A Soul So Wicked (Moon Chasers)
Page 1
THE MOON CHASERS ENCHANT!
“Sharie Kohler will grab you by the throat and hold you enthralled.”
—New York Times bestselling author Lara Adrian
“A thrilling series.”
—Fresh Fiction
“You are in for a treat. The world is dark and dangerous, and the characters are filled with edgy sexual tension.”
—Romantic Times
“Sharie Kohler knows how to deliver a riveting plot, steeped with sultry sexual tension and unforgettable love scenes between an irresistible hero and heroine—outstanding paranormal romance.”
—New York Times bestselling author Kresley Cole
“Sparks fly and the attraction sizzles.”
—Darque Reviews
“Ms. Kohler’s titles are for the keeper shelf!”
—Night Owl Reviews
“Heated passion, fast-paced action, and a world of werewolves you never knew existed.”
—Bestselling author Robin T. Popp
Thank you for purchasing this Pocket Books eBook.
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Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Epilogue
About Sharie Kohler
To Jared, for loving this series.
And because I love you…
PROLOGUE
70 AD
Pain shuddered through her body, as steady and unrelenting as the ocean waves that had pounded the shores of her girlhood home. How she longed for those days of innocence now. Pain-free days when she floated through life beneath anyone’s notice. Before this.
She swallowed and fought back against the rolling tide of nausea. Forcing her eyes open, she flattened her hands on the floor and tried to lift her head, but the boot at the center of her back held her pinned.
She shook the dark hair from her eyes, gasping as the heel ground into her spine. Her head dropped back down; her cheek crushed into the gritty floor.
Her eyes wide and aching, too terrified too weep, she stretched her arm across the packed-dirt floor for her husband, desperate to reach him.
Like a circling vulture, Lord Marshan walked lazily about Michel, his fine boots, polished to a high shine, thudding with each step.
She looked up at his face. He used a handkerchief to dab at the bloody scratches she’d left on his cheek.
“I don’t ask much from my people,” he murmured, his voice deceptively gentle as he spread his arms wide with a flourish. “I’m known throughout this land for my generosity.” He stopped an inch from Michel’s head, his cold stare fixed down on her. “Respect. Loyalty. Obedience.” His lips curled back from his teeth.
His dead eyes. The menace of that sneer. She felt her fate settle like a noose about her neck.
Now the tears came, rolling silently.
This was her fault. She had done this. She had put her family in danger. She choked back a sob and strained, still trying to reach her husband, frantic to touch him, as though she might somehow protect him with the merest brush of her hand.
Michel’s head moved in the barest shake. What was he trying to convey? That she shouldn’t move? Shouldn’t speak?
Her grandmother wept in the corner, tears flowing down the weathered lines of her face as she pleaded, “Please, my lord! We meant no disrespect.”
Marshan sent her a scathing glance and sighed, motioning to one of his men with a flick of his fingers. “Silence the hag, would you?”
One of the soldiers pulled back his fist and struck Grandmère. She slumped where she had huddled by the hearth, her small body as limp as a rag doll.
Tresa had denied Marshan what he wanted: her. She swallowed against the bitter scald of tears. He was lord and master. No one refused him. She should have just let him have his way and said nothing to Michel. It would be over and done with by now, and her family would be safe.
Only she had resisted his every overture for months now. When he’d come this afternoon and tried to collect more than his wife’s herbs from her, she’d fought him. Struck him as if he were the lowliest peasant.
She closed her eyes in agony, reliving the moment when Michel and Grandmère had returned, walking in on Marshan as he shoved her down to the bed, tearing the clothes from her body.
If she hadn’t fought, he would have been finished with her and gone. Instead Michel had attacked him. This was all her fault.
“Please,” she begged. “I’m sorry. I’ll do whatever you ask.”
“Tresa,” Michel admonished from where he lay in a broken heap, his voice a sharp rasp.
“Please, what?” Marshan bent and leveled his gaze on her. “Forget the fact that this peasant laid his filthy hands on me?” He swung his gaze to Michel. “Did you think you could touch me, carpenter?” He pulled back his leg and kicked her husband in the face.
She screamed at the crunch of bone, at the spurt of blood from his nose. Michel moaned, spitting out blood.
“He was just defending me,” she cried out, struggling against the boot holding her in place.
“Defending you? And what are you, sorceress?”
She winced. There was far too much truth in the accusation.
Marshan whirled around and shoved the soldier off her. He pulled her up by her hair and shook her, his grip so tight she was surprised the strands didn’t rip clean from her scalp. “How many innocents have you killed with your potions and wicked spells?”
She whimpered, grabbing his hand that gripped a fistful of hair. “I only heal,” she panted. “Even your wife uses my poultices. Ask her!”
“What was that, witch?” He pushed his face closer to hers. So close she could smell the rancid garlic on his breath. “A threat against my lady wife?”
Icy dread washed over her. “No! I did not say that!”
He scanned the room, looking at each of his soldiers. “Did you hear that, men? Your queen has been threatened.” He returned his gaze to her, and the absolute evil there wrapped her in its embrace.
“Burn the house,” he announced in a calm voice, as if he were requesting lamb for dinner. His gaze flicked to her husband and grandmother. “Leave them in it.”
“No!” She surged wildly from his grip with no thought to the strands that tore from her scalp. Michel and Grandmère were in no condition to save themselves. Not that they could defend themselves against Marshan and his knights even when able-bodied. There were simply too many of them.
She stomped down on Marshan’s foot and his grip loosened. For a brief moment she reached Michel, held his battered face in her hands. Her vision blurred, overrun with tears. She flexed her fingers against his ravaged face, savoring, memorizing the
feel of him. Blinking fiercely, she whispered frantic words of love… apologies… farewell…
He shook his head at her, his dark eyes so full of pain and anguish. He covered her hand against his cheek with one of his work-roughened ones as though he could keep hold of her there against him. The gesture felt so tender and sweetly familiar that it made her chest ache, knowing this was the last time she would ever have that.
A knight grabbed her and started to pull her away. She lurched forward and pressed a final kiss to Michel’s lips.
The knight came for her again, ready to tear her away, and something swelled inside her. The old frightening, overwhelming energy expanded from deep in her core. Her muscles buzzed from the power of it. She hadn’t felt it in years. Not since childhood. Not since she’d learned to suppress it. To ignore it. Fight it.
The moment before he reached her, his body lifted off the ground and launched through the air. He landed with a crash across the room. Everyone looked from him to her, their expressions a mixture of wonder and horror.
Her chest heaved with violent breaths. And then they were on her, too many to fight. Even if she could use her power, it was a wild, elusive thing. Impossible to control, to summon. She didn’t know how to harness it. She’d only ever denied it.
Still, she struggled, her feet thrashing off the ground as she watched Marshan’s men lift the candles off her table and hold them to the curtain surrounding her bed. One soldier stood on a stool and lit the thatched rooftop. It immediately caught fire and sparks popped and rained down on them.
“Want us to leave her in here, too, my lord?”
“She’s a witch,” Marshan announced, his words as cold and unfeeling as his gaze. “Witches are drowned.”
The words shot ice down her spine. It was the fate her parents and Grandmère had always feared for her. Why they had taught her to deny her gift.
Michel moaned and tried to stand, but a soldier kicked him back to the ground. Tresa tried to use her feet as she was dragged out of the house without her family.
“Michel!” She strained for a glimpse of him as she was carried away. Thick smoke already filled the cottage. Outside, the acrid smell hung thick, mingling with the aroma of wood fire and the villagers’ brewing stews and baking breads.
In the fading light of dusk, a crowd gathered to watch, their faces cast in the red glow as they forgot about their dinners. None moved to help as she was dragged through the village and toward the river in her torn dress, parts of her exposed to every man’s greedy eye.
Villagers trailed them. From somewhere in the crowd the cry of witch was taken up. She looked back toward the village, obscured now by a thick veil of trees. A dark, winding snake of smoke stretched into the sky. Even from the river, the sharp smell of her burning cottage filled her nose. It was all she could see in her mind. Michel. Grandmère.
At the river’s edge, heavy chains were hastily wrapped around her. Several bone-breaking stones hung from the ends, weighing the chains so that they cut into her flesh.
She heard Marshan’s voice over the crowd, pronouncing her guilty of various crimes, but she could only stare numbly at the sky, the dark curling serpent of smoke reaching high.
She lifted her face and closed her eyes. Michel, I love you.
A sudden warm breeze washed over her. She opened her eyes, watching as a dark shadow wended its way through the crowd toward her, ribboning through all the oblivious spectators. Over and around bodies, like a lover’s hand, it slid toward her.
It wasn’t the first time shadows had visited her. Ever since she was a girl and had become aware of her gift—her ability to move things with just a thought—the shadows had plagued her. Tempting her, offering her promises of power and eternal life in exchange for her soul.
She’d resisted the demons’ dark lure, discovering that the more she suppressed her magic, the less they appeared to tempt her.
Despair twisted inside her heart. For all her efforts, Michel and Grandmère were dead, their flesh and blood reducing to ashes as she stood waiting for her murder at the river’s edge.
Marshan’s men shoved her forward. The shadow reached her just as her feet met the water.
“Be gone, demon,” she hissed, wincing at the cold water lapping her toes.
The demon ignored her, wrapping around her like a warm blanket, seductively soothing. Its guttural voice curled enticingly in her ear.
Wouldn’t you like to make him pay? Make him suffer for Michel’s death… make him know Michel’s pain? Your pain…
She shook her head, her hair tossing wildly. In her mind, she heard Grandmère’s voice as she had all her life, warning her to resist the shadows.
“No!” she shouted, denying more than this demon. Denying her death, the death of her family—the loss of everything that mattered in her world.
A pair of soldiers dragged her out deeper into the water, until her feet couldn’t touch. The only thing keeping her afloat was their hard hands. The weight of the chains pulled on her bones, sucked her body down.
And what of your grandmother? Did her old, tired bones deserve the fire? She woke, you know. At the first lick of flames. Marshan should pay. He shouldn’t be allowed to live on to inflict further pain.
The demon’s words arrowed straight to her bleeding heart.
Her chin bobbed at the water’s surface. With the weight of chains and stones, she’d sink right down. Plunge in this very spot to a watery grave.
Water slapped against her lips. “Please,” she sobbed, but she was no longer sure who she was begging. Marshan and his men? Or the demon propositioning her?
The hands released her and she sank with the demon’s voice a whispery coax in her ear.
Come, Tresa… don’t let your death go unavenged.
The air left her in the roar of a thousand bubbles, and then there was no more. Cold, brackish water rushed inside her mouth and nose, filling her lungs. The water was dark. Her eyes could see nothing as she thrashed, desperate for air, for freedom. Life.
Come, Tresa. Avenge Michel…
Her lungs burned. Spots flashed before her eyes, brightening her dark, dying world.
Avenge Michel…
The words spun dizzily in her head, eclipsing all else. Marshan had to pay. This was her only thought as her hair rippled like silky seaweed around her.
Suddenly the words formed in her head, exploding free.
Curse Marshan! Make him pay. Make him pay and I am yours. Demon, I am yours…
ONE
The only beautiful thing in the world whose beauty lasts forever is a pure, fair soul.
—Bram Stoker
PRESENT DAY
Darius’s footsteps echoed off the silent street. The waning moon gleamed down, casting the dark street in a pearly glow. He inhaled, glad that he didn’t need to worry about another full moon for nearly a month. He hated losing those three nights, putting his mission on pause, but he could do nothing about it.
At least not yet.
For now, this was the life he lived. As much as he despised it, he could only make the best of it. That’s what he had been doing, but finally he was close. After all these years, the witch would evade him no longer. He’d have her—and an end to the curse.
He stopped before the narrow brick town house and double-checked the slip of paper in his pocket to make sure he was at the right place. He couldn’t very well meet with the FBI analyst in her field office, but he was surprised she’d given him her home address. He could be anyone… a dangerous man. A beast. There were all manner of predators in this world.
He pushed the buzzer and waited. A yippy dog inside immediately started up a frenzy of barking. Through the blurry stained-glass front door he watched the vague shape of a female appear, scooping up the dog in her arms. A pile of dark hair bobbed on top of her head as she approached.
She unbolted the door and peered at him over the wide rims of her glasses. “Darius?”
He nodded. “Anna Posner?”
Satisfied, she undid the flimsy chain and motioned him inside. The fluffy white dog growled low in its throat, shaking uncontrollably in its mistress’s arms.
“Hush, Lacy.” She sent Darius an apologetic look as she patted the dog’s head. “She’s usually very friendly.”
“No problem.” The dog had good instincts. It recognized him for what he was. The same could not be said for Anna Posner.
They lingered in the small foyer. The analyst stared at him with a rather transfixed expression on her face… as if she’d never had a man in her home before and didn’t quite know what to do. He eyed her baggy sweatshirt and sweatpants that hid any hint of her gender.
“Do you have the information I need?” he asked, eager to get what he came for and leave. He wasn’t one for banter.
She blinked, straightening to all of her diminutive height. “Uh. Yes. Sure. Wasn’t easy, of course. A first name and the little description you provided isn’t much to go on… especially as off the grid as this woman happens to be.”
Of course she was off the grid, or he would have found her sooner. “So you located her?”
“Naturally.” She blinked like he’d asked the silliest of questions. “That’s what I do.” She gestured for him to follow her.
He trailed her a few feet down the corridor into her home office. She immediately took a seat at her desk, behind her computer, setting her growling dog in her lap. She tapped at a few keys with rapid-fire speed.
“I think this is her…” The printer began spitting out a sheet of paper, which she pulled out and handed to him.