Wicked Souls by Misty Evans Page A

my chest
burned like fire. “I should kill you for your impertinence
alone.”
    At least he’d banished “smite” from his
vocabulary. “But you won’t, because A, if I am the witch who
cast the spell, killing me won’t free you, and B, if I’m not? Well,
I may still be the only one who can free you, because I can track
down the person or thing doing this and get them to reverse
it.”
    One of his massive hands shot out to slap
me, but I was too fast. I ducked and threw all my strength into a
right uppercut aimed at his diaphragm.
    Pain burst in my knuckles and crawled
through my hand, up my arm. His chest was made of concrete. I
yelped and fell back, landing on my butt, but my punch also knocked
Gabriel back a step, grunting, his chest caving inward. He wobbled
for half a second before gaining his balance again, a look of
complete surprise on his face.
    Ha, ha, I mentally taunted him, and
then thought, oh shit as his surprise morphed into enraged
exasperation. This time both hands reached for me and I cringed,
but before he could grab me or smite me or whatever he was going to
do, Adam came up out of the bed, a glass bowl of Emilia’s potpourri
in his hand, yelling, “Leave her alone!”
    He hurled the bowl at Gabriel’s chest. Gabriel threw up an arm to block it, and it glanced off his arm,
thudding with a solid whack against his temple. The bowl
broke into a thousand shards, showering him with glass and
potpourri. At the same time, Luc sent an energy bolt flying, his
power fusing with Adam’s and Emilia’s.
    A sharp blue light rippled over him and
Gabriel arched backwards, his head snapping up toward the ceiling. He looked as if he were being electrocuted. A second later, he
vanished from sight, the blue light leaving with him and throwing
the bedroom into darkness once again.
    Adam switched on the bedside lamp and
scanned me from head to toe. A deep line etched his forehead. “Are
you all right?”
    I nodded and heaved myself up off the floor,
even though the hollow place in my chest burned and my brain was in
a super sized panic over the fact Gabriel could control my actions
and emotions. A single white feather lay at my feet. I picked it up
and looked at Luc, standing a few feet away, his eyes still glowing
red. “What do we do now?”
    His eyes changed back to black. “We get the
other half of your soul back.”
    “About that…” I started, but before I could
finish the sentence, he shimmered out of sight.
    If I’d still been an active witch, I would
have thrown a hex at him.
     
     

Chapter Eight
    Angelzilla
     
    After that, neither Adam nor I could sleep. We sat at my kitchen table with cups of coffee and tried to talk. “Luc explained my situation with Gabriel to you?” I asked. “Why I
was…sick?”
    He stared at his cooling coffee. “What I
don’t understand is why you didn’t call me. Why did you call
him?”
    “Gabriel was going to kill me. Luc was the
only one who could help me.”
    “And after you got home?” His gaze rose to
mine, accusing. “Why didn’t you call me then?”
    “You were working, and I didn’t want to put
you in danger if Gabriel returned.”
    His accusing look turned damning. “What
about Emilia and Liddy and Keisha? They weren’t in danger?”
    I had hoped Luc had explained all this after
he put me in bed. “I didn’t call them. Luc did.”
    Adam shook his head, doubts flickering
across his face. Doubts I couldn’t figure out how to relieve.
    Doubts plagued me, too, and I had a mountain
of questions of my own. The problem was, every time I tried to
answer them, my mind would go blank. The small rebellion I’d
created in the bedroom against Gabriel’s control had vanished into
thin air. When I tried to explain to Adam about the road blocks
Gabe had erected in my brain, turning me away from Adam and
steering me toward Luc, the pressure returned, sharp and painful. I
gripped my head and closed my eyes. The pain subsided.
    I was staring at the texture of