The Four Horsemen(11)
I laugh, “I am.”
Her eyes glow like mine but brighter, “You know what he is, right?”
“Yeah. He’s a Van Helsing. I know the stories.”
She shakes her head, “He’s an angel like you. You can’t trust them, Rayne.”
I scowl, “How do you know my name?”
She gives me a cocky grin, “I heard about what you did for my sister. You sucked the death from her. I just never knew you were an angel. She missed that part of the story.”
Wyatt steps closer, “Tell us how to find the air witches.”
I smile, “He means please. Please show us how to find the air witches.”
She laughs, “Let’s go to meet the others first.” She looks at our clothes, “You’re going to need to change. You can’t do a ceremony in that outfit. Not since it’s the second shot and, technically, it shouldn’t be able to be redone.”
She takes my hand and pulls me into the side door of the creepy old house. We go down into the basement and through an old tunnel. She looks around, like she can see like I can. “This was once the way out of the city. The witches who ran during the trials came through these tunnels. We learned after the European trials to build a way out, before we built houses. The American Witch Trials were nothing, compared to the European. Of course the trials never killed many real witches. Only healers, wet-nurses, mistresses of men who got caught, and women who were too beautiful. The churches assumed they were witches because they tempted the men. Of course if I am a married man and I want a woman more than my own wife, that makes her a witch. Heaven forbid any of them admitted to being weak. Men would rape women and call them temptress witches. It was sick. We fled Europe during that time, fled for the East Coast. I killed as many of the bad men as I could, but when they brought in the witch hunters, I had to leave. We all did.” She looks back at Wyatt, “None of us can fight off a Van Helsing, not unless we have a full coven. Back then, women weren’t practicing in covens, too easy to get caught.”
Wyatt cocks an eyebrow, “You do realize I wouldn’t have been born during that time. I can’t take blame for things in the 1500s and 1600s.”
She points a long black nail at him, “Changes nothing, Van Helsing. Nothing. You and your kind…”
I cut her off and step in front of her, “He is my kind. He isn’t their kind, trust me.”
Her dark, and yet glowing, eyes flicker between the two of us. She smirks, “You defend him?”
I nod, “He is mine to criticize and torment.”
Wyatt leans over me, “That’s right. Only she gets to make my life hell. Trust me, she’s doing a bang-up job.”
Lila cackles perfectly, though it doesn’t suit her beautiful face.
She nods towards the end of the tunnel, “Let’s go. They aren’t going to be excited we brought him with us.”
She opens the heavy steal door that I would have figured would be old wood but once we are beyond it, I understand perfectly. We are in a cellar under an old house, but it is a shop of sorts, a magical shop.
She claps her hands and the candles everywhere light up. The room is spooky and mystical. Willow would have dug it here.
I shudder from the feeling in the air.
“Show yourselves, sisters. He cannot harm you. He is guarded by his love of the sin eater and his angel bloodline.”
Women start appearing out of nowhere. The room is full suddenly.
We all stand there, looking at each other but no one speaks. I feel the nausea in my stomach from him being too close. His chest and stomach are pressed against my back. He’s gauging the room to fight our way out. I can almost smell it on him, not fear but fight.
I reach back, taking one for the team and hold his hands with my own, “He is mine.”
They make faces and whisper amongst themselves.
“Does it not hurt, sin eater?”
I nod, “Near-death bad.”
The older witch with the white hair in the corner nods at me, “You wish us to handfast, even though you just broke it?”
“We do.”
“Why?” she asks and the others nod in agreement.
I shrug but Wyatt speaks, “I fasted our hands without her knowledge of what it meant. I forced it. This time I have asked as is your custom, on my knees.”
They all look disgusted. A dark-haired one points at him, “Typical man. That’s how many a witch was made a slave in the old days. A handfasted witch cannot use her magic on her husband, nor can her coven sisters.” She gives us a sickening smile, “But it wasn’t ever hard to find a sister somewhere to smite his ass like he deserved.”
They all cackle. They are more like the witches I expected in the world. Not the sneaky faces of the earth witches or the deceptive beauty of the nixie. No, the fire witches are Gothic and slightly haggard in some cases. There is very little beauty to go round. Instantly, I remember something I once read. The beauty of a witch shows on the inside and the out. It was on the wall, somewhere? Willow’s cottage, in the picture maybe. I can see the darkness of them.
One of the witches, a particularly pretty one, smiles at me, “My sister is the one who fasted you last time. You saved her life. For that we are grateful, and we will spell your wishes.”
I look around at the older ones but they seem satisfied by her words, like she is in charge.
They step to the side, making a path for the door on the far side. “There are wedding clothes in the room there. Go and change. Lila will bring you up to the hallowed ground.”
Lila leads the way to the door. She opens it and goes inside. I follow her, feeling Wyatt hesitate as we cross into the room.
The door closes. Lila smiles at him, “Nervous we won’t let you out?”
He gives her his sexy, confident smile. “You can’t hurt me. The dark-haired one spoke an oath, it’s spelled. I felt it on my skin.”
She cocks an eyebrow, “Did I mention that I just love that you’re half angel? I think that’s fantastic.”
He rolls his eyes, walking past her to the clothes. His are dark jeans and a black dress shirt. He scowls, “I’m going to freeze up there.”
She smiles, “Awwww muffin. I’m sure we can manage a nice fire to keep you warm.”
I laugh and he gives me a look, “What happened to he’s mine?”
I shrug, “That was funny. I have a sense of humor, you don’t. It’s no biggie.”
She passes me a long black skirt with layers like a dead bride’s dress and a black corset shirt. I give her the puppy-dog eyes, “I don’t want to be cold too. It’s not funny when it’s me suffering.”
She shakes her head, “The clothes have to be black. If your underwear aren’t black, you have to take them off.”
Wyatt gives her a cocky, asshole grin. “I don’t like wearing them anyway.”
She can’t fight the attraction to him. None of them can. I can’t either. It’s one thing that he’s stop-traffic hot—it’s completely another that he’s a Van Helsing, and all things like us are attracted to him. He pulls off the hoodie and slips on the dress shirt. She turns around as he drops his trousers, with no regard for either of us. He smells the jeans, “These are clean, right?”
“Of course. They’re magic.”
He chuckles, “Well, when was the last wedding?”
She turns back around as he zips the zipper, “Not too long ago, but he only kept them on for an hour or so.”
Wyatt’s face goes still. She laughs. He shakes his head, “Not funny, witch.”
She shrugs, “Like the sin eater says, you just don’t have a sense of humor, do you?”
He steps forward, “I do, it just seems the things I think are funny offend everyone else.”
She swallows hard. I turn around with the corset over my breasts, “Can someone do this up?”
Wyatt touches me, making me jump, “Her—can she do it?”
Lila comes and does the bra and corset over it up. She whispers in my ear, “The clothes are new. We manifest them for weddings.”
I smile, “Thanks.”
She nods, “Let him sweat it out though, huh?”
I nod.
She opens a different door on the other side of the room and leaves through it. We walk up the stairs to a garden. It is dark and dreary. I can feel the wrinkled nose and disgusted look. When I see the first headstone, I gag.
She laughs, “Fire witches don’t normally need the help of the dead to seal something like this, but you two just broke one off. That leaves a stain. If we didn’t have a full coven and all our ancestors buried beneath us, we wouldn’t even be able to do it.”
We walk to where a gathering of women wearing black dresses stand around an old headstone.
I have the funniest feeling like I’m not making the right choice. The dead are there, I can feel them for the first time in ages. The other girls inside of me, the other versions of me, are gone. They are silent, probably in protest, but I don’t care. I want to touch him and kiss him and make love to him, like I never have but I know I can.
Constantine’s name whispers through my mind, but that’s the only place it is. He is not in my heart. He is not my choice, he is theirs. I do not believe in being able to love two people at once. I am hardly able to say I love Wyatt. I know I do, but my heart is broken, and I don’t know why or how to fix it.