“Beck,” I gritted out, a caution-filled whisper—or a threat. One of us had to be the calm one, and I was already on edge because of Fallon. Her presence wrung me out, hung me to dry, made me weak.
I darted my eyes around the bar. There were too many people. I tilted my head, seeing Zephyr to my side as he watched with amusement in his eyes. I looked back at Beck, veins protruding in his neck like a rabid dog. He was going to lose it right here in front of everyone.
Kane’s chuckle rattled in my ears, making it worse. “You should really listen to your boyfriend.”
The comment rushed straight to my brain. I cocked my head, sliced my eyes back to Kane, my feet ahead of my restraint, flexing my fingers to control the rage. The transformation within me felt like a cycle of the werewolf.
Kane’s smile vanished. He stumbled back against the bar stool.
Everyone froze, ceasing all sudden moves with terror in their eyes as my chest heaved. My hands shook from the feeble attempt to control myself, but I felt it, the darkness filtering, the brazen energy vibrating inside me, and I clenched my hands into fists.
A roar quaked in my chest, vibrated in my throat. I couldn’t stop it.
An animalistic scream thrashed in the air with winds of different seasons. The windows convulsed, and both entry doors flew open with a loud bang! against the walls. Violent winds swooshed through the small bar. Gasps and whispers went off like fireworks. The scream rippled like the very soundwaves I made over the sea. Bottles fell from their shelves, shattering when they hit the floor. Papers ripped from the wall, carried away by the strong winds. Phoenix jumped out to catch another bottle that had slipped from the shelf, calling out to me, but his voice was not pulling me out of it. Someone yanked back on my stiffened shoulder. I knew it was Beck, but nothing would give.
The front window shattered, and the townies cried out, clinging on to one another as the glass flew into the cyclone inside the bar. But I was too far gone inside this daze for it to stop. Nothing could stop me.
Not until my gaze fell over Fallon’s long hair tangling with the storm. Through the thrashing white war of her hair, her clear eyes locked on mine. I inhaled, the sound of her breathing in my ears as if she were standing beside me.
Then everything stopped, and the doors swung to a standstill.
Quietness. Stillness.
Kane’s eyes narrowed to crinkled slits.
The crowd looked around, baffled, searching for answers to what just happened.
One last flicker of a glance at the girl who returned home, and I walked forward through the crowd and out of Voodoos, Zeph and Beck close behind.
The three of us sat around a fire in a small clearing in the woods just off the deck of my property.
“Seriously, Jules. What were you thinking?” Beck asked with a lazy grip on the mouth of his beer bottle, letting it swing between his bent knees. Hours had passed and the fire crackled between us as we lost ourselves to our thoughts.
I drank from the bottle, considering my words. “I wasn’t.” I tilted my head to the cabin, where the oil lamplight flickered from inside on the window sill. “Something’s not right.” Or perhaps something wasn’t right within me. I’d never done anything like that before, out in the open. I’d never put any of us in a position to be prodded. I fell back against my chair and balanced the bottle over my knee. “Something’s off.”
“No shit.” Zeph cocked his head, and his blond hair fell over one green eye. “It’s the girl. Since she arrived, you’ve been different,” he said with such disdain.
If they knew I’d picked her car up from the side of the road just so I could have a way to see her again, they’d ask questions—ones I didn’t have the answers to because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I had to keep my thoughts about Fallon to myself. “Fallon has nothing to do with it.”
“Since when do you call her by her first name?” Zeph dragged out. I flipped him the bird.
“Either way, the goat slaughter isn’t good enough,” Beck added with a slight slur as if those thoughts hadn’t already crossed my mind, worries eating away at the both of us. Eventually, he would pass out on my couch and be gone to work at the cemetery by morning, avoiding the troubles inside his home—avoiding his father. “There’s gotta be a different way to break the curse.”
A raven perched nearby, two condescending eyes staring at me from inside the deep forest. Its squawk made my blood curdle. Since I was born, the death omen had been following me, but only worsened since Fallon’s arrival—since her car drove under the Weeping Hollow sign. The raven squawked again, reminding me I didn’t have much time. Death was coming, and I had no idea who it was going after next. Or by whose hands.
“The mutant was looking at you, Blackwell,” Phoenix declared, appearing suddenly from the dark shadows of the forest, a pointed finger directed at me.
I could see in the dark, those who didn’t cast shadows often did. Spite swam in his gaze. Phoenix was a firestarter, and his internal battles were written in his glowing irises because he had a hard time holding back, but it was the only way the cursed had survived this long.
Stay hollow, stay detached, do right by the coven.
“And I have a feeling that whatever is going on is mutual,” he added.
She was dancing, and I was watching her dance. Fallon was falling, and I couldn’t stop myself from reacting. “You misread that entirely.”
Phoenix shook his head and sank into a wooden chair. “Breaking this curse comes first.”
My jaw clenched. “I said it was nothing. A mere reaction, now drop it.”
The forest blinked under the harshness that dripped from my words. The rest of them silenced. All that was left was the forest waking in the night. Roots groaned beneath the cold soil, branches and leaves rustled. The forest was alive and moving, and I closed my eyes in its constant stability.
If not my loyalty to the Heathens, my shadow-blood coursing through my veins was enough to never question my priorities. After watching how the curse had destroyed our families, there was nothing I wanted more than to break it.
Twelve years ago, after Johnny’s death, we’d made the pact in the woods and sealed it with our blood. I ran my thumb over the scar in my palm as a reminder.
It was different than the rest of our scars.
This one meant something.
For the last twelve years, we’ve laid low, earned the town’s trust, became model citizens, played nice, gained access, sacrificed relationships. We did what our fathers couldn’t. And we were so close.
“What was that, Jules?” Beck finally asked as the fire burned at our feet, the four of us sitting around it in a circle.
The incident at Voodoos. The door had swung open. A fury-filled storm made of magic and intimidation had blown through the bar, and Fallon’s gaze had frozen with mine, covered me, comforted me, pulling me out of it somehow.
I dropped my head back and opened my eyes to the starless sky, watching as the smoke and sparks from the fire climbed the darkness toward the moon. “I don’t know,” I said through an exhale, the lie scratching at my throat.
“Let’s just let loose tonight. There’s something inside you, and you need to get it out.” Phoenix wanted to release his magic, release his anger. And he was using me as an excuse. “The running man, Jules. Be free like you used to, it’s been too long.”