A Curse in Darkness by Sherilee Gray

Chapter 32

Warrick

I wasin Willow’s room.

She wasn’t.

I’d been torn from her bed months ago, but my dove wasn’t here now.

My brothers were nowhere to be seen. I had to assume they’d been sent back to where they’d been as well.

I strode into the hall. The house was dark, the air wet and acrid. It was silent except for the sound of dripping coming from downstairs. I rushed down and water squelched under my boots. What the fuck was going on?

Storming through the house, I checked the living room, the kitchen. There’d been a fire. Fuck. I rushed outside, and the sound of distant screams filled the night. They were coming from the cemetery. I sprinted along the path to get there.

I reached the edge of their family burial grounds and frantically searched for her in the darkness.

Then I spotted her.

Willow.

She was on her knees, Clayton Whitlock standing in front of her holding a blade, Willow’s blade.

Defiance lit her gaze, and she moved so fucking fast, snatching up a jagged-looking rock from the ground. Then she attacked him.

One moment her blade was in Whitlock’s hand, and the next, it was buried in my dove’s chest.

Clayton yelled in outrage, and Willow slumped to the side, blood covering her chest. No. I exploded into my beast form and ran for her—

My body collided with the ward surrounding the cemetery, barring me from getting to her. My dove didn’t move, she lay on her side, eyes wide, lifeless.

Roaring, I ran at the barrier over and over again, but I couldn’t get through, I couldn’t reach her.

She blinked and extended her hand for me—

Then she stilled.

She was gone.

I roared again, Clayton turned to me then, and his wild gaze locked with mine.

My phone rang, the only sound filling the silence.

Lucifer’s words filtered through my head.

The wrong time, Lucifer had sent us too far forward. Hands shaking, knees close to giving out as grief ate me up, I yanked out my phone.

It was the king of Hell calling. I stabbed my finger down on the call button.

“Yo! So I think I made a mistake?” he said before I could speak.

“I just watched my female being slaughtered,” I choked out.

“Ahh…so I did mess up?”

“Too far forward.” I checked the date on my phone. “By a couple days.”

“I’ll try again. Hang tight.” He disconnected, and I tried to breathe, but I couldn’t take my eyes off my dove lying fucking lifeless, brutally slaughtered on the cold ground.

What the fuck had happened here?

Clayton started toward me, stopping several feet away, still behind the safety of the ward.

“I’m going to kill you,” I growled.

“Why the fuck do you care? You left her.” His lips curled up. “She called for you, you know, and you never came.”

She’d called for him. He roared in fury, in pain.

Clayton’s expression darkened. “Then she forced me to stab her, ruining my plans. That won’t stop me, though.” He glanced back. “We didn’t even get to consummate the wedding…although, she’d still be warm. Would it be wrong if I…”

“You will know what it feels like to have your limbs torn from your torso.”

“Oh, I’d like to see you try that.” Clayton frowned.

I looked down at my hands, I was fading. I looked back up at Clayton and grinned, then I was gone.

I was back in Willow’s bedroom, and again, she wasn’t there. I exploded out of the room. Same fucking night. Only it had to be earlier because the house was still on fucking fire. I looked in the open doors of the bedrooms as I bolted for the stairs—empty—then exploded through the fire and sprinted outside.

Clayton fucking Whitlock was about to die.

* * *

Willow

Clayton stood behind our ward surrounding the cemetery, unable to pass or get to us. He held Mags tight and pressed his lips to her cheek, looking at me. “I had a feeling you’d flake on me, Wills, had to have a backup plan. And she made it so easy for me, she came right to me all on her own.” He nuzzled my baby sister. “Meet my fiancée.”

Mags was shaking, and she tried to wrench away. “Oh, no you don’t,” Clayton said.

Her lips trembled. “I-I’m so sorry, Willow,” she said. “Rose…I just…I wanted to help Rose…” Tears streamed down her face.

She’d broken her blood vow to Rose to try to save our sister.

Clayton smiled and looked at Cora. “I told you I could do it. I told you I could get you what you wanted.”

Cora smiled. “Yes, you did. I’ll admit, I underestimated you. But you’ve more than proven yourself worthy of my Emily.”

Emily? What the fuck was she talking about? “Let Magnolia go,” I said. “Please, just let her go.”

“Why would I do that?” Clay said. “She belongs to me now. Through her, I have access to all of this. What’s hers will be mine, and all that. And seeing as she’ll be the only member of this line of the Thornheart family left alive by the end of tonight, it means we get it all, right, Cora?”

Cora was watching him, eyes calculating. “Right.”

“We’ve treated you and your little shit of a grandson like family, and this is how you repay us?” Else said to Cora, disgust lining her face.

I looked from Cora to Clay. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I deserve it; I deserve power and respect,” Clay said, eyes bright with fury. “My parents treated me like I was nothing my whole fucking life. I was a disappointment, not powerful enough for them, not smart enough. The handsome idiot, the face of the family business, but nothing more. No one respected me because of the way my own parents treated me. I should have been in charge of the company. I should have taken over from that fucking prick after I killed him, not her. Now I’ll show them, I’ll show everyone.”

“You killed your father?” I asked, but I knew the answer, it was written all over his deranged face.

“He was weak, and he’d ruined my life.”

He sounded like a spoiled child. “And what about your mother and her familiar, did you kill them as well?”

He shrugged. “I had no choice. Mother’s familiar suspected me of knocking off the old man. It was his own fault, really. As for mother, I’d only planned to scare her, but then…” He shrugged. “I guess I got carried away. But in the end, I showed her, I showed both of my parents how powerful I really was.”

And he’d used dark magic to do it, in a way that blocked my blade from sensing his true intentions. And I knew, without doubt, he’d done the same to win his trial, breaking every one of our laws, our covenants. “Is that what you were trying to do to Magnolia? Scare her? You almost killed her as well.”

“I saw the pictures on Nightscape, you running after the hound. Hurting her the same way as mother gave us a common enemy, made you sympathize with me, and it worked for a while, didn’t it? You agreed to marry me.” Mags struggled harder and Clay shoved her to Brody. Mags cried out when Brody wrenched her arms back, holding her tight enough to bruise.

My pulse thundered in my ears, fear for my sister a tight coil in my stomach. I couldn’t attack, not all of them at once. And there was no way they hadn’t protected themselves. “And you think Cora can give you the power you want?” I asked Clayton, genuinely puzzled.

Fury lit Cora’s eyes. “Who do you think summoned those souls, who do you think summoned Edward? Me, I did. You’re not the only powerful one in this family, Willow.”

“Diana?” Else whispered.

“Finally, you’ve worked it out,” Cora said. Hatred darkened her features, making her almost unrecognizable. “When you killed my brother, you took everything from us. Our families severed ties, we were cast out of coven Thornheart. I’ve been waiting so long to get back what should have been mine.”

“You think our coven will welcome you back if you kill us? Do you think the witches’ council will let you get away with it?”

“They won’t know. No one will know. Everyone will think your family died in a house fire.”

Something occurred to me. “You killed Joshua, didn’t you?” I said to Cora. Joshua Thornheart, the male who was meant to be the Keeper of the Thornheart line. “You thought Brody would be chosen as Keeper in his place.”

Cora hissed. “I had to try. It should have been my line, not yours. But it’s fine, I’ll get what I want a different way. I just have to remove the obstacles in my way, one by one.”

One by one.

She’d said that in my dream, she’d been one of the three hooded figures.

Cora, Brody, and Clayton.

“With this cemetery and its power, I’ll bring my family back. I’ll bring Ed and my Emily back.”

“That’s why you summoned Edward? You want your family back?”

She smiled. “Yes, and Emily will be next.”

“We already sent Edward back where he belonged,” Else said.

Cora curled her fingers into a fist. “Not for long.”

“Your brother’s a monster. You were only a baby, Cora. You don’t know what he was. You don’t know him. If you’d told me who you were, I wouldn’t have held Edward’s actions against you. I would have helped you.”

“You’re lying,” Cora yelled.

“What are you going to do?” I said, trying to keep them talking, trying to come up with a way to save my sister, to get her away from them.

“The first two souls we summoned were to throw you off your true task, Willow, and, of course, practice before I brought Ed and Emily back. You were supposed to fail your task, and in desperation to keep your family safe, accept Clay’s proposal. Ed would continue to possess Ren and Emily would possess you. My daughter would become the Keeper. The only thing that’s changed is now I’ll have to find a new vessel for Ed.”

This whole thing was completely twisted.

“How did you know Clayton would help you?”

Cora smiled. “We met through a mutual friend, someone with the same interests.”

Dark magic.

And I’d bet anything the “mutual friend” was someone Clayton did business with. Someone who had access to all manner of dark and ancient spells and relics.

“So Clay got greedy, killed his parents and made a deal with you? He’d marry me, Keeper of coven Thornheart, and then you’d summon Emily, she’d possess me, you’d move into our house and take over my life. Am I right so far?”

Clayton said nothing, eyes glittering.

“And what happens to the rest of my family?” My heart thudded against the back of my ribs because I already knew the answer to that.

Clayton smirked. “Maybe we could work something out?”

He was lying, nothing would stop him from going after what he wanted, not after everything he’d done to get here. “I’m listening,” I said, trying to stall him.

“I mean, Magnolia could get the job done well enough, but it’s really you I want. Okay, yeah, you won’t really be you anymore, you’ll be Emily’s vessel, but you’ve got all the power, Wills, it’s fucking hot, and I’ve worked too hard to end up with second best. Say you’ll marry me, and all of this ends.”

I didn’t believe that in the slightest. “What if I say you can have the cemetery, you just have to let Mags go and we all walk away.” Else squeezed my hand and nodded. We’d find a way to get our home back if we lost it tonight. I just had to get my family away from here in one piece.

Clayton studied me, eyes wild. “Nope. We need one of you for this to work.”

“Fine, then take me, like you planned, and let Magnolia go.”

“Throw me your blade and drop the barrier and I will. And if you even attempt to kill any of us with that knife, Magnolia will die before you can call it back to you.”

I looked at Else and fear filled her eyes. I just needed to get Mags away from them. I was powerful enough to stop these assholes. I just had to get my family away from here without any bloodshed, then I’d come back and slaughter them all.

I threw my blade, and it sunk into the soil by his feet. Triumph transformed Clayton’s face, and I was instantly hit with unwelcome memories from a year ago. Of another time that I was forced to drop a ward protecting people I cared about. I started to shake.

“It’s okay,” Else said. “We don’t have a choice. Do what he wants, and let’s get our Magnolia back.”

She was right, we had no choice. I was going to make them pay for this. I nodded and lifted my trembling hands, stomach churning, heart pounding, holding them out, palm down, fingers spread, and I uttered the words to release the ward.

It dropped and Clayton smiled wider and stepped forward, then turned to Brody as the ground began to shake. “Kill her.”

No!

Brody lifted a blade—

A roar echoed in the distance, and Brody paused, turning to look. It was just a split second, but before he could turn back, something dark gathered behind him. Bram in his shadow form. Brody’s head twisted unnaturally, the snap loud in the night, and he dropped to the ground. Bram instantly scooped up Mags and sprinted for us.

Clayton hissed, hands aimed at the ground. A deep fissure appeared in the earth, and I threw out my hands and yelled the words to bring the ward back up. Clayton flew backward, expelled from the cemetery like he was attached to an elastic bungee.

Cora, who had bent over her dead grandson, then stood, rage contorting her face as she aimed all her power at the ward. Clayton scrambled to his feet, and face lined in fury, joined her. He lifted something gold and ancient looking—a wide, thin disk, a talisman of some kind—and yelled words I could barely hear, repeating them over and over.

His voice rose in volume.

Azel.

Oh god, he was calling on Azel.

Their combined power increased and smashed against our ward with greater force, and impossibly, it began to thin.

They were both so strong, stronger than they should be. Dark magic flowed from them, clawing and biting at the barrier, the kind of evil magic you sold your soul for. And with our blood running through Cora’s veins and her knowledge of the spells we used to ward, they were going to get through if we didn’t do something quickly to stop them.

I shoved my feet deep in the dirt and fired back with everything I had. Else grabbed my hand, her long white hair whipping around her. Mom joined in, and Iris stumbled to her feet and rushed to my side and took my other hand, then Mags.

Clayton laughed and crouched beside Brody. Shoving him to his back, he dug his dagger into the dead male’s chest, wrenching his rib cage open and removing his heart. Cora faltered but didn’t stop with her attack.

“We’ll bring him back, too,” Clay said to her.

The magic of the dead was incredibly dangerous and immensely powerful, which was one of the reasons it was forbidden.

He coated the talisman with Brody’s blood, hung it around his neck, and took a bite out of Brody’s lifeless heart before speaking in a strange tongue. Instantly, dread and terror swirled around us like a cloud laden with horrors and power. He was calling on Azel, a monster so evil, so vile, that if he succeeded in the summoning, we’d be lucky if any of us survived.

Clayton would know what happened to me over a year ago. Cora would have told him what Azel did to me, what he tried to do to my friends. And she knew the fallen angel was incredibly powerful, able to help them reach deeper into the dark magic they’d sought. Angels were always listening, it was part of the job description, even fallen ones, even if they’d been sent to Hell, if you knew how to reach them. Clayton would have had access to everything they needed to achieve that, including that talisman.

And they’d succeeded.

I needed to stop them, now. But attacking Clayton and Cora with my powers wasn’t an option, not when I was using almost everything I had maintaining the ward.

The wind whipped more fiercely, and the trees beside Clayton shuddered, a dark hole opening in the wide trunk, something awful moving in the darkness.

Azel.

Gripping the edge, his ghostly form struggled. He dug black claws into the trunk, wind whipping and biting at him as he tried to claw his way out of Hell. Clayton’s eyes filled with excitement as he continued to chant.

Oh god, Azel was going to free himself.

His head, torso, and hips were out.

Clayton turned to him and raised his arms in the air, calling with everything he had, face red, veins bulging.

“Azel won’t help you get your family back, Cora, he’ll kill you,” I yelled.

“You’re lying!” she screamed. “We made a deal. He made a deal.”

“Azel doesn’t give a fuck about your deal.”

She shook her head frantically. “This is your fault. If you’d handed yourself over to us, we wouldn’t have needed him. You did this.” Hatred filled her eyes. “I curse you and your entire family.”

Azel turned to me and grinned, then his spirit began to fragment, being sucked into Clayton.

He was coming, and he was going to kill us all.

Fear took hold, and my magic faltered, the ward almost dropping. I cried out in defiance, in anger. “No!”

No, I would not let them do this.

There was only one way to counter that kind of darkness—with light.

So tilting my head back, I screamed words I had never said before in my life but had read many times in Else’s library. “I invoke coven Thornheart, mothers, daughters, sisters past. I call on Betsie Thornheart, Lilly and Rosemary.”

“I call on Selene and Elizabeth,” Else called.

“I call on Agnes and Morag,” Mom added.

Iris squeezed my fingers. “I call on Delilah and Elsbeth.”

“I call on Prudence and Daisy,” Mags finished.

The ward shimmered, strengthening as the ghostly figures of our ancestors appeared around us, including our beloved grandmother. One by one, they raised their hands and aimed them at the ward, at Clayton and the yawning portal in the side of the tree, at Azel almost completely free, his spirit being slowly dragged into Clayton.

The hole started narrowing, and Azel’s spirit twisted and writhed in place.

Warmth bathed us, power surging all around us. Light danced around the thick trunk and the portal kept narrowing.

Azel was suddenly sucked back, pulled from Clayton completely, and dragged back to Hell. Clayton screamed in outrage.

A howl rang through the night. Closer this time.

Then a hound, my hound, exploded from the trees, knocking Clayton to the ground, and tore him to pieces.

The tree closed immediately. The darkness, now drowned in light, lifted.

Then Warrick shifted, standing naked and covered in Clayton’s blood. He turned to Cora, who was backing up in terror, but Ren strode forward, blocking her. He was dirty and naked, and even in his human form, he was all animal. My Ren was still gone from his eyes as he bared his teeth, stopping her in her tracks.

Warrick snarled, lifted a hand, and crooked a finger at me. “Get the fuck over here, dove.”

Then I was running to him.

He caught me up and kissed me.

He kissed me like only Warrick could.