Moon Cursed (Sky Brooks Series Book 5)

by McKenzie Hunter

  I was hit with the same twinge of guilt that always reared its head when he said things like that. I hated that I knew about the curse on him and had been sworn to secrecy. I started to disclose it but instead pressed my lips together and dealt with it, feeling the strain of split loyalties as well.

  Josh called my name, and when I turned, he was standing, holding up an open palm that had been recently cut. Blood was just starting to well. I hesitated.

  “Sky.” It wasn’t a request. Once I had moved close enough, I took the knife he held and sliced over my hand. Face-to-face, we linked fingers, and I closed my eyes. His breath wisped across my face as he chanted. I became ever more aware of how close we were. There was always an unavoidable intimacy between us when we shared magic. Before, it had never bothered me—I liked the magical bond that we had, the special connection. But with Ethan in the picture, it felt too intimate and the connection malapropos. All thoughts vanished as Josh’s magic coursed through me, the gentle ocean breeze, the calming nature of it, and as he relinquished it to me, I gathered it. But I knew this wasn’t the purpose of the exercise.

  I had mastered his magic. It was comfortable because it was easy, and if it became too difficult to control, I knew that Josh was there to take over. It was when I switched it over, where he had no control and it became something dark, reckless, and deadly, that it was difficult. Now it was my responsibility to subjugate it and control it rather than allow it to control me. I had to dominate it. Each time it felt different; unlike Josh’s magic, dark magic seemed to have many threads, depths, and dimensions to it.

  It drowned me and I crawled out from the depths of the bleakness. It wasn’t working. I was wading through it, trying to control its mercurial ways without success. The dormant power-hungry monster awoke, drawn to the darkness and the stygian magic. She sought to control it. I heard her chants off at a distance become louder and louder. I tuned them out, working harder to gather the magic under my command. I was aware of things vibrating around me, bumping into one another, and the stuffiness of the room and how Josh’s breathing became sharp gasps as he struggled to take them. They wouldn’t distract me—I had one goal, not to change natural magic to dark, but to use dark magic in the same manner I used natural magic. I opened my eyes for a moment to look at the state of the room and closed them again. Concentrate. Instead of destroying those things, I slowly reshelved the books and placed broken pieces from shattered drinking glasses into the garbage.

  I kept my eyes closed and leaned into Josh. “Don’t be afraid.” I touched his chest. His heart was dragging at a sluggish beat, and his breathing was now just choked gasps. If I stopped the dark magic, things would return to normal. I wanted to do that with the magic—so I did. Josh’s heart started to beat faster, accelerating at a low rate.

  When I opened my eyes, he was a little red but still had the afterglow he always did when he dealt with strong dangerous magic. Josh seemed as drawn to deadly magic as the were-animals were to violence.

  “Well, that was interesting.” I followed the voice to the door where Cole stood. He stepped over the threshold and looked around the room and then inhaled. I could smell magic. Eventually Cole’s eyes landed on me and his lips kinked into an amused smile. “Skylar, you are far more interesting even than I initially thought. That was a very impressive show. Is it always like this around here?” He slipped into a seat next to me.

  Josh shrugged. “It depends. Did you need something, Cole?” His voice was cool and despondent, different than it was with anyone else. Josh had never met a stranger, and most people were drawn to him to the point that I’d started to think it was an innate attraction to magic, that desire to be close to it.

  Shrugging off Josh’s ungenial response, Cole kept his smile. “We contract out for magical services; we aren’t so lucky to have a witch as part of our pack, so I rarely get a peek behind the curtain.” Once again, his gaze slipped in my direction. “Very interesting.”

  Josh was fighting the emergence of a scowl, and I wasn’t sure why he wasn’t fond of Cole. I was used to the strained interaction of dominant were-animals—they were always testing the boundaries—but this was different. I’d been around Josh long enough that I knew when he distrusted someone, and that wasn’t it. I would have picked up on that with Sebastian as well, but Sebastian didn’t hide it; he was quite vocal about his feelings. Cole definitely wouldn’t have been invited to stay at the retreat if he couldn’t be trusted.

  Josh eventually plastered on a fake cordial smile and said in an even tone, “There really isn’t a lot to see now. Just boring research, but when the fun happens, I’ll make sure to invite you for the show.”

  “I would like that.” Cole came to his feet with the predaceous grace that was a subtle reminder that he was a were-animal and the overwhelming confidence that showed he was an Alpha. It was as though he was reminding Josh as well. The tension-ridden silence was uncomfortable, and Cole’s gaze remained fixed on Josh, which wasn’t a good thing. If there was such a thing as an Alpha witch, Josh would definitely be one, and this was brewing into something that I didn’t like.

  “Josh, which one should I try first?” I asked, picking up two of the books on the table. It took a moment before he dragged his eyes from Cole’s. Then he pointed to the one on the left, and I opened it. Once again, I was the object of Cole’s attention.

  I gave him a smile, which he returned. “Thank you, but as you know, we have our work ahead of us, so we really need to get to it.”

  “Of course. If there is anything I can do to help you with it, don’t be afraid to ask.”

  Josh was about to respond, and I was willing to bet it would be something that would rekindle the odd stare-off, when I shot him a sharp look.

  “What the hell was that, Josh?”

  He frowned. “He seemed very nosy.”

  “Aren’t most Alphas? Do you blame him for being curious? After all, his life is on the line, too.”

  “If he was only curious about the magic, that wouldn’t be a problem. He seems really curious about you.”

  “Yes, because I’m the only thing standing between him and a death sentence. I’d be curious, too.”

  Josh didn’t seem convinced, and I wasn’t entirely convinced of it, either.

  CHAPTER 16

  “Are you ready?” Josh asked in a low voice, standing just inches from me.

  Of course I wasn’t ready to try his bootlegged spell that he’d concocted from several other spells. But I had to—it seemed like the most reliable. It was the one he was convinced would work. From the look on my face, he gleaned I was apprehensive. I closed my eyes for just a moment, drawing from the confidence that Josh had in the face of uncanny adversity and possibly failure. As usual it emboldened me. Made the mountain I was about to climb nothing more than a steep step that I could navigate with ease.

  I didn’t want to perform strong magic with an audience, but all the Alphas were present. The indelible mark on them had become their death sentence, and I was the key to removing it. I was giving up control of my body and volition to someone who wanted to take over. But the options were limited.

  I’d practiced it so many times, I knew the spell and everything that it would entail. It had to be pure Faerie and dark magic, so I couldn’t even be anchored to Josh or have the privilege of something comforting and safe. I looked around the room again, but my gaze still went back to Josh because he was the one I trusted for reassurance. I had this.

  The knife slipped over my hand, blood rose to the surface, and I started the incantation, watching as the light in the room was eclipsed to darkness and all the people, sounds, and things around me disappeared. Completely swaddled in darkness, I kept going, breathing the words out. First they felt foreign, and slowly they unfolded into a familiar language, her language.

  I saw the world before it was the way we knew it. Things that were mutated versions of what we called were-animals, more beasts than men in the basic sense. Wild, vicious anim
als that spoke. The world that Logan described, before were-animals became “pretty little things.” I tried to ignore the other things around me, the witches performing strong magic, vampires that looked nothing like the ones I’d met—hairless creatures, garnet eyes, all fangs, inhumane pale monsters that were the walking embodiment of nightmares.

  I couldn’t ignore the violence. Were-animals were complete savages, roaming through the streets, and even the vampires moved away from them. The witches cowered in fear. I kept saying the incantation, pleading for a quick escape and respite from the violence and blood, the pleasure felt in carnal cruelty. I kept going. Again the world became black, the images gone, unfamiliar faces appearing and disappearing—except for the bronze man that Josh had warned me of, that very man who had taken on Ethan’s image when we’d gone to the in-between, and was still in Ethan’s image. Never let him touch you, that was the one instruction Josh had given me. I tried to move. My feet were planted on the ground; the smell of death whispered in the room, and magic soon claimed it. Dark magic. Strong magic. Deadly magic.

  The bronze man shifted to a wolf, then a panther, and continued with various other animals. I kept going. What would happen if I stopped—what was supposed to happen? Was he supposed to stop shifting? That was when I realized I wasn’t adequately prepared for this. The words didn’t come anymore no matter how I willed them. I choked on them. No, it wasn’t the words. Someone was trying to claim the spell and me with it—Maya, her language off in the distance with another spell to counter mine.

  The bronze figure continued to shift, his language matching Maya’s, clouding my head, animals forming, peeling away, and being discarded. Visions of the animals and their horrid acts against humanity filled my thoughts. I heard cries of pain, felt despair as vivid as my own. I owned the sorrow, and it claimed me as its own. I tried to shrug it off, but nothing happened. I was forced to live through it, to see and feel our acts. To truly know what we were until I hated us. Hated us as much as others did. Until I wanted us cursed and dead, too.

  The bleak emptiness of death and dark magic compounded and increased with each animal cast off. It was exactly what was going to happen to the pack. Once considered savages and monsters, they were cursed, and Maya and the man before me weren’t going to change it. I screamed; the bloodcurdling sound shattered the magic, along with that vision and parts of me, too. I felt torn between the two worlds as I clawed my way away from it. Maya spat my name as if it were a curse. No longer the person who saved her, I had become her enemy that was working to contain her. I needed to contain her.

  Still bound by magic, I tried to shed the tenebrific cloak, but I couldn’t. I opened my eyes to an image just as disturbing. They were all on the floor, spasming, gasping for breath. My head spun as I tried to find a way to stop it. Nothing. Through blurry vision, I tried to make out the faces in the room. Another cut on my hand, then someone grasped it, and words floated, and it all stopped. Josh, his magic a cleansing wash, neutralized it. It wasn’t gone, but it had become a dense obscurity of gray, and Maya was quiet. I lay on the floor as voices skated over me; at first, they seemed like they were off in the distance, and then finally they were closer, in the same room.

  Once the pain had ceased, after a few moments they came back to themselves, getting to their feet. Sebastian was the first to lift his shirt—the mark was still there. The others revealed that theirs were there, too. How many more days did we have?

  “Sky, are you okay?” Ethan was cautious as he approached, concerned.

  I nodded absently.

  “Are you sure?” Josh asked. He frowned.

  No. I wasn’t sure at all. I thought I was fine. I felt fine, or as fine as I could be based on the circumstances, but everyone kept looking at me. I rubbed my hand over my face, needing to make sure it wasn’t beastly or I hadn’t sprouted horns, because they were looking at me as though some variation of that weirdness had occurred.

  Josh stepped closer and entwined his fingers with mine. He whispered the words he usually did when he loaned me magic. I felt it, stronger than it had ever been, a direct contrast to what I had subjected myself to before. Strong natural magic overtook whatever was lurking behind. I’d been so deeply submerged in it, I’d lost the sense of what it was. I didn’t want that type of magic to become my norm, where I couldn’t distinguish between the two and was unprepared to deal with each differently.

  “Better?” he inquired. I nodded. Physically I was better, but looking at Ethan, all I saw was the bronze man who was death, shifting to all the other animals and discarding them. The others around me were the carnivorous savages that destroyed everything in their paths, that caused others to cower in fear, that warranted death; they were condemned, too. I swallowed the sickness that was threatening to surface.

  “I need some air.” I backed out of the room. I heard Ethan call me, but I ignored him and continued shedding my clothes.

  I was naked by the time I crossed the threshold of the back door and had shifted mid-jog without breaking stride. I kept running, around the trees, leaping over branches, ignoring the low ones that I missed and that scratched against my face. My paws pounded against the loose dirt, kicking it up. I ran faster, my lungs opening up as I pulled in air, hoping it would cleanse me of the memories. The aromatic smell of the trees, the crisp air, the grainy smell of the sparse grass washed over me. I ran faster, dirt becoming smoke that I ran through. Each time my paws hit the ground, I propelled myself farther, pushed myself faster, pounded the ground harder, trying to escape the memories—but they couldn’t be evaded. I wasn’t sure how long I ran and what I was running for, but when I finally stopped, I wasn’t sure how to feel. But at least things were muddled enough that I could have some reprieve.

  I plopped down in a little spot in the bosk and waited, once again unsure of what to do next, how to feel, what to think.

  “Sky.” Ethan’s voice was soft and plaintive. I looked up but eventually settled back into a resting position. I didn’t want to talk, either.

  “Sky, look at me,” he commanded. I looked up, holding his gaze as he knelt next to me. “You’ve been gone for three hours. Change.”

  Nope.

  When I didn’t make an effort to do so, he reached out to touch me. I snapped at him. He jerked his hand back as gray rolled over his eyes and they narrowed on me. “Sky. Change. Now.”

  I howled, a mournful sound, and buried my head in my paws. I didn’t want to change—not yet. I needed a reprieve from it all, and the moment I changed, it would all come back.

  “Okay.” He lowered himself to the ground and sat next to me, resting back on his arms. I slid up and put my head on his lap and fell asleep.

  When I awoke, he was in the same position. It was dusk, and he still had the concerned look on his face that he’d had when I’d refused to change. I slipped out of my animal shell, a place that offered me more comfort than my human one. He took off his shirt and handed it to me. I slipped it on. Then he took my hand, locking his fingers with mine as we started back toward the house.

  “You are going to have to tell me what happened. That’s not negotiable,” he said.

  I told him everything in more detail than I would have wished, as though he could absolve me of the memories. When I told him about the person who resembled him but felt like death, shifting to several animals and discarding them as a feeling of death ensorcelled him, I turned to face him.

  “Ethan, what are you? Don’t tell me you’re just a wolf. It all just seems so wrong. You seem wrong sometimes.”

  “Sky, I’m not sure why that happened or why your mind has chosen to—”

  I released his hand. “Ethan, don’t.”

  His lips pressed into a tight line. Whatever secrets he had, whatever it was that he felt he needed to protect me from, it wasn’t going to be disclosed, and I was tired of it. I snatched up my clothes, which someone had folded and thoughtfully placed closer to the woods, only taking my eyes off him to put on my shirt befo
re tossing his at him.

  “I think I’ve done enough to earn the pack’s trust, your trust. I can’t be in the dark, struggling for some glimpse of clarity, only to be blindsided when you all need me. I’m not going to do this, Ethan.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “It always is,” I said, walking back to the house, thankful that he hadn’t followed me.

  I’d gone straight to my room. It felt like my room, anyway, since I always ended up in it—the one where I’d first met the pack—out of so many rooms to choose from in the massive house. Initially, they’d been strangers trying to save my life for some unknown reason, and for years that seemed to be the M.O., but now I knew the reason. If the curse was correct, I was the key to ending it. Honesty be damned. Screw transparency. You saw whatever screwed-up, illusionist reality they created on a foundation of lies of omission with the goal of allowing people to see the reality they wished them to believe.

  When someone knocked on the door, I continued to look out the large window, past the crowded forest, transfixed by the light illumination of the moon that pulled at me. I now found comfort in my wolf, and magic was an intricate part of my very existence. Things had changed so much since the first time I’d awakened in this very room three years ago.

  “Skylar.” I turned to look around. Cole entered carrying a bottle and two glasses. “I figured you could use this.”

  I didn’t say anything and returned to looking out the window. I didn’t want him to go away. Okay, he could leave—I didn’t want the full bottle of vodka to leave. He could scuttle back to whatever Alphas-only den of secret meetings he had come from.

  When he took up a position next to me and handed me a glass, I took it and gulped it down. Oh, that’s right, I don’t drink vodka for the same reason I don’t drink gasoline. But it didn’t bother me too much, and dulling my senses seemed like a pretty good life plan.