No Witch Way Out (Maeren Series Book 2)
Page 14
Geer was wrong. This wasn’t just another slaying job. Yes, the vampire was technically breaking the law in a blood trade, but so was she, and besides, slaying meant killing in Maeren.
Geer wanted her to commit cold blooded murder.
Victoria and Jill had quickly followed behind Elizabeth and the vampire.
“Let’s feed him and get back home,” Elizabeth told her two companions.
She was too embarrassed to admit the first bite she allowed another vampire had been so painful as to draw Daemon’s attention.
The next bite she would be better prepared to submit to without letting her pain out.
She needed to get to the human side, with the extra barrier of protection it provided against Daemon.
She wasn’t ready to face the real Daemon yet, especially on top of Geer’s threatening demands in her head.
“There’s something very wrong with that vampire, Liz,” Victoria insisted, although she followed along.
“Why didn’t you heal?” Jill asked.
“It wasn’t exactly a clean bite,” Elizabeth guessed.
The tearing, when the vampire’s fangs had ripped out of her flesh, had probably overwhelmed the healing from his saliva.
He’d ravaged her wrist. Natural healing from the agents in vampire saliva was meant for neat punctures.
“You weren’t healing at all. There’s nothing in his saliva to heal you. It didn’t feel like a vampire’s bite, but more like an animal one when I healed you,” Jill explained with worry.
The vampire pulled her through the market and out to the north road, leaving town.
Their cottage and portal were to the south.
Elizabeth didn’t want to go so far from the portal, with Daemon able to slip into her thoughts.
She was nervously waiting for her spurred demon prince to pop back into her head. He’d been in and out so quickly, it almost could have been something she’d imagined.
Geer never left her.
“You are far enough from witnesses. Bend down and toss some rocks up with dust. Use air, when the vampire is blinded, to send them through his chest and abdomen. Do not stop until the vampire drops,” Geer calmly instructed.
Shoot him, in other words.
Geer had to know the kind of force that would require, rocks crashing through a bony rib cage, before the projectiles pulverized the vampire’s heart.
It would be a painful death.
Her coin trick for the seller demonstrated she had the power, if not for her compassion and moral compass, to kill the vampire.
She dug her heels in. They were sufficiently away from prying eyes that the vampire buyer could get the rest of his feed over.
Then, they would part ways.
Geer would have to be satisfied with her doing the bleeding today for this mistake.
“If your sisters come with us, there are twice as many marks for each of you at my home. I have brothers that need feeding as well,” the vampire said, not bothering to stop his march forward in order to make his offer.
Elizabeth shook her head in refusal to answer for her sister and Victoria.
The vampire kept on walking, ignoring her wishes.
Elizabeth didn’t have her sister’s earth strength, but even a vampire as dense as the one in front of her had to realize she didn’t want to go with him, when he started to drag her weight.
Elizabeth wasn’t taking one more step. She dropped her weight more fully against him, leaning backwards. The pull on his hand holding her arm was heavy.
Finally, the vampire stopped.
“Can you draw a circle or something around us?” Elizabeth asked Victoria.
“Why?” Victoria asked.
She was going to have to come clean.
“Daemon felt that last bite. He was in my head for a moment. And that dragon—”
Victoria’s fear hit Elizabeth’s mind just as the vampire pierced her wrist again, not waiting for her permission to start feeding again.
Loud and sloppy feeding noises drowned out Jill’s gasp of surprise at Elizabeth’s confession.
“Found you,” Daemon whispered into her mind.
Of course, Daemon was back. At least she had confirmed what drew him to her in the first place.
The vampire feeding on her was practically gnawing her poor wrist off, pieces of the gold cloth of Jill’s bandage fluttering in the wind. He had ripped it off to get his teeth in her as fast as possible.
The pain wasn’t something she could block, even if she had been ready for it this time.
He had struck quick as a snake. There hadn’t been time to circle.
Victoria sat on the ground.
Jill walked over to sit down beside her.
The vampire kept feeding, making a mess of it, blood pouring from her wrist to puddle on the ground.
She was hemorrhaging too much blood, feeling nauseous at the sight.
“A little help, here,” Elizabeth asked her companions, but they had strange barriers in their minds.
No, damned it, no.
Daemon was controlling them.
Elizabeth felt real fear.
The tattoo suddenly lit up. Power flared out, in a wave, that whistled past them with a gust of wind.
Daemon must have drawn on her lightning, through their connection, to make Jill and Victoria his puppets.
Victoria’s fear made more sense. She must have been conscious for just long enough to realize what Daemon was doing to them.
Elizabeth should have felt cold with the knowledge that Daemon was using her mind to control others.
The initial fear she had felt was already ebbing away, however, a sense of warmth and security replacing the worry she had about finally confronting Daemon.
He wasn’t hurting Jill or Victoria. He would hurt the bastard chewing off her wrist, his anger throbbing in her head, a palpable thing that pulsed at her temple.
“Is this the blood bonded you claimed?” Geer asked in a whisper.
She shouldn’t have been able to hear it at all, with the wind from his flight.
Still, it came out clearly, and Daemon heard it as well.
“Who is that, Elizabeth?” Daemon asked, sounding dark and possessive.
She felt his arms come around her as he hugged her body from behind, using lightning to make it feel real.
How were they talking to each other?
“He’s trouble. Seems you missed a couple of heads in the caves,” Elizabeth hinted.
“Dragon?”Daemon said it like a challenge in their shared thoughts. “Why are you in her mind? This is my witch and I don’t share well with cowards.”
“Mate bond,” Geer replied, seemingly not intimidated. “Why is our mate all alone and in danger?”
If they were standing across from each other, she was sure they would both be wearing fang-baring grins and power at their fingertips.
This answered her question about whether mates had some kind of magic between them that led to a camaraderie, a sense of belonging.
Yeah, her mates were as likely to tear each other’s throats out as to shake hands and agree to a dating schedule to share her time.
The vampire feeding on her growled, breaking into Elizabeth’s distracted thoughts.
Daemon’s control over the witches didn’t extend to the vampire, still ferociously sucking at her wrist.
Daemon had done something to mask her pain, but the feed was deepening.
She was feeling faint.
“Drop the lightning binding Jill and Victoria. I need to fight back and then we need to run,” Elizabeth begged Daemon.
“Sparks, I told you what to do. It’s not too late. Close your eyes, if you don’t wish to see the rocks pierce the vampire’s flesh as he has torn into your wrist,” Geer said.
Geer was half commanding her obedience and half pleading with her to save herself.
“I can’t,” she whispered, so Geer could hear her.
The feeding vampire growled louder.
It would tear her wound worse, but Jill could heal her again.
“Brace yourself, sweetheart. I’m going to have to punish this trespasser,” Daemon warned her.
No sooner had Daemon sent his warning, then Elizabeth felt her shoulder turning to fire.
The magic in her tattoo really came to life.
It was hotter than ever before, feeling more like liquid lightning, licking her skin for a moment, before the ink lifted off of her shoulder.
Hundreds of drops of midnight-black ink flew from her skin to coagulate above her, forming into a solid dragon that turned white-hot in a blinding flash.
“Are you insane, calling your familiar out when you’re not there to control it?” Geer shouted.
Geer growled, as vicious as the feeding vampire, and then there was a groan, pained . . .
The feeding vampire was completely clueless of the danger above him, his head still bent over her wrist.
Why didn’t he notice the equivalent of a nuclear bomb of magic going off as Daemon pulled his familiar off her shoulder to materialize?
What about the flare of the claim magic breezing by them, first?
Vampires were supposed to be able to feel a bond immediately when they fed. They trained to be sensitive to the taste of another male’s magic, in a world where power in blood was stronger than the sword.
It was like her wrist was the first that the clueless vampire had ever sipped.
Daemon was going to kill him.
She slipped into the vampire’s mind and tried to end the feeding, feeling guilty, even if he had taken her wrist so forcefully.
The male feeding on her wasn’t normal.
As soon as she touched the feeding vampire’s mental barrier, she could see what she had felt was wrong with him all along.
The magic in him didn’t come from his chi.
The blood flowing in his veins was saturated with unbound magic that seemed to be eating at him from the inside.
Jill would understand if she saw it from the healer’s perspective, but from what Elizabeth could tell, the magic acted like a human virus. It infiltrated the normal blood cells and destroyed them as it failed to find the binding proteins it needed.
It might be something a demon’s blood would do in the strong sunlight of the human realm, burning magic not properly bound, and attacking the demon’s body within.
No wonder the male had looked so sickly.
His magic was killing him.
Elizabeth wasn’t able to do anything for the male’s illness, unable to offer healing like her sister, if such a thing was even possible.
She had never heard of magic attacking the body like this, outside of sunlight.
There was only one thing she could do for him.
She grabbed the neurons firing his muscles and thought as hard as she could for the male to run!
Geer was suddenly falling, his groans getting louder, as if he was fighting something painful.
He was falling!
Oh no, what if Geer really couldn’t transform like the other dragon shifters?
If that was his handicap, he was going to be splattered on the ground, coming up too quickly in his sight.
Whatever was hurting him must have made him lose his seat on big grey.
“Geer!” she screamed in fear, forgetting all about her own dilemma.
The Dragon & Fox
Elizabeth might have lost her focus, but Daemon had tight control over his own.
Heat crackled by her. Daemon’s familiar just missed the vampire she’d sent racing off.
The vampire had tripped at her shout to Geer, which turned out extra lucky for the vampire.
Daemon’s familiar had quickly grown to the size expected of a real dragon.
It roared with displeasure. Fire scorched the ground in front of it, then the dragon snapped its lightning jaws inches from the vampire.
The roar echoed in her head, so loud it shook the ground.
A tremor travelled up her spine, until all the little hairs stood up on the back of her neck.
That was a bloodthirsty roar.
Geer’s view was no longer a vertiginous dive.
The ground pulled up and then down, up and down, in a steady rhythm, like wings flapping, she realized.
An answering, deafening roar echoed in her head, before Geer’s sharper vision focused on the blinding sun and then he disappeared from her sight.
Geer had transformed.
She was thankful, although it seemed he couldn’t communicate with her in dragon form.
It was only her and Daemon now, or his familiar, technically.
The strong magic Daemon used to bring out his familiar also called to her lightning.
Without another thought, she let her restraint on it go. Power flooded her limbs, like during a hunt, but multiplied by the magic of Maeren.
It almost made her giddy, with strength bubbling in her blood as she levitated to keep the lightning from grounding.
Daemon’s thoughts came back to her, his familiar circling curiously above as he examined her glowing body.
It was the first time Daemon would have seen her hidden magic, but she didn’t sense any surprise from him.
In fact, he seemed a little distracted, his dragon flying the same circle, while the vampire made good on his escape.
The thick wood of the chair’s armrest was no match for Daemon’s grip as he watched Elizabeth attract his familiar’s attention with her lightning show.
His control was compromised by distance. Unless he got himself into a magic circle to reinforce the spell, his familiar might slip its leash.
The other mate in her head had deserted her already. She needed his strength to get her out of this danger.
He shouldn’t have let himself be prodded into releasing Dragomir, but that damned, filthy vampire had dared twice in a few minutes to take what Daemon had claimed.
The wooden armrest creaked ominously under his fingers, startling Frederick from his boring speech about tariffs, before the assembled lords.
As if Daemon cared about some farmer’s tax contribution to the royal coffers when he had a crumbling kingdom to hold and a runaway witch to save.
Elizabeth pulled herself out of Daemon’s thoughts.
He had known she was there at the end, but he hadn’t barred her access.
She had caught the memory of him using his lightning, intermittently, on the other assembled vampire lords. Not to influence their thoughts, but to spy on their intentions.
Her quick glimpse into the meeting had shown her that Daemon had his work cut out for him, even if he could read all of their minds.
The lords didn’t respect him, although fear kept them somewhat in line. There wasn’t one that would hesitate to turn traitor.
Daemon was considered an interloper to the throne.
“Focus on your own problems, Elizabeth!” Daemon ordered her.
He was right. She didn’t have time to worry about Daemon’s situation.
The familiar was the immediate danger.
Victoria was her only hope. The witch’s knowledge of familiars could help Elizabeth get the familiar back to the harmless ink on her skin.
Elizabeth only knew one way to break lightning. She had to do it, given the danger surrounding them as the dragon circled lower and Daemon’s continued control remained uncertain.
Geer had thought Daemon calling his familiar out from a distance was a dangerous risk. Even Kim had warned her to avoid this kind of situation.
Elizabeth dropped to the ground, so she could kneel between Jill and Victoria, then slapped a handful of lightning onto both of them to form new shields.
No circles or hiding.
She left herself unshielded, aware she needed to be free to use offensive magic, and afraid to cut off Daemon’s connection to her.
It may be all he had to control his drag
on.
Daemon wasn’t her keeper. Geer had been partly right. She was a slayer. She could handle this. Even Victoria had seen the potential in her to fight.
Daemon broke his chair, pulling the pieces of his armrests off and effectively ending the meeting.
“Liz, I didn’t have control!” Victoria shouted as she suddenly was able to move.
“Let me shield black and then pull off your lightning. It should be strong enough to shield against Daemon’s magic,” Jill said, facing the dragon familiar, without weapons, except for her deadly smile.
“No, we have even more problems than Daemon’s familiar,” Elizabeth said, realizing that the vampire that she sent scurrying hadn’t been running to safety.
The bastard had run to his so-called brothers, a group of strange-looking vampires that only had an unkempt appearance in common with him.
They ranged from a red-haired barbarian to a gigantic male with short, ebony dreads that nearly blended into his scalp, giving his skull a knobby appearance.
The vampire that had bit her was coming back over the hill that he had disappeared behind, leading his hungry brothers to feast on them.
“It was a trap,” said Jill, echoing Elizabeth’s thoughts.
“Use your air to escape with Victoria and Jill. Dragomir and I will take care of this despicable filth,” Daemon told her.
“I didn’t know you were such a snob,” Elizabeth replied, though she was tempted to leave him to it.
Geer would have simply made her decision for her.
“No witch should have to fear being forced to feed a male too lazy to procure his blood through traditional means. If word gets around that the king’s men allow lawbreakers to get away with crimes like this, then witches and their families will fear travelling freely. Curfew will have to be reinforced again while we clean up the streets. Better to deal with this properly now,” Daemon told her.
That speech sounded a little more like what she would expect from an enforcer. Much too pretty, for a traitor to the crown.
Daemon had never spoken to her of these kinds of ideals.
They hadn’t really talked, not nearly enough.
“I accepted money to feed him. I’m as guilty as he,” Elizabeth quickly confessed.
“You will be dealt with later, but such a reason doesn’t excuse the male from forcing himself on you and then bringing his friends to do the same to your companions. Everyone knows the king’s laws about feeding,” Daemon said without an ounce of give in his tone.