Shadow Kissed (Magic Side: Wolf Bound Book 4)

Savannah

We bounced down the old trail, Jaxson’s headlights sweeping the darkness ahead of us. Finally, we rolled to a stop at the entrance to the Pere Cheney cemetery. It was little more than a clearing in the woods, with patchy grass and crumbling gravestones.

This place was as forgotten as the people buried here.

Well, all but one.

Hopefully, this works.

I wasn’t quite able to shake off the menace in the warning she’d given me: I will hunt down that missing sliver of your soul and make sure you never sleep again.

So yeah, not someone to be messed with.

I opened my door and slid out of the truck, and Casey followed.

“This place doesn’t look like much,” he muttered. “I thought it would be, you know, spookier. Cobwebs and shit, and grotesque statues.”

The cemetery wasn’t so much sinister as neglected by time. Then again, I could sense the ghosts lurking here, and that made it eerie enough. I shrugged as I dropped the tailgate. “To be fair, last time we were here, this place was teeming with possessed werewolves trying to summon the Dark God.”

Jaxson heaved the granite stone from the bed like it was a sack of feathers, and Casey’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Where do you want the gravestone?” Jaxson asked.

I bit my lip as I scanned the overgrown clearing. There were a few standing markers, but nowhere that felt special. “I don’t know. She didn’t have an actual grave. Somewhere prominent, so anyone who visits can see.”

Walking out across the strange, crunchy, moss-infested grass that grew in the cemetery, I searched for a spot. I put my hands out like my godmother, Alma, used to do, trying to feel the energy of the place, but I sensed nothing other than mild creepiness. That sixth sense of hers wasn’t something I’d ever been able to cultivate, though it brought back good memories to try.

Finally, I reached a spot that felt a little more right than all the others. “Here, I think. I don’t really know.”

Jaxson brought the stone over, raised it over his head, and slammed it into the ground like a pile driver.

It sank about four inches into the earth. Damn.

He packed the dirt around it with his foot as I tried to ignore the way his shirt stretched over those broad shoulders.

“So, what now?” Casey asked as he approached. “Do we wait for Bloody Mary to show up, or do we do voodoo to summon her?”

“I’m not sure, really,” I admitted. “Last time, I just shouted a lot until she came out.”

“Cool, cool, cool,” Casey said doubtfully.

Giving him a dirty look, I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Ghost of Pere Cheney! We brought your gravestone!”

We waited. Nothing happened.

Jaxson raised his eyebrows, and I motioned the men back. “Be patient, and give me some space.”

Wishing I knew the ghost’s name, I shouted again, “Ghost of Pere Cheney, I’m here to fulfill our bargain! I’ve brought you a headstone that will never break, will never weather, and will last long after these others have turned to dust. You’ll never be forgotten.”

Casey made a guilty, hedging expression, and I rolled my eyes.

For a long time, there was nothing. Then suddenly, my wound began to itch. I held up my finger to my lips in warning as a soft chill deeper than the night air washed over my skin.

We were no longer alone.

Slowly, I scanned the cemetery until at last, a pale, spectral light emerged from the woods. I held my breath as the witch of Pere Cheney slipped from behind the trees and drifted effortlessly across the grass. Her long, ratty hair framed a youthful face, and her threadbare dress trailed in wisps behind her on wind that I couldn’t feel.

Anger tightened my fists. She couldn’t have been more than a teenager when they’d hanged her, probably because she’d gotten pregnant out of wedlock or broken some archaic religious laws.

Humans were monsters.

The ghost approached cautiously, as if somehow, I were a threat. “I remember you, shadowed one. We had a bargain.”

“Here is your gravestone, as promised.”

“Who are you talking to?” Casey whispered, his eyes as wide as I’d seen them. “Is she here? I don’t see—”

I quickly shushed him. “Yes. I told you, I see ghosts. Now be quiet.”

The ghost paid our exchange no heed, floating instead to where the gravestone stood. She put her hands over her mouth in a way that made a lump of sorrow form in my throat. “It’s beautiful. Perfect.”

“No one will forget your story now,” I said softly, stepping over.

She wrapped her hands around the stone, a sob hovering at the edge of her voice. “Those people hanged me in the woods, and they let the wolves and birds fight over my bones. This is all there is to remember me.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

Like the shadow of the earth passing over the moon, her eyes went dark. “The fools should have let me live. I cursed that town with plague and disease until not one of their offspring was left breathing. Until it was nothing more than a desolated patch of earth, and all of them rotting in the ground alongside me.”

My skin crawled at the sudden venom in her voice. She was possibly a little unhinged. I began to back away.

She flicked her infinitely dark eyes on me. “It doesn’t have my name. Why doesn’t it have my name?”

Aw, shit.

Somehow, it didn’t seem like arguing you didn’t tell me your name was going to be a viable defense.

My mind spun like Robin Arzón, and I swallowed hard. “Of course not. That’s, uh, part of the mystique. People who come here and see this stone will want to know who you are, and they’ll go crazy hunting through books and archives searching for your story. The harder you make them work for it, the better they’ll remember you.”

Practically purring, she traced her fingers over the granite slab. “What is in a name, anyway? They will remember who I was. What I did. Let them look.”

I licked my lips. “We had a bargain. I brought you your eternal gravestone, but you still owe me another answer.”

Her eyes flared with unearthly light, and she disappeared. My stomach dropped. Shit, shit, shit.

I spun around, looking for her. “Please, don’t go!” I shouted as I ran toward the woods. “You promised you’d help me! The Dark Wolf God is coming back, and I need your help to stop him! We had a bargain!”

As I stepped into the dark shadows of the trees, she was suddenly there, looming over me. “It’s dangerous to ask boons of the dead, you know.”

All traces of her earlier gratitude had vanished, replaced by the cold menace of her floating, ethereal form. My skin lost its warmth, and I began to recognize the depths of her madness and how dangerous the specter might truly be.

But I stood my ground. “How do I stop the Dark God from returning?”

Her face contorted into an expression somewhere between disgust and pity as she floated backward. “It’s too late. You released him. You can’t stop him from returning now. He’s already got his claws in you. Now, do not call for me again.”

Dread seeped into my soul. “What do you mean? Please! Help me.”

Like a viper, she lashed out and jabbed her finger into my wound. I gasped as her touch sent ice racing through my veins.

“You’re broken, and your defenses are breached,” she hissed. “Can’t you feel him prying you apart from the inside?”

Every muscle in my body knotted. “The Dark Wolf God?”

“I can feel it. He lives in you now. You are doomed to serve his will.”

She slipped away, but I stretched out my hand in pleading. “Wait! I don’t understand. How is he inside of me?”

An ethereal wind buffeted the spirit as if to blow her away, but her head turned back, and she locked her hollow eyes on me. “You’re a broken ship, and he is the sea. He’s spilling through the cracks, and soon, he will consume you. I can sense him here, even now. I’ve lingered too long.”

With that, the ghost vanished into a stream of glowing mist. Terror and despair pulled on me like heavy chains, and I let my outstretched hands drop.

“What’s going on?” Jaxson growled. He wouldn’t have heard her half of the conversation, but he would have certainly sensed my fear.

I instinctively grabbed his hand and started tugging him toward the truck. “We should probably get out of here.”

As we stepped out of the woods, Casey started to blurt something out, but I froze in place, hand raised to silence him and straining to hear. The air was unnaturally quiet, and the only sound I could make out was the drumming of our heartbeats.

As we stood there, a chilly frost began to creep through the wound in my shoulder, and I sucked in a sharp gasp of pain. It was far worse than the ghost’s touch, like a blade of ice slowly pushing toward my heart.

Run! Wolfie whispered in my mind.