All rights reserved
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. The book contained herein constitutes a copyrighted work and may not be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, or stored in or introduced into an information storage and retrieval system in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Moira © 2020 Cynthia St. Aubin
Claire © 2020 Cindy Stark
Aerin © 2020 Kerrigan Byrne
Tierra © 2020 Tiffinie Helmer
Created with Vellum
Contents
I. Tierra
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
II. Moira
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
III. Claire
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
IV. Aerin
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
About Tiffinie
About Cynthia
About Cindy
About Kerrigan
I
Tierra
By Tiffinie Helmer
1
"I have a bad feeling about this." Tierra de Moray felt Killian Bane, aka Death, the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse step up behind her and laid a possessive hand on her arm. They were all upstairs staring out at the scene below as her sister Claire verbally tried to pull the wool over Lucifer's eyes by using Satan's cyanide spell against her.
But it could easily go so wrong.
"Agreed. This is taking too fucking long," Dru Geddes growled. War's words mirrored the thoughts swirling in Tierra's mind like a hive of angry hornets.
Why had she gone along with this crazy-ass plan to let her sister face off alone against Satan, the ultimate deceiver? There must have been something else they could have tried. Too many things were bound to go wrong, and had, since they'd opened the first Seal and brought about the beginning of the end.
The sun bled claret in a bruised sky. Bruised is how they all felt. Some of them had been bruised, broken, killed, and, in her case, resurrected.
She bit her lip and held her breath as Lucifer and Claire clinked the poison-laced glasses, each taking a toxic sip of the blood-colored wine.
Don't swallow, Claire, Tierra prayed.
She laid a hand over her swollen belly where her child grew. What kind of world would he or she be born into? Hell on earth? A new order with Lucifer ruling?
A fluttering kick hit her palm and love bloomed in her chest for this innocent life she'd somehow created with Death, the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse.
Suddenly Lucifer vaulted to her feet, spewing wine and screaming at Claire.
Damn it, Tierra knew this would backfire in the worst way. Everything inside her tensed and she wondered if her bones might shatter like glass. She made a move to rush to her sister's aid, only to be held back by Killian's unbreakable grip.
"Claire!" Dru yelled, running for the balcony and leaping over the edge, diving two stories to the ground below.
Tierra stared in horror at the chaotic scene as Lucy tackled Claire, hissing and hacking, clawing at her throat. Then Lucifer jumped to her feet, pointed at Claire, but seemed unable to speak as her face started to melt. She ran from the grounds, and Tierra forgot about her as Claire struggled to her feet, stumbling toward the safety of the castle. She ground to a halt, her body lighting up like the hottest flame, and vomited up a fireball. The roaring mass of flames grew rapidly and spread to the castle.
"Everyone get out!" Nick Kingswood—Conquest—yelled just as Killian scooped up Tierra and ran for the open balcony doors, his massive onyx wings already extended as he leapt over the stone balusters with her clutched in his arms.
"No, my sisters are still in there!” Tierra screamed. An explosion of flames, followed quickly by another deafening denotation drowned out her words.
The castle imploded on itself, sealing her sisters inside.
2
"Son of a fucking corpse fucker!" Lucifer busted into the deserted Palace Hotel. She was going to disembowel every last one of those feckin' gobshite sisters. How dare they try and trick her?
Her of all beings.
She was the embodiment of perfection, filled with wisdom and flawless in beauty. She'd walked through the midst of the stones of fire, had been named the Mother of Lies. The ruler of demons, the destroyer of mankind, the queen of temptation, and, her favorite, the punisher.
And yet, by all that was evil and blasphemous, she hurt. Actually hurt. She burned everywhere, from the inside and out.
They had tried to kill her with her own cyanide spell, and they might have succeeded if she'd ingested more than just the one sip of laced wine. She stumbled over to the large, full-length, glided mirror hanging in the Victorian foyer to assess the damage. The side of her face felt scorched and blistered. Cold air swept over her teeth from the area that should be covered by the skin of her cheek.
She gasped at her demonic reflection.
Her beautiful, perfect, angelic face echoed back at her disfigured, the left side eaten away by the cyanide poison. She looked like a freaking zombie. The muscles and tendons lay filleted open, exposing her gums and teeth through what had been her cheek.
She whimpered. Her fingers shook as she raised them to touch the thin threads of derma and tissue that remained. The skin from her razor-edged cheekbones was gone, and the gaping hole continued down the side of her jaw, to the second hollow cavity in her throat.
So that's where the wheezing sound had come from—air being sucked in through the open pit of her tracheae.
Feeling down her sternum, her hand stopped at the wetness soaking her red, silk Armani blouse. She tore it off and found the source—another cavernous hole the size of a gladiator's head where her stomach had been.
"Come on, regenerate," she snarled through clenched teeth.
She'd never remained injured this long as her powers instantly started to repair any wound she received. She couldn't be killed, but she couldn't live looking like this.
Maybe it would just take a little longer this time to heal since the cyanide spell had been one of her own creations?
Her present state was scarier than when she donned her horns, cloven hoofs, and stingray whip of a tail.
She needed to find a body to wear until she completely regenerated, and then she would kill those fucking bitch-witches, starting with that turncoat Claire.
3
"Go back, damn it!" Tierra pounded on Killian's chest.
He landed them high on top of the cliff of Fort Townsend State Park, far enough away from Manresa Castle but giving them a clear view of the dust rising, turning red and black with the crimson sun over the carcass that used to be the Horsemen's hangout.
"I'm not taking you back there," Killian said, his voice as hard as his chest and just as unmovable. "You don't need to see what the destruction would have done to them."
"They could still be alive—"
"No way they could have lived through that."
"Don't say that. There are stories all the time about people surviving earthquakes, buried alive and found days later," she pleaded.
"Tierra—"
"Don't you dare Tierra me! Your brothers are down there, too. Don't you care about them?"
"Yes," he growled, the muscles in his jaw working. He was hurting too, worrying about them, she realized. "But they are immortal. They will survive."
"We have to go back. Now. If you don't fly me the fuck down there, I'm walking."
He grabbed her arm to stop her march down the hill. "Tierra, I don't want you to see me take their souls."
Tears sprang up and flooded her eyes. She had to swallow the lump of crippling emotion in order to speak.
"Do you feel their spirits?" she whispered.
He stood still, tense, dreading the task ahead of him more than she realized. He cared about them all, not just her. Her sisters had weaved their spell around him, too, at some point.
He suddenly frowned, his heavy brows angling over narrowed eyes. "No, I don't feel them."
"Could that mean—" She was afraid to hope. "They aren't dead yet."
He grabbed her, pulling her close against him. "Hang on." He shot straight up into the air and soared toward the remains of Manresa Castle.
As soon as Killian touched down, Tierra heard her name hollered in a broken sob.
Claire ran toward her, her steps staggering. "I thought you were—"
Tierra reached Claire just as she collapsed and they wrapped their arms tightly around each other. "I thought I killed you." Claire sobbed.
"I'm okay. How did you escape?"
"Dru tackled me as the castle exploded, shielding me with his body."
Tierra glanced around. "Where is he?"
"Clawing through the rubble looking for..." She couldn't finish, and Tierra was grateful that she didn't say bodies.
A thought entered her mind. She had the power over earth, didn't she. She could sift through the debris faster than any of them. "Can you call Dru back? I need to search the rubble. I can find them."
Claire closed her eyes and telepathically sent Dru a message over their special connection.
Tierra knew that Claire didn't mind having Dru in her head anymore, but no way did she want that kind of connection with Killian. It was enough the control issues he had, deciding everything for her, not giving her a choice. Gotten her pregnant, though in reality that was just as much a surprise to him as her. But bonding her without her permission, and then squirreling her away for weeks on end to another world. While it had been beautiful there, and they had some incredible orgasmic moments, he still should have at least asked her first. At the very least, let her contact her sisters so they didn't worry when she disappeared, and given her time to pack a bag so that she'd had something to wear.
She'd been naked when she'd saved his sorry ass from Hell, and then spent weeks in another world, with not a stitch on. Sure, he hadn't minded, and while she liked seeing him in the buff, it had been too Adam and Eve for her. It hadn't helped that he'd taken her to the loveliest, lushest garden she'd ever laid eyes on to boot.
They really needed to have a talk about his bossy ways. As soon as they could catch a break from the damned Apocalypse, he'd be getting a piece of her mind.
Dru scampered over the broken bits of concrete, rushing to Claire's side, pulling her into his chest. He shared a worried look with Death, giving him an almost undetectable shake of his head.
Tierra ignored that and walked over to the edge of the rubble. Closing her eyes, she opened her other senses. Chunks of crushed concrete rolled out of her way as she searched for organic material hidden within.
In mere seconds, she located two beings. She couldn't tell if they were Moira and Aerin, just that they were alive.
Concentrating further, she raised her hands out in front of her and made a large sweeping motion. Wood, plaster, brick and mortar moved as though she had swept a broom in a pile of dust. A few more swipes of her arms, and Nick's swearing could be heard.
"About bloody fucking time," Nick said, climbing out of the hole he'd been pinned in.
"How about you just say thank you?" Killian helped him down from the wall of rubble.
"Moira?" Nick asked.
"We don't know yet," Death softly delivered. "But I don't feel her or Aerin's soul."
"Thank the Goddess." Julian Roarke, Pestilence, the third horseman of the Apocalypse stood on the pile of destruction, carrying an ancient trunk. What could be in that trunk that was more special that he risked saving it, rather than make sure her sisters were squirreled to safety?
"Where could they be?" Tierra asked. "There are no more organic signatures inside that mess." She gestured to what remained of Manresa Castle, the largest, grandest private residence built in Port Townsend back in 1892. It had withstood two hundred years of Pacific storms, two depressions that had taken the town down to a ghost of its former glittering Victorian seaport, only to be destroyed by one fire witch belching a fireball.
"Good thing we'd cleared the castle of the servants when we decided to use the place for a demonic meeting." Nick ripped off his tie. "Goddamn it, I loved this tie."
Claire sniffed back a sob. "This is all my fault. I thought I killed everyone, and I still might have killed Aerin and Moira."
"They aren't dead," Killian said.
"He would know," Dru said, rubbing Claire's shoulders trying to offer her comfort.
"What about Reaper? Would he have...?" Tierra trailed off.
"No. I would have known that too." Killian reassured her.
"I suggest we head back to the manor," Julian suggested. "They aren't here, and Maison de Moray will be their first obvious refuge. I'm certain they are as worried about you as you are them."
"Call up the horses," Nick said. "No way are we driving there." He pointed to where Tierra's beloved Prius lay crushed like a beer can under the rubble. "Shit, my Ferrari was parked in the garage."
"As well as my Hummer," Dru drawled.
"You wait for your horses," Killian said. "I'll take Tierra and meet you there."
Before Tierra could take in another breath, Killian had her airborne.
4
Tierra ran for the house as soon as Killian touched down in the front yard. She didn’t pause when Killian bellowed out her name in warning.
Warning for what? The manor was warded up the ass. This was the safest place in the world for her and her sisters.
She came to a stumbling stop in the vaulted entryway, knowing the house was too big to run through all the rooms. She needed to do the same thing she did with the rubble of the castle. Open up her senses and search for organics.
Killian pounded up behind her, and she felt his need to reprimand her brimming off him in rippling waves. Without looking at him, she held up her hand for silence, and
immediately dismissed him from her senses. A grinding growl over her actions vibrated from his chest and she knew he’d attempt to make her pay for that later. Like she’d allow that to happen. They needed to a serious “Come to Jesus” talk, and soon.
Taking a deep, centering breath, she searched for her sisters. She picked up their four familiars right off. Jinx, her ancient, immortal black cat perked up from where she slept on Tierra’s bed as though feeling her probe. Jinx leaped off the bed and headed toward her direction.
Wow, this was freaking cool.
How come she hadn’t figured out that she could do this before? But then she and her sisters had become more powerful each time they destroyed a Seal. They’d also been gifted with their wands and crowns from the Druids of old. Well, all but Aerin, that was.
Cheeto and Kai, Moira’s pink, fire-breathing, teacup pig and Claire’s sonic boom, tail-twitching red fox were outside digging up bulbs in her flower beds. Dang little varmints. She sent along a sharp “cease and desist” order over the magical channel, and both of them jumped, literally caught in earth’s cookie jar, rich soil coating their furry snouts.
Which Witch is Willing? (The Witches of Port Townsend Book 4) Page 1