Page 1 of The Arcane Taste of the Witchwood Boys (The Witchwood Boys #4)

Brooks

Seventy years ago … (roughly two-and-a-half years ago in Witchwoods time)

There’s nothing like the fear of losing someone precious.

Nothing.

The greatest gift comes with the heaviest price. Loving someone is fucking scary because it comes with the eventual fear of watching them leave, one way or another.

I’ve got my truck keys clutched in my right hand, swinging the old metal flashlight through the forest clearing. It’s quiet and cold. Dew clings to the branches, and the incessant drip-drip-drip of the woods is my only companion besides the wind.

I’ve looked everywhere for my little sister, Sharyn.

Everywhere.

This is one of the very last places on my list.

I don’t call her name because she can’t hear me; Sharyn was born deaf. Instead, I move the light back and forth, sweeping the tree trunks in search of a small, scared face. Come on, honey. Where are you?

I move forward, heading in the direction of the Witch’s Tree. I’ve warned Sharyn against coming to these woods alone, but I also know how intrigued she is by urban legends. This is my fault for allowing her to play Bloody Mary with me the other day. I shouldn’t have indulged her.

Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary.

My mind is on that memory, of my big hand wrapped around her small one. Of looking into the mirror. Repeating the words. Waiting for a ghost that would never come.

Ghosts aren’t real, and neither is the Witchwoods legend.

But if Sharyn came here, she could be hurt. Lost. Cold. Stuck.

I walk right up to the tree, and I hear it again: drip-drip-drip. A sound on repeat, like the words from that stupid urban legend. The nearby creek is swollen and running high. The limbs overhead shift with the wind, pine needles blowing across my hair. I swipe them off with one hand, wielding the flashlight with the other.

My fingers curl around the edge of the hole in the trunk, and I lean in for a quick look.

Something wicked and unnatural caresses my hand—something with claws.

The world flip-flops, and I lose my balance. I drop my keys. The flashlight hits the ground and rolls away from me, but I manage to keep my feet. What in the hell is it now? It’s like I’ve been transported to the Mystery Spot, that off-kilter roadside attraction that Sharyn and I have visited together too many times.

Balance on a crooked platform and see water run upward. Witness a ball rolling uphill. Gravitational anomalies. A bastardization of the laws of physics. That sort of nonsense.

Only, I’m on solid ground.

I retrieve the flashlight, sweep it through the trees again. Earthquake? I wonder, because we get ‘em around here from time to time. My light scans the woods and something eerie clicks in my brain. This isn’t right.

No, it’s all very fucking wrong.

The landscape has changed. The trees are mammoths, and there are flowers in offensively bright colors. A mushroom taller than I am. Glowing. It’s goddamn glowing. Bones hang from the trees around me, skulls knotted with rope and candles in the eye sockets.

The legend is real? But I don’t give a damn about that because I can hear her, my little sister.

She’s yelling for me.

“Brooks, are you in here with me?” she calls out, breaking my heart. She’s asking for me because she knows that if anyone is going to come running, if anyone can find her lost in a different world, it’s me.

I will die for my sister. I will kill for her.

I sprint in the direction of her voice, fast as I can.

I’m good at taking action and making decisions, but too many times in my life, it’s felt like my timing was off. And timing is literally everything.

My breath is white in front of my face as I leap over logs and dodge a waterfall of glitter spilling from the broken cap of a dying mushroom. Its glow fades away as I charge past it, a cloying smell clogging my throat and making my eyes water.

It’s the smell of death, bloated and foul.

Something is rotting.

Many somethings are rotting.

“ She loves the taste of children, that Wytch!” There are spirits whimpering on the wind, their wicked shadows dancing in the maze of tree branches above my head. Their words make me nervous, but there’s no space for me to indulge that feeling without losing crucial seconds.

I ignore the voices; they don’t matter.

I run harder, faster, skirting around the trunk of a tremendous tree in time to see my sister staring back at me. Wide, green eyes. Ginger hair caught in a cold breeze. Freckles. Recognition as she spots me.

I never stop running. I’m almost there. She’s right there.

A shadow of black ink slithers above Sharyn’s small form, taking the shape of something hunched and feathered. Its head is big and round, like an owl. The silhouette leans forward, revealing a human face surrounded by brown feathers. It has two mouths.

The thing looks at me before it does it.

Before it eats her.

It happens in an instant, and timing is everything . Everything. It’s everything. No.

Sharyn … she’s looking right at me, and then—

A wet heavy spatter of blood against my face—

The owl demon towers above me, staring down with big blue eyes ringed in thick lashes. A curved beak instead of a nose. A human mouth underneath it, jaw working as it chews its prey. Blood stains the porcelain skin of its cheeks and chin.

This fucking nightmare ate my sister.

“Sharyn.” I choke her name out around a mouthful of her own spilled blood, damning myself. Crimson liquid drips down my face as I inadvertently shackle myself to these horrible woods.

This place is hell.

My mind fractures, a mass of bloodlust and wrath and grief. Such powerful grief.

Rage.

Endless rage and hatred.

Something grabs me, hands of night on my shoulders dragging me back, knocking me from my feet. I’m hefted in the air by a creature made of night and wearing horns, spun to face an old woman with bone earrings and a pointy witch hat. Tattoos on her face. Lips painted black. Sharyn’s name is still on my tongue as the woman leans forward, blowing a red powder from her hand into my face.

I blink, and then I’m out.

Next thing I know, I’m a captive of the Witchwoods and all the people I love are lost forever.

That’s how I experience my first, true taste of despair, a flavor I will never forget. But what doesn’t kill you, hardens you.

Shapes you.

Remakes you.

I am my own sin, but I am also my own salvation.

Four months later … (in Witchwoods time)

No matter how many times I think about it, I couldn’t have saved them—not my sister or my mentor. Doesn’t stop me from blaming myself for Sharyn’s death.

But I can’t blame myself for this one.

I storm down the cottage’s spiral staircase, heading in the direction of my mentor’s bedroom. Throwing the door open. Staring at the space and breathing too hard.

How could you do this to me? Take me in. Teach me the ropes. Leave me here.

My only friend, teacher, and companion inexplicably left the cottage in the middle of the night without telling me. She wandered over to the Pit—alone.

Why, I don’t know. Now, I will never know. Never. Because the woman who saved me from the Hag Wytch was eaten by the Hag Wytch. Just like Sharyn.

I slump down in a chair at the old witch’s desk, my head in my hands. It’s been a month since my mentor died, and I can’t breathe for how lonely and quiet this place is. Even so, I’m working my ass off to commit to a new daily routine.

In the mornings, I get up and set myself a table for one. Make breakfast. I hunt for meat, and if I’m lucky, I take the kill back to the cottage and dress it down. If I’m unlucky, I starve.

In the afternoons, I clean. I organize the pantries. I prep spells I may never need. Put myself through the motions of all the things that have to be done in order for me to survive.

Fuck my feelings, right?

But it’s the changeless nights that’re the hardest to get through, moonless and dark. Things scream outside these walls. The Hag Wytch hunts. Monsters roam.

I hate the nights here.

My right hand digs into my hair, twisted by magic into bloodred lashed with black. I don’t look human anymore, and that’s the worst part. I don’t look human, I’m not human, but … I feel so fucking human. I feel so lonely.

I’m so lonely.

I grit my teeth and squeeze my eyes shut, pulling on my own hair and choking back a sound.

Why, though? There’s nobody here. Nobody cares if I scream.

In the Witchwoods, this is the only place I can scream.

I still don’t scream, pissed as I am.

“Sharyn, I’m so sorry, honey,” I murmur, talking to myself.

What happened to my sister is my fault. What happened to my mentor is hers. She didn’t tell me she was leaving the safety of this ancient tree, in direct violation of her own cardinal rule: don’t go out at night.

I searched for her and found myself stumbling into a muddy clearing, wet and sticky with freshly-spilled witch blood. Discovered the old woman’s spirit being ground up by oversized human teeth inside the mouth of that demon owl, and there’s nothing I could do about it.

Not my fault, but still my problem.

I swing my arm and knock a pile of grimoires onto the floor. I’m tempted to set the cabin on fire, let it burn to the ground with me inside. Tempted, but too cowardly.

Because I want to live. I shouldn’t want to, not after what happened to my sister. But I can’t help myself. I’m a selfish, disgusting man who wants life when he doesn’t deserve it.

Sitting there in the dark and the quiet, I know that I would do anything to get out of here. Anything at all. I’d ruin anyone. I’d damn the world. Nobody is more important than my escape. Nothing is more crucial than getting rid of the Hag Wytch.

I can form a coven. I can choose my own soldiers. I can fight this war.

I snag the pile of books from the floor and toss them onto the desk, breathing hard. All of my mentor’s life’s work—and there’s a lot of it—is contained in this house. She had time to teach me some things, but not a lot. Not enough.

So I crack the first book, and I dive into my studies with rabid, religious fervor.

I’ve seen what works in magic and what doesn’t. I know what substitutes can be made in a spell. I know what power requires, and that’s sacrifice. A dead animal. A torn-off fingernail. Blood. Teeth. Bones.

But what else? Nature is magic, and magic is nature.

My mentor’s spells have aspects of the divine masculine and feminine, parts for different witches to play depending on the makeup of their coven.

I’m already in hell anyway, so why not see how far self-indulgent sin can get me? Semen is a sacrifice when sex is a waste of precious time. I’m only awake one day a month, all by myself under the new moon sky. The world back home is leaving me behind with every lost second.

Sex is definitely a sacrifice in this nightmare place.

I lean back and unbuckle my pants, spit on my palm, and grip my flaccid cock. My skin shivers with disgust. I don’t have to like it. I don’t have to want it. I just have to make it happen.

My antlered shadow stretches up the wall in front of me and turns my hunched silhouette into something unnatural. I fuck myself with my fist, and it feels good when nothing should feel good in hell. My hips come up off the chair, making it creak. Long, slow strokes to milk my seed and make me climax.

It’s the first orgasm I’ve had since arriving here, and it hurts. Physically hurts. I snatch an empty glass bottle from the desk and spill hot, white liquid inside of it.

If this isn’t a sacrifice, then what is? A meaningless orgasm in a dark void. But if it’ll get me out of here, I’ll do anything.

I mix my own cum with salt and lavender and the tears I shed for my mentor.

That old witch refused to give me her name because she felt she didn’t deserve one.

I’m not sure that I do either.

Nine months later … (in Witchwoods time)

There’s a man in my forest.

I can see him with the big eye on my hat, his heat signature moving through the cold woods. Instead of running away, he’s coming toward me with purpose.

There’ve been a handful of other people who have tumbled through the Witch’s Tree in the last couple of weeks, but they’ve all ended up dead before I could get to them. One fell into the Hag Wytch’s pit of carnage and drowned. Another was eaten by a deer with fangs and a hiss like a cat. A third was picked up by the Hag and dropped from a height too great for survival.

And so, for months, there’s only been me and that godforsaken owl and a silence so profound and an emptiness so deep that I’ve developed an insatiable hunger. I would kill for company. I would do anything for the sound of a human voice.

The Witchwoods’ newest victim has sandy hair and a cocky swagger. Young. Strong. Seems nice. Too bad. He won’t be nice much longer. Either he’ll be dead or he’ll belong to me.

It’s possible that he saw me first. I was distracted, slitting a carcass from snout to tail, covering my hands in blood for a hunting spell. I turn toward the man, just me and him alone in a dark clearing. An owl—not the Hag—hoots from a hole in a nearby tree. A ghost with no eyes skitters along a branch, a feat that’s disturbing since she’s little more than a corpse-white girl in a tattered dress.

The wind blows, rustling the black feathers on the collar of my jacket. It toys with the newcomer’s shirt, plays with his wavy hair. He pauses ten or so feet away from me, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jeans. There’s no fear in his eyes. None at all.

The glowing stones, the ones I shoved into the eye sockets of the skulls on my necklace, throw the stranger’s shadow across the trees behind him. I see a pair of tails, tipped with arrowheads and swaying like the fern fronds to either side of him.

An Eastwoods. My Eastwoods.

Mine. I’ll have him, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

He decides to close the distance between us before I do, but his intentions are very different.

My mouth waters, like a predator salivating over potential prey. I flex my bloody fingers on either side of me as my soon-to-be coven mate struts across the damp earth, avoiding a human-sized banana slug like it’s nothing. It ignores him, slowly slithering its way toward the animal I just killed.

The slug can keep it, can ooze over the dead monster on its back beside me.

I’ve spotted better prey.

I reach up and remove the metal mask from my face, letting it hang and sway from its chains.

The man stops in front of me, and I see that his eyes are a pale blue, like the sky he won’t see after I trap him here. He holds out a hand, like he’s asking for a handshake. Pretty sure he’s drunk, but that only makes this easier for me.

I lift my hand and break his fingers instead, simultaneously starting a fire on his pants with my Southwoods magic. That distracts him long enough for me to throw a solid punch at his face, to knock him down and straddle him.

To wrap my hands around his neck.

My antlered shadow swarms his like a disease, infecting it and melding the pair of dark blotches into one hideous many-limbed thing.

Our gazes are locked as he comes at my face with both hands, going for my eyes with his thumbs. Flames spring up on his skin and he howls with the pain, but he still doesn’t talk. So I pin him down with both hands and lean in, hoping he can see on my face that if he wants to escape this fate, he’ll have to kill me.

“Speak and I’ll spare you.” I don’t sound human anymore. My voice is a wicked rasp, the grouse of the monster that I’ve become. The voice of a witch.

My unwilling East resists, but I’m not dying here alone. I’m not going to be lonely for a single second more than this. He isn’t leaving. He isn’t allowed to leave.

I choke this person that I don’t know, a person friendly enough to walk up and offer his hand in the middle of a dark and unforgiving forest. Despair is what I feel. Despair for the loss of the person I used to be. The Brooks McDowell that fell into these woods died in the same breath as his sister.

There’s nothing of him left, not a single kind or forgiving part. Only selfishness remains.

“Whether you like it or not, you’re mine,” I tell the stranger, my voice as merciless as this horrible place we’re both now going to call home. “You belong here with me.”

He’s tough, but he isn’t as desperate as I am. He doesn’t care nearly as much about escaping this hell as I do about keeping him here, and he knows it. Since he’s smart enough to understand the unhinged look in my eyes, it’s over before it has to get any worse. Before I’ve traded every last scrap of my humanity in exchange for his imprisonment.

“Okay,” he tells me, panting as I release the pressure on his throat. Choking. Gasping for breath. “Okay, you win. What the fuck do you want?”

I stand up, hesitate, and then I offer my hand.

Surprisingly enough, he takes it.

His willingness to grasp my hand doesn’t lessen my despair. It amplifies it. It reminds me of everything I’ve lost and all of the atrocities I’m still willing to commit.

But it does lessen my loneliness.

And I’d sell even my humanity for that.

Present time … (minus a few minutes)

The Hag Wytch dives Marlowe and Kate for a second time, but I’m already on top of things, throwing my machete and nailing the ancient forest bitch in the shoulder. She rakes her talons down Lo’s back, shredding his skin, spilling his blood, stealing his bow.

Lo grits his teeth and bundles Kate up against him, his jaw clenched as he pushes through the pain to get to his feet. He never loses his grip on our North, doesn’t hesitate before making the decision to start running.

Go, Marlowe, fucking go!

I turn, catching Tanner’s silver eyes through the shadows of the forest. He looks like a wolf. I’m glad that I have a beast by my side in the dark tonight.

I call out my orders in sign language, and he’s off before I’ve finished the last word. Tanner sprints after Marlowe and Kate while I backtrack a bit for the brooms, hopping on one and zipping through the Witchwoods in search of the Hag Wytch.

I’ll cut her off and serve as a necessary distraction for the others. Once they’re safe, I’ll worry about myself.

My coven bonds stretch painfully as we scatter through the forest, but one of them hurts a little less than the others. My Westwoods. He’s close. Just him though? What about Kate?

I spin around, hop off the broom, and then react with reasonable caution when something comes at me through the fog. The wooden broom handle slices through the air, stopping a hair’s breadth from Marlowe’s throat.

He’s panting, mask hanging off the bottom of his face, hands up and palms out.

I put the weapon away and start signing at him while I try desperately not to scream.

“ Where is Kate?!” I sign roughly, like I’m yelling. I could choke him. Hell, maybe I’ll spank him and Kate both after this? I am pissed.

“ Safe,” is what Marlowe signs back, motioning for me to follow.

His eyes are solid black, like a demon’s, visible by the light of two dead deer. Their bodies are dull and half-rotted, but their horns are still illuminated by thick candles that’ll burn until they run out of fat. Their antlers are tangled, like they died in battle with one another.

You should’ve stayed safe with her then, I think, but there’s no point in dallying just to reprimand him. Timing is everything. I remount the broom, following after Marlowe as he jogs along. Tanner catches up quickly enough, proving he can run almost as fast as this broom can fly.

We’re making our way toward the ancient, hollow tree where Kate is waiting when the forest spirits start screaming.

“ She’ll eat her liver! She’ll eat her face!” They laugh. Or maybe they’re crying. Can’t tell. “She’ll break her heart. She’ll slit her throat.” Giggles, and then more crying from the leaf-faced demons on the branches.

It’s the most visceral, disturbing thing they’ve ever said.

Marlowe slips into the tree trunk ahead of me, silently stirring the cool, white fog that shrouds the entrance. Tanner is so close behind him that I think they’re touching. I’m right fucking there, slipping off the broom and putting the fingers of my right hand on Tanner’s broad shoulder.

Everything is still. Everything is quiet.

But then the tree branches whisper, a signal that she is coming.

“ Oooo!” the forest spirits wail as time slows down for me. It’s a warning that’s come too late.

I can feel her.

More than that, I can see her.

The Hag Wytch’s shadow stretches over me and up the trunk of the tree that we’re seeking sanctuary in. This is it. I knew it would come to this, eventually. From that very first day, after watching this unholy monster swallow my sister’s head, I knew.

This was a curse that would end me.

I spin, stealing Tanner’s machete from his belt at the same time. I jam that blade in the Hag’s beak, but she’s got two mouths. Tanner hits her with an arrow to the eye. Marlowe grabs onto my arm. Nobody is lax. Nobody is slow. Every one of us is on point.

Kate’s vines tear the earth apart, launching themselves at the Hag like a net. My flames rage at the monster’s feet. Blades of ice pummel the runes that decorate her brown and white feathers, and the wild wind howls, trying in vain to drag her away from her prey.

Kate. Her prey is Kate.

And so imagine my surprise when there she is: Kate, unfurling from a crouch in front of me.

She’s on point, too. I would’ve been eviscerated by the Hag’s human mouth if not for her.

But that is not. Kate’s. Fucking. Problem.

Goddamn it, honey, no!

My hands grab for her hips as she shoves her own blade into the Hag Wytch’s human mouth, past blunt teeth and bloody gums. Fuck if Kate doesn’t look sexy fighting on my behalf, black and orange braid flying, expression feral and hot and angry. She’s in huge trouble for this bullshit stunt.

The Hag’s teeth snap shut on Kate’s arm, and we’re both dragged violently upward.

The Hag snatches me in one of her talons and slams my head against the trunk of a tree. The impact is so severe that for a second, I’m sure she’s killed me. I hit the ground at a raw angle and nearly break my neck, stubbornly lurching to my feet.

I’m yelling instructions to Tanner and Marlowe, even though I know I shouldn’t talk here. We closed the gate. We’ll be trapped now. But that’s fine. So long as nothing happens to Kate, I can deal with it. We. We can deal with it.

Tanner steps up beside me, aiming another arrow. This one hits the Hag Wytch in the back of the head. The arrow glances off her skull and blood spatters violently, but she doesn’t slow. I’ve had the thought in the past that she might be immortal. Impervious. Invincible.

A lot of goddamn i- words that don’t mean shit when my woman is plummeting toward the ground at high speed. I lunge for the discarded broom, straddle it, and try to catch her.

Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.

Kate is snatched up in the Hag’s talons before any of the three of us can grab her from the air. The Hag Wytch is faster and stronger than she’s ever been before. Did eating all of those people fire you up like this, you cunt?

We can’t keep up, not even with magic.

I throw everything I’ve got at the Wytch, searing her feathers with fire and filling the woods with smoke. Nailing her with deadly charms from my hat. I grab onto Kate with my shadow and try to take possession of her body. Marlowe and Tanner are right there with me through it all.

But our enemy is not an animal.

She’s cunning, crafty, and very, very desperate. Dangerous. Desperate things are dangerous.

The Hag Wytch knocks me off my broom, and I land with a grunt on the hard earth. Bones break. I ignore them. I’m in the process of standing up when the Hag severs my wife’s throat with one of her talons.

The owl monster lets go and Kate falls to her death.

Marlowe throws himself under Kate’s body before she hits the ground, cushioning her fall. He grunts from the impact as she slams into him, her severed arm landing on her own back with a splash of blood across my boots.

The Hag Wytch flees the area like she’s done what she came here to do: to execute Kate.

Tanner helps me bundle our North up in my arms and we run for the cottage as a coven.

Kate is gurgling and spurting blood; she’s drowning in it; she can’t breathe.

We run harder. Tear the cottage door open. Fly down the steps. Lay Kate on the living room floor. Surround her, shadows looming above us and peering down at our vulnerable mate. The eyes on my hat are twitching as I direct the men and take my own intervention at the same time.

Marlowe pours salve over the fatal wound in Kate’s throat, his teeth gritted and his eyes too wide for his face. Tanner is sewing her arm back on with sinew and a needle made of bone.

I’m chanting over Kate’s body, and I’m signing at the same time, throwing down a healing spell that I’ve only used once. It stole every ounce of energy I had and left me passed out drooling on the floor for three days. I was nearly dehydrated to the point of death when I finally woke up.

I’ve only done this spell once, but it worked. I healed my own broken back. It’ll be fine.

Katelynn Poppy managed to get someone like me, missing a heart and despairing, to fall in love. To make love. To cuddle. To go on a date. To bake cinnamon rolls. To feel less like a monster and more like a man.

That’s the person she makes me want to be, the man that bakes her cinnamon rolls.

Kate is seizing, and Marlowe is trying CPR. There’s no point. We need magic, not medicine. She’s broken to pieces and drowning in her own fluids. Each press on her chest causes blood to ooze from her parted lips.

And then she stops moving.

Time stops.

It hits me in the heart, this burst of raw, violent energy. Coven bonds stretch, splinter, pop. My mind shatters. How … I can’t … there’s no way forward for me without Kate.

Fuck your feelings, Brooks.

No. No, no, no. I can make this right. I can make this better. I can.

“ Fuuuuuuuuck!” Marlowe screams, and he looks like he might lose it. I think he’s finally snapping, unraveling those last few threads of good that he had left in him. He was always more hopeful than me and Tanner, poor fucking Marlowe. Everything on his hat dies all at once, desiccated plant life floating down to the pool of ruby red on the floor. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Kate. My Kate. My sweet Kate.”

I stand up to do … something. I stand up because I’m used to taking action. No matter where or what, I can always figure it out. I can … I can …

I stumble and fall to my knees, splashing blood everywhere. Choking on my own breaths. Thinking, thinking, thinking. Plotting.

Kate is dead. How do I bring Kate back to life?

A spell to resurrect the dead.

Kate’s ghost appears with no eyes. No more hazel irises. Nothing but a pair of black pits in the center of her pretty, undead face. Her mouth moves like she’s shouting, but no words will come out. Silenced by the woods. Silenced by death.

Tanner doesn’t stop sewing her arm on, but his eyes lift to mine and we both know the truth in it.

Katelynn Poppy is dead.

And magic always requires sacrifice.

“This is my fault.” Marlowe trashes the cabin as I sit on my knees and pretend like I can’t see the ghost of our Northwoods. Because I can’t tell her what we have to do. There’s only one way out of this mess, and she isn’t going to like it. No, she’ll hate it. “I brought her into this. I killed her.”

But Marlowe is wrong.

It isn’t his fault, and he didn’t kill her.

I did.

“ Do what I tell you, and we can save her.” This is what I sign to the other men. “We don’t leave this cabin. Think of what you want to say. Choose your last words carefully.” Then I start to sign instructions for the spell, all the while ignoring the frantic pleas of my dead wife’s ghost.

If the Hag Wytch eats my spirit—when, when she eats it—I want my last words to be the ones I say to Kate.