Light's Shadow (Copper Falls Book 3)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  Sophie cast another spell while he was distracted, but he swatted it away as if it was nothing more than an annoying fly.

  Sophie watched Esme and Marshall. She could see Esme’s Shadow magic growing, as if she was about to cast a spell, but then it just kind of fizzled out.

  Marshall laughed again, then turned his attention back to Sophie. He gave her that same disgusting, oily smile she’d seen so many times in her nightmares. “This was very convenient, coming to me like this.”

  “Together,” she told Esme, and she could see Esme trying, but the same thing happened. Sophie’s spell hit him, at least, knocking Marshall back into the house, even as Esme’s fizzled.

  “I can’t,” Esme whispered in terror.

  “What?”

  “A life for a life,” Marshall said, picking himself up as if Sophie’s spell had been nothing. “A life for a life. Was Luc’s life really worth all this? Your life is far from over, and I own you,” he said to Esme.

  “But Luc’s dead!” Esme shouted.

  “Not at my hand,” Marshall said with a vile grin. “Should have read the fine print, you pathetic bitch.”

  Sophie attacked him again, and this time, her choking spell took. He was distracted, taunting Esme. She choked fast, hard, determined to squeeze the air from his lungs. After a moment, he swatted her back, and she crashed into a maple tree behind her.

  “Kinky, sweetness. I like it. Though I’m usually the one who gets to do the choking.”

  Sophie struck out as hard as she could, drawing on Shadow, commanding it to strike him hard. And it came. It heeded her call, and Marshall’s body was slammed hard into the side of his house.

  The battle started in earnest, and soon the forest was a cacophony of crashes, grunts, screams, and taunts. The air around them was thick with magic, and the trees began to wilt in its unbridled, uncontrolled presence. “All right. Play time is over, kitten.”

  She felt his power slam into her, felt her lungs and heart all being squeezed at the same time.

  “The fuck is that?” he muttered. He laughed. “Oh. How sweet.”

  And then she felt his magic squeezing her uterus, hard, tight, and she screamed, panicking, readying a spell to throw him back, to shield herself, anything to ensure he couldn’t hurt the main thing she was fighting for. She tried, and failed, tried, and failed, her fear and panic making the spell fall apart almost as quickly as she formed it.

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, something blurred past her and rammed into Marshall with the strength of a freight train. She felt the squeezing stop as he flew backward, into dense tangle of shrubbery. Sophie took a deep breath and looked around, expecting to see that the wolves had joined the battle. Instead, Merlin stood there, glaring in Marshall’s direction. Marshall pulled himself up and even before she was fully on her feet, she felt the squeezing sensation again, but just as she raised her hands to fight him back, another blur shot out of the forest and struck him. And when he stumbled back, another rammed into his legs from behind, sending him sprawling to the ground.

  “I’m so close. I’m not doing this again,” Marshall wheezed. Before he could ready another spell, Sophie lifted her hand and threw everything she had at him, forcing his magic away from her as she threw him as hard as she could up into a dead oak, and watched almost in horror as one of the lower branches impaled him as he landed.

  He screamed in agony, and the forest went still. Then there was nothing but a low, hoarse laugh. The brittle branch began to crack immediately under his weight, and he plummeted, branch and all, to the ground. Sophie moved, making sure she kept him in her sights, and attacked him again as he stood, swaying, shaking, trying to remove the branch from his body. Blood poured down his skin and bled into the forest floor. She went to work on his heart again, and he swatted her away with a snarl.

  “Esme! Attack her,” Marshall shouted as he wrestled with the branch. It wouldn’t kill him, Sophie realized as she looked back and forth between Marshall and Esme. Esme looked like she was in pain, like she was fighting a battle Sophie couldn’t see.

  “That’s a command,” Marshall growled, and Esme held her hands up.

  “I’m sorry,” Esme said, and she threw Sophie up into the air. Sophie landed hard, curling around herself, trying to do whatever she could to cushion the fall, to protect the tiny life inside her.

  “Again,” Marshall said. Sophie looked up at him just in time to see him wrench the branch out of his body with a scream, and then she felt the full force of Esme’s spell hit her in the chest. Her breath left her, and she struggled to breathe.

  “I can’t disobey,” Esme said, and as Sophie started to regain her breath, she saw that Esme was crying. “I can’t. I’m trying.”

  “I know,” Sophie whispered. She’d been under Marshall’s power before. There was no resisting it.”

  Esme glared toward Marshall. “You fucking pussy,” she screamed. “You want her dead so bad? Kill her yourself.”

  Marshall laughed. “Hit her again,” he told Esme, and in the next instant, Sophie felt another spine crushing wave of magic hit her.

  “This is your fight. Not mine,” Esme said. Her voice was full of rage. Hatred.

  “My fights are your fights. It was really helpful of the shifter asshole to have you babysitting her all this time. Getting close to her. Getting her to trust you. Bunch of fucking amateurs. Don’t you know there’s no such thing as trust? That anyone and anything is a tool to be used against you?”

  Sophie struggled to stand. “Not everyone is like you,” she said, and unleashed a torrent of magic at Marshall, directing it right at the wound through his stomach. He screamed in agony and bent over, trying to shield the wound from more of her attacks.

  “Take my power,” Esme whispered.

  “What? No,” Sophie said, glaring at her.

  “Take it, you stubborn bitch, or he’s going to keep using it against you.”

  Sophie shook her head, and Marshall laughed. Sophie readied another spell and watched the warlock. He was pale. Bleeding. His flesh looked almost like paper.

  “Hit her again,” he told Esme calmly. “End her this time.”

  “Take it, Sophie,” Esme screamed. Sophie put up a defensive shield, and the spell Esme threw at her bounced off of it. As did the next two. Sophie’s shield finally broke.

  “You’re worthless,” Marshall spat toward Esme, who was on her knees. He knocked Sophie aside, and her head hit the trunk of a tree, hard. Her vision started going dark around the edges, and as she watched, Marshall started pulling Esme’s power from her.

  “No,” Sophie whispered. “No.” She focused all of her magic on him and stopped his heart cold, knowing she had to act quickly to keep him from killing Esme. He stumbled and fell, and Esme lay still on the ground.

  Marshall fought her power back and she hit him again, and again, and again, and every spell he threw at her hit her defensive wards and fell to nothing. She stumbled over to Esme, determined to protect her from any more of his attacks. Here, behind Sophie’s wards, Esme would be safe.

  Every spell she cast, even the ones that would have killed a normal person, he was able to turn aside eventually. She tried siphoning his power from him, and he resisted.

  “Can’t trick me with that one again, kitten,” he said hoarsely. The battle was costing him. He aged more every minute. All she had to do was keep fighting.

  She didn’t know where the thought came from, but it came, and she answered. “Help me, Migisi,” she murmured.

  At once, it was as if the very earth itself rose up, filled her with strength, revitalized her. The goats darted back and forth, as if readying themselves, should he directly attack the Light within her again. She heard howls and growls in the distance. The pack was on its way.

  Too many possible victims. She knew they were coming to help her. But she knew Marshall too well: he would use them against her, his own particular twisted brand of torture.

  She needed to end it before they got h
ere.

  She opened herself up, surrendered herself completely, for the very first time, to Shadow. She felt the magic she’d always suspected was in the land combine with her own, as if the spirits of her ancestors, of Calder’s ancestors, were there with her. It was dark. It was terrifying. But it belonged to her, and she refused to fear it.

  Marshall’s eyes widened, and Sophie could feel him starting to try to leave.

  “Migisi says hello,” Sophie said calmly. And then, full of Shadow, reveling in it, she released it, full force, into Marshall. She was like a volcano erupting, like a hurricane at full strength, like lightning and death and fire, destructive and somehow beautiful in its destruction. Marshall’s screams echoed Sophie’s as she destroyed him, and she felt Calder and the pack arrive behind her. In that moment, she felt everything.

  The pack.

  Esme, barely alive.

  The trees, plants, and animals around her.

  The energy of the falls.

  Two enormous oaks, standing in vigilance near the falls.

  The magic fizzled out, and Sophie slumped to the ground. Calder ran up to her and picked her up immediately, and she looked toward where Marshall had been.

  All that was left were blackened bones, polished smooth as glass by the intensity of Sophie’s magic.

  “He’s gone,” Sophie whispered, burying her face in Calder’s chest. Calder held her tight, and she could feel his heart pounding. “It’s over.”

  “My God, Sophie,” Calder murmured, kissing her forehead, her cheeks, her lips. “I could hear you fighting him… I got your message a few minutes ago… I was scared we were too late.”

  Sophie shook her head. “He would have killed you, just to hurt me. Like he did to Esme—”

  She quickly pulled away from Calder and ran over to Esme, who was lying too still. Not a sound, not a motion.

  “Is she…?” Jon asked, crouching over her. He pressed his fingers to her pulse point and concentrated. “There’s nothing there,” he said sadly.

  “I can try to bring her back,” Sophie said.

  “How, honey? You used everything fighting him,” Calder said gently. Sophie wiped the tears from her eyes and reached out, gently taking Esme’s withered, frail-looking hand in hers.

  “I have to try. Migisi owes her that much, at least.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  November, 1889

  Before the day was through, stories of Migisi and Luc’s demise had spread across the forests, the lakes, the meadows that they had called home.

  They’d died by drowning, walking together into Lake Superior, never to be seen again.

  No, that wasn’t right. They’d killed each other, with knives, fully out of their minds, in the very woods in which they’d lived. Two young Ojibwa warriors saw it, and swore it was so.

  No, no. They’d taken poison, and died in one another’s arms in Luc’s house. A neighbor told anyone who’d listen that he’d found the bodies himself.

  A French fur trader shared that he’d seen them, naked as day, leap from the cliff overlooking Copper Falls.

  No matter how they’d died, the only thing anyone agreed on was that they were gone. All that was left was the eerie feeling that one gets in very old places, as if the spirits of the past were there, watching you, and waiting.

  Living dreams planted in the minds of those who would remember them at just the right time. Not even a difficult spell for someone of Migisi’s power. A safeguard, necessary for keeping the warlock from suspecting what they’d really done. It would buy them time, and protection, and that was all they needed.

  Two oak saplings stood, thin, stretching toward the sun, flanking an enormous boulder beside the falls. If they were left in peace until the next full moon, the magic would hold. After that, not a single being in existence could remove them.

  Thirty-three days later, a band of young warriors returned to their village, with a strange story of two enormous oaks that had not been there a few weeks ago. Their elders laughed it off as youthful fancy, or, more likely, as an error made by young men who thought they knew the land better than they actually did. But the young warriors insisted and several returned to the trees, often staring up at their enormous trunks, at their wide, generous branches, at their vibrant canopies that cast deep shade from summer’s heat just a few months later. How was it possible? The trees, for their part, offered no answer, other than to make the warriors feel safe, and comforted, and it was enough.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Honey, she’s gone,” Calder said, kneeling beside her. Sophie closed her eyes and focused.

  Mostly, she wanted to climb onto Calder’s lap, and tell him about their baby, the baby she’d been so desperate to protect that she’d taken a life, the baby who, after the battle they’d just been through, still lived, safe and strong, her Light living alongside Sophie’s Shadow.

  But Esme had done her best to save her. She’d been a victim of Marshall and his manipulations, and Sophie refused to have another death on her conscience, especially a life that deserved to have a bit of peace and happiness, finally.

  So she pushed aside what she wanted most, and she focused on Esme. She looked and searched, and she started to despair that there was nothing there to find.

  There it was. Just a speck of Shadow magic, already beginning to float away from Esme’s body. It would leave her a hollow shell. It was almost non-existent, but it was enough.

  Sophie focused on that little speck, held Esme’s frail hand in one of her hands, and gestured with her others, fingers moving, coaxing, cajoling. It was a game of tug of war, the magic wanting to escape the body it had inhabited for so long, devoid of life, and Sophie pulling it back, feeding it, comforting it.

  The longer it stayed, the stronger it became.

  Sophie was sweating, the full heat and humidity of the day hitting her. Her body felt broken, exhausted. It all felt a thousand times more intense when she worked with Shadow like this, as if using it opened her up to every emotion, every feeling, every sensation.

  “Why does she look so old?” she heard Jon ask.

  “He must have done something to her. Probably to punish her. Sick bastard,” Calder whispered. “That must have bothered her a lot. She was pretty vain.”

  “Yeah, I noticed,” Jon said. He paused, and then he added, “But she had every reason to be.”

  Sophie felt a smile lift the corner of her mouth, and she kept focusing, cajoling Shadow, making it promises of a long, happy life if it stayed with Esme.

  But she was exhausted. She couldn’t pull that last bit of magic to make it hold.

  “Migisi,” she murmured. “You owe her. You know this.”

  The pack went silent around her, undoubtedly sure she’d lost her mind. After a moment’s hesitation, she felt that same sensation of the very earth around her coming to her aid, heightening her strength. It wasn’t as intense as it had been during her battle against Marshall, but it was enough. She felt Shadow take hold of Esme again, and then it was all about sweetening the deal.

  “Little more,” Sophie murmured, and she swore she could hear someone cursing at her in a lilting tongue. But the power stayed with her, and when she finally opened her eyes, Esme lay there before her, thick red hair shining, skin as flawless as ever, withered bones and flesh now strong and vibrant. She opened her eyes and looked up at Sophie, and they were both silent for a while, both of them acknowledging what they’d been through together, the price they had each paid to be victorious.

  “Very well. You’re not quite the weakling I thought you were,” Esme finally said.

  Sophie laughed and shook her head. “Thanks.”

  Esme smiled. “Thanks. But don’t expect me to start being nice to you.”

  Slowly but surely, the group broke up, going back to where they were supposed to be. The goats darted away, the pack faded into the forest, and Jon went back to Sophie and Calder’s house with Esme to make sure she was okay. Sophie told them to go ahe
ad, telling them she and Calder would join them soon. As soon as they were gone, she took Calder’s hand, and they started walking through the woods, toward the falls.

  “I have something to tell you,” Sophie said.

  “Okay, but first you need to explain why you were talking to Migisi. Because, not gonna lie, that was freaky as hell,” he said.

  Sophie laughed, then shrugged. “It was instinct. I had one of those… memory things or visions or whatever they are back at home. It showed me a few things, and then it showed me this place. It’s hard to explain, but I think it was a message from Migisi. And then when I was fighting him, it became clear that I wasn’t enough, and something told me to call to her. So I did, and the power came, like it surged up through the ground… I know it sounds crazy.”

  Calder shrugged. “You’ve always said like it felt like your ancestors were here, watching over you. Maybe they are. Maybe she is. Maybe all of them are. I know I feel better here than I do anywhere else, even before you came back. This is home.”

  Sophie nodded. Then she smiled. “Thanks for not wanting to have me committed.”

  “Never.” They walked toward the sound of the falls. It was one of the most soothing sounds in the world, as far as Sophie was concerned. They walked along the stream, toward their boulder, the place where he’d first kissed her, where they’d sat as teenagers and kissed and confided in one another, the two enormous oak trees that flanked it giving the area an aura of secrecy and protection. Sophie hoisted herself up onto the boulder and Calder sat beside her.

  “So what did you want to tell me?” Calder asked.

  Sophie glanced over at him and smiled.

  “I need to ask you something before I tell you,” she said.