Page 3 of The Souls Harvest
The fabric rips a bit more as she barks a laugh, “If your beloved Roden Breith is so powerful and wealthy enough to respond to all our desperate requests, why doesn’t he just fucking help us—” A wet and violent cough shakes her fragile body, and she holds up a hand to keep me away. She raises her red-rimmed eyes at me, fireburning behind them as she says through clenched teeth, “I bet he loves pleasuring himself with all those souls. At night. When his dear Harvesters are not watching.”
I snap my head up to her bare, bony chest, where a tiny burn has appeared, to her hair pooling around her like a dark hole ready to swallow her, to her curved posture as if the weight of the lives she’s taken is crushing her down.
“I promise it won’t hurt—” I dash, holding the vial over my head like a knife.
The last thing I register is her mouth open in a silent scream, her eyes wide with a mixture of fear and relief. I hug her with my left arm while I push the tip of the vial between her breasts, sliding it in as it turns warm in my hand. Whatever is left of her soul resists my call, and I push the vial further in, until her last kernel slowly wraps around my fingers. Elation runs through my body as my thirsty vial drinks the soul’s shimmering tendrils.
In a matter of seconds, the woman will begin to shake. They all do. It’s their souls desperately clinging to life.
“We do what we must. We all do,” I whisper in her ear, even if she can no longer hear me.
To the eyes of a stranger, I’m sure we look like lovers stealing a forbidden embrace in the shy light of the new morning. A last shiver of the folly of two souls whose only desire is to feel more.
I wait for the tremor, but it never comes. She lets out a deep sigh, followed by a shorter one, before folding heavily in my arms. Her chest stops moving as the vial vibrates and hums to me.
“Three. Two…”
As always happens, the lungs slowly start pumping air in and out with an unnatural, steady rhythm.
What about stolen?
I swat her words away and gently lower her onto the rain-wet pavement, resting her back against the wall. She will wake up soon and will not remember any of her surroundings. Not the narrow street stretching towards the market square, not the buildings slowly waking up for the day. Her skin will no longer feel the wind or the sun. I could cut her arm, and she wouldn’t flinch.
But her eyes…Her eyes will turn milky-blue, and she will see the shimmer of every soul walking too close to her. Craving a new soul, her body will roam Horigos, leaving behind only death and half-consumed bodies until her muscles will atrophy.
The purple kernel in my vial beats fast, trying to break the glass and return to its owner.
I stare at it as it quickly forgets where it belonged and turns into the weak, flickering memory of a soul.
“You had an entire life in front of you,” I whisper to the life-size doll at my feet. My words are trapped by the wind and fly away.
The sky behind the buildings of Cleryce’s market square is quickly turning brighter, but the temperature is still that of a stormy night.
With the vial safe in the pocket of my trousers, I take off my jacket and gently place it on the woman’s back.
“You’re getting soft.”
I glance over my shoulder as Galen approaches between two rows of market stalls to my left. As he strides between them, the symmetrical lines of street lamps die one by one. A tall walking shadow in all black chased by the first rays of sunshine.
“You know they can’t tell the difference between hot and cold. I doubt she will complain to the other Nistarei in the Fields.”
As the adrenaline leaves my body, the icy morning breeze smacks me, and I shiver a little.
“She may have lost her soul, but nobody ever told us to deny their last strands of dignity. What’s left of her dress doesn’t leave much to the imagination.” I say before pulling off my gloves with my mouth.
With both gloves between my teeth, I give Galen a side look and twist my hair up into a messy braid to stop it from dripping inside the collar of my already-soaked top.
“Dignity?” His laugh is low and sad. “She should’ve thought about that when she accepted—”
I snap the gloves out of my mouth, glaring at him, “She was just nineteen, for fuck’s sake. Did you know that?”
I look away, biting my tongue before I can say anything worse. He’s still my leader, even if we’ve been friends since he was seven and I was five.
Something rustles onto my right.
“Here.” Galen steps behind me, covering my shoulders with his thick leather jacket. “You don’t think straight when you’re uncomfortable, cold and hungry.”
We’re not allowed to consume solid food twenty-four hours before a mission. They say it dulls our senses and makes it difficult to sense a Nistares. We may accidentally harvest the wrong soul or let the right one go without even noticing.
