The Chronicles of Kerrigan Prequel Series Books #1-3: Paranormal Fantasy Romance

by W. J. May

  “Argyle,” he began tentatively, “is it ever hard for you? The way you can’t tell Beth?”

  Despite their constant bickering, the two siblings were undeniably close. Simon had always wondered, but could never even imagine the pain that came from lying to her every single day.

  Argyle’s face hardened for a second before taking on a sad, wistful expression. “You have no idea.” Both he and Simon were quiet for a minute, and then he suddenly shook his head. “But that’s the way things are, you know? That’s the price we pay.”

  Simon nodded quickly and the situation was put to rest. He and Argyle steered the conversation towards lighter things, and by the time his friend headed back to his own dorm that night, the entire thing had been intentionally forgotten.

  But as Simon lay in his bed that night, staring up at the ceiling, the last words that Argyle had said replayed in his head like a perpetual loop.

  That’s the way things are, you know? That’s the price we pay.

  Yeah, but what if it didn’t have to be? What if there was a way that things could be made different? Made better? After all—laws were created, weren’t they? Secrets were only secrets because they were labeled as such. There was a decision to be made, first and foremost. A decision that would go on to shape the rest of their lives.

  We just need better people making the decisions, Simon thought as he drifted off to sleep. We need someone to take things into his own hands and demand a change.

  Before he could travel too far down this road, what felt like a year’s worth of exhaustion overtook him, and he fell into the deepest of sleep.

  But that little plan was still there in the back of his head—tentative and swirling. Gathering up speed and findings its edges as it slowly began to take shape.

  Chapter 14

  He was walking through a house. A house that he’d never seen before, and yet Simon felt absolutely certain that he’d been there. Many times. There were pictures of him on the wall. In some of them he was alone. Sometimes smiling, sometimes scowling at the camera. In others, he was joined by two people he knew, but didn’t quite recognize. A woman and a child, both of whom were just as foreign and familiar as the house.

  He paced uncertainly down the hall, not daring to make a sound. There was a tension in the air that was making it almost hard to breathe. And a suffocating smell lingering just below the surface.

  “Simon? Is that you?”

  Simon rounded the corner and froze in his tracks. Of course! How could he not have recognized her from the pictures?

  “Beth?”

  Yes, it was Beth. But not Beth as he remembered. The Beth he’d left behind in Scotland was a child. A mere fifteen-year-old girl with the pencil frame and wide doe-eyes to prove it. The Beth standing in front of him now was a full-grown woman.

  He took a silent second to marvel at her beauty.

  The waif-like figure and youthful innocence were gone, but had been replaced with the irresistible curves and the knowing wisdom of a young woman. Her frame was still slender, but there was a latent power to it now, and a confidence to the way she stood that didn’t seem like it could have been learned in just the ten or so years that must have passed.

  She was stunning. More gorgeous than gorgeous.

  As much as she was different, she seemed exactly the same. Her long raven hair went tumbling down to the center of her back, as wild and unruly as ever. Her creamy skin had just a touch of a tan, but still glowed in the florescence of the room just the same. And then there were her eyes. Her beautiful, impossible eyes sparkling with every lovely shade of blue.

  Only, there was something different about her eyes. Not the eyes themselves, but the expression in them. The way she was looking at him.

  Simon shuddered and took an automatic step back. She had never looked at him that way before. Standing there under the weight of them, he would have given up anything he had for her to never look at him that way again.

  “Beth, what’s wrong?” he asked softly. He was desperate to reach out and comfort her, but a vague, distant part of him wondered if maybe he was the problem.

  “What’re you doing here, Simon?”

  Her voice was different, too. Sharper. Less forgiving. It was the voice of a woman who’d done and seen too much.

  “What do you mean, what am I doing here? I live here,” Simon heard himself say. Even as he spoke the words, he wondered if they were true.

  His voice was different, too, he realized. It was harsh. Angry. The kind of voice he would never use with Beth. No matter what had happened between them.

  She stared at him for a moment, her piercing eyes gazing deep into his, before she slowly shook her head. “You don’t live here anymore. You need to leave. Now.”

  That suffocating smell was rising to the surface, making his throat burn and fogging up in the corners of the room. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn it was smoke. He shook his head quickly and tried to clear it, gasping for breath at the same time.

  This was a mistake. It had to be. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to happen. He had to do something to fix this.

  But, try as he might, he couldn’t seem to gather enough air to speak. It felt as though the smoke was rising up from inside him, choking silent all his cries for help.

  “Leave, Simon,” Beth said again. “Now.”

  The sound of a child’s laughter echoed from the backyard, and Simon’s head whipped towards the sound. “What was that?” he gasped. “Beth, what’s going on—”

  But as he stood there watching, a sudden change was taking over Beth. The skin on her arms and legs seemed to glow, and the sparkling light in her blue eyes grew almost painful.

  The next second…she was on fire.

  “BETH!” Simon screamed.

  He tried to race towards her, but it was like his legs wouldn’t move. Instead, they started sinking farther and farther into the house. Outside, the child’s laughter had turned to screams.

  “BETH! I’M COMING!”

  But it was too late.

  She threw her hands up and surrendered herself to the fire. It swooped down like it had a mind of his own and consumed her from the ground up. Simon let out a heart-wrenching cry, but the fire didn’t stop there. It spread through the entire house, scorching the pictures off the wall, burning everything to cinders.

  In the end, Simon was the only thing left.

  The world around him was dark—as dark as a starless night. He couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or shut. Whether he was alive or burning. The sound of his own scream echoed in his ears, but the void around him was deathly quiet.

  “Beth!” he tried calling again, holding open his eyes with a pair of bloody palms. “BETH!”

  “It’s too late, Simon,” a deep voice answered him from the beyond. “She’s gone.”

  “NO!” Simon screamed, twisting around this way and that as if he might find her. “She can’t be! I didn’t even—”

  “She’s gone,” the voice said again. “But you don’t have to be.”

  Then, all at once, the voice was much closer. Right in front of him.

  “It’s time to wake up, Simon.”

  A hand whirled out of the darkness and smacked him swiftly across the forehead.

  Wait… This isn’t right…

  Simon pried open his eyes, blinking confusedly in the harsh light of morning. He was back in his dorm room, lying in bed. His breath came out in gasps and a layer of sweat covered his body. The air smelled clean, and the world around him looked exactly the same. All except for the shadowy figure leaning over his mattress. He sat up tentatively and rubbed at his eyes. “What?” He tried to figure the voice through the fog of his awful dream.

  “WAKE THE HELL UP, SIMON!”

  Simon fell clean off the mattress as Jason’s shout echoed in his ears. Even the guy’s voice was a weapon, and he clutched at his throbbing head as he landed in a heap on the floor.

  “That’s more like it.” Jason
kicked him up to his feet, simultaneously glancing around at the cramped dorm. “Depressing room, Simon. You kids should really think of hiring a decorator.”

  An image of Jason’s apocalyptic flat flashed through Simon’s mind, but he kept his mouth shut. Instead, he pulled on a sweatshirt and looked blearily at his clock. “How the hell is it ten in the morning already?”

  Jason took a step back, like a disapproving camp counselor. “Oh! He has a clock, then? Well, I don’t know, Simon. Maybe the alarm’s just broken.”

  With a vicious strike, he shattered the thing in half. The crumpling pieces landing on opposite sides of Simon’s nightstand. Simon blinked as they hit the floor, then blinked again as he turned his eyes to his fuming teacher. “Are we just lashing out indiscriminately at inanimate objects today, or—”

  “When I said I’d be BACK in the morning, I assumed that meant that one or the both of you would BE there in the morning. I thought that would have been implied.”

  Oh… Crap…

  Simon looked at his feet. He thought he had a pretty good idea of where Jason was going with this.

  “Then again, I love the surprise.” Jason’s voice took on that dangerous smile that Simon had learned to fear. “What’s life without a little mystery, right?”

  “Jason,” Simon tried quietly, “I’m sorry, we didn’t—”

  “That way, when I walk inside at five a.m. and see the place dripping with blood but utterly deserted, I can play a little guessing game with myself to find out what happened.”

  Simon backed a step away, bowing his head in submission. “It just got so late, and—”

  “Maybe they were attacked by bears. Carried off by mid-century cannibals.” Jason’s fingers snapped in sudden illumination. “Maybe they were stung to death by a million bees.”

  The frightening narration came to a sudden close as he turned to stare into Simon’s eyes with chilling intensity.

  “So?”

  Simon blanched. “So…what?”

  “Were you and Tristan attacked by a million bees?”

  Probably best to ease into this a little…

  “We fought.” Simon paused, wondering how exactly to say it. “We fought until neither one of us could fight any more.”

  In a way, it was true. Tristan might have been physically defeated, but there was no way that Simon could have taken that final step. They were both, quite simply, done.

  Jason looked him up and down with a searching stare, as if he could pry the truth right out of Simon’s head. There were pieces missing in this story. An untold chapter that Simon was clearly keeping to himself. But the end result was the same, and happened to be exactly what Jason wanted.

  That neither one of them could fight with each other anymore.

  “Good,” he said shortly. Then he turned on his heel and headed for the door.

  “Wait,” Simon called after him, “did you want to set up a time to train? I know the whole school is setting up for this big event today, but—”

  “Go to a couple classes,” Jason instructed, “give me a little time. There’s a new kid I have to fit into the rotation, and it’s going to take a while to set up.”

  “A new kid?” Simon asked curiously.

  Jason nodded and headed off down the stairs. “A psychic.”

  * * *

  Simon could not believe he’d been so stupid. It was so obvious! A new kid at the school? A kid that he just happened to run into and shake his hand. A freaking psychic?

  And then he has this dream. Or was it a dream? Could psychics really see into the future? Or was it a dream tied into some physic thought? None of it made sense.

  Except that something was wrong with Beth.

  Simon’s feet flew even faster down the gravel path as an image of Beth’s burning skin flashed through his eyes. There had to be an explanation for this. This could not be a prophecy. It had to be just a nightmarish dream. It was not going to happen in real life. Simon wouldn’t allow it.

  But in order to do that, he needed to talk to the psychic. And in order to do that, he needed to track the kid down. A feat that was easier said than done, seeing as how everyone and their mother was ditching class today like he was to help the faculty set up for the event.

  He tore through the campus twice before coming up short. No one he asked had happened to have seen the new kid, and he couldn’t for the life of him remember his name. In the end, he decided to go back to Joist Hall and prowl about each floor until he spotted him.

  It was an idea he’d just seized upon with vigor, when he ran into Argyle.

  “Simon!” The two of them collided in the entryway to Joist. “Simon, I need to—”

  “Not now, Argyle!” Simon pushed past him.

  “But I have to—”

  “I’ll see you later tonight, we’ll do it then!”

  Without waiting for his response, Simon went tearing up the steps to the second floor, head swiveling this way and that as he looked around. Even if he hadn’t been on a wild goose chase to find the man with all the clairvoyant answers, he wouldn’t have been able to talk to Argyle right then. To be honest, he had trouble even looking at Argyle.

  He couldn’t see him without seeing his sister…burning up in flames.

  “Hey! Do you know if that new kid lives on this floor?” Simon breathlessly asked the first person he ran into. It was a startled first-year, who looked at him with a dawning smile.

  “You’re Simon Kerrigan, right? The guy who was just in that race around London?”

  Simon resisted the urge to roll his eyes, and nodded hastily. “Yeah, that’s me. Now this guy, does he live on your floor?”

  “No.” The kid backed away, looking like he was on the verge of asking for an autograph. “I think he’s on the third floor. Up with the rest of your year.”

  “Right. Thanks.”

  Simon was off like a shot, scarcely taking the time to wonder what was stranger: The fact that this random guy knew he’d been in a fake drag race, or that he knew enough about Simon to know that he was on the third floor.

  He flew up the stairs and tore around the curved banisters. If only he’d picked up Jason’s tatù before he left, this entire thing would have been so much easier. When he finally leveled out on the third floor, he felt as though he’d just come from a session at the Oratory.

  “Hey,” he ran into Rob as the shifter ventured out of his room, “do you know what room that new kid got put in? Tall, tan, uh…the only new kid we have?”

  Rob nodded and pointed to the end of the hall. “They put him in the same room that his brother had. Kind of messed up maybe, but at least none of the rest of us have to move.” With that, he flashed Simon a quick smile and headed off down the stairs, out to help with the event.

  Simon didn’t care that he was a complete stranger busting into someone’s dorm room. He didn’t care that he was quite possibly intruding upon a vulnerable moment of someone’s life. He needed this psychic to tell him about Beth. That was the long and short of it. The only reason that Simon hadn’t hopped straight on a plane to go get her was that she appeared to be at least a decade older in the dream.

  Jacob.

  He suddenly remembered the name.

  And not a moment too soon. With a final push of strength, he skidded down the remaining stretch of hallway down to the very end. A hasty greeting rose up on his lips and he was about to push open the door, when he saw that there was no need.

  The door was already open. And not one, but two men were standing inside.

  One of them—the older one—was softly crying.

  “I just can’t believe it,” he murmured, sobbing into his little brother’s shoulder. “I just can’t believe I have to go.”

  Simon ducked behind the doorway faster than light as he realized something very important.

  He did care.

  He wasn’t going to interrupt this. Not something so personal. Something so terrible. Beth was ten years older in the dream. It could w
ait a few minutes more.

  “It’s just not fair,” Jacob muttered. “Ethan, I did everything I could to try to get them to let you stay. You know I didn’t want to come here in the first place. I wish this whole thing had never even happened to me.”

  Simon’s face screwed up in wonder as Ethan interrupted his brother with a sigh.

  “That’s no way to be talking about your tatù and you know it. It’s a gift, Jacob.”

  Through the slat in the door, Simon saw Jacob shake his head.

  “It isn’t. It never has been. That’s what you and Dad were never able to see. It’s a curse.”

  Ethan looked at his brother for another moment, shaking his head. “I hope you come to see it differently. You don’t have a choice, you know. It’s a part of you now.”

  Jacob’s face tightened as his brother grabbed up his bag and took a final glance around.

  “Be good to the place for me,” he said as he wiped his face and clapped Jacob one last time on the shoulder. “And…try to have fun. This is a great school, you’ll see.”

  Jacob just shook his head with a sad smile as he lifted his hand to wave. “See you this summer.”

  “Yeah, Jake. See you this summer.”

  Cursing again that he hadn’t borrowed Jason’s speed, Simon ducked quickly into the dorm across the hall, and pretended to be just walking out as Ethan headed out into the hall. His younger brother stayed frozen where he’d been left in the center of the room, looking around at the high arching walls like they were the bars to a cage.

  Simon felt horrifically guilty disturbing him. Especially now. Especially about something like his ink. If it had been for anything less than Beth, he never would have done it.

  But it was about Beth, and the image of her face got his feet moving forward.

  He reached the door just as Jacob was closing it.

  “Hey,” he wedged his foot in front of it, keeping it open with a smile, “remember me?”

  Jacob pulled back in surprise, but recovered himself quickly. “Sure. You’re that guy from the other day. All a mess. How’s your face?”