Authors: Eden Butler
Thunder woke me, but that wasn’t the scariest sound I heard all night.
That came later.
What was more chilling was that the Elam had completely vanished from me. The forest grew light, the night ended and as the sun rose and the presence of Bane’s energy left the camp, Hamill’s angry, indifferent verve replaced it.
Then, the thunder. It sounded like the slap of sheet metal, rattled by the shudder of strong fists. It wasn’t the sound of weather or the natural vibration wind and rain make together in a storm. This thunder was transfixed, buzzed like the hum of the ley lines, and when a third and fourth clap of thunder sounded again, I knew it was a spell.
“They’re tracking you down,” Hamill said, slipping from the hollow of the still shadowy woods as he smoked.
Above us, the swirl of gray and blue crowded in the clouds, pinching out the sunlight to turn the sky black. “Dark wishes.” It was something my father called dark magic made with ill intent. “It’s a special kind of rotten wizard that will trap one of their own in a spell like this.” A quick nod at the biggest, darkest cloud and the whites of Hamill’s eyes stuck out among the shadows and smoke he hid in. “My father says this type of spell work is the worst, the thickest of bad magic. It requires pain and blood to work.”
“Like the magic used to spell Bane and grab the Elam.”
Hamill’s question made me jerk my attention back to him. There was a hint of something in his voice, some odd amusement in his question that made me wonder if he had other motives for asking it. “Exactly like that.” That was not merely curiosity.
“But why would they want you? Why not try to take out Bane?”
It should have been obvious. He should have known but as the shifter took a drag from his cigarette and let the smoke billow over his head to circle up into the dark trees, I thought, maybe, his was a game that needed playing. For a bit.
“Because I’m the one the Elam is calling. I’m the only one that can find it.”
When Hamill only stared at me, I focused on the sky and the blistering wind that danced above us. “They don’t want me to find it. They think using this spell will somehow show them where I am. The best way to keep the Elam out of our hands is to keep it from being discovered.”
“You didn’t steal it.”
I shot a glance at Hamill, frowning. “Of course I didn’t. How could I?”
“And you didn’t touch Wyatt.” I didn’t bother answering. Hamill stepped completely out of the shadows, like the slow reveal of a wound being unwrapped and when my gaze landed on his face, the colored complexion of his skin, I immediately stood. “What?” he asked, moving his head to catch my attention when I refused to look at him.
I’d almost forgotten about the Judas spell. Yet there it was, right on Hamill’s face—a sharp, jagged line smooth against his cheek, running the length of his neck. He wouldn’t know it was there, but I could see it plain as day.
“What’s that look?”
There was nothing to fear, other than the shifter. The forest gave me an advantage. Hamill was a were in his primal self. He knew the woods, but this was the Cove. This was the miles upon miles of terrain my siblings and I had trained to hunt in, to gather and protect along with the other lower covens. It was our calling to know and defend Grant territory. Hamill might be a natural tracker, but I was an earth witch standing on familiar ground. He would not catch me.
“Where’s Bane?” I’d need to access what small reserves of subtlety I had.
“Hunting shelter. Some of his folk have cabins deep in the woods. When he saw the storm rising, he went out to find the nearest one. Said he’d be back within the hour.”
Hamill watched me, as I sidestepped around the camp, my own eyes locked and focused on even the slightest movements he made. “Don’t get any ideas,” he said, glowering at me as though I were rotten. “Bane will have the final say in what to do with you.”
“What?”
“You and your family.” Hamill’s jaw moved as he gritted his teeth. “If I could, I’d rip you all to pieces.”
A swift, dismissive nod and I bolted, zipping away from the camp while Hamill watched open mouthed, unsuspecting and likely confused about my reaction. My father taught me to run and that’s exactly what I did. But I’d acted first, analyzed second, realizing embarrassingly late that I had never seen Hamill in full light. Perhaps that was not the mark of the Judas spell after all.
But as I ran from the shifter and that brewing storm, I realized that making my way on my own was for the best. Bane couldn’t help me, not with the Elam. Hamill certainly couldn’t, and so I continued, running through the forest because I needed to. The air, the earth, the rough landscape below my feet—was all a part of the Cove, a part of what made me who I was. All that sensation, all that earthy necessity that combined inside me, in the natural state of who I was. A Crimson Cove witch searching for a lost object.
Just then, the lightening came, cracking against the darkened sky, illuminating all around me. The low, sprawling hills. The wide stretch of wood and brambles, the slinking, curious eyes of a wild boar that investigated me as I slipped through the woods.
And just when I started to doubt my flight, to suspect it had been hopeless, stupid, to run again, to flee the danger before I could really recognize it as such, the penetrating shock of the Elam flooded me. Its power crashed into me like the lightning bolts above.
“There.” My entire body shook as the rain poured from the sky, drumming against my body and the landscape around me. “Just there,” I repeated to no one.
It felt like a fever, high and searing, and my fingers, my joints, ached to touch it. But the unnatural storm, this infernal spell, interfered, deflected that reach, that power from my senses, forcing me to lean against a large, wet tree and funnel all my focus, all my ability into the signature that called to me beyond the trail merely to keep it from dropping away again.
Eyes tightened, the darkness clouded around my senses until there was nothing but the barely visible smooth curve of the Elam’s tortoise face and the turquoise sheen glinting even in the feeble sunlight behind the storm. In my mind, I held the Elam in my hands, its power blistering, burning and so intoxicating, so freeing and bright. It felt like pure electricity, some live wire of power that I wanted inside me, flowing through me. Sharper focus, I concentrated on the feel of the amulet that encased the Elam. There was a hunger inside it, I felt that clearly. It ached and pulsed; a living, breathing element that craved the ley lines. Yin to yang and it wanted that searing power. It wanted to tether it, tame it and just then, with that strong, blazing energy soaking my subconscious, understanding came to me.
The Elam was mystical, a cord of energy and magic that craved calm and control. It wished for the symbiotic connection to something that was utterly out of control. The ley lines, the Elam, they were two sides of the same coin—one that flipped and rattled, until it finally broke. The other that molded and bent, stilled and coiled and healed.
God how similar that felt. How ironic it seemed to me that I would be drawn to something so unlike myself. The very thing I wanted, was the one thing that would hold me back completely. Bane was the Elam seeking control, calm. I was the lines craving freedom, reach, the grasp of nothing that would hinder me.
Above me, that mock storm brewed and despite my focus, my grip on the Elam loosened. I was so close, I felt the wave of its signature as the rain and winds whipped around me, as limbs and leaves fell and scattered, yet my subconscious hold on the Elam became tenuous, weak and when a loud, heavy crack of lightning sounded above me and the tree I leaned against shuddered with the splinter of breaking wood, that grip left me completely.
I ran.
I’d become the hunted, pursued by a manufactured scavenger. Every length I ran, the lightening followed, cracking, breaking loose the ground, freeing dirt and clay and bits of bark around my feet. Heart pounding, breath an uneven, labored mess, my feet moved just seconds ahead of the streaks of lighting hitting the ground behind me.
Whoever sent the storm wanted me running. But this spell was artless. The markers of stealth and cunning were missing in the forced light of the enchantment. There was little natural appeal to it and the danger rived up too greatly. Licks of light and heat coiled together, broke across the ground, scaring me, but the damage behind was weak, ineffectual. Each ripped-asunder hole and tear in the earth quickly healed itself as soon as the attack ended. Every whip of light that came close to my limbs, that singed my hair, touched with only the small buzz of a faulty outlet.
For a second I got distracted, watching the sky with a smile on my face, still loving the beauty in the darkness even in the false storm, just as I’d always loved stars overhead at night, but then another strike blasted and the smile left my face. Something was wrong. Somehow the threat did not seem as angry, as desperate as I originally believed. And then, because I was no longer frantic or frightened, because my thought was so mundane, the spell almost seemed to realize its own ineffectualness, and responded by amping up a level.
“Shit!” My curse barely registered past the wet deluge above head and when the two trees behind me cracked, crashing inches from my head, I stumbled, crawling with grass stuck between my fingers and under my nails as another strike set about and yet another oak slammed close to me. “Holy shit!” Throwing up my hands too late, I knew that the block would not save me, nor would the quick flash of energy shooting from my fingertips as another tree began to fall right on top of me. I held my breath expecting pain, the sound of bone and skin breaking, but instead, all went still.
“Jani?” My name came out in a groan, one I recognized as injury, at the least, excruciating agony at the worst.
“Bane?” The rain still fell and the crack in the distance told me the unsophisticated spell work was dying but not dead. “Oh God, Bane, what did you do?”
“
Shit
. What I always damn well do.” He felt around in the darkness, stretching toward the thick branch lying across his left leg, nearly freeing himself just as I reached him. “Minding your ass, I suppose.” A small grunt when the branch would not move any further and Bane fell back, resting an arm over his forehead. “Or trying to, any damn way.”
“Stupid,
heedless jolthead
.” When I finally managed to crawl over the limbs and leaves, Bane was still trying to kick off the heavy branch with his free leg. “I never asked you to play bodyguard.”
“You didn’t have to,” he yelled, grunting again, hitting his fists against the wet ground. “I just…”
It was the first time I’d ever heard him sound so open and raw. Bane was not the type of wizard to loosen his guard or be blindly truthful. Especially about his motives. Hearing the difference in his tone just then completely stilled me.
“It was just something I had to do.”
My hands came to his chest, just as I moved next to him, not realizing how much his words impacted me. “Why?”
“I don’t…” Bane’s breath came out slow, as though even thinking of a response was wasted effort he didn’t want to bother with. “Fuck’s sake, Jani, it’s just something I needed to do.”
“And look where it’s got you.” I waved at his leg, fighting back my fear, my anger and the damn tears that had unexpectedly shone in my eyes, making me angrier, making me feel weak and stupid. “You’ve probably broken it.”
“It’s not broken.” When I glared at him, Bane shook his head. “I’ve had broken bones before. This isn’t one.”
A long grunt from my pressed lips and my gaze went around the woods, over the downed trees and toward the trail covered now with fallen limbs and small saplings. “We should call someone.”
“No service out here,” he said, trying to sit up. Bane swatted at my hand on his elbow before he nodded toward the branch and together we spelled the massive wood from his leg. “Besides, the real storm is coming and I’d be a sight more comfortable in the that hunting cabin just over the ridge than sitting on my ass with you looking like you want to stun me with a quick hex.”
That was a thought, though I’d never tell him I likely couldn’t think of a hex strong enough to take him down. Bane was damn powerful.
“I don’t want to hex you.”
“No?” he asked, leaning on me when I reached for his hand.
“Not yet.” He settled against my shoulder and a quick whip of pleasure ran up my spine as I caught the scent of his skin. “But I reserve the right to change my mind.”
The cabin wasn’t much more than a seven hundred square foot room with a small kitchenette, a threadbare, wool rug in front of a slight stacked-stone hearth and absolutely no furniture to speak of. The floor was scraped pine, very old with loads of blotted stains where something wet, possibly bloody had spilled and had never been completely cleaned.
The entire place smelled of wet fur, mildew and that unique stuffiness that most places take on when no one has kept the air circulating or moved around the place. It was also damn cold as well.
Bane had enormous feet that thinned at the ankles and sparse hairs just along his big toe. His ankles were boney and slight and the one in my lap was twisted and swollen with a nasty gash rupturing the flesh. It was a bloody, filthy mess and he would not hold still long enough for me to mend it.
“Don’t move your leg.”
“I’m not.” Just as Bane said that, he jerked his ankle to the side, making my fingers slip up his leg, missing the large gash that exposed the bone.
Dear God, but this wizard was an infant. “You are, in fact.”
“I can heal it myself.” That promise came with a clip, annoyed growl that I’d heard Bane use anytime he wanted to scare away whoever was presently annoying him. At the moment, that was me. Me and my feeble, subpar spell work that couldn’t heal his busted ankle.
“You can’t heal it.” The jerk of his head and those slowly narrowing eyelids were almost comical, edging toward the pathetic side, but he would not keep me from my fussing. “Not with the pain distracting you. You’ll mess up the spell.”
Bane made several low, pointless sounds that I took as irritation when I pulled his foot closer on my lap but the noises from his throat did not distract me from the feel of his skin or how I picked up the sense that his stare went on too long, that he watched me too closely.
He didn’t seem able to do anything other than watch and silently complain. It was a gift I’d rarely seen—someone who needs your help yet refuses to ask for it; someone mightily powerful but incapable of healing themselves.
Still, the watching, the grumbling, continued and it was that attention and the worry that I’d somehow damage him worse that had my fingers shaking as I tried mending the broken skin with a spell Mai could fashion while asleep.
But my invocations for healing spells were abysmal and that particular craft took skill and patience I had yet to acquire, so when my inflection went wrong and Bane’s skin splintered further, I winced, reacting to his loud grumble of “Fuck!”
“Sorry,” I said, covering the gash with the meager bandages from the kit Mai had stuffed into my bag. “So sorry.”
“Incompetent, stubborn…
Shit.
”
He made a grab for his foot, twisting it from my lap before I could stop him. “How is it Mai does such good healing charms and you are…” But Bane ended his question when my eyes flashed and the glare I gave him made him silent.
“Because there isn’t a nurturing bone in my body.” Not thinking about the injury much, I pulled on his toe, jerking that foot right back into my lap. “And because my patient is an uncooperative baby.”
The awkward tension leveled thick and weighty around us just then. We were both soaking wet and tired. Both annoyed by the disaster that the search had been and the ridiculous amount of pressure that continued to build between us. Maybe the silence that quickly descended in that small cabin had little to do with the storm and being attacked or my inability to drum up even the smallest amount of a bedside manner. Maybe it was Bane’s lack of effort at being an accommodating patient. I tried very hard not to think it had anything to do with events that had happened so long ago but which still seemed to shape the present: the kiss and the melding and all those things I kept hidden from him.
He grunted when I called him a baby, jaw moving as though he’d decided to chew on his insults rather than spit them out at me. Still, my patience, my discomfort and the wreck just being near him did to me as I attempted to heal him again, would not keep my temper from surfacing. “Big, powerful wizard covered in scary runes and you can’t even sit still for me to help you.”
Bane seemed to give up the fight then and leaned back on his elbows, watching my fingers as I attempted the charm again, then at my face when I managed the right invocation. “Who says you’re not nurturing?”
I waved a hand over his leg. “Hello?”
His slow smile smothered some of my anger and I shook my head as he laughed. “Who the hell cares anyway?” He nodded at his ankle as though it were nothing. “It’s a scratch.”
“It’s not a scratch and if we don’t heal it, it’ll get infected.”
Bane pressed his hand over my fingers when I started fussing with the bandage. “I’ve had worse injuries. It’s fine.” After a few moments of holding my breath, completely stimulated when he touched the top of my hand, I exhaled, ignoring the small, barely-felt zip of energy from his fingertips. If Bane had noticed it at all, he didn’t say and let me get on with cleaning the wound and freeing it from the dirt and grime left there from our awkward hike over the ridge.
It was slow work that took my concentration and it helped me to ignore how closely he regarded me, how I could sense the feel of his stare on my features, eating up every expression I made. “So why did you take off?”
My eyebrows dipped together at his question—he just wasn’t going to give up, was he? But instead of giving him a straight answer, I tilted my head as if I wasn’t sure what he meant. “Did I?”
Bane laughed, sounding like something deep and warm. It reminded me of pecan groves and honeysuckle and all the things in the Cove meant for someone else. “You’re always taking off, Jani.” He leaned back further, adjusting on his side. “The Runaway Witch. That’s what Sam and I called you, remember?”
“No,” I told him, not liking how those memories collected, like a patchwork doll hurriedly sewn together again without regard for scale or structure. “I don’t remember.”
“Well I do.” Bane pulled two bottles of water from my bag, tossing me one. “You ran from Eldridge Romney in term seven. We were thirteen. He tried kissing you at Joanie Wilkins’ first girl/boy party.”
“Because you glared at him every time he stepped my way.” That night I remembered. But then it’s hard to forget when a small boy like Eldridge with big doe eyes the color of a magnolia leaf nearly faints anytime Bane let that stoic, mean glare land his way. “I didn’t want the poor boy to be bloodied.”
Something quick and distant flashed behind Bane’s eyes then, as though the recall of that night didn’t quite fit with what he remembered but then he adjusted his body, sitting up and glancing at me as though he’d remembered something else. “You ran from the coven games that Midsummer when my uncle hosted the solstice. We didn’t find you for five hours.”
What a retched memory to mention. I’d hated those games and the stupid primal alpha way the men carried on when the solstice arrived. The Grants had hosted, true enough and all the covens worked themselves into a tizzy over the preparations. There’d been bonfires stacked and set all over the groves, smartly organized with gold and yellow candles, flowers and leaves. Flower wreaths were corded together and given to every girl of the Cove old enough to marry. Even my mother, for all her modern-loving proclamations about logic and bucking the traditions, still laced our pillow cases with herbs and charms to summon prophetic dreams. Crimson Cove on Midsummer was a ridiculous play on sense and reason and that year had been no different.
“I ran because Mai told me I’d have to float my flower wreath down the river. I didn’t know whose bank it would land on and didn’t want to be stuck with some strange wizard for the rest of the day.”
“Why not?” Bane leaned forward, elbows on his knees looking too amused by the memory.
“I was fifteen, Bane. I had no intention of letting some wizard I didn’t know claim me as a bride.”
His frown was forced, as was that small eye roll but I let it pass, ignoring him when he knocked his bum foot against my hand. “It was just a game. Besides, they’d have only asked for a kiss.”
“Which they wouldn’t have gotten, hence me leaving.”
“Maybe that kiss would have come from me.” That I doubted. Bane had spent most of the day hidden away in the tree house near the edge of the grove, taking everything in, looking bored and out of place. I’d remembered that’s where he stayed because I’d wanted to follow him just to be rid of all the overcharged Midsummer energy.
“You weren’t playing.”
“No,” he said, taking a slow swing from his water bottle, “but I’d have won you. Trust that.”
The little cheater would have done his best to move my wreath toward his bank. Maybe I’d known that even back then. Maybe that’s why I’d left. I couldn’t be sure. Those memories, of course, were painted with a gloss I had little hope of ever sharpening. That Bane admitted he’d have cheated to get me that day should have made me feel awkward, perhaps a little shy. But what I felt just then as he lowered the bottle of water from his mouth, leaving a small droplet on that fat bottom lip, was hot and heated and things that should have made me embarrassed.
I wasn’t. In fact, with the way he kept watching me, his gaze too focused on my messy tidying of the bandages and rubbish from the cleaning, heightened the edge of tension that we’d managed to push back while we argued over his busted ankle.
Still, no matter what that look did to me, I could no more go to him, touch him, take what I wanted now than I’d been able to back then. Back any time. Save that one day in the classroom.
“You always did that,” I said dismissively. He frowned and I shrugged off his confusion. “Chased anyone away who got a little too close. Sabotaged when things weren’t going the way you wanted. You were like this giant shadowing me and I was the only one unable to see you. Big damn warning to anyone I might want to get close to.” The wadded bandages and rubbish fit neatly back into the bag and I took to rearranging all the accoutrements my twin had provided just to keep from looking at Bane. “Maybe that’s why I always ran. I knew you wouldn’t be far behind.” I glanced up at him, not liking it when muscles around his mouth tightened. “Maybe just once I wanted to do something without that shadow, just to see if I could.”
It was several seconds before Bane spoke. When he did there was a softness in his voice that came out as mildly annoyed. “You did a hell of a job running that last time.”
“What was here for me, Bane?” A small twist of his bottom lip and my heart sputtered twice. “My twin had her own life, my brother and folks, they all had living to do on their own. Hell, Mai was the only person I was close to thanks to that scary shadow of yours.” He opened his mouth to speak but I waved him off. “I wanted to see outside of the Cove. I wanted to see what else was out there. There wasn’t…” I swallowed, holding my breath for a second before I finished, “anything keeping me here.”
What I would have given then to know his thoughts. He could still sense mine, I knew he could. His spell had guaranteed he would, but I had minded what I thought, how intimately I remembered and misremembered things as they had been. Since that test in the forest the night he worked the spell, I’d determined not to let my thoughts seep too freely. He might know my mood, but I worked hard to keep him from my feelings.
Still, his was easy enough to tell. There was that jaw clenching again—the tale tell mark of Bane trying like hell to not blurt out whatever irrational thing was in his head. But if my confession had annoyed him, he wouldn’t let me know it. “And tonight? With Hamill?”
“I caught a vibe from him.” My flippant shrug did nothing to make that worried frown soften and so I continued, moving my knees up to hold myself together as he watched me. “I thought maybe the Judas spell had shown on his skin.”
“Did it?”
“Not sure. I’ve never seen him in full light. Does he have a scar?” Bane shook his head, shoulders lowering as he relaxed. “Well he’s definitely hiding something, but I don’t think he’s responsible for the Elam.”
Outside the cabin, an honest storm raged on. It was a bitter, windy fight with water drenching and thudding on the tiny cabin roof. Only the dim light of a kerosene lamp and the fire illuminated the small room and I was grateful I could not make out more of Bane’s features. They were too striking, too honest when I looked closely enough.
Bane’s cynical snort told me he didn’t buy that either. “He doesn’t have enough magic to subdue me or to take it.”
He hadn’t told me much about the attack. There’d been no full disclosures that might have helped me piece together who the guilty party could be. But that was Bane. That was the nature of a powerful wizard from the Cove. Utter bullshit, but that was how they’d lived for generations. Still, this theft and Bane’s attack went beyond his wounded pride. He’d have to loosen it and answer me.
“You don’t remember anything about the attack?”
“Some jackass got the upper hand. That’s all that matters.” He turned his head, profile against the flickering fire light and I looked away, still not comfortable seeing him this close, this apart from the world. “It set in my bones that they pulled that off and my memory went a little fuzzy then.”
“It’s odd,” I offered, fiddling with my damp shirt sleeve to avoid looking at him again. “Whoever took the Elam obviously can’t control it, otherwise it wouldn’t call to me.”