They shared a look of amusement, but neither of them could seem to summon so much as a smile. “Once I touched her… I never would have been able to do her violence.”
Nicholas poured himself another glass, and topped off Julian’s as well. “Then it’s a damn good thing your touch is so lethal.”
The Library door banged against the wall, and the Tiffany glass chandelier overhead blazed to life with a flip of a switch. “That’s it!” Drustan’s voice boomed over the groans of his comrades. “I’m taking away your Pavarotti. You’re bumming me the fuck out.”
Julian stood and took a threatening step toward War. “Touch Pavarotti, and I’ll give your precious Claire chronic, oozing boils on her unmentionables.”
“She’d still have a mouth.” Nicholas grinned.
“What crawled up your ass and died?” Drustan shucked his sweat-soaked shirt, uncovering a torso marred with the scars of millennia of warfare, and threw it in the fire.
“I have a right to a moment of melancholy,” Julian challenged. “I’m the only one who could carry out our task.”
Drustan picked up the bottle of Burgundy and made a face. Putting it down, he strode to the sideboard and pulled a local microbrew from the chest of ice. “Think again, Mon Ami. Aerin de Moray is alive and kicking. Well, swearing… For a woman, she has the mouth of a sailor, a soldier, and a trucker. Combined.”
Nicholas’s dark chuckle was one part surprise, two parts smug superiority. “Is she now?” He stood, draining another glass of wine before turning to Julian. “You were saying?”
It took Julian a full minute to recover. It wasn’t humiliation that choked him, nor was it anger at the news. But elation.
“It isn’t possible,” Julian said slowly.
“I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself,” Drustan insisted.
“I touched her suitcase. I shook her hand. She should have been dead within the hour.”
“You’re sure it was her?” Nicholas asked.
Julian nodded. “I took the photograph of the others you sent me. There was no mistaking that she was one of them.”
Aerin was alive. He’d look into her silver eyes again before this was all over. He’d hear the smoky alto of her voice. He’d breathe in her scent that reminded him of thunderstorms and the clean winter wind.
“How did she survive, Julian?” Drustan demanded.
“I—she shouldn’t have.”
“Is she with them?” Nicholas asked Drustan, standing and punching his arms back into his suit coat.
“Yup.” Drustan cast an accusatory glare at Julian.
“Don’t you dare look at me in that tone of voice,” Julian thrust his finger at War. “If you’d used the proper sword to thrust into Claire, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
Dru’s eyes flared with his legendary temper. “Hey, fuck you, pansy ass. At least I did more than shake her hand.”
“Indeed,” Julian said with his signature chill. “You managed to lose both your weapon and your wits to her.”
War attacked, but ran into Nicholas’ bracing shoulder. “We don’t have time for this shit. These witches are more powerful than we thought, and we need to come up with a plan.”
Drustan growled at Julian, but put his hands up in an ‘I’ll behave’ gesture. “We need to put an end to at least one of them before they find the Grimoire and we’re all fucked nine ways to Sunday.”
Julian acquiesced as he followed his brothers toward the garage door. “Upon that, at least, we agree.”
“First things first.” Drustan grabbed a clean, black tank on his way out, pulling it down over his belted jeans. “I’m getting my fucking sword back.”
“And your man-card along with it.” Nicholas laughed.
“I got my man card right here.” Drustan cupped himself.
“You may need it,” Julian said soberly. “It seems to be one of the only effective weapons against this cadre of witches. If we are to defeat them, it may have to be through one of the oldest and most dissolute means known.”
Both Conquest and War gave him almost comical matching stares of suspicion.
“The art of seduction, mes frères, is just as lethal and dangerous as the art of war.”
Chapter Five
Someone was working on the inside of Aerin’s throat with a belt sander. It was the first pain that returned her to semi-consciousness. The second was a sinus headache. Then neck pain, joint pain, muscle pain…well…everything pain, really. Her stomach clenched with emptiness and nausea, and her lungs struggled against being full.
A gentle hand pressed something cold against her burning forehead, and she wanted to bless whomever it was. She should probably work on opening her aching eyes first.
“She’s coming around,” said whoever held her head in a rather leathery lap.
“Good,” said another in that slow drawl. “I would have tried to catch her, but she dropped faster than a greased hog down a garbage chute. Wouldn’t have pegged her for the faintin’ type.”
Aerin was not the fainting type, and she was going to set that straight just as soon as she woke up all the way.
“She still doesn’t look so well,” worried the first voice.
“Let’s take her to the house, I have a few things that will help her along,” said a third.
That galvanized Aerin. No one was taking her anywhere without her say so.
“Take me to my hotel room!” she demanded. Well, it was more like she rasped, “Take…me…hotel…” But unless they were idiots, they’d get the gist.
“Like hell,” the gypsy was saying when Aerin finally summoned the courage to open her eyes. “We’re taking you home.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Aerin croaked as she struggled, and failed to sit. “You’re strangers with my face.” Damn, she was usually more articulate than this.
“We’re family,” said the gorgeous woman whose face was upside-down as she was the one holding Aerin’s head in her lap. Helmet hair somehow looked good on her.
Bitch.
“I don’t have family,” Aerin insisted, unable to look anyone in the eye for any amount of time. Her brain just couldn’t seem to process the three identical, yet infinitely diverse women all surrounding her.
“Well, you do now,” Daisy Duke announced. “Congratu-damn-lations.”
Aerin squeezed her eyes shut against the pounding in her head; hoping things had changed when she opened them again.
No such luck.
“This isn’t real,” she breathed, hiding behind her eyelids again. “What the shit did you give me?”
“Weren’t nothin’ but some healing weeds Tierra put in a brew. I figured you needed it on account that you’re sick.”
“Laced with what?” Aerin’s voice had turned from a rasp to a squawk, but she couldn’t exactly say that was progress. “Acid? Mushrooms? LSD?”
“Laced with love,” said the gypsy. “Now shut up and help us get you off the floor and into the car.”
It took all three of them to peel her off the café’s hardwood floor and get her into a semi-upright position.
“Sunny, please watch the café,” Gypsy said over her shoulder as she handed Aerin off to the other two and snatched up Aerin’s purse and phone.
“Sure thing, boss.”
“I’m…not…going…” No matter how Aerin fought it, she lost her protests to the darkness yet again.
****
She dreamed of eyes so blue and so fathomless, the entire planet rotated in their depths. Her sleep was filled with a yawning millennia of loneliness, though cool, strong, and elegant fingers stroked her burning skin with a tenderness that brought tears to her eyes.
“Don’t make me do this,” Julian’s silken baritone held a note of desperation.
Then her dreams became nightmares.
She was lying in a pool of blood, looking into the vacant, lifeless eyes of women who looked like herself. Then she was flying above the earth, ov
er piles—no—mountains of corpses. Men, women, children. Their flesh rotting and stinking of disease. Soldiers missing limbs and weapons strewn about fields and forests scorched bare and littered with ash and death. Armies of creatures unidentifiable terrorized and tortured what few souls were left writhing in grief, pain, and misery.
The sun became a black ball of ash and soot. Even the moon dripped with blood.
Whump.
Aerin woke with a scream stuck in her throat, and sweat dripping from her pores. Her body collapsed down onto a bed made of clouds or some shit and several unrequited addictions screamed through her all at once.
Smoke. Coffee. Water. Bathroom. In that order.
“She really is air,” someone murmured. “Did you see that?”
“Wish I could fly in my sleep,” snarked someone else.
“Did you guys hear something else fall?” A third asked. “Sounded like it was coming from the table over there.”
Alarm dragged Aerin through the fog and into the land of the living. She peeled her lids apart with herculean effort. “My purse,” she hissed over a dry, heavy tongue. “Cigarettes.”
“You are not smoking in my house,” Gypsy said, crossing her bangled arms over her breasts. “It’s time you quit, smoking will kill you.”
Those will kill you, you know, Julian had said.
Aerin shook her head to rid it of the memory and winced. “Yes, please,” she groaned. “Just let them kill me now.” Though she still felt pretty craptastic, the pounding in her head had abated a little, and she no longer felt like she was on death’s doorstep. But she was pretty sure she was still in his yard.
“Drink this.” The smokey-eyed biker beauty handed her a pottery mug with a disarming smile.
“Nuh-uh.” Aerin used the back of her hand to push it away. “I learned that lesson the hard way. I’m not taking anything from any of you until you tell me where the fuck I am, who the fuck you are, and what the fuck is going on.”
Her head was swimming again, so she focused on the white lace canopy above her bed, which could have comfortably slept all four of them with wiggle room to spare. From what she gathered in her periphery, the entire bedroom was done in spare black or white arabesque.
She approved.
“You’re at Maison de Moray,” Gypsy said, spreading her arms to encompass the room, but losing the effect in bell sleeves and bangles. She looked out of place in this room, her riot of color clashing with the clarity of the decor. “And I’m Tierra de Moray, your sister.”
“Moira Joule Malveaux,” said Daisy Duke, with what had to be all the twang that could possibly be found south of the Mason/Dixon line. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“de Moray,” Tierra corrected. “We’re all de Morays.”
“Sinclaire D’Ambrose,” said the sexy biker with that disarming, genuine smile.
“de Moray,” Tierra interjected again. “We’re going to have to take you all to get your names changed.”
“People call me Claire.” The woman didn’t skip a beat. “And I’m still trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, so you’re not alone, girl.”
Aerin liked Claire right away. She had a strength and wit shining from her eyes that instantly drew her.
“We all are.” Moira’s aqua blue eyes shimmered with an intelligence that many might not look past the tits and accent to find. “These past few weeks have been crazier n’ a Klansman at a sheet sale.”
Aerin still hadn’t been able to get past the word “sisters.” Past the fact that this room was filled with undeniable proof that she had a family. Each face a facet of her own, the only variances being eye color and subtle differences in bearing and deportment.
“And your name is?” Claire prodded.
“Aerin. Aerin Doe.”
Tierra stomped her sandaled feet, the chimes on her anklet making a cheerful noise that she obviously hadn’t intended. “de Moray, goddessdamnit! Are you not all listening to me? We’re family. We are part of a legacy as old as humanity. The de Moray women have been witches for as many generations as have been counted. But who we are, the four of us, that is something new. Something so powerful that other witches fear it. Fear us. We have a destiny, a great purpose. Haven’t you always been able to feel it?” Her eyes turned watery and her features tightened with a desperate longing. “I called you here because I knew there was a part of me missing. And because…we’re sisters. We need each other.”
Aerin’s throat clogged for a reason other than illness. She couldn’t deal with this shit right now. “What I need is a cigarette.” She tried to push herself up on arms that felt as weak as cooked spaghetti. “And then some answers that have nothing to do with this nonsense about magic. Like paternity and shit.”
“Ain’t nonsense.” Moira defended. “You can’t deny that you were just levitating more’n two feet above that bed in your sleep. Just imagine what you could do awake.” Her lovely eyes widened. “Shit on a shingle, can you fly?”
“I don’t know, can you count to twenty with your shoes on?”
Hurt immediately darkened to anger on Moira’s features, and Aerin did her best to squelch the guilt pooling in her chest. But, what the hell kind of question was that? Of course she couldn’t fly. She was a person, and people didn’t fly, they fell. Aerin she’d had to pick her sorry ass up enough times to know that beyond a shadow of a doubt. It sure would be nice to levitate to the top of the game, but she’d had to climb hand over bleeding hand, sometimes kicking her opponents off the wall to get where she was.
If she’d had any doubts they were sisters, those were shriveled by the narrow-eyed glare boiling through the air at her. It was the same one Aerin, herself, had visited on innumerable adversaries.
“Quicker’n you can strap yourself into that suit you musta mugged a door-to-door salesman for.” Her accent lent the acerbic tone a wrathful note.
“You’re one to talk about taste.” Aerin tried to swing her wobbly legs off the side of the bed to get closer to her cigarettes.
“That was uncalled for,” Claire reproached.
“This whole fucking thing is uncalled for,” Aerin bitched. “And can we all just hold off a damn minute until I gain my bearings here?” Bearings meaning cigarettes. She eyed her purse which was now hidden behind a very large, ancient looking book that she could have sworn wasn’t there a minute ago.
Oh yeah, come to mama.
Carefully putting her feet on the ground and testing her weight, Aerin tried to ignore the emotions tossed about the room like a chaotic typhoon. Though she could recognize them, she was having a hard time identifying the source, and the barrage became suffocating.
Hurt and disappointment underscored some curiosity, confusion, anger, desperation, and hope. God, she needed to get to her cigarettes. Once she started smoking, it would quiet the fumes of emotion and allow her to think clearly.
Making a desperate grab for her Gucci purse on the sturdy white sideboard beneath the window, she was nearly bruised by the force with which the huge book in front of her bag exploded open, it’s thick, yellowed pages flipped by a strong wind.
“Holyratfuck!” Aerin yelped as she jumped back, almost bowling Claire over. “What the shit is that?”
“You mean you’re not doing that?” Tierra demanded, wide green eyes fixed on the book.
“How in the ninth level of hell could I be doing that? That’s not supposed to be happening! It’s… It’s…”
“Impossible?” Claire finished, her voice laced with a touch of irony.
“Yeah, that too.”
As abruptly as the pages began to fly, they stilled, the book cracked open to a gilded page with stanzas no one could read from where they stood. The room filled with the silence of a tomb in the aftermath. Everyone watching. Waiting. Unwilling to step closer.
Moira broke the silence by emitting a loud humph, as she kicked her hip to the side and slid fingers into her tiny short pockets. “Okay,” she said evenly. “I’ll ad
mit that was rarer than armpits on a snake, but seems to me a book opens on its own, it’s just askin’ to be read.”
Aerin felt woozy again, and this time she wasn’t sure illness had much to do with it. That cold void of… something—power?—started to swirl within her, and she had to stop it. Had to shut it down before it consumed her. The only way she knew how to do that was with the cigarettes, but they were on the other side of that possessed book, and she couldn’t bring herself to reach for them just yet. The withdrawals screamed through her blood, threatening to set it on fire. The ice and heat somehow clashed like a storm front and sent lightning and thunder reverberating through her in the form of an irate anger the likes of which she’d never encountered.
“You first if you’re so eager to touch that thing.” She turned and gestured to Moira. “That is if you’re literate.”
Moira advanced, skimming a narrowed eye over the crumpled fabric of Aerin’s creamy suit. “Last time I saw that color was on a secondhand gown at a shotgun weddin’. Bride called me a slut on account of she couldn’t keep her man’s pecker from pointin’ my direction. Seems I recall her blood didn’t wash out of it so well,” she threatened as the glass of water on the bedside table began to rattle.
Aerin drew herself up to her full height, hoping they couldn’t see her weak trembling legs or the cold sweats that the fever gave her. “Its Armani eggshell, bitch, and bring it! I grew up on the streets of New York, you backwater, hillbilly skank. I’ll beat you so hard you’ll be shitting your own teeth. At least when you return back to that mud hole you crawled out of, you’ll fit right in.”
Moira lunged, but Claire jumped between them, catching the brunt of the impact. “Stop it, you two!”
“You’re too weak to punch the wings off a gnat,” Moira snarled. “I could finish you off with one hand.”
“Yeah,” Aerin smirked. “I’ve heard you’re good at that.” She could tell that she’d hit a mark, because the hurt that blasted at her from behind the rage intensified.
“That’s enough,” Tierra hollered, rushing forward and snatching the open book to her chest. “I didn’t call you here to fight. Grow up before you ruin everything. You’re acting like a bunch of… like you’re…”
Which Witch is Which? (The Witches of Port Townsend) Page 20
