Page 3 of Shadows of the Soul

“Okay, no kink,” Rebecca agreed.

Help me, I’m surrounded by supernatural sex-starved addicts.

Maggie bounced out of the front door, her dark hair a wild tangle around her face. “You’re letting him feed you? In his home?” she whispered.

Hudson threw me a glance over his shoulder, grinned his predatory smile, white, perfect teeth on display, and winked.

I frowned and narrowed my gaze. “Technically, it’s my home. Why?”

Maggie shuffled on her sandals, the soles grazing the wooden floor as she glanced at Hudson. “Um, nothing.”

Hudson whipped his shirt over his head with one hand and let it fall to the ground. He picked up an ax left buried in the tree stump, dropped a large piece of timber on it, and swung the ax. The wood split in two with a loud crack. The birds chattered in the trees. I wondered if they too were in awe of the specimen before us. His muscles bunched and tensed with the motion.

“Holy vampire ovaries, that man is a thirst trap,” Rebecca mumbled.

“Why the hell is he chopping wood? It’s not even cold,” I pointed out.

“Does it matter?” she shot back.

“Umm, so they’ve grown again,” Maggie said. She hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “Do you want to see?

I jumped to my feet and followed a twitchy Maggie with my vampire princess sidekick in tow. We trotted down the steps and around the outside of the house. We passed under some mighty magnolia trees whose leaves rustled in the breeze and entered the garden area reserved for the dead. Unmarked graves dotted the lawn, twenty-five in total. If you weren’t part of a pack or vampire house, you were a loner. Loners didn’t have access to consecrated ground, and were subsequently denied the rights of passage. I had lots of land, and a gift to help those loners pass on. During the final fight with Ric, the elemental, he’d revealed I’d not been simply giving the dead a place to rest. I’d been getting them a back door pass to heaven. After crossing Jennifer over, Ric’s last victim, I ceased crossing over loners. Until I better understood the mechanics of my powers, I deemed messing with the Almighty’s grand plan to be unwise. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself or my activities.

We came to a stop under my largest magnolia tree, its branches draping over the ground casting a sweet heady fragrance in the surrounding air. Tom Wayfer was buried here. He should have been laid to rest in the Tupperware tub I’d gathered his exploded body into. But Maggie, in her teenage wisdom and thoughtfulness about recycling, had emptied him into the ground and covered his remains with soil. All creatures have residual magic. It’s why we bury our dead in coffins and jars. If that magic fell into the wrong hands, it would be dangerous. White roses bloomed over the plot. They sprawled along the lawn and climbed up the trunk of the tree before weaving amongst the branches. The roses themselves weren’t bad news.

“Didn’t you cut these down a few days ago?” Rebecca asked.

“Yes.”

“Should they be bleeding like that?” Maggie asked, leaning over to study the crimson droplets rolling over the snowy velvet petals.

“No.”

Rebecca wrinkled her nose and stepped back. “What does it mean?”

My gaze darted over the flowers. “Nothing good,” I answered. Magic skittered over the ground, the charge raising the hairs on my arms. The heavy scent of roses coated my mouth like fur. Someone had screwed with Tom’s remains. Something unnatural lurked on my property, something that had corrupted a symbol of purity. Evil.

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Mushrooms are the devil’s food.

It’s a little known fact that shifters don’t howl at the moon, and vampires can sunbathe. Both species had hearts that beat, and being bitten by either resulted in blood loss, but not a dramatic change of genetics. However, the rivalry between the two factions was on point. The only thing they hated more than each other was my faction, the elementals. We were considered an unstable, unpredictable, and unnatural race, despite our magic being rooted in the elements that surrounded the natural earth. Hudson told me it was because of our gifts. That they couldn’t be sure what they were facing when going head to head with one of us. It was more fundamental than that. Elementals were embedded into normal society. They taught your children math, dispensed your medication, and advised the president on matters of security. We were everywhere. It wasn’t our abilities the other factions didn’t like, it was our influence.

Still, the shifters and vampires used our skill sets. Medical care proved one of the biggest issues for shifters. There were few doctors in the supernatural arena to see to their needs. I was trained and had the basic equipment to treat ninety percent of problems shifters faced, after all, their kind didn’t get cancer or suffer with heart attacks. My side business brought in more revenue than the bed-and-breakfast that catered to lone supernaturals. As of two months ago, the pack had employed me to check into all shifter deaths. My gift, or curse, depending on how you viewed the world, meant I was uniquely qualified to do this. Being a psychic retro enabled me to view the last moments of someone’s life.

Rebecca floated through the kitchen door, her nose wrinkling at the fried chicken on my fork. To my knowledge, she was the only vegetarian vampire in existence. It seemed unnatural.

“What is that smell?” she asked as she opened the refrigerator. The weird aroma hit me a second later. I dropped my fork.

“Maggie cooked,” I explained.

Maggie could bake cookies. Any kind of cookies; double chocolate, lemon, oatmeal. She was an expert. Now take her out of that speciality and she could ruin toast.

Rebecca reached inside the fridge and took out a foil covered glass dish. She peered under the wrapping like she was checking for a bomb. “I think it’s lasagna,” she stated with a sigh of relief.

Maggie bounced into the room with a smile as big as the sun. “You found my mushroom lasagna. It’s a new recipe.”

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