Beautiful Souls (30 page)

    
              I approached the killer, only feet away now. Once within arm’s reach, I bared down and sunk the wooden rod through the killer’s left eye, not stopping until my fist of white knuckles sat flush with her bleeding eye socket.

    
              The blood spewed, pouring down her cheek as she wailed and writhed in excruciating pain. I held on moments longer, exhibiting signs of a looming psychotic breakdown as my maddened yell released. My body trembled in the after effects of mania and adrenalin, my wild eyes holding their intense gaze on the killer.

    
              I felt a tug behind me. I fought against the pull. Someone called my name, and it sounded so distant in my buzzing ears.    

    
              “Becca!” Leo screamed.

    
              “I’m all right,” I called back, as my brain began to realize my full surroundings.

    
              Leo was at my side in a heartbeat, checking over my body to reassure himself that I had not been stabbed or harmed too badly. He helped me to my feet, leaving me slightly off balance, then hurried over to tie up the killer’s body.

     
              A miraculous thing happened. Miraculous, yes, but also tremendously shocking. The body of Leo’s mother violently shook and changed before our very eyes into the real form of the killer, her fiery-red hair matted with blood and mud spread out in messy clumps behind her head.

    
              “You knew, didn’t you?” I asked Leo, as he slowly peeled me away from the bloody mess. Leo and I stood together awe-struck, staring down toward Zoey.

    
              “You didn’t?” he questioned.

    
              “No,” I replied defensively. How could I have known? Should I have known?

    
              “With all the strangeness that happened every single time she came around you, didn’t you suspect?”

    
              “No…I don’t know…maybe,” I shook my head, considering Leo’s questions.

    
              Leo whipped off his leather belt in one quick snap, and wound it unbearably tight around Zoey’s grimy wrists. He asked for mine as well, and bound Zoey’s ankles with it.

    
              “I’ll never tell them where it is,” Zoey sneered at me. The sound of her voice made me cringe, and I was confused by her outburst. Maybe the blood loss had drained her of any common sense or rationality.

    
              “Becca? What’s she talking about?” Leo asked.

    
              “How should I know?”

    
              “You’ll never make me! You’ll have to kill me first!” Zoey threatened in gravely sadistic words.

    
              “What the hell is she talking about?” I looked to Leo for an answer.

    
              “I don’t think she’s even talking to us. She’s having delirious, hallucinations maybe?” Leo speculated.

    
              “You traitor!” Zoey screamed. “You will pay for this. Even if I’m gone, you’ll pay. I would have gotten away if you hadn’t intervened. But it’s gone now. That I made sure of, and they’ll never got their do-gooder paws on it ever again,” Zoey spoke in a low growl. “And, neither will you.” An grin spread across her bloody face, the wooden rod still protruding from her swollen, ruined eye.

    
              There was the sound of someone’s approach behind us. Leo and I both jumped, instinctively turned toward the sound of crunching gravel beneath feet, and rose to high alert, ready for another fight.

    
              “I’m not here for a fight.” Luke inched toward us with his surrendered hands in the air.

    
              “You stay back,” Leo warned. “Don’t move. Don’t you come even one step closer.”

    
              My eyes ricocheted from one sibling to the other. Zoey was pretty well detained, but I didn’t know how strong her powers actually were or even what they entailed. I couldn’t imagine she could escape her ties unless she could move objects with her mind, and that was a rare power.

    
              I’d learned from my parents and Leo that the ability to cause physical non-living matter to disappear was a common trait among Wizards, but just because something simply couldn’t be seen didn’t mean that it wasn’t there; moving an object was a completely different story, incredibly difficult to learn and effectively use, even if you were one of the few Wizards to possess the power. I kept a watchful eye on her, regardless.

    
              “What’d you do with it, Zoey?” Luke asked in a rather inappropriately calm tone, considering the circumstances.

    
              “I’ll never tell, and if they kill me then no one will ever lay their filthy hands on it ever again,” Zoey threatened.

    
              “What’s she talking about?” Leo demanded an answer from Luke.

    
              “Don’t you tell them, you, you traitor,” Zoey spoke in slow, articulated words.

    
              Luke paused momentarily, considering the things Zoey had said and her obvious, underlying threat. “Your book,” he answered a moment later. “She stole your book.”

    
              “What book? Who’s book?” I asked.

    
              “Your house, Becca,” Leo answered with certainty. “It was a book of yours. What did you have at your house that they could have wanted?”

    
              “That’s why the both of you were outside my house?” I shot the question toward Luke and Zoey.

    
              “In your house,” Zoey smirked, and blood ran from the corner of her swollen, purple lip.

    
              “We…she has been searching for The Book all this time. Ever since that night back in the diner when she caught you with it. She’d always thought that you’d had it hidden in some grand hiding place, protected by a menagerie of solid and unbreakable charms. We…she never dreamed until recently that you’d have been naive enough to simply leave it out in plain sight.”

    
              Zoey laughed sadistically.

    
              “Hey,” I said defensively. “It wasn’t in plain sight. It was in my house, covered and tucked into the back of my closet.” I knew exactly which book they were referring to now.

    
              “What was in your closet, Becca?” Leo asked carefully, almost as if he didn’t want to know or was scared of hearing the answer. “What book?”

    
              “Um, a book I found online last fall,” I answered hesitantly. “I found it in my mom’s shop and got curious about its contents. It’s full of magical families, spells, their histories, and all that. It came across it right after you told me about you…you  know…what you are…and it piqued my interest, so I kept it.” I lowered my voice and spoke the words only loud enough to where Leo could hear me, or so I’d hoped. “There was a sketch in it of the amulet, the necklace that you gave me.”

    
              “You mean The Book of Magic?” Leo asked shocked.

    
              “That’s the one,” Luke confirmed.

    
              “What is The Book of Magic?” I asked the two of them.

    
              “Ha!” Zoey laughed out loud, still bound by her wrists and ankles, taking certain joy in my ignorance. “She didn’t even know what she had all this time. No wonder she didn’t have it hidden. She did keep it from me for months though. What a waste. All that time I spent searching for The Book and it was right here under our  noses, and she didn’t even know what it was or how to use it.” Zoey’s voice was flooding with mockery and loathing.

    
              “Becca, how did you get The Book if you didn’t even know what it was? Where exactly did you find it?” Leo questioned me.

    
              I caught slight movement coming from Zoey’s direction. She had started wiggling and adjusting herself, making me nervous.

    
              “There might be a better place and time for this back and forth,” Luke proposed, and he was right. “What do you two plan on doing with her?” He motioned toward Zoey, still crumpled on the ground before us.

    
              I didn’t know. I looked to Leo for the answer.

    
              “I’m going to give her what she deserves. She killed my mom, then stole her soul. I know that she is your sister, but se deserves to die for what she did to my family, and I’m going to be the one to kill her,” Leo explained in a matter-of-fact tone, never breaking his stare from Zoey.

    
              “If you kill her then she’s right. We’ll…you’ll never find The Book,” Luke spoke.

    
              “I’ll take my chances,” Leo answered angrily.

    
              “You’ll need The Book of Magic if you two plan to stay alive much longer, especially her,” he said, motioning toward me. Then Luke added, “And she’s not my sister.”

    
              “She’s not your sister? What?” I asked, thoroughly confused.

    
              I watched as Zoey wiggled her arms behind her back.

    
              “She killed my mother!” Leo trembled. “My mom! Do you have any idea what something like that is like to live through? What it did to me? Then, she possessed my mom’s soul and I had to keep seeing her everywhere even though I knew that she was dead! It was like losing her over and over again every single time she appeared using my mom’s body! Can you imagine?” Leo shook violently. “She murdered her…and I’m going to kill her!” Leo voice dropped low.

    
              Zoey produced a fireball from behind her back, placed in her free hand.

    
              “Becca, look out!” Leo covered my head with his arms, placing his body over mine as a protective shield. Zoey stood more quickly than I’d ever thought possible and threw the flaming ball directly toward us. It would have hit Leo right between his shoulder blades, but at the last second he rolled us to the side, the fireball missing us by only inches.

    
              Zoey ran full force with me in her sights. God, why did this girl want to kill us so badly? Was it really only about The Book?

    
              I felt Leo slip out from under me, reaching for something above our heads. I rolled to my side to see how close Zoey was and how long I had to react. She was only feet away. I didn’t have time to do anything. Another fireball was growing power in her hand, and I rolled over, protecting my head with my arms. I waited for the impact of heat and pain.

    
              I glanced sideways to Leo. He had grabbed a shiny object off the ground and was scrambling to his feet. With these terrifying events happening so quickly all around me, I had forgotten that I could put up my shield to protect us. I focused, immediately feeling the familiar tingle that assured me my shield was in place.

    
              Zoey barreled toward us, within arm’s reach now. Leo didn’t even have time to make it to a fully upright position when he sank into Zoey’s chest the shiny object he’d confiscated from the ground. The knife.

    
              Zoey fell back, her eyes rolling back in her head. Leo didn’t know that I’d enacted my shield, and he stabbed Zoey with her own knife, protecting me. Blood poured from her chest. Leo stood in shock as the reality of what he’d done sank in.

    
              I had never witnessed anyone die, let alone seen a Wizard’s death. Only seconds after Zoey passed, glowing white orbs floated upward from her body, growing larger and brighter as they ascended into the air. I understood immediately that these orbs were souls that Zoey had possessed. There were so many. How had she possessed so many souls in such a short amount of time? Zoey couldn’t have been much older than me.

    
              An idea dawned on me. This was my chance. I could step into the path of one of these freshly released souls and possess it without actually having to take a life myself. But what if I stepped into Leo’s mom’s soul? Could I take that kind of chance?

    
              Five or six souls had already released from Zoey’s dead body, and they had floated too high for me to reach. I still had not been totally informed on precisely how this type of magic was to be done, but I decided to wing it. I decided to take my chances.

    
              A seventh orb was freed from Zoey’s lifeless body, and without giving it another second’s thought as to what type of soul I’d be stepping into --- animal or human --- I walked directly into its path. I passed confidently through the glowing light, never once second guessing my decision.

    
              My chest made contact with the orb, and it was immediately absorbed into my body. I felt a warmth come over me and actually felt the foreign soul take hold of my own. There was an intense squeezing sensation in my chest, and my breath caught momentarily while the clutching grasp in my chest eased. The burning singe of the soul, sharing occupancy within my body, spread like wildfire throughout my veins.