Horizon, Soul Guardians Book 3 (25 page)

Kara clasped her trembling
hands behind her back. “You’re not crazy. I … I … feel the same as
you, as if I know you already,” she said finally. “This
is
pretty
weird.”

The stranger sighed in relief. He
threw out his hand. “I’m David … and apparently a little
crazy.”

David
, Kara repeated in her head. Somehow she already knew his
name. She pressed her hand in his. “I’m Kara.”

David squeezed her hand gently, but
didn’t let go. His skin was warm, and Kara felt shivers down her
spine. His touch was electrifying. Kara flinched involuntarily. Her
heart pounded painfully against her chest. She was sure David could
hear it. But he still didn’t let go of her hand.

“
Kara,” David repeated and
stared at her. He stood there searching her face, and Kara was
frozen in his gaze, but unwilling to move, for fear she would wake
up from this dream. It was a dream, wasn’t it?

David shifted his weight. “Are you
going somewhere, Kara?”

Kara’s mouth opened, but no words come
out. Embarrassed, she clamped her jaw shut again. She felt David’s
warm fingers press against her skin. Somehow it felt natural to
her. After a moment, she gently removed her hand from David’s grip
and pointed to the bookstore. “There … I’m going—I was going to the
bookstore.”

David looked over to the bookstore and
then back to her. “Mind if I come with you? I’m not much of a
reader, but something’s telling me not to let you out of my sight.
Like I need to keep you safe.”

Kara’s heart skipped a beat. Something
was telling her the same thing. A powerful feeling to watch over
him came over her suddenly. It didn’t make sense, she knew. How
could this be happening? But she didn’t’ care. This felt right.
David felt right. She couldn’t explain it. It was a feeling deep
inside her. She knew she was supposed to be with him.

Kara smiled up at him. “Sure. But I’m
positive I can find something for you to read.”

David chuckled softly. “I doubt it.
Reading’s really not my thing—I’m more of a video game kinda
guy.”

“
I had a feeling you’d say
that.”

David kept eyeing Kara with a cocky
expression plastered all over his face, as though he had won a
prize. She rather enjoyed his attentions, even if they were a
little overconfident. Somehow Kara felt complete.

They crossed the street
together.

Kara smiled.

This was the best day of her
life.

And now a sneak peek at
NETHERWORLD

Chapter 1

Old Jim’s Bookstore

K
ara inhaled deeply and blew the dust off a row of books with
cracked covers and ripped spines. The air smelled like a mixture of
old glue and mildew. The dust motes hovered like a swarm of
insects, and the hot and humid damp lingered and clung to her
clothes. It was not the perfect environment to stow old books, but
she loved how the stale smell of ink on paper seeped out. It was
the smell of imagination—where great minds came together and
created magic with ink and paper—the smell of adventures not yet
discovered. In books, anything was possible...and she loved
it.

She wiped the perspiration
from her forehead and pulled her hair into a ponytail. She
squeezed
The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn
between
The
Call of the Wild
and
The Old Man and the Sea
, in the
classic novel section. She nudged them into a perfect straight
line, with their spines arranged vertically. Once satisfied with
her work, she wiped the moisture and dirt from her hands on her
blue jeans and added to the layer of grime from the day’s work. The
ladder creaked and wobbled under her weight. She clasped her hands
firmly around the rail and stepped down carefully. Once she reached
the bottom, she jumped the last step.

With a smile on her face Kara pushed a
metal trolley piled with books and magazines toward the front of
the shop. She ducked under the single light bulb that flickered
nervously from a loose wire in the center of the shop and drove the
trolley between crooked stacks of books that wiggled all the way up
to the ceiling in some places and teetered perilously.

Rays of light spilled through a large
bay window from the front of the shop and illuminated the
book-shelves in a soft golden glow. Dust particles glowed in the
light like miniature snowflakes. Kara could see the grey cobwebs
that draped from the highest corners of the ceiling and made a
mental note to sweep them later with her broom. Brown and beige
striped wallpaper peeled from the walls behind a feeble wooden
counter that lined the right side of the shop. An old cash register
with manual buttons and a red lever sat above it. Below the cash
register was a glass case displaying different sizes of crystal
balls. Kara giggled at her distorted reflections in them. A warm
breeze brushed Kara’s bangs from her face. Wind chimes sang faintly
from above the open front door.

Kara sneezed. The trolley jerked. A
thick blanket of dust covered most of the back book-shelves, a
clear indication that she still had a lot of cleaning to do. It
would take weeks to dust the shop free from years of neglect. She
seriously doubted it had ever been clean to begin with. On her very
first day at the shop, Kara had given the windows a good cleaning
and had swept and scrapped the floors of dingy brown grime and
maroon stains that she’d rather not think about.

Kara gladly inhaled the summer wind
from the open door—dandelions and freshly cut lawns—her spirits
lifted with each new smell. It was an awesome feeling. School was
over, and she was now officially an employee in a place she admired
and respected. Mr. Patterson had given her a summer job in his
bookstore. Her duties were to help him categorize all the new books
into a new computer program, to keep the shop clean, and to work
the cash register when he was on his lunch break. It had proven to
be the best job ever. And Kara was determined to save enough money
for the first semester at Dawson College. Mr. Patterson even told
her that he would keep her on part time when she went to school.
She couldn’t ask for a better boss or a better job. At last, things
were finally looking up for her.

With the trolley parked,
she grabbed a handful of
National
Geographic
magazines and placed them by
corresponding dates along the middle shelf from the magazine rack.
She shuffled them together—and froze.

Her hair stood on end. Kara
inexplicably sensed a presence. She followed the source of the
feeling towards the bay window—

Someone was staring at her from across
the street.

Her heart hammered against her chest.
A young girl in an old fashioned white dress with a large red bow
tied at the middle, stared at Kara from the opposite side of the
street. Her silky black hair was cut short at her jaw line and
accentuated her sharp features. She was beautiful, like an
expensive doll. She looked to be about twelve years old. Even from
the distance, Kara could see traces of redness around her eyes and
nose. Her pallid face was pulled into a grimace, her eyes wide in
terror. Kara could almost feel her sadness. Her eyes pleaded for
help, for Kara’s help. An unexplainable connection with the girl
rose in Kara’s chest. It was as though they were related somehow,
like a second cousin. The girl jerked her head around suddenly and
started to back away.

Two men in meticulously
tailored grey suits approached the young girl from either side.
Their platinum white hair and their faces were identical. Their
skin was a sickly white color like that of diseased albinos. They
moved swiftly and with purpose. The girl backed up against the
front wall of the neighboring shop. She locked eyes with Kara once
more in a silent plea. She mouthed the words
Help me
. Kara held her breath. The
girl was trapped between the two leering men with black eyes. The
loud hammering of Kara’s heart in her ears drowned all other sounds
around her. The little girl was no match for these two evil looking
men. Kara had to do something. She had to save her.

Kara pushed the trolley out of her way
and threw herself over the counter. She grabbed the baseball bat,
which Mr. Patterson kept hidden behind the counter in case of a
perilous transaction with a customer, and dashed out of the
bookstore and onto the street.

She skidded to a stop.

It was empty. The girl had vanished.
The black-eyed men had disappeared as well. The street rang with
silence. The sidewalk was bare except for a few pigeons picking at
the ground.

Were her eyes playing tricks on her
again? Was this another strange vision? For the past months she’d
had recurring feelings that she was being watched. She had
perceived creepy shadows in dark places following her every move,
lashing out at her when they thought she wasn’t looking. But as
soon as she would turn around to confront whatever it was, it would
disappear in a blink of an eye. Perhaps this was one of those
occurrences. Or perhaps she was going mad. She thought it must be
the latter.

“
Are you planning on
beating someone with that bat?”

Kara whirled around. A handsome teen
with a cheeky grin raked his tousled blond hair with his fingers.
With his head in the air, he sauntered toward her with a hop in his
step.

“
Is it safe? Or should I
come back later?” laughed David, and he jammed his hands in his
pockets.

Kara ignored him and watched the
opposite side of the street. “I—I thought I saw
something.”

David raised his brows.
“And so you decided to go all
vigilante
and grabbed a baseball
bat—to beat it with?”

“
I saw a girl. I think she
was in trouble—no, she
was
in trouble. She was really scared. She needed my
help.” Kara’s knuckles turned white as she grasped the bat tightly.
She remembered the little girl’s petrified face as she retreated
from the approaching men.

“
What girl?” David searched
the street. “I don’t see any girl. Are you sure you saw something?
You know, all that dust you inhale all day could be affecting your
brain.”

Kara sighed and lowered the bat. “She
was there a minute ago. I’m sure of it. And there were these two
weird looking men…with white hair—really ugly looking and creepy—I
felt they were going to hurt her. They had these scary black
eyes.”

“
Black eyes? As though they
were punched in the face or something? Just as you were about to do
with that bat, right?”

Kara looked into David’s puzzled face
and decided to drop it. Clearly he thought she was mad. She shook
her head and shrugged. “Never mind.” She gave out a frustrated
breath and then gave him a lopsided smile. “What are you doing here
so early anyway? I thought you had soccer practice?”

“
I did.” David did some
fancy foot-work to impress Kara. “It got cancelled. I thought we
could catch an afternoon movie or something.”

Kara tried hard not to smile, but her
face betrayed her. She looked quickly away from David. Her cheeks
burned, and she knew instantly her face had gone tomato red. Her
heart pounded in her ears.

“
Um…let me ask Mr.
Patterson first. He might still need me for the rest of the day.”
She hoped silently that he wouldn’t. David had been coming around
the shop every day since the very first time they had accidentally
met two months ago. And every time he came around butterflies
fluttered inside her belly.

With the baseball bat loose
at her side, Kara walked back into the shop. David ducked below the
wind chime and followed behind her. She heard the click of the back
door as it closed. She looked up. Mr. Patterson shuffled towards
them. His bones cracked and popped. He scratched his head, sending
ripples through his wispy white hair. His short legs peeked out
from under his usual kaki Bermuda shorts and colorful yellow and
orange Hawaiian shirt. The floor-boards creaked under the weight of
his bare feet. Kara never understood why he walked around barefoot
in the grime and dust on the floors. But as time went on, she got
used to seeing his large square toes and long yellow nails. She
reminded herself to get him a gift certificate at the local
spa,
Toes with Bows
, for a pedicure. If she was forced to look at his feet, then
at least they could be groomed.