“He’s a pig,” Claire said. “You’ve seen the shit he’ll eat.”
Talk about something useful, you babbling bitches, Lucy silently ordered them, the smell of Tierra’s green concoction stinging tears to the pig’s eyes as a stab of pain bunched in his rudimentary belly. Lucy shuddered inwardly. How crudely these animals were made.
“Then I’ll make more,” Tierra answered with a defiant tilt to her chin. “What I would like to know is, why are we bickering over lighters and talking about gaseous pigs instead of figuring out how to get Moira back?”
Because I own your sisters, Lucy thought. Or I will, soon enough. Every day, Moira shrinks from their minds, little by little. As do you, earth witch.
Both Aerin and Claire stared at the tabletop, chastened.
“We went on a reconnaissance mission earlier to the Horsemen’s compound,” Aerin admitted. “After we forced you to lie down for a nap.”
“What in the Goddess’s name were you thinking?” Blood flooded Tierra’s cheeks. “Do you think I want to end up with all three of my sisters kidnapped, or shot, or burned at the stake?” The memory turned the earth witch’s eyes the green of an uncut emerald. “The two of you out there alone with the Four Horsemen and Lu…,” Tierra stopped herself, searching for a suitable substitution. “That bitch from Hell on the loose—”
“Three,” Claire amended, a half smirk tugging at one corner of her mouth. “Technically there are only Three Horsemen on the loose since you gave Death a first-class ticket to Hell.”
“That was an accident. Mostly.” Tierra blew out an exasperated breath and set Cheeto on the floor at her sandaled feet. Lucy struggled to hold his body still against the cacophony of aromas beckoning him. The trashcan he could tip over. A potted plant just within reach. A scattering of crumbs under the chairs. How the animal could seek after more food with this hideous burbling in his guts baffled and disgusted Lucy in equal measure.
“Moira’s there,” Aerin reported. “And she’s alive. I could feel her emotional signature from a mile away. One part smart-ass and three parts pissed off.”
Tierra’s sigh of relief was audible.
“But,” Aerin continued, “since she’s being held in a house with Three Horsemen and the Devil and she’s still alive, my guess is they’re interested in more than just killing her, or they would have done it already.”
Claire nodded her agreement.
“Do you know where she’s being held? Did you get close enough to see her?” Tierra’s questions had an edge of desperation honed by residual guilt, perhaps, as it was during her own trial-by-fire that Moira was kidnapped.
Aerin and Claire snagged gazes.
“That’s the thing,” Claire began. “We couldn’t even get close. They’ve done something to the area around the compound.”
“What do you mean, done something?”
Cheeto’s keen ears picked up the sound of Claire pulling her riding leathers up to her knee. She gently peeled away a bandage to reveal a nasty scrape running the length of her shin.
“I have matching accessories on both elbows,” Claire reported.
Tierra’s intake of breath was sudden and shocked. “What happened?”
“I took my bike for a little off-roading, and when I got about a quarter mile from the house, something knocked me back about twenty yards.”
“Ditto,” Aerin chimed in. “I have a bruise on my ass the size of Cambodia. Even via the sky, I got about as close as Claire and was blown off my broom. Luckily I caught a couple branches on my way down. I’m pretty sure my ribs aren’t broken.” She poked a polished nail at the waist of her suit coat and winced through an unconvincing smile. “See? Totally fine.”
“This has to be that heinous hell-bitch’s doing.” Cheeto started as Tierra abruptly shoved her chair back from the table. She started digging through her cabinets and cupboards like a woman possessed…a condition Lucy knew the symptoms of intimately.
“Tierra?” Aerin asked with uncharacteristic gentleness. “What’re you doing?”
The earth witch said nothing. Only continued her frenzied piling of bottles and ripping handfuls of herbs from their respective spots on her shelves.
Claire rose from her seat at the table and put a hand on her sister’s shoulder. Tierra merely slipped it off and commenced dragging out stockpots and delicate swan-necked distilling apparatuses.
“Tierra, stop,” Aerin ordered.
“I can’t.” Tierra’s voice was thick as mud, heavy with unshed tears. “I have to fix Claire’s shins, and your ribs, and Moira’s—” Lucy watched from her position under the table as the earth witch’s shoulders collapsed and she broke into back-breaking sobs.
Claire wrapped an arm around her sister’s shaking shoulders and cast a narrow-eyed glance at Aerin behind Tierra’s back. Aerin took her time rising from the table, apparently as nonplussed as Lucy was by Tierra’s hysterics, but eventually shored her sister up from the opposite side, wrapping an arm around her waist.
“This is not your fault, Tierra,” Claire insisted.
“Claire’s absolutely right. Any one of us could have gotten knocked up by their respective Horsemen and brought on the Devil’s wrath.”
Tierra’s sobs ratcheted up to one long, ear-stabbing keen.
Claire pinched Aerin’s arm behind Tierra’s back and shot her a glare as searing as fire itself.
“What I meant was,” Aerin restated, “you were being attacked by Satan. I’m pretty sure no one in that situation could have prevented Moira from being kidnapped. Or Ambrosia’s from being blown to bits.”
The keening transformed to a wail that had every plant within the house dropping its leaves to the wood floor. Lucy had to restrain Cheeto’s body from rushing to snaffle them up.
“You. Are not. Helping. Sister,” Claire hissed below her breath.
“I’m sorry, okay? I sort of fired the HR director who ordered me to sensitivity training,” Aerin whispered back.
“Then shut up and hug,” Claire ordered.
Awkwardly at first, then with growing confidence, the wind witch’s arms wrapped around Tierra’s waist, mimicking the posture Claire had assumed.
“It will be okay, Tierra,” Claire reassured her sister, tightening her embrace. “We’ll find a way to get Moira back.”
“We will,” Aerin agreed. “We’re much more powerful as four. I’m not about to let that moping Judas Julian rob me of such an important asset. And speaking of assets, Ambrosia’s online earnings have totally outstripped the revenue from the physical location. I’ve been meaning to ask, did you have insurance on the store? We might actually make money on that old wreck of a building being reduced to ashes and—ow!”
Claire rewarded her sister with another pinch, high on the tender skin of her inner arm this time.
“I was just trying to say that there might be a silver lining to this whole thing,” Aerin insisted. “We’ll get Moira back, and we’ll be better than we were before. Stronger.”
Tierra allowed herself to be supported within the circle of their arms. “What would I do without you guys?” Her sobs had quieted to the occasional sniffle.
“Probably lead a totally normal zombie-free life,” Claire suggested, which coaxed a contagious laugh from Tierra.
Waves of sickening sisterly love blasted Lucy like the irradiated shrapnel from an atomic explosion. A dark, gnawing pit opened in her stomach.
No. She’d divided them. Set them at odds against each other. Even moments ago, they had been at each other’s throats. She could not allow this. She would not allow this.
Couldn’t bear it.
Lucy again summoned the electric pain she’d inflicted upon Cheeto earlier, and he shot out from under the table, emitting a terrific shriek and a burp of flames that flashed toward the bottom of Aerin’s Armani pantsuit.
“What in the unholy fuck has gotten into that animal?” Aerin staggered backward, grabbing a kitchen towel to snap at the cuffs of her flaming pants.
Claire caught herself on the counter before the pig could plow her boots out from under her on his second charge around the table. “Are you sure there wasn’t some mescaline or something in that goop?” she asked.
Tierra hopped up onto a chair and brandished a ladle, apparently not yet accustomed to keeping her wand on her at all times, a fact Lucy found herself immensely grateful for. “He might be having a reaction to the poultice. Maybe we should lock him in the shed. Just until the side effects wear off?”
“Side effects?” Aerin’s voice had entered the higher end of the spectrum of human hearing. “Since when has fucking red glowing eyes been a side effect?”
Claire looked to Aerin. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s—”
“Possessed.” They all spoke the word at once.
A pregnant pause descended upon the de Moray household. That split second where each sister decided whether they were willing to sacrifice Moira’s familiar for the chance to strike out at Lucy.
Lucy had no intention of hanging around to find out. Using a dizzying burst of power, she launched Cheeto’s body through the plate glass window over the sink and greeted her mother night in a shower of tinkling shards.
The pig’s body hit the ground hard, frightening him and jarring his intestines. The impact evicted a startled squeal and Lucy felt something else break free…something she fought to suppress so she could separate herself from the pig before—
FRRRRRRRP!
The audible flatulence blew from the pig’s hindquarters, igniting in a jet of blue flame. Lucy fought against the sudden force of eviction, of this magic animal’s natural reaction against her unnatural presence within it. All at once, she was rolling ass over teakettle across the lawn, landing in a heap at the curb.
Cheeto regarded her, his snout high in the evening breeze as he pranced toward the front door, his curly tail held aloft like a flag of victory.
Lucifer, Daughter of the Morning, the Adversary and Deceiver, stood and dusted herself off. Since this possession wasn’t human, she didn’t have to count it, right?
And if she didn’t have to count it, she would never have to utter the phrase exorcism by pig fart.
Lucy held her blond head high as she walked across the street, the rhythmic slap of the water witch’s flip-flops marking her passage.
Never had she been quite so grateful that she made her home in the bowels of Hell and not in the bowels of swine.
Chapter Six
Moira awoke still chained to Nicholas Kingswood’s bed with her cheek stuck to a glossy magazine and a headache fatter than a preacher’s wife at an ice cream social. The serrated edges of newspapers brushed her bare thighs. Her calves and elbows bristled against the smooth, sharp edges of sensational rags that were always claiming Elvis up and moved to Boca Raton and was working as a short order cook somewhere.
Truth to tell, she’d slept on worse.
The bed of Uncle Sal’s truck for one. That time Uncle Sal had damn near burned down the shack she’d grown up in trying to brew some moonshine with a Dutch oven and a healthy measure of lighter fluid. Camping he’d called it, as they watched the moon play hide-and-seek among the cypress trees and scribble the bayou with a disk of shimmering silver.
She’d woken up astride her share of men when healing them took a mite too much energy out of her and she’d collapsed mid-hump. Always awkward, waking up on someone whose nickname involved missing body parts or teeth you could count on one hand.
Then there were the times she’d awoken face-down on the bayou’s surface, her hair tangling with the moss, startling some poor fisherman so bad he’d nearly filled his waders with last night’s gumbo when he discovered she was still alive. She’d once floated as far as Lake Pontchartrain where a Coast Guard diver in a wet suit fished her out and insisted on giving her mouth-to-mouth long after she’d informed him she was just fine.
Just a few spells of sleepwalking, Uncle Sal had insisted, tears of relief funneling into the sun-weathered wrinkles at the corners of his tobacco-brown eyes. Moira hadn’t the heart to disabuse him of the notion. To inform him that most the time, she wasn’t quite sure why she existed at all. That something deeper than the fossils below the bayou mud whispered nightly to her of sweet oblivion.
Until a much louder whisper had called her here to Port Townsend, where things had gotten awful weird, and according to the papers around her, the world was beginning to notice.
“Plague of fish descends on Port Townsend!” The Port Townsend Leader headline screamed. “Locals fear the worst in a chain of recent freak events.”
“Rash of Violent Attacks Continues Across the U.S.” Tagline: “Undead or Unexplainable?” This one? Only in the New York-god-damned-Times.
But it was the tabloids that sent cockroaches skittering through Moira’s blood. Apparently, the Washington Watchtower had taken a particular interest in the de Moray sisters themselves. Almost as if they had been…tipped off.
“Sinister Sisters at fault for trouble in Port Townsend?” Below it, a picture of all four de Moray sisters scrambling to gather the downpour of fish. Whoever it was had caught Moira with both hands in the air, summoning moisture from the sky to keep the fish from drying out. From the angle and distance, the photo had been snapped hastily from across the street.
And it wasn’t the only one.
A blurry shot of Aerin on her broom, coupled with the headline, “Witch Takes a Wicked Ride Through Port Townsend!”
But Lucy had saved the worst for last. Closest to Moira’s face, unfolded so she could read the entire article, was a full front-page feature. Front and center, a candid photo of Tierra, blissfully trimming herbs in her garden, her growing bump clearly visible through her light floral sundress. “Witchy sister pregnant with the Antichrist?”
Moira skimmed the lines of type, blinking against her pulsing headache, her gaze snagging on a quote from “noted demonologist and modern-day witch hunter Reverend Bill Blanding:”
“I’ve been saying it for years but my words have gone unheeded. The end of days is upon us, and it is only if the evil among us has been rooted out and destroyed that we might enjoy another season upon the earth. The battle has begun, and I, for one, don’t intend on staying idle while the Devil makes the earth his playground.”
“Get your pronouns straight, you pig’s pecker,” Moira grumbled.
Numb shock tingled from her fingers and toes straight through to her hammering heart.
All this time, they’d been so focused on fighting the Horsemen and dealing with the plagues each Seal had brought about that they had been blind to a bigger and much more dangerous picture.
And the question that came with it.
What would happen if the world knew who they were, and what they had done?
The implications of this thought had only begun to tease the edges of Moira’s mind when the door rattled once on its hinges, flying open under the power of Drustan Geddes’s boot. Expletives that would have made the saltiest catfish noodler blush to his britches streamed from his lips as he hauled a shrieking, biting Aunt Justine into the room and slung her into the chair Satan had occupied earlier. Before she’d decided to redecorate by busting a lamp over Moira’s head.
Her aunt’s arrival was about as welcome as a rash of ass boils before a ten-hour tent revival.
Up to this point, Moira had pert near forgotten that murderous hag had been nabbed too. Probably on account of she’d hoped Justine had died of fright the second War had slung her over his massive shoulder.
Moira had never been that lucky.
Justine glared at her captor, hatred burning bright in her green eyes, her graying red hair wild and face pale with rage.
“Accuse me of foul deeds when you are the one poisoning our coven and cavorting with the Devil herself!” Aunt Justine spat in the face of War, and Moira had to grudgingly give her a couple points for accuracy as the wad hit him square between the eyes. He wiped it from his face with the back of his
hand, and for a split second, Moira thought he might use the same hand to deliver a stinging blow to Justine’s cheek.
He froze, charcoal-dark eyes seething with black flame as he gripped both chair arms instead and shoved his face within a hairsbreadth of hers.
“Say what you will, witch. I may have slaughtered men without number in battle, but at least I can confront whatever gods may be knowing I didn’t attempt to murder three newborn babes.”
Justine’s face turned to ash, her expression stricken and scorched. Her mouth drew into a tight, white line as her gaze fell to the torn fabric of her dark, shapeless dress.
Dru took a step back and looked from Moira to Justine and back again. “‘Divide and conquer,’ Nick said. ‘It will be the best strategy,’ he said. I should have fucking known better.”
“Because you underestimated what a royal red pain in the ass that ol’ harpy can be?” Moira asked, hoping she might flatter herself into an ally.
“Because I fucking invented that strategy. And in this case, divide and conquer isn’t going to cut it.”
“How’s that?” Moira summoned what she hoped to be a look of genuine curiosity.
“Because two bitches in Nick’s room means no bitches in mine.” He turned his broad back to them and stormed toward the door.
“Hey, Mister?” Moira called after him.
“What?” Dru asked through gritted teeth.
“Look, I know you’re War and all and probably know what it feels like to pave garden paths with the skulls of your enemies, but could you please, please not leave me alone with her?”
“You should be thanking me, water witch, for allowing you the company.”
“And I can certainly see your point,” Moira agreed quickly. “Only I hate her guts and she hates mine, so probably we’d be better off separate. See?”
War’s slow smile sent prickles of fear straight up the back of Moira’s neck.
“Well then, I’ll be sure to leave you two together for a long, long time. Give you plenty of opportunity to work out your differences.” With that, he quit the room, slamming the broken door behind him.
Which Witch is Wicked? (The Witches of Port Townsend Book 2) Page 30
