He wasn’t going to…
“Ash,” I said warningly.
My man did not listen to me.
He raised himself a couple of feet off the ground.
And charged.
“Oh, for the Goddess’s sake!” I shouted, beginning to move forward and realizing too late I’d lost my wand somewhere along the way.
Dad put a restraining hand on my arm.
“This is his, Mathilda,” he said.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Stand down,” Dad said.
I shook his hand off.
“No!” I said.
Fane wrapped both his arms around me from behind, but he didn’t need to.
Cystien bound me with golden ropes.
Fuck!
“It’s his, Matty,” Fane whispered in my ear.
Yeesh!
Men!
With no choice, I settled in and watched, something that was easy to do seeing as the helicopter’s blinding bright spotlight lit the action.
Not surprisingly, Ash being awesome, and badass, and now fully Fae (or as Fae as a human could get), this didn’t take long.
Even against the Dark Lord.
Though, it was clearly a Dark Lord weakened.
(Hang tight, it wasn’t just the sisters’ magic united that did a number on him, I’d learn later what the strike of Mack’s spear did to Bligh’s power and I’ll share.)
Just then, I rolled my eyes and settled in for the show of watching my guy kick some baddie ass.
I really wished it wasn’t hot.
But my man, his strength, his gorgeousness and those wings?
It was totally freaking hot.
I wasn’t sure if Cystien had given Ash some pointers, or if it came naturally, but Ash seemed not to have any issue using his wings.
He was graceful and powerful and totally awesome (as usual, so let’s just say he was awesomer).
And seemingly immune to what was left of Bligh’s magic, which was the only thing Bligh had because he sure didn’t have physical strength (should have given himself some of that when he had the chance—jeez, bad guys conniving and out for revenge and indiscriminately killing and not thinking of the practical stuff, always their undoing, I mean, didn’t these idiots watch movies?).
It came clear my guy was working out some issues through pummeling the shit out of Bligh, making the grotesqueness of his face off-the-charts grotesque, but when he’d finished that, with no ado whatsoever, he soared high and just…
Dropped him.
I watched Bligh fall, arms and legs flailing, and I wasn’t sure with Dark Lord powers that drop would kill him (though I’d been hoping that when I took him along for my ride, seeing as one thing we learned about the Dark Lord was that he was always human, only superhuman, so if you could find a way to make his heart stop beating, you found a way to beat him).
It would happen that it didn’t matter.
He didn’t hit the ground.
About a hundred vampires took off from the earth and swarmed Bligh’s body as bats.
It was a feeding frenzy.
Like…serious.
This gave new meaning to avenging the blood of a vampire.
Yikes.
“A great deal of power in that blood,” Fane purred in my ear.
Euw.
My sister landed beside me, Anita beside her, Prunella with her, my coven with all of them, and Daphne oozed over and slithered in a figure eight around my ankles before she sat at my side.
I did a head count of my coven.
Some were missing.
I decided I’d deal with that, what would probably be emotionally, later.
“Where’s Darling?” Su asked.
“Answering to the Goddess.” I tipped my head to the frenzy. “He ate her heart. Then made her a zombie. So after she punched me in the side of the head, I sent her to the under-realm.”
“Bluh,” Su groaned, her eyes drifting back to the carnage.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“You okay?” she asked.
“I’m alive,” I answered.
“Yeah,” she agreed.
Cystien’s golden ropes dissipated and Fane let me go as Ash sauntered my way, furling his wings.
“You should leave them out, they’re hot,” I told him.
His lips quirked as he stopped in front of me.
The helicopter coasted away, and its light went with it, casting us in moonlight which was a lot better.
“With all the hullabaloo around the Dark Lord, that seemed pretty easy,” I noted to Ash.
Though, when Bligh was kicking my ass, it didn’t seem easy.
But the rest…
“In times past, he was not confronted with allied supernatural, since, until you, it is rare the supernatural allied,” Ash replied. “And the Fae hadn’t become involved.”
“No judge, but the Fae didn’t do much this time either,” I said and turned eyes to Cystien. “Speaking of which, where the hell have you been?”
“Amassing my warriors in case the beautiful Mathilda needed them,” he answered, swinging an arm out to the dark-haired Fae who all were not watching the end of the bloodbath, but either had eyes on me, or the females with me.
Right then.
I didn’t need to be clairvoyant to know about a hundred more sex cults were about to spring up.
I had no retort to Cystien, except, “Well…thanks.”
He smiled at me.
“Though, we could have done without Maithieliel’s latest reign of terror.”
He looked guilty.
I shook my head and turned to Ash.
“And where were you?” I demanded.
“Mack had you covered,” he said as answer.
But as you can tell, that wasn’t an actual answer.
And I was me, so I didn’t let him get away with that.
“I’ll repeat, and where were you?”
He got closer and put his hands to my neck. “Darling, I felt my wings beginning to form, something that might not go well in bed with you, and something I suspected would herald what was to come this night. I was right. My wings were forming, and it was heralding what would come tonight. So I got out of bed before my wings pushed us both out of it, and once out, I knew I had to put my plan in action.”
Wait a minute.
Plan?
He had a plan?
What plan?
I was so ticked he had a plan he didn’t tell me about (déjà vu, anyone?), I didn’t have it in me to be ticked he didn’t wake me so I could be with him when he first formed wings.
I squinted my eyes at him. “That plan being?”
He didn’t answer at first.
At first, he pulled a leaf out of my hair, and dropped it.
A twig, and he dropped that.
(Fabulous, I probably looked like hell—and what he did next would confirm that thought.)
He ran his thumb gently over my upper lip under my nose and got a pretty freaking scary expression on his face as he took a moment to stare at my blood on the pad of his thumb before he gave his attention back to me.
“If you were to become aware that the Dark Lord had risen before I could return to you, Daphne would amass the coven. Mack would take your back and weaken Bligh. This while Gabe and I were getting Fane and your father and gathering the vampires.”
“Mack has good aim, and it was nice to know I wasn’t alone,” I said reprovingly (Ash did not appear guilty like Cystien, however). “But it was like Bligh was pricked by a needle.”
“Mack’s spear absorbs magic, Mathilda,” Ash explained. “Bligh was at his full powers before that spear struck. He was at a half, maybe two thirds, after. Though, he didn’t know that.”
Whoa.
That gave me food for thought because even at two thirds, he was kicking my ass.
I didn’t even want to think if he was down to half.
“Cystien?” I carried on.
“He was a
bonus with exceptional timing.”
Guh.
“You were gone from the flat before we’d returned,” Ash kept going.
“Uh, yeah,” I confirmed.
“And we were a little later getting to you than I would have hoped,” Ash went on.
They sure were.
“Mm-hmm,” I mumbled irately.
“But it worked out in the end,” he concluded.
“After he kicked my ass,” I pointed out.
“You were holding your own,” he said.
What?
“You watched?” I accused.
“Fuck no,” he bit out. “But you were alive when we arrived and that’s the definition of holding your own.”
“I was falling to my death!” I shouted.
“Did you? Fall to your death, that is.”
“No, but only because you saved me.”
“So all’s well that ends well, and I’ll note, darling, as it was not a moment I ever want to relive, making it to Poet’s Walk to see it annihilated and you tumbling over a cliff with Jeremy Bligh in your arms, that we should make this the last time we discuss it. It’s just done. Let’s let it be done.”
“How it was supposed to end is that it was me,” I thumped my chest, “that was supposed to save the world! Did I do that? Nooooooooo! He kicked my ass!”
“Sweetheart, look around you. If you don’t think you saved the world, you are gravely mistaken.”
I glared at him a good long while before he was forced to let me go as I looked around me.
“I have not been to England in two hundred and seventy-five years,” Fane shared when I caught his eyes. “And if you were not here, and under threat, I still would not be here.”
“My warriors have not been to this dimension in over eight thousand years,” Cystien declared when I caught his. “And if I did not think you might need them, I would have let them stay in their dimension, and not troubled them with returning.”
“I still don’t know what to make of you,” Prunella announced when my gaze made it to her. “And neither do half the witches in this land. But at least we have more time to figure it out, and it cannot be denied that’s thanks to you.”
Huh.
“You might not have allied all the supernatural world, Mathilda,” Ash said, and I looked back to him. “But only because that’s an impossible task and it would be for anyone. Chosen or not. What you did was allied enough, in fact, more than enough, to take care of the issue. And not only that, you being you, doing what you do, meant this time, we knew what was to come and as such, we were prepared for it.”
He got closer and kept talking.
“No Black Death, darling, and no fallen civilizations.”
“There’s a body count,” I whispered.
“I know,” he whispered back. “But any good general understands, as heartrending as it is, if against all odds they can keep that number low, and the majority live to carry on, they must jot that as a win.”
“I lost my tree,” I muttered.
“Matty, you saved the world.”
Okay.
Right.
Maybe I did.
Kind of.
But Ash was right.
Bottom line?
It was over.
Goddess.
It was over.
I face-planted in his chest.
He wrapped his arms around me.
“Let this be done,” Fane ordered.
“Protect your eyes,” Cystien did his own ordering.
Ash shifted closer, and since I knew what that meant, I lifted my gloved hands to the sides of my face and closed my eyes, but the bright elfin magic still burned through my eyelids.
When it was gone, Ash moved us slightly, and I put my arms around him and turned my head.
Dark-haired Fae were gathering human bones.
Bligh (or at least his flesh) had been incinerated.
Ugh.
One of the Fae, holding Bligh’s wings in his arms, approached Cystien.
“We will take his remains to another dimension, crush them to powder, and scatter it across many,” he asserted.
“Good,” Cystien grunted. “Be done with it.”
Well then, guess no one was taking any chances of the Dark Lord re-rising.
Some of the Fae (the ones carrying bones), flew off.
The others openly checked me, Su and Anita out.
Yeesh.
Sex on the brain, all of them.
The cold wafting off the sea and the aches in my body made themselves known and I shivered in my man’s hold.
He pulled me closer.
I rested my cheek on his chest.
“Who was working at the Witches Dozen?” I asked softly.
“We’ll talk about it later,” he answered quietly.
Yup.
This was going to be way hard to jot as a win.
But I’d deal with that later…emotionally.
With Ash.
I sighed and pressed deep.
“Yuck, you guys are gooey,” Su declared.
Well…
Yeah.
We were.
Thank the Goddess.
. .
Ash was on his back and his wings were out, stretched across the bed and even dripping over the sides.
And his bed in The Dungeons was a king.
So yeah…
His wings were wide and rad.
To the touch, they felt like velvet.
And they could keep you aloft, even when Ash’s hips were occupied.
Mm.
“Tell me,” I whispered into his neck, stroking his wing at the other side.
“Matty,” he whispered back.
“Ash, tell me.”
“Pandora and Paulina.”
I drew in a long, deep breath.
That was who we’d lost at the Dozen.
Pandora and Paulina.
Ash held me close and his wings shifted with agitation.
“They were good witches,” he said soothingly. “They had good lives.”
I shoved my face into Ash’s neck.
He didn’t say more. Offer empty platitudes. Try to find words that would never work to make me feel better.
He just held me tight and let that do its work.
Babs (our nickname for Paulina since her last name was Babcock) was the greatest, and although Pandora never really mastered the espresso machine at the Witches Dozen, I adored her.
But Mavis was going to lose it.
Paulina was her best friend.
The sheets rustled as Ash furled his wings.
I lifted my head. “I don’t want them to go.”
He rolled us so he was on top. “They’re not going anywhere, Matty.”
He ran his thumb gently down the side of my nose while his eyes watched.
“How swollen is it?” I asked.
“The swelling will go down,” he answered.
Not a good answer.
I let that go.
“Are we gonna become boring now that we’ve saved the world?” I asked.
Ash stared at me like I’d lost my mind.
Then he burst out laughing.
“I’m not sure I find anything funny, Sebastian,” I snapped.
He didn’t quite sober as he focused at me.
“Sweetheart, do you ever think you could be boring?”
I hoped the answer to that was no.
He bent his head and touched his mouth to mine.
“I fear we have a number of adventures yet to endure,” he assured.
“Why am I not heartened by the way you made this declaration?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Since you should be as you are ridiculous, and you are sublime, and you are strong, and you are loyal, and you are good to your soul, and I love everything that makes you.”
Now, that was a good answer.
“Oh,” I breathed.
“Yes,” he whispered, “Oh,” he went on.
His wings unfurled again as his mouth took mine.
And I had other things to think about.
Like forming my own two-person sex cult.
Though, I was already a member of one.
Thankfully.
It is of note that the following passage was not written by the direct hand or magic of Mathilda Guinevere Honeycutt.
Recorded for posterity.
Tally of The Night of The Battle of Poet’s Walk:
One hundred and seven lost civilians.
Two killed in a helicopter explosion.
Three dead witches.
One dead Dark Lord.
And one new Fae.
7 December
I’ll catch you up on all the business that took up my entire November (the good, the bad and the awesome) after I tell you what just happened.
I black-dragoned my man’s ass to our rooms in The Dungeons.
He sauntered in quickly, eyes alert, then annoyed, before he opened his mouth and said, “I’ve said it time and again, Mathilda, you’re not supposed to use the mind meld in order to summon me. It’s for emergencies only.”
He wanted an emergency?
I had one.
I tossed the white stick I held at him.
He caught it.
He looked down at it.
His nose kind of scrunched.
It was cute.
My guy wasn’t often cute, but when he was…
Gah!
He looked to me. “Did you urinate on this?”
“Ash!” I snapped.
“Then throw it at me?”
“Ash!” I kind of shouted. “Look at it.”
“Sweetheart, I know when your periods are coming, when they’re here, and that glorious time when they’re at an end better than you do.”
Well!
I am so sure!
“I’m a witch, Ash, that is totally not true. I know my cycles like I know the cycles of the moon, down to the sliver.”
“Mathilda, I’m a man, your man, and you won’t let me have sex with you during your cycles. So trust me, I know them better and you haven’t had one since October.”
My brows shot up. “So you know I’m pregnant?”
“Yes.”
It was almost a squeal when the words came out.
“And you didn’t say anything?”
He shrugged.
Shrugged!
“I weighed the merits of telling you what was happening in your body with having this conversation when you figured out what was happening in your body, and I decided to postpone our squabble until, apparently, now.”
The Rise of the Dark Lord Page 30
