Forgotten Souls (The Saving Angels 2)

"Krista, what's the matter? Is it the heat?" Mark asked, kneeling on the ground to look at me.

"No, it's this," I said, showing him the flyer I still had clutched in my hand.

He reached over and gently pried it out of my sweaty fingers. "It's some kind of revival thing," he said, sounding puzzled, holding it up for me to see.

"Not the actual paper," I said, concentrating on breathing through my mouth as I answered him. "It was the girl who handed it to me," I said, swallowing back another wave of nausea.

Mark turned around looking for the girl that had handed the flyer off to me, but she was gone, already swallowed up by the crowd.

"What about her?" Mark asked, still confused.

"I allowed her emotions in. I saw her past," I said miserably. My insides were a twisted mess from the images I had seen. I wanted to hunt down the sick person that had taken something so important from her.

"Krista, maybe you misunderstood what you felt. We've been training wicked long hours and you said the heat was making you feel ill. Maybe those two things combined made you a little more sensitive."

"No, I didn't miss understand," I said stubbornly. "Her pictures were exactly like the forgotten soul images Haniel has been assaulting us with all week. Something happened to her awhile ago and someone is definitely using it to their advantage now. Haniel said that forgotten souls are consumed by their past hurts and that’s what the Abbadons feed on. They use their pain against them allowing them to only focus on the awful images instead of any good ones. Trust me, she's being used for something," I said as I stood up on shaky legs. I was disappointed in myself for not holding on longer and filtering her emotions like I was created for.

"Well, we still have this," Mark said, picking the thoughts from my head as he held up the orange flyer.

He handed it over to me and I read the headline. "Feel like you've been wronged? Come by and hear what you can do to change that around." Beneath the words was a silhouette picture of a group of people standing side by side. Below the picture was the date and time of the event. At the bottom of the page was an address.

"We can go take a drive over and see if we see anything. It's probably deserted today since the next meeting looks to be tomorrow," he said, grabbing onto my hand.

I felt a wave of relief flow over me that he believed me.

Our mission made us walk back to the car faster than our previous pace and within a few minutes we had reached the SUV and were throwing our stuff into the cargo area at the rear of the Navigator. I climbed into my seat and was relieved as the last of the nausea finally left me.

"You okay?" Mark asked as he cranked the air up to high and adjusted the middle vents so they would blow directly on me.

"Yeah, I feel much better. I wish I could have helped her more, but maybe it's not too late. Haniel neglected to tell us that leaving a forgotten soul unfiltered would leave us feeling so lost. I felt like I had climbed to the top of a mountain only to be pushed back down before I could reach the top," I said to Mark, trying to explain why I felt so mixed up.

"Well, let's go see what we can dig up," Mark said, plugging the address into his navigation unit.

The directions appeared on the screen in front of us in a few seconds, pointing to a destination less than a couple of miles away from where we currently were. Mark pulled out of the dirt lot and turned in the opposite direction that we had taken to get here. After a mile, the soft voice from the navigation unit told us to take the next right. Mark turned down the dirt road and after a hundred yards the voice prompted us to turn left. Mark obliged, and after one last turn we pulled into a wide open space with signs that indicated that it was used for carnivals and circuses that passed through town. >Mark had indicated that we would be spending the day outside, so I gathered my hair together and pulled it into a high ponytail on top of my head so it wouldn’t become a mess after a few hours in the heat. After a light layer of lip gloss, a touch of eyeliner, and a spray of my favorite perfume, I was ready to go.

I walked through the house quietly leaving Feline behind to finish his water in the bathroom.

I found Mark on the patio watching the waves roll in.

"Hi," I said, walking up behind him and placing my hands on his shoulders.

"Hi yourself. Don't you look pretty today," he said, pulling me onto his lap. "Not that you're not pretty every day," he added quickly.

"Sure, sure I got you. Believe me I know I've looked like death this past week," I said grimacing.

"You could never look anything but beautiful," he said seriously, dragging his hand around the nape of my neck to pull me in for a kiss.

After making his point clear, he finally pulled back. "You ready to get out of here?" he asked.

"Most definitely," I said enthusiastically, hopping off his lap.

We drove with the windows down on the way to Mark's secret destination. The ocean breeze blew through the window filling the car with its briny smell. I inhaled the salty scent as the wind whipped my ponytail around. I loved living near the ocean.

"Okay, sooooo where are we going?" I asked for like the hundredth time.

"Can't say," he said, grinning at me mischievously.

I slid down in my seat, pretending to pout, but I couldn't help but grin. I was so excited to be out that we could be going to the dump and I would be perfectly happy with it.