by K. C. RILEY
Shattered
Secret Society of Souls
K.C. Riley
Copyright © 2019 by K.C. Riley
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in an article or book review.
All characters and events depicted in this book are a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-7374439-0-2
ISBN: 978-1-7374439-1-9
To my mom, family, and friends.
Thank you for all the love and support.
Special thanks to Sharon and Belle.
Contents
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
About the Author
Books by K.C. Riley
Introduction
There’s a world that lays hidden between here and the next. A place of angelic beings, witches, and shadows caught in a web of darkness and light. Truth and lies. Fear, love, and magic. Mom called it, Shadowick.
-Elizabeth Maverick
Prologue
It was a normal Saturday night until it wasn’t. Mom and I were almost done watching The Breakfast Club. I would have opted for a Hollywood classic like Breakfast at Tiffany’s because old romance movies were my favorite, especially black and white. But it was eighties night and her turn to pick, so I went along with it.
Don’t get me wrong. I loved The Breakfast Club, but we had already seen it like a zillion times. Still, my mom had never grown tired of it.
I especially hated the part where she would say over and over how much I reminded her of Alliston Reynolds, the basket case. The loner. The weirdo. I was nothing like her, well, not completely, even if we did slightly look alike—pale skin, light freckles, dark brown hair, and eyes. The irony of it all was that, if anything, I looked more like my mother, and despite the age difference, people always said we could be twins.
Anyway, my mom went on and on about how pretty Alliston was. How I should do more with my hair other than the hot messy bun that usually sat at the top of my head. She then started in on me being more open to making friends and getting out of my shell. They say the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, so, go figure.
Exactly, how was I supposed to do either of those things when we were always moving from one town to the next? Charleston, Houston, Jacksonville, Tuscaloosa, and now Nashville. Mom had gotten a new job managing the coffee house below us and even let me put in a few hours after school and on the weekends. Believe it or not, we had already been here a whole three months. Maybe this time it would stick.
I’d just grabbed the last handful of popcorn in my bowl when my mom’s phone rang.
She glanced at the screen and turned the ringer off.
“Who was it?” I asked with my mouth full of popcorn. Not attractive, I know.
“No one,” she said. “Watch the movie.”
And I would have, except the phone rang again. And again. And again.
“I thought you turned it off.”
“I did. It’s probably just broken. Do you want some more popcorn?” Mom quickly sprang up from the couch and grabbed my bowl before I could answer.
“What about the movie?”
“Just pause it,” she yelled, already in the kitchen, which wasn’t far.
In fact, nothing in the small cramped two-bedroom apartment was far. I would have called it a studio, but not so according to the lease. Then again, what did I know?
The microwave door slammed, and I heard Mom punch in the timer for the next batch of popcorn when her phone once again rang. I stretched over to the coffee table to pick it up. The illuminated screen read No Caller ID. And she was right. It had to have been broken because the ringer was still in off mode. I tried turning the phone completely off, but that wasn’t working either. Strange.
There was no way we would make it through to the end of the movie with it ringing all night, never mind waiting for the battery to drain. I was about to answer it when Mom grabbed the phone from out of my hand.
“Hey. It’s called privacy,” she quickly said. The phone never did stop ringing.
“How are we supposed to watch the rest of the movie?”
“It’s probably just a telemarketer,” she answered flustered.
“Then tell them to stop calling. What’s the big deal? And why are you acting so weird?”
“What? I am not acting weird.”
Oh, no? For a moment, I stared at her like the crazy woman she was acting like, until a bad feeling stirred in the pit of my stomach.
Maybe it wasn’t a telemarketer. Maybe it was work. And what if she had already lost her job? My job? My nerves began to get the best of me. We had just gotten here, and small apartment or not, I kind of liked the place. Especially working at the coffee house downstairs. I couldn’t take another move, let alone packing and unpacking another box.
“Don’t give me that face,” she said. “And stop worrying. Everything’s okay. I swear. It’s just a stupid broken phone.” The way she was clearly deflecting only made things worse.
“Then just answer it. Please,” I stressed.
“I don’t see why you’re getting yourself worked up over nothing. But, fine.” Mom took a deep breath in through her nose as her nostril’s flared. “Hello?”
Worked up over nothing, she said. Right. Within seconds, the color drained from her face.
“Who is it?” I asked with my gut twisting into knots.
She hung up the phone and stood there catatonic like a zombie.
Waves of chills ran up my arms and shoulders. “Mom? Who was it? What happened?”
Her eyes remained dull as she stared into nowhere.
“Go and pack a bag,” she finally said in a cold and lifeless voice. “We’re leaving.”
She was scared. So was I, even if I didn’t know why.
“But, we just got here. We can’t just up and leave. Not again. What about school? The job? Our stuff?”
“Listen to me carefully,” she said as her eyes cut into mine. “We have to go. Tonight.”
“But this doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t care if it makes sense.” Her voice grew louder. “Go and pack. Now.”
I scanned the corner of the room at the few boxes that still remained unpacked. I wasn’t doing this again.
“No,” I said firmly. “I’m tired of moving. Just tell me what’s going on. Who was on the phone?”
“Elizabeth Maverick.”
I knew that voice. It was sharp enough to slice through rock. I also knew how far I could push. “Whatever.”
I threw my hands in the air and stomped off to my room, hoping it would snap her out of whatever the hell was happening. I locked my door and refused to pack a thing. With a huff, I pull
ed out my piggy bank and emptied it on the bed. I then turned on an old movie on my laptop and put on my headphones.
An hour later, my mom knocked and asked if I was ready. Was she kidding? The woman had clearly lost her mind and was hell-bent on taking me down with her.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I yelled.
I turned the volume up louder. The movie was just starting to get good.
My mom opened the door over the blaring voices and music, grabbed my bag, and started going through my drawer to pack my stuff. One, how the hell did she get in? And two, I could have sworn I had locked the door.
I gawked at her because, well, what else was there to do? She was serious. And we were leaving.
I pulled off my headphones, knowing this was a battle I wasn’t going to win. Not today. Not tonight. And not with the seventy-five dollars and thirty-six cents in tips that was spread across my bed. Mom and I rarely fought, but when we did, I had to be careful.
“Fine,” I said, reluctantly giving in. I didn’t want her rummaging through my stuff anyway. “I’ll do it myself, but only if you tell me where we’re going.”
The silence in the room sat gridlocked, a stare-down between the two of us until she finally cracked.
“Home.” The tone of her voice swept through me like a ghost trapped in the wind.
“Riverton?” I asked, shocked.
Mom always said she was from Riverton, Virginia, but somehow I gathered that was a lie. Anytime I asked her about it—her family, growing up, my dad, visiting the place—she would go into a major depression for days, weeks, and even months on end. And so, I learned to stop asking. Because when I stopped asking, she got better.
She looked me dead in the face, turned, and walked away without a word.
“So, we’re back to that again,” I yelled. I’d had enough and slammed the door behind her.
Forty-five minutes later, I was finally packed and we were off to only God knew where. She had really done it this time, lost it. And there was no one to call. No family. No friends, not real ones. It had always been that way. Sure, there were moments when we clashed, but they were far and in between. Truth be told, we were always closer than close.
It’s us against the world, she would always say.
Maybe I had only myself to blame. I never should have pushed her to answer the phone. And actually, what I should have done was throw the damn thing out the window. Still, as much as I tried to pretend that it was all in her head, being paranoid and crazy, something spooked her. And now it was spooking me.
Mom drove for hours through the night with no sleep. We made two stops for gas and one stop for the bathroom, coffee, and a couple of stale bean burritos. She still wasn’t saying much, which only made me nervous. She was scared. I could still see it in her face even after I had lightened up on the questions and the attitude. And I wasn’t sure how much more my fingers could take, given I had picked and chewed my nails down to the nub.
We had just crossed out of Tennessee and into Virginia. My eyelids were heavy, my body exhausted.
She glanced over at me. “I know this is hard. But, I promise I’ll tell you everything once we get there.”
“There? You mean, Riverton?”
“No. A place called Shadowick.” That was the most she had said in hours. Her voice was warm again. Sincere. “Just keep me awake, okay?”
I wanted to prod, but a wave of relief that she hadn’t completely lost it washed over me. And she was finally telling me the truth. Or, at least, some part of it. It was a crumb, but I would take it. I half-smiled and nodded. “Yeah. I can do that.”
Or so I thought. It was only minutes before I had already fallen asleep. Crap.
Lizzy…Lizzzzyyy…I know you can hear me, darling.
I awoke to the sound of someone calling my name, a devilishly sweet voice. Alluring. So much so, something inside me couldn’t resist. I glanced at my mom sleeping in her seat before I unlocked my door and stepped out into the cool and foggy night.
A ghostly shadow hovering across the dark country road called out to me. I should have been scared, maybe even terrified, but I couldn’t make my body feel or do what I needed it to the most. Run.
An owl hooted, which only added to the eerie shadow that continued to linger across the road.
“That’s it, darling. Come closer so I can get a better look at you. Why, you’re almost grown,” she said. “Come on. Closer.”
Locked into some kind of trance, I couldn’t help myself. I looked back at the car with mom.
“That’s it,” she said, as though coaxing a child.
Unable to control my body, I stepped out onto the road.
“That’s it, darling. Closer,” she repeated. “You’re almost there. Just a little further.”
Her voice was so sweet. I couldn’t stop.
The sound of a truck blaring its horn should have snapped me out of it. But it didn’t.
“Elizabeth!” Mom screamed out my name from behind me.
But I couldn’t wake up. The shadow’s voice was so sweet, so familiar, and I was almost there.
“You can’t have her,” I heard. At the word no, Mom’s voice tore through me.
Stunned awake, I found myself standing in the middle of the road. My body seized at the truck lights that flashed on and off for me to move out of the way. The truck blared its horn again, but there was no time to think. And there was nothing I could do. Within seconds it would all be over. I would be dead. And yet, I wasn’t.
Somehow, I was pulled from the road and thrown back into the car by some invisible force as Mom moved forward to take my place on the road. It was all one bad dream I couldn’t wake up from.
But it wasn’t a dream at all. It was real.
Our bodies crossed in the seconds that remained. Mom mouthed I love you as her beautiful face glowed with the light of an angel.
She took my place on the road as the doors locked with me in the car.
“Mom!” I screamed frantically, trying to get out to get to her. But it was too late.
The truck came to a screeching halt as the hollowed feeling of something unplugging from my very core ripped through me. In the dead silence and emptiness that followed, it was clear that my mother was gone.
I couldn’t move or breathe. I wasn’t even sure if my heart was still beating. All I could do was sit locked inside the car, frozen in shock. And who could say for how long?
None of it made sense—me sleepwalking, the dark shadow that had called out my name, me mindlessly following it into the middle of the road, or my mother taking my place with…magic.
The cold wind howled through a crack in the window. And the doors still wouldn’t open.
The sound of something flapping stirred from the car floor, and I reached down to pick it up. It was a note in my mom’s handwriting.
Dragonfly, I’m sorry for everything.
Shadowick, VA.
13TH hour, 483, The Destroyer.
1
Six months later...Shadowick, VA. Gray clouds shadowed the manicured lawns and towering trees that opened up to a stone castle, one straight out of a grim fairy tale.
I pulled up to a sign that pointed to student parking and turned as my breath shortened. Déjà vu. A square tower with three stained-glass windows and a clock as big as a house loomed in the front yard.
A feeling of unease wiggled its way up my back.
I had just parked when a tall, slender woman, with the grace of a swan, came out to greet me. She might have been in her early fifties. The shimmer of her white-blonde hair illuminated the soft wrinkles at her eyes, as well as her high cheekbones, and a white sheath dress cut just below the knee. With white pumps to match, she was stunning.
I got out of the car and grabbed my duffle bag before glancing at her again. Everything about her screamed rich, sophisticated, and elite. All the things I wasn’t.
“Hello, you must be Lizzy. Welcome to All Saints Academy. I’m Sister Clara.”
&nb
sp; Far be it from me, but weren’t nuns supposed to be bound and wrapped in habits, carry rulers as side weapons, and be no bigger than four feet tall? Not to mention, goblin-looking? Then again, I was sure I was biased about the whole nun thing to begin with.
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” she said.
I gawked like a moron as I tried to piece it all together.
“Ahh. I think understand,” she continued. “The expression on your face. Let’s just say I’m a nun of a different order, one not so traditional.”
I had no idea such a thing existed and honestly, couldn’t care less. The bottom line was, I was tired, far away from home—if such a thing ever existed—and didn’t belong here.
Sister Clara politely smiled and opened the wooden doors to the castle. My fingers curled tighter around my bag as I stepped past a set of large weathered gargoyles guarding the entryway.
She continued talking as she led me into the main hall. “I think you’re going to love it here. All Saints is, well...special. Yes,” she said, placing her hands on my shoulders. “We’re going to get along just fine. Even friends, perhaps.”
Friends was a bit pushing it, and so was the lack of personal space. I barely knew her.
“Now, you’ll find your room at the top of the stairs. Take a right, and it’s the third door on the right, room 483. Someone will be around with uniforms and everything else you’ll need to start classes in the morning.”
“483?” My eye twitched at the number. Mom’s note.
“Yes. Is there something wrong?”