by Lila Dubois
The wind died, and with it the scent of magic on the air. They were just three people standing in the middle of a forest.
“I’m sorry, Harris. I’m sorry, Trajan.”
As she finished speaking, the blades of stone around Trajan started to waver and ripple, as if she was looking at them through a haze of heat.
Her stomach knotted. She wasn’t doing that. She wasn’t using any active magic at all.
“Trajan, get out,” she whispered.
“Take these down and I will,” came his calm reply.
“I’m not doing that,” she replied with rising alarm.
“Doing what?” both men asked.
The teeth of rock no longer seemed to waver, but instead looked almost liquid.
“Can you see that?”
It looked like the outer surface of each spear was hard while the inside of it bubbled and moved. It reminded her of those fountains where the water was pushed up through a clear tube—the water was obviously flowing, but held in place by the external force of the pipe. As she watched, the individual mineral components started to glob together, and now it looked like the liquid in a lava lamp.
Nimue dropped to her knees and dug her hands into the soil, calling on her power. She could feel the earth under her, could feel the granite of the mountain deep below that. Where she should have been able to feel the spears of rock rising up through the soil and piercing the crust, she instead felt something that was rock-like, but not rock.
“What in Goddess’s name?” She raised her head, looking first at Harris, then at Trajan.
“What’s going on?” Trajan snapped.
“I can’t…the rock…it’s not rock? It’s sort of rock?”
“What the fuck does ‘sort of rock’ mean?” Trajan’s voice was a bit higher than normal. He started trying to jerk his legs free.
Harris dropped to kneel beside her, laying his hand on her shoulder. He followed her gaze to Trajan’s prison of stone spikes and jumped as if he’d touched a live wire. “Whoa.”
“What. The. Fuck. Is. Going. On.” Trajan punctuated each word by trying to pull one or the other of his legs free.
“Now that I’m touching her, I can see it,” Harris said.
“That’s not how magic works.” Nimue didn’t look at him. She didn’t dare take her eyes off Trajan.
“Maybe that’s how it works when you’re dead,” Harris replied.
“For the last time, we’re not dead.”
“You think we used magic, all three of us, at the same time, and nothing bad happened?” Harris’s question was gentle, as if he were trying to help her see how stupid that was.
“No, I think something really bad happened, and I’ve been avoiding thinking about it.” Nim dug deeper into the earth with her magic, trying to understand what the rock spears were.
Harris pressed close to her side, his hip against hers, then slid his arm around and under her. “Stay with me, Nim.”
She opened her eyes to see that she was now elbow-deep in the earth, and her knees, lower legs, and feet were similarly buried in the sun-warmed topsoil.
“What do you mean something really bad happened?” Trajan asked.
She was surprised by his question. Given his current situation, she would have assumed that would be all he could focus on.
Nim sighed. “We’re on the California coast. Not right on the plate boundaries, but close enough.”
“Plate?”
“The tectonic plates. I think that when we all used our magic, we probably set off an earthquake.”
Harris squeezed her waist. “There was one—I felt it.”
Nim paused a moment, concentrating on her unseen work below the earth. This would be so much easier if she could use her sight. “That was just a rumble. We’re on bedrock. But San Francisco isn’t.”
Trajan cursed. “We leveled San Francisco?”
Chapter 10
Nim’s stomach churned as she imagined the buildings collapsing, trapping people inside, the bridges swaying and dumping cars and pedestrians into the unforgiving cold of the bay.
As if in response to her dread, the soil around her warmed. That gave her an idea. She sent the tendrils and ropes of magic she’d sent into the earth to encase the spears of rock-like matter, from where they pierced through the topsoil down to where they emerged out of the solid sheet of rock that was the mountain. It was as if she poured sand into a bowl of long, slim stones, the sand filling the space between.
“I think I can hold it and stop it from reacting to you,” she told Trajan, tipping her head up to look at him. “Can you get yourself out?”
Trajan looked at her, and Nim was keenly aware that she was kneeling, trapped in the soil, while he loomed over her like a vengeful god. “If I can get out of my boots, I might be able to pull myself up on the wind.”
“Don’t sink,” Harris warned her. “I’m going to go untie his shoes.” He popped to his feet and walked over.
“Be careful,” Nim said. “I don’t…I don’t think you should touch the stone.”
Harris crouched and looked at her over his shoulder. “When I’m not touching you, it just looks like rock.”
“What does it look like when you are touching her?” Trajan asked in alarm.
“It looks…alive.”
“Fuuuuck that,” Trajan breathed.
Nim snorted and started to laugh.
“I’m glad I entertain you,” was the Scamall witch’s dry reply.
“I’m sorry, it’s just…it’s been a weird day so far.”
“You don’t need to apologize anymore.” Harris looked up at Trajan, though he was clearly speaking to Nim.
Trajan raised his eyebrows, then shrugged. “Like I said. If I were good at my job, I would have disabled her, rescued you, and we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
Nim felt something moving through the earth. That should have scared her, but it didn’t. Whatever was moving was good, friendly. A second later, vines broke through the topsoil, waving in the odd, jerky motion that once again reminded her of watching a video of a plant growing on fast forward. Harris directed the vines between the spears of stone. The soft, rounded tips of the vines twined around the laces of Trajan’s boots.
“Now that’s cool,” Trajan replied, watching. When the first boot was unlaced he started to wiggle his foot free, while Harris’s plants went to work on the second lace.
Nim once more felt that same pulsing displacement of soil as something moved through the earth, but now she recognized it as plant life growing. Whatever it was brushed against her shin and she yelped in surprise. Her concentration broke and the spears of stone each pushed up six inches higher into the air.
Harris and Trajan both yelled. Trajan raised his arms straight out to his sides. She sucked in a horrified breath. She’d thought she was just holding the stones to keep them from reacting, not to stop them from rising any higher into the air.
The spears along the outsides and front of his legs were slightly angled in and now rose to his hips, leaving only an inch of space between the sharp tips and his pants. The spears between his legs were now at mid-thigh, perilously close to his femoral artery.
Harris had yelled because as the stone shot up, it severed the vines he’d been using to work on the laces of Trajan’s second boot. He fell back onto his ass, one hand pressed to his head.
“Stop it,” Trajan snarled at her.
A sharp gust of wind whipped down the hill, smacking against her left side with enough force to make her wince. “It wasn’t me! My magic slipped, for just a second.”
Trajan’s wind died. “You didn’t make them grow?”
“No.” She sucked up power from the earth only to shape it with her will and pour it out again, filling the soil around and under Trajan, exerting downward pressure on the spears of rock. Colors muted as her eyes began to glow.
“I’m trying to hold it. If it were stone, real stone, I could reach into it, manipulate it, but I can’t
. It’s like…it’s like each of those things is wrapped in hard plastic and my magic can’t get through.”
Harris had stopped rubbing his head, and blinked, looking over his shoulder at Nim. He blinked again, then looked away, his cheeks going slightly pink.
Nim bent her head to look at herself. Trajan’s gust of wind had pulled the tie of her wrap dress loose, and the dress was no longer closed in the front. The fabric dangled off her sides like curtains, but her naked, hanging breasts were clearly on display. Half-sunk into the earth as she was, she couldn’t do anything about the dress.
She looked at Trajan. “Really?”
His hands, already raised, turned up, and he shrugged. “That was an accident.”
“Really?”
For the first time he smiled, really smiled, and it was devastating. He had a dimple. “A happy accident.”
“Quid pro quo, buddy. Once you’re free I expect the pants to come off.”
Trajan and Harris both looked at her. She smiled sweetly. “Fair’s fair.”
“I don’t want to be mean, but could both of you shut up?” Harris asked. He hadn’t sounded that irritated when he’d first woken up from being kidnapped.
“Harris? What’s wrong?”
Fresh vines broke through the earth. This time he had to coax them to grow nearly a foot tall before he could direct them between the space between the sharp rocks, which had widened as they rose, creating a solid barrier of stone at ground-level.
“When the vines cut, I…I felt it.”
Trajan was staring down at him. “And that’s…bad?”
“Yes, it’s bad. A living thing died. Was murdered by these weird, evil rocks.”
“I’m sorry,” Nim said.
“Stop apologizing,” Harris snapped.
No one spoke for a long time. From her position on her hands and knees, half-buried in the earth, Nim couldn’t see what was going on. She pulled up magic through her shins, knees, and feet, shaped it as it passed through her body, and sent it out into the ground through her hands.
“Almost done,” Harris murmured, and she realized Trajan might not even be able to see his feet due to the way the spikes at his toes were angled in toward his thighs.
Nim had forced herself to keep her concentration on wrapping power around the base of the stones-like things, stopping them from rising any farther. If they did, they would start impaling Trajan.
It was hard, but not because of the amount of power she was using. In fact, she was pulling and pushing more power than she ever had before, and doing it without the benefit of a circle.
Harris must have been coaxing backup vines through the soil, because the twisting, slithering sensation of slender, snake-like things moving through and around her legs and wrists was making her shiver. She was not a squeamish person—she didn’t fear spiders or bugs, with the exception of that dragonfly—but there was something about that soft, unseen slither that now set her teeth on edge, when the first time it had only startled her.
Harris, still kneeling before Trajan, spoke in a low voice. “When the vines were cut, it was as if I was cut. As if my finger had been cut off. I’ve been tending fields when they were mowed and it felt nothing like this. I don’t know if it’s because we’re in this weird place, or because of whatever these rocks are, but I… I don’t want to feel that again.”
Nim firmed her jaw. “I won’t let go.” And she also wouldn’t complain about how creepy it felt to have his roots and vines winding around her limbs.
“Done.” Harris sat back and bowed his head for a moment. His shoulders sagged in clear exhaustion.
The wind picked up, and Nimue shivered. Trajan, arms still carefully held out to his sides, was wiggling in his boots.
“Wait,” Harris said, “I don’t think you should use your magic.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, but just…don’t.” The grim tone was so unlike Harris that Nim’s stomach knotted with worry. That worry only increased when Harris crawled over to the closest sapling and laid his hand on it. With truly frightening speed it grew into a nearly full-sized tree, one branch thicker and faster than the rest. When he was done there was a fat, leafy branch two feet above Trajan’s head.
“Can you pull yourself out?” Harris asked.
Trajan didn’t immediately reach for the branch. “Is this supposed to be an apple tree?”
Harris and Nim both tipped their heads, trying to see what Trajan was looking it. She got only the briefest glimpse of a few solid-gold apples through the verdant leaves.
“Um…” Harris pursed his lips.
“Right. Well. One problem at a time.” Trajan grabbed the branch, and with an impressive show of upper-body strength lifted himself straight up. His feet came free of his boots, and he hoisted himself up, pulling his knees to his chest as he swung up into the tree.
He was almost clear when one of his feet dropped just a bit lower than the other as he let go with one hand, reaching up to grab the next branch.
She shouted a warning, but it was too late. His sock caught on the jagged point of the tallest spear. Trajan’s leg came up in a sharp knee thrust and then he disappeared fully into the tree.
Harris was on his feet. “Trajan?”
The leaves rustled and then Trajan dropped down beside Harris. He immediately sat, yanking off his sock.
“Did you get cut?” Nim asked desperately. She wasn’t sure why the idea scared her so much, but she was sure that if he had touched the not-stones, if the sharp edge had pierced his skin, it would be a very bad thing.
Trajan pulled his foot up, holding it with both hands so he could peer at the bottom. “A scratch. No blood.”
Harris crouched to look. “No blood. It barely broke the skin.” He clapped Trajan on the shoulder. “You okay, man?”
Trajan took off his other sock and stood, barefoot. “Now that I’m no longer in danger of being impaled through my balls, I’m feeling a lot happier.” He threw his arm over Harris’s shoulders, giving him a one-armed hug. Harris looked surprised, but not put off.
Meanwhile, she was still holding onto the not-rocks, and kneeling half-buried and mostly naked. Nim cleared her throat. They both looked at her.
“I’m going to let go,” she warned.
Trajan dragged Harris away from the tree and the odd formation of stones. They moved until they were standing behind her.
“Cowards,” she said over her shoulder, but she was smiling.
“Yep,” Harris said.
“Absolutely,” Trajan agreed.
Nim chuckled as she closed her eyes. Without her sight she had to use her imagination to picture what she was doing—the spires of stone rising up through the soil, her magic tightly packed around each. Little by little she started to pull back, starting with the deepest magic, funneling that up to the upper layer of magic that lay just under the topsoil, hoping that by increasing the pressure on top she might be able to force them back down into the earth. If she let go they’d shoot up and stab Harris’s tree, and given how he’d said having them sever one tiny little vine had felt like a finger being chopped off, she couldn’t imagine what several severed branches would feel like.
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed, and her task was made harder because for some reason Harris was still messing around with the vines. She felt them slithering and sliding against her. Biting down on the urge to jerk up and brush at her skin to get rid of the feeling, she continued trying to push down on the spikes of not-stone. Ever so slowly, they receded, retreating into the earth. She was connected to the granite core of the mountain, and tried to have it pull the spires back into itself, but there was no response to her prompting, almost as if the rock didn’t recognize the spires as being a part of it.
Finally she had almost all the power she’d poured into the stone concentrated in a circle near the surface. She opened her eyes, expecting to see only the sharp, blade-like tips still protruding.
The not-stone spires wer
e unchanged. The multisided gray and black flecks of the granite continued to shift and flow within the shapes.
“Damn it,” she gasped. She’d felt them recede. She’d been sure of it.
“What’s wrong?” Trajan asked.
Harris knelt beside her and laid a hand on her back. There was a brief pause, then his hand slid up between her shoulder blades, brushing aside the hair on her neck. He pressed two fingers to the skin above the collar of her dress, and sucked in a breath.
“Touch her bare skin,” Harris told Trajan.
“Excuse me?” Nim said coldly.
“I’m not going to touch her without an invitation,” Trajan said. Nim instantly liked him a bit more than she had even five minutes before.
“I…didn’t mean it…like that. I—” Harris bumbled to a stop and sighed. “You can feel the rock moving if you’re connected to her. Earlier I had my arm around her—to stop her from sinking, not because I was trying to cop a feel—and my, uh, finger, slid inside her top and I…” Another bumbling stop.
Trajan knelt on Nim’s other side. “Give me a minute,” she yelped, not ready to have Trajan’s hands on her.
“What’s wrong?” Harris asked.
If only that hideous creepy-crawly feeling of the vines sliding over her would stop. It was making her anxious, so anxious that she spoke the truth when she otherwise would have instead replied with some caustic retort.
“I’m kneeling, half buried, and unable to get up without risking my hold on some evil magic stone spikes, in between two men who are both physically stronger than I am. And now you’re both going to have your hands on me and it’s just a lot, okay?”
Harris immediately jerked his hand off her neck. “Nim, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She was trembling, and she wasn’t sure if it was from the strain of her magic or the very feminine fear that gripped her. All she could do to reply to Harris was to shake her head.
“What are you trying to work?” Trajan asked briskly.
That jerked her focus back to the problem at hand. “I was trying to push the spikes back into the earth. The granite core of the mountain won’t pull them back, and it should.”