by J. C. Diem
“I think I know what she is,” Rudy said to me after I ushered her into the back seat of the truck and closed the door.
“Then fill me in, because I don’t have a clue,” I replied. We kept our voices low so our new team member couldn’t hear us.
“I’ll bet you a hundred quid that her mother is a dryad.”
“Why her mother?” I asked.
“Because dryads are always female,” he said as if I should have known that. “They’re like sirens that way, but they usually mate with other supernatural beings rather than with humans. Pairing with a human leads to offspring that have far weaker power.” He cocked his head to the side. “Although, from what I can tell, Asha has the full strength of a dryad. It’s been so long since I’ve seen one that I can’t say for sure.” He rarely went to the fae realms. Most leprechauns had made their homes here on Earth. I wasn’t sure why and had never asked. They were a private bunch and kept their secrets to themselves.
“Dryads are tree nymphs, aren’t they?” I asked.
“Aye, lad. They have an affinity for plants and can talk to trees. Some of them can get plants to kill for them, but that’s a rare ability and it’s generally frowned upon.”
It made me wonder what her father was if her mother was a dryad. Maybe she was like me and had inherited a darker side from the being who had impregnated her mother. Only time would tell if she was going to be an asset, or if she would become a dangerous liability to our team.
Chapter Fifteen
Asha hugged herself and huddled against the door as I drove away from the institute that had been her prison. “Am I really a dryad?” she asked. Her hearing was far better than a human’s if she’d overheard our conversation.
“I think so, lass,” Rudy said, twisting around to face her. He sat on his booster seat so they were eye to eye. “You feel very similar to Jake.”
Her brow crinkled and she examined us both. I felt tentatively something brush against my mind, then delve into me. Rudy shuddered as she did the same to him. Power still emanated from her. Either she didn’t know how to reign it in, or she didn’t want to. “I think I see what you mean,” she said. “You’re both different to normal people.”
“Can you tell us why you’ve hurt humans?” I asked. I needed to know how much of a danger she would be before we reached home.
“I’ve only ever hurt people who meant me harm,” she replied. “It started when I was small. My foster brother used to punch me and torment me when his parents weren’t looking. One day, I got mad and pushed him into a shrub. It seemed to come alive and scratched him so badly that he needed several stitches. His parents knew I’d had something to do with it and they sent me away.” Her tone was sad, but resigned.
“Something similar happened whenever anyone threatened me,” she continued. “One night a decade ago, a carload of men pulled over when I was hitchhiking. I knew straight away that they wanted to hurt me. I ran towards some trees, but the men caught me just as I reached the grove. One of them tore my shirt open and the trees came alive just like the shrub did when I was a child. They bent as if they were made of rubber and used their branches to beat the men to death. A Sheriff was driving past and saw me kneeling among the bodies. I was taken to the institute and they locked me up. I’ve been there ever since.”
“It sounds like those men had it coming,” I said, disturbed by her tale.
“I don’t think we’ll have anything to worry about,” Rudy said in a cheerful tone, yet I heard his undertone of doubt. This girl rivaled me in sheer power and she didn’t seem to have much control over it, or even understand how it worked. “None of us mean you any harm,” he added.
Speeding back to Devil’s Peak, we filled Asha in on the events that had happened to the world. She knew nothing about any of it, but seemed relieved that humans now knew that supernatural creatures were real. It would make it easier for her to come to terms with the truth of what she was.
I handed Rudy my cell phone and he called Harley to give him an update when we were a few minutes away from him. We decided to take Asha to the hotel on the outskirts of town rather than to ours. If anything bad happened, we would have a better chance of containing the damage.
I parked in the lot next to Harley’s black truck and we climbed out. Asha held her gown shut again, looking around fearfully as we approached the hotel. Pru opened her door as we neared Harley’s room. She’d taken the room next to his. She took in the tiny girl and the unflattering gown she was wearing and made a tsking noise. “Come inside, dearie,” she said in a kindly voice. “Let’s get you into some real clothes.”
Harley opened his door as well and did a double-take when he saw our guest. From the dazed look in his eyes, he’d fallen beneath her fae-like glamor. Rudy and I could easily withstand it, but it would take the human a while to get used to it. “Is that her?” he asked when the girls stepped inside and closed the door.
“Aye,” Rudy said and stomped past him. “Be careful what you say, her hearing is just as sharp as Jake’s.”
“What is she?” the kid asked, stepping aside to let me in. He closed the door and took a seat on his bed. I took a hard wooden chair and Rudy teleported himself onto the small table beside me.
“We think she’s a dryad,” I said.
Harley searched through the information he had stored in his head. “Dryads are tree nymphs, aren’t they?” he asked.
“Something like that,” Rudy confirmed. “They’re closely related to fairies, but have a greater affinity for trees and plants.”
“Her name is Asha Trinity,” I told him. “She was abandoned at the fire station here sixty or so years ago. She knew she wasn’t normal, but she didn’t realize she was supernatural.”
“She’s sixty?” Harley said incredulously. “She looks way younger than me.” He’d told us he was twenty-four.
“Fae folk don’t age like humans,” Rudy said dryly. “We’ll look exactly the same as we do right now long after your bones become dust.”
“Thanks for the reminder that I’m just a pathetic mortal,” Harley retorted.
“You’re welcome,” the leprechaun said snarkily.
They glared at each other and I shook my head at their childishness. “I think I know how Quin feels now,” I complained. “I feel like I’ve been saddled with a bunch of toddlers.”
“I’m the elder here,” Rudy reminded me.
“Maybe you should try acting like it for once,” I retorted, then smirked at him when he didn’t have a comeback for that one.
I could hear Pru and Asha in the room next to ours. The witch was handing some clothes to her much smaller companion. “We’ll get you some new clothes in the morning, dear,” she said in a motherly tone. “My shoes won’t fit you, so you’ll have to go barefoot for now.”
“Thank you,” Asha said cautiously. “It’s very kind of you to loan me something to wear.”
“We girls have to stick together,” Pru replied. “We’re going to be outnumbered by the men when we all live in that big old farmhouse together.”
“What farmhouse?” the dryad asked.
“I’m getting ahead of myself,” Pru said with a laugh. “Why don’t you get changed, then we’ll pay the boys a visit?”
“What’s going on in there?” Rudy whispered, hiking his thumb at the wall that separated the two rooms.
“Asha is getting changed,” I reported just as quietly.
“She’s naked in there right now?” Harley asked in a suddenly hoarse voice. He shook his head, trying to snap himself out of it. “What’s wrong with me? I don’t usually get this pathetic around women. Not even beautiful ones like her.”
“It’s her dryad allure,” Rudy said wisely. “She’s the female equivalent of Jake. Men will find it hard to resist her. We’ll have to work on a way to teach her to dampen it.”
“It takes practice, but I’m sure she’ll get the hang of it,” I said with more confidence than I felt. She was so unknown to us that I wasn�
��t yet sure if she would be a good addition to our team.
A couple of minutes later, Pru and her charge knocked on Harley’s door. The kid crossed the room to let them in, then stared at Asha in a stupor when she entered. Even dressed in her far too large sweat suit, she was stunning. Harley was only average height, but he towered over her. Her hair was so long that it hung to her feet. He flicked me a desperate look, silently begging me to help him resist her. I wasn’t sure any straight human male could have fought off her natural allure easily. Her tiny size and waifish figure brought out a protective instinct in some. In others, it seemed to bring out their darker urges. Harley was ensnared in the first emotion, which bolstered my opinion that he was a good guy.
“This is going to be a problem,” Rudy predicted.
Pru saw the dazed look in the kid’s eyes, then closed the door and gave him a shove. “Snap out of it and stop drooling like an idiot,” she ordered.
Stumbling back a step, Harley shook his head in a daze and retreated to his bed. He did his best not to look at the dryad, but his gaze kept sneaking back to her.
“Right, we have everyone gathered now,” Pru said. “All we need to do is set Leroy free from the house he haunts and we’ll be ready to hunt down the monster.”
“Have you had a new vision?” I asked.
“Nope. This is based on the same one that brought me here. I saw all of us in an open field, battling something I couldn’t quite make out.”
“It’s going to take a lot of power to bind him to an object,” I warned her. “Not many witches can pull off that spell and survive.”
“I’m sure you’ll be able to loan me enough power to do it,” she said airily waving away my concerns. “We only have three weeks before the next full moon. If what that werewolf at the diner said is true, we need to be ready before then. That means we need the house to be finished and to work with Asha to figure out what her talents are. We’re going to need privacy for this.”
Our base was surrounded by trees. Asha would have nowhere to go to get away from their incessant attempts to speak to her. That would either prove to be a good thing, or it could end in utter disaster.
Chapter Sixteen
Pru intended to go shopping for clothes for Asha in the morning. Harley couldn’t be trusted to watch the dryad due to the effect she had on him, so I asked Rudy to stay behind with her. Harley accompanied me to our base to help with the repairs.
“What’s got him all riled up?” Leroy asked when we entered the house just after dawn. Harley’s face was flushed and he was trying to fight off his magical attraction to Asha even though she was back at the hotel.
“We found the final member of our team in the asylum,” I replied. “She’s a dryad and her allure is similar to mine.”
“No offense, honky, but I don’t particularly find you all that hot.” He flashed his gold tooth at me in a grin.
“No offense taken,” I said dryly. “Most women are attracted to me, although some can resist my charms. Pru doesn’t seem to be overly affected by me.”
“She looks old enough to be your mother, bro,” he pointed out. “She probably sees you as a kid.”
“Maybe,” I said with a shrug. I’d had plenty of older women take an interest in me in the past. “It’s going to take Harley a while to learn to resist Asha,” I added.
“That’s the dryad’s name?” Leroy asked. “What is a dryad anyway?”
I described her species to him while Harley and I got to work painting the attic. We would be able to stay out of the way while the workers got the kitchen installed. Between the two of us, we would be able to get the ceilings and walls done. I would have to have the floors professionally stained. If we tried to do it, it would probably turn out badly. Since we were restoring the house from scratch, it didn’t seem right not to make the old girl look as good as we could.
Thanks to a mental nudge from me, the builders went to work with their usual speed and diligence. Harley and I made sure the bedrooms were painted next before we started on the rest of the house. We were going to need the place to be ready to live in as soon as possible. With that in mind, I brought in another couple of teams to begin installing the bathrooms. After a week of non-stop labor, the entire house was finished.
Pru took over ordering furniture and appliances. She used my credit card liberally, choosing expensive, yet tasteful living furniture, a dining table and chairs and bedroom furniture. She even bought a few paintings and knickknacks to go on the coffee table and sideboards. I left Harley in charge of buying gym equipment. I chose the furniture for the office I’d had built in the attic myself.
I’d claimed the master bedroom and the others chose the rooms they wanted. Harley took the room furthest away from Asha’s. Pru took the one next to mine and across the hall from the dryad. Rudy chose the room next to Asha’s. Like me, he didn’t need to sleep much, but we both still wanted a room we could call our own.
Pru had been busy searching for the spells we were going to need. She refused to allow me to ask Ari for copies of the enchantments. Her pride wouldn’t allow her to rely on someone else for the information. She insisted on finding them herself. I’d had a conjuring den built for her in the basement along with a cell to house Leroy. The ghost had no idea the room was going to be his prison when it became necessary. I’d had to wait for the workers to finish and leave for good before I could make the final adjustments. Once they were gone, I’d added fae spells that would keep spirits imprisoned inside the room.
Asha had been hiding in the hotel on the outskirts of town ever since we’d broken her out of the asylum. She’d been too afraid to step foot outside yet. No alarms had been raised about her escape from the institute that I’d heard. That didn’t mean they weren’t looking for her though. They knew her name, but little else about her and she hadn’t left much of a trail during the past sixty years. While she’d worked odd jobs when she could find them, she didn’t have a steady income. The jobs she’d had were ones that didn’t require her to mingle with others much. Mostly, she’d done cleaning jobs for hotels like the ones we’d been staying at.
I gave the dryad one night to settle in before it was time to see what sort of talents she had. We all gathered in the kitchen in the morning to eat the breakfast I’d cooked. Pru had bought a rectangular table that could seat eight people. It sat off to one side where it didn’t block the flow of traffic.
“If we get to eat like this every day, I’ll be glad I joined your team,” Harley said in approval when I placed a heaped plate of bacon, sausages, eggs and toast in front of him.
“We’ll all die of a heart attack within a year,” Pru said dryly.
“Speak for yourself,” Rudy smirked, eyeing his plate with gusto. He’d conjured up a taller chair so he could reach the table. Even though he was only two feet tall, he could still eat the same size meal that I could. I had no idea where he put it all.
“I miss food,” Leroy said enviously as he watched us dig in.
Asha looked at the huge plate of food I’d dished out dubiously, but managed to eat it all. When her plate was finally empty, she sat back with a contented sigh. Now that she was dressed in normal clothes, she didn’t look so lost and vulnerable. Pru had bought the girl a variety of shorts, t-shirts, tank tops, jeans and other things she would need. She currently wore tan shorts and a white tank top. Harley did his best to look everywhere but at her, but he kept stealing glances at her when he thought no one was looking.
“Now that we have the house to ourselves, I think it’s high time we see your abilities in action,” I said to Asha.
Frightened by that prospect, her amber, green and brown eyes flashed to me. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“We’re going to help you talk to the trees,” Rudy told her.
“I can’t understand them,” she reminded us. “I don’t speak tree.”
Leroy snorted out a laugh, which only the leprechaun and I heard. Pru had only just found a spell book with the in
cantation that would allow everyone to see and hear him yesterday. She was going to travel to town with Harley to buy the ingredients she would need after breakfast. She hadn’t managed to find a spell book with the binding spell in it yet.
“I might be able to help you,” I told Asha.
“What if the trees attack you?” she asked in trepidation.
“I’ll teleport us away before they can crush us to death,” Rudy replied. He squirmed off the chair and dropped ungracefully to the ground.
Leroy followed us to the front door, but couldn’t go any further. Pru and Harley headed for his truck that was parked in the barn. We’d decided the dryad didn’t need a large audience for her first attempt to communicate with the trees. She was already nervous enough and I didn’t want the fragile humans to be around if anything went wrong.
Chapter Seventeen
We flanked the girl as we made our way through the knee-high grass. We were heading for the edge of the woods that surrounded our property on three sides. Rudy had to fight his way through the stalks that were as tall as he was.
“Can you hear them?” Asha asked in a haunted tone when we came to a stop a few feet from a huge old oak.
“I can hear the leaves rustling,” I replied. I shouldn’t have been able to because there was no wind at the moment.
“They’re reacting to her presence,” Rudy said in something close to awe. “I can feel them reaching out to her.”
“What do you hear?” I asked her.
“Murmurs,” she replied. “I can’t make out what they’re trying to tell me.”
“Try touching one of the trees, lass,” Rudy suggested. “A physical connection might help.” He gave me a significant look, warning me to be ready to act. I nodded surreptitiously.
