15. Powerless
Chapter Fifteen
Powerless
DYLAN
Confusion froze me for a split second before fear spurred me into action.
I jumped toward Miles, his eyes already bulging and red from the vines that worked to strangle him.
I shouted for help. I tried desperately to pry the vines off but they kept coming, grabbing him by the arms. They began to lift him up.
His feet were off the boards of the porch.
“No, no, stop! Let him go!” I managed to get my fingers between his throat and the vines. I tugged and yanked. I leaned in and shredded at it with my teeth. They weren’t sharp enough. I could turn to my wolf form but would that take too long? Would it be of any help?
His eyes were full of fear before they started to lose focus. I could see the curtain starting to draw. My heart was close to bursting. This couldn’t be happening.
I searched the porch for something, anything, that could help. A pair of scissors left out or a knife sitting on the ledge or a shovel with a sharp edge to it.
There was nothing. Just more vines falling from the roof and reaching down toward his legs.
The door to the druid’s home swung open. It slammed against the wall. “What’s going—Dylan?!”
“Help us, please, stop this!”
Hunter briefly looked from me to Miles’ unconscious body, the skin around his neck turning a bruised and stomach-wrenching purple.
He said something under his breath and raised his hand, swirling it in the air then yanking it back toward his chest. There was a rush of air.
The sickeningly sweet scent of blossoming roses filled my lungs.
The vines eased, gently lowering Miles back onto the porch, laying him down before retreating back to their rooftop post, dangling off the edge as if nothing had happened.
I fell to Miles’ side. I grabbed his hand in mine.
Cupped his cheek with my other. It took an agonizing couple of seconds but his shifter genes began to kick in.
The bruise on his neck faded, turning back to his regular tan complexion.
The cuts and scrapes that were all across his forearms closed, scabbed, and recovered.
A straggling piece of vine had wrapped around his golden bracelet and broken off.
His eyes blinked open. They focused in on me.
“Oh fuck, thank god. Are you okay?” I asked.
He coughed and reached up for his throat. “I think so, yeah,” he said, his voice scratchy.
“I am so sorry.” It was Hunter, coming over and helping me get Miles back onto his feet. “Those are my watcher vines. They only activate when there’s a clear and present threat or some dark energy that usually comes with black magic users.”
“That’s neither of us,” I answered. “We’re both shifters, we can’t use magic like druids.”
“Yes, yes.” Hunter’s thin brown eyebrows twitched together. “They may have misread the situation. I will look into that. But for now let’s get inside and get you some water.”
“Thank you,” Miles rasped. He was already healed enough to walk on his own. I walked close to his side in case he needed some extra support. My heart still raced at about a thousand beats per minute. Adrenaline flowed through my veins like water in a raging rapid.
We entered Hunter’s cluttered home. It was like stepping into a blowout sale inside of a Michaels.
There were dozens of random knickknacks and figurines with an eclectic assortment of furniture and a couple of those mass-produced watercolor cow paintings.
We crossed through the living room, filled with dappled light from two arching windows.
The trees pushed right up on the house, their branches scratching at the glass.
“Sit. I’ll bring water,” Hunter said as he motioned us to the large gray couch in the center of the sunken space.
Miles and I went to the couch. “You sure you’re okay?
” I asked again. The adrenaline was being replaced by fear, along with another, more toxic, emotion: uselessness.
If it wasn’t for Hunter, this situation could have been very different.
I was powerless to help him. I was watching him die and there was nothing I could do about that.
The thought chilled me more than the residual fear.
“I’m good. Shaken but okay.” He sucked in another deep breath.
Hunter returned with two glasses of icy cold water.
We both gulped it down. He took a seat across from us, in a large black loveseat with an exaggerated back that almost swallowed his five-foot-seven frame whole.
He seemed to have lost some weight since I last saw him, and he’d let his hair grow long enough to tie into a bun.
“I think some proper introductions are due. Hello, I’m Hunter Farenzie, a druid and a professional finder of people and things.” He held his hand across the polished, massive stump of a redwood tree that served as his coffee table.
“Miles.” He reached over and shook Hunter’s hand. “Good to meet you. Dyl told me you could possibly help me in finding someone.” His voice had already returned to normal. Thank fuck for our shifter traits.
“I certainly can try.” Hunter leaned forward, hands splayed on the table. He had piercing ice-blue eyes that verged on being creepy more than anything else. “Tell me more about this person we seek.”
A muscle in Miles’ jaw twitched. He took a moment to compose himself.
He was still shaken by the vines, I could see it in the way he held his hands tight together.
“That’s the thing, we don’t know much about them.
I’m being stalked by someone. They keep escalating in their messages to me.
I thought I’d lost them by moving but they somehow found me.
I want to get to them before they get to me.
Maybe even if I just know their identity, I can take that to the cops or I can send them a message myself instead. ”
Hunter’s lips quirked to the side. He tapped his hands, clicking his black painted nails against the varnished wood.
“Do you know if this person has ever physically touched you? Do you suspect this being a scorned lover? Maybe a close and now obsessed friend? I’m asking because without some kind of link—if we don’t know exactly who we’re searching for—my scrying becomes as reliable as the cell service around my house. ”
Miles shook his head and simply said, “No idea.”
“Give me your hands.”
Miles extended his hands and gave them to Hunter.
“Let me see…” He closed his eyes and stayed rock still for what must have been a full minute.
Miles readjusted and wiggled a bit but held Hunter’s hands.
I glanced out the windows, expecting the vines to bust through the glass at any moment.
My attention was drawn back to them when a green light began to glow underneath Hunter’s skin, expanding down his forearms, through his hands, glowing bright around Miles.
The light seemed to jump through Hunter’s hands and into Miles.
It inched upward, over his knuckles, down the back of his hand, toward his wrists—and then it snapped back like a rubber band.
Hunter was flung backward and nearly toppled the huge chair.
His eyes were wide. All I could see in them was pure confusion. He looked down at his own hands, then back at Miles.
“This person is closer than you think. There is some kind of block on you. I don’t know what it is, I’ve never sensed something like it before, but it prevented me from going any further.
I couldn’t pull any threads.” He shook his head and appeared apologetic.
“I’m sorry, but I do not think I can help you. ”
My heart dropped. It’d been on a fucking rollercoaster ever since we got here.
And now it was all for nothing?
“How can he get rid of the block?” I asked. Whatever he’d have to do, I knew I’d help him with it.
“I do not know, I can’t even figure out what kind of block this is. My sense is that some sort of black magic is involved here. It could be what triggered my watcher vines.”
“Black magic…”
I knew very little of the forbidden school of magic.
Most druids practiced life magic, and then there was black magic, which was what defilers practiced.
If anyone was found to be using black magic—which typically involved sacrifices and blood rituals—then they’d be taken to the Hunters Guild and dealt with there.
The idea of a defiler having their sights set on Miles made my skin crawl.
“Let me do some research on this. Maybe I can find something that might help. It will take me some time, though. Until then, be wary. Don’t let too many people close to you. Black magic typically requires close contact to enact.”
I let out a breath I’d been holding for too long. “Thank you, Hunter.”
“Yes, thank you,” Miles said. “I’m sorry for the chaos earlier, but I do appreciate any help I can get.”
He pushed off the couch and stood. There were rips and tears in his shirt but none across his skin.
“Is there anything else?” Hunter asked looking between us as he got up.
“Uhh.” I opened my mouth before I was truly prepared to ask my question.
In reality, there had been another reason I’d come along with Miles on this information-seeking mission.
I had toyed with the idea of bringing up my cousin.
Hunter would have absolutely no trouble finding Benji.
I’d be able to reach out to him by the end of the day and finally see if I could rekindle one of the most important familial bonds in my life.
But what if my father poisoned the well even more since we’d stopped talking? What if Benji didn’t want to rekindle?
“What is it?” Hunter asked, looking intently at me with those unsettling blue eyes of his. Miles was also staring at me, his thick brows coming together.
“I, uh, what do you know about fated mates?”
Not exactly the question I’d been meaning to ask, but one that’d been on my mind a lot recently.
Hunter’s eyebrows rose for a moment before settling back down.
He cocked his head. “I think they are the world’s way of making sure two souls never go wanting their other half.
It is something that shifters have a very easy time picking up in each other but us humans—even the magically inclined druids—have a harder time differentiating.
But we don’t need the world-pausing scent or the mind-melting touch sensations to know when we’re with our match.
A lot of that is discerned through the butterflies people feel and the giddy emotions they get when speaking to someone.
” His lips curled into a smile. “Anything else?”
“Has there ever been, like, a mistake? Can fate make mistakes?” I tried to make my question sound as innocent and benign as possible.
“No, never in recorded history. Soulmates are bonded at the moment their atoms are formed. A universal law written into the code of their being. Sometimes these souls don’t meet for multiple lifetimes, but there’s always a pull, a magnetic draw as strong as the poles on this earth.
Then, when they meet, the connection should be obvious to the both of them. Does that help?”
“Um, yup, that’s helpful, thanks.”
Miles gave me a weird look before turning his attention back to Hunter. “It’s safe to leave, right?” He pointed toward the door. The vines hung ominously, framed by thin red curtains fluttering in the wind.
“Oh yes. They won’t react anymore, I’ve called them off.”
“Okay, cool.”
We still exited with a bit of caution. I couldn’t help but feel a swell of anxiety as we crossed underneath the motionless vines. They seemed so harmless now that they weren’t trying to kill Miles. I glanced over my shoulder as we reached the car. If they attacked this time, then I’d be ready.
They didn’t move. We got into the car and sat for a moment, decompressing in silence.
I was the one to break it. “So, you said you had a massage table at your place?”