“More like possession,” Moira muttered, turning to Tierra.
They stood staring at each other, the charred line between them becoming a chasm, the distance growing from a few inches to a gulf of mistrust and suspicion.
“L-let’s get hosed off,” Moira suggested, an obvious attempt to break the sudden tension. “We’ll think better without zombie guts and chainsaws. We’ll figure it out.”
“First of all,” Tierra’s eyes narrowed as her grip on the Grimoire tightened. “get these abominations of yours off of my yard!”
“So it’s your yard now, is it?” Claire challenged. “I thought it belonged to all of us.”
“You know what I mean.”
Aerin put her hand on Claire’s arm, hoping to soothe her fiery temper. “Its okay, Claire. I know exactly where to send them.”
A few lonely Horsemen could use some company.
As she turned to give the order, Aerin felt momentarily torn. It was a heady thing, having an army… even if they were mostly shriveled and gross. She didn’t want her sisters to hate her or to mistrust her. But she didn’t feel what they felt. She’d known what to do and she’d saved the day.
Why couldn’t they see that?
She knew why. Because deep down, they understood what Claire had prophesied was true… Tierra and Moira were both afraid. Afraid of their powers and afraid of their potential. They didn’t know what she saw, hadn’t been there when Julian had informed her what could happen if they decided to throw their hats in the ring for supremacy over the earth.
They’d only just heard the truth.
That they were powerful, and whatever they decided to do…
No power in the universe, light or dark, could stop them.
Chapter Thirteen
“Earth to release me from the land.
Water to guide the task at hand.
Flame to hasten my course ahead.
Air to be the path I tread.
By earth, fire, water, and sky,
Goddess bless this broom to fly!”
Thwack. Thick grasses muffled the sound of the new broom hitting the ground… again.
It did not, however, muffle the string of creative epithets spewing from Aerin’s mouth. She couldn’t concentrate, could barely even breathe.
She was angry. Angry at her sisters for the rift that had opened up tonight. Angry at their worried silence or their spoken mistrust of her. Angry with Julian for his strange actions today. For the violence that had erupted between them before he’d withdrawn from her.
Why make a deal to see her if he was only going to push her away? Was it some kind of Four Horsemen Jedi mind game?
“I thought you were afraid of heights.” As though conjured by her tempestuous thoughts of him, Julian’s cultured voice melted from the darkness before the rest of him.
“What are you doing here?” Aerin spun on him. “It’s almost dawn.”
His hands were linked behind him as he climbed the gentle hill to the edge of the drop where she stood above the churning ocean. It hurt to look at him for too long, he was that beautiful. “I had a feeling I’d find you here after all the madness in town.”
Madness. That was putting it lightly. Frightened people. Walking dead. Chaos in the streets.
The world would never be the same…and a fourth of the blame was upon her head.
Or was it? Was all of this someone else’s fault? It was certainly someone else’s prophecy. They only thing she’d done wrong was being born.
Arguably.
Two of her three sisters seemed to think that she’d done something very wrong tonight.
Did Julian know? Could he sense the darkness inside of her? Did he realize that, even now, the undead were slowly converging on his Horsemen brothers at their cabin in the woods?
The assholes deserved it. Didn’t they? The undead wouldn’t kill the stubborn immortals… but they would certainly keep them busy for a bit until the sisters could formulate a plan of some kind.
The de Moray sisters were floundering, stumbling about like blind toddlers in an earthquake. That had to change.
Now.
Aerin used the action of picking up her discarded broom to reach out and sense his emotions.
“You’re conflicted.” She studied the stark angles of his face and deep, pale eyes that wouldn’t meet hers. “And you’re sad.” It drifted to her on the sea breezes, his desolation. The darkness was after him, too, but he was better at running from it than she was.
“Always,” he confirmed.
“Do you…want to talk about it? About what happened earlier?”
A small sliver of light kissed the San Juan Islands, visible from their northern vantage and they both watched it, side by side.
“I’m eternally lonely,” he confessed. “My immortal existence seems without any other reason but to suffer, to inflict suffering upon others. Can you imagine what that is like?”
She tried. She really did, and realized that her mortal brain, while it could sympathize, could not truly conjure the scope of reality to which he was referring. “No.”
“I do not enjoy my existence. Killing for me is no conquest. No war. No chance at revelation or rebirth. Until you, I’ve gone longer than ten thousand years without touching another body and watching them putrefy and expire.”
“I’m…sorry.”
“Are you?” He turned to her then, pain lashing at her from his large frame. Making her want to curl inside of herself, to run and hide from it. What was he doing here? What was he trying to tell her?
“Of course I am, Julian.” When others would have retreated from him, Aerin stepped forward, reaching out to take his face in her hands. His bones felt raw and heavy against her delicate fingers. “What if your existence could be something else? What if all of this didn’t have to be a battle between the eight of us? We could parlay, maybe. Your brothers. My sisters. We could forge an alliance, discuss our options, maybe even join forces. I mean, I know that there is conflict between the four of you. That Conquest and War might just be down for an Apocalypse, and that Death is against, for now. And, like you said, you’ve never really landed on one side or the other. So… let’s hash it out. Make some fucking pro/con lists, an action plan, at the very least a peace treaty.”
“Like an international summit? Or a board meeting?” His affectionate smile melted her, and his eyes were infinitely tender, and a bit too moist as he tucked a tendril of her hair that had escaped her bun behind her ear.
“Exactly.” She smiled back at him, showing her pleasure.
“Are you saying, Aerin, that you are for opening the seals and ending the world, or against it? That you’re not committed to fighting this?” He enunciated his words, his gaze boring into hers with an intensity she couldn’t understand. He wanted something from her. He wanted the truth.
“I’m saying… we could discuss our options. That there’s a chance my sisters and I are destined to bring out the Apocalypse for a reason… Maybe… maybe it’s time.” Aerin gripped her broom tighter as his hand dropped away from her, and all the emotion in his eyes flickered and died out, leaving them pale and cold.
“I know what you’re thinking, Julian,” Aerin forged on. “But if I’ve learned anything from life it’s that things aren’t black or white. There are no true heroes, there are no pure villains. Just people with agendas. What defines you is what you’re willing to do to reach your ends.”
“You think that because you have not lived long enough to learn that you are wrong.” He retreated from her, physically and emotionally, taking several steps backward toward the tree line. “I have landed, Aerin. I have chosen a side.”
She blinked. “What?”
“There is still too much left to be done. Potential unrealized. There is still hope for them, Aerin. And we can’t take it from them. It’s too dangerous, now isn’t the time.”
“Do you get to choose? Do you have the final say?” Aerin advanced on him. “All I’m suggesting is
that we explore what might happen, what is happening. Five out of seven seals are open already and maybe—.”
More shadows lurked in the trees. Big ones. Three of them. Each with a different emotional signature.
“Julian?” Aerin’s eyes widened, unable to believe what was happening. “What is this?”
His hands shook though his eyes were like ice, and he curled his bare fingers into fists, blasting her with pain and fear and piling mountains of his regret on her shoulders.
“I’m sorry, Aerin,” he whispered, as the three other Horsemen melted from the mists, dismounting their steeds and slowly making their way toward her in an arc. Trapping her against the harrowing drop. They looked like the warriors of yore, larger than life and handsome as sin. Like knights from a fairytale… or a horror movie.
“You disingenuous motherfucker,” she spat, her heart shriveling with pain that was all her own. “You’re here to kill me.”
Julian closed his eyes and shook his head. “I could never.”
“But I could.” Nicholas Kingswood put a hand on Julian’s brawny shoulder in a show of brotherly affection before advancing past him toward Aerin. “We all decided it had to be you.”
“You’re the darkest of the four, Aerin,” Julian explained as his brothers closed in. “The one who could tip the scales in her favor… I can’t allow that to happen. If she prevails, she might gain your soul along with your sisters’. Along with everything and everyone else. All hope would be lost, don’t you see? I have to give humanity a chance. I’ve suffered this long for them, resisted her for this many millennia. That can’t all be for naught.”
“She who?” Aerin cried, backing away from the advancing Horsemen as they crushed the grasses and rushes beneath their heavy feet. Conquest with his light hair shining like sand slicked with blood in the pre-dawn light. The midnight tresses of War and Death. Wide shoulders, swarthy features, and lethal intent in their eyes. “Who are you talking about?” She cried out as a bit of the cliff fell away beneath her feet, and a buffet of wind seemed to press her forward, away from a deadly fall, but toward the men who would do her in.
Rocks and four hard places…
Don’t show them you’re afraid.
“We cannot say her name,” War stated.
“You can’t tell me even though I’m about to eat it, here?” she demanded. “Jesus Christ, you guys.”
“No.” Julian shook his head. “The Devil.”
That shut her up.
Julian walked forward with his brethren; the sight they made in the gathering dawn was truly something to behold. If Aerin wasn’t so afraid, she’d be awestruck.
“You’re… you’re really going to let them kill me.”
Julian looked away, the silver streaks in his hair flashing as the cresting sun illuminated them all. “If not for her, it would all be different. But I can’t allow her to destroy the good that I see in you. That I—I love about you.”
“Don’t you dare say that word to me!” The darkness surged within Aerin, and with it, a power she hadn’t before felt.
“Goodbye, Aerin de Moray,” he murmured. “Knowing you has been my greatest pleasure.”
“Fucking me would have been your greatest pleasure,” she said coldly. “But I guess you’ve done that, in a more figurative sense.”
The fear was gone. She looked down at the churning ocean and felt… nothing. A beast of pain gnawed at its cage in the pit where she’d thrown it, but it would soon be smothered with her signature chill. She wouldn’t let it end like this, there was so much left to do. So, instead, she put her broom between her legs, murmured the flying spell…
And jumped.
Instead of the waves and rocks coming up to meet her, Aerin paused in mid-air for a few moments, then shot ahead.
“OhshitohshitohSHIT!” she screamed as the calm water bounced the pink reflection of the sunrise and her own ridiculous image, straddling a kitchen implement and rocketing toward who-the-fuck-knew-where.
All those movies had been right… witches flew on broom sticks.
Who knew?
Flying would have been in-fucking-credible if she hadn’t spaced one tiny detail.
Killian Bane had big, scary black angel wings.
Well, wasn’t that shittastic?
She could feel the kiss of Death on the back of her neck, and she looked back in time to see him barreling after her like an avenging angel, grim intent set in his strong jaw.
“You’d better back off or—or—I’m telling Tierra on you!” she called, all mature and shit.
He laughed, and the sound speared fear through her bones. “Not if I catch you first.”
With a flap of his great wings, he gained on her, and Aerin knew she was fucked.
She squeezed her eyes tight, waiting for the touch of Death. If only she could disappear. If only she was back in the kitchen with her sisters. If only she could see them one. Last. Time.
Poof!
Or, rather… CRASH!
Aerin ran headlong into the refrigerator and clattered to the ground, the small branch of her broom feeling like an entire two-by-four beneath her aching back.
Oh man, that was going to bruise.
“What the hell?” Tierra shrieked, standing so quickly she knocked the kitchen chair over.
“You…you… just like… appeared!” Claire marveled.
“Anyone else think that was too wonky for words?” Moira queried.
“Holy shit, you guys!” Aerin stood on wobbly legs, adrenaline pushing away the pain that wanted to swallow her whole. Sure the man she… er… Julian wanted her dead. In fact, all the Horsemen had decided the world was better off without her. She’d let her feelings be hurt later.
Because she could fucking fly!
“Holy shit on a broomstick!” Aerin exclaimed again, her heart pounding and her blood singing.
“What?” her sisters asked in unison, their eyes wide and disbelieving.
“We need to get that ax,” Aerin said, picking up her broom. “We’re making us all one of these, then I’m going to take you on one hell of a ride!”
Tierra
by
Tiffinie Helmer
Chapter One
"Do not fear death, my daughter.
In time all will be made known.
Stay close to your sisters and the earth;
for she will reveal her powerful secrets.
by earth, air, fire, and sea..."
Tierra woke with a start, sitting straight up in bed as the whispers of the dead floated around her. She choked back the scream crawling up her throat and tried to fight the vestiges of the nightmare. Grief and depression threatened to smother her and tears seared the back of her eyes. Battling the need to cry, she embraced her surroundings with relief.
She was alone in the daylight. No ghosts weaved through mist, twisting around sentinel Standing Stones and morphing into the Four Horsemen, brandishing apocalyptic weapons, the arrow, sword, scales, and Death, silent and still, holding the scythe a macabre extension of his hands.
Could her mother be trapped in the Standing Stones on Siren's Cry, her soul held prisoner by the Four Horsemen? Or had that been her mother speaking to her, offering up much needed advice and wisdom?
Get a grip, Tierra.
It was just her imagination on hyper drive because she'd been pierced by Conquest's arrow and died for a time in the stones herself. The same place her mother had died.
That made more sense, and didn't tap into the yearning for a mother she never knew. A mother she could use more than ever right now as she was going to be one herself. Lately her dreams were wicked and wild with no rhyme or reason. Somehow her memories, fears, and desires had combined with last night's midnight zombie raid and produced one hell of a nightmare.
No more ice cream before bed.
Zombies?
Had that really happened? She wished it had been a dream that she could wonder at and hopefully shake off. But it was too real, too visc
eral. She'd hurt...them—whatever they were—had a hand in killing those…those things. You couldn't really hurt or kill something that was already dead. Could you?
But Aerin. Aerin had done something. Something forbidden. Just how bad remained to be seen.
Jinx jumped onto the four-poster queen-size bed with its handmade crazy quilt of silks and satins, and swiped at Tierra with a black paw. Not a concerned how-are-you-doing paw. More like a get-your-ass-out-of-bed-there-is-shit-to-do paw. Her familiar's eerie all-too-knowing green eyes glowed with judgment in the late morning.
Goddess, she was tired. So very tired. All she wanted was to sleep and to keep some food down. From all she'd read—with making potions and trying to figure out a way to stop the looming Apocalypse limiting her time—her symptoms were normal for the first trimester. Pulling an all-nighter to fight a horde of zombies, not so normal.
The black cat wasn't the only one upset about Tierra's condition. She wasn't too happy about it herself. It didn't seem fair that she'd remained a virgin all this time, waiting for that one romantic true love, and when she finally threw caution into the wind and slept with someone, she got knocked up. Being an earth witch, she should have figured she'd be extra fertile and taken precautions. But still. She'd slept with Death. How in any universe would he have a part in creating life? His job was to take it.
She didn't even know what she was pregnant with. Chances were good it wouldn't be a normal baby boy or girl. Not with a scythe-swinging immortal father and an elemental earth witch for a mother.
She reclined against the pillows and covered her abdomen with a protective hand. While part of her shared her sisters' fear that she carried a demon spawn or the Antichrist, the other part was already fiercely protective, and she knew she'd lay down her soul for the fluttering new life inside her.
Jinx gave a screechy, drawn-out meow that raised the hairs on the back of Tierra's neck.
"Fine, I'm getting up." She tossed back the covers and climbed out of the bed, feeling aches and pains from the fight of the night before. Muscles she hadn't used in a while protested with a vengeance. Swinging a shovel at zombies instead of using it to dig in the earth put a strain on the arms and shoulders. Some of her homemade tiger's balm would be called for today.
Which Witch is Wicked? (The Witches of Port Townsend Book 2) Page 16