The 13th: Frozen Destiny (7 page)
Read The 13th: Frozen Destiny Online
Authors: Ela Lond
“What's a Soul Eater?” Ryan asked.
“That white thing you called
he
,” Ethan told him before he faced Kate. “It was a feeding farm, I knew it, with their help. When they were alive, they probably possessed some clairvoyance or something to be able to do all this.” He waved at their surroundings.
“It's her, she is the one with the real power.” Ryan's hand smoothed Claire's now brown hair. She stirred under his touch.
“Can we go home?” Tyler, with his arm loosely around Mandy's shoulder, leaned against the armchair.
“What should we do about them?” Kate's chin jutted down at Ryan and Claire.
“What about us?” Ryan wrapped his arms around Claire more tightly.
“Do you know who we are?” Ethan asked.
Ryan shook his head.
“I'm the Soul Reaper,” Kate said. “I help spirits who are stuck here to cross over.”
“I'm her sidekick.” Ethan puffed his chest.
Ryan stared at them.
“And all of you are ghosts,” Kate said.
“No!”
“Yes.” Kate nodded. She produced her scythe.
Students who not so long ago had run before her appeared now as transparent shapes with grey overlay and crowded around her. There had to be more than fifty of them.
“Do you feel the pull?” Kate asked Ryan.
He shook his head.
“Liar.” She imagined her scythe into a sickle and touched him with the tip of the crescent-shaped blade. The images of his hike to the monastery flashed through her eyes. Touching spirits with her reaping tool only enabled her insight into memories from their lives, not the ones they accumulated as spirits.
Ryan, with Claire in his embrace, stumbled backwards.
“He came here alone,” she told Ethan. “He must have met Claire here.”
“Do ghosts fall in love?” Ethan squatted before Ryan. Metal embraced his fingers and palm as he reached out and touched Claire's temple.
“What are you doing?” Ryan protectively drew Claire against his chest.
“What's going on?” Claire asked in a weak and sleepy voice.
Soft whispers vibrated through the air around Kate. It was the ghosts, they were calling for her help and she left Ethan and the rest of them to reap. As her sickle cut through the first spirit, it disappeared in small explosions of weak light.
#
Kate blinked in the green light that poured in through the car window. She stretched her arms and yawned before she straightened, poking the warm body underneath her. “Wake up.” She yawned again.
“How long?” Ethan asked in a sleepy voice.
“I don't know.” From the floor Kate pulled a small bag and rifled through it until her fingers wrapped around her phone. She took it out. “According to this only a couple of hours.”
“That's impossible.”
“I agree. The time we spent in Claire's illusion feels like a long dream, but there is no way it was only a dream. If it were, I wouldn't have needed to reap them to break it.” Luckily, in the end Claire and Ryan had reconciled with the fact that they were not alive anymore and that it was best for them to say goodbye to this world. The way they had laced their fingers and the sad look of acceptance they exchanged just before they disappeared in a weak explosion of light would stay with her for days, reminding her how precious life and the love they had in their lives were.
“And I wouldn't have to pee so urgently.” Ethan shoved the car door open and stumbled among the trees.
She shook her head at him and went to wake up Mandy and Tyler, then stepped outside.
The car was parked on the edge of the clearing, in the shadows of trees and the tall, overgrown ruins.
She checked her phone again for a signal, then she noticed the date. “Ethan! My phone is showing me the fourteenth, not the tenth anymore.”
Ethan came out of the forest. “Really?”
“I probably got a bunch of texts and calls,” Tyler said. “It's a good thing I told my mum that the signal is bad. I hope she didn't worry too much.” He pulled the phone out of the pocket of his cargo pants and started to dial a number. “Hi, Mum. Yes, I know...”
Mandy, climbed out of the car, stretched her arms above her head, then doubled over and touched her feet. “What just happened?”
“We were caught in some sort of illusion,” Kate said.
“Which, it seems, put everything that was in the car on pause.” Ethan faced Kate. “How's that possible?”
“Why are you asking me?”
He shrugged his shoulder. “It seems this is something that we will never be able to explain.”
Tyler, who had ended his conversation, opened the trunk. “Come on, help me get this stuff out.”
“What are you doing?” Ethan and Kate asked simultaneously.
“Getting the stuff out, can't you see? It's already five and I want to set up the tents before dark. And eat something. Aren't you two hungry?”
“You want to pitch a camp here?” Kate stared at her friend.
“Yeah,” Tyler said. “Is there something wrong with here?”
“You do know what just happened to us here?” Ethan crossed his arms.
“Yeah? So? Don't tell me you two are afraid to camp here?” From the trunk Tyler started to tug out a long roll of canvas.
Mandy appeared at Tyler's side and helped him get the tent out. “You know how he was looking forward to this camping trip. It would be a shame to go home just yet.”
Yeah, Tyler did like camping. “Fine,” Kate said and pulled Ethan closer. “Let's help them.”
Together they erected two tents and then Tyler brought out a small gas stove, and started to cook dinner. “Beans, the best food for the outdoors,” he said.
Mandy joined him, while Kate went to look for Ethan, who had disappeared from sight a few moments ago. She found him at the front of the monastery ruins.
“Claire, the girl, she was a student here,” he told her as he pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans.
“You looked into her memories, didn't you?”
“Yeah. She's quite old, you know, two hundred years or so. I think she and the other students died from a gas leak, since in her last minutes, she couldn't breathe.” He glanced at her, a sad smile on his face. “And yet, did you hear her? She said that, to her, death wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened, because she got to meet Ryan and spent some time with him.”
“It seems he was the only boy she felt understood her.”
“Like you understand me.”
“And vice versa,” she wrapped her arms around his middle and leaned her cheek against his shoulder, admiring the beauty of his profile. She would never have to ask herself if she loved him the way she did because of his face, since now she knew she loved him only because of what was hidden behind it.
“I'm glad we came here. It might have been a terrible experience, but we were able to help them and to set them free even if it did take longer than usual.”
“Yeah, it was all in a day's work.”
He looked down at her, his eyes smiling. “You mean a week's work?”
“Yeah, all in a week's work.”
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Other Books by Ela Lond:
NOVELS:
The 13th: Destiny Awaits:
Kate, the school outcast, has always been able to see ghosts, and she constantly fears that someday, her so-called 'gift' will drive her mad like it did her mother, who has now been confined to a mental asylum. With the ever-present ghosts, her institutionalised mother, the unwanted attention from a bully and everything else going on in a teenage girl’s life, all Kate wants is to graduate quickly and without troubles. But that becomes impossible when Ethan, a gorgeous new transfer student, takes an interest in her, claiming that she is the Soul Reaper, and that he is there to train her. Things get even worse when her nemesis, the school bully Sandra, decides that she wants Ethan for herself.
Moon’s Reflection Series
tells stories about Lueeshareteers (Bloodeaters), powerful creatures old as time itself, who split into three clans live in seeming peace and rule the world from shadows.
Red Moon’s Reflection
:
After Tina crosses paths with Damon Blackdart, she discovers that her soul houses another, dormant soul, Trinity, Damon’s Beloved, who died centuries ago.
Damon tries to draw Trinity forward and when he succeeds, Tina befriends her and learns that Damon is part of the Lueeshareteers (Bloodeaters), powerful creatures old as time itself, whose three clans live in seeming peace and rule the world from shadows. After she is swept from Damon’s grasp by the Dumes, Trinity’s children, she also learns that vampires are not at the top of the food chain.
Blue Moon’s Reflection:
Tina lives with the Dumes on the edge of Bloodeater society. They are travelling across Europe searching for clues that will bring them to Damon, Tina’s Beloved, before his nightmares swallow him completely. But the only lead they have are Tina’s dreams.
Silver Moon’s Reflection:
Tina, now accustomed to life as a member of the Bloodeaters' world, sets out with the Dumes on a pilgrimage to the Resting Circle. When Damon joins their mission, she must confront her feelings for him, and her fear that surrendering to him will cost her Uriel and the family she has come to love.
Crescent Moon’s Reflection:
A Bloodeater, Uriel of the Dumes, is on a mission to hunt and destroy the Shadows, creatures that pos
e a bigger threat to Bloodeater society than vampires. On one of the hunts he and his two friends stumble across a group of human vampire hunters. When one of them, Jen, is hurt, he takes care of the girl, never imagining that he would fall for her. But Jen hates vampires, and even though Uriel is not one of them, he is a member of the immortal race who is responsible for the vampires' creation.
SHORT STORIES:
Fall Vol.3
is a short (7,000 words long) surreal story:
Eira, a girl without memories and knowledge who she is, on her journey to the Dayyan River with her saviour Blaidd discovers that things are never what they seem to be, and that love has a high price.
Hegira
is a (11,000 words long) fantasy romance set in Victorian London.
Amanda believed she was alone in the world and afraid of never being able to escape her uncle's greedy clutches, especially after he betrothed her to a complete stranger. But then three men burst into the house, interrupting the wedding, and take her away. The intruders call themselves Elementals, and she begins to rediscover her forgotten connection to them.
The 13th: Ineluctable Fate
(Pre-Destiny Awaits) is a short (15,000 words long) paranormal romance set in Victorian London.
As the Awakener, Ashton Godwill eased ghosts’ passage into the other world and obliterated Soul Eaters -- ghosts who have lost their auras and feed on the spirit energy of others. When the number of Soul Easters suddenly increases, Ashton’s guardian employs the help of the Reaper. Unfortunately, the Reaper is the boy who broke Ashton’s heart, the boy Ashton would rather never see again.
Precocious
is a short (13,000 words long) fantasy.
In the world of fairies, seventeen-year-old Rue's days consist of farming, cleaning, selling her crops at the local market or in the human world above, while her stepmother and stepsister attend dances, parties and any society event her stepmother manages to get invited to. Rue never cared for dances and never wished to go to one until Andrew, one of the Prince's friends, invites her to a ball that Rue's stepmother doesn't want her to attend.
The Whisperers
is a short (8,000 words long) fantasy.
Tyne and Kara, shapeshifters who can turn into crows, stop on their journey to the coast in a town whose residents are terrorized by the governor and his son. Tyne and Kara could use their magic to help the people unite and fight against the injustice, but in the past uprisings in which they were involved always brought violence. Kara wants to try a different approach.
SHORT STORY COLLECTION: