Soulceress (The Mythean Arcana Series Book 2) Read online

  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  DEAR READER

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  THANK YOU!

  ROGUE SOUL: EXCERPT

  STOLEN FATE (THE MYTHEAN ARCANA 4)

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  GLOSSARY

  AUTHOR’S WORKS

  ABOUT LINSEY

  COPYRIGHT

  SOULCERESS

  Linsey Hall

  DEDICATION

  For my parents, who’ve always supported me.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you so much to all of the people who put their time and effort toward helping me with this story. As always, thank you Ben for helping me create this book. Emily Keane, for reading every story I’ve written, no matter how busy you are. Thank you Jon McGough, for always being quick with the medical advice. And to Doug Inglis and Veronica Morriss for your help and support when this particular story hit a rough patch. Thank you to Carol Thomas for reading this story and always being there for me.

  Thank you to Valerie Hayward, Shelley Bates, and Jena O’Connor for various forms of editing. The story is much better because of your expertise. And thank you to Simone Seguin for writing wonderful back cover copy.

  Thank you to my beta reader, Charisma Cassidy. I appreciate so much that you volunteered your time and expertise to help make this story the best it could be, especially the epilogue.

  Dear Reader,

  Warren and Esha’s story has a special place in my heart, as does the secondary hero, Chairman Meow. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

  Happy reading,

  Linsey Hall

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Can you repeat that?” Warren Campbell asked, his head buzzing.

  “The witches are losing control of their prison.” Cadan, his friend and colleague, looked grim. “They think the barrier will break within the week.”

  “A week?” Warren’s stomach pitched.

  “Aye. The only prisoner is too powerful to contain any longer. A soulceress called Aurora.”

  Aurora. The name made the blood pound so hard in his head that his eyes throbbed. He hadn’t heard anyone speak of her since she’d stolen his soul more than three hundred years ago.

  “You all right, mate?” Cadan asked.

  Warren blinked and met his friend’s dark gaze. He was spacing out—back to the past when he’d fucked up his entire life.

  “Aye.” He shook his head, then surged to his feet. He had to get his act together. “I’ll go see them and figure out how we can help.”

  “I’ll come too.”

  “Ah, doona worry about it. You’ve done enough by telling me.” More than that, he didn’t want Cadan to know the truth about him. Closest friend or not, the fact that Warren was a monster without a soul was something he didn’t want to share.

  “Aye, well, you know the witches. Prideful lot. Won’t seek help ’til it blows up in their faces.”

  Which made his job a hell of a lot harder. As the head of the Praesidium, the security division of the Immortal University, it was Warren’s job to keep things like this from happening.

  Intent on doing so, Warren strode out of his office and down the beautiful old hallway of his building on the university campus. Cadan kept pace with him, ignoring Warren’s assertions that his help wasn’t needed.

  Cadan was a Mythean Guardian, as the warriors who worked for the Praesidium were called, and was tasked with protecting the individuals most important to humanity while keeping the dangerous Mytheans like Aurora in check. He was also his closest friend and nosy as hell.

  Which meant he was right on Warren’s arse as he strode through the great atrium that marked the entrance to the Praesidium’s building and pushed out through the heavy wooden doors.

  “You’re acting damned strange. What the hell’s the matter?” Cadan asked as they descended the stone stairs leading to the cobblestone courtyard.

  Warren ignored him and focused on the stone buildings rising on all sides of the courtyard, their gray faces dour on this dreich day. The sun couldn’t beat its way past the heavy gray clouds, and it suited his mood just fine. He strode across the courtyard toward the rolling green hills surrounding the main part of campus. The witches kept to themselves in cottages near the forest. Private, but still within the protection of the university.

  “Seriously, mate, what the hell is wrong?” Cadan demanded. “You look like death.”

  Where would he start? With the fact that the soulceress who owned his soul and could use it to power her own evil magic was the one who would be released? Or perhaps with the deaths he’d caused that had landed him in this mess? That everything he’d worked for was about to come crashing down around his head? That he lacked any humanity at all?

  No. He’d kept those secrets for years and would continue to keep them. The life he’d created here at the Immortal University wasn’t perfect, but it was something good he’d worked hard to create out of the ashes of his past. Aurora might have made him into a soulless monster, but he’d tried to do good with his life in the years following the loss of his soul and his humanity.

  “I’m fine. Just doona like the idea of this soulceress getting out, that’s all,” he said.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cadan shrug. His friend didn’t buy his excuses, but Warren couldn’t bring himself to care.

  They arrived at the lushly gardened section of the university that housed the witches’ cottages and strode down the path leading to the main cottage in the middle. Roses climbed up the gray stone, pink and red and yellow, all vibrantly in bloom despite the fact that it was a dreary November day. Smoke drifted from a chimney that speared up from the side of the slate roof and the windows were aglow with golden light.

  Good, they were within. He banged on the wooden door, meeting his friend’s eyes as he did so. Concern tightened Cadan’s brow, and Warren realized he probably looked crazed. He tried to flatten his features into calm even as his insides roiled.

  “Be quiet,” a voice hissed from within.

  Warren turned to see one of the witches peering through a little slot in the door. Her eyes blazed green and threatening.

  “I’m here to talk about the problem with your prison in the aether,” he said.

  It was the only prison of its type, a jail without bars or stone. It floated within the aether, that ephemeral substance connecting earth and the afterworlds—known to mortals as
the heavens and hells of their religions. It was between here and nowhere, and as such was impossible for him to manipulate. Only the witches had access because they had created the prison.

  “We’re working on it. Right now, in fact. And you’re going to screw it up. Come back tomorrow.”

  “Now.” Warren’s voice rumbled.

  The witch squinted, glowering. “Tomorrow. We’re in the middle of a containment spell. You’re going to screw us up. We’re trying to shore up the boundaries and you’re messing with our concentration. Come back tomorrow.”

  Warren frowned, but the seriousness of her voice penetrated. A flash of light bursting from the windows convinced him. If they were doing what they could, he wouldn’t interfere.

  For now.

  “Tomorrow,” he said.

  She slammed the little slot in the door shut.

  Warren heaved a frustrated sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. A huge part of him wanted Aurora to be released so that he could hunt her and retrieve his soul. No. The risk to others was too great if she was released. She could aetherwalk away from the university as soon as she escaped, free to wreak havoc anywhere she chose. There was no telling how long it’d take him to find her, or what she could do in the interim. He’d made a vow to protect others when he’d joined the Praesidium. Serving his own selfish needs at the expense of the safety of others was not an option.

  He met Cadan’s worried eyes. “We’re done here.”

  Cadan nodded. “Come on, let me buy you a pint. Work day’s almost over.”

  “Thanks, but nay. Go back to your Diana.”

  “I’ve got time. She’ll be in the library for another couple of hours.”

  Warren liked Cadan’s woman, an American scholar who was the reincarnate of Boudica. But his friend would be happier with her this evening, no matter how much he protested. Warren was shite company right now.

  “I’ve got some things to take care of. Give my best to Diana.” He clapped Cadan on the shoulder, then spun and strode away, desperate to get some space and clear his head.

  The possibility that Aurora might escape made his skin feel like it was stretched too tight over his muscles. He felt trapped in his own body, torn between duty and possibility. He spun on his heel, changing direction and heading to his house instead of back to his office. All he needed was some space.

  He told himself he’d do the right thing by seeing to it that she stayed in prison.

  But he couldn’t say if he believed it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “It’s a freaking miserable night to be hunting rogues,” Esha Connor whispered to Chairman Meow, her feline familiar.

  They crept silently through the darkened tunnels of the Edinburgh underground, each dodging the deepest puddles in the worn dirt floor. Unrelenting rain had leaked through the porous ceiling, which was actually the street above, and Esha could feel the Chairman’s foul mood. It matched her own, which was the reason she’d leapt at the job to kill the rogue demon who’d been lurking down here.

  She caught sight of a cluster of remnant shadows to her left and gave them a wide berth. Shadows of old evil that lingered after the death of the evildoer were thick down in the underground—one of the reasons Edinburgh was considered the most haunted city in Europe. She could have banished the shadows, but the shadows were relatively harmless and any magical activity might alert her prey.

  Anyway, she kind of liked Edinburgh’s reputation.

  A soft rustling noise made Esha and the Chairman freeze. Esha squinted into the darkness, knowing the Chairman did the same. She hadn’t wanted to alert the demon to her presence before they managed to find him, so she carried no light.

  Instead, she instinctively followed her connection with her familiar, whose night vision was far better. But the Chairman was antsy in the unusual damp of the underground, and her skin almost crawled in empathetic annoyance.

  It was turning out to be a shitty night.

  The rustling grew louder and the smell more rank. Like dead bodies and misery. She covered her mouth and nose with the sleeve of her shirt. The Chairman crowded up against her legs. With a tinge of dread, she held out her right hand and willed a bright fireball into existence in her palm.

  “Ugh,” she said at the sight of her prey.

  The Chairman hissed. In less than a second, she took in the small cavern that opened up from where they stood. A tall but spindly red demon crouched along one wall, some kind of body part—she didn’t want to dwell on which—gripped in its claws. Red splattered the walls and more unidentifiable pieces of gore littered the floor.

  The Chairman’s revulsion, combined with her own, made her gag.

  Disappointed, she pumped more power into the fireball and flung it at the demon. It shrieked. She flinched.

  The Chairman turned to smoke, becoming incorporeal so that the noise and other earthly threats couldn’t hurt him.

  Bile rose in her throat as she watched the demon burn. She made herself watch so she could be certain that she’d accomplished the job, even though she wanted to turn away to save her appetite.

  When the demon was nothing but ash, she waved her hand and forced a cleansing wind through the dark space. It was the wind of time, which she used rarely, and never in the presence of another except her familiar.

  Time accelerated within the wind — in this case, enough to disintegrate the gore into dust, as though a hundred years had passed.

  She felt grief for the mortal families who would never know what had happened to their loved ones, but she couldn’t leave the bodies down here to be discovered by mortal police. They were unlikely to find the place since they didn’t know it existed, but she couldn’t take the chance.

  Remaining secret from mortals was a Mythean’s number-one priority and one of the main goals of the Immortal University, her employer. To ignore the importance of secrecy made one a rogue. A lesser criminal than the one she had just slain, but a rogue nonetheless. If one alerted the mortals to the existence of Mytheans—creatures from myth made real by mortal belief—then one would be targeted for imprisonment or death.

  In which case, Esha was sent to deal with the lawbreaker.

  “Come on, let’s get a drink,” she said to the cat and turned to make her way out of the underground. After that, she sure as hell needed one. She’d been in a pissy mood lately, and this rogue hunt had been an opportunity to get some aggression out.

  It was one reason she liked her job as a mercenary for the university. Esha was a soulceress, the only one in Britain, and she was perfectly suited to her field, given her ability to see the shadows of evil that lingered around a person. Without a doubt, she could determine if the one she’d been sent to kill was deserving of death.

  Since they were no longer worried about running into a rogue, it didn’t take long for Esha and the Chairman to get out of the underground. They exited through an opening in the cliff beneath Edinburgh Castle, close to the Grassmarket and some of Edinburgh’s older pubs.

  A quick sprint through the rain and soon she strolled into an ancient little pub, looking for a man to take her mind off things. Stormy winds slammed the heavy wooden door behind her as she shook the raindrops off her short, honey-brown leather jacket.

  “Who do you think we’ll find tonight?” she whispered to the Chairman, who had turned to smoke again when they’d entered the mortal-run establishment.

  He glided along next to her, invisible to all eyes but hers. He couldn’t answer her, but no matter. She knew what she’d find at The White Stag. A willing man to make her forget him. She didn’t go for one-night stands often, but since a real relationship was out of the question for her kind because soulceresses were reviled, she’d gotten used to making do.

  “A pint of Tennent’s,” she told the bartender.

  As he pulled her pint, she turned and leaned back against the worn oak bar and scanned the wooden-walled room that was crowded with little tables and small leather-backed chairs, searching for a guy who
looked dangerous enough to be intriguing but shallow enough not to mind a one-night stand. And definitely mortal. He had to be mortal.

  Her brows shot up when she caught sight of a table of giggling witches in the corner of the pub. Their familiars had turned to smoke as well.

  “Damn,” she muttered, and turned around to lean on her elbows on the bar. What were they doing here?

  Mytheans didn’t normally come to mortal pubs. She hadn’t expected them to be here since they generally liked to keep to their own kind, especially when drinking. It was one of the reasons she liked to hang out in mortal pubs; she didn’t have to be reminded why she was alone. Like a high-schooler who didn’t have a lunch table full of friends, she found it easier to go to the library when the lunch bell rang. Or a mortal bar, where she didn’t expect there to be other Mytheans cringing when she walked by.

  “Bunch of losers and half-rate spell chanters,” she muttered to the Chairman.

  When his warmth pressed up against her leg, she looked down to see that he’d gone corporeal for a moment to comfort her. Then back to smoke. A small smile pulled at her lips, but it faded as soon as she peeked over her shoulder at the other witches. Still laughing, like girls in movies always did when they were out in a group.

  She spun to face the door and head out, then stopped. She didn’t give a damn what they thought. The bartender finally handed over her beer, and she figured she might as well get half of what she’d come for.