A Barrel of Whiskey - (An Urban Fantasy Whiskey Witches Novel) (40 page)

“I’m okay with that.” She turned, trying to figure out where they were. This wasn’t a street she was familiar with, though that really didn’t mean anything. She might be a native to the area, but that didn’t mean she knew every street. She knew where they were on the map. But what direction was she supposed to be going in?

An almost magnetic pull turned her toward the left.

A building stood before her. Massive. A laundromat dominated the ground floor. A small door hid beside it. It glowed softly as if a light radiated behind it.

She stepped over several branches that littered the street, then stopped, surveying the area.

Limbs. Trees.

The grove had attacked and, judging by the litter of tree limbs, they’d lost.

The street was covered in leaves and branches. It looked like the area had been hit by a hurricane.

Her heart pounding, Paige ran to the door, switching on witch vision. A towering wall of inky black. Blackman wards.

Even though the street was oddly—weirdly—abandoned at the moment, she had no doubt that there were people within the apartments in the surrounding buildings. Several had lights on. A few had moving shadows. More than a few had flickering lights of televisions.

No. She couldn’t afford to dismantle the wards as she had at the warehouse. The explosion of magick in a place like this could cause a lot of damage. Too many casualties.

The door glowed with a burning red light at the handle.

Frowning, she tried to assess what kind of spell was cast on it.

Lucius grabbed the handle, his flesh sizzling and pulled. “Ladies first.”

“Do you have any idea what was on that?”

“Yes. A heat spell. Really, Paige, you think this is the first time I’ve dealt with a witch before?”

They’d met when she’d been kidnapped by a mad man, drugged, had the spell cast into her bones, and then had him possess her. He’d been a demon trapped to a single location by an archangel and a witch. So, yeah. He might know a thing or two about witches.

It made her feel more than a little stupid that she couldn’t just look at a spell and know what it was. “How did you know?”

“The rune work in the aura.”

Paige twisted around to stare at the doorknob, but she saw nothing. She shook it off. For another time, another place. This wasn’t it.

He nodded and led them up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

“Lucius,” she called, as his feet drew dangerously close to a gold line that was drawn across the second to top step.

He stopped, tipped his head to the side, and stepped over it. “That one would have been tricky.”

She was tempted to ask him what it was, but stopped herself. She needed to know, but didn’t at the same time. She needed to get into the apartment with her family and figure out how to get them out safely.

Lucius stopped in front of a door on the second floor and gestured toward it. “They’re here.”

How was it that he had this odd intuition on what was beyond the door?

“You’ll understand more as you develop your gift. We can smell them.”

Smell. More smelling. Great. “Who?”

“Mandy, who is bleeding, though not badly. Leah, who remains unhurt, but is scared and mad. Reminds me of her mother. And Leslie who is bleeding internally. Dexx is somewhere on the premises, though I cannot immediately locate him.”

“Gomez?”

“Is a tree.”

Great. When a dryad lost a branch, how did that affect the human she transitioned into? Did she loose arms? Fingers? Hair? Toes?

Another day. Another time. Another place.

“Anyone else?” Paige asked.

“Well, yes. Of course. Derrick Blackman.”

Paige shook her head.

“Eldora Blackman. Well, rather quite a few of them.”

Where were the damned Galsborys?

“How much further do you want me to go?”

Paige raised her chin. “Stay out here. I’ll go in alone, but if it sounds like I’m losing, get in there. We will need to break the boundaries here as well.”

“They’re here?”

“You can’t see them?” Inky walls blanketed the doors and the apartment they stood in front of.

“No. I could not at the warehouse, either.”

“Hmm.” She switched to shifter vision and searched for the symbol. There. Beside the door in the hallway. “After I’m in and have a moment to assess the situation, you break the symbol here. If I break it, it’ll knock everyone out. Magick will go everywhere. I don’t know how it’ll effect everything. See what you can do. But if it does release an explosion of energy, I want to be inside that room.”

Lucius stared at the wall where she pointed. “Where? What am I looking at?”

Apparently, nothing. “Just trust me. There’s a symbol right here. You take your knife and you gouge the wall. The boundaries will fall.” Hopefully.

Lucius nodded. “How long do you want me to give you?”

She didn’t want to tip their hand, and she didn’t want to be knocked off her feet. “On my whistle?”

He nodded. “I’ll accept a scream or a yell as well.”

Good thinking.

Without waiting, Paige raised her right hand, called on the power of the elements and the demons’ gate, and blew the door inward.

A tall man—dark hair and eyes, easy to look at—stood up and brushed his red tie down. “Honestly, it took you long enough. I thought I would have seen you a while ago. I have to admit, Ms. Whiskey. I expected…more.”

Not quite what she expected. “Derrick Blackman?”

“If the flesh.”

Time to figure out what the Blackmans were doing in Texas. “I didn’t kill them.”

The man raised his eyebrows. “Interesting choice.”

What was going on here? Leah looked fine, aside from the fact that she was scared. Leslie appeared to have gone a few rounds with a fist. And Mandy?

She lifted her bloodied face and tried to smile.

What the fuck was going on here? He didn’t seem upset. Just surprised. “Interesting choice?”

“Don’t you get it?” Derrick chuckled. “That was a test.”

“A test?”

Several people stood in the shadows, each thrumming with a power she could feel. With that came a smell. There it was. A smell. Like jasmine and sandalwood.

“Though, saving the shifters?” He frowned, giving her a confused head shake. “Bad form.”

Paige shrugged. Eight witches in total. Against one.

Well, against four when Lucius took down the ward.

The ward…that seemed to affect everyone. She extended her inky black witch hands. Everyone except her.

“Look.” Derrick twisted with a grin on his face. “She seems to catching up. Finally.”

Catching up? To what?

“You’re probably asking yourself, ‘Is he trying to start a war?’”

She retracted her witch hands—hands made of the same inky blackness as the wards. Her father had been a Blackman. Was it possible that the reason she wasn’t affected was because the wards worked on anything that wasn’t Blackman magick? If that was the case, what
was
Blackman magick? What was Whiskey magick? Were they different families because they—because what? They controlled different elements.

No. That was stupid. Witches controlled the elements that came naturally to them.

Or was it more than that?

Why couldn’t Paige see Leah’s door when she’d let the spirits back to the other side?

Why could Paige see the Blackman wards and still use her magick?

Well, if that was the case, then, couldn’t Leah?

“I don’t really want to start up a full-fledged
war
.”

Huh? Oh, fuck. He was still talking.

He smiled, reminding her of Penguin in the comic books. “No. We just want the Whiskeys to finally meet their demise and this seems like an excellent way to kill two birds with one stone. End the shifters who are growing in numbers, which is unacceptable, and get rid of the Whiskeys.”

So, he
was
working with the Eastwoods.

“And, thank you for making it easier. You managed to get all the Whiskeys into the same state. Do you have any idea how long we’ve been trying to do that?”

She should be angry at his words, but something was off.

A shadow shifted in his green aura.

What was
really
going on here? “So you’re going to…what?” Paige flexed her witch hands, watching as the boundary fluctuated.

“Ah,” he said, his smile widening. “I see you finally figured it out. I was beginning to give up on you, Paige.”

“Who are you?”

“Derrick. Derrick Blackman.”

“I know that, asshole. What are you to me?”

Derrick stilled, his smile slipping. “Your brother.”

Paige took in a quick breath. The idea that she had other siblings, another brother? “How many of us are there?”

“Only you and me, sis.”

She raised a hand to her face, but dropped it. “What gifts do you have?”

“Only this one.”

“And what is that?”

He chuckled. “Honestly, sis, do I have to explain everything?”

She tipped her head. “Obviously, you do.”

“We are the melding of worlds. We are the doors, you and I.”

“Worlds?”

“Yes.”

A slow-trickling dawn rattled through her brain. Her with Hell’s gate inside her soul. Leah, able to reach across into Heaven to retrieve souls that had passed. “And what door are you?”

He ducked his head. “I’ll let you figure that out for yourself, demon summoner.”

Paige met Leah’s gaze and held it for a long, blistering moment. “Then if that’s the case, then let’s open one you won’t soon forget.”

Leah’s eyes widened.

Derrick stared at Paige in surprise, then his head whipped toward Leah. “She’s your—but—”

“Now, Lee!”

Paige closed her eyes and reached inside herself to the gate that resided inside her soul. She touched on the inky blackness, so like the material of the boundary. It flared within her, the ink seeping from her soul, out to her limbs, connecting with the boundary, the wall, the shield, the barrier.

And the world began to shake.

“S
top!” Derrick held up his hands, crouched. His expression immediately changed, almost as if he was a completely different person.

Leah froze, her mouth hung open.

Leslie stilled, her eyes roaming from Derrick to Paige and back.

Mandy stopped straining against the ropes binding her to the chair.

Paige kept her witch hands out, but stopped their advance.

Derrick glanced to his left.

A woman stepped out from the shadows. Short. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, plump in the hip. Her black pencil skirt barely allowed her the area needed to take a full step, though how she walked in those heels was beyond Paige. The woman released the gold button on her suit jacket as she stopped beside a leather chair.

Derrick straightened, fingered his red tie as he righted his expression. “Paige Whiskey, meet my mother, Eldora Blackman.”

Paige narrowed her eyes at the woman.

“She is the new matriarch of the Blackman witches.”

“Congratulations,” Paige said, low in her throat.

Eldora Blackman raised her chin, her dark eyes narrowed.

“Perhaps you could tell me what you’re doing here,” Paige said.

Derrick opened his mouth.

Eldora lifted her hand to her waist, palm down.

A coppery tang settled over Paige’s tongue. “My sister has internal bleeding.”

“I apologize for that.” Eldora glanced at someone over Paige’s shoulder and gestured with her chin to Leslie. “That was unintentional.”

“Are you trying to tell me you had no intention of harming my family?”

Dropping her gaze, Eldora relaxed her shoulders minutely. “No. We did not.”

“Aunt Paige,” Mandy said. “Don’t—”

“Mandy,” Leslie barked, “stay out of it.”

Derrick knelt in front of Leslie, removing a knife from his belt, and cut the ropes holding her to the chair.

Another man pulled up a chair beside her, reaching out his hands, magick—green healing magick—humming through him like a tuning fork.

Paige turned her focus to Eldora. “What’s going on here?”

“Can you ask your children not to attack us?”

Paige grabbed hold of Leah’s bright blue gaze. “Lee.”

She shrugged as one of the other witches cut her ropes.

“Mand.”

Mandy stewed, the hint of flames dancing in her eyes.

“It is remarkable,” Eldora said quietly, “how their gifts remain unwarded.”

That got Paige’s attention. “We don’t ward gifts.”

“Alma warded yours.”

Yeah. She had. “We don’t do that. Normally.”

Eldora nodded, returning her attention to Leah. “Such a powerful girl. So young. So inexperienced.”

True.

“And in a world of mundanes.” Eldora looked at Paige. Not trying to overpower her, or stab her. Just looked at her as if they were equals. “That could be disastrous.”

“We teach them control,” Leslie said with a hiss. “Ow!”

“Sorry,” the man beside her said.

Paige took a half-step toward her sister. “How’d she get hurt?”

“We are to blame, I’m afraid.” Eldora closed her eyes for a long moment, then reopened them. “We did not expect her to be so protective of her children.”

“Well, congratulations. You’ve just met Leslie Whiskey.”