The COMPLETE Witching Pen Series, Boxed Set: The Witching Pen, The Sands Of Time, The Demon Bride, The Last Dragon and Wilted

by Dianna Hardy

  “Do it! What the fuck have I been training you for for fifty years!”

  “All right!” Shit.

  He poured every effort he could into altering what he saw in front of him. Beads of sweat prickled his forehead.

  “Relax.”

  “You are insane.”

  “Just let go a little.”

  He breathed out and let his shoulders sag.

  “That’s it. Now, feel it … feel it. It’s all just condensed matter; the Earth is yours now – her power flows through you and you can direct that power. Make it how it needs to be…

  It needed to be safe.

  It needed to be safe for Amy.

  Something clicked inside him, and his breathing evened out until it became like one continuous breath, everlasting, ever-giving... He and his breath became one entity. He felt the edges of it as it pushed outwards, and he breathed his own vision into everything it touched.

  He wasn’t aware of stopping – in fact, he didn’t feel much like stopping at all – but when he opened his eyes, he found the room back to normal and the beige carpet untainted. There was no black sticky ooze in sight. All that marred the room was the dead man on the floor.

  “Wow.”

  “Good man,” smiled Teigas, and he clapped him on the back.

  Pueblo stepped off the table cautiously in case that black stuff was in any way intelligent and lying in wait for him.

  No sudden surprises. Bonus.

  He lost his smile when his eyes rested on the doctor once more. “Any chance I can change that?”

  “I wish you could. But life is not so easy to restore, and in the end, it is not up to us to do so.”

  He thought of the tree that rose from his mother’s bones and spirit. “Life finds a way.”

  “If it is meant to, yes… If it is meant to.” Teigas nudged his arm. “Come. We’ve got to get to your woman, and fast.”

  ~*~

  The world teetered in and out of focus until his environment became sharp and clear. Norolf had finally managed to work his way through the magical shield protecting the penthouse, although his success didn’t come for free. He had drained quite a bit of energy and his head thudded with a dull ache.

  He pushed the inconvenience to one side and got on with his task.

  Finding her bedroom was easy. Her magic was strong, even whilst with child, and her magic smelt so fresh and lovely … a little like flowers opening up to the sharp crispness of morning.

  With as much stealth as he could muster, he turned the door handle as slowly as possible. It didn’t even squeak. He pushed it open with equal prudence.

  Beautiful silence.

  Except for the light breathing of the sleeping – two people breathing. Aaaahh… so this is how he protects her.

  Unexpectedly, jealousy tore through him hard and fast. He winced at the pain of it, then frowned in confusion. How troublesome that a woman should have this effect on any man. And very untimely.

  He gathered himself and gave his head a shake, willing away the strange wound that the jealousy had seared into his chest.

  His will was strong. He could will her away to wherever he wanted her in no time at all.

  Into your own bed… whispered the traitor in his mind.

  He clenched his fists, balling them as hard as he could. Concentrate.

  He’d never thought much of fate. He made is own luck; always had and always will … so he thought even less of fate now, when an almighty quake shook the entire building from the ground up, throwing a spanner in the works.

  The witch awoke with a scream, completely startled, automatically willing the light on. Her ‘husband’ followed suit about half a second after.

  She was the one who spotted him first. Her pretty skin paled and she clutched at the bedsheets, pulling them tighter around her. Sweet Amy … how utterly endearing…

  The man spied him next and his face tightened into that steady, cold anger Norolf remembered from their last encounter. There wasn’t much he could do though, with the building swaying as it was.

  Things fell off the shelves and the man shouted at Amy to get off the bed.

  She screamed again, and Norolf flew into action. He morphed the scene in front of him. Walls grew into trees and plants, the floor turned into grass, and … he hit a barrier.

  The man had thrown himself in front of Amy and was chanting some rubbish or other, but that wasn’t what had stopped Norolf. What had stopped him was the energy they created together. It surrounded them like some force field, and like an idiot he only now realised that when they had overpowered him before, they had also been together, creating the same energy.

  Soul-bonded.

  He had thought it was the man that had bested him – it had, in fact, been the both of them united.

  With rage coiled in his belly, fuelled by that insistent jealousy he didn’t seem able to get rid of, he renewed his focus and was preparing to exert his will again when something happened that none of them were expecting, the expression on their faces giving their surprise away. It shouldn’t have been possible while she was pregnant: they teleported out of there.

  Just as the Dessec teleported in.

  It could have been hours later, rather than one second. Time came to a halt at that exact moment, and Norolf wondered if it was because of all the teleporting. Maybe too much teleportation in one place created some odd vortex where time ceased to exist, but his thoughts stopped right there. Another quake rocked the earth, and the Dessec met his eyes with a fiery surety that ignited a thread of fear somewhere inside him, and it had been a long time since he’d felt fear.

  Not long enough.

  With a war cry, Norolf pulled off his glove and drove the black stump of his wrist into the floor, watching with satisfaction as the toxic tar spread.

  The Dessec remained eerily quiet, unmoving, although something flickered in those dark eyes of his.

  The echo of his war cry met his new, strangled exclamation, as the tar turned back on itself and headed towards him.

  He tried to redirect it, and for a few seconds there was a stalemate as the ooze rose up in a pile, not moving left or right, but pinned in place by the force of two minds… But he was tired. Breaking through the shield to get into this apartment had taken more out of him than he’d like to admit. If he had damn well known those two had been soul-bonded he would have taken a different approach.

  He cursed himself for his carelessness, and then resumed his efforts against the Dessec.

  Out from behind him stepped a small fairy the size of a toddler.

  Norolf growled out his rage; his hatred for that entire species as manifested in the room as anything else.

  The fairy joined his will with the Dessec’s and Norolf’s weapon became his undoing.

  The tar crept up his feet and legs, coming at him from all angles, and although he was immune to its poison, he was not immune to suffocation.

  “Do you think you’ve won?” he spat out. “One generation leads to the next – the sins of the father shall pass onto the child. Always. The weaknesses and prejudices of your entire race shall weigh down upon your son!”

  “Then I’ll teach him to be strong, so he can turn tides with his mind and fortunes with his heart. I’m sorry your parents never taught you the same. My mother did, even through death.”

  He’d failed. For the first time in his life, he had failed, and it burned like acid.

  The curse that had befallen his family, courtesy of the fay, clung to his body, restricting all movement and arresting his breath as it tightened around his lungs … still rising…

  He stared pointedly at the fairy and smirked. He knew his time was up, but that was no reason to lay all his great plans to waste, was it? The fay were comprised of a sensitive infrastructure where one was connected to all.

  With his final morsel of power – and he knew it was all he had left – he surrendered himself to the outcome and threw every ounce of his will at the small being.
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br />   Like a bolt of lightning, his intention – and a good blob of tar to boot – tore right through the fairy, searing a hole in his mid-region and almost ripping him asunder.

  Tar covered his own eyes, infiltrated his nose, seeped into his ears, squeezed his forty-seven years right out of him, and the last thing Norolf heard was the enraged roar of the Dessec rivalling that of the quake itself.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Morgana doubled over with a scream that pierced the night, and when fairies screamed, it wasn’t akin to a human sound. The phrase ‘screaming like a banshee’ hadn’t originated from nothing.

  Everything spun very fast, which probably wasn’t a good thing when you were on top of the Empire State Building, even if you were an immortal being … which she wasn’t anymore.

  “Morgana!”

  Abaddon had brought them both here after Lucifer’s departure, insisting that perspective would be clearer at the top of the world. Actually, he’d wanted to take her to Mount Kilimanjaro, but she had refused, feeling far too drained to withstand such a trip. Time and space were elements that were becoming condensed to her, the way they appeared to humans.

  “Morgana!” shouted Abaddon, again.

  She whimpered a response, but that’s all she could manage. A searing agony ripped through her middle as if she’d been torn in half. “Teigas,” she gasped out, and then the world teetered and she was looking up at the dark sky, blanketed with stars.

  Abaddon cradled her form as he sat underneath her, his back to the railings that guarded the edge of the building.

  “The ground,” she said, the words practically wrenched from her being. “I need the ground.”

  “Say no more.”

  She yelped in pain, then sagged in fatigue as he took them both hurtling through the air. She might have lost consciousness. She wasn’t sure, as she’d never lost consciousness before and had nothing to compare the sensation to, but when she opened her eyes, not even aware that she’d closed them, the night sky above was a different hue of blue, the air much warmer…

  She still lay cradled in Abaddon’s arms, neither of them having changed position, just the landscape. Beneath her fingertips, she could feel sand. The ocean sighed to her left as every wave met the shore.

  “Where are we?” she asked, and her voice came out raspy, as if aged.

  “Baker Beach, by Golden Gate Bridge.”

  Oh, yes. A small piece of natural beauty embedded among the bustle of population.

  “Teigas is gone,” she forced out.

  “I know his name – he has been with you for a long time now, hasn’t he? Is that the reason for your pain?”

  “One of…”

  Abaddon nodded in silent understanding.

  Morgana dug her fingers into the sand as far as they would go, and attempted to reach into the roots of the Earth as she had done in Rwanda, to reach the Dragon; to reach its energy; to reach the essence that had birthed and nourished her.

  All she reached was the damp layers of sand underneath.

  “There is nothing … Abaddon…”

  “It’s all right, you’re hurt and tired—”

  “No … the fay have been dying. For hours now I have felt them drop, one by one. I thought it was because the Dragon would not rise, but now I know it is destined to be. I wondered if the Dragon remained entombed because it was waiting for me for some reason, but it’s the boy it’s waiting for.” She coughed and it sent daggers through her. “You know, they say that when demons die, their queen or king grows stronger with their powers. It is the opposite for me. The fay are immortal … or were. With every fairy that passes, I grow weaker, immortality slipping. It’s happened so fast.”

  “You are still alive.”

  “No, Abaddon, I am all but a shell. I am existing, not living. I fear Teigas was among the last of the fay. I am reaching out now, and I can hear no voices, no growth, no tinkling of Bluebells … did you know they really do tinkle?”

  He risked half a smile. “You’re talking gibberish, my love.”

  She tried to laugh, but it came out as a spluttering as she fought for her last breaths … and she now knew this is what they were.

  “Come.” Abaddon repositioned himself so he was lying on the sand, and brought Morgana with him, tucking her into his side.

  Grateful for the contact – she couldn’t feel much of anything else now – she struggled to bring herself up a bit to rest her head on his chest.

  He scooped her up instead, and lay her five-foot form directly on top of his six-foot plus, her legs tucked up against his abdomen; her head finally finding its desired destination.

  “You’re so big,” she said, softly.

  “So are you.”

  She winced in pain as laughter threatened to choke her again. “Don’t make me laugh.”

  “I mean it. You have no idea. You’re the greatest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire existence.”

  She tried to huff in frustration, but didn’t have a lot of air left. She’d just have to humour him – let him say what he wanted. What did it matter on the tide of extinction. “Tell me a story.”

  “A story?”

  “Yes. The fay were great storytellers once; our bards could weave so much life into tales that the young would wake the next day thinking they had lived it. Those were grand days, when people asked to hear our stories… Weave me to sleep. Please.”

  He tightened his hold of her, easily covering her small torso with his two arms alone. She thought she could scent salty tears on his breath, but that couldn’t be … it must be the sea…

  “Once upon a time, when time was still young, there was a great queen who had an even greater heart. She treated strangers as family. Love did not have a name then, but she embodied all that it was. She could not stand to see suffering and loss – it was so foreign to who she was, which was a being that craved balance. Balance sustained her, just as she sustained the land she called home with her unconditional gestures of compassion.

  “But then came the day that balance was rocked; spun into the ether and almost lost to all, and this was the moment she began to forget. Her trust had been betrayed, and everything she gave, taken for granted. Love turned to fear, compassion into resentment and her kindness became armoured.

  “It was a hard time, with elementals finding themselves overwhelmed with work, and the great Dragons that protected the equilibrium of the cosmos on the verge of extinction…”

  …Dragons … oh, what wonderful creatures they had been, and I am soaring again … taking to the skies with them … Abaddon’s voice fading in and out … but wait … the story … I should hear how it ends…

  She might have mumbled something, and she focused on returning to her body, although the soaring was bliss … she felt her stony armour crumble…

  “…he watched her from afar. He always knew she was there, but he could never bring himself to even touch her. The depth of her love for all things dwarfed him, for he was ruined in a way she never would be, and he remembered how she had loved so wholly in the beginning, even though she had forgotten … loved in a way he had had stolen from him.”

  She forced herself back down, forced her eyes open, but didn’t know if she succeeded, for all she could make out were sparks of dust. Was that her arm right in front of her, resting on his chest? It looked like glitter… I’m turning into dust – dust to dust – defences, crumbling…

  From somewhere off in the distance, she thought she heard the roar of a Dragon, or it could have been the ocean, but how nice it would be if the beautiful beasts had come to greet her … it was so hard to stay down here. Her entire being swelled with a deep gratitude for her existence … how strange to feel it now, when it has all come to an end … but her soul grew lighter than it had been for a long time. Where once, Tír na nÓg would have been the centre of her gravity, pulling her down and keeping her grounded, it now felt as if it were releasing her from duty; giving her to the winds…

  ‘Change
is the only constant…’

  “…and he prayed that she would see how strong she was – had always been – that it was the armour and the bitterness and the fear that made her perceive herself as weak, and not her love; that beneath that insurmountable wall she had built, the pulse of Tír na nÓg still beat; her compassion still flowed freely…”

  ‘You gave it freely…’

  “…that in the very end, she refound her strength through her accidental mortality, for through mortality and all of its vulnerabilities, she learned how to love again…”

  Love … a voice … Abaddon’s voice? The Dragon’s voice? Strangely, the voice sounded a bit like her own, and the last of the stone around her heart fell away… This is who I am…

  “…and love is the greatest strength of all.”

  How long had it been?

  “The end.”

  It felt like the wind kissed the top of her head.

  “I love you,” she uttered, to anyone and no one. To the first angel, to Dragons, to the past and the future; to the land that she finally let go of. “I love you,” she said, to the world that had looked after her for too long to count, and as she faded to dust that sparkled on the wind, she heard the world whisper back, “And I love you.”

  ~*~

  The teardrop on his chest throbbed painfully as if in sympathy with his own tears which streaked down his face, made cool by the early morning breeze.

  That Morgana had found peace was a blessing, but he wept for the end of, not just an era, but an entire age so old, it outdid time itself.

  Her race had given them a home when they had had nowhere to go.

  His hands gleamed with fairy dust and more than that: the last of the fairy queen’s essence. The fay were gone.

  Ymari’s heavy tear brought his attention back to his own mortality.

  Abaddon gathered himself, planted his feet firmly into the sand and stood up tall.

  Because this was it.

  Now, it began.

  On cue, San Francisco rumbled under his feet.

  ~*~

  The massive quake – the second one in half an hour – would have knocked Elena off her feet if she hadn’t already been sitting. But as it was, she’d spent the last few minutes aligning herself with the planet and finding the right spot to enter it from. Well, she’d found it – she was sitting on it.