Which Witch is Wicked? (The Witches of Port Townsend Book 2)

by Kerrigan Byrne

  “You know, I’d rather walk on my lips than to criticize, but those relics might have come in handy before I went and got myself killed so I could end the Apocalypse.”

  “Ah,” Morgana said. “But it is precisely that act which qualifies ye to wield the relics to which I am referring. Yer willingness to lay down yer life for yer sisters. Self-sacrifice is a rare and beautiful thing, Moira, but as noble as yer intentions might be, ye’re needed here.”

  “But I thought my being here was the problem in the first place. The seals. We keep opening the seals. Mostly on accident. And the Horsemen said that only one of us had to die to end it, and I thought, on account of I’m a screw-up, and nobody much wanted me around in the first place—”

  “The Horsemen doona know everything, Moira.” Her lovely voice held a hint of mystery, of knowing. “Although Julian comes pretty close,” she added. “Very studious, that one. But I suppose one has to find other ways to occupy one’s time when one can’t…” She paused, searching the briny depths like the right words might be hidden in a nearby treasure chest. “Well, when physical pursuits aren’t a primary priority.”

  “So there’s really a chance that we might not end the world?” Moira asked. She hated the childlike hope in her own voice. Hated how vulnerable it left her to disappointment.

  “The world’s fate has not yet been decided. Many factors are in play. Machinations beyond yer comprehension. Much is yet to be revealed. But I can tell you one thing, Moira de Moray.” Morgana floated closer, her silken garments cocooning them in a single cell. “Yer sisters are stronger with ye than without ye. If ye truly wish to avoid the world’s end, ye must stay together.”

  This revelation pierced her with a pain sharper than Conquest’s arrow. She knew Morgana referred to the growing divide between them. The invisible, dark rend that had been born of Aerin’s necromancy, widening as they continued down dissenting paths.

  Morgana’s pale, slim hand came to rest weightlessly on Moira’s shoulder. “Only together do you have hope of defeating the many forces seeking to destroy ye.”

  “Many?” Moira asked. “You mean the Horsemen and that walking mattress what eats souls with her coffee and dresses like a fetish hooker?”

  “Not only they,” Morgana warned. The hand on Moira’s shoulder rose, index finger pointed as Morgana circled it in the water three times. The circle she had circumscribed flickered like a television screen seeking to land on a clear signal.

  Moira sucked in a lungful of water when the image finally cleared. Their lovely old house in flames. An angry, torch-bearing mob sending up victorious shouts. Claire lying on her back, glassy eyes aimed skyward, her chest mauled open to an angry, red cavern. Tommy’s face hovering above it, blood smeared around his lips like jam. Aerin and Tierra under attack, their strength waning but refusing to help each other. Their separate efforts as an approaching mob backed them toward the smoldering ruin of their house. Burning stakes had been erected in the corner of their yard, ready and waiting.

  “No!” Moira pushed her palms against her eyes to block out the image. “No, this can’t be happening.”

  “It isna.” Morgana passed a hand through the water to disperse the vision pool. “Not yet. This is only what will happen if circumstances are allowed to continue down their current track.”

  “How do I stop it?” Moira pleaded. “I’ll do anything. Just show me—”

  “Live, Moira. Live, and claim yer birthright.”

  In Morgana’s left hand appeared a long, slim, silvery wand inscribed with patterns of cresting waves. In her right, a delicate crown inlaid with runes of cobalt and aquamarine, its four spires resembling lacy coral.

  Moira reached her hand toward the wand and felt a vibration travel through the water the second her fingers wrapped around its handle. A new, crackling energy surged through her, every cell in her body leaping with recognition of something long missed. Gripping the wand felt like the embrace of an old friend.

  With her other hand free, Morgana wrapped both around the crown, looking to Moira, who knelt out of instinct. All chatter in Moira’s head died away the second the crown slid into place. Never had her mind been so free of negative static.

  Moira finally broke the reverent silence with a question as profane as this experience had been sacred. “So, now that I have a wand and all, is there anything I can do about this?” she asked, gesturing to the arrow still jutting from her chest. “It’s going to make things real awkward come swim suit season.”

  “Ye’re the one with the wand,” Morgana urged. “Try it.”

  Moira hesitated, looking from the wand to the arrow. “You see, I’m not so good with the spells.”

  “The wand doesna strictly require them,” Morgana explained. “Though it can enhance spells when used correctly.”

  “You see, I’m not so good at doing things correctly, either,” Moira said.

  “Just try, Moira. That’s the only way ye’re like to learn.”

  “Here goes nothin’.” Moira pointed the wand at the arrow in her chest, closed her eyes, and tried to concentrate.

  “Arrow of Conquest, in me lodged,

  git on out like I had dodged.

  My normal chest, return to me,

  By power of earth, air, fire, and sea...”

  A brief, searing pain slid through Moira’s chest, but when she peeked down, the arrow had vanished. “I’ll be a badger’s ball-sack! It worked!”

  Morgana bore the expression of someone who had just licked a battery acid-flavored lollipop. “Well, that wasna very conventional…but I suppose times do change. Do you know the spell for returning to yer sisters?”

  Moira stood in the thick cold sand at the bottom of the sound and clicked her bare heels. “Uh, there’s no place like home?” she said querulously, pointing the wand at her feet.

  “Ach!” Morgana sighed. “These legends become so distorted over time. First of all, they werna ruby slippers, they were Malachite. And Toto wasna Dorothy’s dog, he was her mate. An alpha shifter with a schnauzer fetish. Doona even get me started on Glinda—”

  “Sorry,” Moira said. “I didn’t mean to bring up a sore subject.”

  Morgana massaged her temples. “Perhaps ye ought just study the Grimoire. Given yer position, it would be for the best.”

  “I can do that,” Moira assured her, hoping Morgana didn’t think her heir a total dud. “Anyway, I can’t go straight home. There’s a stop I need to make first.”

  “Very well.” Morgana took both hands in hers and whispered a blessing in a language Moira was unfamiliar with. When she was done, Morgana opened her eyes and laid a hand against Moira’s cheek. “May the goddess guide ye,” she said.

  And then she was gone.

  Chapter Twelve

  The wind whipped through Nicholas Kingswood’s hair, emitting a melancholy howl as it scraped across the jagged cliff. He didn’t know how long he’d been standing here, staring out at the heaving waves, searching for some sign of Moira.

  All the while he kept his vigil, an utterly foreign urge kept returning to him—the overwhelming desire to punch himself in the face.

  Was this what self-loathing felt like?

  Nick had never in his unnaturally long life had to contend with it. Nor with the distasteful bedfellows self-loathing kept for company.

  Guilt.

  Shame.

  Regret.

  Doubt.

  All signs of a theory he had never personally subscribed to. This notion of conscience.

  Yet, the desire to hurl himself off the cliff after her was undeniable. Part of him would welcome the pain of his broken body as a way of sharing what he had inflicted on her.

  It was that part he had told to shut the fuck up several times without success.

  Nick had fought many battles, but none of them had taken place in his own head. As it turned out, he was a formidable opponent.

  “Oh, Nicholas. I thought Julian was the Horseman who specialized in staring for
lornly off windswept cliffs.”

  The sound of Lucy’s voice, at once sensual and sarcastic, set Nick’s teeth on edge.

  “Lucifer,” Nick said by way of greeting.

  She sidled up to him in a squeak of leather and wrapped her arms around his waist from behind in a Heimlich hug.

  “Tell me, darling,” she said, her cheek pressed between Nick’s shoulder blades so he could feel the words grate against his spine. “How did the water witch get past the barrier I erected?”

  “I took her,” Nick said. It didn’t do to bother with deceit when chewing the fat with the Mother of Lies.

  “Indeed.” Her fingers slid down his hips and into the front pockets of his slacks. “And after I made my plans for her painfully—” she squeezed Nick’s cock “—clear. One might think you were openly defying me.”

  Nick grabbed her hands by the wrists and peeled them from his person, turning to face her. Facing Lucy was always safer. “Is it my fault if you were too busy chasing your latest rejection from Julian to be present to collect her soul?”

  She refused to rise to his deliberate provocation.

  “But I was present, Nicholas. Waiting right down there in the shadows of the rocks.” Darkness complimented Lucy’s features in a way the daylight never could. Threading pale white-gold strands through her hair, turning her eyes to sapphires and her lips to red velvet. “Trouble is, there was no soul to collect.”

  “I know Moira can be a bitch sometimes, but I’m almost certain that she had a soul,” Nick retorted.

  “You know that’s not what I meant. How can I collect a soul when you failed to kill her? You had one job, Nicholas.” Lucy poked her blood red-lacquered fingernail into his chest to illustrate her point.

  “I’m pretty sure my arrow was forged in the fires that made the world and tempered with the blood of infinite warriors. I shot her point blank through the chest.” An unwelcome stab of sympathetic pain tightened behind Nick’s sternum. Sympathy pains? What in the everlasting fuck was wrong with him?

  “What the fuck else do you want from me?" Nick turned away from the cliff and stalked back toward his car, wanting the distance from Lucy.

  Lucy’s long-legged gait easily kept pace. “Perhaps to choose a location where the water witch wouldn’t be falling to her death in the ocean. The very place she could be healed from such a wound.”

  Nick halted in his tracks. “Moira’s not dead?”

  “Please,” Lucy sneered. “Don’t act like you didn’t know. We know each other far too well to play this game. Not only is she not dead, she’s inherited Morgana’s wand and crown.”

  Nick’s heart galloped in his chest. “How do you know?”

  “Oh, little signs,” Lucy said, picking at her fingernails. “There’s a halo around the moon, the sea has gone quiet, and she destroyed the entire compound with a flash flood and got away with that wretched aunt of hers.”

  “She did what?” Nick had to bite his tongue to keep from grinning.

  Conquest, destroyer and decimator, grinning. For the gods’ sake. What was next? Cartwheels? Affirmations? Mercy?

  “You heard me correctly, Nicholas. She destroyed the compound. Dru and Julian may well be somewhere in Canada at the moment. They’ve yet to make contact.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” Nick agreed, working as much gravity into his voice as he could muster as he found the remote in his pants pocket and beeped the car to life.

  Lucy waited expectantly for Nick to open her door. Not because she was accustomed to being treated like a lady, but because she was accustomed to such menial tasks being the work of her many slaves and minions.

  She slid into the passenger’s seat, propping the wickedly sharp heel of her leather boot on the dash. As soon as Nick settled himself into the driver’s side and closed the door, she grabbed him by the tie and pulled him across the armrest separating them.

  The sapphires in her eyes turned molten orange, and the breath exhaled from her mouth scorched his nostrils with the scent of brimstone.

  “Let me make one thing abundantly clear to you, Nicholas. If I suspect for one second that you are plotting against me, I will introduce you to levels of pain your immortal brain can scarcely fathom. Death openly defied me and is now rotting in Hell for the privilege. Bane’s current circumstances will seem like a vacation in Eden compared to what I would do to you. Do you understand?”

  Nick nodded. “I understand.”

  Coward, the unwelcome intruder in his mind accused. A real warrior would tell Lucy that he would suffer her torments a thousand fold before he’d see Moira’s beautiful soul shoe-horned into the twisted, empty cavern of the Devil’s clutches.

  “Good,” Lucy said, releasing her grip on his tie as her forked tongue darted out to taste his lips. “Perhaps you should find us a hotel for the night, Nicholas. I don’t think you’ll find your prior accommodations serviceable any longer, and we have much to discuss. But I think I’ll fuck you first.” Brazenly, she stroked her hand over Nick’s crotch. “I’ll not talk to you with the taste of the water witch on your lips.”

  Try it, the foreign voice in his head challenged. Not even the consuming kiss of Hell’s eternal flame itself could burn Moira’s intoxicating taste from his memory.

  And for once, Nick found himself in agreement.

  “We can talk, but my days of being fucked by you are over,” Nick remarked.

  Lucy’s grip on his cock tightened, hoping for signs of arousal she didn’t find. “You and I both know you love a grudge fuck, Nick. And who better to take out your rage upon than me?”

  Myself.

  Stupid fucking voice of reason speaking the motherfucking truth all the gods-damned time.

  Nick didn’t bother to argue. His thoughts had already wandered onto new territory.

  Magnus peeled out of the dirt lot down the path from Siren’s Cry, and Nick gunned the engine with a renewed sense of vigor.

  Moira was alive.

  Moira was alive, and armed with a weapon as powerful as his own.

  If he had thought her a worthy opponent before, he was certain the next contest of their wills would prove…orgasmic.

  Nick allowed a grin to take over the side of his face Lucy couldn’t see.

  He couldn’t fucking wait.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Hey, y’all. What’s for dinner?”

  Moira and Justine stood in the kitchen doorway of the de Moray house, waiting for their presence to register.

  Tierra looked up from a saucepan and shrieked, the spoon she had been holding clattering to the floor as her hand flew to her mouth.

  “Moira! Justine!”

  Moira braced herself for the patented Tierra tackle-pounce-hug she was about to receive. Her sister didn’t disappoint. Moira’s and Justine’s heads knocked together like a pair of bobble-head dolls as Tierra dragged them both into her embrace at once.

  “Thank the Goddess!” she wailed, burying her face in Moira’s neck while simultaneously squeezing Aunt Justine’s spleen up to her throat. “You’re alive! You’re home! You’re…soaking wet. What on earth happened to you? How did you get away? How did you—?”

  Moira held up her hand. “It’s a long story. Maybe we ought to wait until Claire and Aerin are here so I only have to tell it once.”

  “Claire! Aerin!” Tierra hollered at an eardrum-piercing decibel. “Get down here, now!”

  Moira heard the shuffling of footsteps overhead, followed by the creaking of stairs announcing her sisters’ descent.

  “Holy balls,” she heard Aerin mutter. “Whatever the fuck this summons is for, it better not involve kale.”

  “Or tofu,” Claire replied. “If I ever come across the asshat who first cultivated the soybean in the afterlife, I’m going to burn his testicles to cinders.”

  They rounded the corner simultaneously and froze in the doorway.

  “Look!” Tierra enthused, whipping off her apron. “They’re home.”

  Moira hadn’t
been expecting either of them to rush her the way Tierra had. Neither had she expected the narrow-eyed scrutiny she met instead.

  Aerin folded her arms across the blouse of the button-down shirt she was only allowed to wear at home since the Horsemen had unanimously decided she was the pick of the litter as far as the killing was concerned. “How do we know it’s really her?” she demanded.

  “Good question,” Claire agreed. “A certain bitch who shall remain nameless has gotten awfully good at borrowing bodies lately. And besides, I don’t think the real Moira would have brought Aunt Justine back with her.”

  Irritation needled Moira as she stood there in their warm and cozy kitchen. After having surviving a day as Conquest’s captive, patching things up with an aunt who’d tried to kill her, being shot through the chest with an Apocalyptic arrow, inheriting her crown and wand from some watery tart, destroying the Horsemen’s compound, and saving Justine, being asked to prove her identity was just about the last damn straw.

  “We buried the hatchet while we were both captives, once and for all,” Justine reported. “That’s why Moira came back to save me.”

  “The Moira I know would have buried the hatchet in the back of your head,” Claire pointed out.

  Moira pulled up a stool from the counter and plopped onto it. “How exactly would you like me to prove my identity?”

  “What if she told us something only Moira would know?” Claire suggested.

  “Well there’s a short list,” Aerin snorted.

  “Would this help?” Moira lifted her tank-top and retrieved her wand from the waistband of her cut-offs, setting it on the kitchen island.

  Tierra, Claire, and Aerin gasped in unison.

  Even in the pedestrian light, it glowed iridescent like the inside of a clamshell.

  “Where did you get that?” Tierra asked.

  “Same place I got this.” Moira motioned to Justine, who handed her a canvas bag. Moira reached inside and withdrew the intricate crown, holding it up so the jeweled points caught the light before delicately depositing it on a kitchen towel. “It didn’t exactly go with my outfit, and truth to tell, I kinda felt like a fool wearing it.”