witchesintheweeds_GEN

by Lila Dubois

  Now his blind right eye was clouded with white, and a pale scar marked the skin above and below.

  “Hello, Iris.” His voice seemed to reach for her through the glass, and longing hit her like a physical blow. She closed her eyes.

  “Fight it,” he whispered, the words intimate and knowing.

  Iris turned her head to the side, her hair, including the single streak of black, sliding forward over her face.

  He gave her a moment, then said. “I was on a date. What do you want?” His voice was hard and accusatory.

  Iris pulled herself together, then tossed her hair back. “How old was this one?”

  “Old enough to know what she’s doing.” The implication was clear.

  Iris blinked. “She has a driver’s license? Aww. Well done, Rowan.”

  “Are we going to pretend you just hang around the house wearing that?”

  “What? This old thing?” Iris ran her hand down her side, fingers skimming her breast.

  Rowan turned and marched out of sight for a moment.

  They were so deeply, deeply fucked up. If they weren’t both such complete fools and masochists, they would have stopped doing this—torturing and tormenting one another. The barbs were far less painful than the moments of intimacy—those rare moments when they let themselves not just remember but accept the reality that they would never stop feeling this way, as much as they tried to move on.

  When he walked back into frame, he was unbuttoning his shirt. “Hoping to get me hot and bothered?” she asked.

  “Since you fucked up my date, I’m getting in bed.”

  “All alone? You poor thing.”

  He stripped off his shirt, and damn it, he was so beautiful—heavy, hard slabs of muscle under velvety skin. “You’ve had a lot of practice at sleeping alone—why don’t you give me tips?”

  “Oh, our claws are out tonight, are they, Rowan?”

  “What do you want, Iris?”

  “I want information.”

  “Take it up with your cabal. Have your people call my people.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I’m not your lackey, princess.” He glared at her through the mirror.

  “Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t.”

  His eyes flashed with dark power, and for a moment his white eye turned black, but not just the iris—the sclera too.

  “Oh, did I piss you off?” Iris adjusted her weight so she could clap her hands together in exaggerated delight.

  “You can be a real bitch.”

  “And you’re a controlling, arrogant asshole.”

  He turned away and shucked his pants. The fucker made sure his ass was facing the mirror when he stripped out of his underwear. He had a butt that just would not quit, and he knew it.

  He walked out of frame, naked and unashamed.

  Stop this, stop this, her inner voice was screaming and pleading. That voice was the last remnant of the stupid, naive girl she’d been. Don’t hurt him.

  “Information,” she called in a singsong voice.

  “Quid pro quo,” he called back.

  She heard an electric toothbrush click on, and pursed her lips. That was a good one, ignoring her to brush his teeth. She’d have to do that to him sometime.

  If you’re not going to tell him how you really feel, then we shouldn’t call him anymore.

  She ignored that thought too, because Rowan Laveau knew exactly how she felt about him. She slid off the bed and grabbed a thick fluffy robe. Putting it on she made sure it was open enough to show off her cleavage, and when that wasn’t enough she slid down one shoulder.

  When Rowan walked back into the mirror he had on a pair of blue-checked pajama pants. He looked at her and froze. “Robe? You’re serious.”

  Iris dropped the cutting femme fatale act. “Unfortunately.”

  Rowan sat on the end of his bed, all disdain gone from his voice. “Tell me.”

  “One of your covens may be in trouble.”

  “And I’m hearing about this from you, not them?” He shook his head. “No, they’d tell me.”

  Iris pursed her lips, tipped her head to the side, and said nothing.

  “Merde. I can’t help people if they don’t tell me.”

  Rowan inherited his looks and magic from his mother’s family, the Laveaus. She knew he’d only been to New Orleans to visit occasionally, but he’d picked up Cajun and French curses and a few odd phrases from his mom.

  “Fitz Barclay,” she said.

  He grunted. “That doesn’t even surprise me. He’s a pompous fuck. That man has the power to bring extinct species of plant back to life from an ancient seed, and what does he do? He grows organic corn.”

  “Well, he pissed someone off, because his nephew has been kidnapped.”

  “What?” Rowan’s voice was hard, and though he said what his tone made it clear that what he was really saying was this had better not be true.

  “And they hired us, specifically Trajan, to find him.”

  “What?” Now it was a growl.

  “And it looks like he was kidnapped by a coven from Salachar.”

  Rowan narrowed his eyes. “You had better be joking, Iris.”

  She held up her hands. “Don’t get pissy with me.”

  “I’m not pissy. I never get pissy.”

  “You’re being kind of pissy right now…”

  “You said you needed information from me, but clearly I don’t know a damned thing about what’s going on, so did you really just call to gloat?”

  Iris thought they were past the sniping cruelty part of their conversation. She’d lowered her defenses and the accusatory tone stung.

  It must have shown on her face because Rowan pushed off the bed. “Hey, hey, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, sweet—”

  “Don’t.” She held up a hand. “Don’t,” she pleaded.

  “I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

  Iris shook off her feelings, focusing on the task at hand. She was the leader of a powerful coven, having a meeting with the leader of an equally powerful coven. Admittedly it was a meeting where she purposefully had her boobs out, but nothing was perfect.

  “Trajan left me a message this morning.” She quickly sketched out the rest of what she knew. “I’m calling because I want to know if there’s anything brewing between Barclay and Mahkah.”

  “Mahkah…aren’t they the ones with a curse?”

  Iris had to think for a moment, but then she nodded. “You’re right, yes. Do you think that has something to do with it?”

  “Honestly, no idea. Knowing Barclay, he may have insulted someone and maybe the kidnapping was a retaliation. That makes no sense, though, unless it was someone in Mahkah young and dumb and hotheaded.”

  “Hotheaded enough to kill Harris Barclay?”

  “I don’t know.” He studied her. “You haven’t heard from Trajan since this morning?”

  Iris shook her head.

  “A Scamall operative and a kidnapped Saol practitioner both on Salachar land.” Rowan met her gaze though the magic mirror. “This could go really, really badly.”

  No one knew that better than they did.

  “I don’t think Trajan’s found them yet,” she said quietly. “Because if he had, we would know. Something would have happened.”

  “And you’re sure it hasn’t? There are disasters that don’t manifest right away.”

  “I’d really hoped you knew something I could use,” she whispered.

  “I’m sorry.” He resumed his seat on the bed. “But I’ll take care of it.”

  She stiffened. “This isn’t your problem, Rowan, it’s mine.”

  “It involves a member of my cabal.”

  “And a coven that didn’t want to tell you about it.”

  His jaw firmed. “Harris Barclay is mine to protect.”

  Her blood ran cold. “Rowan, you’re not going to—”

  He held up a hand. “No, no. I won’t go looking for him myself, but I have a buddy who is Sa
lachar.”

  “How do you have a buddy who’s a practitioner from another cabal?”

  “He didn’t know he was—he was adopted. We met when I went to try to clear wildlife during those bad fires in California. He was a firefighter—had no idea that he was, on instinct alone, using some Salachar fire magic to fight the fires. Luckily I felt our passive fields touch before I used any active magic. I went to another part of the fire line, and after it was over I went and found him. Hooked him up with a Salachar coven out there. We play online poker.”

  “Is he still in California?”

  “Yeah, and not far from where your cousin disappeared, I think.”

  “I need his name. I’m going to hire him and send him to find Trajan.”

  “You’re not going to hire him. I’m going to call in a favor.” Rowan picked up his phone.

  “No,” she said. “You’re not cutting me out of this.”

  “Fine, group text. Happy now?”

  “Happy? No, I’m not happy.” She’d meant she wasn’t happy about the situation with Trajan, but she’d let too much emotion seep into the words.

  When he looked up, his gaze was full of pain. “Some of us aren’t meant to be happy.”

  Chapter 15

  The cave entrance was easily defended, and everything he could have asked for—a tall, narrow crevice between two boulders. It was just wide enough for him to walk through without turning sideways, and curved slightly, following the contour of one of the massive stones. Once beyond that it widened into an area about four feet across, the walls gritty granite instead of whatever smooth stone the boulders were. The floor was a thin layer of sandy soil over stone, which made it slippery. He was going to need sweep the soil to the sides to improve the footing.

  The cave was twenty feet deep, and only eight feet at its widest, making it almost like a large hallway. The back of the cave was another large boulder. No need to secure that, or start a fire, and the whole place was blessedly free of any magical nonsense.

  It was pitch dark, or at least it had been, before Nim placed his hand against the wall and talked him through pouring power into the flecks of mica and quartz in the granite. Now the interior of the cave was lit with a faint moonlight-white glow, no brighter than if it had been actual moonlight.

  Nim was walking slowly around the cave, examining the floors, the rocks, the walls. “This isn’t right.”

  Trajan’s eye started to twitch. “No, this is exactly right. A good, easily defensible position. If we have to, we can draw him into the cave and I can hide in this little spot here and ambush attack as he comes through.” He didn’t mention that if the Huntsman made it in, they were effectively trapped—he wouldn’t let it get to that point.

  “This doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Nothing makes sense; why should this cave be any different?”

  “Do you know how caves are made?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care.” He was aware he sounded like an ass, but he did not want to know about another problem.

  Nim apparently thought he needed to know. “They’re either carved out by water or created when a natural space is formed by the way rocks fall, and then soil gathers above without falling in. I mean, that’s super-oversimplified, but you get the idea.”

  Trajan took off his jacket and used it to start brushing the sandy soil near the boulders, securing the footing.

  “This cave is…both. Which isn’t possible. This part is carved by water, and theoretically it’s possible that large boulders just happened to fall in such a way to hide the entrance, but that boulder back there…” She stared at the rear of the cave. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Nimue. One problem at a time.”

  “Don’t get mad at me. This is a problem, and considering we’re standing in this cave, which is magic-created, I’m pretty sure it’s the most immediate problem.”

  As if on cue, a horn blew somewhere in the forest. Trajan pointed at the cave entrance.

  Nim’s eyes widened. “Okay, you win, we’ll put the cave issue on the back burner. Was that a hunting horn?”

  “I don’t exactly run around Chicago with old-timey hunting parties, but based on what movies have taught me, yeah.”

  Nim came to stand beside with him. They stared at the front of the cave. Because of the curve of the entrance passage, they couldn’t see anything.

  “One of us should go out there and see what’s going on.” Nim matched action to words and started forward.

  “Hold on, lady, I’m going first.”

  “Okay.” She took a step back, wobbled slightly, then placed a hand on the wall.

  “Sit down. Rest.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “If we have to run, I need you ready.”

  At that she nodded and slowly lowered herself to the floor, wincing.

  One problem at a time.

  Nim might have thought that once they dealt with the Huntsman, they were going to figure out the cave, but she was wrong. Once they dealt with the Huntsman, they were going to take a closer look at her wounds. He’d assumed the blackened skin was burned, but if those had been burns she would have been in too much pain—even adrenaline couldn’t forestall the pain from burns for this long. That meant that the blackened skin was something else. Something like poison.

  He fumbled with the collar of his jacket, unzipping a small pocket and pulling out a thin nylon hood. He put the jacket on, zipped it up, and covered his pale hair with the hood. It was hardly military gray-tone camouflage, but it was hopefully enough to keep him from being easily spotted in the moonlight.

  He turned sideways to exit the cave so no telltale brush of cloth on stone would give him away. His feet were silent on the loamy soil that spilled into the entrance passage from the forest floor.

  Outside, the luminescence from the plants was gone. His stomach dropped—Harris was probably dead, his soul and magic destroyed by the Huntsman entity that had taken over his body.

  He would mourn the other man later. For now he needed to focus on neutralizing the Huntsman so he could deal with Nim’s injuries and hopefully get them both out of this Goddess-forsaken forest.

  The horn came again, from his left and uphill from Trajan’s current position. Good. That meant that the Huntsman had kept going up, not realizing they’d gone into hiding.

  Trajan grabbed hold of one of the boulders at the entrance and scrambled up it, bare toes clinging to the cold stone. He could have simply gone around and climbed the steeply sloped soil on either side, but the footing would be far less sure, and he couldn’t risk falling.

  Once he was above the entrance the slope leveled out to a more manageable thirty-five degrees. He stopped and waited, and his patience was rewarded. The horn sounded again.

  His eyes closed and a lock of hair escaped from under his hood as he inhaled once, then exhaled slowly, calling on the full force of his power.

  His skin flushed first hot then cold. Wind and air currents were all about temperatures—clashing hot against cold, moving one above or below the other.

  The trees at the crest of the rise above groaned under the pressure, a herald of the strong wind that swept over him a moment later. It was tinged with magic, confirming what the sound of the horn had told him about the location of the Huntsman. The magic that rode the wind carried hints of Harris’s, the last remnants of the other man’s life force.

  But Trajan hadn’t called this wind to help him detect where the threat was. He’d called this wind because it was his element, his power.

  His weapon.

  His hand curled into a fist and he blew out air with a huffing sound. The wind mimicked, a punch of air slamming into the Huntsman, who was fifty yards from Trajan’s current position and hidden by trees. There was a shout of surprise, then a mad cackle of laughter. Pain stabbed at Trajan’s left side, just under his ribs. In his lung.

  He must have coated one of his knives in magic and stabbed Trajan’s power.

&nbs
p; The Huntsman could fight the wind.

  Because of course he could.

  “This day has been fucking fucked from the fucking beginning,” he snarled.

  Trajan pushed to his feet and started up the hill, not bothering to walk quietly. With each exhale he kept the wind howling, though he didn’t attempt to use the concentrated blow of air again.

  Five minutes of hard climbing and he rounded a large tree—and caught sight of the Huntsman. He was, as he’d been when Trajan last saw him, totally corporeal—using Harris’s body.

  Harris’s face was twisted, the mouth set in a wide grin, the corners of his lips coming up too far to be natural, an eerie expression made horrible by the wide eyes, open so far that the white was visible all the way around the irises.

  Trajan’s irritation and fuck-this-shit fueled charge faltered at the sight of the horrific visage that had once been Harris’s face. He swallowed.

  For the first time in a very long time, possibly the first time in his life, he had a bad feeling he was outclassed, outmaneuvered, and very, very fucked.

  Even before he’d mastered his magic, Trajan had been tall, strong, and his awkward pimple-infected period had been relatively brief. Just by being who he was, he’d been able to handle most situations.

  For one low, cowardly moment he considered turning around, circling back the way he’d come, and then booking it out of here. Maybe that was even the smarter decision—strategic retreat.

  Maybe smarter, but that wasn’t what he was going to do. He was going to fight the Huntsman, defeat him, and then he was going to get Harris out of here, even if all he was able to bring home to the Barclay coven was a dead body.

  Plan. He needed a plan.

  Whatever the Huntsman was, he had the ability to sense and directly fight magic. That didn’t mean that Trajan couldn’t fight the Huntsman with magic, but it wasn’t the smartest move. But if the Huntsman was inhabiting Harris’s body, it might mean he was bound by some of the physical limitations a human body had.

  Trajan inhaled, then exhaled hard. A gust of wind whipped down the top of the rise. He used his magic to push the air, but dispersed it. The trees rustled and Trajan moved under the covering sound of whistling air and shifting vegetation. He felt only a small prick as the Huntsman struck out at the air—diffusing his magic had worked.