Shadow Sworn (Copper Falls Book 2)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  There wasn’t a single thing he didn’t try to take from her.

  She steeled herself and took a breath, and turned to him. He stood there, looking calm and cool as always. Tall and muscled, with piercing dark eyes, she could remember, with more than a little embarrassment, thinking he was handsome the first time he’d shown up at her after-school job in high school. How she’d been flattered by the way those dark eyes had watched her. If only she’d known. Though, in truth, it had instilled a nearly lifelong distrust of men who looked at her that way. Precisely two men had gotten through it. The first had married her and ended up dead for it.

  “Nothing better to do, Marshall?” she asked, happy that her voice came out strong and steady. She grabbed a pillow and slid it into a fresh pillowcase.

  “You were doing something yesterday,” he said. “I could feel it.”

  She didn’t answer, instead focusing on slipping the second pillow into its new pillowcase.

  “What were you doing?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said with a shrug. She pulled the bedspread up and smoothed it, then walked past him to smooth the other side.

  “You were doing something.”

  Maybe it was the anger running through her. Maybe it was the memory of her first husband, dead at Marshall’s hands. Maybe it was everything, but in that moment, for the first time in years, she wasn’t afraid of Marshall. Her disdain of him was greater than her fear, and she welcomed the sensation. So when she spoke, she knew he expected her to be meek, and she gave him something else entirely.

  “I thought you were all-knowing when it came to me, Marshall. What’s wrong? Things not going quite the way you’d expected?”

  And she saw it, in the briefest of flashes of his eyes: they weren’t. She didn’t understand it. She had wondered why he wasn’t making her do more, why he wasn’t spending all of his time terrorizing her. And she realized, in that instant, that for some reason, he couldn’t.

  “Don’t get smart,” he snarled. “Just another crazy bitch from your line. That’s all you are.”

  She crossed her arms. “That’s the thing about crazy bitches though, isn’t it? You never quite know what we’re going to do.”

  His mouth dropped open, and if anything, he became more ill at ease than he’d been a moment before. “You think you’re anything against me? I could crush you without a thought.”

  “You could,” she agreed with a slow nod. Then she met his eyes. “But you haven’t. Haven’t you learned anything about me by now, Marshall? You think you’ll break me. You think that given enough time scaring me, ruining my life, that I’ll just fold. We’ve been at this for almost twenty years,” she said with some surprise. Most of her life. She could barely remember a time beforeMarshall had been the thing she’d had to arrange her life around. “When, in that entire time, have I ever just given in?”

  “You came to me. You’re Shadow now,” he said.

  She shrugged. “I came to you knowing it was what needed to be done. It wasn’t an act of defeat.”

  He stared at her. “I could kill him, you know. Kill him the way I killed honey number one. It wouldn’t even take any effort.”

  Ice cold fear shot through her, but she focused on keeping herself calm. “If you do that, you lose me. We both know that. I won’t survive it with any sanity left.”

  An odd expression crossed his face, and he looked away. “Its surprising, sometimes, what we can live through.”

  “Yes. You’ve already shown me that. But I’m tied to him. You destroy him, you destroy me.”

  He growled, and ran a hand through his dark hair.

  “I’m not going to let you run my life anymore, Marshall,” she said, watching him.

  He glared at her. “I could do anything I wanted to you right now. Anything,” he added for emphasis.

  “You could try,” she said with a shrug. “But you won’t.”

  With one last enraged look, he disappeared, and she knew he was gone. She didn’t yet understand how he did that, and in that moment, she didn’t particularly care. She fell to her knees and sent a short prayer of thanks to the Light, that he’d not actually done anything to her. And then, after a moment, she thanked Shadow as well, because she suspected that it was the reason he hadn’t been able to. Her hands shook now, but not as badly as they once had. He would always scare her. She knew that. Too much history, too much evidence of the evil he could do. She would be a fool not to fear him. But she also knew that playing meek would be her destruction. She’d almost been there, when both curses had first hit her. She wouldn’t fall under the curses, and she wouldn’t fall to Marshall, either.

  She knew it was easy for him to underestimate her. He wasn’t the only one. She didn’t look like a fighter. She was girly, and a bit on the chubby side, and she loved her garden and goats and chickens. She swooned at paperback romances and loved that her man called her “kitten.” Hippie chick, Layla had once jokingly called her, and it was truer than she knew. If Lightwitches were anything, they were all about peace and love.

  The mistake was thinking that peace and love equalled weakness, or that the girly-girl was unlikely to stand her ground. After all, every kitten believes, in its heart, that it is the biggest, baddest thing in existence.

  And when the mood strikes, it acts like it.

  She finished her tasks in that room, gritting her teeth against the feel of Calder’s curse running through her. Hunger. Thirst. Need. Always, the need. It was like a million tiny splinters digging into her body, and combined with the oily feel of Shadow slithering through her soul, she felt like she was about to lose her mind.

  “I’m gong to take a quick break,” she managed to mutter to Janice at the front desk, then she pushed open the door and started, quickly, down the path toward the woods trails. After she’d gone about a mile, she stopped and looked around. There. Fallen tree, something that wouldn’t suffer from her powers, though the trees it was bending would benefit from having it removed. She focused, and with a wave, the large oak exploded, then fell into a neat pile of wood chips. She took a breath and looked up into the gray sky.

  It was crazy, the way it felt. The pressure building in her, the edginess she felt, that need to use her Shadow magic for something, just seemed to disappear with a “pop” once she finally let go and used it. It was as if she’d fall apart under the pressure, and then, all of a sudden, it was gone and she was left wondering why she’d resisted, why she’d let it get to that point. Of course, she knew why. It was Shadow. The fact that Marshall had worked so hard to lure her to Shadow told her all she needed to know about how good it was. The fact that Light had turned its back on her as Shadow began to take over was the final, absolute judgment of Shadow’s worth.

  But it was what she had. And she’d have to use it, or risk losing so much more than she already had. She glanced at what was left of the tree again, then turned and started walking down the trail back toward the resort. She felt Shadow within her, satisfied for the moment, but luring her, beckoning her, to use it again, to fully immerse herself in what it was. It was attractive, seductive, even.

  She neared the resort, and saw Calder’s truck. He was leaning against the front of it, arms crossed, watching her with a little half-smile that made her heart skip a little. She smiled back at him, then walked to him and grabbed him, pulling him into a hug. He laughed at her obvious enthusiasm and hugged her back, hard.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I was at the post office picking up the fender for the Barracuda,” he said. “I swung by hoping for a glimpse of you.”

  She smiled. “I’m glad you did. I missed you.”

  The way his face lit up at the words went straight to her heart. And this was why, no matter how seductive Shadow was, she knew what real seduction was. It was the curve of his lips, the way his eyes sparkled when he was being mischievous. She reached up and ran her fingers along his jawline, the scruffy hairs there tickling h
er fingertips. He leaned into her touch, eyes on hers.

  “Your goats got out of your yard,” he said with a chuckle after a few moments.

  “Are you serious?” she asked. She was about to pull back when he took her hand in his and kissed her palm gently. “Are they at your place?”

  He shook his head. “I took them back to your house.”

  “That must have been a pain,” she said.

  “Not really. It’s surprising how easily goats move when they’re being chased by a bear. Even Merlin ran back into his pen without acting like his usual asshole self.”

  Sophie laughed. “I wonder how they got out?”

  He shrugged. “I checked the fencing and couldn’t figure out where, but you’ll have to look at it later because I probably missed something. I pounded in a few more of those fence stakes. By the way, kitten, those are some creepy-ass goats.”

  “You too, huh? Cara and Layla said the same thing.”

  “Well, they are. I had pulled Bryce’s car into the garage to start finishing it, and I turned and looked out the door, and the three of them are standing there, right outside the garage door.”

  “Were they watching you? Maybe they’re stalker goats,” she joked.

  “No. They were looking across the road, at the woods next to your house. They pretty much ignored me until I started trying to pull them back to your house.”

  Sophie stood there, her hand clasped warmly in his, her body snuggled close to his. It was the perfect, heavenly combination of warmth and coolness. Between the two of them, comforting, protective warmth, while the air around them had the cold bite of October. Sophie looked up and met his eyes again. “So… my shift’s over in an hour and a half. Can I buy you dinner, sexy?”

  “Are you going to take advantage of me afterward?”

  “God, yes,” she murmured, her need for him, spurred by their closeness and the joy she felt with him, nearly obliterating everything else.

  He cleared his throat. “That’s a date, then.”

  “Want to meet me at Bayle’s in a bit?” she asked as she let her hand run over his chest, her palm skimming the contours of muscles she knew well, abs she’d licked and nibbled, the flesh around his navel that she found herself drawn to again and again. She could hear his breathing becoming labored, and she smiled up at him.

  “If you don’t stop touching me, we’re not going to make it through dinner,” he said, and it sent shivers up her spine, that strain and need in his voice.

  Sophie stood on her tiptoes and planted a firm kiss on his lips. “I’ll see you in a bit,” she said against his mouth before pulling away.

  He let her go reluctantly. “Looking forward to it, kitten,” he said, that mischievous glint in his eyes that she loved so much. She threw him one more smile, then headed into the resort to finish her shift. Marshall’s sliminess was forgotten, at least for a little while, and now that she’d used her powers, she felt calmer as well. She could do this, she realized with a jolt of hopefulness. She could keep Marshall at bay, and hold it together. She could make it all work, because she had too much to lose otherwise.

  Calder waited in Bayle’s, which was one of the newer little restaurants in Copper Falls. They specialized in local offerings, in-season. As he looked over the menu, there was a lot of venison available, lots of fall vegetables and greens. Potatoes. Fish and duck. He guessed the decor was nice. He didn’t really care. His stomach growled as he perused the menu, and his body was still reacting to the way Sophie had been touching him, that sultry look in her eyes. As much as he was looking forward to their dinner together, what he really wanted was something only Sophie could give him.

  Really, he was surprised he was still hungry at all. He’d been eating almost non-stop, taking frequent snack breaks between working on Bryce’s car and the Barracuda. His stomach growled nonetheless, and he grimaced. Fall. Bear. An actual bear would be stuffing itself in preparation to hibernate. He hated this feeling. It was way too close to what he’d lived with during his time with the curse, endless hunger, restlessness. He hadn’t had an autumn since he was a teenager where he hadn’t had the double-whammy of bear plus curse. He hadn’t had any idea how much of the craziness was his bear.

  Basically, his bear was an asshole, he thought to himself as he took a gulp of the beer the waiter had set before him. His bear wanted Sophie all the time. Every second. It wanted to keep her barricaded, protected, with him. It was happiest with her beneath him. It wanted to fight everyone and everything, and it was a gluttonous bastard.

  He grimaced again. Maybe that was just him.

  He glanced at the door again, and there she was. One look, and he was ready to forego dinner completely. She’d pulled up her masses of dark curls, exposing the graceful curve of her neck. She’d shrugged off the polo shirt that she wore as her work uniform, and was wearing a top that gave him a mouthwatering view of her ample cleavage. She wore a long sweater over that, belted at her waist, emphasizing that lush curve from her waist, over her hips, and down her thighs.

  He’d licked his way down that curve dozens of times, and he knew she loved it.

  She was walking toward him, one of those gorgeous half smiles on her lips. He stood up and pulled her chair out for her.

  “You’re staring,” she whispered when she was close to him.

  “Always,” he murmured. He bent his head and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the side of her neck, and was rewarded with a small gasp, the feel of her pulse jumping beneath his lips. He pulled back before he did the so much more he wanted to do. He sat down with some relief, shielding the raging hard-on he had just from the sight of her, her scent, that moment of his mouth on her silky skin. “I’ll always stare at you. You’re the single most gorgeous thing in the world.”

  He was rewarded with a pleased blush, a shy smile as she looked down at her menu. He knew she wasn’t used to hearing things like that. She’d spent most of her adult living as a hermit, hiding from the fucking warlock who’d eventually turned her to the Shadow. A brief marriage that had ended in her husband’s death at Marshall’s hands. Part of him wondered if he should be jealous of that guy, that he’d had her first, that he’d lived by her side, that she’d promised herself to him. Instead, all he felt for him, may he rest in peace, was gratitude. For a time, Sophie hadn’t been completely alone. Not that she needed anyone. Not that. But he’d spent enough time alone to know that, at some point, you almost start questioning your own existence. You start to forget what it’s like to talk to people, and you realize that you have no one to turn to. In his craziest moments with the curse, he’d locked himself away from the world. Usually, it was Jon or Bryce who’d show up and remind him that he didn’t have to face it alone.

  Sophie hadn’t had any of that. And she hadn’t had anyone to tell her how amazing she was. He wanted to make damn sure she never went without that again.

  “Let me guess. You’re having the venison,” she said, glancing up at him with a smile.

  “Of course. Did you see they have a roasted root vegetable thing? It looks pretty good.”

  “I saw that. I think I’m going to try that. Ooh, do you want to try this cheese plate after?”

  He nodded. “Look at the desserts, too. That apple galette thing looks good.”

  He watched as she looked over the menu. “Oh, heck yes. That and coffee, I think.”

  “Yep. And then actual dessert,” he said.

  She glanced up at him questioningly, and he cleared his throat and gave his eyebrows a lascivious wiggle, and was rewarded with another blush as she glanced down.

  “Very bad,” she murmured.

  He grinned. “Actually, I wouldn’t mind eating some of that apple thing from y—“

  “Do. Not. Say it,” she said, blushing even brighter as she glanced around to see if anyone had overheard. He could smell her though, her arousal since the moment he’d kissed her neck making him feel practically drunk.

  “You keep blushing like that, and we’r
e going to end up pulling over on the side of the road again. Remember last time?” he asked. He could see her pulse jumping at the base of her throat, and she swallowed, took a deep breath. He knew it was a little evil. The curse made it so that she was already insane with lust anyway, and he did things like that. But, oh, the reward of having Sophie out of her mind with lust for him…

  “I—“ she began, and then she spun in her seat. He followed her gaze, to the front door.

  “Son of a bitch,” Calder growled, preparing to stand up. The warlock asshole, Marshall, stood just inside the entry of the restaurant, gaze solidly on Sophie.

  “Calder, sit down,” Sophie said. “Not here. Not now.”

  “Do you want to leave?” he asked, eyes still on the warlock as he sat back down. The smirk the warlock gave him made him want to rip his throat out. Marshall took a seat at the end of the bar, far enough away that Calder couldn’t leap at him, but close enough that the bastard still had a clear view of Sophie.

  “No. Screw him. He’s not going to control every moment of my life anymore,” Sophie said, and the steel in her tone got his attention more than anything else. He met her gaze and nodded. “I’m done running,” she added.

  “Then we’ll stay,” Calder said, and she threw him a small smile. He could tell how much it bothered her having Marshall there. Her scent changed. Adrenaline. Not fear, though, and that was different. Her scent had always held that slightly acrid scent of fear when Marshall had been around before. Now… now her eyes flashed in anger as she looked at her menu without really seeing it.

  “He’s not going to make me run. He’s not going to rule my life. He’s not taking another, single, thing from me.”

  He watched the woman he loved, and felt his love for her expanding, growing. Jon and Bryce had been right; Sophie was the strongest person he knew. Beneath her sweetness, her quiet manner, his woman was iron. He practically swelled with pride, and glanced at the warlock. He had no idea, truly, what he was dealing with.