Chapter 9 #2
We're tamping down the last terrace border when the ground moves.
Not an earthquake. Not a tremor. The soil between the third and fourth retaining walls ripples like something underneath is breathing. A long, slow inhale that lifts the fresh-packed clay an inch, two inches, then exhales it back down with a sucking sound.
Flynn's hand shoots out and catches my wrist.
"Back up."
"That's my moonbloom bed."
"Back. Up."
The ground inhales again. This time it doesn't exhale. The clay bulges upward in a dome, cracks spiderwebbing across the surface, and a root the thickness of my forearm punches through like a fist through drywall.
Pale. White. Glistening with sap that is copper and rotting fruit. The root whips sideways, spraying dirt, and slams into the nearest basalt slab hard enough to chip stone.
"That's not moonbloom," Flynn says.
"No."
A second root erupts. Then a third. They twist and braid together mid-air, forming a writhing column that rises four feet, five feet, six feet above the terrace. Smaller tendrils branch off the main trunk, each one tipped with a barbed hook that gleams wet in the afternoon sun.
I know this root system. The wild jasmine I planted along his retaining wall. Except jasmine roots are thin and polite and don't punch through basalt. This is something else. Something fed by the magical loam we hauled out of the ravine. The rare soil that bonds different growing mediums together.
It bonded a little too well.
"Shovels," Flynn barks.
I hold the flat-head from the drainage trench. Flynn seizes his D-handle spade, the heavy one with the reinforced steel blade that he sharpens every Sunday like a religious observance. The root column sways, tendrils fanning outward, and two barbed tips snap toward my face.
I swing.
The shovel connects with a meaty thwack and the tendril recoils, leaking milky sap. Another lashes at my hip. Flynn's spade cleaves it mid-strike, the steel singing through the air behind my head close enough to stir my hair.
"Duck."
I duck. His spade whistles over me and buries itself in a tendril. Sap sprays across his tee shirt in a long white streak.
We fall into a rhythm without discussion.
I swing low. He swings high. The tendrils come from every angle, whipping and coiling and stabbing those barbed hooks at anything that moves.
One catches my overalls and rips the strap clean off my shoulder.
Another wraps Flynn's ankle and yanks. He staggers, drops to one knee, and drives his spade straight down through the root pinning him.
"Behind you!"
I spin. A thick tendril arcs toward my head. No time to swing. I jam the shovel handle forward like a spear and catch the root dead center, forcing it sideways. It wraps around the steel shaft and squeezes. The handle groans.
Flynn's back presses against mine. Solid. Immovable. A wall of muscle and heat and the faint vibration of his runes blazing under the bandages. I brace against him and he braces against me and we hold the terrace while the root system thrashes around us.
"I need to get the main taproot," I shout over the sound of cracking stone and whipping tendrils. "If I sever it from the loam layer, the whole system dies."
"How deep?"
"Two feet. Maybe three."
"I'll hold them."
He shifts. Both hands on his spade. He swings in wide, brutal arcs, clearing a circle of space, batting tendrils aside like he's scything wheat. Each impact rings out sharp and metallic and his shoulders roll with a power that belongs on a battlefield, not a suburban garden.
I drop to my knees. Dig. Bare hands in the clay because the shovel is still wrapped in root and there's no time. The soil is warm. Unnaturally warm. My fingers hit the loam layer and it pulses against my skin, alive with trapped magic.
Deeper. There. The taproot. Pale as bone and thick as my wrist, driving straight down into the enriched soil like a straw in a milkshake. I wrap both hands around it.
Pull.
The root system screams. Not a sound. A vibration that travels through the ground and up through my knees and into my teeth. Every tendril above goes rigid. Flynn plants his feet and holds his spade across his body like a shield.
I pull harder. The taproot tears free with a fibrous rip, trailing clumps of magical loam. The tendrils above collapse. They hit the ground like cut puppet strings, twitching once, twice, then going still.
Silence.
I'm kneeling in a crater of torn clay, holding a dead root the length of my arm. Sap coats my hands to the elbows. My overall strap hangs useless. My hair has achieved a level of chaos that transcends description.
Flynn stands over me. Breathing hard. White sap streaked across his face and shirt. His spade drips.
"Your jasmine," he says, "is an animal."
I start laughing. Can't stop. He extends his hand. I take it. He pulls me up.
The combined yard looks like a warzone. Torn soil. Displaced boulders. Sap everywhere. But the retaining walls hold. The drainage channels hold. The bones of the design survive.
"We can fix this."
"We can fix this," he agrees.
"ATTENTION, RESIDENTS."
Valerius stands at our torn-up property line, pristine silver suit untouched by a single mote of dust. His platinum hair catches the light like a weapon.
Behind him, three figures. Broad. Square. Stone-skinned. Not gargoyles this time. HOA enforcement officers in matching gray polo shirts, each one carrying a sledgehammer that drags furrows in the sidewalk.
Valerius lifts one manicured finger and points it at the granite archway Flynn installed this morning where the fence gate used to stand. The keystone. The centerpiece. The physical symbol of our truce.
"Ordinance 4,012, Section C: no permanent stone structures may be erected without a three-month review period and written approval from the Architectural Compliance Board." His smile is thin and surgical. "Which I chair."
The three goons heft their sledgehammers.
"You have thirty seconds to vacate the structure's perimeter before we begin demolition."