Which Witch is Wicked? (The Witches of Port Townsend Book 2)

by Kerrigan Byrne

  "I know a cloaking spell," Claire said. "I found it in the book. It just appeared. Funny, right? Get it, cloaking spell, appeared."

  "A cloaking spell as in the Romulans?" Aerin asked.

  "I love that you know that, and yes, just like that." Claire smiled. "Sorta."

  "We'll prepare for flight tonight then," Aerin said, nearly jumping in her designer heels.

  "I don't know about flying," Tierra said. "My magic isn't as strong when I'm not connected to the earth." Remembering the night Killian enfolded her within his wings and lifted her off the ground still brought on bouts of anxiety. "What if the zombies or the Horsemen show back up tonight? We need to figure out a plan for both of those, and not be flying around like its Halloween."

  "I can't wait to fly on Halloween!" Aerin exclaimed. "Besides, flying is a combat tactic. One we need to get better at, especially you."

  "Death has wings," Moira said. "You need to fight flier with flier, so to speak."

  "How much of that Horsemen repellant potion do we have stored away?" Claire asked. "I say we load up the super soakers and mount up. I, for one, am looking forward to flying again."

  "I'd be lyin' if I didn't say I wanted to give it another go," Moira agreed.

  Three eager and identical faces turned and looked at Tierra.

  Well, at least it would get her out of the house.

  Chapter Four

  Flying was for the birds.

  Witch or not, she wasn't meant to fly unless assisted by an airplane equipped with seatbelts. Her sisters had taken to the air like fish to water—diving and swirling, cartwheeling and laughing, while Tierra was no more than a witch on a stick, feeling foolish, inept and to be perfectly honest, completely out of her element.

  Before leaving the house, they'd found Claire's cloaking spell, which wasn't anything like what the Romulans used to hide under the nose of Captain Kirk. This charm muddled what others saw if in their midst, rather than truly hiding them. The spell consisted of weaving amaranth flowers and fiddlehead ferns into wreaths and wearing them around their necks. The dark crimson flowers were pretty and smelled like honey and complemented the sharp earthiness of the bright green ferns, but other than its visual appeal, Tierra didn't know how well it worked to conceal them. They should have given the invisibility spell a dry run before flying off into the skies around their house.

  With each passing minute, Tierra's fear of discovery increased. Every rustle in the trees was another zombie horde bearing down on them, and each beat of a wing was Death swooping in to take her.

  That thought was part dread and part desire.

  The full summer moon glowed fever-red over the evening, and the nocturnal forest bloomed under its caress, expelling pollen into a sensual dance of temptation that caused her to ache in places she was better off not thinking about. Woodland creatures frolicked and fornicated, reveling in this midsummer's eve of enchantment, and suddenly the last thing Tierra wanted to be straddling was a branch.

  She wanted to ride...him.

  Death suddenly swooped in from the deepest shadows of the night, stealing her breath. Bare-chested, his skin glowing pearlescent under the moon, he mesmerized her in his fallen angel form. His blue-black raven wings outstretched to catch the downdraft and slow his heart-stopping speed as he aimed right for her.

  Oh, good goddess.

  Her heart dropped into her stomach and something like hunger roared to life.

  Killian Bane touched ground on a whisper and looked straight at her, a cunning smile on his handsome face. A face so beautiful women through the ages must have competed and killed each other to gain his attention.

  His eyes glowed obsidian in the moonlight, shivering and heating her simultaneously as they drank her in. She needed to run, but couldn't move under his arresting stare that missed nothing.

  So much for the cloaking spell. He saw her just fine.

  "Tierra." Her name tumbled off his lips like the final decree of judgment, as though she'd been sentenced and didn't even know she'd been on trial. "You're beyond the wards, gazelle."

  Oh shit. She flicked her eyes to the side and tightened her hand around the broomstick, ready to brandish it as a weapon. How had she let that happen? She was mere feet from the line of protective wards. What had she been thinking? Oh yeah, wasting her energy and time trying to freaking fly. Now she'd pay for her carelessness.

  "What do you want?" she demanded, wishing her voice hadn't squeaked.

  "The same thing you do." His nostrils flared and he advanced a step toward her. "We have much to discuss, you and I."

  She raised the broom. "I don't want to talk to you."

  "I know." His lips curled into a satisfied smile. "You want to fuck me."

  She swallowed, his words ringing true. Goddess, please help me, because I fear I'm beyond helping myself. Memories of his touch, his lips, his body against hers, inside hers assaulted her senses. She could smell him, and he was dark and earthy, dangerous and irresistible.

  "The earth pulses with your need, gazelle. Did you think I couldn't feel it, hear it, wouldn't respond? Me, of all people."

  "But you aren't really a person, are you?"

  "Neither are you, my witch."

  "I'm not yours." Tierra de Moray belonged to no man.

  "And that is where you are wrong. You carry my child. Part of you is mine." He stood broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, tall and domineering, and if she didn't get away from him now, he'd have her, and she'd be lost.

  "You need to leave." She took a step back and his eyes flared. "Right now. My sisters—"

  "Will never catch us." He lunged for her, tore the broom from her grasp and wrapped his arms tight around her. His wings flared wide, and before she could gather air in her lungs to scream, they were airborne.

  ****

  Killian shot them straight up into the sky so fast that tears leaked from her eyes. Tierra could do nothing but hold onto him, her fingernails digging into his shoulders, her legs anchoring around his hips.

  He groaned and nuzzled the side of her neck, his warning a whisper on the wind, "Don't let go."

  She glanced down and wished she hadn't. Vertigo assaulted her and she gasped for breath to the point that her head swam with dizziness. Tightening her hold on Killian, she prayed, calling out to her sisters even though she knew they couldn't hear her. She was disconnected from the earth, from her power.

  Fear needled in, sharp and furious.

  What if he dropped her? He could so easily take her to the edge of the atmosphere and let her plummet back to earth, to her death. Hadn't she just come to terms with the fact that she wasn't meant to be in the air?

  But more than being off the ground, more than not having contact with her sisters, it was Killian who truly frightened her. He was Death. Stories throughout history had mentioned him, legends, mythologies, fairytales. The Bible. He was the Grim Reaper and she a captive in his clutches.

  And worst of all, part of her thrilled at it.

  Demented. I am demented.

  Their trajectory switched and the ground suddenly rose up to meet them. She screamed, finally finding her voice, certain she'd be hitting the earth and splattering all over it. She hid her face in the crook of Killian's neck, knowing she wouldn’t survive another moment. He chuckled, the sound rippling along her nerve endings like he'd skipped a pebble into a pond. Before she knew it, her feet were on solid terrain.

  Power returned, surged with such force that she gasped. Her head fell back on her shoulders, her mouth opened, and her eyes closed in the blissfulness of recoupling with Mother Earth.

  He held her in his arms, his breathing raspy, and she felt his arousal hard and heavy against her. She raised her head and looked at him, his dark, slumberous eyes holding her as captive as his arms. She wanted him and knew he read it in her gaze, the way her body leaned into his.

  "Tierra." Her name was a tortured groan on his lips.

  He reached up and tore the wreath from around her neck, t
he action breaking the spell he had her under. If she didn't do something now, he'd have her under him in the next heartbeat.

  "Don't you Tierra me, you son of a bitch. How dare you do that? Pluck me off the earth, tear me away from my sisters and my—" She stopped herself before she revealed just how powerless she'd been soaring high in the sky. Instead, she raised her hands and moved the soil under him like a conveyer belt, shooting him ten feet back from her.

  Now, that felt good, powerful and downright satisfying.

  For added measure, she quaked the earth below him, ready to bury him six feet under liked she'd done before.

  He flapped his wings once, hovering safely above the ground. "You will not bury me again," he growled.

  "Want to make a bet?" Ooh, this was heady stuff. She hadn't let loose in a while.

  He drifted her direction, moving those glorious wings just enough to keep his feet off the grass. Instantly, she felt small and defenseless below him. Maybe Aerin was right about the damn flying business.

  "Let's call a temporary truce," he said. "We really do need to talk."

  "You didn't bring me here to talk, and where the hell is here anyway?"

  "Look around you."

  She did and immediately calmed. "You brought me to the Standing Stones? Why?"

  "So you'd understand that I don't mean you any harm. You are more powerful here, Tierra. Truly if you buried me on this sacred ground, I'm not altogether positive that I could dig my way out of the grave."

  "That's information you shouldn't share with me." She considered him quizzically.

  "It makes you feel safer more powerful to be here, doesn't it?"

  "Yes," she admitted.

  "Then if I alight, you won't attempt to bury me?"

  "No promises," she muttered.

  He chuckled again, the sound sexy and completely disarming. She lowered her hands and gave him a nod that it was safe to land.

  "I do love your kittenish side."

  Kittenish? She was a damn earth witch, one that had kicked his ass a time or two.

  "All right, more lioness. Better?" he asked, reading her easier than she'd like.

  "State your case so I can go home. By that I mean walk home, not fly," she clarified. Her sisters had to be frantic with worry by now. She attempted to send a message to reassure them, but Killian stopped her with a hand on her arm.

  "Don't. In fact, I need you to seclude them even further. You send out a beacon, it won't only be your sisters who will pick up the transmission. You have the ability to hide us from the world here in the Standing Stones. It will be like we're the only ones on the planet."

  "How—?" she started to ask and then instantly she knew. Felt the truth of it flowing in her veins. Twice now, her blood had been spilt inside these stones, shrouded in mystery and legend. Once when she'd been born in this very place, and then months ago when she'd died. She'd stood over her body, held the hand of her unborn child while Killian and her sisters fought to bring her back.

  Tierra closed her eyes and called upon the vegetation thriving within the mist creeping along the forest floor and weeping down the sides of the cliffs. The locals called this area Siren's Cry because the wind whistled through the stones, sounding like a grieving woman. Moisture teared down the rock-faced cliff and pooled to the turbulent ocean below adding to the mystery.

  As her mother had before her, Tierra had the flora fan the fog to the stones and choked the pathways with vines and thorns, canopying leaves and branches into a shield until she and Killian all but disappeared.

  Now there was a cloaking spell. Finished, she opened her eyes and stared into Killian's.

  "That was very well done," he said, a mix of pride and trepidation in his voice. "You are more tuned in to your power than I thought. I shouldn't be surprised that you and your sisters continue to astonish us."

  "Should you be telling me this?"

  "No, I shouldn't." He gave her a deprecating smile. "But I can't seem to help myself where you are concerned."

  "Why? We're strangers."

  "I wouldn't exactly call us strangers."

  "Enemies?"

  "I'd like to think we can get past both as we’re going to be parents."

  Parents. She hadn't gotten used to the pregnancy word yet. Parenting with this man was beyond comprehension.

  "Whether enemies or strangers, it didn't stop us from making love the day we met. And it won't stop us now." He paced toward her, and they started to circle each other in a dangerous dance mirrored by the stones.

  "That isn't going to happen. It shouldn't have happened last time."

  "I took your virgin's blood. Do you know what that does to a man?"

  "Uh...no." Who knew men cared about that kind of stuff in this day and age? But then he wasn't from this day and age, and she needed to not forget that.

  "No one has touched you but me. Only me." The possession in his eyes branded her skin.

  Her heart thundered in her ears, and she knew he heard it, felt her excitement and fear, and fed on both. "How do you know I haven't slept with hundreds of men since you and I—"

  "I would know if another man touched you."

  "This is getting very antiquated," she scoffed. "Next, you're going to tell me that I can't sleep with anyone but you. Well, forget that, I can sleep with whoever I want to."

  "Try it and whoever you choose to share yourself with will die." The last was said through his teeth.

  "What? You can't do that. That's insane."

  "I can and I will." He grabbed her and pressed his hand to her stomach. "You carry my child. We are destined for each other."

  "I don't believe in destiny or prophecies. That's your delusion, not mine."

  "How else do you explain me fathering a child? I am Death, Tierra. In all the lifetimes I have lived, and the women I have lain with, never did I need to worry about contraception. It took you, an earth witch, a prophesied earth witch, for me to be able to propagate. It’s not only destiny, it's a fucking miracle."

  "Or curse," she countered, feeling panic that never seemed far when discussing this subject. "Have you thought of that? We're pawns in the prophesied Apocalypse. I'm sure your fellow Horsemen are saying the same things about this child that my sisters are."

  "You do not carry the Antichrist."

  "Can you say that for certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt?"

  A pulse throbbed in his temple and he took his time answering. "No."

  "No! You weren't supposed to say no! You were supposed to reassure me." She buried her hands in her hair, covering her ears. She'd give anything to have unheard what he'd just said.

  Good goddess, if he didn't know that this...child she carried wasn't some evil seed, how was she to believe it? Based on how she felt most of the time, she probably was possessed by a demon. Case in point, she didn't do things like run off and cavort with strange men, and they didn't get much stranger than the Fourth Horsemen of the Apocalypse. And now she'd run off with him twice. Ever since she'd met Killian Bane, she hadn't been herself.

  She'd given him her virginity because he was what? Hot? Convenient?

  Well, not convenient, that wasn't the right word. He was there. Like a mountain that needed to be climbed, or an artesian spring to drink from, and she'd never had her thirst quenched. A woman ravenous and he was a mana from heaven.

  Who wouldn't want to sleep with him? Look at him. Chest bare and chiseled, pale and perfect like a marble statue, but warm to the touch. And she so wanted to touch him. Reach out and stroke the downy softness of his feathers, feel the hardened muscles of his body.

  Damn it, this is not helping.

  "Tierra, listen to me. We will get through this. Together."

  "No, we won't. We are on opposite sides of a very big war. One I wanted no part of nor did I ask for. And I'm compromised, possibly carrying something from The Exorcist or Children of the Corn."

  "Stop this now." He took her shoulders in his large hands and gave her a hard shake. "I've
seen our child's soul, remember? Demons don't have souls."

  She was afraid to hope, to grasp for the thin thread he offered. "And the Antichrist, does he have a soul?"

  "That I don't know. But consider this. What if our child—created out of darkness and light, life and death—is the one soul on the planet who can stop the Apocalypse?"

  Chapter Five

  Killian smoothed Tierra's hair back from her face. Fear and hope warred in emerald eyes deeper and more mysterious in the light of the blood moon. Gently, he pulled her into his arms and offered her something he'd never given anyone.

  Comfort.

  Greedily, he took solace from her in return as he held her. He breathed in her intoxicating scent of blue moon roses, delicate and enchanting, with hints of lavender that soothed the beast inside him and tendered his touch.

  Ever so lightly, he traced the shape of her face, over her sharp cheekbones, dusted with a spattering of fairy freckles, along her stubborn jaw, to her neck where her pulse throbbed under his fingertips. Her heart beat in time with his.

  Fast and frantic with need.

  The ache in his soul burned unlike anything he'd ever known. She consumed him. Owned his conscious moments. He considered her in every action, and had damned his existence by dividing his loyalty between his brothers and this one earth witch. If she had any inkling of how much power she held over him, he'd be in deeper trouble than he already was.

  "Kiss me, gazelle." He wasn't only asking for a kiss, and by her sharp intake of air she knew it. But he doubted very much she grasped how hard it was for him to ask and not just take what he wanted, what he needed.

  "I shouldn't," she breathed.

  "But you will."

  "Yes." She buried her hands in his hair and pulled him down to her.

  He growled and took her mouth, tightening his grip, afraid she'd somehow get away from him again. His hands crushed the soft fabric of her apricot dress, gathering the material and lifting it until he had to break the kiss to whip it off and over her head. Quickly, he captured her mouth again. His tongue breached her lips, and he kissed her long and hard and deep.