“Why don’t we have lunch?” Hugh said. “You’ll get to know us, and we’ll talk about it.”
Wayne straightened and drew himself to his full height. “We know you. We know who you are. We know what you’ve done.”
He took a step toward Hugh. D’Ambray towered over him and Wayne had to look up.
“You’re a killer and a villain. Your wife is a witch. This child comes from a good Christian family. If her father knew where she was now, he’d fight every single one of you to get her out of here.”
Oh no.
“So, no, we won’t be breaking bread with you. There isn’t a godly man alive in fifty miles who would let his flesh and blood anywhere near you. We know you want her to stay here. Well, you’re not getting her. What would you turn her into if I left her here?”
Hugh’s face shut down. The charming veneer vanished and only the Preceptor of the Iron Dogs remained.
“What happens when the beasts come for her?” he asked, his voice pure ice.
“We’ll fight them,” Jane said. “And if she dies, she’ll die as a Christian.”
Wayne walked over and reached for Deidre.
The child screamed as if cut. “No!”
Hugh stepped between them. Wayne locked his teeth.
It wouldn’t be a fair fight. Hugh would kill him with the first blow and then Deidre would see the rest of her family die.
An electric jolt of alarm dashed through Elara. Do I grab the child first, do I stop Hugh, do I stop Wayne?
Hugh looked at Deidre. “I know you want to stay here,” he said. “But you have a family. Your uncle loves you. If I tried to keep you here, your uncle would fight for you. He has no chance against me. He knows that, but he would do it anyway. You’re that important to him. I don’t want to kill your uncle. He hasn’t done anything wrong. You have to go with him.”
Elara moved, letting her magic spill out of her. Wayne saw her and stumbled back, hands raised. She swept Deidre up and gently brushed her tears off with her fingers.
“And if he ever mistreats you,” Elara said. “If he or your aunt ever hit you or hurt you, all you have to do is call to me. I will hear, and I will come.” She kissed Deidre’s forehead. Her magic touched the child’s skin, leaving a hidden blessing.
Elara took three steps and placed Deidre into Jane’s arms. “Take her now and leave. Quickly, before my husband and I change our minds.”
The Harmons ran for the truck, carrying Deidre. She watched them turn around and roll out, aware of Hugh standing next to her like a thunderstorm ready to break.
The truck left the gates.
Hugh turned and walked away without a word.
12
Elara leaned forward, rocking on her hands and knees, and sniffed the soil under the patch of wilting jimsonweed. It smelled moist, green, and alive. She sat back on her feet and pondered the thorny plants. Only yesterday, the patch was in good health, the stems standing straight, spreading the toothed leaves, and cradling white and purple trumpet shaped flowers. Today, the stems had wrinkled and shrunk, curling down. It was as if all the water had been sucked out of the plant, and it was dying at the end of a long drought. But the soil was moist.
Next to her, James Cornwell twisted his hands. A white man in his forties, he was of average height, but his arms and legs seemed too long somehow, his shoulders too narrow, and his frame too lanky. He wore a straw hat and he often joked that from the back people mistook him for a scarecrow. He was the keeper of poisons. If it was poisonous and they grew it, James was in charge of it. Normally he was upbeat, but right now agitation took hold of him.
“Never seen anything like this,” James said.
“Have you dug one up?” she asked.
He turned, plucked a plant from his wheelbarrow with his gloved hand, and held it in front of her. The root, normally thick and fibrous, had shrunk down, so desiccated it looked like a rat’s tail.
“What could do that?” James asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“The entire crop is a loss.”
He was right. Jimsonweed, Datura stramonium, wasn’t one of their most valuable plants. A powerful hallucinogenic, it belonged to the nightshade family, sharing ancestry with tomatoes, potatoes, and chili peppers, but also with belladonna and mandrake. Once it was used as a remedy against madness and seizures, but the toxicity of the plant proved to be too high and it was abandoned as soon as safer alternatives were found. Now it was mostly harvested to induce visions. They sold a small quantity of it every year to specialized shops and made sure it came with bright warning labels. It wasn’t a significant earner, but the sudden wilting was worrisome.
Elara glanced to the left, where a patch of henbane bloomed with yellow flowers. Hyoscyamus niger, also poisonous and hallucinogenic, brought in a lot of money, mostly from German and Norse neo-pagans. The plant was sacred to Balder, son of Odin and Frigg. Balder was famous mostly for his resurrection myth, detailed in Prose Edda, but the medieval text glossed over one important detail: Balder wasn’t a martyr. He was a warlord, proficient with every weapon known to ancient people. The neo-pagans prayed to him before every major obstacle, and henbane was a crucial part of those prayers. Henbane was too toxic to be grown and harvested by amateurs. It came with a big price tag.
If whatever killed the jimsonweed jumped to the henbane, they would take an expensive hit.
“What do you want to do?” she asked.
“I want it warded.”
“The henbane?”
He nodded. “I’ll put plastic up too, but I would feel better with a ward.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll tell Savannah.”
James twisted his hands some more.
“Would you like me to do it?” she guessed. “Now?”
“Yes?” he asked.
“Okay.”
“Thank you!” He reached into the wheelbarrow and withdrew a bundle of elm sticks.
The rapid thudding of a galloping horse sounded through the trees. Elara frowned. A rider came around the bend, emerging from the trees. Sam, wearing his Iron Dog black.
He slowed the horse, bringing the mare to a stop in front of them. “Trouble.”
She jumped to her feet.
“What?”
“People from the Pack are here. The guy who was here before and two others, a man and a woman. They said they were the alphas of Clan Bouda.”
Just what they needed. “Where is the Preceptor?”
“In the moat, on the other side. We didn’t tell him yet.”
Clan Bouda, Clan Bouda… What was it the boy said before? His people killed the alpha of my clan.
Oh no. “Keep the Preceptor away from the bailey. Do whatever you have to do. Don’t just sit there, go! Go!”
Sam turned the horse around and rode back the way he came. She focused on the trees in the distance.
“But the henbane,” James moaned.
“I’ll be back.”
Elara stepped. The trees rushed to her. She stepped again, hurrying to the castle, burning magic too fast. Three days had passed since Deidre was taken from the castle and Hugh had gone inside himself. He didn’t want to fight with her. When he spoke, it was short and brisk. He spent all his time finishing the moat. She’d snuck into his dreams last night and found fire and death, ruins littered with corpses, and him, a terrifying monster prowling through it to the chorus of screams and killing, the fiery maelstrom behind him so big, it took up half of the sky. She couldn’t tell if it was a nightmare or a distorted memory.
In that moment, before he’d turned away and left as Deidre’s family drove out of the castle, she had seen his eyes. Hugh hadn’t realized his legacy. He knew what it was, he knew himself to be a killer, he let it torment him, but inside the castle walls he was sheltered from its full impact. The Iron Dogs admired him; her people looked to him for protection. Whether he knew it or not, Hugh leaned on that human net to keep going. He saw himself as strong, violent, and ruthless, but also as someone who protected and led. He was feared but respected and even envied.