Chapter 5 #2
What the fuck did I do next? Tempest was my mate.
Did I just come out and tell her? Did I wait for her to clue in?
Relic’s female had been seriously jumpy, and he’d had to work his way in over time.
Willow had wanted nothing to do with War, and Jagger had convinced himself that there was no way Sutton was his and almost fucked it up completely.
And Lothar and Rox, well, that was another whole messed-up situation.
I didn’t want to fuck this up with Tempest.
As hard as it was for me to go slow, I had to figure out the right way to go about this. I didn’t want to scare her off, and the way she was, so sweet and, yeah, easily pushed around, I didn’t want to accidentally bully her into it either.
My little female had a whole lot of secrets, that I knew.
But after the way Mags had reacted, and the way she’d warned me not to say anything about whatever had gone down at that house I’d tracked her to, the way she’d just vanished, I’d forced myself to hold back.
Add on the things Willow had said, and I had a whole lot of alarms going off.
Something was up with Tempest, something she was trying to keep hidden.
If I came at her with everything I was feeling right then, she’d run.
I had to coax her into sharing with me, I had to make sure she knew she could trust me. Could count on me.
I needed her to want this, to want me as much as I did her.
I just had to figure out how the hell to do that.
Tempest slid another piece of pie past her full lips as she turned the page on one of the books Willow had left for me, a little frown forming between her brows. “This is so interesting,” she said, then licked pie from her fork. “Don’t you think?”
“Hmm?” I was having trouble focusing on anything but her mouth right then. The gloss had worn off, and her lips were a soft pink. She had the prettiest mouth I’d ever seen.
“This part here,” she said, turning the book to me and sliding her finger across the page.
“It sounds like there was some kind of natural disaster.” She tilted her head.
“Rivers washed away crops, rocks fell from the sky, and the sun was darkened by unrelenting shadow for a full rotation of the sun,” she read.
“I’ve heard of this. They called it the darkest night.
No one knew if the sun would ever return. ”
“When was this?” I said.
“I don’t know exactly, but from what I was taught, it was roughly eight hundred years ago.” She paused, an odd look on her face.
“What is it?”
She licked her lips. “Something’s tugging on my magic. Did Willow say anything more about this book? Or if she’d found anything else?”
“No.”
Temp closed her eyes and lifted her hand, hovering above its pages. When she opened her eyes, black swirls like smoke danced around her fingers before settling in the shape of three jagged peaks resting on the ancient parchment.”
I’d never seen her do any magic other than the healing kind. It was fascinating to watch her like this. “What is that?”
“Someone’s trying to show us something,” she said huskily.
“Who?”
She lightly traced the peaks. “I have no idea.”
“Do you know what it is?” I said.
She tilted her head, studying the smoky image. “Cliff peaks in Oldwood Forest. I’m sure of it.”
“You’ve seen them?”
“I have.”
What the fuck was she doing in the forest?
Before I could tell her to never go into that forest alone, she motioned down at the book again. The top of each peak had settled around a single word on the page. One. Of. Three.
“One of three?” I looked back up at her.
“Yes,” she murmured, her eyes lighting up. “I wasn’t sure, but now…these peaks, they represent three priestesses, witches,” she said. “Their lives were devoted to worshipping the great goddess Tera, or the mother as she’s often referred to.”
She was talking about Mother Nature. She traced her finger across the lines again, and this time the smoke dissipated.
“They weren’t just powerful priestesses, they were sisters.
Their magic was unsurpassed. They were from one of the first covens, Stonebridge, and there have never been witches more powerful since. Well, that’s what I was taught.”
“What happened?”
“One winter morning, Brigid, the youngest, woke to find her two older sisters gone. She followed the echoes of their magic and found them slaughtered in the forest. Eartha and Petra had been murdered, their bodies torn apart, their skin flayed, flesh stripped from bone, and laid out in a gruesome display. Brigid vowed to find who did it, to avenge their deaths. As far as I know, she never got the chance.”
“How long ago did this happen?”
“I’m not completely sure, but at least eight or nine hundred years, but maybe more.”
“You think she was in possession of the weapons?”
“Possibly.” She continued to study the pages.
“Why? Why would a witch have need of them?”
She glanced up at me. “I’m not sure, but why else would the book...or whoever it was, show us this?”
“Is there somewhere we can get more information? Is there someone we can talk to about this?”
Her finger slid gently over the brittle pages again. “I’m not sure. The last known priestess died several hundred years ago, but they’d been around for thousands of years before that. I’m sure there are witches who specialize in these histories. I’ll need to ask around.”
I nodded. “So, what was a priestess’s role?”
Tempest sat back, lighting up again. “So many things. They moved among the covens, leading them in worship or performing sacred rites. They often communed with the mother, or with our ancestors. They counseled those who needed it and provided leadership when it was necessary, and that’s just a few of the things they did.
But most importantly, they helped connect their followers with the earth, with the goddess, and with their magic. ”
“So they were powerful.”
“Oh yes,” she said.
“Who could have killed Brigid’s sisters? Who would have had that kind of power? And why?”
She slid another of the books over and reverently opened it to the back.
There was a depiction of what looked like an angel, light glowing from behind him, while broken and bloody bodies lay at their feet.
“At one time the gods walked among us, they warred, they let their jealousy and mistrust rule them and tried to destroy one another. Witches are pagan, and just the fact that we refused to worship anyone but the great goddess made her, and us, targets. I’ve never heard of a battle between witches and angels, but there are images like this one and stories that have been passed down that no one has been able to prove…
or disprove for that matter.” She looked up again.
“But why else would images like this exist?”
“You think this priestess, Brigid, gathered these weapons and hid them?”
She chewed her lip as she looked over the page again. “I honestly don’t know…but I think it’s a definite possibility.”