Marshall stood, blood flowing from his throat, and he laughed.
“Is this the game we’re going to play now, kitten?” He said in that vile voice, his tone twisting Calder’s pet name, and she heard Calder’s deep growl near her, closer than she’d realized he’d been. “You really think you can protect them from me?”
“Everyone stay near me. Don’t try to charge him,” Sophie instructed quietly.
“Gonna kill him,” Russell’s brother said.
“He’ll kill you,” Sophie said, still focusing on holding the shield. Faye’s sudden attack had given her the opportunity to finish making it, surrounding everyone with her magic. It was the largest shield she’d ever even attempted, and she couldn’t be sure it would hold.
“Oh, yes I will. Every single one of you.” He looked into Sophie’s eyes. “And I’ll make it last a little longer, thanks to Sophie’s little game here.”
“You’re not going to do that to me anymore, Marshall. You’re the evil one here. Not me,” Sophie said.
“We’ll see.”
And it began. He started throwing magic at her, at her shield, working to break it. The first blast had it trembling, and she focused harder, holding her hands out, her body rigid, her muscles tight. It was like wrestling with air, trying to keep the shield intact as Marshall hit it, again and again.
“Aw, the kitten’s grown a backbone,” Marshall taunted, striding around and attacking the shield from another angle. Sophie’s teeth clenched as she held it against the onslaught. “I can do this all day, you worthless bitch. You are nothing.”
He did it again, and again, and again, and Sophie felt sweat break out all over her body. Her breathing became labored, and she focused harder as the attacks came quicker. Those inside the shield could feel every impact, and each was met with screams and cries. Many of the adult shifters, those who didn’t have children with them, had shifted and waited at the edges of Sophie’s shield, ready to spring should the barrier fall.
Sophie knew they wouldn’t be enough to save them. Marshall wouldn’t be caught by surprise again.
She grunted and pushed her hands out harder, trying to build the shield stronger.
“So worthless. All of this pain. All of this death, because of one worthless whore,” Marshall taunted as he blasted the shield again. “Remember that, as I kill you all. You would have lived, if it wasn’t for Sophie.” She heard Calder growl again, and then she felt a warm hand on her lower back.
“You’ve got this. I believe in you,” he said quietly.
“Oh, gag me,” Marshall sneered as he threw a harder blast at the shield. She didn’t have any time to be grateful or touched by Calder’s words, but that hand on her back, the reassurance and support it spoke of, gave her a little jolt of energy just when she’d started to feel her strength flagging.
“Every one of you will die. Slowly and painfully. And all because Sophie put her life above yours. She always has been a selfish bitch, though,” he said as he casually blasted the shield again. Sophie felt it tremble.
It was going to break soon, and it was all she had.
She started panting.
“What’s the saying? Sucks to be you,” Marshall said with a feral grin as he blasted the barrier again.
Sophie felt it crack, and begin to crumble.
Sucks to be you.
Sucks.
You siphoned my power!
You know what you were doing! How do you think you managed to take Calder’s curse?
Our powers are great. Limitless. Anything we desire, anything at all, becomes ours.
The shield started to fall, and Marshall laughed victoriously. The crowd around her started screaming.
Sophie focused on him, still holding what she could of the shield, and she pulled her power, rather than pushing it. She focused on him, and she could see the way his power coiled within him, in every cell, in every beat of his heart. She could see it.
She could see it clearly, the same way she’d seen Calder’s curse. The same way she’d seen the magic that would make plants grow and animals heal.
She could see it.
And what she could see, she could control.
Sophie started pulling, absorbing.
Taking.
And she knew what she was losing, as well.
She grunted, and pulled harder, absorbing Marshall’s Shadow magic a bit at a time.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Marshall screamed, and maybe it was the Shadow in her or maybe it was just a lifetime of living under his thumb, but she smiled at the sound of it. “Stop!”
With some of his power in her, it started to become that much easier to take the rest. It flowed into her, filling her, its oily slickness imbuing every part of her, obliterating anything that wasn’t already Shadow.
Giving her everything he’d taken from so many others. It filled her, and he screamed.
He tried to run. She let out a low laugh, and used her power to throw an invisible wall around him, just as he had when he’d tried to trap the mourners.
The shifters seemed to sense that the tide was turning, and the males arrayed themselves around her, as if protecting her so she could finish what she’d started. Those with children fled, finally free of the trap Marshall had sprung on them.
Calder’s hand still rested warmly on Sophie’s back.
“Make the bastard pay, Sophie,” Calder said.
And she did.
As the last bits of his power flowed into Sophie, Marshall screamed in a way that made her skin prickle. She wouldn’t be able to take all of it, she knew. Taking all of it would kill him and, despite what she was, she refused to take a life.
Not even his.
But he could sure the hell go to jail.
“Be ready to grab him,” she said, and she watched Calder and Jack both stride forward, each ready on one side of Marshall.
She stopped siphoning Marshall’s magic, and he slumped to the ground, pale and trembling, still screaming, his nose bleeding. Calder and Jack each took one arm roughly and pulled him up. The town’s three police officers were all in attendance, members of the pack, just like so many others. They shifted back and took Marshall from Calder and Jack.
Sophie slumped to the ground, trying to catch her breath.
Marshall’s power felt like it was choking her, like she was gagging on it. Like she wanted to vomit.
The power of a Shadow lord.
She would never see the Light again, she realized as she watched the scene round her, the police, the shifters shifting back. Everyone looking at her while trying to look like they weren’t.
Calder started to come to her, and she quickly scrambled up.
I want to be home, she thought.
And then, she was.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“I’ll be out of here soon,” Layla said with a smile. Sophie smiled back and settled herself into the chair beside Layla’s hospital bed. “They said the swelling’s gone down enough. There’ll be physical therapy after, but at least I get to go home!”
Sophie nodded. She’d been slipping into Layla’s room at the hospital when she was sure no one else was around. It was too awkward, after what had happened at the funeral.
“It’ll be great to have you home. Bryce will be over the moon,” she said, and Layla grinned. She sobered, then reached out, and Sophie took her hand.
“Why didn’t you tell me about what happened at daddy’s funeral?” Layla asked softly. By all accounts, Layla had woken from her coma at precisely the moment Sophie had taken Marshall’s powers. Cara believed that Layla waking was thanks to Sophie, somehow, that Marshall had been keeping Layla from recovering. Sophie wasn’t sure about that, but she did know she was thrilled to see her best friend awake and recovering. From what the doctors said, there was still some doubt about how well Layla would be able to get around; the injury had damaged her gross and fine motor skills. True to form, Layla was being philosophical about it. At least she had her l
ife.
On waking, Cara had broken the news about their father’s death to Layla. Sophie had hoped the rest of the story would wait for a while. Apparently, it hadn’t.
“I didn’t want to upset you more,” Sophie finally said.
“Upset me? Sophie, you saved my grandma’s life. Not to mention the lives of like, my entire pack. How in the hell could that ever upset me?”
“They were only in danger because of me,” Sophie said quietly. “Your dad—“
“Not another word, Sophie, or I am gonna jump out of this bed and kick your ass,” Layla said roughly, and when Sophie looked at her, her eyes were shining with unshed tears. “Marshall is the reason my dad is gone. Not you. Don’t let his lies become your reality.”
Sophie didn’t answer, but she gave a small nod. Easy to say, not so easy to do.
“Bryce said he got out of jail. Escaped less than an hour after they locked him up,” Layla continued.
Sophie nodded again, her stomach twisting. “I kind of figured he would. He still had some magic. I couldn’t take it all,” she said apologetically.
“So he’ll be back,” Layla said.
“To take revenge on me, or to get his powers back. Maybe both,” Sophie said. “He’s not likely to just give up. It’s not his way. I won’t let him hurt anyone,” she promised Layla.
Layla gave her a gentle smile and squeezed her hand. “You aren’t responsible for everyone, Sophie. You can’t save the world.”
Sophie was about to say something, when the door opened and Bryce walked in. He bent down and kissed Layla, and Sophie knew it was her cue to leave the two of them alone.
“Time for me to get back,” Sophie said. She leaned down and hugged Layla, and then she nodded at Bryce and headed toward the door.
“Hey, Soph,” Bryce said. Sophie stopped and looked at him questioningly. “You know he keeps calling you. Call the man back, okay?”
She shook her head. “He deserves something better. It’s time for him to move on.”
Bryce looked at her blankly. “Have you completely lost it? The man will never move on from you. You may as well ask him to stop breathing.”
Her heart ached, and she didn’t know what to say, in the end, she just walked out of the room, down the hall, and, in the next breath, appeared in her living room.
Solace and prison, all in one.
It had been two weeks. Two weeks, and her world was everything Esme had told her it would be: empty and dead.
She went out the back door and sat on the steps behind her cottage as snow fell on the world. None of it landed on her.
To the untrained eye, the world still looked the same. Snow covered the ground, and the forest rose in the distance. Only someone who loved the land as she did would see what she saw.
First, her land held no animal life. No squirrels or deer scurried in her woods, no owls hooted from her trees.
Not even the goats had remained. She’d arrived home the day of the funeral to find all three of them, even Merlin, gone.
Familiars were, after all, of the Light, and had no need for Shadow.
The trees in the distance had already begun to take the blackened, twisted form of those she’d seen around Esme’s home. She scrunched up her face at the thought of Esme. If it hadn’t been for her, Sophie never would have been able to break Calder’s curse. She never would have been able to construct the shield that protected everyone at the funeral.
She never would have realized that she could defeat Marshall the way she had. She owed Esme an apology, and her thanks. And hopefully Esme wouldn’t try to kill her on sight.
Sophie got up from the step and walked toward the woods. She followed the well-worn trail she always took. Once upon a time, she had habitually trailed her fingers along the trunks of trees as she walked past. Now, she tried not to touch anything for fear of making it worse. Of further speeding its death. No one had come to see her since the funeral, and, other than her stealth visits to see Layla, she had gone to see no one. She had stayed in her house and on her land. Cara still called every day, and they talked about normal things.
Mostly they talked about Layla.
Cara told her other things, too. That there hadn’t been a single incident of violence in Copper Falls since that day, when before, the police had been over-run, the jail over-crowded, due to daily issues thanks to Marshall’s influence. While Sophie was pleased, it confused her. She was just as Shadow as he’d been, now. She wrote the lull in violence off to winter’s frigid temperatures keeping everyone inside.
They’d invited her for Christmas, and Sophie had gently declined.
So she talked to Cara, and she talked to Layla, and she watched her land die around her, and she sat, for hours on end, feeling Shadow writhe within her.
She ignored the other who kept calling her, despite how badly she wanted to hear his voice. He deserved to move on, and he couldn’t do that if he was still holding onto her for whatever insane reason.
She walked the rest of the trail and came to the river, the falls. The boulder and its flanking oak trees.
She heaved herself up onto the boulder and remembered a humid summer day, the lips of the person she had known, even then, was the other half of herself.
At least she had the memories.
She watched as a nearby tree began to wither in her presence, the bark becoming gray and lifeless. She frowned.
Anything we want.
“Live,” she murmured, and she waved her hand.
The tree’s bark smoothed, thickened, and she tilted her head as she studied it. Wondering.
“Anything, huh?” she said quietly, looking down at her hands. “And what if I want life, Shadow? What about then?”
Of course, Shadow had no answers for her. She was coming to understand, bit by bit, that the only answers she was going to find were those buried deep in herself, in the centuries of magic she’d stolen from Marshall.
Well. It would give her something to do with her time, anyway.
She heard the snow crunching, and turned, ready to throw magic if she had to. She always expected Marshall to come back to her for his revenge. He would. She knew he would. He was not powerless, though he was a pale, weak version of what he’d been. And he was still Marshall.
But the shape that stepped out of the trees was one she dreamed over and over again, day and night.
Calder walked toward her, silently. In one easy movement, he leapt onto the boulder and sat beside her. Her body warmed, just having him close to her.
“Do you ever answer your phone?” he asked her, and she didn’t answer, her voice unable to work around the emotions that rose in her at his closeness.
They sat in silence for a long time; the only sound around them was the rushing of the river. She could feel his warmth beside her in the cold. She wore a sweater. The frigid air no longer bothered her. Calder was dressed in a thick coat, gloves, and a hat. His blond hair peeked out from the bottom of his hat, and she curled her hands into fists, trying to fight the urge to run her fingers through that bit of wild, wavy hair.
“So. The curse is gone,” he said finally, and she didn’t answer. Sophie just looked straight ahead at the river. She wouldn’t tell him anything about that. She didn’t trust that it wouldn’t come back if she told him the truth of it. He would have to live the rest of his life thinking she’d taken another.
“Don’t suppose you want to tell me how that happened?” He asked, and she didn’t answer. “Because I know you did it. You’re just as sane as I am, which means it’s really gone this time.”
Still, she said nothing, but now she looked down at her hands and felt the trace of a smile curving her lips.
It was really and truly gone. She’d believed so, but hadn’t dared to hope.
“You saved half of the damn town that day, Sophie. You’re in control. So you did something to make that happen,” he pressed, and still she said nothing. He took a breath. “We have some stuff to work through. Christ, do we
have things to work through,” he repeated in a low mutter. “But I think what we had… what we could still have together, is worth working for. Don’t you?”
She heard him sigh, and then Calder pulled a glove off. To her shock, he took her hand in his, their clasped hands resting on her lap. He squeezed her hand gently, and the warmth of his flesh against hers was enough to break her. Tears flowed from her eyes. She squeezed his hand back.
They sat in silence, the tall oaks that flanked the boulder standing like enormous sentries, the river flowing ahead of them, the falls crashing in the distance.
“I’m Shadow. Completely,” she aid after a while.
He squeezed her hand gently in his. He ran his thumb over her wrist in that calming, mesmerizing way he always had.
“I know exactly what you are, Sophie,” he said, “I just wish you could see yourself the way I see you.” The snow fell gently around them, blanketing the world, erasing the memory of autumn’s decay, creating a blank slate for the promise of spring.
THE END
Sophie and Calder will return in Light’s Shadow, coming in 2016.
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Letter from the Author
Thank you so much for reading Shadow Sworn! I hope you loved it. I’ve loved sharing the Copper Falls series with you.
Shadow Sworn (Copper Falls Book 2) Page 25