“Harold’s ready to go when you are,” Alex said, poking his head into the bedroom where I was pulling on my shoes.
“Let’s do it,” I said, pushing to my feet.
He scowled. “You could try not to look so damned happy about it.”
“I’m just glad to be proactive for once,” I said.
“The last time I was proactive, I woke up heartless and unable to feel,” he said.
“Are we talking about the day you were born or the day you chose another woman over me?” I shot back.
He grinned and I felt some of his irritation dissipate. “Let’s get moving, woman.”
I pretended to huff as he led the way out into the main room where Jin and Harold waited. Alex and I fell into step behind them as we all made our way to the exit. It stood open already and I followed the others out into the late-afternoon sunlight. I glanced around at the chain-link fence that bordered the warehouse property and farther out, the other warehouses that lined this road. But nothing moved. No cars, or people, or even birds. It was just still. I wondered if Safar or Harold or even Jin had something to do with the quiet. A way to shield us from anything that might be watching.
My stomach churned, unsettled at how exposed we were out here in the light like this. “It’s fine,” Alex murmured as we stepped clear of the door and turned back to everyone else. “Safar already warded the entire property.”
I squeezed his hand, grateful for the reassurance.
Safar was already there with a small bag in one hand. I eyed it, awed that she could pack so light. Unless of course one of her gifts was that Mary Poppins bag and she was actually bringing everything she owned.
Jin handed Alex a bag too. “What’s this?” Alex asked.
“More tranquilizers,” Jin said. “And your speargun.”
“Thank you, Jin,” Alex said, gripping Jin’s hand in a tight squeeze. “For everything.”
Jin nodded, solemn. “You are welcome here anytime, friend. If there’s anything I can do—”
“You’ve done more than enough,” Alex said.
Jin’s expression softened. “She would be very proud.”
Alex hesitated and then nodded without a word and my heart panged as I understood. Jin stepped up to me next and when he held out his arms, I stepped into them and hugged him tight. “Thank you,” I said. “For everything.”
“Remember to surrender,” he said against my ear.
I pulled away and gave him a smile. “I’ll meditate on it,” I promised.
“Ready?” Harold asked after Jin and Safar shared a long look. She hitched her bag higher on her shoulder, and I noticed how empty my own arms were. My bag had been left behind at RJ’s days ago. Between CHAS and the shoot-out, I could only imagine what had happened to my clothes.
“Ready when you are,” I said and Harold hooked his arm in mine. He gave Jin a salute and we started off with Alex and Safar in tow.
We headed for the trees across the empty street; the same forest Alex and I had traveled through to get here a few days back. I barely remembered that trek now. I’d been so out of it I hadn’t even remembered the thicket of brush we pushed through now in order to reach the widely spaced firs and pines of the woods beyond. I didn’t bother to ask Harold where we were going. He knew the tree that would take us home. All of them looked the same to me. But I’d seen him work. And I trusted his ability.
No one spoke while we walked. The farther we got from Jin’s warehouse, the more nervous I became. Even with the wards, I knew better than to believe these woods were free from werewolves. Not after what had gone down at RJ’s a few days back. If we ran into one now—
“Here we are,” Harold said, pulling us to a stop in front of a thick trunk.
“A pine tree?” I asked, remembering the Redwoods he’d used back in California.
“A Ponderosa Pine,” Harold corrected, ushering us all in so that we formed a circle around the trunk.
“So, you can … communicate with any kind of tree?” I asked.
“To some degree, yes, all trees are sentient. Although, not all will allow passage.”
“Which ones do that?” I asked.
“The wiser, the better,” Harold said.
“The older the better, you mean,” Alex said, looking up and down at the worn tree trunk.
I poked him in the ribs but Harold was unoffended. “That’s true. This particular tree is about five hundred years old, give or take,” Harold explained. “It was here back when the world was still more magic than machine. Those memories are what allow me to search out answers to long-forgotten questions.” He winked. “Or to find those that are lost.”
“Are we going to ask it a question?” Alex asked.
Harold shrugged. “We’re tree-walking. It’s sort of the same thing.”
I wanted to ask how those were the same, but Harold was already laying a hand against the tree and motioning for us to do the same. I laid my hand over the rough bark and watched as Harold closed his eyes, his lips moving noiselessly as he began reciting something to himself.
I waited.
Just like the first time I’d experienced Harold’s magic, the air around me began to buzz and a wind began to stir, tickling my cheek and tugging at the ends of my hair. The trees near us bowed and creaked, their leaves rustling in the gust that, if I didn’t know better, seemed somehow to come from inside the tree we all surrounded now.
“Keep your hand on the trunk,” Harold shouted.
And a second later, I understood why.
Unlike last time, the wind and the power in the air built fast to storm-strength. Soon, I was clinging to the trunk with both hands, worried that I’d slip free and be left behind. Beside me, the others did the same, our shoulders wedged against each other as we all fought for a grip on the wide trunk.
Alex removed his hand long enough to slide in behind me, bracing me and holding me against his chest while both of his hands gripped the rough bark in front of us. I braced myself as I waited for whatever came next.
A pop—like shocking myself with static electricity—jolted me, and I shut my eyes against the sensation.
When I opened them again, we were in a different forest, and I was hugging a different tree. Across from me, Safar was blinking fast and smoothing her robes, wobbling slightly on her feet. Beside me, Alex was white as a sheet and silent as he gently pried his hands free of their grip on the trunk. He wandered a few steps away and bent at the waste, spitting and breathing heavily.
“Well that went smoother than I thought,” Harold said, releasing the tree and brushing off his hands on his pants.
Safar, already recovered, rejoined us. “Thank you,” she told Harold and he nodded, brushing the whole thing off as nothing.
“You expected it to be worse?” Alex asked, straightening and adjusting his grip on the bag Jin had given him. He still looked dazed.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” Harold admitted. “I’ve never tree-walked with anyone else before.”
I gaped at him and Alex muttered something that probably shouldn’t have left his mouth considering we were relying on Harold’s generosity for a place to stay.
But Harold either blocked it out or pretended to. Safar simply pressed her lips together and shook her head almost imperceptibly. I had a feeling she was used to this sort of thing just like I was. It came with the territory of being friends with Harold.
“We should get moving,” I said, hoping to break the ice.
“True. Daylight’s a ’wasting,” Harold said cheerily.
He started off and we all fell into step behind him, assuming he knew the way. Behind his back, Alex glared as he stepped up beside me.
“You all right?” he asked.
“I’m great,” I said. “You?”
He looked at me like he didn’t quite believe me. “I almost threw up from that tornado trip,” he said.
“Really?” I frowned. “I barely felt it.”
“Huh.” Alex seemed b
affled but in the end we could only shake our heads and follow Harold home.
Crisp California air snaked along my arms, and I shivered. Harold’s porch was small but offered a view I couldn’t pass up. That and the inside of his house felt stifling. Maybe it was the crowd—we were four people sleeping in a two-bedroom, roughly the size of my apartment—but the longer I’d sat at the table, pushing my food around on my plate, the more I knew it wasn’t the company. The sky was calling to me. To her.
By the end of the meal, I’d made an excuse and slipped outside to be alone. This calling or whatever it was … it wasn’t something I could ignore any longer. Although, it would have been nice if Hina’s obsessive whisperings for me to get my ass outdoors would have allowed time for me to grab a damned jacket.
It only took a few moments to forget all about the cold.
I took a deep breath and gazed upward at the half moon shining down from between the trees that surrounded Harold’s little house set a mile off the road.
One minute I was here … the otherness of magic tugging at my mind. In the next breath, I was gone.
Raging fire licked at thick woods, threatening to swallow me whole. I stepped backward but even behind me the flames taunted. I went still as a face coalesced through the smoke. A face I had dreamt of confronting since the night he’d shot Alex.
A face part of me wanted to kill.
I cast a frenzied glance around for a weapon but there was nothing. Only fire. And RJ. He smiled, coming closer—and I could see the differences in him. A subtle shift of expression and features—like Indra. He was different, and in the next instant I realized why.
He’d merged.
The aura cloud around him was proof—one single swirl of browns and blues, like the ocean during a tempest. And the storm itself held in his eyes.
I balled my fists and opened my mouth to scream at him. Fistfuls of fur fell into the fire and burnt to ashes almost immediately. I wondered how I wasn’t getting burned with my feet buried in the heat.
RJ came closer, his twisted expression morphing until all I could see was the power that emanated from him. And the smaller energy that came from me. From Hina. It wouldn’t be enough. I wouldn’t be enough. Not while she and I remained separate. And without help, I didn’t know how to unlock Hina and let her out any more than I knew how to put her away again.
RJ knew it too. He kept coming.
This was how it would end then.
My chest heaved with a breath I swore I hadn’t meant to take. Something inside me lashed out until I was driven forward. I fell to my hands and knees, wincing at the sizzling temperatures of the dirt underneath me. But I wasn’t looking down there or at Ea himself. I was staring up at the moon. It was different than I’d seen it at Harold’s house. Full and pregnant and hanging low enough I could almost touch it.
And it was calling me.
No. It was calling her.
I reached for it even as RJ came for me, not sure why I was bothering with something so unreachable, not when death would find me first. And then I remembered—
Harold’s house. That’s where I really was. Not here with RJ in a burning forest. Home with Alex. I was home.
The moment I remembered, the vision ripped away from me so quickly that I doubled over, grabbing the porch railing just in time to keep myself upright. I heaved in and out with heavy breaths, reeling from what I’d seen. From what I’d been.
Empty. Useless.
I had to merge if I had any hope against the ocean god.
And now I knew when I had to do it.
Chapter Ten
Alex
Harold’s phone was a relic. An honest-to-goodness corded rotary that I couldn’t believe actually worked. But the dial tone was proof. Now, I just had to recall the number I wanted from memory. And that was where the trouble lay. I re-cradled the receiver with a frown.
Across the cluttered living room, the front door slammed open. I jumped up and noticed Safar whirled from her position at the sink, a wet dish dripping to the hardwood as we both stared at Sam.
“What is it?” I asked, crossing the room and shoving past her to the doorway—and whatever danger must be lurking in the yard.
“What? Oh. Shit. Nothing,” she said, grabbing my arm. “I promise. Nothing is out there,” she added hastily.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs and Harold appeared, wide-eyed and breathless. “What is it?”
“Everything’s fine,” Sam said. “I—I had a vision.”
“What do you mean a vision?” I asked, on edge despite her reassurances. We were here in Half Moon and that had either been the best idea ever—or the one that would get us killed.
“I don’t know. I … One minute I was standing on the porch staring up at the moon and the next I was in a forest. With RJ.”
“Where?” I asked, again shoving toward the door, suddenly full of adrenaline.
“Nowhere,” she said, tugging harder on my arm. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I saw it, but I was still here. And no one is out there.”
Harold frowned. “You didn’t try the gumdrops in the second drawer did you?”
“What? No, why?”
He blinked. “Never mind.”
“Listen, I had a vision, and I know what we need to do to make this merge work,” Sam said. She was breathless and wide-eyed and now that I’d forced myself to relax—since there wasn’t anyone to kill outside even if I wanted to—I could see she wasn’t afraid. She was excited.
My shoulder throbbed in silent relief. It wasn’t exactly on board with the physical exertion required to attack just yet. “What do we need to do?” I asked.
“The witches,” Sam said, still breathless—from excitement, I realized now. “A rooting power. We need a lot of them if they’re going to eclipse Hina so she can’t take me over, right?”
Safar shut off the sink and came over, wiping her hands on a dish towel decorated with lips. Harold’s decorating sense was strange. “Yes. But your organization won’t let them gather—” she began.
“Then we’ll gather them ourselves.”
“How?” Safar asked.
Sam looked at Harold, eyes gleaming. “Through the trees.”
I nodded slowly, taking in Harold’s face as it transformed from confused to understanding and then excitement. “We could do that. It wouldn’t be easy,” he warned. “And it would take some time for all that back and forth.”
“We have a week,” Sam said impatiently, and I whipped my gaze back to hers.
“What do you mean? How do you know?” I asked.
“The full moon. We have until then.”
“You can’t know that’s when—”
“I don’t know,” she agreed. “But I think Hina does. I’ve been having these dreams but they didn’t make sense. All of them involve the full moon and I can feel it reaching for me. Everything about it just feels … right. I don’t know. But I think Hina’s trying to tell me this is when it should happen.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but then I remembered something Sam had said to me in one of her lost moments. “The power of the full moon, it grows,” I murmured.
Sam’s eyes widened even more. “How did you know that?”
“I didn’t. Hina did,” I told her.
“She said the same thing to me,” Safar said.
“She was trying to tell us all along,” she said and we both shared a quiet look. Suddenly, all of the strange mutterings Sam had done as Hina meant something else. I needed some time to think back over it all, to see if there were any more clues hidden in her nonsensical words.
Sam turned to Safar. “We need to send a message to every witch Jin knows. See if they’ll agree to travel here for the full moon.”
“Here?” I repeated.
Sam shrugged. “It’s not like we have another chakra point close by,” she said. “And we can’t risk getting to any of the others. So. We’ll bring the witches here to our home turf—an area we know well—an
d we’ll make our own chakra point.”
I sighed and then finally nodded, thinking of the redwoods. There was a place that could work. That would have the lingering magic we would need to help us along—and that was somewhat defensible. Hopefully it would be enough. “All right. I know a place.”
Sam met my eyes knowingly. “Where we buried Bernard?” she asked quietly.
I nodded. “The magic there will help.”
She gave me a half-smile that I knew she meant as a thank-you and then turned back to Safar. “Do you think Jin will help us with the witches?”
Safar nodded, her eyes resting on Sam and a clear look of hope etched on her tanned face. “I will ask him.”
She looked at Harold and he removed a tooth pick from his mouth. “We can go in the morning,” he said.
I felt the beginnings of a strategy clicking into place and the ache in my shoulder dialed back as relief hit me. We were doing this. Without a team, without CHAS backing us, but—we were going to find a way. For the first time since we’d fled RJ’s massacre, I felt the smallest shred of hope.
“This all sounds solid,” I said. “Tomorrow, I’ll put in a call to see if we can find out more about what RJ might try if he figures out what we’re planning,” Alex said.
“What will you do?” Safar asked Sam.
“Tomorrow morning?” She sighed, her shoulders slumping heavily. “I have to go face a different kind of goddess.”
“Who?” Safar asked.
Sam shuddered. “My mother.”
Defiance (Heart Lines Series Book 5) Page 8