The Soul Keepers Series, Book 1 Page 16

  Mak and Rhett turned to the sound. Basil was coming up the steps with a still-smoldering hole burned into the sleeve of his new blazer and, despite the increasing heat of the fire, his lips looking bluish. Rhett took another glance at Mak and realized that hers were the same way. He put his free hand up, examining his fingers—they were pale, losing what little color they had left after becoming a syllektor. Something else occurred to him: He was no longer coughing—none of them were. After only a second, Rhett understood why—they’d all stopped breathing. The fire had officially eaten up whatever oxygen was left in the building and replaced it with thick, poisonous smoke. It had killed their lungs.

  How were they going to fix that?

  “Listen,” somebody else said. It was Tattooed Guy, still ducking and dodging and blocking swipes from the psychon, who was getting angrier and angrier by the second. He must have gathered a soul as well. “I hate to interrupt, but…” He gestured frantically at the psychon, its beady, glaring eyes reflecting the stuttering light of the fire surrounding them.

  Mak sighed. She made her way in that direction.

  “So,” Rhett said to Basil. “Think you’re gonna find another blazer back on the ship?”

  “Don’t start with me, mate,” Basil replied. Rhett couldn’t help but grin.

  Mak screamed then, and her body was tossed across the opening of the stairwell. The psychon had gotten a decent punch in somehow. Her machete skittered across the linoleum as she flew through the air. Basil and Rhett were there, on the other side of the opening, to catch her before she could fall into it. She smacked against the banister, dangling however many floors up above the scorching fire below, and the wood nearly broke under all three of their weights. But the boys pulled her up just before it could collapse.

  Back on the other side of the building, Tattooed Guy was losing his battle.

  The psychon had its gnarly claw around Tattooed Guy’s throat, holding him up a foot off the ground. The psychon’s face was right up against the syllektor’s, its toothy grin spread apart, inhaling. Tattooed Guy was flailing, kicking out, grabbing the psychon’s wrist with both hands, trying to loosen its grip. From between Tattooed Guy’s lips, a swirl of white smoke came twisting out. It seemed to be fighting against the current, fighting to go back into the peaceful embrace of the syllektor’s body. But it was no use.

  When the soul had been completely removed from the syllektor, it floated between them like a cloud, waiting to be eaten up by the psychon. In one swift motion, the psychon lifted its skeletal arm in the air, still clutching Tattooed Guy around the neck, and brought it rushing back down over the stairwell’s opening. It flung Tattooed Guy down through the center of the building, down into the inferno.

  Rhett took his chance, while the psychon was still positioned over the drop and the soul was still floating in midair, helpless, vulnerable. He took two running steps … and jumped, kicking off the faulty banister, which snapped under his feet. It gave him the leverage he needed, though. He leaped across the open stairwell, glancing down at the uncontrolled flames at the base of the building, and aimed his knuckle blade right at the psychon’s face.

  The creature roared, loudly, angrily. And then it brought one of its massive fists up in a wide arch. The punch hit Rhett square in his ribs, and he heard the sickening sound of something breaking inside him. His body went limp, hurled into the hallway where the fire had blackened and charred every surface.

  Rhett hit the floor. Hard.

  “Uh … fellas?” It was Theo, from somewhere nearby. Rhett was having trouble getting his bearings. The world felt upside down for a moment. But he could hear the faint edge of panic in Theo’s voice. He had to help him. Slowly, Rhett tried to find his way to his feet.

  A second later, though, and he could hear the sounds of a scuffle back by the stairs—Mak and Basil and the other psychon, the bastard who had sent Rhett flying. There were hideous noises—bones breaking, metal twanging, tormented screeching. And then the heavy footfalls of the psychon, running, running down the hall toward Rhett.

  He braced himself for another blow, one that might end his existence as a syllektor.

  But the blow never came. The psychon came sprinting down the fire-choked hallway and leaped over Rhett, completely ignoring him.

  Rhett turned over, finding the floor and using it to steady himself as he sat on all fours. His body was weak, breaking down. There was no oxygen in it anymore.

  He looked up just in time to see one psychon join the other, both lunging at Theo, who had been backed into a dead end, with the walls and floor engulfed in flame behind him. The psychons tackled Theo, and all three of them fell together into the floor, into the fire. The wood beneath the linoleum caved in, crumbling downward. Theo disappeared with the psychons in a splash of embers and smoke.

  “Theo!” Rhett cried. But it was more like a croak.

  All around him, the walls began to bow and crack. The ceiling began to come down in heavy, flaming clumps. Rhett pulled himself together, denying his body its desire to fall to the floor and wait to be crushed. He got up.

  And again, he ran.

  * * *

  The hallway fell apart around Rhett as he ran as fast as he could back to where Mak and Basil were waiting. Mak was leaning against Basil, the side of her shirt torn and the flesh beneath it gouged. The sound of falling debris chased Rhett out into the stairwell, and a cloud of smoke and dust encircled him when he made it. It looked like it was just the single hallway that had collapsed. The stairs were holding strong. For now.

  “We have to get out of here,” Mak said. Her lips were bluer than ever, and her eyes were bright red, leaking tears.

  “What about Theo?” Rhett asked. Their voices were gravelly whispers.

  “If he’s in one piece, he’ll find his way back,” Basil replied. “Now let’s get back to the bloody ship.”

  They made their way back down the stairs, Basil helping Mak and Rhett leaning into his damaged side. The building seemed empty now. There were no syllektors down any of the halls and no psychons to speak of. It was just the fire and the dying building and …

  Rhett stopped a floor above where they needed to be. He had been hoping to himself that the door back to the Harbinger would still be open. But now … now …

  The push hummed around him, curling its unseen finger at him to follow it down the nearest hall. It pulsed in his head, heavy as a heartbeat and insistent as a drum. There was still a soul to be taken back there somewhere. He had no choice. He let the push guide him.

  “Rhett?” Basil said, calling to him. “Rhett, what the hell? Mate!”

  Rhett ignored him. The push wouldn’t let him go. But even as he moved down the hall, he could sense the other two behind him, there to protect him. Maybe they could feel it, too. Maybe not. It didn’t matter.

  He found her half in and half out of an open apartment door, lying in a crater formed by the partially collapsed floor. She couldn’t have been older than fourteen or fifteen. Her face was calm but also pained. Fire danced around her, mingling with clusters of debris and fluttering across the fallen beam that was on top of one of her legs.

  The other two peered over Rhett’s shoulders, trying to see what he had brought them here for. There was a feeling of quiet uneasiness among all three of them. How had everyone missed this girl? Why had the psychons left her behind? Maybe they hadn’t. Maybe they were going to come back for her soul any second now.

  The push did its thing—it pushed. It pushed with the force of a stampede of buffalo. If Rhett didn’t get down and collect this girl’s soul, it was going to rip him apart.

  He fell to his knees beside her. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mak and Basil steadying themselves, preparing for a fight should another psychon show up. They watched the open end of the hallway.

  Static filled Rhett’s ears, and buried within the static: a heartbeat. The girl’s heartbeat. She was alive but fading. He was amazed that she was still breathing, although it wa
s hitched and labored, an unsteady wheeze. The soot-smudged window was there at the very end of the hall, open just a couple of inches. It must have been letting in enough oxygen to keep the girl from suffocating.

  But her spare time was about to run out.

  Rhett slipped his hand into the girl’s palm. At once, her eyes opened. They shifted and found Rhett’s. They pleaded silently, for comfort, for painlessness, for joy. It was the same as every other soul that Rhett had collected … except for one thing.

  The push didn’t go away.

  Normally, the moment that Rhett and the others reached the soul they were intended to take, the push fell away, clicking off like a radio. Now, though, the push persisted with the same intense, unceasing force. It wanted something else from Rhett.

  He tried to concentrate, but his ears were filled with the static sound of death and the undercurrent of the girl’s slowing heartbeat. He could feel Mak watching him. He stared into the girl’s eyes.

  “It’s okay,” he started, and paused. Time yawned open. Rhett’s heart gave an unexpected thump in his chest. And then another. It was an involuntary sensation, something that he felt without having to consciously switch on his senses. It thumped again … and again. He saw the image of his own limp body hanging upside down in his mother’s wrecked car. It flickered in front of his eyes like a bad film reel. He saw the waitress in Arizona and the coffee pot sinking toward the ground in slow motion. He saw the boy in Brazil. He saw the first soul he had ever gathered himself. And then he saw the red, quivering fist of this girl’s heart, flexing in her chest, sending whatever life force it could to the rest of her body. There wasn’t much left. Rhett’s heart beat again, in time with hers.

  In some distant world, past all the static and flashing images and synchronized heartbeats, there was the sound of shattering glass. As if from a thousand miles away, a psychon screamed. And Rhett knew it had come for the girl. The force of her death had spread far enough to hold one of them back, it seemed. Or maybe there was something else, something awful, that kept leading the psychons back to them.

  Rhett didn’t have time to think about it. He knew what he had to do.

  “You’re going to be okay,” he said, and all at once the world around him snapped back into motion. The push broke away, fading like the pressurized cuff of a blood pressure monitor. The psychon roared from some other part of the building, mixing with the sounds of the building as it kept on crumbling. Basil had disappeared, maybe to try and head off the psychon. But Rhett could still see Mak in his peripheral vision, and she was staring at him with her mouth open and her eyes squinted. “You are not going to die today,” Rhett continued.

  “What are you doing?” Mak said.

  He ignored her, gripping the girl’s hand even tighter and holding her gaze. “This is not the way your life will end. I am your anchor. To life. To living. Hold on to me. This is not your time.”

  “Rhett, what the hell are you doing?” Mak yelled.

  Around Rhett and the girl, something strange was happening. The little fires that were sprinkled across the debris began to stutter and spark, turning purple. The smoke that plumed in the air was filled with tiny lightning. The beam that was crushing the girl’s leg was no longer burning but surrounded by jagged bolts of purplish-blue electricity. The beam cracked in half suddenly, falling away in two pieces, releasing the girl from its trap.

  “Oh my God,” Mak breathed. “What … what are you?”

  Rhett paid no attention. “I don’t know why you’re here,” he said to the girl. A single tear fell from her eye and rolled down her cheek, which was blooming with the first faint roses of color again. “But I’m telling you that you’re not ready.”

  The girl’s limbs and muscles stiffened, gaining strength. She continued to stare at Rhett, but there was a focus in her eyes now that hadn’t been there before. She was seeing him, really seeing him. He was glad to have her attention.

  “You are not ready to die,” Rhett said again.

  The girl began to sob.

  Rhett let his hand slip from hers, and as he did, the sound of the strengthening heartbeat that was nestled inside her chest dropped away. The girl couldn’t see him anymore. She was looking at everything in the hall but him.

  In that same moment, the window at the end of the hall shattered inward, and a dark, shrouded figure filled up most of its frame, silhouetted by the bright sunshine behind it.

  The girl screamed, and Rhett sat back in surprise.

  “Ma’am?” the shrouded figure said. And as it leaned into the window, Rhett could see the shape of a helmet and the outline of a gas mask. A firefighter. “Ma’am, can you make it to the window?”

  Rhett stood, watching the scene play out, feeling the sense of his own heartbeat dwindle out of him again. Strangely, he was happy to feel it fade.

  Mak was there, looking at him with wide eyes. “What—”

  One of the other apartment doors behind her exploded, the doorframe buckling and an eruption of plaster and dust filling the hallway. Mak spun, ready for another fight even though her body was completely devoid of color and looked as if it was about to fall over.

  The girl on the floor screamed again.

  “Ma’am, we need to get you out of there now!” the firefighter yelled from the window.

  A psychon stepped out into the hall. It looked colossal in the small space, having to cock its head to keep from putting it through the ceiling. This close and this still, Rhett could see every gross detail of the psychon’s body, every pockmark in its bones, every red, twitching thread of muscle. Its tattered cloak hung loose and ratty around its wide shoulders, and the hood—for once—dropped a shadow across its skull face, leaving only the macabre grin of its teeth. Rhett could hear the slow, wheezing sound of the psychon’s breathing.

  It stepped forward, crushing a spiderweb of cracks into the floor, its claws dancing with excitement. It looked at the girl, who was sitting up now, holding her knees to her chest, frozen with panic. She couldn’t see Rhett or the psychon, only the destruction that was raining down around her.

  Come on, Rhett thought. Get up.

  The psychon looked at Rhett, then back to the girl. Rhett squeezed the handle on his knuckle blade, preparing to strike as soon as the ugly-ass thing was close enough. Even though it couldn’t exactly make facial expressions, Rhett could still see a certain curiosity on the psychon’s face, in its tiny white eyes. It sniffed at the air, looking for a soul to consume … but now there was none. The soul that it had come for was no longer available.

  Basil came thundering down the hall and pulled up short behind the psychon. The creature gave him a passing glance and then stared hard at Rhett. Rhett stared into the deep craters of its eyes as it tried to figure out what had happened, why the soul that it had smelled was somehow sewn back into the girl’s body.

  The psychon roared in anger and frustration, the sound of it like a small nuclear bomb going off in the confines of the hall.

  Then it turned and charged back through the wrecked doorway that it had come from. It vanished into smoke and darkness, making crashing sounds as it tore back through the building.

  “What in the bloody hell happened here, mate?” Basil said. His voice was laced with suspicion but overcome with panic. They didn’t have much time left.

  “Don’t let that psychon get away!” Mak suddenly yelled from beside Rhett. “It knows what he did! Basil, it knows what he did!”

  Basil gave them both another confused look and then turned and ran after the psychon, scythes in hand.

  Beside them, the girl was slowly pulling herself to her feet, staring with wide, bloodshot eyes and an open mouth at the damage, at the fire that was still crackling and snapping at the building. Rhett glanced at her, willing her to go with the firefighter … and she did. Her eyes were still red and wide, and her lower lip shook, but she was gripping the firefighter’s gloved hand, letting him help her out of the rubble and ruin of the collapsing building. />
  Rhett turned back to Mak, and she took a step away from him.

  “Mak, I—” he started, moving toward her again.

  “Don’t,” she said. And again she stepped back from him, this time with her machete held out in front of her.

  Rhett stared at the weapon. “Mak…”

  She hesitated. “I … We just have to get back to the ship.”

  “Please, Mak,” Rhett tried. “You have to know I’m just as freaked out as you are.”

  “Trust me,” she said. “I don’t think you are.” She took a couple more steps backward, indicating that she was heading back to the Harbinger, with or without him.

  Before he followed her, Rhett looked over his shoulder again, at the open window where the girl and the firefighter had already disappeared.

  “She’ll probably spend the rest of her life thinking she’s crazy,” he murmured.

  He didn’t think Mak had heard him, but she said bitterly, “The rest of her life was supposed to be five minutes ago. Let’s move. Now.”

  * * *

  The building echoed and shuddered with the sounds of its collapse. The fire on the bottom floor was completely out of control, burning with an intensity that sent heat waves warbling up the stairwell.

  Mak tried to keep up the prisoner routine with Rhett, but as the building grew less stable, she gave up and ran beside him. She held on to her machete, though.

  The steps buckled and cracked under Rhett’s feet as they ran down them. At some point, Rhett realized that Basil was on the other side of him, chasing the steps down to the next floor, where the doorway back to the ship was still hopefully open.

  “Bastard got away,” Basil mumbled, answering the unasked question.

  The three of them dove off the steps and onto the landing just as something fell apart beneath them and the flight of stairs broke away from the wall, tilting sideways. From above, massive hunks of fiery debris came plummeting down. The sound was enormous and terrifying.

  Rhett was sure that when they rounded the corner to the door, it would be closed. But as they entered the hall, he could see the open door and the inside of the Harbinger behind it. The hallway was coated in fire, licking at them as they sprinted down the hall, with the building coming down behind them.