Deep Within The Shadows (The Superstition Series Book 1) (22 page)

“My wards will hold.”

“Do they cover the whole house, the roof, the attic vents? These suckers can leap like a fucking kangaroo and hit with the force of a baseball at ninety miles an hour. The big one cracked my windshield like an eggshell.”

His language alone increased Juliet’s concern.

Aubrey frowned, biting her lip. “If they come through a window, they’ll burn to a crisp. If they touch the house, the same will happen. But I didn’t think about the roof. Nobody told me they could jump.”

“Fuck!” Caleb exploded.

Juliet tried to release her fear and ground herself. “I have an idea, but it will require that we all of us working together.”

“What is it?” Miranda demanded.

“We were going to try to suck one of the shadow creatures into a crystal. We just need to work on a bigger scale. I can take care of the ones on the lawn, and you two need to gather up the ones on the roof.”

“How do you know they’re already on the roof?” Aubrey asked.

“Listen.”

A muffled rustling sound much like a paper bag being crushed came from above.

“Those assholes are eating my roof,” Aubrey’s green eyes sparked, her red hair floating about her shoulders as anger fired her powers.

They all followed her into the living room. Aubrey reached for some of the crystals they had prepared, and she put some in her pockets. Miranda and Juliet did the same.

Caleb’s features had hardened with concern. “How can we keep the shadows off of you while you three take out the spiders?”

“I’m going to kill the streetlights. You watch my back and warn me if they start to fire up again. I’ll be using fire to dissolve the spiders. The shadows may try to manipulate the light from that to attack.”

It had been so long since she’d felt empowered, and now the feeling of being in control of herself and her gifts rushed up to meet her like an old friend. She gripped the front door knob and jerked it open.

She threw out a hand. “
Terminus vicus lux luscis
.” Like dominoes falling, every streetlight blinked off, plunging the neighborhood streets into darkness.

“Showoff,” Miranda muttered before shooting her a grin. As scared as they were, they were finally living as they should always have been.

Juliet motioned for Miranda to stay back and walked across the porch. She kicked a tarantula-sized arachnid off the stairs like a soccer ball, and heard it hit the street with a crunch. The weight of the thing surprised her.

She rushed to an open space on the lawn and pulled the power up and through her body in a rush. The scuttling horde surged toward her as soon as she stopped in the center of the yard. She waved her hands back and forth as she would if she were brushing the grass.

A thousand small, skittering shapes hastened toward her, their bodies glittering like crystals. Her skin crawled, and the thought of them touching her provoked an itchy feeling in the back of her throat.

Her anger built to overpower her fear. “Within the grass, within their mass, with fire I will ignite, these things divined to inspire my fright.” Each shiny body began to glow fiery red, like a hot coal, and they writhed and withered onto their legs, which curled like burned paper under them. Thousands of them glowed against the inky blackness of the grass, turning the yard scarlet with their heat and sending out the scent of burned sod.

In the dull red glow, tall gray shadows, hazy and indistinct, began to form.

Miranda ran to the edge of the porch and extended a hand, calling out, “
Impluo!
”

Large, wet drops of rain plopped onto the lawn, hitting the burning spiders. They hissed, and steam billowed upwards. Heat pulsed and built until the first one crackled, then popped with the ferocity of a gunshot, sending out shards of hard, molten glass. Like a chain reaction, the others followed in quick succession, sounding off like a string of firecrackers on the fourth of July.

As the light died, the shadows dissipated as quickly as they had appeared. Before the noise and rain ceased, Caleb and Chase ran off the porch, leaping over the smoldering patches to stand on the sidewalk and act as lookouts for any shadows.

Miranda and Aubrey followed to join Juliet on the rain-slick grass. They faced the house and looked up on the roof. Beneath the half-moon’s light, the charcoal gray shingles glittered with tiny, skittering forms.

Aubrey bent her elbow, cupped her hand and spun it in a circle. “
Per suction quod verntus levo illa molestus
.” The wind spiraled and swirled, circling in wild eddies along the ground, sucking the dead, broken carcasses up out of the grass. With the twisting speed of a dust devil, it took flight and climbed into the sky, bounced, then whirled along the roof, causing the damaged shingles to clatter as it scooped up the writhing mass of crystalline arachnids like a vacuum.

Miranda drew a deep breath and exhaled hard enough to blow up a balloon. A large, transparent bubble appeared and expanded until it stood six feet in diameter, suspended above the ground. “Wiggly arms and legs come hither, within my bubble you will slither,” Miranda called out. The wind stilled, and Juliet was certain the sudden appearance of thousands of swarming spiders clumped together in a heaving mass with their burned and broken nest mates would haunt her with more than one horrible nightmare.

“Do you think you can break the bubble at the same time I send these things back to their creator?” she asked Miranda.

“Yes, I can do that.”

“Maybe it will be enough to scare her into dropping this vendetta.” Goddess, she hoped so. Juliet drew upon the earthy power beneath her. She stretched out a hand and touched her fingertips to the bubble. Immediately at least fifty spiders heaved against the sphere and tried to gnaw their way through to bite her. She couldn’t entirely control the instinctive flinch, but held her hand steady. “From shadow to light, carry back this power, and end this final witching hour.”

The sphere suddenly stretched out, elongated, as if it were being sucked through a keyhole by a ferocious vacuum. Then it began to shrink, getting smaller and smaller, as more and more of the spiders and their transparent prison were drawn away to another time and place.

“
Ut liberum
,” Miranda commanded, just as the last remnant of the bubble disappeared into the either.

A waiting stillness hung in the air. And for several moments they remained frozen, silent.

“Remind me not to piss you ladies off,” Caleb quipped. “Having thousands of those things dropped on my doorstep would be about as bad as experiencing the ninth circle of hell.”

Aubrey laughed, breaking the white-knuckled tension of the group. “Juliet didn’t drop them on her doorstep, Caleb. She sent them all back to her directly.”

“Jesus,” Chase murmured.

Juliet rolled her head to relieve the tension cramping her neck. It was both satisfying and depressing that she’d probably banished the one thing that could have led them to the person responsible. And that she’d been forced to break their cardinal rule of “an it harm none, do what ye will.”

Her voice was tinged with a pinch of bitterness when she said, “Karma’s a bitch.”

M
iranda stood next
to the bed, Caleb’s neatly folded clothes in her hands. Washing his clothes was such a small thing, yet intimate. His gray boxer briefs and white tube socks were tucked between layers of shirt and pants.

She had never allowed herself to dream of a husband and family. Had never thought she could want a man until Caleb. Not until Juliet had assured her Clay Maddox was gone for good. For a brief glorious few hours she’d believed it was possible. Until she showed Caleb what she was.

She’d ignored it, suppressed it, and the void inside her had grown to swallow her personality, her life. She had punished herself for the past by pretending to be someone other people could ignore. She’d hidden in plain sight. But she couldn’t do it anymore.

“What are you thinking so hard about, Mandy?”

Caleb’s voice, gravely from sleep, jerked her back to the present. He stretched and the fabric of his T-shirt pulled taut across his chest and shoulders, outlining the strong, masculine lines of his upper body. Her mouth dried with longing and her skin tingled. When Caleb folded one hand behind his head and patted the bed next to him, her heartbeat burst into an erratic rumba.

His small gesture inspired a tiny kernel of hope, although she cautioned herself not to read too much into it. She placed his clothes on the dresser and closed the distance between them. Instead of sitting, she climbed on the bed next to him and curled on her side, facing him.

For a long moment he looked into her eyes. The dark beard stubble along his lower jaw tempted her to touch, but she curbed the impulse. He had made the first gesture, but she needed to take things slow.

“How’s your arm?” he asked.

“Better.” Juliet had done a gentle healing, and though the bruise had flourished with color, the bone-deep pain had eased a little.

He tucked a long strand of hair behind her ear with a fingertip, and the small caress resonated all the way down her neck. “What were you thinking about?”

“I was regretting how much time I’ve spent hiding in the shadows, afraid to be what I am.”

“I understand the need to hide what you can do, but why did you think you had hide the rest?”

The question aimed right for the heart of the whole situation and hit its mark. Fear and guilt welled up, threatening to paralyze her. Her voice came out a whisper. “I didn’t think I had a choice.”

Caleb’s throat moved as he swallowed. “It had something to do with your stepfather, didn’t it?”

Oh, Goddess, he was going to guess what it was. How could he not, with her every emotion clamoring beneath the surface of her skin? She tried to swallow, but her heart had lodged in her throat, making it impossible.

He urged her against him.

She shivered as a numbing cold took hold of her, and she burrowed into him, seeking the closeness she had denied herself…and him.

“I love you, Mandy. Nothing will ever change that.”

It would. Whatever he thought had happened, nothing could compare with the reality of it. Now that he had connected her behavior to Clay Maddox, it would get stuck in the back of his mind until he began to ask questions. And the Gods help her, she’d answer them.

His fingers found the back of her neck and he rubbed the taut muscles there until she began to calm. “There were things that happened in Afghanistan I will never be able to talk about to anyone. It’s fine if you can’t talk about things, either. I understand.”

Tears burned her eyes as relief flooded her. For however long it lasted, she’d take it.

*     *     *

Chase braced a
forearm against the window frame and studied the front yard. Scorch marks peppered the grass, reminders of the battle that had raged the night before.

With the normalcy of drinking coffee and the murmur of quiet conversation coming from the kitchen, what had happened last night seemed distant and dreamlike.

He took one more swallow of coffee. It was time to get back to the real world and catch who was responsible. There were three men dead, and it had to be connected to the attacks against Miranda and Juliet. He couldn’t use any of the things he’d seen last night as proof, however; he had to build a case using real world facts.

First he needed to interview Samuel Newton. He’d called earlier and checked with the doctor to make sure Samuel was well enough to be questioned.

“I’ve pressed your clothes, Chase,” Juliet said from behind him.

Surprised, he turned to see her dressed in the clothes she’d worn the day before and holding hangers with his trousers and shirt neatly hung on them. His attention shifted to his underwear, T-shirt and socks in her other hand, and he was struck momentarily speechless. “Thanks.” Uncomfortable heat climbed into his face and he went closer to exchange his cup for his clothes. No one had washed his laundry since he left home for college. He always kept a change in the trunk, but battling the spiders to get them had been out of the question at the time.

“I’d like to go with you to the hospital to visit Samuel.”

He raised a brow. He should have known there’d be a hitch. “In order for this to remain within official guidelines, I can’t have you with me when I interview him, Juliet.”

“I can go in and thank him for saving my life. If he hadn’t knocked me free… Maybe I can reassure him how open-minded you are, so he’ll tell you exactly what happened. Otherwise he might not be candid with you.”

“If I allow you to talk to him, it contaminates his testimony. Any contact the two of you have, and the timing of it, will be the first thing a defense attorney will home in on.”

“I understand, but he may not be completely truthful if he doesn’t feel you’re open to—the unusual.”

“After last night, I believe I’ll be open enough.” He offered her a wry half smile.

“He may have convinced himself he was hallucinating by now.” She shrugged. “Isn’t that what most people do when they can’t explain something away rationally?”