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But Clay couldn’t accept that there was nothing they could do to help Baer. Reincarnation wasn’t enough. If Baer died and returned to the Circle, he wouldn’t be the same damn man. He wanted this man. This friend he’d made. This brother fighting beside him against the pestilents.
“That’s not all the bad news,” Grey continued after the silence had stretched several minutes between them.
Clay looked up from where he was supposed to be typing their address into the GPS on his phone. “I can’t imagine how this is going to get worse.”
“Dane saw you. In the field.”
A horrible sinking feeling weighed on his stomach, and something cold slithered through his veins. “What?”
“When I got Baer out of the barn, Dane was waiting by the SUVs. We had to practically carry Baer out of there. But Dane…he was right there when the vines crawled across the field, taking down the pestilents and attacking the barn. He might have also heard Baer give his best Wicked Witch of the West impression.”
“What?” It was the only word Clay’s brain could process.
“You know…‘Attack, my pretties,’ ” Grey said, using a horrible, high-pitched voice. “Baer waved his hands in the direction of the field, and the squirrels attacked.”
“Fuck,” Clay breathed.
“Yeah.” Grey collapsed back against the driver’s seat, seeming to relax for the first time since they hit the road.
“You think Dane knows we did that?”
Grey tore his eyes from the road to look at Clay like he’d lost his fucking mind. No, but he was deep in denial.
“Seriously? You’re standing in the middle of a field, arms outstretched, and laughing like a madman while vines attacked people. Vines moving on their own like fucking snakes! And then Baer is half-dead and going all Wicked Witch right before a scurry of squirrels attack.”
Okay, Clay didn’t remember laughing while in the field, but that wasn’t the point of Grey’s shouting.
The point was clearly that he’d have to have a very long conversation with Dane…assuming his lover was still at the plantation house when he and Grey arrived.
Clay scrubbed a hand over his face. He’d wanted to tell Dane. He’d wanted to tell him the fucking truth from the very beginning. There just had been no good way to explain about the goddesses and magic. At least, he’d been sure there was no good way to explain it all.
The only thing he was sure of was that this was not the way Dane should have discovered the truth.
If he lost Dane, it was his own fault.
“That guy…” Grey started again, his voice low and soft.
“Cor?”
“Yeah.” Grey stopped and licked his lips. His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “You think he’s dead?”
Clay chewed on his lower lip for a moment, weighing his answer, the feeling deep in his chest before he finally answered. “No. No, I don’t.”
Grey blew out a deep breath he’d been holding and slumped a little lower in his seat. “Yeah, me neither.”
Cor was going to come for them again. He was going to keep coming after them until they were all dead. Again.
And the fact that he remembered any of them from a past life made him all the more dangerous. He could recall things they’d done in the past, tricks they’d used to survive other attacks. The fucker was already one step ahead of them, and Clay hated it.
The only thing Clay could think of in their favor was the distinct look of surprise that crossed Cor’s face right when the trees started flinging the pikes at him and the other pestilents. Cor had never seen him do that. Cor might have faced him when he was Vale, but he’d not faced Clay before. It also meant that he hadn’t faced this Grey or this Baer. It might not be a huge edge, but Clay would take whatever they could find.
They were ending this fight once and for all.
And the first step was finding a way to save Baer’s life.Chapter 19Baer insisted Dane take him to the plantation house and not the hospital. Dane drove, his truck zipping along the roads as fast as possible. Sunlight glared through the windshield, blinding him. He hit a rut, the tools in the back flying all over the place, and Baer groaned.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
Fury and confusion made a twisted, dark mass in Dane’s head as he did as asked, though he didn’t agree. A hospital made more sense.
But nothing made sense to him right then. He’d watched Clay in that field, watched him throw out his arms as vines left the trees and attacked. Watched spikes coming off trees.
There was no other explanation.
Clay had wielded those vines somehow. They’d come off the trees, danced through the air, and the man he was sleeping with—his lover—had stood in the center of it all. Laughing.
He stared ahead, gritting his teeth and wondering just how he’d seen what he’d seen. There was no logical explanation for any of it. He glanced over at Baer, who was slumped in the seat, in obvious pain. And what had been up with him and those animals? Baer had spoken, and the squirrels had done exactly what he wanted.
