by Lila Dubois
Table of Contents
Excerpt
Witches In the Weeds
Blurb
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Second Epilogue
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Note from Lila
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Excerpt
Harris was hurting by the time they’d reached the car-sized boulders Trajan said hid the entrance to the cave. Every part of him either throbbed, ached, burned, or stung, and he could no longer remember the exact root issue for each individual pain point.
“Let me go first.” Trajan looked appraisingly at him. “Or maybe you should go first and I’ll protect the rear.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Trajan looked wry. “Last time I let you stay back, you got possessed by an evil ghost thing.”
“And you would have been able to, what, not end up possessed?” Harris was too tired to be really upset.
Trajan sighed. “Just stay with me.” He took Harris’s hand, lacing their fingers together. The faint irritation Harris had felt toward the other man disappeared, to be replaced by a tingling warmth.
Harris followed Trajan into a narrow space between the boulders. He felt rather than saw it when they passed through into a more open area. Trajan moved a bit and then the walls of the cave started to glow, brightening bit by bit rather than flicking on to full brightness immediately.
He looked around, mildly curious. When he caught sight of Nim, he stopped. “Nim?”
“Fuck.” Trajan released Harris’s hand and approached Nimue. He walked with his knees bent, his hands slightly out from his sides. It was the posture you used when you were approaching something, or someone, dangerous.
Looking at her now, Harris was surprised that he’d mistaken the woman in the water for Nim—Trajan was right, her arms and legs were marked by large swaths of black skin. She was completely naked, her dress and panties puddled on the floor at her feet. She was facing away from them, and the smooth white expanse of her upper thighs, butt, and back was startlingly pale compared to her marked limbs. She stood with her hands pressed against the stone wall at the rear of the cave.
“It’s not right,” she said.
“Lady, lady,” Trajan crooned. “It’s okay. Why don’t you take a step back? It’s too cold to be naked. Come here and I’ll warm you up.”
“I’m warm enough.” She dropped one hand from the back wall of the long, narrow cave.
“Nimue,” Trajan barked. “Do not remove the needle.” He didn’t look away from Nim, but waved Harris forward. Harris didn’t know what was going on, but he mirrored Trajan’s movements, coming up on her other side.
“Hey, baby,” he said. “It’s me. It’s Harris.”
Nim turned, her eyes bright with what was probably fever. “Harris. You’re okay.”
“Yes, I’m okay. We’re all okay.” He held out his hand.
For a moment he thought she’d take it, but she turned back to the rock. He could now see that her hand was holding the end of the gold pin she’d pierced into the skin below her belly button.
“It isn’t right,” she said.
“What isn’t?”
“This.” She patted the stone with her free hand. “This isn’t how caves form.”
“Why don’t you take a step back and explain it to me?” Trajan said.
“I need to know what it is, because it isn’t right.”
“It’s fine.” Trajan sounded a bit frantic.
“Touch it,” she told him. “Make it glow. I showed you how.”
“If I do that, will you take a step back?”
“Yes.”
Trajan stepped close enough to Nim that she was in arm’s reach, and with his other hand he touched the stone.
Nothing happened.
He frowned. “I must have done it wrong.”
“No. This stone is wrong.” Nim yanked the needle from her skin. It clinked against the stone when it fell.
“Fuck. Grab her!” Trajan wrapped his arms around Nim, but not before she pressed both hands against the stone, her power exploding in a blinding flash of white light.
Harris wrapped his arms around both of them, yanking them back. He braced himself for something horrible to happen. He waited.
Nothing happened.
Harris raised his head from where he’d ducked it against Trajan’s, and opened one eye. The sight that greeted him rendered him speechless for a moment. He blinked, then said, “Uh, guys?”
Trajan had pulled Nim protectively against his chest. Seeing them together like that, Nim’s head tucked under Trajan’s chin, his arm wrapped around her, made Harris’s chest ache, but it was a happy ache.
Trajan opened one eye, looking at Harris, who pointed at the back of the cave. At the place where the smooth stone had been.
“Fuck,” Trajan breathed.
Nim lifted her head. She was trembling and would have been swaying if Trajan hadn’t been holding her. He loosened his grip enough for her to turn and look at the new wonder her magic had wrought.
Witches In the Weeds
Elemental Covens, Book 1
Lila Dubois
Published 2017 by Book Boutiques.
ISBN: 978-1-946363-77-0
Copyright © 2017, Lila Dubois.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Book Boutiques.
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, locales, or events is wholly coincidental. The names, characters, dialogue, and events in this book are from the author’s imagination and should not to be construed as real.
Manufactured in the USA.
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Blurb
It was a simple plan. Stop the curse, save her family. Well maybe simple wasn't the right word...
As the eldest daughter of the Mahkah coven, it's Nimue Mahkah's responsibility to protect and provide for her family. When her family's crops start to wither and die she knows she has to save them at any cost. Losing the crops will mean losing not only her family's livelihood, but also the cauldron of magic she's amassed deep in the earth. The magic she needs to break the curse.
Desperate times call for desperate measures…
Unable to stop the blight with her own earth-based magic, Nimue sets out on a bold plan – she is going to kidnap Harris Barclay. Knowing his ability to speak with and cure living things, he may be her only hope.
The kidnapping goes off as planned, but Harris is ridiculously handsome and more magically powerful than rumored, neither of which she counted on, especially since she can't use her own magic around him without risking a disaster worse than the blight. Left with only her powers of persuasion, and a few threats, she finally convinces Harris to help her plants.
And then the muscle, shows up…
Hired by the baron of
Harris' coven to find him, Trajan Dixon, an air mage and trained security operative, locates Harris and Nimue and arrives on the scene at the exact wrong moment. In the fight that ensures all three use their magic at once, something that is strictly forbidden by all the cabals.
And now they know why!
One magical cave, a giant talking owl, and a wayward love spell later, the three find themselves on the run together, trying to figure out what happened, and fighting a forbidden attraction for one another
Acknowledgements
Cover Artist: Valerie Tibbs, Tibbs Design
Chapter 1
Kidnapping someone was surprisingly easy, even without magic, in rural Montana.
When her target walked out of the field of rapeseed, Nimue felt a moment of hesitation. He was big. Bigger that she’d thought. She knew from her pre-kidnapping research that he was five foot eleven, one hundred and ninety pounds. He seemed bigger.
Five-eleven was close enough to six feet that it made no difference, and his broad shoulders and heavily muscled upper body made it clear that those one hundred and ninety pounds were muscle. By comparison, she was five-four and a hundred and thirty-five pounds, though her license said one hundred and twenty.
The sky above him was variegated, indigo in the east, lightening to sapphire, then azure, and finally a cornflower blue in the west, where the sun was just about to slip behind the horizon.
The field of organic rapeseed behind him was filled with millions of small yellow flowers, waiting to be harvested and turned into expensive, organic canola oil. The scent was incredible—a musky smell that reminded her of honey and mustard plants. Research into Barclay Farms, a subsidiary of Barclay Green International, had told her that they were the leading organic farming operation in Montana. Barclay Farms had, until twenty years ago, operated primarily in New York, but they’d expanded their operation to Montana, and more recently, Wisconsin. Many business and agricultural reports credited them with getting the state government to implement organic farming incentives.
None of those reports mentioned that the Barclays were one of the most powerful covens in Saol cabal, that their bloodline, like all covens in Saol, had living-things magic. The Barclays were especially gifted when it came to flora. Other covens within Saol were fauna practitioners. A common campfire story for practitioners was that the witches of Salem had been herbalists and healers from Saol covens.
Nim stayed hunched in the bed of Harris Barclay’s truck. She’d sneered when she’d first seen it, but once she’d climbed in she hadn’t been able to smell gas, only feel the faint hum of electricity. He’d modified it into an electric vehicle.
He was carrying a red toolbox, the same one he’d carried every time he walked out into a field. When she’d been following him yesterday she’d gotten close enough to catch the scent of ozone coming from the metal box. It was a practitioner’s kit, containing the foci and tools he’d need to work magic.
The truck was parked on a dirt road that separated the rapeseed from a field of wheat. They were twenty minutes from the closest town, with no one around for miles.
She had one knee on the bumpy bed of the truck, the other foot braced and ready to push off, to launch her from where she hid just behind a built-in toolbox spanning the bed.
She thumbed the cover off the needle of the syringe she held. She reached up with her free hand and took the cap off the backup syringe clenched between her teeth.
Booted steps made soft thumping sounds against the packed dirt of the road. Ten feet, five feet.
What are you doing? This is nuts. You can’t do this. This is assault. Kidnapping.
That pesky rational voice would not shut up.
She could do this. She would do this. Because when it came to her family, to stopping the curse, she would do whatever it took.
He opened the driver’s door to the truck, his toolbox rattling a little as he slid it across the passenger seat. Damn it, if the sun didn’t set soon she was going to lose her distraction.
The sun set.
The earth sighed, and then seemed to ripple, as if there was a minor wave-like earthquake that originated at the horizon, at the point where the sun set, and spread from there, like ripples in a pond, across the land. In reality she knew that wasn’t what had happened, but that was how her mind, and her magic, interpreted the transition between day and night. She’d experienced this daily since she came into her power, and was able to ignore it, focusing on her objective.
Harris jerked around to look at the field of rapeseed, and she wondered what he saw, what sunset looked and felt like to him.
She didn’t let herself wonder for more than a fraction of a thought.
As his attention was pulled by the setting sun, she leapt, clearing the edge of the bed of the truck. She landed on her feet just behind him, reached up to wrap one arm around his neck, and then stabbed the syringe down into his trapezius muscle, pressing the plunger with her thumb.
Harris reacted faster than she would have liked. He whirled, right arm knocking her back so hard she landed on her ass. The second syringe popped from between her teeth and bounced under the truck.
Nim scrambled backwards in a desperate crab walk. Harris clamped one hand on his shoulder where she’d injected him, and stared down at her.
She’d had plenty of time to get a good look at him while she followed him over the past two days. She knew what he looked like, knew he was handsome, with kind eyes and a ready smile.
The man who looked down at her did not look kind, and he was not smiling. His irises seemed to glow with a golden light. He was drawing in his power.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
It would take anywhere from a minute—if she was lucky—to ten minutes—if she wasn’t—for the drug to take effect. If she’d been able to inject it into a vein it would have been nearly instantaneous, but it was hard to do that on an unwilling victim unless she was willing to try and jab him in the jugular, and risk tearing the blood vessel, resulting in him bleeding out.
She wasn’t. First of all, because killing was bad. Second, because she needed him alive.
Harris looked down at her and blinked several times, the light fading from his eyes. He was trying to tamp down on his magic.
Normally he would have been able to sense that she was a practitioner, maybe even know which cabal she belonged to, but she’d taken pains to hide her magic, and to prevent herself from accidentally using it. Under her sweatshirt she wore a belt made out of polyester, the most unnatural fabric she could get her hands on. The inside of the belt had three sharp pieces of asteroid fasted to it. The not-of-this-earth stone stabbed into her, breaking the flesh and dampening her own magic.
“Uh, sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you.” Harris lowered his hand, then rolled his shoulder, as if trying to get rid of tension. “Are you okay?”
Oh damn it. He was nice.
“Don’t be nice,” Nim pleaded.
“Uh, what?” His words were slow, but she didn’t think it was the drugs.
“I said don’t be nice.”
“Right. Don’t be nice.” He held both hands up, palms facing her, in a gesture that could either be “back off, crazy woman” or “it’s okay, I won’t hurt you.”
She was sitting on her butt, heels of her hands pressed into the ground. The earth was dead under her, and though she knew it was due to the dampening belt, the lack of connection made her feel queasy. Like touching the lifeless body of a loved one. Though she was only twenty-four she’d had plenty of opportunities to grieve over the bodies that had once been loved ones.
Harris hunkered down, balancing on the balls of his feet. “What’s your name?”
Nim sat up, wrapping her arms around her knees. She’d figured she’d start running once she injected him, have him chase her through the wheat until the drug took effect. Falling on her butt had made that semi-impossible, and she hadn’t imagined that he’d be so nice, that he would seemingly not realize that she’d stabbed him. Th
e syringe she’d used lay two feet behind him, so far unnoticed.
“My name is Kim,” she lied. Kim sounded enough like Nim that she figured it was a good name to give him.
Harris opened his mouth as if to say something, frowned and fell forward onto his hands and knees. Dust puffed up around him. Now that the sun had set, it was getting dark fast. His green windbreaker and red and black flannel shirt had been leeched of color, as had his dark mahogany hair. The world was now painted in shades of blue, indigo, and gray.
Nim got to her feet and took several steps back, adding some distance between them. Harris slowly raised his head. In the twilight she could see the faint luminescence in his eyes as he once more started to gather power.
“What did you do to me?” His voice was a menacing growl, as if a bear could speak. The hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood on end.
He still hadn’t noticed the syringe, but he clearly knew she’d done something.
“No long-term harm will come to you.” She kept her voice strong, no hint of apology coloring her words. She’d thought long and hard about how she’d respond if he asked her that.
His eyes glowed brighter, and it was a sign that he was losing control as the drug took effect. One of the signs of a powerful practitioner was that they could control any outward expressions of their magic. When she’d first jumped him, she’d startled him, but he’d quickly controlled it. Now he was letting the power shine through.
For a moment she was so entranced by the glow of his eyes that she forgot what that meant. He was drawing power.
Shit.
Almost as soon as she thought the curse word, a thousand needles pierced the skin of her right arm and side. She danced to her left, frantically brushing at her right side with her left hand. Her mind conjured images of a swarm of bees or wasps stinging her. She looked down as she continued to brush, and saw dozens of wheat shafts tumbling to the ground. Their pale gold color was transformed to silver by the moonlight that was now illuminating the landscape. A dozen more were stuck in the denim of her jeans, the thick fabric having stopped them from penetrating.
