witchesintheweeds_GEN

by Lila Dubois

  The weight of reality was so great that she felt like she couldn’t breathe. She ran, sucking in great lungfuls of air, yet it wasn’t enough.

  “Kim, wait!” Harris called out.

  That wasn’t even her name. The band around her lungs tightened.

  “Kim!”

  She ran up the hill to the ridge, her thigh muscles burning, her skirts held in her fists. When she reached the top, she didn’t slow down, though for safety’s sake she should have. She started down the other side, moving faster and faster as gravity added speed. Maybe she’d trip, fall, smack her head against a tree, and this would all be over.

  And then her sister would inherit the curse. And the past five years of work would mean nothing.

  But the earth would not let her fall. She was its creature.

  Trees flashed by, tall streaks of brown and green. The earth rose to meet her bare feet, so every footstep was sure and firm. She reached the edge of the cannabis crops, and even without her sight she could feel that they pulsed with healthy life. Harris had pulled the blight in toward the center, stopping it from spreading any further. She’d noticed that last night.

  The path twisted and turned, but she knew the way, knew when to turn, when to veer. She reached the outcropping of rock and ran up it, vaulting herself into the sky. For one breathless, terrifying moment she was flying, falling, but then the earth caught and cradled her, and she kept running.

  The stream came into view, and Nim tried to slow her steps. Even with the earth’s help, gravity was a powerful force, and she had to fall to her knees at the stream’s edge. Momentum kept her upper body moving forward and she threw out her hands to stop from hitting her face, her palms slapping the water before thudding against a rock just under the surface. The shock of the cold mountain stream cleared her head.

  What was she doing, running like some foolish girl? What a totally useless response.

  The self-flagellation only made her feel worse. Nim squeezed her eyes closed, then plunged her face into the cold water, trying to shock herself out of the negative headspace.

  Strong arms wrapped around her waist and hauled her back out of the water.

  Nim gasped as she was lifted off the ground, water dripping from her hair onto her shoulders and chest.

  Harris dragged her back, then released her. She spun to face him. He was breathing heavily, his skin seeming to glow with barely suppressed power and anger.

  “What the hell?” he demanded.

  She gathered her hair into a wet coil, pulling it over one shoulder. “You surprised me.”

  “I surprised you? That was more than surprised.”

  Nim curled her hands into fists. “I…I can’t.”

  “Can’t what?” He slashed a hand through the air, forestalling her response. “You better. Because whatever that is—” He stabbed a finger at the plants beside him. “—it’s tied to a curse. A strong curse.”

  “Tied to it? How?” Hope leapt in her chest.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can you find out?” If the curse was tied to the plants, and to the magic she’d buried under them, maybe she could break the curse by killing the plants. If it meant saving her sister and the lineage of her coven, she’d burn this entire forest to the ground.

  “I can. But you’re going to have to tell me about the curse first.”

  Nim opened her mouth, then closed it. The anxiety, fear, and sadness that had caused her to run in the first place rose within her again, like bread dough, slowly expanding within her, until it once more felt like she couldn’t breathe.

  Harris was watching her, hands raised, palms toward her. “You’re glowing.”

  Nim tried to get it under control. For a moment she thought she had it, but then she made the mistake of meeting Harris’s gaze. She looked at him, and she knew, with a certainty that was its own kind of magic, that he was the kind of man she could love. That in his arms she would be happy. That their life would be full of teasing and laughter, passion and magic.

  It was total bullshit, and a rational section of her mind was desperately pointing out that she and Harris could never be together, even if she hadn’t been about to die. He was from Saol, and she from Salachar.

  Chapter 7

  This was fucked. He was fucked.

  Trajan looked at his useless cell phone. He hadn’t had a signal for more than an hour, and he’d been hiking in these godforsaken forests for nearly three. He couldn’t get lost, at least not for long, because the wind could always guide him home. Luckily, the small utility knife in his go bag had a tiny compass embedded in the handle. Between that and the wind, he knew he’d been traveling northeast through densely forested mountains most of those three hours.

  He’d landed in San Francisco last night, and gotten up before dawn to drive north to the small airport. He’d managed to catch the manager as they arrived, and got more information from the startled man than he could have hoped for.

  He’d gotten a name.

  Nimue Mahkah.

  He’d been sitting in his rental car with the windows down when a gust of natural breeze brushed magic against him. He could never decide if it was better to describe it as a scent—the ozone-like smell that accompanied the first rainstorm of the season—or a feeling, like the eerie tickle of walking through a cobweb.

  He’d tossed his phone onto the passenger seat and started up the car, peeling out of the parking lot and driving the direction the wind had come from. When he’d run out of road he’d climbed out of his car, filled his pockets with essentials, and started into the forest, leaving his rental car pulled to one side of an unnamed road. He’d been moving fast, not wanting to stop to send a progress-update email, in case the delay cost him the trail of magic. Several times he’d had to stop and wait until the wind started up again. He didn’t dare use his own magic to call up additional wind, since he had no idea where Harris Barclay was.

  But as he’d walked he’d been thinking about that name. Nimue Mahkah. He recognized it. He’d heard it before. Sometime during the second hour of walking he’d remembered where he’d heard her name. At first it had startled a bark of laughter out of him, but amusement had quickly fled. It couldn’t possibly be her, because if it was…

  If it was, then Harris had been taken by a practitioner from a different cabal. And that meant it was only a matter of time until one of them used their magic, triggering a catastrophic event.

  And he was close enough he would probably be swept up by whatever it was.

  Trajan looked down at his cell phone again. If it had been working, his first action would be to text one of his cousins—hell, maybe all of his cousins—and warn them that Nimue Mahkah may have been the one to take Harris Barclay. They would realize how fucked up that was, and that they would likely never see him again. They’d be able to tell Fitz Barclay. And then…

  Trajan had no idea what would happen then. Would the Barclay coven go to war with the Mahkah coven? Would the cabals step in and stop that from happening?

  He’d never know the answer, because he’d be dead.

  The breeze had died off fifteen minutes ago, and he was standing on a steep hillside. He could try and start back the way he’d come, to get the hell out of this forest before it exploded or caught on fire or became suddenly toxic.

  He was still standing there, torn by indecision, when a hard gust whipped between the trees, stirring the debris on the forest floor. The magic carried on that breeze was so strong it nearly knocked him to his knees.

  Decision made.

  Trajan jerked a baseball cap from the back pocket of his jeans. It was old and worn, the bill perfectly curved. He slapped it onto his head, making sure the band was positioned across his forehead. A thin strip of flexible woven gold was hidden inside the band. It had been carved with runes and Coptic script, and once it was in positioned on his forehead, covering his third eye, his own magic was suppressed. The particulars of how to create the dampening band—which they called the b
lindness, since it blinded the third eye, and thereby all magic—was a closely guarded secret. Without it, Trajan wouldn’t have been able to do his job.

  With the hat in place, he could no long feel the wind. Well, he felt it in the most basic physical sense, as air moving over his skin, but he no long knew if it was a north or west wind. He no longer felt the magic carried on the breeze, but that last gust had carried such strong magic he knew he was close.

  Trajan crested the rise and found himself looking down into a valley. He lifted his hat off his head for another second, and the magic seemed to punch him. It was no longer carried on the breeze, it was simply present in the air. He slammed the hat back on and started down into the valley. It had been a calculated move, and he had to hope it wasn’t close enough that removing the dampener allowed the kidnapper to sense his passive magic. He moved quietly, the soft carpet of needles making it easy for him to stay silent.

  Halfway down he first caught sight of a small stream at the base of the valley. When he was ten feet from the water he stopped, crouched, and listened. He could hear something. Movement, running? The sound was bouncing weirdly against the trees and the water. He dared not take off his hat again, so he focused on his sense of hearing as he crept downstream toward the sound. After twenty yards he heard them, their voices indistinct.

  Trajan’s heart jumped in excitement before he blew out a long slow breath and forced himself to enter the calm, watchful state that had nothing to do with his being a practitioner and everything to do with him having trained his whole life to work dangerous missions on behalf of his clients and his coven.

  He took a moment to pull a pill bottle from his pocket and unscrew the cap. Once it was open, he took out two thin gold needles and threaded them through the collar of his shirt like a seamstress pinning a hem, careful to keep the tips away from his skin. Next he pulled a long metal straw out of his inner coat pocket.

  Keeping fifteen feet up from the stream, he stayed low and crept ever closer to the voices. On the other side of the stream the space between the trees was filled with tall, leafy green plants.

  Shit. He’d been right about who Nimue Mahkah was.

  He struggled to stay in the calm, battle-ready headspace he needed. This situation was eighteen kinds of fucked, and if he didn’t do this right, the three of them were going to be the epicenter for a Vesuvius-level event. There were many well-documented cases of two practitioners using power too close together and causing something horrible to happen. Usually the practitioners died. If they didn’t, they were forever changed.

  No one knew what would happen if three practitioners, one from each cabal, used their powers all at the same time in the same place. He was using the blindness, but if things went really sideways, his magic could override the spells in the band. He’d never had it happen, but he knew it could.

  He took another step and then caught sight of them. A slender woman with black hair, wearing a black dress, stood on the far side of the stream, her back to him. Harris Barclay faced her, his hands open and at his sides. There were two circles, one dug into the earth, the other crafted of living plants. Neither Nimue nor Harris stood in their circles.

  Trajan shifted, and he could see Harris’s face. The other man looked afraid, and a second later Trajan realized why. Though he could only see her partial profile, the glow from Nimue’s eyes was visible.

  Harris repeated the warning. “You’re glowing.”

  *

  She looked at Harris, and try as she might she couldn’t stop herself from wanting him. From wanting to feel his bare hands on her skin without there being deadly repercussions. She wanted to be able to make plans. She wanted…she wanted to live.

  Anger and fear made her tremble. His eyes were wide with fear. He was afraid of her, and that was like a knife to the gut.

  If she didn’t get her power under control, she could do some serious damage, to both of them. Even if Harris didn’t do any active magic, he was magic, and her working would react with the passive magic that he exuded and more than likely cause an earthquake. He didn’t have a dampener, and wasn’t drained.

  “I’m cursed,” she whispered. Her voice was so soft she doubted he could hear.

  “What?” he asked, his tone gentle.

  She shook her head, and magic pressed against the inside of her skin.

  “Kim. Control yourself.” His face was a hard mask, but there was still fear in his eyes.

  “I…I can’t.” She needed to let the magic out before her cells splintered apart.

  Harris turned to look over his shoulder up the hill, as if judging whether he could get far enough away, fast enough.

  There wasn’t time, but she was wearing her necklace. Nim ripped it off, and while his back was still turned she leapt, holding the sharp pendant like a knife.

  *

  Trajan lifted the blow dart, popping one of the golden needles into it in a practiced motion. He sucked in a breath, raised it to his lips, and shot the dart between the trees. It arched over the stream and flashed gold in the sunlight as it completed the arc.

  The tip of the spelled dart sank into the back of Nimue’s shoulder. She dropped to her knees, the weapon she’d been preparing to use on Harris slipping from her fingers.

  Trajan raced between the trees, cleared the stream in a single powerful leap, and landed on the far bank.

  The instant his feet touched down, heavy vines wrapped around them.

  “Harris, stop,” he barked out. “Fitz sent me.”

  The creepy, prickly sensation of plants sliding around his ankles stopped. Harris was on his knees, Nimue cradled against his lap. His right hand was flung out, and his eyes glowed faintly gold.

  Harris blinked. “Uh, what?”

  Trajan looked at the way Harris was cradling Nimue and his stomach sank. Maybe this hadn’t been a kidnapping. Were they in this together?

  “You were kidnapped.” Trajan let the statement hang in the air, not quite a question.

  Nimue gasped in obvious pain. The darts were not designed to be kind and gentle. He expected her to object, or to curse at him. “Why is everyone stuck on that?” she asked.

  Harris started to laugh. Trajan looked from them to the literal forest of pot plants growing on the slope behind them. Right. That might explain it.

  Trajan crouched down so he was eye-level with Harris. “Harris. My name is Trajan Dixon. Your uncle hired me to rescue you.”

  “No!” This time Nimue sounded desperate. “No, I need him.”

  Trajan regarded her coolly. “Well, you can’t have him. I’m sorry no one taught you this, but you can’t just take people.”

  Nimue bared her teeth at him. “We just need another day.”

  “Hold up. I have no idea how long it’s going to take to fix that mess,” Harris said.

  Trajan was missing something. “What mess?”

  Harris smiled and held up a hand. “Kim needs my help with her plants. There’s a blight attacking them. Her coven depends on them. I’m going to help her push back the blight.” He looked down at Nimue. “And deal with the curse.”

  “Kim?” Trajan asked, looking at Nimue.

  Her eyes went round in fear. It took him only a moment to realize what was going on. She hadn’t told Harris who she was.

  Trajan looked at Harris. “Her name isn’t Kim. Her family isn’t going to starve. I’m sure they have fifty other plots just like it. And you can’t stop the curse. No one can, and she should know better than to try.”

  Nimue pushed up off Harris’s lap, fire in her eyes that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with anger.

  “What?” Harris looked between Trajan and Nimue. “What is he talking about, Kim?”

  “She isn’t Kim.” Trajan kept his gaze locked on Nimue as he answered Harris. “She’s Nimue Mahkah.”

  “Damn you,” Nimue snarled. With a movement so quick he was shocked, she reached back, found the end of the gold dart made with the same magic that create
d the blindness, and yanked it free. White light filled her eyes.

  Fucked. They were fucked.

  “Kim, no!” Harris snapped.

  “Harris, run!” Trajan dashed forward, grabbing the second dart from his collar. He might be able to stab her with it, and keep it in her long enough for Harris to get away.

  Nimue turned from both of them and leapt down into the circle dug into the earth. Harris followed her down, then started fumbling at her neck. Trajan had no idea what was going on, but his job was Harris. He jumped into the circle, and had to drop the needle or risk stabbing Harris with it. He grabbed the other man’s shoulder and tried to drag him away.

  Several things happened at once.

  Nimue slammed her palms down onto two crystals that were embedded in the dirt. The earth bucked in reaction, as if instead of solid ground they were standing on a trampoline and someone had just jumped on it, causing the ground to bounce under them.

  Trajan lost his footing, landing hard on his ass.

  His hat fell off.

  Harris whirled to look at the plants. They were shaking, as if someone had grabbed the stalks and was jiggling each one, making individual leaves dance. The earth shook again, and the cannabis plants each grew a foot. A cold, hard wind whipped through the valley.

  Too late Trajan realized he was using his magic—it was unthinking, akin to a fight or flight response. Just as fight or flight wasn’t always the best idea, his magic whipping to life was possibly the worst thing that could have happened.

  Everything stopped. The wind went abruptly still, the plants stopped shaking. The earth was still beneath them.

  It was not the stillness of calm. Like the world had inhaled, and this was that moment before the exhale.

  There was a distant rumble, like thunder, but it wasn’t a sound, it was a feeling.

  Nimue’s head jerked up and she looked around wildly. Trajan could only sit there blinking. He had only moments to live, and that fact was hard to wrap his mind around.