A Light So Cruel (Pioneer Falls Book 3)

by Heather Davis

  A LIGHT SO CRUEL

  Published by Heather Davis

  Copyright 2018 by Heather Davis

  www.heatherdavisbooks.com

  All Rights Reserved

  First Edition 2018

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9993664-2-4

  Edited by: Eilis Flynn

  Cover Design by Asha Hossain

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written notice of the publisher. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblances to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  For Olivia and C.J.

  You’re never alone, even in the darkest forest.

  Table of Contents

  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

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BOOKS BY HEATHER DAVIS

  Chapter One

  The thick canopy of trees between Falls Park and the cemetery nearly obscured the light. Moving along the makeshift path, I wished I had the nerve to transform into my wolf self so I could see better, but it was mid-afternoon and the town was full of folks attending Mr. Gray’s funeral and the church dinner afterward.

  People had turned out in droves, unable to keep from gossiping about the murder committed by Mrs. Gillingham, the eccentric lady who ran the pawnshop and, apparently, was a black widow who’d killed before. She’d probably be charged in connection with our former Protector Ivan North’s death, too. That tragedy seemed far off at the moment, though.

  Ravens had led me to these woods. I couldn’t quite explain it, but I felt like they wanted me to see something. I’d taken their presence in the cemetery a few weeks ago at Ivan’s funeral as a bad omen—so maybe it was happening again. Then again, most everything that happened in Pioneer Falls had been bad since I’d learned my family’s secret.

  Inheriting an unbreakable curse can really ruin your life.

  As I moved through the brush that afternoon, I caught a deep iron smell. Blood. I was a little too familiar with that scent. My wolf-enhanced sense of smell had been picking it up a lot lately.

  “Lily!” Morgan McAllister, my boyfriend, called behind me, but it seemed far off—somewhere in the distance. Like he was calling me from near the falls, and we were separated by the roar of water, a spray of mist.

  I moved forward, toward something unnatural, out of place on the ground among the leaves and branches. As I got closer, I could tell it was a discarded black eye mask, like something you’d wear to a masquerade ball, with long red ribbons and ebony feathers. I bristled. Was this a throwaway from the Harvest Festival we’d had in Pioneer Falls the week earlier? What was it doing here?

  But then I found a shoe. A man’s loafer, to be exact.

  My skin prickled with warning. I no longer heard Morgan calling me. On the ground two piles of leaves were mounded over the dirt. An unwelcome coldness filled my belly. I smelled the iron smell again. Not fresh blood. Old blood. Dead. Lifeless.

  Horrified but unable to stop myself, I knelt next to the mounds. I brushed away some of the leaves. Flesh. A human arm.

  Frantically, I uncovered more of what appeared to be a man, buried in a shallow grave. My stomach roiled against the smells, the visual of the graying skin, the sightless eyes. A bullet hole carved a rust and black depression at his temple. He wore a velvet jacket, some kind of black pants, an old-fashioned cravat at his throat. It didn’t make any sense, but maybe someone in costume had gone missing from the festival. But I hadn’t heard about anything like that.

  I turned to the other mound and did the same thing, revealing a woman in a brocaded corset and a silky full skirt trimmed with lace. Beneath her pale makeup and red-stained lips, her skin was greenish-gray. At her temple, a bullet hole leaked dark, oxidized blood onto a powdered wig. I was careful not to touch things, aside from the leaves. I slowly backed up from between the two bodies, the full realization hitting me. I’d found dead bodies in the woods near Falls Park.

  My stomach rumbled a warning and I jetted toward the bushes. As much as I tried to rein in the puking, I couldn’t. When I’d finished, I wiped my mouth with the back of my sleeve and then spit a couple of times to try to clear the taste. In my pocket, I found a balled-up tissue and I used it to cover my nose and mouth as I went back toward the victims.

  Instead, I found Morgan. “You all right, love?” he asked, his amber eyes full of concern. I lowered the tissue from my mouth and breathed in the smell of his leather jacket and his piney cologne as I hugged him. “What is it? Are you ill?”

  “I was—anyone would be at the smell,” I replied. “They reek.”

  “What?” Morgan asked, letting me go. “I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t you see them? They’re right here…” I glanced around, but it was as if a gust of wind had come and resettled the mounds. Shaking, I got down on my hands and knees and started searching around for the bodies. But where were they? I frantically pawed around at the leaves.

  “Lily…” Morgan crouched beside me. “What is it, lass?”

  My frustration grew. Surely, this had been the place. I hadn’t run far to throw up. But I couldn’t seem to find anything. I backed away from the spot, scanning the forest floor. Then something caught my attention at the base of a tree. Something bleached out, weathered—a scrap of moldering reddish ribbon. I used the tissue in my hand to pick up the fragment.

  Something rustled in the canopy of branches above us. Wings. Ravens.

  I stared at the piece of ribbon. I could’ve sworn it had been attached to the vibrantly colored masquerade mask I’d seen a moment before, but in my hands it was nearly disintegrated. As if it were decades old. A new wave of nausea hit me and I staggered backward. “The scene of the crime.”

  Morgan caught me in his arms. “What crime? Should we call your father?”

  “Not now,” I murmured, my lashes fluttering as I felt shadows swimming around me. A raven cawed. I flashed on the forest floor again, the bodies, uncovered as I’d left them a moment ago. The scene of the last Harvest Festival murder.

  Morgan rubbed my shoulders, bringing me back to the present, to my body. “What are you seeing? Are you with me?”

  I opened my eyes. “The ravens wanted me to know what happened here.”

  He steadied me. “Are you saying you saw ghosts?”

  “A memory. Not a ghost.” I tugged at his hand. “C’mon.”

  As we walked back over to the cemetery, my head began to clear. The smells faded. I thought of my teacher Ms. Wilson, of how she’d rented what’d once been
the dead woman’s house. How she’d insisted the deceased pair hadn’t been lovers, but I saw that wasn’t true. They’d been dressed in the costumes of a couple—some variation of Marie Antoinette and her husband. And most disturbing of all, they’d each died from a single shot to the temple. Execution style.

  Morgan and I wound through the rows of graves, finally coming to the crypt where the raven had spooked me before leading me to the woods. I traced the names on the brass plate. Millicent. Charlie. The victims from that Harvest Festival murder. I knew that was what I’d find.

  Ms. Wilson had warned I should let the dead rest, that it was better for the living. But I was about to discover that the ravens of Pioneer Falls wouldn’t leave me alone until I uncovered the truth. Until I set things right.

  ***

  Call me paranoid, but it was a little freaky to have an unkindness of ravens tailing me in the days that followed Mr. Gray’s funeral and my vision in the woods. An unkindness—that’s literally the word for a group of ravens. Dark birds occupied the maple tree in the backyard. Perched on electrical wires on Main Street. Cawed at me from the roof of Pioneer Falls High when I walked through the doors each morning.

  In our town, it’s not unusual to see ravens around. They’re known scavengers, feeding on the spawned-out carcasses of the salmon in our river and creeks that feed our namesake falls. The ravens are integral to the ecosystem in our area of the Cascade Mountains. Some would say, part of the natural beauty.

  Just a few hours’ drive from Seattle, Pioneer Falls is a mecca for tourists who want to go hiking, take photos of the falls, or enjoy the scenery of leaves turning. But most of all, it seems like a place people know each other and feel a part of the community. It’s beautiful…on the surface.

  But beauty can hide terrible secrets.

  I was sure there was some kind of secret surrounding the gathering of ravens. Why else would they follow a person from place to place? I’m no expert, but I knew that wasn’t normal wildlife behavior. Then again, who’s to say what’s normal these days?

  I mean, I’m a werewolf. That’s far from what used to be normal for me.

  My family keeps our curse hidden, much like the bloody history of Pioneer Falls. And that November, we weren’t the only werewolves in town. A brutal pack, led by a gnarled old wolf named Ezra Smith, had moved in a few months ago, causing all kinds of problems. They didn’t seem to be planning to leave. I actually preferred the annoying ravens.

  One blustery Friday, light rain pitter-pattered down as I hurried to work at the coffee shop after school. Pioneer Falls gets a fair amount of bad weather, being in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, but most people here, like in Seattle, don’t run around with umbrellas. You’re more likely to find us with rain parkas and rubber boots. Rain’s just part of the package, not something to fear. Though, every once in a while, if the creeks and the river flood, that’s another story. Innocuous things can turn deadly.

  I hadn’t noticed any ravens tracking me from the high school, but when I reached the coffee shop, two birds perched on a wire stretched across Main Street, flicking rain from their soot-colored feathers. I cast them a wary glance and ducked inside the door.

  The scent of espresso shots and freshly baked cinnamon buns greeted me like a warm hug. Pioneer Perk’s the only coffee place for at least twenty miles. Maggie Green, the owner, is obsessed with the old TV show Friends, so the decor mimics the coffee shop set of Central Perk. A couple of big couches and an armchair sit near one of the main windows, with a low coffee table between them. Little bistro tables are scattered around the rest of the place. Exposed brick walls, original to the old building, are decorated with floating shelves of plants and knickknacks from Maggie’s travels, and a few hippie accessories, like Himalayan salt lamps and big crystal chunks, that Maggie thinks give the place good energy. She’s into that kind of thing.

  With ravens stalking me, I figured I could use all the good energy I could get. I settled for a mocha with extra whipped cream before my shift. I ditched my raincoat on one of the hooks in the back room and then took my drink to one of the couches, pretending not to stare out at the ravens staring in at me.

  The coffee shop was mostly empty, not too unusual for a Friday afternoon. Tonight was the last football game of the season, so there’d probably be a rush a little later than normal. I concentrated on the taste of the mocha, the sweet chocolate cutting through the dark roast espresso, the silky whirl of cream. Definitely good energy.

  When the door chimed, I looked up to see my friend Cooper North heading to the counter, his camouflage rain jacket slick with rain. It had been a couple of weeks since I’d seen him at Mr. Gray’s funeral. Cooper’s father, Ivan, my father’s human Protector, had been killed by a werewolf hunter, though we’d probably never know the whole story since that hunter was dead now.

  Cooper set his tall to-go cup on the low table and slid his wet coat off. “I always know where to find you,” he said, taking a seat on the other end of the couch.

  “Me, coffee shop. You, graveyard,” I joked, referring to Cooper’s job at Pioneer Falls Cemetery.

  “For now.” He took a sip from his cup, watching me over the rim. “So…Morgan told me you had a vision in the woods near the cemetery a few days ago.”

  “What—are you guys buddies now?” I asked.

  He shrugged and gave me a sheepish smile. “I misjudged him. When he came around, I thought he was mixed up with Ezra. You did too, for a while.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I didn’t need a reminder about my early misgivings about Morgan. Not with the way I felt about him now—all warm and fuzzy, no suspicions left.

  Cooper set his cup on the table, releasing a wave of jasmine-scented steam. When he leaned back on the couch, I caught a hint of machine oil and soil rising from his clothes, and underneath, his laundry detergent and sweat. Signs of hard work. His light brown hair, on the longish side, was slicked back a little, wet from the rain. His blue eyes were bright against his face, which was tanned from working outdoors, even this late in fall.

  Somehow, his high cheekbones seemed more prominent, as if he’d lost a little weight from stress. But overall, Cooper seemed better than he had in recent weeks, more alert, less sad. I could see shades of the guy I’d known as a freshman when he was a senior at Pioneer Falls High, the handsome loner who’d been a bit of an outcast, but still the crush of several girls in school.

  “Anyway,” Cooper said, “Maggie said Morgan was handy. Have him call me, I’ve got a few repair jobs I could throw his way.”

  I smiled. “Cool. He’d like that, I bet.”

  “Figure he could use the work,” Cooper said, with a shrug. “His parents cutting him off and all.”

  “Oh.” I tried to hide the fact that the news was a surprise, but Cooper caught my expression.

  “Crap, sorry. Morgan didn’t tell you. Secretive freaking wolves,” he muttered.

  “No, I mean… It makes sense. They’ve got to find some way to force him back to London. They’re not nice.”

  Cooper glanced down at his watch. “Gotta get back to the cemetery with the part I needed from the hardware store. You gonna tell me what happened in the woods?”

  “I’ve been trying to forget it,” I said, but I gave him the rundown.

  When I’d finished, Cooper let out a long sigh. “Huh…well, we’re not really in the ghost business. I try to stick to wolves.”

  “Yeah, but the ravens,” I said, pointing out the window at the two birds on the wire. “Like at your father’s funeral. That was weird, but now they seem to be following me. Am I supposed to do something? Something about the murder? I know it’s unsolved.”

  “You could help Maggie get the historical society up and running,” he said, pointing at a flyer posted on the shop window. “There might be something else you could dig up.” He smirked. “Sorry, graveyard humor.”

  I punched him in the arm. “Do they want something from me? I mean, if I could figure out what they’
re trying to say, maybe they’d leave me alone.”

  Cooper gave me a thoughtful glance. “Ravens and wolves, symbiotic relationship. Could have something to do with your pack. You tell your dad about this?”

  “Not yet,” I admitted. “I don’t want to make it a big deal. I know he’ll tell me to leave it alone, anyway. If only it were that easy! He doesn’t have birds stalking him like out of some Hitchcock movie.”

  Cooper took a long sip of tea and then set it down on the table. “Speaking of weird stuff, you know anything about someone returning my dad’s stolen TV? I found it on my porch the other day. No note or anything.”

  “Nathaniel Smith told me they took it when they were at your father’s place. He’s not exactly the note-leaving type.”

  “Maybe I misjudged them a little, too,” Cooper said, getting up and sliding on his raincoat.

  I rose and held out his to-go cup. “Are you kidding me? You were wrong about them killing your dad, but you were never wrong about them being a bad pack.”

  “I thought you were always willing to give any wolf the benefit of the doubt.” Cooper gave me a pained smile as he took the cup back. “Besides, maybe there’s hope we can broker a truce.”

  “Maybe,” I replied, moving toward the window as Cooper said good-bye.

  Outside, the old-fashioned street lamps of Main Street clicked on, causing the ravens to stir. The wire swayed as the birds took flight. Probably they knew my routine—that I’d be at the coffee shop for the rest of the night, or maybe they were just seeking shelter in the gathering darkness. I shivered and turned away, grateful to lose myself in the tasks Maggie had waiting for me.

  ***

  When you’re a werewolf, even in human form your senses are sharper than an average person. That’s how I caught Morgan’s scent before I saw him—an intoxicating blend of forest and cologne and the musk of his skin. I scanned the block ahead for Morgan as I walked. My blood surged with anticipation.