Headless Harvest (The Witch’s Almanac #1)

Chapter 1

SILAS

I keep close to the shadows of the wood, slipping between the shaded boughs of trees, tasting the air with my tongue.

I hear it then, a desperate cry threading through the marrow of the night, tugging against the well of my power.

My chest tightens, boots move faster over the damp earth, seeking the Kindred calling for salvation, her terror sharp enough to cut through the distance between us.

The pull leads me to the edge of a vast farmstead looming up a knoll, with lanterns blazing across the well-made porch and shadows clustering in its gables. The smells of churned soil and drying husks batter against me, cloying on the air but I push on through the field of rattling stalks.

Voices rise, heavy and thundering as I near the edge of the crop line, the side yard full of seething townsfolk and I can feel their hatred, their calls for violence and destruction as they echo on the wind.

Faces glow fever-bright and menacing in the firelight, their words a dichotomy of scripture and accusation, all gathered in front of three stakes of white pine driven deep into the earth.

Against the first, an elderly woman hangs limp, sobbing and bound in ropes, her thin hair plastered with sweat and tears to her face, keening like a wounded animal.

She begs and pleads for salvation, words swallowed by viscous jeers and spit from the crowd of good, God-fearing folk.

Next to her stands a girl, not yet into womanhood, chin trembling with unrestrained rage.

In her face is fear, but also defiance as a minister stands before them on a raised platform, hurtling thundering judgments, calling her a consort of the Devil.

She stands in stoic silence, ignoring him completely, eyes fixed on a woman in the crowd bearing a striking resemblance to her own face.

The third stake stands empty.

My heart thuds in my chest, grateful the Green Witch I seek has not yet been brought to bear.

The screams of the condemned claw against me, but I have to secure the Kindred first, the mandate of our kind clear.

Somewhere near, she waits for intercession, mayhaps already bound.

I feel her fear like a hand pressed to my own chest, constricting my lungs.

The pull grows sharper with every step toward the house, a thread of raw, desperate power tugging me inward.

I slip through the servant's entrance, shouldering past the ajar door as I grasp that tether, follow it down a long, narrow passageway, focusing on the pulse in my bones.

I find her crouched in the corner of a dimly lit back room, shackled to a beam with a long, heavy chain, and though I expected some level of abuse, my blood chills at her visage.

Blood stripes her temple in a glistening rivulet, dripping into fair hair stained red, then further down a jagged tear in the flesh of her jaw.

She pushes up from the filth of the floor the instant the door opens, a feral snarl breaking across her face as she bares her teeth, body jerking back.

She is all instinct, all claws and desperation.

So young for our kind, less than a quarter century. Too young for this display of carnage.

My gut twists.

Beneath the copper tang of her exposed wounds, another smell clings to her—foul, human, unmistakable. The sweat of man. Of violation.

My vision swims in red, rage hot and violent urging me to burn this house, those people, any soul who dared touch her but I force it down, clenching fists to palm, nails digging into flesh. There will be a time for retribution but today is not that day. I lift my hands, palms open.

"I will not harm you. Feel me. My power. Recognize me, sister."

My voice thrums low, a steady chord beneath the chaos of her instinct and terror, and as my magic permeates the air, I see it settle over her, coaxing and steady.

She fights it for a moment, until recognition breaks through her haze.

The youngling’s body goes slack, a raw, relieved sob tearing from her throat as she marks me as Kindred.

"May I touch you?" I ask, gesturing to the iron binding her wrists to chains that weigh more than she.

Filthy clothes hang loosely from her body, but she gives me a trembling nod of assent.

I waste no more time, but tread slower into her space, careful as I reach for the shackles when the barest brush of my skin against hers produces a flinch.

Beneath the irons, the flesh is raw and bloodied.

"Hold fast," I warn through clenched teeth, and she braces one small hand against the rough wall.

I close my eyes, calling my Cast, pleading to Tyr for strength, to see justice served.

Heat surges through my bones, strength and power kicking in my muscles and with a wrench, the chains groan and twist in a screech, irons dropping to the floor in a tangled heap.

The youngling cradles her wrists against her chest, staring at me with wide, green eyes a shade or so darker than mine.

They are startlingly similar, and it guts me.

She could pass for my daughter, to unknowing eyes.

I need to get us out of this wretched place.

My elbow finds the grimy pane on the nailed-shut window of this prison, sending shards of glass raining down beneath the sill.

"Come," I instruct and she obeys, taking my hand, allowing me to lift her up.

As her leg swings over, the door I crept through blasts open with a crack.

A large, jowled Constable fills the doorframe, the blacks of his eyes narrowing on her.

It flares my protective instinct, and I move the mass of me to shield her from his gaze.

His musket lifts, a sneer on his face as the youngling freezes, trembling, her breath wheezing in a growl.

In her eyes, I see it—the blaze of hatred, the fury of a soul who endured him once already.

Footfalls echo in the hallway. With only a moment to act, my fingertips light with flames, my rage too sharp to contain.

I slash my hands through the air, shooting an arc of flame in a curling whip across the room.

The Constable screams, dropping the musket, stumbling back as fire licks up his coat, catching the fabric in a blaze.

"Go!" I bark, pushing the youngling through the window, jagged glass biting against my palms as I lower her to the earth before clambering out myself.

I land heavily beside her, the taste of ash still hot on my tongue.

It is reckless, exposing my power that way, but what is done is done.

We run to a cacophony of hounds baying, howls rising in the night mixing with the shouts of men behind.

I grab her hand, feel her put her safety in my own as we tear through the grounds, the black maw of the forest waiting.

Together, we flee into the dark.