"What prophecy?!' I shrieked, because I was tired of the whole clichéd 'let's not tell the MC shit until it's too late' nonsense. I wanted to know, and I wanted to know now. Reaching out, I grabbed Gram by the pearls and dragged her close enough that I could smell her perfume.
"When you were just a child," Gram said, carefully taking my hands in her wrinkled ones. "I saw that you would be drained by Daniel and your magic used to fuel a supernatural war. We have one chance to stop it. One chance, Duckie, and you're it."
"What did you guys sell to Alberta?" I asked, and they all gave me a shared look of complicity. I pursed my lips. I swear to god, if they said our firstborn child, I was going to stab somebody. "Dude, y'all better fess up," I snapped, letting go of Gram and feeling my magic burn hot and wild inside of me.
"We, uh, promised her she could, uh, be our future child's godmother?" Reg blurted, and I seriously picked up a lamp and chucked it at him.
"Whoa, Smokey, calm down," Warden was saying, putting up his hands in a placating gesture. "She was willing to take an if. If we ever have a kid or adopt one. She gets to train it in 'the old ways'. That's all. I'm not even kidding."
"Alberta's getting lonely in her old age, and she has nobody to pass her gifts and knowledge onto. It's a good deal, Arizona," Gram said as I narrowed my eyes. I hardly believed the faerie chick would take such a questionable bargain. "And we're running out of time to discuss it. You have an hour to complete the ritual before we lose her protection."
"And minutes if anyone out there figures out what we're doing and decides to attack anyway," Warden added, looking at least somewhat sheepish as he glanced over at me. "Your neighbor is one powerful chick, maybe even strong enough to stand up to the Seelie Queen, but not the Seelie Queen and an entire army. So let's be quick."
He knelt down next to the table, his red and black hair spiked in all sorts of random directions. I still wasn't entirely sure I believed the guys about their bargain with Alberta, but I supposed it would have to come later. Besides, the idea of being re-bonded to the guys … it filled me with this deep sense of excitement that soon, all would be right with the world.
"Okay, first the scissors, then the orgy, then … traveling through window condensation?"
"Exactly," Reg said, snapping his fingers at me. "We travel inside, get a bit of bodily fluid from each woman and use that to wake up their lovers. Once we've done that, we have an entire army of elementals. And if their spirits are stuck in CUM, they'll do whatever it takes to get them out."
"Hopefully they won't use hot water or it'll turn to glue," I joked, but only Reg chuckled at my pathetic attempt at humor. I rolled my eyes and dropped down on the other side of the coffee table from Warden. Max. My college sweetheart. Still had to pinch myself every now and again to remind myself that he was really here to stay.
"Blood first," Warden said as he popped the top on the glass bottle and used the gold scissors to stab his finger. He wasn't shy about it either. He really dug in there with the sharp point, his groan of pain making me feel squeamish. Crimson liquid bloomed bright as Warden massaged it into the jar and then reached out for my hand next. "Come on, Ari-Vampari. Give me your hand."
"But … it hurts," I said, but I thrust my hand out anyway and turned away. I was such a baby when it came to pain. I trusted Warden though. He was my fucking husband now for crap's sake. Closing my eyes, I waited for him to prick me—that's what she said!—and grimaced as he massaged out some blood.
Dustin was next, then George, Shane, Reg, and Billy.
Gem came last.
"What did you give her anyway?" I asked George and this time, it was his turn to grimace. Not over the prick of the scissors, but over what he'd done to Gemma.
"It's horse tranquilizer," he said, and I raised both brows.
"Holy crap. You sure she's okay?" As Warden stabbed my twin's finger and dropped a bit of her blood into the bottle, I felt a surge of hot magic whip through me like a wild storm.
"Not totally sure, but … about seventy percent?" George shrugged and blushed a little. "Sorry, it was the best I could come up with on short notice. It was too risky to leave her awake during this ritual, and I won’t risk it."
I shrugged, not actually all that concerned. That bitch tried to steal my husbands, so she deserved what she got. "How long do you think it will last?"
"Uh, unsure. Probably longer that we have at any rate." George gave me a nervous smile and I squeezed his hand to reassure him I wasn't upset.
"Okay. So, we're doing this then? Cutting all our bonds?" I looked around to all six of my husbands and was met with nothing but love and support. Okay, this was happening then. Magical haircut of sorts.
"Don't forget," Billy reminded all of us, "Anita said it'd be painful. I'll go first if you want?"
Anguish I believe was the word she'd used, but I hardly needed to make the situation more tense than it already was.
I held the little jar up to the light, inspecting the dirt and crap Anita had poured into the bottom of it and our mixed blood on top. What had she said, again? Shake the jar, then smear the paste over my third eye which would allow me to see the bonds … and then snip them.
"Here goes nothing," I muttered, taking a deep breath and then shaking the little jar like it was a polaroid picture. Once it was mixed, I unscrewed the cap and was instantly hit with the coppery tang of blood, as well as the aromatic scents of herbs and dirt. I hadn't been paying much attention to whatever else Anita put in the spell, and I probably didn't want to know. It was bad enough that I was smearing blood on my face …
"Is that right?" I asked George, seeing as he was a hippy and probably knew all about the third eyes.
"Uh, a little higher," he corrected, guiding my fingers which I'd just used to scoop some of the paste out with. Touching my forehead, I felt the cool, wet mixture against my skin and then it was like a wave of awareness swept through my body. It was like I'd just woken up from a long nap, or I'd just gotten glasses for the first time. The whole world was crisp and clear …
"Holy shit," I whispered, staring wide-eyed at the silvery web of threads intertwining everyone in the room. It was so much more complicated than Anita had made it sound! There wasn't just one thread connecting me to each of the guys, there were multiple. Not to mention the threads between each of them.
One thing that all of my threads had in common, though, was that at a point just before they reached my spirit, there was a roadblock. Like how trains change tracks, there was an extra thread added on, coming from Gemma, and a barrier on the thread leading to me.
That fucking bitch. If I didn't hate her before, this solidified it for me.
"I can see them," I whispered in awe, raising a hand to touch one of my soul ties and feeling the frozen, crystallized nature of it. Suddenly it made sense what Gemma had been trying to do. She couldn't just take my bonds, so she attached herself and then blocked me, slowly killing my bonds as though she were docking a dog’s tail—also a barbaric practice but she totally seemed like the type.
Raising the little golden scissors in my hand, I fingered the thread connecting me to Billy and watched ice flake off it. Anita hadn't specified where to cut the bond, but just for good measure I decided to cut the non-frozen part which should cut Billy from both me and Gem.
"Are you ready?" I asked Billy, but was really just stalling for time myself. Just how painful was this going to be? Hopefully, not much worse than that spanking I'd received earlier.
"Just do it, Firebug," he encouraged, but I saw him set his jaw in preparation.
Come on, Arizona, you can do this! Just a little snip and it's over.
Fuck, I sounded like a Rabbi advocating circumcision …
Sucking in a deep breath, I placed the open blades on either side of the thread, which I could still see plain as day with my open third eye. "Here goes nothing," I muttered, and closed the blades.
Time seemed to slow. The scissors made a metallic snipping sound in the air, an
d then it was done. I watched in horror as the two ends of our bond shriveled and died, the death spreading from the cut point and racing up each end to the both of us.
When the dead bond withered low enough to touch us, the pain was instant and all-consuming. As one, Billy and I screamed. It felt like my soul was being hacked into with a blunt axe, chopping and chopping until it had carved a bloody chunk from my heart and then tossed it into a fire.
I couldn't speak for Billy, but the way he twitched and sweated told me he was experiencing something similar, and it only served to make me awash with guilt.
Eventually, after what felt like hours, but can't have been more than a minute, the pain subsided. In its place was a sick, hollow feeling that I knew in my heart would never be filled until our bond could be restored. Suddenly, I understood the mental anguish Anita had mentioned.
What if something happened and our bond was never reformed? Would I live the rest of my life as an empty husk of a human? Like a used condom that had been washed and then cast aside.
"Are you okay, love?" Dustin's warm Irish accent pulled me out of the spiral I was heading down, and he touched my face gently. "If you're okay, try and get going with the rest, yeah? That little cut sent out a massive power surge and we're on borrowed time now."
For once, he didn't sound like a prick. He was genuinely worried, and that made me worry even more. I simply wasn't used to Dustin acting like a decent human being, and it was knocking me for six.
"Okay," I whimpered, raising my golden scissors with a shaking hand. This time I cut Dustin's thread, and he too couldn't hold back the scream of agony, so I knew it must be just as bad for them as it was for me. As it was, I was only a third done and I felt like I wanted to throw up or kill myself. One of the two.
"Come on, Blossom," George urged. "Me next."
"George," I sobbed, "I can't …" Just the idea of inflicting pain on such a gentle soul, such a nice guy, made my heart crack in two.
"You have to, Blossom," he encouraged. "Focus on the make-up sex afterwards. This will all be made right again just as soon as you finish cutting."
He was right. Of course he was right. George, always my voice of reason.
Taking another deep breath, I raised my scissors a third time, cutting my earth bond and feeling the ground shake beneath us. Or maybe it was my almost uncontrollable trembling? Hard to tell which, but thankfully I'd passed so far through pain that I was becoming numb.
"You can do this, Sugar Tits," Reg coaxed, grasping my free hand in his and squeezing it. I could barely feel him though, I was so numb. This time it was easier to raise my scissors and cut that water bond. It no longer hurt. How could it? I was already dead inside.
"Two more and then you're done," Warden told me in a low and soothing tone. Not that I needed soothing, I was past it. My soul was in tatters and my heart was a bloody, beaten lump of meat inside my chest. I met his hazel eyes with my own lifeless ones, and snipped our bond.
He screamed; I stayed silent.
"Last one, sugar doll," Shane drawled. "You've got this."
Did I, though? Did I got this? I felt like cutting these bonds was the worst decision I'd ever made in my entire life, but it was too late now. The damage was done, and so without feeling or emotion, I snipped that last bond.
The power surge swept through the house, smashing windows and knocking us all flat on our backs, but still I felt nothing. Nothing but pain … unending, deep pain, filled with despair and hopelessness.
"You're done, babe," Billy said, clearly having recovered already as he wrapped his arms around me. "Let's get upstairs and re-bond before anything else goes wrong."
A bitter chuckle bubbled out of me and I shrugged. "Who cares? There's nothing good left in this world. There's nothing left to live for. I have no soul anymore… It's all gone. Carved up and torn to shreds. Gone."
"Arizona, girl, this isn't like you." Reg frowned, grasping my cheek with his hand to peer into my soulless eyes. "Snap out of it, ST."
"No," I replied, in a bored sounding voice. "Leave me alone, I just want to curl up and die."
"Shit," Warden snarled, and really his lack of weird and wonderful cursing should have been a clear tip off to the seriousness of the situation, but I didn't care. "Guys, we need to fix this shit like hyper quick. Dustin, grab the athame and chalice, I'll carry Smokey."
"I don't want to go anywhere," I argued, slouching into the couch and folding my arms over my chest. "You're all better off without me. Maybe Gemma will wake up and you all can fuck her instead? She'd be a good wife. She'd even play with girls for you … not like me. I'm a dick chick, through and through." I sounded drunk, but I was so far removed from myself that I had no control. I'd locked myself into a tiny little safe place in my mind and had no desire to ever leave.
"Hey, Gemma." I leaned over to her unconscious form and started poking her in the arm. "Hey, twin sister. Wake up. My husbands need to fuck you. Sorry, I mean my ex-husbands."
"Arizona Morgan Smoke!" Gram’s outraged voice boomed through the room. "You will stop this nonsense at once! This is the spell, and you should damn well know it. Now slap out of it." Before I could snidely inform her that the saying was snap out of it, she'd cracked me across the face with her ghostly palm.
I gasped. Not with pain, but with shock. My Grams. My skirt suit wearing, pearl-clutching, grandmother, just slapped me. What the actual fuck?!
"Grams!" I screamed in outrage, and she grinned triumphantly at me. Psychotic bitch.
Just as I was about to launch into a tirade toward my deceased grandmother, Gemma groaned and blinked her eyes a couple of times.
"Wha … what happened?" She sat up and blinked rapidly, looking around the room with confusion. "Why are all the windows broken? And what is that incredible smell?"
Her nostrils flared as she sniffed the air, doing a seriously good impression of Baron the Bloodhound from the CUM party, and then her eyes locked on Shane like a missile targeting system.
"Oh, hey Skeeter," she purred in an almost animalistic voice as she began prowling toward him on hands and knees.
"Shit!" Reg cursed. "She can sense the broken bonds! George, hit her with more of that horse tranq shit!"
"I can't," George yelled. "I only had one dose and I was counting on it lasting longer!"
"Arizona," Dustin barked in my face. "Do something! We can’t use our feckin’ powers in case it makes it easier for her to claim us."
I shrugged apathetically. "So? You're better off with her. Let her have you."
Dustin grabbed my face in his fingers, gripping my chin so tightly it could have hurt … if I could feel anything. "Now you listen here, ya little gobshite. Yer not that sort of quitter, this is the spell making you all kinds of crazy. The woman I fell in love with wouldn't sit by and let her skanky sister take her men."
Something he said penetrated the thick, cold shell I had grown and my eyes flickered to Shane. He grabbed Gemma’s shoulders to hold her back as she prowled toward him, then reached out her tongue and … licked his neck!
"Oh hell no," my small voice muttered, seeing the slow motion of my evil twin's wet tongue sliding up the bend of my husband’s neck.
With a burst of motion, like a clog finally clearing out of a drain, I pushed to my feet and dove across the room at my sister. I wasn't altogether sure what my aim had been, other than to get her the fuck away from Shane. He was mine.
"You fucking skanky husband stealing whore," I raged when we came to a rolling stop against the wall and sent a picture frame crashing to the floor. My fingers were curved like claws and I had them wrapped around Gemma's throat like I really intended to choke the life out of her.
Heck, maybe I did? I wasn't really in my right mind.
"Get off me, you fat slut!" she screamed back at me, grabbing a handful of my curly blonde hair and yanking. Hard. Luckily for me though, I'd just endured pain beyond my comprehension so a little hair pulling was fucking nothing in comparison.
&
nbsp; "Don't slut-shame, you stupid shitface!" I snarled back at her, releasing one hand from her throat and bitch slapping her clean across the face. Okay, so now was probably a good time to acknowledge that I had been harboring a whole lot of pent-up rage and aggression towards my sister. Ever since she'd gatecrashed my wedding, this anger had been building inside me and this just seemed like the perfect opportunity to let it all out. While beating her ass like eggs.
"Get off me, you're such a psycho!" Gemma screeched, clawing at my face and rolling us back across the floor again. I wasn't giving up that easily though. This bitch had it coming.
"What, it wasn't good enough to sleep with my best friend? You needed to steal my husbands, too? What the fuck did I ever do to you, huh?" I demanded, grabbing at her hands as they tried to claw out my eyes. "You were the one our parents kept. You were raised to be their heir. Why couldn't you have left me the fuck alone and found your own sept?!"
"Because I can't!" she bellowed back at me, straining against my grip and breaking one hand free. Her sloppy punch glanced off my chin and I retaliated by landing a much more precise fist to her perfect little nose, causing her to howl with pain and clutch her face.
Suddenly, it was like all the air had been let out of my sails and I sagged back against the coffee table, panting. "What does that even mean, Gemma?" I asked through the wash of exhaustion. I'd really never been in a proper cat fight before; the closest I'd come was the succubus in the alley which Britt saved me from, and Nigel the naked incubus, which wound up with me being captured.
"It means, you fucking idiot, that only one of us could ever have a sept. And you got to it first." She glared at me as her hands cupped her nose. A thin line of blood trickled down her cheek, so I must have hit her pretty hard. Go me!
"What? But why?" I frowned. There was still so much I didn't know about this world.
"Oh my God, you are so fucking dense. Because we're twins. Spirit twins are like … impossible. So only one of us would ever be granted the power to bond a sept. Except we didn't know that until after you bonded all six of these dicks." Gemma cast a disgusted look at my men and my temper flared hot.
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