by Harry Nix
In the darkness, Jacob motioned with a paw and his head and it took a moment for Alex to understand. He was to go one way and Jacob the other. Then they’d attack together from separate sides.
Alex nodded and then Jacob slinked away, moving further around the boar. As he did, a small field of silence went with him. The boar started looking back and forth from where Alex was, to where Jacob was moving.
As he waited for Jacob to get into position, Alex decided he’d ask if the werewolves hunted and killed birds and the like. The idea situation would be that birds and other small creatures didn’t fear them at all. The cone of silence may as well have been an alarm and Alex could see how it was both a help and hindrance when it came to defending territory.
Once Alex judged that Jacob was roughly in place, he started creeping forward, sometimes only a few steps at a time before freezing again. He could see the boar through some low ferns and every time it turned its head to where Jacob was, Alex moved. He knew the young werewolf would be doing the same.
As he crept, he could feel a wild excitement inside him. That feeling of right was back again. This was correct, what he was meant to be doing. Forget politics, forget asymmetrical warfare. Hunt boars, mate with his women, hold his territory!
Alex reflected it wasn’t far off Conan the Barbarian’s motto: What is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.
He shook his head at himself, forgetting for a moment where he was and what he was doing. The small movement was enough for the boar to see him.
With a great roar, it charged.
Shit Alex thought. He was in wolf form, but his human mind had screwed things up. It was no matter though—now the fight was on, his instincts took over.
He ran at the boar just as Jacob, still in wolf form, came pelting out of the dark behind the animal.
Alex had intended to go for the throat but the boar, survivor of countless battles was far too wily for that. As Alex dived, his jaws open, it ducked its head and lashed out with its tusks. It caught Alex in the side, the tusk going deep.
Then Jacob hit it from the back, knocking it over and making things far worse as it landed on Alex, crushing him against a tree. The tusk snapped off and the boar squealed in pain.
Alex found himself in agony. The tusk had pierced his lung and now the boar was free of him, it swung to gore him again.
In the fight with Jasper, Alex had realized a key flaw: he’d been practicing spells in human or hybrid form, the movements designed for hands to trigger spells. He hadn’t been able to cast any while in wolf form. In the intervening week, Alex had rectified that. The stabbing pain in his body was yelling at him that he had a long way to go to learn how to hunt like a true werewolf. He hadn’t used a spell specifically so it wouldn’t become a crutch.
The hell with that Alex thought and cast Flame Shield.
The fire burst out around his body and caught the boar as it attempted to jam its remaining tusk into Alex. There was a hiss and it squealed again as it burned its face against him. The boar reared up and pulled itself away from the sudden fire in front of it. Alex saw Jacob and then felt his shift as he transformed into hybrid form. For a moment he thought it was so Jacob could use his long claws on the boar but then realized it was so he could speak properly.
“Put the fire out!” Jacob yelled.
The boar shoved him, and the werewolf went down with a curse. If it had attacked then, Jacob would have been in serious trouble, but the boar was in too much pain to stay and fight. It had lost a tusk and burned itself. It went crashing off through the forest at high speed.
Alex canceled the spell, but it was too late. He’d already set fire to some dry wood and undergrowth. He also made a mistake canceling the spell before getting out of the flames. The flame shield spell protected him from fire while it was active. The moment he canceled it, he got burned too.
With a grunt of pain, Alex rolled out of the flames and shifted. The pain from the embedded tusk was roaring but Alex knew better than just to tear it out immediately. He had enough magic to heal but first, they had a fire to deal with.
Jacob had started stomping the fire, squashing it out but it was spreading quickly. Alex joined him, blood running freely down his side. It was after his foot burned again, he realized his stupidity and cast the standard Shield spell. Now when he stomped, it activated, protecting him somewhat from the flames.
It took all of ten seconds of stomping and yelling for both of them to realize the fire was out of their control.
“Run,” Alex yelled, pointing in the direction where the forest thinned out.
Jacob compiled and Alex managed to keep up, despite the pain. Soon they were out on the grassland.
Alex wasted no time in sitting down and casting his homebrew Healing Flame spell.
“Jacob, pull the tusk out on three,” he instructed.
The young werewolf must have been spending too much time with Juno.
“Do you mean, one two three go or go on three?” he asked, grinning for the first time.
“No more Lethal Weapon for you unless this tusk is out straight away,” Alex said with the best smile he could manage through the pain.
Jacob gripped the tusk but didn’t wait for a countdown. He simply pulled it out. After he cursed, Alex stuck the flaming finger directly into the wound as deep as he could. As he’d learned from healing Stephen, the spell was somewhat by touch. It could easily heal up surface injuries and leave deeper ones untouched. Alex supposed it was the downside of his hastily written healing spell. It was far more compact than the one Juno used but hers went everywhere in the body, the healing power finding its way to the worst injuries first.
“That is so gross and cool,” Jacob said with reverence as Alex slowly pulled his finger out of the wound, the flame healing at it went. He’d pulled up his spell screen and saw his long list of injuries. The punctured lung was the worst of them, and he’d held his finger in place until it had disappeared.
Soon the wound closed up, which was good because Alex was running out of natural mana. He had plenty of sex magic, a full bar actually, to power it but he wanted to keep it for an idea he had.
“Burning down the forest, are we?” April said from behind them. Both werewolves jumped, surprised she’d managed to get the drop on them.
“Fighting a boar and I used flame shield,” Alex said.
Despite his wound, despite the fire that was now taking hold in the forest, a part of him wanted April badly. She was wearing overalls and a t-shirt and was covered in mud, which went up both arms to her elbows. To Alex, she looked unbelievably sexy. Her pink hair was shimmering in the sunlight and the grave-robbed necklace with the emerald was a deep green set against gold. It had mud flecks on it too, but it just completed the image of April as a forest nymph.
“Yes, I saw, very impressive. Now give me some of that sex magic I know you’re carrying around,” she said.
She didn’t wait for Alex to agree but came to stand in front of him, facing the burgeoning forest fire. It was starting to roar now, the flames growing as the breeze picked up. Although Alex knew forest fires were natural and required to clear out dead wood that would only make future fires more intense, he was glad April was going to attempt a spell of some kind to get it under control.
He put his hand on her shoulder and they easily connected. They were in nature already but now Alex smelled fresh wildflowers and damp earth, the scent of her magic. Music burst out of the air as April lifted her hands and cast two spells in quick succession. For a moment Alex saw the screen above her head, translucent green and spells compiling.
The first spell took half of Alex’s sex magic, the bar dropping quickly. The second took the rest of it and then April dropped her hands, her spell screen dropping.
She turned around and quickly grabbed their hands. A moment later, the second spell hit, and Alex felt like running, anything to get away from here. Jacob took an in
voluntary step away from April, but she held both of them tight.
“Flee, it’s called. Just resist it, hold on,” she murmured in a calming tone.
Alex still had his spell screen up and he saw four question marks change to Flee under his active spell list.
“I want to go,” Jacob said. He was breathing heavily but not struggling against April’s grasp.
“It makes the animals run away, in case I can’t stop the fire,” April said, gently smiling at them.
Alex let out a breath and focused on his mate. Her lips. That muddy necklace. The hint of cleavage he could see. Her eyes. Her vivid pink hair.
“Just look at me Jacob,” April said.
Jacob did as she asked, but Alex saw he was still tensed up, ready to bolt if she let go.
They stood there for a minute until the spell canceled and then April let them go.
Both of the werewolves shook themselves, as though they’d just gotten out of a bath.
“Is that some kind of fear spell?” Alex asked. He knew Juno was keeping spells from him, which he’d put down to her secretive witch nature, but assumed April had been more open.
“It’s a sort of ‘there’s a predator coming to eat you’ spell. It works best on animals and also affects werewolves at about half strength, due to your wolf side. Doesn’t do much at all to pure humans.”
“That was half strength? I was going to sprint away!” Jacob said in amazement.
“What was the first spell?” Alex asked, touching April on the arm. He wasn’t going to give away his thoughts, but he got the sudden impression he was being managed by his three mates, or at least magically so by Juno and April. He knew they were worried about his magical experimentation but also knew why he was doing it: he needed to get good, and fast.
But he’d had hints before that both of them weren’t revealing entirely everything they knew, spell-wise. He remembered asking April a magical question and somehow it had turned into her dragging him to bed and after that the question had been forgotten.
He wasn’t angry, or even annoyed but he realized he was going to have a more serious conversation with his mates in private and put it out on the table that he needed to read as many spells as possible. Holding back because they were worried he’d blow his finger off (which he’d done with an early enchanting experiment) or start a fire (which he’d also done, more than once) or injure himself wasn’t going to work long-term.
Alex wasn’t sure he kept all his thoughts off his face, however. April was watching him closely.
“It’s a weather spell. The first part asks the trees and plants to give up some water to save them all. The second part pulls in moisture, trying to make it rain. It’s a warm day so that’s why I used your sex magic to power it. I’ll show you later.”
Alex saw Jacob smile as he ducked his head. The young werewolf had seen both Nia and Juno topless not too long ago and was clearly still overwhelmed by April’s beauty. Talking about sex magic around him was a bit too much for the teenager.
“I’d like that,” Alex said and smiled at her. Both were being kind and friendly, but they were also holding back from saying what they really wanted, in front of Jacob.
Alex was sure much would be said about using a fire spell in dense forest.
He looked back to the fire, which had now well and truly spread. The fire crackled and climbed the trees and as the wind blew, sometimes it roared. Smoke was spiraling up to the sky.
It was then he felt the chill in the air that was clearly unnatural. It swiftly deepened and Alex was glad he was in his hybrid form. When he breathed out, a plume emerged from his mouth.
“So awesome,” Jacob said, breathing puffs into the air.
Alex had seen plenty of spells, but they’d all been instant-effect ones. April’s spell was slower. Despite not being connected to the magic via her, Alex still had his own connection, albeit weaker, and he could feel the currents in it. The spell was still drawing on the magic after April had cast it, which on its own was an interesting development.
First, the trees and plants gave up water, which was pulled out of them, forming a mist. Droplets began to fall as it coalesced, but it wasn’t enough to stop the fire. Then the second part of the spell kicked in. The cold around them pulled water out of the air. Alex got a vague sense that April’s spell stretched high up above them, like a spike.
He looked up and saw clouds forming above the forest.
Then, it began to rain, light droplets at first that quickly turned torrential.
The fire had no hope against the onslaught of water.
Alex wanted to get under shelter but then stayed put as April spread her hands and stood in the storm, letting it wash some of the mud off her. Jacob gave both of them a look like they were crazy and got under the nearest tree.
“Kinda warm,” Alex said as he was soaked to the skin.
The initial chill of the spell had died away and the rain indeed did feel warm, almost tropical. The fire quickly died down and soon there were only a few embers here and there that were soon soaked out.
“You want to know why I didn’t show you these spells,” April said, now that Jacob was at a distance from them and the rain covered the sound of them talking.
“Was I that transparent?”
Under the rain, April’s t-shirt had gone see-through and her clothes were sticking to her like glue. Those thoughts from before were back.
“I definitely know what you’re thinking now, my love,” April said. She trailed a finger on the necklace, wiping away some of the mud and making Alex realize he may have been staring at the wet t-shirt competition in front of him.
He pulled his gaze back up to her face.
“A Flee spell that works on mages could be very useful, is all,” he said.
April stepped closer and wrapped her arms around his body. In his hybrid form he towered over her. He was mostly healed from the boar attack and despite knowing he was going to get cold and wet his clothes, he shifted back to human form, shrinking down, the shifter charm returning his clothes.
Now that they were closer in size, April kissed him. He kissed her back, for a moment forgetting Jacob wasn’t that far away.
“Get a room,” he heard the werewolf say, just loud enough to qualify as shit-stirring.
They broke apart, Alex ignoring Jacob.
“Like all magics, the more you use them, the greater the effect on you. Nature magics make you want to grow things, to sustain life, to be fruitful and multiply,” April said.
There was a tone in her voice that gripped something deep inside Alex. It wasn’t just about sex. It was the multiply part of it. Having babies was so far on the outer reaches of his mind that it may as well have been on Pluto but... there was something there. Nia’s mother and some of Julius’ other wives had poked and prodded that spot a few times. Alex had pushed it far, far away. There was simply no way, not with the danger they were in. The wolf inside him had a different argument: grow the pack, be strong, make cubs to leave behind if you die.
Alex’s response was: or how about we not die and see how that goes?
“The Flee spell is from a very dangerous branch. Manipulating emotions, thoughts and minds is not something to be done without great caution. Most who go down that path die or go mad. There aren’t even any mage enclaves based on it because so many die or descend into madness. I’ll show it to you, but you must promise not to treat it like the other magics. Death magic is bad enough, Mind magic is far, far, worse. You cannot cast it without first showing me,” she said.
“I promise,” Alex said, and he meant it.
The rain was lessening now and then abruptly shut off. The fire was out but many of the trees were blackened and a lot of the undergrowth was gone entirely, burned away.
“Seeing as you’re here, come help me,” April instructed. She waved Jacob over and together they followed her to a nearby marshy area where she’d been digging in the mud. Small white bulbs were laid out on the grass,
looking like tiny onions.
“Just a few more,” April said, squelching back into the mud.
Then she turned to Alex and Jacob who were standing on the grass, not moving.
“C’mon, get in here and start digging, pronto!”
Alex shifted to hybrid form, the shifter charm taking his wet clothes away.
“You heard her Jacob, get in there,” he said, giving the werewolf a little push into the mud. Jacob was fast though and grabbed Alex by the hand, pulling him down with him.
The two of them landed with a splat and began wrestling.
April ignored them and kept digging, letting them get it out of their system, a smile on her face.
5
Alex found himself under a shower again, rivulets of mud running down the drain. At least this shower was hot—the one outside had been icy.
After helping April dig up roots, they’d returned to the village and he and Jacob had used outside showers to get the worst of the mud off. April had vanished off to a cabin she’d claimed as her own that was rapidly filling with various herbs and roots for potion-making.
Jacob went on his way, the young werewolf looking for food and Alex took himself inside to a proper hot shower.
As he soaped and scrubbed, he wondered about the external showers at April’s home, which had been a school. Given April’s predilection for getting down in the mud, external showers made sense. Perhaps there had been other reasons for it too. Alex remembered when he’d asked April why it wasn’t a school anymore that she’d changed the topic and vanished.
The feeling of natural, normal, right and correct again was warring with the side of him that refused to accept it. He didn’t know why the school wasn’t a school because, really, he barely knew April. No person in their right mind dived into a relationship and within weeks was behaving like husband and wife.
