Paranormal Realities (A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Box Set) Read online

  Paranormal Realities: A Box Set

  Copyright 2012 by Patricia Mason

  Writing as P.R. Mason

  Table of Contents

  Entanglements

  PART I: RIFT

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part II: Anarchy

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  PART III: Conciliation

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The Banshee and the Linebacker

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Fated Hearts

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Author's Note

  Amazon Edition, Licensing Notes

  Entanglements

  Copyright 2011

  Patricia Mason writing as P.R. Mason

  PART I: RIFT

  “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” -Shakespeare

  Chapter One

  June 21st

  No one had ever lived after jumping from the Talmadge Bridge. Until now, in my entire fifteen years, I had never been particularly special or unique. So the chances I, Kizzy Taylor, would be the first to survive were probably slimmer than the cheerleading captain at my high school. The nighttime Savannah skyline, with its gold domed city hall, loomed in the distance, serene and beautiful. Leaning over the railing, I peered down to the water far, far below me. The whipping wind slammed my ponytail against my forehead.

  In the darkness, the black sheen of the water’s surface had the appearance of asphalt after a rain. It would probably feel like asphalt on impact. At the thought, my knees buckled. Even if I wasn’t particularly afraid of falling, I was suddenly very afraid of heights…Weird.

  Straightening my shaking legs with defiance, I dragged my gaze away from the river and deliberately stared at my feet. They weren’t as scary as the height. From the purple polish on my toes to the blister on my right heel, they were the same feet I’d slipped into clear plastic flip-flops this morning. The garishly happy sunflower appliqué of my shoes mocked me.

  “Kizzy.” Adam’s tiny four-year-old fingers tugged at the denim of my pants. He held his favorite plastic pterodactyl toy in his other hand.

  Glancing back at him, I pried his fingers away. “Get back,” I ordered, giving a little push behind me. Okay. Maybe my life was over but I was going to save my little brother.

  “I want to go home and see Mommy.” Adam's blue eyes were wide and glistening with fear.

  “I know, baby. We will. But get back now.” I tried to keep my tone firm but loving.

  A car’s horn blared. Rising as it approached, the tone of the honking then fell as the car left us behind. The lights of the enormous suspension bridge must be illuminating us as if we were on a theater stage. Why didn’t any of these passing cars stop to help?

  Adam’s sobs tore at me as I balanced my belly against the icy metal of the railing and climbed over. With barely enough room for my feet, their tips hung over the concrete edge.

  “Shhh.” I glanced back over my right shoulder at Adam to try to meet his eyes but they were scrunched tightly shut. “We’re just playing a game. We’ll go home soon. I promise.”

  “This isn’t a game.” The baritone voice, so agonizingly familiar, drowned out my brother’s cries. “You have to do it,” the man shouted prodding me in the back with his revolver.

  The muzzle jabbed into my skin through the thin fabric of my t-shirt and pushed me forward. I would totally have a bruise tomorrow...if I survived until tomorrow.

  “Jump,” the man screamed.

  Gripping the rail behind me, I clung. A jagged piece of metal on the rail bit into my flesh and I winced as liquid pooled in my palm. I couldn’t help jerking that hand away to hold it in front of me. Blood dripped off my palm before disappearing into the darkness and becoming part of the Savannah River water.

  “Kizzzzzy!” My brother screeched.

  “Shut up.” The man started with a jerk. “Do you want to make me shoot?”

  The pitch of Adam’s wailing heightened.

  Clutching at my necklace as if it were a religious medal, I turned to try to talk to him.

  “Can’t you just leave Adam alone? I’ll do what you want.” My pleading had the same effect on the man as it did on the steel of the suspension cable a few feet away.

  “This is because of you,” he said. He. My dad. He didn’t even look like the hero I’d always known. My once handsome father was now ugly with his face set in angry angles and with unrecognizable wild eyes. "This is all because of you."

  Tell me something new. I’d always suspected I was to blame for my parents’ divorce. But could the breakdown of a marriage actually send my father into this kind of craziness?

  “What about Adam,” I said. “Will you take him home…after this?”

  “That’s not important.” He—I refused to think of him as Dad again—waved the gun around as if he weren’t even aware of it anymore.

  His monotone statement sent an uncontrolled shiver rushing through me. Suddenly, my heart raced so fast and hard it wouldn’t have surprised me if it burst through to the outside of my chest like that creature in the movie Alien. I was terrified for myself and for Adam.

  If I tried to get past him, my father could easily block me and throw me over. Mind racing, I remembered the door in the concrete tower—one of the two supporting the deck of the bridge—we’d passed walking up here from our car. I hoped that door led to a stairway down or possibly an elevator. The tower and its door to freedom tantalized me at only about fifty feet away. I could walk the edge of the bridge like a balance beam and make it there pretty quickly.

  But what about the gun? It occurred to me that, for some reason, shooting me wasn’t what he wanted or he would have done it by now.

  Carefully turning my feet and preparing to get away as fast as I could, I gripped the rail with my right hand and held out the other toward my brother.

  “Come to me,” I said.

  With complete trust Adam ran and hopped so I could lift him into a “seat” on my left elbow. His arms wrapped tightly around my neck. The smell of chocolate in his hair bolstered my resolve.

  “What?” The man blinked as if coming out of some kind of trance. “What are you doing?”

  Not bothering to answer, I inched my way along. A wall of wind I hadn’t counted on thwarted my progress. Worse, a sudden gust threatened to sweep us over the side.

  “Stop,” the man ordered.

  A popping from behind me was almost immediately accompanied by a burning in my right bicep. The arm I’d been using to anchor us to the rail went numb and I lost my hold. Apparen
tly, he was willing to shoot me after all.

  Only a few more feet to the door. We could still make it, but I needed to go back over the rail to get there.

  Twisting, I prepared to set Adam down on the safe side. Another popping noise sounded from behind me and a thud reverberated in my body as if I'd been slammed in the side with a twenty-pound barbell. The numbness in my arm expanded into the rest of my body and fog seeped into my brain. I know I dropped backward and lost the precarious balance I’d had with my feet.

  Falling seemed to take forever as the water slowly rose to meet me. The dome of city hall continued to gleam in the distance, with its golden reflection extending to the river water. Strange that I hadn’t seen that before.

  No, I thought. The glow wasn’t on the water it was above the water. A luminous oval pulsed between the river and me. The oval transformed into a circle tinged not only with gold but also with violet.

  This must be some dying hallucination the brain generates, I thought as I passed into the shimmering ring. The teacher hadn’t covered this in Biology I. Maybe death tripping was in next semester’s material. The stuff I wouldn’t be learning.

  Hitting the water felt like a giant wet mouth sucking me in before swallowing me down.

  * * * * *

  “Does she yet live?” A gentle female voice asked.

  “Yes…A curse on Jupiter’s eyes.” This voice was male and harsh in its reply.

  “If the consuls are informed of her presence, we will all be condemned,” the female voice said. “Your position in the Senate will not be of protection, Gaius.”

  No longer numb, my arm and side burned as if I’d been used as an ashtray by a stadium full of people. My eyelids weighed heavy and their seams were crusty with a substance that felt like a cross between sand and glass shards. I wanted to gasp and pant with pain but these strange people with their odd accented words stopped me.

  “Let us return her to her people with all possible swiftness before shame is brought to the house of Calixo,” the female said.

  “Return her? But would that not further violate the edicts of the Senate?” asked a male voice with a slightly higher timbre than that of the other male.

  “Yes, but the gods have left us little choice, my son,” said the deeper male voice.

  “And upon whom will you bestow that glorious task?” the son asked with heavy sarcasm. “Surely not my exalted brother.”

  The father’s voice spoke as if between gritted teeth. “If a father orders, your duty is to but obey. And absent complaint."

  “But—” the son began.

  “Try not my patience with such tone," said the father. "You test the bounds of paterfamilias too often for my taste.”

  Managing to pry my lids open slightly, I saw the young man kneeling over at my side but his attention was focused beyond me, probably to his father. He had short black hair with the slightest of waves and that perfect olive complexion I’d always envied due to my pale, untannable skin. Dark, almost navy blue, eyes glared from beneath perfectly arched black brows converging in a furious vee. A grimace twisted the full lips of his angular face. The young man wore a red tunic in a style I didn’t recognize. Square cut and trimmed with gold at the neck, the garment fell loosely and then draped to the side at his waist. Even though he scowled mightily at his father, my friend Petra would have called him “so fine he’s divine”.

  The thought of Petra and the normalcy she represented made me want to cry. As if I wasn’t already on the verge of tears from the pain humming over my skin and through my body.

  “Why do we not just execute her,” the divine one said. He turned his head to look at me and I snapped my eyes shut. If they knew I was awake they might decide to execute me right now.

  “No,” said the woman. “The Gods have not revealed what consequences might beset this world if her death was upon us.”

  “I do not see the situation could yet worsen,” said the young man. “The boy’s death is already here.”

  The boy?

  ”Adam,” I screamed, struggling to sit up.

  “Sedate her again,” I heard the female voice shout. “With quickness,” she ordered as I struggled.

  My eyes darted around me but I was blind to anything but the angry navy blue eyes of the young man holding me down.

  I felt a pinch in my arm.

  My lids drifted shut but I fought to stay conscious aided by the continuing burning of the gun shot wounds. That pain was nothing compared to the soul-destroying agony attached to my thoughts of Adam. These strangers had better hope I did die, I thought. Because if they’d killed Adam I wouldn’t stop until I killed them.

  Chapter Two

  September 25th

  The family Volvo inched forward in the line of cars. The only storm cloud in the vivid blue sky hung over the school building, a rectangular gray-brick structure that resembled a prison.

  Twisting the chain around my neck, my fingers slid down to the metal disc at the end and traced its surface. From the driver’s seat Mom glanced my way. My hand fell to my lap on top of my thirty-pound boulder of a backpack.

  A kid who seemed sort of familiar walked past my passenger window. My eyes met his through the glass. A derisive curl appeared in his lip. Great. Recovering from my injuries had taken some time so my entry into the sophomore class had been delayed by two weeks. Getting a late start on the school year would have been difficult enough without everyone seeing my mommy drop me off.

  Another beautiful day at Double Dick High.

  “Kathleen Elizabeth Taylor!” Mom darted a glare at me. Her lips compressed into a Barbie pink line.

  Oops. I’d said that out loud.

  “What?“ I asked pretending to be unaffected by her disapproval. "Everyone calls it Double Dick even the teachers.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “All right. Richard Johnson Academy.”

  “That’s better.” Mom pulled the car to a stop. She reached into her purse and pulled out an item. “Here,” she said thrusting out an iPhone wrapped in a cherry red rubber jacket.

  “What’s this?” All of a sudden she was getting all gifty?

  “I know it’s got to be difficult starting school a couple of weeks late this year. I thought this would help.” A slight tremor shook Mom’s smile and she barely held back tears. “I want you to be able to text your friends.”

  Translation: “I want you to be a normal teen again.”

  Normal teen? What "normal" teen had a father sitting in jail awaiting trial? Normal teenhood didn't exactly result from having a father try to kill you.

  Before "the bridge", maybe I’d been a normal teen. Mom had always said I should have been born on the Fourth of July because I was like a firecracker, always going off. I'd had a habit of darting in one direction or another, with this activity or that project. Even my hair, a garish red, exploded out of my head in a riot of curls if I didn’t studiously flatten it with the strongest flat iron money could buy.

  When my parent's fights had started sounding like the worst of Dr. Phil, I’d begun, not only to iron out my hair, but also to iron out my personality. I'd made myself the best teen anyone could hope for. But it was too late. The “d” word—divorce—happened anyway.

  Now I let my hair explode again. What did I have to lose?

  Mom was still talking, saying things I didn’t hear. She finished with, “Just don’t text in class, honey.”

  “Okay,” I said taking the phone out of her hand. I pushed it into the pocket of the backpack. Not texting would be an easy promise to keep since none of the losers I used to call friends had kept in touch ... except Petra. But I wouldn’t text even her. Better to keep a distance.

  “Thanks Mom. I wondered how I was going to text naked photos of myself to all the boys.”

  “Kizzy!” Mom’s eyebrows rose almost to her scalp line.

  “What? Sexting is all the rage,” I said in a monotone. “Gotta fit in somehow.”

  “Omigod.” Mom chuc
kled. “Give it back.”

  Mom pulled to a stop behind another car at the outer perimeter of the school grounds, close enough to make an escape. Pulling the handle on the car door, it swung open and I hopped out onto the sidewalk.

  The passenger side window lowered with an electronic whir. “If all else fails, you’re not alone," Mom said. "Remember, Juliette is here too.”

  “Yeah,” I said with false brightness. My stepsister, Juliette, the Stepford sibling. We didn’t exactly run in the same circles at this point.

  “Just stay away from Petra," Mom said. "That girl is always getting you into trouble.”

  It was probably the other way around, but Mom didn’t need to know that. Did I see a spot of reverse psychology in my mother’s eyes? Nevertheless, it worked. A few minutes ago I had zero interest in hanging with Petra. Now the idea didn’t seem like total dung.

  Turning, I walked away and Mom shouted, “I’ll pick you up after school.”

  Wonderful. Just call me social pariah.

  Now for the harder part. I had to walk into the building. Appropriately clad in the Johnson Academy uniform, consisting of green and blue plaid skirt paired with white blouse, I sported inappropriate streaks of purple through my wildly short red curls. The streaks weren’t regulation but would probably pass.

  I tied a blue sweater around my waist and hoisted the backpack over an arm before squaring shoulders to move forward.

  I’m a badass. Don’t mess with me. I’m a bad ass. Don’t mess with me. Walking with the chant repeating in my head, I hoped the interior monologue would give me the proper air as I made my way to the building through a throng of unrecognizable faces.

  The names of the minors involved in "the bridge" incident had been kept out of our local paper and the national news as well. So I clutched at the tiny, glimmering possibility that the entire school didn’t know what happened to me. Didn’t know about how I’d gotten my brother killed.

  Just outside the entrance, a group of gigglers congregated. With their freshly pressed shirts and shiny shoes, they were probably freshmen. Finally, someone recognizable appeared: Franky Abbot.