Soul Keeper Read online

  Soul Keeper

  Everwood Trilogy 1

  Kate Keir

  Copyright © 2018 Kate Keir

  All rights reserved.

  * * *

  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 other information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. This book is a work of fiction, all names, characters, places, and events are the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  For Rich

  xxx

  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

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Thank you…

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Have we met before? I got so increasingly bored of hearing someone ask me that question. Apparently, I was the most universally recognisable person on the planet. People thought it was an awesome story when I explained it to them; they didn’t realise that while this was a fun first for them, it was like the ten-thousandth time I’d had to go over it in my nineteen years on this planet. It happened almost daily.

  Ever since I hit my teenage years, almost every new person I met believed they knew me in some way. They believed it with such ferocity they looked at me as though I was a complete liar when I told them we really hadn’t met before.

  Today wasn’t going to be any different by the look of things. I was working at my part-time job—as a tour guide in the ruins of Castle Dion on the banks of Loch Ness—and a guy in my group just wouldn’t accept that we hadn’t met before.

  “I’m sure I know you. Do you drink at the Indigo bar?” he pushed as I tried to focus on listing my facts about the castle’s great hall to my tourists.

  Why won’t he just let it go? I rolled my eyes. “No, really, we haven’t.” I didn’t want to do my in-depth explanation as to how he thought he knew me, in front of twelve other people, although I had to admit he was quite cute.

  He seemed to finally accept my insistence that he shut up and let me get on with my job, and he was quiet for the rest of the tour. Although I still caught him silently looking me over more than once.

  I really liked my job. It was a fun way to bring in some extra money while I worked my way through college. I did have a bank account that was pretty healthy due to the insurance payment after my parents’ death, but I had my whole life ahead of me, and I knew the money wouldn’t last forever.

  The tour ended, and after thanking the visitors for coming along, I let myself into the gatekeeper’s chamber, which served as a staff-room in our twenty-first century version of the castle. Dropping down into a seat, I was relieved to find myself alone with my thoughts for a few moments. The others must still be out on their tours.

  Just then, the door clicked open, and the annoying but “oh so hot” guy from earlier stepped into the room.

  “You can’t be in here. It’s staff only.” I rose from my seat and gestured to the door, indicating he should leave.

  He shot me a dazzling smile and ran his hand through his tousled black hair. “I’ll go, but only after you tell me where I know you from.”

  Sighing, I took a step toward him, reaching around him to grasp the door handle so I could usher him outside. “Trust me, you don’t know me. Almost everyone who meets me says exactly the same thing. I just have an extremely recognisable face.”

  His friendly smile disappeared as I spoke. It was replaced instead with a dark, almost hungry look. “Everyone who meets you knows you?” The question had a wheedling tone to it, and it was totally different from the light-hearted, albeit pushy, questioning of earlier.

  Nerves started to kick in, and when he wrapped his fingers around my wrist, squeezing so hard I yelped and let go of the door handle, I realised something was seriously wrong.

  I began to back away slowly, my boots scraping across the stone floor—although it was warm outside and I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I always wore my favourite tan-coloured ankle boots at work—but the gatekeeper’s chamber was pretty small. I wasn’t going to get very far. What on Earth is going on here?

  He started to cross the room toward me, and my eyes widened as I looked at his face. The dark expression was still there, but his face was no longer entirely human. The features started to swim, and there was a ghost of an alternate image overlaid on his skin. It was like a second, rotten face of a ghoul or some other kind of monster was merging with his good looks.

  I briefly thought about screaming; it was the logical first choice of response when a freaky ghost thing was about to kill me in a seven-hundred-year-old castle. Then a wild laugh broke from my lips as I acknowledged how unreal this whole situation was. I looked around me, searching frantically for a weapon. What the hell am I going to do?

  I was saved from making a decision when the door clicked open again, and I heaved out a sigh of relief when I saw Finlay walk into the chamber. The creature—because it really wasn’t a boy anymore–turned toward my blond-haired saviour and growled.

  “Begone, Draugur.” Finlay sounded so different than usual I did a double-take. His voice rang with power, vibrating through the air as it resonated off the stone walls. He raised his outstretched hand, and held his flat palm toward the thing in the middle of the room, taking a step closer to it as he spoke.

  The creature turned its head slowly to look back at me once more, sending a spear of ice down my spine, before it vanished. Yep, that’s right; it completely and utterly disappeared. I sat down heavily in my chair and frowned in confusion.

  “Finlay, what was that? What, actually just happened?”

  I had known Finlay since my first day at school. We were five years old when we met, and he was the one thing that had always been a constant in my life. After my parents’ boat sank, drowning them both and leaving me an orphan at thirteen, his amazing mother took me in until I elected to move back in to my family home when I turned eighteen.

  Finlay had always been there for me throughout my grief, and I loved him more than anyone else on this Earth. He was the best friend anyone could ever ask for, but even though I knew him so well, I had no idea he was capable of getting rid of weird ghost people.

  He crossed the room and knelt on the floor in front of me taking my hand in his and smiling. “Are you okay, Flor?” Finlay is the only person alive permitted to shorten my name from Flora to Flor.

  “I’m okay, but you didn’t answer my question, Finlay. What was that? And, and did he just disappear?” I raised my eyebrows at him questioningly.

  “Err, yeah it did disappear.” I had never seen him look so sheepish before. It would have been endearing if I wasn’t still so hung up on what I had just seen.

  I stood up, frustrated he
wouldn’t tell me anything about what just happened. “Finlay, why are you being so weird?”

  “I’m not.” He was defensive now.

  “Then tell me what I just saw.” I narrowed my green eyes and rhythmically wrapped my fingers around my copper-coloured braid, which trailed over my shoulder and down to my hip, waiting impatiently.

  I thought he was just about to start talking when the door banged open, and a couple of the other tour guides came in, talking and laughing together. The moment was lost, and I knew I wasn’t going to get another word from him until we were alone again.

  I made for the door and poked his chest half playfully as I passed him. “I’m not going to let this go, Finlay. You know that, right?”

  A fleeting look of what might have been regret passed over his face before he replied, “If only you could, Flora.” Then shaking his head, he beat me to the door and left.

  “What’s up with him?” asked Jessica, one of the other girls.

  Frowning, I made my way to the door. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”

  I jogged up the stairs that led to the staff carpark. Because the castle sits right on the edge of the loch, to get to it you have to use the hundred or so carved stone steps or a lift that runs down through the middle of the visitor centre to bring you back to the road.

  When I got up top, I noticed Finlay’s car had already gone, and I shook my head in frustration. Why was he so keen to avoid me after what had just happened? We could usually talk to each other about anything, but admittedly this was way off the scale of the usual stuff we would discuss.

  We lived close to each other and often came to work in the same car, but today was Thursday, and I had my last day of college—before the summer break—straight after, so we had come separately. It was unfortunate, because he wouldn’t have been able to avoid my questions if we were sharing a car together.

  I opened the door of my eight-year-old, battered Suzuki and climbed behind the wheel, still thinking about the thing that had attacked me. Its interest in me had definitely been piqued by my admission that everyone thought they knew me. Question was, why? Sure, people were always fascinated by my familiarity, but they didn’t usually change into something out of a horror book once they heard my story.

  College gave me little time to think about my encounter with the monster or Finlay’s intervention. I was too wrapped up in saying goodbye to everyone in my class to give any more thought to what had happened that afternoon and I welcomed the break, tired of turning things over in my head.

  Going home was a relief. I was exhausted and ready to get some food before I called Finlay to get my answers. As I walked through the door to the tiny, two-bed cottage that was my parents’ legacy of their obsession with country living, I heard a cranky “meow” sound from my bedroom. A fluffy, brown tabby cat with white paws and nose padded into the kitchen.

  “Hey, Achilles.” I scooped my rescue cat into my arms and cuddled him close, extracting a yowl of indignity for my efforts. He was the most beautiful Maine Coon cat you ever saw. He had been picked up by a local rescue centre when he was a few weeks old, and the very moment I saw him, I knew we were meant for each other, and I mostly believed Achilles agreed with me.

  I reluctantly released my hostage, and he skittered through the cat-door without a backward glance. He had always been a tiny bit feral, and he still wasn’t quite used to the idea of living in a house full-time. In winter, I would see a lot more of him—but it was the start of July now and he preferred to bask in the sunshine and mostly catch his own food from the rich pickings amongst the heather and hills surrounding the cottage for miles in every direction.

  For dinner, I grabbed a pizza from the freezer; I was not in the mood to get creative tonight. Once I had eaten, I picked up the phone and tried calling Finlay’s number. I wasn’t really surprised when it rang and then went to voicemail, although I started getting annoyed after my fifth attempt to contact him.

  “Finlay, stop ignoring me. Pick it up!” I knew the message sounded petulant, but I was furious with him. Whatever it was that happened today, he knew what that guy was, and he owed me an explanation.

  I had all but given up on ever speaking to my best friend again when a sudden knock at my door caused me to jump in surprise.

  Narrowing my eyes, I crossed the room to the kitchen and silently slid a knife from the drawer. Sense told me it was Finlay at the door. But if it was that ghoul-thing from earlier, I wanted to be prepared to defend myself this time. I opened the door slowly, hiding the knife behind my back.

  “Hey, Flor, I think we need to talk.”

  I sagged in relief as I took in Finlay’s blue eyes and the shaggy hair that framed his face—so blond it was very nearly white. He eyed the knife in my hand and stepped quickly through the doorway, gently disarming me and wrapping his arms around me in a bear hug at the same time.

  “Flora, I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have let you leave by yourself after what happened. That was unfair of me.” He dropped the knife onto the sideboard as he spoke.

  “You’re damn right it was. I’ve been terrified all day. Terrified I imagined it and that I’m going mad. Terrified I’m going to be killed by him—it. Whatever it was.” I stepped back out of his arms—usually such a comfort to me—and waited to hear what he would say.

  “It’s going to be a lot easier if I just show you, Flor.” He bit his lip as he spoke, making him look a lot younger than his nineteen years, “Will you trust me?”

  No matter what happened, I would always trust Finlay. Nothing would ever change that. “Okay.”

  “Then let’s go.” He grinned, and just for a moment, everything felt entirely normal again.

  Chapter Two

  We got into Finlay’s blue jeep, and I buckled my seatbelt, waiting patiently for him to at least give me some idea of where we were going. After fifteen minutes of driving in silence, I realised I wasn’t going to get anything from him before we got to our destination.

  “You know? I have never known you to be so secretive about anything. I’m beginning to think you’re Buffy the Vampire Slayer or something.” I laughed.

  Apart from flinching almost imperceptibly, there was no reaction from him at the mention of one of my favourite old school TV shows.

  I gave up at that point and reached out to turn up the radio. I knew the Ed Sheeran song that was playing would annoy Finlay; he hated Ed Sheeran. But he didn’t show it, even when I sang along at full volume.

  I realised long before we got there that we were heading back toward Castle Dion. As Finlay wound the car along the road that meandered down the western side of Loch Ness, I turned the radio down and shivered as I turned to him and spoke. “We’re going back to where it was?”

  “No, we’re not Flor, I promise. We are going to the castle, but…it’s really hard to explain. I’m not going to take you anywhere you could get hurt, I swear.”

  I bit my lip nervously but said no more.

  He stopped the car about half a mile before we got to the castle, and I looked at him in confusion as he opened the door and started to get out into the warm darkness of the night.

  “Five minutes, Flor, and you’ll see. You’ll see it all.” He didn’t give me time to think about it; instead, he started to walk toward the waterside.

  It was surprisingly light out as I began following after Finlay. Looking up, I saw the moon was full, the beautiful silver beams falling into my path and illuminating the way. The brightness of the evening meant that as I approached the water, I could see Finlay jump into a small row-boat which was tethered to a tree.

  As I drew closer, I let my puzzlement show on my face. “This is starting to feel more and more like some sort of weird date, Finlay.” Although I climbed into the boat and sat down opposite him to allow him the room he needed to row, a part of me was waiting for cheesy Italian music to start playing.

  Finlay untied the tiny vessel and pushed off from the bank with the ease of someone who had
done this before, and before long I was astonished to discover how beautiful the loch looked at night. The inky water was topped by metallic ripples of moonlight that continually broke apart like quicksilver before the bow of our boat.

  I was so entranced by the beauty of the moonlight on the water that I hadn’t even realised we had drawn level with Castle Dion, my awe only broken by the sound of Finlay’s voice. “Look at the castle, Flora.”

  I pulled my eyes away from the spectacle of the loch and turned toward my place of work. I started to complain I had seen the castle a thousand times before when my breath caught in my throat and I stood up so quickly I almost toppled the boat.

  “Whoa, easy, Flor. Sit down.” There was a smile in Finlay’s voice as he studied my reaction.

  I tumbled back against the wooden bench but didn’t take my eyes from the stone behemoth towering over us. When I left this place in daylight earlier it had looked as it always looked—the ramparts jagged where parts had collapsed over the years. Every room was there in principle, but there was no roof or walls to separate or distinguish them. The turrets hadn’t been there since the seventeenth century. I knew because it was what I was scripted to tell every visitor who came on my tour.

  “This cannot be Castle Dion,” I whispered.

  Every rampart stood proud and complete, the walls were not crumbling, and the turrets rose tall up toward the moonlight above. The walls were made of a rock that glistened and sparkled, instead of the dull stone I had become used to seeing each day, and the gaping hole where the gate had once been, was now filled by an impressive wooden door attached to the stone by elaborate iron fixtures.