Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  And women tended to be more interested in sex when they were fertile. That was Nature's little joke, but then, remember She's a Mother.

  Thirty hours from zygote to mitosis, three days for the embryo to migrate to the uterus, one week to implantation, all rough figures that change from one woman to another. Fiona must have gotten herself knocked up the first day she had Brian, to taste like that. Witch's luck, or witch's skill.

  All Maureen would have would be a fertilized egg, at most.

  Did she have the guts to look? Did she have the guts to live with the answers?

  Maureen tasted the coppery salt in her mouth. When would a lab test know, she wondered. When would the proper hormones and other changes show up in her blood, her urine?

  Not for weeks. There was another way. The dirt she lay in told her of it, lent her power. It was her land. It obeyed her. It supported her. That was the only reason she still lived.

  {Look inside yourself,} it said. {A witch has more ways of sight than eyes. You don't need a crystal ball.}

  She lay in her half-faint, voices murmuring around her, feeling warmth, feeling wetness in her mouth washing away the blood, feeling the gentle touch of concern. Brian, she knew. Brian held her. Brian cared for her.

  She'd fucked him. Twice. She'd been too busy wrestling with herself to pay much attention to him in the process. Next time, she'd try to do better. Someday, she might even be able to kiss him.

  You're dodging, the worm said. Are you a coward? Does the witch who killed Dougal fear to learn the truth? She can bind Fiona but can't control her own belly? As Maureen thought about it, sweat turned clammy on her skin.

  She looked.

  She found an egg. It had been fertilized. The helix strands of DNA said Dougal was the father. Maureen's stomach twisted like a writhing snake.

  Abortion? Adoption? Tough it out? She could kill the fragile life with the slightest touch of Power . . . .

  She had started to turn her thoughts down those tangled alleys before she noticed another minute blob of protoplasm. Twins. Different eggs, released at different times. Brian had wound the chromosomes in that one.

  Twins, by different fathers. One she ached for, one she had hated enough to kill. God was such a joker. There hadn't ever been twins in her family, as far back as she knew the tree and all the monkeys swinging in it.

  The Pierce women, she thought, the O'Brian women, both sides, we're small. We're skinny, we're flat-chested. None of those big-hipped big-boobed earth mothers who can birth twins and then go out to finish plowing the back forty with one baby hanging on each tit.

  The irony of it all sickened her. Thanks a hell of a lot, God. I've just swept eighteen years of ghosts out of the fucking madhouse and You go and dump a new load of trauma in my lap. Some people can't stand the sight of happiness.

  And then she let her inner eye wander, through the rest of her belly, the rest of her body, and realized neither baby ever could be born. Her body would reject them. Her body simply didn't have the strength for pregnancy--didn't have the fats and sugars and whatevers floating through her bloodstream to build placenta and nourish one baby, let alone two.

  She'd lost too much weight, between the dungeon and the magic. She'd barely been able to ovulate. Dougal had killed his own son. Brian could try again, next month or the next. "Feed up good and you can still be a mommy," her body said.

  God's own abortion, she thought. Even He takes steps to protect the mother's life. God aborts embryos and fetuses all the time. She remembered an obscure statistic from Dendro. 202: something like 90 percent of the fruit set on an apple tree got aborted, every year. No matter when it starts, life isn't nearly as sacred as some people like to think. There's always more of it than the world can hold.

  Never count your chickens before they hatch.

  Relief jangled with pain and loss. She wondered what they would have looked like, what they would have grown up to be. She thought she probably always would. I'll cry for them, she thought, sometime when I can find the strength for tears.

  The worm stirred again in her brain. It asked, What would you have done? To hell with chickens. Would you have flushed a baby away with a used Kotex?

  Don't know, she thought. Damned glad I won't have to choose.

  She opened her eyes and stared up at Brian. She smiled, weakly, through tears.

  "Sorry."

  He shook his head. "I told you to save your strength. Wait here. I'll get some people and horses down from the castle. They'll carry all of you up the hill."

  Maureen blinked her eyes, puzzled. "Why should they help us?"

  "They need you. This land is still feudal. People band together around power, for protection. You're their protector."

  She swallowed bitterness. "I don't want slaves."

  "Then don't treat them like slaves. They'll stay."

  "Brian, will you stay?" She held her breath.

  He bent down and gently kissed her forehead. "Yes. I think it's time I retired from the hero business. The Pendragons have gotten fifty years out of me. Whatever's left is yours."

  She could breathe again.

  * * *

  Maureen watched Brian's back disappearing through the woods. "Castle," he'd said. Her home. She lay in the dirt and leaves of her own bonded land. She could feel it in her bones.

  The stench of the dragon hung over them like a cloud. As far as the forest was concerned, the rotting meat was just so much food and fertilizer. The way she felt now, though, the stinking hulk revolted her. She was too damn tired to take the larger view.

  David stirred in Jo's lap. "Is that guy really dead?"

  "Which one?" Maureen's voice came out as a whisper, nearly as hoarse as the croaks of the ravens in the trees.

  "The one we grabbed. The one over there."

  Jo answered. "He's dead. He isn't held in limbo, like we were. I felt him die."

  David looked like he wanted to vomit. "We ate him."

  "He deserved to die," Maureen whispered. "Treacherous, murderous, conniving bastard, he deserved to die. He would have killed all of us. Don't lose sleep over Sean."

  Treacherous, murderous, conniving--those adjectives all fit the land, as well. She could feel it. She had some work to do, some attitudes to change. She'd leave enough dangers in, though, to serve as guards against Fiona.

  But her blood belonged here. Brian had talked to her about Power, about Blood, about Old Ones, but the words hadn't really stuck. After all that had happened, all that she'd done, that sense of belonging finally said it all.

  She and Jo weren't even human.

  "You're staying?" David aimed his face at Maureen, but he looked like he was afraid of Jo's choice.

  Maureen answered, anyway. "I'm staying. I'm not crazy here." She shot a glance at Jo. "I can talk to trees, and nobody calls the shrink. And if I think 'They' are out to get me, it's probably true."

  Jo stroked David's forehead. "You're a hero in this land, darling. You've killed a dragon. Bards were always powers in Celtic legend. You have a place here."

  David suddenly looked even paler. "I'm not a hero, Jo. I ran away. I only came back and fought because there wasn't any place to run to."

  Jo laughed and stroked his forehead again. "I'd prefer to live with a smart hero, any day. I've got no use for a dead one."

  "You can stay at my castle until you find another place," Maureen said. "Fiona told me there was lots of room around here, unclaimed land. Of course, she is Sean's sister. He was a champion liar, too."

  Jo stared down at David, her face suddenly a mask. "I don't know."

  She's waiting for something, Maureen thought. She wants him to tip the balance. What does he want to do?

  "Jo," David whispered, "Jo, I like living with four seasons. Let's go home. Otherwise, every time I touch a leaf, I'll wonder if it's going to drink my blood, suck the marrow out of my bones, eat my soul. Even the dirt is hungry here. I feel it. You may be born to it. I'm not."

  A faint smile eased Jo's
face. "Thanks, dear. This land scares me." She hesitated. "No, I'm lying. I scare me. I'm afraid of the woman this land creates in me."

  She finally looked across to Maureen. "You say you aren't crazy here? Well, I am. I don't like being crazy. I enjoyed killing that creep. I even did it twice, it was so much fun."

  Maureen nodded. "I never belonged, back in Naskeag Falls. You don't belong in the Summer Country. We're not twins. We never were twins. We're some kind of mirror between the worlds. It reverses our souls, not our faces."

  The orange tom had reappeared from wherever cats go. She caressed him, snuggling him under her filthy ski jacket and ruffling his fur. "Marmalade is walking between worlds, too. He and his harem seem to be moving in with me. Fiona wouldn't let them just be cats. Maybe you can ship us some cases of tuna or sardines."

  She looked up at Jo again. "Come and visit. Both of you. I promise to make the forest behave itself."

  A tiger-stripe butted Jo's hand, demanding attention, while a gray-and-white feline settled against David's side and started to wash her paw. The three cats purred in counterpoint harmony, almost loud enough to shake her bones.

  Maureen heard voices and the thump of hooves. Brian, she thought, she hoped, she prayed. It had better not be strangers. The cats could put up a better fight than we could.

  It was Brian, leading three horses and two women with food and wineskins. They hoisted their patients into saddles, funny little saddles without any horn to grab hold of, and Maureen had never sat on a horse since summer camp. They handed up three cats, to perch neatly in loaf-shapes crosswise behind the saddles as if they rode every day. Each walker took a set of reins and led the horses off through the woods.

  All she had to do was keep her butt on the horse. Big as it was, the beast seemed placid enough, rocking along in a slow walk suitable for small children and fools and invalids, and she didn't have any reins to worry about so she concentrated on wine and cheese. Good wine. Good cheese.

  Maureen looked up from a bite, and the skin along her spine prickled. A red-furred shape stood sentinel on a boulder beside the trail, underneath a huge oak tree. Maybe the forest had forgiven her threats of fire.

  The fox didn't stir a hair as the parade ambled up, close enough to touch it. Maureen reached out for it with her thoughts.

  Thank you. Thank both of you. How did you keep the forest from killing us?

  {We told them that they could be ruled by you, or by the black-furred witch who tortures trees. Even briars can understand a choice as simple as that one.}

  Maureen nodded to the fox, and the fox nodded back. They had a contract.

  {Welcome home.}

  It vanished into the bushes.

  Excerpt from The Winter Oak

  The Wildwood Series Book #2

  Chapter One

  David gritted his teeth and followed Jo's hand through the darkness. He assumed the rest of her was still attached. Damp, clammy nothings brushed past his face and hissed gibberish threats in his ears. Phantoms teased the corners of his eyes, shapes black against black, yellow against yellow, flowing through the ghost images his brain played to give substance to emptiness.

  The touches, sounds, and shapes plucked at his fear like virtuosi on over-taut harp strings. The air smelled of sodden graveyards, thick and rank in his nose and against his skin as if he had to swim through it.

  Under the Sidhe hill, he thought. Three steps between magic and reality. Magic with teeth and claws as long as his forearm, magic with vampire briars that had tried to suck his soul into the land and spread his life in a blood sacrifice to renew the perpetual summer of the Summer Country. Magic that Jo carried in her genes.

  He felt cold sweat between his shoulder blades and trickling down his sides under his arms. This was taking far too long. When Brian had brought him to the Summer Country, it had been step, step, step, and they were there, sunshine and green grass and warm sweet breezes contrasting with the icy mess of winter in Maine. David hadn't even had time to be scared. That had happened later.

  Jo's hand gripped his, tight enough that his bones creaked. It tugged, and he took another step and another. The darkness held firm. Hot breath chuckled in his left ear, and feathery fingers brushed across his eyes like someone testing ripe fruit in the market. He flinched.

  Jo scared him, but not enough to give her up. The other Old Ones, Dougal and Sean and Fiona, they were a different can of worms. No wonder Irish tales painted the Sidhe as lacking heart and soul. Anything they could do, they would do.

  Tunnels seemed to open to one side or the other in the black, wet air, felt or heard in receding echoes rather than seen. Despair flooded over him. They were lost.

  And then orange light flickered in the corner of his eye, a rectangle barred by darkness. He blinked, his brain whirled and re-set, and he recognized the window in Jo's living-room. Venetian blinds, half open, with the sodium streetlight beyond.

  Night, not the perpetual velvet blackness of the space between the worlds.

  Home.

  He sagged with relief, hugging the small woman who had just dragged him headlong through the caves of hell. She shivered in his arms.

  "Jo, you may be the sexiest woman alive, but sometimes you scare the shit out of me. I swear you'd teach a kid to swim by throwing him off the dock."

  She stepped back half a pace in his arms, enough room to wipe her sleeve across her forehead. "No. But I never did have training wheels on my bike."

  "What took so long?"

  He felt her head shake in the gloom. "So long? It was three steps, just like Brian said."

  "Next time, try shorter steps. I feel like I just chased you for half a mile." He paused and took a deep breath, calming his heart. "Cancel that. Ain't gonna be any 'next time.' I'll take the rest of my fairy tales out of books."

  She seemed to be looking at him funny, as if she was having second thoughts about getting tied up with a pureblood human coward. But he'd never claimed to be anything else. He wasn't a natural warrior like Brian, handling weapons like they'd been forged to fit his hands, his eyes always weighing every scene for attack or defense, his body rock-hard from running ten miles around the walls of Maureen's castle each morning without breaking a sweat. Guitar players don't need that kind of training.

  She shook her head, sniffed, and started looking around. The Old Blood had sensitive noses. Then David noticed it, as well -- something thoroughly dead.

  "Oh, shit. The garbage." And dishes petrified in the sink, milk curdled in the fridge, last night's lasagna two or three weeks gone and furry. He'd walked over to Maureen's place to check with Brian, because Jo hadn't come home that night. And they'd stepped out of the world without coming back here. God only knew what mutated life-forms now lurked in the potato salad.

  Jo groped for the light switch and flipped it on. David blinked like an owl at the sudden glare, catching flashes of the room as his eyes adjusted. Something didn't look right, but he couldn't pin it down.

  Dishes waited in the drainer, clean. The garbage pail was empty, with a fresh liner. Jo stepped over to the refrigerator and swung it open. No milk, no meat, no fresh vegetables or cheese, just a few unopened cans of soda and the like. Jo shut the door and stood staring at the answering machine. The lid was up and the tape cassette gone. She pulled out the drawer underneath the phone, fumbled for her emergency cash envelope, and checked it. It looked full.

  "Damnedest burglars I've ever seen, washing dishes and leaving the money."

  She stared at the phone for a moment and stood like a statue, plotting her next move. That girl could be ice if she wanted to, just like the Sidhe, no reaction or a flip comment where a sane person would dash around in panic. David headed for the apartment door, to check with the Mendozas and use their phone.

  Yellow plastic streamers barred the door, "Police Line" in reversed letters in the hall light. "Jo . . ."

  He felt her behind his shoulder, tallying up the evidence like a cyborg. "How long have we been gone?"
<
br />   Brigadoon. Rip Van Winkle. Spend a night in Faerie and find a lifetime has passed when you return.

  David clenched his fist and gnawed on a knuckle, staring at the door. A glued paper seal had joined the frame to the metal door, someone's signature now split by a rip through the middle. Proof the door had been opened, tampering with evidence. Jo studied it, calmly adding another tick-mark to her checklist.

  She's inhuman. He shuddered, realizing that the phrase meant just what it said.

  She nodded, computer run complete. "Okay, we need some excuse for opening the door, some way to toss off a few weeks without a story."

  She glanced up. The stairwell light flashed blue and went dark, filament burned out. She flipped the kitchen light off, plunging them back into night. Enough light filtered up from the second floor so that David could see her climbing through the tape, leaving it in place. He followed her, numb, and pulled the door closed behind him.

  She ticked off one finger on her right hand. "First thing we do, we buy a pint of booze and split it. We're drunk. Dark hall, drunk, we didn't notice the tape and seal in time. No criminal intent, no crime."

  Second finger. "We've been drunk or stoned for weeks, no idea how long. Off on a trip with Brian and Mo, celebrating. They're engaged, we're engaged, big party, got crazy and took it on the road -- out west, down south, Canada, don't have a clue where and when, you and I tell different stories, no problem."

  Third finger. "They've just dropped us off, Brian drove away, no idea where they're going. I've got to get back to my job, you've got gigs to play. Gonna be a hell of a hangover."

  * * *

  The chairs hurt. David couldn't recall anyone mentioning that in the detective movies, but his ass said that the chair had been designed to be uncomfortable. And they weren't even "under interrogation," just sitting in a cluttered detective's office across the government-issue gray steel desk from a polite cop. Everyone had been polite, and he and Jo were still together rather than split apart to see if their stories matched. He wondered how long that would last.