The COMPLETE Witching Pen Series, Boxed Set (56 page)

“We’ll go get her, I promise – as soon as we’ve got an open window to do so.”

She nodded her thanks. “How’s your mum?”

“Better, although she refuses to have us try and sort out her little age problem. Oh, and … er … I told her about stuff. She wanted to know about my granddad, and what’s been going on…”

“Oh.” She suddenly felt queasy.

“Don’t throw up again, okay? She’s cool with it, and, well, she’d like to meet you.”

Great.

“Great,” smiled Amy, although she felt anything but. It was sort of like meeting your boyfriend’s mother for the first time … except she was meeting her sort-of-but-not-really-ex-husband’s daughter from the marriage that came after theirs. What in God’s name was she going to say to the woman? “What do I say to her?”

“I dunno. Steer clear of ‘I’m the one that came before your mum’, and you should be okay.”

Amy glared at her.

“Knock, knock.” Paul came in through the doorway carrying a large rucksack. He’d said he needed to pop back to The Council for some things, and that now would be the best time to do it, since no one there would recognise him. He’d promised to be no more than fifteen minutes, so Amy figured what Pueblo didn’t know, wouldn’t hurt him, and she didn’t want to be under constant guard anyway – she was pregnant, not useless.

The Council had quickly reordered itself after Etienne had ‘disappeared’, appointing a new High Priest in no time, but then, Etienne had structured the system to be able to deal with such things.

Amy looked at the clock. “Fifteen minutes, just like you said. Very punctual.”

He smiled. “Always have been.”

“Yes, I know.”

And that killed the conversation.

Elena rolled her eyes. “I’m going to check on my—”

Her sentence ended in a little squeal, as the ground began to shake, and this quake was the biggest they’d felt so far.

“Table!” shouted Paul. “Under the table, both of you!”

They didn’t argue, but ducked under as a couple of glasses fell off the shelf.

“Mum!” cried Elena.

Paul shot her a look. “I’ll go.”

After a pause, she nodded.

“Be careful!” Amy called out after him. As if it wasn’t bad enough to have to worry about one man going off on some half-cocked mission, she now had to worry about two? For the next nine months?

“Elena!” Karl stumbled into the kitchen.

“Here, under the table.”

Karl nodded, relief showing on his face, then propped himself under the door frame.

The quake subsided as quickly as it had begun, but this one had left people shrieking outside on the street, car and house alarms going off, and all the dogs in the neighbourhood barking.

The two women gingerly crawled out from their hideout, and the three of them stared at each other in silence. What was there to say, anyway, when you were waiting for the world to end?

“So,” Karl grinned. “Breakfast?”

“Oh, breakfast would be
awesome
,” came the familiar voice from across the living room to their left. “I don’t even know when I last ate.”

The three of them spun and stared, gobsmacked, through the open doorway, to see Mary and Gwain standing by the couch.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were hungry?” said Gwain.

“You have nothing in your fridge.”

“I do.”

“Beer doesn’t count.”

“I’d have got you something.”

“When? Before Michael’s visit, during Sophia’s visit, or after all the hot sex?”

He never got a chance to reply, because his face met the front of Karl’s fist.

~*~

Truth be told, he was getting a bit tired of being hit, but he knew Karl’s anger came from a just place, as opposed to Michael’s, which came from righteousness, and Abaddon’s, which came from a place of lunacy having spent an eternity living in darkness and sin.

Still, it pissed him off, and not just because that flawless punch had landed him on his arse – the boy had some muscle – but because what hurt him, hurt Mary. He had to consciously remind himself that Karl had no idea that was the case.

But it was Mary who took the lead. She shook her head, and pulled herself to standing in record time. “Hey, hey, hey,” she cooed, as she gently took Karl’s fist in her own hand.

Cooed? Mary cooed? Yeah, he’d heard it all now, and this woman was fuckin’ amazing. He wondered if she’d coo, purr, or scream bloody murder when he sank that blade in her heart.

Karl looked at her, confused, and then Mary spread her wings.

Well, wasn’t the boy’s face a picture.

Elena and Amy still stood in the doorway with their mouths hanging open, seemingly unsure of what to do. And he’d be damned if the blonde’s aura didn’t indicate she was with child. Shit. Looks like they’d missed out on a whole bunch of stuff too.

He turned his attention back to the lad. He had to stop thinking of him as a boy, despite having watched him grow up … from a distance, anyway. It was a full grown man standing in front of him now. One he was about to leave stranded. “Karl … son…” Gwain stood and placed himself next to Mary.

Karl suddenly looked pained, as if he’d just realised what he’d done. “Gwain … sorry. I’m sorry…”

“No, I’m sorry. I buggered off without a word and left you to pick up all the pieces.” He hesitated, then placed a hand on the boy—the man’s—shoulder.

Karl straightened, and looked him directly in the eye. “You fucking bastard.” Then he threw his arms around him, relief pouring off him.

Gwain’s chest tightened with emotion. He returned the hug, then clapped him on the back.

They pulled away from each other, and Karl turned to Mary. He took in her whiter-than-white wings. “Bloody hell…”

“Is exactly where I’ve been,” she grinned.

“We can’t stay long,” Gwain said.

“
Breakfast
,” hissed Mary, next to him.

He let out a long breath. “But we’ll stay for breakfast,” he mumbled.

Mary squealed in delight, bounded across the room to Elena and Amy, and then all the girls were hugging and squeaking and everything had gone super-sonic.

“You know,” he said to Karl, “there are some things not even evolution can change.”

“Are you telling me that women have always spread joy in high frequency?”

“Mm-hmm. Even in Neanderthal times.”

Karl laughed out loud, and Gwain hated himself for what he was about to do.

He dug into his pockets. “Here,” he said, and placed the Pen in his hand. “I need you to look after this – I know you can … And here…” In his other hand, he placed the keys to his penthouse.

Karl looked at him, bewildered. He’d been to the penthouse once, just before they flew to Hyde Park to save Elena. “These are the keys to your penthouse.”

“Yes, they are, and if the quakes get bad, the safest place is on the roof. You have wings, the others can teleport, and nothing can fall on you if you’re on top of everything else.”

Karl thrust the keys against Gwain’s chest. “Sod that. You’re saying goodbye.”

He ignored him, and pushed his hand, still holding the keys, back towards Karl. “There’s a safe in the bathroom that adjoins the master bedroom, behind the mirror. The smaller key opens it, along with a code. You’ll want to read the info you find in there. Some of it’s … about you.”

He paused. “Me?”

Gwain nodded.

“What’s the code?”

“Your birth date.”

Silence thickened the air between them.

Gwain clasped a hand to the side of Karl’s face, and swallowed back tears. Apocalypses turned grown men into sissies… “I’m proud of you, my boy. You’re the angel I’ve always wanted to be.”

“Breakfast!”
called Elena, from the kitchen, and Mary hooted her approval from somewhere in there as well.

He nudged Karl forwards, and they both entered the makeshift cuisine to a banquet of everything and anything you could ever want for your morning feast. It smelt divine, and he suddenly realised Mary wasn’t the only one who couldn’t remember when she last ate – his stomach rumbled.

He sought his angel out over the ‘mmmms’ and ‘aaaahhhs’ of delight, and met her eyes above the busying hands reaching for the grub.

She smiled at him. It was steady and sure, and bittersweet, because as they sat down, he knew she understood as well as he did, that this would be their last meal.

~*~

Half an hour later saw everyone stuffed. Well, almost everyone. Mary was still picking at bits and pieces, and my goodness, the woman had an appetite. Elena had missed her. She always seemed to inject everything with life – strange, considering they now knew she represented everything that was darkness, death and pain.

Both Mary and Gwain had filled them in on what had happened to Mary at the prison, and what had transpired with Sophia and Archangel Michael.

And now all of Heaven was gunning for Mary’s head.

Mary, though, seemed oddly calm with it all. In fact, she looked more than calm – she looked
healthy
. The girl had never looked
un
healthy, but now, her pale skin sort of glowed a bit pink, and that haunted look she carried around in her eyes, which Elena had always assumed was from her nightmares, was no longer there.

Gwain also looked strangely peaceful, although less resigned to the idea of Mary beheaded, as were they all. Still, probably for the first time – she’d never really looked properly before – she could see what her mother was saying: Gwain always looked distant. Even now, with everyone joking and larking about, he sat a little removed from them, not quite part of the merriment, his eyes, ever so slightly glazed over and focused on something no one else could reach.

Except Mary.

When he looked at Mary, he was anything but distant, and the way he
stared at her held so much
feeling
, Elena had to look away. It was too easy to feel like she was intruding on something private, even though the only thing passing between them was a look.

It should have been weird, the whole Mary and Gwain thing – she didn’t think she’d ever seen Mary with a guy before, nor heard her talk about one – but they just …
fit
… which she supposed made sense, what with them being made from the same nucleus of dark matter that had existed before Heaven did, or whatever the hell Mary had tried to explain to them earlier. She was still trying to get her head around it. At least all the prophecies about the dragons and sins and stuff made sense now.

And that was really what was on everyone’s mind: the prophecies. The last thing they were waiting for was all the dimensions to bleed into one, whatever that really meant.

Elena let her gaze fall on everyone else. Her mum, who had joined them fifteen minutes ago was talking to Amy, who had looked about as thrilled as a potato when she’d first approached her. However, true to style, her mother had opened the conversation with, “So, you’re the one that came before my mother,” and, after initially looking like she was about to faint, Amy had proceeded to get on with her mum like a house on fire.

Gwain and her mum had also talked briefly, and Mary had been more than curious at their interaction, but then Mary was curious about everything, anyway. When Gwain had offered to try and heal her, her mother had blatantly refused, looked at Mary, and ordered them both to save their strength – “they were going to need it”. Elena wondered if that had come from some kind of clairvoyant insight.

Gwain had simply shrugged. He was clearly more used to dealing with her mother’s stubbornness than Elena was.

Her grandfather sat to her mother’s right, looking almost as distant as Gwain. It was clear that things were still strained between him and his daughter, but the two of them
had
exchanged words, and some kind of healing seemed to be taking place. It was bizarre to see them together, though – her grandfather looking youthful, and her mother looking old.

Elena sighed.
You should be healing rifts with him too,
scolded her mind.

Yes, she should. She just wasn’t quite there yet, even if the world was ending.

Katarra had gone back to her tribe to await the apocalypse. The Brujii, like the Totilemi, were keen for it to happen. The change would signal a freeing of powers for both of them, and for the Brujii, the ability to breech the confines of their forest homelands. If the dimensions were no longer separate, all demon tribes would be roaming the earth freely, even the Shanka.

The Dessec were one of the few demon races that did not welcome Armageddon. They had their own little desert oasis, and they wanted to keep it that way. Pueblo had often scoffed that for a tribe whose gift was bending time, they were ridiculously resistant to change. And now he was off on a mission to overthrow them all…

Finally, Elena looked for Karl. She caught sight of him through the kitchen doorway, on the far side of the living room looking out of the window. He’d been strangely quiet since Gwain and Mary had shown up, and following his little outburst of temper. She knew he would beat himself up over that for weeks to come, given that he hated thinking he was anything like his father.

She’d seen Gwain talking to him in private after that, but Karl hadn’t divulged anything to her. She’d let it lie, giving him time to calm down, but now, Elena stood and made her way to him. She didn’t get very far.

Karl turned and strode back into the kitchen, his expression grim.

One by one, everyone fell silent.

“Hundreds, if not thousands, of angels line the horizon,” he said. “This is it.”

Chapter Sixteen

Mary should have been scared. No – she should have been downright terrified. Terror was something that had always sat in the pit of her stomach, waiting for nightfall; waiting for her to close her eyes…

But she wasn’t afraid. For the first time she could remember, every single thing felt right, and the fear that lived in the pit of her stomach, had been banished by faith. She knew Gwain felt it too, but he had been tarnished by too many years in the physical dimension with only one half of himself for company. Faith was harder to trust when you were bound to something that promised you suffering.