Page 50 of Soul Bound

Winslow

Ranger was right when he said the facility was a place out of nightmares. It more reminds me of a set of a horror movie, and I kept expecting someone to come around the corner holding a butcher knife when we were weaving through the long pitch-black hallways toward the room Thalia died in. I’ve never been happier to have a flashlight than I was when we entered the building. There aren’t any exterior windows, so the only light provided was the single beam of light from the single flashlight.

I’ve never been one to be afraid of the dark, and I know I hid it well as we walked through, but there were times I really wanted to turn back. That little voice in my head kept screaming at me“Not Safe!”over and over again. But every time I didn’t feel safe, I would think about Ranger and know he would never let anything happen to us. And with his wolf shifter hearing, he can sense if something was in here with us.

Well, something alive anyway. I’m in charge of sensing when the dead are near.

And boy, are they near.

I don’t know how many women died here, but the second I crossed the threshold of the building, I was swamped with their energy. Many of them are not strong enough to appear to me, but I can feel them hovering around, drawing on my own energy—feeding off it is what it feels like. I was already starting to feel pretty drained from the swarming of emotions I felt from them before the room temperature drops to meat locker levels.

“Can you see anything yet?” Ranger asks, as we both shiver in place.

I peek around the room. “No, nothing yet—oh wait! Thalia’s here.” She flickers into focus across from us, looking as ghastly and ghostly as before. “She’s standing there by the medical cabinet. Can you see her?” I cup my hands over my mouth and blow warm air, trying to heat my frozen fingers.

“Her reflection isn’t there anymore.” Ranger pulls my hands from my mouth and wraps his shockingly still warm hands around them, a silent but sweet gesture. “Is there anyone else?”

I shake my head in answer.

“Thalia, what’s going on?” I ask, even though there’s a very high possibility she won’t answer me.

“This way,” she croaks, her thin pale arm raises, and she points in the direction of the floor to ceiling cabinet beside her.

“What—” I begin to ask, but two more figures flicker next to her.

The women look similar to Thalia, but instead of the hospital gown she wears, they wear matching pairs of white medical scrubs. They also aren’t bloody like Thalia is, making me wonder how they died. The redhead has bruising around her wrists and throat, making my wrists hurt in sympathy. I recognize those marks, they’re restraint marks and I’m all too familiar with them. The woman with stringy blonde hair that covers half of her once pretty face doesn’t have a mark on her. They both look like they’re in pain as they look back at me.

Thalia looks between them and with a subtle nod to them, they move to stand on either side of the cabinet.

“There are two new spirits. I don’t know what they’re doing though,” I tell Ranger. I wish he was able to see them as I do so I don’t have to relay what they’re doing for him.

Without touching the cabinet, the ghosts somehow make it shift. It opens like a door would, the whole thing swinging forward like it’s on a door hinge. It looks like a passageway is hidden behind it.

“Cool! A secret passage,” I say in a singsong voice while I bounce on my toes. “I told you bad guys always have an escape route.” I take my now less frozen hands back from Ranger and start to move forward to investigate, but Ranger pulls me back by the hood of my jacket, halting me. “What?”

“I’ll go first,” he gruffly says, stepping ahead of me.

I roll my eyes and silently mimic him behind his back.

Big tough man. Pfft, whatever.

He takes the flashlight from me and shines it into the passageway. About ten feet into the tunnel is a flight of stairs leading down into a black abyss.

You know what, on second thought… he can go first.

I purse my lips as I peer in around him. “So, this is the part of the horror movie where we yell at the screen‘Don’t go down the fucking tunnel, you idiots!’”I look back at the ghosts and find only Thalia remains, her cloudy blue gaze looks blankly back at me. “Do wehaveto go down the scary tunnel of doom?”

She nods her head once.

“Fuck. Me.”I really don’t want to.

“Down the dark tunnel we go?” Ranger asks.

I begrudgingly bob my head. “I just want the record to state, I think this is a bad idea.”

“Don’t worry Winnie.” He grins over his shoulder at me, his perfect white teeth shining in the gleam of the flashlight. “I won’t let anything get you.”

“Geethanks, buddy.”

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