Page 1 of Which Witch is Willing?
I
Tierra
By Tiffinie Helmer
1
"Ihave a bad feeling about this." Tierra de Moray felt Killian Bane, aka Death, the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse step up behind her and laid a possessive hand on her arm. They were all upstairs staring out at the scene below as her sister Claire verbally tried to pull the wool over Lucifer's eyes by using Satan's cyanide spell against her.
But it could easily go so wrong.
"Agreed. This is taking too fucking long," Dru Geddes growled. War's words mirrored the thoughts swirling in Tierra's mind like a hive of angry hornets.
Why had she gone along with this crazy-ass plan to let her sister face off alone against Satan, the ultimate deceiver? There must have been something else they could have tried. Too many things were bound to go wrong, and had, since they'd opened the first Seal and brought about the beginning of the end.
The sun bled claret in a bruised sky. Bruised is how they all felt. Some of them had been bruised, broken, killed, and, in her case, resurrected.
She bit her lip and held her breath as Lucifer and Claire clinked the poison-laced glasses, each taking a toxic sip of the blood-colored wine.
Don't swallow, Claire,Tierra prayed.
She laid a hand over her swollen belly where her child grew. What kind of world would he or she be born into? Hell on earth? A new order with Lucifer ruling?
A fluttering kick hit her palm and love bloomed in her chest for this innocent life she'd somehow created with Death, the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse.
Suddenly Lucifer vaulted to her feet, spewing wine and screaming at Claire.
Damn it, Tierra knew this would backfire in the worst way. Everything inside her tensed and she wondered if her bones might shatter like glass. She made a move to rush to her sister's aid, only to be held back by Killian's unbreakable grip.
"Claire!" Dru yelled, running for the balcony and leaping over the edge, diving two stories to the ground below.
Tierra stared in horror at the chaotic scene as Lucy tackled Claire, hissing and hacking, clawing at her throat. Then Lucifer jumped to her feet, pointed at Claire, but seemed unable to speak as her face started to melt. She ran from the grounds, and Tierra forgot about her as Claire struggled to her feet, stumbling toward the safety of the castle. She ground to a halt, her body lighting up like the hottest flame, and vomited up a fireball. The roaring mass of flames grew rapidly and spread to the castle.
"Everyone get out!" Nick Kingswood—Conquest—yelled just as Killian scooped up Tierra and ran for the open balcony doors, his massive onyx wings already extended as he leapt over the stone balusters with her clutched in his arms.
"No, my sisters are still in there!” Tierra screamed. An explosion of flames, followed quickly by another deafening denotation drowned out her words.
The castle imploded on itself, sealing her sisters inside.
2
"Son of a fucking corpse fucker!" Lucifer busted into the deserted Palace Hotel. She was going to disembowel every last one of those feckin' gobshite sisters. How dare they try and trick her?
Herof all beings.
She was the embodiment of perfection, filled with wisdom and flawless in beauty. She'd walked through the midst of the stones of fire, had been named the Mother of Lies. The ruler of demons, the destroyer of mankind, the queen of temptation, and, her favorite, the punisher.
And yet, by all that was evil and blasphemous, she hurt.Actuallyhurt. She burned everywhere, from the inside and out.
They had tried to kill her with herowncyanide spell, and they might have succeeded if she'd ingested more than just the one sip of laced wine. She stumbled over to the large, full-length, glided mirror hanging in the Victorian foyer to assess the damage. The side of her face felt scorched and blistered. Cold air swept over her teeth from the area that should be covered by the skin of her cheek.
She gasped at her demonic reflection.
Her beautiful, perfect, angelic face echoed back at her disfigured, the left side eaten away by the cyanide poison. She looked like a freaking zombie. The muscles and tendons lay filleted open, exposing her gums and teeth through what had been her cheek.
She whimpered. Her fingers shook as she raised them to touch the thin threads of derma and tissue that remained. The skin from her razor-edged cheekbones was gone, and the gaping hole continued down the side of her jaw, to the second hollow cavity in her throat.
So that's where the wheezing sound had come from—air being sucked in through the open pit of her tracheae.
