Born In Water
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Born in Water
Cré-witch Chronicles, Vol. l
Sarah Hegger
Contents
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
What happens next…
What happened before…
Stay in Contact
About the Author
Also by Sarah Hegger
Dedication
To anyone who could do with a touch of magic in their reality. I’m looking at you, Iola.
Also a big thank you to Anna Sharpe for her eagle eye.
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 Sarah Hegger
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Format and cover design by: Renee Rocco
First Electronic Edition: July, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-7334057-6-8
978-1-7771903-1-6
Created with Vellum
Praise for Sarah Hegger
Drove All Night
“The classic romance plot is elevated to a modern-day, wholly accessible real-life fairy tale with an excellent mix of romantic elements and spicy sensuality.” Booklife Prize, Critic’s Report
* * *
Positively Pippa
“This is the type of romance that makes readers fall in love not just with characters, but with authors as well.” Kirkus Review (Starred Review)
* * *
“What begins as a simple second-chance romance quickly transforms into a beautiful, frank examination of love, family dynamics, and following one’s dreams. Hegger’s unflinching, candid portrayal of interpersonal and generational communication elevates the story to the sublime. Shunning clichés and contrived circumstances, she uses realistic, relatable situations to create a world that readers will want to visit time and again.”
Publisher’s Weekly, Starred Review
* * *
“Hegger’s utterly delightful first Ghost Falls contemporary is what other romance novels want to grow up to be.” – Publisher’s Weekly, Best Books of 2017
* * *
“The very talented Hegger kicks off an enjoyable new series set in the small Utah town of Ghost Falls. This charming and fun-filled book has everything from passion and humor to betrayal and revenge.” – Jill M Smith, RT Books Reviews 2017 – Contemporary Love and Laughter Nominee
* * *
Becoming Bella
“Hegger excels at depicting familial relationships and friendships of all kinds, including purely platonic friendships between women and men. Tears, laughter, and a dollop of suspense make a memorable story that readers will want to revisit time and again.” Publisher’s Weekly, Starred Review
* * *
“…you have a terrific new romance that Hegger fans are going to love. Don’t miss out!” Jill M. Smith – RT Book Reviews
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Blatantly Blythe
“Ms. Hegger has delivered another captivating read for this series in this book that was packed with emotion…” Bec, Bookmagic Review, Harlequin Junkie, HJ Recommends.
* * *
Nobody’s Fool
“Hegger offers a breath of fresh air in the romance genre.” – Terri Dukes, RT Book Reviews
* * *
Nobody’s Princess
“Hegger continues to live up to her rapidly growing reputation for breathing fresh air into the romance genre.” – Terri Dukes, RT Book Reviews
* * *
“I have read the entire Willow Park Series. I have loved each of the books … Nobody’s Princess is my favorite of all time.” Harlequin Junkie, Top Pick
Born in Water
Preface
“The immense diversity and pluriformity of this creation more perfectly represents God than any one creature alone or by itself.”
St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
Chapter One
A beautiful English summer’s day greeted Alexander and his morning coffee—as good a day as any to fulfill his fate. In movies days that defined a hero’s fate demonstrated a preponderance of stormy weather, at least a dark cloud or two. Perhaps today’s sunny outlook was more in the nature of a commentary on his eligibility for heroism.
He walked through the glass doors between his drawing room and the garden and took a deep breath of the flower-scented air. Green swathes of lawn mowed into stripes ended at a rough-hewn fence. Beyond that, stretched acres and acres of pasture he rented to the farmer next door. Birds sang, bees buzzed and cattle lowed, all beneath a gentle sherbet-yellow sun.
Not a day to suggest dark thoughts or even grimmer senses of foreboding, but there you had it. His premonition had ripped him awake at four-thirty, and he’d not gone back to sleep. The details remained confoundedly vague, but he’d seen her clear as day: a curvy redhead with big green eyes. The scent of honey and sage had chased him awake. Unable to go back to sleep, he’d gotten up, worked out in his home gym and tried to escape the dark augury buggering up his morning.
Portents, auguries, evil and darkness brought his thoughts to their inevitable end: Mother.
Car tires crunched on the shell driveway on the far side of the manor. He’d bet his balls one of Mother’s minions had come calling.
Some people had wonderful mothers. The sort you sent Mother’s Day cards to and bouquets of flowers for her birthday, the ones written about in those sappy greeting card messages.
Still others had more blurry relationships with their mothers. There was love and some respect, but most of it muddied by messy resentments and failed expectations.
His door knocker broke the manor’s bucolic peace.
In Alexander’s experience, motherhood was a spectrum. Wasn’t everything in this latest decade? Most mothers fell somewhere between next best thing to an angel and hell-spawned crazy lady who should have been neutered at birth.
The knocker went again, louder and longer announcing his unwanted visitor’s determination to perform its duty.
Alexander’s mother was off the spectrum at the deep, deep end of the hell-spawned pool. Or more succinctly put, an evil megalomaniacal bitch.
Footsteps crunched on gravel as his visitor hurried around the side of the house. The footsteps stopped and then rushed forward.
“My lord.” His mother’s minion oozed closer with an ingratiating smile. It was wasted on him, but Alexander gave him a nod. Encouraged, the minion said, “Our lady would like to see you.”
Our lady, like she was some beneficent earth saint spreading love and blessings in her wake.
That one almost had him snort laughing, but Minion was still groveling and hovering. Alexander didn’t blame him. He wouldn’t go back to her without an answer either. “Where is she?”
“At the statue.” Minion scraped the ground with his forehead. Unfortunate deluded prick that he was.
Alexander
took another sip of his coffee. It had taken hundreds of years, well at least since the seventeenth century, to perfect his blend. Not the sort you could pick up at Starbucks. There was a lot to be said for the expediency and efficiency of this century, but the downside was that people had forgotten how to savor things.
Coffee, like a beautiful woman or a great single malt, should never be rushed. Shoving it in a paper cup and jostling it in your car cupholders was negating a sensory banquet. First there was the aroma. His blend was mostly floral with the barest hint of nut and spice. It finished on a lingering—
“My lord?”
Malt. It finished on a trace of malt. “What?”
“Your lady mother awaits.”
Clearly, Minion was not an appreciator of luxuriating in the finer things. One should relish the exquisite, particularly when one hovered on the precipice of never being able to do so again. “What’s your name?”
“Clyde…my lord.”
“Clyde, do you have to keep my lording me?”
Clyde gaped at him, extra flesh on his rosy cheeks quivering. “Well, it’s your title and more importantly…you’re her son. Aren’t you?”
“So she says.” Alexander had been forced to surrender his dearest hope that the stork had dropped him at the wrong house many decades ago.
“Well then.” Clyde’s cheek flesh firmed into a grin. “You are the son of our dearest lady, the heir, so to speak.”
Alexander could never resist messing with a minion. “Does she know you’re expecting her demise?”
“What?” Clyde paled. “Never. She is immortal.”
Or as close to it as any being could get. “Then why would she need an heir?”
Clyde was flummoxed, and he frowned as he tried to reconnect the scattered dots of his beloved mythology. Inspiration struck with a fervent gleam in Clyde’s heavily lashed brown eyes. “But you are the son of death, are you not? He who shall bear the fruit, which will shape all magic to come.”
Ah yes, that smashing prophesy, his raison d’etre if Mother was to be believed. The son of death shall bear the torch that lights the path. And the daughter of life shall bring forth water nascent and call it onto the path of light. Then they will bear fruit. And this fruit will be the magick. The greatest of magick and the final magick. As close a translation as they could manage from the original druidic poem.
“Bear the fruit.” Alexander took another sip of his coffee. Jawing with Clyde had brought it perilously close to the cooler side of warm. The flavor hinged on the right temperature. “Would I bear the fruit or is that the daughter of life’s gig? I rather saw myself as the fruit fertilizer, as it were. He who shall implant the fruit, more than she who will bear it.”
Clyde swallowed. “Eh?”
“Never mind.” His coffee was ruined, so he set the cup on the walnut side table inside the French doors. A lovely little piece he’d picked up in Spain, baroque but minus the overdone swirling crap the Italians had insisted on. “Lead me to the bearer of the impregnator of the fruit.”
“Eh?”
“My mother, Clyde, where is she?” Then he remembered and motioned Clyde to silence. Clyde had already told him she was at the statue, but he might have guessed as much. The old finger and thumb’s obsession with the statue had reached new levels of fanatical.
Stalwart soul that he was, Clyde led the way to his car. “I’ll drive you.”
“And behold. The son of death shall come riding in a silver Prius.”
“Eh?” Clyde bleeped the locks and opened the passenger door for him. Then he got in and gave a nervous titter. “Oh, funny. Very clever. Like the bible. Only a Prius not an ass.”
Clyde had given it more thought than he had. Alexander folded his tall frame into the seat.
On such a lovely morning he would have preferred to walk but that would have landed Clyde in more hurt than anyone deserved. Mother liked her orders obeyed to the multitudinous, and often capricious, letter.
Stopping before entering the lane, Clyde looked left and right and left again. He eased forward, eyes intent on the lane, a concentration flush on his cheeks. Poor bugger was nervous as hell.
“So, Clyde?” He leaned back in his seat and stretched his legs out in front of him. The inside of the Prius was surprisingly roomy. “How long have you been a follower?”
“Five months.” Clyde glowed with fervor. “I was most gratified to be called on for this special task.”
Clyde would probably live to rue that gratification because Mother had several nasty special tasks for her minions, and she didn’t hesitate to select a volunteer. “Do you live in Greater Littleton?”
Most of the earlier minions had come from the village of Greater Littleton. It was to be expected, given that the village nestled at the foot of Baile Castle. A ripple of unease snaked down his spine.
His dream had featured Baile. Alexander had only been inside the castle once but the details of it were imprinted on his mind. That entire hideous fucking day was imprinted on his mind. He hadn’t known it at the time, but that day had marked the beginning, the beginning of an ending that was about to play itself out.
Clyde beetled them around a bend in the lane and Baile wove into view. Clear against the blue sky, she stood on a rocky promontory that poked into the sea. Sunlight sparkled off the sea and etched the bold, strong lines of Baile’s many turrets and ramparts. The finest example of a medieval castle in England, possibly the entire world, and the fevered obsession of Mother’s every waking moment.
Mother wanted into Baile. More specifically into the network of caverns running through the cliff Baile perched on. Even from this distance, Baile’s muted power played like a cat having its fur stroked the wrong way over Alexander’s nerve endings.
That power came straight from Goddess herself and was the only thing that could stop Mother now. On his darker days, Alexander doubted it would be enough. But somehow it had to be.
When they reached the green, Clyde parked and pointed. Reverence bathed his features as he stared at Rhiannon. “There she is.”
“Thanks for the lift.” Alexander climbed from the Prius. He checked his mental barriers were all in place and reinforced weakening areas. He could afford no mistakes with Rhiannon. She’d eat him alive, regurgitate him and start the torture again.
Rhiannon stood with her back to them, head raised as she stared at the statue.
Even had Clyde not pointed her out, Alexander could find her if he were blindfolded and disoriented. The nauseating stench of blood magic swirled around her constantly. The link she’d forged between them on his birth was always there too, like a barely discernible murmur.
Her onyx hair absorbed the light around it. Even dressed as she was in jeans, a blouse and high-heeled sandals, Rhiannon stood out. Without understanding why, a group of school kids paused their laughing chatter and gave her a wide berth on their way across the green to school.
Smart kids. He wished their parents could be as smart.
“I can feel him,” Rhiannon said by way of greeting. If the statue had been flesh, it would have been melting off Roderick’s bones with the intensity of her scowl. “He stirs, which means Baile stirs.”
He stopped beside her. He and Roderick had hated each other for most of their long, long lives. “I thought I sensed him.”
“He seeks to wake.”
Alexander waited for the rest.
She turned to him. Like her hair, her dark eyes sucked the light in. “He cannot wake. But if he does, you know what I expect of you.”
“Of course.” He shrugged. “I will kill him.”
One of the two reasons she’d spawned him. Once his usefulness was exhausted, she would get rid of him. He held too much power, and she tolerated no challengers to her supremacy.
“He stirs because of her.” She dug her long red nails into his forearm. “You feel her?”
“Yes.” Rhiannon spoke not of Maeve, tenderly cradled in Roderick’s stone arms, but of the other reason
he’d been created, the primary reason. “She’s on her way.”
“You know what you must do?” She turned the full force of her intense stare on him. A plan hatched so many hundreds of years ago would make a maniac of anyone. Add the promise of total world domination to the potion and you had one extremely motivated black witch on your hands.
“I know.” He held her stare. “Let me do what I am created to do.”
Indecision played across her face. She didn’t like leaving anything to chance. “Don’t fail me, or I will intercede.”
“I understand.”
She glared at him. “Do you?”
“Yes. I won’t fail.”
He’d better not fail, or Roderick, Maeve, the little water witch on her way to fulfill her destiny, he, and the remaining cré-witches were all dead. And the rest of humanity would pay the price for eternity.
No pressure.