though, the very thought of lying naked and exposed in the tub made another shiver pass over her.

  Don’t let him get to you, she told herself.

  Unfortunately, it was probably too late for that.

  She went to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water, then drank half of it in one large gulp. When it hit her stomach, she realized she hadn’t eaten anything since the toast and yogurt she’d hurriedly wolfed down at five-thirty that morning. However, despite her physical hunger, Audrey could tell that she really didn’t want to eat anything. Her nerves jangled and her hands felt shaky, although that could have simply been from too much caffeine and not enough food.

  Michael Covenant’s words kept echoing in her mind, no matter how hard she tried to push them away.

  I would think you’d be one of the first people to recognize there is very great evil in the world.

  Never mind that good and evil were slippery concepts, and not ones that someone with her background liked to throw around with abandon. A therapist was supposed to say that while actions could be evil, people weren’t. They were simply acting out their own neuroses, their own world views.

  And yet, Audrey still had a hard time believing that the man who’d killed her parents wasn’t evil. He’d never said why he did it. There hadn’t been a note, or a manifesto left behind. He’d allowed himself to be arrested, and then was found dead in his cell three days after capture. No sign of any trauma, no obvious evidence of a heart attack — which would have been odd, since he was only in his early twenties — no poison, nothing.

  The media called it the Waikiki Massacre, even though technically the gunman had fired down from his room on the eleventh floor of the Hyatt Regency onto crowded Kalakaua Avenue and not onto the beach itself. Not that it mattered — by the time he was done, forty-two people had been killed, including Audrey’s parents.

  They’d gone to Hawaii to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary. At the time, she was fifteen years old. Her aunt Deb — her mother’s older sister — was staying with Audrey while her parents were out of town…and she ended up staying through the whole ordeal and afterward, renting out her own house so her niece could stay at her high school and be surrounded by her friends, could have something of a normal life despite the tragedy that had struck, seemingly from nowhere. Her maternal grandparents made some token protests about taking her in, but they’d just sold their home in Murrieta and bought a condo in Scottsdale for the winter months and an RV for travel in the summer, and weren’t in any real position to act as her guardians. And Audrey’s paternal grandfather was dead, and her grandmother in a fifty-five-plus community in Florida, so that meant Deb was the only real choice.

  In some ways, the gunman fit the typical profile of a mass shooter — he was a white male, a little younger than most mass shooters, but the difference wasn’t terribly anomalous. His parents proclaimed that he’d never shown any interest in guns, had never exhibited any traits that might have been warning signs. In a way, despite her grief, Audrey had felt almost sorry for them, for their utter bewilderment at the tragedy that had hit their family as well. The shooter apparently had younger siblings, but the whole family went into hiding not too long after the massacre, concerned for their safety.

  As for Audrey, her aunt Deb kept her from spiraling into her own anger and sorrow. She made sure her niece saw a therapist, did everything in her power to ensure Audrey wasn’t permanently scarred by the event. Because she was a minor when the shooting occurred, she was off-limits to reporters after both she and her aunt made it clear that they didn’t want to be interviewed. Besides, there were plenty of other angry surviving family members who were more than happy
to talk to the press, to lobby for better gun-control laws. While Audrey understood their anger and the way they were channeling it, she didn’t get involved. She graduated from high school, went to Pomona College in nearby Claremont. Audrey had always suspected that her aunt had something to do with that — she was an English professor at Scripps, another of the Claremont Colleges, and so it was entirely possible she’d pulled a few strings to make sure her niece was admitted, even though she was a good student, if not a stellar one.

  At any rate, Audrey had done her best to put the past behind her. Possibly her parents would have been surprised by her interest in parapsychology, but she guessed they would be proud to know that she’d gotten her master’s degree, had graduated without as much student debt as many of her peers, thanks to scholarships and grants and the part-time jobs she worked the entire time she was in school. Of course, it also helped that her parents’ life insurance had paid off the house, which Deb ceded back to her once she was out of college and working full-time.

  Well, mostly working. Audrey knew she needed to do a little better on that front. If she’d screwed things up with Michael Covenant by storming away from the Whitcomb mansion today, then she’d have to get her act together and start hustling for clients for real.

  The roof creaked slightly and she startled, nearly dropping the water glass she held. Through the open window, she heard the rustling of the willow tree in the backyard, its fronds trailing over the small pond with its miniature waterfall her father had so carefully constructed when she was fifteen.

  Just the wind. Audrey knew she really needed to get herself together, because she couldn’t be jumping at every noise, every shadow. That was no way for an adult to function.