I was watching all right. Or maybe staring. His body was firm, lean. Not too muscular—not in a way that implied he obsessed over going to the gym—but defined and strong. Equally as strong was the heat spreading from my stomach down to my thighs and up to my breasts. I sat back, holding my breath.
His body trembled. Pain etched into his face as his figure blurred. My heart thundered in my ears. I wanted to tell him to stop, but the words remained trapped. Wild vibrations coursed through him.
Then, I heard it.
Several loud pops sounded over a deep growl. He hunched over as his skin forced his body smaller. His spine protruded against a thin layer of flesh. At the sound of bones crushing, I dug my nails into the couch cushion.
His face deformed. Hair pierced through his flesh as his form shrunk. I almost gasped in horror, but bit it back, my teeth digging into my bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. At any moment, the tea I’d drunk might surge from my stomach.
The end of the transformation came suddenly, leaving a pile of clothes on the living room floor. A bushy-tailed squirrel pounced out of the pants and scampered over.
This was the man I was planning to move in with?
Perched on his hind legs, he tilted his head and chittered. I cupped my hands together and lowered them to the floor. He padded into them, and my hands shook as I brought his face to mine.
Charles was in there, somewhere. His eyes had changed, too—no longer teal but an eerie shade of green, like the squirrel I’d seen in the woods and the eerie, smoky eyes I’d seen outside my window after the ritual.
“Your eyes,” I said, lost in a sense of wonder and dread. “You were the squirrel in the woods.”
He placed his tiny paws together and nodded. Surprisingly, having witnessed his change firsthand made me feel less freaked out. If I was scared of anything, it was for him, not of him—scared of the pain he had to endure with every shift. And if I cared about that, I had to admit I cared about him. Somehow, some way, he was working his way into my heart.
I released him and watched as he returned to his human form, the process seeming quicker in reverse. He stood naked before me. Hastily, I dropped my gaze, but the image might as well have been burned into my retinas.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him smirking as he redressed, but I didn’t dare allow my peripheral to take in anything more than the expression on his face. Even after he dressed, my heart thudded over the memory of him without clothes.
He sunk onto the couch beside me, his brow heavy above his eyes. “You sounded afraid.”
“Your eyes—” I shook my head. “I would swear I’ve seen them before, and not just in that squirrel.”
“Happens to all elementals at night.”
“My attacker didn’t have eyes like that,” I said.
“He wouldn’t if he was hungry. The eyes only glow when the elemental has lifeblood in their system.”
“Why a squirrel?”
“It’s one of the easier ones”—he swept loose hair from his eyes—“and it doesn’t rip my clothes.”
“That was—I mean—” I paused to gather my thoughts. “An owl outside the woods had the same strange eyes. You?”
“I had to follow you to make sure no one else had. I wasn’t the only one hunting those grounds.”
This man was not good for me. My life might not have been normal before he showed up, but at least it’d made sense.
I was shaking just thinking about what would have happened without him. Charles cradled me against him. He probably meant for it to be comforting—and, at first, it was. But when I peeked up at him, and our gazes locked, all I felt was lust. I saw the shift in his eyes, too. The shift from wanting to protect me to simply . . . wanting me.
He released me and cleared his throat. “This—Well, you and me . . . You know it’s not a good idea.”
“Then what is it you want?” I asked.
“You,” he said, his expression unreadable and his voice heavy and full of . . . full of what? Sadness? Regret? “To understand you. To know that you’re safe. To not have to avoid the only person I can be myself around.”
He swept the back of his finger down my cheek and nuzzled his nose against mine, eliciting from me a shaky breath. Maybe this was okay—giving into the physical—so long as I kept my heart out of things. So long as we didn’t commit to anything.
The urge to kiss him surged through me, but he pulled away. The missed opportunity left me a little sad, but I sighed quietly in relief.
Ancient man, Sophia. Remember that. How long can it last?
“And you?” he asked. “What do you want?”
“I can’t answer that,” I said.
I knew exactly what I wanted. It just wasn’t what I should.
When Charles excused himself to make a phone call, I added a few more notes to my Book of Shadows.
Strigoi: ‘Water elementals’, also known as Shape-shifters, sent by the ‘Universe’ to hunt evil Cruor. They feed on blood to see auras, which help them determine who to hunt. Not all Strigoi become hunters. Strigoi are only immortal if they keep shifting.
Charles wasn’t going to stop shifting.
WE SPENT THE REST of the night and early morning talking. Charles wanted to hear about my life, which meant telling him about all the people who had died and left me behind. He seemed concerned when I told him about my parents, but, more importantly, he didn’t look at me like I was some kind of freak.
I asked him about the side-effects of Cruor blood, and he said sometimes a bond would form and the human might be able to ‘sense’ the Cruor whose blood they had drank.
Those types of side-effects would fade within a couple of days, as they had with me. But I didn’t tell Charles I’d been able to do more than just ‘sense’ Adrian. My Grandpa Parsons had always told me to never offer up anything I didn’t have to. While others gave their sage wisdom of ‘the only stupid questions are the ones that go unasked,’ it was his advice that resonated more: ‘Only ask questions you can’t resolve yourself.’
Without more answers, I didn’t know which questions were safe to ask.
Charles told me about his life, too. About his early urges for blood and his struggle to temper his supernatural energy. He’d never dated a human before—had always been certain they would run the second they learned about his true nature.
Was I any different?
Our chemistry aside, a mortal woman couldn’t have a future with an immortal man, though my reservations were no match for my impulse to live in the moment or my need to learn more about his world. The supernatural perhaps offered the only explanation for my ancestor’s missing body and my family’s curse, but I couldn’t turn to Charles about those things. Not because he’d told me not to ask any more questions, but because I’d made that mistake when I’d confided in Ivory, and I wouldn’t make it again.
I’d have to find the answers I wanted on my own. The question was, how was I going to do that under his watchful eye? Moving in with him might bring me some protection, but I wasn’t sure how much that protection could outweigh the looming complications.
{twelve}
SIX WEEKS HAD PASSED since I’d moved in with Charles. Six tortuous weeks of struggling between my physical desire for him and my mental determination not to get involved. I admit to deriving some pleasure in that he didn’t seem to be having an easy time with it either.
His demeanor around me had relaxed a great deal, but there were still times the tension between us was so palpable I feared I would toss caution to the wind. But anytime I thought something was building between us, a week would go by before I would see him again. In that way, living with Charles was fairly similar to living alone.
I had to admit, his house—which was once Belle Meadow’s old library—had some advantages over my own. For one, when my house was ransacked two days after I moved out, Charles’ house was not. Secondly, a moat of daffodils surrounded his lot. But this wasn’t an advant
age because of my love for landscaping—which didn’t exist. Charles explained that narcissus, while only mildly poisonous for humans and animals to ingest, was outright debilitating to Cruor even to the touch.
After Charles explained the purpose to me, I’d immediately jotted down what I’d learned in my Book of Shadows, cross-referencing the new knowledge under both Daffodil and Cruor.
Daffodil was discovered as a Cruor repellent incidentally, back when flowers were put on graves to cover the stench of death. When bodies in some graves began to go missing, it wasn’t long before humans noticed the dead buried beneath the daffodils always remained. At first, the humans believed the daffodils were warning off bad spirits. But once news broke forth of grave-robbers, humans began to think the effect had been only a coincidence. In reality, the daffodils had prevented the Cruor from rising. During that time, however, the Cruor discovered a way to turn humans, and the necessity of Cruor being earthborn came to an end.
Between this information and Charles’ declaration that I would be safe so long as I traveled in groups, especially at night, I realized I didn’t have many options. I couldn’t move in with Lauren; she would freak if I overpowered her home with daffodils because of her whole ‘floral scents give me a headache’ thing.
I wasn’t exactly stuck where I was with Charles, but I couldn’t think of better solution, and I wasn’t sure I still wanted to. Our location was safe. All I had to do was leave the house during daylight and return before nightfall. The daffodil did the rest.
I wish that would have been enough forever.
OCTOBER 31ST marked the beginning of the darker half of the year. Red’s bandage had come off the week before, and I thought he’d be ready to fly home. Wherever that was.
I took him from his cage and lowered him to the ground. “Here’s your chance. Get on with your little bird life. Just be sure to build yourself a nest and stay there at night.”
Red walked across the cold ground, stared out at the muted clearing, then hopped back to the perch in his cage.
I crouched to peek inside. “Don’t you want to be free?”
After several failed attempts, I let out a sigh and headed back to my Jeep with Red still in tow.
With the fading of daylight, the voices returned. Slowly at first, pulsing into my own thoughts in place of the thudding silence, but then more rapidly, rushing by with renewed intensity. Unintelligible. Tangled. I didn’t know if it’d be better to understand them, or if that would only make me feel crazier.
This year, Samhain would be especially important. On this sabbat, the spirits of ancestors visit their descendants—to help them and advise them—and I needed all the advice I could get. This would be my last hope of getting answers on my own.
My friends would be joining me in Charles’ backyard to perform our ritual. Well, my ritual, mostly. Lauren wasn’t Wiccan—she was only joining the ceremony to support me in my beliefs, just as I often celebrated Christian holidays with her. And Ivory said she didn’t want to do a ritual for her ancestors but would come along for my sake.
We met at dusk. I draped an orange cloth over a stone I’d chosen as an outdoor altar and perched pictures of Grandpa Dunne, Grandpa Parsons, and Dad, along with Elizabeth Parsons’ court document, in a semicircle around the altar’s pentagram. I never included my mom in these things. Even with her gone, I wanted to honor her distaste for my beliefs.
As I performed the rites, I kept my thoughts to myself, wanting the support of my friends but not wanting them to know what I needed support for. Start to finish, the ritual took nearly an hour and was entirely uneventful. Maybe the answers would come later. I stubbed out the mint, apple, and nutmeg incense sticks, then shared cakes and a bottle of sparkling wine with my friends.
Lauren suggested we spend the evening making grave-rubbings, and Ivory said she knew just the place. I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t been out after dark since I’d gone to Club Flesh with Ivory . . . not even to buy milk or bread.
After I closed the circle, I stepped aside to call Charles, who was out for the evening. “Ivory and Lauren want to go do grave-rubbings.”
“That one of your Wiccan things?”
“No,” I said, incredulous he was even asking. “Grave-rubbings. You lay a piece of paper on the grave, then rub it lightly with lumberman’s chalk. It gives an ‘imprint’ of the grave. Didn’t you ever do coin-rubbings in school? It’s like that.”
“I didn’t go to school,” he said, “but it sounds fun.”
“It does?” I walked farther from my friends, lowering my voice. “I mean at night. They want to go now.”
“You won’t have to worry at the cemetery. Cruor don’t go there. Besides, you should be fine in a group.”
An icy breeze crossed the yard, biting at my nose and cheeks. I pulled my coat tighter to ward off the chill. “No Cruor in the cemetery? You’re sure?”
“None in that cemetery,” he said. “The only Cruor residing in a cemetery are the Maltorim in Damascus. The Queen, Callista, says it keeps other Cruor away. Cemeteries are where the original Earth elementals came from and the one place they don’t want to return. Moreover, there’s nothing there for them. They want living blood, not dead bodies.”
“Okay, if you’re sure.” I waited for him to say something else—anything—but he didn’t. “I better get going. Meet you later.”
We said our goodbyes, and I snapped my phone shut.
Ivory cleared the black taper and white pillar candles from the altar. She hadn’t said much since arriving.
“How’ve you been?” I asked lightly, coiling the black cord that had marked our circle.
“Dealing with family issues.” She turned away, abruptly dropping the conversation.
Ouch. I knew she was still upset with me, but I couldn’t understand why and didn’t want to start an argument over it. Instead, I helped Lauren clear away the plate of fruit, vegetables, and bread from the top center of the altar, then packed the black votive candle along with the cauldron into my box of supplies.
As I cleared the ashes of dead twigs, each having been named for things that needed to end—for myself, for others, and for the earth—Lauren crouched beside a stone statue in the yard and pulled a camera from her bag. She snapped a picture of herself and the marble lion. After a few more clicks, she checked the camera screen.
“Cool that Charles bought the old library.” She shoved her phone back in her bag and turned to me. “Cocoa?”
“Please,” I said.
She headed inside. I packed away the boline we’d used to cut our ritual apple. The crosswise slice had created a pentagram at the core, honoring the five elements—earth, air, water, fire, and spirit. I also put away the half-slice of apple we’d eaten from during the ritual, but the other half-slice I wrapped in a piece of cheesecloth to bury later—an offering to feed the souls of nearby spirits.
Ivory stood at the edge of the yard, staring off into space. I should’ve gone to her; instead, I folded the altar cloth away and carried the box to the back steps. She followed me inside, dragging her wine-colored nails along the wood-paneled walls as she peeked into every room. Old offices were now bedrooms, and the single-stall bathroom had been fully renovated.
“What did Charles do to this place?” she asked.
“He couldn’t live here the way it was.”
Lauren called from the kitchen: “Everything’s new!”
Ivory pointed down the hall. “I’ll wait in the parlor.”
I offered Lauren a hand in the kitchen. She nodded toward the mugs.
“So, are you calling him your boyfriend yet? You’re keeping things at his house.”
Lauren didn’t know I was actually living here. It was easier that way. “We haven’t exactly pulled out the label-maker.” I opened the cocoa packets and dumped them in the mugs. “Spoon?”
“I’m going say he’s your boyfriend.” Lauren poured the hot water over the cocoa mix, snatched a spoon from the dish rack
, and leaned over me to stir. “I don’t see how he could be anything but.”
I moved the mugs to a tray. What made someone a ‘boyfriend’? I’d been avoiding any attachment to Charles. He would live forever, and I would not.
I carried the cocoa tray into the living room and pressed a steaming mug into Ivory’s hands before lifting my own. “Are you joining us for the grave-rubbings?”
Ivory’s gaze flickered upward, the flash of an eye roll I’d seen her give Lauren hundreds of times but never me. “Why wouldn’t I?” She set her hot cocoa aside. “We’ll visit the cemetery near my house.”
Back when our town had moved graves from the old cemetery, a few families insisted that their loved ones’ coffins not be moved to the new cemetery. In one newspaper interview, an elder of the town said the dead should never be separated from their ‘first soil’.
As a result, the town set up about fifty graves, all from the same three families, in a small cemetery at the end of Litton Avenue. They’d had to move not only the coffins, but the soil that had covered those graves as well. Moving the soil for all the graves would have been too much of a hassle. That was how our town ended up with two cemeteries. One much smaller than the old one, and one much larger.
A wide grin splashed onto Lauren’s face. “I heard that cemetery is haunted.”
Ivory spat out a laugh. “You’re the one who started the rumor!”
I wasn’t sure about that, but I didn’t say anything. Neither did Lauren.
Before we left the house, I made Charles a turkey and cucumber sandwich and left it in the fridge to hold him over until dinner. He’d once told me he liked to eat a human meal after hunting, because it reminded him that there was more to him than his need for blood. I’d been making those meals for him ever since. Maybe it didn’t feel safe to speak my affections, but I hoped he knew I cared.
Probably more than I should.
When Darkness Falls - Six Paranormal Novels in One Boxed Set Page 65