Arthur was the first one to emerge, and then, one by one, the others followed him out as they circled me. I lifted my eyes to his, and then I rolled them when I found his smile filled with victory. My outfit changed, and my swords slid into my hands.
“That wasn’t smart, hiding outside the Guild, Arthur,” I uttered. “It was rather easy to find you here.”
“You are too predictable, Erie. I like the new digs, easier to take what is owed to me, and I’ve been waiting a long time to take my pound of flesh and fuck that worthless thing between your legs. I won’t be gentle.”
“And what is owed to you? The sex you think you earned by abusing me? You befriended a child who had never known love, and you used that against me. The only thing you have earned is death.”
“Look around you; you’re surrounded, Erie. You have always been less, and will always be less than we are. You think he is going to save you this time? He isn’t. You won’t get an option to say no to me anymore.”
“Oh, no, he’s not coming. I put them to sleep until I return to him. You, on the other hand,” I said with a dark smile. “You die here, all of you who think to take a woman’s choice from her. Your death, though, I’m not going to lie. I plan to enjoy it.”
A commotion sounded behind us, and the Knights turned as I studied the man Arthur had become. Immortality suited him, but like all beings who played with dark magic, it took its toll on him. His skin was pale, colored in lifeless runes that wouldn’t protect him, not from me. He’d been with the witches, and I could smell them on him. He thought he was backed by Hecate, but she wasn’t shit compared to me, nowhere near my level of evil.
“You seem less…arrogant?” Arthur growled, and his men drew their swords as the Fae and others moved in around us, surrounding his Knights.
“I assure you, I have never been arrogant.” I didn’t flinch as he moved closer, the scuffling in the alley behind us drawing him to it. “I wouldn’t do that,” I said as I turned with him, watching as he took in the Fae who stepped from the shadows, staring at me.
“Erie, get the fuck over here, and where the fuck is your shirt?” Zahruk’s eyes searched mine, and I smiled coldly as he took me in and then shook his head, watching me.
“Back up, Zahruk,” Lucian growled as he stared at me.
He felt it, the power that exhumed from me. Arthur drew my attention back to him as I turned, eyeing him before I disappeared, appearing right in front of him, slamming my fingers through his eyes and ripping him in half, straight down his body. I knelt down, pushing my hands into his blood as I brought it up to my face, painting it before I painted the rest of my body, unable to stop myself as I turned around, standing to stare at them and their horrified, widened stares.
“The fuck, Erie?” Zahruk demanded, and my eyes turned to take him in. “The fuck?”
“Zahruk, you really need to shut the fuck up right now.”
“You mind explaining what the hell is going on then, Lucian?” Synthia said as she stared at me.
I was dressed in merely a skirt, my wild hair covering my naked breasts that were painted in woad. I smiled as Zahruk took me in. I could smell the lust oozing from him, his need to feed calling to me as he watched me. He wasn’t afraid, but he also didn’t want me as my men did; he wanted to fuck me, and that was it. I could read it in his sapphire eyes as they began to glow, revealing his own beast that peered out at me, wanting me.
“That isn’t Erie anymore. That is who she truly is. Meet the real Mórrígan, ladies, and gentlemen,” Lucian said as a tick in his jaw hammered. I closed the distance between us as my bare feet dragged across the ground until I was close enough to taste his unique scent. Once I reached him, I took in the sheer brilliance of his mask that he’d donned to appear human.
“Pretty shell,” I whispered huskily, leaning over, smelling him as I took in the pretty form he preferred when in the realm of mortals. My hand lifted, cupping his cheek before I stood on my toes, and stretched to kiss his cheek. “I like the other one better though.”
“I’m still stronger than you, and I’ll still kick your fucking ass, Mórrígan.”
“Why didn’t you come to find me?” I asked, tilting my head with a frown. “Why would you leave me there, knowing I suffered at the hands of weak-minded men?”
“Couldn’t, little one,” he said, pushing the wild hair away from my face and smiling down at me sadly as he tucked it behind my ear. “You weren’t fully awakened yet, and I couldn’t feel or see you. You never used your power, which meant it didn’t alert anyone to the fact that you were back.”
“I needed you, and I needed them. They hurt me, and I didn’t even know who I was or what I was. I didn’t understand why I deserved to be hurt or why they thought me evil. I was left unprotected in my darkest hour of need, and in my weakest form.”
“You are never weak, sweet girl. You are War, and the song of a million battles plays within your veins. You killed them all, and if I’m correct, you also have the druids hiding from what they’ve awoken. What do you intend to do now?”
“I’m about to take Lucifer’s entire army from him and leave him vulnerable. You’re welcome. He’s hiding in the veil with a small human that you wanted, if I am not mistaken. You were looking for him, I found him. I am owed.”
“If you take his army and leave him exposed, indeed, Goddess, you will be owed.”
“What the fuck is this?” Zahruk asked.
“When a Goddess is awoken from death or brought back, as is Erie’s case, they slumber. Callaghan, or Balor as we call his beast, protected her until she began to grow. He left her defenseless with druids, and then somewhere along the way, the Goddess of Battle emerged once more and began planning to set the world on fire. And now, it burns for her as many a man has done before.”
“Playing sweet for me, Lucian? You shouldn’t, you know I don’t like sweet men. And not the entire world or every man burned for me.” I smiled at Lucian, who smirked and nodded his head at the secret we held. “Only those who thought to kick me when I was down will perish. You should never kick the Goddess of War when she is down, because when she gets back up, they go down one by one as they beg me for mercy, and the Goddess of War has no mercy to give. It may be a new world, but it still has the same problems. I have to go, but if you follow me, Zahruk, I will give you back what I have taken from you,” I smiled as I vanished.
Chapter 48
Erie/Mórrígan
I stood in the shadows of the room, watching my lovers sleep from the heavy magic I’d used to force them into it. Arthur’s blood clung to my flesh, dried, crusted, and already flaking off, which was a pity since it felt so good. Callaghan’s thick lashes brushed against his high cheekbones as I pushed the memories of our love deep into his subconscious.
I’d loved him; I’d loved him so freaking much that I would have done anything to get him. He was right; I was his monster. I was their monster. I didn’t love like a normal woman because I wasn’t. I’d been through hell before ever gazing into the crystalline, glowing eyes of my fated beast. I’d watched worlds burn to ashes, creatures that should have been invincible being slaughtered, and the rise of mankind. Watched the most brutal and unforgiving race of all time evolve into what it had become today.
He’d killed me, which was true. However, it hadn’t happened as he remembered it. None of what they remembered of me was the full truth. I’d tried to save Callaghan, and the Gods themselves had taken me from my beautiful beast. How they had become one entity was beyond me, but I was glad they had. It had taken a piece of my very soul to make Balor, my beast, immortal like me. It was the most selfless thing a Goddess could bestow upon another being. You had to truly love the being enough that your soul would find a home within them and flourish to keep them alive. Fomorians were only partly immortal, living less than a thousand or so years, and I’d wanted him forever.
Swall
owing hard, I pushed more memories into the sleeping pair and watched as they turned over, disturbed in their endless magic-enhanced slumber as I slunk out of the shadows and sat beside them, pushing dark blond hair away from his face. Lying beside him, I placed my hand into his, holding it to create a conduit for my memories of the events to slip into his mind.
Paris, weeks before the fall of the Templar Knights.
My lips brushed against his, and his eyes watched me warily. I knew he was pulling away, sensing the uneasiness which he felt in my presence. His bright, beautiful eyes watched me as I rose from the bed we’d shared as I grabbed the sheer, rose-scented robe and turned back to let him see all of me. Those eyes that I adored sparkled with lust, even as he lifted from the bed and leaned on his elbow, looking at me.
“You’re leaving?” he asked roughly. His eyes were still heavy with sleep as he once more lifted further until he hung his legs over the edge of the straw bed covered with furs that protected our flesh as we went to war with our bodies. I swayed my hips as he watched, a sleepy grin covering his mouth before something on his mind made his face close down again.
“I have things to do before I can go home.”
“You’re leaving France?” he asked crisply, eyes slowly narrowing, as if he didn’t want me to go and was trying to figure out how to keep me with him. But he did, he wanted me to leave him to his family, and I hated myself for it, but he loved them, and I had no place here with him anymore. I held my memories again, knew what and who he was. He’d loved me once, him and the beast he now housed, even though they hid it from me.
They blamed me for leaving them, as if my sick and twisted version of love had all been a game to me that I’d grown bored of playing. It hadn’t, but we’d done the one thing I had been warned against. Together, we had created a child; life had been growing inside of me. So the Gods who feared me had made sure it wouldn’t grow anymore. My hand moved to the gentle swell of the new one we’d created before I’d gained my memories and I smiled sadly.
“I need to go away for a while,” I admitted. “Will you miss me?” I asked, watching as he hesitated with his answer. “Maybe I will go and find a husband. One who can give me what you cannot offer me here.” I watched his eyes narrowing as the beast inside him peered out at me. “I’m sure someone will be able to love me enough for what I am that they offer me more than this. I crave more than to be the whore who waits here for you to need me.”
“You’re mine. You belong to me, with me. You chose me on the field of battle when we lay in the blood of my enemies and brethren who fell. You don’t get to leave me now.”
“You have a wife, a son, and a home that would never welcome me into it, Sir Callaghan. You will never leave them, and I almost understand it.” I didn’t, not when a part of me lived inside of him. He’d taken a wife because they’d expected it of him, even though he’d known I would be reborn sooner or later. I didn’t hate him for it, as the years it took for me to come back could be endless, and this world waited for no one.
“You cannot leave,” he growled.
“What will you do, chain me to your ceiling and play with me as your need comes? Go home to your wife and child,” I hissed as I stripped from the robe and started dressing into the ridiculous layers of the current fashion.
He grabbed me, turning me towards him as his mouth crushed against mine. His hands bit into my flesh as he lifted me, pushing me down onto his massive cock as he walked us back to the bed. There, he slowly lowered me as he used me, uncaring that tears filled my eyes as I watched the love dancing in his eyes as it mixed with his growing anger. He may not want me to leave, but he’d never choose me over his family, and that was part of why I’d fallen in love with this man.
Callaghan wasn’t from this era, this new world where men were loyal to one woman. In our days, men took wives, plural. You never married or joined kingdoms for love; you did it to make binding strength and courts stronger. He’d done it this time, never fully loving his sweet wife, who didn’t understand his mind. She was gentle; he was rough. She was a dutiful wife, and he was here, with me. We’d spent months together, and lately, he’d begun to grow distant. So I’d made attempts to rid him of the problem, a wife who he didn’t love.
He lifted my dress, finding my sex wet and ready as I always was for him. He drove into me until he jerked tautly, watching as I unfurled and whimpered while my own orgasm hummed through my body until I uttered his name as he kissed it away from my lips. Those intense blue eyes gazed down at me, his resignation to what was unfolding burning in his endless depths with anger.
“You’re not leaving France. You are the one woman I have ever craved or loved this much. You hold nothing back from me, and you give me everything I need. She may be my wife, but you are the one I love. I married her for duty, to bind two houses into one. If I had to choose, it would be you who I wake up to every morning. This isn’t what I wanted, but this is what we have together now. It’s enough.” His hands stroked my breasts, watching me as I struggled to make him hear me, to listen to me.
“Enough for whom? You? I am no one’s whore, Mason. I won’t play one for you or anyone else. Eventually, she will die, and you will be freed of her. You can find me then.”
“I will never be free of her, we made her immortal. Her blood is the same as mine is, Eris.”
“My name is not Eris.”
“No? Then what is it?” he asked with a guarded look in his eyes.
“It is not what you have called me while you fucked me. I may not know who I am, but I know I am not this weak thing that lies about, waiting for you to have time for me. I can feel something inside of me awakening, and I need to figure out what it is. I need to be in Ireland when it happens.”
I felt him growing hard within my body and felt his mood changing from rejection to violence. His thrusts turned angry, harder, driving me over the edge as he barreled there with me. I whispered his name as my lips brushed against his as tears lit my eyes, rolling down my cheeks as I shook my head at his denial. I was toxic, and he knew it. I had done what he couldn’t, because I knew he wanted me. If I told him of the child we’d created, he would move mountains to hold me here. I couldn’t remember my past, and I wanted this man to be my future, but the stars wouldn’t align for us. Nothing made sense anymore, other than running from him and waiting for his wife to leave this world. That, however, would never happen. So I would run alone, and leave him and the home I felt within him behind.
“You’re awakening,” he mused as he pulled out of my body and rolled onto the bed beside me. “I cannot leave the Knights, nor is divorce allowed within the Order. You will stay with me as we are, and one day soon, you’ll understand why.”
Two weeks later, after countless dealings with a group of dark witches, I watched from the shadows as the Knights who had once protected them turned them away at their gates. It served them right; their treachery against me couldn’t go unpunished. Not when I’d reached out to them for help to conceal the child that grew within me, only to have them send word to the Gods of my precarious situation. So I’d put it into motion to bring the coven to their knees for making my pregnancy known and setting me within their sights.
Mason was inside his precious compound with his loving wife and their son, while my son was unguarded and unprotected from the Gods who would surely murder us once it reached their ears. He knew I was unprotected, only just grasping on to what I was, defenseless as I waited for my powers to grow. He had chosen them, pushing me away as he fought to protect them against me, even though I had yet to try for his wife’s life again.
Instead, I had abandoned the house we shared soon after he’d gone back to her. I’d respected his need for her to live, but at the cost of removing myself from the equation. I slipped from the shadows and stared at the demons, who watched me as I approached them.
“It is done, they will burn by dawn,” Cade growled. �
�Release us.”
“You will go to the humans’ king’s court and spread rumors to drive the Templars out of this realm and back into Ireland; nothing damning, just mistrust against them. I need them to return to Ireland, where I can grow stronger, and we can return to what we were once more. It will remove them from here, and allow you and Lucifer to continue your endless torment on these poor humans you enjoy so much. Can you do that?”
“It is already in motion, Mórrígan. You and your Knight will both be removed from this place soon enough.”
“Did you need to murder innocent women and children, or did you just get off on it?” I asked icily.
“I got off on it. You wanted them to pay for what they did, and they are. So will the Knights, and once they figure out what is coming, they will run as they always do when they are threatened,” he growled as he watched me. “Is there anything else, your highness?”
“Do not call me that,” I hissed.
“You did remove Lucifer from his throne, which makes you the Queen of Hell, your highness,” he hissed back, his black eyes glazing over as he watched me.
“Has everything already been set into motion?” I asked, and when he nodded, I struck without warning, removing his head from his shoulders as I watched his meat sack slamming against the ground lifelessly. I held up his head and smiled at his shocked eyes. “I am the Mórrígan, the Goddess of War and Battles, and the current Queen of Hell. When I tell you to cease being obtuse, you will obey, or you will perish as everyone else who has threatened or abused me has before you. Now crawl back to Lucifer and tell him he’s next.”
“I have no legs!”
“You have a tongue; learn how to wield it correctly. Now go.” I tossed him into the woods as I stared at the fires that burned on the high walls of the castle where Callaghan had housed up with his family.
If She's Wicked Page 39
