Page 3 of A Curse in Darkness

There’s that saying that life is what happens to us while we’re making other plans. In my case, life had kicked me in the crotch, spat on me, then ground my humble plans to dust.

I thought I had it all figured out. It was a simple plan: run my store, look after my family, use my powers to help others, and enjoy a variety of energetic and highly skilled lovers. But most importantly, my plan was to avoid drama at all costs. Growing up in a house with my grandmother, great aunt, mother, and three sisters, I’d had more than my fair share. The Thornheart women were not only powerful witches, they were strong-willed and extremely volatile. So that last one was easier said than done.

But I loved them more than anything in this world.

And now I was going to be eaten alive.

Someone really had it out for me.

Darkness creeped in at the edges of my vision. Oh goody, maybe I’d pass out first?

The scars on my back burned, reminding me they were there as dark, disturbing memories pushed forward, invading my groggy mind. There was no fighting them this time. The twisted face of my torturer filled my head as shadows of the pain the monster had inflicted on me a year ago spiked through my nerve endings.

He’s dead.

Azel was dead. The fallen angel had been decapitated, burned, and sent to Hell. He would never hurt anyone else again, that was a fact, but it didn’t erase the scars on my body, or my soul. Or the fact that my weakness had almost allowed him to hurt the people I held dear.

A howl, powerful and filled with the terrors of the night, promising pain in the most gruesome of ways, echoed in the distance.

If I could move my jaw, I would have cursed. I knew that howl.

The darkness pushed in even more.

The saplings growing between the trees bordering the clearing cracked as they were walked on. The beast was coming for me. A dark shadow appeared at the edge of the clearing, amber eyes glowing from the nothingness, aimed directly at me.

Then it burst from the woods, charging—

Everything went dark.

* * *

“Wake up, Wills. Jesus, you need to wake up.”

I moaned. My eyes were superglued shut.

“The hound’s coming.”

That did the trick. My eyes snapped open and stared up at Ren. I was still in the woods. “W-what are you doing here?” I sounded like a demented toad.

“Saving your ass.” He slid an arm under my pits and dragged me off the ground. “Where’s your dagger?”

“By my clothes.”

He cursed and rushed over to grab everything. “You need to get dressed.”

Ren Macanroy was my best friend. He was nineteen, a mortician at his family’s funeral home, and a fox shifter. He was also my familiar, and the fact I was trying to shield him from my current situation was a sore point between us. Familiars could be shifter or animal, and you never knew what you were going to get. Ren had lived down the street from me his whole life, and one day, at age fourteen, he’d just shown up at my door, drawn there by a force he hadn’t understood. We’d both felt the connection instantly.

But he wasn’t equipped to handle the shit I found myself in now. Fox shifters were cunning, quick-witted, strategic, and extremely nurturing. They were tactile caretakers and loved to be around others, but they weren’t fighters.

Most Keepers usually had some kind of vicious mofo as their familiar, like a bear or a lion, or maybe a honey badger or even a mongoose. From what I’d seen and heard, anyway. But then, I was never meant to be the Keeper. And Ren was never meant to be a Keeper’s familiar.

That honor had originally traveled down another branch of the Thornheart family, only the succession was broken when Joshua Thornheart—the only living descendant from that line—was killed in a house fire. We had no idea which branch of our coven would pick up the hellish honor in his stead—well, Gran had, another of her secrets—until I was compelled to come here to this spot close to a year ago and was greeted by a giant serpent. Saying we were unprepared was an understatement.

So yeah, now I found myself in a bit of a pickle.

My legs wobbled, almost giving out, and Ren cursed, grabbing me before I landed on my ass. Good thing shifters weren’t fazed by nakedness, and there was also the fact that the bond between us was not romantic in any way, shape, or form. We had more of a sibling vibe, just as deep but also…different.

Not every witch and her familiar was the same, though, or as lucky as us. Sometimes feelings became romantic, which was all well and good when those feelings were mutual. When they weren’t, that’s when things got complicated. Being tied to someone you were in love with and being unable to walk away because of the bond between a witch and her familiar, then watching them with someone else, was a special kind of torture.