Midnight Falls (Sky Brooks Series Book 3)

by McKenzie Hunter

  “Spells,” Josh and Ethan offered simultaneously.

  Seeing the confusion on my face, Josh elaborated. “As long as I can remember there have been rumors about these objects that were so strong that could do things that sheer magic couldn’t. We always wrote them off as fables. But once we discovered the Gem of Levage existed, and then the Aufero, we started to speculate that maybe the Clostras existed as well. An idea that there was a book of magic so powerful that they were guarded by a ward that would only allow only a select few to read them, brought out our curiosity. When the rumors persisted along with those stating that Marcia was trying to find them, we made it our goal to try to find them first. Apparently the spells are very unique and dangerous, unlike anything a witch, faes, or elves can do. ”

  “The one that concerns us is one that can ‘lay the beast to rest,’” Ethan added.

  Lay the beast to rest? It didn’t sound like a bad thing at all. In fact, is sounded like a wonderful idea. We wouldn’t be were-animals anymore. Why the morose mood?

  “Is that what this is about? You want to use it to cure us?” My heart was beating fast at the idea that we were one book, one spell, away from being normal.

  Sebastian’s brow furrowed. “The beast will be laid to rest along with the person that shares its body. If the rumors are correct, the spell exists to kill us all,” he said.

  A spell that would kill all the were-animals—we needed those books. Or did we? As long as they weren’t all together, it was better. Let the missing one stay gone, that was my opinion. But I knew that wouldn’t be good enough for Sebastian; he had to control the situation.

  As Ethan drove me home, I couldn’t tell what thoughts occupied his mind. Usually I could sense his emotions; they were like a brushfire, wild and hard to ignore. Now there was a controlled calm that I assumed was for my benefit. He played jazz loud, providing much needed noise where there should have been conversation. Now the car was filled with the sounds of saxophones, trumpets, bass guitars, and pianos. The deep crooning of the artists spoke to me, a deep sorrow from a place of pain where few people could relate.

  When we drove up to my house, Quell stood at the front door, pacing. How long had he been waiting? Did he do it yesterday out of habit? I had arrived several hours earlier than expected. Had he been there since the break of dawn, waiting for me?

  “Your vampire is here,” Ethan said.

  My vampire. Were there ever truer words? His dark eyes were bright as I stepped out of the car. He frowned at the bandaging on my arms and without an invitation followed us into the house. Ethan didn’t put on any pretense about knowing how to disable my ward. Once I opened the door, he whispered the key word and held the door open for me. Quell slid in behind us, and stopped in the middle of the room between Ethan and me as I took a seat on the sofa. Ethan leaned against the wall, fully aware of the barrier Quell had made between Ethan and me.

  Quell’s gaze cruised in my direction and remained on the bandages for a long time. “Did you do that to her?”

  Ethan balked at the accusation before finding a comfortable place of dismissive contempt, disregarding Quell’s question with a roll of his eyes.

  “I asked a question: did you do that to her?” A slight threat trailed over his words.

  Ethan wasn’t going to answer, and when the muscles along Quell’s neck tightened and he drew back his lips, exposing his fangs, Ethan pushed himself from the wall and assumed a defensive position. The tension became a little difficult to bear, heightened testosterone stifling the room; it was only a matter of time before one of them allowed it to control their actions.

  “He had nothing to do with my injuries,” I said softly. I hated trying to placate them, but I figured breaking up a fight between the two would have been a lot worse. I picked the lesser of the two evils.

  Eyeing the bandages again, Quell fixated on them as though I had an amputation rather than a couple of knife cuts. He came closer and knelt in front of me. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Who did this to you?” His attention went back to Ethan, who had returned to his position of casually resting against the wall. His mere presence irritated Quell and he didn’t try to hide it.

  “I don’t want to talk about it now. Maybe later.” Quell looked more feral than usual. I doubted if he had had anything to eat since I left. It’s peculiar how someone that needed blood to survive could be so finicky.

  “Have you fed?” I asked.

  His gaze kept drifting back in Ethan’s direction. “I can wait,” he responded, momentarily returning his attention back to me.

  But he couldn’t. I could see the hunger in his eyes. He would leave tonight and somebody or somebodies would die. But before I could say anything, Ethan spoke up. “No, she’ll do it now. The responsibility she takes on doesn’t stop because she had a rough day.” Then he shifted his attention to me, “Isn’t that right, Skylar?”

  I glared at him, the king of jackasses. He simply smiled. They knew about my arrangement with Quell, but them knowing about it and seeing it were two different things. Ethan’s sole purpose in life seemed to be to embarrass me and throw my mistakes back in my face at every possible chance. I wouldn’t have denied Quell in the first place.

  “Go ahead,” I said, keeping a defiant gaze on Ethan the whole time.

  Quell moved with hesitation towards me, giving Ethan one more look, over his shoulder. “Are you sure?”

  I tilted my head, giving him better access. He moved slower than usual, cautious as he inched closer to me. His lips brushed against my neck. He paused for a few moments. “Are you sure?” he asked again, softly. I nodded and his fangs quickly pierced my skin. A hiss escaped through my clenched teeth. It hurt; my wrists were used to the constant invasion. I waded through the pain and kept my focus on Ethan.

  Quell stopped often, checking my response, gauging my reaction. While Quell was concentrated on me, I focused on Ethan, whose glower was clinched into a tight line. His nose flared several times, but he held my gaze, his arms folded across his chest. His glare was so intense it was hard to hold, but I did. I cradled Quell closer to me, sliding my hands down the nape of his neck.

  A rose tint spread over Ethan’s face and neck. I felt a shameless sense of delight and a vindicating victory. His frown was pulled tight and for several minutes, and the rigid composure wouldn’t ease. After much effort, he relaxed his arms, pushed up from the wall, and went into the kitchen.

  Eventually Quell pulled away, and his tongue slid across his lips and my neck, removing the trail of blood and closing the opening. His lips were cool against my ear as his breath brushed against them, and he held my face close to his. “Did it bring you acceptable pleasure to upset him like that?” he whispered.

  Of course, but his look of censure and disappointment caused the moment of self-indulgent pleasure to quickly wither away.

  “Please do not do that again,” he said as he rose, a lot more graceful and lithe than before. A restored vibrancy that was always missing when he hadn’t fed for several days had returned. I couldn’t allow him to do it more; it took so much out of me, but because he was so finicky he didn’t have a lot of options.

  As he started toward the door, I stood too when Ethan came out of the kitchen. They kept a careful eye on each other. Ethan tracked his every movement until Quell let himself out.

  With a spark of derisive amusement, Ethan said, “You do manage to get yourself in some very compromising situations, don’t you? Michaela’s favorite is enthralled with you—how cute. It will be interesting to see how this will play out.”

  “It can’t be any more interesting than you sleeping with Chris, when she was obviously Demetrius’ mistress. I can assure you, it was quite interesting watching that train wreck,” I said in a tepid voice.

  Things were at an impasse, linked by unspoken deception and animosity. There was an unresolved issue between us and neither one unwilling to broach the situation as we should have. “Are we
going to talk about the elephant in the room?” I finally asked.

  His light chuckle dawdled in the silence. “Of course. Should we talk about how you held onto dark magic? Or discuss how you were attempting to run away to be with your family—or anywhere just to get away from us? Perhaps the topic should be about Quell and how your actions will adversely affect this pack when Michaela decides to take notice. Yes, let’s discuss the elephant in the room.”

  Well, I wasn’t talking about that baby elephant. The one I wanted to discuss was a big horrible brute of a beast that was more than just a series of bad decisions. “No, I would rather discuss what you did to me the other day. What the hell are you?”

  “You know what I am. Do you really think your panic attack is discussion-worthy?”

  Was he kidding me! A loss of words struck me so seldom that I didn’t know how to react. The confidence in which he delivered this pile of compost for a microsecond made me relive that night again. Did I have a panic attack? Could I have overreacted that day and have exaggerated what actually occurred?

  “Do you really believe I don’t know the difference between a panic attack and what happened to me at your house?”

  A slight shrug brushed off my question. “I don’t care to try to figure out what goes on in your mind. It is simpler that way.”

  “I don’t trust you,” I blurted out before he could make it to the door to leave.

  “Good.” He turned to look at me once more. The cool gaze sized me up in one sweeping move. “Because I don’t trust you either.” Then he was out the door.

  CHAPTER 5

  I hit the floor for the fourth time as Winter swept my leg. I was off today. My face had smashed into the mat more times today than it had in the past five months, when Winter had finally given me a slight smile of approval and a terse, “You’re not bad.”

  I wasn’t going to get anything more than that. That simple phrase was like her handing me a gold medal in the Olympics because most of the time she was telling me that my skills were laughable. Sparring with her and my continued instruction in Krav Maga had changed that quickly. They were skills that I hoped I would never have to use. I knew how to kill someone with my hands; it should have made me feel confident. It didn’t. It made me feel dangerous.

  With a quick flip I came to my feet just in time to block Winter’s strike and moved to the left to avoid a jab she threw. A quick step to the right gave me the positional advantage for a hip toss that landed her on the ground for just a few seconds. She moved too fast. It was always her advantage and something I was still having a hard time adapting to. My advantage was strength, and—so she said—a predator’s instinct that came from being a werewolf. But I didn’t feel like I had an instinctual advantage. My wolf was a dud.

  On the ground again, I tried to get out of a hold that Winter had me in. I had the advantage, her grip was off, and when I broke it, my elbow jabbed into the stomach. We came to our feet about the same time. A full onslaught of kicks, punches, and tosses ensued, then one left punch caught me in the jaw. Winter stopped, took a step back and frowned. “You’re off and making amateurish mistakes.”

  When I failed to block a punch and stumbled back, she frowned and asked, “What’s wrong with you?” I massaged my throbbing face.

  Damn, she hit hard. “Do you ever wonder about Ethan?” I asked.

  “In what way?”

  “He’s different.”

  Winter’s eyebrows rose with amusement “Really? He’s the peculiar one?”

  “You all know about me and what makes me different, but you can’t see it. He drops wards with ease. That doesn’t strike you as odd?”

  “Most were-animals can break wards,” was her swift rebuttal. “I can break them, but I still need to improve.”

  “He broke Josh’s protective field. Were-animals can’t break protective fields, only other witches.”

  “Ethan’s mother was a witch. It isn’t hard to assume that he has some magical ability,” she said as she grabbed her water bottle, took a drink and plopped down on the mat. Sweat covered, hair straggling out of her messy ponytail, and beads of sweat making her tawny skin a little too shiny, and Winter still looked better than most women did on a good day. “It isn’t something we want to advertise. The witches are odd about stuff like that. The very idea that we are immune to their magic while in animal form makes them a little nervous. They seem to forget that in human form we are just as vulnerable as anyone else.”

  I went on to tell her what happened at Ethan’s after he had stripped me of the dark magic, but she seemed stuck on me holding onto the dark magic rather than Ethan damn near killing me by just touching me.

  “Why would you do that?” she asked, exasperated.

  I didn’t feel like a lecture. “I shouldn’t have, that is beside the point. He touched me and my heart stopped,” I said.

  And she was silent for a long time. When it came to Winter, I never conflated her silence with deception. It wasn’t in her. I am sure that if she needed to, she had the ability to allow people to see her reality, but she didn’t have the patience for it. She was more inclined to tell you it’s none of your damn business or challenge you to make her tell you. Which is why I figured she probably didn’t really know the dark pack secrets. No, it seemed like Sebastian and Ethan had the position of “guardian of the secrets by any means necessary” taken care of. They were good at their jobs.

  “I don’t know, Sky, but sometimes, it's better to be oblivious. I know you don’t want to accept it, but it is. When there are people that can tell whether you are lying by your physiological changes and behavior, or compel you to truth with a simple touch or a spell, the best weapon you have against it is not knowing the truth.” It was an earnest response.

  “Who can compel you to truth with a touch or spells?”

  “Faes can do it, and stronger witches can cast spells, but Josh says it is so draining they use it is a last resort. You know I can do it on a smaller scale.”

  Yes, I knew that Winter could charm people, which was equivalent to compelling, but it was easy to forget. It was something she chose not to do often and she never considered it as one of the weapons at her disposal. I assumed she considered it cheating. Winter was a lot of things, but she would never be considered a cheater.

  “Is there any way to stop a fae from doing that to you?”

  “Of course, there is always a way. I generally tell them that whatever part of them that touches any part of me will not return in working condition. Most of them will only require one demonstration and then we are fine.” Her clear hazel eyes always held a tinge of menace, in clear contrast with her gentle features and the tepid tawny coloring that highlighted her delicate cheeks and winged out just slightly to accentuate her narrow face.

  We usually practiced on Wednesday and Saturday, but she didn’t mind adding today, Thursday, when I called and asked. If it were up to Winter, she would live in the gym, sparring every chance we had. A few months ago, she was injured badly and nearly killed by a creature and she went into survival mode. She trained too much, but no one could tell her otherwise. As a were-snake she was considered a lesser species, a title she wore with unnecessary shame. The greater species had more to do with the felidae and canidae, who were larger and had the ability to heal faster. If anything, she and her kind were the greater species. They weren’t called by Mercury or the moon and were only forced into their animal form during a solar eclipse. They could virtually live a normal life, reaping the benefits of being a were-animal while only acknowledging its existence every year and a half. That was great as far as I was concerned.

  She relaxed back on her elbows and looked up at the window of the gym. It was still hard getting used to the changes between Winter and me. It was less than two years ago that she was the president and founder of the “let’s kill Skylar” club. Now we were friends. Well, I considered us friends, but I wasn’t sure what we were. We rarely talked on any other days except when we sparred,
those two days a week she tried to beat me up. It was a dysfunctional friendship at best; nevertheless, it was a significant improvement from its origins.

  “Besides the threat of bodily harm, is there a way to stop a fae from compelling you to truth?” I asked between drinks of water.

  “Not really. Only if they break contact before the effect is complete. But it happens so quickly it’s difficult to do so. There’s an enigmatic pull that makes it nearly impossible to break. The stronger faes will bind you with a kiss, which they can release in the same manner. Honestly, the best thing you can do is to keep your distance.”

  “Well, I’m sure the binding kiss is a little easier to ward off than touch,” I said, amused.

  She shrugged. “For some it is harder than you think. Most of them are rather pretty, the men and the women alike. Most people don’t mind the kiss so much.” It seemed like she was speaking more from experience than simple knowledge of faes. “It is not something they do often. More like a last resort. They aren’t renegades running around making people fall in love, feeling them up, and kissing all that come in contact with them. As with the witches, stronger magic is draining on them and requires extensive time to recover from afterwards. If they are compelling you to truth, I assure you they need the information.”

  “Making you fall in love with them, that’s necessary?”

  “You get the same results. The emotion of love causes that indomitable need to please that person. I am sure it is easier to achieve your desired results if the person's only desire is to please you. I think I would prefer them to force the truth out of me than to feel an insatiable adoration that can only be soothed by making the fae happy. In fact, I would prefer them to compel me to commit suicide.”

  Each door I opened in this world made me want to slam it and pretend it didn’t exist, and this was another one. Something as simple as a touch. How many people did I touch on any given day? A slide of my hand against their back as I passed them, a good-natured handshake during a greeting, a light touch on someone’s knee as you squeezed past them in a row. How easily such a dangerous power could be executed without much thought.