Light's Shadow (Copper Falls Book 3)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  She was mad. Very, very mad. Remember that, she told herself.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he growled.

  “I could ask you the same,” she hissed.

  “Go home.”

  “No. You need to come home.”

  “Sophie—”

  She glanced around, at the shifters all watching them with interest. She didn’t want an audience for this little argument. She expected to say several things to Calder that they didn’t need to hear.

  “We need to talk. We’ll be back,” Sophie said. She took his hand and then took a step, witchwalking to the falls, to their boulder beneath the two enormous oak trees.

  She dropped his hand and put her hands on her hips, glaring at him. He glared back.

  “You should be at home. Where’s Esme?”

  “Why? Bryce asked me the same thing…” And then it dawned on her. “I don’t need a goddamn babysitter, Calder!”

  “She’s not a babysitter. She’s backup, in case he shows up there.”

  “You need to stop this. This whole hunt is insane. What the hell do you think you’re going to do if you find him?”

  “Kill him,” Calder said flatly. “This shit ends now. I know. I know. He’s super powerful and old and a dickhead who doesn’t fight fair. I still wouldn’t want to be in his shoes when we find him. And we will find him,” he said, looking into her eyes. “Go home.”

  “What the hell do you think I am? You can’t tell me what to do, Calder. This is my mess. This is my problem—”

  “Your problems are my problems,” he said, raising his voice. “Why don’t you get that? If it’s a problem for you, it immediately becomes my problem, too. That’s the way it works when you love someone.”

  “Not fair, trying to be sweet. You took off, without a word, going behind my back, to do something you knew damn well I didn’t want you to do!”

  “Exactly. Because I knew you’d fight me on it. I’m not going to be talked out of this, kitten. I don’t need to be protected.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “That’s it, isn’t it? Your ego was bruised because I tried to keep you safe. What a bunch of macho bullshit, Calder.”

  “I don’t need to be protected,” he repeated, his voice a low growl. “And it’s my job to do everything I can to keep you safe.”

  “I can keep myself safe. The last thing I need is you running off trying to be a hero and getting yourself killed.”

  “So much faith in me,” he said, anger lacing his voice.

  “I expect you to be smarter than this,” she said loudly. “Not to take it as some kind of challenge to your manhood.”

  He advanced on her, and she took a step back.

  “My manhood is just fine,” he growled. “This is about you, and about that fucking warlock, and about me doing what I do best: acting instead of sitting around on my ass waiting for him to come after you. I’ll never be okay with that. I’ve played this your way. Now I’m playing it mine.”

  He took another step toward her and she took another one back, the backs of her thighs hitting the rough side of the boulder. It was hard to focus, being this close to him. Having him standing there, angry and naked, glaring at her that way, with that hunger in his eyes, had her body going haywire.

  “I don’t need to be saved,” she said.

  “Neither do I.”

  Before she could say another word, he was in her space, pressing his body against hers, his mouth descending on hers, claiming her lips as he pulled her body close to his. Angry, tense, frustrated. All of it came through in his kiss, along with need. She clawed at his shoulders, considered pushing him away until he got it through his head, that he needed to come home and stop this nonsense.

  He shoved a muscled thigh between her legs, pressing firmly against her sex, and she moaned. She was wearing nothing but a sleep tank and a thin pair of pajama pants, but even that felt like too much between them.

  He seemed to have the same thought, and yanked her tank top up and over her head, tossing it aside.

  “I’m still pissed at you,” she said quickly when their lips parted as he pulled her top off.

  “I don’t care,” he growled, and then his hands were on her breasts, squeezing, pinching, rolling her nipples between his fingers, pulling, just a little, giving her that bite of pain he knew she liked. She thrusted her hips toward him and he growled low in his throat, then pushed her pajama pants down her hips. She kicked them away, and he spun her around.

  “Calder?”

  “Hands on the boulder, Sophie,” he said in a low voice. She braced her hands on the large, rough stone, trembling. He put his hands on her ass, squeezing her, moulding her, and she moaned. He pulled her hips back and then pressed firmly between her shoulder blades, making her bend deeper. She could barely breathe, her heart was pounding so hard.

  “Please,” she said, hearing the need in her own voice.

  The next instant, Calder was thrusting into her, hard, deep, and she let out a cry. Her cry became one long, drawn out wail as he pounded into her ruthlessly, relentlessly, all of his desire and frustration evident in the way he took her. For her part, she pushed back into him, matching his pace, taking him as deeply as she possibly could.

  Soon, her legs started to give out and Calder turned her around. He hooked his arms under her knees, passed her back against the boulder, and thrusted up into her again. His eyes were on hers, and each slow, deep thrust had her teetering ever closer to the edge.

  “You’re mine,” he growled as he slammed into her again. “I’ll do what it takes to keep you safe. You don’t get to tell me how to do that.” He slammed into her again, and she screamed as she fell apart. Seconds later, he groaned loudly and pressed into her as deeply as he could, staying there, motionless as his own climax overtook him. He stayed pressed deep inside her, her body crushed between him and the boulder, the rough granite ungiving and solid against her back. She put her arms around him, gently rubbing over the deep scratches she’d left on his shoulders. Both of them were breathless, hearts pounding. He held her close and buried his face against the side of her neck. She closed her eyes and relished the feel of him near her, inside her.

  When she did, she had a flash of memory. Of being taken in this same spot, on another night, rough ground beneath her body, dark sky overhead. Except the man she loved wasn’t in control, and he was hurting her. He didn’t mean to. She knew that. But he was hurting her and he was too far gone to realize it.

  She opened her eyes and took a shaky breath. She looked at Calder, who had gone pale.

  He met her eyes and gently stepped away, lowering her to the ground. He raised a shaky hand and ran it through his hair, shame in his eyes.

  Shame that wasn’t his own. It hit Sophie, the realization of what had just happened.

  “You saw it too?” she whispered.

  He looked at her in surprise, then gave a terse nod.

  She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly freezing. “It wasn’t you,” she said.

  “Fucking Luc,” he muttered. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Is this the first time that happened to you?” she whispered, almost afraid to hear his answer.

  He shook his head. “This is the fourth time.”

  Her stomach sank, and she felt like she was going to puke.

  “The first time, I was standing outside your house,” he said, looking toward the falls, as if he was unable to meet her eyes. “It all seemed normal one second, and then the next, I had this… memory, or whatever, of setting the fieldstone for the chimney and fireplace.”

  Sophie bit her lip. She was on the verge of tears again. “And the second time?”

  He closed his eyes. “The second time, I saw Migisi and her daughter, sitting in front of the cottage. The third time, I thought I was cursed again.”

  She went to him and wrapped her arms around him, and Calder continued. “It was the day after the pack trial. I’d gone out to talk to Bryce.”

  Soph
ie nodded. She remembered auguring with him, telling him to stay in bed and rest awhile to heal from all of his injuries, and he’d refused.

  “I stepped into the woods near here. Just the edge. And I had this memory of trying to bash my way into your house, out of my mind with rage, determined to get to you. I didn’t know if I wanted to kill you or mate you,” he added. “It was a lot like that first night, not too long after you came back to Copper Falls, full moon, when you put up wards to protect yourself from me.”

  Sophie nodded, remembering that terrifying night.

  “Except that even at my worst, I never had any desire to kill you. Ever. And this time, it wasn’t you. A woman and a little girl sat outside, near a fire. The girl watched me with these big, terrified eyes. The woman wouldn’t look at me, and I wanted to rip her apart, just as much as I wanted to mount her.”

  Sophie took a shaky breath, and Calder rubbed his hand up and down her back. “This is the third time it happened to me,” she whispered. “Twice, they were just little flashes, so quick it was easy to dismiss them. The first time, I was at the house of those three witch sisters. The ones who raised Claire,” she added, and he nodded. “I was standing in front of their house, and I looked at the porch. There was a horse and buggy nearby. And a little girl sat on the steps. She was crying so hard, but she looked at me with such anger, such hatred in her eyes…” she blinked back tears at the memory of the way she’d felt in that moment, as if she was losing everything.

  Calder didn’t say anything for several long moments, just standing there holding her.

  “This theory the witches had, that we’re them, reborn… maybe they were right?”

  “Esme doesn’t think so,” she said. “She knew Migisi better than the sisters did, even if it was from afar.”

  “I know. But maybe she’s wrong. And maybe she’s seeing what she wants to see.”

  Sophie backed up and looked up at him. “I don’t want to be her. I want to be myself.”

  “Yeah, so do I. But how else do you explain that we’re both here, now, having memories that don’t belong to us?”

  Sophie clamped her mouth shut.

  “There has to be another explanation,” she said after a while.

  “Or the witch was right, and we’re here, reliving all of this shit again. Maybe the idea is that we’re supposed to get it right this time.”

  Sophie shook her head. “I am not Migisi.”

  Calder didn’t answer.

  “Come on. Do you feel like a French fur trader?” she demanded.

  “I feel like a shifter, cursed by a witch, who’s in love with a Shadow witch while we both fight to keep each other safe. Lots of similarities there, kitten.”

  “I’m not her,” she said flatly. She took a breath. “Let’s go talk to the sisters. Tell them what we’ve experienced. I know they think we’re them, but maybe they can give us some idea of what else this could be. Or tell us exactly how it would be possible for Migisi to make herself come back, and Luc too. I don’t think she did. She was talking in her journals about a descendant,” she said, repeating what she’d told the sisters. “Not herself.”

  He shrugged. “But we don’t know exactly what happened at the end, do we?”

  “No. I wish we did.”

  “Me too.”

  Sophie pulled her pajama pants and top back on, and then took Calder’s hand. They stopped back at their cottage, where Esme was still sound asleep. Calder quickly pulled on some clothes, and then they witchwalked to the sisters’ house in the woods.

  They appeared in the woods across from the witches’ house.

  “You know what doesn’t make sense to me?” Calder asked as they looked at the house. The lights were on. Sophie was glad the witches weren’t late sleepers.

  “What?”

  “Why now? I mean, I just started having these flashes in the last few weeks.”

  “Me too,” she said.

  “You’d think we’d have been having them all along,” he said as he took her hand and they crossed the narrow road to the witches’ house.

  “You’d think so. Especially if we were them reborn,” Sophie said.

  “Something triggered us having these memories, no matter who we are.”

  Sophie nodded in agreement, and then she and Calder both went still in the same instant.

  “Fucker,” Calder growled, shifting before her eyes. Both she and Calder ran for the house. When they burst in, it was to see the living room in chaos, furniture tossed about, Patti, the Light sister, too still in one of the corners. Another of the Shadow sisters was doing her best to throw any object she could get her hands on at a figure in the center of the room.

  All it took was one glimpse of the black trench coat, the burly frame, and Sophie was nearly overflowing with rage. She let her power loose, and Calder charged at Marshall in the same moment. He was forced to let go of the third sister, who slumped to the floor in a heap, and he laughed.

  “Oh. How sweet,” he said in that smooth, calm voice of his. “The couple who fights together… how does it go?”

  Calder was just about to slam into him when Marshall gave a wave of his hand and Calder went flying across the room, crashing through a wall and into the room beyond.

  “Oh, that’s right: the couple who fights together dies together,” Marshall said with a smile. “How’s it going, kitten?”

  Sophie sneered and focused her power, squeezing his throat the way Esme had tried to teach her. This was a hell of a time to really put it into practice, but all she knew was that she wanted his voice to stop. She wanted his eyes to stop looking at her, and she wanted to make sure she never, ever saw him again. He went silent, and a look of panicked shock washed over his face.

  Yes.

  Shadow rose, and Sophie tightened her hand. Marshall’s eyes started to roll back, and Calder roared back into the room. Marshall managed to get his hand up, and it was Sophie’s turn to get smashed back into the kitchen wall. Marshall bent, trying to catch his breath, just as Calder leapt at him. He wasn’t ready for it, still gasping for breath, and Calder’s claws raked down Marshall’s face. Sophie staggered back up and reached out again. The murderous look he gave Calder only strengthened her resolve. She reached out, focused her Shadow magic. She could see him, Marshall the way he truly was, his essence black and sticky as tar, oily and unclean. Vile. She focused, and listened to his heart.

  There.

  She made a squeezing motion with her raised hand, and he started heaving for breath, clutching his chest.

  He was fading. This was working.

  Calder jumped at him again.

  At the last second, Marshall disappeared, and Calder ended up leaping at nothing. He gave an angry roar when he realized what had happened.

  Sophie looked around the room. The sister Marshall had been draining lay on the floor where he’d tossed her, limp, pale, her neck at an awkward angle. Patti had gained consciousness and was screaming, crawling across the room to her sister. The other one was rocking back and forth, a keening wail issuing from her that chilled Sophie to her very core.

  Before she knew what she was doing, she’d made her way across the room and knelt beside Patti, looking down at the Shadow sister.

  “Charlotte,” Patti wept. “He killed her.”

  Sophie closed her eyes and focused, not knowing what she was looking for, but determined to see if there was anything to be found. She felt Calder behind her, saw the Light emanating from both Patti and him, brighter now so soon after he’d used his shifter powers. The other Shadow sister looked like a writhing gray ghost to her sight. And the one Marshall had drained, Charlotte, lay still, almost devoid of power.

  Almost.

  There was something there. A speck. Hardly anything. Sophie focused on that speck of Shadow magic, holding it, drawing it close before it could fully leave Charlotte’s body.

  She heard Patti ask something, and Calder gently shush her.

  Sophie focused harder, letting S
hadow wash through her completely. Before, when she’d had Light magic, she’d made soaps and lotions, imbued with a little bit of the Light. It was why her customers loved her products so much. She’d forced magic into those items.

  Before she realised what she was doing, she did the same with Charlotte, focusing on that little speck of Shadow, pushing more power, willing it to grow, to become more. Not sacrificing her own power to give Charlotte more, but making what was in Charlotte stronger, better, fuller.

  She’d never pulled this much Shadow magic before. Whether it was desperation or adrenaline, she couldn’t say. All she knew was that that little speck of Shadow was more than that now, that Shadow was beginning to flow through Charlotte’s body. Not Sophie’s magic, but Charlotte’s, which looked to Sophie like black spider webs. She heard Charlotte gasp loudly and she drew back. Charlotte opened her eyes, still gasping for breath.

  Sophie could barely breathe with Shadow coursing through her, filling her with rage and the lust for power and destruction that Migisi had written about. Even in healing, there was a lust for power, for proving that she could do what everyone told her she couldn’t.

  You don’t heal with Shadow. But she had, and it hadn’t felt anywhere near as good as it had felt to squeeze Marshall’s heart, to feel his life force fading slowly from his body. Even the memory of it had her blood racing. She could feel, right then, just how easy it would be to give herself to this. It felt like being invincible, like being God and the Devil and wielding the might of nature all at once.

  She swallowed, then ran to the nearby bathroom and bent over the toilet, heaving, eyes streaming tears, her entire body shaking.

  Almost instantly, Calder was behind her, gathering her hair into his hands and holding it back from her face. He stood there, murmuring nonsense meant to comfort her. Every time she thought she was okay, she heaved again. Her stomach hurt, her ribs hurt, and her throat was raw.

  When she finally rose, she couldn’t look at him. He was still naked after shifting back. He’d closed the bathroom door behind them, giving them some privacy as Sophie got herself back together. She turned on the faucet and cupped water in her hand, then swished out her mouth several times. Calder spotted mouthwash on the counter and poured her a bit, and she swished.