Where A Witch Goeth

Fifty-Six: What Fae Hell Is This?

I learned something surprising during my trip through the Source Spring with Nick.

Werewolves can't swim. 

Too dense, I guess.

Nick nearly drowned us both, nipping at me for purchase as he sank and sank and sank, dragging me down in a whirlpool of space, time, and very real water. The only reason he didn't accomplish drowning us both was because he began to transform and that caused him to release the grip his wolf's teeth had on my dress. Instinct caused me to break free and head for the surface, but before I even crawled free from the pool, gasping for breath, a stronger instinct sent me diving back down to save the man I thought I loved before I knew what true love was.

Nick was human again, sinking, lifeless when I grabbed him beneath both arms. Adrenaline= allowed me to push to the surface and drag him free. CPR training from another lifetime kicked in, and I worked to make Nick's heart pump as I pushed air into resistant lungs. Two cycles and Nick was coughing up water. I turned him quickly onto his side, and he immediately climbed to all fours, vomiting what looked like gallons, while I patted his back.

"You're okay," I soothed.

He nodded wearily, and sat down, having evacuated all the water from his lungs. He was naked, though he seemed completely unconscious of the fact as he reached for me, drawing me to him by the shoulders, touching me, inspecting the wound at my shoulder where Abraham had bitten me.

"He really tore into you," he said hoarsely.

"I'm fine, you're the one that almost drowned, you dumb dog," I muttered.

Then I began to cry.

He cursed and pulled me to him, and he didn't ask me why I was crying. We both knew why. We were no longer in the cave, but in a meadow with tall black grass that was like no shade of grass familiar to either of us. The blades of grass were sharp, biting into our skin as we brushed it. The moon casting light above us did not seem like the moonlight of our world—it was an eery, ghoulish yellow, making everything around us seem sick and wrong.The sky was streaked with sickly brown clouds the color of vomit. A foreboding forest ringed the meadow, but its gnarled and knotted trees of stark white trunks and crimson leaves looked like wounded soldiers.

In other words, nothing about this place welcomed.

This was not the Tir Na Nog into which I had followed Maeve. And this was not my world either. We had followed the Goblin to what looked like, for all intents and purposes, some sort of Irish Underworld.

Nick echoed my thoughts as he murmured, "What fucking Fae hell is this?"

"I don't know. I don't know all the names of the Irish planes, but I'd bet this is where the Unseely Court reigns." I looked up at the blood-red leaves and the noxious red clouds and shivered. I was wet, and though it wasn't exactly freezing here, it was by no means warm beneath that sickly moon.

Nick noticed me shivering, and then looked down at himself, realizing for the first time that he was naked. He cursed softly under his breath, stood, looked around, hobbled to the pool—apparently he'd taken some damage from Abraham as well—and bowed his head before the dark lifeless water.

"Come here," he gestured for my hand. "Let's just try to go back."

It wasn't going to work and we both knew it. Whatever light or magic that activated the portal was inactive now. This was a dead dark pool that stank of algae. But even if I had been active, even if I had been able to see Evander in its depths, beckoning me home to the other side, I wouldn't have gone.

"Tavish is here somewhere," I said, turning in a slow circle, then walking this way and that, looking for tracks.

"What?" Nick turned from the pool, and came toward me. "What?"