Dire Blood (The Descent Series, Book 5)

by Reine, SM

  He tried not to laugh as she jerked the picnic blanket around her shoulders. He flipped onto his back, arched his hips off the ground, and squirmed into his jeans. No time for underwear. He wasn’t even sure what he had done with it.

  The voices came closer.

  “I want to see if my favorite tree is still in the grove,” said a woman with a thick French accent. “Go on without me, ma sucre.”

  “Where’s my bra?” Hannah hissed, splaying her hands to cover her small breasts.

  James glimpsed a hint of pink under the leaves and snagged it for her. There was a ladybug on one of the straps. He flicked it off. “Here.”

  The footsteps were just outside. Hannah pushed him. “Don’t let anyone see me!”

  He spilled out of the bushes onto the grass…and looked straight up at the inverted face of Ariane Garin.

  “Is that…little James Faulkner?” she asked as he scrambled to his feet. He straightened, and she had to tip her head back to meet his eyes. She covered a disbelieving laugh with her hand. “Not little anymore, I see!”

  “Ariane,” he said, out of breath as he buttoned his jeans. “You are—well, I’m surprised to see you here.”

  She was just as lovely as he remembered, albeit much shorter. Her cheeks dimpled when she smiled. “I hope it’s a pleasant surprise. Is it still James? Or are you something less formal now, like Jim?”

  “James, please,” he said.

  Ariane patted his cheek, wafting the smell of her shampoo towards him. “Always very serious.”

  He glanced into the bushes, where Hannah was presumably still dressing. “Not quite as serious as I used to be,” he said, and he wasn’t sure if he imagined that he heard his girlfriend laughing or not. “I didn’t expect to see you here. Last I heard, you and Isaac were on some kind of secret mission.”

  “That’s true. I’m only in town to visit with Pamela and Landon. It’s not an advertised trip, I’m afraid—we won’t be long.”

  “I understand,” James said, even though he didn’t. “So, if you’re here to see Pamela, then…what are you doing here?”

  Ariane cast a glare around at the grassy fields. The sunlight shined through the leaves, dappling the path with dancing triangles of gold and green. “Here at the park? I’m searching for Christine’s memorial tree.”

  “I thought I heard others with you.”

  “Oh.” The tops of her cheeks turned pink. “Isaac and Elise are with me, of course.”

  “There’s a new playground up that way,” James said. He gestured toward the opposite path on the other side of the stream. “The coven installed it for member children. It’s very popular.”

  She dismissed the suggestion with a wave of her hand. “Elise doesn’t really play. She’ll be doing drills with her father in one of the clearings now.”

  “Drills.” He blinked. “How old is she?”

  “Nine years old,” Ariane said. Those dimples returned. She wrapped a curl around her finger and gave a little laugh. “The same age you were when we met. Isn’t it funny how that goes?”

  “Very funny,” he said faintly.

  A nine-year-old doing drills with Isaac. It had been a good decade since James had last seen the man, but he recalled him as being looming and frightening. He somehow doubted that Isaac would take it easy on anyone training with him, even his own daughter.

  “Isaac and I have been invited to participate in some—well, I suppose some ‘secret missions,’ you might say. It will be dangerous. We thought that Pamela might like to keep Elise for a few months while we take care of things,” Ariane said. “Pamela is used to having young vagabonds in her house. Of course, Elise isn’t one for witchcraft, but I found my experience with the coven to be very educational.”

  So educational that she had ended up pregnant just a few months later.

  James hadn’t even seen the girl yet, but he suddenly felt very bad for Elise.

  “I think Pamela’s busy now. Her studies have been consuming her,” he said. “In fact, her studies have been consuming me, too.”

  Ariane shrugged. “Maybe.” It seemed to have only just occurred to her that James wasn’t wearing a shirt, and a mischievous look crossed her face. “What are you doing in the park, James?”

  Hannah was silent in the bushes.

  “Jogging,” he said, seizing on the first idea that drifted across his mind. He coughed into his hand. “And other kinds of exercise.”

  Was that a very quiet giggle? Ariane didn’t seem to have heard anything.

  “Well, perhaps you could help me find the memorial grove,” she said. “It’s been a long time since I visited. I’m not even sure I remember where it is.”

  “Sure. So we’ll go look at her tree, then,” James said, raising his voice a little to make sure that Hannah would hear him. “It won’t take a minute.”

  He started walking, maybe a bit too quickly to be subtle about it, and Ariane followed. She had matured into a composed, graceful woman. She drifted over the path without seeming to actually touch the ground. She wore a knee-length skirt and a simple blouse, but she would have been suited just as well to the kind of dresses that James imagined queens might wear.

  “How is Hannah?” Ariane asked after they had left the bushes behind.

  He twitched. “Why do you ask?”

  She gave him a private smile. “Because I seem to remember that you were rather enamored with her.”

  That was one word for it.

  James gave the answer he had prepared for the coven when they asked the same thing. “Hannah and I partner together in dance competitions, but we don’t see each other outside rehearsal very much. It’s too stressful.” Ariane didn’t seem convinced, so he added, “And she’s a frosty bitch.”

  She laughed. “Are you dating now?”

  “No, of course not,” he said. “Frosty. I said that part, right?”

  “You don’t have to let the coven control you, James. They’ve always had very specific ideas about who we are all meant to be, but they’re not the ones living our lives. I think it’s wonderful that you’ve found love, and it’s better for you to be with someone you care about than with whoever the coven thinks you should care about.”

  They entered the memorial grove. The trees were all much younger here, and were encircled by protective rings of chicken wire; inside, miniature altars hugged the slender trunks. Some of the older trees had begun to grow around the statues of the Horned God and Mother Goddess.

  James took Ariane to a tree with a placard that said “Christine Kavanagh.” It seemed like it was growing a little slower than the others.

  He waited in silence as she knelt and whispered to the tree in French. She didn’t take long. After just a minute, she straightened and dried her cheeks. “Thank you, James,” she said. “I should find my daughter.”

  A few moments earlier, he had wanted desperately to be far away from Ariane and her grief. But she still looked so sad. He told her, “I’ll walk with you.”

  They moved through the park together, quiet and slow. The trees became denser as they moved upstream, so the only way that James could tell they were reaching Isaac and Elise was by the sound of metal clashing on metal. Ariane hadn’t been joking about running drills.

  James saw a flash of red hair darting between the trees, but Elise was immediately concealed by her father’s shoulder as he moved in front of her. “Thank you for sharing Christine’s memorial with me,” Ariane said, drawing his attention back to her. She took one of his hands in both of hers and held it tight. “I miss her. She would have loved Elise—she’s such a beautiful soul.”

  “I’m sure that’s true,” James said.

  She patted his cheek again. “Remember, James: this is your life. Not Landon’s. And definitely not Metaraon’s.”

  “Strange advice, coming from you.”

  Ariane glanced at Isaac. Her smile slipped. “Not that strange.” She embraced James. He held her a little tighter than he really needed to, and
then let go. “Goodbye, James.”

  “Goodbye, Ariane.”

  She joined her family, and James left.

  “We need to talk,” Pamela said while the coven was grounding after a ritual.

  James was sitting outside on the grass, propped on one elbow as he nibbled at a handful of nuts. He spit the shell onto the ground. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to miss our last lesson. Rehearsals ran long, and I promised the owner of the studio that I would teach the advanced ballet class, so—”

  “That’s not what I want to talk about.”

  A sense of dread securely fastened itself to his gut. Pamela must have found out that he was still dating Hannah, all protests aside. It didn’t surprise him. She knew goddamn everything.

  He sat up as his aunt settled onto the grass beside him, and prepared to defend himself. He thought of what Ariane had told him—how it was his life to live, regardless of what the coven wanted—and he tried to summon the same conviction she had had when she’d said it.

  But Pamela didn’t let him speak. “Elise Kavanagh is going to begin visiting me for the summers,” she said.

  That hadn’t been what he had expected her to say at all. James was taken completely off-guard.

  “Oh,” he said, because he thought he probably wasn’t supposed to have already known that.

  “I want you to help me with her lessons.”

  “You’re going to try to teach her magic?” James asked, brow furrowing. “But she’s a kopis.”

  “No. No magic. That would be a waste of time. We’ll be studying demonology, angels, and history.” Pamela plucked a dandelion out of the earth, popped its bud off with her thumb, and began stripping open the stem. “I thought you would like to help me. I know you’ve been studying those things independently, and the breadth of your knowledge is probably greater than mine by now. I also thought you’d like to teach her how to dance.”

  James laughed. “Dance? Really?”

  “We don’t have any fighters in the coven. None of us can throw a punch, much less help the girl refine her skill with swords. But she’s still an athlete, and she’ll need exercise.”

  He had the sudden, uncomfortable feeling that this was one of the things the coven had been discussing while his back was turned. But why? What would any of them get from teaching some kid how to dance?

  “I’m too busy this summer,” he said. “Maybe next summer.”

  Pamela flicked the shredded stem into the grass again and stood up. “Next summer.” She smiled thinly. “I’ll hold you to that, James. Don’t forget.”

  JUNE 1990

  James and Hannah quietly bought a condo in Boulder together. They didn’t have any real furniture, but they had a mattress and an altar, and that was all he really cared about. Their nights were spent tangled together, naked and sweaty. He didn’t sleep for months. They stayed awake, holding hands and talking about their future. Maybe marriage. Maybe children.

  And they tried to never talk about the coven.

  During the day, Hannah went to work. She had found a job as a legal assistant. It was barely enough to cover their bills, but the company had a retirement program, which they agreed was more important than the better-paying job that had been offered to her by the dance studio. They could always dance on the weekends.

  Except that James spent every day dancing and teaching dance. His skill improved. Hannah’s waned.

  And in the evenings, he studied magic—deeper and more arcane than anything the coven had studied before. He emerged sometimes to join the other witches and share what he had discovered. They started treating him like a king instead of a prince. They whispered about who would one day succeed Landon as high priest. And if they asked questions about James’s personal life, he told them that he was living in the city—alone—to be close to the dance studio.

  The accident happened later in the fall.

  Hannah had begun to attend twice the number of rehearsals in preparation for the holiday season. She practiced in the mornings before work and tried to join James on her lunch break, as well. She was improving again—she had always been so graceful, and so talented, but months of deskwork had made her slow. Her form wasn’t what it used to be.

  She attempted a jump that she had made a thousand times before, and slipped off the stage. Her ankle twisted. James heard her cry from the other side of the curtains.

  He rushed past the orchestra pit and jumped into the audience. He was the first to reach Hannah’s side, and he could immediately tell that it was bad. Her foot was twisted in the wrong direction, and the ankle was already purple. “It’s okay,” he said, shielding the injury with his body so that the rest of the company wouldn’t see the extent of the damage. He scooped Hannah up into his arms. “She’s fine. I think it’s just twisted.”

  He rushed her to the dressing rooms and set her down. Her breathing was staccato and hiccupping.

  “It’s over,” Hannah said, her forehead soaked with sweat.

  “Don’t be melodramatic,” James said. He found his jeans, pulled out a leather-bound notebook, and sat down at her side again. He was prepared for this. He had been making new healing spells just last weekend.

  But Hannah pushed him away. “Don’t. I don’t want your aunt’s witchcraft anywhere near me.”

  “This isn’t her magic; this is mine,” he said, stroking a hand down her knee. “I can save your ankle. Your career. I can do it—you know I can do it.”

  “Who am I kidding? I don’t have a career anymore,” she said, and only then did she begin to cry.

  She forced him to take her to the hospital. They said it would take months to heal. James gripped his Book of Shadows and tried not to yell at the doctors.

  Hannah went home in a cast that covered her leg from her knee to her toes.

  “This is ridiculous,” he said as he positioned her on the couch. “I’m more than powerful enough to fix this. I have to hide the kind of destruction I can wreak from the coven so that I don’t scare them. And you would rather heal for six months than let me fix you?”

  All she said was, “Fuck you, fuck the coven, and fuck your magic.”

  James danced with a new partner at the next performance. Hannah stayed home.

  It took almost six full months for Hannah to apologize. She showed her contrition by appearing at James’s spring performance with her cast removed, a dozen roses for his dance partner, and a guilty smile. “Don’t get too excited. These are for Monique,” Hannah said, pushing the flowers into his arms.

  He took them. “You hate Monique.”

  “I hate that Monique is dancing with you while I’m helping the Millers file divorce paperwork. She’s a lovely dancer.” Hannah’s smile grew chilly. “Not as lovely as I was, but…lovely.”

  James wanted to say, you could still be lovely, but it probably wouldn’t have been true. She didn’t want it badly enough anymore. Instead, he leaned forward and kissed her. “How does the leg feel?”

  “Good,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t say what she was apologizing for, but he understood.

  “I love you,” James said.

  Hannah leaned close to his ear and lowered her voice. “And I love seeing you in a unitard. Keep it on under your jacket so I can take it off when we get home.” She kissed his neck, then sashayed away with only the smallest of limps.

  Good God, did James love that woman.

  APRIL 1993

  Over time, James’s studies into magic became so involved that he required a dedicated ritual space, which his condo lacked. The coven was happy to finance a move into a bigger home. He told Hannah that he had inherited money from a distant relative and wanted to buy a house, and she agreed.

  So James and Hannah traded up from their cozy condo to a four-bedroom, two-bath cabin in the woods, at which point it became impossible to deny that they were still involved—especially since they hadn’t had dancing as an excuse to see each other for years.

  Nobody m
entioned their relationship to his face, but Pamela’s attempts at matchmaking grew more insistent, and telling her “I’m already involved” didn’t do a damn bit of good.

  “She’s done trying to get me together with Beatrice and attempting to set me up with someone from international covens instead,” he told Hannah at dinner on their monthly date night. It was a quiet Italian restaurant that they had been to a dozen times—nothing special or exciting, but the food was reliably good. “She offered to bring in some fire witch from Florence. Florence! It’s like she thinks I just need to be tempted by someone more exotic.”

  Hannah pushed a piece of penne around her plate, chin propped on one hand. “They really want you married off, don’t they?”

  “They haven’t said it to my face, but—well, yes. They want me to marry and produce offspring, because apparently I’m lazy and selfish for failing to prioritize these things at twenty-three years old.”

  “It’s the unfortunate side-effect of being the focus of their clumsy attempts at Machiavellian scheming.” The corner of her mouth quirked into a half-smile. “Although, I have to say, it’s almost cute. The coven’s idea of scheming is remarkably similar to my great-aunt Rita’s scheming. She thinks the same thing about me. Twenty-five, unmarried, no babies? My womb will shrivel into a husk. But she’s only worried because some of the batty old women in her knitting circle are starting to have great-grandchildren, not because they think I’m Merlin and might produce the next king of the world.”

  “I’m not Merlin,” James said. “I think I’m a little more attractive than that.”

  She slid her foot up the inside of his leg under the table. “If they want your babies that badly, you could always jerk off into a jar and throw it through Landon’s window.”

  “I love it when you talk dirty.”

  “I’m just so tired of dating the entire coven,” Hannah said. “When I climb into bed with you at night, it feels like every single witch in Colorado is in there with us. And, frankly, I’m not all that into group sex. Maybe you should date one of these girls just to shut up Pamela for a few months.” She winced at the thought. “But don’t tell me about it, please.”