by CC Solomon
“The soulmate spirit doesn’t always go away upon physical death. They do not have their full powers or even bodies, but something remained for them to gain strength.” Ahmed gave a slight shrug. “The female soulmate was able to take over a body which may be her gift. The male is still confined to his land of origin. But when they both are mobile and reunited … it will be incredibly challenging to defeat them.”
“What do they want?” My brother, Charles, slouched in his seat, looking every inch my relative with light brown skin, curly hair, and deep brown eyes. The only difference being that he was tall and lanky, where I was short and curvy. Well, that, and he was a vampire now.
Ahmed picked up a glass of water and studied it without drinking. “A second chance at greatness. They helped build kingdoms. People worshiped them. But then new soulmates were born, and they overcame each generation until they met their match and were placed into a deep hibernation that even they could not break.”
Ok, so these soulmates weren’t invincible. Good to note. “How’d they kill all the other soulmates?” And why couldn’t other soulmates be allowed to exist at the same time?
Ahmed shrugged. “I do not know. Whatever they did to defeat the other soulmates and prolong their powers made these first soulmates almost invincible, such that putting them to sleep was the only way to conquer them.”
I was far from completely understanding this magic. “So, after these soulmates were put down, new soulmates would come, and the prior soulmates would die?”
“Or lose their magic and grow weaker. Then magic totally left the world. And for some reason, this return of magic brought them back. They are in a different world from which they left. One which they want to control. The only beings strong enough to stop them are the current generation’s soulmates, Phillip and Amina. They want your powers to help gain control of this world. If you refuse to submit, they will kill you.”
It didn’t sound like we really had an option. We submitted and they killed us. We didn’t and they killed us. I wasn’t inclined to give in. I looked across the living room at Phillip Leal to get a feel for his thoughts.
He stared back at me with a look of concern, frown lines appearing between his light brown eyes. He was a powerful life mage, a witch who could control all things of the earth.
I was the same, apparently. The magical fates who had decided to bring the paranormal to the everyday world, who had brought forth a disease that wiped fifty percent of the human population off the map, had decided that Phillip and I would be soulmates.
Being soulmated was more than just love, which was the reason for this conversation and why the original soulmates were such a threat. Soulmating was a combination of magic, making the mated pair immensely powerful. However, I couldn’t even imagine we’d be powerful enough to take out the very first paranormal soulmates. These beings wanted us to submit to them, and if we didn’t, they would kill us just like in our dreams.
“They’ll try,” Erik grumbled. “They don’t have The Six.”
The Six was a special magical bond that came about once in a blue moon through a spell cast by a powerful paranormal. We were a mix of differing types of paranormal beings who could share strength. We should have been incompatible because of our differing powers, but some being saw fit to connect us.
Charles was a tech mage, and most recently, vampire. Erik was a werejackal. Faith Thomas was a succubus and Lisa Xu was a fairy. Felix Gonzalez was some form of magical being we couldn’t yet identify, but he could talk to invisible beings, one in particular named Azrael. I was a life mage and soulmate. Although being a soulmate to Phillip was not my choice. However, the fates decided that we would have to put our differences aside to bond and fight evil. Kind of hard to do, seeing as I was mated to a werejackal who hated his guts for very good reasons.
Together, we couldn’t be more different, and yet we somehow worked like we were a part of our own special pack. We’d just scratched the surface of our bond, and we’d have to do a lot more scratching if we planned to defeat this Gedeyon and Rima.
“The Six would make you more formidable.” Ahmed set his water glass down. “That is an edge they do not possess. To be honest, I’m not exactly sure the first soulmates even really want you dead.”
That had to be good, right?
“I’ve heard there is disagreement on how they would like to handle you both. They can keep you alive and have you submit to them so they can use your energy to make themselves stronger.”
Maybe that was the reason Phillip and I hadn’t died in the dream, then. That wasn’t good.
“That was their course of action, I am told, before magic ended long ago. But, of course, the longer they let you roam free, the stronger you get and the harder it will be for them to defeat you. On the other hand, if they killed you now, they risk not having your energy and if they are going to take your energy to power themselves, they want you at your full capacity, which involves waiting for you to grow stronger. It is an important dilemma.”
“Poor them,” Charles cracked.
This still wasn’t making a ton of sense. “I thought once one soulmate pairing dies, the other pair automatically gets stronger?”
Ahmed nodded, he began to pace the room, hands behind his back. “In most cases, but this is a different circumstance for them. They are reintegrating, they need life force to do that. Just like any living dead or hibernating being would. At least, that’s the rumor.”
“So, there could be a crack between them?” We needed a weakness to exploit, and it looked like there were slim pickings here. “They might not be on the same page?”
Ahmed nodded again.
“We could use that.” Phillip looked at me, and something twinkled in his eyes. I already knew what he was going to say, and I held in a sigh. “Of course, that would mean Amina and I would have to make sure we don’t have any cracks between us either.”
I hated to admit it, I knew he was right. We’d have to make sure we got along better. That would continue to make things awkward between Erik and me. I loved Erik. I was not confused on that front, but my connection with Phillip still confused the hell out of me, and I was currently choosing to handle it by keeping my distance.
It wasn’t a particularly good plan.
“Can I ask a question?” Lisa raised her hand. She sat beside me on the couch at the edge of her seat and looked around the room hesitantly. “If these soulmates get control, just how bad are we talking about the world becoming?”
Ahmed frowned and clasped his hands in front of him. “I only know what I’ve been told by my kind. The djinn are an old species and have seen much. They were there for the reign of the first soulmates. Soulmates can do great good or great evil, just like any living creature. Gedeyon and Rima began as good. People loved them. But soulmates have a consuming power. It’s almost seductive. Not just the bond between the pairing but the power itself. That kind of power can change you. It can change the world around you. The original soulmates became victims to their own power. It was just as the saying by the historian, Lord Acton, ‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely’.
So, would that happen with Phillip and me? Was that what we had to look forward to?
“When people did not please them; they would be killed. When sights harmed their eyes, they destroyed them. They demolished villages, civilizations, removed the existence of collections of people.”
Could I imagine myself turning that dark? Had Rima? Was she once an innocent person who only dreamed of helping others and then got corrupted? The thought chilled me.
“Our historians and archaeologists are left with mysteries of ancient civilizations that aren’t just mysterious due to the passage of time. It was also due to the soulmates. The soulmates ruled mankind for hundreds of years. They thought they would live forever. They played in all manners of magic to achieve immortality. Sacrificed thousands in the hopes that the blood of their followers would keep them alive. Nothing worked forever. Soulmates don’t
come every generation.”
Obviously not. “Then, how were they put to sleep?”
Ahmed gave me a look that said I was top of the class. “A pair of soulmates who were kept hidden from the originals thrived. And because the originals could not find them to stop the new pairing from growing stronger, they grew weaker. In their weakened state, a special sleeping spell was placed on them.”
Wait, hope was starting to come back around for me. “So, there’s a way to hide from the originals?”
“Apparently.” Ahmed gazed out of the window as if tiring from this conversation. He had shared a lot, but I still had so many more questions to ask.
“What can we expect? What are the powers of a soulmate?” Our mentor in Ireland, Liz, had given us some basic information on soulmates but not a lot.
“You know you can connect with others telepathically and in a dream state. You have an enhancement of your regular powers, making you the strongest of your particular paranormal kind. You can also absorb the powers of other soulmates you kill but to a lesser strength.”
So, this was a Highlander moment? The nerd in me was pleased. “What about mind control?”
Ahmed looked back over to me with tired eyes. “That is your own power as a life mage. To my knowledge, it is not a gift the first soulmates possess. They do have followers with similar abilities. Misandre, the dark fairy queen, under their command, can control weaker minded beings.”
Ugh, I wasn’t surprised she was strong. She’d nearly killed me back in Ireland. So now, even their followers were almost invincible. This would be a bloody uphill climb. “Well, at least they aren’t the same as us. Our powers won’t cancel each other out.”
“So, what’s next?” Felix asked, stretching his legs out in front of him and yawning. Ahmed’s lecture, while enlightening, was draining us all. If I wasn’t afraid of another nightmare, I’d go back to bed for a nap.
“We have to take out the Baltimore town of original allies. They’re too close,” Erik answered, resting the back of his head against the wall. He looked up at the ceiling, studying the textured surface as if he’d find a plan up there somehow.
The light coming through the window was giving me a headache. It was either that or this story. This was information overload, and I was just an inch shy of running through the door with my arms waving in the air and screaming. However, I was supposed to be a leader, so I had to play it cool like I had just a tiny bit of the answers. “We go there, and we are declaring war.”
Erik stood up and stretched. “War’s coming anyway.” He said it as calmly as if he were announcing that it was going to rain later.
I squinted up at him. “Uh, okay, but we need to be battle ready. I’m not trying to voluntarily walk to my death.”
“I hate to say it, but he’s right,” Phillip said from across the room. He gestured towards the djinni to his right. “From what Ahmed’s explanation implies, the originals are getting help. And that help is what is allowing Rima to roam around. Which means they are in a better situation now than they were a thousand years ago. We have to take out the help.”
I looked back at the group, my heart twisting as I remembered how each of them had died in my dream calling for help that never came. “I’m not interested in risking innocent lives to do that, though. They just want Phillip and me. Everyone else can stay safe. We don’t have to endanger any other town. We don’t need to get any more people to fight our battles. After what happened to Ed’s town, I can’t take that risk.” The Fae and other supernatural creatures had launched two attacks on our new friend, Ed’s, small community back in Dublin. He’d lost several people solely because they’d been defending us.
Such unnecessary deaths.
“Then we are doomed,” Annie Mae Jenkins stated from the dining room area. The older woman with short black hair and wise dark eyes stood. She rested a hand on the table. “My visions will come to reality if you don’t fight. And make no mistake, humanity needs you to fight. The soulmates, the magic returning, the regressions, they are all connected. This is not a personal fight between two pairs of soulmates. This is a fight for mankind.”
I sighed and threw my hands out to the side. “I get it. I’m not saying we shouldn’t fight. We just have to be more thoughtful about it. And are we even sure all these things are connected? The regressions haven’t happened yet.”
Felix coughed, and looked away. I eyed him suspiciously.
“How do you know stopping the first soulmates will stop the regressions when they come?” The regressions. My stomach churned thinking of it. They were, essentially, another wave of the supernatural sickness which affected paranormals instead of regular humans. When infected, we became the darkest and most primal version of ourselves. Weres would go loupe and vampires would go bloodlust.
Mae and Erik exchanged glances.
Faith and Charles did as well.
Ok, what was going on here? Someone was keeping secrets.
“The regressions are already here.” Phillip pushed away from the wall. “Blake mentioned it to me a few days ago but … things came up.”
Yeah, like her having Ahmed’s djinn lamp hidden in her closet, making her a prime suspect for being one half of the first soulmates.
I sucked my teeth. “Can we even trust anything she says now?”
“It’s true.” Faith ran a hand through her short dark blond hair, and her eyebrows gathered in a frown. “A couple of vampires went blood lust. We thought it was all a coincidence except that’s never happened before.”
“Then a few of our weres went loupe,” Erik added, placing a hand on my shoulder. I looked up at him as he continued. “That’s another reason they were so on guard with me when you left. They thought I was regressing too, but I was different.” His eyes softened, and I instantly felt stabbed with guilt.
Yes, I’d been missing for almost three months, and since I was Erik’s mate, he didn’t do so well with us apart. I was convinced the only reason I had done okay was because I had Phillip’s power through the soulmate bond.
“And it’s not just here, Sis,” Charles stated, slouching in his seat, sunglasses now covering his eyes. As an undead vampire, he should have been sleeping now. I knew he was struggling to stay awake, but he didn’t want to miss anything. “Back in Hagerstown it’s going on. Two witches went dark. Killed an innocent human for some sacrificial magic. They looked like monsters by the time they were caught. Colonel Robinson banned all magic for a while.”
Why did I suddenly feel like I had been wrapped in a bubble until now? “How long has all this been going on?”
“A month or so,” Erik replied.
I put my fingers to my temples in an unsuccessful attempt to hold back the headache dancing its way to the front of my head. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“We weren’t certain until recently. We thought they were isolated incidents.”
I looked to Mae. Surely, she knew better.
She gave me a shrug with sympathetic eyes. “I didn’t even know about the incidents, honey. When they finally told me, I let them know that this was the start.”
“We didn’t share because we consider it pack business. It’s like sharing about someone’s mental health. We took care of it,” Erik explained, rubbing my back. He was trying to calm me, and his touch did feel good but I was determined to hold on to my annoyance.
I didn’t want to question him then about what took care of it meant. I didn’t have to.
The loupe weres were killed.
I looked to Lisa through heavy lids. “Anything going on with the Fae?”
She shook her head swiftly, her black hair grazing her shoulders. “Not in the Fae realm, as far as I know, but it was inferred that our kind aren’t exempt. They are about to close the proverbial doors to even other fairy if we don’t go there soon so they can remain safe.” Her eyes clouded with worry, and I wondered if she was considering leaving herself.
I knew she was still saddened by the state of
affairs. Of course, she was partly to blame, having banished Phillip and I to Ireland for months in order to get me to help him heal from his evil curse and for us to bond. I had ended up only giving him a temporary fix. The thought that these soulmates could still get to him chilled me. I couldn’t have the old Phillip back again.
“A teen in the school who’s an orc ate a live chicken,” Felix said with a look of disgust, interrupting my thoughts for more unpleasant matters. “I thought he was just mad about that D I gave him in chemistry. In retrospect, I did think it was an extreme reaction.” He brought a fist to his chin and nodded as if reaching a profound answer.
“You think?” Charles muttered with a grimace. Besides him speaking and making faces, his body looked perfectly still. No rise and fall from his chest. It was disturbing but I knew it was his state as a vampire now, and there was no need in making him feel bad by focusing on it.
Lisa made a gagging noise in response to Felix’s tale.
I looked at Felix with a gaping mouth for several seconds before speaking. This world had already been filled with horrors before the magic returned but now there was no denying it. I didn’t have to watch a horror movie to get nightmares, I just had to apparently go teach. “Okay, uh, we’ve got to stop this.”
“Indeed,” Ahmed agreed, before turning to Phillip and putting out a hand. “My lamp.”
Phillip held tighter to the antique lamp that he had stolen from Blake’s apartment. He pressed it to the side of his face, somehow looking both comical and serious. “Stays with me until the fight’s over. We won’t force you into doing anything we say. Too much like slavery. Not my style. But if you want this back, you have to fight on our side.”
“I would have anyway.”
Phillip gave a slight shrug, lamp still pressed to his face. “Call this insurance then, but my word is my bond. You’ll get it back in the end.”
“We’ll all make sure of that,” I added, standing up to stretch my own body.
Ahmed gave a soft sigh. “Very well, but know this: having that lamp puts you in dangerous territory. If they know you have it, they will come for it. They will kill for it.”
