She swore before blowing out a slow breath, her shoulders slumping. “It isn’t poison.”
“Then what is it?”
“A spell.”
A spell? “But the man who did this isn’t a witch or a mage or anything. I didn’t even feel him use magic. He shot energy into me like a knife, not to curse me or whatever.”
“If those gates he can effectively hide tell us anything, it’s that he is a master at spells, so I’m sure he masked it with his energy and while damaging you, left the magic behind to fester.”
I swallowed. “Okay. And what kind of spell is it.”
She blinked down at me, tears in her eyes. My chest grew heavy, and if I had been one to comfort people, I would have pulled her into a hug and let her know everything would be okay. But that wasn’t me, so I just stared at her, waiting for her to gather herself again and tell me the truth.
“What’s supposed to happen is that the spell worsens, probably for a couple of days.” She stopped and swallowed. “It would weaken you and then when you are too weak to fight back, the spell goes into the final stage.”
“What is the final stage?”
“Control.”
I stared at Cecil as her words sunk in. Finally, I broke out into laughter.
“This isn’t a laughing matter.”
“It kind of is. I mean, come on. Can you really picture someone controlling me? Shit, I would probably drive him crazy the moment he tried to tell me to do anything.”
She shook her face, blinking furiously. “Do you have any herbs?”
I pointed to a door that led to the pantry. She got up and stalked over, yanking open the door and disappearing inside. She was in there for a few moments before coming out with a handful of jars.
“Your supplies are better than my own. Why have you never told me?”
I shrugged. “I go into the Woodlands a lot. Some of that stuff I can sell for a good chunk of change. Others are just natural to have around.”
I could see she wanted to ask questions, but she knew better. We were going into my past and that was territory she’d learned to stay away from. She nodded and put it all down.
“Well, you have everything I need, so there’s no need to go to my house.” She dug in my cupboards and pulled out pots and bowls, cutting boards, knives, and other tools I didn’t even know were in my kitchen.
Before she got too busy, she gave me a bowl of soup. She took a moment to stare at everything, her eyes brimming with knowledge. Sighing, she reached up and ran a hand through her reddish brown curls before reaching into her jean shorts and pulling out a clip. In seconds, her hair was up and out of her face, her expression serious. Cecil only put her hair up like that when she was about to focus on anything witch related, like spells or potions.
Then she got to work. Her face blanked out as she expertly moved around, cutting herbs, mixing ingredients, and whispering words I couldn’t hear. The room filled with the smell of woodbine, rosemary, honey, and other sickly sweet plants. My nose twitched, but I didn’t say anything and let her work.
I even dozed off while I waited.
A couple hours later, she put a cup in front of me and cocked her eyebrow, daring me to not drink it.
I lifted it up and took a deep breath. “What the hell? Did you just dump a whole bag of sugar into water or something? This smells sweet.”
“This is going to stop that damn spell from trying to take you over. It’ll replenish your energy and act as an extra layer against the spell until your body can get rid of it.”
“I’ll live without the drink.”
She shrugged, acting nonchalant. “Yes, but I imagine you’ll be too weak to get out of the bed for a few days. Feeble. Helpless. Unable to stop anyone, including Baron, from entering your home and doing what they want with you.”
Cold dread ran down my body as I stiffened at the thought. I did not do helpless and Cecil knew that. I refused to be helpless. I eyed her. She kept her face blank.
“Well played,” I grumbled and chugged down the drink to get it over with. The natural herbs went down smoothly, already doing what they were created to do: heal me.
I swear my eyes crossed, and my body shook from all the sweetness in that drink.
“Happy now?” I asked.
She nodded. “Now go to bed. I’ll keep an eye on you and leave when I know you’ll be okay. Remember, take tomorrow off. Go to the Woodlands.”
“Fine.”
I got up and shuffled to bed. She followed me and made sure I made it under the covers before she disappeared back downstairs. I closed my eyes and was out within seconds.
Chapter Thirteen
I remember deep anger swirling through the pit of my stomach. I stared up at him. The one who broke me. Changed me. Warmth enveloped my body. The wind howled. I screamed and became something primal. I remember his eyes widening in surprise. But then, he smiled. And we fought.
—Nyssa’s Journal
The next day, I was in the Woodlands blowing off steam from the last couple of days, like I had promised Cecil. Not that it was hard to listen to her in this case. The sun was high, the air muggy, with no wind to offer a reprieve from their onslaught of slow torture. Cecil was right. I needed to come out here.
I did feel less tired after she put me to bed last night. I could focus better, I didn’t hurt, and all this fresh air was doing wonders, clearing my head so I could think. It was like the farther away from the city I was, the freer.
When I came out here to recollect myself, I forgot about the city. There was always that risk of not going back because, let’s face it, I didn’t fit there. The city wasn’t for me. But something drew me there, and always dragged me in. Was it Cecil? Or something that hadn’t happened yet? Maybe because of the lost memories that refused to be remembered? Either way, I always returned.
I ignored the sound of a branch cracking behind me, already aware of the beast that was watching me curiously. It wasn’t a threat.
There were other creatures hanging around too, some curious, but most wary. I had a bigger reputation in the wild than I did in the city. Every one of them knew I was bigger and badder than them and kept their distance. Even if no one knew what I was, we all knew I could still end them and would enjoy every second of it.
Truthfully, it wasn’t that I was the biggest and baddest around, but that I truly didn’t give a shit. It was them or me, and my determination ensured it was always me who came out on top.
The Woodlands had always been a place capable of relaxing me despite its well-deserved reputation. I didn’t know why. Maybe was the wildness, the survival of the fittest, the primal urges that coated the air. Or maybe it was because I lived in here for so long. This was home. I understood this place.
Not the city. Despite living in one for six years, I still struggled to understand the ways of the humans and the beings who made a home among them. I couldn’t grasp that kind of pack mentality. I didn’t get why we had to treat the humans like precious little children, holding their hand through their troubles. There were more of them in the cities than of us, why did we have to take care of them? For every being, there were about five humans. They were cockroaches and like cockroaches, I just shrugged them off. I did my job and moved on.
If I wasn’t doing my job or basking in my own primal sexual urges or wandering around, then I was watching, trying to figure out why a woman would let a man beat on her, why a teenager would take drugs that would send her right back to the hospital, or even why a mother would allow her child to talk down to her because she wasn’t giving him enough in life. I just didn’t get it. The entitled lived in cities.
If you wanted something, you worked to get it your own damn self. I would never let a man lay their hand on me without retaliation, and I definitely wasn’t so suicidal that I would put myself into a hospital because of drugs. My suicidal limit cap was running into a crowd of bad guys and beating the crap out of them. Not self-harm.
I came to a riverb
ed and settled down on a boulder to take a break and relax. The hiking was great, exerting my body to its limit, helping to clear my mind of the last few days. No longer did my thoughts whirl around Baron and what he wanted from me. I stretched myself out and lay back, lifting up my camera to take a picture of the trees creating a frame around a slab of blue sky.
After a few photos, I lowered my camera and just stared up at the sky, taking in the hues of blue and green, the birds, both smaller than my hand and bigger than my car, flying around, and the clouds that drifted by until I dozed off.
A buzzing noise jerked me from my sleep. The persistence wouldn’t stop, and I finally caved in. Normally, I would leave my phone at home to completely sever myself from the human world, but with all the gates and attacks going on, I figured I should be “on call” in case I was needed again. I couldn’t allow myself to disconnect from everyone, and the fancy schmancy phone made that connection easy to maintain.
“Yeah,” I answered, a little drowsy, the sleep determined to keep me under for at least another hour or so.
“Nyssa?” a familiar voice said. Maura. Her voice was strained with a little dose of panic.
“Yeah, what’s wrong?”
“Our coven has been attacked. It’s bad.”
I was up and already on my way to my car. Normally, I wouldn’t care about the attack. It wasn’t my problem. But an unfamiliar emotion filled my chest, forcing me to move and get there. There was something about Maura’s voice.
“How bad?”
“Bad. We need you to find this gate for us before it happens again.”
“On my way. I’m out of the city, but I should be there in a couple of hours. Is that fine?”
There was a moment of silence overlaid with some background noise of pain and suffering. What the hell happened?
“Yes, that will be fine. I think they will not attack us again so soon. But please hurry. It is also my understanding that you are good friends with Cecil?”
My heart tightened. “Yes. She okay? Is she hurt?”
“I’m sorry. We are doing everything we can. We weren’t prepared for this attack and while we are witches, we’re an all-female coven and our talents are not defensive. We didn’t have much protection against them, our spells too weak...”
I tuned her out, my feet moving on my own.
I didn’t remember running through the Woodlands.
Getting in my car.
Driving.
I didn’t remember when I got back to the city.
Or pulled up to the little witch community in the middle of it.
I definitely didn’t remember how I found myself standing over Cecil.
Over her broken body.
Her skin was gray, her eyes closed, but I could see movement underneath her lids as she fought to stay alive. Her breathing came out raspy, her body covered in blood, and what I could see underneath that were flesh and bone. Something or someone had torn into her, cut her. Played with her.
And then left her for dead.
Maura stood next to me, still talking as if she’d never stopped since I had answered the phone. My brain didn’t process her words, too busy trying to understand why the hell Cecil was on her deathbed.
Life was supposed to flash before your eyes when you were dying, not watching a loved one die, but still my life with her flashed through my eyes. Her dragging me out of the Woodlands the first time we met. Her tending carefully to my wounds. Me lashing out at her, full of so much distrust. I didn’t understand anything back then and was a true bitch. I didn’t understand city life, all the people and creatures around me. I couldn’t understand why no one was tearing each other apart for being so close to one another. The Woodlands was all about territory, staking your claim and defending it to the death. City life was about sharing. I couldn’t understand that, and she patiently taught me that not everyone was out to get me. I was wild, and she tamed me. She found other outlets for me. Sexual pleasures. The gates. The world to travel. The camera. I thought the camera was her best idea yet. The camera kept me grounded. Made me able to show her the beauty she wasn’t able to grasp or see in the Woodlands. Who was I to become if she died? It was inconceivable. I needed her.
“Nyssa,” Maura said, touching my arm, and I finally took in my first real breath since she told me Cecil was hurt.
“What?” I had to swallow a couple of times, my voice croaky. “How...?”
I couldn’t find the words I needed. I was a close friend with death, and yet I’d never had to deal with this kind. At least not from what I could remember. I always kept people away, always alone. Cecil taught me it was okay to have allies, even friends. Not family. I still struggled with that. Hell, I struggled with friends, but Cecil... She was someone special.
Maura seemed to understand my predicament. Her eyes lit up with the knowledge that I had never lost someone close to me before, and that I didn’t have a way to handle it.
She tried to pull me away from Cecil. I refused to budge.
“I need to tell you a few things, come with me. Please.” The please was what drew me out of my little hellhole. When she tried to bring me back out the door, I let her. It was okay. I would be back. No way in hell was I going to let Cecil out of my sight for very long. If she couldn’t take care of herself, then I would have to.
Maura brought me into a huge living room. I was too worked up to sit so I just stood there, not really taking anything in.
“We had to put her into a stasis.”
I just blinked at her.
“We put her in a... healing sleep? In a little pocket of a different realm to prevent her from dying. She’s been poisoned by something her attacker had on his blade.”
“Those wounds were done by a poisoned sword?”
She nodded. “Not all of them. But the last guy to attack her used a poisoned sword. We don’t know what kind of poison he had on his blade, and it’s eating at her from the inside out. That’s why she looks so damaged. By the time we could get her back here and understood what was going on, the damage was done. She’s in the sleep for now but we can’t keep her there forever. We need to find out what the poison was. My coven sisters are looking into it now; it’s one we’ve never dealt with before.”
“How long do we have?”
“We can keep her in stasis for two weeks. Tops. But that could change at any moment.”
I nodded.
Two weeks. I had time.
Maura reached out and touched my hand, trying to show compassion, which I didn’t want. “You need to prepare yourself. She might not pull through.”
“Don’t say that,” I said, my voice dead as I yanked out of her touch. My insides swirled with my thoughts and emotions, rising up and up. This time, with heat, I said, “Don’t you dare say that.”
Not about Cecil. Not about a woman as amazing as her.
She had to live.
She had to.
My chest squeezed tight, and I gripped my sweat-dampened shirt.
Something in me snapped. I let out a loud, frustrated growl, not wanting her pity or her understanding. Not wanting her trying to placate me or treating me like a girl-child who’d just lost her mother. I wasn’t a girl-child. Hell, even when I was one, I wasn’t. I was a survivor. Even so, I needed Cecil up and active. I needed her laughing at a stupid joke I made or explaining some humane concept I didn’t understand.
The darkness within pulsed with each thought, as if agreeing with my assessment. We needed Cecil.
We needed her to hang out with us at the park while we checked out both men and women and debated why one was better over the other. We needed her. Her kindness. Her understanding.
Her warmth.
Not Maura’s.
The hot darkness reached its peak and whipped out from me with a scream. I lost control and a red-hot pain I wasn’t even aware of rose. It had always existed, and Cecil’s situation caused a chink in my armor for it to slip through. The air filled with this mysterious existence
as it smashed out around me. I didn’t even try to control it, I was lost in the painful emptiness that Cecil’s dying body created in me. I heard Maura screaming something, but I heard nothing. I needed Cecil. Not Maura.
Cecil.
She held me together.
The intensity in the room increased, and people were yelling. How did people get through this? How did they handle losing their babies, best friends, lovers, families? Why would they put themselves in that kind of position?
Why did I put myself in this kind of position?
Again.
A flash of a memory came to the front of my mind and disappeared but not quite fast enough. It was of bodies of familiar people I couldn’t remember, scattered on a blood-splattered floor. But what really got me were the feelings I had in that memory. The same. I felt the same as I did now.
I cried out and fell to my knees, holding onto my chest as waves of the heated darkness expelled from my body in response to the frantic and aching beat of my heart. I burned. I hurt and I burned.
Arms wrapped around me and yanked me into a hard chest. Still I saw nothing, just the pain. I needed her awake. I needed to hear her laughing and teasing.
“—kay. It’s okay.” The voice was gruff, tucked into my neck, his breath warm across my skin.
I shook frantically. No. No, it wasn’t.
I didn’t understand. I couldn’t understand. Why was I like this? I was tougher. I needed to be tougher.
Breathe.
You’re alive.
Breathe.
You’re not hurt.
Breathe.
You will get through this.
Breathe.
You always do.
Slowly I climbed out of the emotional wreck within me, and my vision cleared.
I recognized the arms and followed them up until my head was turned, practically nose-to-nose with Landus. Releasing a soft sigh, I tilted my head just enough for our lips to touch lightly. The contact alone was enough to bring me back to myself as my lips tingled from the brush. He stiffened but didn’t pull away, nor did he move closer. I pushed into him, using him to ground myself and to pull myself back together. Even as I deepened the kiss, he was hesitant. Only after I growled did he finally respond with a soft rumble in his chest that sent vibrations through my back.
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