What could I do but nod? “I will,” I muttered. Isaac was like that one crazy relative you invited to Christmas dinner purely for the entertainment.
Shit, if learning about trees could save lives, then call me the tree master. I would learn.
“This tree is full of healthy Nwyfre. Touch her,” Isaac told me.
Okay, that almost sounded dirty, but I was working on being more mature so I didn’t even crack a grin. I reached out, right above Dominic’s head, and touched the tree’s trunk. A pulse shot out and zapped my hand, making it glow purple for a split second.
“Yes.” Isaac nodded. “She contains the spark of life.”
The happy druid lifted his staff high and came down hard on the ground a few inches from Dominic’s chest. It sank into the earth and the crystal started pulsing like a strobe light. Dominic was bleeding out; a large puddle had seeped into my jeans, and I tried not to think about it or focus on the deep cuts I saw along his body.
Isaac took a deep breath, rose to his knees, and leaned his forehead on the tree’s trunk. Dominic was trapped below the druid’s body so that Isaac created a circle with the tree, Dom inside.
“Thank you for your sacrifice,” he whispered, and my brow furrowed. He’d better not be talking about Dom.
Keegan stepped forward, but Logan yanked his arm back. Something was happening.
Isaac’s strobe-light staff had stopped and was now glowing a bright, soft, buttery yellow. His hands came down on Dominic’s shoulders, orange light flowing out of them, covering his lion like a cocoon. The druid’s head still rested on the trunk of the tree and I gasped when I looked up and saw the tree’s branches were … dying, wilting and turning brown.
Logan must have seen it too, because he cursed under his breath. “Holy mother of God,” he breathed.
“Nwyfre, gwyar, calas. Life, flow, form…”
Isaac chanted under his breath. He repeated this over and over, his staff shining so brightly I had to squint and shield my eyes, but I didn’t dare look away.
I was witnessing a full-blown miracle. The poor tree, she hunched forward, fully brown and nearly falling over, but Dominic, his skin was … healing. The cuts had the pink sheen of a new scar, and I saw his once-ragged breathing was now slow and steady. He was going to live. Suddenly the staff pulsed one huge bright light—I was forced to close my eyes. Then it died out to nothing, ceasing its illumination.
When I opened my eyes, I saw the once magnanimous twenty-foot-tall tree had shriveled to the size of a grown man. Isaac stood, taking it in his arms and pushed it backward, the trunk crumpling easily as he laid it on the ground. Tears were streaming down his face as if he’d lost a good friend. My throat suddenly tightened with emotion. It was beautiful how much he cared for something I had never thought to look at twice. I walked over and knelt beside him, lowering my head so that my red hair covered my face.
“All living things matter,” he told me, and I nodded, not even caring that I was fully crying—crying over a freaking tree, over the way a grown man cradled it like it was a dying lover.
I placed my hand on its brittle brown branches. “It mattered.”
I heard movement behind me and looked back over my shoulder to see Dominic had shifted to his naked human form. He was looking from Keegan to Isaac and then to the tree with an awed confusion.
I stayed with Isaac in companionable silence for another few moments, then he nodded, patting the brittle trunk, and stood. “We shall plant two trees tomorrow,” he told me.
The simplicity of that sentence nearly knocked me over. Kill one tree and plant two in its place. It was so … right. Something had shifted within me. This experience had changed me—for the first time since this whole nightmare began—I wanted to be a druid. An Earth druid. Not because I wanted to kill Ardan, or help my friends, but because I wanted to be this connected to something so beautiful. Something I hadn’t realized I needed. The Earth.
“Come, young one. Let’s find your staff,” Isaac stated, and reality came crashing down on my tree-hugging party.
We needed to see an elf about a staff.
5
When Keegan and Danny had gone into the club, it had given Danny the opportunity to freshly scent the elf’s trail. Now we were parked in front of a tiny house, pushed back from the road.
“It’s late. Should we wait until morning?” I asked Isaac. I wasn’t too keen on meeting a freaking elf and asking for a favor at midnight.
Isaac chuckled. “Elves don’t sleep.”
Every face on the bus fell. “Say what now?” I asked. Did he just say elves didn’t sleep? That totally brought them up a notch on my “scary as hell” list. Things that didn’t sleep … vampires, and now elves. Oh God.
Nadine was stroking the neck of the pit-bull I’d rescued. She’d done a crude but good job of closing his wounds with a surgical staple gun. Now the dog was passed out because Nadine had given it some type of tranquilizer.
When I asked why she couldn’t have closed Dominic’s wounds with the stapler, she’d looked at me like I was an idiot. Dom had a magical spell keeping him from healing and staples wouldn’t have broken that. I still had a lot to learn about this life.
Danny rolled his neck. “My magic is slowly coming back, but I’m not sure I would be of any use if he is combative.”
Isaac nodded. “Noted. Come on, Sloane. Let’s get this done. It will take a few days to make the staff, and Ardan will have received word we were at the club.”
I paled. Last time we had a run-in with Ardan, Cooper died and Gear almost lost a wing. I wanted to avoid that kind of carnage at all costs. At least, until I was a purple-fire-throwing badass who could actually take him on.
Logan stepped up into the aisle. His dark hair was wild and wavy, framing his eyes, which looked strained. He looked tired as hell, and yet he was ready to stand by my side and face this next unknown. Keegan stood as well, but Isaac shook his head.
“Too many of us will spook him. You do not want to spook an elf,” the druid stated, and my blood ran cold. Oh God, what would he look like? Ten feet tall? Razor sharp teeth? Dusky skin from his last feeding of small child?
‘Calm down. I’m sure he’s nice,’ Logan said, through our mate bond.
I glared. ‘Hey! You’re not supposed to hear my thoughts after Eva’s spell, unless I send them to you.’
He chuckled. ‘I’m not reading your thoughts. I’m reading your face and shaking hands.’
Oh. I made my hands into fists and put on a light smile. “Let’s go,” I said. Better to charge into fear headfirst, right? But if he did in fact have razor sharp teeth, I was hiding behind Logan.
Keegan cocked his shotgun, holding it firmly in his grasp. “Just holler if you need backup.”