Page 70 of Witchbane

There wasn’t much we could see beyond a handful of trees. Thoughrealis not how I would have described them. Those creepy gnome-like trees, which had more a zombie feel than anything living. Zombie trees that ate people? Not a place I wanted to explore.

The ice continued to spread, darkening the edges of the portal. “I need to close it,” I said, feeling that cold creep into me. And the last time a portal had snapped shut it had shattered, throwing shards of power around the room. If I didn’t close it soon, I was pretty sure that barrier wasn’t going to stop those shards.

“Close it,” Liam agreed. “Slowly.” Obviously he’d caught my thoughts about the portal breaking. But closing it was pretty hard too. The ice fought me. Like as it spread, it was reaching through, following the flow of my magic and invading me with it.

Liam hissed, even while pain crawled up my leg. I would have fallen over if he hadn’t been there to catch me. It wasn’t fire or even a sharp pain, but more a slow etch of death, the creeping numbness of sensation. I didn’t look down, but focused on making the portal smaller and smaller until it was little more than a pinprick. Only then did I squeeze the last of it shut, and let the elastic tug of it pull the weakened tear in the veil back to where it belonged.

I sucked in air like I’d run a marathon, proud of myself for controlling it. Even if it hadn’t gone where I wanted it to. I’d opened and closed it without incident. Mostly. I looked down and my left leg was wrapped in a crawling vine again.

“Fuck,” I grumbled.

“I’ll get it off,” Liam said.

“You’ll have to change,” Kiran looked at us. “It clings to magic. But the kitsune disrupts it. I see what you mean about a vine. Mine is not as simple.”

“That wasn’t the mortal world?” Nick asked.

“No,” Kiran agreed. “Nor Underhill. Not that remains anymore.”

“Double fuck,” I growled. The cold etched itself into my bones, and tears dotted my vision at the pain. Like my muscles and nerves were dying from a fast frost burn. I gulped air, trying to keep from screaming. How hadn’t I noticed this before? The barriers I’d erected, or perhaps even the ones the forest god had bound me with, had obviously kept it muted with the kitsune.

“Sit down. I will change first,” Liam said. “We need to get this off you.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice, but he did have to help me down else I’d have landed flat on my face. A moment later he was kitsune, large and beautiful. He pressed his nose into my hair, a silent apology.

Change,Liam’s voice prodded my mind.Give it nothing to hold on to so I can rip it away.

I trembled at the growing wave of pain that seemed to be racing upward, trying to claim me completely, and gave myself up completely to the kitsune. It burst free from my skin, like an explosion rather than a graceful change. But I lay on my side, the vine halfway up my stomach now, the pain beginning to edge away as the growth slowed.

“This isn’t any magic I recognize,” Nick said, keeping his distance. The pieces Liam tossed away writhed and wriggled. Nick seemed to blast them with magic, which stopped their movement and turned them to dust.

“No. It’s old high court magic. More a curse than the blight of Underhill,” Kiran agreed. “Underhill will use it if it can. Anything that weakens us.”

Liam licked my snout, a silent apology, and I braced myself for more pain, and a mass of painful memories.

Chapter 19

I’d lost an entire night. Exhaustion from the curse, if that’s what it was, and recovery time had zonked me out solid. While Liam had lain down beside me, I knew he hadn’t really slept, choosing to fill his mind with all the knowledge he could find. If I hadn’t been exhausted, I’d have done the same.

When I roused from a near dead sleep, I felt even more tired, and a little cold. The kitsune gave me a blast of heat, but overall, we were still wrung out from the vine. It hadn’t done that the last time I opened a portal. It made me wonder why now. Was it the forest god trying to stop us from crossing over? And where had that portal gone? Some fae court hidden away in the mortal world?

It was far too much for the throbbing in my head.

“Any chance of conjuring some aspirin?”

“I probably could,” he admitted, “but not sure it would work the way you hope.” Liam kissed my head, leaning over me, his weight welcome and firm. “How are you feeling? Headache?” He didn’t really need to ask. I was as open to him as I could possibly be, and I could feel the soul bond and the scion ties looping around us, settling him deep in my head.

I groaned. He massaged my temples in slow circles until I was almost ready to fall back to sleep. A heap of books lay scattered around the room. And I could recall hearing Nick’s voice a half dozen times, even through my sleep. “Why are you still awake?”

“Thinking. Planning. Consulting with Nick over thoughts on magic.” He tugged on my braid. “I have an idea. But I need you.”

“Only when you have an idea?” I muttered.

“I need you all the time.”

“Pretty save there, Ulrich. What’s your idea?”

“The last portal you opened we used our own symbol for, but there was a bit of something etched around it. In the design of the magic. Do you remember?”