Free Obsidian Souls (Soul Series) by Donna Augustine Page B

they finally did step out of the flames, they stood naked with dark smudges of ash and what I sickeningly realized was some of the remnants of the dead man. What were these things? They weren’t human, of that I was now convinced. At least in this, Caden had been telling me the truth.
    I motioned to Caden that I was ill and I must have looked the part because he readily removed his weight from me. I crawled backward from our hiding spot and ran as far as I could before I bent forward and emptied my stomach of all its contents.
                  I saw his boots next to me.
                  “Can you walk?”
                  I nodded my head yes, but I couldn’t yet find the strength to actually move. His arm went around my waist to assist me. When it quickly became clear I was going to slow him down he swept me up in his arms. We moved quicker with him carrying me then when I was just following him and we managed to get back to the bike in what felt like seconds, instead of the ten minutes the trip had initially taken.
                  “Will you be able to stay on the back of the bike?”
                  “Yes, I’m fine. Let’s just go.” I wasn’t fine. I knew it and so did he, but I didn‘t want to stay here a second more than necessary. My hands shook as I reached around him. I was glad for the roar of the engine as we took off back to the bar. I hoped it hid the sound of my crying. Now that I was away from the immediate danger of being discovered, the force of what I had just seen struck me hard.
                  This is what was coming for me? I was doomed. They weren’t even human. What could I do and where could I possibly even go? Maybe to Canada or Europe? Mexico? We made it back to the bar before I had decided if it would be an island in the Mediterranean, or if I’d be safer in some cold tundra in Russia.
                  He left the bike in the back and we went inside. He was right, I didn’t want to know anymore, but now I felt like I had to know.
                  “Why didn’t you help him?” I accused him the moment we were inside the building.
                  “It wasn’t my fight.”
                  “They burned him alive!”
                  “That man wasn’t an innocent angel.”
                  “It doesn’t matter. He didn’t deserve to die like that.”
                  “And how do you know? Who are you to decide? He was a dirty cop that had tortured and killed people for them. I don’t fight for people like that.”
                  “If he worked for them, why did they do that?”
                  “I don’t know, but it’s not my problem.”
                  The steam completely went out of me. We made it down into his place and I collapsed onto the couch. “I have to leave here. I’ve got to get a visa or whatever it is you get to move to another country and I have to leave.” I knew my voice was on the verge of hysteria.
                  “You can’t outrun this,” he said matter of fact.
                  I turned to look at him as he stood in front of the bar counter while he poured a whiskey.
                  “What is this? What kind of people stand in a fire and don’t get burned?” I couldn’t shake the vision of them standing in the blazing fire. The screams of their victim were still echoing in my brain.
                  “The world isn’t what you think.”
                  Now if that wasn’t the biggest understatement of the year. Nothing that had happened as of late fit into my world.
                  “There are things that would make tonight seem like a boy scout outing. The one thing you have to know is that you are in this now. There is no running, no turning back. When you asked what kind of