I didn’t worry about impressing Grant this time and gathered only a nominal amount of each element, combining and passing them to him. He accepted my magic so gently I almost didn’t feel the link.
“I won’t break,” I said.
He eased magic through our link, watching my face for a reaction. I huffed.
“I swear. I’m fine.” To prove it, I flooded our link with magic.
“No permanent damage?”
I shook my head. His concerned expression, combined with the sensual, powerful energy of his magic swirling through me, teased unrealistic fantasies to life, and I turned away, busying myself with collecting my bag and checking on my camera to distract myself.
Grant built another air platform, pulling magic evenly from both of us, our link enhanced by Quinn. Then the captain placed his hand on the nearest tree and spoke in a loud voice. “We need the fastest route to the spriggan.”
His words splashed ice on my half-formed fantasies, yanking me back to the present. The boughs above us rustled, then those of the tree next to us. Limbs creaked and birds twittered in alarm as the oaks pulled their branches aside to reveal a clear path south.
Grant stepped onto the platform and held his hand out to me. I climbed up behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist, hoping he couldn’t feel the tremor of fear that ghosted my arms. Obtaining the dragon’s breath had been the easy part. We still had to stop a homicidal creature more powerful than the three of us combined—and our only weapon looked like a bag of air.
10
I clutched Grant’s shirt with sweat-damp palms and double-checked Quinn’s location. The gargoyle stayed close, gliding between the unnaturally split canopies. Our close call had scared him as much as it had me, and I was more than happy to have him within shouting—and boosting—range.
“What do you know about spriggans?” Grant asked, his voice a rumble against my chest.
I blinked, the afterimage of Quinn’s bright golden body flashing across the back of my eyelids. My trepidation over the upcoming encounter had numbed my brain more than I realized if the captain was the one prompting information from me and not the other way around. I wracked my brain for details about spriggans, coming up with rumors and hearsay but few real facts. My readers would likely have even less knowledge about this rare threat, which meant I’d need to ground today’s event with facts about the species as well as historical details. Plus, I’d need every last word of this story to shine with evocative information if I had any hope of winning the trip to the everlasting tree.
The reminder of my objective centered me, giving me something to focus on other than my anxiety. I wondered if that had been Grant’s intent.
Nah. I was giving him too much credit.
“Spriggans are fierce and almost impossible to kill,” I said. “They have bottomless appetites and eat anything and everything in their path. Until today, I thought the only way to stop them was to ring them in fire until it consumes them.”
“That’s about right, only less ‘bottomless appetite’ and more ‘pathological impulse to destroy anything living,’” Grant said. “Spriggans are strong, quick to adapt to any combative styles they come up against, and impervious to most weapons.”
“Except fire.”
“And Landewednack dragon’s breath.”
The ground rose and fell, the hills becoming more pronounced the farther we traveled. I peered around Grant’s shoulder, mesmerized by the unfolding line opening in front of us, the trees perpetually parting to provide us with the most direct route to the spriggan. Craning to view behind us proved equally hypnotic: The massive oaks’ branches dropped back into place as we passed in an endless shifting of limbs and leaves, restoring the forest to its normal state. Already, Beldame Zipporah’s towering mountain had been swallowed by the forest, and drawing a straight line in any direction seemed a fool’s fantasy.
“But why attack here and now? Why was it drawn to this grove?”
“Spriggans are from the British Isles. They are guardians of a dryad forest in southern England.”
“Guardians? Then why is this one attacking the dryads here?”
“It was probably drawn to this grove because of the familiar dryad magic, and if it were in its right mind, it would never hurt a dryad, but spriggans go mad when they’re away from their homeland for too long. Their minds become warped. Now all of its ferocious potential is being brought to bear on the gentle dryads.”
Gentle wasn’t the term I’d have used to describe the dryads this morning, but I knew what Grant meant. Any creature, no matter how peaceful their nature, could be driven to violence when their homes and lives were threatened.
Wary of fracturing whatever spell had prompted Grant’s uncharacteristic willingness to disclose information, I tried to keep my tone light and my questions direct and simple.
“How did it get across the ocean?”
“It must have gotten into the cargo hold of a trader’s ship. More foreign creatures than you’d think slip into the country that way.”
“How did it get this far inland?”
“On its own two feet. They can travel great distances.”
“But why?”
Grant shrugged, and the muscles of his back shifted against my breasts, reminding me of how intimately we were positioned on the tiny, flying platform. Grant must have had the same realization, because he stiffened and didn’t move again. For some reason, that made me smile.
“It could have been lost or looking for a mate,” Grant said after an awkward pause. “It wouldn’t have been thinking clearly.”
“So it didn’t set out to attack this grove?”
“No.”
Quinn’s enhancement cut out, then roared back through the link. We both jerked to check on the gargoyle. His wings flared in alarm, then tucked to his sides, and he dropped like the stone creature he was to the forest floor. He’d spotted the spriggan.
My pulse kicked higher, my body stiffening with a surge of adrenaline.
Grant brought the platform to a stop at the base of a small incline, dissolving the plate of air. We dropped to the ground in unison, the maneuver as coordinated as if we’d done it a dozen times. Reluctantly, I let go of Grant and the illusion of safety I enjoyed while wrapped around his strong body. He dissipated our link as he stepped away from me, and the loss of physical contact timed with the withdrawal of his magic curled into a tight sense of abandonment I couldn’t quite shake.
With the high sun beating down on my head and shoulders, I should have been hot, but nerves stole my body’s heat. I tucked icy fingers into my armpits and surveyed our surroundings. The trees had closed in around us, and this section of forest looked no different than the acres behind us.
Quinn’s stone feet pounded through dried leaves and brittle underbrush in a racket loud enough for three gargoyles as he extricated himself from his impromptu landing spot. I started to shush him before realizing we were in no danger of attracting the spriggan’s attention. Without the wind whistling against my ears, the cacophony was impossible to miss. I turned to face the hill, my mind conjuring a horrific scene to go with the crack of breaking trees and heavy earthen rumbles.
“It’s huge and it’s hurting them!” Quinn said, skidding to a halt next to me and leaning against my leg. He looked to Grant with worshipful eyes. “Help them! Hurry!”
“Stay here,” Grant said.
I gave him the incredulous look his order deserved.
“Fine. Stay low.” Hunched at the waist, Grant trotted up the hill, crouching lower as he reached the crest. I followed, Quinn on my heels. When Grant stopped, I halted beside him and looked up. My breath caught in my throat.
A tornado could have touched down in the forest and done less damage.
A twisted path of devastation three times as wide as Wicker Road stretched from the base of our hill to the horizon, the soil churned with broken tree carcasses ripped into a jumble of ragged limbs and shredded bark. The shriek and p
op of an oak being torn asunder jerked my attention to the towering giant at the center of the carnage. A monstrous mix of voracious dryad and human bloated to giant proportions, the spriggan loomed as tall as the oaks it destroyed. Massive trunk legs supported its—no, his—thick torso topped by a shockingly childlike face. Where the rest of his walnut-brown body appeared rough, more bark than flesh, his smooth face and delicate nose might have been described as sweet—if not for his terrifying round eyes that spun in search of his next victim, his mouth agape to expose a thicket of splintery teeth. Thorny vines sprang from his fingertips, growing as they whipped across the battlefield to wrap around a tattered stump. With a yank, he uprooted the decapitated sapling and shoved it into his mouth. Beneath his feet, the soil roiled, revealing glimpses of spiked roots tunneling from his toes outward.
I fumbled for my camera with numb fingers. No matter how clever my prose, I would never be able to describe this scene as evocatively as a picture could show it. Even more important, my readers needed to see the dryads’ bravery.
Their fragile bodies didn’t even reach the spriggan’s knees, and if they’d used a direct assault, it would have been suicide. Instead, the dryads stood at the edges of the pandemonium in groups of four and five, employing Grant’s tactical strategies. A blackberry bramble snaked across the demolished clearing, not simply moving but growing. Layers upon layers of refined wood magic supported by traces of earth and water fueled its rapid maturation, the weaves too complex to be created by anyone other than a dryad. It would have taken me a month to dissect the spell and another four to re-create it—if I’d possessed the necessary skills with wood, which I didn’t. Yet the dryads built and stretched the elaborate weave so rapidly the bramble slithered forward at a walking pace.
Sneaking up behind the spriggan, the bramble reared high and struck around his knee, wrapping its thorny length down the spriggan’s calf.
I primed and lifted my camera, snapping pictures as the spriggan stumbled, his assault on a tree across the clearing cut short. The dryads altered the magic around the bramble, and new shoots blossomed along the vine, half tunneling into the ground, the others twining higher up the spriggan’s leg, attempting to root him in place. The enraged giant snapped off his own twenty-foot-long vine fingers at his palm. The severed vines fell limp and new ones sprouted to wrap around the bramble and wrench it from his leg. The blackberry vine whiplashed all the way across the savaged clearing to the base of the bush, throwing branches twice its thickness into the air before snapping off.
The spriggan treated his own flesh with even less care, tearing the bramble from his leg and shoving handfuls of it into his enormous mouth. He devoured the thorny plant while his gaze darted around the clearing, locking on to a tree far to our left. On the fringes of the destruction, the oak stood like a jewel, tipped with a lush canopy several feet taller than the surrounding trees. Its health and size suggested it might be a bonded tree, one linked to the life of a dryad just as the dryad’s life was linked to it. The two dryad warriors crouched at its base confirmed it. They looked like children, their spindly weapons insignificant against the might of the colossal spriggan.
Deep furrows shot from the spriggan’s feet toward the bonded oak, spraying soil and broken limbs in parallel lines. Simultaneously, long vines burst from his hands to wrap around the closest branches of the oak. The spriggan didn’t have to move to reach sixty feet away.
“It’s going to kill them!” Quinn squeaked.
“We’ve got to do something.” I spun to Grant, wrapping my hand around his thick forearm.
“Look.” He pointed across the ravaged ground to a dozen more blackberry brambles snaking toward the giant. Before the spriggan’s underground attack could reach the oak, three brambles wrapped around his legs, toppling him. The oak branches in the spriggan’s grasp broke free with sharp snaps, leaving the tree mostly unharmed. The spriggan wasted no time tearing at the brambles imprisoning him.
“He won’t stay down for long, but they’ve worked out how to distract him,” Grant said.
I nodded, studying the battleground with better understanding. Remnants of blackberry brambles littered the broken ground beneath the hill where we crouched, their lines bright green against the mud- and wood-churned soil. Many more broken ropes of brambles crisscrossed the spriggan’s cataclysmic wake, clumped where the dryads had successfully diverted the spriggan from bonded trees.
“Nathan is here.” Quinn used a paw to point.
The senior writer huddled well back from the fighting, on another rise where he had a similar height advantage as us. Like me, he had his camera in hand, and the shimmer of a communication capsule beside him captured his voice as he recorded the details for his story. For my story.
I snapped my camera shut and stuffed it back in my bag. I’d gotten the pictures I needed; continuing to photograph the horrific events seemed macabre, as if I would be hoping for a more gruesome event to top the already shocking pictures I’d captured.
“Where’s your squad?” I asked, surveying the outer perimeter of the destruction.
“On their way.” Grant gestured for us to follow him down the hill, away from the spriggan, where we wouldn’t be visible to the giant. When we halted, he gripped my shoulders, his heavy hands weighting me down as if he wished he could root me in place.
“Will you remain right here if I order you to?”
I bit my lip.
“You have no business going up against a spriggan,” he pressed.
No, I didn’t.
Grant seized on my visible indecision. “You’re a journalist, Kylie. You need to remain objective, outside of the story, so you can see the whole picture. You can’t stick yourself into your own stories and expect to get a well-rounded article.”
“That was . . . refreshingly logical, Captain.” His words might have come from the editor herself, and he was right. I wasn’t a warrior. I didn’t have the right personality or skill set. Instead, I’d decided to better the world by protecting people with knowledge, writing articles so everyone could be better informed.
But sitting on the sidelines, crafting an article and hoping I’d win the challenge with it while the dryads fought to save their trees and their lives didn’t sit right with my conscience. Nor did sending Grant in alone, not when I could be of assistance.
Nothing says I can’t write a more intimate piece, one from the front lines of the battle.
I scoffed at the thought, reading my own attempt to bolster my bravery by giving it a journalistic bent. In truth, I actually thought I could make a difference in this fight. I hoped I wasn’t fooling myself.
“We’ll be stronger linked,” I said.
Grant’s face darkened, his expression turning mutinous. I hurried on before he could argue.
“At least until your squad gets here. You’ll need—” I started to say he’d need me, but I remembered that humiliating lesson from the climb up Beldame Zipporah’s mountain. “You can use me, use my magic. You’re not exactly your most energized self, Captain Monaghan.”
“I’ll help, too.” Quinn stood tall, though his eyebrows drew together with worry. I patted his neck, proud of his courage.
Grant look back and forth between us, clearly wanting to say yes to Quinn and no to me.
“I won’t be left behind.” The firmness of my voice surprised me, considering how badly my insides were quaking.
Grant’s molars ground audibly. “Fine. Link up. And, Kylie, don’t make me regret this.”
11
When I stuffed my camera back in my bag, pain sliced into my fingertip. I yanked my hand out and examined the line of blood oozing to the surface, then peered inside my bag. The harpy’s metallic feather had fallen free of the protective sheath of my journal. Shaking my stinging finger, I scowled at the feather. I’d completely forgotten I’d put it in there, but seeing it spawned an idea.
Gingerly removing it, I laid the feather on the ground, then packed mud around the needle-shar
p quill. When I had a solid pommel of pressed dirt, I encased it in a net of earth and wood and tied off the spell to hold it together. Despite having never made anything like it before, the entire spell had been effortless, thanks to my access to both Grant’s magic and Quinn’s enhancement. Even so, I sensed the weariness edging our link. We’d been through a lot today, and it had taken its toll on all our energy.
I swung the feather experimentally, listening to the whine of displaced air. Grant would require every drop of our combined magic in his assault, leaving none for me to defend myself. At least now I had a weapon that stood a chance of fending off the spriggan’s spiky vine fingers. When I glanced up at Grant, he nodded approvingly.
“I have two rules,” Grant said, holding up his fingers as he ticked them off. “Kylie, you get no farther from me than my shadow. Quinn, the opposite goes for you. I want you as far from the spriggan as possible while still boosting us. You’ve seen his reach; keep your distance. Is that clear?”
Quinn and I nodded. With the sun barely past its zenith, I’d have to stand practically on top of Grant if I were to take his instructions literally.
“Can you boost the dryads, too?” Grant asked.
“I’m already enhancing those I can reach.”
“We’re lucky to have you with us. Now get to safety.” Grant clapped Quinn on the rump, urging the gargoyle into action.
Quinn spun and ran down the hill away from the spriggan, his lope transitioning seamlessly into flight when he spread his wings. In a few hard beats, he surpassed the canopy and circled wide around us.
Grant shifted, pulling my gaze to his. “If we do this right, we’re going to draw the spriggan’s full wrath. Once we’ve engaged him, I won’t be able to extricate you from the field. No one would think less of you if you remained behind.”
I shook my head. “I’m coming,” I croaked, my throat parchment dry.
Deadlines & Dryads Page 8
