Hero Society
Fall
Jessica Florence
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events, and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of those terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.
Jessica Florence© 2020
Editing by Magnifico Manuscripts
Proofreading by Virginia Tesi Carey
Cover by Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations©
*This book contains sensitive material such as depression, suicide, and cutting. *
Prologue
2008
Selene
I wanted to die.
On the outside, I seemed like your normal angst-ridden eighteen-year-old, but on the inside, my soul screamed to end everything.
Death called to me like a siren’s song. It rolled inside my veins, its very presence haunting my mind.
Although surrounded by many at the party, I felt so alone. People cared about me; people loved me. I hadn’t come from horrid upbringings or even had life-altering occurrences that drove me to desire suicide.
No, this need was deeper.
“Selene! There you are, baby.”
My boyfriend, Travis, came over to me with a beer in his hands. My body cringed at the scent. I hated alcohol and parties. But Travis thought it would be good for me to get out of my dark bedroom and be around people. He claimed I was gloomy all the time. I tried not to be, but gloom was inside my genetics.
“I wanna go home.” My voice could barely be heard over the music blaring in this house.
Travis’s pretty-boy face looked at me, and he shook his head, his blond hair sticking to his sweaty forehead with the movement.
“Let’s just go somewhere quieter. Help clear your head.” He set the beer down on a random table and wrapped his hands around mine sweetly. His touch was soothing, but I knew it wouldn’t last long. Even now the call to find death was growing stronger, a constant battle in my head.
Travis had been kind to me, always a bright light during my darkest days. I liked that about him the most. He believed he could fight back whatever cloud hovered over me with his bright smile and funny charm. He led us past couples taking exhibitionism to a new level. Thankfully Travis hadn’t pushed me to do anything like that in the three months we’d been dating.
“In here should be calmer. You can barely hear the music.” He opened a door to a bedroom. My hand squeezed his nervously, my head running wild with the thought of being in a room like this with him. My eyes closed with anxiety, tensing my muscles one by one.
“Easy, Selene, it’s OK, baby. I won’t hurt you.” His warm hands cupped my cheeks. I focused on my heartbeats, counting them, feeling my breath fill my chest, then contract.
“I’m OK.” My eyes opened to look into his pretty blues. I wasn’t OK, but I could fake it. When you hit your lowest, faking was all you could do to function. Pretend, pretend, pretend.
His hands dropped, believing my mask of contentment before walking over to the bed. I followed and sat gingerly on the quilted comforter. The room was lit by one single lamp on the nightstand and appeared bare, like an estranged spare bedroom.
“You’re really pretty tonight. Did I tell you that already?” He leaned in a little closer, his lips pressing a kiss to my pointed nose.
“You did. You look handsome, too.” He did. I tried to compliment him when I could. It helped show I cared to think about something other than the turmoil inside my head. His fingers inched up my sweater, feeling my arm beneath the soft material. A strange tingle shot up my arm, making my head quiet for a moment . . . no thoughts of death, no screaming inside me.
“Touch me,” I whispered. His touch made me feel quiet and normal for a few seconds. It hadn’t been like this before, but something was different now. Ever since I’d turned sixteen, everything had changed. Fighting it had been my only option. I tried to be the girl I was before—the sweet cheerleader with hopes of being a nurse, marrying well, and popping out kids to play behind the white picket fence. But challenging the darkness only made it worse.
“I’d love to.” Travis answered my whisper and began touching me more. At first it was up my arms, then his lips were at my jaw, then my neck. He was drunk, and his movements were sloppy. But the tingle ran wild throughout me. It wasn’t arousal. This was something different. I felt his hands. I felt the wetness and heat from his lips on my cool skin. Something about this was affecting my shade.
His hands moved up my shirt, gripping me harshly. I bit into my lip to stop from crying out. His other hand moved to my jeans, hastily trying to unclasp the button. I wanted the relief from the madness inside me, but I wasn’t ready for this.
“Not this, Travis.” I tried pushing him back.
“I won’t hurt you, Selene. I promise, baby.”
I believed him, but I still wasn’t ready. My hands pushed harder against his chest as he leaned back to focus more on my jeans. His eyes widened as he lost his balance on the edge of the bed. The force from my push and his own body weight propelled him against the nightstand with a crash.
“Oh God, Travis, are you OK?” Instantly, I was at his side. Death permeated the air. The feeling settled over me like a warm blanket. The thrashing in my head was gone, and the tingle in my blood ran rampant.
“No, no, no.”
My shaking hands touched his face, checking his features for signs of life. Blood soaked into the carpet beneath his head and coated the furniture. He’d hit the corner of the wood, proof of the injury he’d suffered.
“Selene?” His voice was clear, but his lips hadn’t moved. His eyes were still closed, and there was no movement from his contracting and expanding chest.
“Selene?” I turned, hearing the voice behind me.
My blood-covered fingers went to my mouth to cover my gasp, the tang of copper slipping past my lips. He was there, shimmering like a ghost. “You’re dead!” I cried against my hand, trying not to be too loud but also not believing what I was seeing. I’d seen people like this since turning sixteen, but I thought it was all in my head . . . the madness driving me every day toward a mental hospital.
Only there he floated like a ghost and not a trick of the brain. This was real.
“You have to take me on, Selene.”
I shook my head, wanting no part of this.
“It’s your job. Death calls to you, and you are Death.”
Death was calling to me. The feeling was so strong that I wanted to join him, to feel the coldness start in my fingers, then move across my skin, consuming my mind . . . the sweet surrender to the darkness.
“No, baby. Not your time.” He shook his iridescent head but I panicked. I needed a way out. This was too much for me to live with. I reached into Travis’s pocket that I knew housed a small knife. No more faking I was OK. No more trying to smile when all I wanted to do was waste away. No more separation of soul and mind. I was going to become one in death.
The pain was nothing. Blood pooled into the carpet, and soon I would be free. Death called to me like a siren’s song, a final kiss of darkness, and I was allured to its depths forever.
Chapter One
Present Day
Selene
“I don’t wanna be here,” I grumbled to my animated friend Emily, who could not sit still at the sight before her.
“You just wait and see. That story you’ve been
dying to write for the paper is here.” Her eyes never left the circular circus stage before us. Emily was a five-foot-seven ball of energy, with pink hair and freckles on top of her nose. Her smile was my favorite part of her physic. Emily’s smile could instantly make you feel better about life, like a cup of hot chocolate with whipped cream on top.
She’d used that cozy grin on me many times after the incident with Travis’s pocketknife. I’d killed myself in my insanity, but it wasn’t my time to go. Doctors fixed me up, pumped me full of blood, and put me on twenty-four-hour suicide watch. After that my parents had me committed until I was better. Emily was one of the nurses who took care of me. She made sure I ate food and kept me company. The worst place someone who has mental issues can be is in their own head. Over the few months of being in the psych ward, we’d become friends, bonding over the desire of death but grew strong enough to resist.
Emily had been a cutter growing up. Thankfully I hadn’t found an interest in that act. She had worked through her issues and wanted to help others. She didn’t have any friends because she was too much for people to understand . . . like me.
Sometimes my long dirty-blond waves looked nice, like I put effort into my appearance. My normal black eyeliner was on point. Then there were times where I looked like I’d slept under a bridge. Mental health was no joke, and in reality, everyone battles some form of insanity. I’ve found the best thing you can do while feeling like you’re stuck in the mud is make mud angels.
This week was a good week. Hell, I’ve actually been having a good few weeks. My desire to flirt with death was manageable, thanks to the Hero Society. After they’d come out to the world, explaining that people with powers came from the ancient Greek gods and goddesses, who in their final breaths cast their powers into the genes of mankind, hoping the powers would protect us mere humans. The powers came to the host the genes deemed worthy of them on a person’s sixteenth birthday. If a person didn’t use the powers, he or she would go mad.
Like me.
A man named Phillip Griffin and his friend Draco came to my home a year ago on a business visit. They were the leaders of the Hero Society. Draco had been immortal until he helped two others from the society change time for the better of mankind and their crew. His immortality was a price he paid gladly for saving his woman and the world. He’d known every power that could come forth in the human genes of the gods.
I thought I had been going crazy for years. Turns out my power made me a reaper. I couldn’t kill someone like most would assume but I could feel when death was coming for someone’s life. Once they died, I was to take their soul on. Of course, I found out there was an afterlife for us once we die. It had been working without me bringing souls up or down. I just happened to have the gift, and if I was around the soul, then I would take it where it was supposed to go. If I wasn’t around there were other spirits that did the job. So while I wasn’t needed per se, I still helped.
Since I was able to speak to those who recently passed, as well as a journalist who wanted the truth in everything, I helped settle unresolved cases with the Seahill Police Department. It was either use my gifts for the greater good or slip into madness again. I’d chosen to be a superhero and use those powers to help those who couldn’t help themselves.
Most of the time the dead wanted to move on, but there were a few that refused. I’d try to help them so that they could move on peacefully. Forcing them to leave never worked in my favor. They tended to avoid me and disappear before I could grab them.
“Oh, it’s about to start!” Emily’s hands shook my arm, bringing me back to the present.
The lights dimmed on the plain black stage, signaling something was about to happen. Her fingers reached over and intertwined with mine. Sound started through hidden speakers all around us.
“Caw!” A screeching black crow flew past my head. My hair whirled from the bird’s movement to the stage. A man appeared as if out of thin air, and the crow landed on his shoulder.
“That’s him!” Emily whispered, squeezing my hand tighter.
What was it about this guy that intrigued her so? His head was tilted down, and an old top hat sat on his head. Fog crept onto the circle-like stage in front of us. My skin tingled and I hoped someone wasn’t about to die on stage.
“As reality slips from your mind, your eyes widen with wonder, and your soul leaps onto the wind of a dream.”
That voice. My spine straightened, and I stared at the man dressed in black with a ringleader’s red coat. The timbre in his words demanded attention without yelling. A stomping sound shuddered throughout the small arena, just as his head popped up, and he looked into the crowd. At me.
“Prepare for the mystical.”
His mouth didn’t move, but the words came out like he’d said them. Then the crow on his shoulder laughed in the man’s voice. That’s not scary or anything. A talking crow being creepy on a mystery man’s shoulders.
The lights came on and there were suddenly performers everywhere! Trapeze artists flew above, leaping into each other’s hands, swinging back and forth. A woman on a tightrope jumped and danced along the thin wire. A smaller elephant with a small boy sitting on top of the elephant’s back, lifted its body up onto a ball and walked around slowly. It was a spectacular show of all the various arts in performing. But there seemed to be something different about this circus than others I’d seen in the past.
Every player on the stage had an iridescent glow to them that did not come from the lights. The shimmer made their skin, hair, and clothes glow. The ringleader moved around the stage, working magic and orchestrating the acts in perfect synchronization. An eerie feeling enveloped me as I realized I’d seen that glow before.
“Do they always shine like that?” I whispered to my enraptured friend’s ear.
“Always. They are so shiny, they almost look like ghosts.”
Then it hit me. This was no ordinary circus. Emily was right even though she didn’t know it.
This was a circus filled with ghosts. But how?
Chapter Two
Selene
I watched the ringmaster as he moved about the stage. He watched each performer doing their job at the right moment timed with the music. Somehow, he could see them or maybe even control the circus ghosts. I was so confused about what was happening that the more I tried to figure it out, the more I was lost.
“It’s so magical.” Emily sighed in awe beside me.
It was. If I wasn’t so blind to the notion there were ghosts on the circular stage and everyone saw them, I would have had parted lips and a slack jaw like she did.
The ringleader’s presence demanded everyone’s complete attention. Every move he made was precise; every impossibility he created was pure magic. The acts around him were magnificent and perfectly executed, like they’d been doing this for many more years than I’d been alive.
So many questions.
The tingle in my skin increased; pin and needle-like feeling pricked all over my body. Death was near. Was it the ghosts that gave me this sensation? They were dead, and this was not an uncommon feeling around the dead.
An ear-piercing scream echoed throughout the room. The horrifying noise was not part of the show. The ringleader ceased movement, his eyes on the crowd to my left. More people from that area began to scream, shouting for help.
“I’ll be back!” I yelled at Emily, the room becoming louder in the panic. Through the crowd of hysterical people, I waded toward where the screaming had started. A shimmer—two shimmering forms could be seen, but then the crowd got in my way as it tried to get away from the dead. One of the deceased had vanished, moving on to the afterlife with a collector spirit like myself or had been a spectator.
A woman stood above a dead body, an exact mirror in looks. She was confused, as many are when they gaze upon their former body. No one else could see her . . . just me. Everyone else who stayed near us were either crying or calling 911. One person applied pressure with her sweater on th
e blood oozing out of the woman who was already gone.
“I don’t understand.” Her voice was soft, barely above a whisper. Her gaze lifted up, finding mine on her.
“Do you know what happened?” I probed, and she shook her head.
“I had just come back from . . .” She paused, her face scrunching up as she thought hard about where she was or what she had been doing. It happened a lot—the memory loss after death. People were already so distraught and confused that they tended to forget their last moments unless it was important. Wherever she had been wasn’t important, and I doubt she knew the identity of her killer.
“Is that me?” Her shimmering face looked down at the bleeding body, while her hand went to her mouth in shock.
“I’m sorry.” I offered my condolences, but there wasn’t anything I could do to fix it. I could only take her onward. My body hummed since I was so close to her. The feeling calmed me and gave me peace like it always did.
“Are you death?” She looked up at me and I shook my head.
“I’m not death, but I am a reaper. I’ll take you on to where you are supposed to be, where you can be at peace.” I smiled and reached my hand outward. I wasn’t going to get much information from her in this confusion, and I’d already been drawing too much attention to myself standing by the body talking to what everyone else assumed was the wall instead of a ghost.
“I’m not ready to be dead.” She pursed her lips and looked back down at her body, already turning pale from the blood draining onto the red carpet.
“You can choose to stay but you will become a lost soul, and trust me, you don’t want that. Moving on is where you belong. It’ll be OK. You will be OK, and everyone you love will be happier with the thought that you’ve found peace in death.”
Her hand raised toward mine. I felt my body lightening, like I was becoming one with the air, feeling that nothing else in the world could touch me and I was as close to heaven as I could get.
Fall (Hero Society Book 6) Page 1
