A Summoning of Souls. Leanna Renee Hieber

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СКАЧАТЬ almost striking her head on the stone cairn covered in moss and ivy at her feet. She plummeted in a hazy fall.

      Just as Eve was about to crash into a wooden doorway, she closed her eyes and braced for an impact that never came. She was wrested to her feet, gravity shifting, the world righting itself. Opening her eyes, the willowy, sharp-featured Strand stared at her, dressed in a simple blue sisters’ habit. The deaconess released her grip on Eve’s arms. They stood just outside what appeared to be a large cathedral when she’d just moments ago been in an empty forest clearing. Arches and spires soared away from them into oblivion. The building changed depending on one’s general beliefs, familiar comforts or favorite architecture.

      “There’s an entity following you,” Strand said sharply, looking around. Eve turned. Although there was nothing but a thick mist behind her and the vague outline of trees, a murky reflection of the forest beyond, the hairs at the nape of Eve’s neck wouldn’t settle.

      “The man brings in his wake a terrible fear,” Strand continued, “and promise of violence. In Sanctuary, we are all a bit psychic. The sacred space itself was made from the sheer force of spirit ages ago, made not from mythic creatures but human hearts. We know that man means us harm and I will not have it find us.”

      “Albert Prenze.”

      “Yes, he hates us. Not us specifically, but ghosts. And he’s following you.”

      “Yes. My precinct has been working his case,” Eve said. Strand opened the arched door of Sanctuary just wide enough for their bodies and hurried Eve in, closing it behind her to stand in a shadowy entrance foyer of grey stone arches and colored light. “His irrational hatred of ghosts stems from family torment. I don’t know what purpose could be served by terrorizing you here.”

      “You’ve led him to us,” murmured a voice from the shadows in a light African accent. A young woman stepped into the light cast by a bay of quatrefoil stained-glass windows over the front door, dressed in the same blue habit as Lily Strand, her brown face framed by the white of her wimple, her dark eyes wide and worried.

      “Mara, please, Sister,” Lily said in a low voice. “Eve has only ever wanted to help. That’s why I called out to her in the first place. I trust this living one.”

      “You can trust my whole team,” Eve insisted.

      “But none of them know what we need here,” the woman continued, anxious. “You can’t know the ways in which we are vulnerable, and your presence only tears at our fabric.”

      “Mara, please, light candles if you fear a breach,” Lily insisted.

      The young woman glided away, small hands dancing nervously at the sides of her habit. Eve followed her, wanting to reassure her as she hurried away. She stepped forward under the archway of the foyer and into the nave, but Mara disappeared into a side chapel.

      Eve glanced up at the stained-glass windows of the main sanctuary. The windows changed since last Eve had seen them; the structure altered itself in mysterious ways. She had recalled the windows featuring angels, but now human forms shone from them in all manner of dress, region, tradition, and time period. Was the light beyond their leaded images indeed darkening?

      “My apologies,” Lily said to Eve, following her gaze toward the windows. “My Sisters are uncomfortable for a living soul to come and go from here, and for the company outside. The growing storm. The threat that Prenze represents. Cruel hearts like his, forged by troubles I can’t claim to know, seem to find purpose in disturbing the hard-fought peace of other souls. His hatred of spirits is most particular and personal. This places you in a precarious situation.”

      “You can’t think me the enemy?” Eve asked in a pained gasp. She’d done so much for the spirit world all her life, taken it into her mind, listened to all its whispers when ghosts threatened to split her mind in two. She’d forsaken a higher education due to their pressure to keep them first, so she opened the Ghost Precinct and remained self-taught, she’d devoted her life—

      Lily Strand put both hands on Eve’s shoulders as if she could hear this runaway train of frustration.

      “Of course not. I know you to be our biggest ally. It’s what’s around you. If Prenze is manipulating you here, it’s likely to see if he can wedge in after you. If he were to get in…” Lily shuddered. “I worried enough about little Ingrid’s body and the undertaker. But that disrespect was nothing compared to Prenze’s abject hatred of spirits. I leave it to you and your gifted friends to stop him outside. I’ll do what’s necessary here on the inside. Though I will say, we need every living being who treasures spirits to lend us their love for the amount of protection needed.”

      Lily gestured to the nearest Sanctuary window. “These are the images of our helpers, gifted living folks who are attuned to the veil. Her Holiness, our foundress, asked Sanctuary’s Living Light to reach out to those who can help us weather storms.”

      The nearest window struck Eve to the core; the leaded glass portrayed a woman in contemporary dress of light blue, but the rest of her was entirely without pigment. Hair and skin white as snow, her ice-blue eyes sparkled and her smile was kind. Radiant white light artfully shone from behind her in leaded strokes as if her whole body was lit. A stunning, ethereal vision. While Eve didn’t recognize the woman, she desperately wanted to know her. One of Gran’s earliest Spiritualist lessons had been to declare that powerful women were keeping ghostly balances steady all around the world; she and Eve were but two actors on a grand, mysterious stage.

      “She’s our best living asset, that one,” Lily said, following Eve’s gaze to the stained-glass portrait. “You’re not the only gifted conduit to the dead, Eve.” She gave a teasing smile. “And we need all of you here, at the end of an era, to be sure we’re all not torn apart, to lend your lights. But as for you, go on; you’ve been here long enough. You’ll have worried whoever came after you this time.”

      The deaconess returned Eve to the front door. Glancing out a beveled glass lancet window, she exclaimed, “Ah! It’s the mortal whose faithful heart created this portal! Go on!”

      Eve turned back to the nave to see several Sisters heaving great shutters over the Gothic arched windows, closing over loving, saintly looking faces from all around the world, battening down before a storm.

      “It’s getting worse, my friend,” Lily said sadly. Thunder rolled in the distance. “Take care out there as we take care in here.”

      It was as if the whole spirit world shouted it at her in a thousand accusatory murmurs: “Don’t let anything in!” Eve clapped her hands over her ears for the furor of it.

      The deaconess heaved open the great wooden door, and as the light beyond blinded Eve and she raised her arms against it, the woman placed both hands on Eve’s shoulders and pushed her forward into the brilliant void.

      Eve fell again, that dizzying lurch and queasy pain distinct to this out-of-body experience, praying she’d come to again in one piece. She’d had quite enough of going unconscious and waking up without remembering the journey. For someone who loved to be in as much control as a paranormal life allowed, this was a fresh hell and terrifying new habit.

      When she opened her eyes, would he be waiting for her? Albert Prenze? Had he been the one to drive her here, or was it her own unconscious, powerful desire to drink in the divine mysteries of Sanctuary mortals were not supposed to understand?

      A shadowy figure suddenly obscured all ethereal light. She knew that form. It had been at her window. A torment. The astral СКАЧАТЬ