Crescent Calling: The Crescent Witch Chronicles - Book One by R Nicole (essential reading TXT) 📗

tried to find my magic. It had been easier than I’d thought up until this point, but that was before the chance of kicking the bucket had become a reality, and Boone had kissed me. There were so many things left unsaid…and undone.

Letting out a long breath, I raised my hand, imagining a golden net emerging from the leaf litter. I couldn’t see it, but out the corner of my eye, Boone shivered.

“I can sense it,” he murmured.

I let my hand fall back to my side. “Then it’s done.”

Glancing at Boone, he smiled reassuringly, but only one thing was on my mind. We were on the precipice of a life-changing event, and all I wanted to know was if he wanted to be my boyfriend or not. I wanted to ask if he was satisfied with a single kiss or if he wanted more. If I meant more to him than the promise he’d made to my mother and the Crescent Witches. If he felt for me as I felt for him. All this time, I thought it had been a harmless crush, but now, in this place…I knew something more was growing in my heart.

“I better change,” he murmured.

I nodded awkwardly, my chance slipping away. He strode across the clearing, moving closer and closer to the woods. It was now or never. If something happened and I didn’t ask, I would regret it forever.

At the last second, I spun on my heel. “Boone?”

He paused at the tree line and glanced over his shoulder.

“What are we?” I blurted. “You and me?”

He turned, and his lips curved into a wicked grin. “My heart belongs to you, Skye Williams. Whether you want it or not.”

“I want you,” I murmured.

His smiled widened. “Are you finally askin’ me for that kiss?”

“I think it’s a bit too late for that.”

His laugh was a welcome sound, and he nodded, his hair falling into his eyes. “I think so.”

Finally, he turned and disappeared into the darkness, and a moment later, a white gyrfalcon appeared on the branches of the hawthorn.

“Be safe,” I said, raising my hand.

He flapped his wings and took flight, and then he was gone, a silent hunter in the night.

Listening to the woodland around me, it was alive with the sounds of nocturnal scurrying. There were no eyes watching me, and the feeling that tingled along my skin was anticipation. The battle was coming to me, and I was the one who would have to plunge the athame into its chest.

Nothing changed for a long time. I waited, holding my position in the center of the clearing, making sure I was underneath the branches that would protect me the most. I grasped the talisman in my free hand, my fingers stroking the golden crystal, hoping Boone’s theory was right.

Staring up at the hawthorn tree, the silver rays of the full moon trickled through the branches, dusting the clearing with an eerie glow. Under different circumstances, it might’ve been beautiful, but I wasn’t waiting for a lover to come and sweep me off my feet. I was waiting for a monster.

The sound of something moving through the woods echoed all around, and I spun, my heart leaping into my throat. Catching sight of the russet-colored fur of a fox melting through the forest, I sighed in relief. It was just Boone.

He stepped into the clearing and came to join me in the shadow of the hawthorn, a comforting companion in the dark of night.

My mind raced as the forest fell silent, and the craglorn loomed. Would I make Aileen proud? Was I going to live up to the legacy of the Crescent Witches, or was I just a big phony who’d struck it lucky?

“Do you think they would be proud?” I asked. “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?”

The fox yipped softly.

“My first test as the last Crescent Witch,” I murmured, holding the dagger flush against my chest. “No turning back now.”

My gaze darted frantically around the edges of the clearing, looking for the place where the craglorn would attack from. The silence was deafening, and the foreboding lingering in the air was suffocating.

“Where are you?” I mused, my heart thrumming painfully in my chest. “Show yourself.”

As if on command, a shadow emerged on my left as a creature forged through the tree line, and there it was. Finally.

It was shaped like a tall, thin man but had no clothes on and no shoes. Its body was bluish black, and its clawed hands were tipped with talons that looked as if they would gut me with one swipe. Add in a pair of beady, black eyes with no whites, and you had one extremely twisted and mummified fae. I got where the crag in craglorn came from now.

“That’s a craglorn?”

I began to tremble at the sight of it. It looked like something out of the movie Aliens, and at any moment, it would probably shoot a little baby craglorn out of some horrible orifice, then it would clamp down on my face and suck the magic out of me. Or maybe I was overreacting. Either way, I was in deep trouble.

“Uh…maybe I should’ve charged up a sword rather than a dagger,” I muttered. “I could have swiped at it from a distance. Instead, I have to get up all close and personal. Now I know how men with little you-know-whats feel like. I bet it has bad breath.”

Boone yipped and nudged me with his fox nose.

“If I survive this, I’m so learning mixed martial arts.”

The craglorn advanced, and the moment it crossed the boundary, the web caught it. A golden flare burst over our heads, the faint outline of the net burned into my vision, and the creature wailed. It was an unearthly cry that reverberated through my bones and caused terror to grow in my heart. It was pissed.

“Magic,” it said an urgent voice, tilting its head from side to side. “Magic…”

“That’s right,” I said, coaxing it closer. “It’s a buffet. Take a