Just then, a hum of energy glided across Aerin’s senses like a smooth, silken breeze feathering over naked flesh, which could mean only the arrival of one individual.
Julian Roarke approached looking alarmingly gorgeous in dark Brioni Vanquish Bespoke suit. He’d the stride of an immortal, languorous and long. His pale skin and Byzantine bone structure cut a sharp contrast to the dark hair shot through with threads of silver. His was not a brutal beauty, but a haunting one. She was instantly so struck and aroused by him, she almost forgot to be angry.
“Are you going to do anything about this?” she demanded of the horseman.
One dark brow arched. “Is there a reason to?”
For a man who put Einstein, Plato, and Aristotle to shame, he could sure be a dumb ass.
“They’re hitting on your…”
His other eyebrow joined the first. “My what?”
They hadn’t DTR’d, so to speak. Her inner feminist wouldn’t allow her to say “your woman” even though she was. “Girlfriend” wasn’t strong enough. Soulmate sounded trite and stupid. Wife…well she couldn’t let her mind go there. And they hadn’t technically soul-bonded yet. The “L” word was often said against a pillow in their more intimate moments.
Though not broached in public.
Amusement danced in his Baltic blue eyes. “While your coterie of knight’s errant leave much to be desired in their comportment—and hygiene—their loyalty is commendable and their veneration of you unequivocally comprehensible. Moreover, if your affections toward me were endangered by them, we’d have more dire augury calamities than the impending apocalypse to occupy us.”
“If I find out you were just insultin’ me.” Mookey shoved his sleeves up his forearms.
“I don’t even think he’s speaking American.” Little Earl shook a mallet-sized fist at him.
Ignoring them, Julian said, “I’ve been sent to inform you ladies that the garden arch has been prepared, and we’re ready to begin at the bride’s convenience.”
“Not without me,” Sal jumped to. “I’m officiatin.’” He leaned down to drop an air kiss on Moira’s temple before scurrying away. “Come on, boys, if you want to get all the good seats afore these towering jack holes steal the front row.”
No one bothered to tell them that the only guests at the impromptu wedding were, in fact, the wedding party.
Aerin’s particularly favorite ‘jack hole’ executed a bow that would have impressed at the court of Queen Elizabeth I, and with a fond look in her direction, he strode away.
Damn, but the man was smooth.
And his ass was just so, so fine.
Moira took in a deep breath before letting it out between two pressed lips with a decidedly equine sound. “I feel so crazy stopping in the middle of an apocalypse to get married. Especially when it’s sort of a moot issue what with being soul bonded and all. But… it’s worth a try, I guess. I just wish I didn’t have to fit that dress over this mess.” She gestured to her midsection.
Though she’d been pregnant for less than a handful of weeks, she was big enough to make a person wonder if there weren’t four babies in there. The consensus was she should have given birth days ago, and the fact that they’d failed to kill Lucifer, the princess of darkness, herself, was the cause for the delay.
Sal, ever the helpful hillbilly, posited—well more like insisted—that her living in sin with the “baby daddy” was “Not right with the Lordt,” and decided a shotgun wedding was imminently necessary.
So here they were.
Moira struggled to her feet and reached for her dress. “I’m so desperate I’ll try anything. I’ve been following all the online advice. Hikin’ my ass all over town. Scarfin’ food hotter than the devil’s nutsack. Riding Nick like a rented mule. If this wedding don’t work, I’m going to find me a pogo stick.”
“Even if this doesn’t work,” Claire said, helping Teirra wrestle with the dress, “it’s nice to have something to celebrate during a time like this. Some hope to cling to.”
Aerin had to agree. She reached over to help, and realized she was still clutching her ruined shoes. She’d overreacted, she supposed. But when she had to keep her shit together about so much tragedy. When it was all out of control and crazy… her emotions seemed to go volatile over the other things.
“Aerin, would you go tell them we’ll be ready in ten minutes?” Moira asked, her gaze gentle with a knowing—an understanding—that made Aerin want to squirm. Here it was Moira’s wedding day and Aerin was the one acting like Bridezilla.
“Yeah,” she muttered, sufficiently chastised. “It’ll give me time to change my shoes.”
To everyone’s astonishment, Nicholas Kingswood, first and arguably most insolent of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, he who conquered the world from atop a horse the color of his bloodlust; Conquest his own big dick-swinging, over-ruling, civilization-wasting self, took his almost farcical wedding ceremony as seriously as if it were held in all the pomp and ceremony of Westminster Cathedral. With his dark hair slicked back and his powerful frame clad in a tux that might have been tailored for Gieves & Hawkes, he looked like a hot Bond Villain.
Standing in the garden’s arboretum, framed by a trellis strewn with autumn foliage in every earthen shade, he claimed Moira’s hand in front of a teary Sal.
The de Moray Mansion’s spires reached for a sky in which large, happy, lazy clouds were tugged in all directions by fragrant sea breezes. The trill of songbirds and the soft percussion of deciduous tree leaves in the gentle wind had been the only melodic accompaniment of the bride down the aisle. And even though Salvadore Malveaux’s “dearly beloved’s” sounded nothing like anything civilized society would recognize, the ceremony had been charming and, blessedly, short.
Moira had practiced her lovely vows with her sisters that morning, but by the time she had the third sentence out, the pregnancy hormones had taken over, and, sobbing, she shoved the paper she’d written them down on into Nick’s hands. He’d read them quietly with features softer than Aerin had ever seen them. Then, he folded them up, and tucked them into the pocket next to his heart.
His fingers shook when he slid a diamond the size of the Rock of Gibraltar onto Moira’s hand, and his voice rang strong and resonant as he recited his vows.
“I’d like to say I chose you, but there was never any chance of that. You exist. And so, I am conquered. Thank you for teaching me how to smile. How to appreciate the quiet moments and simple pleasures. My protection is unequivocal. My devotion is absolute. My love and commitment are unconditional. The future, while uncertain, belongs to us, to our family, and my only reason for existing now is to fight for the chance for an eternity with you at my side. You have given me your hand in marriage this day, and in return I give you my life, my very heart to keep.”
A crisp, perfectly folded handkerchief appeared in Aerin’s hand, pressed there by long, elegant fingers.
“I don’t need this,” Aerin sniffed. “I’m not crying.” She cleared her throat. Then blinked the burning away, which only made the tears fall faster.
“I know, darling.” Julian’s shoulder leaned more heavily against hers as he pressed a soft kiss into her hair.
She clutched the handkerchief and brought it to her nose and did not blow. But inhaled. He smelled of bergamot, ambergris, and that indefinable perfume only found in the pages of well-loved books. Aerin breathed in, and in, and in, wanting to lock the scent of him inside of her lungs and never release it. To keep him.
Always.
But, even though some of her tears were happy ones, she mostly wept for what they might not have for much longer.
For what they might all lose in the end.
“And now!” The twang of Uncle Sal’s patois jarred her into the moment. “By the power invested to me by the Highway 90 Holy Serpent Mega Church of Stumps Bayou, Orleans Parrish, Louisiana, I pronounce you two hitched! You may kiss your bride.”
Nick and Moira’s kiss was full of te
eth, as they were smiling too hard to properly pucker.
Red, whose bald spot in the back of his head had been staring at Aerin through the entire affair, turned to Little Earl and queried. “Speakin’ of serpents, how come there ain’t none at this here ceremony?”
“Dunno,” Little Earl shrugged a big shoulder. “I offered to go catch us some, but Moira Jo said we can’t.”
“Hardly seems like a legal weddin’ without ‘em,” Red tutted, swiping his red, sweat-ringed trucker cap from his back pocket to return to its eternal perch over his ears. “Maybe it’s on account of that one-time Mookie’s pecker done near dropped of when one of them fuckers got ‘im in the biscuits.”
Mookie tensed as straight as a divining rod. “You shut your whore mouth Redford Alouicious Meredith Mcgillicutty or I’ll gut you like a pike and pickle your innards in mason jars.” He turned in his chair to glance shyly back at Aerin. “Don’t mark them none, all my dangly business is right where it ought to be.”
“Congratulations,” she said with a sour smile.
Julian leaned forward, bringing his aquiline nose close to Mookie’s porcine one. “If you want your pendant glands to remain so, you will refrain from mentioning it in the presence of my woman.”
Mookie blanched, blushed, and then turned some strange shade of puce, but to his credit he narrowed his beady eyes and said, “I am going to turn around now, but it ain’t because I’m afeard of you.”
“You should be, mortal, for a creature does not exist as venomous as I.” Beneath Julian’s near porcelain skin, veins of darkness surged and slithered before disappearing in the blink of an instant.
Each of the men surged to their feet and retreated toward the married couple.
Aerin hoped the shit in their pants was only figurative.
“Neat trick,” she muttered.
He merely shrugged.
“Your woman? I never said I was your woman.”
“Neither did you deny it,” he challenged.
It was her turn to be silent. She looked on as Claire and Tierra rushed to Moira kissing her cheeks and showering her with love and laughter. The uncles were next, lined up like misfit toys to pay their respects to the couple and whoop and holler their happy wishes.
Drustan joined in, back-slapping and elbowing Nick with manly jibes. Killian’s deep laughter was added to the din even as he held his daughter, so tiny against his deep chest.
Aerin stood, if only not to be rude, but couldn’t seem to make her feet move to join.
Julian unfolded himself from the chair next to her, but slid his arm around her waist to breathe into her ear, “You’re troubled.”
Aerin made a wry noise. “Don’t read my mind, we’re not bonded.”
“I can read you, Aerin, because you are my favorite thing to study. Tell me what is wrong.”
Well… if he wasn’t the rightest thing-saying mother fucker alive.
“I’m not troubled,” she admitted, pasting on a false smile as Moira turned to beam at her. “I’m scared.”
She’d never uttered those words to another soul.
“Scared of the evil that threatens to take all this from us?”
She shook her head. “Scared to hope we can defeat it.”
41
“I’m assuming the shotgun wedding didn’t work,” War remarked the next day during a traffic jam on the grand staircase as all seven of them waited with varying degrees of patience for Moira to finish waddling down on her swollen feet.
Aerin almost plowed into her when Moira stopped abruptly and turned to address Dru. “You don’t have to assume anythin’ as you might use your immortal powers of observation to deduce that I’m obviously still knocked up and wide as a pontoon.”
Seven voices clamored in ardent and overblown disagreement as they each filed behind her into the den. They praised her grace and goddess-like beauty, miraculous maternal body, magical glowing skin, and glimmering hair.
“Oh, stuff your pie holes y’all, I ain’t blind, I looked in the mirror this morning.” Moira, clad a pair of Tierra’s yoga pants slung below her belly and an oversized T-shirt that simply read Y’all need the Goddess more tipped over than sat down, landing on the overstuffed couch with a moan of relief and an uncouth sprawl. “How does anyone do this for months?” she bitched, glaring at her stomach. “Just get it out!”
Nick, his concession to casual being that he rolled up the sleeves on his silk Bruno Magli shirt, perched a butt cheek on the arm of the couch next to her. The idle fingers of one hand wound their way beneath Moira’s lustrous hair to absently work at knots in her neck and shoulders.
“Put it in. Get it out. Make up your mind woman,” he leered at her, receiving a swat on the thigh for his troubles.
Aerin appreciated the joviality their conversation brought to the heavy purpose of their mid-morning meeting. The gist of it being: What the fuck did they do now?
Killian, who was the last to file in the room, planted his boots in a wide stance in the doorway. The leather of his coat creaked as he tested its mettle by crossing his ginormous arms. A man that monstrous needed some give in his seams. Death’s own sentinel, he scanned each of their faces with his dark gaze and opened their conclave with all the ceremonious candor of his years, immemorial.
“Sooooo…What the fuck do we do now?”
Crickets.
Aerin looked to a flowy, pajama-clad Tierra, who was usually a fountain of ideas—a few so wild and wide of the mark they had to wade through some hippie crazy sauce to get to the expert ones. She found it deeply unsettling that her eldest sister kept her eyes trained on the antique carpets the hue of Bordeaux, as if silently calling not it.
Dru claimed the other end of the couch from Moira, Claire curled up so close to him she was practically in his lap. The couple said nothing, but held some sort of intense, silent court with their eyes.
“Didn’t anyone tell you it was rude to mind-meld in public?” Aerin flung herself into the Queen Anne chair opposite them in a fit of pique and adjusted the cuff of her cream blouse.
Claire dashed her a conciliatory glance. “We were trying not to argue out loud, which is also rude.”
“By all means, have at it.” Aerin gestured for them to continue. “It would be nice to hear just about any idea right now, no matter what it is.”
It wasn’t that she didn’t have all the answers that bothered her, it was that, for once, she didn’t have any. She was a data miner, goddammit. And, while magic was a code she was learning to hack, what the fuck did she do about fate? Destiny?
Prophecy.
Dru made a growly noise and pulled Claire closer, tucking his hand beneath her hip. “If we agree on any one thing, it’s that we are every which way but fucked.”
“If I may.” Julian, resplendent in a navy checkered morning suit and butter-soft gloves, stood with his hand resting on the high back of Aerin’s chair like a monarch posing for a portrait. “I think it’s safe to say a cohesive strategy thus far has been woefully—you’ll forgive me—preposterously nonexistent. Because we were unable to arrive at an initial consensus regarding how many of us were for or against the apocalyptic prophecy, and accept or decline our part in it, we’ve frankly buggared the whole business.”
“Harsh, bro.” Dru shook his head.
“A harsh reality.” Killian ran an exhausted hand over his face. “Six seals out of seven are open, and look what ripe and holy shit has been dumped onto the planet.”
Nick scratched at his sharp jaw, a sheepish look sitting oddly on features as brutal as his. “A few government coups and stock market crashes and a global recession. Not something mortals haven’t rebounded from before.”
“Yeah.” Dru straightened a bit. “I mean sure, some warlords are doing each other in, but most destabilizing countries are only threatening to go to war. And, I’ll admit, and a few fingers are fondling nuke codes, but no one’s pushed the red button yet.”
“Likely because so many of them are starving
or infirmed,” Julian’s bleak and sonorous voice called to Aerin, and she slid his glove off his fingers before entwining them with hers.
“Let’s not forget the zombies and zealots and witch hunters.” Killian said. “And the she-devil who followed me here.”
“The moon turned to blood,” Tierra supplied as forlorn as Aerin had ever seen her, the weight of earth’s pain curling her shoulders forward. “The oceans are toxic and dying, the earth trembling, fires ripping across entire continents, super storms displacing millions, volcanoes threatening to erupt at any moment. It takes all of our powers, daily, to keep all this from consuming everything and everyone. What sort of place are we making? What are we leaving for our children?”
“Julian’s right,” Moira said with uncharacteristic solemnity. “Nothin’ we’ve tried seems to have worked.”
“What if we stopped trying?” The words escaped Aerin before the next thought had fully formed, her idea needing to be manifested before it slipped away like vapor on the wind.
“Darling.” Julian’s fingers squeezed hers as he leaned closer. “I know things appear hopeless, but I don’t believe we’re beyond the pale. Surely not all is lost—”
“No, hear me out.” Aerin turned to look up at him, decided she didn’t like that one bit, and tugged him down so he crouched beside her chair. “Do you remember what we spoke of that first ride we took to the cliffs? About the Goddess?”
His electric irises warmed to the color of the Mediterranean in July, the fine lines branching from his eyes as he looked into the past with that perfect memory of his. “I told you the Goddess was no longer allowed in the realm, that the feminine divine is lost—”
“Yes, yes, that’s the part. Now remember when you explained to me the meaning of the word apocalypse?” She leaned forward, intensity gathering as she saw the spark in his features and the birth of something echoed in her own vibrating soul.
Hope.
Which Witch is Willing? (The Witches of Port Townsend Book 4) Page 21