Several long seconds passed before she could find the energy to lift herself away from Curtis’s chest. He wore a black button-down shirt with a hole torn in the stomach and dark denim jeans. She lightly pressed her hand to his wound to see if it still bled. Satisfied her petrifying spell was holding, she pushed back on her legs to kneel on the ground to get her bearings.
Maura stiffened in surprise. The ghosts had disappeared, but so had the trees.
Moonlight shone over open prairie. Uncut grasses swayed in a light breeze. A row of trees shadowed the distant landscape. Nothing about the environment felt right—the look, the weather, the smell, the energy her magick summoned from the nearby forest to refuel her ghost-drained powers.
Humidity clung to the air, sticking her shirt to her arms and chest as she stood. She used the bottom hem to fan herself.
“Reveal yourself,” she whispered the simple spell.
The magick marked Curtis’s body with several blue embers floating up toward the heavens. They dissipated in the breeze. Sparkly blue lights drifted up from the nearby trees, indicating the small forest animals that lived within. A more significant light to her right could have been a mammal, or perhaps a single person. Slower to appear was an intense gathering of lights to her left, high above the trees and miles away to show what might be a distant town or campsite. The number of blue lights denoted there were nearly a hundred people gathered, give or take.
“Doesn’t look like anyone will be sneaking up on us, Curtis.” Maura wished the man would wake up and help her figure out what was happening. “But it also means no one is coming to help us, and ya need a healer.”
Maura tried not to let nervousness control her thinking. Panic didn’t help anyone. She thought about sending up a magickal flare. If her family were nearby, they’d come running. If they weren’t, she could attract some very negative attention.
Maura again dropped to the ground next to Curtis. She lifted his shirt to reveal his muscular stomach. Dried blood surrounded the petrified puncture wound. She pressed her fingers around the opening, keeping her inspection clinical. The spell she’d used to stop the leak was akin to squirting superglue into an open wound. No healer or doctor would approve. There was no way to determine what internal organs, if any, had been injured.
The spell wouldn’t last forever. Soon the wound would start seeping again. They needed to find real help.
Maura unbuttoned his shirt. “Sorry, pal, it’s either yours or mine, and I am not running around mystic prairie in my bra.”
Undressing an unconscious man wasn’t an easy task under normal circumstances, but thankfully her magick made pulling the material off him as effortless as plucking a spiderweb from the air. It slithered from his body like ethereal liquid only to resolidify in her hands.
“Someone’s been hitting the gym,” Maura observed the definition of Curtis’s chest and arms. She might be hundreds of years old, but she wasn’t dead inside. “Don’t worry. I’m not a pervert. I won’t be doing strange stuff to ya in your sleep.”
Curtis felt familiar, though she knew she’d never met him. That she would have remembered. Maura tried to remember exactly the last time she’d been on a date. It had been long before she came to Green Vallis. The motel took up all of her time, but that was more excuse than anything else.
Why was she thinking about this now?
“Ya are distracting me,” Maura scolded. “I need to keep my head on task.”
She made quick work of tying the sleeves around his waist to apply pressure to the wound.
“Now, I don’t want to worry ya, but I am not sure where we are or how we got here.” Maura examined her makeshift bandage. “I’m going to venture a guess and say that wasn’t a Civil War reenactment gone awry, which means we could be in some serious supernatural trouble. So, if ya would like to wake up and give insight into our situation, that would be much appreciated.”
Curtis didn’t move.
“Or ya know, keep sleeping,” she muttered sarcastically. “That’s helpful too.”
Maura stood and slowly turned in a circle as if staring into the shadows would reveal some kind of hidden truth. All she saw was a field at night. They could have been anywhere.
Maura tried not to freak out as she sought the most reasonable explanation. The MacGregors were always pulling pranks on each other. Maybe Bruce thought this would be funny payback for her making him paint over his gorgon porn. Her brother was talented. She just wished he’d pick a different canvas.
Was it possible he’d trapped them in a painting? If Uncle Raibeart helped enchant the paint, there was no telling what would go wrong.
Or could it simply be another nightmare? Her dreams were vivid. Maura rubbed her arms. Though, usually not this vivid, and her nightmares included significantly more blood than one puncture wound.
Hallucinogens? When was the last time she ate? Magick mushrooms were easy enough to find.
But what if her family had nothing to do with this? What if it was a supernatural attack?
“Ow, fuck.”
Maura quickly turned Curtis and fell to her knees next to him. “I have never been so happy to hear anything in my life.”
Curtis tried to sit up. His brow furrowed. “Ow, fuck?”
Maura smiled in relief to see him awake. She nodded.
“Ok, then,” he whispered. “Ow, fuck.”
“Careful.” She guided his arm. “You’re pretty badly hurt.”
Curtis surveyed their surroundings and frowned. “Where are we? How did we get out of the forest?”
“I don’t know,” she answered.
“How did we get here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is here?”
“No clue.”
“How long was I out?”
“Don’t know. Time got a little wobbly. For a while though—”
Curtis slapped his arm. “Dammit!”
Maura jolted in surprise.
“Something bit me,” Curtis explained.
Maura leaned to check where he rubbed his shoulder. The sight of his chest in the moonlight held her attention longer than it should have. Thoughts tried to surface. Her imagination was running wild.
What the hell was wrong with her? She kept losing her focus.
Curtis held his stomach and pushed to his feet. “Do you have any clue which way we should go?”
Maura pried her eyes away from him.
“There seems to be a small gathering or something in that direction,” Maura pointed toward the distant trees. “I’d guess roughly two or three miles.”
“I thought you didn’t know where we are. Did you hear them?”
“Ya know what it means that I’m a MacGregor, right?” Maura’s family had a rule about outsiders learning about the existence of magick, but Curtis was supernatural, well, half-supernatural. “My cousins told me that ya know about magick, about us and what we do.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “I do. When I was growing up, I heard stories about your family from when y’all lived in the South—all good, by the way.”
“Like what?”
“That you saved thousands of lives,” Curtis said. “They say MacGregor magick can be trusted but to be careful because you have a Loki hiding in your ranks. There is even a painting of one of your ancestors in the local library back home.”