Soulshifter Read online

  Soulshifter

  Published by Scribe Publishing Company

  Royal Oak, Michigan

  www.scribe-publishing.com

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2015 by Barbara Pietron

  www.barbarapietron.com

  Cover design by Miguel Camacho

  Interior design by Inanna Arthen

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  ISBN 978-0-9916021-2-4

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

  Pietron, Barbara.

  Soulshifter / by Barbara Pietron.

  pages cm.

  ISBN 978-0-9916021-2-4

  [1. Death --Fiction. 2. Hell --Fiction. 3. Fantasy fiction.] I.Title.

  PZ7. P6193 S68 2015

  [Fic] --dc23 2015939733

  Printed in the U.S.

  To Cass, who tolerated my ever-present laptop and clicking keyboard every day during the month of November while I wrote this story.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Barbara Pietron

  Chapter 1

  Revelations from the Dark Realm

  Feedback shrieked from the electric guitar amp, annihilating the harmonious blend of drums, bass guitar and electric piano. Jack winced as he fumbled for the volume knob on his guitar, pretending he didn’t see Tommy, the lead singer, shoot him a furious glare. Head down, Jack concentrated on the next few chord progressions, until Tommy launched into his signature vocal screaming. Then Jack stole a glance to his left and caught the eye of his best friend, Wes, who skillfully delivered the pulse of the track on his bass guitar. Wes lifted his eyebrows and Jack answered with a slight shrug and an apologetic frown.

  It was one thing if Jack screwed up this opportunity for himself, but Wes had talked the band into giving Jack a chance this summer when they lost their lead guitarist to college. Jack didn’t want to embarrass Wes, or give Tommy a reason to give his friend a hard time. The singer hadn’t wanted Wes in the band either, but when the other members heard Wes play and realized he was a wizard on the bass guitar, Tommy had been out-voted. It had taken two years for Wes to earn the lead singer’s grudging respect and Jack hated to mess that up.

  They finished the set and Jack ducked out of his guitar strap, leaning the instrument against the cinderblock wall of Fletch’s—the drummer’s—basement. He ran both hands through his thick curls, for the first time thankful that his mom had insisted he get a haircut before school started. Shoulder-length for most of the summer, his dark brown mane was now tamed to a mass of loose curls that ended at the base of his jaw—not as rock and roll, but certainly cooler.

  He turned and nearly collided with Tommy. “What’s up with the feedback, Ironwood? We’ve got a gig in two days!”

  “Sorry, man.” Jack shook his head. He noticed John, the keyboardist, give him and Tommy a wide berth as he beat a hasty retreat. “Just having an off day. I’m low on sleep.”

  “Well, you better get it together by Monday. A lot of people come out to the park on Labor Day, and we don’t need you making the rest of us look like amateurs.” He spun on his heel and stomped up the steps before Jack could reply.

  Fletch offered Jack a sports drink. “You’ve been playing good all summer. Just don’t choke when you get on stage.” He laughed, but his eyes were serious.

  “Thanks.” Jack took the plastic bottle and cracked the lid open. “I’ll be fine. I promise.” He took a long drink, letting the slightly salty, citrusy liquid soothe his dry tongue and throat before bending to put his guitar into its case.

  An intermittent chink of metal on metal sounded from the base of the stairwell. “Ready?”

  Jack glanced up to see Wes tossing a bundle of keys into the air and then catching them. “Yep.” He noticed that Wes had decided to leave his guitar at Fletch’s. They were going to rehearse again tomorrow, but Jack felt like he ought to go home and get in some extra practice. He followed his friend out to the minivan, which smelled like the burgers and fries they’d eaten on the way to rehearsal, and loaded his gear into the back.

  After Jack plopped into the passenger seat and closed the door, Wes spoke up. “Dude.” He drew out the solitary word and added a sigh, conveying both disappointment and sympathy.

  “I know,” Jack said quickly. “I’m not a hundred percent today. Yesterday was my end-of-summer spirit-walk.”

  Wes nodded. “That’s what I figured when you said you were low on sleep. You missed an entire night, right?” He plucked a paper cup from the cup holder and put the straw into his mouth.

  Jack wrinkled his nose. If there’d been any soda left, it must be pretty watered down by now. “Yeah, I was up Thursday morning until Friday. And I slept like crap last night.”

  Wes returned the cup and braked for a stop sign. He glanced at Jack. “Well, don’t let Tommy get to you too much—you’ll always have one strike against you because you belong to the sect. Even after two years, I still catch him giving me looks.”

  Jack nodded but didn’t respond, deciding if he wanted to expand the conversation about his spirit-walk. He downed the last swallow of his sports drink.

  “People fear what they don’t understand,” Wes spouted in an odd, high-pitched voice.

  Jack turned to stare at the other boy—not because of the weird voice, but rather, the words. Profound thoughts were not what Wes was known for.

  Wes burst out laughing at the look on Jack’s face. “What? My mom always told me and my brother that.”

  Jack chuckled. “Okay. You had me wondering.” He knew the comment referred to the sect. Like any religion or spiritual group, the Racamedi Transcendental Sect had its share of doubters and haters. But his friend’s words also hit home with Jack’s particular problem today. He took a deep breath. “So here’s something I don’t understand. In my spirit-walk, I ended up in the dark realm.”

  “And?” Wes sounded unconcerned. “My brother Jensen’s a shifter too. He’s been to the dark realm.” He stopped for a red light and turned to face Jack.

  “But Jensen’s a cop. It makes sense that he might end up on the dark side of the underworld.” Jack cracked his window and made a mental note to throw away the fast food wrappers when they got to his house.

  “True. But you weren’t actually there… you were there in spirit. So what’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal is that it means something. But I can’t imagine how it relates to the purpose of the spirit-walk.”

  Wes studied Jack for a moment with a raised eyebrow, then noticed the light change and moved his foot to the gas pedal. “What was the purpose? Don’t you just concentrate on what you want to get out of the walk?”

  “Sorta. The spirit-walk before school starts is really just about guidance—trying to make sure you’re on the right path and all that. But I didn’t exactly spend a lot of time contemplating school beforehand.”

  Wes took a quick glance at Jack and then snickered. “Dude, it’s a girl, isn’t it?”

  Jack let his head fall back on the headrest. Everything with Wes somehow led back to girls, even when the subject couldn’t be fu
rther from the fairer sex. But this time Wes had hit the nail right on the head. “Yeah,” Jack admitted reluctantly. “Shera.”

  The other boy smirked knowingly. “Right. The hot girl at the regional meetings. Isn’t she the daughter of one of the elders?”

  “Yeah. I ran into her at the sect offices Monday. She was with her dad.” Jack frowned, remembering his initial impulse to bolt when he saw them at the end of the hallway. But Shera spied Jack and rushed forward to give him a brief hug while her father looked on with confused disapproval. Shera reminded her dad that she and Jack had gone to school together until his family moved to Ketchton three years back. The confusion had left the older man’s lined face, but the disapproval lingered. Jack felt his cheeks grow warm as he pictured the hole in his faded Metallica t-shirt, the pocket half ripped off his cargo shorts and his worn-out Van’s sneakers through the eyes of Shera’s father. Of course that had also been before his haircut.

  Suddenly Wes laughed. “Dude, your daydreams must’ve been pretty dirty if they landed you in the dark side of hell!”

  Jack smacked his friend on the shoulder with the back of his hand. “Ha ha. I’m not like you.”

  “Not just me! I bet every teenage male at those meetings has Shera in their spank bank.”

  “Shut up.” Jack’s voice was quiet but firm. “It’s not like that for me.” Unfortunately, Wes was probably right. Shera was stunningly beautiful. And it wasn’t only her father’s position that elevated her in the sect; she was extremely gifted at reading auras. “I really like her. I spent most of the day before my spirit-walk trying to figure out what I could do to earn a high enough standing in the sect to be able to date her.”

  “Wow, you’re really serious about this,” Wes observed as the van bounced over the rutted dirt road that led to Jack’s house. “So what did you see in the underworld? Did you talk to anyone? Did Shera come up?”

  “No. I drank the tea, lay down and closed my eyes. When I opened them I was near a river in some sort of canyon. I wasn’t met by a spiritual guide and didn’t know what I was supposed to do, but eventually I found a path that led up the side of one of the canyon walls so I followed it. When I finally made it to the top, I was in the dark realm. The only thing I saw besides rocks and ash was a creature. It was hard to make it out in the gloom, but it had a dog-like head, a humped back and walked on two feet.”

  Wes rolled into the driveway, shifted the van into park and turned to Jack with round eyes. “Like an Enuuki?”

  Jack shrugged. “A hump-backed Enuuki, maybe.”

  “Gnarly. A hell’s messenger.” Wes bobbed his head appreciatively.

  “Sure, if you’re not looking for some meaning in the entire incident.”

  “What did your adviser say?”

  Jack sighed. “Brody said it would make sense eventually. He didn’t seem too worried about it.”

  “Then you shouldn’t worry about it either, dude. Come on, it’s the last weekend of the summer and we’ve got a gig on Monday. It’s gonna be epic.”

  “Yeah, okay. I’ll practice the set again tonight.” Jack climbed out of the passenger seat, stuffed the bag of fast food garbage under his arm, then slid open the van’s side door to retrieve his guitar and amp. He headed toward the house, contemplating his friend’s words. Wes was right. In order to play a good show on Monday, he needed to get his mind off Shera and his spirit-walk.

  Pausing on the front porch, Jack chuckled wryly—actually, the odds of him becoming a rock star were probably better than the chance of him ending up with Shera.

  Four days later Jack strode toward the back doors of the school amid the chatter and bustle of students getting ready to leave the building. Because the heavy traffic of kids was mostly headed for the same destination—the buses—the doors had been propped open and the hall monitor leaned against the wall nearby looking bored. A gust of chilly wind swirled around the exiting kids and rushed down the hallway, brushing Jack’s bare arms. He stopped abruptly and a girl bumped into his back.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled to her ‘what’s your problem’ frown. He’d just remembered wearing a jacket on his way in. Turning, he headed for the biology lab. Since his locker was on the other side of the building, this morning he’d gone straight from the bus to biology. This was only the second day of school and he was still figuring out how his class schedule fit in with visits to his locker.

  Back-tracking up the hallway, Jack could see that the door to the biology lab was open and he accelerated his pace. Cool. He’d grab his jacket—assuming the teacher hadn’t turned it in to lost and found—and still make it to the bus in plenty of time. The smells of ammonia and latex hit him, and he pivoted to step through the classroom doorway, then paused at the sound of angry voices. Retrieving the jacket wasn’t worth walking in on a teacher and student confrontation. As he debated his next move, Jack realized the argument had nothing to do with school. It was a couple in the classroom and, by the sounds of it, they were breaking up.

  About to retreat, Jack froze.

  Did the girl just say what he thought she said?

  He’d taken his adviser’s and his best friend’s advice and stopped worrying about his spirit-walk. With his head in the game, rehearsal on Sunday had gone well. At the Labor Day picnic, nervous, Jack lead-fingered the beginning of their first song, but the enthusiasm of the crowd spilled onto the stage and he soaked it in. By the end of the tune, he’d relaxed and lost himself in the music. They completed the rest of the set without a hitch and Tommy didn’t make any disparaging remarks, leaving Jack stoked about his performance.

  Later, as other bands took the stage, a girl asked him to dance and even though she disappeared into the crowd before Jack could get her name, he’d started school yesterday feeling pretty positive about things in general.

  Now, standing in the doorway of the biology lab, his spirit-walk flooded back in distinct clarity. Jack leaned forward just enough to glimpse the arguing couple, then backed away and sprinted down the hall to catch his bus. His thoughts were spinning a mile a minute, formulating a plan.

  He knew the meaning of what he’d seen in the spirit-walk.

  He knew what he had to do.

  His first step would be to get more information from the girl in the biology lab. Fortunately, she was easily recognizable.

  And he knew exactly where to find her.

  Chapter 2

  The Approach

  Jack spied Natalie as the horde of students broke apart. He pulled a notebook from his locker and flipped through it, watching from the corner of his eye as she approached. This was his last chance to talk to her today.

  She was alone this time, no excuses. The realization pumped extra adrenaline to his already buzzing nerves. When she stopped next to him and began spinning the dial on her combination lock, Jack’s throat closed up. He swallowed. Forced air into his lungs. “Hey, Natalie.”

  “Hi.” The surrounding babble and slamming lockers nearly drowned out her automatic response. She didn’t bother to glance in his direction.

  The smell of overripe banana wafting from the open locker on Jack’s right gave him every reason to keep his face turned toward Natalie. He closed his notebook and slid it onto a shelf. “Hey… uh… I’m sorry about your friend.”

  “Thanks.” Though her flat, bitter tone didn’t invite further dialogue, Jack knew time was short. If he was right about what he’d seen on his spirit-walk, a life depended on this conversation.

  The din died down as the hallway cleared. The locker on his right banged shut and Jack breathed a small sigh of relief—for the smell, and for the privacy. He tried again, getting straight to the point. “Uh… look, I believe you… what you saw, I mean. The thing that took your friend wasn’t human.”

  That actually earned him a quick glance. “Yeah, right.”

  “Seriously, I—”

  She cut him off with a sudden look directly into his eyes. “No one believes me.” The raw despair in her voice dropped like a
weight on his chest. She turned away and continued cramming books into her backpack.

  “I—” Jack scrambled for something he could say to make her listen.

  Natalie hefted her backpack onto one shoulder and pressed her locker closed. She paused, one hand resting on the locker, eyes downcast. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t want to talk about it,” she said in a low monotone, then turned and headed for the exit.

  Jack gave his locker door a shove and took off after her, fumbling for the right thing to say. His long legs quickly closed the distance between them. “Natalie, wait. Please. I’ve seen it too.”

  Her lips pressed into a straight line while her eyes remained fixed on the doors in front of her. Jack lowered his voice as they passed a cluster of students. “It’s hairy, right? Pointy nose like a fox. Walks upright. Has a tail.”

  Natalie slowed her pace a bit and studied him without turning her head. A brief glimpse of the terror she kept carefully hidden escaped from her nonchalant façade. “Where did you hear that… that description?”

  “From you.” Jack cleared his throat. This is where he could really blow it. “I overheard you yesterday. Accidently,” he added quickly. “I wasn’t eavesdropping, I swear, it’s just your description was so familiar… I’d seen that creature before.”

  Natalie didn’t respond. Jack pushed the door and held it open. She strode past him without comment.

  He followed her across the parking lot. “I can prove it to you.”

  She stopped abruptly and spun to face him. “How?”

  Jack planted his feet and jerked his upper body backward to keep from knocking her down. “I… I can show you. Actually, if you have time I can show you now.” He read the conflicting emotions on her face. She didn’t know him. In the two days since school started they’d probably exchanged less than a dozen words: hey, excuse me, sorry… basic pleasantries for strangers with neighboring lockers.

  Before she could reply, Jack offered a safety net. “Do you know where the Little River Gallery is?”