by Eden Butler
“Inside!” I shouted, nodding toward where Bane had disappeared into the tent, to the din of cracking roars and his own curses that rent apart the night.
“Jani, watch your back,” Sam said, heading for the tent, his hands extended, braced for a hex of his own. “It may not be alone.”
But my brother would not see the inside of the tent or get the chance to attack. He was two feet from the opening with one hand over his head, a great swirl of white light circling from his fingertips when a massive black were shot through the thick canvas of Cari’s tent.
“Move! Down!” I heard, but couldn’t make out who’d made the command and then, with the charge of several wizards and weres I didn’t know crowding into our camp and my brother and Bane charging toward the creature, I was stuck frozen. My gaze locked on the long, sharp claw extended up and its thick flanks flexing as it pounced straight for me.
Thick air circled me as the creature moved, the swish of fur, the flick of saliva and my senses filled with the smell of his earthy scent and the bite of his claw tips as they landed against my neck. I rolled and he followed, but only half a second before my hex flew from my fingers and the dim charge from the subdued lines grazed him as I shouted, “Toirmisc!”
“Gods! No…Jani,” Sam screamed, running for me just as the creature growled, twisting around to see the crowd charging, ready to corner him as I lay on my back with another hex moving into the center of my palm.
Hatred bubbled inside me. Freya’s screams, her laughter dimmed by the animal all coalesced in my mind as I watched it. I’d hurt Hamill with less of a hex. If I had been closer to the lines, if Bane had not subdued me, I could find justice for my friend. But then the creature watched me, his black, dark eyes blinking, staring as though there was something akin to sorrow, to grief lying hidden somewhere deep behind all that primal hunger.
The fury dimmed in me and I could not move, not until the creature shook its head, seeming eager to give up its pursuit of me, and growled, disappearing into the dark woods, forgetting me and the small injury he’d managed to the back of my neck.
It burned and twinged, but it was no greater pain than I’d given myself half a dozen times in some drunken stupor trying to make it into my apartment.
“Jani…where…are you hurt?” my brother said, dropping to my side, throwing back my thick hair to look at my neck. “It’s…not so deep.” He exhaled, tightening his hold on my shoulder, and I held his wrist but did not mention how badly his fingers shook against me.
“I’ll do, Samedi. Do not worry yourself.”
But he didn’t release me or try to pretend like he had any intention of doing so when the weres ran past us, shooting into the forest after the creature. Hamill trailed Bane, who marched across the camp and knelt in front of me, his expression blank, his complexion pale.
“What is it?” I asked, my stomach dropping when the wizard rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Cari…is injured,” he said, looking toward the tent. Several of the Biloxi witches were moving in and out of it, carrying bags and blankets. “It attacked her.”
I sat up, brushing Sam’s hand away from my neck. “How…how bad is she?” I said, feeling sick. She was a rotten witch who probably wouldn’t worry one fig over me, but there wasn’t anyone I’d want to see attacked by that massive creature.
“It got her arm, but it’s not too severe.” He finally looked back me, tilting his head toward my neck. “And you?” I waved my hand dismissing his question and Bane let it go. There was something else worrying him. The tight set of his expression and hard flex in the muscles around his neck told me that much. When I reached for him, resting my hand on his arm, Bane looked down at it for a long time, like he wasn’t sure he wanted it there but wasn’t quite sure he had the strength to tell me not to touch him.
“Malak…and Ethan are missing,” he finally said, standing.
I came to my feet, dusting off my jeans as Sam stood next to me. “No one’s seen…”
“Not a soul. And I can’t sense their signatures. They’ve just…disappeared.”
The look Bane gave me was long and worrisome. Identifying no signature for higher coven wizards could only mean one thing. There was no longer a signature there to detect.
“Bane…” I tried, thinking of something that wasn’t a ridiculous excuse.
“What else could it be?” He tilted his head back, staring up at the stars like there was an answer he hoped to find there. “This is…my fault.” Shaking his head when my brother began to argue, Bane held up his hand to silence him. “You are a good friend, Sam Benoit, but we know it’s true. I called the covens. I called the packs. I put everyone in danger to find the Elam and we’re nowhere closer to finding it.”
“We can…”
“No,” Bane said, his voice sharp. “No, Jani, no more planning. No more excuses.” Moving his top teeth over his bottom lip he looked between me and Sam, likely not seeing us at all, likely working something in his mind that no one would be able to sway him from. “No,” he said again, giving his head the slightest nod. “We do this differently now.”
“What…do you need?” I asked him, ready to argue if he thought of sending me back.
“You, Jani,” he admitted, ignoring the low grunt Hamill made behind him and the way my brother shook his head. “You can still sense the Elam, can’t you? The signature is still strong for you?”
“It’s faint, but if we move soon, I can find it. I know I can.”
“Not alone,” Sam said, but he didn’t manage to get Bane’s notice. The wizard kept his attention on me, his stare even, focused like he wanted to read me to understand how much I believed what I said.
“Good,” he answered, nodding again. “Sam, I want you and the others to take Cari back to town. See that she’s looked after. I’ll send Joe and the weres to look for Malak and Ethan, but right now, we’ve got to find the Elam. We’re running out of time.” He looked up, eyes narrowed as he spotted the moon. “The full moon approaches.”
“I can help…” my brother tried, pointing to the tent. “She doesn’t need…”
“I’m asking you,” Bane said, holding Sam’s shoulder. “I’m asking you to protect my…to watch over my…betrothed.” He lowered his head, tilting it toward me, but keeping his gaze off my face. “For…for the good of the Cove, Samedi.”
It hurt more than I’d let him know. I cleared my mind, bringing in thoughts of Freya and that creature, of the smell of its fur and the fear that filled my blood when it pounced at me. Anything at all to keep the ache I felt at Bane calling Cari his betrothed. It was simple and stupid. It was ridiculous to feel this jealousy about something I’d known for days. But it lay there, in my chest, festering and growing, threatening to overtake me the more attention I gave it.
I stepped back, moving to the fire, stoking it as Hamill squatted across from me, puffing away on his cigarette. Behind me my brother and Bane discussed moving Cari with the witches and how security would be handled. In the end, we would be three. Me, Bane, and Hamill, carefully warded and concealed until we came to the Elam.
An hour later, Cari was wrapped and adjusted onto a makeshift stretcher Sam and one of the Biloxi witches had fashioned out of thick limbs and the unscathed bits of canvas from her tent. She leveled one final warning glare my way, which I ignored, and my brother stopped, loaded down with a pack of his belongings and that higher coven witch’s.
“Safe journey,” I told my brother, kissing each of his cheeks.
He held me back when I made to step away, grabbing my hand tight. “Safe journey and mindful thoughts,” he told me, shooting a look to Bane over my shoulder. “We all have our place, sè, no matter how unfair it is.”
“I think I’ve learned that lesson by now, Samedi.”
“Wi,” he said, squinting when Bane called to me, extinguishing the campfire with a cool charm. “But I don’t think you’re the one who needs to learn it now.”
Sam walked away from the camp,
following the witches, and I hoisted my pack over my shoulders, nodding to Bane when I approached. He frowned, pointing to the loosened strap near the waist and stopped to adjust it.
His scent surrounded me like a fog, and I had to remind myself of Sam’s words and what would happen as soon as we discovered Elam.
“We’re all carrying more now,” he said, vaguely, as he moved the strap around my waist, stepping closer. When he couldn’t seem to get it to line up, the wizard dropped to his knee in front of me. “Well now, this is nice…” His smile was a dangerous thing. Smug and delicious.
Gods help me, my gaze ached for him, wanting to draw in everything I could about him. See all the things I’d missed over the years, remember each detail to keep inside my head when this job was done and it was time again for me to walk away.
At that thought, Bane stretched his shoulders tight and stood, dropping his hands from my pack. “You’re just going to run again?” he said, his voice astonished, angry.
“I didn’t run, I escaped.”
He stood in front of me, hands held in tight fists at his side, and that expression was stern, confident. “What are you hiding from me?”
Just then, I could have told him. I wanted to tell him. I’d have risked his anger, the betrayal he’d feel just to have him know it was me, the lower coven witch whose father dealt with the dirty work in the Cove, that had made a claim on him. And I had let him claim me, back in that classroom ten years ago. But now was not the time. In fact, it never would be the time.
“I have to know.” His fists tightened further, but I managed not to react, other than to step away from him.
“It won’t matter soon enough. We find the Elam and you’ll be married.”
He frowned, as though he didn’t like the reminder, but didn’t comment. Bane was stoic again, and I told him all he deserved to hear.
“I left the Cove because I had to.”
“Because of me?” Why did he have to seem so damn eager for the truth? What was the point? Why the hell did he enjoy torturing us both so surely?
“Because it was the only way for me to survive.”
Bane didn’t answer, and that restraint he held onto so tightly didn’t waver in the least as he stepped closer, ignoring my small protest when he touched my face. “Yes, but you forgot the people left behind to survive you.”
Fifteen
Four hours later, we retired, exhausted, my neck throbbing from the pain and I collapsed next to an oak with low-hanging limbs.
Then the thunder woke me, but that wasn’t the scariest sound I heard all night.
That came later.
What was more chilling was that the Elam had completely vanished from me. The forest grew with the first light we’d seen in nearly an entire day, the night ended, and as the sun rose and the presence of Bane’s energy left the camp, Hamill’s angry, indifferent vibe replaced it.
Then, the thunder. It sounded like the slap of sheet metal, rattled by the shudder of strong fists. It wasn’t the sound of weather or the natural vibration wind and rain make together in a storm. This thunder was transfixed, buzzed like the hum of the ley lines, and when a third and fourth clap sounded again, I knew it was a spell.
“They’re tracking you down,” Hamill said, slipping from the hollow of the still shadowy woods as he smoked.
Above us the swirl of gray and blue crowded in the clouds, pinching out the sunlight to turn the sky black. “Dark wishes.” It was something my father called dark magic made with ill intent. “It’s a special kind of rotten wizard that will trap one of their own in a spell like this.” A quick nod at the biggest, darkest cloud, and the whites of Hamill’s eyes stuck out among the shadows and smoke he hid in. “My father says this type of spell work is the worst, the thickest of bad magic. It requires pain and blood to work.”
“Like the magic used to spell Bane and grab the Elam?”
Hamill’s question made me jerk my attention back to him. There was a hint of something in his voice, some odd amusement in his question that made me wonder if he had other motives for asking it. “Exactly like that.” That was not merely curiosity.
“But why would they want you? Why not try to take out Bane?”
It should have been obvious. He should have known, but as the shifter took a drag from his cigarette and let the smoke billow over his head to circle up into the dark trees, I thought, maybe, his was a game that needed playing. For a bit.
“Because I’m the one the Elam is calling. I’m the only one that can find it.”
When Hamill only stared at me, I focused on the sky and the blistering wind that danced above us. “They don’t want me to find it. They think using this spell will somehow show them where I am. The best way to keep the Elam out of our hands is to keep it from being discovered.”
“You didn’t steal it.”
I shot a glance at Hamill, frowning. “Of course I didn’t. How could I?”
“And you didn’t touch Wyatt.” I didn’t bother answering. Hamill stepped completely out of the shadows, like the slow reveal of a wound being unwrapped, and when my gaze landed on his face, the colored complexion of his skin, I immediately stood. “What?” he asked, moving his head to catch my attention when I refused to look at him.
I’d almost forgotten about the Judas spell. Yet there it was, right on Hamill’s face—a sharp, jagged line smooth against his cheek, running the length of his neck. He wouldn’t know it was there, but I could see it plain as day. We’d been cast in near total darkness for so long, hidden beneath the heavy growth of the forest that the faint discoloration would have been almost impossible to make out. But now, there was light. Now there was truth.
It terrified me.
“What’s that look?”
There was nothing to fear, other than the shifter. The forest gave me an advantage. Hamill was a were in his primal self. He knew the woods, but this was the Cove. This was the miles upon miles of terrain my siblings and I had trained to hunt in, to gather and protect along with the other lower covens. It was our calling to know and defend Grant territory. Hamill might be a natural tracker, but I was an earth witch standing on familiar ground. He would not catch me.
“Where’s Bane?” I’d need to access what small reserves of subtlety I had.
“Hunting shelter. Some of his folk have cabins deep in the woods. When he saw the storm rising, he went out to find the nearest one. Said he’d be back within the hour.”
Hamill watched me as I sidestepped around the camp, my own eyes locked and focused on even the slightest movements he made. “Don’t get any ideas,” he said, glowering at me as though I were rotten. “Bane will have the final say in what to do with you.”
“What?”
“You and your family.” Hamill’s jaw moved as he gritted his teeth. “If I could, I’d rip you all to pieces.”
A swift, dismissive nod and I bolted, zipping away from the camp while Hamill watched open mouthed, unsuspecting and likely confused about my reaction. My father taught me to run and that’s exactly what I did. But I’d acted first, analyzed second, realizing embarrassingly late that I had never seen Hamill in full light. Perhaps that was not the mark of the Judas spell after all.
As I ran from the shifter and that brewing storm, I realized that making my way on my own was for the best. Bane couldn’t help me, not with the Elam. Hamill certainly couldn’t, and so I continued, running through the forest because I needed to. The air, the earth, the rough landscape below my feet—was all a part of the Cove, a part of what made me who I was. All that sensation, all that earthy necessity that combined inside me, in the natural state of who I was. A Crimson Cove witch searching for a lost object.
Then the lightening came, cracking against the darkened sky, illuminating all around me. The low, sprawling hills. The wide stretch of wood and brambles, the slinking, curious eyes of a wild boar that investigated me as I slipped through the woods.
And just when I started to doubt my flight, to suspect it ha
d been hopeless, stupid, to run again, to flee the danger before I could really recognize it as such, the penetrating shock of the Elam flooded me. Its power crashed into me like the lightning bolts above.
“There.” My entire body shook as the rain poured from the sky, drumming against my body and the landscape around me. “Just there,” I repeated to no one.
It was like a fever, high and searing, and my fingers, my joints, ached to touch it. But the unnatural storm, this infernal spell, interfered, deflected that reach, that power from my senses, forcing me to lean against a large, wet tree and funnel all my focus, all my ability into the signature that called to me beyond the trail merely to keep it from dropping away again.
Eyes tightened, the darkness clouded around my senses until there was nothing but the barely visible smooth curve of the Elam’s tortoise face and the turquoise sheen glinting even in the feeble sunlight behind the storm. In my mind, I held the Elam in my hands, its power blistering, burning and so intoxicating, so freeing and bright. It was like pure electricity, some live wire of power that I wanted inside me, flowing through me. Sharper focus, I concentrated on the feel of the amulet that encased the Elam. There was a hunger inside it; I sensed that clearly. It ached and pulsed, a living, breathing element that craved the ley lines. Yin to yang and it wanted that searing power. It wanted to tether it, tame it, and just then, with that strong, blazing energy soaking my subconscious, understanding came to me.
The Elam was mystical, a cord of energy and magic that craved calm and control. It wished for the symbiotic connection to something that was utterly out of control. The ley lines, the Elam, they were two sides of the same coin—one that flipped and rattled, until it finally broke, the other that molded and bent, stilled and coiled and healed.
Gods, how similar that seemed. How ironic it was to me that I would be drawn to something so unlike myself. The very thing I wanted was the one thing that would hold me back completely. Bane was the Elam seeking control, calm. I was the lines craving freedom, reach, the grasp of nothing that would hinder me.
