Paranormal Realities (A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Box Set)

by Patricia Mason

  "What am I looking at?" I asked.

  Holden didn't answer. Merely shrugging, the sad turn of his lips etched lines around his mouth.

  My gaze returned to the street where I observed Lashonda pushing her way out of the crowd. She stumbled as she mounted the curb. Even from here I could tell she was sobbing.

  "Lashonda," I called to her. What was wrong? "Lashonda. Are you okay?"

  She didn't seem to hear me.

  A man clicking photos with his a long lens camera moved to the right just as the woman next to him moved to the left. The momentary parting in the cluster allowed me to see the focus of their attention.

  Me.

  My body lay still, broken and bloody in the street.

  "Ahhhhhhhh," I screamed, jumping back from the window and whirling away from the scene. Step-by-step I backed up until I bumped into the metal railing of the staircase.

  "You did this." I accused Holden.

  He flinched and his expression turned wide-eyed and stricken.

  My mind raced for answers. "Are you death?"

  "No." Holden strode to me and, despite my cringing from him, he grasped me by the shoulders. "No. I'm life."

  "No," I said. "I'm lying in the street. How can you say that?"

  "Because it's true. I'm your life. Or rather, we are each other's life. We're fated hearts. We were meant to be together."

  He tried to pull me into a hug but I resisted.

  "You said before that we knew each other in a past life." I searched to make sense of this.

  "Yes," he answered. "We were married during one of my five lifetimes."

  "Five lifetimes? I don't understand," I cried, shaking my head.

  To add to the confusion, the sound of footsteps climbing the steps freaked me out. What now?

  Mrs. Gazardi, still wearing the flowing gown of the previous night, emerged to frown first at me and then at Holden. "You still haven't done it, I see."

  "Done what?" My voice was a shrill shout. "Kill me? I think he has since I'm bleeding in the street."

  "No you foolish girl," Mrs. Gazardi said. "He was supposed to educate you." She stalked to the window. "It's almost too late. We have to do it now or never."

  I felt tears streaming down my cheeks.

  How could I feel the moisture of tears when I was dead?

  I must have spoken aloud because Holden answered me.

  "You're body isn't dead. Not yet," Holden said with a sad shadow in his eyes.

  Shaking my head a sob slipped out. "What are you saying?"

  "You can go back to your body now and you'll survive. You have a choice."

  "I can live?" Turning out of his arms I made to descend the stairs. "Okay then. Let's go."

  The sad eyes returned. "Like I said, you have a choice. But if you choose to live...if you don't die now, we can never be together."

  "Why? You said—"

  "You can go back but I can't."

  "What?"

  "He's already dead," Mrs. Gazardi said. "He has no body to go back to. And his soul can only remain on earth for three days after his body passes."

  "I didn't move here from Miami, I died in Miami." A tremor shook his voice as Holden said the word died.

  "But—"

  "And if you don't die now, we won't be reborn at the same time for our next lives," Holden explained. "We won't live and love each other in the next incarnation."

  Shaking my head, I tried to clear it. Fear still pounded through me forcing out every other thought, making my mind foggy. "This makes no sense."

  "Don't be afraid. Fear blocks love and it's your fear that has kept us apart before."

  He placed his palm against my chest and memories flashed in my head. Memories of him. Of me. Of us together as teens running hand-in-hand through a field. His appearance was different then and so was mine but somehow I knew it was him...me...us...in a past lifetime. Maybe he really was a Viking then.

  "Why didn't you do that before?" I asked.

  "Because you weren't ready," Mrs. Gazardi interrupted with an impatient twitch of her hand.

  "I'm still not ready." But I had to be. This was happening.

  Locking eyes with Holden, he answered my unspoken question. "I appear to you now as I will when we meet each other in our next life," His lips twisted in a grimace. "If we meet each other next."

  "You mean I'll remember all this?" My arm swept in an arc around me.

  "No," he shook his head. "Probably not consciously. But your unconscious will know me."

  "You said we were married in one of your five lifetimes. Did we have children?" My tears had stopped and I moved closer to Holden, leaning against him.

  "One." I felt his smile against my forehead. "A boy. But then I was called to war and died in battle. So we didn't have the years together we should have."

  "What about your other four lifetimes? Weren't we together?"

  "No." He stiffened. "You were too afraid to feel the pain of loving someone to take a chance in each of those lives, so we missed each other. That's why this time they allowed me to come here and talk to you."

  I felt his displeasure. His disapproval—anger even—lashed me with guilt and I pulled away.

  More memories of my past lives came to me. No painful jolts this time. The images were more like old friends. But from them I realized that the pain of losing Holden in our first lifetime together had so traumatized me that I had not wanted to experience that soul wrenching pain ever again. And that fear had followed me from life to life. I still didn't know if I'd be able to break free of the fear. Hadn't I been living this lifetime shackled by inhibition, choosing not to take chances?

  Stepping toward the window, I gazed down at the street as an ambulance screeched to a halt.

  "Come on," Mrs. Gazardi demanded. "This is taking too long."

  "So who are you in all this?" I asked. "Obviously, not just my school counselor."

  Her inner light began to shine so bright I had to shield my eyes.

  "I am Gazadriel," she said in a booming voice, part the woman I knew and part otherworldly baritone. "I am here to guide you to where you may go."

  "Are you certain if I go with you now we'll have a lifetime together?" I asked Holden.

  "Nothing is certain," he replied. "We will still have to make it happen. But it's certain we will have the opportunity. If you stay here now...we won't.

  He held out a hand. "Please, my love. Take a chance to be with me."

  "I don't know." Gnawing on my lip, I tried to process everything.

  "The time is now or it will be never." Gazadriel climbed onto the sill where the wind whipped the long strands of gray-white hair that had escaped from her bun. The folds of the gown billowed about her body.

  A whirlpool turned in the clouds over the square and the swirling increased its velocity.

  "You have to make the choice now. There's no more time." Holden held out a beckoning hand. The hand shook. His face was grave and serious.

  Through the window I could see the paramedics performing CPR, trying to save me.

  At that moment, I knew my decision. I chose my fate. I would save myself.

  The bell tolled in the clock tower, indicating 9:15. Only three minutes left.

  Just thinking about returning to my body caused my soul or my consciousness, or my whatever, to jerk out of the bell tower, and it traveled down the stairs, passed over the sidewalk and reached the street. For a few moments I hovered over my still form before slipping back inside.

  "She has a heartbeat," one paramedic shouted and ceased the rib cracking compressions on my chest.

  No pain. That was the first thing I marveled at as I pried up my lids and peered up into the face of the man working over me. I didn't feel anything but a heaviness in all my limbs. Still I managed to lift one arm that felt like our living room sofa was on top of it as I moved to take the oxygen mask off my face.

  Opening my mouth, I shouted out a whisper. "Lashonda."

  "I'm here," m
y friend said, inserting herself between the paramedics to kneel beside me. Tears had etched a path down her cheeks and kept flowing. "You're gonna be okay. Hang in there."

  I wished I could reach up and put a comforting hand on her arm. I wished I could tell her it would all be okay. I wished I could say so many things.

  "Tell my dad I love him." The sofa seemed to be on my chest now, but I forced myself to speak anyway.

  My words caused a new gush of tears to flow down her cheeks.

  "You gotta stay strong so you can tell him yourself," Lashonda cried.

  I just had one more thing I had to say.

  "I love you too...girlfriend." I closed my eyes again and sighed out relief.

  "Eve, don't go," I heard Lashonda shout from far away.

  But by the time she spoke, I'd willed myself from my body and my soul had already traveled halfway up the stairs of the church again. In an instant I was in the steeple where Holden waited.

  His expression went from pleading to joyous.

  Reaching out, I placed my hand in his outstretched palm.

  "If you are coming, it has to be now." Gazadriel spread her wings wide, silvery long locks windswept and flowing free around her head. She tested the edge of the window with her feet and pointed to the full-blown tornado in the sky. "There's no more time."

  "I'm ready, I said, squeezing Holden's hand. He squeezed mine in return, pulled me to his side and pressed a sweet kiss against my lips.

  Side-by-side, hand-in hand, we climbed up onto the parapet beside Gazadriel. We grasped her robe with our free hands and she took off with us in tow. With Gazadriel as our guide, Holden and I flew off the side of the church, traveling up and into our future together.

  # # #

  Author's Note

  **Thank you for reading Paranormal Realities. If you enjoyed it, I hope you will post a review at Amazon.com. And if you would like to know more about me, please visit my websites at http://www.prmason.net and http://www.patriciamason.net.You might find some freebies there!

  If you enjoy humorous romantic suspense you'll enjoy this book by Patricia Mason:

  In Deep Shitake (humorous romantic suspense) -- Take one devastatingly attractive movie star. Add one outrageously sexy female private eye with a penchant for food-word obscenities. Mix in a dose of mistaken identity and a handful of Russian mobsters...And they're all in deep shitake. http://amzn.com/B007VDZ0JA

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