Shadow Forest- The Complete Series

by Eliza Grace

  “We did it. We beat him.” I stammer out the words. Everything inside of me is fighting—elation that the witchfinder is dead, sadness that my mom has disappeared right along with him.

  Another pulse of energy shoots out from us, from what seems like the epicenter of the meadow where I broke through the canvas and made the portal to the false house, breaking the illusion that was trapping Jen. It is so powerful that it nearly rocks us all off of our feet. I grab at Hoyt to stay upright. Jon is standing a little ways from us; he’s dealing with the loss of my mom too. I didn’t get to see them together but for a short time, but enough to know there was great love there.

  We have both lost a mother figure this day.

  “What the hell is happening?” Hoyt holds onto me until I’m steady on my feet.

  “I think you’ve broken the spell.” Jon says, his voice flat.

  “What do you mean? The witchfinder’s dead; I’ve got my magic back. I should be free of the forest, right?” I turn to Jon. He is that boy I first met, full of rage and sarcasm.

  “I’ve been here a long time.” Jon shrugs, walking over to the nearest tree to lean against it and cross his arms. “From what I’ve heard, after all my damn time here, is there’s only one way to break Elisabeth’s spell.” He points a finger at Hoyt, then directs the same finger at me. His face is warped in a lopsided, sneer. “A mortal in love with a witch. Said mortal proves that love. Little sacrifice action and, ba-da-bing, no more spell. Apparently, it’s supposed to be ironic.”

  “That’s what’s happening?” I grunt out as another violent wave of magic earthquakes through the woods.

  “Yep,” Jon says. “And my suggestion?” Jon looks behind him, into the darkness of the forest. “Time to start running.”

  “Running?” Hoyt asks, moving closer to me and wrapping his arms around me.

  “I’m a vampire,” Jon says it looking at me; I feel Hoyt’s arms tighten around me, “and there’s a heck of a lot worse than me in these woods. So, yeah, I think running might be in order. You know, in the ‘for dear life’ sort of way.” Jon almost spits the last word out.

  “A… vampire.” It’s not a question. Hoyt’s warm against me.

  “Yes, pretty boy. A vampire,” Jon bites out.

  I step away from Hoyt; he lets his arms drop from around my body, although I get the impression that he doesn’t want to let me go. I don’t want to let him go either. Part of me wishes we were still in that dream world, alone and dancing. It had been scary, but it had also been isolated from all of this madness.

  Hoyt is staring at Jon now. He hadn’t known what he was. Part of me had assumed he knew already, about the creatures and the secrets of the Shadow Forest. He’d found his way in before the spell was broken after all. I want to ask what’s happened to him since I’ve been trapped. I want to ask how he found me. But I can’t right now. No, there are more pressing matters to attend.

  “And now that the spell is broken?” I whisper, so low I don’t think anyone could possibly hear me.

  “The witchfinder died because he was human, Tilda. All his years caught up to him. Most of the things Elisabeth imprisoned, things like me—me because I killed the wrong person in my blood lust so long ago—are not human. And now,” he pauses, stands away from the tree. The sarcastic, angry boy fades away. “Tilda, they’re free. They’re all free again.”

  My first thought is Jen, alone in the house, confused about what has happened, scared and not knowing where I am. She doesn’t even have Hoyt now to help her. “We have to get to Jen.” I start running, not waiting for anyone to follow. But they do. I can hear them. Two sets of feet. Jon is coming too. That sends a twinge through me. I love Hoyt, but I have come very quickly to care for Jon.

  Maybe I care too fast for people.

  Fall too fast.

  I don’t want to gather people, have more people in my life, just to have more people to lose when tragedy strikes.

  A shriek sounds behind us, somewhere deep in the forest. It sends my pulse racing.

  We’re almost to the edge of the woods, to the gap in the fence. We’d been closer than I thought.

  “Jen!” I start screaming as we near the broken section.

  It hasn’t once crossed my mind that I’m still running, still able to walk and use my legs, even with the enchantment destroyed and the witchfinder dead.

  It doesn’t cross my mind at all…

  Until I pass through that gap in the fence and I fall forward, my knees giving out, the feeling leaving my body from hips to toes. There’s not even a tingling, not even the progress of tingling Hoyt and I had made whilst in therapy. My legs are gone again. Gone.

  Hoyt races up behind me, picking me up without a word. I’ve already dissolved into tears.

  “My legs, Hoyt. My legs.” I’m unintelligible, gasping and sobbing. I know there are so many more important things to be doing. Warning Jen. Figuring out what to do. How many creatures are in the forest? How dangerous are they? My mind races to the ‘others’, the ones mom was so scared of that we stayed quiet, clinging to one another in the woods.

  The shriek comes again; it is soon joined by grunts and roars. A forest of monsters. Jon had called it that.

  A forest of monsters.

  And we’d loosed it on the world for the sake of me.

  CURSE KISSED

  SHADOW FOREST, BOOK THREE

  Broken World

  What have we done? What have we done?

  We’ve made it halfway across the pasture. Hoyt’s strong arms are the only thing keeping me from dissolving into panic and grief.

  Hoyt, in his hurry, stumbles and falls. I drag myself free of his body so I can turn around and look at the forest. I cannot think about my re-broken legs right now. What is coming? What is coming? The trees are shaking, moving back and forth as if hurricane winds are rushing past each bark-covered trunk. There is something giant in the distance, I know it. It is crawling from the belly of the woods, finally free and ready for havoc.

  “God. Oh my god.” Hoyt’s voice adds to the tornado-like din.

  I scream as a tree root bursts from the ground nearby, shooting upwards like a spear bound for heaven. I use my upper body to yank myself out of the line of fire, just as another root shoots out of the meadow and rises towards the sky. I want to check if Hoyt is okay, but I am swallowed up by the panic of it all.

  “Tilda!” Hoyt scrambles for me and picks me up. He is okay. No. He’s not. There’s blood on his forehead. I’m jerked about as the world whirls—a psychotic ride with no speed control. I need to find his face again; I need to see how bad the wound is.

  “Here they come,” Jon sing-songs out, sounding disturbingly unbalanced. This is past normal Jon, past his sullen demeanor. I worry he’s losing it. I should be losing it too.

  I’ve just lost my mother after all. For good this time.

  And my legs don’t work.

  And creatures are coming out of the woods.

  Hoyt had been heading towards the house again, but now he stops and turns around. No longer a ride on high speed, now slow motion. His face goes slack. I keep staring at him, my tall strong physical therapist who has helped me through some of the darkest moments of my life. “This can’t be real,” he murmurs, as if caught in some other place, his mind a captive of unreality.

  Jon points with a shaking hand. “And you thought I was such a big, bad vampire.” He hiccups at the end of his words, and I realize he’s crying. Crying for my mom, perhaps. Crying because he is free after so very long. Crying because everything is changing.

  I turn my head now. I have to look. I can’t hide under bed covers like a small child, willing the monster in my room to disappear. My eyes refocus on the forest, and my gaze widens at the show, as if I’m sat in a plush theater and the main attraction has just sprung to life. Arianna was not the only fairy caught in the forest it seems. Hundreds of the flying mischief-makers are rising up out of the canopy like shooting stars. They stream down to the
earth in a path of brightness to illuminate the other creatures walking out of the shadows. I nearly laugh when I see that the elusive, Napoleon-complex-suffering Master Toady is leading them. His grin is lopsided and triumphant.

  I see beasts without shadows and shadows without beasts. What I can only assume is a vampire jumps quickly into the air and shapeshifts into a colony of perfectly-synchronized bats. Behind him, a woman begins to shift also, her body contorting and her bones cracking and hair sprouting across her skin. My mind jumps to werewolf, my eyes eventually see bear.

  Holding me, Hoyt takes several more steps backwards toward the house.

  I am caught between wanting to watch and wanting to run… though I cannot run.

  Sadness threatens to choke me. I swallow it down, the hardness of reality jagged and cutting. Jon moved closer to Hoyt, close enough to touch. I leaned away from Hoyt’s body, my fingers stretching out to touch the vampire boy I’d grown somewhat enamored of; Jon startles when my hand grazes his arm. Vampires shouldn’t be scared. If a vampire is scared, things must be so very bad.

  “There must be a way to stop this. Jon, what do we do? God, look at all of them.” I don’t even know what they all are. Some are obvious—like the giant wolves loping along, with bright red shining eyes. Others look so harmless. So harmless. Young children with blonde braids and skinned knees.

  “You think this is bad,” Jon laughs out, still sounding hysterical. “There are other worlds, Tilda. Other realms. Alternate truths that exist atop this one. This spell is part of that puzzle. With it gone…”

  “Jon, we have to stop it.” I think about the werewolf he’d saved me from, about how it was so hungry it would have eaten me without a moment’s hesitation. And we’ve just let an entire population of starved supernatural beings loose into the world.

  Jon laughs once more, a childish screech of delight bordering a sob.

  Any blood is on my hands. Our hands.

  The Bicker Boys

  “You’ve got to stop laughing,” Hoyt mumbles in Jon’s general direction. His arms tighten around me. “We need to get in the house. Fast.”

  “That’s not going to help,” Jon counters. “Four walls and a roof against an army.”

  “And your plan is to just stand out in the damn open?” Hoyt barks back and turns toward the house, not waiting for Jon’s answer.

  The house can’t protect us… But we have to go there. Jen is there. She needs our help.

  “It doesn’t matter if the house is safe or not, Jon. We still have to go there. We have to make sure Jen is okay.”

  “Fine,” Jon says sarcastically. “Hey, you’re a witch. Cast a protection spell on the building. I’m sure you learned enough from your mom to do at least that weak magic.”

  My face falls. I’d learned so little. I’d wasted so much time in the woods when I should have been soaking up every ounce of knowledge and stealing hugs every second.

  Saramah Lomet. Bind this house to my power. Bind these walls to my will. Bind the inside, keep it safe, as the outside terrors rage. Saramah Lodone.

  The whisper in my head is not my mother’s voice. It is his. But it can’t be. The witchfinder is dead. He is dead. “I think I know what to do,” I say in a shaking voice. “Don’t ask me how though.” I can’t face the possibility right now. I’ll tell Jon and Hoyt later… when we aren’t facing an army of monsters.

  Hoyt starts running. Jon too.

  We move like Olympic runners, closing the distance to the house faster than I think should be possible. But the back door won’t open and I feel a pulse of power shimmering down the side of the house like an invisible waterfall. I keep one arm around Hoyt’s neck and I reach out with my other hand. I touch the door gently and gasp as the magic pours into me. Not a waterfall. No, this is like falling into rapids… your body moves with the current at jarringly-fast speeds and you hit the bottom, scrapping your skin against rocks and wishing for rescue.

  I can’t breathe when the power is gone from the house and filling me to the brim, a cup overflowing. But the door opens and Hoyt stumbles over the threshold still carrying me. Jon hesitates. “Jon, hurry.”

  He smiles sheepishly. “Not all human myths are true, but the whole ‘have to be invited in’ thing is. So…” He gestures at the door.

  “Oh… really? That’s… I mean. Jon, come in. Hurry.” I tumble over the words and his body relaxes as he can finally come into the house. He closes the door. “Lock it.”

  “That’s not going to help anything,” he argues, but does it anyways.

  Light a candle. Salt the earth.

  “Light a candle… salt the earth…” I repeat in a whisper. “Hoyt, put me on one of the chairs and get a candle from up there.” I point at an upper cabinet. “Jon, grab that salt shaker on the stove.” I wonder if I need to describe the shaker, if Jon’s seen one before, but he grabs the glass and metal shaker quickly and without further prompting. “Earth… we need earth.”

  “You need to salt the earth,” Jon says quickly, coming over to me. “You don’t need actual dirt. It can be anything that was once part of the earth.” He knocks on the kitchen table in front of me. “This is fine. It’s dead, but it’s fine.”

  Hoyt hands me the candle. I place it on the table and I focus. I gather my will to me, centering it in my chest. It breathes like it is its own sentient creature. The warmth must start, the wick must grow hotter and burn. Give me light. Give me light. The candle flickered once, twice, and then it sprung into persistent dancing flame. I took the salt shaker and I waited. Did I say the words now? Do I salt first?

  The thing that scares me most is that I expect an answer. Did a part of him stay within me? Had the link between us not fully severed when he died? Do I now carry a particle of his soul?

  Salt the earth, speak the words. The voice again… his voice.

  The witchfinder, for I now admit it must be a part of him seeded inside of my consciousness, urged me forward. Before I begin to speak, I realize that we’ve not seen Jen. Where is she? What has happened to her?

  Protect the house first.

  Protect the house, then find her.

  I turn the shaker upside down and begin snowing white granules of salt onto the table. “Saramah Lomet. Bind this house to my power. Bind these walls to my will. Bind the inside, keep it safe, as the outside terrors rage. Saramah Lodone.”

  Nothing happens, so I repeat the words a second time. And then a third.

  When I finish the third ‘lodone’, a sonic boom of ethereal magic sparks from me. It sends out shock waves, ripple after ripple. I can see the obsidian glimmer of it coating the floor and growing up the walls and seeping into the ceiling above our heads. It is an overhead sea of golden sparkles for only a moment before it fades into invisible existence. Black shifting into metal. Dark shifting into brightness. The flavor of power on my tongue.

  “Damn, you did it,” Jon breathes out. “Didn’t think you had it in you. And…” he felt up and down his body, a smile growing on his face. “I’m not dead or feeling like I’m dying. I mean, I’m already dead… technically. You know what I mean. That spell wards against evil and it’s not exactly discerning. Good vamp or bad, that spell will usually knock us on our asses.” Jon patted me on the shoulder enthusiastically. Despite how happy he sounds, his eyes still look arrested by sadness.

  I stare at him, my own smile coming to life, and I wonder if my own gaze is sad. It should be. I’m an orphan again. “Mom said that magic is as much about will as it is talent. I wouldn’t want you hurt, Jon. So… I guess you weren’t.”

  “But I don’t understand how you did it. I mean, did she teach you that?” Jon backs away from me as the other guy in my life advances. The sadness in my vampire boy’s eyes deepens.

  Before I can answer, Hoyt comes up behind me and puts a hand on my shoulder. I look up at his handsome face, one that I’ve missed so very much, and realize that he’s staring at Jon… and he doesn’t look happy. “So, fill me on what’s been h
appening. You two seem chummy.”

  I reach back and touch Hoyt’s hand, but my eyes are on Jon. The hurt across his face is shifting into hardness, a tightening of his eyes and mouth. I like Jon. I like him enough to like-like him. But Hoyt is… Hoyt is Hoyt. And those feelings are sewn into the fabric of who I am now, here in this broken body. Jon is part of the me in the forest, the part that could walk again and had a mother. Clinging to him would be like… keeping a part of that with me.

  It wasn’t an unattractive prospect.

  “We can talk about that later,” I rush out the words, thinking fast. “But now I need to find Jen. She should be here. She was here. I saw her.” My eyes widen when I realize where she must be. So close… The painting. But if she were in her studio, she should have heard us. She should have come out already. Forgetting that I am once again a crippled, tired thing, I try to stand up and pitch forward. Jon lunges to help me at the same time Hoyt does.

  In their effort to avoid one another, neither actually saves me from plummeting to the ground. I hit the hardwoods with a bang, but take the burden of the fall with my palms rather than my face. “Ouch,” I mumble, embarrassed, my cheeks hot. I shift, rolling over to my back. “That could have gone better,” I say quietly, forcing out a little laugh. Both Hoyt and Jon are staring down at me, looking shocked and equally as embarrassed as I am.

  “God, Tilda. I’m so sorry.” Hoyt is the first to break his frozen stance and fall to his knees. “I was going to help. I wanted to help, but then he was coming forward. And… and…” His voice trails off.

  Jon says nothing. He just looks sullen and like he wants to fall into shadows and disappear.

  “It’s fine,” I mumble, pushing my upper body into a sitting position, gawking at my useless legs like I’m seeing them for the first time. Which is dumb. “Hoyt, can you get my wheelchair?”