Page 21 of Which Witch is Willing?
“Thendealwith this.” A pitchfork materialized out of thin air, and Lucy threw it at Tierra’s chest, her aim deadly accurate. The three prongs stabbed sure and deep before anyone could react.
Take that, you earth whore, and your little spawn, too.
Tierra pitched backward like a fallen tree.
11
Pain exploded in her chest. Tierra lay prone on the cold, hard ground looking up at a foreign sky devoid of stars with russet clouds smothering the blood-red moon.
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Twice now she’d been stabbed in the chest, once by Conquest when he shot her with his arrow, and now that she-demon had skewed her with her devil fork. A note of hysteria bubbled up from her. She must look like someone planted a pitchfork in her sternum just as astronauts had pierced the moon with a flag so many decades before.
Damn it, she couldn’t die. Not now. She had her child to bring into the world, and she needed to live long enough to make sure that happened. Darkness clouded her vision and she knew at any moment she’d experience that eerily comforting, weightless, pain-free state as she had when she’d died before.
Voices screamed above her. Her sisters. And then Killian’s ferocious roar.
She blinked in an attempt to clear her vision. Focus. Maybe they could save her again? But in order to do that, they’d have to open a Seal. There was only one left, and her life wasn’t worth destroying the world.
“Tierra!” Killian dropped to his knees beside her, taking her face in his hands and forcing her to look at him. He felt for the pulse in her neck, and froze, then a satisfied smile graced his face. “Do as I say, and just stay calm.”
Calm?She was dying. She’d never hold her child in her arms, would in fact take her baby’s soul with her when she died. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and trailed into her hair. Would she be able to raise her child in the hereafter? Goddess, she prayed it would be so.
Moira knelt beside her, her trembling hands hovering over Tierra. A soft drizzle started to fall and lightning flashed from Aerin, their anguish effecting the weather.
“Control your emotions,” Killian barked to them. “Get her sisters out of the way,” he addressed the Horsemen. Nick dragged a screaming Moira from her perch beside Tierra.
Good Goddess, she needed more time. Needed to know if she felt about Killian the way he felt about her. He had to know that she cared for him before he had to take her soul, and that of their child. She hoped he delivered them to Heaven. She’d even take the Garden of Eden. Any place but Hell. With all the indiscretions she’d recently done—what with opening the Seals, bringing about the end of the world, and killing zombies—she might actually be sent to Hell. One visit there was enough to leave lasting scars, but an eternity? She couldn’t bare thinking of it.
“I’m sorry,” she choked out.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Killian said, smoothing the hair back from her forehead and wiping away her tears. “Don’t cry. This won’t take long, unless you fight it.”
What was there to fight? No way she’d survive this.
Actually, how was she still alive? She knew one prong of the pitchfork had pierced her heart as it wasn’t beating, and her lungs had to be impaled, since each breathe she struggled to drag in had a bubbling sound.
“I’m going to pull out the pitchfork,” Killian said, his hand wrapping around the staff. “This is going to hurt, but everything will be better afterward.”
Better?How? “Wait!” She needed to ease his heartache, and time to say goodbye to her sisters. She glanced at her sisters’ stricken faces standing over her. Each of their Horsemen restraining them from rushing to her side.
“There will be plenty of time to talk, but it’s imperative that this is removed, and quickly.” With no more warning, Killian yanked the pitchfork from her chest. Her body arched with the action. Pain screamed through her like a branding iron set to flesh.
Was that her shrieking like a Banshee?
“Holy shit! You’re killing her!” Aerin yelled.
Julian wrapped his arms around her middle as she tried to escaped his hold. Killian tossed the pitchfork, embedding it in a tree with a twang.
“No, he is not,” Julian said. “He’s saving her. The protuberance won’t dislodge itself, thereby inhibiting her ability to heal.”
"Healin’ herself? How in the ever-loving hell is she doin’ that?" Moira asked. " And why didn’t that tricky tadpole throw up a force field like it did the last time Beelzebub touched Tierra?”
"You haven’t told them?" Julian asked Bane, while sharing a look with Dru.
"Told us what?" Claire demanded.
“Now’s not the time,” Dru said. “We should get her inside.” On guard, he scanned the area as though Lucy might return at any moment.
Killian carefully lifted Tierra into his arms. “I’ve got you. Just relax.”
