Page 97 of Which Witch Is Wicked?
"Get it off!" Choking, Tierra lost her hold on the wand, and rivulets of water carried it out of reach. She clawed at the chain that seemed to have sealed itself to her skin, gasping for breath. A large stone the size of a peach pit hung from the chain, burnt, black, with a sulphuric stench. It acted like her own personal kryptonite and smothered, exhausted, and rendered her powerless the more she fought to free herself from it.
Lucy yanked Tierra's hair, pulling her head back. "Look. I don't want you to miss this. Watch and know that you can donothingto save your sister. She will be dead by nightfall."Moira.
Spirited away on Conquest's horse, she was gone in a flash of snowy mane and razor-sharp hooves.
The rain stopped, and the ocean receded.
"It's just you and me now, Tierra," Lucy whispered in her ear.
"W-what...isthis?" Tierra fought the choker and tried to send another urgent message to Aerin and Claire. It was hard to focus, to string her thoughts together, but she had to get through.
"Don't you recognize it?" Lucy asked. "You've been living with this and ingesting it for, dare I say, a while now. If we had the time, I would love to see what long-term effects brimstone would have to that brat you're brewing. But time, sadly is one thing that has always been in short supply."
Brimstone?Oh good goddess.
"Ingesting—how?" Tierra choked, her heart sinking at the thought of the damage the brimstone might have already caused her child. She knew the smell and the physical reactions, but this was much, much worse than the response to what had been placed in the house. "Brimstone is one of my favorite weapons as you never know how it will react with the chosen target. Its earth without life, stone that has burned in the fires of Hell until it fuses and becomes a small part of Hell itself. And obviously debilitating to you, which is interesting. I ground some of it into a powder and added it to your teas. All those precious teas you love so much and push on your coffee-loving sisters. I did have Justine add some to the coffee for good measure." Lucy chuckled. "She wasn't even aware of what she was doing. Impressionable, that aunt of yours. Now, Aerin, she seems to have responded well, don't you think? I couldn’t be happier with the results. I haven't noticed its effects on Moira, yet. I will need to experiment more now that I have her under my care. But Aerin and Claire, they'll make a great addition to the Sisters of the Serpent. Yes, I'm sure you'll be thrilled to know that the coven has been renamed and restructured under my expert tutelage."
If Moira came into further contact with brimstone, it would surely kill her. At the manor, Moira had been full of tears, leaking moisture until she was exhausted. Tierra couldn’t let that happen. Somehow she needed to overcome the effects and warn Aerin and Claire. They needed to rescue Moira before the brimstone destroyed her.
And Aerin and Claire had to be warned that the Horsemen were working with the Devil. At least War and Conquest were.
Tierra couldn't stomach it, couldn't believe that Killian had consorted with the Devil. Not the man she'd given herself to, had created a new life with.
She retched until she dry-heaved. Her head pounded as if there were a thousand hammering zombies inside it mashing her brains into oatmeal.
Silently she prayed for the Goddess, for her sisters, for...Death.
"Now it's time for my favorite part of my plan." Lucy grabbed Tierra's arm and wrenched her to her feet as though she weighed nothing.
Tierra stumbled, and Lucy yanked her arm until it felt torn from its socket.
"Keep it together a little longer, Tierra. You're today's main attraction, and we don't want to disappoint the coven. You've stalled me long enough."
Lucy dragged Tierra past the crumpled Sunny and into Ambrosia's. The door shut with a tinkling of bells. The sound belied the darkness of the souls that turned toward them. Lucy supported Tierra in front of her with an arm across her chest while her other hand splayed over Tierra's slightly rounded stomach.
Another wave of sickness threatened to consume Tierra when Lucy licked her tongue up the side of her neck and nipped her ear. "You can blame Death for what's about to happen next. He's been a very,verybad boy, and his actions must be punished. The quickest way to do that is take away the one thing he has always coveted. Life." Lucy's hand flexed over Tierra's belly, and her nails dug into her skin.
"No," Tierra growled, finding strength from somewhere deep inside her. She tore Lucy's hand away and struggled in her hold.
Lucy merely laughed at Tierra's useless attempts to free herself.
The gathering responded to her laughter, and they began to chant in a language Tierra had never heard before. They swayed and writhed, naked, outside a circle of crushed brimstone where a Leviathan cross had been painted in blood. An infinity serpent eating its tail was anchored at the bottom with an inverted crucifix above. At the top of the cross, a thick wooden post had been bolted into the bamboo floor with wide steel plates.
Each of the twelve women—Lucy made thirteen—had the
Leviathan cross tattooed on their right breasts. The marks were angry and red as if recently tattooed. A closer look revealed that the symbol had come from a hot iron branding their flesh.
"Meet the Sisters of the Serpent," Lucy announced, tossing Tierra to the greedy hands of the chanting coven. "Tie this witch to the stake and burn her."
12
Tierra!
Killian rushed for the front door and yanked it open.
"Where the bloody hell ya off to?" Julian hollered, glancing up from gazing into another bottle of booze. He'd been drinking the cabin dry since he'd returned from Africa.
"Tierra's in trouble."
