No Light: A Werelock Evolution Series Standalone Novel Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  About this book

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Epilogue

  Coming Next …

  And After That …

  Thank you

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from Slip of Fate

  Vair: Beyond the X-Club

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2018 Hettie Ivers www.hettieivers.com

  Cover Photo: Lindee Robinson Photography, www.lindeerobinson.wix.com/photoillustrator

  Cover models: Angel LaCoursiere and Andrew Kruczynski

  Interior formatting: www.champagnebookdesign.com

  All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Please be advised that this book contains sexually explicit scenes and graphic language. If such content offends you, please do not read.

  ISBN: 978-0-9994405-0-6

  FBI ANTI-PIRACY WARNING:

  The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  About this book

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Epilogue

  Coming Next …

  And After That …

  Thank you

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from Slip of Fate

  Vair: Beyond the X-Club

  About the Author

  Other Books

  Although No Light is book number four in the Werelock Evolution Series, please note it may be read as a standalone within the series. It is not necessary to have read Werelock Evolution: The Complete Trilogy prior to reading No Light.

  That said, having read the trilogy that precedes this book may enhance your enjoyment, as those who are familiar with the earlier books in the timeline will pick up on a few jokes and references that will be lost on new readers.

  Please be advised that Hettie Ivers has a tendency to see satire and irony everywhere, and she has never met a foul word or raunchy euphemism she didn’t like. (With the exception of “baby batter”—which remains a hard limit for her.) This book contains violence, foul language, adult content, and a lot of over-the-top werelock characters. If such material offends you, please do not read.

  Avery

  They said Bigfoot wasn’t real. Neither was the Boogeyman.

  Werewolves. They were supposed to be myth as well.

  They weren’t.

  I’d watched one claw my beloved fiancé’s chest open in broad daylight. I’d witnessed it murder my best friend and dismember her husband before any of us had time or thought to reach for the rifle that lay just inside our camping tent.

  And I’d felt the cruelest burn of defeat I’d ever known deep in my abdomen as the unholy, monstrous animal shuddered and climaxed between my battered thighs while I bled out from the gash its teeth had made in my throat.

  A normal person might’ve prayed for death as their body lay broken in the dirt, violated by an unnatural, beastly aberration.

  I’d never aspired to be normal.

  My life didn’t flash before my eyes as I fought for my final breaths. All I saw was that Rock River AR-15 rifle in my mind’s eye. Even as I felt my heart stopping, my very essence draining, my spirit disconnecting from the pain radiating throughout my damaged being—I wanted that rifle above all else.

  My fourth foster mother had often told me I was too stubborn for my own good. She’d thought to beat that stubbornness out of me. She’d failed. I was the kid who took a blow and came back swinging with both fists. Every single time.

  That I couldn’t get back up now was inconceivable. That I’d never exact revenge on that wolfman creature who had just taken from me everything I valued most in life was beyond enraging. The farther I drifted up and away from my body, the more unthinkable it all was.

  I was dead?

  Fuck me. There was something beyond after all. Because I was dead yet still part of something bigger. It should’ve reassured me.

  It didn’t. I wasn’t done swinging. I wanted back inside of my broken body. Already I missed the pain that said I was still alive, the agony that meant I hadn’t stopped fighting.

  I wasn’t ready to be this orb of light floating through the ether, farther and farther away from the smell of fresh blood mixed with earth where my body would soon begin its inevitable process of decomposition.

  If only I could get back up one last time. If I could wrap my fingers around that rifle …

  Other light orbs surrounded me, some unknown, some achingly familiar. Their energy pulled me farther away from where I wanted to be. I felt Marcus next to me, pulling at my soul strings, his gentle spirit telling me not to be afraid to move on.

  Marcus was the love of my life. He was everything I’d ever wanted. We could be together for eternity now, safe from the pain and strife that had always followed me.

  I
’d lived a very full thirty-two years. I’d beaten every single odd that had been stacked against me since birth. I’d proven every self-serving foster parent, hypocritical social worker, and naysayer wrong and made more of myself than any of them had made of their own sorry lives.

  And I wasn’t done. I still imagined the sensation of my fists clenching, my body readying for battle. I’d never quit anything before. I didn’t know how.

  Marcus was tugging harder now, urging me to surrender to the inevitable and let go … to leave the world of the living behind and be with him in whatever spirit realm lay beyond for us. I sensed my best friend Sloane’s spirit circling and embracing me, reassuring me that everything would be fine.

  Sloane’s radiant energy proved harder to resist. Sloane was family. From the moment we’d met at sixteen, I’d sensed we shared some deeper cosmic destiny that defied the fact we came from worlds that couldn’t have been more different. She’d accepted me with a love that was absolute, and I’d fancied myself her sworn protector throughout our college years, knowing she was too sweet and too sheltered to recognize the darkness that lurked in the hearts and minds of most men. But I’d failed her this time. And still she loved me unreservedly, calling to me with her tinkling laughter and sparkling, indefatigable optimism, tempting me away from thoughts of rifles and revenge, luring me farther from the pull of gravity and into the unknown where she and her husband, Garrett, and my beloved Marcus were rapidly flying.

  Reluctantly, I followed, letting their energy carry me higher until the earth was but a speck of lint suspended in space below. As we joined other light orbs, I began to feel even more weightless. Boundless. I saw Marcus, Garrett, and Sloane’s energy balls burn brighter than before. I felt their elation, their uncompromising joy. I tried to let it in—to feel what they felt, to become the oneness that they were morphing into.

  But another energy source caught my attention. There was a dark energy swirling amid the orbs of light. It looked lost. Out of place amongst the celebratory beams of light energy dancing about. It was searching for something.

  How I knew a random, dark celestial matter was looking for something was beyond a living mind’s ability to fathom. But my soul—or whatever this was that was left of me—simply knew.

  As it got closer, I realized it was so much more than dark energy. There were shades of grey. Color, too. And within the slivers of color were the faintest streaks of light.

  They were barely noticeable at first, but the longer I observed them, the more those faint streaks fascinated and called to me until they appeared to burn brighter than all that was dark and ugly within the black orb. Glimmers of hope. My existence on earth had often been sustained by less.

  And I knew. It was looking for a way back. Just like me. It wasn’t finished yet either.

  I perceived its overwhelming yearning for revenge, as well as its long-harbored hope for salvation. But more than that, I sensed at its core it was looking for something to nurture it … someone to love it and believe in it despite the darkest shadows marring its very nature. It needed … a mother. And it had chosen me.

  Or maybe, we’d chosen each other.

  Marcus and I had been trying to conceive, hoping to start a family shortly after our wedding set for next month. Thoughts of being the kind of mother I’d always wanted drew me closer to the curious dark orb, even as vibrations from Marcus and Sloane’s energy grew stronger, more anxious to keep me with them.

  But I was captivated by the dark energy the closer I drew to it. It was as powerful as it was needful, bursting with a strange brand of magic beyond anything I’d ever encountered. An inexplicable enchantment surrounded and saturated it, rendering it a nearly indestructible force of being.

  And yet, it was nothing without a host. It needed a willing vehicle through which to return—someone strong enough to care for it, while sensitive enough to nurture the faint light within struggling to emerge.

  If I followed Sloane, Marcus, and Garrett, I knew I’d find peace and certainty. Whereas fear, anger, unprecedented confusion, violence, and struggle lay within the dark, mystical matter poised before me. It was a road that would lead me back into the arms of danger—and likely far more peril than ever before.

  But it would lead me back.

  Powerful as my will had always been, the bait of hope amid the worst stack of odds was a drug I’d never had strength enough to decline. It called to me like no other poison. And it was those thin rays of hope I glimpsed in the dark orb that tipped the scales in its favor, drawing me closer and closer while all of the other light orbs merged and shied away from it.

  The energy of Marcus and Sloane grew frantic behind me. I could almost hear their human voices again, telling me this wasn’t my fight, pleading with me to walk away from this challenge—as they had so many times in life. I heard Sloane’s sweet, loving voice of reason, urging me to understand that I couldn’t save everyone, that it wasn’t my responsibility to change the world.

  But the hope within the dark matter believed otherwise. And I did, too. Together, we could.

  I focused my energy on Sloane and Marcus, imploring them to understand what I needed to do. Marcus’s energy was devastated, yet resigned. I felt waves of his love wash over me as slowly he let me go.

  Sloane emanated an odd mixture of wistful yet mirthful comprehension as her inner light observed mine for the last time. She knew me too well. She knew I wouldn’t have the strength to leave her. I felt her final thoughts and emotions reverberate through me like a weary sigh as she relinquished me to the dark matter with a forceful shove of gravity that sent us both barreling back toward earth like a lightning bolt.

  “If you have to go, go now. And Avery? Make it hurt.”

  It was the oddest sentiment she’d never spoken. So not a Sloane thing to say or think. And I knew it would both mystify and delight me to the point of watery giggles every single day that I lived on without her and remembered.

  Regaining consciousness within my wrecked body was far more painful than I’d estimated. Everything hurt. I felt the sting of flesh melding together, skin and tendons knitting and healing themselves within my torn throat. Deep inside, my cervix burned as if it’d been grated and doused in saltwater, even as I felt a foreign, welcome magic healing my abused vaginal canal.

  I heard my heart pumping, slowly at first, then rapidly, as a life-giving surge of adrenaline shot through my veins once more. Experimentally, I flexed my fingers, leisurely grazing over the dirt and leaf litter they rested upon, until a feral grunt to my right sent my eyes flying wide.

  I was alive. And viewing the world in Technicolor, judging by the scenery that assaulted my senses as I stared up into the changing fall foliage above against the backdrop of a bright blue sky.

  I’d never been praised for possessing patience, and not even experiencing death was meant to alter that, it seemed. Because it took every ounce of forbearance I possessed to slowly test my limbs and arise as stealthily as possible once I saw, from the corner of my eye, the animal shift into its full humanoid form and abandon the cooler of food he’d been rummaging through in favor of sniffing and licking at Sloane’s dead body.

  The wind picked up, swirling leaves and rustling branches. In my heart I imagined it to be the spirit of my departed best friend, helping to conceal the sound of my movements, because her lifeless body provided whatever further distraction was required, enflaming the beast’s temporarily abated lust once more and causing him to claw at her clothes and tug her shorts to her ankles.

  It seemed to take an eternity before I reached the tent that stood a scant few feet away. And I hardly allowed myself a breath until I had Marcus’s AR-15 nestled against my right shoulder. A rage blacker than anything I’d ever felt was the only thing that prevented me from screaming and vomiting my guts up when the werewolf mounted and began to violate the prone, motionless body of my best friend.

  I was a crack shot. I could’ve blown the mongrel’s head off the first time I fired. B
ut that was more than it deserved. The first bullet I fired into his shoulder, startling and knocking him off balance more than injuring. I knew it from the way stunned yellow eyes flew over his shoulder to glare at me in disbelief.

  “Get off of her!” My throat felt raw. The order emerged garbled.

  He snarled. I fired again, taking his ear clean off and disfiguring the side of his face. He howled and leapt from Sloane, spinning around to charge me.

  The next bullet blew through his right knee, causing him to stumble sideways when he pounced in my direction. The fourth hit his left thigh, sending him flailing to the ground at my feet. And the fifth … the fifth shot took out his privates.

  With great effort, I forced myself to pause, to breathe in and out through my nose and remember my own rules of engagement. I needed information first. Then I would make it hurt.

  Unfortunately, I would discover that crazed, rogue werewolves weren’t the easiest source of useful intel on the species. Eighteen minutes and twenty-six bullets later, the most critical things I’d gleaned were (1) I was going to turn into a werewolf in seven days, (2) I wasn’t likely to survive that transformation, and (3) werewolves were damned tiresome to kill.

  By the time I was certain he was dead, there wasn’t much left of him that hadn’t been riddled with bullets. But I figured it was enough for a team of scientists to begin their process of dissection and discovery. It would have to do. Because there was no way I’d have ever allowed that thing to live. And by the time I found my phone and dialed 9-1-1, my entire body was shaking something fierce and I’d thrown up the contents of my stomach. Twice.

  I held it together while I told the authorities everything that had happened, carefully omitting several key parts—such as the part where I’d been raped by a rabid animal, died, met up with a dark orb, and then come back to life with the assistance of said magical orb as it healed my torn neck and vajayjay.

  I mean … I’d just handed them a monster straight out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales on a silver platter. No need to pique their interest to the point that they felt the need to dissect and investigate me next for being some kind of walking dead creature. I left out the interrogation part of my story as well, letting them think I’d simply gone nuts unloading the rifle in self-defense.