House of Night by PC Cast and Kristin Cast

chapter 1
Emma sat at a table on the outside patio of a coffee shop with another angel known as Daren. Sensing my approach the two looked up at me, I walked the last block before reaching them. Emma smiled, “Sytyne, how are you this evening?” Emma had a very calm, lovely melodic voice. With her white blonde hair long and straight and big blue eyes she was what I thought an angel should look like. Daren scowled at me, with his hazel eyes and medium length wavy brown hair. He looked sort of like the human’s depiction of Jesus. Though I have never actually seen the son of Christ before so who knows. “Oh my, you’ve been in a fight.” Emma exclaimed finally sensing my pain.

“Hell hounds,” I muttered. Not paying Daren the least bit of attention. “Can you? Can you help me out?” I gave Emma my sad puppy dog look. She smiled, and placed her hand over mine. Instantly I felt a warm sensation creep up my injured wrist healing the struggle marks. Slowly it seeped up my arms and then over my entire body. I felt my wounds healing, and the pain subside. The same couldn’t be said for my wardrobe though. When the healing was through, Emma removed her hand. “Thank you, I owe you another one,” I exclaimed. It was true I was in debt to Emma she has helped me out quite a bit in my past. Though angels didn’t deal in debts, she did what she did out of kindness and expected nothing in return. If I had went to a demon however you can be sure they would collect on their debts.

The dark night sky did well to hide my unsightly appearance as I walked off. Down town Denver was quite the melting pot. In some areas my appearance was an upgrade. Once you got away from the main streets that is. Making my way home to my tiny apartment I shed my clothes the minute I got in the door and tossed them into the kitchen trash. A nice long hot steamy shower had done wonders for my mood. Wrapping my robe around myself I made my way over to my computer. There was no sleep for me tonight. My fight tonight got my adrenaline going and I was wide awake. My computer was my only outlet now. You see I have tried to have a mortal job, okay well many but they never last long. My job as a soul collector is a demanding job with an unforgivable schedule.

Many of us had a hard time finding mundane work that would accommodate our lives. My new obsession was writing, I decided that writing novels was a perfect outlet for me. It let me make my own hours and it revolved around my existence. I was never at a loss for material since I wrote about soul collecting. My novels are pure fiction of course. Would you really take me seriously if I told you that everything your about to read is all true?

My short stories are published on a bi weekly basis. This however is my first attempt at a full length novel. Soul collector that’s me, my name is Sytyne pronounced (si-teen) I am 97 years old though I don’t look a day over twenty five. I am a junior collector, and won’t reach full fledge until I have completed 5,200 soul collections and at least two hundred years of age. 5,200 might seem like a lot but the truth is people die everyday. It’s my job to collect their souls and send them on their way to the other world. Once in the other world their souls are transported to heaven or hell, or in some cases purgatory. The afterlife was not my jurisdiction. It was just my job to get the souls there. Generally I gave recently deceased souls a seven day allowance to cope with their loss, before sending them to the afterlife. While the souls were here they were in a state of stasis.

Some souls saw no need for the seven day allowance and just wanted a quick departure into the next life. Often those were widows or widowers who just wanted their reunion. Suicides were often the same, they were just as eager to exit stasis as they were to exit their lives. Elderly, and sickly also wanted quick departures. They had time to come to terms with their eminent death while still alive, and saw no need to stick around. There were others of course, each soul was different with different intentions.

Some souls were difficult and insisted on remaining in stasis in a spirit form, often referred to as ghosts. They had their reasons for not being ready to let go. Some were victims of murder and those who felt their life was unjustly cut short. Others stayed out of revenge, often referred to as poltergeists, those ones couldn’t necessarily hurt me but they did scare the crap out of me. I did my best to avoid those them. To all my souls that decided to remain in stasis I warned them that by doing so their eternal fates will be decided for them.

There are four ways that a spirit form could be vanquished into the after life. A shaman had the power to send them on, which most often was hell. A powerful priest performing an exorcism almost always sent them onto the afterlife, ninety-nine point nine percent of the time they were sent to hell. There were the soul snatchers who like me were neutral beings only out for their own good. They made their existence by stealing vulnerable souls in stasis and placing a price on the souls. If the soul was good and pure occasionally heaven would pay the bounty and take it to heaven. More often than not, hell was into buying pure souls. The servants were also sent from hell to extract a disobedient soul from stasis and drag it back to hell. I didn’t recommend the last one, because your soul was doomed to be tormented for all eternity if that was the case.

My job was to take the souls peacefully, by their own accord. Soul collectors were neutral beings every soul had it’s own free will and we could not defy that, nor would we want to. In the young girls case from tonight she chose to remain in stasis until she could appeal her charge. The charge was the state of the soul. It could be charged to hell, or heaven, in some cases when the lines blurred purgatory. The girls charge belonged to hell. The upper levels handled appeals and such difficult matters. It was only my job to get her an appointment and deliver her to her appeal. Once a soul is appropriately delivered I was done with them.

Souls that remained in stasis were no longer under my protection, making them vulnerable. They were bound to my jurisdiction though. If at any time during stasis they decided they were ready to cross over they came to me and I delivered them. They could very well haunt for the rest of eternity if they so wished, as long as they weren’t caught.

So how did I get myself mixed up in this? Well I really never had a choice. My father is a soul collector as was his mother and grandmother, and so on and so on. We were born into the job. My mother was human my father met her back in the year 1901. They fell in love and courted for two years when they finally married, and had me. My mother and father split up when I was ten years old and my mother raised me until she passed away a month before my seventeenth birthday. I went to live with my father and began my training. It was then I learned about what I was. My father had to leave my mother before she or anyone else realized that he was not aging. My father collected her soul, and explained everything to her right before he delivered her.

That’s the way it is, we breed with humans to keep our kind going, it’s our duty to pass on the line. We could date and even mate with other immortals but genetically it was impossible for us to breed with them. We needed humans and they ultimately needed us. I had a human boyfriend who I adored and cared for very much but in time I too had to leave him before he grew suspicious. Fifty years later I had the opportunity to collect his soul but I just couldn’t bare to do it. The pain was too strong, and it broke my heart to have someone else collect him. There were rules that we had to abide by. One such rule was we had to wait two centuries before we were aloud to breed. This was to ensure we were complete with our training and able to balance a double life and properly train our offspring. Another reason was because we weren’t mature enough to deal with human connection. I was technically sixty seven when my father was through with my training. Now I was in sort of a probationary period.

Three more years before my probationary period is over. Another hundred until I reached full fledged collector status. You know that saying for work-aholics, you live where you work, you work where you live? Well that’s us. We were always working so it was necessary for us to live where we worked. In order to live amongst humans we had to survive as they did. We still had rent and bills to pay so we needed jobs to earn an income. So please I would love to get out of this crappy apartment, I beg of all my readers out there to continue purchasing my books, and tell a friend. Who knows maybe one day I will be collecting your soul, and placing myself between you and hells assassins. I’m just saying I might be more willing to do it if you were one of my fans.

This is really as intimate as I’m willing to get to the human race. I do crave normal friends sometimes and wish I could bring myself to interact with your kind more. My problem is I’m still young and often get attached, and well you guys die. I’m just not mentally ready to put myself through that again. So you will understand if I prefer not to make any public appearances at least in the next few decades.

Well I’m off to go meet up with some friends of mine, you might know them as the angel of death better known as Anthony, the two cleaners I mentioned earlier, Chase and Taja, and Karma better known as Seisha. They to were like me, in the sense that we were all neutral beings, we were all in this jurisdiction together and well we need friends just like anyone else.