Soul Screamers Volume Two

  Saving the world has never come easy—and Kaylee Cavanaugh’s died to prove it…

  The final collection of New York Times bestselling author Rachel Vincent’s Soul Screamers series is packed with emotion, with intrigue, with secrets, with family—and above all, with love.

  Don’t miss

  WITH ALL MY SOUL

  FEARLESS

  NIEDERWALD

  and a brand-new novella, LAST REQUEST

  Praise for the Soul Screamers series by New York Times bestselling author Rachel Vincent

  “Twilight fans will love it.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “The reader can get behind Kaylee and her predicament: saving the world from unspeakable evils while trying to hold on to the ones she loves. But what really makes this story stand out is Vincent’s brilliant otherworldly characters.”

  —VOYA

  “A fitting send off for Kaylee Cavanaugh….It’s a bittersweet farewell for this fantastical cast of characters.”

  —RT Book Reviews on With All My Soul

  “The story rocks (for teens and adults, I might add).”

  —Book Bitch

  “Fans of those vampires will enjoy

  this new crop of otherworldly beings.”

  —Booklist

  “I’m so excited about this series.”

  —The Eclectic Book Lover

  “A must for any reading wish list.”

  —Tez Says

  “A book like this is one of the reasons that I add authors

  to my auto-buy list. This is definitely a keeper.”

  —TeensReadToo.com

  Also by New York Times bestselling author Rachel Vincent from Harlequin TEEN

  Soul Screamers

  “My Soul to Lose”*

  MY SOUL TO TAKE*

  MY SOUL TO SAVE*

  MY SOUL TO KEEP†

  MY SOUL TO STEAL†

  “Reaper”†

  IF I DIE∆

  “Never to Sleep”∆

  BEFORE I WAKE∆

  WITH ALL MY SOULΩ

  “Fearless”Ω

  “Niederwald”Ω

  “Last Request”Ω

  *also available in SOUL SCREAMERS VOLUME ONE

  †also available in SOUL SCREAMERS VOLUME TWO

  ∆also available in SOUL SCREAMERS VOLUME THREE

  Ωalso available in SOUL SCREAMERS VOLUME FOUR

  from HARLEQUIN MIRA

  The Shifters

  STRAY

  ROGUE

  PRIDE

  PREY

  SHIFT

  ALPHA

  Unbound

  BLOOD BOUND

  SHADOW BOUND

  OATH BOUND

  Dear Reader,

  It has been my profound pleasure and privilege to spend the past five years writing the Soul Screamers series. After seven novels and six short stories/novellas, I’ve spent more time in Kaylee’s world than in any other fictional world I’ve created, and at this point, it’s hard to remember a time before Kaylee.

  The Soul Screamers series was my first foray into young adult literature, a segment of publishing where I feel very comfortable. While I don’t intend to give up writing for adults, neither can I imagine not writing for teens, and I owe that to Kaylee.

  Kaylee, on the other hand, owes everything to you. All of you, who read her stories, then lent them to a friend. Or recommended them online. Or preordered the next in the series. Or wrote to tell me which characters you love and which you hate. I will be forever grateful to you all for giving Kaylee a chance.

  Now, I ask you to follow her on this last journey, in With All My Soul. Kaylee has earned her happy ending, but it will not come easily. She has evil to defeat, and finally she understands that victory—not to mention retribution—cannot come without sacrifice.

  I’ve heard from many readers since With All My Soul was first published in the U.S., and with those letters and comments in mind, I can tell you there may be tears. But don’t give up before the last page. My goal for the end of the book was to have readers smiling before their cheeks could dry.

  In addition to With All My Soul, I’m thrilled that this omnibus contains three other Soul Screamers stories, each of which is near to my heart. “Fearless” was Sabine’s first appearance in the Soul Screamers world. I wrote it before I wrote My Soul to Steal, as a way to get to know Sabine as a character, and so that readers could see her from her own point of view before they saw her through Kaylee’s less flattering viewpoint. Sabine was fun to write from her very first line of dialogue. “Niederwald” was a chance to pair Sabine and Emma on a road trip, and their adventure features more of Sabine’s verbal sparring and gives Emma a chance to play hero.

  “Last Request” is a brand-new story set between the second-to-last and the last chapters of With All My Soul. The story alternates between Tod’s point of view and—for the first time—Nash’s as they try to grant the last request Kaylee never had a chance to ask for. If the end of the story makes you cry, I recommend rereading the last chapter of With All My Soul for a pick-me-up.

  Since this omnibus is the very last Soul Screamers installment, I would like to thank you all, dear readers, for coming on this journey with Kaylee, and with me. This would not have been possible without you.

  Rachel Vincent

  Table of Contents

  With All My Soul

  Fearless

  Niederwald

  Last Request

  WITH ALL MY SOUL

  Ending any series is hard. Ending this series has been particularly hard for me, both creatively and emotionally. I’ve been working with Kaylee and her friends and family since January 2008. We’ve been through seven novels, two anthology short stories and several novellas together. Kaylee and the gang have lived in three different houses with me, in three different states. I’ve spent more time in the Soul Screamers world than in either of my adult series to date.

  Saying goodbye has been bittersweet. But Kaylee has grown up, and I’ve grown up a little bit with her, I think.

  This book is dedicated to Kaylee, who’s suffered through so much for our entertainment. She’s been a good sport—a fighter to the end—and it has been my pleasure to finally give her the happy ending she deserves. (Don’t peek! I promise, you’ll hate yourself for it later….)

  And…

  This book is dedicated to every reader who’s ever written to ask me for a release date, a spoiler or a snippet of the text. My words may have brought Kaylee to life, but your interest kept her going.

  Thank you all.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  I used to hate the fact that my world is built on half-truths, held together with white lies. My life itself is an illusion requiring constant effort to maintain. I lie better than almost anyone I’ve ever met. But if I know the truth about anything, it’s this: when people say the devil is in the details, they have no idea how right they are....

/>   * * *

  “It was a nice service, right?” My best friend, Emma, smoothed the front of her simple black dress, both brows furrowed in doubt. She shifted her weight to her right foot and her heel sank half an inch into the soft ground. “I mean, as far as funerals go, it could have been worse. People cried.” She shrugged, staring out at the slowly departing crowd. “This would have been awkward if no one had cried.”

  It was awkward anyway. Funerals are always awkward, especially in my social circle, where the definition of “death” is under constant reevaluation.

  “It was a lovely service, Em.” I watched as people fled the open grave in slow-motion retreat, eager to be gone but reluctant to let it show. There were teachers, shell-shocked but in control, looking out of place without their desks and whiteboards. Parents, looking helpless and scared. Classmates in dark dresses, black slacks, and uncomfortable shoes, most in the same clothes they’d worn to the past few funerals.

  We were all much too familiar with the routine by now. Whispered names and details. A day off for mourning. Excused absences for the viewing. Counselors on call for grieving students during every class period. And finally, the funeral, where we said goodbye to yet another classmate most of us had known for most of our lives.

  I was one of those who’d cried, even though I was among the few who knew that the star of the show—the recently deceased herself—was actually still with us. Right next to me, in fact. A guest at her own funeral.

  Sabine leaned closer, Nash’s hand clasped in her right one, because her left was still encased in a cast. A curtain of thick, dark hair fell over half her face, shielding her from most of the thinning crowd. “So, seeing yourself in a coffin wasn’t awkward? ’Cause it was awkward for me, and I’m not the one being buried today.”

  “Oh, no, the viewing was totally horrible,” Em admitted, her brown eyes wide. Those eyes were all that was left of her, other than her soul. Everything else was Lydia’s. Thin, angular face. Petite bones and slim build, similar to my own. Limp brown hair. Freckles. Feet that didn’t quite fit into Em’s favorite pair of shoes, stolen from her own closet while her mother and sisters shopped for her casket. “But the funeral itself—that was nice, don’t you think?”

  It was, as it damn well should have been. Em had left funeral details—in her own handwriting—in an envelope on her vanity table the day we’d picked up her shoes and a few other essentials. Once Ms. Marshall was thinking clearly, she’d probably wonder why her seventeen-year-old daughter had given so much thought to how she wanted to be buried, but grief had eclipsed her skepticism at least long enough to arrange the funeral of her daughter’s—albeit morbid—dreams.

  “It was beautiful, Em,” Tod whispered, and I glanced up to find him standing next to me, where there’d been only damp grass a second before. It took more self-control than I’d known I had to keep from throwing my arms around him and trying to melt into him, which had recently replaced hoping for world peace as my new favorite impossible task.

  I couldn’t throw myself at him because most people couldn’t see him. Reapers are sneaky that way.

  Beyond that, I couldn’t indulge in an embrace from my boyfriend—that word felt so inadequate—because today wasn’t about comforting me. It was about burying Emma. Being there for her.

  And planning vengeance. Justice for Em and for everyone else Avari and his fellow hellions had possessed, tortured, or taken from us. Today was about plotting retribution for Emma’s boyfriend. And for Lydia, and for Sabine’s foster mother, and for Brant, Nash’s baseball teammate.

  And for Alec.

  My hand twitched at the thought of him, as if I still held the dagger. I could almost smell the blood. I could still see him in my mind, one of my few real friends, his eyes filled with pain and confusion, staring up at me in fear. Until they’d stared at nothing.

  I swallowed my anger at Avari and what he’d taken from us, determined to avoid ruining Emma’s perfect funeral with the bellow of rage itching to burst free from me.

  Today was a new start for Em, and a new start for us all. We could no longer afford to be victims in Avari’s quest to walk the human world. Beginning today, we were soldiers. Warriors, battle-weary and not yet focused, but warriors nonetheless.

  Warriors, at least for the moment, in black formal funeral attire. All except for Tod, who could wear whatever he wanted because no one other than the five of us could see him.

  I started to take his hand, hoping no one would notice such a small motion, but then Emma made a soft, strangling sound and I looked up to see her staring ahead, frozen like a deer in mortal danger.

  Her mother was heading straight for us.

  “Kaylee, thank you so much for coming.” Ms. Marshall sniffled and reached for my hand, and her tears triggered more of my own. “Thank you all.” She glanced at everyone but Tod, whom she couldn’t see, and when her gaze lingered for a second on her own daughter, hidden behind a stranger’s face, Emma burst into fresh sobs.

  “We wouldn’t have missed it, Ms. Marshall,” Nash said, while I wrapped one arm around Emma.

  Sabine stared at us both. The funeral hadn’t upset her at all, that I could see, and she obviously didn’t understand why it had bothered us, beyond the lie we were telling the world, since Emma was still alive and mostly well.

  “Thank you.” Ms. Marshall sniffled again, and she didn’t seem to notice that her own heels were sinking into the soft earth. “I know Emma would be happy if she could see you all here now.”

  Em sobbed harder.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t believe we’ve met.” Ms. Marshall dabbed her eyes with a damp tissue and held one hand out to her own daughter.

  Emma cleared her throat and shook her mother’s hand. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.

  “This is my cousin. Emily,” I said. “She’s just lost her parents, so she’ll be staying with me and my dad.” That was the best story we could come up with. It was heavy on coincidence, but just as heavy on necessity—Em had to live somewhere, now that she’d lost everything she’d ever had. Except for us.

  Ms. Marshall’s expression crumbled beneath a new layer of sympathetic grief, and her voice shook. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Emily.”

  But if Em heard her, I couldn’t tell.

  “She loved you so much!” Emma threw her arms around her mother and buried her tear-streaked face in her mom’s hair. “She wouldn’t want you to forget about her, but she doesn’t want you to worry, either. Or to...” Em nearly choked on her own tears, and we all stood there looking as helpless as Ms. Marshall looked confused and...devastated. She was crying again, and so was I. “Or to...you know...stop living. She wants you to live,” Em said into her mother’s ear. “And to hug Traci and Cara a lot. And to make yourself happy. She’s sorry she called your boyfriend an idiot. It shouldn’t matter that he’s kind of stupid, if he makes you happy, so Emma would want you to go for it.”

  She finally released her mother and stepped back, wiping tears with her bare hands. “So you should go for it.”

  Ms. Marshall’s tissue was soaked and when she blinked, more tears fell. “I didn’t realize you knew Emma. Do you go to Eastlake?”

  “She will,” I said, when I realized Em’s flood of words had dried up, leaving her speechless and evidently mortified by her outburst. “But she knew Emma from...before. We were all three really close.” I couldn’t tell whether or not Ms. Marshall believed me—or whether she was even capable of thinking my hasty explanation through at the moment—but she nodded and wiped at her cheeks again.

  “Kaylee, when you feel up to it, I hope you’ll come over and take something from Emma’s room. To remember her by. I’m sure she’d want you to have whatever you’d like.”

  “We will,” Em said before I could speak.

  Ms. Marshall frowned, then nodded again and started backing away from us in heels crusted with mud from the recent rain. “Thank you all for coming.” Then her two remaining daughters each put a
n arm around her and led her to the long black car waiting with its engine running.

  “I think I scared her,” Emma whispered, clutching my hand.

  “Yup.” Sabine’s nearly black eyes were dilated and her mouth hung open just a little. As a mara—a living Nightmare—Sabine fed on fear, but she’d been going hungry a lot lately, since grief and anger had finally overwhelmed the nearly constant state of fear we’d all been living in for the past few months.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s rude to feed from the dead girl’s family at a funeral,” Nash said, one arm around her waist, his fingers curled around her narrow hip. He used to hold me like that. I used to like it. But Nash and I were over. We’d been over before we even knew we were over, and I still wasn’t sure he’d completely accepted that yet. But it made me feel better to see him touch her in public.

  He’d been touching her in private since the very day we broke up.

  Sabine lifted both brows at him. “You expect me to believe that if someone threw a pie in your face at a funeral you wouldn’t lick your lips?”

  “If someone threw a pie in my face at a funeral, I’d...” Nash frowned. “Well, that’d be really weird.”

  “Weirder than seeing yourself buried?” Tod’s hand slid into my grip, his fingers curling around mine, now that there was no one near enough to see me holding hands with empty air. No one except Sophie, my real cousin, and her boyfriend, Luca, who watched us from the other side of the open grave. They knew all about Tod. In fact, my undead reaper boyfriend hardly even registered as “strange” to Sophie anymore, considering that her own boyfriend was a necromancer. And that Luca and Sabine were the only ones among us who’d never died.

  Nash’s death was classified information, available on a need-to-know basis, and so far, his mom and brother didn’t think anyone needed to know. Including Nash.

  Emma and I had both died twice, and for me, that second one actually stuck. Now I was a “resurrected American,” better known, in colloquial terms, as life-challenged. Or undead. Or the living dead. But I’m not a zombie. I’m just a little less alive than your average high school junior.

  “No,” Nash said, in that short-tempered voice he seemed to save just for his brother. “Having a pie thrown in my face at a funeral would not be weirder than seeing myself buried.”