by Lila Dubois
Wheat wasn’t sharp. How had he turned the plant into a deadly offensive weapon? He would have had to stiffen the shafts, then control the plants themselves enough to have them bend back and snap forward, launching the newly formed projectiles. Practitioners from Saol had no power over air—that was the realm of the Scamall cabal, so he hadn’t used air magic to move them. He’d had the plants themselves attack her. That kind of power was…terrifying.
He was perfect.
This time she heard it, the rustle of the wheat in the field opposite the rapeseed. It sounded as if wind moved through the crops, though the night was still. The rustle was followed by an odd popping sound. A fresh set of needle-like flora came at her. It was instinct that had her raising her arms to shield her face. Sharp shafts stabbed her forearms, breasts, and stomach, easily penetrating the soft thermal shirt she’d bought in town in an effort to blend in.
She screamed through her teeth, frantically brushing at the quill-like things sticking out of her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the blur of yet another set headed her way. She backpedaled toward the rapeseed, then realized she didn’t want to get any closer to those plants while Harris was conscious. She was now about ten feet from the rear of the truck, and Harris was still on his hands and knees by the open driver door. The dome light in the cab, which had provided some weak illumination, timed off, leaving them in the last moments of twilight, before it became full dark.
The fields of wheat and rapeseed groaned and swayed, as if in a stiff breeze.
The air was still.
Shit.
Nim raced for the truck. It meant getting close to Harris himself, but she was counting on the drugs having taken enough of an effect that he wouldn’t be able to attack her.
She scrambled onto the back bumper and then dove into the bed of the truck. The bed wasn’t one smooth surface, but corrugated, and it hurt when she hit it. There was a faint whistle as yet more wheat-quills passed over her head. If he’d had power over wind, he might have been able to get them to make a ninety-degree turn and shoot straight down, but as it was they sailed harmlessly, if scarily, overhead.
Harris groaned, and then she heard a thump.
Nim stayed down but twisted to look around, to make sure Harris hadn’t groaned as a distraction and was even now leaning into the truck and reaching for her. All she saw was the twilight sky, wide and long and endless. She counted to one hundred before she dared to rise.
Bracing her knees on the inside of the bed of the pickup, she peered over the edge. Harris lay facedown in the dirt, one arm outstretched toward the field of rapeseed, the other folded under his body.
His head was turned to the side, a lock of dark hair across his closed eye.
She climbed out and knelt beside him. “I’m sorry.” She brushed his hair back, off his face. “I wish there’d been another way.”
She took a second dampener, this one mounted to the inside of a leather bracelet, and strapped it to his wrist. He groaned a little as the sharp edge of the rock scraped him, but the drugs kept him under.
With his magic disabled, including his passive magical field that all practitioners had around them, she was safe to use her own magic. Raising her shirt, she undid the dampening belt. Her whole body sagged with relief. Unfettered, her magic returned in a wild rush of power, filling her and causing her to use her sight.
The night was no longer dark. The earth itself glowed. Her grandmother had a theory that what they saw was the heat of the earth, and their magic interpreted it as a series of lights, similar to the northern lights, radiating up from the earth about four feet into the air. She rested the tips of her fingers on the bare earth. Power flowed up into her. After several hours wearing the dampening belt, the relief of once more being in touch with magic brought tears to her eyes.
She pressed her fingertips to the earth. Under her hand the hard-packed soil turned powdery soft, and she sank her hand in up to the wrist. She spent a moment reaching down with her senses, down through the layers of topsoil, down to the deep places where man had never touched. She’d touched earth disturbed by mining or fracking before, knew the broken, sickening feel of that. There was none of that here. The deep earth was pulsing with untold ages of power. It hummed quietly, sleepily, almost like a great cat purring contentedly in its sleep.
She brushed her senses against it, a sign of respect, letting the earth know she was there. As she drew her awareness up, through the layers and strata of the earth, she retained awareness of the deep earth. When she hit the upper layers of soil she took a moment to examine the fields, hoping to learn more about the man now passed out on the ground beside her.
The ground where the crops grew was rich. It had been well tended, fed with fertilizer and manure. Still, it was not peaceful ground. It was worked, like a farm animal that pulled a plough or carriage every day, its task relentless and unending. These fields cradled and nurtured crop after crop, never laying fallow for more than a week. The soil was rich with nutrients but lacked any sort of identity.
But the roots of the plants…they glowed with power.
“Goddess,” she breathed. “So much power.”
She turned her head to look at the field of rapeseed. She was still looking at the world through her magic-enhanced eyes, which some called the sight, others the third eye, so the field of rapeseed was alive with brilliant green light. Each leaf and flower was outlined in light, as if they were wired with fiberoptic threads.
She pulled her hand gently from the earth and rose to her feet, looking toward the horizon. The magic-tinged flora stretched as far as she could see. It was am incredible amount of power on display.
She’d never seen anything like the endless fields of magic-touched crops.
Nim looked down at Harris. Probably his family had helped him tend these fields. Surely he hadn’t nurtured each one himself, because if he had…
If he was that powerful, kidnapping him was a very, very bad idea.
“This might be a very bad idea,” she told the unconscious Harris, “but I’m desperate.”
Nim crouched and brushed her hand against the earth, murmuring as she closed her eyes. She envisioned a pillar of earth rising, lifting the man from the ground. The soil below his back rose, tipping him into a sitting position. The rising mound of earth grew until his butt was level with the seat of the truck. Dirt spilled into the truck filling the driver-side foot well. Bit by bit, dirt displaced and Harris was shifted sideways, until he slid smoothly onto the driver’s seat.
Nim released the earth, whispering her thanks.
Nim braced her hands against Harris’s hip and thigh and started shoving him across the seat. When he bumped against the toolbox, she scrambled in, careful not to touch him, then grabbed the handle, and then pulled the toolbox out. Her fingers burned at the contact with another practitioner’s tools. She quickly dropped the toolbox into the back of the truck. A few more pushes, and Harris was clear of the steering wheel.
Standing back from the open door she extended her right hand and called to the soil inside the truck, calling it back to the earth. Every particle flowed out of the truck like sand pouring out of a bucket. When she was done, the truck was remarkably clean. She hopped in and started the vehicle.
She had the truck in gear when she remembered the syringes. Cursing, she jumped out, then wiggled under the truck. She didn’t dare grope for the second—uncapped—syringe, so had to wait for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Once she found it she snatched it up, fished around in the bed of the truck until she found the cap, then secured it. She climbed back into the cab.
Harris looked uncomfortable, with his head lolling forward, chin on his chest. Nim closed the driver’s door, then braced her back against it and pushed, sliding Harris until he was in the passenger seat. There was a spare jacket on the floor of the passenger side. She folded it up as best she could and made a pillow out of it, sliding it between his head and the window.
Nim reached out and o
nce more stroked his hair back from his face.
As her fingers touched his skin, sparks leapt between them.
She sucked in air and yanked her hand back.
She’d never felt anything like that before. Even being near a witch from a different cabal was dangerous, never mind touching them.
She must not have put his dampener on tightly enough. Yanking up her shirt, Nim re-buckled the belt. Her abdomen was a mess—there were tiny puncture holes covering her skin. The black shirt she wore was sticky and stiff with blood. As the meteorite shards pierced her skin three fresh trickles of blood joined what was already there.
Hissing in pain, she yanked her shirt down. The magic was gone again, and she felt slightly nauseous. Around her the landscape was flat and dull, with no telltale magical luminescence. She undid the bracelet she’d placed on Harris’ wrist. There was a small scratch, nothing more. Maybe that explained the reaction—the dampener hadn’t been embedded enough to mute his entire passive field of magic. As long as she was wearing her dampener—and she had enough drugs to keep Harris asleep—she wouldn’t hurt him by resecuring the bracelet.
“Let’s go, Harris,” she told her unconscious victim. “The sooner we get going, the sooner we get to California.”
Chapter 2
“Mr. Dixon? I have a client on the line for you.”
Trajan glared at the admin assistant. He hadn’t even set down his duffle bag. He hadn’t even made it ten steps though the front doors. It was the first time he’d been in the office in a week. He was looking forward to sitting on his ass in his seldom-used ergonomic chair and staring blankly at the wall for a few hours before diving into the hundreds of emails he hadn’t answered while he’d been out of town on his last job.
The young man looked apologetic. “They’re a VIP.”
Fuck.
Maybe the admin—what was his name? Trajan wasn’t in the office often, and he was drawing a blank—was wrong. “You checked the VIP list?”
“Yes, Mr. Dixon.”
“We’ve been over this. Please just call me Trajan. Or Tray.” He made sure to emphasize the pronunciations—”tray-jan” or “tray”. “Not Mr. Dixon.”
Dixon Securities had well over three hundred employees, and was still family-owned after nearly sixty years. But Trajan was just one of many Mr. Dixons who worked there. His father, grandfather, uncles, and cousins all worked for the firm. There were even more Mrs. Dixons, though they all went by “Ms.” You only had to meet one Dixon woman to know that they were at least as, if not more, dangerous than the men.
“Yes, Trajan, I’m sure.” The admin raised a brow. “Josh. My name is Josh.”
“I knew that,” Trajan said.
“I’ll take it in my office.” Trajan headed for his office, moving fast. A VIP client was the sort of person he couldn’t keep waiting, no matter how much he longed to swing by the coffee machine.
He tossed his bag onto his desk, then looked at the fancy digital office phone. The readout said Fitz Barclay.
Double fuck.
It wasn’t just a VIP, it was a heavy-hitter VIP. The baron of the Barclay coven was calling him. This couldn’t be good.
He cast one longing glance at his chair, but remained standing and picked up the receiver. “Mr. Barclay.”
“Trajan. My nephew has been kidnapped.”
Maybe he’d better sit down for this. Trajan dropped silently into his chair and jerked a pad and pen from the drawer of the desk. He wanted to ask, “Are you sure?” Even if this caller had been someone other than Fitz Barclay himself, that would have been a dicey question to ask. It was never a good idea to insult a client.
“How long has he been missing?”
“Two days.”
“Please be more specific.”
There was a pause, then Barclay said, “I’m checking with the boy’s father, my brother.”
“I appreciate it, sir.”
The line went quiet for several minutes before Barclay said, “He spoke with his mother on Tuesday afternoon. He was out working the fields.”
It was Thursday morning, meaning the boy had been missing for more than a day, but less than forty-eight hours.
“Who was he with?” Trajan asked.
“He was alone.”
That couldn’t be right. They’d wouldn’t have left a young practitioner to work alone in the fields.
Unless the nephew wasn’t young. Fitz Barclay was in his sixties, but he was the oldest of the Barclay siblings. Trajan had assumed that nephew meant teenager. He knew it wasn’t a child, since they wouldn’t have waited that long to call for help if it had been.
Practitioners’ children usually had more autonomy, earlier, than their non-gifted peers. Teenage antics and destructive behavior weren’t allowed in coven families, since teenage assholeness combined with magical ability spelled disaster. They grew up faster, and were expected to behave as adults, with all the rights and privileges that included. But giving teens autonomy was very different than letting them work the craft on their own.
“How old is your nephew? And what’s his name?”
“Harris. And he’s twenty-eight.”
Trajan set down his pen. “Mr. Barclay, since your nephew is an adult he’s probably fine.” He’s on a bender, met someone, or just avoiding his family.
If it were Trajan, it would be that last one.
“Mr. Dixon, do you think I’m perhaps having a fit of vapors?” Fitz Barclay’s voice was silky-smooth. It didn’t go unnoticed that Fitz used the “Mr. Dixon” instead of “Trajan.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, Mr. Barclay.”
If Trajan had remembered to shut his office door it would have been fine, but he’d forgotten, and it was just his shit luck that his cousin happened to be walking by right at that moment. Tiberius stopped, backpedaled, and stuck his head in the door, eyes wide.
“Barclay? Fitz Barclay?” Tiberius was only six months younger than Trajan. Their parents had been into the idea of names of power around the time they were born, hence them being stuck with the names of powerful Roman emperors.
Trajan glared at his cousin and tried to wave him off while still concentrating on the call. Tiber shrugged and backed out of the office.
“There was evidence of a struggle at his abduction site.”
Tiber had left Trajan’s door open and was now talking to someone in the hall. Couldn’t he do that somewhere else?
“Missing and kidnapped are very different things, Mr. Barclay. You’re certain he was kidnapped, there was a struggle?” How would someone manage to capture a practitioner?
The powers of the Saol cabal, of which the Barclay coven was a member, were perhaps the least viable as defensive magic. Saol practitioners had power over living things—plants and animals. Individual covens or families each specialized in one or the other type of power. The flora-dominion power of the Barclay coven made them politically and financially powerful, but they weren’t an offensive threat.
At least that’s what most practitioners thought. Trajan had once seen Fitz sparring. The baron had thrown a handful of seeds on the ground and almost as soon as they hit the dirt, tough, woody vines sprouted, wrapping around his opponent.
“Mr. Barclay, may I ask, is Harris a practitioner?”
An angry silence filled the line.
“Oh my god, you did not just ask Fitz Barclay that,” a woman hissed.
Trajan’s head jerked up. Jez—short for Jezebel, which made the name Trajan seem not that bad in comparison—had pushed past Tiber and was now standing in front of his desk. She had the ice-queen looks the women in his family were famous for. Her hair was a blond so light it was white, her eyes a pale, pale blue that darkened to cobalt and glowed when she called her power. She was twenty, and had gotten her first official job at the firm only a few months ago, though she’d grown up haunting the halls of Dixon Securities’ fortieth-floor offices.
She was also a horrible gossip.
Trajan
narrowed his eyes at her, then shook his head as menacingly as possible while still holding a phone to his ear.
“Yes, my nephew is a practitioner. A powerful one.” Fitz Barclay, already a little pompous, now sounded as if he had a stick up his ass, and not in the fun way.
“You said there were signs of a struggle?”
“Yes, including signs that he’d used his magic to fight.”
Now that was interesting, and alarming. Out of the corner of his eye, Trajan watched as Tiber tried to wrestle Jez to keep her from running out the door and telling every other coven member in the office who he was talking to.
“No signs of destruction?” Trajan asked.
“No. Whoever took him wasn’t a practitioner.”
When practitioners from different cabals used their magic in close proximity to one another, the result was destruction, usually on a massive scale. Wildfires that inexplicably couldn’t be contained, earthquakes, freak tornadoes on a cloudless day, actual explosions, and animals going berserk were all possibilities. The stronger the magic users, the more deadly the reaction of their magics. The destructive interaction of different kinds of magic had been the impetus for organizing the covens into cabals. But not all magic had deadly interactions. Practitioners with fire or earth magic were able to use magic in proximity to one another. Covens with those gifts were grouped into Salachar. The Scamall cabal included those with air and water magic. The Saol cabal, which had both flora-magic and fauna-magic covens, was the only one that had an obvious correlation.
By law, no practitioner was allowed to use their magic unless they were on land controlled by their coven or their cabal, or if they were sure there was no other practitioner within a one-mile radius of their position. For that reason most large cities were declared the magical equivalent of demilitarized zones. Places like New York City, Boston, and Dallas were so densely populated that there was almost no way for a practitioner to definitely say that there wasn’t another magic user within a mile of them. Practitioners who lived and worked in those cities had to drive to special locations outside the city to use their powers.
