“You don’t know jack shit about academics if that’s what you think,” Ava spat, pacing quickly and restlessly in front of the fire.
Sean found the sight of her long, slender legs incredibly distracting from the matter at hand. He took a deep breath and shook himself mentally. Survival now, sex later. Okay.
“So, if you’ve got any ideas, tell me,” Declan shrugged. “Otherwise, we’ll go back to Grace and see what she has to say.”
“I know just as well as she does what the solution is,” Ava said testily. “It all hinges around the phrase ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I have some vague ideas about what it might possibly mean, but I don’t have any evidence to support them. I don’t want to act on just a hunch because I have a feeling we’re not going to get too many shots at this. When I face down Eve Barrows’s ghost, I’m going to do it with my guns fully loaded.”
She paused and looked Declan squarely in the eye, making the most adorable irritated face Sean had ever seen.
“And don’t try that psychological provoking shit on me again, Declan Molineaux,” she said, her lips twitching to hide a smile. “I knew exactly what you were doing and only played along.”
Sean looked at Declan, eager for what would undoubtedly be a damn funny reply, but instead, he beheld Declan, white as a sheet, staring at Ava, aghast.
“You have to face Eve Barrows?” Declan said, anguish and fear choking off his voice.
“Oh no she doesn’t,” Sean said before he could even think. “Ava’s not going anywhere near that ghost. Or White Farm. Ever. If I have to tie her to the bed, I will.”
The terror at the thought of Ava facing an undead spirit that was full of evil intentions was like a punch in the stomach. He wanted to hit something at even the thought of it. There had to be another way, a better way, a safer way.
“It’s not like I want to,” Ava said finally, resuming her pacing, but in a calmer manner. “I just have a feeling, and no, it’s not a baseless hunch like I was talking about earlier. I have a feeling that I have to be the one to summon the shade of Eve Barrows and face her down. I’m not exactly sure of why, yet, but I can sense in the back of my mind that there are threads and connections. I just haven’t been able to suss them out and pin them down.”
She looked up as if she was about to say something more, but suddenly, she stiffened, her eyes glazing over and her mouth open as if midscream. Then, she crumpled in a stiff-limbed heap on the hearth rug.
* * * *
Them.
She had to warn…she had to run…
Why wasn’t she moving? Why did her legs feel so heavy? Why was everything dark?
She realized her eyes were closed, and with a struggle that it shouldn’t have required, she opened her eyes and looked up into the faces of Sean and Declan, both contorted with fear.
It all slammed into her then. Her body jerked as her arms and legs seemed to be fighting for coordination.
“We have to warn him.” She gasped, hearing her words slur as her lips moved sluggishly, as if she had overdosed on Novocain.
“Who, baby?” Sean asked, cradling her in his arms.
“Robert,” she mumbled out, forcing her mind to send deliberate directions to her body. “Help me up. It’s Robert. He’s in danger.”
“Robert can take care of himself,” Declan said.
“Not this time,” she said, her heart pounding with terror at what seemed an unstoppable horror that was rushing toward them. She felt herself lifted effortlessly to her feet by Sean, then staggered toward the chair where some of her clothes were draped.
She grabbed her jeans and turned to look at Sean and Declan.
“He won’t see it coming,” she whispered, panicked tears welling up and spilling down her cheeks. “It’s going to happen. Oh God, it’s happening!”
Something seemed to take hold of her limbs and jerk her around like a puppet. The invisible grip on her had no hands or fingers, just a force that filled every thread of muscle and jolted her to its will.
Then, through the open window there came a terrible cry, that of a wolf in pain.
Ava thought her heart had stopped as everything froze for a long second as she tried to believe what she had just experienced and heard was real.
Before she could say anything, she caught a growled, “Stay here,” and the next instant, she saw two giant gray wolves, flying out the window, landing easily on the ground below. With a speed that was too fast for human eyes to follow, they ran into the forest just as another cry of agony sliced the silence of the night.
She didn’t even have a chance to be torn with indecision. The decision was already made for her.
Find it.
Her body went limp, and she barely was able to slump into a chair as she felt the energy of whatever had possessed her drain away. Too worried to try and figure out what had just happened, she weakly but determinedly pulled on her clothes.
She was grabbing mittens and a flashlight when her whole consciousness was jolted again by compunction.
Find it.
The words were soundless and yet as heavily reverberating as any call across the mountains. She barely held on to any thoughts of her own. There was no running commentary in her head, no microanalysis of the environment around her, no questions or questioning. There was only sensation and urge.
She fumbled the front door lock in her hurry, finally flinging it open and running out into the night. The icy bite of the air shocked her lungs and robbed her breath, making her airways burn. Behind her was the dim light that spilled from the house, but before her, she could see nothing but darkness. She had to find the edge of the woods, but they had to be the right woods, not the trees that stood between Long Road and the estate. Not the trees that extended between the estate and the empty vacation home on the other abutting lot.
No, she needed to find her way into the forest that separated the estate from White Farm. Flashlight. She had a flashlight. Flicking it on with her mitten-covered thumb, she shone it around until she saw the driveway. Once she was oriented to the gravel path, she knew that she had to go to her left.
Wolf howls began to fill the night sky, and she guessed that the men of Blue Moon were responding to Robert’s cry. In that moment, she knew in her gut that they needed to be here. But how could she summon them? How could she even find them? How could she do anything except follow the visceral urge that gripped her very soul?
If she called out, her voice wouldn’t be strong enough to carry her words. She was just a few yards from the forest now. She had to do something. Robert, Declan, and Sean couldn’t do this alone, and if they tried, she was terrified that one of them might not come back.
An idea born of pure desperation flashed across her mind, and putting all of her intention into her voice, she lifted her face to the sky and howled. Her high soprano howl seemed crystal clear and ice-blade sharp, the sound rising and expanding over the land. She howled again, putting everything she had into it, fighting her own body as it tried to keep moving forward.
Finally, out of breath and out of the will to resist, she stopped, barely aware of the intense silence that now reigned in the night sky. All she could think of was the forest, its ancient darkness calling to her with a voice she had no choice but to obey.
Running against the cold that burned in her lungs, Ava Bell disappeared into the woods.
Chapter 22
There was no sense of left or right, forward or back. For all Ava knew, she could have been running in circles.
Her flashlight cast a weak circle of illumination just a few feet ahead, making the ghostly gray tree trunks loom out of the shadows with scary suddenness. Frozen leaves crunched under her boots, and her breath came out in white puffs.
The sound of violent snarls and snapping came from somewhere ahead, but that was not the direction she was drawn in.
“Damn it!” she huffed in anguish as she strained against the compulsion that kept her body from heading to where the men she loved were
fighting something dark and terrible. “Come on! Let me go!”
Still, she couldn’t deviate an inch from the direction she seemed to be heading in. She plunged through clumps of trees, clambered over enormous fallen tree trunks covered with lichen, and squelched through frozen mud. The cold was starting to seep into her bones and make them ache, and in the back of her mind ricocheted a mantra of “Find it Find it Find it.”
“Where are you?” she panted into the icy night air. “Who are you? What am I looking for? Help me.”
Nothing but thick, viscous silence oiled around her, and the impenetrable darkness yielded no clues. She ran frantically on, stumbling over roots, catching her jacket and hair on thin, switch-like branches that seemed to appear out of nowhere and grab at her.
She heard Robert, Declan, and Sean howl, their piercing keening registering instinctively within her as a distress call. The fear in her heart of what was happening to them was overwhelming, blanking out her mind and short-circuiting her ability to think of what to do. Even as her mind and heart screamed with the need to go to them, her body was being pulled toward some unknown end.
Her lungs burned, and her mouth grew dry from inhaling the cold air, but a thin sheen of sweat broke out under her clothing as she grew hot from running.
“Find it Find it Find it…”
“Ooh!” she cried out as she tripped over a stone and slammed into the bristly trunk of a pine tree, ricocheting off to the side.
Jarred and sore, she sat still in the frostbitten pile of rotting leaves for a moment, realizing that the chanting had stopped in her head. The compulsion was gone. She looked around, feeling a little disoriented, as if she had suddenly been abandoned. Cautiously, she crawled over to where she had flung the flashlight when she fell. Picking it up, she shone the light around her but saw nothing but trees and darkness. She flashed the light across the ground, but the only thing that stuck out, literally, was the rock she had tripped over.
It was right in front of her, underneath the pine tree she had fallen against. It was a queer place for a rock, she realized, when there weren’t any that she had seen anywhere in the forest. It was low and flat, and partially hidden by lichen and leaves.
A wild idea popped into her head, and she crawled toward it then wiped the dirt and debris off as best she could. She held her breath as she shone the light on the relatively clear surface.
“Fuck!” she exclaimed, gritting her teeth. “God damn fuck shit!”
Anger exploded inside her at the failure of her idea. This wasn’t a headstone. This was just a rock.
She sat back on her heels, keeping the light on the offending rock as she took deep breaths to calm herself.
“Right,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’m going to find the guys.”
Something slammed her back down to the ground, knocking the breath out of her and dragging her right back to the rock, pushing her face into it. In a blind panic, she screamed and fought against the invisible, invincible force that held her face into the rock.
The rough surface scraped her cheek as she struggled against the stone, and she pushed against it, thrashing to try and free herself. Suddenly, she stilled as she felt through her thin mittens a groove in the surface of the rock. A straight line. Deeply gouged out.
“Oh dear God,” she whispered. “This is your grave.”
She felt the pressure on her body lift slowly, and she cautiously came to her knees. Shucking off her mittens, she used her fingers to scrape away the rest of the dirt and moss then picked up the flashlight, angling it until the lines became apparent.
She shivered uncontrollably as she studied the lines. They looked fierce and angry, as if they had been gouged out by…by claws.
“Exsequor exequor,” she sounded out. Shit. Latin. Her Latin was rusty at best, and her brain was already short-circuiting in terms of being able to think clearly. What the hell did this mean?
“Think, Ava,” she said out loud, the sound of her voice small against the darkness but reassuringly present and real. “Exsequor exequor. Follow. End. Follow to the end or grave. Follow to the grave.”
Follow to the grave.
The rush of clarity was like being hit by a semi. This was Ezra’s grave. Whoever or whatever had written the inscription had meant it as an instruction, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was the instruction for how to avenge Ezra and destroy Eve.
Follow to the grave.
Instinctively, she dug beneath the leaves that covered the ground, reaching the frozen soil. The dirt was hard packed and frozen, and it hurt her fingers to dig at it, but finally, she broke through the surface and was able to grab several handfuls of it and stuff the dirt in her pockets. Her pockets bursting with soil, she stood up, cringing and waiting to see if anything came at her, but she felt loose and free to move about.
Now, she had to find the guys. All the worry and fear for them came rushing back as the obsessive urge to find this grave ebbed away. She realized she hadn’t heard any sounds of wolves howling or growling for a while, and her heart froze with the terror that the worst had happened.
No, no, no. It couldn’t have happened. Robert, Declan, and Sean were okay. They were fine. They were just taking care of Robert. Oh God! Was he hurt? How badly was he hurt? No, she couldn’t go there. She couldn’t think of how empty life would be without them. It didn’t matter how they had come together or why they had been drawn to each other. They were meant to be. Together. All of them. It was good, and it was right. They loved her, and she loved them.
Fear and love pumped energy into her aching legs as she ran helter-skelter through the woods.
“Robert!” she called out. “Declan! Sean! Any of you! Make a sound, tell me where you are!”
Suddenly, a wall of howls came barreling at her from her right. She turned and aimed for it, wincing and covering her ears as it grew unbearably loud as she got near.
Finally, she broke through a clump of trees, the round beam of her flashlight bouncing over a huge group of werewolves. She stopped short, her heart in her throat as a moment of panic completely swallowed her up. She knew she could trust her lovers, but what of the others? Would they see her as the enemy? Would they resent her as the cause for the danger they were all in?
She scanned the wolves, astounded to see hundreds of them there, standing guard proudly on fallen tree trunks, flanking a small circle of space, trotting in scouting circles around the perimeter of the group.
“I’m here to help, okay?” she said hesitantly. Great, now they heard her fear and had probably smelled it from a mile off. Dogs could smell fear. So could wolves. Shit.
One of the werewolves came forward, and in the harsh halo of the flashlight, she thought she recognized Sean’s wolf form.
“Sean?” she said cautiously.
He yipped then came up to her and bumped his head under her hand so she would pet him. Yes, this was definitely Sean. She released a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
Without warning, Sean stood at attention in front of her and howled. Somehow, she understood the sound without words or any conscious thought. The message from the sound seemed to arrive in her brain without any translation from human words. She knew he was asserting her dominance in the pack.
Shocked, she watched as all the wolves lowered their heads to her. She felt the unfamiliar prickling of tears and realized that tears were streaming down her cheeks at the enormity of the honor that was being given her. It was all because Robert, Declan, and Sean loved her. Love for them welled up and spilled over in her heart, washing over her and filling her with a sense of power and purpose she had never known before. Her entire body tingled, and her fear disappeared. She was on fire, burning with power and rage.
No more! No more would any dark demon or ghost trouble this town. This place was hers! These wolves were hers! She would face down whatever there was and drive it back to hell. She would set the wolves of Blue Moon free for all times, no matter what the price.
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Sean and the other wolves seemed to sense the change in her, and they flung off an energy that seemed to feed into and loop with her own until she felt she was buzzing with power. A group of wolves directly in front of her parted to reveal a wolf lying on the ground, panting shallowly, the flashlight revealing three huge, deep gashes in his side, slowly oozing blood.
In the blink of an eye, Ava was kneeling next to Robert, gently stroking his head and kissing his snout.
“You do not give up,” she admonished him, putting all the authority she could muster into her voice. For a second, she thought she saw him twitch in response to her tone.
“If you even think about dying,” she said, lifting one of his paws to her lips. “I will bring you back to life so I can kill you myself. Understood?”
Weakly, Robert touched his nose to her hand, and she smiled through her tears. Looking up, she saw that Sean and what she guessed was Declan in wolf form standing on either side of her.
She stood up and swept the wolves with a look.
“One of you runs to get Dr. Nasir,” she said crisply, the hot anger in her veins burning away the last of the fog in her brain. “Some of you stay with Robert. You make sure he stays alive, you understand? The rest of you, come with me.”
Ava looked at Robert and smiled, then turned, her expression growing grim and determined, and began walking in what she infallibly knew to be the direction of the farmhouse. On either side of her were Sean and Declan, and behind her, she heard the sounds of a thousand paws and the susurrations of a thousand breaths. She squared her shoulders and felt for the dirt in her pockets with one hand while the other held the flashlight.
This was it. There was no turning back. She still didn’t know exactly what she had to do, but now, she believed that either her instinct would come through for her or it would be the end.
Either way, it was all going to happen on this moonless night at White Farm.
Chapter 23
Ava emerged from the woods down by her cottage. Steadily, she walked up the slope and across the dead grass to the farmhouse, a river of wolves flowing around her.
Blackthorne, Fiona - Moonstruck [Blue Moon 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 16