I dove out of the way just in time, only to hear the rack of bottles smash and shatter against a display against the wall in a tremendous explosion of glass. Shards sliced the flesh across the top of my hands where they covered my head. Something bit deeply into my calf, just above my boot where my pant leg had ridden up, but I didn’t cry out. Lifting my head and turning slightly, I saw a jagged piece of curved glass four inches long sticking out of my leg. On my feet again, I reached down and yanked the piece out. Warm blood trickled down into my boot. Back to my feet, I searched for Emma.
“Emma?” So consumed with fear for her, I didn’t notice the soul eater upon me until the cold of its shadow fell over me. I whipped around, my head snapping back so I could look up into its hazy face. The dark sucking holes for eyes and a mouth appeared as it had when it was incorporeal.
“Chevalier,” the creature hissed through a mouth never used before.
“Soul eater,” I nodded back. I wanted it to believe I was still unafraid, but a soul eater becoming solid went against everything I’d ever been told. It had been a long time since fear had touched my heart.
Reaching into my heavy coat, I pulled out an opalescent moonstone the size of my palm and brandished it out toward the soul eater – the only useful tool I could smuggle through the metal detector. Most people knew it as a symbol of peace and harmony, but I knew it to be an amplifier to my power. I yelled out to the soul eater, “Hominay, regeta, questano.”
It threw back its massive head and let out a raspy chortle. Despite the light emanating from the moonstone reaching out toward the soul eater, the beast swept its massive arm, smacking me across the room, my body slammed into another rack of wine bottles. Bottles shattered under my weight. Corks popped with enthusiasm, followed by a hissing spray of liquid.
The breath had been knocked out of me, but my armor-lined clothing protected me from any broken glass. Wine dripped down the back of my head as I sat, gathering my wits.
From my new angle I could see Emma flattened against the floor behind a rack. Her eyes trained on me with a mixture of fear and wonder. Travis was crouched over her. He began to pull her up and toward the back exit, but they were too slow. The soul eater advanced on them. I tried to yell for them to look out, but the words came out as a wheeze after my hard impact. The soul eater hovered over them now. Travis’s body trembled, warring with its own fight or flight instinct. Glasses askew, Emma blinked up at the cloud as if she weren’t quite sure she could believe her eyes and was trying to wake herself up from a dream.
“Propheros,” the soul eater hissed at Travis.
Holy gods of creation. The soul eater just named the Propheros, which could only mean one thing: the time of darkness was almost upon us.
CHAPTER THREE
It felt like I’d swallowed the moonstone and it had dropped down to the pit of my stomach with a sickening thud. It couldn’t be. The Propheros? Here?
Launching myself from the broken racks, I pulled out my moonstone again.
“Illiamos,” I shouted, throwing it up toward the creature. The spirit made flesh turned to see the moonstone just as it exploded into pure white light. It wailed as its form exploded with the light of my will, amplified by the moonstone. I shut my eyes against the blast, throwing up an arm to brace against the rush of energy.
When I opened my eyes, I saw it had returned to its incorporeal form. Again, I struggled to comprehend what was happening. If my Masters were here, they could instruct me what to do.
I already felt the dark mist straining to regain its solid form, and without another moonstone I was out of options. Racing to Travis and Emma, I yanked them by their arms to their feet, then ushered them out the back door.
“What in the hell was that?” Travis’s voice broke. He kept pace with me but tugged his arm from my grip once we were outside in the frosty glare of midafternoon light.
The pine trees surrounding the liquor store glistened with a layer of frost, their needles tinkling against each other in glassy laughter. The wine coating the back of my head instantly froze, but I ignored the unpleasant sensation. I continued pulling Emma forward as she stumbled. Her panting emitted white puffs in the cold.
“Seconded.” Emma lips trembled. “What in the hell was that?”
Her face was now almost as white and clear as the eggs I used to pick out from under the chickens we kept at the Temple. Fear radiated off her. Mindfully, I pushed away her fearful energies away from me. Never before had I been in danger of allowing such pollution to enter my will, but standing in front of Emma, my defenses were weakened. How could she have such an effect on me?
“It’s a soul eater,” I said. “Come on, we must get you both to safety.”
“A soul eater?” Travis screeched. His sweat-soaked hair lay plastered against the sickly pallor of his face. “What the fuck is a soul eater?”
Emma found her footing and kept pace enough that I could release my grip on her. “Pretty much says it in the name, doesn’t it, Travis?”
I tried to cover the smile that sprang to my lips as I directed them to the edge of the forest.That’s my girl.
I corrected myself, no,notmy girl.
Travis stopped short of the forest’s edge and shook his head while pushing his hair back. “Oh no no no, there’s no way, man. I’m not going in there with you.”
Emma covered her torso with her arms, now shivering in the bitter cold of ten-degrees. Under her plaid-shirt, Emma’s white tank top was darkened with sweat stains and bordering on transparent, her hair stringy and wet at her brow and neck. She was probably terrified, yet I still found her to be some beautiful, unearthly creature.
“Travis,” she said. “Follow the guy who just saved our asses from the big scary dark mist monster, otherwise you’ll end up like every hysterical twenty-something dude in a horror movie.”
Travis’s posture remained rigid, unmoving.
“You are more than invited to stay and chat with the beast,” I offered, though I had no intention of leaving him to the soul eater. Especially not after learning Travis was the Propheros.
