witchesintheweeds_GEN Read online

  “Goddess, mother, grandmother,” she chanted. “Bless me, hear me.”

  Harris knelt beside her, head bent. His lips moving as he started to pray silently. Tears prickled her eyes. It was nice to have someone here with her at the end. Someone to pray for her.

  She stared up at the darkening sky through the branches. The white needles of the tree made her think of winter and snow. She would never see the snow again.

  “North star guide the darkness to me.” She had carefully modified all the words to the traditional prayers to fit this spell. “Eastern dawn hold the darkness within.” As she spoke, her words, crafted and shaped by all the pre-casting work she, Harris, and Trajan had done, called power into her body. “Southern fire burn the darkness from my family.” The influx of thick, bristling power hurt, and the dark lines of the manifested curse burned, especially where her back was pressed against the ground. “Western water accept me into the mother’s embrace, return me to the water.” Her voice wavered both from pain, fear, and grief. She had to stop, clear her throat, and then continue. “Great owl, you who are known as Quiet, and Silence, and Death, hear me, the Dark One. Keep my body and my bones. Keep the darkness here.”

  She made the mistake of glancing at Trajan and Harris’s faces. Trajan’s jaw was clenched so tightly the tendons in his neck stood out. His eyes were bright blue with power, his cheeks wet with tears. Harris was openly weeping, his lips moving as he prayed.

  Her heart clenched and she almost stopped. There was only one sentence left. After that she would have pulled all the power she could into both her own body and into the protective sphere of the working. If she’d done it right, she would be lost to them—the power raging through her would overwhelm her, and she wouldn’t be able to see them or speak to them again.

  This was it. One more sentence and it was over, she was gone. Lost. Alone.

  There was the other option—muting the curse. Her gaze met Trajan’s and she could tell he was thinking the same thing she was, thinking back to that night.

  Trajan’s gaze sharpened, as if he sensed her wavering resolve. Before her love for them and fear of death could overwhelm her, she finished the spell.

  “Goddess, mother, grandmother. Hear me. Grant me your blessing, send me your power. I now bind the darkness!” She shouted the last word, and deep in the forest there was a sound like a brass gong ringing. Her eyes were glowing from the power she’d poured into every cell and fiber of her being until she felt like her skin would split. The pain from the curse manifestation made her shake, and acid rose up her esophagus. “I bind the darkness. I own the darkness. Let it not pass to another, for I am it, and it is me.”

  She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear over the rush of her own blood. It was better this way, because she wouldn’t have to watch Harris and Trajan walk away and could pretend that she wasn’t going to die alone and in pain.

  “I am the Dark One.”

  That had been the final piece of the puzzle—the owl’s name for her, so specific, repeated so often, had to mean something. Little by little they’d refined the wording, and decided to end it this way, with a declaration of being.

  The air crackled as she finished the spell. The power that she’d pulled started to heat up. The casting was like filling the pot with water, and now the flame was turned on under that pot, the magic working to boil the water.

  The analogy was apt, because it felt like she was burning from within. Her back arched in a bow of pain. She was blind and deaf, awash in a world of bright-white agony.

  She must have rushed the spell, spoken just a bit faster than she’d practiced, because she was stuck like that, in the jaws of the powerful spell, for what felt like hours. Vaguely she was aware that she’d risen from the ground, her body suspended in the cradle of the sharp, hot magic.

  When the sun finally set, it was a relief. She felt it, as she always had, as a shiver that worked its way across the earth. It came like a great tidal wave, huge and inescapable. She did not run from it; she accepted it, welcomed it.

  The sun set, and Nimue Mahkah died.

  *

  They watched in tense horror as her body, bowed up in an arch of pain and suspended in midair so her toes were six inches off the ground, flashed black at the exact moment the sun set. It wasn’t as if her skin tone had changed, but rather as if for a moment she were a carving made of obsidian. Then she’d slumped against the ground, dead, her body returned to its previous state—marked by inky lines, but with some patches of skin visible.

  Trajan had pressed his fingers to her throat the instant her lifeless body thudded to the ground. “No pulse.” He sounded calm, cool, and collected. He started chest compressions.

  “Clear,” Harris snarled. He slapped the already-prepared pads of the automated external defibrillator onto her naked chest. Trajan lifted his hands. Harris hit the button. Nim’s body jerked.

  In the five minutes between her completing her spell and sunset, when they knew the volume of power she was holding made her unable to see or hear, they’d stripped off the ceremonial garments, making sure there would be nothing in the way of their life-saving activities.

  Harris leaned down to her face, turned his head to the side, listening at her mouth. “No breath sounds.”

  Trajan checked her pulse, then resumed compressions. “Heart pumping first,” he reminded Harris.

  They’d learned as much CPR as they could since the night Nim refused to let them try to mute the curse. They’d snuck out of bed while she slept to study videos Robert had downloaded to a tablet for them. They’d read the books and practiced on one another.

  Harris knew Trajan was right, but he put the mask of the handheld resuscitation bag over her mouth and started breathing for her. Trajan, who they’d agreed would take the lead on CPR, leaned back and put two fingers on her neck.

  Harris pulled the bag away from her mouth. Her chest rose on its own. “She’s breathing.”

  “I have a heartbeat.”

  Trajan and Harris shared a startled look. It…worked. She was alive. Harris grinned. Trajan smiled one of those rare smiles.

  Nim’s eyes snapped open. Harris leaned over her, happy tears in his eyes. She opened her mouth…and screamed.

  He jerked away from her as she wailed in agony, and then watched in horror as the black lines that covered her skin started to wiggle and move, and then her whole body flashed obsidian-dark.

  Once more she dropped to the ground, dead.

  Trajan calmly reached for her neck, checked her pulse, and then started compressions. “Get the AED ready.”

  Harris’s hands shook, but he did it, slapping the pads back on her.

  A jolt, and her heartbeat was once more steady.

  She gasped, eyes opening.

  “Nim,” Trajan said. “We did CPR. You’re not going to die.”

  Her eyes widened. While Trajan was looking at her face, Harris was watching as the dark lines on her skin once more withered and swirled, a brief moment of warning.

  Nim’s eyes rolled, her back arched in pain, and her body flashed black. The curse once more killed her.

  “There’s not enough time!” Harris shouted as he frantically set the AED to recharge.

  “We’ll make time,” Trajan snarled. He was on his knees, pumping her chest to the rhythm of “Staying Alive.”

  This time Trajan was able to get her heart beating again with just compressions. Nim woke up sobbing. “Won’t work. Tried. With cousins. Tried. Hospital. Brain hemorrhage.”

  The inky lines on her skin wiggled. The curse condensed. It was getting stronger. Less and less of her skin was showing each time she was brought back to life.

  Nim jerked as if shocked, and her eyes rolled back in her head before she slumped. She was gone again.

  “Fuck,” Trajan snarled. “Damn it, if we could just keep her alive long enough we could heal her.”

  That was their plan—let her die to satisfy the curse, bring her back, then link hands and heal
her. But the healing wasn’t totally instantaneous, and she had to be alive for it to work. Even if they managed to link hands in the few seconds she was alive, the curse would kill her, their circle wouldn’t be complete, and there would be no healing.

  Harris stared down at her, and the secret hope he’d worked so hard to hide from her, fueled by his determination and love, died just as she had.

  “Do not give up.” Trajan continued compressions. “Use the bag.”

  Harris did it because Trajan wasn’t ready to give up. He still hoped.

  She looked so small and broken, her skin a withering mass of black curse lines that had condensed into large black blots in some places, the lines extended out like the thin, spidery legs of some horrific, hairy bug.

  Harris blinked.

  Trajan paused, felt her pulse, and said, “Heartbeat.” His voice was no longer so sure, or so steady, as it had been.

  Harris dropped the bag he was using to breathe for her, then pulled his pack across the ground. He had used an old spell, one from his childhood, to magic the bag he carried until it was large enough to hold everything he’d wanted to bring. The size made sure Nim didn’t suspect what they’d planned. Besides the AED he’d already pulled out, he had food, water, a large first-aid kit, needles, and several prescription-only medications. That wasn’t what he grabbed.

  He pulled out the firestone Robert had created.

  Nim moved weakly, head rolling to the side. “No,” she moaned.

  “I’m so sorry,” Harris whispered. He took the firestone and slammed it down on her right wrist. Bone cracked.

  “What the fuck!” Trajan yelled.

  Nim’s eyes widened, and then she screamed. Trajan grabbed at him, but Harris dodged. He had to do this fast, before the curse took her again. He slammed the firestone down onto her other forearm. The outer shell of sand-colored stone cracked, and golden-white heat started to pulse out of it. He heard the bones of this arm break, heard the hiss and sizzle of burning skin a second before the smell reached his nose.

  “Harris, stop!” Trajan commanded.

  Harris rolled to his feet, eyes sweeping her naked body. “Look. It’s centered.” He pointed to the black blobs. “The firestone burns it away.”

  Trajan was staring at him. Nim’s skin started to change, the flesh-toned parts turning glossy black. Harris didn’t hesitate. He slammed the stone against her breastbone, hitting the largest concentration of black.

  Her body turned flesh-tone once more, though she sobbed and whimpered in pain. Smoke rolled up along the sides of the stone as her skin burned.

  Trajan jerked the stone from his hands. Harris reached for it, but Trajan slammed it against her hip, where there was another concentration.

  Nim let out a tortured moan, and when Trajan pulled the firestone back, some of her burned skin clung to it. The outer shell of rock had flaked away, revealing the yellow quartz and pulsing, living heart of the firestone.

  Harris remembered the way the blight vines had seemed to burn her, though they’d ended up doing no more than discoloring her skin and cutting her in a few places. The blight had been only a small fraction of the curse, and now her skin was burning as the firestone, which to Harris and Trajan was nothing more than a smooth, cool rock, reacted to the curse and burned the flesh that had been forced to house such evil.

  “We’re killing it,” Harris said. “Look, it’s trying to take her again, but it can’t.”

  “We might kill her, killing it,” Trajan said grimly, but he pressed the stone against the skin of her thigh.

  “No-o-o mo-r-re, p-pleas-s-se.” Nim’s teeth were chattering, her whole body shaking in pain. Trajan and Harris shared a look. He’d been so excited when he realized that the curse, as it grew, was clumping together, making it easier to fight. He’d felt triumphant when he remembered he had the firestone. That afternoon the black markings on her skin had retreated from it.

  Any triumph and excitement was gone to be replaced by nausea and wavering resolve. “We’re hurting her.”

  “The curse will kill her.”

  “No-o-o. Ple-e-e-ase.”

  Trajan scanned her naked body. “Turn her over. We have to check her back.”

  Harris rolled her onto her front, her broken arms flopping. Her back, which had first manifested the curse lines, was nearly solid black.

  “Maybe we can stop,” Harris said. “She hasn’t died since we started. There’s not enough curse left to kill her.”

  Trajan paused. “Not now, at least not here, when she’s full of power and protected. But…”

  Harris closed his eyes. “But if we take down the circle…”

  “Either it kills her again or it goes to her sister.”

  “Don’t. Touch. Circle,” Nim panted. “Let. Me. Die.” Each word was a pained gasp.

  Trajan looked at Harris, then pressed the stone down against Nim’s back and held it there. He held it there as the skin on her back burned, as the curse hissed and withered. As she screamed.

  Harris saw the tears streaming down Trajan’s face and covered his lover’s hands with his own. It wasn’t fair that he keep his hands clean. They would do this together, whatever happened.

  The branches of albino redwood he’d grafted to his circle started to smoke. Harris looked up, and above them the great white tree was glowing, not with the sparking white of reflected sunlight, but with a dull yellow light.

  “The tree is on fire,” Harris said.

  Trajan didn’t look up from Nim. “It’s almost gone.”

  “The tree is on fire,” Harris repeated. “We need to move.”

  “Not until it’s gone.”

  “Tray!”

  Nim, who now lay limp and weeping as they burned her, suddenly screamed. Yes, there was pain in the sound, but also…surprise.

  Deep in the forest the gong sound echoed again. Harris was thrown back by a burst of moonlight-white power. The manifested curse, which looked like bits of black tar, were flung wide, seeming to hang in midair where they struck the circle.

  Harris grabbed at the closest smoking branch of albino redwood and ran for the nearest blob. He touched the needles to the blob and it turned instantly to dust. Trajan was watching him, and ran to do the same.

  When every blob was gone, Harris plucked the remaining redwood branches from the bramble of his barrier circle and swept the entire clearing while Trajan knelt by Nim.

  Harris scanned the ground, terrified he’d left some small trace of the curse. He saw nothing.

  They’d done it. They’d destroyed the curse.

  He turned back to Trajan. His head was bowed, his shoulders slumped.

  Harris’s heart sank.

  Dreading what he would find, he approached Nimue.

  She was alive, but that was no blessing—her eyes were open and glossy with agony. There were great gaping holes in her skin, the white of the fat and pink muscles visible where the skin had been either burned completely off or ripped away. Her arms and at least a few ribs were broken.

  “What have we done?” Trajan asked. “Her back…her back.”

  They’d held the stone there the longest. Trajan had turned her face-up, but whatever he’d seen had left him looking defeated and sick. Harris had nearly abandoned hope when the curse kept killing her, and now it seemed Trajan was the one to give up.

  “No,” Harris snapped. He grabbed Trajan’s arm. “No, we save her.” Harris carefully laid his palm against hers, fitting their marks together.

  “Too…much.” Nim’s voice was only a thread of sound. “Too broken. Too many…things wrong.”

  That made Trajan look up. “One problem at a time.” His voice was back to the cool tone of command. Harris wanted to cheer.

  Trajan reached over, grabbed a needle from Harris’s bag, and pulled the cap off with his teeth. He stabbed it into her thigh and pressed the plunger. “Problem one, you’re in pain. Solution? Morphine.”

  Harris’s heart swelled in his chest. Damn it, he lo
ved his man. He loved both of them so damned much he didn’t know what he’d do without them. And maybe, just maybe, if he was very lucky and the Goddess smiled on them, he might not have to find out.

  Trajan laced his fingers with Nim’s, their marks pressed together.

  Harris grinned, reached down into the well of his magic, and sent it flowing into her, even as Trajan pushed magic into him.

  Nim’s eyes fluttered closed, and her body sagged with relief as the morphine started to work. Harris poured magic into her, and flowers with pretty white petals and spidery black stamens bloomed in a carpet around them.

  The moon tracked across the sky, and all through the night they poured power into her. When dawn came Harris broke the circuit long enough to run to the edge of the circle and break the barrier—ripping up the plants, filling in the trench, and tossing dirt into the air.

  If they were wrong, if the curse was still there, they’d just killed her sister.

  But as the first streaks of true dawn hit the tree above them, he knew they’d won. The once-mighty, impossible redwood was now a withered trunk, the needles all fallen to pool on the forest floor around their circle, a carpet of white, like freshly fallen snow. With the circle open, the dawn spread her magic, and when sunlight touched her face Nim’s eyes opened.

  Where she had once had lovely gray eyes, her irises were now three distinctly different colors. The innermost band, around the pupils, was a pale silvery gray. The center band a deep, cobalt blue, and the outer ring a bright spring green. They were eyes that would never be mistaken for anything other than magic.

  Nim sat up. Patches of pink, healing skin marked her body. In the places where the flesh they’d been forced to burn away had borne black scars there was now only smooth skin. The scars were not completely gone, as no scars should be, but she was whole, she was alive.

  Nim looked down at herself, then at each of them in turn. “Your eyes,” she whispered.

  Harris looked at Trajan. His eyes too were tricolored, with a blue inner ring, green center ring, and silver outer ring.

  “Like hers,” Harris told him.

  “Mine?” Nim touched her cheek. She looked up at the tree and gasped. “What happened?”