“I feel…” I whispered, again more to myself and the listening trees and stars than to any of the males gathered around me. “I feel violated.”
Chapter 14
Tanner’s touch became gentler. My sons backed away from staring at my belly and sat in the two chairs. I reached out an arm. Thatcher took my hand, held it in both of his, and Harper leaned closer and whispered, “We love you, Mom.”
“I love you too.” Tears formed under my eyelids, and my mouth watered at the same time. Six days of a heightened emphasis on magic, and I was ready to beg for normalcy. As my mind scrabbled for clues about how my new normal might manifest, the pain around the tattoo began to dissipate.
I fluttered my eyes open. Tears glistened along my lashes, and Tanner’s hand hovered above the left side of my abdomen. His eyes were closed, and his lips were moving. As he chanted, the pain returned, gathered under his palm, and surged like a scab being ripped off tender skin. Searing pain hit me hard and fast, and I twisted on the hard cushion.
“Tanner, what are you doing?” I managed to get out the words without screaming.
“Removing the tattoo.” He glanced up at me. “I really think this needs to come off. Now. Is that okay?”
I ground my teeth and nodded.
“Harper,” Tanner said. “Get me a plastic bag, like a sandwich bag, something I can close up tight.” He resumed the chant, his voice getting louder, the words tumbling into one long, desperate sing-song. Harper returned with a Ziploc bag.
“Open it,” Tanner ordered.
I lifted my head, watching in disbelief as Tanner chanted the tattoo off my skin, onto his palm, and into the bag.
He pinched it closed and held it up to the feeble light shining through the screen door. “Gotcha.”
“Guys, I’m bleeding.” It wasn’t a lot of blood, but the skin was raw and stung in the air and I needed something on the bare wound and fast.
“First aid kit?” Tanner asked.
“Cupboard above the fridge,” I hissed between short breaths.
Tanner tucked the bag with the rune-scarred skin into a pocket of his backpack. “Thatcher, stay with your mother. Harper, get the kit. And scrub your hands. Calli, I have to wash up. Then we’ll get you bandaged.”
He stood quickly. Thatch sank to his knees beside the swing and let me squeeze his hand.
“Thanks, sweetie,” I whispered. “It really hurts.” The rest of my body began to react to the multiple layers of pain and betrayal uncovered by the removal of the tattoo. More quick breaths in and out through my mouth helped level the spikes of discomfort and keep more tears at bay. “Did your Dad ever make you two get tattoos or anything?”
“No,” Thatcher assured me. “But Harper and I will do body checks tonight as soon as we get you fixed up.”
“Maybe there’s a way Tanner can check,” I said, wincing. I tried to roll up to sitting, only to find the swing had started to spin. “I feel really woozy.”
When I came to, I was lying on the couch in the living room. Thatch had pulled my favorite mid-century chair close and was staring at my face.
“Mom, how d’ya feel?” he asked, one hand resting lightly on my forearm.
I tried the head-lifting thing again. No spinning but a dull ache throbbed across the left side of my belly, into the bones of my pelvis and lower back.
“Better?” I answered. “But do you think I can have a couple ibuprofen or something?”
He nodded. “Be right back.”
I patted the sore area. A wide, Telfa bandage crinkled under the slight pressure.
Calli.
I looked around the room. No one else appeared to have heard the voice. And this one was different from the one I’d heard here and in the orchard.
This one was masculine. And familiar. And this voice wasn’t resonating up through the ground. It was coming from the woods ringing the back of the house.
CALLIOPE.
Heart thumping, I scrabbled off the couch and fumbled with the sliding doors to the back porch. The exterior lights were off and the wood under my feet and under my hand at the railing was damp in the night air. Closing my eyes, I tried to shut out the conversation inside the house and listen for the whispering.
Calliope, come here.
The voice was creepy, and nothing in me wanted to respond to the command.
“No,” I hissed. “No.”
Wood splintered and cracked. A different voice, deeper in tone and louder, cursed as another tree, more to the left, rocked like it was having a spontaneous meeting with a sledgehammer and losing. The pain from the tattoo removal had burned like fire; this attack on my woods affected my bones and the timbered infrastructure that gave shape to my house.
What the—
Angry. Whatever was out there was becoming angrier, breaking branches, creating a ruckus outside the bordering line of brush and trees. I gripped the railing, sent my awareness into the ground, straight, like a taproot, followed by short bursts of green light—the wards.
The wards Tanner had placed along the curving circle of woods were keeping something from reaching the house and getting to me. And maybe to my sons.
I spun around too fast and went from standing at the rail to landing sideways on the swing, right onto my throbbing hip. Taking a deep breath, I heaved myself up and reached for the door as a tall silhouette appeared on the other side.
“Mom?” asked Harper. “What’re you doing out here, we’re…”
“Get Tanner,” I urged. “Quick!” I plopped onto the cushioned seat and pressed my palm to the covered wound. “Shh!” I said when they came back, and motioned for them to be quiet. “Listen. Can you hear that?”
A creature—or a human—moved about in the woods. Tanner paused then repeated the same
