by Jo Holloway
DARKNESS
in Green & Gold
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Green & Gold, Book Three
Jo Holloway
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DARKNESS in Green & Gold
Copyright ©2020 by Jo Holloway
ISBN: 978-1-9991359-5-9
First edition.
Published by Jo Holloway Books
Edited by Courtney Umphress
Cover design by MoorBooks Design
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or locations is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
More
Acknowledgements & Author’s Note
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER 1
SMALL RUSTLINGS STOPPED as the forest stilled and fell silent. Birdcalls cut off mid-chirp. Cara rolled over with a grunt and sat up on the wet earth. Her nose wrinkled at the smell of rotten leaves and damp earth. Running was supposed to be her happy time. But one moment of lost focus and here she was, flat out in the dirt after scaring the woods into silence. Fantastic.
Grimacing, she rubbed her aching kneecap, smearing mud from her burning palms across her pantlegs. A fern frond brushed the back of her neck, and she swatted it away, ignoring the stinging scrapes on her arms. The forest she loved had turned against her.
Above the trail, evergreen branches blurred together across the dreary winter sky, and she furiously blinked back the tears prickling in her eyes.
Stop it. You are not crying about a stupid fall, Cara Ransome.
Not now. Not with everything else.
The tightness in her chest climbed her throat to her clenched teeth.
“Thanks for the warning,” she snapped. “Both of you.”
Jenner was already beside her, nudging at her wrist with his wet nose. Usually it was hard to stay mad at her dog when he gazed at her with those liquid brown eyes, black ears flicking back and forth above his furry face, but today, the burning on her hands matched the fire in her belly.
Dampness began to soak through the seat of her pants, and she switched her glare to Wes.
Her friend had stopped as soon as she’d fallen and turned back for her. He’d already extended a hand, but dropped it and raised his eyebrows instead after her little outburst.
“We’re . . . sorry?” Wes glanced at Cara’s dog. “We didn’t realize you needed a warning not to trip over your own feet.”
Between Jenner’s tilted head and the way Wes’s eyebrows had vanished into his shiny black hair, she couldn’t help another groan. Sarcasm coming from Wes was all wrong. From her, maybe. But not from her logical, direct best friend. That wasn’t him at all.
“Crap. I’m doing it again, aren’t I?” Cara took a deep breath and forced her tight jaw to relax. This time when Wes reached out, she accepted the hand offered to her and climbed to her feet with a soft thanks.
Jenner circled them, sniffing the air. The familiar green gleam passed across his eyes when the Pyx who lived in her dog spoke from his mind to theirs.
“There is another one of us nearby, though I cannot tell precisely how close,” Jenyx said, his voice clear in her head.
“Well, that’s helpful,” she muttered.
Cara brushed her hands across the back of her pants, feeling the wet spots with a frown. Ever since these others had started coming around, irritation and anger came faster and easier than ever before.
“Cara . . .” Wes prompted again at her grumbling.
“Ugh, I know. I can’t turn it off.” She shook out her arms like the motion could rid her of the unnatural aggression. “It’s so annoying.”
“It’s not you. It’s them. Are you okay, though?”
Tough question. Lately, she never felt okay. Learning she was an empath on top of everything else had been hard enough to accept, even before these newcomers started setting her on edge all the time. She tested a little weight on her knee and then checked her hands. The red rash across the bottoms of her palms caused another flash of anger, but she bit it back. “I think so.”
Wes gave her a half-hearted smile. “Good.”
“Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing. It’s not your fault. You know it’s just your Pyxsee empathy picking up on one of them.”
Jenner had moved off the path, scenting the woods around them, making sure they didn’t have unwanted company too close by. Cara closed her eyes. She breathed in slowly and then exhaled. The fresher air above the undergrowth helped clear her mind.
There had to be a way to stop the churning emotions that didn’t feel like they belonged to her. At least, she hoped they didn’t. Her friends thought her awful moods lately were a product of her ability to sense the Pyx nearby. Maybe they were.
Of course, it was little comfort to think there were such hostile-feeling Pyx in the area. Everything she’d learned from Jenyx in the past two years made her think this wasn’t normal for them. The Pyx who lived in her dog had always made it sound like his kind were peaceful observers in the long history of the world, rarely interfering in the lives or events of the times. More than anything, she wanted to feel like herself again, not like she had no control over her own life or feelings.
Her eyelids lifted, and she found Wes still studying her with concern across his dark features. Hundreds of tiny gold flecks in his brown eyes meant he was a Pyxsee too, but they didn’t come close to matching the intensity of her solid-gold eyes.
Wes didn’t have to deal with the extra ability she had found herself saddled with. He saw and heard the Pyx like she did, like all normal Pyxsees did—if being a Pyxsee could ever be called normal—but he didn’t have to feel them. As far as she knew, no one else did. The eye color she’d hated most of her life for how different it made her was coming back to bite her again. She had no idea what normal even was anymore.
“I hope you’re right, but we don’t know for sure.”
He looked at her sideways without a word. She knew that look, but his silent reassurance wasn’t what she needed. She needed answers.
“No,” she insisted. “We don’t know. We don’t know anything. That’s the point.”
Flames of frustration clawed at her ribs again. This time, she was pretty sure the emotions were her own. She shot a dark look at Jenner�
�not that it had anything to do with her beautiful brown-and-black dog.
“Cara, child, I know you feel left out, but we will share what information we can when the time is right,” Jenyx said. His usual soft and gentle voice rang with a sharp edge in her mind.
Wes’s jaw twitched as he heard it too.
“The council meeting was three months ago already. How much longer do you need to figure stuff out before you tell us what’s going on?” She couldn’t keep the acid from her tone.
“It is complicated. The situation is not what we expected, and we have yet to discover the meaning of these new Pyx in the area. They have avoided all the usual communications with others. Your reactions to them, current mood included, are worrisome, to say the least.”
“Yeah, or maybe I’m just an angry teenager,” she grumbled. “Or I’m going crazy. Again.”
“Enough.” Wes’s low, quiet voice was gentle, but his words were firm. “I might not know what you’re going through, but we all know the real you. And angry isn’t you. This attitude is coming from them, and you know it.”
She started to shake her head. “Maybe I’m like all the people we hear about in the news these days, not acting like themselves. Don’t look at me like that. I’m serious. Something’s going on. How do you know it’s not affecting me too, whatever it is?”
Her gut twisted with a wave of regret she couldn’t place, and she glanced at Jenner. She would never get used to being struck by random feelings out of the blue.
“Fine.” Wes turned and started down the path.
“Wait up. Where are you going?”
“If you won’t listen to reason, maybe a more permanently cheerful friend can make you see things in a different light.”
Cara rolled her eyes but fell into step beside him.
“Even if you’re right, it’s Pyx whose feelings I absorb, not people.”
“Not even exceptionally sunny people?” Wes shot her one of his rare smiles.
The corner of her mouth ticked up. She scoffed. “Worth a shot, I guess.”
“Besides, getting away from this area can’t hurt. If you’re feeling this mad, they could be close. They could even be watching us.”
She glanced over her shoulder. Shafts of pale winter light split the woods, filtering through the gaps above and illuminating some of the shadows. Nothing jumped out at them, but a tingle worked its way up her spine as she hurried forward.
BY THE TIME THEY STEPPED out of the trees into the open clearing of the school campus, the tingle had receded, and her dark mood began to lighten. She rolled her head from side to side, loosening the tense muscles of her neck while they strolled past wooden fences.
A figure sat on the fence ahead. His familiar crown of golden-blond hair glowed in the late afternoon sun.
Jory turned his head at the sound of their approach and took in Cara’s appearance with his trademark enormous grin. “Wow, Cares. Did you leave any mud on the trail?”
“Ha ha, Sunshine. Very funny.” She climbed onto the bottom railing of the fence to punch him in the shoulder.
Puddles dotted the sand arena in front of them. A big bay horse trotted along the far side, extending his stride down the long edge before the girl on his back sank into the saddle and gently coaxed him to compress before he splashed through the wet corner.
Wes climbed the fence on her other side and swung his legs over to sit on top like Jory. “Better?”
“Yeah, better.” Wes had been right as usual.
Cara allowed herself a moment to appreciate the support of the two guys sitting on either side of her. In spite of their differences from each other—a bright, cheerful grin on one side and a dark, thoughtful expression on the other—they shared a fierce loyalty, both to each other and, now, to her. They were the best friends a girl could ever ask for, and all she’d done lately was snap at them. If she couldn’t control herself, they’d probably ditch her soon. Somehow, she had to shut these feelings out and get her life back.
“Seriously. You know running doesn’t usually involve rolling in the dirt, right? You’re doing it wrong.” Jory chuckled when she sneered at him.
“You try running when every muscle fiber in your body gets tight for no reason, and your thoughts spiral off to—” She cut herself off with a small head shake. She didn’t feel like discussing where her thoughts had been when she’d fallen, and she forced herself to focus on the horse and rider now coming toward them, instead of spinning back down that particular dark spiral.
She turned to Jory, whose grin had slipped from his face.
“It happened again?” Jory looked across to his childhood best friend. He and Wes barely had to speak to understand each other, and he grimaced at the look on Wes’s face. “Damn. We gotta figure out what’s going on.”
The girl on the horse stopped the animal in front of them and loosened the reins. “Figure out what’s going on with what?”
“With Cara and the random fits of rage.” Jory gave Cara a wink, and then faced the girl in front of them. A sweeter smile crept across his face as he turned to the newest member of their tight group.
“Again?” Liv stood in her stirrups and swung her right leg over the horse’s rear end, dropping to the ground in one fluid motion. Holding the reins in one hand, she slid her helmet off with the other and shook out her shoulder-length auburn hair.
Cara nodded, still clinging to the top rail of the fence. The horse took a step forward and raised his head. She leaned over the fence and held out a hand. His velvety lip nuzzled her stinging palm, searching for treats, and her mood lightened a bit more.
“Sorry, Charlie, I don’t have anything for you.”
He snorted into her hand. She jerked it back but not before he’d coated her with slime.
“Yuuuck.”
Wiping her hand across her thigh added a green-tinged stain to the mud smeared below.
Lovely. Really adds to the look.
Three snickers from all around her brought a flash of amusement. She shot dirty looks at each of them. “Control your beast, Liv.”
Liv smirked. “Sorry, Charlie’s a real snot-breathing dragon sometimes.”
More laughter circled her, but she held back the silencing glares and chuckled along with them.
“So the Pyx still aren’t telling you anything?” Jory asked, bringing the serious tone back.
“No.” Wes shifted on his perch atop the fence. “But we did say we’d trust them a while longer.”
“I want to know what they did with that evil . . .”
She missed Jory’s words when a swoop of guilt hit her, causing her to lean out from the railings and wrap one arm across her middle. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Jenner slinking away into the undergrowth. Was this feeling coming from Jenyx? What was he feeling this awful about?
“Cara?”
A smooth, clear voice from behind them jerked her upright again. She resisted the urge to clap both hands across the wet spots on the seat of her pants. Good thing, since it would have meant letting go of the fence and toppling over backward.
She stepped down from the railing and spun around to put her back to the fence, facing the person approaching.
“Hey, big bro,” Liv called out to him.
Rhys waved in his sister’s direction without taking his eyes off Cara. “You okay?”
She dropped the arm still wrapped across her and nodded. “Cramps.”
Holy crap, Cara. What did you just say?
Heat surged across her cheeks. The gorgeous eyes in front of her twinkled—a perfect thunderstorm of swirling grey with a gold limbal ring that flashed like lightning when he was mad . . . or amused, as he clearly was now.
Say something! Fix it.
“Running . . . running cramps. Stitch in my side,” she blurted.
Wow, Cara. Next level humiliating.
The thoughts that had consumed her while she was running with Wes, the ones that had distracted her to the point where she tripped over her ow
n feet, came flooding back. Rhys.
His eyebrows raised as he scanned her filthy clothes. There was no hiding the streaks of mud or the green horse-slobber stain on her pants, no matter how much she wished she could disappear. Thankfully, Wes drew Rhys’s attention away.
“She tried to beat me in a sprint at the end.”
“And you can’t beat her so you tackled her instead?”
Wes shrugged one shoulder. “It’s the only way.”
The rich notes of Rhys’s laugh rang inside her chest.
“So glad I can amuse you all with my misery,” she said.
Rhys adopted a serious expression. His lips glistened in the sun when he moistened them, forcing down his smile. “Sorry, Cara. It’s a good look, really. But there has to be an easier way to commune with nature. At least a less painful one.”
Fighting her own smile as her friends snickered again, she muttered a quiet, “Et tu?”
Rhys folded his long, lean frame between the middle railings of the fence and swung his legs through to stand up smoothly on the other side. Her fingertips twitched as he ran a hand through his dark-blond locks. Wes gave a tiny snort from the top of the fence, and she quickly stopped staring. As usual, he was too observant for his own good—the downside of being friends with another Pyxsee who shared her heightened observation skills. Her lips pursed together as she glared him into silence, but at least he’d warned her before Rhys could catch her staring too.
Rhys stopped to pat Charlie’s neck before stepping over to drape an arm around Liv, towering over his sister and squeezing her in a sideways hug. Cara couldn’t help a small smile. After all they’d been through, it was no surprise they were as close as any siblings she’d ever known.
The rest of the thoughts clouding her focus during the run came back. Rhys with a happy smile while he talked to Liv at breakfast with them, or when he talked to Wes. Rhys with the same easy smile when he sat with Emma at meals, or walked across campus with Emma, or waved to Emma between classes.
No. Stop it. She fled from images of beautiful, perfect Emma.
“So what’s new?” Rhys asked, glancing around.