Soul Survivor Read online

  The man’s brows drew down, again as if he were reading her thoughts. Her heart contracted hard once more, slamming against her chest walls, this time out of a realization that echoed deep in her very cells. While her body continued its struggle to live again, her mind froze. It couldn’t be him.

  It couldn’t be…unless…

  Others came into view, gasping, staring, talking behind their hands. The man removed his chambray shirt in a flash, covering her with its soft warmth. The muscles in his chest rippled as he tucked it around her, his eyes never leaving hers.

  Kai.

  Reflexes, long dead, woke in her body and mind, contradicting each other. One urged her to snuggle down into the shirt and surrender to the inevitable. The other screamed at her to run as far and as fast as she could.

  Her body too weak to run and her mind a tangled mess of past and present, she was trapped in a hell of her own making.

  Her throat closed up before she could say his name and the world went dark again.

  Chapter Three

  Twenty-four hours later

  County hospital

  The vibration in her throat woke her. Hot and thick, the sensation—a special ability passed down from the long line of Moon Water chieftesses before her—alerted her to approaching danger.

  But what?

  The answer eluded her. All she knew was that something was wrong. She felt uneasy, on edge. While disoriented, some part of her brain was telling her to run. Her legs reflexively tried to move. Tried and failed.

  Something heavy was lying on her. It was soft and warm, but she was still cold underneath it. She tried again to move her legs and realized they were held down by a blanket. Maybe two.

  The lids of her eyes twitched as she fought to open them. Her head throbbed at the effort. A ceiling and walls swam into view. She was in a bed, wrapped in blankets like a fly caught in a spider’s web.

  This is wrong.

  The blind on the single window of the room was closed, keeping her in shadows. Keva lifted one of her hands to rub her eyes and noticed a tube attached to the back of it. Turning her head to the right, she could see fluid dripping into her arm from an IV.

  Hospital. Not good.

  She blinked to clear her hazy vision, tried again to move her legs. Whatever drugs were in her system, though, combined with the heavy blanket, left them lethargic.

  Breathing deeply, she pulled the strong antiseptic smell of the room into her lungs, hoping it would lift the fog, sharpen her senses. Instead, her stomach roiled at the stinging scent.

  Get out. You’re in danger.

  The warning signal in her throat would not leave her. She gave up on her normal senses and struggled to tap into her extrasensory perception. She was in the hospital. What danger could find her here?

  As she opened herself up, a deeper awareness pierced through her hazy thoughts. The hair on the back of her neck prickled.

  He’s coming.

  Dread beat a rhythm in time with her pulse. The man. The one who found her. He was coming because something bad had happened, not just to her, but to her Moon Water relatives. She couldn’t remember what, but now through the fading lethargy, she could feel the absence of their souls as keenly as she could feel the approaching danger. Nova? Liseli? Tessa?

  After she reached out to each woman, she counted the seconds, waiting for the feathery feel of their souls to answer her. One, two, three, four…

  Nothing came except a crawling tingle, like inchworms making their way up the back of her head. Her Moon Water sisters were not immortal like she was, and she’d sworn out of love and duty to protect them at all costs. If anything had happened to them…

  Searching her memory, she flinched as a swipe of blood flashed across the back of her eyelids. She heard Angel scream. Heard Tessa beg the Great Mother for protection. Heard Annika, the stray cat she’d named after her long-lost sister, yowl as if someone had stepped on her beautiful, gray tail. And then there was silence.

  The crawling sensation spread down Keva’s arms and legs. The monitor next to her bed beeped in jerky rhythm with her heart rate. They’d been attacked. But who would want to hurt them?

  Adrenaline flooded her body. Raising herself on one elbow, she commanded her memory to wake. Being in the hospital with no memory could be just as dangerous as the attack itself. How long had she been out? How would she escape the approaching danger?

  Who was the man?

  A wave of nausea rolled through her stomach. Struggling into a sitting position, she gasped for more air, and fought the blankets and sheet pinning her to the bed. It was a struggle. Whoever had tucked her in had attacked the job like a mother swaddling a baby. When the restrictions finally broke free, she was sweating, but shivering as well. The room swam in front of her eyes and she shut them tight, grabbing the bed rail to steady herself.

  Her throat pulsed another warning.

  Kai.

  Suddenly, his image floated just out of reach like the tail of a dream and then a different image, this one at the church, snapped into focus. The man.

  Warmth enveloped her, counteracting the ominous blanket of danger hanging at the edges of her mind. She could again feel the softness of his chambray shirt, the lingering heat. He’d taken it off to cover her from the eyes of the gawking onlookers at the church. Even though every one of them had been in uniform of one type or another, they were still human. She’d read the shock in their faces, heard their murmured questions.

  They knew I was dead.

  But as the man shielded her from their open curiosity, his energy, tight and protective, flowed over her. He looked just like Kai, only different. More…contained.

  Her mind must have been playing tricks on her. If the man was Kai that meant Kai had been reincarnated. And no matter the time or place, he would’ve recognized her.

  Or would he?

  Another pulse filled her throat and Keva swallowed hard. Blinking her eyes open, she focused on the blue shirt hanging in the closest. Whoever the man was, he hadn’t recognized her as his lost soul mate, so he wasn’t Kai. Whoever he was, he was coming to ask questions. Questions she couldn’t answer without revealing she’d been alive for a thousand years.

  And that little piece of trivia was a fast ticket to the state mental institute.

  Now that she was awake, her body was healing faster. That, plus the adrenaline gave her the energy she needed to get moving. Working the latch on the rail, she slid it down and brought her legs around in a slow arc to let her feet dangle. Pushing off the bed, she used the IV pole and bed to balance her weight. It might still take her several days to regain her full strength, but she had to find Tessa and the others and figure out what had happened.

  Blood pulsed with fury in her veins and pooled in her organs, healing whatever form of internal damage she’d suffered. The sensation was weird—there was no other way to describe it—as tendons, ligaments and muscles worked at kneading themselves together.

  How would she explain her healing wounds to the doctor and nurses monitoring her progress?

  She couldn’t. She had to get out of the hospital. Now.

  Something rough tugged against the skin over her heart. Releasing her hold on the bed, she lifted the edge of the faded cotton hospital gown and looked down to find a gauze bandage covering her tattoo. Peeling a corner of the bandage up, she sucked in her breath at the sight of flames etched into her skin around the blue ink of her Chieftess circle. Cold fear raced through her, accompanied by another memory of the attack in her sanctuary. The shadow of a ghost, reaching his hand into her chest and squeezing her heart so tight it exploded between his fingers.

  Pinpricks of light pecked at her vision as phantom pain seared through her. A loud buzzing rose in her ears, blocking out the hum of the machines next to her bed. Slamming her eyes shut again, she willed herself not to pass out. Far away, as though in a tunnel, she heard again the ghost’s voice chanting a spell.

  A shaman? Though she tried, she couldn�
��t bring him into focus even as his words rang in her ears. His voice was familiar but…

  She hadn’t heard Enann’s voice in a thousand years. As Matron of the Moon Water Tribe and High Chieftess of the entire Salt Coast Clan, she’d refused to do her duty and marry him, and he’d vowed to kill her, but he couldn’t be her assailant. He was long dead, just like the rest of the Salt Coast Clan and Red Fire Nation. They’d all died because of her.

  She was definitely losing her mind if she was hearing his voice in her head. It was the drugs. It had to be the drugs.

  The tattoo she’d been given at the age of nine from her mother stung, the skin under it trying to fight off the evil and heal itself. It marked her as a Moon Water woman, and symbolized her duty to the Salt Coast Clan. The newly injured skin would heal, but the flames the ghost shaman had etched there would eternally scar her. He had marked her with fire, her enemy’s symbol, to make sure she would never get away from his magic.

  Cold sweat broke out along her hairline. What about my sisters? Did he mark them too?

  Yes, her heart answered.

  She couldn’t wrap her mind around the enormity of it all. The shaman, her sisters, Kai. The past and the present, two speeding trains on the same track, seemed to collide in her head.

  What the hell is going on?

  Another elusive answer. For the moment, all she could do was focus on getting out of the hospital. Each issue would get its due once she was safe and could clear her head.

  Without looking, she molded the bandage back over the injury. It didn’t matter what the shaman had done to her—she was cursed with immortality, thanks to a spell gone wrong. The simple spell to reunite her with her soul mate, no matter the place and time had become a curse. She could feel pain, she could scar, but she would never die. Not until Kai came back to her or she found another way to end it and set herself free. Even with all the wisdom she’d gained as an immortal, she’d never figured out a way to break the spell or end her own life. And she had paid an even greater price than immortality…because she’d used magic for her own gain, Thunderbird—the god of all soul magic—had sent a mudslide to wipe out the Moon Water tribe, taking many of the other Salt Coast Clan and Red Fire Nation as well. Only a handful of her people had survived besides herself and now, it was only her and the five Moon Water descendents.

  What mattered was that the shaman had hurt those descendents. He would pay for that. As soon as she could stand without losing her balance, she would find him, ghost or human, and make sure he never hurt another Moon Water, another woman, again.

  A wave of energy, powerful and male, washed over her. Keva sucked in her breath from the intensity. It was not evil like the power of the shaman. This energy burned with determination. It pulsed with protectiveness. It heated her from the inside out.

  The vibration in her throat, the innate defense mechanism of her shaman family, grew frantic.

  Kai.

  With age-old instincts, she touched her fingers to the strong beating at the base of her throat. Never in all the years since Kai had died had she felt energy like his radiating around her. Hope warred with fear in her chest. If the man was truly Kai, would he wrap her in his arms? Or finish the job the evil shaman had started?

  The sharp rap on the door startled her even though she anticipated it. Her plan to run evaporated. Tense with nerves, she cleared her throat and called out, “Yes?”

  The door swung open with a slow hiss, the man’s head emerging in the opening. His brown eyes, the color of oil-rubbed bronze, did a quick inventory of her from head to toe. “Huh.” A hint of surprise played at the corner of his mouth. “The nurses said you were still sedated, but you look pretty awake for an unconscious person. May I come in?”

  The deep, melodic sound of his voice nearly felled her. It conjured the salt of the ocean, the smoke of the fire, the breaking of her heart.

  Oh, Great Mother, what have I done?

  A thousand years of searching for her lost love, and here, in this dingy hospital room, she had simply wished him into being?

  Keva shook her head. It had to be the drugs, the trauma of what had happened, tricking her into believing Kai was standing in front of her.

  The man frowned, taking her shake of the head as a no. “The sooner you answer my questions, the faster we can apprehend your attacker.”

  The pulse in her throat expanded like a white balloon even as shivers racked her body. “Of course. Come in.”

  He moved into the room, seeming to fill it up. The hospital sights and smells receded and his energy blanketed her. His dark hair was trimmed short; his eyes held a look of expectancy. His face was clean-shaven, prominently displaying his square jaw and firm mouth. An image of Kai transposed itself over the man’s face and Keva’s heart kicked hard against her lungs.

  As he offered his hand, the sleeve of his navy blue jacket bunched around the muscled arm underneath. “Ms. Moon Water, I’m FBI Special Agent Rife St. Cloud. I’m investigating what happened at the church.” He shrugged and gave her an apologetic smile. “I wouldn’t bother you right now but I have questions it seems only you can answer, and like I said, the sooner these questions get answered, the better.”

  An FBI agent. Kai had been reincarnated as a modern-day warrior. The floor shifted under her, the room swam in front of her eyes again, and this time the IV pole wasn’t enough to keep her balanced.

  Agent St. Cloud dropped his briefcase and grabbed her as she toppled forward. “Whoa, take it easy.”

  White-hot electricity shot through her body from his touch. She melted into him, welcoming the feel of his arms supporting her, his muscles tightening around her body. She sensed his heartbeat speeding up, heard his intake of breath.

  Chemistry. Even a thousand years of immortality and reincarnation couldn’t change it.

  Moving her to the bed, he laid her down on the bleached cotton sheet. “Hey, now, no passing out on the FBI guy.” He patted her hand and grinned, but the grin didn’t reach his eyes. He scanned her face trying to decide if she really was okay or not. “I could lose my badge.”

  While his body recognized her, his mind didn’t. Keen disappointment pierced Keva’s heart. Had his body been imbued with a new soul? The vibration rocking her throat told her no. He was Kai, he just didn’t know it.

  Yet.

  She had no choice but to obey him—she couldn’t stand, no matter how determined she was. “Just don’t leave me,” she whispered as he covered her with the blanket.

  He paused, his thick eyebrows drawing together as he studied her. Every cell in Keva’s body liquefied. The spiral of life had spun again in the right direction.

  Kai, her soul mate and sworn enemy, had finally come back to her.

  Chapter Four

  Enann cursed, his voice echoing off the walls of the empty room. The Moon Water knife, his magic key to the past, was gone. His only path out of the situation now was to find the obsidian amulet Keva never let out of her sight. The magic it held would allow him to become a ghost again and return to his own time.

  His nostrils flared as he pressed the flimsy garment from Keva’s collection of clothing to his face, drawing the familiar smell of her body deep into his lungs. She had worn the garment between her legs and his senses tingled as he detected her unique scent, earthy and female under the aroma of the flowers she had washed it in.

  Sunlight illuminated the room, the energy in the place seeping from the walls, rising from the floor. Her energy. Every object he looked at reflected her back to him, even the ones he’d never seen before and didn’t understand. The objects in this place, her private sleeping spot, even more so.

  As his callused fingers rubbed the soft cloth, a dark melancholy swept over him. Tracking her—the woman he’d loved—across time and space had been his sole mission for a thousand winters. But now he wondered if it was a mistake.

  Keva wasn’t the High Chieftess of the Salt Coast Clan anymore. She was no longer Matron of the Moon Water tribe. She had
changed like the world around her, and even after all this time, she still didn’t want him.

  Shame choked his throat. The son of a Red Fire chief and smarter than all the members of her council, he’d still never been good enough for her.

  Enann balled Keva’s garment in his hand, just like he’d done with her heart hours earlier. Caught in a never-ending day that forced him to live the turning point of their lives over and over, he’d decided he could and would still prove himself to her.

  Nothing had gone as planned.

  The look of horror on her face when she’d opened the door and saw him had shocked him. After all this time, she still looked at him with utter disdain. Instead of the welcome he had imagined, he’d been met with rejection again.

  From outside, a light flashed into the room through the opening, disappearing as fast as it came. He heard a noise like the growl of a bear. He’d heard the same noise the day before. He slipped to the opening and looked out.

  The growl died away and the lights went out. The man with the gray braid had returned. He stood, hands on his hips, surveying the building with a steady, careful eye. As if he felt Enann’s presence, he turned his gaze to the opening.

  He seeks me.

  Enann had always been a hunter, not the hunted, but he knew it was the eyes that gave the hunted away. Dropping his gaze to the floor, he stood perfectly still, back against the wall.

  The material in the opening must have reflected the night back at Gray Braid. A heartbeat later, when Enann raised his eyes, Gray Braid was gone.

  Knowing his time was running out, he scanned the room for the obsidian amulet. Everywhere his gaze touched, he saw women’s faces, some bowing, some on their knees, some looking up to the skies. All were made from different kinds of stone, different sizes, colors he had never seen before.

  He ran a hand across Keva’s bed, searching for the center of the room’s energy. The amulet had to be there since Keva wasn’t wearing it when he found her.

  He hadn’t meant to kill her, but how could she have refused to return with him to the place and time where they could be together? The place and time where Kai was rightfully dead and Keva’s lust for the warrior no longer blinded her to Enann’s undying love?