by Tricia Barr
Tricia Barr
Cover art by: Molly Phipps
Copyright 2018 Tricia Barr
Printed in the United States of America
Worldwide Electronic & Digital Rights
Worldwide English Language Print Rights
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form,
including digital and electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any
information storage and retrieval system,
without the prior written consent of the Author,
except for brief quotes for use in reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
I was doomed from the start.
Before I ever took a life. Before my parents were murdered. Even before I caused my mother to die for six minutes while she was giving birth to me. I was doomed before this life began.
And I can trace it all back to that face. The handsome, rugged, dimpled face that haunted my dreams before I could walk. I had memorized every line and curve of it before I could say a word. I knew that his hazel eyes shown blue when he was happy, gray when he was mad, and sparked green when he was being witty or humorous. And every winter, when my mom would make me hot chocolate, I was reminded of the warm color of his springy light brown hair that parted in the middle and came down in short waves around his ears.
But that was all I knew about this man. I didn't know his name or who he was, why I dreamt of him so often. I had no idea that he was anything more than a figment of my unconscious imagination. I had no idea that he was going to be the love of my life, or that he would be the one to bring it to an end.
I’ll never forget the first time it happened.
I was seven years old and in the second grade. The bell for recess had rung and all the kids ran out onto the playground. It was a beautiful, bright sunny day in the middle of autumn, and the only dark cloud in sight was the one that permanently floated over my head. You know how some people have rose-colored glasses? Well, I have overcast-colored glasses, and everything is always gray.
“Go away, Lorelei,” Clarissa said, pushing me away from the jungle gym. Clarissa was a popular girl, you know the type—perfect shiny blond hair, blue eyes, hands forever cattily poised on her hips like the spoiled only child of privileged parents. “Nobody wants you here. Why don’t you go play in the sand with your imaginary friends?”
“I’ve seen her talk to them, you know,” Jessica added as she gave me a disgusted sideways glare. “Just staring up at nothing and whispering. It’s so creepy!”
My stomach clenched, and the heat of embarrassment and ostracism rushed up my face. By this time in my brief academic career, I had been labeled as the freak who talks to herself, who sees things that aren’t there. My parents assumed that I was talking to imaginary friends, and it worried them, that I was too lost in my head to discern daydreams from reality. That’s why I hid it as much as I could, but sometimes my reactions were inevitable.
Because these definitely were not imaginary, and they weren’t always friends. Imaginary friends are usually something cute, like a talking pink elephant with a bowtie, and you can make them go away. The things I saw were just people, or the echoes of people. Some old, some young, some children my age. Some were nice, some were mean, and some scared the hell out of me. I didn’t always know what they were, but by now I had figured out that they weren’t in my head, that they were ghosts.
I tried as hard as I could to ignore them. Normal kids can’t see what I see, and if I respond when a ghost talks to me, people think I’m crazy. But when a ghost is screaming at me for attention, drowning everything else out and driving me insane, I can’t always stay silent.
Which is why I had a reputation in my elementary school. The other kids thought I was weird—they didn’t know the half of it, and apparently, neither did I, until after what happened next.
“Come on, Clarissa,” I said, not backing down from Clarissa’s nastiness. “You don’t own the jungle gym. Just let me play.”
I took hold of the railing of the colorful stairs and planted my foot on the first step.
“No! Take your freakiness somewhere else, loser!” She slapped my hand away from the railing, so hard that my skin stung.
In defiant outrage, I tried to push past her up the stairs, but she gave me a rough shove backward and I landed on my butt, scraping my palms on the ground.
She and Jessica laughed as they stood over me, and all the other kids around started to follow suit. I hated her so much in that moment. As if it wasn’t hard enough being me, she had to push me down and make me a laughing stock, literally adding insult to injury. I glared at her, wishing she would just burst into flames. I wanted her to disappear.
And then it happened. My fury grew limbs and I had a sixth sense that went beyond my physical form. This sense found something, and in my defensive anger, I yanked on it. Suddenly, Clarissa’s laughter caught in her throat and her whole body straightened and went stiff. Her back arched impossibly backward, and she made the most horrible expression, with her mouth gaping open and her eyes rolling up into her head so that all you could see was bloodshot white.
All that anyone else saw was Clarissa’s body spasming for an instant before collapsing on the jungle gym steps. But I saw what really happened. Her soul was pulled out of her body with a terrible ripping sound that only I could hear. The body cannot live without the soul. And somehow, I had done this. I killed Clarissa.
Jessica fell to her knees and tried to rouse her fallen friend, and when the realization hit that Clarissa was dead, Jessica screamed. Clarissa’s soul hovered above the two of them, looking down with only vague curiosity, and then faded away, disappearing from this plain. Sometimes they do that. Ghosts don’t always stick around after their bodies die, but I had no idea where they went.
All the other kids closed in around us for a closer look, everyone questioning what just occurred. The playground was a hum of whispers and paranoid stares in my direction.
“You did this!” Jessica cried, pointing a fierce accusatory finger at me. “You killed her! You really are a freak!”
I shook my head frantically, backing away as if her pointed finger was Lorelei-repellant.
Teachers came rushing on the scene, asking what happened and gathering Clarissa’s corpse off the ground. Now everyone was insisting that I had cast some spell on her. And I couldn’t contest, because in a way it was true. I didn’t know how I had done it, but I somehow pulled Clarissa’s soul out of her body.
In my current panic, all my senses were heightened, and I was now painfully aware that I could feel the souls of everyone around me, both the living and the dead. I knew that, if I wanted to, I could tug on the soul of any of my classmates or teachers with my metaphysical limbs and they, too, would die. That knowledge horrified me to the core, and I ran.
I locked myself in the nearest bathroom and buried my face into my knees to cry until my eyes were nearly swollen shut. Teachers banged on the door trying to get me to come out, and eventually, a janitor unlocked the door. The school had called my parents, and it was my dad that scooped me up off the bathroom floor and carried me out.
That was my first kill. And unfortunately, it wouldn’t be my last.
Although, technically, it was my second kill. My parents had often told me the story of my birth. While in labor, my mom’s heart stopped, with little unborn me still in her belly. The doctors rushed to cut me o
ut so that they could attempt to resuscitate her. It took them six minutes to revive her, which is a dangerously long time to be dead and come back. She luckily didn’t sustain any long-term damage, which was miracle. And the fact that I made it out of the birth alive was also a miracle. Mom and Dad called me their Miracle Baby.
But after Clarissa, I knew the truth. I wasn’t a miracle, I was a curse. I was the reason that Mom died. Somehow, I must have pulled out her soul the same way I had done it to Clarissa. I could never look at Mom the same way after that day. I couldn’t live with the guilt at knowing the truth.
Looking back now, I wish I had looked at her more, wish I had savored every second with her. Because three years later, she and Dad died, for good this time. I know what you’re thinking, and my metaphysical hands are clean on that one. Their death had nothing to do with me. They were murdered.
After that, Luca took me in. Luca was a long-time friend of Dad’s, and the only other family I had. Little did I know growing up that dear old Uncle Luca was actually a big time Las Vegas crime boss, and when he stumbled upon my curse, he didn’t shun me for it like the rest of the world would have. He saw a place for me in his empire. He promised me that, together, we would hunt down the people that killed my parents.
I think about Clarissa every time that I have to use my curse. But I remind myself each time that the people Luca has me kill aren’t innocent like Clarissa was. And Luca reminds me each time that it’s all to avenge my parents.
“Are you listening, Lorelei?” Luca asked from the opposite end of the limo in which we were sitting. He was dressed like it was any other day, in a tailored black suit, silk black tie, and dark purple shirt that somehow flattered the white in his salt-and-pepper goatee. His short black hair was slicked back, and his brown eyes were narrowed at me with slight irritation.
“Sorry, no,” I said with a negligent shrug. “I was daydreaming.”
Luca rolled his eyes, but Smooth, my favorite of Luca’s—let’s call them employees—snickered.
“At least she’s honest about it,” Smooth said, flashing me a smile. Against his coffee-colored skin, his bright white smiles always seemed to outshine those of other people.
Luca sighed and clenched his jaw. “Lorelei, I understand that you’re a sixteen-year-old girl—”
“I’ll be seventeen tomorrow,” I interrupted him.
“Fine, seventeen. But could you please grace us with your attention so that you don’t get us all killed.” The vein in his right temple was bulging, a sure sign of his fuse shortening, so I figured I’d better stop provoking him.
I crossed my legs in a lady-like manner, placing my clasped hands on my knees, and cleared my throat. “Proceed.”
“Thank you,” Luca said, while Smooth bit his lip with amusement. “These are dangerous people. And they might know who killed your parents.”
They were always dangerous people, and they never knew who killed my parents. Luca was no closer now to locating my parents’ murderers than he was seven years ago. For the most part, the people he had me kill were people that crossed him. Not in petty ways, like owing him money or selling drugs on his turf; he knew I wouldn’t kill innocent people, and he had other employees for that. No, he only called me in for big baddies, and our current marks were among the worst. Luca didn’t think I had been listening, but I heard everything he’d said about them.
These guys were human-traffickers. Las Vegas had sex for sale on every corner, but not all of the merchandise was in it willingly. Luca had a whole harem of prostitutes, but they were all volunteers, and every last one of them was treated like a princess. The people we were about to raid now did not operate like Luca. All of their women were captured from third-world countries and kept in despicably inhumane conditions. They were caged like animals. I hated these men to the core and I didn’t even know their faces. I wasn’t going to feel too guilty about ripping out their souls, if they even had any to begin with. But Luca wasn’t here to correct an injustice. He was here because these guys were bad for his business, and he needed to snuff them out.
“Alright, we’re here,” Luca said, looking out his darkly tinted window.
I looked about as well, seeing that we had arrived at a warehouse of sorts outside of the city. We were in some industrial neighborhood, filled with warehouses like this one. Because of the late hour, the parking lots were all empty, and everything was quiet.
“You know the drill, Lorelei,” Luca prompted with his fingers poised behind the handle. “Keep your radar up and kill anyone who tries to shoot.”
“Got it, capitán,” I said, playfully saluting him with my index and middle finger from my forehead.
“And please, take this seriously,” he said, his thick brows pinching pleadingly.
I took enough things seriously. Didn’t he understand? I tried as hard as I could not to take these little excursions seriously, because if I did, I couldn’t live with myself. Just because the men I killed were lower than the lowest of scumbags didn’t mean I took any pleasure in killing them. I was sixteen. I should be going to the mall with friends and maybe even going on dates with boys, not invading a warehouse to free a few dozen indentured illegal immigrants.
But that was a conversation for a later time. For now, I just had to get this over with.
The three of us exited the limo and stalked up to one of the side doors of the warehouse.
“How many people are inside?” Luca asked me in a whisper.
I tapped into the radar of my sixth sense, searching in the metaphysical world for the presence of living souls inside the tall steel-framed building. The sorrow that hit me was instant and spirit-crushing. It was the sorrow of the hundreds of poor girls inside. My soul-tapping ability didn’t allow me to read the minds of others, no, just to feel the overall emotional health of the person within. And all the girls being held captive in there were miserable, lost, hopeless.
The pain of their souls allowed me to distinguish them from the dozen men that were containing them, for the color of these men’s souls was a muddy gray, filthy with all the dirty dealings they had washed their hands of throughout their lifetime.
“There are twelve of them,” I answered.
“This will be easy,” Smooth said. “Like taking candy from a baby.”
Nonetheless, both men took out their guns and held them in preparation to defend themselves. And me, I didn’t need a weapon. I was the weapon.
Smooth opened the door and went in first, followed by me, then Luca. Both men were always flanking me—they wouldn’t want their most valuable asset hit by a stray bullet.
The interior of the warehouse was a maze of storage containers. I didn’t need to wonder what was inside them. I could hear the whispers and soft sobs of the captured girls just beyond the thin metal walls. The sounds filled me with rage. I was a very vengeful person. Vengeance was my driving force, exhausting as it was. I wanted vengeance for my parents’ death. And right now, I wanted vengeance for the stolen innocence and abuse of these girls. I wanted to make these men pay for what they were putting their prisoners through, regardless of whether or not they knew anything my parents’ murderer.
As the three of them stepped into the middle aisle of the warehouse, bullets ricocheted off the floor near their feet with bright orange sparks. I narrowed my senses in on the three shooters, locking in on their souls, and then wrenched them out. Anymore, it was like flipping a light switch or snapping my fingers. I willed it, people died.
I couldn’t see much in the dimly industrial structure, but the thuds of their bodies falling off the rafters and landing on the cement floor confirmed to my two accomplices that our adversaries had been extinguished.
But the shots they fired alerted the rest of the thugs to our presence, and six more men came storming onto the rafters, aiming their guns at us.
We stopped and put our hands up in a gesture of neutrality.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?” A man in a tacky white suit
came out of the room upstairs across the warehouse and looked down on us from under a spotlight. He puffed out his chest like a rooster, proud to be the master of so many hens.
“I’ll make this simple for you,” Luca announced, putting his hands down and puffing out his own chest. “I am Luca del Veccio and this is my city. You came into my town without my permission and brought your unwanted business. We don’t sell slaves here in Las Vegas. So you can either forfeit your…product and live to tell the tale, or I will relieve you of both your girls and your lives.”
The men above them chuckled mockingly, crossing their arms against Luca’s proposition.
“Lorelei,” Luca signaled, and I did as expected, snuffing the life from the other six shooters, and they obediently collapsed, dead.
The laughter fell silent as the apparent leader and his last two remaining henchmen looked around in confusion at their fallen comrades. The leader snapped his finger at one of them to check the others.
“They’re dead,” said the one on his right, kneeling over one of the dead thugs with his fingers on the thump-less jugular.
“How did you do that?” the leader demanded, the first traces of fear in his eyes.
“You are new to my town, so you don’t know about the talents of my young apprentice here,” Luca said, gesturing to me on his left. “She can kill a man just by willing it. Would you give them another demonstration?”
I looked at the man on the leader’s left, staring him straight in the eyes.
“No, no,” he said, shaking his head and backing away.
A hint of guilt squeezed my chest, but I did as I was told, and the man fell backward with a horrible gasp.
The leader was afraid now, the questions of the impossible storming in his flickering eyes.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I already told you,” Luca said. “Leave my city.”
“Done,” the leader said quickly. “We’ll pack up first thing in the morning.”