My Immortal Soul Book Two

By Odette C. Bell

Three weeks have passed since the incident at the orphanage, and Celeste’s still in trouble.
With the Sect breathing down her neck, she needs to find some way to drag their shadowy cult into the light.
But in tracking them down, she’s only thrust deeper into her destiny. She finds a pocket in time, and through it, a door to her ultimate fate.
....
A light-romance urban fantasy, My Immortal Soul follows a kick-butt crime fighter and her demon nemesis vying for the truth in a twisted city with a worse fate. If you love your fiction with action, wit, and a splash of romance, grab My Immortal Soul Book Two today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Odette C. Bell
• Release date: Apr 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370143214

Book preview

Chapter 1

There was too much going on in my life. Then again, would you expect peace for an ex-child of the Devil?

If you believed in Karma, I’d be paying for my sins for the rest of my life. If, instead, you believed in the power of will, I’d be doing good because I chose to.

The question was, what did I believe anymore?

I pushed off the rooftop, heels clinking hard against the treacherous slate as I threw myself carelessly at the building opposite.

It was a slow, slouched move – far less graceful than usual. But I had far less energy than usual.

It had been three weeks since the incident at the orphanage. Yep, three whole weeks. Now, you’d think in that time that I would have blasted this case apart, personally destroyed the Sect, found Sister Marigold, and generally saved the day.

I hadn’t.

Because this wasn’t easy.

I’d been working my butt off for the past three weeks, tracking down every lead I could find.

And right now, as I landed on the opposite roof, rolled, slipped a bit, and had to desperately clutch hold of a drain, I was tracking down a lead.

They weren’t a demon, they weren’t an angel – they were a middle practitioner just like me. Though their credentials when it came to not picking a side in this never-ending holy war weren’t as solid.

Jay Copland was an ex-cop. But unlike most of the other cops in this town, he’d figured out what was really going on under the surface of this screwed up city.

He’d seen a demon devouring a corpse, and from there the traumatic experience had opened the equivalent of his third eye. The guy had found out everything he could about magic. Considering he was a cop, that hadn’t been so hard. Plenty of unwitting police officers over the years had accidentally confiscated magical tomes and amulets without realizing it, and they littered the evidence lock up.

He’d studied, he’d learned magic, and he’d gone out on the streets to hand out justice.

Oh, give it up already, I spat as I found my balance, hauled myself onto the roof, and started running up it, body low to distribute my balance.

My soul dial was only turned partially to the left. I was using barely any magic of my immortal being to track Jay down. It wasn’t because I fancied a challenge. The very last thing I wanted to do right now was lump more stress on my shoulders.

Nope. According to Sydney, I had to conserve my soul energy.

You see, another fight was coming, and the more of my soul I had in reserve to fight, the better for everyone.

You might have legitimate questions about why I was trusting Sydney, the self-confirmed old soul. The answer was – I didn’t have any other option. The kid had gotten me out of that situation with Ravar, and he clearly knew more about what was ultimately going on here than anyone else did.

Heck, Sydney was the reason I was now tracking down Jay.

I reached the top of the sloped roof, a blast of air slamming into the side of my face. It caught my hair and sent it whipping over my shoulder so quickly, it was like I had a scalp full of whips. They battered me just as effectively, too.

I paused for several seconds as I allowed my eyes to half close. I tipped my head back until the long line of my neck caught the moonlight making it in from a slit in the clouds above. I could feel its gentle caress as I centered my attention.

… There. Two blocks down.

Shit Jay was fast. The guy was pushing 60, but that didn’t damn matter. He hit the gym for several hours every morning, and I knew for a fact he wasn’t above using certain herbs to beef up.

Back into the fray, I muttered as I deliberately pushed off and allowed myself to slide down the other side of the roof. I upset the slate, several of the tiles falling off, sliding down the roof, and tumbling into the darkness of the alleys below.

Far in the distance, I felt a sudden burst of magic. I saw it, too. Just a flash sparking toward me with all the speed of a bullet.

I didn’t dodge. I leaned forward, watching it until the very last moment. Then, when it was almost upon me, I slammed a hand onto my amulet and forced it all the way to the left.

Magic pulsed over me, white and brilliant. It was more than enough to absorb the force of Jay’s blow. His magic, though unquestionably strong, couldn’t match a well-timed blast of one’s eternal will.

Though it was tempting to remain in full soul mode, I knew I couldn’t. Sydney’s nagging voice rattled in my ears almost as if the kid knew what I’d just done and had cast some kind of mental spell on me to remotely harangue me should I ignore his orders.

I yanked my dial back to about 5%. It felt like taking an ax to my own legs. They immediately wanted to cut out from underneath me as weariness tore through my body with all the effectiveness of a brutal army.

I stumbled as I reached the end of the roof, more dislodged slate slipping around me, tumbling off, and crashing into the abandoned alleyway below.

Though it could have been tempting to give in to my crushing fatigue and tumble off the roof with that slate, I gritted my teeth, forced my way, and willed my legs to work.

Just at the last moment, my stylish black heels pushed off the gutter, and I flew through the air.

I flipped, landed on a much lower roof, crouched, then shot forward.

I was in my usual uniform. If you could call it that. I wasn’t wearing sturdy pants or a bullet-proof vest or anything that could be termed sensible attire for battle.

I was in my nice white blouse, my high-waisted black pants, and my best heels.

It wasn’t like I had anyone to impress. I’d just had to track Jay down right after work, and I hadn’t had the chance to head back home and change.

As I pushed up from the roof, I smelled another blast of magic sailing my way. Then another, then another.

I felt like I was in a frigging side-scrolling video game as I dodged to the left and right, putting on sudden bursts of speed that made my heels grate over the concrete roof and the wind flutter through my blouse.

The next one won’t miss, I picked up Jay’s voice right by my ear.

The ex-cop hadn’t doubled back to warn me of that. He was using a throw-spell. It was heavy-duty magic, and it was kind of impressive that a human of Jay’s credentials had learned it. But that there told you everything you needed to know about the guy.

He pushed himself, then he pushed himself some more. Where others needed to rest, relax, and spend time with their family, Jay needed nothing. He’d ditched his wife and kids when he’d learned about magic, either to protect them or because he’d realized you couldn’t continue to play happy families in a world where both Heaven and Hell were as bad as each other.

As for relaxation, I doubt it had ever existed in the ex-cop’s vocabulary.

And as for sleep, just like me, he would barely need it. One of the first true magical lessons was how to get more out of sleep. I’m sure Jay had whittled it down to barely several hours a night.

I didn’t bother to waste any of my magic on remotely communicating with Jay. I just threw myself forward with all my strength, my heels like two metronomes beating wildly.

I ran forward with such speed, by the time I reached the opposite side of this roof, I finally felt like I was gaining on him.

I heard a frustrated breath of air that seemed to echo throughout the entire city.

I didn’t need to pause, tilt my head back, and breathe in another lungful of air to know that Jay was only two rooftops away now. I could see him.

He was glowing. Not that an ordinary person could see that. But to me, I could pick up the distinct outline of his magic tracing around him like a forcefield.

He paused for a split second, his head tilting my way as a blast of wind took to the tails of his jacket, slamming it around his legs, the sound like wet sheets buffeting on a clothesline.

Why were they wet?

Ah, good question. Remember when I rocked up to Sydney’s house back when I was looking for the kids? Recall how the whole front yard had been saturated, despite the fact it hadn’t rained that day?

Water has unique properties. After all, it’s water that sets Earth apart, and in combination with our atmosphere, makes life possible. Your body is mostly water, for god’s sake.

Water is everything. Without it, there’d be no life, and without life, there’d be no magic.

So magic and water go hand in hand. It’s much easier to cast magic when you’re surrounded by vast bodies of water. It’s also much easier to dissolve spells when you have access to great quantities of it too.

So some practitioners will turn on the sprinklers, crack out their buckets, and steal the neighbor’s hose whenever they have to cast a strong spell.

When Sydney covered his front yard with water, it would have made it easier for the protective charms he was using to soak into the ground.

As for Jay, he took that to the extreme. He was always wet. He had vials upon vials of a specialized water spray hanging around his neck. As soon as he dried out too much that casting magic became harder, he would crack one against the center of his head and let it soak him through.

His short silver-flecked black hair stuck to the side of his face as he shook his head, muttered something through thin lips, and pivoted hard on his foot, his jacket flaring around him with all the drama of some character from a video game.

He put on a phenomenal burst of speed that saw him close the distance of 30 meters from where he was to the edge of his roof in a single second.

I was surprised steam didn’t issue out from his shoes as they silently took every step.

He reached the edge of the roof, turned, flattened one hand over his chest, and spread the other toward me.

Oh shit, I had time to mutter as I felt something crack above me.

It wasn’t some giant hammer that was going to sail down from the clouds, clock me on the noggin, and end this fight for good.

It was the clouds.

Jay was practicing weather magic, ha? Good on him for learning such a complicated spell. But at the same time, screw the bastard for what he was about to do.

I didn’t have anywhere to go as the heavens opened up and started raining down on me with proverbial cats and dogs. Though I imagined Jay could have spared the magic to make actual cats and dogs hail down from the tumultuous gray clouds, obviously he was smart enough to appreciate he shouldn’t waste his magic.

Plus, rain was enough.

It was thick, pounding down around me with such force, it instantly flattened my hair against my shoulders and cheeks, practically drilling it into my suddenly cold muscles.

The sound of it was phenomenal. The way it rang out was like listening to a battle raging over the city.

But who cares about its force and sound? I cared about its magic-sapping qualities. For this was no ordinary storm. Jay had spelled the damn clouds so that every droplet of rain-soaked my magic from me as effectively as a sponge soaking up liquid.

Damn you, human, I spat, sounding like the pissed off demon I’d once been.

My hand jerked up to my amulet, my fingers twitching around it, almost ready to slam the dial all the way to the left.

Jay might think he was winning now. But this wasn’t a fair match. As soon as I used my full skill, I’d show him what an ex-Devil girl could do.

I stood on the edge of the roof, shoulders drooping as every droplet of water hit me and turned into dancing sparks of steam and stolen magic.

My fingers twitched toward the dial as my gaze tracked Jay’s disappearing figure.

I… almost did it.

A part of the old me – the Devil me – hated to lose so much that there was no line she wouldn’t cross to win.

But then I reminded myself I’d outgrown that idiot.

I forced my hand to drop.

I took in a defeated breath as I turned my head up and faced the clouds. They boiled overhead as if the sky was a great big pot and someone wanted to serve up a dish of defeat.

Righteo, another failure, I muttered to myself as I uselessly tried to push my sopping wet hair from my face. When the magic-laced rain only whipped it back over my eyes like a petulant child, I let out a raking sigh, gave up, and turned away.

There’d always be tomorrow morning, right? Though tracking down a practitioner like Jay during the day wouldn’t just be useless, it would be foolhardy.

Jay, believe it or not, had less to lose than me. I, despite my history, tried to at least live by the rules of man during the day. I didn’t run around advertising magic to the general populace. Jay was different. Jay was an ordinary human who’d been pulled head-first into this dark world.

He ran a popular conspiracy site that listed every single magic sighting in town. Fortunately it was fringe, and everyone thought it