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

by CC Solomon

  “No, but whoever did that to Phillip probably didn’t put up a ward around him that was lightweight,” Charles said in a low voice. “Shit. I didn’t like the dude, but damn.”

  “Phillip,” I cried. “Can you hear me?” The tears in my eyes were falling, and I quickly wiped at them to stop the clouding of my vision. He’d been in this room all alone being cut and maimed. He was my friend and he was hurting. I thought of how he helped me with Raya and the ghost attack and Fae attacks in Ireland. He’d helped me escape the prison and defeat David. Outside of the dark spell, he was a good man at heart. Now he was hanging there looking weak and defenseless. It was startling and sad to see.

  A slight head bob but no answer. I felt bad even bothering him. However, I needed to know if he was even alive. The fact he was moving at all explained why I was still breathing. I needed to make sure he stayed breathing.

  “Can you speak?”

  No answer again.

  Amina? Phillip’s voice sounded weak in my head, but at least he was conscious.

  “Yes. Hold tight. I’ve got to break the ward.” I walked to the candles and picked up the smallest one, blowing out the fire. I threw it at the wall near Phillip.

  The candle disintegrated against an invisible wall in front of him.

  “Glad I said something, aren’t you?” Charles stated, appearing beside me.

  I nodded. Phillip, we’re going to get you out of this.

  I deserve this.

  No, you don’t. I’m not going to let you die.

  I’m sorry I’m dragging you down. Please forgive me.

  There’s nothing to forgive. Just rest. Let us help you for a change.

  Erik stood behind me facing, the doorway. “Coming,” he said in a hushed voice.

  I turned slightly to him. He wasn’t back to full sentences yet, but one-word grunts were better than nothing. “I hope it’s Felix and Faith, but I feel like it’s not.”

  I turned back to the ward and threw my hands up, forcing my magic into the invisible wall to weaken it. While we were waiting for whoever to show up, I thought I might as well be useful and get the ward down. However, it was proving exceedingly difficult to weaken.

  “Guys?” Chelsea’s voice came from the doorway. “Oh, my God.”

  “Chelsea, stay back. Phillip’s surrounded by a dangerous ward. I’m trying to break it. We’re going to get him out and heal him.”

  Chelsea walked further into the room. “Well, why would you do that when I worked so hard to keep him like that?”

  I stopped what I was doing and turned to her, a stab of fear pricked my heart.

  “What are you talking about, Chels?” Charles asked. “You did this?”

  She nodded quickly, a wide smile on her face. “Yes, I said I would get my revenge.”

  “Chelsea,” I tilted my head, confused. “You made him think you liked him as a ruse to get your revenge? This is crazy.”

  She lost her smile. “No, crazy is killing someone who did nothing to you and wasn’t even a threat.”

  “I think he’s suffered enough.”

  “How’d you put up a ward? You’re a vampire?” Charles asked. “Someone else help you?”

  “I am more than meets the eye.” She winked at him with her red vampire eyes.

  “Witch?” Erik questioned, eyeing her carefully as she walked further into the room.

  She shrugged.

  “How’d you do this?” I demanded.

  “His defenses were down with me, so I was able to bespell him.”

  “I don’t understand how he could become so gullible. He’s too smart.”

  “Magic, honey. You think I could get that sap to focus on any other woman, but you? He was sad because he didn’t get the rose in the end. Made him more susceptible.”

  “You put a spell on him?”

  “Absolutely I did,” she flung her long hair over her shoulder. “And even with your soulmate connection ,he came to me. After that, my plan got so easy. And with Hagerstown coming up with this outpost for the sick, it was the perfect place to get my revenge.”

  “But you knew killing him might mean killing me.”

  “Which is why I just tortured him a bit.”

  She called what she’d done a bit of torture? He was split open.

  “What was your endgame? Leave him like this and walk off into the sunset? Maybe find a new town so you wouldn’t have to face any charges? What if he died?”

  She gave me a pout. “That would suck.”

  My mouth hung open in shock. She was my friend. How could she not care? Were we ever really friends?

  “Oh, don’t look at me like that, Amina.” She waved a hand at me. “You allowed that asshole to walk around. Clearly, you didn’t give a damn about me.”

  “Chelsea, it wasn’t like that,” Charles stated.

  She glared at him. “Oh, you’re his friend now?”

  “How’d you do this? How’d you do a spell?” I pressed. “Why’d you come back here? You were smart enough to know you couldn’t keep him in this room for long. It might be less secure, but people still do sweeps. Especially once they found out Phillip was missing. You also have to know Phillip couldn’t survive long in his condition, even with magic. You came back to finish him off before we found him after you learned we knew he was missing.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “You should have been a detective.”

  “You hate me that much, Chelsea?” I asked in a soft voice.

  Chelsea rolled her eyes. “It’s not about you, Amina. Not everything centers around your life, although you want everyone to believe it. The first soulmates aren’t going to destroy the world. If you’d agree to fall in line with their plans, we’d all be fine. As it is, you want to risk everyone’s lives for your own selfish goals. Joo-won and his people took in a lot of us after Hagerstown was about to kick us out.”

  “Us? You’re still here.”

  “Had the loose end of Phillip to tie up and then I planned to go to Baltimore.”

  “Did Joo-won know you were planning to kill Phillip?”

  Chelsea lowered her head, eyes glaring up at me. “He doesn’t need to know about the things I do.”

  The way she looked at me unsettled me. This wasn’t the Chelsea I knew. “Well, seeing as he works for the first soulmates, who you claim don’t want to hurt Phillip and me, I would think he wouldn’t be pleased with your plan.”

  She gave a harsh laugh. “In the long run, he’ll thank me for what I did. Everyone will.”

  Erik gave a low growl.

  “Not everyone,” Charles cut in. “Especially if Amina gets hurt in the process.”

  “Well, seeing as she’s not cut up now, it’s a high probability that she’ll survive.” Chelsea took a step forward, and Charles and Erik blocked her.

  “Chelsea, how can you believe anything Joo-won told you? They just want more followers. We are your friends,” I implored.

  “You’re so naive, Amina,” Chelsea replied. “We were just two people stuck someplace together for six months. We were friends for that time, and now we’re free.”

  I involuntarily flinched, stung by her words.

  She looked to Erik and Charles. “Out of my way.”

  “We don’t want a fight,” Charles said.

  “Then move.”

  “You’ll never forgive yourself if something happens to Amina because you killed Phillip. Don’t let your hatred for Phillip, about what he did when he was cursed, change you. Be the better person. This all happened because of the soulmates. If Phillip wasn’t cursed by them, he wouldn’t have been such an asshole.”

  I’d tried to convince Charles of this very logic myself, and it barely seemed to work. Had he seen the light some time ago without telling me?

  She stared at him with unmoving eyes and then sighed. “Fine. Let’s do it the hard way then.” She moved in a blur past us all, and before I could track her, she was in front of Phillip, having crossed her ward unharmed.

>   I magically conjured a rock and chucked it over the ward line, it made it over the ward with no crumbling. Apparently, she’d broken her ward to get to Phillip.

  Chelsea grabbed Phillip by the head with one hand and aimed black pointed talons at his neck before swiping. Blood gushed out of his neck, and his eyes bulged. He opened his mouth, coughing and choking on his blood.

  My throat constricted, blocking air. I grabbed at my neck, gasping. I felt Erik rush to my side, and I looked at him with watery eyes. I was suffering just as Phillip was. I dropped to my knees, and Erik fell with me. He was saying words, but I couldn’t hear them. I had to focus on breathing, but I couldn’t.

  I could vaguely see Chelsea step back from Phillip with a triumphant look on her face. She really didn’t care I was dying too.

  Phillip looked over to me, choking. His eyes squinted in pain as tears fell down his cheeks. It couldn’t end this way. I wouldn’t let it. I had to get to Phillip. I had to save him.

  Voices crowded my head as I heard Felix, Faith, and even Lisa. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, my mind could only focus on trying to breathe.

  Erik laid me on my back, and there was pain in his eyes as he looked at me helplessly. He hovered his hands over me and I vaguely wondered if the others were pouring healing magic through him. Maybe Phillip and I were no longer connected if pain was inflicted on one of us, but if one of us received a fatal wound, it still affected the other.

  I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe.

  Panic caught in my throat and I curled my toes and hands, as if I could grasp on to air to fill me.

  From the corner of my eyes, I saw another blur of movement and then Chelsea’s body flying backwards in the air into the remaining candles. At once, her clothes caught fire from the flames, and she screamed out curses as she rolled on the floor to smother the flames.

  I looked to Erik, but I still couldn’t breathe. If I was going to survive, someone had to help Phillip. I rolled my eyes towards Phillip and then back to Erik, hoping he would understand. Erik jumped up. There would be no helping me if Phillip was bleeding out. My injuries were purely magic based.

  A figure, Charles, leapt into the air past me and landed in front of Chelsea. She got up in one swift motion and brushed off the flames catching her clothes as if they were minor dust particles. And while she did that, my little brother pulled out a gun from his holster and shot her point blank in the head without so much as a word. He shot again and again, riddling her body with bullets.

  My throat began to expand, and air passed through. Erik held his hands out towards Phillip, and Phillip straightened up against the wall, the opening in his throat closing around the bloodied skin.

  I gasped in gulps of air as I turned to fully face Charles. He was not done with his attack. He walked to Chelsea’s limp body and punched his fist into her chest, ripping out her heart and throwing it across the room.

  I closed my eyes, feeling warm tears on my cheeks.

  Chelsea, our friend, was dead and my brother had killed her. He would never be the same.

  I opened my eyes again and looked to him. His eyes were red, and bloodied tears slowly ran down his cheeks. He dropped to his knees, wordlessly.

  Phillip’s coughing caught my attention. Erik walked over to me. I raised a hand. “I’m fine. Check on my brother, please. I can help Phillip.”

  I stood up and walked over to Phillip to help him break free of his chains and heal his chest.

  As I poured my magic into him, he looked at me wordlessly with haunted eyes. The chains on his wrist fell away and his arms dropped to his sides.

  “You could have died,” he said with a choked voice.

  “I didn’t.”

  “We have to break our bond. I don’t want you to die because of me.”

  “We aren’t breaking anything. Our bond is what makes us strong.” I looked up at him and placed a hand on his cheek. “You’re okay, Phillip. We made it through, once again.”

  “I’m sorry for everything.”

  I shook my head, removing my hand. “Don’t apologize.”

  “I love you.”

  I stiffened, very aware that Erik was not too far behind me, with my brother. I needed no public confessions of love from another man. “Don’t say that.”

  Phillip frowned. “I’m sorry.” He turned away from me. “As she was cutting into me, all I could think about was you. Nothing else. I can’t do right by you. If our bond was broken and this happened, you could have let me die. Everything would be better for you.”

  I sighed, wiping at another stupid tear. “No, it wouldn’t have, Phillip. You are a part of my life now. I need you. So, don’t think your dying doesn’t matter, because it does.”

  Phillip looked at me with pained eyes before looking away again, settling his gaze behind me. “Is he okay?” He motioned his head behind me.

  I turned and caught Erik’s gaze on us. He didn’t look angry or hurt. He looked … sad. He gave me a nod but didn’t speak. I wasn’t completely sure I understood. Did he understand my connection with Phillip? Was he okay with it? Was I okay with it? I was processing too many emotions, and I had to put them on the back burner for now.

  I looked past Erik to see my brother still on the floor near Chelsea’s body.

  “Charles?” I asked, my throat sore. I slowly sat up.

  “I killed her, I killed her, I killed her,” he whispered repeatedly. He gripped his head, scrunching his face tight with a pained look.

  I walked over to Charles. He was as still as a statue, staring down at Chelsea’s lifeless body. Her eyes were open in surprised horror.

  I walked to the body, bent down, and closed her eyes before turning in front of her, blocking my brother’s vision.

  “You did what you had to do,” I reached my hands up to slowly rub his arms.

  “She was killing you. I had to do something,” he said, his voice monotone.

  “Yes, you did, and I thank you. Because of what you did, Erik and the others could save Phillip, which saved me. If you hadn’t, she would have stopped us from getting to Phillip and he … we … didn’t have much time.”

  He rested his forehead on my shoulder, and I rubbed his back. “How could she have done the things she did? She was just a vampire, like me.” His voice was shaky now.

  “You’re much more than just a vampire.” Phillip walked over to us. “And she was much more than a vampire as well.” He rubbed his chest. “She took out one of my kidneys. I don’t know what she did with it, which is very problematic.”

  “What was she?” I asked, turning slightly to him.

  “Sadly, I have no clue.”

  I frowned, thinking.

  “You want to know what the hell she was, just ask her,” Faith called from the doorway.

  Felix stood behind her and looked over her shoulder at Chelsea’s body.

  “Shit.”

  “How can we do that? She’s dead,” I whispered, the words catching in my throat. Chelsea was gone. It all felt so unreal.

  Faith nodded. “Yeah, and we have someone who can talk to the dead. And whatever she tells you, it won’t be a lie.”

  Chapter 26

  My mind was still in shock and cloudy from the healing. I’d totally forgotten Shayla was a necromancer. She was first and foremost a witch to me, but her mage ability was controlling the dead. She could bring back to life any formerly living creature and control them. They had to follow everything she said. She could make zombies if she wanted. She could also control ghosts and the living dead such as vampires like my brother.

  Henry got some of his vampires to guard the basement floor while Shayla did her whole magical thing. No need for any nosey people to muck up what we were trying to do before we had any answers.

  Shayla got down on her knees in front of Chelsea’s body. She pulled out a Swiss Army knife and sliced the palm of her hand and balled it into a fist, squeezing the blood over Chelsea’s body. She close
d her eyes and muttered in a voice too soft to hear. She then moved her hand away and stared down at the body.

  “Ok, time to wake up, now.”

  We waited with bated breath, standing around Chelsea’s body, and staring with wide eyes. At first, nothing happened. And then a twitch. A slight trembling of the right hand and then the left until the whole body moved as if controlled by seizures. Chelsea’s eyes flew open, they were now opaque and cloudy. She let out a scream that sounded like an amalgamation of several voices at once. It was both terrifying and astounding.

  “Chelsea King, you’re back in the living plane. We have some questions to ask you,” Shayla stated in a commanding voice.

  “What’s going on? Where was I? Where am I?” she asked, her voice back to normal.

  “We can explain, but you’ll have to answer our questions first.”

  Shayla had previously explained to us we should not tell the truth to Chelsea regarding her demise. She’d get too caught up in the fact she was dead, and we didn’t want to waste time with explaining what had happened. We needed answers first.

  “What the fuck are you?” Phillip asked, taking a step towards her with rage in his voice.

  “Calm down, dude,” Felix threw an arm in front of him.

  “She slit my throat. She slit my throat,” he replied, still glaring at Chelsea.

  “Chelsea, what are you?” Shayla asked, lightly tapping Chelsea’s arm.

  Chelsea turned to her with those disturbing cloudy eyes. “I was a vampire, but then I was sent away.”

  “Sent away where?”

  “It was dark, and no one else was there except me and her.”

  “Who’s her?” I inquired

  “She said her name was Rima and she wanted to hurt Amina. And Phillip. She said you were in the way.”

  I walked over to Shayla’s side so Chelsea could know I was there. “It’s me, Chelsea.” I tried to look past the bloodied bullet hole in the middle of her forehead and focus on her eyes but that wasn’t much better.

  “Amina.” She sobbed. She reached out her hand in the air. She couldn’t see me clearly, and I grabbed her hand. It was cold and stiff, and a little piece of me broke inside.