And she hated herself for not solving this before he had to do this.
“If he weakens him enough, can we just put him back in the pen? He doesn't have to do this,” Sophie said. Jon gave her a long look, shifted back.
“This is the end. It should have been done years ago, but neither of us had the heart. The injuries he already has… He'd die a slow, painful death from them anyway.” He watched his brother, remorse in his eyes. “He doesn't want to do it.”
“I know,” she said softly.
Mr. Turcotte made a final lunge at Calder, limping, bleeding, and Calder gave a loud, rage-filled roar. Tears came to Sophie's eyes. He'd made a decision. He jumped at his father, clamped his huge jaw around Mr. Turcotte's throat, and bit down. Sophie wanted to look away, but she felt like she owed Mr. Turcotte and Calder this at least, to bear witness to the end, to watch Calder so she'd understand the coming grief he'd feel as well as she possibly could. Tears were flowing from her eyes, and she watched as Mr. Turcotte's movements weakened, then ceased. When he'd been still for a few moments, she could see his eyes flatten, as if the life had left them. Calder stepped back, and his father's body started changing, fur disappearing, bones popping, until all that was left was a much older, emaciated-looking version of Calder. She covered her eyes and cried. Jon turned, roared, and punched the wood pillar of the porch.
Sophie looked back at Calder, who had shifted back. He ran for the bushes and started retching. She ran off the porch, stood behind him, tentatively putting a hand on his back. He was trembling, retching, taking deep gulps of breath as if he couldn't breathe. Eventually, he fell to his knees, and Sophie did as well, gathering him into her arms. He rested his face against her, and she could feel hot tears on her neck. She held him as tightly as she could, rode out the fist tide of his grief with him.
A few minutes later, he gently pushed her away, stood up, helping her up as he did. He pulled on the jeans he'd discarded before shifting and went to his brother, who was standing over his father's body. Sophie stayed where she was, hating herself for not being able to end the curse before it came to this point.
“You should have her heal that, man,” Jon said in a flat voice, referring to the slice across Calder's chest.
“It's mostly healed. Just bloody. She can't heal it anyway.”
She watched as Jon shot Calder a look, then looked back at her.
“That's what Lightwitches do,” Jon said.
“Drop it,” Calder said, his voice a low growl. A warning. He hadn't taken his eyes off his father.
Jon tore his gaze from Sophie, looked at his brother.
“This isn't your fate. She's here. She's going to fix it,” Jon said. Calder waved it off. “You did what you had to do,” Jon said more quietly. “I would have done it.”
“You shouldn't have to. You shouldn't have had to do any of the shit you've been doing.”
Jon gave his father's body a last glance. As sad as he was, as angry, Sophie also got the sense that there was relief there. She couldn't blame him for that. From what Calder had said, he'd given up his life, for the most part, to be his father's caretaker and guard.
“I'm going to go dig.”
“It's mostly dug. I did it after the other day,” Calder said, referring to the day they'd had to go and shore up the fences around their father's pen.
Jon clapped him on the shoulder again. “I'll go check on it, do anything else that needs to be done.” He shot another look at Sophie, then walked around to the back of Calder's house. Sophie slowly walked toward Calder, tentatively put a hand on his back. He didn't respond. She took his hand, and after a moment he twined his fingers with hers.
“I'm sorry, Calder,” she said softly.
He didn't respond. She stood there with him, feeling at a loss, wanting to comfort him in his grief, and not knowing how, getting the distinct sense that he didn't really want her comfort.
“You lost your magic. Whatever you had, it's gone. The wards failed.”
She nodded. “They never took in the first place. I'm sorry,” she repeated.
“I don't care about the wards, Sophie,” he said, eyes hard, watching her.
She didn't respond.
“And you smell wrong. Like him. So I need you to tell me, right now: did he do something to you to make you lose your powers? Did he hurt you? Did he force something on you?” She knew what he wanted. He wanted something to hurt, something to punish.
“I did it willingly,” she said softly, and he stared at her. “I did what he's wanted me to do all these years.”
“Which is?”
“Turn from the Light.”
Calder let go of her hand, not trusting himself to touch her just then. It was like she'd just knocked the air from his lungs, like she'd just gutted him. “Why the hell would you do that?” he asked, taking a step back from her.
“Because my power wasn't enough, Calder. It wasn't enough! Every spell that I learned from Migisi's book, that maybe, might have been something I could have used, I don't have the power to pull off.”
“So you threw away what you are because…..” He wanted to hit something so bad. He knew he was close to losing it completely. And she stood there, looking small and soft, her eyes bright with tears. Trembling, and it broke him, to see her that way.
“Because the Shadow offers me more power,” she said, looking away. “It's the only chance I have to save you.”
Rage roared through him. Because of him, she'd given up everything she believed in. What the hell had he ever done, in his entire life, to deserve someone who'd give up that much for him? He didn't deserve it, and he didn't want it. “Go inside, Sophie,” he said, his voice rough. His chest hurt, thinking of what she'd done. “Just stay away from me for a while.”
“I get it, Calder. This is my fault. My wards failed and now this. I don't blame you for hating me—“
He let out a frustrated, angry shout, grabbed her arms and pulled her to him, breathed her in. She was still there, below the sulfur and smoke. He gritted his teeth. “I don't hate you, Sophie. It's not even possible for me to hate you. I don't blame you for this. When are you going to get it through your head that I love you, that out of everything that's happening, keeping you whole is all that matters to me? That protecting you is the only thing that gives my life any meaning now? And you fucking threw away everything you stand for, and you never even asked me what I thought about that. Get. Away,” he growled, releasing her and stalking away. He heard her door slam behind him, and he ran into the woods, roaring, letting his beast run free before he completely lost his mind.
Afterward, he and Jon buried their father, then he watched his brother shift and take to the woods, lumbering toward the cabin he'd now live in by himself.
He shook his head, went to Sophie's house. He let himself in with the key she'd given him, stripped, and got into the daybed in the living room beside her.
“I don't regret it,” she said. “And if you love me as much as you say you do, you'll respect that maybe I'm not a complete idiot.”
The room was dark, and all he could smell was her. Her warmth beside him soothed him in a way nothing else did. She was naked beneath the blankets, her soft skin pressing against his. Her voice was hoarse, and he knew she'd been crying.
“I know you're not an idiot. You're amazing, and I love you. And you're stubborn as hell. You would have done it anyway. Doesn't mean I'm not pissed off at you over it.”
“It's likely you'll be even more pissed at me before it's all over,” she said quietly. “Come on. You need me.”
He took a deep breath, rolled her body under his, lost himself in her body, in the way she sighed his name. She had no idea, none at all, how true her words had been.
He needed her.
Chapter Twenty-Five
October 29, 1861
It had been a mistake, Migisi thought to herself as she stalked through the woods. Letting Luc leave the way he had. Letting him believe she would be grateful to be
without him for a while. She'd seen the hurt in his eyes. Not for the first time. She knew, when she was in her right mind, that she'd been progressively more terrible toward him the longer they'd been together. What kind of monster spent day after day hurting the one she loved? Yet, that was exactly what Migisi had been doing. As the Shadow had slowly and surely worked itself into her soul, she'd gotten worse, verging on abusive. Her mind flashed to the the previous morning, when, in an incoherent rage, she'd hurled a hot cast iron pan toward him. His reflexes had been the only thing to save him from injury.
She knew. She knew that she should let him go, that trying to keep him would only hurt him more as time went on. She also knew that he wouldn't leave.
She'd tried. She'd tried to tell him he should go, that he should move on. But he'd marked her. Claimed her. He refused to leave. Even getting him to meet with his business partners for a couple of days had been a challenge. No matter how terrible she was, he stayed. And for the life of her, she could not understand why.
But without him, she was lost. She missed his touch, his scent. She thought of him, away from her. If he had any sense, he'd decide to stay gone. But she had to let him know she loved him. She had to let him know how sorry she was for what their lives had become.
She'd been walking for two days, and knew from the way the river was narrowing that it would soon be meeting the other, smaller river. That was where his business partners had set up camp. That was where she'd find her love.
As she neared the camp in the waning daylight, she could hear the sounds of male voices, a harmonica playing.
And, so soft she could have missed it had she not always been hyper-attuned to her surroundings, a passionate sigh.
Followed by a muttered curse she knew well. How many times had she heard it in her own ear, his hot breath coming in hard pants, as he went over the edge with her?
She didn't want to see.
She needed to know.
She crept silently, like a ghost, in the direction of the sounds, her heart pounding, her nerves making her tremble.
“Stop. What in the hell?” she heard him say. And then, “Migisi?”
She took one more silent step, and they came into view. Her back was against a tree, the top of her dress pulled down revealing pale breasts, much fuller than her own. She had shining red curls, a painted face.
Luc's eyes were on Migisi. And then on the woman, and he shook his head, confusion on his features.
She felt cold. Empty, as if what she'd just seen had taken the very life from her. She felt the last shreds of Light leave her as her heart shattered.
“I see I am not missed,” she said in French to Luc, who was holding out his hands, approaching her slowly.
“What? Migisi,” Luc said. “I don't know what is happening. This is not what it looks like.”
“No? I suppose it's not what it sounds like, either,” she said, and she barely recognized her voice, so dead and cold.
“Migisi,” he whispered, eyes unfocused, widened in fear, hands held out to her.
The words came to her, unbidden, words in a language older than anything she knew, words she never, in her entire life, would have imagined herself saying.
They came easily, naturally, as if they'd been waiting for her, a stream of syllables that condemned and sentenced the man she'd loved, her heart and soul, to a life of suffering. He, and his children, his children's children, would live with the emptiness she was feeling just then.
When the words stopped, the twilight was silent around them. The woman had long since disappeared, to who, or where, Migisi did not care.
“What did you do to me, my little ghost?” Luc asked, pressing his hand to his stomach. She could hear it rumbling, could see the discomfort in his face.
“Suffer. And then die, my love. I will haunt your every remaining moment,” she said coldly. She turned her back on him, and walked through the forest, and creatures great and small trembled in her wake, and she was too far gone to hear the faint laugh that echoed on the breeze.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sophie lay next to Calder in the daybed in her living room. She held him, and his arms were wrapped tightly around her waist, as if he was afraid to let her go. His face rested on her chest, his warm breath raising goose bumps over her flesh. He was sleeping now, though it had been a long time coming. She'd given him everything she could, had held him when he'd sunk into grief over his father. She'd watched as he ate every bit of food she offered him as if he hadn't eaten in days. He'd drunk gallons of milk, cartons of cider.
It was getting worse.
With his father dead, and no descendants to help bear the burden of the curse, Calder seemed to be bearing the full brunt of it. And while she could and would give him everything she had to help him feel better, she knew there was a limit to how much she could give, and that his hunger was never-ending.
Destroying him was not an option. Maybe she was selfish, but life without him, a life in which she ended his life, was an impossibility.
She watched him sleep, and she gently, lazily ran her fingertips through his tousled hair.
She had the ability to help him now. And it terrified her. She could see, every time she looked at him, what it looked like. She could feel, every time he loved her, what desperation was.
She would take it. For him. For herself.
She closed her eyes, matched her breathing to his, almost without thinking. She went by instinct, completely opened herself up to the Shadow, to the power granted to her by giving herself up to Marshall.
It came, without hesitation, as if all it had been waiting for was her summons. She focused on Calder, on seeing the fine, yet unbreakable threads of her ancestor's curse in his soul. So much clearer now than she'd ever seen them before, because, unlike before, they were part of her.
They were Shadow, and so was she. It was just a matter of opening herself, of drawing them inside.
Nearly effortless. Marshall had been right. Shadow would always flow to Shadow, just as Light had always flowed into Light. As she lay there, and held him, and breathed with him, she felt his curse twining its way into her soul, and every bit of it that filled her made her feel empty, until it was finally done and she felt the curse solidify in her own soul.
The emptiness was terrifying.
Painful.
Overwhelming.
It was as if every scent, every sight, every touch ignited hunger. Calder beside her was enough to make her mad, and the things she wanted to do to him, the things she wanted to do to his body, had her aching with need. Her stomach growled, feeling emptier than it ever had, cramping so completely she thought she'd pass out from pain if she didn't have something soon. Her mouth was dry, her throat barely able to work when she tried to swallow.
And she understood, now better than ever, why Calder had snapped so easily at times. The car parts flying out of his garage, tree trunks hurled away from him, walls punched. And she marveled that, enduring it, he'd been endlessly gentle with her.
She opened her eyes and looked down at him, still asleep, but looking more relaxed than she'd ever seen him.
It was worth it. She would survive, and he was free.
Hands on her wrists, lips at her throat.
“What did you do, kitten?” Calder's deep voice, his chest rumbling against hers as he held himself above her.
She whimpered.
“It's gone. All of a sudden, like that, it's gone. What did you do?”
She opened her legs, urging him to fill her, take her.
“Not until you tell me,” he said, raising his face, eyes searching hers. ”Tell me.”
“I took it,” she whispered. “Please.”
“You took it.”
“Shadow goes to Shadow. I took it.”
He growled. “You didn't even think of running this little idea past me?”
“Like you would have said. 'yes, dear, go ahead and take my curse. Great idea', if I had,” she said.
�
��Sophie, you can't—“
“It's already done. I have it, and you're here with me and alive and I'm not going to lose you and there is no taking it back now.”
He looked at her, seeming at a loss. “It hurts, doesn't it?” he said, voice low.
She nodded, tears coming to her eyes, and she fought them back. It was agony.
“I didn't want this for you,” he growled, gripping her wrists tighter, eyes still boring into hers.
“I'm better able to take it than you are.”
“When I go mad, someone can kill me. If you go mad? You're a Shadow witch now. Do you think you're going to remember to be good when you're in the throes of hunger, when you're desperate for relief, when you're so full of rage, so sick of being empty that you just want to make someone hurt as much as you're hurting? Do you think you're going to remember then, with that dark power slithering through you, that you don't believe in violence?” He delivered all of it in a low, urgent tone, not taking his eyes from hers. “What did you do to yourself?”
“I did what I had to do. Just as I always have,” she whispered.
“I hate this.”
“I don't. Believe in me, Calder.”
“You know I do. I always have. You're going to be in so much pain, kitten.” His eyes searched hers.
“You were nearing the end. We both know it. With your father gone it was worse.”
He didn't answer.
“I'm stronger than you in that way, Calder,” she said. “I can contain it until I can figure out how to get rid of it. Because that's still the goal. I'm still going to break it. But I couldn't watch you lose it. I couldn't watch you become like your father,” she whispered, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes as she looked up at him, begging him to understand. “This was my line's fault. I refuse to let you feel this anymore.”
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