Read The Soul's Mark: CHANGED Online
Authors: Ashley Stoyanoff
The Soul's Mark: CHANGED
Book 4 of The Soul’s Mark Series
By Ashley Stoyanoff
By Ashley Stoyanoff
Published by Ashley Stoyanoff Books
www.ashleystoyanoff.com
Copyright 2013 Ashley Stoyanoff
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.
Edited by Kathryn Calvert
Cover design by
Liudmyla Supynska
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
To my mother, Jo-Anne, thank you for all your encouragement and feedback. A special thanks to my editor Kathryn. Without you, this book would not have been finished. Further thanks to my friend Kim and my husband Jordan, whose unwavering patience and guidance has made it possible for me to finish The Soul’s Mark: CHANGED.
Th
e Soul’s Mark Series
The Soul’s Mark: FOUND
Waking Dreams, A Soul’s Mark Novella
The Soul’s Mark: HUNTED
The Soul’s Mark: BROKEN
The Soul’s Mark: CHANGED
Deadly Trilogy
Deadly Crush
Mitchell had a cold. He was coughing. His nose was running, and he was driving Amelia crazy with that stupid bell. The bell was something Eric had seen on TV and he’d thought it would be funny to give one to Mitchell. It wasn’t.
For most people
, a cold was just that … a cold, but for Mitchell, well, he hadn’t been sick in more than eight-hundred years, and with the way he was carrying on about it, if Amelia didn’t know any better, she would have thought he was dying. He’d only been human for two weeks now, and it had been the longest two weeks of her life.
Amelia was pleased that life in Willowberg had returned to normal—quiet and uneventful. To her relief
, and utter astonishment, Eric had stepped up, and with Megan’s help, he’d taken over most of Mitchell’s day-to-day town running stuff, whatever that was—Amelia still really wasn’t entirely sure. But Eric was actually good at it. Things were running smoothly, and for the first time in, well, since Amelia had arrived in Willowberg, there were no disasters to deal with. But most importantly, so far, they’d managed to keep Mitchell’s … condition, and Amelia’s change, a secret.
But the problem with keeping it a secret
was that Amelia couldn’t leave the house. And not leaving the house meant being stuck twenty-four hours a day with a whiny, eight-hundred year old man with a cold.
Sunlight streamed through the French doors, making the marble floor glimmer where it touched.
It danced off of the weathered black cabinets and granite countertops, coating the kitchen in a warm glow. The cherry wood island was littered with newspapers, and unopened mail was piling up in a toppled stack off to the side. On the top of the pile, Amelia spotted the electricity bill. Her brow knitted together and a pang in her heart made her swallow hard. The mail, the bills, all of it had been Mabel’s responsibility.
Amelia
stared at the stack for a long moment and sighed. God, she missed Mabel. She squeezed her eyes shut for a brief moment, remembering Mabel’s bright, motherly smile and her warm embrace. The memory helped a little and when she glanced back at the stack, she made a mental note to go through the mail, and talk to Mitchell about paying the bills.
Amelia picked up the ladle and gave the chicken noodle soup a quick stir as it simmered on the
gleaming stainless steel stove. She sucked in a deep breath. She’d always liked the smell of soup before, but now, with her new senses, it was fantastic. The salt. The chicken. Even the noodles had their own aroma and mixed together; it was delightful.
The soft chime of Mitchell’s bell sounded, f
ollowed by a painful, hacking cough. “Millie,” Lola hollered. “I’m going to kill him if you don’t make that bell stop!”
Amelia
choked on a strangled laugh. Lola. Their new relationship still seemed weird. Weird and exciting. As far as makers went, Amelia guessed she couldn’t have asked for anyone better, but it was still Lola. Grumpy. She had little tolerance for anything, and Mitchell was no exception, especially now that he really couldn’t do anything to her. In all honesty, Amelia thought that their family was giving Mitchell a hard time just because they could now.
“I’m on it,” Amelia yelled back. She
grabbed a bowl from the cupboard and ladled out the steaming chicken noodle soup. Setting the bowl on the tray, she snagged a spoon from the drawer, and then turned off the burner.
The bell sounded again and she grinned.
Who would have thought it would be her taking care of Mitchell? Amelia surely hadn’t. But she had to admit, even though he was driving her batty, she loved every minute of it. She picked up the tray, and made her way through the house to their bedroom.
As she
weaved through the crisp white hallways of their massive house, Amelia noticed that the rich wood floors were starting to look a touch dimmer than usual. Every surface she passed held a thin layer of dust and the windows were looking a bit grimy. Amelia had really tried to stay on top of the housework over the last two weeks, but by the time she got from one end of the house to the other, it was as if where she’d started had never been touched. She didn’t have a clue how Mabel had done it all, and Amelia was starting to think it would take an entire army to come close to keeping up with everything that Mabel had done.
Amelia sucked in a deep breath and swallowed down the pulsing ache in her throat that always seemed to appear when she thought about Mabel. When she was certain that she wasn’t going to burst into tears, she
pushed open the door to her bedroom, juggling the tray in one hand. “How are you feeling, Mitch?” she asked, giving him what she hoped was a bright smile, but it felt a bit forced and stiff. She kicked the door shut with her heel and padded over to him, climbing the steps of the raised landing to the bed.
Mitchell looked up a
t her and croaked, “I’m dying, love. How do you think I’m feeling?” His nose was all chapped and cherry red, and his eyes, puffy and watery. He was curled up in their bed, with the bold blue comforter pulled up to his chin so only his face was visible, and he had a box of tissues beside him.
“Oh
, stop being so dramatic. It’s just a cold,” Amelia said with a laugh, as she perched on the edge of the bed, setting the tray on the nightstand beside him. He shot her what she thought was meant to be a dirty look, but it was ruined by a sneeze, and she laughed again. “I made you some soup.”
“My voice hurts
,” he whined and sniffled. He grabbed a tissue and blew his nose loudly.
Amelia tried to forge
her face into a serious expression, but it didn’t work. She giggled. “Mitch, I don’t really think that’s possible.”
“You know what I mean,
” he said and groaned, and then he gave her the saddest puppy dog look she had ever seen. “Amelia, love, can’t you do some witchy thing and make this go away?”
“Oh, honey,” she said
, trying to stifle another laugh. She failed miserably. “Suffering strengthens the soul.”
He arched an
eyebrow at her, and Amelia wasn’t sure if the look he was giving her was disbelief or amazement. “You can, can’t you?” he said finally, after a long moment of silence. “Is this payback for something?” Disbelief it was, then.
Amelia smirked. “Now what in the world would I want
to pay you back for?”
Mitchell frowned. Even without the bond
, she could guess what he was thinking. It was written clearly in each one of the crinkled lines that were indenting his forehead. The truth was she had tons of reasons to want payback. Because of Mitchell, she had cursed all vampires, created vampire hunters, lost her parents, almost died—twice, killed someone, and now, she was a vampire. He had literally turned her world upside down. And that wasn’t even counting the time when he had taken away her free will without so much as telling her he was real and not just a figment of her imagination, or the lying and manipulating he had done to get her to Willowberg in the first place.
But he had also shown her what it was like to love and be
loved, needed, and wanted. He had given her a new family. Shown her a new world. And brought her back to the world she had always been meant for. He had given her a new start, a new life, one that she wouldn’t trade for anything. Mitchell may have been a big jerk sometimes, but he was her big jerk, and she loved him (and sometimes hated him) for it. If she knew how to fix him, she would have in a second.
Again
, she found herself wishing that the movies about vampires were real. So many of them portrayed vampires to have healing properties in their blood, and they did—kind of. Vampire blood could heal during the changing process, but that didn’t help them. Mother Nature, Amelia’s mother, had made it extremely clear that Mitchell wouldn’t survive the change again—yet. His body needed time to adjust and strengthen, before it could handle another shock like that.
Amelia
rested her hand on his forehead, brushing back his sweaty curls. “You’re burning up,” she said, feeling his cheek and neck with the back of her hand.
“It’s probably just your heightened senses,”
he said, pushing her hand away.
She
furrowed her brow, searching his chiseled face and taking in a deep breath, looking for the telltale signs of a lie. This was the eighth day he’d been sick and each day he only seemed to be getting worse. It was also the first day that she’d felt any sign of a fever on his clammy skin, and she was certain that the sour odor that was coming from him was infection.
He sat up and reached for the bowl of soup. After slurping
a big mouthful, he said hastily, “Stop worrying. It’s just a cold.”
“Just a minute ago you said you were dying and now it’s just a cold?” Amelia glared at him long and hard. His heartbeat picked up, she could hear it thrumming rapidly in his chest
, and his breathing became strained, too quick, and too shallow. “What are you hiding, Mitch?”
