A Menacing Tempest (Druid's Curse Book 3) Read online

  A Menacing Tempest

  Druid’s Curse 3

  When it came to defense, or offense when needed, Cullen McIntyre thought he was prepared. It wasn’t until he watched as monsters he’d never knew existed walked out of thin air to kill members of his family, twice, that Cullen realized how wrong he’d been. By the third time he’d come face to face with those determined to kill him and the rest of his family for doing their duty, Cullen knew he needed help, and lots of it.

  The moment Ulf laid eyes on Cullen, he’d been enthralled by the man’s resolve to protect what was left of his family. Being shot and left for dead by Cullen should have cooled his desire for the fiery man, but it only made him want him more. By the time he caught up to Cullen, Ulf knew, without a doubt, the druid was destined to be his. Now he just needed to convince Cullen of that.

  As Cullen and Ulf join their friends to fight the monsters from the realm of the Fae, they find there is a new threat waiting to get through the Veil. A threat they might not be able to defeat. Will Ulf & Cullen get their chance at happily ever after, or will the Fae finally succeed in their quest to destroy the veil?

  Copyright ©2019 Shea Balik

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover by: Harris Channing

  Edited by: Avril Stepowski

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  Table of Contents

  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 1

  February 1, 2019 1:00 PM

  “Are we gonna die, Uncle Cullen?”

  Cullen McIntyre closed his eyes, lowering the wires to set another booby trap, this one less than thirty feet from the barn as a last ditch contingency, wishing to hell he was anywhere but there at that moment. It didn’t seem possible that he was surrounded by the beautiful landscape of his sister and brother-in-law’s farm on the west side of Mexico while placing guns and explosives all around the property to blow it up.

  But if there was one thing that had been beaten into him over and over again ever since he’d learned his heritage wasn’t just some story his grandfather liked to tell, life was a bitch. One who laughed when he was down and then kicked him in the teeth for no other reason than to laugh some more.

  As if to shove that point home, when he opened his eyes, the sweet angelic face of his five-year-old nephew, Bryce, was staring at him with so much damn fear in those pretty cornflower blues eyes, that Cullen wanted to grab him up and protect him from ever knowing the horrors they had lived through. But it was the mix of defeat and acceptance in his voice that had truly felt as if Cullen had been kicked in the balls.

  How a person so tiny had the ability to tear apart his very soul with only six words, was something Cullen couldn’t explain. Just as he hadn’t been able to give a reason why Bryce’s mother, Cullen’s oldest sister, had died. That it had happened right before Bryce’s eyes was Cullen’s most unforgivable sin.

  He should have been better prepared. That he’d only arrived on his sister and brother-in-law’s farm three days before the Winter Solstice wasn’t an excuse. Nor that he had any idea the most terrifying monsters that none of them had ever known existed had appeared out of thin air to attack them.

  As he stared into the innocent eyes of his nephew, Cullen made a silent vow not to fail him ever again. If only he believed he could protect Bryce, his younger sister, Nessa, as well as their cousin Kyleigh, then maybe Cullen would finally be able to sleep for more than an hour at a time.

  Shaking the defeating thoughts from his head, Cullen knelt down so he was closer to eye-level with Bryce. He placed a hand on the little boy’s shoulder and did his best to look and sound reassuring. “I swear I will do everything in my power to keep us all alive, kiddo.”

  Even in Bryce’s young eyes there was a flash of doubt, but thankfully, he was naïve enough to still believe in his uncle and that uncertainty was replaced with trust. That he hadn’t done anything to earn that trust, didn’t seem to matter to his nephew. Too bad Cullen knew damn well he’d not only failed his nephew but his entire family.

  In case Cullen didn’t have enough self-recrimination to remind him he’d fucked up more than once already, his 20-year-old cousin, Kyleigh would have no trouble doing it for him.

  “Yeah, right.” Kyleigh laughed in derision at his absurd statement. “Like you did the last two times those things came for us?”

  Then she crossed her arms and stared daggers at Cullen, the full weight of her rage and hatred in those eyes. “You know,” her voice dripping with venom, “When Bryce had to watch his mother and father killed right in front of him. Then, since you clearly hadn’t learned your lesson, you let them come again two weeks ago to kill anyone they’d left behind, including my parents. Which, you know, was so much fun to watch as they beheaded my father and sliced apart my mother.”

  Tears streamed down Bryce’s face as sheer terror shone from his sweet blue eyes. His head kept moving all around, as if expecting the monsters that had attacked them twice now, were about to show up out of thin air.

  Not that Cullen could blame him, for that was exactly what had happened and he’d done nothing to stop it. This time though, he was ready. He wasn’t about to let anything touch the rest of his family. Especially not a scared, spiteful cousin who hated him.

  “Stop it, Kyleigh,” he told her harshly, even going so far as to use her full name instead of the shortened, Ky that he usually called her. Gathering a shaking Bryce into his arms, he returned her glare. “I’m sorry you lost your parents, but terrifying Bryce isn’t going to change anything. Now go check on the security system and make sure the guns I just wired are working.”

&nbsp
; Kyleigh’s gaze dropped to Bryce with a fleeting look of regret, but then she shook off any remorse she might have been feeling for hurting little Bryce and turned on her heel to stomp off. He watched her go around the paddocks, which were mostly empty since Cullen had put the horses out in the north pasture three days ago to hopefully keep them alive after tonight.

  It wasn’t until she was walking into the main barn, where Cullen had set up their security system that he started to reassure his little nephew. “I know it’s been scary, kiddo, but I promise you, I’ve done everything I can to make us safe.”

  Those tiny arms only held on tighter, as if Bryce didn’t believe his uncle. Then again, why should he? Up until now, Cullen had completely failed them. Him. Mr. Always Prepared, had no clue what had been coming for them just six weeks before.

  He forced back the bark of laughter that had tried to bubble up at that absurd statement. Was there a way for him to have been prepared? Sure, Cullen had heard the stories of when the Fae used to come through the Veil, but that had been hundreds of years ago.

  Then, suddenly, his parents had called and insisted he go to Mexico, where his sister and her husband owned a farm. He could hear the panic in their voices, but they’d refused to tell him anything more until he’d gotten there.

  Unsure what to expect, he’d been tempted to bring an arsenal, but he wasn’t sure how to get it across the border as he would coming from their family home in Tennessee. When he’d arrived on the night of the eighteenth, just a few days before the solstice, he’d been shocked to find all his siblings gathered as well as his aunts and uncles, along with his one cousin.

  The moment he’d arrived to find them all there as well as his grandpa, Loch, Cullen had wished he’d tried to bring his weapons. After he’d entered the house and they had all gathered together, he’d known it would take a whole lot more than a few weapons to take out what was coming for them.

  What his parents had to tell them had Cullen going straight to the nearest arms dealer in the area. In Mexico, obtaining the arsenal he’d need, hadn’t been difficult. But the guns hadn’t been enough. Not even close.

  “You shouldn’t listen to Ky, kiddo.” Nessa, Cullen’s youngest sister, the only one he’d managed to save, said. She might have acted as if she were talking to Bryce, but her gaze was directed at Cullen. “She’s lashing out at everyone because she feels guilty.”

  Cullen tilted his head in askance, but it was Bryce who answered. “She yelled at them before that last…” his voice trailed off as if he didn’t want to finish that sentence. So, he skipped the mention of the creatures that had come at them not once, but twice. “She said she hated them for making her stay when she wanted to leave.”

  Cullen glanced up at Nessa, who gave him a nod of agreement. Not that it mattered, at least, not now. Maybe, if they made it through Imbolic, he’d have a talk with his cousin.

  “I promise, kiddo,” Cullen said, staring into his nephew’s blue eyes. “I’m going to keep you safe.”

  If it was the last thing he did, Cullen would make sure he kept that vow. But first, he had to finish getting things ready.

  He wiped the trace of tears from Bryce’s face that reminded him so damn much of the sister he’d lost. “Can you go with Aunt Nessa and get dressed for the ritual?”

  Bryce’s blond head moved up and down. “Do I get to dance tonight?”

  Cullen smiled at the hope in Bryce’s voice. “That depends,” Cullen told him. The hope was banked, which crushed Cullen’s heart like it had been stomped on by one of the ranch’s bulls. “Did you practice the steps?”

  That eternal hope only a child could have flared again in his cornflower blue eyes as Bryce nodded wildly. “Yep. Aunt Nessa said I membered all the steps.”

  The inability for the his five-year-old nephew to say a word as complicated as remembered, yet still wanting to participate in a ritual where he knew the monsters from before would show up, amazed him. Even afraid, Bryce was determined to do his part as a druid.

  “And you do it better than Kyleigh,” Nessa told him as she took his hand and headed toward the house. “Now, we should practice the words again, don’t you think?”

  “What’s the point?” Kyleigh asked, fear and hatred dripping from her like a poison. At least she’d waited until Bryce was too far away to hear her. “We’re all going to die anyway.”

  Kyleigh was twenty, too damn old to be treated similar to the child she was determined to behave like. “I get that you’re afraid, Ky, but taking it out on me and scaring Bryce isn’t going to change anything. Now get ready for tonight, there’s no telling when those things will make an appearance, but we have to finish the ritual this time or we’ll never stop them from attacking us.”

  At least, that’s what his grandfather had believed. If anyone knew about the Veil, it had been Grandpa Loch. Cullen just prayed he could get them through this alive, for he didn’t think he could deal with losing anyone else.

  When Kyleigh had followed Nessa and Bryce into the house, Cullen turned back around to glance at the farm his sister had moved to shortly after she’d gotten pregnant. Cullen hadn’t understood the sudden move to such a remote place at the time. But now?

  He sighed as he looked over the green and brown pasture near the barn. It was empty now since he’d put the horses out to the distant pasture to keep them as far from the coming danger as possible. But the first time he’d visited his sister right after Bryce had been born, the area had been filled with horses her husband, Fitz, had been training.

  Fitz had a way with horses and often took in injured or abused horses and rehabilitated them. To do his work, he’d had five barns. Two for those horses that needed to be given space to heal from their emotional scars more than their physical ones.

  He glanced in the direction of where those barns used to stand, but were now nothing more than a heap of rubble. Another barn that had housed ten horses in various stages of pregnancy, still smoldered as it had been burned just two weeks before.

  A part of him still struggled with everything that had happened since he’d arrived. He was a druid. That was something he’d grown up knowing since birth. Eight times a year, his family, as well as druids from all over the world, performed rituals on the solstices, equinoxes, as well as Imbolic, Beltane, Lughnasadn and Samhain.

  Roughly, each ritual date was around six to seven weeks apart. According to his grandfather, the rituals they performed weren’t as much about the harvest, position of the sun and moon, or renewal of spring as much as it had to do with ensuring they kept the Veil between the realm of the Fae and the human world intact.

  Until his parents had told them other druid families had been attacked recently, Cullen had assumed all of that had been in the past. Sure, they still performed the rituals, but that didn’t mean the Fae were still attempting to get into the human world.

  Boy, had he been wrong.

  CHAPTER 2

  1 hour before the ritual for Imbolic

  Cullen glanced around the property one last time. He hated what had become of the once beautiful ranch. Along with three of the barns having been destroyed, much of the landscape was scorched as the bonfire from the Winter Solstice had been used by his brother, Gordon, to contain the beasts that had walked right out of thin air.

  The sight still sent chills down Cullen’s body, especially as they had come through what Cullen now knew was the Veil, less than twenty feet from Bryce. If it hadn’t of been for the quick thinking of Bryce’s parents, Rona and Fitz, who had thrown themselves between their son and the gruesome creatures that pushed through the Veil, Bryce would have died that day, too.

  It had taken the sight of six inch claws tearing through Fitz, tearing his heart right out of his chest, for the rest of them to react. Cullen had always assumed he would have been one of those people to not freeze. That had been before his gaze had landed on two of the most hideous monsters not even Hollywood had ever created.

  The first had been dripping in a
coating of what he assumed was slime. It’s hoofed hands and feet stomped the ground, shaking it as hard as he imagined a stampeding herd of elephants would have. It’s coal black eyes reflected the bonfire, giving Cullen the feeling they were burning like the fires of hell.

  The second had the massive claws that tore through his brother-in-law and sister before any of them could blink, much less react. But the moment his family had, it had been Gordon, the oldest of his siblings, as well as Rona’s twin, who had saved Bryce.

  On a druid’s twenty-first birthday, they received magic from their ancestors. For Gordon, that had been fire. The two beasts that had killed their sister went up in flames that caused them to scream in agony.

  For a second, Cullen was stuck between the past and the now, as a scream that sounded nothing like the one from the hideous creatures, jolted him from his memories. Jerking around, he raced for the house where Nessa and Bryce were trying to eat something before the ritual.

  But it wasn’t until he was already halfway across the driveway, nearly to the house, before he realized the sound that had every single hair on Cullen’s stand on end was coming from the barn. Skidding to stop, he glanced to the open double doors just as Kyleigh raced out.

  “Ky,” he shouted, relieved that she appeared okay, dressed in the gown her mother chose to make for her for the ritual.