A Curse Awakened: A Weird Girls Novella (7 page)

Taran flipped off the mound of broken glass from the destroyed altar with two very enthusiastic middle fingers. “How do you like us now,
bitch
!”

I grinned at my sisters, pleased and proud of their efforts, and grateful our gashes weren’t as severe as the hideous torment had suggested. We looked like we’d fallen into an acre of cacti with an army of rabid cats, but fortunately none of the slices appeared life-threatening.

My smile faded when I caught Emme’s stoic expression. Glass crunched beneath her sneakers as she moved across the demolished altar in a trancelike state, tears dripping from her jaw and her body encased with her light.

“Emme?”

She didn’t respond and placed herself between Taran and Shayna, bowing her head as she simultaneously clasped their wrists. My other two sisters tensed, waiting for the inevitable pain that accompanied Emme’s healing and obviously confused by her despondent state.

Shayna’s giggles dwindled into choked sobs as Emme’s pale yellow glow enveloped all
three.
“Oh,”
she gasped.

Taran used her free hand to cup it over her mouth as the first of her tears began. They stood united, all three shaking from the rush of emotions encompassing their small frames. I should’ve run to them. My tigress should’ve growled. But something warned me not to move—they needed Emme’s
touch,
and everything else her power was granting them. So I watched motionless as their cuts sealed, their blood dried, and their soft weeping engulfed the room.

Emme wasn’t just healing them.

She was cleansing their souls.

The atmosphere shifted with the growing expanse of Emme’s radiance, combating the darkness and sin veiling the room. The plastic bags peeled from the windows, falling almost soundlessly against the dusty floor.

I stole a glance at the ceiling. The semblance of the dead me was gone. Only spider webs claimed the grimy rafters. And despite the vestiges of the skulls and broken glass from the candles, the garage became just another garage.

I couldn’t be certain if Emme’s power had purified the air and warded away the iniquity, but my instincts told me it had. After all, despite the darkness that had haunted our lives, Emme had faithfully remained our light.

She released my sisters, who continued to openly weep through their grateful smiles. Taran wiped her dirty cheeks with the back of her hand, her eyes resuming their beautiful shade of blue. “Jesus, Emme,” she said. “How the hell did you do that?”

“I’m not sure. I just knew I could.” Emme’s focus remained on me as she left my sisters, her hands extended, and her glow illuminated the darkness. “It’s your turn, Celia. Are you ready?”

My jaw tightened. “No. I’m okay the way that I am.”

Emme’s soft smile faltered. “You’re not.” She glanced back at Taran and Shayna. “None of us are, or were. Too much has happened.”

I stepped out of her reach and attempted to soften my hardening expression. “I’m well enough.”

“Dude.” Shayna rushed around the thicker patches of broken glass. “It’s okay. Don’t be afraid. You’ll still be you. I promise.”

“I don’t want to.”

Taran stomped through the shattered glass, kicking pieces behind her. “You don’t feel different, do you? You didn’t feel that charge that the rest of us did?”

I knitted my brows. “What charge?”

“The feeling of freedom that accompanied the severed bind.” She swore. “Celia, the only thing keeping you from embracing your full power is you. For shit’s sake, let Emme help you through this last step so we can help Danny!”

I stepped back again. “My vision is sharper—”

Taran threw her hands in the air. “I don’t give a damn. That’s not good enough and you damn well know it!”

“You used ‘damn’ twice,” Shayna pointed out, only to sigh at Taran’s glare. “I’m just sayin’ you’re usually more creative with your language than this, T.”

I held out my palm when Taran approached again. “Look, maybe this is as good as it gets for me, you know? Maybe I’m as powerful as I can be.”

Taran crossed her arms and glowered, her way of telling me no way in hell was I going to win this debate. “If that’s the case, it shouldn’t matter what Emme does to you, huh, girlfriend?”

“Well … no—but what if it has a bad effect? Danny didn’t say anything about needing Emme to heal me.”

Danny, who hadn’t said a word, chose this moment to speak through Emme’s iPhone. “These old magical testaments don’t always spell everything out. I think you should try, sweetie. Nothing Emme will do should hurt, especially now that the altar has been destroyed.”

“Please don’t be afraid, Celia.” Emme withdrew some of her power to appear less threatening. “I would never risk your well-being.”

I stood my ground. “But what if I hurt you? What if instead of gaining control of my beast, your
touch
is the key that unlocks the cage I house her in?”

“I don’t think it is, Celia.” Emme’s attention flickered to our sisters and back to me again. “In fact, I’m certain of it.”

I teetered back and forth, unsure. Fear gripped me like a vise. I didn’t want to change who I was. A different me could hurt my family.

“Please, Ceel,” Shayna pleaded. “Let’s finish what we came for. Time’s up, dude!”

Their faces implored me to listen. Well, except for Taran’s. Her narrowing stare informed
me I needed to just shut up and deal. None of them understood my fear. So I verbalized the trepidation holding me back. “Fine. But if something goes wrong, stop me from hurting anyone, any way you can.”

My sisters stilled. They knew I was asking them to kill me if I lost control. I wasn’t exaggerating. I knew what my beast was capable of. I only hoped they understood as well, and that they would end my life if necessary.

Taran unraveled her arms. Mini-streams of blue and white fire danced along her fingertips as she positioned herself on my left. Shayna took my right as she converted her battle-ax back into a bat. Great. Her strategy included bashing my head in. At Taran’s nod, Emme closed in and reached out.

My breath immediately caught. Like the dead leaves of an oak pummeled with a rush of wind, my most deeply repressed feelings were plucked away. At first my defenses fought back, refusing Emme’s
touch.
Yet Emme wouldn’t falter. She used her power to gently pry through my emotional barricades until she reached into my soul.

The first of my tears released at the memory of my parents’ murder. Once again, I watched the last beats of their hearts spill their blood. The memory was too powerful for me to squelch my sob, but as it released, so did a rush of pain.

Emme reached in further, and clenched me within her magic. She meant to help me, but then something changed.

My back abruptly bowed, my spine cracking like something out of a chiropractor’s wet dream. That earned me another “Holy shit” from Taran. Emme screamed and yanked her hands from mine. Through my muddled mind I could sense her light cocooning me and levitating me from the floor. My tigress licked her chops excitedly and propelled through my sternum, severing our connection. I tried to tilt my head to see where she’d gone. She’d never left me before. Through my haze, I caught her prancing around the room like freaking Bambi.

My sisters screamed louder. Taran’s hysteria made her especially vocal. “Put her back in. Put her back in
now.
Goddamn it, Emme—get her tigress back in ’er!”

“I-I-I don’t think I can.”

“Omigod, omigod. She’s looking at us.” Shayna’s panic boosted her voice several octaves higher. “Why is she looking at—omigod, she’s gonna
eat
us!”

Their voices morphed into distant whispers while the most painful of my memories
swirled like a windstorm and demanded my attention. My sobs released harder, raw at first, and violent enough to jerk my body. But with each ragged breath, the brunt of my memories left me.

Relief washed over me with each drop of my tears. To say I’d never again hurt from my past would be a lie. I knew the memories would always haunt me. But I hadn’t realized the depth of my emotional wounds until Emme’s power reduced them to mending scars.

Time slowed as my body twirled in the air like a petal falling from a rose. I opened my heavy lids after what seemed like forever to find my cuts healed and my golden tigress sitting with her back to me. Her tail flickered from side to side as she examined my sisters with amused interest. Smooth blond-and-white-striped fur draped close to four hundred pounds of lean muscle. Although I’d felt her presence stirring within me for years, I’d never really seen her until that moment. My God, she was beautiful. I could have stared at her for hours.

My poor sisters, conversely, weren’t exactly awed by my beast. They huddled in the corner, clutching each other. I tried not to laugh. So much for stopping me at all costs.

My tigress glanced over her shoulder at me as my feet touched down and Emme’s residual glow faded. The beast tilted her head as if gauging whether I was ready for her. I was. It may have been minutes or moments since she’d left me, but they were minutes and moments too long. I smiled, my eyes watering. For the first time since she’d birthed within me, I accepted her. I wanted and needed her with me.

“Here, kitty-kitty.”

She shared the same olive eyes as me. I guess we were more alike than I’d ever given her credit for. That familiar stare widened when I called her to me. She was happy that I wanted her back. In one graceful leap, she pounced with front paws extended and tackled me against the concrete.

My sisters screamed as I was slammed backward. I lost my breath from the strike and from my tigress’s soul merging with mine. My body convulsed violently, riled by the unfathomable boost of her power. Energy fired through every nerve, every synapse of my sprawled and bewildered form, causing one hell of a roar to rip through my throat.

The windows and garage door rattled, sending my sisters into full-out panic. “Shit, shit, shit. Emme, heal her!”

“I can’t touch her, she’s seizing!”

“Just do it!”

Emme gripped my shoulders as my body melted
into
the floor.

Oh, my God!

I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t smell.

I tried to flail my arms, but I no longer possessed them. My body broke into a billion minute particles. Like sand passing through a colander, what remained of me slid through the heavily packed earth. Thank heavens, my tigress shoved past my alarm and took control. Instinctively she stopped our descent into the ground and lurched us up and across.

Just when I thought I would die of asphyxiation, I broke through the soil. I spit out the dirt clogging my mouth while my hands swiped at my eyes, trying to clear the grit out so I could see where the hell I was. My body remained buried in the earth from the waist down. I’d appeared in the yard next to a row of scraggly bushes, a few feet from the old garage.

And I wasn’t alone.

Emme’s filthy and stunned face met mine and her grip on my shoulders tightened. She screamed—holy hotness, did she scream!—alerting Taran and Shayna to our whereabouts. They raced outside, and joined Emme in voicing their terror.

“Stop!” I yelled over their shrieks. “You’re hurting my ears!” Good grief. My supersized hearing had at least doubled in acuity.

Emme panted against me, mud oozing from her mouth and chunks of dirt falling from her hair. “Wh-what was that?”

Taran and Shayna didn’t wait for an explanation. Taran reached beneath my arms while Shayna took hold of Emme. They tried to haul us upward, only to knock heads. “Son of a
bitch
.”

My tigress nudged me, directing me once more. “Wait, I think I can get us out,” I said. “Hang on to me, Emme.”

She clutched me as if we dangled from a cliff. I held my breath, and concentrated on forcing my body upward. Well, seems like I concentrated a little too hard. Emme and I were flung from the soil and toppled onto the grass. We rolled off each other in opposite directions, both of us breathing hard.

Shayna loomed over us. “Ceel … did you just
travel
underground?”

I swatted more dirt from my eyes. “I think so.”

“Like a gopher, Ceel?”

I thought back to how every bit of me and Emme had dissolved into minute particles.
“Um. No. Not exactly.”

Emme turned her head in my direction. “We shifted like, like, flour.”

I examined my hands, grateful my fingers seemed to be in the right place. “I guess that’s a good way to describe it.”

Emme rose on wobbly legs with her palms out, wary of the ground as if it might swallow her whole. She patted the back of her shorts. “Oh, no, I think I lost my phone in our … travels.” She peered at the patch of overgrown weeds we’d emerged from. Aside from being flattened, the section appeared undisturbed. “What else do you think you can do?”

I pushed up on my elbows. Dirt smeared every inch of me. “I don’t know. I’m almost afraid to find out.”

“No shit,” Taran muttered. She stared at her hands where mini-bolts of lightning sizzled from her fingertips. “Girlfriends, this could be really good or really, really bad.”

Okay. That was new. I stood, mesmerized by all her sparks, when the gate to the yard squeaked. Nieve stood there, watching us quietly. A single tear fell from her eyes. She nodded once as if satisfied and then ran for all she was worth. I raced after her. “Nieve, wait!”

As fast as my tigress moved us, I just barely caught her disappearing around the block. My sisters staggered to a halt behind me. “How did she …”

My stare narrowed. “I don’t know, Shayna. But she’s headed back toward the neighborhood we found her in. We can’t let her get away.”

The new me could have caught her, but although my sisters possessed heightened power, no way would my tigress and I chance abandoning them. So we jogged along as fast my sisters’ pace allowed until we reached the apartment complex that we’d searched earlier.

My tigress was sure we could find her by scent. But there was no trail to pick up. For the first time, it occurred to me that I hadn’t caught even a trace of Nieve’s aroma. The realization unnerved me. Everyone and everything carried a scent as unique as their being.