Copyright © 2025 by Brittany Noelle
CASSIDY
TWO MEN HURRY INSIDE, too late to save the wounded girl.
My thoughts glitch, stutter on words. Wounded… no. She’s… I can’t even think the word.
Another silvery ribbon rises from Chloe’s body. The Englishman swallows it whole, bones rattling, scales of blue ice forming down my back. The transformation is suiting. I am becoming the monster I truly am. Too weak to be a hero, to save the one person who mattered in the world.
Chloe’s blue eyes fade to gray.
I can’t function, can’t fight. I cower away from the sight, like backing away from a movie screen. Farther and farther, into the cave of my mind, into the dark. The screen of reality withers and shrinks. Until I’m cornered, corralled. Shoved in the deepest, dampest crevice of my being. I don’t know what to do. I’m so small. Insignificant. Yet, somehow, far worse. A killer. A betrayer. A terrible, terrible friend.
Never have my hands been bloodier.
My writer mind whirs to action. Provides the escape I need to survive. Reality melts, and then all I can see are fluttering book pages. Stark white against empty shadows. Falling like leaves all around. They warp and twist and take on words. Searching. Treading. Sinking. Precious. Nervous. Popcorn. Then the pages shift and fold. Press in on all sides, tight against the ribs, the ankles, the throat. Filling in the corners and the gaps of my glitching thoughts. Wrapping me up in a new costume, like a mummy, like a swaddled baby.
Then more manifests in this strange in-between state. Chairs from the old family breakfast table pile high around me like a protective wall. The purple scarves Chloe and I shared on winter marching band nights weave through the legs, securing them in place. I hear a faint meow of my old black cat Evie. An invitation. To come home, to curl up, to sleep. And I do. I crawl and coil and make myself small inside this cave of memories. Popcorn kernels fall like rain, popping droplets of birthdays long gone. The glow of my too-many-tabs-open laptop washes it all in a comforting, unreal blue. And the scent of midnight coffee wafts through, thick and heart-warming and brimming with laughter.
My too-large yellow sweater, a gift from Chloe, stretches over me, keeps every memory close, safe. Laptop cords and skull-eye necklaces wrap a dozen times over, tight, tight, tight.
I am cocooned.
Lost to the past, to the good things. Only the good things. Chloe and cats and coffee.
Safe from the truth.
~*~*~*~
KANE
A HEEL-KICK AGAINST THE front door.
I can’t lose another one.
A knuckle-cracking punch against iced-over wood.
I can’t lose her.
A furious series of shoulder slams, desperate to get inside.
“Kane,” Westley calls his brother, again and again. “That’s not working. We have to find another way in.”
Kane sucks in a breath then charges for the closest window. But every blow is met with unbreaking ice. Cassidy’s screaming inside. And whatever fucked up soul possessed that vessel is stronger than anything they’ve faced. Errant souls manifest all the time. Cause mischief. Simple haunting voices shit or floating chairs or candles around a room. But this? Kane hasn’t seen a soul able to affect the world around it so strongly since…
The Scottish woman in his head scoffs. Please. I’m much stronger than this pitiful display.
“Not helping,” Kane grunts, rounding to the side of the house. Trying every window. Then the back glass door. By then, ice crystals have masked every access point, blocked his view inside. No blonde hair to be seen in that dark house turned prison.
Let me out. Fight his ice with fire.
Adrienne’s heated soul slithers down from the back of his skull, spilling orange light down his marked arms. And he’s not fighting her, having the same desperate thought. He can’t fight this on his own.
But Adrienne can take things too far. Can do more harm than good. Kane closes his hands against her intrusion, fists forming, but shaking more than steady.
He can’t lose Cassidy. Not just because she’s an innocent in all this. And not just because she’s a Golden. Something connects them, something beyond strange birthmarks and links to the dead. The same invisible thread of energy thrumming outward from his chest continues to seek her out. It has to mean something. He can’t decipher it, but he can’t ignore it either. She’s important. To what, he isn’t sure. But his very blood churns with the need to protect her.
She’s already got you wrapped right around her finger, hm? Adrienne teases.
“Ade,” Kane cuts her off. “You can’t…” He falters, so unsure. And terrified of the weightlessness. “Just don’t burn me out. Okay?”
Adrienne’s soul swirls hot through his marks, like lava filling each shape. Trust me, hero. I don’t want to lose your lovely vessel. You’ll make it out.
“And Cassidy.”
And your chicky.
Kane nods. Swallows. Then unfurls each shaking fist.
Smoke curls around each finger at once, the skin across each palm brightening from an inner force. Kane hurries back to the front of the house, hands out, rushing to the front door and gripping the icy doorknob with an orange-glow grip.
Westley pulls on his brother’s sleeve. “What are you doing?”
Kane cringes from the pain, ignoring the droplets of blood spilling down around his feet. “You got the pistol?”
Westley pulls out the weapon at once.
As soon as the ice layer melts and the metal gives way under his grip, Kane jerks back. “Now!”
Westley fires.
A bang, a flash. Kane barely registers it as he barrels a shoulder against the door and hurries inside. Smoke surges around him, twisting out into the open night air. He coughs against the fumes, pushing past several teens escaping through the now open door.
And as the smoke parts, he finds her. The icicle ridden, snow-scaled morphed form of Cassidy. Bluish horns curl from her temples in elegant icy curves back over her ears. Long ice claws extend from each finger. Lacy white frost decorates every inch of exposed skin.
Even her grin is frozen. Too wide for her delicate face, exposing too many teeth.
Kane glares. “Let her go.” He holds up his bloody hands to show no weapon, no way of fighting back.
Cassidy’s possessor doesn’t care for the surrender, laughing once and licking a stark pink tongue across Cassidy’s palm, lapping up shiny red blood. “She’s too comfy. Nice and roomy.”
Kane clocks several bodies on the ground, including spiky-hair. Shit…
I’m ready, Adrienne hisses down his spine.
Before Kane can counter, Westley steps into place at his side, pistol still raised. “Do it,” he orders, matching his brother’s stern voice too closely.
Cassidy’s voice slides through the air, heavy with a European accent and catching at a lower register. “Lads,” she sighs, exaggerated and amused. “You know bullets can’t hurt me. Only her.” The invading soul puppets Cassidy’s finger, circling the tip against her frosty jugular.
“Been asleep awhile then,” Westley bites back. “Things change.”
“Wes,” Kane hisses, “be careful. We don’t know it will work—”
“Have some faith—” His thumb bends down the hammer.
“Wes!”
Half a breath, then another shot fires.
Cassidy’s blue-ice form blurs as she spin-dodges. Then presents both icicle claws at her sides, ready to slash both brothers to bits.
Wes staggers back, struggling with the gun. “Jammed!”
Kane steps forward to shield him, empty hands now curled into fists. “Get back!” Wes bolts through the open front door. Leaving Kane alone with the morphed and twisted ice monster.
“She thinks highly of you,” she says, accent so strange.
Kane’s frown deepens, hating seeing her like this. Afraid he’s too late. Afraid to hurt her. But what choice does he have? He grits his teeth and meets the ice creature in the center of the flame-licked, smoky room. “Hope I deserve it… Adrienne!”
He whips his fists out to both sides, the Golden marks on his arms shining bright. A more oppressive heat than the house fire bursts off his skin. And he shouts as Adrienne’s soul melts inside and morphs their shared body into their own creature.
The skin splits across the shoulders, releasing bulking biceps, lava red and steaming. Veins of fire crack down each arm as if Kane’s core has been consumed and combusted into pure flame. Curling black horns sprout and push from his brow. His clothes rip and tear, forgotten in this new state. He is reborn, bursting from his weak human skin. A monster of fire and molten rock.
“Thought there was something off about you,” Cassidy’s thin mouth snarls, the English soul no longer amused. “Not just any old collector, eh?”
The lava creature doesn’t meet the banter.
Ice and fire clash.
Kane’s attacks are brutal punches. Each blow chips away at the ice protection across Cassidy’s body. While the English soul slices and slashes, tearing midnight blue into Kane’s crimson skin. Back and forth, neither gain advantage.
Adrienne’s fiery release and bask in freedom threatens to melt the ice creature to a puddle, but Kane tempers each blow, afraid to hurt the girl beneath. They meet in a dangerous balance. Both offering their soul and abilities to the twisted-up lava form. Kane’s unnatural strength. Adrienne’s summoned fire. If they were shooting for a killing blow, they’d have it in seconds.
“Why’re you holding back, hero?” With the force of a blizzard wind, the ice monster throws Kane into the flames.
He curls upright, unaffected by the heat. But by now, the fire has eaten a hole through the wall of the house. Bright lights flash on the other side. Blue. Red. Blue. Red. Cops already on the scene. They have to hurry.
“Ah, I get it,” Cassidy’s mouth says, kneeing Kane’s jaw before he can fully stand, forcing him back down. “Think you can still save her, don’t you?”
Kane recovers enough to grab Cassidy’s ankles and tug her off balance. She topples backward, landing hard onto the coffee table, then collapsing through its burned-up legs.
Scrambling over the beast, Kane holds its claws down, eyes glowing with fire. The heat of his grasp melts through the ice further, burning into the human wrists beneath. Adrienne’s insistence burning Kane’s temperance.
The icy soul hisses, the first evidence of pain. “She’s mine,” it sneers.
But the lava hero presses harder. Adrienne fighting back the only way she knows how. But she’s hurting Cassidy. Emotions steaming through all reason.
Kane restrains movement as best as he can, searches those frost-lined eyes. No hint of gold around the iris. Soul tucked so deep in her own body no sign remains.
Even if they hurt the icy soul, they won’t be able to save her body. Not without her help from the inside.
Kane’s voice comes out a strange, doubled and hoarse sound. “Cassidy. Use your gift.”
“What?” the English voice snaps.
“Fight back,” Kane says, searching for the soft-spoken girl he met earlier tonight. The Lady of Winter. “You can’t let him win. Use your gift!”
A raging howl and Cassidy’s brows bend together, crystals of ice breaking free. She rolls Kane to the side, managing to pin him to the scorched carpet. A claw strike to the red-pulsing bicep. Another slash to the chest. Over and over. Ice dragging lines across the fiery skin. Then down the black-burned horns, striking sparks. Then a deep cut across Kane’s unwavering, unpained, steadfast orange glare.
His biceps buckle. His fists curl and burst with flame. And still the lava hero remains still, even as orange-fire blood leaks from the wound across his face. Holding steady. Searching the darkened glare of this ice monster for any sign of the Lady inside. Any evidence she’s still alive, still fighting.
Even as the monster grips both sides of his head, he doesn’t fight back. Claws dig into his temples, up under his jaw. Cold ice steaming against such hot skin.
The lava hero waits.
And the ice monster chuckles. “Goodnight, little hero.”
Finally, a stiff breath releases from Kane’s gritting teeth. But he maintains his stare into Cassidy’s. Waiting. Searching. Holding Adrienne’s anger back until there’s a hint, a single glint of gold flashing.
There!
“Cassidy,” he hoarses out. Icicles digging deeper. Crushing against his larynx. “Use… your… gift…”
~*~*~*~
CASSIDY
A FLASH OF FEELING, of connection with my body. The briefest breath of a moment, right behind the ears…
My Golden marks. Lady of Winter. Lady of runes and souls. Reading and listening and words and whispers.
For years, I ignored my mysterious title. My gift.
But again, my marks pulse. A connection to my body. A reminder of who I am.
My soul recoils. Refuses to face the lie I’ve been living for a decade. Refuses to acknowledge the glittering marks pressed into my skin. Refuses to believe that I could have any role in the world. Because whenever I’ve tried, it always ends in disaster. That’s all I am. A disaster floating through life, latching onto brighter, more valuable souls to give my time on earth any semblance of meaning.
But now my anchor is gone. My best friend.
If I’m going to survive this, I’ll have to swim on my own.
Do I want to survive this? Do I deserve to?
Outside my body, through the faraway screens displaying reality, Kane moans, agonized and fading. His fire-red blood spilling over my claws.
How much blood have I spilled because I refused to take control? Refused to accept my abilities? Refused to see myself for who I am and where I fit in the world?
Ugh, it’s so dark, so hard to think. The artifacts of my past too stifling to maneuver around. Too cluttered and pressing in on all sides.
Until a flash of silver snakes across my vision in this strange in-between. A soul. Chloe! And her friends. I thought they had faded, had been absorbed. But they’re still here.
Of course, they’re still here. The knowledge flashes through me as if I’ve always known it.
Because the Englishman can’t be whole on his own. He needs me, needs them.
Without us, he’s just a disembodied weak spirit.
All we have to do is wake up. Take back control.
Out there, Kane’s glaring brow goes limp, his gritting jaw loose.
Wrenching and twisting, spurred on by pure determination, my soul sheds. Cords and necklaces fall. The blue glow of my fictional worlds flickers and fades. The chairs collapse and tumble. And finally, the threads of the yellow sweater unspool and spiral and float away. Leaving me bare, exposed.
Unhindered.
I have to act fast. I’ve wasted so much time already.
In this in-between state, physicality wavers and spins. Unsteady. I’m a floating ghost inside my own body.
The edges of my vision glow silver. I spin to find the consumed soul, but it fades into the shadows. I can’t see clearly here. How am I going to find them in this impenetrable soul-darkness?
Outside, the Englishman raises another needle-sharp claw, ready for a last strike upon his opponent. Ice now lattices over Kane’s left eye, freezing it shut. But his other eye reveals just a narrow slit of an orange stare, intent on my face. He lifts no defense. A Warrior of the Sun refusing to fight. Waiting for me to step up, take back my body. Use my gift.
The swirl of soul runes sparks in my mind.
Warrior… of the Sun…
The Englishman’s control of my physical arm pauses mid-attack.
And briefly, the darkness parts. Like lightning battling against a stormy night sky.
Curving, red-stained walls manifest. A purpled, bruise-like floor. An inner soul world stitched together from something bloody and pulsing and mangled.
Then it fades back to dark.
I mentally repeat it, the swooping swirl from Kane’s Golden glyph. Using my gift of language in this dark, soul-space. Sun, sun, sun…
“What… are you doing?” the Englishman curses on my lips.
He’s afraid. For once, his sarcasm stutters.
It’s working.
Sun! Strikes of light dash across the soul-space. It is half-visual, half-feeling.
Sun! The ground and walls shimmer into shape. Pulsing and crimson and made of something like flesh. The inside of a brain, a heart?
Sun! The cave-like walls quiver and bleed red into a sticky-puddled floor. Wounds gash the fleshy walls open, gaping blackness beneath. It’s all a terrible nightmare, the Englishman’s soul given form, broken and slashed through.
I repeat the sunny mantra, filling the space with strobes of light.
And I finally find them. The consumed souls. They zig-zag through the walls of the Englishman’s wounded soul-space like silvery threaded stitches across different gashes. Mending the broken bits of this monstrous soul. Not every wound is repaired, though. Some still bleed, some lay open, edges browning and dying. But the silver soul ribbons have been threaded through the largest gaping holes to repair. Chloe, Tom. Rick and Richelle. I can feel them, sense them. Not their personalities, but their being. They pulse and flutter with life still their own, even as their souls are forced to heal another’s.
I hurry to the closest wound, the silver tail of a soul sticking out. Tom, I sense. His carefree energy now shivers and shrinks, inching away, pulsing with panic. I can almost make out words, but his confusion in this state is too hard to interpret.
Instead, I reach forward with my phantom form, grip the soul, and rip it from the gashed flesh.
Out there in the physical world, my body falters, ice scales on my back loosen. The Englishman groans and shouts, “No, you can’t… you can’t do that!”
In the fleshy inner world, Tom’s soul squirms, and I release him. Let him swirl and tumble into the air. Free.
The Englishman’s hesitation gives Kane an opening.
With his leg, he catches my ice body around the arm, roll-pinning me down. The Englishman fights back, slashes, struggles back upright until they are facing each other in the center of the smoky room yet again. Kane lands a punch to my ribs, cracking ice scales away, throwing me into a bookcase. Book spines and pages crackle into the surrounding flames. My body coughs and sputters. And a single silvery ribbon of soul escapes from my lips into the smoke, rising out of sight.
“No!” the Englishman screeches in horror.
I keep fighting back. I carve the Sun rune into the bloody floors. I scratch it into the fleshy walls. With more light, I find another soul. Richelle. I pull her free and find another ribbon wrapped desperately around her. Rick. Together, even in death. I release them both.
Silver ribbons escape from my body again in swirling arcs. Kane holds me in place as my body weakens. The Englishman shakes with rage, with worry. He hadn’t planned this far into his body-snatching scheme. Couldn’t have planned this far. Without the souls, he isn’t himself. He is a shade of what he once was, soul damaged and mangled. He needs the souls to repair his mind, needs a body to move through the world, needs to find Mr. Mountain before it’s too late! His panicking thoughts pelt me like hail, staggering my progress in the strange soul-world.
“She’s mine!” he snarls through my throat.
“Not anymore,” a voice shoots through the smoke.
The other young man with glasses, Wes, returns through the fire, gun poised.
Jolting off me, Kane waves his arms, shouting for him to stop.
The Englishman leaps forward, ready to snatch another soul from this stupid human.
Wait, I plead, searching for Chloe’s soul. There! A slivered wound, a paper cut from ceiling to floor. Stitched tight and weaving with silver. I push in, flexing against flesh, pulling Chloe’s soul out from the dripping blood. Chloe!
A single shot rings out, bullet catching the scaleless skin along my ribs.
My physical body jerks, falls back into the bookcase.
The soul-space walls pulse red and bleed black, each wound worsening, tearing further apart. A mimic of the gun shot splitting me open. A single silver ribbon, Chloe’s soul, tries to hold it all together, to stitch and mend the Englishman’s soul. As she was captured to do.
But the pain is too great, the wounds of the Englishman’s soul too deep. His plan frays and falls apart just as the fleshy soul-world slashes open. And Chloe’s soul ribbon strains, and stretches, and shreds in half. The rip of her life echoes against my skull as an unending, heart-squeezing scream.
Until the crimson soul-world dissolves into the raging flames of reality.
I return to life. To my body. To the horror.
And collapse.
~*~*~*~
CASSIDY
THE ENGLISHMAN PANICS, LOSING control, losing power. Without the other souls acting as bandages for his own, he is sporadic, terrified. He doesn’t understand how it’s possible to be defeated by humans after consuming souls. It doesn’t make sense. He loses coherent thought, mission becoming a dim mantra rather than a goal. His memories flicker and split and spark. Fading into the shade he was before.
In reality, my ice claws recede, leaving behind fingernail-less nubs. The clouds of possession ease from my mind. The Englishman tries to cling. He needs to finish his mission. Now. Before it’s too late. But then he is gone. Our shared mental hard drive cracks and shatters. His influence shrinks, shrivels, and coalesces into the gunshot wound on my side. He still stings me with as much ice as he can, but he can no longer control me.
I return to my body in full. Lying on my side. Bleeding out.
Staring into the vacant eyes of my dead best friend.
And whatever bravery I found when trapped within my soul-form suddenly vanishes.
I know I scream, but I can’t hear it.
Arms collect me, pull me from the fire. I kick my rescuers. I try to fight as long as I can, try to scratch with bloody tips for fingers, until I realize I don’t know what I’m fighting for. To help? To fix what I’ve done? There is no fixing this, no coming back.
They’re dead.
I don’t want to be here; I don’t want the supernatural to be real. I want to pretend again. I want to hide again. Where is my memory cave? Where is my yellow sweater?
Burned honey scents fill my nose. Chloe’s mom’s soul wraps around me like a hug. It’s not your fault, hun. Please know that.
Tears hurt. Feeling hurts.
Please. Free her, she says. Free my daughter.
Honey cornbread scents fade back to fire, to death, to blood as I’m moved against my will. The hum of an engine replaces the crackle of flames. “Hey, hey, don’t black out on me,” Kane’s voice begs. “Hey, wake up. Wake up!”
I don’t want to live. I refuse. My body is ready to die, and I am ready to let it. I don’t belong here. I’m not made for this violent truth. I’m weak and a failure. I refuse to wake to a world without my best friend as the lead and me always at her side. I’ve done horrible things… but this…
“Kane, we don’t have time. Cops. Hurry.”
“Fuck…”
“Less talking. More driving.”
“Yeah. Got it.”
It doesn’t matter where they are taking me, or how they saved me from the icy grip of the Englishman. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t…
But I do care. And that’s the problem.
I care too much. I feel it all completely.
The real world is too stark to comprehend. The events of the last few minutes don’t register. I cry, sob, quake with sensations I can’t process. The pain. The loss. The guilt. I spit blood and ice onto the truck floor, rid myself of the possession. Scales melt away. My spine corrects, bulging out then in under my skin. I can’t deal with this. I don’t want to deal with this. Just die, please just let me die.
When my bones settle, I’m rocked by the shaky ride of the strange vehicle and the unfamiliar smell of oily leather. Thankfully, blood loss wins over. I’m losing consciousness, and it’s blissful. I’m back in my mind. Cave of memories mended, crawling through Chloe’s clothes, her scarves, her laughter. I fade into the memory of her raspberry perfume, her warm kiss goodbye on my cheek.
My heart twists, bitter and repulsed by my very being. By the tragic irony of this entire night. A night I never wanted to happen in the first place.
Chloe kept her promise. She busted me out of my cocoon.
She just hadn’t known she would have to die to do it.
TO BE CONTINUED…