Spree (YA Paranormal) by Jonathan DeCoteau Page B

insecure and rebellious. Aliya went along, and maybe that was her greatest sin. But she was still a kind soul. She deserved her life.
    I reached down and stroked her hair, gently, the way a mother would. I’d never know what it would be like to be a mother, but I felt protective of my friend.
    “Rest, Aliya,” I told her, “but not too long. As soon as you awake, tell your friends. Tell Zipper. Tell everyone…if you remember.”
    I enjoyed the moment with my friend until I sensed the blackness of a Taker in the room.
    “You’re not taking her,” I told the ghost before he could form.
    “We won’t have to,” a voice said.
    I recognized the bizarre, uneven pitch that was Crazy T’s voice.
    He materialized just enough to point down at Aliya’s folder on the edge of her bed.
    I couldn’t grab material things too easily yet, but Crazy T could. He lifted up the folder, stood right next to me. He opened right up to a page where the doctor noted a break in her spinal column. She was being prepped for major surgery, but the prognosis was clear. Aliya would never walk again.
    Crazy T smirked, which looked even eerier with his black pit eyes. He threw the papers on the floor.
    “It’s your choice,” he said, pointing to Preggers, who hovered around Aliya. “Either your school or your friend.”
    Crazy T disappeared, and it was just Preggers and me.
    I could hear her voice, whispering to Aliya that she was nothing, that she’d be in a chair for life, that it was my fault, that death was wonderful, that she should come along for a safer ride.
    “Be strong,” I told Aliya.
    “She will be,” Belinda said.
    The Keeper appeared as a blinding, protective light, one not even Preggers could look directly into. Fellow Keepers swarmed around Aliya, showing her images of herself with children, of herself leading a different, but meaningful life. They gave her life; they gave her strength.

     
     
    Chapter 7
     
     
    Angry at the attack on Aliya, I lashed out.
    The Taker in me gravitated towards the fields, towards the explosives, the deaths that were sure to abound there. The fields were a massive, pulsing black sun calling to all Takers, to all lost souls that fed on fear, death, and hatred.
    Even by night the fields were surrounded by Takers, some I hadn’t even seen before. Rope Man was there, a hanging shadow leering out. Burn Girl was there, waiting to stir up new fires, new burns. But there were a group of boys without faces, just shadowy scabs standing guard. I tried to read their auras, but they were too abysmally black. The only picture I could get was of gang wars decades earlier. These were dark sentinels, street soldiers hastening their arrival in hell.
    I stood before them, concentrating, seeing if I could picture an explosive, set it off—anything to warn the town. I could feel a small spark of fire forming when I felt a smack that sent me flying clear across the sky.
    Crazy T appeared, taller than I’d ever seen him, feeding off of the energy of the Takers. They gave him their hatred, their rage and strength, and he wasn’t about to let a small obstacle like a dead girl stand in the way of hell.
    “You just never learn,” he said to me.
    “So teach me,” I challenged.
    My hatred only fed Crazy T, who grew powerful enough to send me flying from the field. Flocks of Takers fed on me, magnifying my worst fears. I could see bits and pieces of my classmates raining all around me, overcome as I was by endless Taker negativity.
    “I gave you this life, and I can take it away,” Crazy T told me.
    “You said it yourself,” I told him. “I’m a Taker, and before this is done you’ll see that it’s me who’s come to take you.”
    I lunged at Crazy T. He became a tornado of energy, ripping me apart with images of my crying mother, of Aliya, paralyzed, of Steph taking a stone to the head in the explosion and dying before being consumed by fire.
    In that moment, as Crazy T came for me, I sensed something