Sarah Noffke - The Born Leader (Unstoppable Liv Beaufont Book 12)

This book is a work of fiction.

For Trudy.

The first day we met, you called me a tiger.

Still my favorite college class ever. And the one that flamed my fire for writing.

Sarah

To Family, Friends and

Those Who Love

to Read.

May We All Enjoy Grace

to Live the Life We Are

Called.

Michael

T error ran down Liv Beaufonts spine like a sharp tack, needling each of her vertebrae. She tensed against the wall, trying to slow her breathing.

Never before had she felt such fear. It tore at her insides. Made her want to run as fast as her magic could take her. Hide under the covers. But there were no covers, she reminded herself. Just the darkness in this seemingly endless maze.

Liv knew the fear wasnt real, only imagined, but it was hard to remember that when staring into the soulless eyes of the Bogeyman.

He was only yards away, around the darkened corner. The scratchy sound of his breathing seemed to tap on her chest, threatening to end her at any second.

He cant hurt me, she told herself, but it did little to calm her. The fear of the monster that had scared children for eons was as real to Liv as the hairs standing up on the back of her neck.

However, the lore that surrounded the beast was murky at best. There was no documentation of anyone ever being hurt by the Bogeyman, and yet there were numerous unsolved cases involving missing people that were loosely correlated to the monster.

This creature was a myth to some, a figure made up to scare children into staying in bed. Liv knew now that was absolutely false. He was real. Shed stared at the shadow-like black figure with her own eyes. If that was false, then what else was? Could he actually hurt her? Take her soul? Steal her away?

Plato had told her the trick for taking the Bogeyman down, but doing it was so much harder in reality. How could something so easy be so incredibly hard?

The scraping on the carpet at Livs back grew closer. The Bogeyman was only feet away.

All Liv had to do was say five words. That was all. She didnt have to slay the beast using Bellator or have an exhausting and lethal battle with him. Just say five words. But she had to mean them. And right then, she knew that was impossible. The fear was too real.

Her heart thumped so loudly in her chest that it hurt. She wasnt even looking at the Bogeyman yet. When she had before, shed nearly crumpled to her knees from the fear.

Unable to face him, she sprinted, feeling something claw at her heels as she took off. Liv didnt look back. Instead, she ran as if her life depended on it, not stopping until she rounded the corner in the dark building.

The fifty-story skyscraper was in New York City. It had no rooms, only hallways that traced around the building, going up and up and leading nowhere. It was the Bogeymans home, a place few knew about besides Plato.

Most wouldnt willingly walk into the Bogeymans lair since it would be like signing themselves up for an adrenaline rush that had killed many. Liv was reminded of that as she threw her back against the wall to the next bend and stared at a corpse that was more bones than rotting flesh.

She covered her nose and mouth against the horrid smell, but it was the expression of panic on the dead mans face that nearly made her vomit. Fear brought out the worst in people. It did horrible things to them, and the expectation of what was to come was worse than the actual experience.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt had once said, The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Liv wondered if he had ever stood mere feet from the Bogeyman and listened to his rattling breath, which seemed to promise the cruelest of endings? Maybe if he had, he would have said, The only thing we have to fear is fear itselfoh, and the Bogeyman. Run from that monster before it gets you.

Even her usual attempts at internal banter didnt help. She lifted her hand and found that she was violently vibrating, as if the floor under her was quaking badly. Liv glanced down. The floor was still. It was she who was trembling, and with each passing moment, it was getting worse.

She had to get control of herself. But first, she had to run.

Liv sprinted for the next bend, hopefully putting enough space between her and the Bogeyman to buy her the time she needed to survive.

With her back pressed against the next wall, Liv took measured breaths. Shed learned from Akio, her combat instructor, that a one-to-two ratio activated the rest-and-restore sequence in the body. That was what she needed right thena restoration of her mind, her emotions, and more importantly, her body. That was what the Bogeyman would measure when she said those five simple, magical words. He apparently could assess someones physiology, like a monstrous lie detector. If she didnt mean those five words, he would know, and then it would be too late for a plan B.

Blowing out a breath, Liv closed her eyes and pictured herself in bed as a young child. She remembered experiencing the fear she was feeling now. She remembered feeling it when her bladder was full and the bathroom was a long fifteen feet away. Too many times, shed thought shed pee in the bed rather than simply make the walk across the darkened space. She forced herself to relive that memory now, speaking to her younger self.

He doesnt own you, she stated in her mind.

He might be real, but the fear comes from your own imagination, Liv stated definitively in her mind.

The Bogeyman cant hurt you.

She watched in her minds eye as her younger self pushed her covers aside, swinging her feet over the bed. Little Liv nearly hiccupped on her breath as the soles of her feet touched the floor, like she expected something to grab her from under her bed.

Dont fear him, Adult Liv said loudly in her mind, speaking over the scuttling sound of the Bogeyman drawing closer. She tried to stay focused.