Paranormal Word Series Box Set (Books 1-3 and Novella)

by CC Solomon

  “I’d rather us spend our time finding a way to kill him without hurting her,” Erik stated, standing beside me.

  “Sounds like you want us to help Phillip,” Faith surmised, looking to Mae. “Why?”

  “He was not always like this,” Mae stated. “I don’t know what happened but something changed him. For some reason whatever happened to him is being mentally blocked from me. But Amina might be able to find out with her pow—”

  “Right now, I don’t give a fuck about him,” Erik stated. I could feel a growl threatening to erupt from his chest. “This soulmate thing sounds dangerous. She needs to stay away from him.”

  I heard Mae sigh again. “He already knows where she is. We have to look past our likes and dislikes for the greater good.”

  I felt a dull and persistent headache attack me. I couldn’t hear any more about helping Phillip. He had made his own choices; I had no sympathy for him and didn’t want to help him in any way.

  “My brother’s dead and Phillip tried to sentence Felix to blindness. I could give a shit about the greater good. Who is he to you? Why do you care so much about us helping him? Why do we need him? What do you know that you aren’t telling us? I’m tired of you giving us pieces. I want the whole truth, damnit!”

  Mae looked away.

  “Tell her, Mae,” Bill said in a gentle voice. The silver-haired man walked over to Mae and placed an arm around her. “It’s time to tell everything now, Mae.”

  Mae shook her head. “Phillip is my godson. He is more like my son. His mother and father died when he was fourteen and I took care of him after that. His mother was my best friend. Phillip’s mentor I told you about, the one who was killed by humans, was my husband, his godfather. I know Phillip to be better than he is. He isn’t the son I see now.”

  “You lied to me!” I cried, throwing my hands out. The ground shook under us but I kept talking; not caring if I was the cause. “You brought us here and you knew what he was. You made Lisa trust you. You didn’t tell her your town was run by a sociopath who had mind control powers. I tried to let it slide because I thought maybe you really needed our help but he’s practically your son.” Erik gently lowered my hands and grabbed my right hand in his. I felt my temper, which was verging on out-of-control levels, lowering. The ground settled. “Is there even a big evil really coming? Or did you just want someone here to help Phillip be the man you used to know? It’s a new world. It changes people. Accept it.”

  “I’m so sorry, Amina. It’s not that way. I never lied to you,” Mae said, eyes watering. “Helping Phillip was not my main objective in getting you here. I admit that I hoped you could help him. But without you helping Phillip, I don’t know if the group will be strong enough to fight what’s coming.”

  “Screw this soulmate shit,” Erik stated.

  “I agree. We need to stay here and focus on figuring out what’s coming for us. None of us are going back to Silver Spring,” I stated.

  Erik sighed.

  I looked up at him. “What’s the sigh for?”

  He looked down at me. “I have to go back, Mina. Seth and Phillip are dangerous. I might be all there is to help the pack. When things die down, you can come back. It’s a good town and they need us. A lot of the people we freed from the prisons are there. We can take down Phillip and Seth and make it something good. Hagerstown doesn’t need us.”

  “So, you’re leaving us? Because I’m not going back.”

  “I really want you to come back. I want us all back.”

  “You gotta be kidding me. You can’t be a hero to everyone, Erik,” I spat.

  “I know it’s hard now, Amina,” Mae began. “But you are all meant to be in Silver Spring. I think you can do good, not only for the town there but for the world. If left unchecked, Phillip could do real damage in this world. Having Erik return would help but you all need to come back.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not safe for Felix there, or Lisa, since she teleported him away. It’s definitely not safe for me since Phillip is clearly threatened by my power.”

  “We can help settle things and then have you come back,” Mae reasoned.

  “What about me? Am I’m expected to go back with Erik now?” Faith asked with a tone of unapproving surprise. “Screw that.”

  Erik shook his head. “Faith, since you’ve befriended Blake, she can give you knowledge about Phillip.”

  I was fuming. All I wanted to do was bury my brother, mourn, and seek out those who helped David escape hell. Going back to Silver Spring and trying to resolve their problems was a distraction I didn’t have time for.

  “Where’s Lisa?” Faith asked, looking around.

  “She’s not here,” Felix replied with a frown.

  “I know she wasn’t taking this well. Maybe she went to lie down,” Faith guessed.

  Felix shook his head. “She’s not here. She’s not in town.”

  “Did she teleport somewhere?” Faith asked, her face in a patient question.

  “In a way.” Felix shrugged.

  Faith sighed. “Felix, please, this is not the time for riddles. Where did Lisa say she was going?”

  He looked at her with wide eyes. “She didn’t speak to me. I’ve been beside you this whole time. I just know.” He raised a hand before anyone could ask. “She’s not here anymore.”

  “How could she leave us?” Faith asked, visibly hurt.

  I understood. Lisa was like her sister now. My heart hurt. I was no one’s sister anymore. Somehow sensing that renewed pain, Erik squeezed my hand.

  “Her boyfriend was just murdered in front of her. What was there to stay for?” I asked in a strained voice.

  “But what about the visions?” Felix asked, eyes wide with a mixture of pain and confusion.

  “Charles is dead. The Power of Six is over. We lose. Let her be.” I looked back over to the morgue doors. A wave of exhaustion swept over me.

  Bill, who I was beginning to understand was not a man of many words, spoke up. “We don’t lose. It’s not over,” he said in a quiet voice. “We keep moving, we keep fighting, we keep the faith. We’ve made it this far and we still have work to do. Through the pain, we have to still believe.”

  Tears welled in my eyes, blurring my vision. I wanted to give up but I gazed around at the faces of everyone in the hallway and thought about those who still needed our help. I thought of the children back at Silver Spring. The children who would grow up in a world of magic and the supernatural, many of them orphans who needed people in their lives they could trust. They needed protecting, but I wasn’t in a space to help. I couldn’t emotionally or physically move myself to be a hero now. I was done with loss, pain and the unfairness of it all. I just wanted to lie down and forget.

  Chapter 4

  The next morning, I awoke to an odd call from the morgue. We were set to have Charles’ funeral so I didn’t need any problems. They wouldn’t tell me on the phone what the problem was and insisted I come to the hospital.

  Erik, with his superior were hearing, heard the caller and got dressed with me. As I got ready, I heard him make some calls to the others to tell them that something was going on at the morgue.

  When we arrived, Mae, Bill, Felix and Faith had beat us there. It made sense, as they had stayed in an apartment building near the hospital. Erik and I had settled into the apartment I used to share with Charles when we first stayed in Hagerstown.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. The four turned and exposed what they were facing.

  I looked over to see a cold steel table where my brother lay. Only, he wasn’t in the peaceful, almost-sleeping position from the night before.

  Instead, he looked like a toppled, grotesque statue. He was frozen, with a deeply arched back, head still on the slab, hands clawed up and legs bent. His eyes were open but unblinking.

  I gasped in shock. “How long…has he been like that?” I asked.

  “We aren’t sure,” Bill replied. His dark-brown eyes looked tired and I wondered if
he and Mae had even gone to sleep. “The mortician came down here around 8 a.m. and alerted me. Mae and I stayed late at the hospital to get to know people and help where we could. We went past the morgue again at 8 p.m. so he could have moved any time after that.”

  That meant he could have been like this for almost twelve hours. “Is he…is he alive?” I whispered. I didn’t want to allow myself to have any hope but it was the obvious question.

  Bill shook his head. “I checked his pulse,” he replied with worried eyes.

  My heart plummeted.

  “Could this be…rigor mortis?” Faith asked. She looked away from Charles’ body, visibly uncomfortable, which was an unfamiliar look for her. She rubbed her hands over the lids of her deep-blue eyes as if attempting to erase the image of my brother from her mind.

  Bill shook his head. “Not like this.”

  If it wasn’t rigor mortis, what was it? I’d seen people with magic die before and this didn’t happen.

  I walked went over to the table. “Charles!” I shouted at his body. Reason told me he was still dead but he had moved at some point! His whole body had shifted and his eyes were open. This was a new world, controlled by the supernatural, and I had to believe that maybe things weren’t as they seemed.

  But Charles didn’t move. I put a hand to my mouth and leaned over to get a better look at him now. His eyes were fully blood red, with just a black iris in the center. I hadn’t seen that from the door. “Why are his eyes red like this?” I asked to whoever could answer.

  I slowly reached out to touch him.

  “Don’t!” Bill shouted, walking over to me.

  I turned to him. “Why?” I frowned and narrowed my eyes. “What do you know? What’s happened to my brother’s body?”

  Bill glanced over to Mae. Mae gave Bill a sympathetic smile and nodded her head. Looked like she had more secrets than I thought.

  “Charles can come back,” Bill stated.

  The room filled with gasps and sounds of confusion.

  I turned to Bill, frowning. “What are you talking about? You just said he’s gone. He has no pulse. We were just here yesterday and no one said anything. I don’t want him back as a zombie.” Bringing someone back to life basically made them a simpleton controlled by a mage of the undead or necromancer. That wasn’t what I wanted for my brother.

  Bill quickly shook his head. “I wouldn’t dare do that, Amina. That’s worse than death and it’s not within my power.”

  “Then how can he come back?”

  Bill sighed. He was drawing this out and I was getting angry.

  “Bill,” Erik stated in a caution-filled voice, walking over to stand beside me. He placed a comforting hand on the center of my back and my anger subsided a bit, slowing my pounding heart.

  “Mae had a vision that something bad was going to happen to The Six,” Bill started. “We didn’t know if it was going to be death but we knew we couldn’t risk losing any of you. There have to be six. You’re all too important. So, we took some precautions for those we could get to. We had a vampire that we trusted help us. At different times this week we served everyone but you, Amina, the vampire’s blood. And the only reason we didn’t get to you was because you were under Phillip’s eye. We also didn’t think anyone would dare hurt you because of Phillip.”

  “I had tea with you,” Faith stated, scratching her head in frustration. Her eyes held a look of disgust and irritation.

  “You came to the prison and gave me some homemade soda,” Felix said, face in shock. “It was good, too.”

  “I came to talk to you, Bill, and drank your coffee,” Erik added.

  The older couple nodded.

  “Vampire blood stays in the system for about a week. You don’t need a lot,” Bill explained.

  “Charles and Lisa came for dinner and they each had a glass of red wine,” Mae added.

  “So, they all drank blood? Then what?” I asked eagerly.

  “Vampires weren’t just made from the change. They’re still being made. Just like weres, who can be made from a bite or birth from a were parent. If you die with vampire blood in your system. You don’t always stay dead,” Bill replied. “You can come back. As a vampire.”

  “Charles is going to be a vampire?” I asked.

  We all looked to my brother’s unbreathing, unmoving body.

  Bill nodded. “I thought it would happen last night but I didn’t want to get your hopes up. It can take as long as seven days. The fact that his body hadn’t decayed was a good sign but that isn’t always due to vampirism. Paranormal beings are slow to decay in death, just as their aging is slowed down in life. This—” he waved his hand towards my brother’s awkward form “—is a good sign that he will change. When we saw this, we knew you’d have to be here if he woke up.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us before doing all this?” Erik asked, his voice gruff and full of disdain.

  “Would you want to be vampires, honey?” Mae asked from across the room. She was perched on a stool looking more than exhausted.

  None of us answered. Vampires were glamourized in the movies but in our new world they weren’t all like Blake Devlin, the head of the Silver Spring Vampires. She was beautiful and alluring. However, vampires ranged in appearance and behavior.

  In general, vampires didn’t need to eat food. They couldn’t be out in the sun. Even the strongest ones would get sunburned and the weakest would be set ablaze against the sun’s rays. They had to drink blood to survive and although they were hard to kill, there was no proof, at least not yet, that they were immortal. Then there was the whole not being able to have kids thing. The living vampires made as a result of this new magical world could still procreate but if you were made by blood exchange, you’d be sterile.

  Lastly, there was the bloodlust. This typically affected weaker vampires and meant that they became scary monsters completely ruled by their hunger for blood. None of us were certain we would have agreed to that kind of life and Mae knew that much.

  “The six of you must survive,” Mae insisted again, her hands balled into fists. Passion wrapped around her voice and I saw in her eyes real fear. It unsettled me how close to desperate she sounded. Her visions of this terrifying future that only we could stop from happening had really scared her. “I’m sorry that we withheld this from you but…we must make sacrifices to save the world. We can’t afford to lose anyone.”

  I crossed my arms. I wanted to be mad but ultimately there was hope. My brother had a chance at life again. I wouldn’t have let my mother down. I wouldn’t be alone and he wouldn’t have lost his life being in a place he never wanted to be. He’d be a vampire but he’d be alive-ish.

  He would hate me for allowing this. Or maybe he wouldn’t. I needed to see his smile again. I need to hear his jokes and smart-mouthed quips. I needed his hugs and reassurance that things weren’t all crazy in this world.

  It would be a while until night but I wouldn’t leave him. “I’ll wait until he properly wakes then,” I stated in a soft voice.

  No one left for any long period of time. We took bathroom and food breaks but remained in the morgue otherwise. We spread out in the room like a morbid party.

  The group passed part of the time discussing how to find Lisa. In this world, that would be close to a hopeless endeavor. We didn’t have cell phones working, just some communities with landline phones. Felix emailed her, which assumed she had access to the internet wherever she went.

  I hoped that wherever she was, it was of her own accord. I tried not to think about the possibility of her being kidnapped but I couldn’t ignore it. I’d have to do a locator spell when I left here.

  If Lisa never returned and Charles didn’t come back, I’d just have Faith, Felix, and Erik. What if they all left or died too? Would I turn into a pile of mush and give up on the world? I was ready to now and I didn’t think I had much strength left to survive any more loss.

  I realized now how much I’d depended on Charles to be there for me emo
tionally. Even before, in the Pre-world, I called him whenever I had a bad date or when I wanted to chat about the latest TV show that we both loved. Just the thought of the memories made me tear up again. If we were thinking of fighting Phillip and his henchmen, it was very possible that we wouldn’t all make it out alive.

  How would I hold up if I lost Erik?

  I looked over to him sitting next to me on the floor. His head rested against the stark white wall; eyes closed. He hadn’t left my side since Charles was killed, practically following me to the bathroom. I sighed. I couldn’t get used to his presence. It would hurt too much if he left or died. Leaving to go back to Silver Spring was dangerous to me and Erik seemed to entertain that danger with no fear. Sure, he was a former military man and bodyguard, and as an alpha werejackal he was strong, but he was still human to me.

  I’d had bad breakups in the Pre-world that’d left me on the couch in a puddle of tears and comfort food. And then a friend or a family member would swing by or call to cheer me up. But they were all gone now. I had no one.

  Sure, Faith was nice enough but she wasn’t exactly a cheery sweetheart. Felix was sweet but he was also struggling with his own issues. He had lost his memory and a bit of his mind the day the world changed.

  Suddenly, I didn’t feel so strong. I felt emotionally exhausted and overwhelmed. The ties that I was beginning to form with the others were starting to feel like weighted burdens. The thought of losing Erik made me almost sick to my stomach. I was getting too vulnerable and my prior naiveté had cost me dearly. If I was going to be a match for Phillip, I needed to be cold and calculating like him.

  “I had another vision last night,” Mae stated, breaking the silence. “I have a better idea of what the six of you are meant for.”

  “What?” I asked in a soft voice.

  “Something...important is coming. Smaller things will happen before then but those things will build your strength.”