Page 96 of Which Witch is Willing?
She knew this spell. She knew this power. She’d read about it in the back of the Grimoire. In the pages that were verboten.
Insatiable Chains, it had been called. A spell used to steal from its victim. Youth, beauty, luck, and, when applicable, power.
Life.
A chilling pain lanced through her as she felt the spell go to work, ripping her away from herself in slow, agonizing increments.
Her sisters rushed to retaliate.
“You willnot,” Tierra drew her fingers into claws and the building shook.
“We’ll end you first.” On Aerin’s other side, flames ignited in Claire’s hands. She could sense Moira draining the air of moisture, could hear it knocking about in the pipes below them.
Claire’s fireball hit Lucy in the arm, knocking one of the chains free.
Aerin screamed in agony as a scorching burn blistered her skin.
“Whatever you do to me now, will be done to those in my thrall,” Lucy warned, her lips pulled back in a smile of brilliant glee as her sisters hesitated.
Around such putrefying power, Gwen’s features, like all the rest, were beginning to disintegrate. “You burn me, you burn your sister. Drown me, imprison me in ice or vines, and so shackled is Aerin. What would you do? Trap all these women in a blaze? The walls are warded and can only be penetrated by darkness. No magical being, witch, nor horseman can get in or out.”
“Maybe,” Aerin labored to speak around the unfathomable pain. “But Hillbillies can.”
Summoning her dwindling powers, she activated Plan B.
Aerin was barely given time to enjoy Lucifer’s almost dog-like glance of befuddlement before the windows to the Raven Rook shattered and four ridiculous humans blew inside, straddling brooms and whooping up a ruckus.
Sal, wearing the armor of an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt and ratted jeans, crash landed by them and wrestled his broom to the ground.
“Ha!” he hollered. “And they kicked me out of hog ridin’ on account of me bein’ dumped on my head so much.” His victory smile was cut short when he took in their situation. With a motion smooth and strong for a man his age, he scooped up the girl who’d been like a daughter to him, and deposited her sidesaddle on the broom.
“C’mon Moira Jo, time we git the hell outta Dodge.”
Moira didn’t tear her eyes from Aerin, though she clutched at the broomstick as if afraid to fall. “I can’t leave!”
“You’re the only one who can,” Aerin gritted out. “Darkness. The baby will unlock the wards.”
“It’s impossible,” Lucy screeched.
“No, it isn’t.” Aerin laughed triumphantly. Or maybe she moaned, it was hard to tell. “You forget that not only did you live in my body, I lived in your mind, too. I know how strong you are… but I know your weaknesses too.”
Moira shook her head. “No. I’m not leaving the three of y—” Suddenly she doubled over and clutched her belly, her breath obviously stolen from her.
“Sal!” Aerin screamed, as a pulse of power drove her to her knees.
“10-4!” With a salute, the broom took off beneath them and he steered it toward the window. The entire room held its breath as he approached the window and then deflated as hewooshedthrough without so much as a hiccup. His entourage wentYeeHawingafter him with their legs kicking in the air.
Aerin’s relief was short-lived, however, as the three of them turned back to the devil, who had just had her best laid plans shit-kicked out of her.
And still, she held them a prisoner of her wrath.
As Aerin’s powers slid away from her, she felt the spell go to work on her life.
46
“We have something you want.” Julian’s cultured baritone crashed like a rogue wave over the din, leaving smooth silence in its wake.
The entire room turned to where two of the four horsemen stood, each framed by a separate shattered window, unable to advance any closer.
