Ascending Darkness Read online

  About This Book

  From USA Today bestselling author J.L. Weil comes the sequel to Falling Deep, where the truth can be a dangerous game.

  Mallory Dorian only wanted a normal, boring life. To graduate high school, go off to college—basically, do everything the opposite of her mom. But life has a way of interfering with her carefully laid out plans.

  Insert Torent Stark, the drool-worthy demon who makes her want to throw away all her dreams. But before Mallory can open her heart, a dark shadow of death looms inside.

  Mallory must face the past before she can think about the future, and her family’s history has a few dark spots. It is up to her to break the blood curse looming over her family or risk all that she has grown to love.

  Ascending Darkness

  A Havenwood Falls High Novella

  J.L. Weil

  Contents

  Havenwood Falls High Books

  Also by J.L. Weil

  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

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Havenwood Falls High Books

  Written in the Stars by Kallie Ross

  Reawakened by Morgan Wylie

  The Fall by Kristen Yard

  Somewhere Within by Amy Hale

  Awaken the Soul by Michele G. Miller

  Bound by Shadows by Cameo Renae

  Inamorata by Randi Cooley Wilson

  Fata Morgana by E.J. Fechenda

  Forever Emeline by Katie M. John

  Reclamation by AnnaLisa Grant

  Avenoir by Daniele Lanzarotta

  Avenge the Heart by Michele G. Miller

  Curse the Night by R.K. Ryals

  Blood & Iron by Amy Hale

  Shadows & Spells by Cameo Renae

  Falling Deep by J.L. Weil

  Saving Infiniti by Rose Garcia

  Willful by Liz Ferry

  Cast in Moonlight by Ali Winters

  Promise the Moon by Kallie Ross

  Blurred Lines by Daniele Lanzarotta

  Ascending Darkness by J.L. Weil

  Finding Infiniti by Rose Garcia

  Unicorn’s Lament by Megan Linski

  Stay up to date at www.HavenwoodFalls.com

  Subscribe to our reader group and receive free stories and more!

  Also by J.L. Weil

  Dragon Descendants Series

  (Upper Teen Reverse Harem Fantasy)

  Stealing Tranquility

  Absorbing Poison

  Taming Fire

  Thawing Frost

  THE DIVISA SERIES

  (Full series completed – Teen Paranormal Romance)

  Losing Emma: A Divisa novella

  Saving Angel

  Hunting Angel

  Breaking Emma: A Divisa novella

  Chasing Angel

  Loving Angel

  Redeeming Angel

  Luminescence Trilogy: (Full series completed – Teen Paranormal Romance)

  Luminescence

  Amethyst Tears

  Moondust

  Darkmist – A Luminescence novella

  RAVEN SERIES

  (Full series completed – Teen Paranormal Romance)

  White Raven

  Black Crow

  Soul Symmetry

  Beauty Never Dies Chronicles: (Teen Dystopian Romance)

  Slumber

  Entangled

  Forsaken

  NINE TAILS SERIES

  (Teen Paranormal Romance)

  First Shift

  Storm Shift

  Flame Shift

  Time Shift

  Havenwood Falls High: (Teen Paranormal Romance)

  Falling Deep

  Ascending Darkness

  SINGLE NOVELS

  Starbound

  (Teen Paranormal Romance)

  Casting Dreams

  (New Adult Paranormal Romance)

  Ancient Tides

  (New Adult Paranormal Romance)

  Copyright © 2019 J.L. Weil, Ang’dora Productions, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  Published by

  Ang’dora Productions, LLC

  5621 Strand Blvd, Ste 210

  Naples, FL 34110

  Havenwood Falls and Ang’dora Productions and their associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Ang’dora Productions, LLC.

  Cover design by Regina Wamba at MaeIDesign.com

  Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the owner of this book.

  Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  For all those who encouraged and supported my dreams.

  Chapter 1

  The window in my bedroom was closed and yet, for an instant, I smelled the sea, heard the call of the water, felt its coolness wash over my face. Here and then gone. The longing to be in the water swelled in my heart, like an endless love.

  Not that I knew a lot about love.

  Why Torent Stark’s face instantly flashed in my head at the mention of love was something I’d rather not dwell on. In fact, I’d rather not think of him at all. Too bad my mind didn’t feel the same way.

  Torent was a boy.

  Okay, he wasn’t just any boy. First, he was a half-demon. That right there was a giant red flag waving in my face and should have been enough to tell me he was bad news. Then there was the crazy ex-girlfriend drama. Torent’s ex-girlfriend had made me her archenemy. Sometimes too much baggage was not worth the risk, but my heart didn’t seem to care about his past relationships or the dark streak inside him he worked so hard to hide and control. I gave him mad props. He had so much more control over his abilities than I did.

  My magnetic energy was still unstable, causing inconvenient outbursts, like the time a box of staples almost embedded itself into one of my instructors at Sun and Moon Academy during one of my night classes.

  What I was going to do about Torent was another one of those mysteries of life, and damn if my life hadn’t become a long Nancy Drew novel. So much secrecy shrouded my past, and I was only recently unearthing the answers, but I had more questions.

  Before moving to Havenwood Falls, my life was normal. I’d lived in Wisconsin, gone to an average high school, watched my mother end yet another marriage. And in a way, things had returned to that habitual norm. Mom got a job, which Gigi was thrilled about. I had settled in at school and was coming to terms with being a water nymph.

  Okay, so not your typical normal, but my life was average by Havenwood Falls standards.

  However, some things never change.

  Take Brooklyn Kendall, for instance. She still hated my guts. Turns out she didn’t need a magical object to feel such strong enmity for me.

  Torent was still trying to get me to go out with him. He was persistent—I’d give him that. And cute. And charming. And . . .

  A bird squawked outside my window, interruptin
g my internal list of all of Torent’s redeeming qualities. At this time of the year, the local birds had already migrated south, but a few stragglers had taken up residence in the tree outside my window. They had spent the last week waking me up before my alarm, and that put them on my shit list. I was not a morning person, not before at least two cups of coffee. I hadn’t thought much about it, but this morning, something about the sound gave me the heebie-jeebies.

  My eyes narrowed, and I went to the window to push aside the curtain and peer out into the yard. The sun was just peeking over the mountains and, it being late November, the air would be brisk. A light sheet of snow carpeted the grass.

  Perched on an icy branch, the black bird gave another warning screech. His midnight feathers were in stark contrast against the barren tree. Beady eyes of charcoal watched cautiously through the glass. Strange. His feathers ruffled as he stretched out his wings, and I smiled, tapping lightly on the window.

  “Where are all your little friends?” I asked, not really thinking about the fact I was talking to a bird.

  He cocked his head to the left and right, eyeing me. Then he kicked off the little branch and flew straight into the window. Thwack. I jumped back, unable to believe what had happened.

  The bird had just committed suicide.

  A blotch of blood smeared down the glass, and my stomach turned. I backed away, feeling uneasy about what I’d seen. It wasn’t every day I witnessed a bird snapping its own neck.

  So much for that normal life.

  My cell phone buzzed on the bed, and I turned my back to the massacre streaming down my window to pick up my phone.

  “Crap,” I grumbled, staring at the time on my phone. My third alarm had gone off, and if I didn’t move my ass, I would be late for school.

  I tossed on a pair of jeans, a white tank top, and a flannel, only to stop in front of the mirror. Dear God, is that me?

  My hair looked like one of those black birds had made a nest in it, blond curls messily framing my face. The mascara I was too lazy to remove last night was smeared over my eyes, giving me a Goth look. I was going to have to roll with it. On my way out the door, I snatched a tube of lip gloss and applied it hastily to my lips, then sprayed two squirts of perfume over my clothes, unsure if they were clean or not. I grabbed a brush, my car keys, and my book bag before dashing down the stairs into the kitchen.

  Gigi was sipping a mug of hot coffee.

  “Morning.” She grinned cheerily.

  I grumbled an inaudible response and plucked her cup of coffee from her hands, downing half of it. “Thanks. I needed that.”

  “I guess so,” she replied, taking back the nearly empty cup. Her blue eyes were shining. For a woman in her sixties, Gigi was sharp as a whip.

  Mom came around the corner and stopped halfway to the coffeepot, eyeing me. “What happened to your hair?”

  She was dressed in black slacks and a white button-down shirt, one button too many undone at the top. No one was more shocked Mom had gotten a job as a file clerk at Bishop Enterprises than Gigi.

  The two of them constantly harped at one another. It was as routine as taking the garbage to the curb on Wednesdays.

  “Don’t ask,” I mumbled, moving through the kitchen. I threw a hand in the air, waving bye, and stepped out the front door.

  Icy breezes wrapped around me, and a blast of wind blew through my flannel. I cursed myself for not grabbing a to-go mug of coffee. It would be a long-ass day. Not to mention what this wind was doing to my already disastrous hair.

  Jogging down the stone path to my old and semi-reliable car, I twisted my head toward the tree outside my bedroom window, my thoughts returning to the bird. I didn’t have to time check on his little corpse, and yet I found myself moving off the path and onto the lawn. The frozen grass crunched under my weight. I grew closer, and eventually my Converses skidded as my steps faltered.

  What the—

  There wasn’t just one poor dead bird under the aspen tree. There were at least half a dozen strewn over the cold ground, their small necks angled oddly off to the side. My heart knocked in my chest.

  My hand flew to my mouth, and I took a step backward. A trickle of unease ribboned down my spine as I tried but failed to make sense of the scene in front of me. What had happened here? I wanted to believe it was a natural event, not something supernatural, but I couldn’t shake the sneaky suspicion it wasn’t Mother Nature at play.

  God, it would be just like Brooklyn Kendall to arrange a bird graveyard to freak me out. Things between my fellow water nymph and me were anything but smooth sailing. She still wanted to make my life miserable and blamed me for pretty much everything wrong in her seemingly perfect life. Misery loves company, as the saying went.

  I suppressed a shiver and got into my car, backing out of the driveway with enough speed to kick up gravel.

  I whipped my car into the parking lot of Havenwood Falls High. The three-story red brick building was bustling with students rushing to get to class. Throwing my car into park, I sat staring at the arched front doors and considered skipping the entire day. The whole dead-bird thing had gotten to me, more than I realized.

  But ditching classes would earn me a Saturday detention and would tarnish my pristine college resume. I had a plan. That plan didn’t involve me being stuck in Havenwood Falls for the rest of my life.

  A world existed behind these mountains and waterfalls, and I was going to see it all. I was going to get that college scholarship. No deranged pranks or cute boys were going to stop me from pursuing my dreams.

  I dashed through the front doors as the bell for first period rang. Son of a bitch. I was late. Again. My feet flew over the brown marble floor toward my first class. No time to stop at my locker.

  “I hope this isn’t going to become a weekly occurrence, Ms. Dorian,” Mr. Zander, my AP English Lit teacher, scolded while I was sneaking not so stealthily into class.

  I slumped into my seat, a tight smile pasted on my lips. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  He went back to waving the black marker in the air, telling the class to open their textbooks to page seventy-three.

  What a way to start the day.

  I managed to get through my morning classes. Silver and blue snowflake decorations lined the cream hallways for the upcoming holidays. There always seemed to be some school event going on. HFH’s mascot was a dragon. How fitting. The fierce-looking dragon was plastered everywhere—floors, walls, banners, flyers—you name it and he was there.

  I slid my butt into the seat across from Beck, who was picking at something under his nails. Someone had given his hair color a boost last night. The blue was extra bright today.

  “You know I’d dye your hair for you,” I said, grabbing one of his hands and surveying the damage to his fingers. The skin was tinged blue, along with the tips of his nails.

  He pulled his hand back to his side of the cafeteria table. “It looks so damn easy in the commercials.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re supposed to wear gloves.”

  His nose wrinkled in disdain. “They make my hands sweat.”

  My brows rose in question. What was the big deal with a little hand sweat? It beat having blue fingers for a week.

  “Wolf thing,” he stated. “I was thinking of painting my nails black anyway.”

  Beck Winslow was the first real friend I’d made in Havenwood Falls. He was also a wolf shifter. Not a big deal in a town full of supernaturals.

  I pushed aside some of my wayward second-day hair. “You’re not going to believe the morning I’ve had.”

  “Hello, blue fingers,” he replied, waving his hand in the air. “There is definitely something funky in the atmosphere. I’d say we’re in for a snowstorm. I can smell it.” His eyes shifted to the large square window that overlooked the parking lot.

  That wasn’t quite what I had in mind, and despite the sun beaming this morning, an incoming storm would explain the hint of water I sensed in the air. My eyes followed hi
s, seeing the beginnings of gray clouds rolling in. “Is weather predicting a wolf thing?”

  He grinned, and it lit up his face. “Intense senses.”

  My fingers drummed on the tabletop beside my untouched salad. What had possessed me to get rabbit food when what I really wanted was an entire pizza from Napoli’s?

  “I might need to borrow your intense senses,” I said, half joking.

  Beck plucked a cherry tomato from the top of my lunch and popped it into his mouth as he leaned over the table. “What’s up?”

  I nibbled on my lower lip instead of my salad. “This morning, a bird flew into my bedroom window, but that wasn’t the strangest part. When I left for school, there were half a dozen dead birds scattered outside my bedroom. Tell me that is normal?”

  “That is a bad omen, chica.”

  “Peachy,” I said dryly. “Just what I need. So you’re saying I should be worried?”

  He shrugged. “It’s hard to say. This time of year the animals get a little restless. It could be nothing. Oooor,” he dragged out, “you might be cursed. Piss someone off lately?”

  I sighed and leaned my head into my hands. “That narrows it down.”

  His eyes spanned the lunchroom, landing on a trio of girls giggling annoyingly. “I can think of one particular popular girl who would love to throw a flock of dead birds at your house.”