Lifted Curse (Curse Trilogy)

by C. M. Owens

  “I can’t reach her blood,” the man they call Clay shouts. “It’s as if she’s blocking me somehow. I can’t pull out the virus or the blood. Hale, stay away.”

  “I won’t fucking leave her. She’s mine not his,” he blares back as the explosive vehicles swirl above. “Araya, baby, I love you. Come back to me.”

  Come back? Why does he think I’m his? Love? How can he love me?

  “Kill him now,” my king compels.

  There’s a twist in my gut forcing me to touch the belly of mine which feels to be carrying a life force I can’t explain. It’s strong, and it’s begging me not to hurt this man claiming to love me.

  He blows through the packs with his explosive hands leading the way. My blood simmers in my veins as the display seems to force me to gravitate toward him with an unexplainable power.

  “No! Araya, do as I said!” my king screams, and my eyes darken and soften back and forth between the eyes of the two men claiming me as their own.

  “Araya, don’t listen to him, baby. He’s not your counter, I am. It’s me. It has always been me,” Hale pleads, and I tilt my head curiously.

  “You can’t fuck with her, Hale. Her blood is too strong for you to try to cause a division,” Ty screams, and then suddenly I hear a roaring blast from sound waves disrupted as the dark-haired girl squares off with my king.

  My king yelps and screeches as he digs up the dirt behind him, caught off guard by her attack. I turn to show the girl a lesson when I feel arms around my waist. The battle rages like the inferno I never thought I could see. The blue eyes hold mine, begging me to recognize his beauty within. I see a golden-haired girl with savage eyes coupled with a blond-haired boy incinerating the world around them as they stalk toward my king.

  This creature in front of me beckons for my attention to return. His lips find mine without permission, but I can’t stop him. It doesn’t feel a betrayal as it should.

  “It’s me, baby. It’s Hale. I’m yours and your mine. Come back to me.”

  I start to fling him off of me - to show him he has crossed a line and punish him for his insolence. I can’t though. Those soft eyes laced with mounds of love pull me in closer. I press my lips against his this time, and he jerks me to his body to feel the heat just before an electrical burst strikes my side.

  He rips the cord free as the shooting pain digs into me, and I feel a burning growing stronger inside of me. I feel myself… going darker, deeper, and I feel the power begging to escape from my mouth, my eyes, my fingers… everything.

  “Araya,” he breathes, and I gasp as the air runs through my lungs as if for the first time.

  The explosive trucks still circling above us suddenly explode into the air driving all the debris into the vacuuming cyclone forming in the sky like a phase five storm. I stroke his face lovingly before a screaming howl erupts from behind us.

  “I have to take care of something,” my drunken voice chimes.

  He steps up beside me, and images of a fatal blow flash through my head as the small boy I came to save delivers me a warning using his gift from so far away. I can see Hale’s death, his body being smashed to pieces before blown to ashes. It’s so real I feel as though I could reach out and touch his sparking embers.

  I tremble slightly, and then I place my hand on his head before whispering.

  “Sleep,” my voice commands so gently.

  His eyes roll back in his head, and I look around at all the others before they too drop to the ground under my words.

  Angelica, Grayson, Symphony, and Clay follow suit - falling in front of the man who was seconds away from killing them. I glance over to see the resting body of Brazen who had been on his way to me before the sudden urge to shut his eyes came into play.

  Ty’s eyes narrow at me as he snarls through his gritted teeth.

  “That’s new,” he growls.

  “I told you not to be so dismissive,” my dark tone eases out, and I feel the power growing stronger, darker, and more uncontrollable by the second.

  His eyes try to roll back in his head from my newly found sedating powers, but he’s so strong. I can feel his burning desire for my death. I can feel his dark aura shining through to break free from the force of my trance… which is fine. I want him to feel the pain of his death.

  “I won’t feel death, bitch. You will though. Once I’ve studied your brain again with you frozen in this fucking state,” he growls while completely overcoming my new, unexplored gift.

  “You also thought you could bind me to you like one of your slaves,” I taunt.

  He smirks, and I feel the sting of a needle which shouldn’t have pierced my skin. I feel the burning of the liquid that once knocked me out though there shouldn’t be a sedative strong enough to bring down a hybrid.

  I’m too strong though. As quickly as the dizziness sets in, it dissipates. The burning metabolism of phase three Araya eats through the liquid with effortless ease, and his eyes grow wider in disbelief as my fully alert ones fall on him to cast their violently violet glow.

  I smirk, and then he screeches as he whirls through the air. His back cracks against the wall, but he stands and heals without the taste of blood. Suddenly I feel my own body sailing backwards, weightlessness consuming my rising stomach, and then I smash through wall of the Hilbrook compound.

  The taste of blood sours on my lips, but I too heal quickly just as I did when fighting Symphony. He stole it from me. He stole my ability to heal instantly instead of a gradual healing.

  “I did,” he says while once again reading my thoughts. “I’m just as strong as you physically. Mentally, baby, I’m so much fucking stronger.”

  I gasp as I feel the air leaving my lungs. I clutch my throat while feeling the veins in my body trying to shrivel up. I want to scream as my brain, lungs, heart, and everything else begin suffocating with the excruciating agony ripping through me. I’m actually worried my body is going to fold in on itself, as though I’m being vacuum-sealed.

  “Hurts doesn’t it? A gifted hybrid thought he could hide himself from the United so he didn’t have to forever be tied to them. It’s ironic he sought refuge with me,” he laughs.

  More tragic than ironic.

  I move my lips to try to speak, though I have no idea what words I would use. My chest can’t rise or fall as it continues to deflate. The dryness in my mouth leaves my saliva turning to grains of dust as I squirm uselessly under the force of the impacting suction.

  My storm above is still circling with its own suctioning force, but it’s not strong enough to pull this man full of manufactured power from his feet. With the devil in his eyes and ice in the place of his heart, he’s just too damn strong.

  Hopelessness starts to devour my willpower, savagely feeding on it to offer me only despair. I look to my sleeping family, all of them lost under my spell, and a tear falls when my eyes come to rest on the man I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life with. None of them can help me… they couldn’t do anything even if I allowed them to wake. I can’t watch them die.

  Suddenly I feel a stirring, as if I’m being resurrected by the power of my love for my true family - the ones who have loved me unconditionally without pause since I met them. My heartbeat quickens against the force trying to still it.

  Memories of Hale’s breath on my lips just before he stole my love for the first time shine through me, warming me. The dance I shared with Brazen the night he pulled me from the corner and dried my tears before healing my broken heart swish through to fill me with a new breath despite the air still being drug from my lungs. Clay’s watchful eyes and unwavering friendship gives me a little more strength as memories from him soothing me after my first breakup with Hale surge to the surface. Angelica’s wisdom beyond her years aides my mind in controlling the fear she would not allow to control her. Grayson’s heart, his courage, his desire to be loyal to one who believed in him when no one else did sends a new wave of my own courage pounding through me. Nicholas’s sacrifice, his love
for the daughter he failed brings my eyes down to the small child in my womb needing me to be there for it the way he was for me in the end.

  I start rising - like the phoenix from the ashes - and another breath escapes his grasp to fall into my lungs. My head pounds as I push against the force caused by a mach twenty ride. He growls as he pushes against me harder, and my head pops back for a second before I dig in deeper, forcing myself to rise again as the rubble beneath me cracks under my hands and his force.

  He loses his focus, and the compound starts to suffer from the force I’ve been holding up against. The walls do fold in on themselves almost instantly, and I hear the sound of rock crunching against rock as more walls give in.

  My hand slides across my stomach, and I think of my child being brave enough to come into the world as the first of her kind. It’s a girl. I can feel her presence as she announces herself more prominently, begging her mother to stop this man from stealing her first breaths, telling me to get the hell up and fight for her.

  Sandy tears brush from my eyes as my winded storm starts to draw forth more bits of the world around it, leaving the sleeping mass I’ve banned it from taking. It’s my phase five storm. It’s my life. It’s my child. It’s. My. Turn.

  The breaths begin flowing easily into my chest, and I stand to walk with more ease through the force I shouldn’t be able to withstand. His eyes show the terror when he feels me fighting his strongest weapon.

  My child’s heartbeat quickens as the adrenaline rushes her the same as it does me. She’s ready for me to fight this son of a bitch. She’s ready to see her mother show the world why she deserves to live in a place where hybrids are free, happy, and loved.

  “No, damn it,” he strains out while trying to push harder against me.

  I smirk as his futile attempt to surpass my strength fails. It’s too late. He has pissed me and my child off now. There’s no saving him.

  I sling my hand over and his body sails into the debris behind me as he plows up the remains of the once standing compound. He screams as I return the favor, and I show him how strong my crushing force can be. It might not draw the air from his lungs, but it sure as hell doesn’t allow for new breaths to enter.

  The storm above darkens as the red lightening strikes, and his screeching cries of pain exude with more force as they zap through him with their convulsing force.

  “Doesn’t feel good, does it?” I scoff while staring at him. “Don’t fight it. It’ll hurt less if you just give into the burn,” I mock to exact his words.

  A metal rod is jerked from the ground and it slams into his stomach, pinning him down as if my force wasn’t enough. His cries almost make me laugh as the wicked, unforgiving smirk turns up on my lips. The red slithers streak free from the sky again, and their force is magnified by the protruding metal implanted in his body.

  He shakes violently, his blood rushing from his body that is no longer healing with instant finesse. His clothes sizzle under the acidic rain gushing free from the clouds, and his eyes roll back in his head as a yellow foam runs from his mouth in heaps.

  I show no mercy as the lightening continues to crash, charging his body with the same volts of power he tortured me with. He’s not strong like I was. He can’t stand the taste of his own cruel torture.

  His gargles replace his screams, his pants replace his breaths, and his pain replaces his dark heart’s desire as he becomes increasingly limp - his body thrashing harder without him fighting back. His spirit is more broken than his hybrid body, and death is creeping up slowly to free him from the other torture methods swishing through my brain.

  I sling another rod through his torso, but no screams follow. The lightening bonds with it as well, and the red ripples slash him up more and more with his invincibility a mere taunting memory.

  I stalk over to stare him in the eyes while frying his soul, and I kneel down to let my voice, my words be the last thing to go through his mind.

  “When you stole my strength, you inherited my weakness. May the devil have less mercy on you than I.”

  With that, the lightening surges through harder, crimson sparks flying into his body to free him from the world he planned to control; the world which will shed no tears for his loss.

  His eyes gloss over as death invades, stealing his last breath, his last movement, and his last prayer that would never have been answered. I step back from the soulless bastard who has caused more pain than any one man before him. I’ll see to it no other has the chance to offer the same fate to any other breed left to live.

  I start to send him into the suctioning force of my storm, but I don’t want him flying so close to heaven. He doesn’t even deserve a glimpse. Instead, I close the vacuuming sky, and the last bit of sand stirs beneath my feet as the calm air settles in with the first sighting of the tinted morning sky.

  I stare at the mess of sleeping bodies, and I first stroke the cheek of Clay to allow him to wake. He coughs up the mound of sand that has entered his lungs, and he shakes his head in disbelief.

  “What the hell?” he gasps.

  I see the reflection of my eyes in his as my diluted pupils return to normal, the brighter violet settling into a duller hue to offer a less intimidating gaze.

  “It’s done. I need you to separate the virus from the blood of the rest of these hybrids before I let them wake. Now that Ty’s dead, you should be able to do it without interference.”

  He takes in another breath before letting his eyes fall on the man stacked on top of the fallen compound, the evidence of his cruel death telling Clay how he died.

  “You went too easy on him,” he murmurs softly.

  “It was a little exhausting to keep using so much power,” I say a little too smugly.

  He smirks, and then his eyes widen at all the sleeping bodies he has overlooked.

  “How did you… when did you… how is this…”

  His words escape him when too many questions crash his brain at once.

  “We can talk about it later. Let’s just say I’ve got a few more secrets to keep. No one needs to know how strong I really am, or my child will be at risk. For now though, let’s just worry about putting sanity back into the minds of the enslaved.”

  He nods, still shaky and uncertain of what else to say, and then he walks over to the first body lying still on the ground.

  “This might take a while,” he sighs.

  “We’ve got time… all the time we need. I’m going to wake our people right now.”

  He smiles, though I can see a hint of uneasiness in his eyes. He knows the magnitude of my new gift, and he knows as well as I do, no one else can.

  “Araya, just wake the ones we trust. When I’ve finished, you can wake everyone at once. We’ll blame the sleeping spell on Ty since he’s dead.”

  I nod, completely agreeing with him now that I’ve given it better thought, and my eyes fall on the two men lying side by side; my hybrid and my full blood. I almost dread the chastising screams I’ll hear when they realize I left them out of the fight.

  “I think I’ll start with Angelica, Grayson, and Symphony,” I huff while moving over.

  Clay laughs while shaking his head, normalcy returning when he hears the humor in my tone.

  He shouldn’t fear me. None of them should. My eyes look down at my stomach as I caress the blooming child who helped give me the strength to be the force everyone needed - the weapon I hated myself for being not too long ago.

  “You will be one tough little girl,” I coo to her.

  Clay’s eyes perk up, meeting mine with a glassy gloss from a hidden sense of pride twinkling upon hearing the announcement of my child’s gender.

  “She’ll be just like her mother then,” he gingerly offers, and my own tears drip.

  I smile appreciatively, and then I move over to start the process I’ve been dreading with everyone else. Clay is the only one I knew would be more concerned about the others than my excluding him from the fight. That’s the mentality of the c
ommander.

  I sigh looking around, and he continues laughing under his breath when he hears my hesitation. This is going to be a long, long day.

  “Rex… where is he? Is that how you knew?” I ask while stalling.

  “It is. He said he saw Ty owning your mind, and he knew Hale was the only one who could free you from his hold. He’s fine. I told their standing captain to take them to Hershian. The captain residing there would do anything to keep them safe. He was handpicked by Nicholas to take over when he…”

  “He knew he was going to die?” I choke out.

  Clay’s eyes hit the ground when he realizes what he said.

  “I’m sorry, Araya. He knew these men would eventually get too close to you or Angelica. He was prepared to give up his own life to ensure your safety. There’s something I’ve been holding back from you, but I think you should read it. I believe your ready now, and I think it will give you the closure you’ve been missing.”

  He pulls out a bloodstained letter, and I use my gift to slip it free from his hand and carry it to mine. The tears start falling before I even read the first line because this is my father’s last words.

  Araya, my girl, my perfect piece of beauty,

  No one will ever know the love I held for you from beginning to end, and I’m so sorry this was the only way to show you. I can only imagine the emotions you’re experiencing if your reading this because you never got the chance to know me, and if your eyes have found this, then you never will, at least not in the way I think we both would have liked. That’s okay though. I will die knowing my daughter grew into an incredible woman who has restructured life for all hybrids by simply existing, striking hope into the hopeless heart.

  I pray your wedding is one of your dreams, and I wish nothing but eternal bliss for you. I leave knowing you are in splendid hands with everyone you trust in your life. You’re amazing, thoughtful, and more compassionate than any person I’ve ever had the chance to know with possibly the exception of your sister. I have no right to ask you for anything, but I pray you take care of her, guide her, and shape her to be the woman you had to become on your own.