Spirit Read online

  SPIRIT

  Damned Book 2

  by

  Charmaine Ross

  Copyright © 2017 by Charmaine Ross

  Edited in UK/Australian English

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Published in Australia

  First Published 2017

  web: www.charmaineross.com

  twitter https://twitter.com/CharmaineRossAu

  Facebook https://www.facebook.com/charmaine.ross.01

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  About the Author

  Charmaine’s first foray into romance was as a fourteen year old where she fell hopelessly and eternally in love with her hero as only a teenager can. Instead of watching movies and staying up late, she would go to bed at eight thirty and continue her very romantic, very safe, love affair.

  Since then, she has fallen in love with many heroes, some less safe than what her teenage brain could possibly imagine. After earning a Fine Art’s Degree, a Diploma of Secondary Education and a Diploma of Marketing. She now works in Internal Communications in a global company. Despite her day job, she always returns to writing.

  Although she has travelled, she always returns to her home town of Melbourne and lives with her husband, two children and two cats in the ferny-greens of the Dandenongs. If she’s not working on her latest romance and falling in love with yet another hero, you’ll find her reading, watching and basically indulging in her addiction to any story on any media type she can get her fingers on.

  Spirit: a Paranormal Ghost Romance (Damned Series Book 2)

  Thrown against a sinister threat, Cassie Hunter must race to save the soul of her sister.

  The Grey-Mists, the dimensions between dimensions, are filled with perilous danger. But what’s a girl who can see the unimaginable to do when souls are annihilated right in front of her eyes?

  Cassie and detective Elliot Stone are thrust into a world between worlds. The place where souls are trapped for all existence. And Cassie and Elliot are trapped right alongside them.

  Although they can still touch, kiss, and love each other, things are not as good as they seem. When the villain that has ties to Elliot’s life captures Cassie, bad turns to worse. An evil force has plans to open a portal with enough power to decimate life on Earth and everything in between.

  How can a ghost and a living soul ever hope to overcome such dark power?

  Spirit is the second instalment in the Damned series. Follow Cassie on her journey through perilous dimensions of reality to fight for the love of her life.

  Chapter One

  All I got for my effort of worrying was a headache that made me nauseated.

  “Dr Hunter, are you ok?”

  I managed a smile and gestured the nurse away as politely as I could as bile rose up my throat. I didn’t know her name. She wasn’t a part of the surgical staff at The Alfred, the hospital that had me under investigation about the death of my patient, Henry Davis who, upon his death, I’d helped find his will for his lawyers.

  He hadn’t left me alone after he’d died, giving me one hell of a fright and then continuing to nag me until I helped him. I saw his spirit find his eternal peace and his place, his Heaven with his wife and daughter. Unfortunately, the same peace hadn’t followed me. I was still alive and facing the problems his death had brought about.

  “I’m okay. Just a bit tired.” The nurse didn’t look as though she totally believed me, but she left my room, shutting the door behind her and I was left blissfully alone to worry myself senseless.

  One of the problems Henry’s death had brought about was re-awakening my ability to see spirits, something my mother was adamantly against and was going to put an end to, if it was the last thing she did, and my meeting the man I’d fallen wholly, totally, stupidly, and completely in love with.

  The man who had died seventy-eight years ago.

  The same man who was now causing me to stalk the width of my hospital room because he’d disappeared through the wall after a Soul-Eater, who had stolen the one piece of ‘evidence’ who could prove beyond a doubt that I didn’t kill Henry. The soul of one doctor George ‘slimy-bastard’ Campbell. The man who had orchestrated Henry’s death and the upheaval in my brilliant career as a cardiologist. That was only one part of the mess I was in. I also had the Soul-Eaters to contend with.

  The Soul-Eaters were pure evil. I was starting to get a clear picture of what they were doing here on Earth, but I didn’t know why. They took souls, actually forcibly tore them out of bodies, because the souls they took weren’t ready to depart. From what I’d seen, they very much wanted back in their bodies. They were certainly kicking and screaming when they were taken. Abducted against their will. And a Soul Eater had just taken George Campbell in front of my eyes not one hour ago and Elliot had disappeared after him.

  I was a patient in my own hospital after nearly being ripped apart by a Soul-Eater in the Grey-Mists myself. It was only that I managed to somehow ‘imagine’ myself away that I was able to escape it. I still wasn’t sure what I had actually done.

  The Grey-Mists was a confusing place to exist, a place between places, where there was nothing but indistinguishable shapes, and the ability to create whole worlds somehow. There was no entry and no exit. A maze of nothingness that went on forever. Elliot has been stranded there for seventy-eight years after his death, and now he could be stranded there again after going after George.

  The Soul-Eaters were stronger in the Grey-Mists. Maybe even too strong for Elliot to fight. It had taken both of us to free ourselves when Elliot was taken. I’d seen Elliot nearly become nothing as the Soul-Eater had sucked the very essence out of him. It had been a fluke we’d gotten away that time.

  My gut hit my toes with that thought, the rebound threatened to empty my stomach of the little I’d eaten. I was still healing from my assault with the Soul-Eater. The wounds that I’d been inflicted in the Grey-Mists, had also affected my physical body.

  I had to get back into the Grey-Mists to find him. What if he was fighting another Soul-Eater? What if, at this very moment, his life essence was being sucked away?

  I’d need Laura, my sister. She was the only one who could guide me out of my body so I could disengage from its physical field. But Laura was with Mum, who was not letting either one of us out of her sight. There was no way Mum would allow Laura to help me into the quasi-relaxed state I needed to separate my soul with my body. And Henry, who had led me into the Grey-Mists, had now well and truly moved to his next life. All I could do was pace the room and yell Elliot’s name into the empty space. Each passing second moved with agonising, empty slowness.

  I bit a fingernail clean off, the stinging pain bringing clear thinking back. God, I had to bring him back. Somehow. Someway. How? Think, Cassie!

  The angel—Ariel.

  She’d come to us when Elliot had brought me back to my body and told us that we’d actually asked for all of this nonsense to happen. Strange, since I didn’t remember asking for my life to be reduced to pieces.

  Ariel told Elliot that he’d asked to come back to right his wrongs, instead of moving to his afterlife. She also told me that we were linked and that we had a teeny-tiny job to do. What was that again? Oh, yeah, save the human race. Easy-peasy. She told us that we were a part of a ‘Grand Plan’. Well, Elliot going MIA wasn’t a part of any plan I wanted to be a part of.

  Ariel also
told us to call her when we needed her help, but only if it didn’t go against free will. There had to be some sort of catch to getting untapped angel-power I guess.

  She was the angel responsible for my latent capability to see dead people, or spirits, as they prefer to be called. Mum always had the gift, but it had gotten the best of her and she moved into the middle of the outback to cope with it, when my sister and I were just kids. In the outback, there were little to no ghosts or anything else for that matter, and as soon as we were old enough to leave home, Laura and I had moved to the city.

  When I was a baby and had shown Mum that I was also able to see spirits, Mum worked hard and ‘turned off’ my gift. Now with Ariel waking it up again, it was on full force and had totally upended my nice, peaceful, well-run life within a few short weeks. Professionally and personally.

  If there was one person I needed now, it was my angel. She didn’t exactly give me a telephone number, so I was presented with the problem of being able to contact her. Maybe if I relaxed like I did when I wanted to separate from my body, she’d be able to hear me. I settled onto the bed, closed my eyes, and concentrated on her name, filling my mind with her beautiful image. Golden hair, flawless features, and a calming peace that could settle wars. “Ariel, if you can hear me, I need Elliot here with me. Please—bring him back to me. Now!”

  There was a brilliant flash of light which I saw even behind my closed eyelids and a band of energy rocked my body. Elliot stood before me, albeit more than a little confused. “It worked!” then I gasped, “It worked.” Ariel hadn’t minced words. She said she’d help. And she had.

  I gaped at the man I’d fallen helplessly in love with. Stupid I know, to fall in love with a ghost, but I couldn’t seem to help it. When I’d first laid eyes on Elliot I was overcome with an unbelievable sense of familiarity which had turned quickly into longing, yearning, and undeniable love. I’d been inconceivably drawn to him and against my better judgment, and my mother’s express wishes, I’d tried to help him remember who he was. To me, he wasn’t just a ghost. He was a spirit with amnesia.

  He didn’t remember his life or anything about himself. I couldn’t leave him to drift about eternity in the Grey-Mists, not knowing who he was or what his life had been. Then he remembered a little about himself. He was a crooked cop, on the take, and he had gotten his partner shot on the night he died, but I was not going to believe that about him. Time and time again, he’d shown me he was a man with integrity and morals, something criminals were desperately short on. Even though he chose to believe the worst about himself, I was going to uncover the truth about him.

  As for our future? Well, what future could a dead man and an alive surgeon have? At the moment, not much, except if I managed to get back into the Grey-Mists where I could touch him, kiss him, and maybe…well, probably…do a lot more to him, if I had my way. It was the one place we could be together.

  Ever since Mum had seen Elliot she’d taken an immediate dislike to him. It didn’t make any difference that Elliot had the esteemed manners of the prior century. He’d come for me, specifically to help me with my ability, and that meant that not only would there be no room for a boyfriend of the more physical type, but no wedding and no grandchildren. Between Laura and myself, the pitter-patter of little feet was becoming a far distant dream for her. One that she clung to with every fibre of her being.

  Elliot frowned, looking about, “Why am I back here? How did I get back here?”

  “I asked Ariel and she brought you back. Where were you?”

  “You care where I was?”

  Crap. I hadn’t actually told Elliot how I felt either. That wouldn’t be fair. I wasn’t going to ask him to wait until I turned old and grey and died to be together. He had a life in the afterlife to look forward to and I wasn’t going to hold him back. “Well, when I saw you in the jaws of a Soul-Eater, feasting on your soul until there’s nothing left, then yeah, I care!”

  Elliot grinned and looked pleased with himself.

  “Not the reaction I expected,” I said, my worry-turning-anger spiking.

  “I think you might care for me, Dr Hunter,” he said.

  I flipped my hair over my shoulder. “Well…of course I care. What would I do about all of those lost wandering souls out there without you?”

  I did care for him. Deeply. Even though I wanted to protect him, I also needed to protect myself, too. Once said, those words that were in my heart could not be taken back. And they could open me up to a whole world of hurt. If I didn’t say anything, I had a sliver of a chance to protect my heart from being smashed into irretrievable pieces. There was a very big chance that I might not have this ability forever, and then where would we be? Elliot would be hanging around and I wouldn’t even be able to see him. Both of us would be hanging in a state of immobility from opposite sides of the grave. I wrapped my arms around myself, warding off an internal chill.

  “You disappeared and didn’t come back again. I can’t deal with the dead around here without you. I’m in a hospital, the second worst place to be for a person like me to be, well, after a cemetery that is. Why did you disappear like that!” Or a morgue. I shivered. That’s where I’d first met Elliot. Not the romantic beginnings I’d always thought I’d have when I met the man I’d fall in love with.

  It was cowardly, I know. But it was all I could manage. I wanted to tell him how I felt. That I was in love with him from the depths of my soul. That if he wasn’t here for me, then I couldn’t function with this ability. That I would be totally lost and alone and cold inside forever. The desire to tell him hung heavy in my heart, urging me to utter them. But I didn’t.

  Not only had Elliot had saved my life, from being on the wrong end of Paul Richards’ gun, he’d also saved my life from being attacked by the Soul-Eaters in the Grey-Mists. If the beautiful, silvery cord that connected me to my body had broken while I’d been there, it would have meant I wouldn’t have been able to come back into my body. He’d made sure he delivered me back to the living world, even though I’d pleaded with him to let me stay.

  If I’d stayed there, I’d have been with him. Something I hadn’t quite forgiven him for.

  “I saw something—someone—familiar to me. A face. From my life.” A pulse ticked at his temple as he clenched his jaws in a lock-tight clench.

  Whoever this person was, it might mean that Elliot thought less of himself than he did now. “What? How?”

  He frowned, sitting next to me, but not indenting the bed at all. He didn’t impact anything in this world and I hated that. “When I entered the Grey-Mists, he saw me and he disappeared right in front of my eyes.”

  If there was one thing I knew about the Grey-Mists, it was that literally, anything could happen. A man disappearing was completely acceptable. I shrugged, “So?”

  “It doesn’t seem right, somehow. If I saw someone I knew there, I’d want to talk to them. The Grey-Mists is a confusing place. I wandered there all those years and didn’t see a thing. Surely, when he saw me, he’d want to talk to me. Especially since I knew him. No matter what he did while he was alive.”

  I wanted to at least hold his hand, but I couldn’t do a damn thing about that either. “I’d want to talk to you.”

  His lips curved into a little smile and his eyes softened as he looked at me. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what I was doing when I went after George. There wasn’t time. I ended up following the Soul-Eater through the Grey-Mists. Campbell screamed so loud I was able to follow the sound a long way. But it moved fast, faster than I could chase and I lost the trail.”

  “And who was the man?”

  Elliot’s eyes turned hard. I watched his jaw clench and unclench. “You think I’m good, but the more I remember about my life, the more I see what I really was, the more it just confirms what I know about myself.”

  “You don’t remember your whole life. Only bits. The bad bits.”

  Elliot pushed the rim of his hat back off his forehead with his index fing
er and grinned at me. His gaze softened and I read sadness there, “You’re too good for me, Cassie. But it seems you’re stuck with me. I promise I’ll try my best, but what I know is that people don’t change. Alive or dead.”

  My heart did a little flip. He dressed like an early twentieth-century cop. Trench coat, grey three-piece suit, starched collar, tie. Even if he took his coat and hat off, when he reappeared, he was always wearing them. I figured he must have been young when he died. Early thirties. It was the look in his eyes, that aged look when people saw too much of the bad side of life, that made him seem older.

  I held his gaze, “No. They don’t. And you need to see what I see.”

  Elliot’s smile turned wistful, “Your trust is infallible. I’m grateful. The simple truth is I don’t deserve it.” He held up his hand when I went to speak. “The face I saw was a criminal from my time. Black John was his name. Murderer. Thief. Gangster. You name it, he had his hand in it.”

  “Someone you were investigating.” I didn’t like the way he was so adamant he hadn’t any good in him. I didn’t like the way this conversation was going.

  “More than that. I was investigating him, yes — but I was also doing business with him.”

  I frowned, “You could be remembering bits and pieces of your investigation. You might have been posing as someone who wanted to do business with him to draw him out.”

  “He recruited me. I sold and he bought. He asked me to do things for him…and I did. Bad things, Cassie. Things I won’t ever tell you about.”

  I shook my head. It didn’t make sense. Elliot a gangster. I didn’t want to believe him. Couldn’t. “No!”

  “He was there the night I died. It was him I was going to meet. Not to arrest him, but to work for him. I was on the take, Cassie. Working both ends. A cop — and a gangster.”

  “No!” I stood, shaking. I put my hands over my ears, stood with my back to him, but he went on relentlessly.