The COMPLETE Witching Pen Series, Boxed Set (50 page)

She stopped by the front window, her haggard reflection bouncing off the pane, the darkness outside, reminding her that it must be about one in the morning. Did she even sleep anymore? Everything seemed like one giant nightmare.

Paul came up behind her, stopping short of touching her. She stared at him in the window, refusing to turn around. His breath tickled her hair. It startled her how
familiar
he felt, not least because he’d been nothing of the sort before these stupid memories invaded her. Two and a half weeks ago, she’d been praying to remember anything, and now she wondered if ignorance would have been better.

“Amy,” he whispered by her ear, and it was all she could do not to lean back into his frame, and she couldn’t deny that a part of her wanted to. But she didn’t. And he didn’t lean into her, not that he needed to … his words did it for him.

“If I thought for
one second
that there was even the smallest chance of you and I having any kind of future together, I would be fighting that demon tooth and nail to be by your side. If I thought you and I could have anything other than pain and complication, he’d have to kill me to tear me away from you, and I
would
die for you, Amy … I would die for you.”

She whirled around to face him, eyes burning hot, her anger practically palpable, and jabbed him in the chest with her finger, so hard he took a step back. “You hold my hand while you tell me to let go; you’ll
die
for me, but you won’t
fight
for me…” She grabbed the front of his shirt in two fists. “
Why are you here?
”

His hands settled around her arms, and he brought his forehead down to hers. It took every smidgen of self-restraint for the ‘Elizabeth’ in her to
not
reach out and kiss him. The part of her that was Amy wouldn’t –
couldn’t
– do that to Pueblo. Paul was obviously struggling with the same moral dilemma, and suddenly it was all too hard. She needed him to say something – anything… “Why?” she whispered.

“Amy … because…” he struggled to get the words out… “you’re pregnant.”

She stood that way for a long time, her hands frozen into balls and hanging onto him for dear life, because she was sure the ground had just disappeared from beneath her.

Eventually, some kind of sensation returned to her, and she could feel she was shaking her head from side to side…
Pregnant? PREGNANT?
 

“No … it’s not … that’s … that’s—”
the perfect explanation for your exhaustion, your nausea, the constant knot in your stomach, your irrational emotions and the fact that your period’s late.
 

Her insides lurched … again.
Oh, shit, my period’s late!
It hadn’t even occurred to her with everything going on, but now that she thought about it, it had been due just over two weeks ago.

“But…” she stammered, unable to finish the sentence.

Paul patiently massaged her fingers loose and removed them from his shirt, saying nothing, but clearly gauging her reaction.

When? When had this happened? She and Pueblo had been careful, and the likelihood of conceiving so close to her cycle should be next to none. So when—

Oooooh – there was that one time in the desert during their dream when they’d had the amazing and magical sex during their bonding, that had taken them out of the dream…
Ugh! Earth to Amy! If it took you
out
of the dream, then it was
real
wasn’t it? Plus, the magic… So that must have been when it happened…
 

Still in silence, Paul guided her back to the couch. Her legs automatically gave way when the back of her knees bumped the sofa. She tumbled heavily back onto the cushions … and that’s when she remembered the
other
dream.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit…

The hot fantasy lover dream! The one she hadn’t known was actually a dream-connection with Pueblo, but that had somehow turned into reality when she’d reached for the nearest warm body she could find to ease her burning ache – when she’d reached for Paul…

Oh, God!
That had been just hours before the desert dream with Pueblo.

Amy stared at Paul in shock and trepidation, and caught the tightening of his jaw and the clench of his throat as he gulped.

Because he knows what I’m going to ask…

Her hand instinctively settled on her belly. Surprisingly, her voice was much steadier than she had expected. “Who’s the father?”

~*~

Michael had left half an hour ago. Gwain guessed they had under twelve hours before all hell broke loose – or in their case, all heaven.

Mary threw the last splintered leg from the coffee table onto the rest of the broken pieces that made up the pile by the bin, then looked at Gwain, amused.

“What?”

“You’re grimacing again. Every time I put a piece of that table on this pile, you grimace. Am I throwing it away wrong?”

His lip twitched slightly, but he didn’t smile. “I liked that coffee table.”

“Don’t be such a girl. You can get another one.”

“Not one like that I can’t. It belonged to Vincent van Gogh. After he lobbed his ear off and wrapped it up, he laid it on this table before heading out the door. You can still smell the blood on the wood if you find the right spot.”

“
What?
” She bent down and picked up the bit she’d just dropped, examining it. “Were you there?”

“Yes.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “You weren’t the
reason
he lobbed off his ear, were you?”

He did smile then. “No, Mary, I wasn’t.”

She dropped the wood back on the pile and sidled up to him, wrapping her still naked form around his torso. He was really going to have to find her some clothes … not that he wanted to.

Letting out something between a breath and a sigh, he held her, relishing in the simple fact that he could. He cupped her backside, and pressed her against him. “You know, I’m feeling a little bit better already.”

He heard her laugh into the crook of his neck. Then she looked up at him, but her smile was sad. “There’s so much about you I don’t know; you’ve had so many lifetimes without me. I feel dwarfed by your age.”

“Technically, I’m not that much older than you, even if you reappeared twenty-eight years ago.” He placed one of her hands on his forehead. “You know everything about me, Mary. Just reach inside my mind – you’ll find it all.”

“Yeah … I know I can do that. I know I can just go in there, and feel everything you felt whenever you went through whatever you went through. But I so wish I could have
lived
those moments with you. Been there to experience them with you, to help you through it all… Oh, and by the way – that
sword…
I knew as soon as I held it. I can’t believe you’re
that
Gwain. I’ve read all about you.”

“Half-truths,” he said with a grin. “But they were good days.”

“Was the table really round?” she asked, with excitement.

“Mm-hm,” he nodded.

“And did you really go looking for the holy grail?”

Oh, how he loved her. Her unbridled curiosity about simply everything was a trait she’d always had, whether she called herself Mary or Ymari. So was her zest for life. He couldn’t stand the thought of a dead Mary. “I went looking for you.”

His serious tone silenced her.

“Every sacred mission, every hunt for hidden relics, every pilgrimage from one end of the earth to the other … I was looking for you.”

She moved her hand from his head to his cheek, to the same place she’d ripped into with her nails all that time ago. An inner-steel hardened her stare, but the steel itself was forged in devotion – a devotion he could feel seeping through his pores, nourishing him as his own blood did.

“I’ll never let go of you again,” she whispered. “I swear it.”

Another inch higher, and she sealed her vow with a kiss, the tip of her tongue brushing his.

His wings burst out in an embarrassing display that had her giggling into his mouth.

“Yeah, well, that’s the affect you have on me.” He deepened their kiss, grabbed her under her thighs and hauled her up onto the nearest surface, which happened to be the kitchen’s marble counter. Her hands found their way to the back of his shoulders, whilst his mapped out the swell of her hips, her abdomen, swept along the dip of her belly button, traced the underside of her breasts…

She groaned into his kiss, which he much preferred to her giggle. “Do we really have time for this?”

“Sod time. Time made me wait. Time owes me.”

She made a beautiful keening sound when he brushed his thumbs over both of her nipples. They instantly pebbled, and by God, he loved her breasts. They were larger than average, but then so was she… He was, one hundred percent, a breast man. “Does that feel good?”

“Are you kidding?” she moaned. “Can’t you tell what you’re doing to me through our connection?”

Fuck yeah. He thumbed her hardened tips, which earned him gasp after gasp, and had him wishing he’d never put his jeans on after the archangel left. “I want you to come like this.”

“I’ve had more orgasms in the past few hours than I’ve had my entire life.”

“So have I.” He took one of her nipples in his mouth, and rolled the other between his fingers.

On ragged breaths, she grabbed at his hair and pressed him further into her chest, her hips rising off the counter, the heady scent of her sex making his balls ache…

Fuck it, his stomach actually did a somersault – had it ever done that before? It was such a girly response – she was turning him to mush; to angel putty…

“Do you really have time for that right now?” came the contentious voice from the doorway.

Mary shrieked, and his wings automatically rose to form a protective barrier around her. He turned to face the intruder he was going to throw out of the window.

Sophia stood at the entrance to the kitchen, with four other Totilemi and a very little, hunch-backed Chinese man, who looked like he was at least one hundred and twenty. She tapped her foot in impatience, but her face still wore a bored expression that was almost blank. It was creepy enough that all the Totilemi demons wore the same mundane mask, but creepier still that they
all
looked
exactly
the same, as if they were quintuplets.

“Don’t you knock?” said Mary, angry, red-faced, and clearly frustrated in more ways than one. Her own wings unfurled, and she stretched them around herself to hide her nudity, releasing Gwain from the task.

For the first time he had seen, Sophia suddenly grinned – no, she beamed. “Oh,
you
have wings! You’ve merged?”

Shit. As much as he knew she was a demon, he just couldn’t bring himself to throw her out the window. “Explain to me why it’s any of your business.”

“The angel shall lay with the dragon.”

Mary rolled her eyes.

Gwain strode towards Sophia. “What do you know of the portents?”

“It’s what Satan was torturing me for. He knows they exist – that they signal the beginning of the final battle – but he doesn’t know what they are, or at least, he didn’t.”

“And Michael wasn’t forthcoming with their meanings.”

The child look-a-like raised her eyebrows in surprise.

Oh, goody, expression number two.

“The archangel? That means—”

“That he’s sending out an army as soon as he can manage it, and Mary and I may be dead soon. If we’re lucky, we’ll catch one more sunrise.”

Sophia clapped her hands in excitement. “Excellent!”

Maybe he
could
throw her out the window…

“Exactly why does that make you so happy?” snapped Mary.

She turned to speak to her Chinese companion in a language that wasn’t quite Cantonese. Gwain couldn’t place it – which irked him, because he knew almost every language in existence – but it didn’t sound like a modern tongue.

The man nodded attentively, seemed to agree to something, then shuffled forward towards Mary.

Gwain stepped in his path.

“Take a chill pill,” said Sophia. “He needs to see the necklace.”

“Why?” he demanded.

“Because he made it – or at least he thinks so – and if it’s the same one, it was a fairy queen who paid him a damn fine price to do so. It’s not just a necklace. It was forged using ancient blood magic, and has the power to awaken the old Gods.”

The old man gestured at Gwain. His accent sounded impossibly thick bouncing off his ancient, raspy, vocal chords. “I see, yes? I see?”

Mary hopped off the counter, still wrapped in her own wings, and came to stand by Gwain. “I think it’s okay,” she assured him, before reaching behind her neck and unclasping the chain.

She addressed the man. “This was left with me as a baby. I’ve always wondered about it.” Jostling a bit with her wings, she dropped it into his wrinkled hand.

He lifted it to the light, bit it, eyed it scrupulously, then ran a hand over it and closed his eyes as he muttered something that sounded like a chant under his breath.

Gwain spoke to Mary in his mind.
I don’t like this.
 

She met his eyes.
Let’s see what he says. We don’t have many choices open to us.
 

There are always choices.

Are there? Do you know what I really want to do? I want us to go out together tomorrow and buy a new coffee table, and me some clothes … but you and I … what Michael said … there’s not going to be a happy ending for us, is there?

It was a rhetorical question, and it annoyed the hell out of him that she’d said it – thought it – so calmly.
We’re not going to die, Mary. Let all of Heaven’s army come – I won’t let them kill us.
 

And where are we going to go so that they don’t?

He didn’t have an answer to that question, so he sort of just growled at her.

Six pairs of eyes watched him guardedly.

Mary grinned. “That’s very sexy, and not very mature, but it doesn’t change anything.”