Paranormal Word Series Box Set (Books 1-3 and Novella)

by CC Solomon

  “Help!” she gurgled out, eyes wide with terror. I’d never seen her so scared or helpless before. She was the hot head and fighter of the group. However, when her friends were in pain, she didn’t think twice to stop and help. Now tears streaked down her face and she reached out for me, not knowing that I could do nothing for her. I was letting her down.

  I felt him on my right and turned to see Phillip standing beside me. “Help her,” I shouted. My voice sounded weird. Ghostly and echoing.

  Phillip looked at Faith with pained eyes and threw out his hands toward her. No magic poured from him either.

  I caught the sound of a sickening crunch, and Faith went still. Her throat was caved in and her eyes were open in a frozen mask of horror. I felt like my stomach had dropped. She couldn’t be dead. She stared at me with dull, unblinking violet eyes, and I fought back a scream.

  I ran to her but the scenery around me changed before I could reach her.

  I was now in a different bedroom with dark blue painted walls. No one was in the bed, but I heard a cry to my left and saw Felix. He was hunched on his knees on the beige carpeted floor next to his closet, holding his stomach.

  “Azrael!” he called out. “I’m not ready. I’m not ready.”

  He soon toppled to his side and I gasped upon seeing the insides of his stomach. Intestines, fatty tissue, and blood poured to the floor. His eyes filled with tears as he screamed out in agony; grasping his stomach and trying to keep the contents inside.

  Phillip knelt down and ran a hand across Felix’s body, but nothing happened. Nothing was healing. I closed my eyes and tried my magic but still nothing. I prayed and called out to Felix’s guardian angel, Azrael. The angel did not appear, they never did, at least not to anyone besides Felix. It appeared that his angel had abandoned him this time.

  I couldn’t stand to see him like this. Felix was our friendly giant. He was the comforter and jokester in times of hardship. Now he was writhing in pain on the floor, having done nothing to deserve this horrific situation.

  I walked over to Felix and fell to my knees. I held his hand, covered in his own blood. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he gritted his teeth against the pain. I began to stroke his hair with my other hand until he took his last breath, dying beside me. Tears blurred my vision, and an overwhelming sadness enveloped me.

  The world around me changed again, and Felix disappeared, but Phillip stayed. We were now in a living room. I turned slightly, still on my knees, but saw nothing. The room filled with a croaking noise. It sounded female. I looked up and saw Lisa laid flat against the ceiling. Her arms were spread, and her eyes were wide in fear. She did not move, and I only assumed it was because she could not. She called out, but no sound came.

  I stood up and grabbed Phillip’s hand, hoping we could float up and get to her but, once again, our magic failed us.

  Lisa’s face changed as we looked on helplessly. “What’s happening, Amina?” she asked in a tiny voice.

  “I’m so sorry,” I replied.

  “Why? What did I do wrong?”

  I shook my head, not knowing what more to say.

  She grew older. Wrinkles formed, the skin on her face dried and sunken. Her hair grew brittle and gray. Soon her body thinned and hallowed. She was aging fast. Older than any human I’d seen. My friend, who I knew to be beautiful and bubbly, was now caught in this nightmare that I knew I’d brought upon her.

  She looked so scared, and it broke my heart because I could do nothing. She looked almost mummified now. Her skin took on an ashen tone, then grayed. Her hair and nails fell out, lips thinned to nothing. Her body was now a skeleton covered only by a thin, paper-like layer of skin. Chunks of her face started to crack, and the remains of the thin skin covering the rest of her body soon broke apart. She looked at us with scared, dull eyes, toothless mouth still open in horror. Pieces of her skin fell towards us, but we disappeared before they landed.

  I felt sick to my stomach as the world changed around us once more. Phillip drew me to him and hugged me. I laid my forehead on his chest and closed my eyes. I couldn’t see anymore.

  I felt the scenery shift, but I was too scared to move away from Phillip as I slowly opened my eyes. We were outside and it was night. I could see the pavement of the street.

  I heard a gurgling noise as if someone were rinsing their mouth out. “What is that?” I whispered. I squirmed to turn, but Phillip held me tighter.

  “Don’t look,” he said back in a pained voice.

  “Who is it?”

  He didn’t speak.

  If this was going by The Six, there were only two left.

  I pushed away from him in a panic.

  Charles kneeled in the middle of the street, hands at his throat just like Faith. Except he wasn’t fighting some invisible strangulation. He was choking on his own blood. It poured from every orifice. His mouth, nose, ears, eyes. A pool of blood surrounded him. He was exsanguinating before my eyes, and I could do nothing to stop it. He looked at me with pleading eyes, and I ran to him and held my brother in my arms.

  “Sis,” he sputtered out. “Don’t leave me.”

  “I’m not,” I said.

  “I can’t see you.”

  There was too much blood in his eyes, blinding him. I tried in a futile attempt to wipe away the blood, but it just continued to pour. My baby brother was dying in front of me, and again, I was useless to him. I couldn’t be without him in my life. He was all the family I had left in this horrible world. What would I do without his wise-cracks and reasoning to keep me on track?

  I lay him back on the pavement and whispered loving words to him, his body shaking until he went still. Dying in my arms just as he had before.

  I could barely see him anymore through my tears, and I started to hyperventilate. I couldn’t lose him again. I cried out into the night and pressed my brother’s limp body to me. Soon the street began to disappear under my knees and my brother from my arms.

  I closed my eyes, feeling Phillip’s hand on my shoulder. I knew what was coming next, and I didn’t want to face it. I didn’t want to see yet another person I loved die in agony.

  We were now in the police station in Silver Spring when I heard it. The howling. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard before. Bone chilling. I walked to the back of the room and saw Erik on the floor. Except it wasn’t human Erik. It was Erik in between human and jackal form. He was misshapen. This was not the warrior form. This was… something else. Something more grotesque. Something horrifying.

  He looked in pain, back arched. His legs were too thin to support his overly long and wide torso. His human arms were too long, and his head, that of a jackal’s, was too big. His heart was beating fast. I knew this because I could see it pumping through his furry chest like some monster ready to rip its way out. He howled again out of a mouth that was large and distorted. His teeth were protruding, and he couldn’t close his mouth due to enlarged, malformed jaws. His eyes were glazed over in a light gray film. I realized then that he was blind.

  His matted, golden fur did not fully cover his skin. The uncovered parts were still human skin stretched thin. It was a nightmarish sight to be coupled with his cries of agony. Erik was our rock. He was afraid of nothing and put himself before all others. To see him this way was too much, and my heart broke once again.

  I started for him, but Phillip grabbed my hand. I glared at him. “Let me go.”

  “He could be loupe, Amina.” Phillip’s eyes seemed deeply saddened.

  “He won’t hurt me.” I peeled his fingers off me and continued to Erik. I wasn’t sure if that was true. If he were loupe, he wouldn’t be in his right mind. However, I was his mate, and we were part of The Six. I had to hope we were stronger than anything. More importantly, I couldn’t let him die on the floor alone.

  “Erik, it’s me, Amina,” I said evenly, carefully lowering myself next to him.

  Erik’s howling died down a bit, but he still shook in pain like a sick dog. It was agony see
ing the man I loved reduced to this.

  I touched the part of his arm covered in fur, and he calmed a little. I didn’t have my magic, but I was still his mate.

  He whimpered.

  I stifled a cry, helpless. “Let go, baby. I’m here. You’re not alone. Move away from this pain. See your daughter again,” I whispered through a broken voice. He had already suffered so much. The loss of his daughter during her own transformation to become a werejackal was something I could not imagine. The small bit of comfort was that in death, he would see his little girl again.

  His whimpering soon faded away as his breath grew short and ragged, eventually stopping all together.

  I let out another deep, guttural cry. My whole body shook, full of loss. They were dead. They were all gone, and I was helpless to save them. How would I survive?

  I heard noises. Battle cries and gunshots.

  The atmosphere changed, and I was sitting on grass now, in front of a house, Phillip still by my side. It was daylight but a cloudy day. Bodies appeared all around me. Fighting. Humans battling creatures I’d never seen before. They were tall, nightmarish beasts with leathery black skin, long pointed ears, bulky frames, and red glowing eyes.

  Vampires in full blood lust attacked people. They had skin the color of marble and granite, sharp protruding teeth and nails. They had no hair and their bodies were muscled, devoid of fat. One such vampire tore open the neck of a man with his jagged teeth.

  Then there were the Fae. Some I recognized. We were in Ireland again. In Ed’s town. This was the same fairy we’d battled before. She was the leader of the Fae group who had come to attack us under the orders of the original soulmates.

  A female fairy with pink eyes twisted the neck of a red headed man holding a bow and arrow.

  I knew this man. Ed. I gasped, covering my mouth. Yet another friend lay dying in front of me, and I could do nothing to stop it. The light in his eyes vanished, his usual smirk gone from his lips. I sobbed out, feeling almost in near panic and crazed. I would never stop crying. I was broken.

  I looked around me in shock. The houses were on fire, and children ran around screaming. A vampire grabbed a little girl and bit into her neck. I raced towards them and tried to push the vampire away, but my hands went through the creature. I stumbled back in horror. I could do nothing as he drained the child before me.

  Why couldn’t I touch anything?

  I snapped out of my thought and turned to Phillip. “How did they get beyond the ward without us feeling it?” I asked him.

  He shook his head, a look of helplessness on his face as he stared around in open mouthed confusion.

  “Why can’t we help? Did we die? Who’s behind all of this?” I shouted.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. Everything’s destroyed,” Phillip looked dazed.

  I continued to look around me and saw him then.

  He stood in the middle of the field, facing the entrance to the walled village. He was tall, over six feet, and the color of deep mahogany with thick, coily hair. He was handsome and appeared to be of African heritage with high cheekbones and large golden, glowing eyes, which were almost too bright to look at. He was dressed in a pair of black slacks and a collarless white, button-down shirt.

  I knew who he was as soon as I set eyes on him. One half of the first soulmates.

  Phillip turned and saw him too.

  “What do you want from us?” I called.

  Submit. The man’s deep African-accented voice echoed in my head.

  “Stop hurting them.”

  “Then submit to us, or they will all die.” He raced towards me, and I screamed in fear.

  My eyes snapped open. It was all a dream. At least I hoped.

  However, I knew what I envisioned was more a warning of things to come if I didn’t give in. But what would submitting to the soulmates really mean?

  Chapter 1

  I stared at the ceiling in Erik Bennet’s bed back in Silver Spring. The early morning sun peeked through the vertical blinds and filled me with a sense of dread. “It was just a dream. A shit dream, but a dream,” I said to myself.

  “I had a bad dream as well.” Erik grumbled. He sat up, arm balanced on a raised knee. His black hair was disheveled, his eyes still sleepy.

  What were the chances? “What’d you dream about?”

  “I died.”

  My heart lurched. “How?”

  “I was stuck in mid transformation. The same as…” His voice trailed off, and he looked away from me.

  I already knew what he was going to say.

  I sucked in a breath and rubbed the middle of his back. “I had a dream Phillip and I watched you die in that exact same way. We also saw the others die too and the Ireland village get attacked.”

  Erik looked at me with wide eyes filled with fear. “Charles bled to death.”

  Wait. Had he seen the same thing?

  He blinked as if answering my surprise. “Felix was gutted. Faith was strangled. Lisa rapidly aged. I saw it all. I saw a man with glowing eyes too.”

  How was this possible? “This was one of the original soulmate’s doing. The one who’s still trapped in his land of origin. He put those nightmares in our heads.”

  “How?”

  “No idea.” I picked up my phone from the bedside table. I knew who might, though.

  I called Lisa and Charles.

  Erik must have had a similar thought because he called Faith and Felix.

  Everyone had the same dream. They’d died, the Dublin village had been lost in battle, and the soulmate with the glowing eyes had appeared.

  No. This couldn’t be possible. Could it? One other person might know.

  Phillip answered my call in a somber voice. “Amina, I was just about to call you.”

  “You had the dream, didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  “The others did as well.”

  “Yeah, and Ed’s village.”

  But was it real? “Are they okay?”

  “Ed got word from his village, via email, they had a mass hallucination about some impending battle.”

  What did this mean? “He told us to submit. He showed us how he was going to kill the others if we didn’t. He put us all in a shared dream. How did he do that? We don’t have that kind of power. I’m just getting the hang of dream walking and telepathy.” Panic rose, threatening to take over as I grew nauseous. “We have to leave town, or we’ll put everyone here at risk.”

  “No,” Erik stated. “We aren’t running from these assholes.”

  “We fight. Like Ahmed said,” Phillip agreed over the phone. “These first soulmates can try to scare us all they want, but we have power too. Once we find out who they are and where they are, we can send them a scary ass dream as well. Let them know messing with us won’t work.”

  “Cool.” No. Not cool. Nothing about this was cool. “But we don’t know who they are. They have the edge on us there. And until we find them, there are innocent people who will get hurt. I’m not willing to chance that.”

  Erik rubbed his forehead. “Remember our talk with Ahmed the other day. We can find them.”

  I remembered, but it didn’t make me feel as confident.

  One day earlier

  “Tell us everything.” I sat on Erik’s couch. “Tell us who these soulmates are. Tell us what they are trying to do. Tell us about their followers and this town of theirs in Baltimore.”

  The man we knew only as Ahmed, stood in the center of the living room. He was actually a djinni, and we’d found his missing lamp in the closet of someone we thought was a friend. This so-called friend we, well I, was convinced was actually half of an evil soulmate pairing with plans towards world rule. After stealing his lamp, she’d used Ahmed’s powers to help accomplish that mission.

  He gave me a curt nod. He always looked serious. He was well dressed in a dark gray tailored suit. His black hair cut short with a neatly trimmed beard. The Iranian-Englishman—a professor before the world wen
t to hell in a hand basket—displayed nothing of what I knew djinns to be from my years in the Pre-world.

  “The male half of the soulmates goes by the name Gedeyon,” Ahmed began. “I don’t know if that’s his original name. He comes from ancient northeast Africa, what we now call Ethiopia. At that time, magic reigned. He has the power of the evil eye, which he can use to inflict harm or lay a curse just with a gaze.”

  That sounded fun on all kinds of levels.

  “He also has a Lycan ability. Specifically, he can turn into a werehyena. As the oldest living werehyena, it’s possible he could be alpha to all hyenas, so that’s a following you can’t count on.”

  Great. Were we going to need hyenas?

  “The female, I don’t know where she originated, but her power is something very ancient. She embodies or is possessed by a deity or goddess. She goes by the name Rima now. I’m sure I’ve seen her, but I can’t recall what she looks like. I realize that was purposefully done by her.”

  He realized that how? “I don’t understand. How can they live thousands of years? Are the paranormal immortal?” With magic back in the world, for reasons we still didn’t understand, there was no telling what the rules were anymore. Humans with magic abilities could live longer lives, but could we live forever?

  “Not many beings are immortal. I do not think soulmates are either.”

  Well, that kind of sucked.

  “So how are these assholes still around?” Erik asked gruffly, his deep, New Zealand accent coming through strongly. He folded his tanned arms, and his hazel eyes squinted, anger emanating from him. Erik was a werejackal, so him going out of control would be a super scary thing.

  I placed a hand on his thigh and squeezed. Three days ago, he’d fought some nightmarish creature one of the soulmates had conjured. I had no doubt he was still steaming over that attack and ready to end whatever and whoever was coming.

  He took in a deep breath and seemed to calm down.