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

by CC Solomon

  I lowered my shoulders. “Well, that’s bullshit. All you’ve been doing is frightening me.” I would not be put at ease by his distracting smile.

  He chuckled, a deep laugh that tickled my spine. I hated to notice, but he was handsome, in a regal way. He had that presence. The kind that made you think he had to be somebody important. He didn’t slouch, and there was an air of confidence, bordering on cockiness, about him. Although he laughed, his eyes were still cold, and I shivered slightly despite the warm breeze passing through the restaurant. He was powerful, of that; I had no doubt.

  “I suppose that would be true. I come from a time where fear was the best way to gain obedience. However, I see that may not work for you. I should not be surprised. You are not … regular. I have never met other soulmates. Well, that is not true. I have met several soulmates, but it was right before I killed them.”

  I stiffened in my chair. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because there can only be one ruling soulmate pairing at a time. If other soulmates are born and then unite, then the ruling soulmates lose their strength, as well as their immortality.”

  “Soulmates are immortal?”

  Gedeyon smiled and nodded.

  “So, you killed innocent people to stay on top?”

  He threw out his hands. “No one can rule as well as my partner and me. It made no sense to upset the balance of the world with such a change.”

  “Balance?”

  “That is the role of the soulmates, in part. To balance the good with the bad. Help all kinds thrive. It took me one hundred years to find my Rima. We were not on the same continent.”

  “You lived one hundred years before finding your mate? How were you alive that long?”

  Gedeyon chuckled. “I forget that your generation is just now learning of your powers. You have no idea how long you can live. Those of our kind do not have the lifespan of a normal human. Our aging slows dramatically in our twenties to early thirties. Of course, with the reemergence of magic, you don’t get younger; you just stop aging at the age magic took over. You must have changed at twenty-one? You still appear very youthful.”

  “I was twenty-two.”

  Gedeyon sat back in his chair and crossed his legs. “I would look younger than I do now, but my powers are not what they used to be. Otherwise, I would be here in person.”

  I nodded slowly. “Ah, so this is another dream meeting.” I looked around again, feeling very relieved. “We can talk face to face over the internet now, you know?”

  “This is more fun, yes?”

  “Not when they are nightmares filled with my friends dying.” I squinted my eyes at him, trying to appear threatening and knowing I wasn’t.

  Gedeyon tilted his head from side to side. “I know that you have my djinni, Ahmed. And that is fine. You realize he does not know as much as he may think. What has he told you?”

  I sighed. “Enough. What do you want with us? We aren’t going to bend over and be your flunkies. And we aren’t going to sit back and let you kill us either.”

  “I would expect nothing less. Did Ahmed tell you who we are? Or how magic left the world?”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to get into his murderous history. However, it was very possible he could share some information that would be helpful to me defeating him, or at the very least, me knowing more about soulmate magic.

  I shook my head.

  “I used to be a ruler in a land once known as Punt. It is now known as Eritrea, but it extended much farther than that to Egypt and Ethiopia. Magic arrived in our world, much like it did your world. It came when my great-grandfather was just a child. By the time I was born, it had already become as normal to the world as anything else.”

  He was much older than I could imagine. He’d seen magic come and go and come again. I wouldn’t be able to surprise him with anything he hadn’t already experienced.

  “However, the world knew nothing of the soulmates, and I had no guidance on how to find my mate or that I even had one. My family already had magic. We had the power of the evil eye and could shift into hyenas. We were some of the first werehyenas in existence. In my day, you didn’t have control over whether you listened to your pack leader or not. If they were strong enough to be the alpha, you were physically compelled to follow them. I imagine if that is not the case now, it is only because the person running the pack is not the real alpha.”

  Gedeyon could beat Seth and rule the pack. He could control them all, including Erik, who was my mate. Could he then control me and, by extension, Phillip? Maybe all of this was formalities, and Gedeyon could easily compel us all to bow down.

  Gedeyon, seemingly oblivious to my inner turmoil, smiled. “I continued much of life unaware of my status until I received a foretelling from a village priestess. The priestess told me of soulmates and that my half would give me great power in this world. But she was not close.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Where was she?”

  He cocked his head to the side. “Perhaps I’ll share more about her another time.”

  It made sense he wouldn’t want to tell me. If he believed that we didn’t know her identity, helping us narrow down where she came from, what she looked like, and what powers she possessed probably wouldn’t be in his best interest. Of course, that meant Blake was probably not the female soulmate. A sickening guilt clouded the back of my mind.

  I shrugged. “Let me guess, you dreamed of each other, and she told you where she was, and you got a witch or fairy to transport you to her land.”

  Gedeyon chuckled and pointed his finger at me. “You are very right. But I suppose that is the only answer that there could be. Dreams are the easiest ways for soulmates to find one another. I had dreamed of my soulmate for decades. No one could explain her presence until the priestess. Dreaming of your soulmate is like a candle lighting the darkness. We are each other’s candles, and we are drawn to our light. It is why we learned of you and Phillip. Had you never connected, we would have never known of your existence. As soon as the soulmates connect, it sends an internal alert to any other existing soulmates. Most of the soulmates we’ve encountered were already adults when they connected. Some had not even met in person before we disposed of them.”

  “Good for you,” I said, sarcastically,

  Gedeyon kept his smile. “We had to stay in position. This world that you live in would have been so much better if we stayed. There would have been no slave trade or holocaust, no trail of tears, or apartheid.”

  I rolled my eyes. He sure had a high opinion of his powers.

  “You doubt me, but you do not know what the world was like with magic. Killing an insignificant fraction of people is barely a sacrifice for a flourishing world.”

  “You talk like you’re some benevolent being, but you want to end all of humanity.”

  Gedeyon grimaced. “You have a lack of understanding. We don’t want all of humanity gone. We just want the un-gifted humans to understand their place. We cannot take them for granted, and they do not have the power nor intellect to do what is needed to right this world. They have destroyed this planet. They destroyed magic.”

  He said the last sentence with bitterness in his voice. “Humans ended magic?”

  He looked out at the water as he spoke. “The humans did not understand magic. They were afraid of us. Maybe even jealous. They had ambitions of their own, I suppose, but they could never rule any land when there were supernatural beings in existence.”

  “So how did they get rid of magic?”

  “A curse. A curse from the heavens. One that is now broken. One that we will not let occur again.”

  “So, a band of humans got some curse from heaven to suppress all magic because they wanted to run the world. You don’t think it had anything to do with maybe how you and your mate were running things?”

  Gedeyon lost his smile. “We were already in forced slumber by that time. It was not us they were fighting against.”

  “So, then they got help f
rom heaven to fight other bad paranormals?”

  “Do you think the heavens are always so good? Do you think the gods and angels that helped these humans had no motives? You are naïve, child.” There was a thunder in his tone that quickly reminded me I was not talking to just anyone. He was one half of the original soulmates, and he could probably kill me in my dreams.

  Gedeyon continued to speak. “When there is magic, there is less of a need to believe in gods and angels. Why pray when you have your own magic? What can God do that you cannot? Yes, you may pray for more magic or to continue as a source of magic. Many witches did. However, that was not enough for the heavens. We were competition.”

  My mind raced. So, angels and God or gods, as I knew them, found a way to end magic on earth because the supernatural were becoming too much competition, and people stopped looking up to them? If I believed what he was telling me, it sure put a humanistic tone to the higher-ups in a way that made them less omnipotent.

  Gedeyon leaned into the table. “Amina, you must understand that not everything you have come to believe in this world is truth. When magic ended, what do you think happened? We immediately lost our abilities. Our way of life. For some, they lost who they were. The weres did not change at the moon. The giant trolls lost their height. The Fae and djinn, who were not already in their dimensions, remained locked out and away from their people. We were left without a sense of who we were. Many couldn’t survive. Our life spans were drastically shortened. Those who had lived beyond a normal human life almost immediately aged to our years and died.”

  “And then the magic returned. How did you come back?”

  He tilted his head back. “Ah, that is the question to ask. Only the most powerful beings were able to awaken when the magic returned. For most of us, it was not immediate. It takes time to power up, so to speak.”

  “Do you know how the magic returned?”

  Gedeyon nodded, but he didn’t speak. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised he didn’t tell me that either.

  I raised my shoulders and looked up at the arched wooden ceiling. “So, what is it that you want from us? Not that I’m in a rush to die, but why haven’t you tried to kill us? Or is it that you can’t?”

  Gedeyon laughed again. “You mistake us letting you live with weakness. We have power, and we have followers in many places.”

  I frowned. “It was you, wasn’t it? You brought David back from hell.”

  “That was not my direct doing. My other half came up with that plan and utilized an ally to make it happen.”

  “You want me dead?”

  “On the contrary. My Rima and I had a bit of a disagreement on that course of action.”

  Ahmed mentioned that. Great, so the more lethal one was running around free while the one who wanted me alive couldn’t do anything but send nightmares my way.

  “I have a proposal for you.” Gedeyon leaned in towards me. “Instead of fighting me and Rima, become our right hands. You will be the most powerful pair, after us, of course. The four of us together could do great things. Perhaps even stop this regressive sickness spreading. We did not bring that upon the land. That would make no sense for us to do so.”

  “Your mate doesn’t mind this? She wants me dead.”

  “I am persuading her. I am offering you a very reasonable deal. A deal we have never offered to any other soulmate. You should feel honored. This is, as you Americans say, a win-win situation. How can you say no?” He gave me a smug smile, and I fought the urge to grimace.

  “Well, joining forces with beings that hurt people doesn’t seem like a win-win. You put a spell on Phillip to turn him into an asshole, and now you want us all to be besties? It doesn’t work like that.”

  “Amina, I never wanted to kill you. Having you alive is more to our benefit. This is something I wish I had realized before. The soulmates are not our enemy if we nurture the relationship properly. We didn’t do this before, and we might have been too quick in our decisions to kill the newer soulmates at times. Our goal is only to help the world. Magic should be at the top, humans must know this and fall in line. We can balance the world again. Advance magic and technology. It’s possible for both to exist even better than before. You should think about it. Tell your Phillip.”

  “And if I decide not to take you up on your offer?”

  He gave a nonchalant shrug. “You will die, and so will everyone you love. I will do what must be done.”

  “Why hurt anyone else?”

  “I have learned that leaving loose ends will result in later trials. But I would hope it does not come to that. I really believe we can make a strong partnership, and with time, you will come to understand my position. This is one battle that you cannot win. We will not allow it to happen.”

  He gave me a pointed look that I understood easily to mean he would take us out. Suddenly, any charm I thought he had in the beginning faded. I knew his threats were real. He spent hundreds of years killing soulmates. He had major practice. Phillip and I were strong, but we were still inexperienced and as smart as toddlers when compared to the first soulmates. Hell, Phillip and I weren’t even able to take out Ahmed or Misandre when we fought them. How were we strong enough to fight Gedeyon and Rima?

  “You have only a little time to decide.” Gedeyon interrupted my thoughts.

  “What do you mean? Are you mobile now?”

  He smiled, but it failed to reach his eyes. “Enjoy the view. I hope one day you get to come here and visit for real,” he replied and then disappeared before my eyes.

  Chapter 16

  I sat upright in the bed, looking down at Erik sleeping beside me. He was snoring lightly and looked so young and vulnerable. That scared me. I couldn’t have anything happen to him or the others.

  I reached out to Phillip in my mind and relayed the dream with Gedeyon. Talking to Phillip in person would be less awkward, but I didn’t want to wake Erik yet. I was curious to hear Phillip’s opinion first since he was also being offered the proposal.

  Where was the dream location? Phillip asked in my head the next morning.

  I have no idea where it was. On a beach.

  That’s helpful, he thought back.

  Really?

  No.

  Smartass. So, what’s your thought? We know they have a history of killing soulmates. They have a hatred for regular humans but don’t want to kill them. And Gedeyon has some real bitterness towards angels. Azrael can shed some light on that.

  I could care less about the angels. What I do care about is his offer. We can’t risk anyone else getting harmed because of us. And after that nightmare he gave us a while ago, I don’t want to test him.

  So, what are you saying? We should give in?

  It’s not such a bad thing to do. We can do more good with them on our side. We could, at the very least, keep them in check.

  You are seriously underestimating their power and overestimating any control we could have over them.

  Fine, fine. So, this guy knows we have the lamp, and he’s fine with us believing Blake is his soulmate.

  But you don’t believe she is?

  If the female soulmate’s identity is known, why is he showing himself and not her?

  I thought about that and had to admit that had been nagging at me for some time. Because it isn’t her. And if he is the only one revealing himself and not her, it’s because her identity is still a big deal. And that could mean that-

  She’s close by. Meaning she’s in Hagerstown or Silver Spring or even here in Galway.

  I nodded, forgetting he couldn’t see me.

  Amina, this is why he isn’t seeing us as a threat. With Rima still at large, she could snap her fingers and kill us before we’d even know who she was. If we don’t agree to his proposal, she could take us out.

  Snap her fingers?

  Saw it done in a movie.

  Well, I hope it would take a lot more than just that. I sighed. So, Blake’s innocent?

  Or he wants us to think she�
��s not the soulmate so we can take our focus off her.

  My head hurts. Is it her or not? We have to decide on what to do.

  We can’t make this decision in a vacuum. Talk to the group and let me know what they think.

  The group? You’re saying that like you’re part of it.

  Well, Ahmed and Lisa don’t hate me. She responds to my emails when I ask her about how the Fae are doing with gathering support.

  Hmm, file that away in the memory bank of Lisa and Phillip becoming best buddies.

  But just so I’m clear, you think we should join forces with the originals?

  I think we should not rule it out if our backs are against the wall. If we can’t build up enough support or strength, that’s the best possibility, don’t you think? I’d rather them not kill us, and if we can stop this regression as a result, we need to make that sacrifice to protect everyone.

  I don’t think we were made to give in, Phillip. That’s not why we have The Six. We’re meant to fight.

  Several months ago, I was willing to die to take out Phillip when he was evil so he couldn’t continue to hurt others, but now I wasn’t so sure I’d make the same decision. I didn’t want to bow down to anyone ever again.

  The group was, unsurprisingly, not in favor of Phillip and I joining forces with Gedeyon and Rima. When everyone gathered at our apartment to talk, we were met with screams of disapproval. Only Ahmed remained silent, which concerned me.

  “That is a horrible idea.” Mae voiced her disapproval loudly.

  It was the first time I’d ever heard her raise her voice.

  Everyone paused and looked at her.

  “It might be the most peaceful solution,” Phillip explained.

  “It is playing right into their hands, and nothing good will come of it.” Mae slapped her hand down on the dining room table.

  “Honey,” Bill began, placing a hand on her shoulder.

  She waved him off. “Don’t honey me, Bill. These children are crazy if they think they can control ancient beings. They will be swept up in their evil, and we will all lose,” Mae went on, shaking her head. “Two evil soulmates are bad enough, but four? The world will be destroyed. All of us, paranormal and human alike. This cannot happen.”