by LJ Swallow
"So I gather. And how about the delightful War. Is he ready to apologise yet?"
Xander apologise? She knows the likelihood of that, judging by her smirking face.
"If the apology is mutual, I imagine he would," I reply. "Things became a little heated."
Portia carefully cuts cheese and places it onto to crackers she has lain out on a plate in front of her, and we wait as she slowly eats. Eventually she licks her fingers and returns her attention our way. "I'm prepared to listen to Xander, if he can agree to my terms."
One thing about Portia, it's impossible to judge what she's thinking. She's clever—putting herself across as a charming and friendly lady—but we've seen her darker moods many times.
"What terms?" asks Ewan. "We'll speak to him."
"An apology. The truth about everything you four have done in recent months. Xander must also allow us to question Verity."
I scratch my eyebrow. She certainly likes to pile on her demands.
"And Xander must come to my bed." Another sip, another smile.
"What?" Mine and Ewan's voices reply in shocked unison.
"Xander. Sex. A proof of our unity."
Oh, holy fuck. He would never do something like that. But my shock is joined by a guilty relief that she didn't ask either of us. But of course not, because she perceives Xander as our strongest and the one she needs to conquer.
There's no way anybody could conquer War.
Her laughter chimes around the kitchen. "Your faces! You Pony Boys are so precious! I adore you. I'm joking."
There's a part of me that thinks she isn't. Over the last ten years, Portia's repeatedly propositioned us and then denied she was interested. Is that face saving?
Ewan rubs a hand across his face. "I'm too tired for this, Portia. Can you accept us bringing home Elyssia as a pledge of our loyalty? If we wanted to betray the fae on any level, we wouldn't have helped. We didn't want to interfere because there’s enough shit we're dealing with right now, but we did."
"And for that I am very grateful, and yes this does shine a new light on our situation and relationship." She places her fingers on his arm. "I would like to repay your help in some way. Perhaps we could organise to meet, and you can tell me everything." She emphasis the word everything.
He looks over at me, and I nod. "As long as you reciprocate with information, Portia, because I think you’re holding something back too.”
“Of course.”
“And I don't want you to bring Logan to the meeting."
Portia drops into one of her silences, the kind where things could go either way. Then she smiles. "I will be in touch tomorrow. I need to attend to my daughter."
She leaves us in the kitchen, where I stare at the school notices attached to the fridge by magnets, at the planner posted on the wall besides Kailey's behaviour chart. The kitchen's filled with the ordinary in the middle of a household that's anything but.
We leave, hearing raised voices above as we pass the stairs, hopeful we may be able to get back on track with Portia and gain some help.
11
JOSS
I stand in the study and cross my arms as I run a gaze along the bookshelves in the quiet room looking for a specific book. The afternoon Vee made it clear our relationship would be between the five of us, and not two, I joked about showing her the pictures in one book, but now I'm concerned this isn't a joke anymore.
The book—containing Truth—is one filled with references to demonic magic, and that scares me. This worried us early on, until we met Vee and discovered how much of us she contained, and how I couldn’t sense anything demonic around her. But does her recent behaviour point to a demon connection? Judging by how tricky everything is right now, I'm keeping these worries to myself to avoid an overreaction, especially by Ewan.
Vee's calmer than she was, back to her old self.
I'm not.
I have no fucking idea what I saw when I died, but I'm followed by an unease as great as when the wraith, or whatever the hell it was, followed me. As with the creatures that attacked Ewan, I've spent spare time pouring over books while Ewan looks online.
There's nothing in any mythology that harms in the way the creature killed me. A Horseman. One of the strongest beings on the planet.
But am I? Are we?
What and why did I remember?
The worst part is that the scene loops through my mind. If I drift away, tired by everything, the image of the girls, the gun... death sneak in. Worse still, I find myself in the place I was amongst the screaming. Just thinking about it sets my heart racing at a level that constricts my chest to the point I can't breathe.
I asked Ewan what happened when he died, and he saw nothing. Maybe because he was only dead for minutes?
I'm damn sure Xander or Heath will be targeted next, and if it's Heath... what then? Vee doesn't have the power.
Yet.
"Joss?" Vee's voice pushes through the shadows in my mind and shoves away the memories about to return.
The soft expression and concern in her eyes isn't an emotionless Vee, perhaps Ewan got through to her? The wild-eyed need isn't in her eyes as it was last time we spent time in the study.
Did she really want me that evening? Or was she driven by this primal something inside her? Now Vee's calmer about the situation and she hasn't hinted she wants help with eradicating her humanity, I'm relaxing around her. Perhaps I'll discover her true motives.
"I wanted to show you the books. We haven't had time with all the craziness, and that's not disappearing soon, but I think it's important."
"Is this the one with the picture you mentioned? I've been wondering what's so hilarious about that."
I chew on my lip. "It was funny at the time."
As I run a finger along the shelved books to locate the right one, Vee approaches from behind and wraps her arms round my waist. She places her head on my back.
"Are you okay now, Joss?" she says. "You haven't spoken about things fully. You still don't feel right to me."
I loosen her arms and turn, encompassing Vee in mine and pulling her close. She smells good, vanilla-flavoured Vee with her soothing presence. She asked me in the past why I always wanted to hold her when we slept together and always kept amazing self-control. Yeah, that was bloody hard, but I worried if I scared her away, I wouldn't be able hold her and absorb the comfort she gives that bolsters me when things are tough.
Heath complains how he hates his role as Death; Ewan sometimes barely disguises his stress about the role. Xander? I don't know; his mood swings probably keep him focused in an unfocused way. Me? I crave the closeness, the touch, and the natural comfort from being with somebody who brings out the human Joss and lets me forget the Horseman side.
For me, this is Vee.
"I had a weird vision." I don't mean to say anything; the words spills out.
"When? Just now?"
"No." I sit on the nearby chair, and Vee perches on my lap, arms wound around my neck. Her easy intimacy draws me closer to her and allows me to admit what I haven't to anybody.
I tell her the story of what I saw the first time and the second. I choke back the words several times, and she grips me tighter smoothing my hair.
I finish, emotionally and physically drained, more than any time I've fought demons—because this time I'm fighting mine. Vee voices what I didn't want her to.
"I know you believe in the Biblical, Joss. Do you think you were in Hell?" Her words are hesitant, spoken into my hair. and I hold her harder.
I swallow. "Yes."
"And do you think the man you saw—"
"Was me?" I interrupt. "Yes."
Vee pulls away and holds my face in both hands. "No. He couldn't be. Joss, you're a good person. You care. You're intuitive. The day I arrived in your lives, you helped me. You never showed a single sign of malice."
I pull her hand from my cheek, and every question that's come to me when I've lain in the dark spills out. “But what if the person
I saw in the two visions is another me, and I was in Hell because of the things I did to people? What if this is my second chance, and if I fuck up, I’m dragged back to Hell? I'm worried that's what happened to the Horsemen who came before us.""
My anxiety rises as concern flickers across Vee's face. My words sound too convincing.
"But we can't be sure Hell exists, Joss."
I gesture at the books. "Something does. Maybe under a different name, not labelled by a religion. I've said this before. I call him Lucifer for want of a better name."
"Call who, Joss?"
"Whoever rules the realm beyond the portal the Order want to breech. The one who plans to send through his demon race to conquer the human world. What if all this shit happening is to prevent us paying attention to the portals? We're distracted."
Vee chews her lip. “How do you know if the portals are under threat from those on the other side?”
"We sense it."
"And do you now?"
"No."
“Then don't worry. Focus on what's happening."
We fall into silence, and I fight the quickened breathing that betrays my fear. I need to know more.
“I thought you were quiet because you were recovering from the attack. I didn't know this was happening."
"I can't stop thinking about it, Vee. I doubt myself. I'm terrified I'm going to lapse back into whoever he was."
"He wasn't you, Joss. This is who you are. The man who loves and cares for us all. The guy who succeeded in resisting my request to lose part of who I am because of that love and loyalty."
I look into Vee's eyes, seeking a true answer to my next question, even though I know she can't lie. "Do you still want that, Vee? Do you still want to lose your human side?"
She looks away, stroking my cheek with her thumb lost in thought. "Sometimes." She looks back. "I fight it. Ewan made me realise what would happen if I do. I want to love you all, and be loved by you all. I want the closeness we have as five, and all that's happening is I'm pushing you away."
I catch a hint of something else. "But?"
"But there's something here." Vee places a fist on her chest. "Something gnawing I can't explain, and I'm scared it will devour me."
We share a look, an understanding. Do we all have the same thing eating at us? I rub her legs. "Let me show you the book. Maybe that will explain something—to both of us."
The blue leather-bound book smells of the past, the pages musty to join the peculiar smell the combined ageing books give the room. Every book was in this room when we arrived, as if left there for research. I found this one a few months later; it took me a while to work through them. Many confused me with their rows and rows of scrawled text in an unfamiliar language. This one included images, and I was drawn to the contents as I began to recognise and decipher things.
I open at the beginning, a blank page of thick paper.
"This starts with Biblical stories, a history lesson, I guess." I flick past pages crammed with neatly printed text. "These are Biblical verses about us."
Vee scratches her head. "About the Biblical Horsemen."
I nod. "You should read this, if you don't know our namesakes' full story. Even these days, humans predict the seven seals will open into an apocalypse. We only know of six portals, so maybe one has already. But we're supposed to walk through and devastate the world, so this obviously isn't accurate as we didn’t."
"Okay. So what else?"
I flick through pages until I find illustrations. "These show where the portals are located. There's one on each continent."
"Wow. What if they were all attacked at once? There're four of you and you're in one place."
"Yeah, we asked ourselves that question." I point at the page, showing lines running between the portal symbols. "I think they're linked, as if they need to be opened in a specific order."
"And have any been breached while you've been in the world?"
"No. We've visited them to inspect what they are, but that's it. Our main concern is keeping what's already here under control to stop any attack on them from this side."
"And you think that's what's happening now?"
"I don't know. I suspect there’s a more coordinated plot that involves taking us out first."
I continue turning the pages, and Vee leans over as the Horsemen’s names appear on separate pages, with visual representations of our powers. She laughs. "Was this a training guide?"
I give a wry smile. "If it is, we didn't find the book until after our powers triggered."
"I bet that was a shock!"
"Oh yeah. Instinct ruled in those situations." I scratch my nose and turn a page. "Here's you."
A simple depiction of a female figure surrounded by four males, carefully inked in black, is drawn on the page. Beneath, a simple diagram of a circle represents Vee and four lines representing us touching the circle, two at the top, two at the bottom.
"So there's Truth at the centre of us."
Vee studies this for a minute.
"Xander originally thought the four of us combined created Truth, but we gradually became aware Truth was another entity. Partly because of this." On the next page, a more anatomically correct version of a woman graces the page.
Vee snorts. "Oh, nice. I think they captured my likeness well, though I think my breasts are smaller than that."
I chuckle. "I'll check and confirm later, if you like?"
She flicks my nose and kisses me.
"So, the next page?"
Vee goes to turn the page, and I place my hand on it. "That's everything relevant in the book."
"Liar." She pushes my hand away and picks up the book, then rests it on her lap.
I sigh. "Just don't think this is anything more than a symbolic representation. Like the circle and lines."
"Whoa!" Page turned, Vee almost drops the book. "What the hell?"
Yeah, the picture I was going to show as a joke, days ago, when she spoke about wanting us all. I intended to use this to tease Xander, who was adamant he had no connection to her.
On the page are the five figures represented throughout the book. Joined.
Physically.
"Well that's a bit bloody different to the circles and lines!" Vee continues to stare, brow pinched. She points. "Is this suggesting we'll do... this?"
"Uh. I don't know. I think it just illustrates what we thought. That Truth is a central part of the Four Horsemen. That a Fifth is part of us."
"But together? At the same time?"
I watch warily, attempting to pick up on her emotions.
Then she laughs.
"Omigod, what did Xander think about this once he realised Truth was a woman, and this depicted him having group sex with his brother involved?" She snorts a laugh, but I can't help smiling too.
"What do you think?" I ask cautiously.
She taps the page. "What do I think about having sex with you all at once? Seriously, Joss?"
"No! I mean what do you think it means?"
"Probably what you said. This situation won't happen, by the way, even if you were all willing." She laughs again. "Oh, man... I wouldn't know what to do with you all."
I share her amusement, and a relief Vee doesn't believe this is any more than symbolic. The idea does not appeal to me either. At all.
"Yes. The other symbol, the circle and lines, is just a physical representation of that. Confirms what we think, right? That if I have sex with all of you, I'll become stronger." She shakes her head with another chuckle. “Just individually though.”
I nod and ignore the Ewan-shaped elephant in the room. "Yes. There's something on the next page that's weird."
Vee flips over. The next page is blank. "What?"
"Huh?" I pull the book from her and stare down. "There are two pages missing. I think; I'm sure I remember a page with symbols on. I was going to compare them to the Collector's book." I rub my head. Did I imagine it? I've studied a lot of books recently. "Maybe it was a different
book." I run a finger along where the pages bind, but there's no sign anything was torn out. "It was another figure. This was who we thought was trying to get through, the one the demons tell us about."
“I could help you check other books?” suggests Vee as she sets the one she’s holding on the table.
I rub my face. “Sure. Another time. I’m exhausted after tonight.”
“Hmm. Yes. Elyssia. Do you think this will help mend things with Portia?”
“I hope so.” I wrap my arm around Vee’s waist and look up at her. There’s a troubled look in her eyes as she looks back. “Are you okay? Is this about the book?”
She touches my lip with two fingers. “I’m sorry about what happened last time we were in here. I shouldn’t have pressured you like I did.”
I laugh in disbelief. “Are you talking about the sex, Vee? Believe me, you didn’t pressure me into that. I always told you I was just waiting for the go ahead.”
“No, I mean trying to make you take my emotions, putting you in that position.”
I pull her head towards me and rest my forehead against hers. “Honestly, the only position I was thinking about was the one I was in with you.”
“Very funny.”
“Seriously, I wouldn’t have done that if I thought there was any chance I would lose control and do what you’d wanted. I care too much about the girl I’m holding now to risk losing her.”
Vee presses her soft lips against mine, and we hold our mouths together with the humming emotion passing between us. “I don’t want you to think I was just seducing you because my powers took over.”
“I know,” I run a finger along her cheek. “I can tell how you really feel, remember.”
Sighing, Vee wraps her arms around my neck. “Thank you.”
I slide a hand beneath Vee’s shirt and stroke her warm skin. “But you do realise I’ll never be able to sit in this study again without picturing you naked on the desk.”
In this moment, peace and happiness washes over me I haven’t felt for days. Vee’s. She climbs from my knee and holds out a hand. “Let’s go to bed.”
I arch a brow. “Are you seducing me again, Miss Verity?”
