witchesintheweeds_GEN Page 10

  Harris tried to open his fingers, but it felt like they were glued to Trajan. “I’m trying.”

  “Shut up,” Nimue hissed.

  Harris jerked his head up to look at her. Her head was tipped back and her hair was blowing up, as if she were standing on a grate with hot air blowing up from below. He could just barely see her face between the stands of whipping hair. When he did catch sight of her expression, his stomach knotted.

  “Did you see it?” she breathed.

  “Fuck,” Trajan hissed as he slowly tipped his head back.

  Maybe if he didn’t look he wouldn’t have to see whatever it was that put that horrified expression on Nimue’s face and that grim note in Trajan’s voice. He wasn’t ready to deal with whatever else the afterlife held. Harris stubbornly stared at the trunk of the tree directly across from him. As if in reaction to his emotions, the tree sprouted fresh leaves on the branches closest to him.

  Strangely, that gave him hope.

  Harris looked up.

  *

  There was something there, hiding in the bright white sun. She could feel it. Trajan could too. Where before she’d tightened her grip on his hand in anger, now he firmed his hold on her hand in tense preparation.

  Harris was staring at one of the trees he’d called to life at the border of her casting circle. Fresh green leaves popped from the lowest branches, a few of them catching in her hair, which was whipping around her face.

  “Can you turn off the wind?” She kept her voice low as she spoke to Trajan, not wanting to draw the attention of whatever was above them.

  “That’s not me,” was his murmured reply.

  Her hair continued to dance in a wind that seemed to be coming from underneath her, blowing and pulling her hair almost straight up.

  “It might be you,” Harris said slowly.

  Nim wanted to look at him, but she didn’t. Firstly, because she didn’t dare look down. Her instincts were screaming at her that if she did, whatever was up there would swoop down.

  “What are you talking about?” Trajan asked.

  “I think…I thought, earlier, that I could do some earth magic.”

  “What?” Trajan and Nim said in unison.

  Harris made a disgruntled noise. “We’re dead. Why couldn’t we have some new powers?”

  “I don’t think that’s how being dead works,” Trajan said slowly.

  I don’t think we’re dead.

  “Just try,” Harris insisted.

  “How? I don’t even know how I’m doing it in the first place.”

  “Think of it as breathing,” Trajan instructed.

  Nimue immediately held her breath. Nothing happened.

  “Not your actual breathing,” Trajan corrected. “Think of it as if your emotions were breathing.”

  “So I have to stop having emotions?”

  “No.” Trajan sounded frustrated, and she was about to snap at him when he said, “I’m sorry, I’ve never tried to explain this before. Think of it as if…as if you were trying to blow up a balloon. You’re taking deep breaths and blowing out hard trying to fill up the balloon.

  “Your emotions are doing that. They’re breathing too hard, too deep. Let go of the balloon, stop trying to blow it up, and you’ll start to breathe normally.”

  Nim had no idea how to go about getting her emotions to stop trying to blow up a metaphorical balloon she hadn’t known existed. He probably hadn’t meant it literally, but she imagined a big round balloon right above her head. Once she had the image in mind, she popped the balloon with a mental prick of needle-sharp thought.

  The wind died, her hair falling down around her face and shoulders in tangled clumps. Unable to brush it out of her face with her hands, she tossed her head and blew at the few stray strands that fell across her lips.

  “Holy shit. You have wind magic.” Trajan’s calm voice was a mismatch for his words, and the implications.

  “I bet you have new powers too,” Harris told him.

  The quality of the light shifted almost imperceptibly, as if the thing hiding in it had moved.

  “We need to get out of here,” Nim snapped at them.

  “Yes,” Trajan agreed.

  “I still don’t know why we’re freaking out,” Harris admitted in an almost cheerful tone.

  “There’s something up there.” Trajan’s voice was grim.

  Harris sighed. “I was afraid it was going to be something like that. I can pull the trees down again.”

  “No, we need to move. We have to assess our situation.”

  Nim bit back a sharp retort. She was used to being in control. She had so little control over her own life and fate that she’d reacted to that by developing control issues. There was no point in having a pissing match with Trajan, not when she agreed with him.

  “Step one,” he continued. “We stand up.”

  They were still kneeling, still bound together by their linked hands. Trajan put words to action, shifting his weight to one side and getting his right leg out from under him, planting his foot on the dirt in the take-a-knee posture. He grimaced. “My foot’s asleep. It will take a minute to get feeling back.”

  Nim tried to follow his lead, but her right leg got caught in her dress. She switched, bringing her left leg forward. The slit in her wrap-style dress parted, draping along either side of her bare thigh.

  Harris wolf-whistled, not in a threatening way, but with an overt exaggeration that made her laugh.

  “Were you two, uh…” Trajan looked back and forth between them.

  “Were we what?” Nimue glanced at Harris out of the corner of her eye, without moving her head. The unidentified thing hiding in the light was making her nervous, and she didn’t dare look away, or even pretend to look away.

  Harris took the one-knee position. His pretty eyes, which she’d sworn were more golden-brown than green, now seemed to be a bright, clear emerald. He grimaced and bounced his heel up and down, probably fighting the pins and needles she felt in her own limb. “He’s wondering if you kidnapped me in order to have your way with me.”

  “Rape jokes aren’t funny,” Trajan said.

  Nim’s eyebrows crept up her forehead and she warmed to the scary blond man. “Amen to that.”

  “Sorry.” Harris sounded contrite.

  “So did she?” Trajan asked Harris.

  “Seriously?” Nim demanded in outrage.

  “No sexual assault, though I thought about it. Wait, that sounded wrong! I didn’t mean I was going to assault you, Kim, I mean Nimue. I was—”

  “Nim. My friends call me Nim. That’s why I told you my name was Kim. Sounded close enough.”

  “Nim,” Harris repeated. “I wasn’t thinking about assaulting you. I would never.”

  “I know.” She squeezed his fingers, wishing she could look directly at him.

  “You two seemed pretty cozy for a moment there before she tried to stab you.” Trajan sounded only mildly interested, as if they were discussing the weather. She could see him out of the corner of her other eye, and he, like she, had his head tipped up, eyes narrows while looking into the white sunlight that hid…whatever it was.

  “I wasn’t going to stab him. Well, I was, but not in a bad way.”

  “There’s a good way to get stabbed?”

  “I needed to offload some magic, so I was going to pierce him with my dampener so I could push out the magic I had.”

  “Why didn’t you just toss it to me?” Harris asked.

  Nim cleared her throat. “I was having a dramatic moment. I didn’t think of it.”

  “Meanwhile, all he sees is my kidnapper about to stab me. ‘Oh! what a tangled web we weave.’”

  “There are more appropriate quotes.” Trajan shifted, pulling on her arm, and then brought his other leg forward until he was in a catcher’s crouch. He grunted. “Fucking tingle foot.”

  “Shakespeare quotes?” Harris asked incredulously.

  “That quote is actually from Sir Walter Scott’
s Marmion. If we’re doing Shakespeare, something from A Midsummer Night’s Dream?” Nim suggested.

  “‘Lord, what fools these mortals be’ seems appropriate.” Trajan tugged on her hand as he spoke.

  Nim pulled against the men, tightening her grip as she did so, so she too could pull her other foot under her.

  “Or maybe,” Trajan continued, “‘Are you sure, that we are awake? It seems to me, that yet we sleep, we dream.’ We stand on three.”

  “I’m pretty sure we’re dead.” Harris pulled at her as he too got up into a crouch.

  “We’re not dead,” she said in exasperation. “Do you feel dead?”

  “How the hell would I know what dead felt like? And what are you two looking at?”

  “There’s something up there. I saw it move.”

  “How can you see anything? It’s so bright.”

  “‘Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania,’’” Trajan murmured.

  “I think that’s the point. We can’t really see anything.” Even after the trees had sprung open, there was dirt packed between the trunks, creating a visual barrier to anything outside her former casting circle.

  “Ready your magic,” Trajan said.

  “All of us?” Nim clarified.

  Trajan snorted. “The damage is done. We’re—”

  “Don’t say dead,” she pleaded.

  “Dead. Harris, ready your trees for a physical defense.”

  “He’s pretty good at offense,” Nim said.

  “With plants?” Trajan sounded dubious.

  “I still have lots of holes to prove it. I’ll prepare an offense.”

  “I’m experienced at using offensive magic. Let me handle that.”

  Nim narrowed her eyes, but didn’t look at Trajan. The arrogant jerk.

  “Don’t piss her off,” Harris begged. “She’ll have the earth swallow you whole.”

  “She’ll what?” Now Trajan sounded uneasy, and Nim smiled. “Never mind, we don’t have time for this. We go on three. Nimue and I on offense; Harris, you’re on defense. One.”

  “I just remembered a quote.” Harris sounded pleased, and not at all nervous.

  In contrast, Nimue’s nerves were jangling. “A quote?” she asked.

  “From A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

  “Two.” Trajan spoke a bit more forcefully.

  Harris cleared his throat and then in a sonorous voice said, “‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’”

  Nimue’s stomach fluttered and she caught her breath. Harris squeezed her fingers.

  “Three.”

  Chapter 9

  The earth below Trajan’s feet trembled and he called up a spout of wind. Rather than pulling the air down from the sky in a tornado, he forced the ground-level air all around their small circle to rise straight up, creating an impenetrable tube of rushing wind. He’d said he’d take offense, but this was actually a defensive spell, admittedly one that acted like an offensive one—a wind like this could cut through living materials.

  The branches and leaves of the six-foot trees that stood sentinel around them didn’t so much as sway under the force of his wind.

  Trajan’s heels started to rise off the earth as the volume of power he was using, as well as the nature of his magic, nullified gravity. The unbreakable hold Nimue and Harris had on him was the only thing that kept him anchored in place.

  He felt as if he’d had sparkling wine injected directly into his veins—his entire body felt bubbly and light, and he was aware that he was grinning. He’d never used power like this before, because he’d never had power like this before.

  Calling up the wind took less than a second. He wasted another second reveling in the effervescent feeling.

  Then his brain, and his practical nature, snapped him back to reality, and he looked around. The column of wind he’d called was picking up dust and obscuring their view.

  “Nimue, can you—”

  Before he’d finished the question, the air cleared, and he could feel the tingling power of her earth-based magic as she forcefully held the soil down.

  The branches of the young saplings were sparse enough that he was able to see above and through them.

  “Goddess,” Nimue breathed.

  “That’s…that’s not possible,” Harris stuttered.

  Trajan looked at the thing that towered over them, needles blindingly white in sunlight, but now that they were all standing the angle allowed them to see. “That’s one big fucking tree.”

  The redwood was at least a hundred yards tall, a football-field-sized tree rising straight up into the air and towering over the trees around it. The trunk and branches were the same reddish-brown fibrous wood as a normal redwood, but the leaves—or were they needles?—were pure white. The sunlight was hitting them and being reflected ten of thousands and hundreds of thousands of times, creating the blindingly white light. He kept the wind spell in place. If that tree reached for them, the force of the paper-thin column of wind would cut it in half.

  “That’s not a tree,” Harris said.

  Trajan risked a glance at the other man. He didn’t look scared. He looked…stunned. “What is it?”

  Nimue bowed her head, as if in prayer.

  A shiver worked its way down his back. “What is that?” he asked more forcefully.

  “It’s an albino redwood,” Harris breathed.

  “I thought you said it wasn’t a tree.”

  “I meant it’s not. It can’t be. Albino redwoods can’t get that big. They can’t.”

  “Maybe in the land of the dead they do.” Trajan looked back and forth between them. “What is she doing?” He jerked his chin at Nimue.

  “The trees are sacred,” she replied softly.

  “Sacred?”

  “To the Pomo peoples. White redwood branches have incredible healing powers.”

  Trajan had done a quick search on the Mahkah coven when he’d figured out whom he was looking for, and knew they had strong ties to native magic.

  “It’s…it’s not possible,” Harris was stammering. “Albino trees have to be fed by networked trees. They can’t grow that big.”

  “Fed what?” Trajan asked, giving the tree an uneasy look. There was something eerie and awe-inspiring about the massive, otherworldly tree.

  “Blond human men,” Nimue replied in a horrified, hushed whisper. “These trees demand the sacrifice of humans, but only blonds. It wants you.”

  Trajan’s blood ran cold and he clenched his teeth.

  Harris tugged at his arm, pulling Trajan’s attention. Harris rolled his eyes and jerked his head at Nimue. Trajan whipped his attention to her. She was trying to nod solemnly, but her lips were twitching as she tried to fight back a smile.

  He exhaled slowly. “That was cold.”

  Nimue started laughing. “Your face…”

  Harris was fighting a snicker.

  “You know what?” Trajan normally was more debonair than this, but the adrenaline his body had dumped into his bloodstream was making him cranky. “You two suck.”

  Nimue’s laughter deepened and she took a half step toward Harris, leaning against his shoulder as she continued to laugh.

  Harris got an odd, vulnerable look on his face when she shifted to lie against him, but he didn’t push her away. Trajan watched with interest as he leaned toward her, as if he would kiss her hair, but then stopped himself.

  However these two had ended up in the same place at the same time, there was something between them. A small pang of jealousy stabbed at him.

  What? Where had that come from?

  “Being dead is so damned weird.” He’d meant to keep that particular bit of insight to himself, but the words popped out.

  Nimue stopped laughing. “We’re not dead.”

  Still holding them, he had to nod at the tree with his head. “Then explain that.”

  “I think our magic had a reaction.”

  Trajan snorted. “You think? Practitioners from different ca
bals have caused earthquakes, tornados, fires, sinkholes, hurricanes, lightning storms—”

  “I know!” Nimue jerked on his hand as she tried to throw her hands in the air, apparently forgetting that they were connected. “Damn it, why can’t we let go?”

  “Because. We’re. Dead.”

  “We are not dead.”

  “Nim.” Harris’s soft voice broke into their argument. “I know you want that to be true, but we all used magic at the same time. That would have caused something huge. The likelihood of us surviving it…”

  “I cannot be dead.” She swallowed and tears collected on her lower eyelids. “If I’m dead, it means my sister is the heir.”

  Trajan had heard about the Mahkah curse. It was the sort of thing that made people wince, say “that sucks”, and then move on with their day. He hadn’t stopped to think about what it would be like to be one of the cursed.

  “I know, and I’m sorry.” Harris tugged her close and she rested against his shoulder, her head tucked under his chin. The arm Trajan held was extended awkwardly, so he took a step toward them, until less than a foot separated them.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. She looked at Trajan with her head still resting against Harris, her gaze somehow including him, increasing the link between them beyond just their linked hands. The strangest feeling swept over Trajan.

  It was a feeling of rightness, or satisfaction. It was like the feelings he got when all the pieces of an investigation fell into place, or when a security system he’d set up worked perfectly the first time. It was akin to that feeling, but exponentially stronger.

  “We’re here, together.” His voice came out gravelly, and the words felt awkward, but he felt compelled to say them. “We’ll stay together.”

  Harris met Trajan’s gaze and the other man smiled. Harris’s eyes were a lovely shade of gold-green and he had smooth, handsome features.

  Huh. Apparently in death he was at least a little bit bisexual. That was new.

  “Together,” Harris repeated.

  “Together,” Nimue agreed.

  Trajan’s arms dropped to his sides.

  Nimue straightened, holding up her hands and staring at them in shock.

  Trajan did the same.