Which Witch is Willing? (The Witches of Port Townsend Book 4)

by Kerrigan Byrne

  “We have a ritual to do too,” Bane rumbled. “To improve your chances of…success.”

  “Come the fuck again?” Nick asked, incredulous.

  “Precisely,” Julian said. “The ritual and concoction are meant to ensure your virility.”

  “My virility is just fucking fine, I assure you.”

  “It isn’t me that needs assuring.” Julian passed a hand over his neat, dark queue, his icy blue eyes skating once again to Bane.

  “Give me a break,” Nick said, hands contracting into fists at his sides. “You knock up the earth witch first time you bust a nut and all of the sudden you think you’re fucking Johnny Apple Cock?”

  “All I’m saying is, you banged the water witch like a screen door how many times with nothing to show for it?” Bane challenged. “Tierra said that we can’t afford to take any chances.”

  So, the glass full of ass had been the earth witch’s idea.

  Crossing her meant crossing Death, and, perhaps for the first time in his unnaturally long life, Nick couldn’t seem to muster the desire to argue.

  How fucking weird was that?

  “What is it exactly that we’re supposed to do?” Nick asked, his face growing longer and his stomach heavier by the second.

  Julian cleared his throat and picked up the parchment. “We are each to recite a phrase which will allow us to imbue the concoction with our respective abilities so that they may serve you in your endeavor.”

  “She made him a baby batter shake?” Dru whooped out a laugh.

  “Not exactly.” Julian paused, a fine crease appearing between his dark brows.

  In the millennia of their acquaintance, Nick had gotten pretty good at interpreting the fine and subtle shifts in Julian’s facial expressions. What he read there now was enough to send a white-hot bolt of panic shooting through him. “What do you mean, not exactly?”

  Julian plucked nervously at the ornately embroidered cuff of his dress shirt. “A shake would imply that this is intended to be ingested orally, which, alas, is not the case.”

  Nick snatched the parchment from Julian’s hand, his eyes sweeping fast down the page of Tierra’s looping script, arriving at the words just as Julian spoke them.

  “The solution is mean to be applied topically.”

  The parchment fluttered to the ground as Nick held up his hands and backed away. “Forget that shit. No way am I rubbing that on my junk.”

  Julian cleared his throat. “That’s the other thing.”

  “What other thing?”

  “The poultice cannot be self-administered.”

  At this, Nick turned his heel, prepared to quit the room. The house. The state. The planet.

  Death caught him by the shoulder, spinning him roughly around. “Now is not the time for your hubris,” he thundered. “If there is even the smallest chance that this will improve the odds of this working, you are fucking doing it.”

  “And which one of you assholes is volunteering to do the applying?” Nick asked,

  In unison, Bane and Julian looked at Dru.

  “Fuck all the way off,” Dru said, surging to his feet.

  “Think about this logically,” Julian advised. “Neither Death nor I would be a desirable candidate to address the—area—in question, our abilities being such as they are. Whereas you—”

  “Would rather fucking cut my hand off,” Dru insisted.

  “You fought with the Roman legions,” Bane argued. “Don’t act like you never crossed swords.”

  “I don’t like it any more than you do,” Nick insisted. “But what fucking option to we have? We have to end this.”

  Dru’s hulking shoulders sank. “I swear to the gods, if any of you breathes a word of this, I will find each and every one of you and remove your bowels through your nostrils.”

  Abruptly, the voices next door stopped, the sudden quiet swarming through the wall.

  It was time.

  26

  He saw her first in silhouette.

  A blinding flash of lightning burned into his retinas the shape of her nude body against a backdrop bleached bluish white. Thunder chased it into darkness, and the she reappeared in the warm wash of candlelight.

  Moira.

  She looked like a Celtic warrior queen. Naked and defiant, paint finding each dip and hollow in her waist, sliding down the tender skin of her inner thigh. Cherry wine hair spilled over her shoulders and breasts, the waves in it wild as the sea.

  She didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

  Only waited for him within the circle of runes and candles.

  Nick went to her, making quick work of his own clothing, wanting no barrier between them. He paused when he came to the circle’s edge, knowing that his whole long life came to this line. To his decision to cross it.

  Warmth from the candles licked at his ankles he stepped over them, and into a new world.

  Within its confines, they were the only two people alive.

  He looked into her eyes. Flames played over their shining surface, making a kaleidoscope of azure and gold.

  For no reason he could think of, he reached out, tracing with the tip of one finger first the tree at her navel, then the flames on her belly, and last, the waves over her heart.

  He watched the gooseflesh rise beneath his touch and wondered at it, at the pure loveliness her reaction to him.

  Continuing up her collarbone, the curve of her neck, the delicate ridges and curve of her ear. The soft, vulnerable indentation of her temple, her cheekbone, her nose, her lips.

  He was simultaneously drawing her and discovering her.

  Nick slid his hand behind her neck, but did not pull her to him to as he had so many times. He waited for her to come.

  To his eternal wonderment, she did.

  Moving slowly, erasing the distance between them, until her skin was on his skin and her mouth was on his. Searing lust rose up in him, demanding that he consume her, dominate her, make her his own. His hands tightened on her arms as he waged the internal war against himself. Against his very nature.

  He wanted her.

  He wanted her to want him.

  Need me, he silently willed her.

  Choose me.

  Make me yours.

  No sooner had the words floated through his brain than she grabbed a handful of his hair, bit his lip, dragged her fingernails down his back. Delicious pain surprised him, sending a bolt of pleasure from his scalp to the soles of his feet.

  And where before they had been silently, liquidly drinking from each other, tongues and lips entwined, Moira now drew from him, pulling him closer. Deeper.

  Hungry as a baby bird, innocent in her single-minded insistence.

  Her hand found his, guiding it down the flat plain of her stomach, down to the part of her already wet and wanting.

  A moan rumbled up from his throat and he knew she felt him, hard as marble against her stomach, his knees weakening from that simple friction.

  She guided him down onto the wood floor, straddling his hips. Her hair was a corona of flame, her cheeks flushed. Pure, animal lust in her eyes.

  “I love you.” Nick hadn’t known the words were going to come from his mouth until they did.

  Whatever spell that had held them until now evaporated and she looked down at him, shock and surprise warring for supremacy on her features.

  “I do,” he said, ready to welcome whatever reality his admission had brought into being. “I love you, Moira de Moray.”

  Moira froze, poised above him, millimeters from joining their bodies with one downward thrust of her hips.

  He’d said it.

  Nicholas Kingswood, apocalyptic Horseman, destroyer of nations, Conquest himself loved her. Loved her.

  She looked the man below her, his face appearing decades younger in an expression of naked vulnerability.

  The question in his eyes.

  She answered him not in words, but in movement. Keeping her gaze locked with his, she sank down on him slowly, delib
erately, not stopping until she taken him, all of him, into her body.

  Only then did she lean down until her breasts were flat against his chest and her mouth was by his ear. “Nicholas Kingswood,” she whispered, even as she began to undulate her hips in a rhythym she knew he would find maddening. “I love you more.”

  She felt a jolt of electricity as his body tensed and sat up, keeping her in his lap. His hands cupped her shoulders so he could push deeper, deeper into her while looking her in the eye, his breath warming her already flushed cheeks.

  “I belong to you, Moira de Moray.” He punctuated each word with an upward thrust. One hand migrated from her shoulder the back of her neck while the other one found her aching nub. “You own me. Body and soul. Heart and spirit.”

  “I am yours,” she said breathlessly, pleasure stalking her like a great dark cat, ready to drag her spinning over the cliff.”

  “And you are mine,” he answered, each word punctuated with an upward thrust of his hips.

  Those words vibrated through her, and she felt him. Felt him in her heart, her bones, her soul. They were one, and there was no end to her, no beginning to him. Pleasure like bolts of silk, unfurling, expanding, from the place where they joined.

  She was lost. Blind with endless bliss.

  She felt him join her their, headless of the animalistic roar that tore from his throat.

  Somewhere in that vast nowhere of, she felt something else.

  Small but bright, with the secret promise of a seed.

  Life, within her.

  Moira woke the following morning with sunlight rivering across her eyelids, spent candles hardened into wax puddles dotting the room all around them.

  She stretched languidly, her muscles deliciously exhausted by the night’s exertions.

  Peeling back the silky sheets, she rose, walking nude over to the antique full-length mirror.

  And screamed.

  There, where her wallpaper-flat abdominals had once lived, was a round, bulging belly.

  A basket ball.

  A beach ball.

  A goddamn planet.

  Nick shot up out of bed.

  “What? What is it?”

  Moira had meant to say look, but what came out instead was another inarticulate scream as she gestured at her belly.

  Nick came up behind her, his hands tightened into wedges, which he brought down to the precise angle of her hipbones as he said one word.

  “Boom!”

  Just then, the door flew open, three sisters and three horsemen piling in, filling the room like an old fashioned bedding ceremony.

  Moira snatched her discarded tank top from the back of her vanity chair, clapping it to her lady bits as her arm covered her swollen and tender breasts.

  Nick, on the other hand, stood there with his hands on his hips and his business swinging in the breeze.

  Tierra, a colorful paisley dressing gown knotted over her own distended middle, took one look at Moira and gasped, her hands rising to her mouth. “Oh. My. Hell.”

  Bane scowled.

  Claire grinned.

  Aerin gagged.

  Dru, shirtless and clad only in rumpled athletic shorts, looked from Moira’s belly to Nick and back again. “For fuck’s sake. Did you squirt a whole baby out of your dick?”

  Moira looked to Julian who, in his smoking jacket and dark slacks, had become an odd tether for her in a sea of uncertainty. “Well done, Moira de Moray,” he said, his lips drawing back from beautifully shaped white teeth. “I believe you’ve conceived the devil.”

  III

  Claire

  By Cindy Stark

  27

  Claire de Moray’s excitement quickly faded as she stared at Moira’s belly, now swollen with child. “I have a bad feeling about this,” she whispered to no one in particular.

  The walls of Moira’s bedroom closed in around the eight beings who’d attempted to bend the fate of the world by encouraging Moira’s pregnancy. Oxygen fled from Claire’s lungs, leaving fear in its wake. This was no longer about becoming an aunt again.

  What had they done?

  Moments before, the entire household of witches and horsemen had woken in the early morning hours and rushed Moira’s bedroom. Claire had learned that her very own sister had conceived the devil, and a foreboding as dark as the clouds currently hovering over Port Townsend weighed heavy over her.

  The previous night, the four witches and the four Horsemen had agreed that one of the women needed to conceive a dark-souled baby to balance Tierra’s angel baby. In the shadows of the night, their idea had seemed completely reasonable. But now?

  Good Goddess, that baby in Moira’s stomach was almost as big as the one Tierra carried.

  Overnight.

  Everything about the conception and the child seemed wrong. Nothing good grew that fast. Yesterday, the baby had been a thought, and now look at it.

  A chill colder than an arctic wind blew through Claire and threatened her fire, leaving her with a shiver. She’d lost her fire once, when Dru had convinced her to give it up, and she never wanted to experience that again. “I have a really bad feeling. Maybe we shouldn’t have messed with babies and prophecies.”

  All eyes in the room focused on her, and Moira’s face turned ghost white. The newly pregnant mom accepted a secondhand blue terrycloth robe from Aerin and donned it. She tied the sash tightly above her bulging belly and then placed a protective hand over the baby. “Don’t go saying that now, Claire. This little one went straight from tadpole to full-fledged bullfrog overnight, and I can’t—”

  Aerin coughed. “You mean whale,” she said under her breath.

  Moira clenched her fists. “That’s just about enough. We decided this needed doin’ and I was the only one willin’ to do it. So, hush your mouths and start believing that he’s gonna restore the balance to the world. Just because he’s fixin’ to take the devil’s place don’t make him bad. I thought we were clear on that point.”

  Her hefty stomach rolled like an earthquake across the land, and Moira gasped.

  Claire dropped her jaw. It was too bad Moira hadn’t bonded with Nicholas and become immortal like Tierra. Claire would feel a lot better about things then. Still, Claire had bonded with Dru, but she didn’t know if she’d been blessed with immortality or not, either. “She sure is strong one.”

  Nicholas snorted. “Would you expect otherwise from my offspring?”

  Dru and Killian chuckled, but Julian stepped forward and took Moira’s hand with his gloved one. He searched her eyes and offered a kind smile. “I’m sure everything will be fine. Would you mind if I touch your stomach?”

  Moira seemed grateful to have someone on her side. “I don’t mind none if you do, Julian.”

  Pestilence reached out with a gloved hand toward Moira’s stomach.

  “Stop!” Tierra said before he could touch her.

  Claire turned a surprised gaze toward her Earth witch sister. Tierra’s face had also blanched, and she clutched her stomach. Her breaths came shallow, and the terror in her expression mimicked that in Claire’s heart.

  Killian wrapped a possessive arm around her. “What’s wrong, my gazelle?”

  Tierra panted. “I don’t—”

  She released a cry of pain and doubled over. “It’s the baby,” she managed. “Get me to my bed. I need to lay down.”

  Claire searched her sister’s features, looking for evidence of her well-being. “Are you okay, Tierra?”

  She blew out a measured breath and gave a short nod. “I will be.”

  Killian scooped her up faster than he stole a soul and whisked her from the room.

  The rest of them looked at each other wide-eyed.

  “Did she mean her baby?” Aerin finally asked. Then she pointed a manicured fingernail toward Moira. “Or that one?”

  Claire pushed her hair, messy from sleep, back from her face. “I don’t know. But…”

  Aerin caught her gaze and held it. “You’re thinking what
I’m thinking.”

  Claire bit her bottom lip and nodded but remained silent. No one would speak the obvious.

  Moira’s child wasn’t natural.

  Moira glanced furiously between her sisters. “What in the Sam Hill are you going on about? Don’t you try to keep anything from me. If there’s a problem, and I have a right to know.”

  Claire sighed, not wanting to tell Moira the unhelpful bad news. “I don’t know what it means, Moira, but as long as history has recorded, the de Moray women have never given birth to…a son.”

  Aerin lifted questioning brows. “Are you sure it’s a boy?”

  Moira glared. “All’s I know is whatever’s in don’t feel feminine. You don’t believe me, come put your paws on my belly.”

  Claire glanced to Aerin who gave a small shrug and moved closer. Claire did the same, though she wasn’t at all comfortable touching a pregnant woman’s belly, even if it was her sister’s.

  Aerin and she placed their hands onto Moira’s plump stomach. Immediately, loving sensations reached out to Claire, soothing her soul. Warm waves of happiness washed away any doubt she had.

  Claire exhaled in relief and smiled at Moira. “You’re right. He’s okay.”

  Aerin removed her hands and stepped back. “Agreed. Nothing ominous growing there.”

  Moira snorted, and a happy smile tipped up the corners of her mouth. “Ominous. How could you even think that? Day needs night, ya know, to keep things balanced and such. Just because something is dark doesn’t mean it’s bad.”

  A scream of pain echoed through the house, and Claire cringed from the intensity. “It looks like things are good here, but some of us should check on Tierra.”

  Julian lifted his chin in acknowledgement. “Yes, lets.”

  Claire held up a hand. “How about if Dru and I go? You all should stay with Moira and care for her. Waking up with a…”

  She paused, at a loss for words to describe the enormity of Moira’s stomach and what it contained.