He was still in the clinic within the Pack’s property, because they seemed to have just about everything here. I hated all of the tubes and wires connecting him to machines, but they were keeping him alive. It reminded me of what the shadows were doing to those kids, what Mace did to the catchers.
If I could trade all of this so-called power to save Papan’s life and see him smiling one more time, I wouldn’t hesitate.
It breaks my heart to see him like this.
A person like him, with such a vibrant nature, shouldn’t be reduced to this. But that was exactly what his bastard brother sentenced him to when he injected such a high dosage of liquid silver.
By all accounts, it should’ve killed Papan, but he must have been as stubborn as me and refused to die without a fight.
I’m going to fight for him too.
The doctor suspected neither the silver nor the demonic essence was left in his blood, but the silver had contaminated his organs.
I didn’t know what would happen next, but the symbol on the back of my hand somehow connected me to an ancient deity. I was still sketchy on the details, but Saul Sear had the same mark tattooed on his back. He opened up about a few things. Turned out—
Seere, Seir, Sear
—was affiliated with the Goddess Hecate, and back in the Underworld, he commanded a bunch of demons. He happened to be a good demon who did the Goddess’s bidding and took on the role of living countless human lives at her command. He might have lost his demonic army while in the human world but he kept his mysterious and wonderful powers.
The day he cut a deal with my grandmother, he conveniently decided to try his hand at living with wolves—the Wilson Pack.
It all sounded a little too coincidental to me. A lot of my life felt like it had been scripted without my knowledge. So from now on, I would be the only one writing on the blank pages.
The first thing on my to-do list was saving Jason Papan—PI, werewolf alpha, all-round good guy, great friend, lover and not just my partner in crime, but in life. The doctor told me to let him go, to switch off the machines keeping him alive and give him peace, but that will never happen.
He’s not gone yet. I know he’s not.
My sister might be plagued with a new set of nightmares, but she was safe with Roe. I’d spoken to him several times, and would forever be grateful for his support, understanding and advice—and apologized for not attending Juliet’s funeral. I just couldn’t deal with it right now, not when Papan was knocking on death’s door.
I was glad I’d passed on the professor’s final message to Roe.
The pooka kids were back with their parents and in control of their shape-shifting, while the shadow monster victims had been returned to theirs too. Lavie constantly checked in on me—said it was to see how Papan was doing, but I was pretty sure she was keeping an eye on
me
. Her friend was being released from the mental hospital, and would be reunited with her child and husband soon.
Some things were working out. I had to celebrate the small victories.
I hadn’t spoken to Gareth, though he did leave several messages I hadn’t listened to. Yeah, I preferred to keep my distance from him and Oren at the moment, which wasn’t much of a problem since I didn’t tell Gareth where I was and my biological grandfather was staying away.
At least my grandparents were now in peace, and together.
The good usually comes with the bad.
So I was still waiting for the
Obscurus
to strike when I least expected them.
The overhead lights buzzed for a second and my body stiffened. I blamed it on paranoia, because I kept expecting Mace to pop up.
Although Saul claimed that the werewolf estate was solar powered and the phantom wouldn’t find access, Mace would figure out another way. Our showdown would come sooner than later, but he was in for a real surprise. He wasn’t taking my new ability. And Jacinta wasn’t going to snuff it out either.
“Happy birthday, Papan.” I leaned over and lightly brushed my lips against his, pushing his hair away from his handsome face. “I know you can hear me. I need you to come back to me because I’m not going to walk away from you. Not now, not ever. So unless you want me to spend the rest of my life inside this room, you better wake up.”
He didn’t respond, though I thought I saw his eyelids flutter.
“Besides, I’ve finally got that trench coat you always wanted me to wear.”
As I sat down on the chair pressed against his bed, I wrapped the fingers of my left hand around his and turned his hand over. The pink outline of Hecate’s Wheel—or the Strophalos of Hecate—flashed on the back of his. Nothing like the dark ink mine had become, but every time I touched someone I cared about, I noticed the symbol appear on their skin. Was I marking them?
I looked out the window opposite the bed and saw Saul standing outside talking to a group of people. Even from here, I could see his blue eyes focused on mine.
The compulsion to reach for my back pocket was so strong, I couldn’t help but check. Sure enough, there was a small piece of paper and it said:
Let me know when you want to use my blood.
Yeah, he knew what Papan needed and I would speak to him about it tomorrow.
All I wanted—and needed—to do was stay at Papan’s bedside. Where I could read my grandmother’s grimoire and find out exactly what the Hecate Ritual entailed. After all, if she’d used it to fortify me as an infant, I’d probably need to do the same to my granddaughter someday…
Time moved on outside, but it seemed to be on pause inside this room.
I wasn’t going to let what Papan and I had slip away, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to leave until he opened his eyes and regained consciousness.
About the Author
Yolanda Sfetsos has always had a wild imagination and often found herself making up stories in her head. When she was in her teens, she started putting some of those ideas on paper.
She loves to dabble in a variety of genres but especially enjoys writing urban fantasy, futuristic, and Sci-Fi tales—all with a dark, paranormal edge.
Yolanda lives in a suburb of Sydney, Australia with her small family. When she’s not writing, she’s either thinking about it, researching, reading, walking, or watching her favorite TV shows. Or maybe she’s on Twitter.
You can visit her website at:
www.yolandasfetsos.com
Look for these titles by Yolanda Sfetsos
Now Available:
Recast
Wither
Clash
Shiver
Sierra Fox
A Patch of Darkness
Split at the Seams
On Pins and Needles
All it takes is one freak to turn everything into a demonic ritual.
On Pins and Needles
© 2013 Yolanda Sfetsos
Sierra Fox Stories, Book 3
Sierra Fox can’t catch a break. Her relationship with werewolf, Jason Papan, is going great but someone’s still trying to kill her. After a death prediction, she becomes even more paranoid. But there are too many things going on in her life for her to dwell on just the one.
With her biological grandfather’s help, Sierra is about to find out exactly why the demonic-obsessed freaks wants her. Meeting the half-sister she didn’t know she had throws her into a new lot of trouble. The teenager suffers a supernatural problem that makes her a target, and when teenagers start turning up dead, Sierra realizes the case leads to her sister.
As Sierra finds herself in the thick of the murder investigation, and the target on her becomes harder to avoid, she has no choice but to face her darkest fears and accept that to overcome the looming threat, she’ll have to embrace the darkest of her powers. Or that death prediction might just come true…
Warning: Spook catching: never gets any easier, neither does trying to avoid being killed by a shadowy organization. Always expect the unexpected—dangerous vampires, poltergeists and demon-obsessed freaks. At least the werewolf is pleasurably safe.
Enjoy the following excerpt for
On Pins and Needles:
I stared at this seemingly healthy young girl and for the first time noticed the dark circles under her eyes, and just how thin she was. “I don’t know what to say.” I bit down on my lip, fighting the itch to grab a pen and start writing this down into my grimoire—under my family history. This was bizarre. She’d allegedly died four times already and had somehow—obviously—been revived. How was that possible?
For just a moment, I honed in on my spook catcher skills, hoping to eliminate the fact she could very well be dead right now and not know it. But no, she was very much alive.
“It’s okay. Most people don’t know what to say or how to react.” She looked down at the desk. “All I know is that every time I come back, I feel a little different. A little heavier, if that makes any sense.”
My heart sped up. How had my mother dealt with another anomaly? And what could be wrong with Willow that she kept dying but came back? It explained why she’d reached out to me. Yet I couldn’t help but wonder how her father fit into all of this, and how he even knew about me. How long had he known? I still had a hard time believing my mother actually told him.
“Listen, I don’t want to pry into your business, but does your father know you’re here?”
Willow’s head jerked up unnaturally fast and her blue eyes widened, shining brightly. So bright it almost looked as if shimmering light was filtering from
within
her. “Why?” Her soft voice suddenly had a rough edge.
“I’m curious, what does he think of all this?”
“My father has nothing to do with this.” The long strands of her hair lifted around her like slithering snakes being whipped by a sudden gust of wind.
What the hell was going on? My hair sizzled from the electrical charge I associated with poltergeist activity, or phantasms. “Willow, are you okay?”
“Yeah, just dandy,” she replied, and a flash of light exploded behind her, revealing the writhing form of a tall, thin boy with longish brown hair. He weaved around her, his body charged like an electric eel. Yet she didn’t seem to notice him or the sparks.
When another form appeared behind her, this time in the shape of a dog, I jumped out of the chair and took a step back.
I raised my right hand. “Okay, Willow, you need to calm down.”
“I am calm. I’ve never felt calmer, because being around you feels different…in a good way.” A rueful smile spread across her plump lips. “You’re exactly what I’ve needed all this time. You can help me.”
The monitor between mine and Ebony’s desk flickered on, and so did the overhead lights. A few manila folders flew off the top of the stack and began swirling around, an assortment of pens following close behind.
If I couldn’t get her to calm down, the poltergeist activity would wreck the office.
What had set her off? I’d said something that made her angry and it was now manifesting with violent electrical, telekinetic energy. It wasn’t the evidence she’d presented, or even discussing the fact she’d died several times. No, it was the question about whether her father knew she was here.
“Willow…”
“Yeah?” she asked while the boy writhed around her. He seemed to have eyes only for her, just as the small dog did.
“Tell me about your favorite movie, or book.” I knew next to nothing about this girl, so distracting her in a positive way was going to be quite a challenge. Usually to calm poltergeist activity, I needed to connect with the source but these attachments didn’t seem to be in control.
She
was. And that wasn’t the only thing that made everything so confusing, because poltergeists rarely revealed themselves. It was usually like dealing with an invisible telekinetic entity. So how could a live person have poltergeists with her
and
make them appear? No, that wasn’t quite right because I was pretty sure she couldn’t see the kid and the dog.
But I certainly can.
Her smile widened. “Oh, Jamie and I loved to watch scary movies together. It didn’t matter how old or B-grade they were, we loved them. We especially loved the old hack and slash ones from the 80s.”
The hovering boy turned to look at her with what could only be described as adoration on his face. His bluish shimmer made her glow like some kind of celestial being.
“Do you have a favorite?”
“Oh, we loved
The Nightmare on Elm Street
movies the best. I was never scared, but liked it when Jamie held my hand.”
“Who’s Jamie?” I sat slowly, wincing because the electrical charge was so close my skin was crawling. “He sounds like a good friend.”
She was quiet for a moment, staring at the desktop as if she was lost in the past. “He was…he was my boyfriend.”
“Willow, what happened to him?” I asked softly. Anything, even the wrong tone of voice, could set her off again. At least nothing was flying around the office now. “How did Jamie die?”
The poltergeist boy I assumed to be Jamie continued to glide around her.