25. The Darkness is Waking
Chapter twenty-five
The Darkness is Waking
Icould call Tara, but I could only imagine how that would go.
“Uh,huh, right. Are you trippin’ right now? Maybe you should get some sleep and call me back later”
I settled for slipping her charm under my pillow. I sat up for hours lost in my thoughts. I have no idea how late it was when sleep finally claimed me, but even in my sleep there was to be no rest.
The preserve called to me, as it had so many times before. I walked to the edge of the property, where the cultivated lawn gave way to wild forest, and I stood there in the moonlight, breathing in the scent of magnolia, pine and something wilder.
Three shapes emerged from the trees.
Wolves. Massive wolves, larger than any natural wolf, with intelligent eyes that caught the moonlight.
One was dark gray, almost black, all muscle and presence; a presence that demanded attention and oozed power.
One was warm brown, with a playful tilt to its head, and one was silver-gray, sleek and watchful..
They approached slowly, giving me time to adjust. When they reached me, they sat in a semicircle, waiting.
I reached out and touched the dark wolf, feeling the coarse fur beneath my fingers. He leaned into my touch, a rumble of contentment vibrating through his chest.
"This is real," I said softly. "All of this."
The wolves didn't answer. They didn't need to.
I sat down in the grass, and they arranged themselves around me morphing from wolf into men; Callum at my back wrapping his legs and arms around me, Jasper pressed against my side, Eli's head in my lap. Something hummed in my chest, warm and steady, connecting me to all three of them.
I'd spent years running. Years hiding. Years trying to be invisible.
But here, in this strange place with these impossible men, wolves? I was finally found.
And for the first time, that felt like freedom.
Shadow ran along my arm and wrapped itself around my hand. Then, like a vat of overturned ink, it poured off me, drowning Eli first, and then Jasper. The waves of ink rose higher, and I screamed.
Callum tried to hold me, but the darkness swallowed him too, pulling him under before his fingers could find mine. I thrashed against the tide, choking on something that tasted like blood and rot, and the last thing I saw was his golden eyes going dark.
I was drowning. I was drowning in myself.
Then the world lurched sideways.
Not like waking. Like being tugged through water by an invisible hand, yanked from one current into another.
The darkness spat me out, and suddenly my feet were on solid ground, my lungs burning with air that smelled different.
Strong. Like a cross between a café and a candle shop.
Coffee, chicory, something green and herbal, familiar in a way that made no sense.
I was standing in a kitchen.
Old cypress floorboards creaked beneath my bare feet.
The walls were painted a faded blue, the color of robin's eggs left too long in the sun, and morning light slanted through windows hung with faded lace curtains.
Through the wavy glass, I could see Spanish moss draping from ancient oaks, the gnarled knees of cypress trees jutting up from dark water beyond the yard.
Somewhere, a wind chime made of hollow woods sang a low, haunting tune.
I knew this place.
The certainty hit me like vertigo, a bone-deep recognition that had no source I could name. I had never been here. I had never seen these walls, this light, these windows looking out onto bayou water. And yet I had been here… something in me, some old memory, settled at the sight of it.
Home, something whispered.
Which was insane. I'd never been to a place like this in my life.
A heavy wooden table dominated the center of the room, scarred and scored by decades of use.
Scattered across its surface were bundles of dried herbs tied with red thread, coils of rough twine, small pouches of something that smelled sharp and green.
Wooden beads in colors I couldn't quite name caught the light.
And bones. Actual bones, small ones, bird or rodent, maybe, arranged in patterns that tugged at the edge of my comprehension.
An elderly woman stood behind the table, her dark hands moving through the materials with practiced ease.
Her skin was deep brown, lined with age but somehow ageless, and she wore a brightly colored wrap wound around her head.
Blues, various shades of gold, and black, like a sunset on the bayou.
Her eyes, when she lifted them to look at me, were dark, sharp, and utterly unsurprised.
"You again, chère," she said. Her voice was rich, layered with an accent that sounded like Louisiana and felt like something older. "What keeps bringin’ you here?"
I stared at her. The question made no sense. The whole thing made no sense. I was dreaming. I had to be dreaming, because a moment ago I'd been drowning in darkness and now I was standing in a stranger's kitchen smelling coffee and watching her sort bones like she was organizing paperclips.
"Do you know me?" The words came out before I could stop them.
She tilted her head, studying me the way you'd study a puzzle that wasn't quite behaving correctly. Her hands never stopped moving, fingers finding herbs and beads by touch alone.
"Should I know you?"
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Nothing about this followed any logic I understood. Dreams weren't supposed to ask questions back. Dreams weren't supposed to look at you with that kind of knowing patience, like they had all the time in the world and you were the one who needed to catch up.
"I don't..." I started. "I don't know how I got here."
"Mmm." She made a sound that was neither agreement nor disagreement.
Her hands paused on a bundle of something that looked like sage.
"Most folks don't, first time, but this is no you first time, is it?
Takes practice, knowing which doors you mean to walk through.
" Her eyes flicked down to my hands, then back to my face. "What's that you got there, chère?"
I looked down.
My right hand was closed in a fist, knuckles white, clutching something. I hadn't realized I was holding anything.
I opened my fingers.
Tara's charm sat in my palm.
The little bundle of thread, wood, and herbs, bound with intention, that she'd pressed into my hand before she left Atlanta heading to Nashville, making me promise to keep it close.
Protection, she'd said, in that half-joking way she had when she talked about anything related to her grandmother's traditions. Humor me.
I'd kept it in my pocket. Always.
But that wasn't what made my breath catch.
The darkness was still on me.
It clung to my skin like oil, visible now in the bright kitchen light. There were shadows, too, swirling at my feet and hands like something living. But my entire body was wrapped in the oil-slick darkness, drowning in it.
Every part except my right hand.
Where the charm sat, my skin was clean. Bare. The slick coating couldn't touch it, couldn't cross whatever invisible line the little bundle of thread and herbs had drawn. It curled at the edges of my palm like water hitting rock, churning but unable to advance.
"Hmm," the old woman said. Her voice had changed. Sharper. More interested. "I know this work, I do."
"What is it?" I heard the panic climb my throat. "What's on me? What is this?"
"One be blood, one be a curse, chère." she said, "You be carryin’ it for a long time. I can see it, sure enough. Been seeing folks carry all kinds of shadow my whole life." She picked up one of the small bones, turned it between her fingers. "Some of 'em know what they carryin’. Most don't."
"I don't understand."
"Course you don't. Understanding comes after, chère. First comes the claiming, but you done good. You run." She tossed a handful of bones across the table. Her dark eyes met mine, held them. "But you fear you destiny."
Her body jerked upright as if a puppet on strings. Her eyes rolled back until there was nothing but white. The voice that filled the room was old, powerful, and not of this world.
Truths denied, cypress crowns
Blooded lines, hallowed ground
Darkest queen, a path reclaimed
Darkness, Death, and the Prince of Pain
She blinked and her eyes were once again the dark, warm brown from before.
The darkness surged, too oil-slicked to be shadow.
A cold tide rose from beneath my feet, pulling at me like reversed gravity.
The kitchen flickered at the edges, the bright light going gray, the warmth bleeding out of the air.
The old woman's face stayed steady, but everything around her was dissolving, swallowed by the shadow that had poured off me in the dream before this dream.
"Help me," I gasped. The words scraped my throat. The darkness was at my chest now, pressing in, pressing down. My hand, my clean hand with Tara's charm, was the only thing still visible. A small island in a rising flood. "Please. Help me."
"What's you name, chile?" she asked. Calm. Patient. Like we had all the time in the world, even as the world disappeared around us.
I tried to speak. The darkness filled my mouth like water, like smoke, like something that had been waiting inside me all along.
"You name."
My lungs burned. My vision narrowed to a single point: the old woman's face, her dark eyes, her expression of fierce and terrible waiting.
"Seren—"
The world went black.
I woke with my own voice echoing in my ears and my hand closed so tight around something small and rough that my nails had drawn blood from my palm.
Tara's charm sat in the center of the crescent marks, slightly warm, slightly humming.