Embraced By Darkness

She did, her heels clattering on the tiles before the sound disappeared into the thick padding of the carpet. The husband made a mewling sound and crawled off the bench on which he'd landed. He didn't even look at me, just started ru

I wrenched my hand from underneath him, sending a thick shard of bloody glass skittering across the tiles, and tried to grab his arm.

You wouldn't have thought it would be so damn hard to grab the arm of a human, but the man was suddenly an octopus—arms and legs everywhere, slippery as a snake. I finally caught his right hand, grabbing it firmly and yanking it behind his back. It didn't seem to make one bit of difference. He was fighting and twisting and mewling, the noise inhuman—a match for his suddenly inhuman strength. I wasn't exactly a lightweight, but I wasn't The Hulk, either. And keeping this man pi

He bucked like a bronco. I gripped him tighter, holding on for dear life as I twisted his arm higher up his back. It had to be hurting, but he didn't seem to care.

He bucked again, and somehow twisted in midair, so that I was on the bottom, hitting the tiles back-first. Air exploded from my lungs, leaving me gasping.

He began hitting me, the blows raining down on face and arms and breasts. The wolf within rose snarling to the surface. I caught a blow, my hand wrapping around his and squeezing. Bones splintered, broke, and pain flicked through his ever-reddening eyes.

A reminder that a human rested behind whatever controlled his body. I backed off, merely gripping rather than crushing, then bucked, flipping him off me.

I scrambled to my feet as he slid across the tiles, then ran over and hit him, hard. The blow landed on his chin and he was out before he really knew what had happened.

Even so, I didn't relax.

The blow might have taken out the body, but the soul that rested within would be unaffected. And who knew how it was going to react?

"Riley?"

The voice was Jack's, and harsh with concern. Damn, we had to be short-staffed if Jack was coming out on rescue missions.

"Down here," I said, my gaze not leaving the husband's prone form. He began to twitch, the muscles in his legs and arms moving, even though he was still out. The dark soul inside was trying to get up.

The soft thud of boot heels approached. A second later Jack's suddenly dangerous presence filled the room.

"You called for help with a human?" he said, disbelief evident in his tones as he stopped beside me.

"Not just any human, but one possessed by the spirit who's tearing the women apart." I paused, and looked at him. "How the hell did you get past the threshold?"

"Got Mary to invite me." He studied the man for a minute. "You've beaten him up a bit, haven't you?"

"Had to. The spirit gives inhuman strength, and he almost got the better—" I stopped as the man lurched into a kneeling position.

"It's going to keep that man moving until it kills him." I looked at Jack. "Can you force it out of his mind?"

"I do that and the soul will escape. We have no way of containing it."

"We have no way of containing it in the body, either. At least this way well save one life."

"At the cost of others, perhaps." He held up a hand to forestall my protest. "I'll try. At the very least, it may give me some hint of what we're actually dealing with."

Power touched the air, a tingly, spidery flare of electricity that flowed like wildfire through the air. Its touch had the tiny hairs along my arms and the back of my neck standing upright, but its effect was more dramatic on our target.

He screamed, a high, furious sound, and began to fight, throwing himself left and right, as if trying to rid himself of a physical touch.

Black smoke began to pull free of the husband, curling back in on itself, becoming more solid but still resembling nothing human. I shivered.

"What?" Jack said.

"The soul is retreating."

"I can't see it."

"You can't see souls."

"Unfortunately."

I flicked him a glance. "There's nothing unfortunate about it, trust me."

He gave me a wry sort of smile, though his attention was still on the husband. "We've had this argument before."

"Yeah, and your reasons for thinking it's fantastic still suck."

The soul had pulled almost all the way out of the flesh. The feel of him, so thick with evil and the need to destroy, crawled across my senses.

This soul wasn't sane.

Not now, and probably not in life.

If it had ever actually lived, that was.

I rubbed my arms, smearing blood up my forearm from the cut on my palm.

"What is it doing?" Jack asked, as sweat began to bead his bald cranium and forehead.

"Nothing." There seemed to be a slight pulsating through its opaque form, as if a heart beat deep within the darkness. But I felt no sense of energy, no gathering of power that had been so event in the other souls who'd talked to me.

For that, I could only be grateful. There was nothing this hateful soul could say that I'd really want to hear.

"So it's just sitting there, above the man's body?"

"Yeah."

"Want to try talking to it?"

"I have a feeling opening my shields to this thing could be a very bad idea."

"Bad as in, oops, it's possessed me?"

"Yeah." I paused. "So you really have no idea how to contain a soul?"

"As I said, no fucking idea at all. I came here prepared to save my investment, not to play with spirits."

I gri

The last tendril of smoke pulled itself free of the husband's flesh. The pulsing within the sould got stronger, and a sense of power caressed the air. It began to rotate—slowly at first, then faster, until the sheer weight of energy caressing the air had the hairs on my arms standing.

Then it lunged forward, a face forming out of the darkness, the mouth wide open, teeth bared. It screamed—no earthly sound, harsh and powerful enough to set teeth on edge. I yelped and jumped back, but it didn't follow. Simply hissed then flicked away, its snakelike form slithering across the floor and out the window.

"Our dark soul just left the building."

"You might want to check that it's not taking over the woman."

"It wants revenge, not death," I said, "And I can't fed its presence anymore."

But even so, I spun on my heels and ran out the front door. The sense of evil no longer rode the cool night air. I took a deep breath, washing the foulness of that spirit from my lungs, then glanced down the street. Mary Jamieson sat in the driver's side of ray car, her hands clenched around the steering wheel, face pale and swollen under the harsh street lighting. Jack's car was parked right behind mine, lights still flashing and driver's door open. He really had hurried.

Smiling slightly, I headed down to collect her. By the time we got back, the husband was awake, and more than a little confused. For the next hour we questioned the two of them while the paramedics tended to them, but there wasn't really much they could tell us. The woman's only crime was an affair, and the husband's was caring too much. Or perhaps holding back too much anger.

"So," I said, as the paramedics left. "What are we going to do with them? We can't leave them here, and we can't leave them together. And we have no way of knowing if that soul is coming back."

He sighed, and rubbed a hand across his bald head, "Take Mrs. Jamieson to a safe house and make sure she's comfortable. I'll second liaisons onto watch duty for the two of them until we sort out what's happening."

I looked at the woman. "Mrs. Jamieson? Would you like to pack some clothes?"