by Leia Stone
My head was pounding; my knee joints ached. What the hell had I done?
“Let’s go!” Logan grunted, and I realized he was holding a barely-conscious Isaac.
I shook my head and my vision cleared a bit, my dragon healing kicking in, I hoped. Without thinking, I stumbled forward, past the moaning bodies, and knelt before the pit-bull. When my hand reached out to pick him up, he growled.
“Shhh. I’m not going to hurt you,” I told him, taking off my shirt so that I was in my bra and jeans, and wrapping it around him to staunch his wounds. His growl turned into a whimper and my throat tightened with emotion.
The man in the canary suit was dead, his clothing now a rich red. I hoped this meant there would never again be another fighting operation like this one, but I knew people like Canary existed everywhere. All I could do was my one small part.
“SLOANE!” Logan growled from the doorway and I lifted the dog quickly, trusting he was too injured to attack me. A low growl rumbled in his throat but died out quickly, his head lying limp against my arm. I gingerly took steps around the bodies that were now gaining strength, trying to ignore the pain in my knees, my blurry vision, and what it all might mean.
My muscles protested as I walked up the stairs and into the hall, where I saw that the guard had been removed and the door was wide open, Gear standing in front of it with Keegan’s shotgun in his hands.
“Hurry!” Gear shouted, and took a look over his shoulder.
We all piled into the alley; at the end I could see the bright yellow bus waiting, back door wide open. Nadine was standing in the back, urging us forward. A car alarm was going off nearby and it didn’t take my sensitive dragon nose to detect smoke. As we reached the back of the bus, Nadine pulled us up one by one—pausing for a moment, looking at me with confusion, when she saw the bloody half head of a dog in my arms.
“Mittens isn’t gonna like this,” she said, and hauled us both up. I hadn’t even thought that far. I just knew I couldn’t leave him there to die. As I stepped up into the bus and looked out onto the road I saw a car was up in flames; faint sirens were growing louder in the distance. It all made sense now. Nadine had been tasked with the distraction. The car looked nice, a bright canary-yellow BMW, turning black with the extreme heat of the flames. It was that bastard’s car. I don’t know how she knew, but Nadine had blown up the asshole’s car who’d hurt Dom.
Speaking of Dom, he was dripping blood everywhere, panting on the back seat, looking up at Logan.
“Danny! He got hit with a spell when he was fighting the sorcerer. He’s not healing,” Logan shouted.
The second the door closed with all of us inside, Roxy peeled out, turning the corner and causing the bus to rise up on two wheels. Isaac was sitting quietly, holding his staff, breathing in and out slowly as if in a meditative trance. Keegan was looking for clothes for Dominic.
“Danny!” Logan shouted again.
Danny looked green, sickly. The sorcerer took a deep breath and nodded to Logan: “My powers have been bound. I can fix it, but … need time.” He was out of breath and collapsed back into the chair.
“We don’t have time! He’s bleeding out!” Logan screamed, pressing a cloth onto Dominic’s wounds.
“Don’t say that!” Logan suddenly screamed at Dom. They must have been mentally communicating. I left the dog on the bench and stood, fighting a wave of nausea. I was still out of sorts from throwing so much purple magic.
“Can we go to a hospital?” I suggested, walking up to stand beside Logan. Keegan was pacing the aisle, looking frantically from Danny to Logan.
Logan shook his head. “They won’t give two shits about a dying lion. Even a vet couldn’t handle this. It’s a magical injury, and he can’t shift to human—he’s too severely wounded.”
Finally, Isaac opened his eyes. “Pull over,” he said, with a deadly calm.
We all stared at him. We were passing a wild patch of land, thick with forest. There would be no help for Dom here. Roxy kept going.
“Pull OVER!” he shouted, slamming his staff down on the floor of the bus with a thunderous crack. Roxy slammed on the brakes, careening the vehicle to the dirt pullout. Once the bus reached a full stop, Isaac stood, no longer looking weary from being tossed into a wall by that female druid.
The druid pointed to Logan. “Get him outside.” Then pointed to me. “Shoes off. This is your first lesson.”
I didn’t argue. I leaned forward, tearing off my shoes and socks. I would do anything to help heal Dom, and I was assuming the druid had a plan to heal the lion shifter. As I ran to the front of the bus, following the crimson trail of Dom’s blood, I saw that Nadine had hopped over the seats and was tending to the injured pit-bull. Her medic case lay wide open.
Thank you. I sent a silent prayer that the dog would make it. I didn’t know why I’d felt so deeply for the poor creature. He shouldn’t have to die like this. The second I hopped down onto the hard soil, the ache in my skull eased; the final bits of blurriness to my vision fled. I didn’t want to admit it, even to myself, but it seemed the Earth did have a healing effect on me.
Isaac walked to the edge of the trees and held both palms out. Keegan had exited the bus and was standing beside Logan, who somehow was carrying the heavy, limp lion shifter. Keegan stared at the druid’s back.
“Come on, druid,” Keegan roared—I could hear his wolf close to the surface. “You gotta tell us what your plan is. He’s bleeding out!”
Isaac looked over his shoulder at Keegan. “Nwyfre,” he stated. The foreign word stirred something within me; a wind picked up and tickled at the edges of my skin.
“What?” Keegan growled. He looked ready to pummel the good druid.
“Life force, Chi, prana. Nwyfre,” Isaac stated, as if that explained everything.
Isaac then turned to face us fully, holding open his arms and motioning for Logan to deposit Dom into them, but not before tossing Keegan his staff. The alpha caught it with ease, and other than a short pulse of orange, it did nothing in his hand. Lucky bastard.
Dominic had lost consciousness, his head lolled to the side, tongue hanging out. Logan shared a look with Keegan and Keegan nodded. The moment the weight of Dom’s unconscious lion body fell into Isaac’s arms, he grimaced and his face darkened. “He needs a mountain hemlock. Now.” And with that, he was off, running through the dark forest with only the light of the moon and the headlights from the bus to direct his path. How he ran with the weight of an unconscious lion in his arms, I’ll never know. I took off after him, my bare feet padding on the soft mossy forest floor. What in the hell was this crazy druid up to?
Logan and Keegan were right behind me. I ran barefoot through the green overgrowth, zigzagging in and out of the thick trees until suddenly Isaac stopped before a large … Christmas tree. That’s what it looked like to me, bushy and with the typical pine needles.
“Mountain hemlock…” He breathed a sigh of relief. Stepping forward, he peered closer, inspecting the branches, giving no indication that holding a four hundred pound lion was tiring him the slightest bit. Druid super strength must be a thing, and I must not have inherited it. With a slight groan, he gently laid Dominic at the base of the tree, close enough to be touching the trunk with his back.
“Sloane!” Isaac barked suddenly, and I jumped a little, stepping closer to him.
“See this tree? Her branches are full. She’s mature, not a sapling, and there is no disease or rot.”
I heard Keegan growl behind me, and I simply nodded. “I see that…”
Please don’t be crazy, I internally prayed to the gods of druids.
Isaac reached out his hand to Keegan. “My staff…”
Keegan’s eyes were practically glowing. “You’re a healer or something, right? You’re going to save him?” I could tell by the guttural undertones that Keegan was holding back his wolf.
If Isaac was wasting time, Keegan would kill him, I realized.
Isaac wrapped his hands around h
is staff and the orange crystal flared to life, glowing so brightly we had to shield our eyes. “No, I’m not, son. Earth is the healer, and she will be the one to save him.”
He took to his knees and motioned for me to do the same. Logan was looking at Isaac incredulously. I could only shrug and kneel beside my new teacher. The earth vibrations had been zipping up and down the soles of my feet since I exited the bus, but now, here on my knees, inches away from Isaac and this tree, I felt like I was near a high voltage wire.
Isaac caressed the tree’s trunk. “If you don’t pick the right tree, you will transfer disease to the body. You must learn your trees, Sloane.”
What could I do but nod? “I will,” I muttered. Isaac was like that one crazy relative you invited to Christmas dinner purely for the entertainment.
Shit, if learning about trees could save lives, then call me the tree master. I would learn.
“This tree is full of healthy Nwyfre. Touch her,” Isaac told me.
Okay, that almost sounded dirty, but I was working on being more mature so I didn’t even crack a grin. I reached out, right above Dominic’s head, and touched the tree’s trunk. A pulse shot out and zapped my hand, making it glow purple for a split second.
“Yes.” Isaac nodded. “She contains the spark of life.”
The happy druid lifted his staff high and came down hard on the ground a few inches from Dominic’s chest. It sank into the earth and the crystal started pulsing like a strobe light. Dominic was bleeding out; a large puddle had seeped into my jeans, and I tried not to think about it or focus on the deep cuts I saw along his body.
Isaac took a deep breath, rose to his knees, and leaned his forehead on the tree’s trunk. Dominic was trapped below the druid’s body so that Isaac created a circle with the tree, Dom inside.
“Thank you for your sacrifice,” he whispered, and my brow furrowed. He’d better not be talking about Dom.
Keegan stepped forward, but Logan yanked his arm back. Something was happening.
Isaac’s strobe-light staff had stopped and was now glowing a bright, soft, buttery yellow. His hands came down on Dominic’s shoulders, orange light flowing out of them, covering his lion like a cocoon. The druid’s head still rested on the trunk of the tree and I gasped when I looked up and saw the tree’s branches were … dying, wilting and turning brown.
Logan must have seen it too, because he cursed under his breath. “Holy mother of God,” he breathed.
“Nwyfre, gwyar, calas. Life, flow, form…”
Isaac chanted under his breath. He repeated this over and over, his staff shining so brightly I had to squint and shield my eyes, but I didn’t dare look away.
I was witnessing a full-blown miracle. The poor tree, she hunched forward, fully brown and nearly falling over, but Dominic, his skin was … healing. The cuts had the pink sheen of a new scar, and I saw his once-ragged breathing was now slow and steady. He was going to live. Suddenly the staff pulsed one huge bright light—I was forced to close my eyes. Then it died out to nothing, ceasing its illumination.
When I opened my eyes, I saw the once magnanimous twenty-foot-tall tree had shriveled to the size of a grown man. Isaac stood, taking it in his arms and pushed it backward, the trunk crumpling easily as he laid it on the ground. Tears were streaming down his face as if he’d lost a good friend. My throat suddenly tightened with emotion. It was beautiful how much he cared for something I had never thought to look at twice. I walked over and knelt beside him, lowering my head so that my red hair covered my face.
“All living things matter,” he told me, and I nodded, not even caring that I was fully crying—crying over a freaking tree, over the way a grown man cradled it like it was a dying lover.
I placed my hand on its brittle brown branches. “It mattered.”
I heard movement behind me and looked back over my shoulder to see Dominic had shifted to his naked human form. He was looking from Keegan to Isaac and then to the tree with an awed confusion.
I stayed with Isaac in companionable silence for another few moments, then he nodded, patting the brittle trunk, and stood. “We shall plant two trees tomorrow,” he told me.
The simplicity of that sentence nearly knocked me over. Kill one tree and plant two in its place. It was so … right. Something had shifted within me. This experience had changed me—for the first time since this whole nightmare began—I wanted to be a druid. An Earth druid. Not because I wanted to kill Ardan, or help my friends, but because I wanted to be this connected to something so beautiful. Something I hadn’t realized I needed. The Earth.
“Come, young one. Let’s find your staff,” Isaac stated, and reality came crashing down on my tree-hugging party.
We needed to see an elf about a staff.
Chapter 5
When Keegan and Danny had gone into the club, it had given Danny the opportunity to freshly scent the elf’s trail. Now we were parked in front of a tiny house, pushed back from the road.
“It’s late. Should we wait until morning?” I asked Isaac. I wasn’t too keen on meeting a freaking elf and asking for a favor at midnight.
Isaac chuckled. “Elves don’t sleep.”
Every face on the bus fell. “Say what now?” I asked. Did he just say elves didn’t sleep? That totally brought them up a notch on my “scary as hell” list. Things that didn’t sleep … vampires, and now elves. Oh God.
Nadine was stroking the neck of the pit-bull I’d rescued. She’d done a crude but good job of closing his wounds with a surgical staple gun. Now the dog was passed out because Nadine had given it some type of tranquilizer.
When I asked why she couldn’t have closed Dominic’s wounds with the stapler, she’d looked at me like I was an idiot. Dom had a magical spell keeping him from healing and staples wouldn’t have broken that. I still had a lot to learn about this life.
Danny rolled his neck. “My magic is slowly coming back, but I’m not sure I would be of any use if he is combative.”
Isaac nodded. “Noted. Come on, Sloane. Let’s get this done. It will take a few days to make the staff, and Ardan will have received word we were at the club.”
I paled. Last time we had a run-in with Ardan, Cooper died and Gear almost lost a wing. I wanted to avoid that kind of carnage at all costs. At least, until I was a purple-fire-throwing badass who could actually take him on.
Logan stepped up into the aisle. His dark hair was wild and wavy, framing his eyes, which looked strained. He looked tired as hell, and yet he was ready to stand by my side and face this next unknown. Keegan stood as well, but Isaac shook his head.
“Too many of us will spook him. You do not want to spook an elf,” the druid stated, and my blood ran cold. Oh God, what would he look like? Ten feet tall? Razor sharp teeth? Dusky skin from his last feeding of small child?
‘Calm down. I’m sure he’s nice,’ Logan said, through our mate bond.
I glared. ‘Hey! You’re not supposed to hear my thoughts after Eva’s spell, unless I send them to you.’
He chuckled. ‘I’m not reading your thoughts. I’m reading your face and shaking hands.’
Oh. I made my hands into fists and put on a light smile. “Let’s go,” I said. Better to charge into fear headfirst, right? But if he did in fact have razor sharp teeth, I was hiding behind Logan.
Keegan cocked his shotgun, holding it firmly in his grasp. “Just holler if you need backup.”
My mate nodded as we passed. Dominic was curled up in one of the seats, half naked and passed out, asleep. He’d spent five minutes declaring to Isaac that he owed him a life debt and would do anything asked of him. Isaac told him to get some rest. Said that he himself was fatigued from the healing, and they would both need lots of relaxation to settle their energies.
I, however, felt wide awake, pulsing with adrenaline in anticipation of meeting this creature. Dragon, check. Wolf shifter, check. Sorcerer, check. So far I hadn’t met anything too scary, but a freaking elf straight out of the land of Faery, that c
ould change the game. I was susceptible to nightmares.
As we exited the bus and crossed into the yard, I leaned in to Isaac. “So, this elf, is he … dangerous?”
Isaac’s face gave nothing away. He was scanning the front yard, trees and plants. “He could be if he wanted to be.”
Great. That was helpful. I stepped back, letting Isaac take the lead. He didn’t walk up to the front door, instead, began to cross the lawn and go for the side gate that led to the backyard, I stopped.
“What are you doing?” I whisper-screamed.
Isaac looked confused, and then looked to the front door. “Oh, the house is just for show. An elf would never sleep inside.”
Of course not. Logan slipped his hand into mine and I felt my dragon settle. We crossed the yard quickly and stopped at the ornate arched gate which was surrounded by a tall brick fence that we couldn’t see over. The druid made a fist and rapped on the gate, as if it was a front door.
“Hello!” Isaac called over the tall gate.
A shadow moved behind it, and I heard the crunching of rocks.
“Who’s there?” the deep voice came from the other side.
Oh God. That voice was scary. He was totally ten feet tall.
“I was a friend of your brother, Yalash.” The druid spoke calmly, as if he didn’t want to anger the elf.
A whimper came from the creature on the other side of the fence. “Yalash is dead.”
Isaac nodded. “I know. Please open the gate so I can explain our situation. Yalash was a good friend of mine.”
There was silence a moment. “Do I need my illusion? That will take a minute.”
Isaac shook his head. “No. There are no humans.”
Oh my God. Holy crap. He needed to put on an illusion to cover his ghastly form from humans? I think I’m going to pass out.
If his form was anything like his deep and menacing voice, my dragon might rip right from my body in fear.