Goddess Rising, page 10
“I mean,” I started, staring over the Quay and watching birds fly. “You guys shot me. Tried to blow up my house. I don’t see the misunderstanding, but you did me a huge favor. Have you seen Ireland this time of year? Gorgeous.”
“My husband is so happy,” I continued. “He has a spring in his step and all that. I think we’ll stay, seeing as how we’re already settled. I’ll say this, though,” I added, dropping the good-natured tone I’d affected so far. “We aren’t enemies right now, but keep fucking around, and all your fears will be realized.
“You attacked my children’s home. You shot me, and make no mistake, I know who was behind that trigger pull. If you keep fucking around, you’ll find out just how badly this will go. You can’t come at me directly, and if you come after anything that is mine, you will pay. I’ve never harmed a soul that didn’t earn it. I want peace, but I assure you, if you start a war, I will finish it. Have a nice day.”
I hung up the phone, blocking the number as Coi slow-clapped behind me, putting his hands on my shoulders.
“Well done, mo chroi.” He kissed my hair, spun me to face him, and knelt between my legs with a smile. “They will stop. She is trying to save face, that is all.”
I nodded, knowing he was right.
“And your protections will hold if they try to force the issue.” He winked, and my grin changed to a full-blown smile.
“They will,” I said. “What now?”
“Now we finish unpacking and see how it goes.” He kissed my cheek, leaving me to boxes and thoughts of war with my former country.
Chapter 13
We spent the afternoon setting up our workspaces. Once the locals noticed the activity, more and more stopped to check out the space because that’s what a community like Belmullet does.
The Prime minister arrived to shake hands and kiss babies, assuring us that there’d be no repeat of the events in America. He didn’t ask for assurances or favors, though someday that would come. Aedan said these things had a pattern, and he would know.
And next, it would be Scotland or Finland or France. There would always be a next time, and he was right. The first move was the hardest, but I’d learn the way of it quickly.
My parents came, bringing Sephone, who already looked better for being away from the rest of us. If her head was a little higher and her poise a little more polished, Coi didn’t see, but I did. To his credit, he didn’t try to baby her. Whether it was having multiple tasks to accomplish or something else, he left her to roam the building and talk to her family.
Once my office almost functioned, I went to the waterfall on the first floor, sifting behind the flow to the alcove behind with a singular intention. Closing my eyes, I focused on the fountain in the middle of Talamh na Sithe and built a Way to another alcove behind a statue of my mother positioned there. Some Ways were intentionally made for the public, but I would not advertise this one, nor would I make it passable by everyone. It would be a quick way for those close to us, like Taliah, to go home and see her parents or for Sephone to come and see us directly.
I wove the strands of creation quickly, making it small and stable but not fancy. It once took me hours to make a Travelway, and the first one took me a day. Now, I accomplished it in a few minutes, the act of creation coming like air into my lungs. I didn’t come from behind the statue by the fountain on the other plane, just backtracked and wove the other direction to stabilize both.
When I popped out behind the waterfall, I sifted to Coi’s office, hoping to find him alone.
“You have stars in your eyes, Anamcara, and smell like the universe. What have you gotten up to?” he asked, flattening his lips as he worried.
Smiling, I snatched his hand and sifted behind the falls again, putting my finger to his lips so he wouldn’t make a sound. I waved my hand at the back of the alcove, and the Way opened for him to see. “To the Fae square behind that terrible statue of my mother.”
“Perfect,” he said, his eyes crinkling with a smile. “Just like you.” He booped my nose, making me roll my eyes.
I sank to my knees, looking up at him with giant star-filled anime eyes. He blinked, his fangs extending like a teenage vampire as his eyes bled yellow, and I was glad I could still surprise him.
I freed his cock from his pants, taking it to my throat in one rough plunge. He groaned, fisting my hair and tipping his head back.
“Quiet, babe,” I whispered, popping my lips from his tip.
“I am no babe,” he growled quietly. “Open,” he said, his eyes entirely yellow and past the point of return.
Smiling wide, I opened my mouth, accepting him when he drove between my lips because using creation magic got to me like that. He pumped his hips, fucking my face and making me drip onto the floor, but I didn’t care. I liked this. I loved unraveling the master vampire and ancient fae. Life was long, and these moments were precious to both our sanities.
Gripping his ass, I dug my nails into his velvety skin to the hard muscle beneath. Feeling him tense and his movements stutter, I hollowed my cheeks and swallowed him as deeply as he could reach. He came hard, spilling his saltiness down my throat with his head thrown back and a stunned, silent exclamation on his lips.
He dropped beside me, breathing hard as he gathered me in his arms. “You wreck me,” he panted. “Perhaps I am a babe.”
“I love you, too.” I tucked into his arms, enjoying the sound of the water that splashed into the small pool before lumbering away in a stream where fat, lazy fish begged for food. “I like it here; we’ll be happy.”
“We would be happy anywhere we are together, Anamcara.”
“We’re.” I stifled a smile against the velvet iron of his chest.
“Yes, we are.” He sighed contentedly, causing me to do the same.
We sat for a while, listening to the quiet roar of the waterfall and distant stream of voices before I sifted to my office to finish setting up.
I used magic. Not gonna lie. I imagined where I wanted the things in the final boxes, and, after checking for nib-nosers, I magicked them into place. I was tired of unpacking, and, yeah, maybe it was a tiny overuse of magic, but I didn’t care if it meant I was done. The next time, I wouldn’t even pretend to unpack.
My office was incredible, and I loved the open warehouse feel of the place even more once it was set up. I looked out the massive window to where gulls flew over the bay before shutting and locking the door with a press of my mind no key could undo.
Around the upper level, most people were finished or wrapping up. Laughter echoed through the atrium, and something unlocked, settling in my chest. This was a good move despite dying for a few seconds and the stress of the last few days, and I wouldn’t regret it or look back anymore. My family was here, and here was the best place in the world. Wherever here was today, or wherever here was tomorrow, it was these people that mattered.
Chapter 14
It was late when we returned to the castle on the cliff. We’d considered staying at the Hennessey Building, but there was still commotion from latecomers, and we didn’t want to harsh their vibe. Had we been there, they’d have worried about being quiet, and the raucous environment would’ve dimmed. We didn’t want that.
We pulled through the iron gates at the base of the drive, winding our way through fields of heather just starting to bud. Soon, the landscape would be covered in a fragrant riot of purple and a scattering of white. Heather was the bane of an Irish farmer's existence, much like Kudzo in the south, but to me, it was gorgeous and my favorite part of the country.
There was an old Way to Talamh na Sithe in the middle of the field behind the house that we’d used to stage the first battle in the war that eventually won my mother her crown and ended my grandmother’s tyranny. This place was sentimental to me because of what happened in those days, and for other reasons I didn’t understand.
Coi had lived here with his first love, his human love, two millennia ago. He’d built the place for her, but she’d been murdered along with his unborn child before my grandmother changed him into the first Fae-vampire hybrid. And so, this place was also sentimental to him.
The cottage’s round turrets rose as we mounted to the last hill, revealing the grand view of the place. I couldn’t even complain about Coi’s driving when the layers of the castle peeled away slowly, like a tease, until all its beauty was laid bare in the moonlight. I sighed, knowing this place was more a home to me than any other. Like my blood found the marrow from which it came. Anxiety I didn’t know I felt fled on the scent of the ocean and sound of the waves, somehow muted at the base of the cliff.
Coi reached for my hand, bringing it to his lips. “Where did you go?” he asked. “You flickered for a moment.”
Where my anxiety vanished, his tripled. I know I scared him sometimes. “I was just here, I think. In this moment. I love this place.”
“Never leave me.” It was a demand, a plea, an order, but I heard the tinge of fear in his voice, and I hated that.
“You’ll always find me if I try,” I said, meaning it. “You’ll always bring me home.” Because I couldn’t promise not to leave, I was trying. I was trying so hard, but Dani made something even she didn’t understand. I’d trust The Flame Keeper more than myself in this matter. “I love you,” I added, giving him a smile I felt in my eyes.
“And I, you,” he said, reverting to his more formal cadence of speech because he was still worried.
“What the?” I started as we pulled to the old carriage house converted to a garage.
Aedan chuckled, rubbing his hands together in glee. “You will have to get used to the steering wheel being on the wrong side of the car, but it is not hard.” He hopped out after pressing the button on the car to open the bay where this particular car lived.
Rows of cars sat in the fading light of day. My McLaren F1, my P1, My old truck. My Truck! Our cars, all the cars I thought I’d never see again, were lined up, detailed, and sparkling, awaiting a place to call their new home. “Aedan,” I shrieked, running to hug him and then running to hug my truck before jumping into the cab, inhaling the scent of old leather and memories I didn’t even know I had missed. I turned the key, listening to the old diesel grumble to life and failing to hold back a shiver.
Coi watched, smiling like a satisfied cat at my joy. “How?" I asked. “It’s only been hours, literal hours, that we’ve been here.”
“Magic.” He winked, and I wondered if he was teasing or truthful. A skilled driver could get a car through some of the larger ways, but it wasn't easy as the Ways recognized organic figures, not metal ones. Especially not metal ones. Sighing, I sat deeper into my seat, wondering how many twenty-six-year-old one-ton diesel trucks like mine were driving the Irish roads.
About ten years ago, the world made a final, hard push toward using only all-electric vehicles, but it failed. Companies stopped making anything that ran on fossil fuels, and more power grids crashed due to overuse. The all-electric experiment became untenable for the time. The Chinese government put a chokehold on the rare minerals used in the batteries, and the environmental damage from those mines became widely known.
The American automobile market was beginning to recover from that experiment, but it had been a long road, pun intended. There was a balance now between all energy types that there hadn’t been, and the world was starting to stabilize because of it.
And while gasoline and diesel fuel had been hard to find for a while, it was worth keeping these cars, especially since not every country fell prey to the initial allure of all-electric vehicles nor had the infrastructure to use them. Electric engines don’t growl like my truck, don’t scream like my F1, or grumble like the Camaro. There’s beauty in all things, and it’s my job to find it.
“Where are we going to put them?” I asked, scanning the too small carriage house in dismay.
“Most will fit in the carriage house, but we will build a garage for the rest.” He assured, smiling at me as I bounced on the seat of the old Chevy like a toddler.
“Let me do it! I don’t want them to get wet, salty, sunburned, scratched, or defiled. I can build it.” I turned the key off, silencing the diesel’s hum.
“Anamcara. No. It is too much.” He reached for me, pulling me to him.
“It’s,” I said, looking early into his face for approval.
“Yes, it is. I agree.”
“You agree! Perfect!”
“No, that is not.” He sighed, scowling at me. “That’s not what I meant,” he tried.
He was close. So close.
I didn’t correct him. My hair floated in a breeze that wasn’t there, sparks erupted from my fingers, and I knew my skin glowed in excitement. Like, glowed like a lightbulb. It had been years since I lost control like this, but it had been a while since I used my magic in a big way. Making Ways, building shields, and unpacking boxes was child’s play on my magical spectrum. I felt unused magic boiling under my skin, begging to be loosed.
“I need to, Coi. The well is overflowing. I’ll be exhausted for days, and it will be years until it builds up again. The last time was when they needed help with The Inn.” I was right; he knew it, I knew it, and we knew it.
When he sighed, I knew I’d won.
“Lara,” he tried.
“Busting out my government name now?” I quirked my eyebrow before pecking him on the lips and pulling back. “How do you want it to look?”
He sighed again. “You’ll be the death of me.”
“Ah, good boy. Good, good, boy.”
“I am not a dog.”
“Definitely not a dog, babe.”
He sighed again so profoundly that I thought he might deflate and puddle to the ground like a day-old balloon.
“It should look like the environment, like the house and the carriage house.” He gave in. “You will be down for days, Moi Chroi. Is this the time?”
“It’ll be fine. I need to burn some of this off, and it might help me be more present and stop flickering out.
It was a low blow, and I’m not proud. I was using his fears to get my way, but I wasn’t wrong either. After helping with the Inn, I’d been stable for a long time.
“Like the Castle. Got it.”
“It is a cottage, not a castle,” he scoffed. “Your mother lives in a castle.”
“My mother lives in a palace, and this is definitely a castle, babe.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, looking at the night sky for answers or his mother, not sure which. Dani wouldn’t know what to do with me either, in my defense.
“Where?” I asked, ignoring his heavenly pleas.
The castle and the carriage house sat on a vast open expanse of the moor with flat land all around. The house was fortified with walls, as ancient castles are, but beyond them, the garage could go anywhere.
“Perhaps there.” Coi pointed to an area beside the existing cottage house but closer to the house proper, and I saw how it could be connected in my mind’s eye.
“Perfect.” There was enough room to make it big, but I could also make it bi-level, which I wouldn’t tell him beforehand. It would look better and be more functional, but it would take a teensy bit more work. Better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
The world dropped away, and I let my mind sink into the ground. Using magic, I felt for the natural material deep within the soil. Aedan built this place with his hands and years of effort. He and his crew would’ve mined the materials like I was, but my way was easier. Faster too.
This wasn’t creation magic, though I could’ve created something magnificent out of thin air had I chosen. But creation magic was tricky, and there were consequences to large scale creation that I couldn’t see and didn’t intend. This was just old-fashioned earth magic and would take hard work and a lot of sweat to accomplish.
I got lost in the design, lost in the feel of pulling material from the earth around me. Metal ores, rock, and water came to my call. Stones of the right size were smoothed and put into place. Magic went into the bindings, the walls, the floors. The layers.
The wind blew in the face of magic it didn’t understand either. Watching. Waiting. Sweat ran down the curve of my spine, soaking the ground I’d rooted into. I was aware but yet not of Coi’s presence. Ever present. Present. There. Thoughts were pictures, were sighs, were raindrops in the wind. Breaths were heartbeats, were rocks, were the sky.
Sounds had touch, and touch had scent. I was there and not. In this world and the next. And the next. And the next. All words were spoken and whispered and nothing and silence. Incredible, incredible silence.
I held the picture of what he asked for in my mind, willing the natural world to bend to my paintbrush, a stroke here and a jab there. I pulled marble from somewhere and conduits from somewhere else. Someplace far, far away. Sandstone. Granite. Words left me becoming only needs and thoughts. Desires and Visions.
Earth magic changed to creation magic because, let’s face it, that’s who I am. I can’t help it. Like all Gods, Dani made me in the image of herself. Eldritch. Primordial. Powerful. Too powerful. Too much.
A hard slap to my cheek forced me awake. Then another slap brought me to this world, this cliff and not the one I searched for something else, something more.
“Enough!” Coi demanded.
Opening my eyes, I took in the gorgeous structure that was far more than a place to park cars. Its design blended perfectly with the castle and the carriage house; it molded between the two, with entrances and exits to both. I’d tunneled through the castle’s fortifications to make all of them accessible in bad weather. There were windows and turrets and towers. If this place was a cottage before, it was a castle now for sure. Maybe a palace, for surely I saw living areas beyond those walls.
