Keepers & the Soul Key
Meridian Chronicles Book 4
by M.D. Fryson
Genre: Fantasy, Paranormal Romance
What has happened to Aiden after his selfless act of sacrificing his life for Meridian? Where did Meridian go? True love can break the curse, but only an act of true love from a twin soul sets her free.
Their epic and sudden departure have left their friends, witches, fairies, and spirits in search of their souls.
While the high court demons strategize their attack of the hall of souls to absorb the angels’ power — the only demoness at court has her secret obsession, and she used Moloch, the dark one’s soul collector, who may have taken more than just one soul of a wicked witch.
Astaroth’s secret obsession and help from Moloch may indirectly help the dark one’s plan. But there is one problem that lingers.
Lahash, the rogue demon of the high court, has been charged to destroy his obsession, Echo, the Earth nymph. After kidnapping her and taking her to the dark realm, she is weakened and cannot fend off the brooding demon’s lust. In a passionate moment, Lahash finally confesses why he is so obsessed with the nymph, and she admits her secret knowledge of human souls.
The search for Meridian and Aiden surfaces a shocking revelation. Aiden is trapped and needs to be saved, but from whom?
The spirit guides demand the return of a spirit guide from the keepers, who remains in the hall of souls. They believe this spirit guide can stop the demons, save the spirit guide realm, find Meridian, and save humankind.
The keepers, known as the angels, have one request that the chosen one must accomplish before Etheria can be saved, and Aiden to be returned. There is only one weapon that can destroy the demons, and it is the angels’ quartz sword hidden on Earth.
Will Etheria’s chosen one of the spirit realm find the sword? Will the demons be destroyed, or will dark one’s plan triumph? Can the fallen finally be freed of their awful fate? Will Lahash kill Echo?
Find out if all is to be in vain or if the chosen one can defeat the demons, connect with her twin soul, and form the powerful soul key that can save all.
Excerpt:
Lahash swiftly entered his quarters to check on Echo, whom he had left to regain a bit of her energy as she was near passing when he brought her out of the iron prison.
He walked through the doorway, and the doors swiftly closed behind him. After a thorough examination of the room, at first glimpse Echo was not visible to him. As he walked past the bed and around a corner, there she was seated in a chair staring at the floor.
“Lahash! I want out of here! I want out of here right now!”
Lahash looked relieved to see her. “Calm down, Echo, you will leave here shortly. You will accompany myself and Valefor back to Earth.”
Echo crossed her arms and dropped her chin down while she shot her death glare at Lahash. “Why have you let me out of prison? Why are you just going to allow me to go back to Earth? What is it you are up to? What do you think you will gain?”
Lahash leaned up against the corner in the wall, and in his thoughts of her, whom he was enamored with, he smirked and said, “I could always use the company here. I am sure you and I would have grand times. Maybe hoped is a better word.” The grin left his face. “I have to go back to Earth, and you need not be worried about the whys behind what the demons do. Or I could just let you stay here with me.” His eyes danced back toward the bed that Echo had awakened in from her near passing.
Echo threw her arms down and let out a huff, and in a fluster, she stormed over to the swaggering demon. “You can’t keep me here forever!”
“And why not? You can’t leave on your own and even if the fairies come here for you. They would have a fight on their hands now, wouldn’t they? If you want to leave here, you can, and it will be with myself and Valefor. We have business on Earth to tend to.”
“Why are you doing this? What is it you want?”
“It tires the dark one of the demons drawing power from humans. It would be a lot easier to draw our power from the cosmos as the angels do. If we take that power and destroy the hall of souls, then things would be simpler. That is a way to put it.”
Echo was incredulous. “How can you believe all this? Why? Humans, yes, you all draw your power from the ill-willed and the cruel. But there are humans out there that have good hearts, they have good souls and do not deserve this fate you speak of. You will fail. I think you all forget that just because they have been tucked away and hidden that they have no power.”
Echo remained fumed and returned to her seat in the red velvet chair and crossed her arms. Her grip left impressions in her arms. Her beautiful eyes, if knives, would cut Lahash, with the rage seething within them.
Lahash moved toward the steaming nymph who shifted her dagger-like eyes away to stare at the stone floor her feet rested upon. He stood for a few seconds looking down on her, and then knelt beside her. He rested his arm on the back of the chair to steady himself. With an ironic look of softened eyes that gazed upward to study the nymph he was so obsessed with, he forced a mutter, “I know.”
Echo said, “What did you say?”
Lahash looked away from her sharp eyes, and winced at his own words, in shock of what he allowed her to know. Downward at the ground, he stared at his leather shoes made in Paris and said, “You heard me.”
Lahash stood up, turned away, and moved toward the chamber doors as if to leave, but he stopped and said, “I know. I understand and respect the dark one and his will. I understand that to him, having the scum demons in the legions we command to draw power from those humans is beneath him. But without that energy source, we to would perish.”
Silence encompassed the large and museum-like chambers Lahash called his resting place.
Echo’s rushed breathing remained audible to the demon, and he turned his head. “Oh, the humans go to church and blame the demons for their sins or Lucifer as the say influences them into wrong. They live their delusions each day, struggling to take ownership of their doings. We do not cause humans to act in the manner they choose. We are opportunistic and seek those of ill will out and stay close for their negative energy. That is all it is. Just energy we have nothing to do with free will or the choices of humans.” Lahash turned to face his feisty fairy foe, as she stared him down. “I do not care what happens to Warrick, he deserves whatever he has coming from Karma, the dark one or even the one soul who will come for her reckoning.”
Lahash returned his dark and fearless eyes to the prying eyes of Echo, “But I have no care either way what happens to Etheria. I would rather see Earth be left as it is, for all beings to go back to the way things were before Warrick started this war that we will have to finish. But he did what he did, the dark one has been awaiting the perfect time, and because of Warrick, we are now where we are.”
Echo stood up and walked toward Lahash, who remained distant in his stance. “Why, then? Why are you here? Why do you take part?”
Lahash snorted, “Really? Why? Because I was born a demon, I do not have any other choice. I dislike being involved in these things, but I have to do what I am ordered to do if I am to remain at my station.”
Echo walked away toward the bed that Lahash left her in to recover. “Why did you come to get me? Why was it me you chose and not one other? Is it my element? Why? Why me?”
Lahash followed Echo, and looked up to the painting on the ceiling, “Didn’t you put your powerful spell on me? To use my lustful ways against me. To render me powerless in my attempts to destroy humans and Etheria?” Lahash smirked and ran his fingertips over her exposed shoulders with a deceitful smile.
“Spell? What do you mean, spell?”
“You all are nymphs. You rule love and lust. You can use those things against any being to include the demons. You have me under your spell. Just as Siren can plunge in here with her scream that drives demons’ will, she can save a spirit guide from burning alive in the dark realm’s pit of fire.”
Lahash advanced closer to Echo who moved backward. “Lotus can drown out any problem with her water element and Karma. Oh, Karma can deliver quite a punch. Venus, the element of love itself, the ruler of air and communication. She can take a person to another place and see their dreams, see and find their true love,” Lahash continued moving toward Echo, who brought her arms up to her chest as though to protect herself from Lahash’s words.
“Then there is you. What is your power? A storm on Earth? Are you the stabilizing factor in it all? Do you carry a secret, that you Echo, are another protector of what lives on Earth? Mother Earth, are you her? Are you mother nature to it all? Are you the keeper of live souls on Earth? Are you the undefined mystical element that is commonly overlooked? Karma may hold the Universe’s debt to all beings, but you hold something extraordinary. When those souls are released from the hall of souls, who is it that delivers the souls? Tell me, Echo? Are you the human’s idea of a stork? The hidden knowledge of a soul key? Tell me why I would pick you.”
Lahash’s eyes further darkened, he towered over Echo as she collapsed back onto the bed as he held himself over her with his long arms, looking downward on the nymph as if the words he spoke were not true at all. As if there was not a spell or one that Echo put on the demon.
Echo, even so, exhausted from her capture and not in full capacity to operate in the manner she was accustomed, placed her hands over her face to hide her sadness and the tears that flowed out of her eyes. Through her sobs, her voice muffled as she sobbed into her hands and said, “Yes. Yes.”
Once she let out her answer, she jerked her hands away from her face in anger. “There! Yes! I am the Earth Fairy and rule Earth, and all that inhabits it. I make sure the souls make their way to their destined body when born into the world. It is me.”
Lahash paused with a grin. “So where does Selena fit into all of this and her daughter, Luna?” Lahash snapped his hands away from the silk bedding, and his stoop lessened as he towered over her.
Echo wiped the tears from her eyes. “Selena is a mother to us all. She knows what all of us will do. We help humans soul travel, we do not know who each twin soul is before they find one another, but once they connect, yes, I am the fairy that carries with me the knowledge of each destined soul to be with another — a soul key.”
Lahash’s eyes softened with her answer. Echo slowed her speech and the venom in her voice faded as she surveyed the demon. “We help lost souls cross over to where they belong. That is my job. It is who I am. So, therefore you picked me? Because I know of individual souls that have converged through the course of their lives. Twin souls? That is, it? Why?”
Lahash whispered, “That is not why I picked you. I picked you because your place in this Universe is for something that I love something I do not want to see the end, even if it for my selfish reasons. Earth. Humans. Earth and life are a beautiful thing, frail, just like you…Or am I under your spell?” Lahash grabbed Echo around the waist and pulled her toward him, and as he leaned in to press his lips to hers, her eyes changed color to an amber where swirls formed right before one of the brilliant rays of energy surged outward against an enemy such as a demon.
As her eyes swirled and her face angered. “Go ahead, you want to destroy me? Do it.” Lahash implored.
Echo drew her head further back and looked at Lahash in near pity, then she closed her eyes and pressed her lips to his.
After a moment of the pair’s lips meeting, Echo placed her hands on Lahash’s shoulder to push the demon off of her. The harder she struggled, the tighter the hold was as he maintained a steady grip around her waist. He leaned forward, sending her into a backbend to escape his grasp. Now that Lahash had more of a fairy nymph, he was under her spell, intentionally or not.
His mind traveled back to the day he held Luna as a prisoner, and the nymphs showed up to distract him. “You made a mistake ever giving to me what you all did the time you broke Luna out of the dark realm. It did not defeat or hurt me, it made me want more.” He leaned back in and forced his lips on hers, and his heavy breathing was audible as he fought the nymph’s attempt to get away from him.
Echo broke her lips away from his. “Lahash, stop!” Echo continued the struggle that led her to fall to the bed with the demon on top of her. After more of a battle between the pair, Lahash stopped and flashed across the room. He maintained his back to her, kept his head low while he ran his index finger and his thumb over the outline of his lips. He then ran his finger across his tongue and turned his head to cut his eyes back at Echo, who still sat on the bed in shock at what had just transpired.
“You taste good,” Lahash smirked.
Echo arose from her position on the bed and grabbed him by the arm and jerked Lahash around so she could look into his eyes. “You stop this now! What just happened will never happen again! I don’t understand you! Why? Just because I carry the knowledge of soul keys. What does this matter to you? Humans? Why? I want to know now!”
There was silence for several minutes as Echo stared at Lahash, her breathing was raced as the anger was rising again.
He said, “You remind me of someone, a human. Someone I knew ages ago. Demons do not have rules. We are labeled as what we are, but for some of us, there is more. As much as I lust, I have felt before. I have felt what may have been love.” Lahash stopped to see Echo’s face resembled shock. “Don’t look at me that way. It is true. It is rare for a demon to feel, but it has happened to a few of us. It isn’t something we brag about. Like I said, it was ages ago. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of her.”
Echo asked, “What was her name? And what happened?”
Lahash sighed and said, “Sophia. Her name was Sophia. After her, I swore that I would never allow myself to feel whatever that was for a human again. We couldn’t be together.” He stopped and looked at Echo, who now didn’t look at him with so much disdain.
Book Trailer
Fairy Nymphs & The Demon Court
Meridian Chronicles Book 3
Meridian, stays with Raina the ex-coven member who uses black magic to keep Meridian at her side. Aiden struggles with Meridian’s absence having no idea why she really left him. The demon court has their own agenda in the fight for human souls by keeping Meridian banished, but the elemental fairy nymphs come back again to help and may be the ultimate undoing in the fight to send Meridian home. Using the demon’s lustful ways against the favorite of the court, Lahash, may throw a kink in their demonic plan that involves the hall of souls. One good witch answers another of the demon’s riddle setting off a battle in the dark realm, but the real answer still eludes everyone. Is Meridian’s twin soul Aiden? Is it Relic or Kieren? Meridian finds her twin soul but it comes with a price. In the third of the four installments of Meridian Chronicles series, hang on for love, treachery and a fight for one unique soul that will take you on a ride to a mind blowing ending you won’t see coming.
Book Trailer
Black Widow Curse & The Coven
Meridian Chronicles Book 2
MERIDIAN’S curse has left her in a state all her own of amnesia.
She is on Earth lost and afraid with only fragments to piece together her mysterious circumstance. The curse has taken the unimaginable from her, but that is just scratching the surface. The Black Widow curse will reveal itself through the demon’s riddle, the Coven and the Fairy Nymphs.
A trip back to Salem is just what the psychic ordered, but treachery lurks with an ex coven member who calls on demons. The demon realm offers more riddles than answers, but a stroke of luck from the high demon court, brings in a sophisticated demon, Lahash who has grown tired of the games.
The curse hides Meridian’s identity and her memory will unlock the Universal secret of her twin soul to find her way home. As Meridian finds Aiden so do the impacts of her curse and what it could do to their budding relationship.
Meridian’s soul and fate are in the cross hairs, while the odds rise between the demons, witches and the fairies. Finally having found Aiden, the Fairy Queen comes through to send aid to Meridian, but she still doubts herself and contemplates running away from it all. Who is Meridian’s twin soul? Will she go back to Etheria or will the curse reign down on Meridian?
Find out in this dark and twisted paranormal romance.
“Great sequel to the first book in the series! I loved the introduction of Lahash. Reminds me of one of my favorite characters from an older book I read some years ago. It was great to get more into the minds of the lead characters and see that they have some of the same thoughts and emotions just like we do. Anyone who loves a good paranormal book with some villains you will love to hate or just hate and a great plot with some nice twists then I would definitely recommend this book!”
Book Trailer
Hall of Souls & The Book of the Fairies
Meridian Chronicles Book 1
If you love Fairies, have an insatiable love for the unseen, enjoy a good riddle shrouded with demon twists and believe in soul mates; hang on for a ride with Meridian through the twists and turns in this paranormal love story.
Notorious leader, Warrick has it out for Meridian and her circle of Spirit Guides and plans to use the Hall of Souls to cast Meridian’s father away for fictitious crimes as a cover for his real agenda. Struggles for the balance of power over humankind and a battle for their existence have the Spirit Guides in a precarious position.
Seeking refuge, the Spirit Guides fall deeper in debt to the mysterious fairy Queen as she capitalizes on the Spirit Guides’ weak position. Answering the dark one’s riddle may be the answer, but the sly queen is no stranger to tricks and riddles. The Queen’s agenda may be Meridian’s downfall.
A love triangle is unfolding in the midst of this epic struggle threatening the unity of the Fairies and the Spirit Guides. Human boy Aiden, son of a fallen spirit guide, unbeknownst to him is in the middle of the love triangle and the source of Meridian’s obsession.
In a race to save her father from the Hall of Souls and a fight for humankind, Meridian is on the horizon to finding her soul mate and taking back her home of Etheria until the Fairy Queen’s deception becomes the ultimate price.
Giveaway
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About the Author
My series is fantasy paranormal and the characters are actually inspired by real people.
Personally, I am a wife and mom to three boys. I am an animal lover especially horses that I used to ride, train and show. Someday will do once more!
I hold a BS in Business Administration with a minor in Marketing. I graduated with a 4.0 and made the National Dean’s List 2 years in a row.
I like many kinds of books. Paranormal is my favorite and anything self help, self motivation.
I also like romance novels.
I love chocolate, coffee, my family (not in that order), the beach. Being born a Pisces make it impossible to not love the water…especially the ocean.
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