A Touch Spellbound (Zodiac Cove Book 6)

Only the forest was left now. The shops and homes, the beaches and cobblestone paths, all of it was gone. Even if we did manage to end this, what would we return to? Six square miles of dense trees and foliage? Would we all pile into the dead zone and set up a tent city in the place the curse had called home for over three hundred years?

Or had we already lost the heart of the island?

What did it matter if we rescued a bunch of trees? Zodiac Cove was gone.

I glanced at my brothers, who wore their heaviness on their sleeves. We’d been lost boys when the Wilders brought us into their home and taught us how to be the kind of men we could stand to look at in the mirror every day. We found ourselves on that island, gave ourselves new names, and wrote ourselves new futures. It was more than a kitschy little tourist town. It saved us back when we had no idea how to save ourselves.

Jocelyn pushed a soft and soothing balm of magic into me. I gave her waist a gentle squeeze, appreciating more than ever how well she knew me and just what I needed in this moment. In turn, I pushed my gratitude and what comfort I could offer back into her.

Zodiac Cove was more than a home to all of us. It had been created by the gods and goddesses we shared the smallest amount of blood with to be a safe place to love freely. Anyone who came there needing a place to find themselves was welcome. We attracted an eclectic mix of tourists every year, people who kept coming back, because they could feel it too.

Finn shook his head. “What are we even doing anymore?”

“Fighting.” Jocelyn straightened her shoulders. I could practically feel the steel wrapping around the delicate bones in her spine. “It’s still our island. It’s not the homes or the businesses that make it ours. It’s in our blood. We were tasked to take care of it.”

“Damn right.” Audrey nodded at Jocelyn. “This is our legend, our legacy. We owe it to those who came before us to save what’s left.”

“I’m with Audrey and Jocelyn,” Brooke said. “I wasn’t born here, but I never had a home until I came to this island. It’s mine too, and I’ll protect it with my life.”

Finn shrugged and gave Jocelyn a wink. It didn’t take much to pull him out of a funk. The Libra in him could shift moods almost as quickly as a Gemini. “I guess we should take advantage of these clear waters, then, and get a move on.”

He headed back into the cabin and fired up the boat’s engine again, propelling us forward to the cave. Behind us, the forest continued to shake and rumble, sending vibrations through the water that reached us all the way out here. But we couldn’t afford to get stuck on what was happening on the island. We needed to take advantage of the curse’s diverted attention.

Finn docked the boat near the cave’s entrance, and it bobbed listlessly on clear, calm waters. Up until this point, the cave had been fully guarded by an army of sharks large enough to tear through our small fishing boat, but Nirah must’ve been feeling confident that he’d already won, because not a shark or an eel was to be found.

All of the curse’s energy was on the final push now.

“We’ll have to swim underwater for a bit,” Donovan said. “Violet and I will pull the rest of you with us; with our fins we can make better time.” He turned to me and Jocelyn. “We’ll need you both to levitate us up to the rock ledge, it’s pretty high up and too smooth to climb.”

“Oh, good,” I said. “Finally, an easy task.”

Jocelyn rolled her eyes and nudged me in the ribs. “We’ve got this.”

“Nirah is going to hit us right away.” Galen pushed his glasses up his nose. So much more in control of himself now that the boat had stopped throwing us around on the water. “We need to be ready. I think you should lift me and Kenna up first, then Wes and Audrey next. The four of us stand a better chance of holding him off while you get everyone else up there.”

“What are we supposed to do once we get up there?” Cole asked. “He has to go into the pool willingly. Have we not thought that part through?”

Jocelyn and I glanced at each other.

“We have a plan,” I said. “For the record, it’s not one I like or readily agreed with, but it might possibly be the only way.”

Jocelyn went on to describe what we needed to do, and once we had everyone on board, we didn’t waste any more time. The twelve of us dove into the water, forming a chain behind Violet and Donovan. The two of them swam like dolphins. They sliced through the water as if it was butter, gliding with an ease and grace that was enviable. In less than a minute, they delivered us to the other side of the cave.

Our heads bobbed on the surface as we treaded water. Jocelyn squeezed my hand tight as we sent out the first wave of power to lift Kenna and Galen over the imposing granite wall. As soon as they disappeared from view, a shriek that sounded like a wounded animal caught in a trap reverberated off the smooth dome overhead.

“We need to move faster,” Jocelyn said.

We flung Wes and Audrey up next and the cave immediately lit with a golden-green light. Next, we sent Finn and Thora up, figuring we’d need our healers sooner rather than later. We sent up Brooke and Cole, followed by Violet and Donovan.

That left only me and Jocelyn to carry ourselves.

As our heads rose above the rock ledge, we took in the horror that waited for us. The others were already engaged in battle with both Nirah’s beast and the creepy-crawlers he’d sent after everyone like an army from the deepest depths of hell. Wasps larger than baseballs circled overhead and dove in formation. Warthogs charged in unison to slice off limbs with their razored backs. Snakes and spiders nipped at people’s ankles. It was chaos.

Violet and Donovan ran through the battle, ducking and weaving through the menagerie of horrors. They reached the opposite ledge and stopped, glancing into the crystal blue and gold-flecked waters from the River of Life.

Even from here, we could tell the pool had gotten dangerously low. Still deep enough to handle drowning Nirah, but damn, it was close. Another day and it would’ve been too late.

The Well of Rebirth looked nothing like what had been described to me before. The basin had the same carvings of dawn and twilight, but the threads of golden light were almost nonexistent. The center should’ve been as bright as the sun, but it had dimmed significantly. Now it gave off less light than the weakest of bulbs.

A thick black substance that smelled faintly of sulfur and burnt rubber churned in a slow clockwise motion. It moved like half-frozen mud down a gentle slope. Faces of people I recognized, trapped in a different time, dipped in and out of the darkness. Ghosts of people’s fears, anger, and resentments.

There should’ve been a balance, but the dark had taken over. Without light to butt up against, it would have no choice but to feed on itself. Maybe that was what the curse was, after all. An endless loop of darkness that continued to swallow its own tail.

Whispers of fear and heart-clenching loss filtered into the cave. Translucent faces contorted in pain and longing circled above the basin before a web of sticky tar lurched from the depths. Capturing the impression of someone’s sorrow like a flytrap.

Another thread of golden light blinked out.

A shadow of Kyle in his wedding tux rose to the surface. Anger twisted his face as he raised his hand to a cowering Jocelyn. Across the basin, Brooke flung out a golden vine that shone like the sun. It wrapped around the shadow of Kyle and dragged him below the surface. A thread of light that had gone dark lit up once more.

He had dipped beneath the surface before he could strike, but bile rose in the back of my throat. Jocelyn and I were solid, beyond regret, but it still sickened me that I let grief mask the red flags I should’ve seen before it had gotten to that point. That I mourned him as my best friend while I isolated my actual best friend who had needed me more.

“Hey.” Jocelyn touched my cheek. “Those days are over. Don’t go back there.” She tilted her head toward the basin. “We’re low enough on light as it is.”

“Yeah. I know.” She was here with me now. That was all that mattered.

Another shadow rose to the surface, this one was of me, walking away from Jocelyn. Leaving her in the dead zone in her dirt-smeared wedding dress. The anger, guilt, blame, all of it so viscerally marked on my four-years-younger face. Brooke hit it with another golden vine, taking it out before it could pull any of the emotions that fed it from me.

Another thread of golden light flickered to life inside the well.

Sensing what was happening, the dark within the basin swirled sullenly, master of the small domain it had created. But just those two golden threads of Brooke’s had been enough to beat back the dark from taking over the center. It would hold for now.

Brooke gave us a nod, then returned to battle, throwing metal and vines at whatever creatures came for her. Before we could get moving again, a spider came flying toward us. Its small needle pincers clicked together as it scuttled on prickly legs. The red markings on its back glowed with an unholy light.

I kicked it over the edge of the basin. Black, swamp-like strands wrapped around the spider, dragging it deep below the surface. I could’ve sworn I heard it scream on the way down.

Jocelyn shuddered. “Let’s get moving before Nirah throws something worse at us.”

We ducked behind Wes and Audrey, who were busy fighting off a swarm of wasps. Audrey iced a clump of them that shattered on the stone ledge, while Wes hit them out of the sky with zaps of lightning like he was in a twisted version of an arcade game. They exploded into vapors that drifted about like inky ribbons caught on a breeze.

The black tar from the inner walls of the basin launched a sticky tendril into the air and tried to pull the smoke into its depths, but Kenna was quicker. She darted under a bolt of lightning Wes hurled at a warthog, her fire engine hair whipping behind her, and sucked the cursed smoke into her translucent body. It burned it to ash and disappeared.

Audrey pulled a wave of water from the gray clouds gathered over her head and used it to cover the basin in a thick sheet of ice. “The ice won’t hold for long, but we need to keep those remaining lights alive. Don’t give it your fear.”

Easier said than done. On the opposite side of the basin, Brooke wrapped Nirah’s beast in a thick iron coil that dug into its gray, sagging flesh. The beast’s roars bounced around the open cavern as his steel nails shredded through its metal hold as if it was tissue paper.

Cole pulled her away before the beast could gut her with the talons it swiped at her midsection. Out of the mouth of the tunnel where the River of Life had once poured into the pool, a flock of seagulls bulleted into the air and swooped over the beast. Donovan directed them to attack, and the gull’s screeches echoed through the cavern as they tore at the beast’s decaying skin and pecked at its eyes until black blood ran down its face in rivulets.

The beast swung its sharp nails into the air, slicing through three gulls that hit the stone floor with a dull thud. Galen launched a blast of fire, frying off the beast’s hand. The overly ripe scent of rotting flesh seared the air. Beside me, Jocelyn choked on the potent smell, and I pressed my hand against the small of her back to keep us moving.

The black tar inside the basin beat against Audrey’s ice as another resident’s scream filtered into the cave. The darkness within the basin smacked the underside of the ice to grab it, cracking the glassy surface that kept it trapped. But the ice held, allowing one more thread of golden light to persevere. The ghostly scream faded and the muddy tar resumed churning in sullen silence.

From the other side of the basin, Donovan called off the birds, sending them away before any more of them could be hurt. Violet took his hand, and a burst of bright aqua light sparked between them. They broke into a run. The beast made a swipe for them, but they dodged it and dived between cursed creatures, toward the ledge that overlooked the gold-flecked pool. Their gills split open the skin on their necks, and they dove, swimming for the bottom, where they would wait for their time to act.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Brooke wove a five-foot-long spike with a serrated edge and flung it through the heart of the beast. It threw back its spiked head, its rotted saber teeth pointing at the sky as it howled with the pain of an eternity’s worth of torture. Smoke swirled around it in a funnel as it fell to its knees and exploded in a cloud of soot and ash.

Galen tried to grab the smoke, but he couldn’t get a grip on it. Like it was already attached to something else. Out of the fallout, Nirah rose to his feet, his eyes swirling with the smoke that Galen had tried to destroy. He licked his lips with his forked tongue, his gaze narrowing in on me and Jocelyn.

I grabbed her hand and made a run for the ledge around the pool. Something barreled into my back, sending me sprawling forward. Screaming pain like I’d never known wrenched through me as the lower half of my leg disconnected from the rest of me.

“Fucking hell.” I scraped my fingers against the rock, the veins in my neck tightening to the point of bursting. I felt as though I’d been stabbed with a thousand knives, then set on fire. I peered behind me and almost passed out. “What the fuck?”

Wes took out the razorbacked warthog with a bolt of lightning with one hand while he used the other to freeze a funnel of wasps. A spider slipped under his radar and scuttled up my body, aiming its needle pincers at my neck. Jocelyn slammed her foot into its side. The spider went skidding across the ice covering the basin, and Audrey froze it to the surface.

Warm blood pooled around me, making me light-headed. I gritted my teeth against the pain as Jocelyn put pressure on my leg to staunch the bleeding.

“You’re okay.” Her voice trembled with fear. “It’s really not that bad.” I turned my head in disbelief, and she pushed harder on my leg. “Don’t look at it! You’ll make it worse.”

Black spots began to cloud my vision, but when I blinked, Finn stood over me, tsking. “Can’t keep your ass out of trouble to save your life, can you?”

“You got me. I did this on purpose just to piss you off.” I banged my fist against the smooth granite floor when he shoved the pieces of my severed bone together. “Aren’t healers supposed to have a gentle touch?”

“Only in the movies.” Finn’s warm, pearlescent light glowed in my periphery. The sound of his calf bone snapping and healing triggered my gag reflex, but my relief overrode the sickness rolling through my stomach. “Motherfucker, that stings.”

When the pain lifted, I flexed my foot, grateful to find it attached to the rest of me. I rotated my ankle a few times. Not even a lingering hint of detachment remained. Never again. I’d take my chances with the spiders before I’d go near those warthogs a second time.

Jocelyn helped me to my feet, then hugged Finn, squeezing his midsection tight enough to cut off his air. “That’s twice now that you’ve saved him.”

He squeezed her shoulder. “Yeah, well. I don’t want to make this a habit.”

On the opposite side of the basin, Nirah set his sights on Thora, who was in the middle of healing Galen from a spider bite and in the passed-out phase. Nirah crept up on her with his broken, jagged gait. In a blink, Finn scooped Thora out of harm’s way. Brooke threw a vine reinforced with metal around Nirah, and he fired a mouthful of wasps at her. With the battle now largely taking place out of our reach, Jocelyn and I rushed to the edge of the pool.

Donovan waved at us from the bottom of the crystal blue, gold-flecked water, giving us the signal that he and Violet were ready to go. Audrey, Wes, and Kenna joined the battle with Nirah. Galen fired off another wall of flame, burning the last of the wasps.

The eight of them kept Nirah distracted while Jocelyn and I charged enough power between us to cast the illusion that would end this.

“You know what to do, right?” Jocelyn asked.

I pinched my lips together, hating this plan with every fiber of my being, but knowing it was the only way. I had to trust Jocelyn on this. If I faltered in my belief for even a second, all this would fail. So I swallowed my trepidation and gave her the words she needed to hear.

“I’m ready,” I said.

Power charged hot and heady between us, licking at our insides and peeling away pieces of ourselves with more precision than a surgeon’s scalpel. This time, I didn’t feel the discomfort as our magic stole away shards of bone and lining from my intestines to create the ultimate illusion that would allow us to save what was left of our home.

Jocelyn put all her concentration into building a false rock ledge, solid enough to walk across, while creating the illusion of the pool where there was now nothing but smooth granite walls. It had to be convincing enough to trick the curse into letting Nirah step over the water.

And while she was doing that, I got busy turning the woman I loved into a long-dead ghost with golden, stardust hair and sun-kissed skin. The only person who the curse wanted bad enough to risk giving Nirah temporary control.

And all eyes turned toward us as Ceti came alive one last time.