by Sarra Cannon
“That’s where you’re going wrong,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“You will never be able to control it,” he said. “No more than you can control the moon or the sun. The more you try to resist it or push it down deeper inside of you, the more the darkness will fight to be seen.”
His words nearly took my breath away.
“Then what can I do?” I asked. “I spent so much of my life trying to suppress or deny my powers, and I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to be able to cast and use my magic. I want to just be the person I was always meant to be, but if I can’t learn to fight this darker side of myself, I’m afraid I’ll lose everything. I’m afraid it will change me forever.”
Silas smiled, his eyes wrinkling at the corners, and I suddenly realized just how much older he was than me. Because he and Rend and so many of the other demons looked about my age, it was sometimes easy to forget just how much longer they had been around. How much more of life they had seen.
But looking at Silas there in the half-light, I saw the wisdom in his eyes. The years of heartache and struggle to understand exactly this thing that I’d been fighting with myself.
“The problem is that you think you should be struggling against it,” he said. “That you think you’re meant to be something other than who you are, just because you wish you were someone different. That’s not how it works, Franki.”
He slipped the black stone over his head and placed it in my hands.
“Stop fighting to be someone you’re not,” he said. “The darkness is a part of you, but that doesn’t make it bad. You don’t need to control it. You simply need to accept it. Once you do that, the struggle will be over, and everything will become clear. I promise you.”
The soul stone in my hand began to glow as Silas and I both wrapped our fingers around it.
The darkness of Solomon’s spirit tugged at the darkness inside my own heart, and my natural instinct was to push it away. To resist it with everything I had.
But as we sat there on the side of the cold mountain, a strange little family together for the first time, I stopped fighting the truth of who I was. Of who I had always been.
And I had never felt so free.
Light Of My Life
Rend
By the time Franki came inside, it was well after midnight, and we had a long day ahead of us tomorrow.
I didn’t need the rest, but her human body had to sleep. She’d been trying to sleep in a chair near Katy’s bedside most of the time, and any time she’d joined me in one of the guest rooms, all she did was toss and turn.
She needed one good night of sleep, and since she wouldn’t take one of my potions to help her relax, I had something else in mind.
“Come upstairs with me,” I said. “I want to show you something.”
Franki raised an eyebrow in surprise and quickly said goodnight to Silas and the others.
“What’s this about?” she asked. “Did something change with Katy?”
“No, she’s still sleeping,” I said. “This is about us.”
She frowned, but I grabbed her hand and led her up the stairs. She paused near the door to my bedroom, but I shook my head.
“Down here,” I said, motioning toward a door at the end of the hallway. There were so many rooms in this house Franki had never stepped inside before, even though she’d been living here for months.
We passed by the main guest rooms, which were nothing more than ordinary rooms with king or queen-sized beds and a private bathroom.
The door at the end of the hall was usually locked, but when I pressed my hand on the image of a snake at its center, the lock clicked, and the door opened slightly.
The light of a pale blue moon cascaded down from the open sky as we stepped onto a bed of lilac grass.
Franki’s eyes widened, and she slowly turned her head, taking it all in.
“What is this place?” she asked.
I smiled. “This is my garden,” I said. “It took seven fae from the Winter Court to create it more than fifty years ago.”
I took her hand in mine and led her through the perfect rows of moon lilies and winterberries. Crops of different ingredients for my potions stretched out more than a hundred yards. There were groves of dark-bladed cypress and red palms. More than a thousand different species of plants and trees.
I almost never brought anyone here, because I didn’t want to disturb the delicate cycles and systems.
But if I could give Franki even one night of peace right now, I wanted her to have that.
“This is beautiful,” she said. She laughed and looked up at the moon. “Are we even still in your house? How is there a moon in your house?”
I wanted to capture the sound of that laughter and replay it over and over in my mind. It was truly the most carefree, soul-filling sound in the world.
For someone who was afraid of her own darkness, she was the brightest light of my life.
“It’s technically still my house, but similar to the magic of Venom, this place exists outside of time and space. It’s separate from everything and runs on its own cycle,” I said. “Most of these ingredients are taken from the Shadow World or from the fae lands. There are a few of the more common ingredients from the human world, too, like garlic and spring water.”
“You use garlic in your potions?” she asked, scrunching up her nose.
“Yes. Contrary to Hollywood’s portrayal of my kind, we are not averse to garlic,” I said, laughing. “It actually has a lot of healing properties, and I use it a lot.”
“I had no idea,” she said. She walked along the rows of flowers, leaning down every once in a while to smell them. “I guess I never really thought about where you got all the components to make so much of the five potions we sell at Venom.”
“Well, now you know my secret,” I said.
I pulled her into my arms, and she leaned her head against my chest.
“Maybe we should just stay here,” she said. “Hide away from everything in this magical little place. No one ever has to know.”
I kissed her head and wished that was the way it could be, but we both held people’s lives in our hands.
“We can’t stay here forever, but we can stay here tonight,” I said. “And just for a little while, we can pretend that nothing else matters.”
She looked up at me, her eyes filled with tears. She smiled and ran a hand through my hair, sending shivers across my skin.
“Make love to me,” she whispered.
I lifted her into my arms and carried her toward a silver stream that flowed through this place, nourishing the roots of every plant that grew here.
I placed her down in a bed of soft grass next to the water and took my time undressing her. Loving her with every piece of myself. My soul.
I hated that I’d held myself back from her for so long, letting my own fears keep me from the person I wanted most. But now that we were living on borrowed time, I hated that I couldn’t spend every moment of the days I had left in her arms.
Earlier, she’d asked me if I believed love could change a person. Make them want to be better.
I knew that it was possible, because loving Franki had given me a reason to live. To want to to be the best possible version of myself.
For the first time since I’d become a vampire and sold my soul to the Brotherhood, I had no problem resisting my thirst. All I wanted was to give her pleasure, and there was no thought of pain.
And as I made love to her under the fairy moon, I vowed to live. To find a way, no matter how great the odds that were stacked against us.
Another Dead End
Franki
I woke in the early morning hours, feeling more refreshed than I had in a long time.
I snuggled closer to Rend, placing my hand on his bare chest and draping one leg over his. I wanted a lifetime of mornings like this, and if that meant putting myself out there as bait for the other crows, then I was more than willing.<
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I thought through the possibilities of the day, wishing I had some kind of crystal ball to know how it would all turn out. There was a chance we would lure this crow witch in and follow her straight to the Mother Crow’s hideout. By some miracle, we could be done with this whole thing by sunset.
But it was also possible that nothing would happen at all.
Maybe the crows stopped watching the campus after what happened with Katy. Maybe this would be just another dead end, and we would be back to the beginning, praying for some clue.
At times like this, though, the choice was to either drive myself mad with worry or to just trust that somehow, this was all going to work out exactly as it was meant to.
I kissed Rend’s neck and he stirred, wrapping his arms tighter around my body and placing his lips on my forehead.
“How did you sleep?” he asked.
“Better,” I said. “You?”
“I had a lot of crazy dreams,” he said, “but it was nice to be next to you all night.”
“It’s going to be an important day,” I said, squinting against the light of a radiant silver-blue sun. “We better get up and get ready. My first class starts in three hours, and we need to go through every possibility and what we need to do depending on how things turn out. If this witch shows up, we need to make sure we don’t let her slip through our fingers. This could be the only chance we have to really find the Mother Crow.”
“We still have the stone, too,” he said. “If it really is a portal stone, I still have hope that I’ll be able to go straight through and defeat her before she even realizes what’s happening.”
I closed my eyes and rested my cheek against his shoulder.
If only it could be that easy, but nothing in this world was ever that easy. Every victory was hard-won, and every time one foe was defeated, something much more evil seemed to crawl from the shadows.
Would we ever be able to enjoy a life of peace?
Would there ever be a time when all the fighting was over? The Order and the Brotherhood destroyed or changed to the point that there was no longer any need to fight?
Or would death continue to chase us for the rest of our lives?
I sighed and reluctantly pushed myself up, untangling my legs from Rend’s and stretching.
“I need to check on Katy and then get in the shower,” I said. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen?”
“I’ll make you some breakfast,” he said, running his hand softly down my back.
All I wanted to do was stay here in the garden with him for the rest of the day, but we had work to do.
I dressed quickly and walked back through the rows of beautiful, mystical plants, sighing as I stepped back into the hallway of Rend’s house. Katy was still asleep, her arms crossed over her chest.
I ran a hand along the scratches on her arms. They hadn’t seemed to change at all.
Normally, wounds like this would have either gotten infected or started to heal. These, however, looked as fresh as they had when I’d found her.
It was more like Katy was trapped in time, rather than simply sleeping. Her body was in stasis, locked in those moments just after the attack.
I prayed that when she finally awoke, it would mean that almost no time had truly passed for her.
In the meantime, though, I needed to figure out exactly what I was going tell her parents.
They’d called and texted her several times, and I’d responded, pretending to be Katy and letting them know that things were just super busy with finals just around the corner.
Apparently, she’d had plans to go out shopping with her mother this weekend, so I’d had to cancel those by saying I needed to stay home and study. I got the feeling from her mother’s response that Katy almost never cancelled on her.
And what the hell was I going to do about finals? This week was the last official week of classes, and we were both missing it. That meant we were also missing the part where they told us exactly what to expect on the final exams.
Next week was dead week where everyone had the chance to study and finish papers. But the week after that would be our last chance to finish the semester—and our entire college education—without having to take an incomplete in every class.
Katy had plans to go on to grad school in the fall, and she’d already been accepted to UCLA. If she didn’t graduate on time, it would ruin so many of her future plans.
And it would be all my fault.
At this point, I didn’t even care about my own grades or if I managed to graduate on time. I just wanted Rend to be safe and for Katy to be back to her old self, awake and giving me shit about all the things.
Today just had to go well.
We couldn’t afford to lose another minute of time in our search for the Mother Crow.
This was our chance to end it all.
No Going Back
Franki
Three hours later, I walked onto campus like it was any normal day.
The sun was shining overhead, and our plan was in place. To any normal observer, I was all alone out here today. Connery was a few steps behind me, a backpack slung over one shoulder, doing his best to fit in with the college crowd.
Azure was nearby, too, just a little ahead of me. She’d gotten a cup of coffee from the student center and was sitting on the steps of the library, reading a book.
Marco, Silas, and Rend were nowhere to be seen, but I knew they were watching me. They promised to keep a safe distance so they didn’t scare off any crows who might be keeping an eye out for me today, but at the same time, they were close enough that they could easily shift into shadow and reappear at my side in seconds if I needed them.
My first class of the day was on the other side of campus, but Katy and I usually met up over here close to the apartment we used to share so that we could walk together.
I tried to keep my eyes forward, focusing on the other students as they went about their mornings, totally oblivious to the supernatural world around them. For a moment, I envied those people and their ignorance.
They had no idea just how dangerous the world really was. I would give anything right now for my biggest worry to be how I was going to pay my rent or whether I had time to grab some coffee before class.
But once my eyes had been opened to the truth, there was no going back.
I was in the thick of the battle now, where every moment held a question of life or death. I just prayed that today would hold the promise of life.
As casually as I could, I glanced up at the trees and searched for any sign of the crow. She didn’t always appear first thing in the morning, so I didn’t panic when there was no sign of her. I really didn’t want to actually have to sit through class with this ball of anxiety sitting in my stomach, but I needed to act as normal as possible. Follow the schedule.
Hope for the best.
I glanced back to see Connery talking to a couple of guys who seemed to be giving him directions. I rolled my eyes and laughed. That guy would look natural in any situation.
I turned and kept walking toward the math building. I had exactly ten minutes until class would start, and with each step, my heart started to beat harder in my chest.
Where was she?
I stopped near a wooden bench and pretended to look for something in my bag. I pulled a bottle of cold water from the backpack and took a drink, stalling. The building was just around the next corner, but I didn’t want to go inside until the last possible minute.
If she showed, I didn’t want to miss her.
Slowly, I zipped my bag back up and threw it over my shoulder. Two minutes remaining and still no crows.
Disappointed, I walked toward the steps of the building and reached for the front door.
But a tingle on the back of my neck made me turn, heart pounding. I searched the sky and the trees, but I didn’t see any sign of a crow.
Still, I could feel her. She was here somewhere, watching me.
I let go of the door handle an
d walked back down the steps, my mouth dry in anticipation. I turned in a full circle, my eyes taking in every inch of my surroundings.
My eyes met hers about three-quarters into my turn.
A small, black bird perched on the edge of the bench I had just left minutes earlier. Her blue eyes stood out against her black feathers, and I froze, knowing that whatever happened in the next few minutes might mean everything for us.
The plan was for me to try to get the witch to shift and talk to me. The longer we could keep her here, the better chance we had of catching her scent and following her when she took off.
Or capturing her outright.
But I needed to get to a quiet place where she would feel safe shifting without a lot of eyes on her.
I stared into those blues eyes and then jerked my head toward a dark space between my building and the next one down. The crow cawed, but she didn’t fly away.
I glanced around, trying to get a lead on where Connery was hiding. I spotted him sitting at a picnic table just outside one of the nearby buildings. There were books spread out in front of him, and he was leaning forward, writing something in a spiral notebook. Just a normal college student preparing for finals.
I took a deep breath to calm my nerves and started walking toward the shadows between the buildings.
Please, follow me.
I walked as far back as I could, hiding myself in the cool darkness underneath two tall trees. There was no one back here, and the hum of an air conditioning unit rang in my ears. I set my bag on the ground at my feet and waited, counting to ten. If she didn’t follow me, I would go back out and signal Connery to take over.
But by the time I got to six, the sound of wings fluttered in my ears, and the small bird flew into the trees just above my head. She seemed to be watching. Waiting to see if we were truly alone.