I wasn’t sure how long I cried, but when the tears finally stopped–I could feel the sum of my age within the gravity of my limp bones. I pressed the heels of my hands into my raw eyes, rubbing until the dull ache was gone. I straightened, trembling fingers turning to the next page after my mother’s letter.
Blank.
A thin line creased my brow as I turned the next page and found that it was also blank. I skimmed through the entire book, finding that every page after what my mother had written was completely empty. “So much for finding answers,” I mumbled disdainfully and pulled myself to my feet. She’d left me with more riddles than I’d bargained for but strange enough, also some very substantial answers. She wouldn’t have given the book to me unless I could figure out the encryptions on my own. There were clues in the text; I just needed to clear my head and focus.
I slipped Rionach’s pendant back over my head and tucked the book under my arm as I headed for the stairs and spelled the hidden door behind me. Back in my room, my barn owl was still perched on the fat tree branch, just level with my bedroom window. I’m not going anywhere she seemed to say by tilting her heart-shaped face. There was something reassuring about her presence and I was comforted knowing she was keeping watch over me. My animal spirit guide, the night huntress.
Chapter Eleven
Hope Springs Eternal
The amulet had done more damage than I wanted to admit as I examined my skin in the bathroom mirror. The wound was tender to the touch; warm and coated in a nasty looking blister that had bubbled up over the burn. Awakened power indeed. I sighed and tugged on a long-sleeved shirt, adjusting the collar to make sure it covered my wound. I palmed the grimoire and tucked it into my bag before glancing at the digital clock. Wren would be here in less than thirty minutes to pick me up for school, but sitting idle was not one of my strong suits. My head was still reeling from the morning events, so I decided to make use of my time by heading outside to convene with the elements. I was not prepared, however, for what was waiting for me when I opened the front door.
Wren’s mother was standing with her hand raised as if she were about to knock. I hated that I saw so many of Wren’s beautiful features in this cruel woman’s face. She dropped her hand, straightening the hem of her red top and smiled at me. “It’s Quinn, isn’t it?”
“What are you doing here?” I cut right to the point.
Her eyebrows flickered in brief surprise, but for her part, Gabriella maintained an easy smile. “Well, I was looking for my son,” she paused, acting as though she were peering around my shoulder into the house. “Is he here with you?”
I snickered in disbelief. “I think you know the answer to that. You could smell him if he were.” I was surprised at how level my voice sounded, even more surprised at the amount of animosity circulating through my veins at her very sight. “He doesn’t want to see you.”
Now it was her turn to sneer. I’d known she couldn’t keep up that friendly act. “I take it you know all about what he is, then.”
It wasn’t a question so I didn’t answer. Instead, in a bored, flat tone, I repeated, “What are you doing here Gabriella?”
“Despite what you may think you know about me, I do care about my son. I know about the Thornwood pack, and I know they’re planning on taking control of the Silver Mountain territory.” She was watching me carefully and I made sure to keep my expression neutral. “I came here to see you.”
Okay, that did surprise me. “Why?”
“Because I know that my son thinks he loves you and men do stupid things when they’re in love. I don’t believe you fully understand what could happen to him if he stays with you.” Gabriella took a step forward and my palm tightened on the door handle. “Wren’s heart has always been his greatest weakness. He cares too much. He always tries to play the hero, and one of these days it’s going to get him killed.”
“It speaks volumes of your character that you see his benevolence as weakness,” I said acidly. I stepped out onto the porch and let the screen slam against the frame behind me. Gabriella and I stood just about the same height, unwavering in our stance. “After what you did to him, you don’t have a right to come here and say anything about what Wren should or shouldn’t do with his life. His choices are his own.”
“You’re protective of him, that’s good,” she replied, nodding slowly. “It’s a shame you’re not a wolf. You’d make a good Were.” Gabriella turned from me and sat down on the porch swing, staring with a blank expression across my yard. “I saved my son’s life by abjuring him from our pack. When he challenged my mate for the Alpha Master position, my heart shattered.” Her voice barely registered above a whisper. “Reese is a big man. Wren wouldn’t have lasted longer than a minute. I did what I had to do to save him. I hope you can understand that.”
She didn’t turn to look at me. She dropped her gaze, staring down at her shoes instead. I wasn’t buying the pity act. “You left Niall for Reese. Everyone says you were cheating on him with Remy. Now you stay married to a man that is an abusive monster.”
She turned her cold gaze on me. “Don’t pretend to know all the dirty little details of my life Quinn Callaghan. You don’t know the half of it.”
“I know that Wren had to watch his mother leave his father because she chose to run away with the new big bad wolf, and that she repeatedly abused him when he tried to save her from being a human punching bag.”
“I’ve always done what I needed to survive,” she spat. “I won’t apologize for that. Leaving with Reese was the only way I could save Niall. When Remy died, Niall fell into a pathetic slump and could no longer lead our pack. I may not have loved him in a romantic sense anymore, but I didn’t want him to die…” she paused. “But I do love my son and everything I’ve done was to protect him.”
“Did you ever stop to think that maybe Wren never needed you to save him?” I lowered my tone, matching her venomous glower.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she said. “Wren uses his heart when he makes decisions and that will always end badly. Ryker is dangerous, and if Wren doesn’t join the Thornwood pack, Ryker will have no choice but to kill him. I know my son is a proud young man and won’t submit to anyone’s authority. That’s why I’m here. I’m asking you to save him, Quinn. I need you to break it off with him so he no longer has a reason to stay.”
I took a step back, recoiling as though she’d physically slapped me; my reaction was that visceral. “I can’t do that, Gabriella.”
Her ruby lips curled into a smug sneer. “So you’d just let him die?”
“Of course not,” I snapped. “I would never let anything happen to him.”
Gabriella’s gaze was a blank stare, and then her expression shifted into something like amusement as a burst of laughter exploded from her mouth. The sound cut along the edges of my conviction and I felt the fury of it rising in my blood. I stiffened, nails biting into the soft flesh of my palms as I squeezed my hands into fists.
“That’s rich,” Gabriella managed through her bitter laughter. “I hope you know how ridiculous it sounds coming from a mere human. I mean, you are aware that nothing can ever become of your romance right? He won’t be able to escape his nature, believe me. Eventually he’s going to want to belong to a pack, and eventually he’s going to want children and those are all things that you can never give him.”
Gabriella continued to point out all the ways that Wren and I were wrong for each other, but at some point my mind must have tuned her out. Her mouth moved in succession as hatred swirled in her eyes, but all I heard was the slow and steady rhythm of my heartbeat. She sounded like Hailey, and I was tired of people telling me I would never be enough for the one person I couldn’t live without.
A shadow began to veil t
he surrounding forest, conjuring inky tendrils of black vapor from the earth. Smoky strands slithered across the forest floor like hungry vipers. Gabriella didn’t notice the Darkness working its way into my yard, or see the way the clouds suddenly obscured the sunlight. An invisible touch, cold as ice, swept up my sides and pulled my shoulders back.
You can make them obey, the Darkness whispered. It was the look on Gabriella’s face that made me realize I had raised my right hand and a ball of black and white electrical-charged vapor was swirling across my open palm. I held it there, letting her see the storm that was brewing from my rage.
“I. Am not. Human,” I hissed.
Gabriella’s dark eyes filled with a mixture of wonder and fear. She swallowed hard, taking a step backward. A terrible realization washed over me then. I liked watching her skitter away from me. I liked knowing that I could cause her fear. Her dismay was fuel for the nebulous power building inside me. I closed my hand over the energy ball, distinguishing the flame.
I didn’t hear the Pontiac pull into the lane. Wren was out of the car and on the porch before I could blink, shifting me behind him. Gabriella looked up into her son’s face, blinking back a frown and raised her chin.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Wren growled.
“Quinn and I were just having a little chat,” she replied, her tone was composed but slightly disoriented.
“What did you say to her?”
“It’s okay, Wren.” I reached for his wrist and his skin burned beneath my fingertips.
“No. You have no business coming here. If you have something to say, you’ll say it to me, and you’ll leave Quinn out of it.” He stepped forward, towering over his mother. Gabriella didn’t budge. Her eyes sparked with the colors of the noonday sun and she smiled.
“You wouldn’t see me at the funeral and you wouldn’t come to Nelly’s. What other choice did I have?”
“You shouldn’t have come here.”
“I miss you, Wren. When I heard that Niall was killed I had to see you. It isn’t safe here. It isn’t safe for you to be without pack protection.” She met my eyes and squared her shoulders. “Rogues killed Niall; you’ll share the same fate if you don’t submit to Ryker’s authority. Thornwood is a smart choice, Wren.” She reached out as though she meant to comfort him, but his hand caught her wrist and held her at bay.
She snickered. “You don’t honestly believe that a witch can protect you?”
My gaze traveled up to the side of Wren’s face, and I saw the artery in his neck jumping beneath taut skin. Tendons strained on the back of his hand, the muscles in his arms bunching. Gabriella stood still, glowing eyes fixated on her own wrist in his unforgiving grip.
Finally, she met his gaze. “Let go, son.”
He released her wrist and she cradled it against her chest, fingertips massaging the hurt. “What I do is no longer your concern.” His icy timbre spiked the tiny hairs on the back of my neck. “You gave up that right when you abjured me from your pack. I may share your DNA, but that is all.” His eyes, burning with summer lightning, flickered back and forth between hers. “Go back to Washington. You’re not welcome here.”
He turned from the porch, not once glancing over his shoulder. My heart was pounding, but I forced myself to meet her gaze. “There’s a lot you don’t know,” I told her in a voice that barely pierced the sound waves. “I’m not going to lose him.”
Gabriella flexed her hands at her sides, squaring her jaw. She didn’t bother with a reply. I turned my back on her and climbed in the passenger’s seat. We left her standing on the porch, her figure melting away as we backed out of the drive and pulled out onto the road. For a minute we said nothing. I watched Wren shift through the gears, the loud roar of the heavy engine a welcome sound as we wound through the mountainside.
“She asked me to leave you,” I said after a while. I stroked the moonstone at my throat as the weight of the amulet seemed to shrink in on itself. I thought of the black vapor coiling out of the ground from the forest, slithering towards me with hunger. Was it possible that I’d conjured the Darkness in anger–or had I imagined the whole thing? The amulet lay dormant; a resting and insentient thing once more.
“She had no right to come to you,” Wren replied, downshifting as we came around a bend. His left leg worked the clutch while his right hand pumped the gears in place. Wren glanced up at me beneath the veil of his eyelashes, the lingering effect of his lighting gaze turned on me.
“She believes she’s protecting you.”
Wren snorted. We were pulling into the school’s lot now and Wren parked the Firebird where we had a view of the track.
“I’m not saying I agree with what she did, but, I think in her own sick and twisted perspective she believes she did what she had to do to keep you safe.” I looked down at my bag, the corner of my mother’s grimoire peeking out through the opening. My own mother had chosen to shield me from a future she believed was too dangerous for me to learn about. She thought she was doing the right thing, too. I no longer possessed a black-and-white perspective of right and wrong, but I did understand the actions behind those choices. They were hard choices, but they were made with good intentions, I was coming to realize.
I ran my thumb along the edge of the grimoire before pulling it to the surface. Wren was looking at me; whatever residual anger he’d been clinging to faded from his eyes. “I woke from a dream this morning that the enchantress sent me,” I told him. “She told me I was running out of time and I needed to open the door to the hidden room.” I glanced up at him then, gauging his expression. “My mother left this for me.” I handed him the grimoire.
I watched as Wren’s lips pursed as he ran his fingers over the insignia on the cover. “I told you that I would be there with you when you chose to open the door.” His tone was hard, but I knew it was coming from a place of concern.
I waited a beat before replying, “I needed to do this on my own.”
He looked up at me then, and I saw the question floating across his irises without him needing to speak. What if something had happened to you?
It was in that instant that I wondered if maybe Gabriella had been just a tiny bit right about him. Unlike her, I saw his kindness and his heart as strength, but I worried that he would willingly sacrifice himself to make sure that nothing ever happened to me. What was it that Blaire said about Conan? He’d been brave–almost to a fault, but he loved Luiseach for all of hers. There was honor in giving your life to protect someone you loved, but I didn’t want him to be the hero. I wanted him to live.
And that responsibility rested on my shoulders. “Open it,” I encouraged.
He did, and I caught another small wave of my mother’s vanilla fragrance as Wren read the letter she’d left for me. I waited patiently, keeping my eyes positioned on his face, watching the way his dark eyelashes kissed the skin above his cheekbones whenever he blinked. When he finished reading, he rested his hand on the page and turned to look at me. I saw both the rush and the absence of words building behind his troubled eyes. I understood the conflict better than he could imagine because it mirrored my own.
“It’s empty after that,” I said, scratching my eyebrow with my thumbnail, “at least to the naked eye. I think the rest of the pages are spelled.”
“Have you told the others?”
“Not yet. I wanted to show you first.” I leaned over the console and pointed out a couple of lines that caught my attention. “I think this is another clue about where to find the cabin.”
“Let Orion show you the way,” Wren read aloud. A frown creased his brow before he glanced my way. “Like the constellation?”
“That’s my take on it.” I shifted closer, angling my head so that a lock of
hair slipped across my forehead, brushing the back of Wren’s hand that was poised on the book. Wordlessly, he turned his palm, fingertips sliding through the ends of my hair as he studied the words and phrases my mother had used in the letter.
“Text Blaire,” Wren said a moment later. “Have her meet us in the courtyard at lunch. She should see this.”
“We don’t have the same lunch period,” I pointed out, glancing up at him.
A sly grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I think I can manage to cut class, Quinn.” He closed the grimoire and held it out for me. As I reached for it, his index finger hooked the collar of my shirt and tugged it downward, exposing my cleavage and the gruesome blister on my chest. His jaw clenched. “How did this happen?”
“How did you know it was there?” I yanked my shirt collar back up, knotting my brows together in a grimace.
“I can smell it,” he said. “It’s from the amulet, isn’t it?”
“Okay, that’s rather disturbing.” I stuffed the grimoire back into my bag.
Ignoring my comment he said, “What happened?”
“I’m not sure.” I reached up, running my fingers through the knots in my hair. “It happened when I reached for the handle of the hidden room. The amulet just sort of zapped me like it didn’t want me going in there or something. I think it’s aware that whatever is in this book has the answers we need to destroy it.”
His jaw clenched and unclenched. “You shouldn’t be wearing that thing,” he growled. “You should pass the amulet along to Blaire or Bryna. If it hurts you again–” he trailed off, shaking his head emphatically.
“You know I can’t do that. I’m the one that’s been entrusted to protect it.” Wren sighed, but it sounded more like a low growl catching in the base of his throat. “It’s going to be okay,” I said to him. “I can feel it.”
The Calling of the Trinity (Trinity Cycle Book 2) Page 13
