by Lila Dubois
Whatever it was, it had a firm hold of Nimue. He couldn’t dig her out. If that magical spinning disk of death got to them, it would cut right though her arms.
That horrific realization spurred Harris to action. He rolled onto his knees, shoved his shirtsleeves up, and then laid one forearm on her lower back, his arm up against Trajan’s naked side. He slid his other arm under her, apologizing when he accidentally brushed her breasts before pressing the inside of his forearm against the naked skin of her abdomen.
“I can’t cut the flow of magic.” Trajan’s tone was hard and flat.
“Reverse it.” Harris looked down at Trajan’s bare back.
The side of Trajan’s head was against Harris’s stomach. They were bound together in desperation for the second time that day.
“We have to will it back down,” Harris continued.
Trajan grunted. “Tell me what that looks like.”
Harris had to take a precious moment to think. The edge of the disk was now only a yard from Nim’s arms and growing fast. “Think about it like water.”
“I’m Scamall, but I’m an air witch, not water.”
“But you’re aware of what water is, right?” Harris snapped. “It’s like she sucked on the end of a hose to get water flowing, but now that it’s flowing, it’s a siphon.”
“Fine, but I told you I tried to cut the power and I can’t.”
“Don’t cut it—all we need to do is remove the hose.”
“You’re objectively terrible at coming up with visualizations.”
“For Goddess’s sake, her arms are about to get chopped off—I’m having trouble thinking.”
“Remove the hose.” Trajan spoke slowly, as if tasting the words. “The magic will stop flowing.”
“The white part,” Harris blurted in a moment of inspiration. “Her power signature is silvery-white. The disk is white.”
“Yes, yes.” Trajan sounded relieved. “I see what you mean now. Only the top of the power rope is the tube.”
Harris didn’t really understand what Trajan was saying, but he wasn’t going to wait any longer to act. He reached for the glowing white cylinder of power that fed the disk. Trajan had called it a power rope, and he’d thought of it as a ribbon. Whatever it was, Harris reached for it with that strange not-quite-familiar magic.
To his shock, when he grabbed the magic he sank into it, fusing with it. For a horrifying moment he worried he was about to be pulled into the flowing conduit, his magic sucked from his body to power the disk. That fear made him yank back his magic, pulling not just with the earth magic, but his own power. In his mind’s eye, the silvery-white tendril of his awareness that had fused with power ribbon started to glow green-gold, and then ever so slowly the once-straight rope of power bent, as if it really were a rope that was stretched between two points, but not so tightly that it couldn’t be pulled.
A shimmer of blue magic joined his gold, and the white part of the rope bent farther.
Harris saw all this with his mind’s eye, and when he blinked and focused in the physical world he realized the disk was no longer expanding.
Another pull, another tug, and then the earthy yellow power that fed into the white started to dim.
The disk slowed its deadly rotations.
Trajan grunted and the blue power yanked hard, breaking the last fibers of connection between the deep well of earth magic and the white conduit of her power.
The ribbon of earth magic started to fold in on itself, sinking down into the core of the planet. After a moment Trajan stopped the wind, and the sudden silence was deafening. Around them the not-quite-real forest seemed to be watching, and Harris had no idea if it was friendly interest or predatory menace.
Trajan slid his arms from Nim and sat back, panting. Harris carefully repositioned her dress to cover her naked back, then lay on his side to look at her face. Her head hung limply between her arms, her hair a wild, tangled curtain around her face.
“Nim, baby, are you okay?” He cupped and lifted her chin.
“Baby?” Trajan asked. “I thought you were trying to pretend you two weren’t involved. I’d prefer it if you didn’t lie to me.” The other man sounded hurt—not annoyed, hurt.
“We aren’t,” Harris snapped. “How the hell could we be? We couldn’t even touch each other. But she’s…I like her. I told her I wanted to kiss her. She said she wanted to kiss me.”
“You might have Stockholm Syndrome.”
“He doesn’t have Stockholm Syndrome.” Her voice was rough and weary, but she spoke.
Harris stroked her cheek. “Hey.”
Nim opened one eye. “Hey.” She turned to look at Trajan. “Hey.”
He looked nonplused, then said, “Hey.”
For a moment they looked at one another, and a strange possibility occurred to Harris. No, surely not…
Nim tried to move, then frowned. “Harris, your roots are all wrapped around me. Can you move them?”
She thought they were his? Shit.
Harris blew out a breath. “Well, Trajan said one problem at a time. We dealt with one problem, time to start on problem number two.”
Nim went utterly still. Trajan pantomimed thunking his head against something, then said, “What now?”
Harris started to dig out around Nim’s arm. “Let me,” she said. He backed off.
A second later the dirt began to pull away from her, small clumps rolling away from her skin as if repelled by a magnet, revealing the rope-like black material wrapped around her forearms, wrists, fingers, lower legs, knees, feet, and toes. Harris and Trajan both stood and stepped back, giving her space. When she was done, she knelt in the center of a smooth, flat oval of earth. The soil she’d displaced was neatly piled along the edges of the oval.
A stab of lust shot through him as he imagined how easy it would be to turn under and then replant a field with powers like that. Thinking about gardening always got his motor revving.
“Harris, please get them off me.” Her fearful plea brought him back to the issue at hand.
“Those aren’t roots. They’re not plants.”
Trajan looked at sharply. “What do you mean they’re not plants? What the hell are they?”
The black material was rough-looking, like frayed rope, or the hairy, tough root of a native desert species. It covered nearly every inch of her flesh that had been under the soil, except for the places on her hands and arms where she bore the magical markings he and Trajan had left on her. The fibers were not only wound around each limb, but crisscrossed around and between them, stretching from her right forearm to her left thigh, back up to her left wrist and on and on like that, creating a web of material that kept her from moving anything but her head. The main stalks were as thick as his wrist, and disappeared into the earth, firmly holding her in place.
Nim was straining her neck to look up at them. Harris crouched in front of her so she wouldn’t have to do that.
“I didn’t get to tell you what I found when I examined the plants.” He considered touching her, maybe caressing her cheek or laying a hand on her shoulder. He wanted to comfort her. “The blight was gone from the plants, but it was still there, in the soil.” He paused as her eyes went wide with realization. “I’m sorry, Nim. That—” He pointed at the black material that bound her. “—is the blight.”
*
Trajan crouched beside Harris and stared at the evil black root things that bound Nim. She was pale and drawn, her eyes sunken and her whole body trembling slightly. After the amount of power she’d called, he was surprised every nerve ending in her body and synapse in her brain wasn’t fried.
And now this.
As they crouched there, a breeze—a natural one this time—carried a dust mote into a sunbeam, and hundreds of rays of light, each no bigger than the tip of a needle, flashed.
“You know something? I hate this forest. I didn’t really like forests before, but now I hate them.” Trajan dug into his pants pockets. “The magic is
weird, the dust is weird, the trees are weird. The bugs are fucking giant.” He found what he was looking for, his multi-tool. “The ground is weird. The pot plants are really fucking weird.”
Nim and Harris watched him in either stunned or admiring silence—he was going to go with admiring—until he flipped open the biggest blade on his multi-tool. He reached for the ropes of blight.
“No.” Harris grabbed his arm. “It’s not alive, but it’s…aware.”
Trajan turned his head slowly. “Oh, good, all we needed was a semi-sentient plant disease.”
Nim started to laugh. There was a distinct hysterical quality to it. Trajan’s heart clenched. She’d been through too damned much. He was going to get her out of this current cluster-fuck of a situation and then he was going to kiss her and come up with a pet name for her. Something way better than “baby.”
Maybe this stupid place was messing with his head too, because she was his opponent, not the person he was sent to rescue. Then again, a lot had happened—the situation had changed drastically. They’d said they’d stay together. However they’d ended up here, they were a team now.
He picked up his discarded shirt, wrapping it around his left hand, and grabbed one of the strands coming off her left arm. He cut through it with the knife. There was a hissing, popping noise like a drop of water hitting a skillet of hot oil, and then the whole thing started to wither.
Nim screamed, and he didn’t know if it was from fear or pain. He wasn’t going to stop and ask. Trajan grabbed the next strand and cut through it in one hard, clean jerk. Beside him, Harris ripped off his own shirt, used it to protect his hands, and then started pulling at the severed chunks, turning and throwing them onto the disc, which was fucking brilliant. Knowing their luck, if they hit the ground they’d root and grow into something horrific. Trajan tossed the occasional piece, but for the most part concentrated on cutting it away from Nim’s body.
The pieces he hadn’t gotten to yet withered and tightened on her skin, and soon he was pulling away pieces coated in her blood from where they’d sliced into her.
After that first scream she didn’t make another noise.
Harris was whispering under his breath, and after a moment Trajan realized he was praying, an old prayer many practitioner families taught their children.
“North star guide and protect us. Eastern dawn banish the dark. Southern fire warm our heart. Western water quench our thirst. North Star guide and protect us…”
When he’d severed all the pieces that spanned the space between her arms and legs, Trajan snapped, “I’m going to move you. Harris, help me.”
Together they rolled her onto her side, making it easier to reach. Her hair spilled around her like a halo of warm, living brown shades darker than the soil. Her eyes were closed. She was shaking.
Grab, hack. Grab, hack.
“Come on, lady, stay with me,” Trajan said.
Her right arm and leg were free. He pushed on her right knee, straightening her leg. She made a small sound of pain, but he forced himself to ignore it, yanking hard on the last two bindings on her left leg. Harris immediately snapped them up and tossed them onto the disc.
“Only a few more, baby,” Harris promised her. “He’s almost got it.”
“Come on, lady,” Trajan repeated, the term not an accusation, but an endearment. Not the nickname he’d planned on, but things happened. Especially in this godforsaken forest.
Harris slid his fabric-covered fingers under the last coil, pulling it away from her skin, and Trajan hacked it free. Harris turned and flung it with the others.
“It’s gone. It’s gone,” Trajan told her. She looked so small and fragile and broken.
She wasn’t any of those things—she was strong and fierce. He had a near hundred percent success rate with his cases and operations. She was the only person to ever cause a job to go so spectacularly FUBAR, which he took as a sign of exactly how powerful and determined she was.
Yet she lay on her side, trembling and bloody. Trajan reached for her, only to have Harris scoop her up first.
“Nim, Nim,” he whispered. “You’re okay.”
Slowly her eyes opened. They were glassy with what was probably shock. She reached out a hand to Trajan. He took it, and she pulled him to her, until he was pressed against her other side. Her ass and thighs rested on Harris’ lap, so Trajan slid an arm under her knees, supporting her legs, and then wrapped his other hand around her back, his arm just under Harris’s.
Ever so slowly he looked up, meeting Harris’s gaze over the top of her head.
An understanding passed between them, and a silent, uneasy truce was called. They both wanted this woman, and wanted to protect her. He wasn’t sure if it was adrenaline or the intimate way that they’d shared magic that made him feel so suddenly close to and protective of her, but the feeling was real and potent.
As Trajan looked at Harris, he was hit by another feeling—desire for Harris. That was the second time since they’d woken up dead that he’d looked at the other man and felt desire.
“We need to get out of this forest,” Harris said slowly.
“Agreed.”
“Yes, please,” Nim whispered.
Trajan looked around. “Sure. We’ll just walk out of here and nothing else weird or dangerous will happen.”
This time Harris laughed, while Nim turned her face into Trajan’s bare chest and groaned.
Chapter 12
Harris didn’t want to be the one to end the odd, intimate embrace, but the sun was starting to fall low in the western sky. He had a very strong desire to not be in this forest when the sun set.
He used the hand not behind Nim’s back to push her hair off her face. Her cheek rested on Trajan’s bare chest, and the sight made him both horny and jealous.
“We need to go,” he told her.
Trajan nodded his agreement and added, “My rental car is—was—several hours’ hike from here.”
“You think your rental car will still be there?” Harris asked.
“Honestly, I’m not sure. I think Nim’s right, we’re probably not dead-dead, but—”
Nim, who hadn’t moved or reacted, finally sat up on Harris’s thighs and slid out from between them. She scrambled to her feet, her back to them, and started retying her dress. Only when it was fastened did she turn around. “And what precisely is dead-dead?”
Harris couldn’t answer. He was staring at her arms and legs, at the blackened and blood-smeared flesh. “Maybe we should just stay here for the night,” he said slowly. Nim had to be in incredible pain.
“I’ll be fine, Harris.”
“Does it hurt?” Trajan asked.
“No.”
“Either you’re lying or you’re in shock. Neither is good.”
“Let’s just consider this”—she gestured to her body—”my punishment for my crimes. I’ve paid my debt, so now we’ve got a clean slate and we can move on to other issues.”
Trajan leaned forward, planting his fists in the dirt as he peered at her legs. “You have open wounds and your skin in practically black. Burns, maybe. We need to bandage you, and then one of us will go for help.”
“Help?” She started to throw her hands in the air, then stopped. “What help? According to you we’re not dead-dead, but what exactly does that mean?”
“It means I don’t know what we are, but I know you’re hurt.”
“I just want to get out of here,” she said quietly. “I’ll go on my own if you two want to stay, but…but I’m not sure I’m able, so I would appreciate the help.”
Harris could tell those words cost her something. From what little he knew of her, he was sure that Nim didn’t often admit weakness or ask for help.
“Okay,” he said. “We walk out of here. All of us.”
Trajan crossed his well-defined arms over his impressively muscled chest. Harris wasn’t a lightweight, but he enjoyed carbs too much to have the kind of muscle definition Trajan displayed, the bastard
. “If we walk out of here, you have to agree to something,” Trajan said.
“What?” she asked.
“You don’t use magic.”
Nim stiffened, and Harris turned to look at Trajan.
“Don’t look at me like that.” Trajan glanced at each of them in turn. “This place reacts strongly to her magic. So far, my magic, and yours, seem to function normally.” He raised a brow as if asking them to refute what he’d said.
Harris nodded.
“But not yours,” Trajan continued, attention back on Nim. “So if we do this, you don’t use your magic, and you stay between us. We’ll protect you.”
“I don’t—” Her teeth snapped together as she stopped mid-sentence. “I was going to say I don’t need you to protect me, but if I’m not going to use my magic I will need your help.” She raised her chin. “But we have a problem.”
Trajan’s chin fell against his chest. “Of course we do,” he muttered.
“I don’t have my dampeners. They disappeared when we transformed.”
“Transformed?” Harris asked.
“We didn’t die,” Nim repeated staunchly, “but something happened to us. Transformed was the first word I could think of. And like I said, I’m pretty sure San Francisco is transformed—into a post-apocalyptic nightmare.”
“Fuck,” Trajan breathed.
So much had happened that Harris hadn’t had time to really think about what she’d said. Thinking about that now would only cripple them with worry and guilt. “Transformed? Not a bad term. We transformed, the forest transformed.” He held up his hands to show the tattoo-like markings on his palms and one forearm.
“If we can find my hat, you can wear it. There’s a dampener in the band,” Trajan said. “Otherwise, I think I still have a few darts in the pocket of my jacket.” He got to his feet, brushing at the knees of his pants. His shirt was still crumpled on the ground, while his jacket lay several feet back, where he’d clearly flung it before pulling off his shirt.