Blackthorne, Fiona - Moonstruck [Blue Moon 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (25 page)

No more! No more would any dark demon or ghost trouble this town. This place was hers! These wolves were hers! She would face down whatever there was and drive it back to hell. She would set the wolves of Blue Moon free for all times, no matter what the price.

Sean and the other wolves seemed to sense the change in her, and they flung off an energy that seemed to feed into and loop with her own until she felt she was buzzing with power. A group of wolves directly in front of her parted to reveal a wolf lying on the ground, panting shallowly, the flashlight revealing three huge, deep gashes in his side, slowly oozing blood.

In the blink of an eye, Ava was kneeling next to Robert, gently stroking his head and kissing his snout.

“You do not give up,” she admonished him, putting all the authority she could muster into her voice. For a second, she thought she saw him twitch in response to her tone.

“If you even think about dying,” she said, lifting one of his paws to her lips. “I will bring you back to life so I can kill you myself. Understood?”

Weakly, Robert touched his nose to her hand, and she smiled through her tears. Looking up, she saw that Sean and what she guessed was Declan in wolf form standing on either side of her.

She stood up and swept the wolves with a look.

“One of you runs to get Dr. Nasir,” she said crisply, the hot anger in her veins burning away the last of the fog in her brain. “Some of you stay with Robert. You make sure he stays alive, you understand? The rest of you, come with me.”

Ava looked at Robert and smiled, then turned, her expression growing grim and determined, and began walking in what she infallibly knew to be the direction of the farmhouse. On either side of her were Sean and Declan, and behind her, she heard the sounds of a thousand paws and the susurrations of a thousand breaths. She squared her shoulders and felt for the dirt in her pockets with one hand while the other held the flashlight.

This was it. There was no turning back. She still didn’t know exactly what she had to do, but now, she believed that either her instinct would come through for her or it would be the end.

Either way, it was all going to happen on this moonless night at White Farm.

Chapter 23

Ava emerged from the woods down by her cottage. Steadily, she walked up the slope and across the dead grass to the farmhouse, a river of wolves flowing around her.

As she approached, she shone the light up at the dark house, and her heart froze midbeat as she saw the curtains in one of the second-floor windows stir. Dread crept into her resolve, making her draw on the last reserves of her courage to keep going. Okay, she could do this. She would do this. She had to do this. Her heart was pounding like it was trying to beat its way out of her chest as she walked up to the front door.

Suddenly, Declan was by her side. He sunk his teeth into her parka as he tried to drag her away from the door.

“No!” she exclaimed, glaring down at him. “I’m going in. This has to be done.”

Declan still tried to tug her back, a high-pitched whine whirring in his throat.

“Let go!” she said, struggling to dislodge her jacket from his jaws.

Reluctantly, he released her, but he sniffed around the front door and whined again.

“Look, I’m not exactly looking forward to this, either,” she said, her voice shaking as she bent down to retrieve the spare key from where she remembered her advisor had said it would be.

The wooden door stuck, having warped somewhat with the cold, and it took a solid slamming of her body into the door to dislodge it. She stumbled inside and choked.

No wonder Declan was trying to keep her from going in. The place reeked of gas. One wrong move on her part, and the whole place would probably explode. She left the front door wide open then went around to each window in the whole house and forced them open. Tomorrow—if there was a tomorrow—she’d call the gas company. She bit back a semi-hysterical giggle at the thought of how inane that thought was, how practical and
real
compared to complete craziness and impossibility of everything else she was dealing with.
Gas leak? Ha! Small potatoes.

Her eyes began to adjust to the different darkness inside the house, and she could dimly distinguish steps, walls, and doorways. She worked her way back from the newer addition of the farmhouse, with its spacious bedrooms, modern kitchen, and large bathroom. The oldest part of the house was small, just a single living room with a fireplace and an attic bedroom above. One flight of extremely steep, narrow steps led up to the bedroom. Large wooden beams crisscrossed the ceiling.

“Okay,” she whispered to herself in the dark. “Now what?”

Seconds of silence turned into a minute, turned into two minutes. She stood completely still in the middle of the living room, waiting for something to happen. The quiet grew heavy and oppressive, and she could feel her pulse speeding up to an almost painful velocity. Something was going to happen. She knew it. But, it was like being in her own private horror movie, and the suspense was literally killing her.

She couldn’t help yelping in terror as suddenly, hundreds of wolves began to howl. Their cries were fierce and piercing, and she felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up as shivers ran through her body.

“Oh my fucking God,” she sobbed as abruptly, the front door slammed shut, the deadbolt turning without any hand touching it. She saw all the windows in the living room slam shut and heard the latches click into place, and then in the background, she heard the windows in the rest of the house shut and lock.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” she whispered frantically, the now familiar surge of panic throwing her mind into overdrive for a change instead of just freezing it in place.

“Shit, okay, come on,” she whispered to herself as she ran to the kitchen. “Come on, where the fuck is it?”

She threw open all the cabinets, ruthlessly tossing out all the boxes and bottles she found in them until she laid hands on a can of salt. Then, she dashed back to the living room, frantically searching around the hearth until she found matches. She crept back into the middle of the room and set the flashlight and the matches on the floor. With shaking hands, she poured a thick line of salt in a circle around her. Who knew if it would really work against ghosts and demons, but it was a protection of long-standing in folklore, so it couldn’t be completely wrong. Could it?

The howling outside grew so loud that she put her hands over her ears, as if that would keep the sound from shattering her eardrums. She glanced out the windows to see all the wolves standing with their backs to the house, forming an outward-facing protective ring. Maybe the sound was part of how they protected her? Her mind felt like it was moving at warp speed, every synapse firing connections like a machine gun.

Sound was made up of sound waves, a kind of energy. Right? So, if sound was energy, then the wolves were constructing a wall of energy around the house. Maybe there was something about the sound waves that other types of energy could pass through? So were they keeping something out or trapping it in?

Ava looked around the room again, slowly revolving inside the circle.

“Goody Barrows!” she called out, her voice coming out weaker and shakier than she had expected. She took in a shuddering breath and braced herself, forcing herself to let go of everything and yell. “GOODY BARROWS! SHOW THYSELF!”

She hoped that using archaic language would trigger a stronger response. All kinds of things she had learned about witchcraft and demonology sloshed around in her brain, a prickly arsenal of language and folklore. From African Voudun to simple knot magic, it was all there on the tip of her tongue. Her mind bubbled with phrases from seventeenth century witch trials, suddenly understanding for the first time the true majesty and power of the stilted sentences and formality of the language.

“Goody Barrows,” she yelled, feeling a surge of power make her entire body tingle. “I summon thee to judgment for thy crimes against God, the Lord Almighty! By the common blood in our veins, I bind thee to my words, as sure as I were to fix thee with a knot. Show thyself, witch!”

Breathless, she watched as out of nowhere, a white mist seemed to coalesce into the loose form of a person. There was nothing defined about it, no facial features, clothing or anything recognizable, which made even more terrible and frightening. The only thing that made Ava sure she had summoned Eve Barrows was the tremendous malice that the misty, faceless figure exuded.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” Ava whispered, tears of panic springing up in her eyes as she fought to stay anchored in reality—an awful reality that contained so much more beyond life and death that could never be fully explained.

She could almost taste the malice in the air around her. It prickled against her skin like tiny needles as she stood staring at the mist. She caught her breath as a lamp flew off the table and straight at her head, leaving her no time to duck. A dull thud resounded in her ears as it took a moment for her to realize that the lamp had struck her in the head. She had fallen to her hands and knees, her hands on the ground outside the circle of salt.

Quickly, she drew her hands back inside, just as the mist moved to cover them. Waves of pain and nausea throbbed and ebbed, and she got to her feet again, only to catch sight of a wooden chair lift off the ground then go hurling through the air at her. This time, she managed to duck, and she realized that the spirit was trying to knock her out of the protective circle she was in.

“Eve Barrows,” she gasped, instinctively clutching at the crucifix around her throat. “I command thee to cease thy conjure! I am protected by the Lord Almighty, and thou shalt not touch His servant!”

The ghostly shape grew more opaque and seemed to give off a sickening, green luminescence. As its ghastly glow grew, the flashlight flickered and went dead. Ava stared down in horror as the apparition seemed to draw energy straight out of the battery. If it could do it to a battery, what could it do to a human body that was just like a giant battery?

As if in an instantaneous response to her question, Ava felt her legs turn to jelly and her arms tremble from weakness. Her heart began to lurch irregularly as it struggled to keep beating.

“No!” Ava said, bracing herself. “You can’t do this! No, old language, old English…think, think…Thou shalt not prevail! Thy malefica and charms have no dominion over me. I am thy blood and thy bone, and I stand equal to thee in all things.”

In the moment the words left her lips, she felt her mind expand and the full realization of what she had to do exploded across her thoughts.

“Bone and dust!” she cried as the figure reached out with transparent arms and fingers that seemed to grow into evil tendrils that shot out toward her throat. The tendrils stopped, jerking back as if burned when they reached the boundary of the salt circle. The apparition grew in size to tower over her, raining sickening hatred down onto her as she felt drained even further. She slumped to her knees. She wouldn’t last another minute at this rate. Her heart was already starting to slow down, making her dizzy, and it was hard to take a full breath.

“Dust to dust!” Ava screamed, lurching to her feet one more time. She grabbed two fistfuls of dirt from her pockets and threw them at the shade of Eve.

The grave dirt didn’t fall to the ground. It seemed to be caught in the mist, floating as small clumps and flecks, bringing the apparition’s outline into clearer focus. Ava threw all the dirt she had at the form, gasping and sobbing as it began thrashing to try and break free of the grave dirt.

Finally, she stood face-to-face with the trapped entity. Its hatred and evil were like the blast of an Arctic storm, but Ava knew it couldn’t go anywhere. The grave dust of Ezra Barrows had trapped his wife, the ultimate revenge.

“Dust to dust,” Ava panted as she picked up the matches. “And, ashes to ashes.”

She took a deep breath and stared at the ghost of Eve Barrows.

“Go to hell,” she spat, then struck a match and threw it at the imprisoned shade.

The world exploded around her.