by Lila Dubois
The last echoes of the owl’s call faded and she dropped her hands. “Well, there’s a big talking owl,” she said, trying to make a joke to help dispel some of her residual fear.
Trajan marched up to her, crowding into her personal space and looming over her. “What did we say?”
Nim stiffened.
“We stay together, and you don’t use your magic.” Trajan threw out his hand behind him, as if to indicate the now-vanished wall of dirt.
“Back off,” she demanded. “You two were in the middle of a pissing contest, and I didn’t have the energy to stand around waiting for you.”
“Then say something. You asked us to help you, and we will, but you have to be smart.”
“I was being smart.”
“No, you were running up the stairs instead of out the front door, like some dumbass in a horror movie.”
“Enough, both of you.” Harris wrapped an arm around Trajan’s waist and gently pulled, forcing the blond man back half a step. Nim smiled at Harris, but he didn’t return it. “Trajan is right, Nim. You needed to agree not to run off. If we’re going to get out of this, we need to stay together. Especially because the sun is down.”
The rebuke from Harris stung a bit. Her first instinct was to be defensive, but she swallowed that impulse. “I’m sorry.”
Trajan reached into his coat pocket and pulled out something, handing it to her. There was just enough residual sunlight left that she could make out the glint of gold. She took the long needle-like object.
“This is a dampener?” she asked.
“Yes. All you have to do is pierce your skin. It doesn’t even need blood contact.”
She raised her eyebrows. “That is serious magic.”
He shrugged, his cheekbones painted dark gold by the last vestiges of daylight. “My family couldn’t do what we do without dampeners.”
Nim held it up, twirling it in the light. “Just pierce the skin?”
“Yes.”
She nodded, then turned her back to them. Parting the front of her dress she slid the waistband of her underwear down an inch, then lay the needle flat on her lower abdomen and carefully punctured just the top layer of skin. When she was done, the middle section of the needle was firmly embedded in her flesh, the end and tip exposed. When she’d been younger she’d gone through a weird phase where she’d slide safety pins into the skin of her hand and pretend she had lots of hardcore piercings.
She pulled her panties up, covering the needle and hoping that would be enough to keep everything in place. She turned back around.
Trajan and Harris were staring at her.
Trajan’s chin was lowered, his focus so intense that it was an almost physical thing. His eyes roamed over her, as if trying to detect where the needle was.
Harris’s eyes were wide. “Nim, baby, where did you just put that?”
Trajan shifted his weight, a small movement, but it made her hyper-aware of his physicality.
“Not where you think,” she assured Harris, fighting back a smile.
“But you put it somewhere.” Trajan looked her over again. This time Harris joined him in the activity. She felt their gazes like a physical touch on her flesh.
“It’ll stay in place.” She meant to reassure them, but her voice came out husky, and she was stupidly, undeniably, turned on by the way they were looking at her.
“It’s dark,” Trajan said. “We need to find shelter. And a bed.”
“Bed,” Harris repeated.
Nim’s nipples hardened into points. “A bed, for…us?”
Harris blinked and looked at Trajan, who looked from Nim to Harris and back. Trajan’s expression relaxed into what was either surprise or relief. “Yes. For us.”
Had they just planned to have a threesome?
Nim pointed back up the hill. “My place is on the other side of the ridge.”
Trajan nodded. “Good, you stay between us.”
Harris stepped toward the tunnel-path she’d so recently come tumbling down. “I’ll go first; I know the way.”
Harris held out a hand to Nim, but rather than take it she reached down into the dirt. It was flat and dead under her hand. She jerked her fingers back. The implied promise of threesome sex had made her forget the dampener.
“Nim.” Trajan’s voice was a warning.
“I know. I forgot. I was going to grab a chunk of mineral and fill it with magic to make a sort of flashlight.”
“I can help with that.” Harris, barefoot and bare-chested, tipped his chin down and his eyes started to glow with green-gold magic. Around them the plants—cannabis bushes, redwood trees, and everything in between—began to glow with faint bioluminescence.
“Whoa,” Trajan said.
“It’s beautiful.” Nim turned in a circle, looking at the faintly glowing vegetation. The forest, already abnormal, now had an otherworldly feel to it.
“I didn’t realize Saol flora witches could do that.”
Harris blinked a few times, and the illumination of magic in his eyes faded but didn’t disappear. “They can’t. I can’t. I just had this feeling I would be able to in this place.” He looked around. “It’s like using my sight, without using it.”
“Let’s move,” Trajan said.
Harris looked at Nim, and when she stepped up behind him he started into the now lit tunnel of vegetation. It was a bit discouraging to be retracing her steps from earlier, but Nim trudged on, climbing much more slowly now that she wasn’t aided by her powers.
“Plants glow when you use your sight?” Trajan asked Harris from behind her.
“Yes. What about you?”
“I can see air currents. They’re different colors, sometimes textures depending on speed.”
“The earth has an aura,” Nim said. “Sort of like the aurora borealis, but it’s at ground level, not up in the sky.”
The owl’s distinctive call floated through the trees. “Good,” Trajan said. “It’s far away.”
Nim relaxed a little. She’d been half worried they’d get back to the stump and the giant owl would be there again.
They walked on, moving through patches of yellow, blue, and pink light amid all the green as they walked under clusters of oddly colored buds.
“Have you ever smoked pot?” Harris asked.
“I assume you’re talking to Trajan,” Nim said dryly.
Trajan smiled at her, the softest expression she’d seen on his face to date. “Smoked? No, I like the air too much to smoke. Now, brownies…”
Nim chuckled softly. “If you like brownies, you would love this butter I make.”
“I bet your coven gatherings are much less tense then mine,” Harris said.
“Family issues?” she asked him.
“We’re more a business than a family. That’s why I like to stay out of it. Stay in the fields.”
“That explains why it was so easy to kidnap you,” Nim teased.
Harris looked over his shoulder and glared at her. She grinned at him and he chuckled.
“You got kidnapped by a girl,” Trajan added.
“I bet I could kidnap you, too,” Nim assured him.
“I think not.”
“There’s no air for you to play with underground.”
“You like breathing?” Trajan asked.
“Wait, can you do that? Stop someone from breathing?” Nim shivered a little.
“I can stop you from inhaling. I wouldn’t, because as my mother kept insisting, murder is bad, but I could. There are some in my family—my cousin Iris—who could actually pull the air out of your lungs and collapse them, or force so much air in they explode.”
“Remind me not to piss off your cousin Iris,” Harris said with feeling.
“She wouldn’t, but she could.”
“I heard that Saol fauna witches can make the bacteria in your stomach eat you alive from the inside. Is that possible, Harris?” Rumors about the dark and deadly powers of other covens and the other cabals had been good
campfire horror stories in her coven.
“How would I know?”
“You don’t hang out with the animal witch covens?” Trajan asked.
“Do you hang out with water witches?” was Harris’s counter question.
“Yes. A water coven also uses Chicago as a home base.”
“You share the city?”
“Yep.”
“I didn’t think that was possible.”
“In Chicago, with all that water and all that wind, it’s honestly safer to have one of each coven based there. There’s a reason that each class of power doesn’t need its own coven—water and air magics don’t react.”
“Thank you for that Magic 101 lesson.” Harris came close to rolling his eyes.
“Isn’t someone from your coven the High Magus?” Nim asked Trajan.
“Who told you that?” There was a formal, suspicious note in his voice, and Nim felt like she’d lost something. Felt like he’d been standing right beside her but was now five feet away.
“I have, had, a lot of cousins and we liked to gossip about the other covens. We knew they were talking about us, so…” She trailed off with a shrug.
They walked on in silence for several more minutes, the slope steep enough that their progress was slow. Despite the strange glowing plants that illuminated their way, this was the most normal Nim had felt in weeks. Maybe months.
Since turning twenty-four, she’d been obsessed with finding a way to break the curse. Not that she hadn’t been trying before then, but she’d also allowed herself to have some sort of life. With her death imminent, and the danger to her sisters so painfully real, she’d then focused everything on amassing power and crafting spells to break the curse. She hadn’t had a normal conversation—or at least as normal as conversations between practitioners ever got—in nearly a year.
And once they were back at the bunker, they were going to her bedroom and then…
Her brain practically exploded with possibilities.
“Are you cold?” Trajan asked.
“A little,” she admitted. “Normally I just pull heat up from the ground and never get cold, but with the dampener I can’t.” She looked over her shoulder at him. He was starting to shrug out of his jacket. “But that’s not why I’m shivering,” she admitted huskily.
Trajan reached out, two fingers hovering near her cheek. She brushed her face against his hand, giving him permission to touch her. Asking him to touch her.
A hand closed over her mouth, hard enough to make her yelp in pain. Harris yanked her back against his chest. Trajan reached for Harris, murder writ large on his face.
Harris shook his head, the movement so forceful his cheekbone knocked into Nim’s head.
“Something’s coming,” he breathed.
Nim’s whole body flashed cold then hot. Harris released her, and together they turned.
They were ten feet from the upper edge of the planting area, the mouth of the tunnel a dark arch compared to the brightness within. Nim crouched, trying to get a better view of what might be out there.
Harris crept forward, keeping his back to the plants, and though he touched them, they didn’t make any sound as he passed. When he was near the mouth of the tunnel, he too crouched. Nim rose at Trajan’s urging.
“If we need to, I’ll take you and run,” he whispered in her ear.
“I’m not leaving Harris.”
“He can protect himself. The priority is getting you safe.”
“That’s insane. The priority is making sure we’re all safe.”
“We will protect you.” There was a lot of stubborn male stupidity coloring Trajan’s voice.
Nim slipped her hand into her dress, but Trajan caught her wrist. “No magic,” he hissed.
She was ready to say something else when a man’s laughter jerked her head around.
Harris wasn’t laughing, which meant that had come from someone else. There was someone else here with them.
Trajan motioned for her to stay and crept forward. She followed him, not to be stubborn, but because she did not want to be standing all by herself if the laugher busted through the plants. With no magic she was absurdly vulnerable.
Trajan and Harris were crouched side by side. Nim put a hand on each of their shoulders and leaned down, her head almost between theirs. Together they looked out into the dark forest. The trunks of the trees glowed almost burgundy, while the needles had a deep glow closer to that of a green light bulb than the florescent bioluminescence of the cannabis.
Standing atop the stump the owl had been perched on was a man.
Not a man, a ghost. The figure, whose laugh had sounded very real, appeared to be made of shimmering silver mist and dove-gray smoke. Every detail of his clothing and body was visible, yet she could see the deep red glow of the tree behind him through his chest.
“Goddess protect us,” she breathed.
“Ghosts aren’t real.” Trajan sounded rather desperate.
“Keep telling yourself that,” Harris murmured.
The ghost was dressed in quasi-medieval clothes—a tunic that came down to mid-thigh, a fitted leather breastplate, tall boots with pants tucked into them, and gauntlets. The strap to a quiver of arrows and a bow were slung across his chest. There was a very large knife in a sheath on his belt, and he held a second, smaller knife in his hand.
“I will cut out your heart,” the ghost said. Then he laughed.
“Retreat?” Harris asked.
“Sounds good,” Trajan agreed.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” Nimue begged.
Nimue kept her hands on their shoulders but backed up several steps, not willing to turn her back to the figure. Harris and Trajan did the same, rising just enough so they could move easily, but not standing to their full heights, which would have blocked their view of the top of the tall stump.
One careful step at a time, they started retreating.
The earth shook under them, knocking Trajan to one knee. The cannabis reached out to steady Harris.
“Nim, no magic,” Trajan snapped in a whisper.
“That wasn’t me.”
“It was him.” Harris’s voice was grim. “He jumped down.”
“The ghost jumped down…and caused an earthquake.” Trajan took hold of Nim’s wrist. “Harris?”
“I got this. Get ready to run.”
“No, we’re not leaving you.”
“I will cut out your heart, girl. You may run, but the Huntsman will find you.”
Nim leaned her head against Trajan’s shoulder. “Of course it’s my heart he wants to cut out. Of. Course.”
“I assume he’s the Huntsman.” Trajan released her wrist to give her a quick, one-arm squeeze. “I won’t let him cut out your heart.”
“Aww, you’re too kind.”
“Run!” Harris’s yell made them both jump. “He’s coming.”
Trajan grabbed her hand and bolted. He reacted much faster than she did, so for a moment, before his hold on her jerked her around, she saw the Huntsman coming, saw his silvery form fill the entrance to their verdant tunnel, saw the muscles in Harris’s back and arms tense as he called up a wall of thorn roses at the same time as the cannabis bent down, breaking in some places as he collapsed the mouth of the tunnel.
The ghost came through it, the Huntsman slamming into Harris.
“No!” Nim screamed. Then Trajan jerked her around and it was either have her arm pulled out of her socket or follow him as he ran down the hill, away from the Huntsman.
Away from Harris.
*
“I will take your heart from your chest, you cursed creature. Then I will level your forest, so evil has no place to hide.”
Trajan nearly fell when he heard the Huntsman’s threats, because now he sounded like Harris.
“Harris, Harris,” Nim was whispering. “We have to go back. We have to help him.”
The mountain slope they’d so carefully and diligently climbed flashed past as they raced back dow
n toward the river. They emerged into the small clearing where a massive piece of obsidian jutted out of the mountainside. Trajan skirted it, but a sharp edge sliced through his pant leg, and a stab of pain made him miss a step. Nim slammed into his back.
“Goddess, no,” she whispered.
Trajan risked looking over his shoulder to see what had put that note of horror in her voice.
The fields of cannabis they’d just run through were blazing with light, heat rising in white smoke-like tendrils from the tops, but that wasn’t the worst of it. The Huntsman was less than five yards away, and he was no longer a ghost. What had once been rendered in shades of silver and gray was now solid—because the Huntsman was Harris.
The black-leather doublet covered his previously bare chest. Black leather pants were tucked into black calf-high motorcycle boots. Harris held a short, curved knife in one hand, there was another on his belt, and he, like the ghost, had a bow and quiver of arrows.
“Harris, Harris, it’s Nim.” She reached out one hand toward him.
The Huntsman laughed and lunged. As he did, his eyes glowed silver.
“That’s not Harris,” Trajan warned her even as he jerked her back into motion.
He didn’t have time to think about that. To mourn or shake his fists at the sky. All he could do now was get Nim out of harm’s way.
Rather than continue downhill, Trajan turned right, shoving his way through the glowing plants, following the narrow divide between two plots that he and Harris had used earlier.
His leg ached, and it was probably bleeding, which meant he was leaving a trail of blood behind him. Fuck. That was a really, really bad idea, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
The stab of pain in his leg each time he took a running step made him realize that Nim hadn’t said a word about her own pain. She had to be feeling it—it had been too long for the adrenaline and numbness of shock to still be in play.
They stumbled out from amid the cannabis, into the relative darkness of the glowing forest. The instant they were clear, Trajan turned and threw out his hand as if he were lobbing a ball underhand. A gust of air slapped the plants, bending them nearly to the ground. For a moment they could see Harris, who stayed upright a second longer than the plants before a second punch of wind slammed into him, throwing him back. He landed on the smooth obsidian and skidded across, falling off on the far side.
