“Well, it sure as hell did when someone shot me through the chest with his flaming arrow.”
Nick at least had the grace to look mildly regretful. “Assuming that wand will keep you from getting a wicked case of the clap, what makes you think that you two can convince the wicked you’re in love?”
“As much as I hate to say it, Nick brings up a decent point.” Claire looked from Moira to Julian and back again. “You two aren’t exactly what you call a match made in heaven.”
Contrary to the assumption made by many when the twang of her bayou patois vibrated the delicate membranes within their ears, Moira was not a fool. She knew what there was to see when others looked at her. Understood that sex was the language she spoke most fluently and any brains she might have were always filtered through it.
And yet, when she’d had even half a chance to read growing up, it was the courtly tales she’d disappeared into. She had long been conscious of a deep ache for a world where doors were opened to her for reasons other than cadging a glance at her ass.
The truth was that pretending interest in a man like Julian Roarke wouldn’t require much pretending at all. It was pretending to be the kind of woman he might like where her brain started to bog down like a pontoon motor in a weed patch.
“All respect to Plato,” Julian said, “but I’ve found that like attracts like isn’t always a reliable adage when human courtship is concerned. History lacks no precedent for the coupling of apparently ill-suited companions.”
“Yeah, but none of those couples were under the close scrutiny of Satan herself,” Claire pointed out.
“That we know of,” Dru added.
“What I mean is,” Claire clarified, “it won’t do us one lick of good if you two aren’t actually capable of selling it to Lucy. Maybe we should see what you’ve got before we commit to the plan.”
Moira sought the only other pair of blue eyes in the room. She couldn’t help but wonder if this shade didn’t indicate an inherent kindness like her own, something not shared with his dark-eyed brothers three.
Claire’s eyebrows lifted expectantly. “Well?”
“You’re saying you want us to practice?” Moira’s throat worked over a swallow the approximate size of a duck egg.
“That’s what I’m saying.” One side of Claire’s brick-red lips twisted upward.
“Here?” Julian’s voice matched Moira’s own for uncertainty.
“Yep,” Claire confirmed.
“Now?” Moira gulped.
“No time like the present,” Dru chimed in.
Allowing herself one deep breath, Moira turned and faced Julian, still seated on the opposite side of the room. “All right then.”
Suddenly, she was back in what passed for a middle school dance in Stumps Bayou. A dark, sweaty basement beneath the reception hall the First Church of the Lamb’s Holy Blood loaned out on the weekends to supplement its meager collection plate offerings. Cement cold beneath the industrial carpet. The air heavy with dust and the scent of moldering hymnals. A circle of faces cast in sharp relief by the flashlight pilfered from the custodian’s closet. Zydeco music thumping false cheer through the floorboards above.
At the center of it all, an old brown beer bottle, spinning like a centrifuge and Moira, at its outside edge, feeling the pressure flatten her lungs.
She felt just as breathless now.
Julian rose when she was yet halfway across the distance separating them, driven by manners acquired in another time. An older time.
They faced each other, awkward and stiff as two scarecrows, propped together in a field by bizarre circumstance.
Over in the corner, Nick looked like he was being eaten alive by insects from the inside out. Face twitching. Muscles flicking and bunching. A fine sheen of sweat blooming on his brow.
“So, how do you figure we ought to do this?” Moira shifted her weight from one bare foot to the other.
Julian looked thoughtful for a moment. “Perhaps we might begin with an embrace?”
“An embrace.” She nodded, grateful for the suggestion. “Okay. That sounds all right. I reckon we could do that.”
Neither of them made an attempt to move.
“Shall we?” Julian’s arms rose stiff within his tailored dinner jacket. The buttons on his waistcoat winked in the lamplight, catching the strands of the same silvery hue at his temples.
“Sure,” Moira said. “That is, if you’re ready.”
“I am.”
“Okay, then.”
“Indeed.”
“Wow.” Dru rolled his eyes. “This is giving me a hell of a boner.”
“Hush your face, Duh-rew.” Moira took a half step toward Julian. “All right. Here I come.”
Julian mimicked her movement. “As do I.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Dru planted a hand squarely between each of their shoulder blades and shoved them together sternum to sternum like two halves of an apocalyptic sandwich.
And then she was hugging Julian Roarke.
Chapter Seven
And then she wasn’t hugging Julian Roarke because his body had accelerated away from hers so quickly that for a brief second, her arms were still in the air where his waist had been. Only when Moira heard the crash did she discover what had happened.
Nicholas Kingswood.
Conquest in his full glory had launched himself across the room and into Julian’s body with bone shattering force.
Well, coffee table shattering force anyhow.
The splinters exploded outward more violently than if had someone had taken dynamite to a woodchuck.
On top of the rubble of broken wood, Nick and Julian struggled for purchase. Having initiated the attack, Nick had the benefit of superior position. He managed to get his hands around Julian’s throat at roughly ascot level and squeezed with enough force to cause his brother’s eyes to bulge as his face reddened.
“You touched my woman, you diseased fuck!” White flecks of saliva gathered at the corners of Nick’s mouth. His eyes lit with the same curious glow Moira remembered in the seconds before he released his arrow on Siren’s Cry.
“As part of a plan to thwart the Devil, you ignorant swine pizzle!” Every word was a tortured gasp from Julian’s constricted throat.
Nick might have taken Julian’s lack of physical objection as a refusal or inability to fight. Most likely because Nick couldn’t see what his dexterous brother was doing behind his broad back.
Julian’s gloves had literally come off.
And what followed would put Moira off oysters for the rest of her natural life.
The long, elegant fingers of Julian’s bare hands fastened on Nick’s forearms. A look of utter shock was quickly wiped away by the dawning of agony, intense enough to crush Conquest’s face into a grimace.
First, the skin surrounding Pestilence’s grasp bubbled up into bilious sores. Weeping, the skin beneath them fell away in great, gray slimy sheets. Nick howled in pain and rage but refused to relinquish his hold.
It might have been the sight of exposed muscle, red and raw as a Sunday roast, that finally galvanized War into action. He was on his feet in one second and had Nick in a headlock the next, a bicep roughly the size of a grapefruit flexing around Conquest’s neck.
“Let. The fuck. Go.” Dru’s voice was low and lethal. Enough to have Moira reaching for Claire’s hand.
“Three of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are having a throw-down in our living room,” Claire said. The words were as flat and toneless as if she were announcing she needed to have a pee.
Moira said the only thing she could think of. “And?”
“And nothing,” Claire sighed. “I just felt like it needed to be said.”
Conquest did not surrender. Not when War threatened to disembowel him with an apocalyptic sword. Not when Pestilence melted his arms into bloody stumps only for Nick to regenerate them and have them melted all over again.
No.
Only when Moira squatted
down next to him and spoke one sentence calmly into his ear.
“Nicholas Kingswood, so help me Goddess, if you don’t turn loose of Julian right this second, I will never again hump you to kingdom come so long as either one of us lives.”
And just like that, it was over.
Nick released Julian’s neck. Smooth, tanned skin closed around the mess of muscle and tendon on full display from the elbow down. He stood, brushed a few flecks of gore sticking to the rolled cuffs of his shirt and straightened his tie.
Julian recovered his gloves, neatly tugging each finger into place before rising to his feet and returning a few fugitive hairs to the cue tied at the base of his neck. The red marks where Nick’s fingers had been were rapidly fading, along with whatever strange, sudden violence had taken over the room.
Moira had been no stranger to barroom brawls growing up. Hell, it wasn’t a Saturday night without one.
But something about watching Julian and Nick go after each other churned the deepening current of dread within her.
This is what it’s like.
This is what it’s like when the world and all the creatures on it spin ever closer to their collective end. When all is greed, hatred, and hunger. When even brothers tear at each other in blind, selfish rage.
This is what it’s like when all that’s left is darkness. Vengeance. Destruction.
Opening the Seals may have loosed the plagues, but it was what evil found in human hearts that made it stay.
Was it any wonder Lucy had decided to make this place her home? Her playground?
“You are so cleaning this mess up. You know that, right?” Claire stood over the broken table, her hand on her hip, eyes narrowed at Nick. “If you think I’m picking wads of your skin off the floor, you are out of your immortal skull.”
Dru’s attention swiveled to Claire, the one spot in the room it never strayed far from in the first place. “He’d be fucking thrilled to clean up, wouldn’t you, Nick?”
When Nick began to protest, Moira cleared her throat and folded her arms beneath her breasts.
Right beneath her breasts.
“You have a dustpan or something?” The words sounded like they had been forced through a filter of industrial strength fuck you, but for Nick, they represented Herculean strides.
“This way,” Moira said. “In the kitchen.”
Nick followed her from the parlor through the entryway and into the kitchen, by far Moira’s favorite part of the home. Always clean, but never quite tidy, cluttered in a warm and welcoming way. It had been here where she and Tierra had first unburdened their souls of the pain their upbringing had caused. Here she and Aerin had reconciled over fried chicken after their first zombie battle. Here where she and Claire busted each other’s cops and shared shots of whiskey.
It felt colder now as Moira walked through it. The various herbs looked blanched and sad by comparison to their cheerful planters—an attic sale jumble of pots and tea cups and whatever else Tierra had felt like nestling them in on any given day.
They seemed to miss their mistress as much as Moira did.
Killian Bane, if you’re not taking care of her, I will pluck every feather from those flashy wings you’re so proud of.
“Broom and dustpan are in there.” Moira gestured to the small utility closet next to the pantry. “But I think a wheelbarrow and a shop vac would do a better job for you.”
“And where are those?” Nick asked.
“Nowhere,” Moira reported. “We don’t have either.”
“Thanks a heap.” Nick bent to retrieve the dustpan as well as an industrial sized black plastic garbage bag. Something about seeing him in this routine domestic situation had Moira’s panties migrating to places they oughtn’t. “How can an earth witch not own a wheel barrow?”
“Well, we used to have one, but Tierra insisted that Claire burn all the tools those zombies touched after they were done building the shed on account of all the undead cooties they probably had.”
“Can’t say I blame her.” He glanced back at her over his shoulder. “Do you have a better broom? The bristles on this one are all—”
Nick’s sharp intake of breath sucked whatever he had intended to say back down his throat. Most likely because Moira’s hand had found its way into the front pocket of his pants and around his cock. Her breasts pressed into the warm expanse of his back while her nipples tightened painfully beneath the ribbed fabric of her tank top.
His blood moved as quickly as the rest of him did. In seconds he was full and hot beneath her grip as his knuckles whitened around the broom handle.
“My, my, my.” Moira breathed against the space between his shoulder blades. Her hand continued its leisurely exploration. “I ain’t never felt fabric like this on the inside of a pocket. What’s this made of, anyway?”
“Silk,” Nick hissed through his teeth.
“Silk. That explains why it’s so…slippery.” She slid her hand quickly downward by way of illustration. “I’m slippery, too, Nick. Want to feel?”
Moira peeled Nick’s fingers away from the broom handle and dragged them behind him to find the warmth of her thigh. Upward, under her skirt, across the moisture blooming through her panties.
He tried to turn then, the habit of his dominance rising up as elemental as the very dust from the earth’s making and nearly as old. An answering rush quickened in her blood and she pushed him against the closet wall with strength beyond her own. Strength Nick himself had given her along with his blood. The same elixir pulsed within his flesh beneath her grip.
“You didn’t like it when Julian touched me, did you, Mr. Kingswood?”
“No.”
“I’m afraid he’s gonna have to touch me a lot more before all this is said and done.” The muscles in his back tensed against her cheek. “But for every time he touches me, I’m going to touch you. Twice as hard. Twice as long. He hugged me, now I’m huggin’ you. See how this works?”
He made no answer.
Maybe because she’d tightened her grip on him, working her way upward and over the part of him she knew to be twice as silky as the fabric covering it.
“This plan ain’t gonna work if you’re bustin’ in and shooting everything all to hell every time I get close to Julian. You understand? I’m asking you to cooperate. Not for Aerin. Not even for me. I’m asking you to do it for you. For Nicholas Kingswood. Because every time I pretend with Julian, I’m going to take it out on you.”
His big body shuddered with animal pleasure at the proposition, which she’d chosen to phrase like a threat for this very reason.
“Good boy. Now go clean up your mess.” She went on tiptoe to bite the muscle at the base of his neck before swatting his ass and releasing him.
Knowing smiles met them when they re-entered the parlor. The largest pieces of the table had vanished, leaving only odd wood chips and splinters behind.
“Good news is we have some extra fire wood,” Claire announced. “Bad news is now we’re going to have to come up with a story about what happened to the table.”
From the way Dru picked splinters off his tight black t-shirt, Moira guessed he might have taken it out and busted it up by hand.
“Maybe you oughta go singe it a little bit,” Moira suggested. “We can tell Aerin you were practicing a spell that went sideways.”
“Not a bad idea.” Claire rose from the couch with Dru in tow like a steroid-enhanced shadow. “Be right back.”
Nick made quick work of sweeping the unspeakable combination of both immortal and wooden remains into the black trash bag.
Moira followed behind him, dousing the area in Tierra’s favorite disinfecting concoction of tea tree and lemon oil when he was finished.
“Would you mind carrying that out to the trash?” she asked Nick, deliberately glancing at Julian, who had retired to the window seat with a stack of books borrowed from the nearby shelves.
A fine white line appeared around Nick’s lips as his jaw flexed. “Not
at all.”
And then there were two.
Chapter Eight
Julian’s intense solitude populated the room, filling the space everyone had left behind. He was remote as a statue seated there, the world dissolving beyond the borders of the pages beneath his scrutiny. Moira wasn’t sure if it was the direct sunlight filtering through the window or the ugliness that had unfolded only moments before, but his espresso-dark hair seemed shot through with more silver than she’d noticed before.
Slowly and with more care than she used to sneak up on a footless duckling, Moira waded into the silence.
She eased herself down on the cushion next to his, surprised to find herself crossing one leg over the other and tugging her skirt down toward her knee. What was it about Julian Roarke that made everything about her feel as subtle as a drag queen at an Amish barn raising?
“Medieval Herbs and Poultices, huh?” She leaned in to peek at an intaglio print of a hydrocephalic monk smashing what looked like bowling pin into a cup of green weeds. “Don’t get attached. I heard there’s a surprise twist at the end.”
Julian didn’t speak.
“So, that went well,” she said. “You give a pretty damn good hug, if you don’t mind me saying.”
It wasn’t exactly a scoff, the sound Julian made. More like an exhale, but with feeling.
“Nick and me had ourselves a chat. I think he’ll be all right from now on.”
“I.” Julian didn’t look up from the text.
“’Scuse me?”
“Nick and I,” he repeated. “You wouldn’t say me had a chat. The same rules apply whether it’s a compound subject or you individually.”
“You don’t say.” Truth was that Moira knew exactly how that sort of thing worked but she was too lazy to try and school her tongue against following the well-worn pathways in her mind. That, and she had no end of fun annoying Aerin with her hideous grammatical abominations. “Let me try this again.” Here, she cleared her throat. “Nicholas Kingswood and I conversed at length, and unilaterally decided it would be mutually beneficial if he were to refrain from further displays of aggression in accordance with our plan to prevent one Lucifer the she-demon from facilitating the world’s end.”
Which Witch is Wild? (The Witches of Port Townsend Book 3) Page 20
