Meanwhile
There was never enough good tea. Eileen Archer surveyed the forlorn bags in front of her with a critical eye. Somehow, once you crossed the Atlantic, it became a lot harder to get hold of anything decent and, as the fates would have it, England's favoured liquid pastime was one of those substances that never seemed to transfigure well. How had David put it, after sampling one attempt? Almost, but not quite entirely unlike tea. Then he'd grinned in that way of his, but the original comment had seemed quite fitting.
Such musings were irrelevant, really, but it helped to think idle thoughts whilst waiting for a kettle to boil, rather than prowl around the shaky building that had been base for the past three months, jumping at shadows. They'd got back at record time, everything was packed up ready to leave, and John was trying to persuade the only carrier they had found to take a parcel of glass vials. It was a parrot of some kind, its plumage a garish blue, but as long as it was up to the job conventionality was unnecessary.
The kettle whistled, and Eileen doused the sorry bags in boiling water. Who knew, they might taste better than they looked.
A footfall in the adjoining room made her tense, then relax again as it was followed by a squawk, and then by her husband with a parrot on his head. He looked resigned.
"The good news is: it will carry vials, and you can address them. The bad news - " the parrot shifted position, and leaned forward to nibble his hair " - is that it thinks it a game. Got one on, half-addressed, and… help?"
Eileen shook her head, smiling slightly. "Twit." She reached up towards the bird, which eyed her with avian distrust.
The air shifted. Eileen froze, her mind reeling. What had changed? Something right on the edge of sensation, a numbing…
"Apparation barrier!" She whirled around, wand drawn, towards the doorway. "Hwan, we - "
Hwan came through the door backwards, his face set in a mask of surprise, and suddenly the air was full of emerald, and a roaring, hissing wind.
He was dead before he hit the floor.
Hecate's blood…
The rest of the door blew in. Eileen shrieked and covered her face, wooden shrapnel peppering her arms and by the time she could look again there were half a dozen wands trained on her. She froze.
"A sensible move, Mrs Archer. I'm afraid your friend was less courteous." The voice was unfamiliar and, as she located the speaker in the grim-faced group, so was the owner. A tall wizard, sandy-haired and far better groomed than any of his companions, but the wand aimed at her was as steady as any other.
Not a local, then.
Eileen swallowed hard, trying not to look at the prone figure on the floor.
"You have me at an advantage," she said, forcing her voice to stay calm. "I don't even know your name. Although I suppose Esteban is with you? At the back, feeding off someone else's skill now?"
There was an angry Spanish outburst from the rear of the group, but the unfamiliar man laughed and waved a hand dismissively backwards.
He'd be almost charming, if he weren't clearly a nutjob.
"That is harsh, Eileen. May I call you Eileen?"
"I'm sure you will."
"Indeed." One of the wizard's eyebrows arced slightly, and he smiled. He had very straight teeth. "My associates, and I, have a… somewhat vested interest in an item you now possess. It would be in you best interests to hand it over."
Eileen watched their captor closely. She knew this type. A memory stirred across thirty years. Mark Ashby. It wasn't him - he'd come to an end at the tip of an Auror's wand years ago, she'd heard - but the type was the same. All charm and smooth words, until the hex from behind took your knees off.
They weren't going to be getting out of this.
She met his gaze.
"The Datura. Sent it to Austria two hours ago. We've got some interesting varieties of binding weed, if you'd prefer."
There. The freeze in the smile, a tiny crack in the mask. She almost giggled as the mania of despair waltzed through her mind. This was not a sensible attitude, but there was a very clear indicator of their captor's intent cooling on the floor. The wand trained on her twitched, and she screamed as agony blossomed in her shoulder. The force of the hex took her balance, sending her crashing to the floor, and she stared in horror at the scarlet blisters bubbling up her arm. The blond wizard's wand flicked again and the spell cut, the flesh relaxing. It was still raw, but the searing pain had vanished. He smiled again. There wasn't even a pretence of warmth in the expression.
"A taste, Eileen. Do try not to lie in future. Oh, and - " he span around, small sparks dripping from his wandtip as he re-aimed on John " - nothing heroic from the husband, please. Now, Esteban is very good at wards, but his tracking charms are certainly effective, and so I know these seeds are still in the building. We take them," he smiled again as he spoke, and turned back to Eileen, "or we take her apart."
Eileen almost swallowed her tongue. Automatically, she glanced back at John. He hadn't moved since the shout, but the parrot had gone. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of blue near the room's small window. John was still standing very still. Finally, he looked back up, meeting their captor's gaze.
"I don't - "
"Now Archer," the blond's voice was sharp again. "I'm told you like to talk. Don't." The wand twitched towards her again in emphasis. Slowly, John turned, his hands raised, and made his way over to the desk that made up a good quarter of the room's furniture.
They aren't in there.
Eileen concentrated on her corner vision, seeing the blue blur move again. It struck her as so ridiculous - they were going to die for the sake of some overblown hallucinogen. Diane would…
Diane. She'd never know what happened. Did she even know what they were doing out here? Did they even know what she was doing? Letters in either direction had been vague at best. She was safe though, at the school or what remained of it, and they were in a dingy shack, at wandpoint, with John lifting the catches on -
That was a lot of catches.
That was all the catches. Suddenly she saw the cracks again, saw the rows on rows of crystal vials. Oh Merlin.
John's gaze met hers in the moment he turned round, serious in the fleetingly intense way of him, and Eileen's heart skipped a few beats. If nothing else, she loved that man.
"You want seeds?" John said, quietly, calmly, as he stepped forward and held out the box, every draw free, every hinge unfolded and every piece of glass glittering in the dim light. "Take them."
He let go.
Eileen threw herself sideways, yelping as the move prompted a fresh flare of pain from her shoulder but the moment of the roll carried her gaze and she saw, through time slowed like treacle, the box inch its way to the floor. Wood - already broken, straining magic against physics on the knife-edge of failure already - met the rough concrete floor, and burst. Volume and content, already uneasy fellows such things, pushed in and blew out at the same instant, scattering crystal, potions and seeds. In the fragment of a moment before time rushed back, the final spells failed, and Eileen's fingers closed on her wand.
The room vanished in an unleashed, accelerated arboreal nightmare. Roots smashed through concrete, brick and - from the screams - flesh, plunging towards water and darkness. The floor under Eileen bucked and blistered, smashed apart as shoots, vines, stems, erupted skyward. Binding, looping each other; tearing, whipping, and strangling in the way of plants, sped a thousand-fold by the unleashed magical chaos around them.
Eileen dodged aside as something that might once have been a fig whirled up next to her, lassoing an abrupt sapling and forcing it to the ground, so hard that the wood splintered, scything shrapnel across the remains of the room and nailing an unlucky liana to a wall.
"John!"
There was fire now, somewhere beyond the floral chaos. It wouldn't hold for long - magical or not, the things burned - but it might be long enough. She ducked under a huge red flower with suspiciously sharp edges to its petals, and there he was, pinned against the swelling bulk of something black and buttressed. A thick vine, the colour of a rising bruise, bound his legs, tiny flowers bursting along its length. There was blood on his face, and anger blossomed in Eileen's chest as the tiny flowers turned to face her.
Bloody plants!
Hexes flew, slicing through writhing stems like butter, and she ripped the last fragments free, blood and yellow sap staining her hands. She blasted an inquisitive pitcher into fragments and pulled John's arm over her shoulder, heaving him upright. He was a lot taller than she was, though, so this was less than ideal.
"Dammit, Archer!" she screamed in his ear, vocabulary going back decades. "Move those skinny legs!"
John muttered something, but the shout had done its job and he leaned on her, swinging his legs like a drunken man. At least he was moving. Eileen glanced around, desperately trying to find a way out when suddenly the distant mental pressure vanished as the rapidly-expanding new forest smashed the wards apart. She looked up, focusing on the ridge visible in the distance and half concentrated, half aimed a prayer at anything that might be listening.
The crack echoed, bouncing between two swelling tree trunks as they slammed together in the suddenly vacant space.