Page 5 of The Arcane Taste of the Witchwood Boys (The Witchwood Boys #4)

Brooks

It’s my responsibility to keep our coven safe, not Kate’s. I don’t know what she’s done, and fuck if that doesn’t piss me off to no end. I can’t plan if I don’t know the details. I will get the details—just as soon as we’re in the cottage and she’s tied up to my satisfaction.

If I have to torture the information out of her, I have no problem with that. Let’s see how many hours she can stand being touched without orgasm. She’ll fold like a deck of cards.

“Let go of me.” Kate is struggling between me and Tanner as Marlowe sweeps the woods with his bow. We’re not far from the cottage, but this is still the Witchwoods. We could die as easily from a plant as we could from a gore-bear, and a million monsters in between. Even though Kate said … whatever the hell she said about becoming the Hag Wytch, I’m still on the lookout for that monster owl.

I won’t take any risks. I’ve already fucked up enough as it is.

The only way to redeem myself is to get us out of this mess and back to happily ever after.

The stream of spirits flows above us, diaphanous and ethereal, a ribbon of energy and sorrow. As we walk, we walk beneath it, moans and cries sounding from overhead.

“ Run, don’t walk. She eats everything!” The forest spirits aren’t any more chipper than they usually are. I wish fervently for them to shut the hell up. I’m tired of their bullshit. They’re always screaming and yelling, but they do nothing.

“Not a chance in hell,” Tanner growls at Kate, helping me drag our struggling wife through the unforgiving woods. Animals are running away from us. Not entirely unusual. Not until I see a flash-toad shift gears and scramble back in the opposite direction.

Hmm.

“Did you guys hear me? I said that I am now the Hag Wytch. Sunrise is coming. What if I sing, Brooks? Do you understand how serious this is?”

“I don’t care if you’re God himself, you’re not going anywhere.” I keep my grip on her arm, already working my way through a plan. Kate is the Hag Wytch? How the fuck does that make any sense? But she wouldn’t lie to us about that.

Besides, how are the three of us alive right now if not for the will of the divine?

I spent months alone in these woods studying everything there is to know about magic, how it works, what gets things done. To bring three back from the dead? It’ll be a fate worse than death, I can promise you that.

I clench my right fist against the rage I feel. At myself, mostly. Now isn’t the time.

Tears fall from my hat and hit the brim, trailing salt and water through the woods.

“I’ll end up eating you if you don’t let me go!” Kate screams as her hat tries to bite me and Tanner both. Its tongue lashes out, pummeling me and leaving bruises and saliva. Don’t care. Nothing matters except getting Kate someplace safe.

Keeping Kate safe, like I should’ve done in the first place.

“We won’t let you eat us,” I promise her as we come into the clearing with the Witch’s Tree at its center. Marlowe tests it by putting his hand into the hole. Nothing happens which means it’s closed. We succeeded on one front, and fucked ourselves on another.

Wonderful.

Nice to know that my spell was successful. I should’ve stuck to my guns and never allowed us to come back into these woods.

Kate tears away from me, a feat that should be physically impossible. Tanner looks as stunned as I am, and the pair of us exchange a look. Marlowe keeps himself busy scanning the woods. He’s doing his job, as he should be. It’s me that’s screwing up—again.

I can plan for anything.

I can anticipate anything.

Except for the impossibly strong will of my own wife.

“Katelynn McDowell, get your ass over here.” I point at the ground in front of me, but Kate is backing away, putting herself near that goddamn tree. The spirits are coalescing in the space above us, a whirlpool of melancholy, a tumultuous soup of the undead, gossamer and crystalline. I can barely breathe right now, speaking through clenched teeth.

I cannot believe that we’re standing here right now, that my last words to Kate weren’t my last words at all.

“What the fuck is happening?” Marlowe asks, panting and red-cheeked. His dark eyes move from Kate to us and very quickly back to Kate again. “You let her go?” He puts his bow on his back, like he’s prepping himself to go after her.

“Goddamn it, LISTEN TO ME!” Kate screams, and her hair lifts in a supernatural breeze, orange and black strands wafting around her face as she pants and squeezes her bloodied hands into fists. The brown wings on her back are striped with gold and white and silver, a matching set of colors to the Hag Wytch. But the runes on Kate’s wings? Our coven sigil, stamped over and over and over again. “I made a deal to get you back. I … killed the Hag Wytch. And the only way to kill the Hag Wytch is to become her. The singing and the eating and the … all of it is my burden to bear.”

I see Tanner slip into the trees, taking his shadow with him. He’s going to maneuver his way behind or above Kate, so he can surprise her. She sees him go, but she can’t keep track of all three of us at the same time. She puts her back to the tree and focuses on me and Marlowe.

“And what the fuck did I tell you?” I’m as hysterical as she is, tired of holding myself together when all I want to do is scream. “I don’t care if that’s true. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the four of us staying together, no matter what. Life or death or back home or these woods, I don’t give a shit, Kate.” I take a step toward her, my shadow rising above me, antlered points blending into the boughs. Her horned one bares its fangs back at me.

“ Go, go, before she starts the feast!” The forest spirits start throwing sticks and rocks at Kate from above. Marlowe aims his bow at them and fires off a flaming arrow, borrowing my magic like it’s second nature. It feels right for him to do that. My brother-in-arms. A man I trust to protect my wife.

He doesn’t hit any of the forest spirits, but they scatter through the trees, twig-like legs clacking across the wooden limbs as they run.

“ Cursed witch gobbles up her coven,” they grumble as they pull back, reluctantly, to the edges of the clearing. They observe us from faces made of leaves and beady, glowing eyes. In hushed anticipation. In palpable fear.

Our Northwoods folds her wings in against her back, stepping forward from the Witch’s Tree at the same time. Tears stream down her face, cutting tracks through the dirt and the blood. Her hands are shaking as she holds them out toward us, palms up. Pleading. Kate is pleading.

She is painfully beautiful, bright-orange and night-black hair swirling around her face. Big, dark hat with a wilting cone and white fangs on the brim. Breasts bare and high and proud. Nipples pebbled. Black leather pants clinging to generous hips. Parted, panting pink lips and eyes like priceless coins.

I wish I could give in. I do. But I can’t.

“Why don’t you guys ever listen? I don’t want to hurt you. That’s the worst thing that could ever happen to me. Don’t you care at all about my wants, Brooks?”

A breeze cuts through the woods, causing the foliage to dance. Things creak. In the distance, there’s a shriek and a cry. Hunting. Eating. Dying. Mating. All of it happening around us as we stand here exposed, unprepared for a fight and rapidly losing time.

“We shouldn’t always get what we want, Kate, not if it isn’t good for us. I’ll make the decisions for this coven. I’ll make all the hard choices so you don’t have to.” I’m struggling to keep my voice even.

Kate is right about one thing though: it’s almost sunrise. We should be back in the cottage already. If she’s telling the truth, we need to lock her up somewhere until I can strategize our way out of this mess.

A cloud of spirits perfumes the air like fog. Logically, I know that my sister and my mentor are both in there somewhere, but as much as I love Sharyn, as much as I respect my mentor, Kate has to come first. We’re already riding the coattails of the impossible by standing here together, and I can’t let this situation unravel any further.

“Come here, and we’ll figure it out. We’ll lock you downstairs. There’s a vault, like a safe room, in case the cottage was ever breached.” I take another step toward Kate, not bothering to hide my approach, purposefully snapping a twig underfoot to distract her.

Marlowe creeps in from Kate’s right, and Tanner is nowhere to be seen or heard. Good. Get her, Tanner. Grab her before she runs.

The forest goes still, like time has stopped. Only the breeze still blows, ruffling my hair against my forehead. Wrinkling the brim of my hat. Stealing away the tears that my hat sheds without my consent.

“ Ooooooh!” The forest spirits begin to dance, like they’re rejoicing.

The lucent mist of the dead dribbles downward like rain, balls of pale blue and ash gray and snow-white light swooping in toward the hole in the Witch’s Tree. First one and then ten, fifty, hundreds. The spirits surge like they did before, rushing the tree in a wave, pushing into the hole and stretching it like an assault.

The old tree groans and grumbles. The wood snaps and creaks and splinters as the ghosts shove at the invisible gate until the lock we created with our spell shatters. Like a bone snapping in a metal trap, the tree breaks at a spot just above Kate’s head and begins to fall—directly on top of her.

Marlowe rushes forward and grabs her, dragging her out of the way of the enormous trunk. I barely get out of the way myself, kicking up mud and rolling to avoid the gargantuan crash as the Witch’s Tree takes out others in the nearby vicinity, hundreds of feet tall and large enough to shake the earth.

The woods are screaming, plants and animals alike, as the tree lands with a deafening whump and crushes everything in its path. I’m struggling to get to my feet with the rumbling and the cloud of leaves and dirt and debris that explodes out in a violent wave, striking my skin and puncturing one of the eyes on my hat. It hurts like hell, but I can live without it for now.

Tanner must be okay, or we’d feel it. I knew the very second that Kate died, this energy that nearly broke my spirit. A worse pain than stabbing myself in the heart. Much worse.

Infinite and irreparable.

Fuck your feelings, Brooks. Later. I’ll deal with all that emotion later.

“Lo!” I call out, and he answers with a whistle, like he’s out of breath but okay. I make my way over to him as quickly as I can, finding him with his arm around Kate’s shoulders, the pair of them staring at the stump that used to be a skyscraper of wood and green needles.

Spirits continue to funnel into the broken trunk, fleeing the Witchwoods for our world. The gate isn’t just open now—the entire fence is coming down. The forest begins to shift and change, small trees joining the landscape of behemoth trunks, like two overlapping paintings. The mundane alongside the magical.

Dust floats in the air with the fog as the spirits moan their way into the tree’s opening and something else cracks, like an egg made out of glass. It shatters and pings and there’s this hot shimmer on my skin that Marlowe and I both shield Kate from.

The glowing orbs slow their frantic fleeing, bobbing gently in the air with a collective sigh. The forest spirits are whispering excitedly, and in the distance, there’s the hum of a car. Yellow police tape, torn and flapping in the wind. A red soda can with a white logo on the ground. A glowing Witchwoods vulture landing on a nearby branch to survey the carnage beneath the fallen tree.

A person with a phone in her hand staring back at us, mouth agape.

Well, I’ll be damned: I can see both worlds at once.

The woman starts to scream before turning and fleeing the scene. Her footsteps pound through the chaos as she runs the length of the fallen tree trunk. Something furry and fanged grabs her a few seconds later, dragging her into the dark of the woods. Not my problem. But this … this is definitely my problem.

The gate no longer exists.

Earth and hell are now one.

And yet, that still isn’t my biggest problem.

My wife is an immortal forest god and I can’t stop the sunrise.

I can’t stop the song.

“What’s happening?” Kate whispers as I wrap my fingers around her arm, more concerned with her than I am with whatever’s going on around us. It’s significant, I’ll give you that, but it still matters less than she does.

My eyes stay on her while the ones on my hat that aren’t oozing blood assess the situation. Tanner, somewhere in the woods to the north of us, is moving quickly in our direction. Marlowe hums for him, and he responds, indicating that he’s on his way and that we should stay put.

“What does that mean?” Kate asks, looking up at me in desperation. She’s still going to try and flee, but she won’t do that until Tanner comes back. She wants to make sure the three of us are together. “Tanner’s hum, it clearly means something. Your expression changed when you heard it.”

“He’s coming.” I look down at her and arch a brow. “And not the sexy sort of coming. He’ll be here in a minute.”

Kate’s expression shifts, the wings on her feathers ruffling.

“Not a good time for dirty humor,” she grumps, but she reaches up a hand and places it over mine, squeezing. I’m so in love with this woman. I would kill myself an infinite number of times to keep her safe. I don’t doubt the same is true for Tanner and Marlowe. Our Westwoods crowds close to her right side, his arm slipping from her shoulders to the curve of her waist and giving Kate goose bumps in the process.

“If we can’t make sex jokes in the face of death, when will we ever get the chance?” Marlowe asks dryly, dark eyes searching the forest. He knows as well as I do that animals died while being crushed under this tree. And if there’s blood and gore—which even I can smell—then the carrion eaters will come.

There are a lot of carrion eaters in the Witchwoods that will switch to live prey if given the chance.

We are live prey.

“Explain the bargain you made,” I demand, turning back to Kate. She’s biting her lip, eyes darting this way and that, waiting impatiently for Tanner. “Quickly, North. For you to become the Hag Wytch, it must mean this is a curse. A curse is the only sort of magic that two witches from separate covens can cast with each other. Tell me what your agreement entailed.”

“I told you: I am the new Hag Wytch. I’ll try to hunt you, eat you, kill you, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Whatever it is that you’re thinking of doing, you have to let me go for now. My song is going to put you to sleep.”

She gestures at her throat, turning to Marlowe and grabbing the side of his face. He stops her with his hand on her wrist, their faces pressed close.

“How do you pass on the curse?” he asks, which is a great question. If this can be given from one person to another, we’ll find someone else to take the fall. If there’s no way to get rid of the Hag Wytch, we can at least foist that responsibility off of Kate and onto another person. Anyone at all. First person I see.

I should’ve grabbed the one with the phone.

But there’ll be more people. Billions of them. We’re home now, aren’t we?

It’s subtle in this particular spot, but only because we’re inside the park. If we walk just a ways that way, I imagine we’ll see houses alongside bioluminescent Witchwoods fungi. Cars beside ferns that are bigger than they are, growing from the middle of the street.

The Witchwoods has finished its ooze, and it owns everything. Both worlds.

Kate takes a while to answer, the wind stirring her hair.

“I … don’t know.”

Marlowe huffs in frustration, but I am perfectly calm.

There’s a way to save Kate. I’ll find it. I’ll figure it out.

Tanner appears near the stump, skirting around it as he makes his way toward us. His wolf ears are working overtime, taking in the myriad sounds as he assesses the threat level.

High. Very high. Catastrophic.

Kate tries to pull away to get to him, but neither Lo nor I will let her go. She reaches for Tanner, and he comes to her, folding his body around hers and holding her close. Above her head, he watches me and Lo.

Keep your eyes on this crafty woman, his expression says. Lo curls his lip. I nod.

“ Stop fuckin’ runnin’ from me, kitten,” he grinds out through clenched teeth, clutching at Kate’s naked back with witch claws. She bleeds and then … she heals. Instantly. I narrow all seven of my remaining eyes.

“The gate is down, isn’t it?” Marlowe asks aloud, putting it to words before anyone else can. “But who cares? That doesn’t change anything. We still need to get Kate back to the cottage.”

“If the gate is down, then my friends—” Kate pauses, like she’s choking on something. Her hand goes to her throat, and she closes her eyes. “Yeah, okay, let’s go back to the cottage.”

Tanner lifts Kate up and throws her over his shoulder, and the weirdest part is that she doesn’t fight it at all. She lets him carry her back to the cottage. Is silent while we open the door and move into the foyer. Is calm and docile and tame as we set her down in a pool of blood on the living room floor at the bottom of the stairs.

I’m waiting for her rebellion. I’m ready.

“Where is this supposed vault?” she asks as I push my hat brim up and out of my way. Blood and white fluid oozes over the edge from my ruined hat-eye.

“There isn’t one. I lied to get you in here. If the cottage is ever breached, the only place to go is out through the sump.” I nod at Tanner, who’s already got a coil of spelled rope in his hand. He tosses it over Kate and she gasps in outrage as Marlowe helps him truss her up.

Said I liked a challenge though, didn’t I?

Kate stretches her arms and snaps the rope, yanking a charm from her hat in the same breath. She’s now faster, stronger, than all three of us combined. Hag Wytch. She crushes the glass bottle in her fist as she turns to me, blowing red powder in my face.

Déjà vu strikes me alongside an equal mixture of pride and rage.

My mentor trained me well. I trained Kate well. I am going to throttle this girl.

She’s looking directly at me, reading into the scream that I’ve been holding back for years. The one that’s chained to the tip of my tongue, never to be set free. WHY, KATE?!

My body crumples to the ground in the very same spot that I died not all that long ago.

Kate besting me only makes me want to try harder, so I will. As soon as I wake up from this spell, I’m going to chase her down. I’m going to spank that pearly white ass until it’s red and stinging. And then I’m going to fuck her until orgasms are their own form of torture.

I’m a man of my word, after all.