Twisted Souls: Twisted Magic Book Three Read online

  Twisted Souls

  Twisted Magic Book 3

  Rainy Kaye

  Twisted Souls © 2021, Rainy Kaye

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  About the Author

  1

  When Jada and I were ten, we were fiercely competitive, including who could hold their breath longer under water, but I had to admit right now, she had won—at everything. Wherever Jada was, whatever she was doing, she was certainly living a better life than I had the last week or so. She wasn’t going up against monsters or following the trail of the seven deadliest witches and mages to ever roam the earth.

  The keys jingling in the ignition caught my eye, and I stared at them with a sinking feeling as I momentarily relived Joseph Stone’s death. Before leaving New Orleans, we had looted his corpse for the keys to his van, which was the only vehicle in our reach that could tote around the massive portrait in the back, the one that imprisoned Nikandros Remis.

  Or, at least it did for now. We had no way of knowing how long the seal would last if the painting wasn’t returned to the vault, wherever that might be. It seemed a little foolish to be driving around with a barely contained monster, but I batted away the thought. The only thing more ridiculous would be to go chasing after another one, yet here we were.

  The problem was, we weren’t left with many options that weren’t simple madness. The men who had kidnapped Fiona had done something to her, and it wasn’t going to be fixed with rest and chicken soup. Sasmita had more knowledge about magic than Randall and I combined, and even she couldn’t imagine what had happened to Fiona in the days she had been missing. Fiona didn’t seem capable of speaking, either, so asking her was ruled out. She barely even blinked when we tried to engage her.

  Her eyes were far from lifeless, though. She continued to take in the world around her, both in the van and outside the window, assessing, thinking… calculating.

  And none of that was the least bit like the Fiona I had been best friends with since grade school.

  We had to find a cure for her, and we had to find the vault. Pressing forward was our only option; doing the right thing was just a side effect at this point, but when I thought about it too long, it hurt my brain. All I knew was, I had to be here. I had to do this.

  Sasmita had chosen Haven Rock, Colorado as our next destination, due to proximity from New Orleans. The rest of the portraits were only farther away, which was saying something because Haven Rock was more than a fifteen-hour drive, which had become dull, and then irritating, within the first four.

  After nine hours, we stopped at a hotel whose beds surely contained their own ecosystem to pretend to rest, and before sunrise, we were on the road again. Randall drove, and I sat in the passenger seat. In the backseat, Sasmita brushed out her long hair as she gazed out the window, but her mind was somewhere else.

  Fiona just was.

  My head felt stuffed full of cotton.

  To my right, outside the window, mountains rolled toward the gray horizon, dusted with snow. To the left was a sudden drop down a rocky side and beyond, in the distance, mountain peaks jutted up toward the sky.

  My breath hitched.

  I turned in my seat and stared out the back window. “How much longer?”

  “We’re coming up on it any moment, I think,” he said, glancing at the GPS on his phone mounted on the dash. “Looks like there’s one road into the town and it doesn’t have an intersection until about halfway through.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “What’s the population of this place?”

  “Under four hundred,” Sasmita said from the back. “It was an old mining town, and now I think most people just come here to ski.”

  “I’ve never skied in my life,” I said absently, staring out the windshield. Flat topped mountains rose on either side of the road like parapets.

  “Well, since this isn’t an episode of Scooby-Doo, I don’t think we’ll need them to chase after our g-g-ghost,” Randall said, deadpan. He leaned forward, squinting up at the sky. “What the fuck is that?”

  Sasmita shifted forward between the seats. From the gray clouds, a dark silhouette of a large bird zoomed toward us. It grew bigger, and bigger until it filled the windshield.

  “What the—” I started.

  It slammed into the front of the van, jarring it backwards. I was thrown back in my seat. With a shriek, the beast swung up off the van and circled around. As it came back in, I noted the fat reptilian body with scaly haunches, like a dragon. It craned its feathery head to stare at us with dark eyes set over a sharp beak. It screeched and dove at us again, talons bared.

  Randall stepped on the gas. The monster collided into the van and kicked off.

  “Go, go, go!” I gestured Randall onward.

  The van tires spun before finding traction and rocketing us forward. The shadow of the monster fell over the windows on one side of the vehicle.

  “Don’t look at it,” Randall said, cupping his hand over my eyes.

  I started to swat his arm away.

  “It’s a cockatrice,” he said. “If you make eye contact with it, you’ll die.”

  I blinked against his palm. Before I could respond, the monster slammed into the side of the van. The back swung out. The cockatrice rammed again, and the entire vehicle shuddered as it spun around. The back tires dropped down, off the road. Something clicked, and then metal banged against metal. Cold wind gushed from behind.

  I twisted around, away from Randall’s hand, to the back. Sasmita yelped, turned in her seat, grabbing the portrait frame as the painting slid toward the back, van doors swinging open. Beyond the doors provided a glimpse of the drop off the mountainside. The van was inches from losing its back tires and falling over the edge.

  The portrait slid down. Gritting my teeth, I started to climb over the center console, reaching for the picture.

  “Wait,” Sasmita said, voice strained. “We can’t shift more weight to the back, or the van might tip.”

  My heart raced as I took in my options. Pressing my tongue to my bottom lip, I stretched out farther, crawling onto my knees and pushing down in the seat, trying to focus my weight to the front of the van. I wasn’t sure how much good it was doing, but I couldn’t reach the portrait anyway.

  The cockatrice glided over the top of the van, talons scraping with a sound that put my teeth on edge, and the van jerked back a little. The portrait slid farther. Sasmita straightened, half standing. With a grimace, I scrambled over the console, bracing one foot against the dash, and grabbed her arm. Her fingers clenched around the frame, but her shoulders tre
mbled with the effort. The van tires spun as Randall leaned forward, urging the vehicle onward.

  The shadow draped over us again.

  I launched forward, reaching over Sasmita’s arms, and grabbed the frame as the cockatrice rammed the van again. Sasmita and I tugged back. The van shot forward, bumping back onto the road. Randall jerked the wheel and the van careened at an angle, heading back toward the town. The cockatrice screeched as it missed us on return.

  Sasmita and I held the frame, tugged against the back seats, as the van shot toward buildings up ahead. The van doors swung wildly, but we wouldn’t be able to close them without one of us letting go of the frame and risking the portrait sliding out as the van picked up speed.

  Beyond the doors, the cockatrice circled in the sky, a dark shadow, but it did not follow us. Finally, it swooped down and landed on the rock wall on the side of the road, staring out like a guardian statue.

  In the backseat, Fiona remained coherent, but uninterested.

  My focus flicked back to the monster.

  “I think it’s done with us,” I said.

  “Good,” Randall said, and the van began to slow to a stop, “because we’re here.”

  2

  Sasmita and I let go of the frame, and I turned forward in my seat to take in the town. Old wooden buildings painted blue, mint, or brown with balconies and glass doors crammed together on either side of the two-lane street. A few cars were parked on the curb, but the town was void of traffic or pedestrians as far as I could see. The town was quaint, like it belonged on a postcard, or at least a travel website. I could imagine people visiting here for short getaways.

  A thin red mist hovered just above the ground and swirled with the breeze.

  “I’m assuming that’s not something commonly found in mining towns in the Rocky Mountain foothills,” I said, gesturing outside the windshield.

  Sasmita made a long ehh sound.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” I said.

  Randall leaned toward his side window. “It might be toxic.”

  “Why?” I straightened up in my seat, trying to glimpse what he was looking at but without much luck. “Not that I would expect anything less, of course.”

  Something on the side of the road, bunched on the ground next to a car, caught my attention. My heart stuttered and then stilled. The longer I stared at the mound, the more I could make out ragged clothes and long limbs.

  Human limbs.

  I started to speak, but the corpse thinned as the skin and muscle deteriorated until bones peered through. Thankfully, the head was turned away so I could only make out the dark hair on the back of its skull.

  “There are dead bodies,” Sasmita said, echoing my thoughts. “I see at least four. The mage has already started, it seems.”

  I leaned towards the dash, peering out the windshield. “What should we do?”

  A shadow moved to my right, and I jerked around as a tall, broad woman wearing a respirator hustled down the sidewalk, past the van, her big curls bouncing. The mist parted and surged toward her with each step. She disappeared through a glass door, into a building. On the wall, a small plaque read Lee’s Apothecary.

  My hand went to the van door handle. “Should we follow her?”

  “I definitely have some questions that these guys can’t answer,” Randall said, gesturing toward the corpses on the left side of the road, nearest him. “She walked through the mist so maybe it’s okay. We can make a run for it.”

  “Hold your breath,” I muttered, shoving open my door.

  I hopped to the ground as Sasmita and Randall scrambled out. Randall slid open Fiona’s door and prodded her into moving as I hurried around to the back of the van and slammed the doors shut, sealing in the portrait.

  We closed up the rest of the doors and hustled toward the apothecary. I tried to avoid looking at the corpses, but found another one a few feet away.

  With a shudder, I shoved past the glass door, a small bell tinkling on our arrival.

  The woman with the respirator looked up from where she arranged a display of white and clear bottles that contrasted the dusty turquoise walls.

  “The ski resort is closed,” she said, and I could hear the cheeky grin even though I couldn’t see it behind the mask. “May I interest you in a tincture?”

  “Is it going to stop us from becoming rapidly decaying corpses?” Randall asked.

  “Once you’re dead, I doubt you will care how fast you decompose,” she said, shifting her focus to rearrange inventory on a little black table between us. “What brings you into town?”

  “Yeah, how do we go about not becoming a corpse?” I said, ignoring the woman’s question. I stepped forward but kept one hand on Fiona’s arm. “I assume that’s what all this is about?”

  I circled my face with my finger.

  “The mask does seem to help,” she said with a nod.

  Sasmita plucked up one of the bottles from a shelf nearby, turned it over, and then placed it back down. “So, what’s causing the deaths, exactly?”

  “Depends who you ask,” the woman said, shrugging. “People started becoming ill or simply dropping in their step when the red mist arrived. But either quick or slow, the plague gets you in the end without the mask.”

  The bell on the door chimed, and she looked up but continued to address us.

  “You folks probably want to get some before you breathe in too much of this fresh mountain air.”

  I spun around as a lanky boy of sixteen or seventeen strode towards us. He wore a respirator and his blue eyes peered out from under his windswept red hair.

  I tried pulling up my magic, but it was gone.

  “Don’t go scaring the guests, Tilda,” he said, shaking his head. He turned his attention to us. “Yes, something is in the air, but it could just as easily be a fume leaking from one of the old mines.”

  Considering we had tracked one of the mages here, I doubted that, but I did appreciate his optimism.

  “County officials are sending in mobile labs and hazmat supplies,” he continued. “I think they’ll have to quarantine the town for a short time, but no need for drama.”

  My mind split between asking him if he had seen the cockatrice flying above the road leading into Haven Rock or how he had missed the crumpled bodies outside. Before I could right my brain, he gestured for us to follow him.

  “I got some extra masks,” he said. “You can have them and some spare filters to get you through your visit.”

  I exchanged looks with Randall and Sasmita. She gave a barely perceivable shrug and we started forward. The boy waved a little at Tilda before spinning on his heel and heading for the door.

  “Behave yourself, Tommy,” she called as we exited back onto the narrow sidewalk.

  Soft snow powdered around my feet and on my shoulders, and a little cold shiver wove around my spine.

  “This direction,” Tommy said, leading the way down the sidewalk.

  We followed past the tightly packed buildings with dark windows and closed doors. Besides the apothecary, nothing else appeared to be open, and I had to wonder how many people had been on their way to work when the plague hit.

  The red mist swirled around us as we walked, and I found myself trying to pull away from it, but it billowed closer, brushing against my hand.

  Up ahead, an alley opened between the post office and pharmacy, both closed.

  With a grimace, I stepped around a pile of bones, hair, and clothes and tried not to look at it too directly, tried not to identify the specifics.

  Tommy turned down the alley, and we filed after him. Wooden sides of the building gave way to five-foot stone walls that seemed to be as old as the mountains they pushed up against. As we made our way down the narrow corridor, a gate in one wall came into view.

  “Is there—” Sasmita began.

  Three silhouettes stepped out from the shadows in front of us. A gun cocked as the light shifted, revealing two men, one with a thin ponytail and the other with h
is hair shaved close, and a woman with layers to her shoulders. All three boasted respirators and the same wild red hair as Tommy.

  Heart jammed against my chest, I looked over my shoulder at two men standing behind us, both masked redheads. One held a rifle and the barrel glided between Sasmita, Randall, Fiona, and me.

  “Looks like our luck turned,” the man with the ponytail said. He nodded toward Tommy, who unlatched the gate. It swung open, revealing a large yard with deep green grass and sprawling trees. “Let’s go.”

  “Uh…” I looked between the two groups. One blocked our way back to the sidewalk and the other obstructed the path to the mountain. The wall on the opposite side was short enough we could probably get over it, but not before the guy with the rifle nailed at least one of us.

  My magic was still gone, but maybe Sasmita could level the playing field.

  As if reading my thoughts, the woman pulled a gun from a holster on her hip, aiming it at us. She raised her eyebrows and gestured the barrel toward the open gate.

  The group started forward, surging up on us. They weren’t going to let us decline their invitation.

  My stomach clenched as I turned and, with Sasmita, Randall, and Fiona, trudged through the gate, the group right behind us, guns raised at our heads.

  This trip was already off to a great start.

  3

  The group nudged us across the yard, the wet ground squishing beneath my soles, and out onto a sidewalk. We marched down the street like some kind of parade where the only onlookers were the corpses.

  To my right, Randall clenched his jaw, and I could see his thoughts spinning up. I had never really noticed that look before all this had started, how deeply serious and, at times, disturbingly cunning he could be.