Page 88 of Which Witch is Willing?
“Harsh, bro.” Dru shook his head.
“A harsh reality.” Killian ran an exhausted hand over his face. “Six seals out of seven are open, and look what ripe and holy shit has been dumped onto the planet.”
Nick scratched at his sharp jaw, a sheepish look sitting oddly on features as brutal as his. “A few government coups and stock market crashes and a global recession. Not something mortals haven’t rebounded from before.”
“Yeah.” Dru straightened a bit. “I mean sure, some warlords are doing each other in, but most destabilizing countries are onlythreateningto go to war. And, I’ll admit, and a few fingers are fondling nuke codes, but no one’s pushed the red button yet.”
“Likely because so many of them are starving or infirmed,” Julian’s bleak and sonorous voice called to Aerin, and she slid his glove off his fingers before entwining them with hers.
“Let’s not forget the zombies and zealots and witch hunters.” Killian said. “And the she-devil who followed me here.”
“The moon turned to blood,” Tierra supplied as forlorn as Aerin had ever seen her, the weight of earth’s pain curling her shoulders forward. “The oceans are toxic and dying, the earth trembling, fires ripping across entire continents, super storms displacing millions, volcanoes threatening to erupt at any moment. It takes all of our powers, daily, to keep all this from consuming everything and everyone. What sort of place are we making? What are we leaving for our children?”
“Julian’s right,” Moira said with uncharacteristic solemnity. “Nothin’ we’ve tried seems to have worked.”
“What if we stopped trying?” The words escaped Aerin before the next thought had fully formed, her idea needing to be manifested before it slipped away like vapor on the wind.
“Darling.” Julian’s fingers squeezed hers as he leaned closer. “I know things appear hopeless, but I don’t believe we’re beyond the pale. Surely not all is lost—”
“No, hear me out.” Aerin turned to look up at him, decided she didn’t like that one bit, and tugged him down so he crouched beside her chair. “Do you remember what we spoke of that first ride we took to the cliffs? About the Goddess?”
His electric irises warmed to the color of the Mediterranean in July, the fine lines branching from his eyes as he looked into the past with that perfect memory of his. “I told you the Goddess was no longer allowed in the realm, that the feminine divine is lost—”
“Yes, yes, that’s the part. Now remember when you explained to me the meaning of the word apocalypse?” She leaned forward, intensity gathering as she saw the spark in his features and the birth of something echoed in her own vibrating soul.
Hope.
“Apocalypse, when translated from Greek, its original language, literally means a revelation or… cataclysm really. I told you that when the Goddess was driven from this, her creation, she left it forsaken, vulnerable for other deities to pick over once the prophecy was complete.”
“But she didn’t forsake it,” Aerin said. “She left us. We could have the power to take over once the prophecy is complete.”
“Uh oh,” Claire fretted. “Is she evil again? Because when she gets evil, she gets power hungry.”
Aerin turned reluctantly away from the fierce, beautiful face of the man who stared at her as if she hung the moon—before it was all bloody and stuff—to face the skeptical gazes of her sister witches.
“This isn’t about power this time,” she said fervently. “This is about protection. Think about it. When the Druid Malcom de Moray wrote the Domesday prophecy, he essentially said it would be the end of life as we know it.” She gestured widely. “But what is life as we know it now?”
In the most excited tones he’d used since she’d met him, Julian picked up what she was throwing down, quoting himself from that first time they’d met. “The world is an overpopulated, unmitigated disaster. Your governments are all corrupt, incompetent machines run by money and special interests. Humans in the first world are overfed, entitled, heartless bureaucrats who prefer to be blind to the suffering of others so long as they’re entertained by screens and buttons and social diseases. They do nothing for those who are still chained by tyrants or starved and abused by those who call themselves holy men. The feminine divine is lost. Wisdom is falling prey to dogma. And fear, greed, and apathy is keeping everyone subservient while corporations threaten entire ecosystems, fish the oceans to emptiness, and turn the planet into their own rubbish heap.”
“Exactly.” Aerin jumped up in her excited exuberance, a broad smile spilling over every muscle in her face until she felt as if her entire body thrilled with life. Eureka! “Life is meaningless and terrible. Basically, it’s the fucking worst. So let’s like, end this thingy.”
“Uh-oh,” Tierra’s eyes went owlish as she backed away slowly. “She’s not gone evil. She’s gone freaking nuts.”
Aerin was too electrified with an idea to be irritated.“Listennnuh, I’m saying let’s save the fucking world by ending it. Not ending people’s lives, but the way they live it. Let’s get rid of it all. Every imbalance. Every evil. Every suffering. Patriarchy, Oligarchy, Monarchy, other…archys and pave the way for your little cretins to bring power to the light and dark side of the force, or whatever. And then, with our immortal elemental powers of badassary, we can restore the feminine divine and, hell, possibly restore the power of the Goddess to her rightful place.”
She could feel her idea take root in Tierra, catch fire within Claire, and wash over Moira.
And then a man opened his mouth.
“That’s all well and good, but you’re forgetting a few things,” Killian said dryly. “Lucifer, for one.”
“Well yeah, I mean, we’ll have to kill her and her minions, obviously.” She gestured impatiently. “And then save the world.”
“And how do you propose we do that?” Nick asked.
“Well… I don’t know,” Aerin said. “We’re supposed to be a fucking think tank, I can’t haveallthe answers.”
“And then there’s us,” Julian said, his voice dripping with regret. “The fact that we exist mean others suffer. That is who we are, and we are undying.”
