He had to duck and think hard of being a rat to hide from her magic. His father would laugh to hear how the Norwood sisters still teased each other that they had rats as big as horses in their barn.
“Not lightning . . . fire,” his father insisted, pushing away the hot cloth Daemon was using to try to wipe the soap off of his father’s face.
“That’s right, Father. Elizabeth has lightning magic. It’s kind of a quirk that she hasn’t fire, but who’s to argue when a witch shouldn’t have lightning, either?”
Daemon left the used towel next to the basin for the servants to clean up, when they brought his father’s witches for his feeding.
He hoped they came soon. This was the most lucid his father had been in a while, and it might be prolonged if he was fed the powerful blood of the witches from his primary harem.
Daemon shouldn’t have let him feed so often on lesser witches.
His father grabbed his arm again and looked Daemon in the eyes, the cloudiness seeming to melt away from his clearing gaze.
“Dae, the fire witch knows . . . saw the circle in your room . . . knew the glyphs!”
The water basin, razor, and the rest of the shaving implements, went clattering onto the floor as Daemon pulled his father into his arms, heedless of the mess.
He kept hold of his father’s arm and turned, hunching down to get his father on his back. He slipped into his father’s mind to make his father’s muscles move and get him to hold on, despite his reconditioned state.
He finally tied his father with shielded-fire, once he was in place.
The witch in Daemon’s bed had been too careless in front of his father. She assumed delusions were dementia and frailty was helplessness.
She had let William into the room earlier, and told him everything she’d seen while spying, all while spooning broth into his father’s mouth.
It had taken but a few seconds to read the memory, once he knew what his father was warning him about.
William had been infuriated by the witch’s loose lips, even though the king had been drooling most of the broth all over himself, heavily sedated by the potion the witch had slipped into his bowl.
His traitorous brother had shut the witch up with a slap, but that unexpected violence from William had shocked their father awake and he remembered the witch’s treasonous words.
‘You have to take the demon while he’s weak and alone.’
The guard rapped on the door, announcing the arrival of his father’s witches.
Daemon opened a square foot of his air-shield to call out to the guard that they needed a few more minutes for his father to relieve himself.
Daemon headed for his father’s fireplace. He ignored the insistent knocking on the door, only pausing for a moment as his father coughed and choked wetly.
The iron scent of blood filled the air and a quickly cooling warmth wet his shoulder.
“Just hold on a little longer,” Daemon begged, adding more fire ropes to hold his father’s body as he frantically felt for the fake-vein in the marble mantle.
He pushed the stone lever up.
Daemon had unknowingly fed his father the second bowl of soup that William had ordered.
It hadn’t been bitter tasting at all, giving his father false strength, before the fatal poison took hold.
The knocks were rattling the door as the guards tried to turn the doorknobs and push uselessly against Daemon’s air barrier. They were calling out that he was needed immediately, shouting about assassins in the castle and that the witch in his bed was dead.
He doubted William had left her death to chance.
The fireplace was dusty, fallen into disuse because his father always complained it was too warm in his room, ever since Daemon had started visiting his mother.
The portal was just behind the sliding rock at the back, its glow already filling the dark stone walls.
His father’s rattling breath was barely a whisper in Daemon’s ear as he stepped into the portal, hearing the doors crash open to the king's room as the portal’s magic cut off his distant air barrier.
Shielding himself and his father in black fire, Daemon jumped.
Playing with Danger
Human Realm
Elizabeth
“Will you stop looking over your shoulder?”
“Someone is following us, Liz.”
“Yes, of course. That is the plan.”
“Getting caught is not a valid plan,” Geer commented.
Yep, the dragon with an opinion on everything was back. They hadn’t discussed his embarrassing loss of control over his animal side or her girly shout when she thought he’d fallen from the sky.
Nope, they weren’t saying anything about that incident. Geer had moved right back into his favourite role as her unwanted advisor.
Slaying was her job. She didn’t need him to tell her how to do it.
He would watch and learn, just like Victoria.
“I thought the slayer was supposed to be the one doing the hunting,” Victoria pointed out. “We’re acting like prey.”
“Didn’t you tell the princess that you prefer to haphazardly walk around, until you run into danger, for these hunts?”
“We’ll wing it,” Elizabeth replied, mostly for Geer’s benefit. Hopefully, he got the joke and loosened up. “Just eat your gummy bears, and don’t forget to drop one every few feet,” she reminded Victoria.
“Waste of good candy, if you ask me. Vampires don’t eat gummy bears. They get stuck in the fangs.”
“There are other sweet things we enjoy,” Geer whispered.
She didn’t dignify that with a response. Perhaps if she ignored him, he’d get bored and leave her alone.
“These vampires want to drain little girls. I’ve ensured that’s what they think they’re getting by giving us a little lightning disguise,” Elizabeth explained.
“What?” Geer shouted in disgust.
She ignored him, still, but his reaction was a point in his favour.
“You’re already projecting an illusion?” Jill asked.
Jill was at her hospital job, but she was doing charting and able to shift her focus, so she could still be a part of their little hunt.
Elizabeth’s magic connected Jill with them—minus the dragon.
Unlike what had happened with Daemon and Geer, overhearing each other when they both connected to her mind using their mate bond, there was no overlap with Elizabeth’s telepathy to the other witches.
Her lightning was separate and still under her control, so she kept Geer out of their conversation. He was a bystander, only picking up what was said out loud.
“I’m projecting,” Elizabeth replied to Jill.
Victoria was in on their three-way telepathic conversation, as well.
“Wicked, you have the midnight oil to burn tonight. If mom knew you were playing with another vampire horde, she would break all your stakes and bury them six feet in the ground, beside Fluffy, in the backyard,” Jill warned.
“It’s not a horde. There’s a vampire for me, and one for Elf, and there was one for you, but since you have to work, you’ll just have to live vicariously. Which stake do you want me to use on your vampire?” Elizabeth asked.
“The birch, because you really have to learn to be a little more flexible,” Jill told her.
“Who's Fluffy?” Victoria asked out loud.
She still reverted to speaking instead of thinking, often, probably finding it more natural.
Elizabeth turned to her. “Our cat was called Fluffy. Then there was our dog, Cujo,” she informed the princess, looking appropriately grave for the classic horror reference.
Victoria looked at her blankly.
Elizabeth gave her a moment, stopping to look around and check out the street both ways before they crossed towards a nicely deserted park.
“Elizabeth’s joking. We do not have a pet cemetery in our yard,” Jill said before Elizabeth could explain it.
“Trust me. I�
�m sure our mother has buried more things in the yard than you’re aware,” Elizabeth teased her sister.
“I would sense it with my earth magic, genius, so stop trying to creep us out!” Jill insisted.
“I’m siding with Liz on this one,” Victoria said. “Your mother is scary.”
“She’s strong,” Jill replied with a mental shrug.
“Go back to your charting. I’ll let you know when the exciting part comes up,” Elizabeth told her sister, silently agreeing about their mother.
“I’m already feeling the excitement,” Victoria said. “A secret portal in the castle library, a trip to the human realm, and now a slayer hunt. You’re full of adventure, Liz.”
The princess had been almost under lock and key in the castle. This was the freedom she dreamed of, although it was tinged with sadness over leaving her brother behind without an explanation.
Elizabeth was going to make it up to her.
“I know you can handle yourself. Do you have the knives Kim gave you somewhere easily accessible?” Elizabeth asked her, speaking out loud again.
It made Victoria more comfortable, and the vampires following them were far enough away, Elizabeth could use a little air-barrier to keep their conversation quiet for now.
“Oh yes,” Victoria answered, and Elizabeth could feel her anticipation.
“You’re letting the princess fight? I won’t be responsible for what her mate will have to say about this, but I’m giving you warning now. Back out of there, before it’s too late. This isn’t going to end the way you think,” Geer warned forebodingly.
Elizabeth ignored his advice, as usual.
“Dust is all that matters in the end,” she reminded Victoria.
They had talked through what to do. Geer would see that the princess wasn’t helpless.
“Right,” Victoria agreed.
“No fancy moves, get the stake where it counts. I’m going to swing, over there, on the playground. I want you to try the slide. Climb to the top and the vampire should come to you.”
“Pop them in the centre chi, and poof, they’ll ash and transport back to Maeren, right?” Victoria asked, recapping her quick lesson on their walk over here.
Elizabeth imagined the moment of impact for Victoria, the dusty finale that she’d played out dozens of times before in her line of work.
“Just don’t breathe too deep. I’m going to remove the air-barrier muffling our conversation. Anything you say, they will hear now,” Elizabeth warned her.
“Oh no, I’m all out of gummy bears,” Victoria whined, making a show of turning her little paper bag inside out and then crumpling it up to toss into a trash bin a good eight feet away.
“Pretty good aim . . . for a little girl,” Elizabeth pointed out.
She was already using lightning to make the two of them look much younger than their real ages. When Victoria did something spontaneous that gave away her disguise, it was hard to fix it fast enough.
“Don’t worry,” Jill said. “Same idiots that come over here thinking that little girls in the park this late is normal, won’t be questioning Tor tossing trash like a major league pitcher.’
Her sister had left her charting and went into the nursing break room, not leaving her sister on her own with her green recruit.
Elizabeth should have known her sister would insist on sticking around for the whole hunt.
“Let’s play,” Elizabeth said, making her voice pitched as high and sweet as she had Victoria’s voice, a moment ago.
The little girls made their way to the dark playground.
Three vampire minds trailed behind them.
They started to fan out as they got closer, unable to suppress the hunting reflex to cut off all exits.
The king had outlawed this kind of behaviour for good reason. What separated them from the rest of the monsters, if this was how they fed?
“Bend down and grab a handful of sand before you climb up the playground, and toss it at the top of the equipment, just in case you need to use your water gourd. Turning the sand into mud under their feet is subtle enough that they’ll probably never figure out why they tripped,” Elizabeth suggested to Victoria.
Elizabeth was too used to covering up her magic in the human realm to give up hiding it now.
Victoria really didn’t need the notoriety of hunting rogues down. One slayer was enough.
“Are you really planning on only using those wooden stakes to fight that many at once? What happened to your foxy familiar? Demon to demon only seems fair,” Geer said, seemingly ready to tell her how to fight dirty again.
His vision, which had been focused on the dark ceiling of some room, suddenly swung around as he sat up.
She got a bit of vertigo from Geer’s vision moving—while she was sitting still on the swing. What the heck was he doing? It sucked not being able to shut down their connection from her end.
Hopefully, it wouldn’t mess with her lightning illusions.
Geer had mentioned ‘demon to demon’ to her. Did that mean she’d messed up on picking their prey for tonight?
She hadn’t felt the telltale signature of extra stolen-magic from them, declaring they were demons instead of vampires, but Geer might have some sort of special dragon sense that he was using through their bond to see better than her.
She was about to ask him, when Geer shifted and his shared vision moved, again.
The room spun. The park spun. No nausea, not yet.
“Stay still,” she softly whispered, so Geer would hear her plea.
Sending out a probing wave for any other mental signatures or potential human witnesses, Elizabeth nearly jumped up from her swing when the street lamp closest to the forest path flickered and went out as her magic touched it.
The lightning made it dramatic, a loud buzzing like an overloaded circuit, announcing the light’s death before it burned out.
“It’s already creepy enough, Liz. No need to turn off all of the lights,” Victoria commented.
“Totally an accident. Never happened like that before when I pushed my ping range,” Elizabeth said, puzzled.
“Ping?” Victoria repeated.
“Have you heard about radar?” Jill asked.
She briefly explained to Victoria the concept of using lightning to ‘ping’ minds. Then, she sat up on her break couch and asked to be able to see through Elizabeth’s eyes.
Jill didn’t like the idea of the lights suddenly going out, either. As easy as she had been about them hunting the vampires earlier, one little wrinkle in their plan and her sister was rethinking this hasty caper.
“It’s fine,” Elizabeth reassured her. “I’ve got a good hold on the three vampires we’re hunting. Nobody else, is here. I’ve hunted here, lots,” Elizabeth reminded her.
Pulling back on her lightning to focus on the vampires and her fellow huntress, Elizabeth let Jill see the park and its gloomy swing set.
“The girl on the swings again? Seriously?” Jill asked with a groan.
“Hey, it’s a classic, Glinda,” Elizabeth said.
The swing still squeaked. Elizabeth had barely started swinging, when Victoria began to jump up and down at the top of the slide, trying to get the attention of the vampires.
“Come up here and play!” Victoria yelled.
“What are you doing? You’re supposed to hide up there and wait for one of the vampires to try to find you,” Elizabeth said in a hurry.
“They’re all going for you, Liz,” Victoria replied.
“Not anymore,” Elizabeth said.
She could feel the minds of the vampires—or demons!—moving away from her and towards Victoria.
Elizabeth may have been the easier prey, out in the open, but Victoria was now the loudest.
The predators swung their thoughts towards Victoria, like cats catching sight of a loud jay, squawking as it flew too near.
“As I mentioned earlier, this is not a plan. Use your true magic and end this before the princess gets hurt,
” Geer wisely advised.
At least, he was holding still for her, not messing with her delicate balance of mate vision, lightning illusions, and her real vision.
She may have intended for Victoria to be less accessible on purpose when she’d sent her up to the top of the playground slide.
It wasn’t that Victoria was inexperienced with weapons and fighting, but more that Elizabeth hadn’t had time to judge her ruthlessness.
She didn’t want Victoria second guessing her blows when it came to sending these vampires back to hell.
“You only get one, Elf. Jill’s my sister, so I get her vampire, too. There’s no poaching,” Elizabeth said, trying to figure out how to draw the attention of the vampires back to her.
“Agreed.” Victoria’s excitement was still at the forefront of her mind, and a little wariness, to caution her.
The princess felt just like Elizabeth did, on her first hunt, except for the pit of dread that always clenched Elizabeth’s stomach. The knowing that if she failed, another human would pay the price, like her childhood friend.
“I’m going to illusion your body jumping around and playing at the top of the slide. I’ll make your real self invisible to their senses, so you can hide and spring onto the vampire at the right moment.”
“Okay,” Victoria agreed.
“I’ll be busy myself, so I can’t promise you anything more than a simple illusion for bait. The vampire will know it’s not real if he tries to drink from it,” Elizabeth warned her.
“I’ll hide on the roof,” Victoria decided.
That was a good choice. The vampires were going to have to climb the structure from below, making the roof the safest.
Victoria’s slender body leaned out of the play structure to grab the wooden roof. She pulled herself on top of its shadowy height.
Illusion Victoria giggled, still playing at the top of the slide.
Elizabeth left her swing and ran around the playground, screaming, “I don’t wanna slide. I want to play hide and seek. No peeking.”
Ducking under the slide, Elizabeth let her illusion continue on running around, while she hid.
No Witch Way Out (Maeren Series Book 2) Page 19