Whiskey Storm (Whiskey Witches Midnight Rising Book 1)

by F. J. Blooding

  “You’re not…” He chuckled a little, shifting his weight to one foot. “Concerned?”

  Oh, she was. She was raving mad inside the tiny room of her tiny heart she allowed herself to be mad in. “You should be.”

  His smile blossomed. “Because he’s so powerful?”

  She shrugged. “You can underestimate him if you want to, but he walks beside me as my equal.” She gestured to the battlefield.

  His expression clouded a little around the edges. “We both know he’s not…” He sighed and looked out over the battlefield that had once been homes. “This.”

  Maybe not, but he was Dexx Fuckin’ Colt. “Do you? Do you really?”

  His eyes narrowed. “You will return my people.”

  Not likely. Oh, wait. Yes. Yes, she would. “When you return ours.”

  “What do you mean? Your what?”

  She let a pained smile flash across her face. Well, she didn’t let it. It just flashed and fell away as she thought about throttling his stupid, muscle-head neck. “The people you’ve been taking. The paranormals who have been disappearing.”

  “If anyone’s disappeared, they ran away.”

  “Okay. Well, when they’re returned, I’ll return your people.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  She sucked her head into her shoulders in a deep what-the-fuck-you-want-me-to-do shrug. “I guess they’ll enjoy Hell, then.” And hopefully not take it over.

  “You’re going to regret this.”

  Yeah. Probably. “I already do. And you will regret starting this war.” Paige turned around, her body sagging with exhaustion as she limped back to the one remaining door. “I assume you can find your own way out.”

  Super Douche raised his voice to bark, “Move out.”

  She heard another door open and each body made a slight “whoosh” sound as it slipped through.

  Eldora waited for Paige at the door. She pulled the corners of her aged lips down and nodded approvingly. “That was something.”

  It certainly had been. “Do we have the doors open?”

  “Like you said.”

  “And the wards up to protect them?”

  “As best we could. The elves helped.”

  Good because Paige knew DoDO would be back, and the elves would need places for refugees.

  But before she left, she had one more thing she needed to do.

  She turned, surveying the field of the dead. Super Douche was leaving through his own doors, and when the last of the DoDO agents she could see had left, she reached down and dipped her left hand in the blood of a dead elf.

  She didn’t know blood magick. That wasn’t her thing. Leah had inherited it from her father. Paige had, however, learned a thing or two from working with Merry Eastwood and her blood witches.

  And Paige had life magick.

  With the blood of the elf on one hand, she reached to one of her several wounds and dipped into her own blood.

  Then, she walked to the door. She didn’t understand how, but the door connected to this plane, this dimension. It was the only thing she could touch, physically touch.

  She closed her eyes and prayed.

  Blessed Mother, help me find a way to protect the people here, to seal them away where they can remain safe until such time as we can unlock their realm and return their world to them. Help me keep DoDO out.

  Paige rarely got an answer in return in the form of words. The answers or replies were almost always in the form of feelings and images. This time was no different, but the emotional response that came back was in the form of a question.

  Are you sure?

  Paige knew that with the All Mother, there were a million different ways this could go wrong, a million different ways it could be interpreted, but Paige just didn’t have anything more to give.

  I don’t know what else to do, Mother. If you have a better idea, please give it.

  The All Mother smiled—not with a face and lips. She smiled with warmth, understanding, and a sense that things would work out. Of course.

  A power far greater than Paige, greater than all the witches and other paranormals she knew, reached into her, through her, pulled on the life energy of the blood on her hands, pulled it through her skin, her hands, her arms.

  The power ripped out of her back in a way that was painful and with-standable at the same time.

  A loud crack sounded over the land. The trees swayed with the force of it. The vines crackled and twitched.

  Then they rose toward the sky, growing and talking and chittering.

  And devouring the bodies of the fallen, taking the sustenance they needed to grow.

  Eldora touched Paige’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”

  Paige was spent. She let Eldora guide her, her eyes barely working. Her ears barely registered what was going on.

  When they stepped through the doorway, she was greeted with chaos.

  Reporters. Refugees.

  And Leslie.

  A fully pissed-off Leslie.

  “I just won one bloody battle,” Paige muttered, holding out a bloody hand. “Can we not do this right now?”

  Leslie’s eyes widened with alarm.

  The last thing Paige felt was Leslie’s arms—and a few other arms. She didn’t know where they’d come from—surrounding her as she fell, fell, fell into darkness.

  18

  The next day, Paige felt like she’d been hit by a truck. She hurt in so many places, and when she went to sit up, she discovered a sharp pain in her abdomen.

  She looked down and saw a bandage. She’d been shot?

  Right. She’d probably been shot so many times, but the mage magick. It’d healed her.

  Well, not quite as much as she’d hoped. There were bandages on her legs, her left arm, and one on her foot.

  Okay. Wait. Even with the mage magick helping, wasn’t she a shifter? She should be fully healed by now.

  Well, after questioning a few shifters—Margo. She’d questioned Margo—she discovered that they did heal faster but that they still needed time to heal. It wasn’t magick.

  It was. It really was, but Paige got the hint that she needed to cool her jets.

  She’d spend quality time with her kids. Jet cooling couldn’t be any better than that.

  The twins were ready to nurse—thank the goddess because so was she. Boobs sucked, and then Bobby was ready to play.

  Of course, Paige wasn’t. She was ready to lie down and take a nap because getting up, having one conversation, drinking one cup of coffee—after having made it herself because Dexx wasn’t there to save her—and sitting on the couch to nurse had worn her out.

  Which, seriously, was about right. Right? She’d just nearly single-handedly defeated a DoDO army.

  Not quite, but yeah. Pretty much. There’d been a lot of magick slinging.

  She invested a few more hours into sleep. She watched a few episodes of Into the Badlands because it was a good visual show that didn’t require a lot of brainpower, though, there was something going on with the storyline and she was beginning to realize that maybe she should have been paying attention longer.

  The next day, she felt a bit more like herself.

  Venturing into town, though, was still a chore. She didn’t want to shift shape. She was tired. She hadn’t even realized that there’d be a “doing it too much” tax put on shifting, but it made sense. Like anything else, it required energy, and she had certainly expended that.

  But it also meant driving, and she hadn’t filled up her tank in a while.

  Also, when she was tired of shifting, the twins were too.

  They remained human, which was nice because it was easier to keep track of them. It was also harder because that meant she had to carry them and their fifty-pound car seats as well.

  She pulled up to the mayor’s office and began pulling the kids out. A random stranger walked down the sidewalk in front of the mayor’s building and offered a hand with the twins. Just s
ome random stranger, which… yeah. By the end of the siege, there would probably be a lot fewer random strangers.

  “Thanks.” Normally, Paige might have been a little more hesitant, a little more Mighty Mom about it, but not that day. “These things weigh a ton.”

  The dark woman carried Ember’s car seat to the mayor’s building and set it on the floor inside the door. “It’s not a problem. We all got to stick together right now, don’t we?” She smiled back at Paige and then continued on her day.

  Once inside, it was a matter of pushing Ember’s seat with one foot while she carried Rai with two hands.

  For about two seconds. Then the receptionist—whose name Paige was really going to have to remember—came in and saved her, taking both the sleeping twins and stashing them by her desk. “She’s just about ready for you.”

  Suzanne knew she was coming because Paige’d forgotten to call ahead.

  The receptionist looked up from the sleeping babies. “How are you doing? I’ve been watching you on the news.”

  Did she even want to see what was being said about her on the news?

  Yes. She did. She probably should have been watching that instead of Badlands. “I seem to be getting some airtime lately, don’t I?”

  The receptionist shook her head. “You look great for having kicked so much butt out there.” She glanced at her desk and then back up at Paige. “She’s ready for you now.”

  Paige was going to put that down as one of the classiest compliments ever.

  But when she got into the mayor’s office, Suzanne was in a snit. “Can you believe these a-holes?” She pointed to the TV, which was playing one of the news stations at a low level.

  Paige could barely hear it. Something must have knocked out some of her hearing. She didn’t even remember what it might have been. “I’m sure I can.” Believe the reporters would say whatever they were paid to say? Yes. “What’s going on?”

  “The president is stating that you attacked her agents.”

  Right. Well, she would say that, wouldn’t she? In a different world. “We attacked? Nothing about how they were causing a ruckus on a different plane?”

  “We had no cameras going that entire time,” Suzanne said, turning on Paige. “You can’t ever do that again.”

  Paige was confused. “Go out and help people?”

  Suzanne looked at her like she’d lost her damned mind, her blazing blue eyes daggering Paige with intensity. “Go in there, be the hero, and then forget your cameraman.”

  “Well,” to be fair, “I hadn’t realized we were going to be saving people.”

  Suzanne gave Paige a frank look. “Since we have no idea what’s going to happen for the next few days or weeks or whatever, I’m assigning cameramen on you at all times.”

  That was a bad idea. “I can’t promise to keep them safe.”

  “They’re scrappy.”

  “They still die when they’re scrappy.” Because that was a word often thrown around in fiction novels to describe characters who were armed with nothing more than sass and a mouth. “We’ll figure something else out.”

  “No.” Suzanne pointed to the TV. “They’re murdering us out there and you were sleeping for two days and we had no story. We tried. We really did. But that woman—Eldora isn’t good for TV. And Merry is a convicted murderer, so we can’t even think about putting her on the screen. And your sister?” Suzanne’s dark eyebrows shot up, disappearing behind her bangs as her hand fluttered to her chest. “That mouth. We can’t put that mouth on TV.”

  The mayor was a good person, but there was only so much dramatic Paige could take on this much sleep. “Talk to me about the refugees.”

  Suzanne settled down after that and filled Paige in on the town situation.

  Quite a few elves had made it to their town for sanctuary and more were coming, though fewer now than there had been. The toddlers had made it through, but there were a lot of casualties and several of their bodies were being taken back to the elven plane for death rites.

  Basically, what Paige had seen right before she’d left—he plants taking from the bodies what they needed to grow? That was death rites.

  Paige tried not to imagine their tiny bodies—

  Enough. She couldn’t go there. Not when she was still this damned tired.

  Things were running smoothly for all the fuss. Seriously, the mayor was doing a fantastic job.

  During the battle with Sven, a lot of people had cleared out, leaving their homes abandoned. Granted, those homes still belonged to those people, but they weren’t being “lived in” at the moment, so the mayor was assigning people to live in them. The proviso required them to respect the previous owners and box up things that didn’t belong to them. If they broke something, they had to fix it, or they were kicked out to live on the street.

  “How is the issue with the supplies going?”

  “Glad you brought that up. I actually managed to get funds to help offset the costs. Different organizations and corporations are contacting me to set up supply deliveries and donations of goods.” She half sat on the corner of her desk.

  “That’s all pretty great. Things seem to be coming together.” Paige took in a deep breath as she sat in the chair, looking up at the mayor, almost ready for yet another nap.

  “I even have a drug company donating insulin because we have three Type I diabetics.” Suzanne preened, pleased with herself. “That would be beyond terrifying if the supply was cut off.”

  Paige didn’t know much about diabetes, but she did know it was scary bad. How? No clue. But it was bad. Suzanne should be pleased with herself. She’d done a… “Good job, Madame Mayor.”

  The town was being taken care of. That was the bottom line.

  However, the president was winning, and Paige needed to get the word out. On her Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. Whatever. Pinterest. Paige was really good at Pinterest but had no idea how to get the word out there. She could, however, pin a thousand posts on craft projects she’d never do.

  But also on YouTube. She could start a channel there.

  So, she collected her kids, grabbed a sandwich from the deli—which… how amazing was it to go to the store and not have to use money? Everyone’s accounts were frozen. F-R-O-Z-E-N. And not in the Disney way where they could sing a song about a snowman and feel good about themselves. No. They didn’t have any money.

  But they were still functioning as a collective of prisoners in the comforts of their own homes.

  Then she took the twins to the park bench beside the downtown ward tree and pulled out her phone.

  She clicked the live stream option, which seemed really dumb. She didn’t understand how people could just turn a camera on themselves and talk like what they said actually mattered.

  But what she had to say did actually matter.

  She started the stream and began showing the park and retelling how they fought against the demon horde. That led to other things and she divulged information the elves would prefer remained secret, but the time for secrets had passed. They didn’t have that luxury anymore.

  She told the people watching—and there were a lot. It started off as a couple. And then there were more hearts flying across her video and likes and mad faces and… it was distracting. She told them what happened. What really happened in the elven city. She couldn’t really read the comments.

  She told them about the kids on the battlefield. About the pile of toddlers she’d tried to save, about the bodies being sent back.

  And she cried. On her live stream. She tried not to but staring up at her ward tree—their ward tree, she couldn’t hold back the tears. She did, however, keep the words going. People needed to hear them.

  It was finally time to wrap it up, though. She looked into the camera. “You guys need to keep your heads down. DoDO and the president are serious. And they don’t have barriers of morality to stand behind. They’re killing kids—toddlers, babies. They don’t care. They only care about repressing us, containi
ng us, and keeping us out of their society. We’re not safe.”

  She blinked as more hugging heart emojis flowed across her screen.

  “There are paranormal leaders and we are discussing what needs to be done to make you and keep you safe. But until then, find refuge.”

  That wasn’t what she’d wanted to tell them.

  Someone walked past and shouted a hello at her.

  Paige smiled and waved back before returning to the live stream. “And to all of you who are human and afraid, remember that you’ve been safe for generations, for thousands of years, from us. We hid because of our fear of you and what I’m seeing now is that we were right to do so. The only way you’re not safe now is if you attack paras. If anyone is attacked, people will defend themselves. That’s the way the world works.”

  This had to be done. Geez. “Okay. Signing off for now. Sorry I didn’t fill you in earlier but…” She paused and licked her lips. “Yeah. Okay. Be safe. Everyone be safe. And…could we show the world what it means to be amazing? Please?”

  She hit stop on the feed and glanced down to see a ton of emojis and comments.

  Not all of them were good.

  The twins were awake and fussy. They didn’t like being human, but she appreciated the fact that they were remaining so.

  Chuck and Faith came up to help calm the babies.

  But Chuck looked rattled. Paige had never seen the regional high alpha look rattled before. “What happened?”

  He put Ember to his shoulder and bounced him. “Dexx.”

  Seriously? “What did he do now?”

  “He—” Chuck’s eyes widened, then narrowed as he sucked in his lips and bit down on them. “He attacked me, and I could not feel Hattie. It was as if she was being repressed.”

  A cold bucket of holy-shit poured over her. She’d had a chance to get him back. Super Douche had offered it.

  “He did let me go.”

  That was a good sign. Right? “Do you think he was on orders to attack you? Kill you? Capture?”

  “I don’t know, but the way he looked at me?” Chuck shook his head as Rai nursed. “He didn’t know me.”