Into the Woods

by Kim Harrison

  Downshifting and braking hard, he came to a halt.

  The sound of the wind stopped, and his face warmed even as he shivered in the shade of ancient trees. He glanced back, seeing no one on the road, but the top of the hill was hidden behind a curve. Sweat broke out on him. Legs protesting, Trent swung a foot over, and hoisting his sixteen-pound racing bike onto a shoulder, he strode to the right, trying not to disturb the thistles as he found the narrow dirt path.

  A faint shout brought his head up. Deep under the trees, he looked back to see a lone rider speeding down the hill; behind him, the three Weres were shouting curses and howling at him. The sun caught a haze of dust, and he smiled and faded back into the woods. One rider now, not two. He could see why Rachel relied on the pixy.

  Pulse hammering, he pulled the GPS from the handlebars and tucked it under his armpit as he threw the racing bike into the bracken and out of sight of the path. His helmet was next, his spelling cap now tucked into his pocket. The fronds waved and settled to hide the gleaming black frame. The lone rider knew where he was going, but no need to advertise it. Satisfied, Trent turned and ran down the dirt-packed path. Immediately his legs cramped up, and he grit his teeth, running through it until his clumsy, awkward motion smoothed out into a mile-eating lope he could keep up for hours.

  A bird called in the distance, and a woodpecker sounded. His breaths in and out eased as more familiar muscles took over. Running, he could do. The sun came and went on his shoulders, and the sound of the ocean vanished under the hushed sighing of the wind in the trees.

  He almost wished he had bowed to Ellasbeth’s demand and abandoned his business dealings in the Midwest if only to claim a chunk of this peace. But then his heart hardened. Cincinnati might not be rich in wild spaces, the forests that once covered her hewn down and burned in the furnaces that had fueled her industrial revolution, the multitude of species she’d once boasted trampled into extinction under her droves of pigs and then people who flocked to the new city and a society built on human values. But for all her loud, brash exuberance, Cincinnati had welcomed his mother and father when they’d fled those who had promised to protect them. Cincinnati offered them shelter, meager, humble, but honest. And his mother, Trent remembered, had loved the fields more than the woods.

  An image of his mother sitting in the sun with a horse cropping behind her rose up from his forgotten memories, shocking him. She was laughing with him, a daisy brushing her lips before touching it to his forehead fondly. Trent gasped, stumbling as his feet misplaced themselves. Recovering, he continued on with a panicked pace. He remembered his mother so rarely, and he grasped the image of her smiling at him, the sun blinding on her white dress, the grass as green as her eyes, sealing the memory away so he’d never forget it again. His mother had loved the fields, so far from the sea that she had forgotten its lure.

  “Hey, Trent!”

  The mental image of his mother vanished at Jenks’s voice. Stifling his annoyance, he squinted up at the pixy. “One left?” he panted as he ran. My mother was of the field, he thought, vowing to share his love of horses with Lucy. Girls loved horses. That was one thing they could share. Maybe he could do this.

  “Yep,” Jenks said proudly. “One rode right off the cliff swatting at a bug. That would be me. He gashed his leg open on a rock and will be lucky to make it up to the main road and the rescue car. That would be pure dumb luck. The other guy in the blue tights is still on your trail. He took one of the Were’s bikes when I crashed his. You’ve about five minutes ahead. He’s trying to bike in. Stupid ass. You were smart ditching yours. He’s banged his bahoogies twice already.”

  Coming to a halt to read the GPS, Trent smacked the mosquito biting his elbow and squinted at the sun-faded map. The system was flashing, having an electronic hissy because he’d gone off the race route, but that the walking trail wasn’t on record was a good thing. The stream has to be close. Tucking the GPS away, he squinted up at the cliff rising to his left.

  “You going to try to lose him in the woods?” Jenks said as Trent started forward at a slower pace, hoping to catch his breath so he’d have something when push came to shove.

  “No. I can’t outrun him. I need a good place for an ambush,” Trent said absently. He looked up, startled to find Jenks hovering backward as he walked forward, staring at him in what appeared to be apprehension. “Ah, thank you, Jenks. I appreciate you taking care of the one man. My chances have improved dramatically.”

  Jenks squinted at him, then frowned. “Sure. What can I do to help with this last one? He uses magic like it’s his first language. The broken lines here don’t bother him at all.”

  Concerned, Trent felt the bumps in his belt pack. He had only three sleepy-time potions he wanted to keep for the compound. Everything else he had was ley line based and potentially lethal—and with the fractured state of the ley lines this close to the faults, it wouldn’t be a fast implementation. He’d need a distraction if he was to even have a chance. He didn’t want to end up trapping himself in a bubble of protection and lose because he ran out of time, pinned down by one of the Withons’ guards until they came for him and then killed him as a trespasser. I am so weary of ultimate resolutions . . .

  “I’ve got an idea,” he said as he jogged through a stand of young trees, ducking some of the larger branches as he moved through them. “Is he still on his bike?”

  “Tink loves a duck, you’re improvising. I’ll go check,” Jenks said dryly, and he darted back down the way they had come.

  Heart thumping, Trent continued to run up the path before slipping off it and doubling back amid the short grass and ferns. Cursing the insects he stirred up, he worked back to the thicket of young trees. Being careful not to crush more vegetation than necessary, he pulled a sapling back like a bow, ready to smack the next thing that came down the path. It was hard to see, and he tucked his sunglasses aside, squinting as his eyes adjusted.

  A mosquito landed on his arm, then another. Three found the tiny slip of skin showing between his black biking tights and his socks. Slowly the forest reclaimed the silence, and the sound of insects and wind became obvious. Grimacing, Trent reached out his awareness and tapped a line.

  Silver-flecked energy tasting of green and broken rock flowed into him, heady but intermittent. The “amperage” was adequate, but the flow was erratic and might cause a breakage in his charm that the wise practitioner could exploit. If his familiar had been closer, he could have drawn a clean line through him, but the auratic bond between him and his horse didn’t work past the curve of the earth.

  The soft hum of Jenks’s wings grew loud, and Trent winced as the pixy stopped dead in the path in a spot of sun, right where the tree was going to swing. His wings blurred to invisibility and the sun caught his silver dust to make him a primordial vision—until the pixy swore, darting sideways when a blue jay dove at him. A blue feather drifted down, and the jay screamed.

  “Jenks!” Trent whispered, thinking Rachel would joyfully kill him if he came back without the pixy. She’d never believe he was taken by a blue jay.

  Brightening, Jenks darted over. “Tink blasted birds,” he said loudly as he stabbed the mosquitoes on Trent’s arm with his sword and they exploded in little drops of blood. “There are obviously no pixies around here.”

  Trent continued to gather the energy to him, hoping that by holding it in his chi, he might give it some semblance of order. He held his breath, listening for the sound of a bike, unable to hear over the low hum of Jenks’s wings. “Will you settle somewhere?” he asked, and the pixy alighted on the bent-back tree. “Not there!” he hissed, but it was too late. The soft rattle of a street bike pretending to be a dirt cycle became obvious. In a flash of sun, a man in blue riding tights shimmied up the path, the man standing on the pedals to make progress.

  Eyes flicking over the man’s thick legs and wide shoulders, Trent grimaced. He was stocky for an elf, and his straw-blond hair poking from under his helmet and his heavy build sai
d he had a large portion of human in him. He’d been behind Trent at the start of the race, and he had thought it odd that someone so athletic would put himself in the middle of the start instead of the front where he could break from the casual racers sooner and have a better time.

  If Trent was lucky, the man would have enough human in him to slow his magic down, a prospect that seemed unlikely when the man looked up and met his eyes. Intelligence glittered, followed by anticipation of dealing out pain, then alarm as he saw the bent tree and realized what was about to happen.

  “Now!” Jenks shouted, and Trent let go of the tree.

  The bent branch sprang forward, Jenks rising up so it moved harmlessly under him, sighing with its passage. Dirt sprayed as the man skidded to a halt, turning sideways to avoid a full strike, but unbalanced, he fell. Heart pounding, Trent launched himself at the man still disentangling himself from the bike.

  The thump of impact rocked them both, the man pinned under his bike dazed but reactive. Reaching out, Trent grasped the man’s arm, ignoring the pinch of pain in his foot.

  “Ta na veno!” Trent shouted, gasping as the words triggered a memory flash and line energy jagged through him. The twenty minutes it took to prepare the wild-magic charm unrolled in his mind faster than thought itself, reliving it in an instant and harnessing the energy now flowing through his hands. He had to touch the man for it to work. The charm could not puncture the assassin’s aura on his own. Wild magic needed every ounce of direction he could muster.

  Trent’s eyes widened as he felt the spell peel from his soul like new skin. It raced through his body, following his neural pathways, condensing, becoming more powerful the farther it got from his chi and the fewer pathways it had to take. It would explode like a bomb once it reached the man under him, acting like mental shrapnel to burn the assassin’s own neural network to render his magic useless and put them on equal footing.

  “Son of a bitch!” the man shouted, and with a grunt, he shoved his bike up. Trent’s grip on the man was torn away, and in a panic he scrambled for anything as his magic crested, hesitated, and then not finding anything to fall into, collapsed back into Trent.

  Agony arched through him. His jaw clenched as his muscles violently contracted. He fell back, his head hitting the soft earth and his breath whooshing out. His heart spasmed once, fighting to find a rhythm as the charm exploded. He couldn’t think as images of the people he knew, alive or dead, flashed like strobes in his thoughts as the magic randomly jolted the neurons in his brain, burning through him, shredding his aura . . . leaving him helpless.

  Someone was groaning, and he bit his tongue when he realized it was him.

  “Not bad,” the man said, and Trent blearily looked up at the metallic thump of the straw-blond man shoving the bike off himself and standing. “I don’t know that one. Your witch is right, though. You should leave the magic to those who know what they’re doing.”

  Idiot, Trent thought, his chest hurting as he clenched at the dirt, trying to put the world back together, but he couldn’t even stand up. Nothing was responding. His charm had backfired right at him. He had nothing, no magic, no weapons. Nothing.

  “Damn, you made me break my bike,” the man said, bending over his knees, clearly trying to catch his breath. “That really pisses me off.”

  “Sorry,” Trent managed. “I was aiming for your face. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to just leave?”

  The man looked up from his leg, bleeding and caked with dirt and bark, and shook his head. Grimacing, he unclipped his bike helmet and took it off. “Get up. Ellasbeth wants to talk to you before she peels your skin off and drops you into the ocean.”

  Trent held up a finger for a moment. With a muffled groan, he got a leg under him, and from there, got to a kneel. Panting, he squinted in the sun at the man. Things were starting to work again, and his resolve strengthened. He didn’t have his magic. Big deal. He wasn’t helpless. “You’re going to have to kill me,” he rasped, meaning it.

  The big man shook his head. “I get paid more if you’re alive. We can do broken and bleeding, though.”

  The sound of the knife pulling from a sheath was chilling, the cold steel hissing softly before the last ting of release. It glinted in the dappled shade, and seeing it, Trent went still. His eyes flicked everywhere, and he tensed, even as he settled himself deeper into the mold and earth, becoming one with it, easing his seared thoughts until nothing remained but the knife and the man wielding it. Not again. Restraint. Show some Goddess-blessed restraint. I am not an animal.

  “Hey! Dewdrop!” Jenks shrilled as the man moved toward Trent, knife bared, and Trent’s air sucked in as the pixy dove down.

  “Jenks!” Trent shouted as the man moved faster than Trent would have believed was possible, knocking Jenks aside. The pixy screamed a curse as he spiraled into the bracken.

  The man grabbed Trent’s shirt front, the smell of him cascading through Trent: sweat, anger, testosterone, satisfaction. It plinked through him like little drops of fire, igniting his anger. He was a Kalamack. This was the space he defended, the companion he protected. He would prevail.

  The knife arched toward him. Trent watched it, still rising to meet it from his kneel. Leaning sideways, he grabbed the man’s free hand, yanking him off balance and stepping behind him. Dancing almost, he struck at the man’s grip on the knife, hitting the nerve complex perfectly and swiveling his wrist to catch the knife as it fell.

  The man’s eyes widened, but it was too late, and with a spinning grace, Trent tossed the knife to shift its grip, and smoothly ran it under the man’s ear, falling back six feet as the man’s heart pounded once with no restriction . . . and his life’s blood surged free.

  “Holy Tinker’s damn!” Jenks exclaimed.

  The large man before him clamped his hands to his neck, bright crimson blood coating them in his second heartbeat.

  Damn it, Trent thought, grimacing as the man gaped at him, and with a third heartbeat, his body was depleted of enough blood to maintain the pressure to feed his mind. Disgusted with himself, Trent tossed the knife to land before the kneeling man. A fourth heartbeat, and he fell forward to hide it.

  “You . . .” Jenks stammered from a fallen log, his wing bent and leaking dust. “Tink loves a duck, you’re good!” But Trent was anything but pleased. He’d done it again. What the hell was he turning into? Maybe Rachel was right.

  “Hey!” Jenks said as he jumped from the log, and Trent put a finger to his lips, his brow furrowing as he realized too late it was covered in blood. Frowning, he patted the man down, searching his pockets until he found a two-way radio.

  “Target . . . —nated,” he said, pitching his voice low and breaking his words to simulate a bad connection. “Hurt and requ— pick up at—. Coordi—,” he finished, then dropped it, using his foot to smash the radio until the back came off and the radio broke into three pieces. Jaw clenched, he stomped on it a few more times just for the hell of it. Adrenaline surged through him, ugly but exhilarating. I do not enjoy this. But the feeling of perfect grace and movement—finding an absolute end to the dance—had left him with a calm that was only now dissipating.

  His hands were sticky: avoiding Jenks’s eyes, he found a wipe in his belt pack and cleaned his fingers. The flies were starting to gather already, and Trent backed into the shade, sitting on the low log beside the pixy, and listened to the wind in the trees as he found himself.

  Damn it all to the Turn and back, he hadn’t wanted to kill the man. Okay, he had, but not like this. The more he tried to not be his father, the more he became him. The man was dead, and he didn’t care, didn’t wish it were otherwise but for a mild feeling of having failed to find a better way.

  “That was slick!” Jenks said as he clambered up beside him, his wings moving fitfully. “I don’t know what I’m more impressed with, that you just bought yourself an hour, or . . . that.”

  Trent stared into space beyond the body in the patch of sun. Why didn’t he
feel anything? Had he become the task of keeping his species alive so deeply that his own soul had been swallowed up by it? Was it too late?

  “Rachel is right,” Jenks said, his voice holding both encouragement and unexpected understanding. “You are a murdering bastard. If you were small enough, I’d bang knuckles with you. Hell, if you were small enough, I’d put you on my own lines.”

  Trent’s breath slipped from him in a sigh as he thought of Rachel. Why did the woman hold him to such a narrow line of behavior? It wasn’t like the people she lived with didn’t end lives when the need demanded it. She knew it, and yet if he killed someone to save his life, she labeled him a failure. Maybe it’s because I label myself as one, he thought, then grimaced at the pixy, blinking at the expression of pity and understanding on Jenks’s face. He had to get better at magic—killing people was starting to wear on him.

  “You okay?” the pixy asked, his mood serious, and Trent nodded, his breath hissing in as he tried to touch a line and found himself burned.

  “Mostly,” he said as he stood, knees shaking. They had to get moving. The Withons might have a helicopter.

  “You leaving him here? It’s a lot of evidence.”

  Trent looked back at the body, knowing the knife with his fingerprints was somewhere under him, not to mention his prints on the bike and the man, and his footprints. Jenks stood, waiting. The pixy’s nonchalance should have soothed him, but it only bracketed his own realization that something in him was on the verge of dying. Rachel suffered every time she was remotely responsible for anyone’s death. She agonized over it, tortured herself until she found the knowledge that made her strong enough that ultimate force could be avoided. He just kept killing people until it had gotten easy.

  “We leave him here,” Trent said softly. “This is an arranged madness. There will be no inquiry, no backlash killing.” His gaze landed on Jenks. The pixy hadn’t flown since being hit, and silver dust was still leaking from him. “Can you fly?”