Midnight Shadows

by Emerson Knight

  Inside, the Creed’s sanctuary appeared unchanged from my previous visit. The long table with chairs stood next to the far wall. The windowed armoire that held the Aufero stood in the corner, its doors secured by a pair of metal locks.

  We stopped just inside the room and I looked to Sky, anxious for any sign of physical distress. She swallowed and walked four steps toward the armoire, then stopped, testing the curse. Other than the pounding of her heart in her chest, there was no sign of magical attack. After a moment, she took a few more steps and stopped again.

  Still nothing. Her shoulders noticeably dipped as it became apparent that the curse had been lifted. As she walked forward in earnest, an orange-black glow appeared within the armoire as the Aufero sensed her presence. With increased proximity, the glow brightened and began to pulse. The armoire began to rock and vibrate. When Sky was just a few feet away, the glass doors shattered as the orb burst through, flying straight to her. She gasped as she caught it at her chest, then quickly stored it in her bag.

  As we emerged into the narrow alley behind the shop, I wondered if we’d caught Marcia by surprise after all. Sebastian’s SUV waited, but the engine was off and he wasn’t in sight. Sniffing the air, I sensed a sudden atmospheric shift just before we were struck by a blistering wind. A fierce rain followed, pelting us and cutting our visibility. Thunder rumbled in our ears as a bolt of lightning struck Samuel, driving him back against the wall.

  I glanced to Josh and Sky, but they were untouched. The whites of Josh’s eyes faded to black as he called on his magic.

  A clatter of armor rose in the alley as Liam marched from the west at the head of his royal guard, spears raised. Marcia had been busier than we’d suspected. I wondered what an alliance with the Makellos, the elven elite, had cost her.

  I charged directly at Liam. Recognizing the danger, he slipped behind his line. Leaping over their spears, I latched on to the throat of one soldier and cast him aside, then took down another, wreaking havoc in the line as they compressed to protect Liam.

  Gathered around him, they retreated, warding me off with the tips of their spears as I growled and snarled, looking for an opening. A wave of Samuel’s magic blew past me, ruffling my fur as it struck the elven formation. A gap appeared, revealing the Elysian twins.

  The gap in the elven line also left Liam vulnerable. As much as I wanted to kill him, I turned my attention to the more immediate threat. I charged into the gap, racing toward the twins. Just before a soldier intercepted me, his spear discarded for a sword, the female twin flung electricity toward the shop. I heard Samuel cry out.

  Two more soldiers joined the first. Slipping behind one soldier’s guard, I nipped his ankle to bring him down. Lunging for his throat, I was forced to turn aside to avoid another soldier’s spear. The blade grazed my fur, drawing blood.

  Marcia appeared between the twins, an invocation on her lips. At her gesture, rain turned to a punishing hail. Fist-sized balls of ice pummeled my sides and head, driving me back toward the Sky and Josh.

  Where is Sebastian? Had Liam caught them by surprise before we’d emerged from the shop?

  Squinting through the storm, I saw the rest of the Creed appear behind Marcia, gesticulating in unison.

  The shimmer of Josh’s protective field materialized in front of me, shielding me from the storm. I glanced back to see Josh working his magic to strengthen the field while Sky stood next to him. Behind them, Samuel struggled to his feet.

  A sudden flash of light blinded me. Hail pummeled me once more, indicating that Josh’s field had collapsed. Just as my sight cleared, a new field appeared, stronger than the first. Despite the combined power of Josh and Samuel, the field wavered beneath the full weight of the Creed’s magic. Sparks glittered and burst along the translucent barrier as it was pummeled by hail, lightning, fire, and bolts of energy.

  It was only a matter of time before Josh and Samuel were overwhelmed, and Sebastian was nowhere in sight. I couldn’t believe that Marcia, even with Liam’s help, could defeat the pack.

  Glaring through the field, I bared my teeth at Marcia and growled. Once the field collapsed, she would be my first target. I’d kill her and as many of the witches as I could, buying time for Josh and Sky to escape.

  Sebastian, in wolf form, appeared charging from the east end of the alley. Gavin, Winter, and Marko, in human form, followed. As they struck Liam’s guard, Sebastian burst through their line to crash into the elven twins, tearing them apart. The lightning strikes ceased, but the Creed continued to pummel the field. Ignoring the chaos behind her, Marcia confidently walked toward me. A knife was in her hand, the knife she’d used to cast the peace spell on Samuel.

  The field buckled, showering us both in gold and purple sparks. Before I could leap, an elven soldier thrust a spear at me, driving me back. Snapping and snarling, I tried to get past his guard, but the elf was determined, and skilled.

  Behind him, I saw Samuel raise a hand to Marcia, the start of an invocation on his lips, then hesitate. His face darkened. He took awkward, spastic steps backward, as if propelled against his will, until he stumbled into the wall and remained there.

  The peace spell.

  Marcia acknowledged his plight with a twisted smile as she continued toward Sky. Taking one step back, Sky reached into her bag and drew out the glowing Aufero. A powerful field formed around her, only to fall a moment later from the combined invocation of the Creed.

  Marcia gasped as the knife leapt from her hand to Josh’s. Raising it, he charged. With a wave of her hand, he was flung back against the wall and pinned there. His eyes melted into black as he called upon his most powerful magic to free himself.

  A contest of magic followed, spells and counterspells, as Josh tried to free himself. But Marcia had the advantage. The Creed beside her, they locked hands, combining their power.

  I growled in frustration, unable to break from my fight to help him.

  Marcia raised one finger, her attention fixed on the knife in Josh’s hand as it slowly began to rise toward his throat. Grunting, panting, he strained for self-control. His hand shook violently, but continued rising until the blade cut the skin of his throat like paper.

  I pivoted, trying to put the soldier off balance to dash around him. The tip of his spear sliced my right hip, forcing me to spin around to avoid a deeper cut.

  Josh released a fierce, primitive roar that struck the witches like a shock wave. All but Marcia tumbled to the concrete. She screamed at the now knife embedded in her arm and fell to her knees.

  The Creed vanished.

  Struck by the fringe of Josh’s shock wave, the elven soldier lost his balance. I clamped my jaws around his throat and shook. Bones crunched and the soldier’s body went limp. I dropped it and ran back to Josh and Sky, relieved to find them safe. He remained lost in his rage, blasting magic at the few remaining soldiers in the alley.

  Samuel nodded to me and moved closer to Sky.

  The battle was nearly over. Steven and the rest of the pack had come in from the west, attacking the elves from behind. Liam had disappeared and most of his soldiers were dead, but the survivors were putting up a valiant fight. As Winter swung her katana, I saw a soldier slip in behind her, raise his spear. I struck him from the side, knocking the spear from his hands as I took him to the ground and tore out his throat.

  “Skylar!” Gavin shouted.

  The urgency in his voice turned me around just in time to see Samuel wrap an arm around her waist. They disappeared.

  CHAPTER 20

  Josh had only just realized that Sky was gone when I changed into human form.

  “Where did they go?” I demanded.

  He spun about, confused.

  “Josh! He transported her. Where?”

  “Not far,” he said. “He’s weakened. He’ll take her somewhere close, where he can rest and get his power back.”

  Sebastian and Winter were at my side, leaving the last of the fight under Steven’s direction.

 
; “I should’ve never trusted him,” I growled.

  Even if they were close, the chances of finding them were slim. Our only hope was that Sky used the Aufero to escape. If she managed to free herself, she’d go somewhere public. If he took her out of the city, she’d look for a major road and follow it until she picked up a ride or found a phone to borrow. The best we could do was split up and hope to get lucky.

  “I’ll take west,” Sebastian said. “Josh, go east. Winter, south. Ethan, north. Go twenty miles out, main roads only, then circle back.”

  On the way to our cars, I told Josh on a hunch, “I’ll take east.”

  The little hope I held of finding Sky faded with each mile. As I drove out of the suburbs to an increasingly barren landscape, I felt a sense of dread. On the few occasions in my life where I’d felt hopeless, I’d always been able to substitute anger; I’d always been able to defy the odds through sheer will. There was nothing I could do now. Sky’s safety was entirely out of my hands, and I felt empty. Powerless.

  I let Samuel get closer to her.

  If she were harmed, I doubted I’d ever recover from the guilt.

  As I drove, my eyes shifted from the road to my phone beside me to the odometer. I was nearly at the twenty-mile mark when I caught a flash of someone on the other side of the road. I slowed, crossed the median.

  Sky raised her arm to shield her eyes from the glare of the headlights. Relief rushed through me as I flicked off the high beams and brought the car to a stop next to her. Looking in her frazzled eyes, I nearly couldn’t breathe.

  The odds were almost impossible.

  Looking inside to be certain it was me, she sighed and opened the door. She practically collapsed into the seat, exhausted, but she appeared unharmed.

  I turned the BMW back toward the city and called Sebastian. The relief in his voice was palpable and nearly matched his surprise.

  We were quiet for a few miles. I couldn’t stop glancing at her, wondering how she’d found me. What was it that made me change directions with Josh?

  “Why did you head east?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “That’s twice.”

  “What?”

  I smiled, watching her expression as she recalled stumbling upon me in New York. She nodded, not sure what to say. She glanced at her bag and a look of concern came over her.

  “Something is wrong with the Aufero. Using it to draw out the dark elf magic seems to have corrupted it, made it darker.”

  I’d seen the change, but there was another possibility: Maya. Logan had warned us that eventually Maya might try to wield more of her power through Sky. “Are you sure it is the magic pulled from me?” Her lips pursed as she considered the possibility, but neither of us had an answer. “For now, don’t use it until we can figure it out.”

  We were quiet, lost in our own thoughts, until I turned into her neighborhood.

  “When did Marcia align with Liam?” Sky asked.

  “I am trying to figure it out. There’s something at hand and I think it is directed toward us.” Whatever they were up to didn’t bode well for the pack.

  As I turned the BMW into her driveway, the headlights swept over a tall figure waiting on her porch. He stood straight, still, his lavender eyes narrowed as he fixated his attention on Sky. Unaware of his presence, she started out of the car.

  “Sky,” I said.

  She paused, gasped when she saw Logan staring at her.

  In removing Sky’s curse, we’d removed his as well. Already, the consequences of our choices had come to haunt me.

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  MIDNIGHT FALLS (SKY BROOKS SERIES BOOK 3)

  Midnight Falls (Sky Brooks Series Book 3) is Sky’s POV and the original storyline.

  Josh stood in the middle of the diaphanous shell. I pressed against parts of it, trying to find a weakness in the barrier, but it held firm. His mocking grin remained as I whispered several words and pressed against the protective field that remained even after three failed attempts. It was the strongest he had ever made. I could feel the strength of the magic he used. Even if I couldn’t feel it, I could see it in the strain on his face. His cerulean eyes turned a shade darker as he called forth stronger magic.

  It wavered; his eyes eclipsed even darker trying to hold it. The words fell freely from my lips and specks of orange and blue flailed in the air, and the wall dropped; the light crystals of its existence dissipated into the air.

  “Very good,” he said softly as he walked to the sofa and dropped onto it.

  Just as I was about to take a seat in the chair across from him, a glass tumbler flew in my direction. My hands quickly flicked in the air and it changed direction, crashing into the door across the room, sending shattered pieces everywhere.

  The exasperated breath made small waves over his lips. “You didn’t have to break it.”

  “You didn’t have to attack me with glassware,” I shot back with a grin.

  The remarkable control Josh had over magic, even when he was fatigued, was impressive Effortlessly, from his seat on the sofa, he gathered the broken glass and cleaned it away without as much as lifting his head from its resting position against the back of the sofa.

  “You’ve improved so much in the last three months,” he said.

  With practice, my ability to control defensive magic now rivaled Josh’s.

  “I think we should try spells again,” I said.

  It was only when he lifted his head and those intense perceptive eyes held mine that I saw the guilt about our shared secret. We were living in this perpetual state of denial and never discussing the source of my magic, which was something we danced around. It was the dirty little secret that we would probably take to our graves. I never admitted that I held on to some of the dark magic that Ethos forced into me as an effort to kill me, and Josh didn’t mention that he knew that when he saved me from it. We had mastered the beautiful art of denial. We never discussed it even after I’d performed a spell and things went terribly wrong.

  I was gifted with the ability to change dark magic to natural and we speculated that I could learn to do the reverse with dark magic. Most days I had convinced myself that I could master it completely, but sometimes I doubted it. It didn’t feel like Josh’s magic, natural, but it wasn’t quite dark and draconian. But it was stolen dark magic. The more I thought I was controlling it, the more the reins of my control seemed to loosen. I often wondered if we were being foolish and naïve to believe that diablerie wasn’t inherently evil and was at the mercy of the one who wielded it.

  “I think we should wait,” he finally responded after giving it a long consideration. His tone held a level of guilt rather than apprehension. Protective fields and defensive magic were easy; they just used a minor amount of magic, leaving the core of it untouched. Performing spells was where you delved into the essence of it, forcing it to react to your command. Casting a spell wasn’t like the other things—they seemed harmless in comparison. Spells changed the dynamics of the world, altering and manipulating things. If done correctly, they were majestic, obliterating any feelings of powerlessness while draining their source, which is why they were hard to do with borrowed magic. But my magic wasn’t borrowed. The source was dead and I had taken it from him.

  He sat up, concentrating on his hands for a long time before he looked around his new place, which he had moved into just a little o
ver a month ago. He brought many of the things from his high-rise condo in the city to his new home; a three-bedroom Art Moderne ranch. I was curious to know what eclectic person decided something so unique, with its odd curves and peculiar design, would not look conspicuous in the Midwest. It did, which was why it was hidden away nearly half an hour from the city. The stainless-steel appliances, expensive hardwood floors, vibrant modern colors, and empire blinds didn’t seem to improve his post-dorm/fraternity house decor, which probably irritated his brother each time he visited. The scarred coffee table fit the oversized microsuede dark blue sofa that was slept on more than sat on. The odd accent chairs must have been a gift because they seemed out of place, and far too traditional for his style. The worn geometric area rug wasn’t worth keeping in his first place, let alone packing and moving somewhere else.

  It was different from his condo that I had loved, but it gave him what he desperately needed—privacy. After we had a few accidents with magic, staying in his condo wasn’t really an option, especially after the homeowners’ association asked via a nicely worded form letter from their attorney that he leave.

  “Do you think we were wrong for keeping some of Ethos’s magic?” he asked softly.

  Oh, I guess we are talking about it now.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But look how far I’ve come in just a few months. Imagine how much control I will have in a few more.” My denegation seemed far more convincing than I felt about it.

  He took his time responding. “Maybe we should go back to the way we were. Just get rid of the dark magic and I go back to loaning you mine.”

  I shook my head. “Loaning it makes you weaker. Why do that when I can just improve my skills with magic I already have? I can do this, Josh. We can do this. Right now it’s hard, which I am sure it was for you when your strength increased.”