Lifted Curse (Curse Trilogy)

by C. M. Owens

  “You set me up. You were the anonymous tipper.”

  “I knew they wouldn’t learn the truth. You’re too smart to let them find out who you were born from. You’re too wise to show them how powerful you really are, now aren’t you? But I needed the place on lockdown in order to keep the crowds at bay during our escape. Not to mention, I needed Hale, Clay, and your sister focused on something else. By the way, her blood is useless. It’s hard to believe you’re really sisters®”

  “That’s why you took her? You thought she was like me?”

  “Of course I was curious, but I knew there was so much more to you. I smelled it the second I sliced open her veins with the tip of a uranium dipped blade. She was normal - gifted, but normal. I had no further use for her. I would have killed her, but I couldn’t do that to you.”

  “You couldn’t do that to me? My father died, you son of a bitch.”

  “Your father?” he scoffs. “The full blood who sent you to one of the worst places a hybrid child can go?”

  “He didn’t mean for me to go there, and he saved me by sacrificing himself. That’s love. Hale saved me more than once, that’s love. Brazen laid his life down for me numerous times. That is love. Not this. This is insanity.”

  “What can I say? I watched the girl I love fall into a trance the moment Hale arrived. You ignored the fact I was even standing there when he started flirting with you. You didn’t hesitate to fall into his arms like a mindless drone the first time he went savage in front of us either. I was there. I had to hear my girl rolling in the bed with another man while Clay had people restrain me. That’s enough to drive any man mad,” he growls.

  “I broke up with you before Hale went savage. I had already chosen him before I even knew he was my damn counter. You just couldn’t accept it.”

  He slams his fist into the wall, and then suddenly he vanishes from my eyes again, reappearing directly in front of me - close enough for me to feel his harsh breaths creeping across my skin with an ominous crawl again.

  “Now I have you back. Soon the machine will have all of your data processed, and I will be able to merge your blood with my drug. You’ll love me, Araya. You’ll love me more than you ever loved him.”

  Not possible, psycho.

  “Don’t do this, Ty. Please don’t do this. If you love me like you say you do, then let me go. Don’t try to enslave me.”

  He smirks a terrifyingly chilly grin, and then he walks back toward the door.

  “I won’t try… I’ll succeed. I’ll have the girl Clay loved first and the girl who was taken from me. You’ll both be drowning me in your affections for all time. I’ll have an army of new hybrids foaming at the mouth for a chance to show off their new gifts. I’ll have everything, Araya… absolutely everything. This world is going to belong to me very, very soon. You should be thankful I’m bringing you along for the ride.”

  Fuck.

  I don’t even know how many gifts he has. He showed me his invisibility, but that isn’t all he has up his sleazy sleeve. Hale has to know I wouldn’t run out on him. He has to know.

  The small glimpse of light still filters through the crack in the wall. The dripping sound has started to drive me crazy, and the putrid stench of the stagnant water puddles near my feet makes me feel nauseated to the point I can barely breathe in the disgusting air.

  I’ve been down here for three days with no food, no drink, and no hope of my gifts coming back to me. How is she forcing my gifts into hiding when she is nowhere around?

  My weakened hands tug at the chains hoping they’ll rattle off, but they barely even make a sound. My languid body slumps against the wall as the tears start to drip from my eyes, and Ty walks in with triumphant smile.

  “Almost there, baby. Almost there. Your blood is close to merging with my concoction. I’ve decided to call it my love potion. Good name, huh?” he smugly inserts while sipping on a glass of amber liquid.

  “Go to hell. I’ll never love you. Even if you enslave me, deep down I’ll still loathe the very sight of you,” I growl, my days of exhaustion and irritability shining through.

  “That’s what you say now, but you’ve not seen how incredibly well it works,” he murmurs, and then Symphony walks in like his puppet bound by strings.

  He smiles as her arms slide around the back of his neck, and his lips devour hers as he pushes her against the wall. I tilt my head curiously when I see a total lack of passion exuding from her. I realize she’s a prisoner, not in love. She’s not relishing his touch, hell she doesn’t even want him touching her. She’s just doing as commanded with a vacancy showing in her eyes.

  “Why is it you’re the only one who ever smiles?” I snark.

  He turns around slowly, his eyes hooded and dark.

  “She smiles. She doesn’t have to smile all the fucking time,” he snarls.

  “She would if she was in love.”

  “She does love me, you fucking bitch.”

  Suddenly there’s an explosion coming from the room beside us.

  “Fuck,” he growls while rushing out, and I capitalize on the opportunity to speak to the girl truly in love with Clay.

  “Symphony,” I call before she leaves the room.

  She turns curiously to me and realizes her name sounds oddly familiar on my lips.

  “What?” her fragile voice snaps.

  “Symphony, you know me. You know Ty isn’t the man of your dreams. Hell, he doesn’t want to live happily ever after with you. He wants to add me into your mix. You love Clay Jude. Do you hear me? You love Clay,” I assert.

  “I don’t know a Clay,” she murmurs dismissively, and then she disappears from the room.

  Crap. I botched that one.

  I listen to the room next door when I hear several other footsteps tromping through, and I realize it has knocked a gap in the sound barrier separating us.

  “How the hell did this happen?” Ty barks.

  “The machine overheated, Sir. I told you it wasn’t merging with her blood. You’d almost need Clay Jude’s abilities to make this work. Her blood is just too complex.”

  “Damn it. It was merging. Fix the machine. Do it again,” he commands with urgency.

  “As you wish, Sir,” an exasperated voice exhales.

  Well now I know Frankenstein has an Igor, I just need to find a way into that room. I have to get out of these chains.

  “I don’t want her with us,” Symphony says to the man she thinks loves her.

  “It’ll be fine, darling. You’ll learn to adapt. The three of us can live in a world with no rules barring us.”

  They still don’t know about my unspoken.

  I’m weak, tired, and nothing in this room is going to help me break free.

  “I said I don’t want her to be with us,” she growls. “I don’t like sharing, and she doesn’t want to be here. Let her go back or just kill her. I don’t want her here.”

  “I do want her here, so she’s staying. I promise you’ll have me as much as you want me, but I need her too.”

  He has dosed her with the new virus. That’s how he awakened new parts of her brain. That’s how she’s staying in her savage state. Clay will have to separate the virus from her blood to save her, and I don’t know if I can spare her in order to escape.

  I summon up my strength while she’s distracted, and I hear a slight crack in the metal when I use my gift to start unlocking the shackles.

  “I need to go topside for a while. We need supplies. Araya still needs to eat, drink, and all that. I love you,” he mutters to her.

  “And I you,” she says coldly, but she doesn’t say love.

  I hear his feet clanking against the ground, and then my second shackle falls free. I grip my wrist and then I feel the weight of my arms bearing down on me after being suspended over my head for so long. The aching is terrible, more so than it should be. My baby has to eat.

  I creep to the steel door holding me in this room, and I try to use my gift once more to open it.
It refuses to move though.

  I know there’s only one way out of here. I know if I force my savage up, it won’t go down without Hale, but I don’t care. The only one I’m looking to protect right now is the one not able to take care of itself.

  I start to pull forth my savage when the door creaks open. I tilt my head curiously, and I freeze when I see the new hybrid blues staring at me through the crack.

  “Well?” she prompts. “Are you going or staying?”

  I slip through the door, and I lean against the wall to face her a little more head on.

  “You didn’t think your gifts worked without my permission did you?” she snarks.

  “Symphony, please listen to me,” I say with a coaxing tone.

  “What’s going on?” a man says while bobbing out of the room beside my prison hole.

  Igor.

  “Go back inside Franco,” she instructs.

  “Absolutely not. Is this her?” he gasps, and then suddenly his neck snaps as he drops to the ground.

  “Oops,” she menacingly releases, her eyes still burning into mine.

  I apparently still don’t have my gifts, and she’s so damn strong.

  “It’s just you and me now,” she eerily murmurs while circling me without fear.

  My breath rushes from me when I’m sailing through the room without warning - the wind slapping my back and slinging my oily, unwashed hair to my face. My back cracks against the wall, and I slam into the concrete with more force than my lips can take as they split open on impact.

  Too fucking strong.

  “Symphony, please,” I plead, and I see hesitance in her eyes as a fleeting moment of sanity surges through her mind.

  Her eyes show me a glimpse of true hybrid blue, but then they turn back to the new hybrid color before I have time to grasp a hold of hope.

  “Hurts, doesn’t it? I felt like that once. Every time I took a breath, there was someone there to knock it out of me. I was in Chestnut, but no one talks about the hell it was. Everyone speaks only of Cheyenne, as if there weren’t others suffering. Chestnut sounds like a harmless name, doesn’t it? The full bloods there beat, raped, and damn near killed me before bringing me back to life to do it all over again. But, we don’t talk about Chestnut. It’s always about Araya. Poor, poor Araya. The things she endured,” she snaps with sarcasm dripping out of her mouth.

  “Symphony, I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” I utter through painful breaths, and then I feel my body crashing through a wall as she slings me around again.

  I taste the dust that shakes from my body when I try to stand. My hands are torn up now, and my body is trembling in weakness with no power exuding at all.

  “It’s rather obvious you didn’t suffer the way I did. You would have never been fucking a full blood if you had.”

  “Brazen is good. He’s not like them. Ty is like them though. Don’t you see what he’s doing? He tortures our kind,” I murmur through strain while desperately trying to make her understand.

  I feel as though someone has just slapped me with a car as I go barreling through the roof. My body breaks through the numerous levels of concrete as she forces me up to the surface where the sun is in full glow, barely finding its way through the thick branches and heavy leaves of the trees that only grow in places like this.

  I roll around, grimacing in pain while gasping for air. I’ll show more pity on others from now on when using my gift against them. If I survive.

  The wet ground beneath me soaks through the ragged dress meant for a happy day. Now I’m worried I’ll wear it to my funeral instead of my wedding. I try to stand, but my body gives out beneath me. I have to go savage. I have to risk it. It’s the only way I can beat her… I might not stop in time to save her though.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she growls while feeling me trying to pull forth the strength to turn. “I have a hold on that too.”

  No you don’t.

  “You don’t know me as well as you think you do then,” I strain out through the harsh breaths evading me.

  My baby’s life means more than her life. Hale, Clay, Brazen, Angelica, Grayson… they all mean more to me than she does. I don’t like what I have to do, but I care more about them. My life has been coiled around the rod of right and wrong and the thin line in between. I’ve never felt like I was straddling that line as much as I am right now, but I know what I have to do.

  The low growling in my belly starts to warn me of what I’m doing, offering me one last chance to back out. Symphony is a fool for thinking she can subdue a savage like mine. She’s crazy to think I’ll let her hurt the ones I love.

  She flings her hand again, but she’s met with surprise rather than satisfaction when my body remains stationary against her force. My violet eyes burn brighter now as I stand to my feet. The acidic tears I’ve shed sizzle against my burning body before evaporating into a faint memory of the pain she has inflicted.

  Her eyes widen in fear when she sees what I’ve become - one seriously pissed off savage bitch too strong for her hold.

  I smirk as I start walking around in a leisurely stroll to face her a little more head on. My non-uranium touched wounds begin healing before her eyes without a drop of blood despite their severity. She stammers backwards when she sees what a true savage looks like rather than a forged one.

  “What’s wrong, Symphony? Did you really think you could control my savage without my permission?” I taunt mercilessly, mocking her condescension from earlier.

  “No. I’ve got the power to stop you,” she growls.

  My devious smirk only grows as my eyes become alight with menacing thoughts running wild. I envision her body being ravaged and torn to shreds by my power, and then I feel a car slam against me as she uses her forged gift against me. Minutes ago, that would have been a fatal blow, but now it’s no more dangerous than a human slap across my hybrid face.

  An eerie chuckle emerges from my throat as the car slices in half against my body, and I remain standing, unscathed and unfazed.

  “That wasn’t nice,” I retort while brushing off a few slithers of metal from my shoulder. “My turn.”

  I crack my neck to the side, and her body flies backwards in a folding position across the forested area. Trees snap, scream, and break in half before smashing to the ground as her body acts like an involuntary lumberjack leveling the wooded area.

  I stalk through the falling debris very casually on my way to show her what real power is. She screams out as the blood rushes from her body, and a flicker of sanity returns as she pleads for her life.

  “Please. Araya, please don’t.” Then her eyes return to their tainted blue before she says, “Do it. End it if you can, bitch!”

  I tilt my head curiously, and then I hear the roaring engines surging toward us. I hear screams in the distance shouting my name in panic.

  Hale. It’s Hale.

  I gravitate toward the hummers barreling toward us. The sun moves into hiding, and the few streaks of warm light that had escaped through the trees, shrivel up into nothing as the orange glow blocks out the rays.

  “Araya!” Hale’s voice calls, and I turn back one last time to launch the sniveling, broken girl toward the hummer.

  She thuds as she lands on the hood of an idle vehicle close by, and I see Clay emerging as Hale rushes to be at my side. He grabs me up, and his lips engulf mine with fear radiating through him as his hands slide over my body.

  I feel the tears he has cried in my absence trying to resurface, and I feel his heart pounding exhaustingly against his warm chest.

  “Get her in the car. We need to get out of here before they come back,” Brazen yells.

  My eyes flash to him, and I see his face streaked with the same anxiety Hale has suffered. I turn back to the camouflaged facility that has acted like a prison for the past few days, and I give it a little wink that forces the building to implode.

  The dark fragments cloud up and shadow the orange glow cast from the sky. Debris rains do
wn on us, and I hold my hand up to divert the falling stones, steel, and other rubble. Everyone ducks uselessly, and their eyes widen when they see how very in control I am right now.

  “Fucking shit. She’s fully evolved,” Brazen murmurs in disbelief.

  “Yes I am,” I murmur with a smirk. “I’ve never felt stronger in my life, and I’ve never felt like killing anyone as badly as I do Ty.”

  “She’s talking as if she’s here with us… not savage,” Clay gushes while inspecting the unconscious body of his love lost.

  “I had enough control not to kill her,” I growl. “You’ve got your work cut out for you. He has really fucked with her head… literally.”

  “Unbelievable,” Hale mutters before pulling my lips to his again.

  I smile behind the kiss, and I hear him pulling out a vial of olophine from his pocket. I pull my hand up to stop him, and he looks at me a little worried.

  “If I’m like this, she can’t stop me from using my gift. If she wakes up before Clay fixes her, we could all die. I’m stronger than her like this.”

  “Araya, you’re… you’re phase three. Your pupils are fully dilated. I don’t know how you’re not destroying the world as we speak, but I can’t risk losing you to your savage completely.”

  “You’re talking to me as if I’m only Araya… not Savage Araya. It’s obvious you don’t fully consider me lost right now. I’m stronger this way, and I’m more in control than I’ve ever been before.”

  Clay scoops up his lost love, and then counters with, “We can’t take you back to Seminole while you’re savage. There are too many full bloods there, and-”

  “And what? I’m standing here in front of her, and she hasn’t touched me. She hasn’t even threatened me,” Brazen interrupts defensively.

  I almost smile, and Hale’s grip tightens on me when he worries my smile is of one accepting a challenge to break my ex full blood lover.

  “I’m not going to hurt him,” I say to ease his mind.