No Witch Way Out (Maeren Series Book 2)

by Mercedes Jade

  An injury which George had so conveniently healed for her by transporting her to Maeren.

  “I don’t threaten. I promise and I am a witch of my word,” she said.

  “I’ve brought you here, just so you can let go, all you want. Go ahead and do your worst,” George said. He dipped a little to enter a dark cave.

  She hated the dark. George didn’t know it. Nobody did, but family.

  How could a slayer admit she feared the dark when vampires only came out at night?

  The little myopia she had naturally was multiplied by the dark, but she knew her fear was from something deeper than mere optics, never forgetting the demon that had broken her innocence of the night.

  “Don’t you at least have fire to light the place up or are we reverting to the ice age?” Elizabeth whined.

  “Why should I waste my fire when you won’t be replenishing my blood?” George asked, reasonably.

  He didn’t have any trouble navigating in the dark, turning right to head down what she thought was a tunnel.

  “It’s cold in here,” she complained, speaking out loud in compromise.

  He didn’t want to waste power.

  The damp of the cave was felt more keenly because of their sweaty climb. Even though she hadn’t done any of the work, she had been clinging to the furnace of heat that was George.

  The sun had nothing on a fire prince exerting himself.

  Now her sweaty, exposed back was turning to ice.

  “I could fix both the dark and cold for you if you cooperated a little with my request for blood,” George offered.

  She could use her lightning and fix them both herself, but he was offering her a bargaining chip.

  “Will you let me feed on you?” he asked, pushing for what he wanted.

  “I will think about it,” she said. “First, don’t you think you should explain why you stabbed me in the chest?”

  She was still annoyed that he had done it. He had been so quick about it that she didn’t even feel what he had stabbed her with to release her chi, only noticing the tingling, moments before transport.

  She had a good reason to stab him, protecting her family, but what the hell had been his excuse?

  “I needed to bring you here,” George answered, slowly, like she was the biggest dolt in Maeren.

  Torches, set in the cave walls, all lit at once, giving a healthy glow of light to the cavern they entered.

  Even though it was quite open and spacious, she was sure anyone with claustrophobia wouldn’t be able to stand it.

  There were no windows to the outside and the only opening was the narrow tunnel they’d come through, and it bent in a way that cut off the light and exit to the outside.

  “I’m going to need a better answer than that if you want to bite me,” she told him.

  “I needed to disable you as quickly as possible, given your powers,” George said, reluctantly admitting her strength was a challenge to overcome.

  Maybe he hadn’t underestimated her magic after all. No way, he was merely referring to her air.

  He knew what her lightning could do, had thought through the implications of her telepathic power.

  He might even know she could control others, like when she had the dragons and Victoria, although it had been more a strong suggestion for the dragons and only Victoria’s muscles, not her mind.

  George walked over to a table protruding from the wall. He pulled down a bed that had been cleverly hung vertical, flipping it down to lie on top of the table and converting it to a sleeping surface.

  Bed and kitchen, cave edition.

  Elizabeth didn’t let go when he turned, resisting when he leaned back to encourage her to fall onto the bed.

  There was no blanket to hide under. The chill in the cave was making her nipples stand out, and as he had so kindly lit the torches, she couldn’t hide her body from him.

  “You are a full-grown witch, despite your bite-sized body, so don’t make this any more difficult with false modesty,” he said, clearly becoming a bit impatient.

  “Can you lie down on your stomach, and I will slide off, please?” she asked.

  She would prefer clothes and a blanket as well but had to take this a step at a time.

  The bed is narrow. It’s only meant for me,” he said, but he turned around, climbing onto the bed as requested.

  There wasn’t any creak, so it was solid, if narrow.

  “Where do you put all of the witches you bring here if there’s only one measly bed?”

  George ignored her for a moment, lying down on his abdomen and taking a few moments to just breathe.

  With a sigh, he got up on his elbows and pulled the single pillow out from under the tucked sheets to wedge under his upper chest, letting his head hang down on the firm mattress. He sucked in one more slow breath and let it out.

  “It’s just me,” George finally said. “I told you, I was joking, earlier.”

  She could see he had been right about there not being enough room for two on the bed. Now that he was lying down, she couldn’t lie beside him.

  She sat up, on top of him, and examined the muscled back under her. Her cold nipples complained about leaving the warmth of being pressed against him.

  “How about I massage your back, while you tell me a bit more about why you dragged me to your secret hideout?” she asked.

  She didn’t wait for him to respond, getting up on her knees and leaning down to work the tense cords of muscle, begging to be released.

  “Fine interrogator I am, letting you rub my back and ask all of the questions,” George quipped, groaning as she worked a deep knot, thumbing a scar. Even his back was marked up.

  “So, I’m here to be interrogated?”

  She had figured as much when he said he had to disable her by stabbing her here.

  Now, she was in his domain and under his control.

  He could continue to think that.

  “You are a dangerous rogue witch that has attacked numerous members of the royal family and aided and abetted other known criminals, Jill Norwood and Kaila Norwood.”

  Elizabeth didn’t bother protesting but she did ask, “What did my mother do?”

  “Do you really think we believe your sister carried out a poisoning that elaborate on her own? She has considerable earth, but it is your mother who is unparalleled. There are rumours that your mother may even be a blood witch.”

  She massaged harder. “My family is innocent. I controlled all of their minds. I did the same with Victoria to get her to come along, so she couldn’t be used to track me.”

  Her family was in more danger than she had realized if they were speaking of blood witches.

  Could you be executed for rumours? She was pretty sure the punishment for poisoning the royals was death.

  “I did figure you used magic to get Victoria to move—after all, Victor said she drank the same paralyzing poison as he had. Are you sure you did all of the rest of it on your own?” George asked, shifting, so her thumbs weren’t digging so hard into his spine.

  She eased up.

  “Just who did you catch spying on a murder, happening right under your nose?” she reminded him.

  She gripped his shoulders, thick with incredible power, and thought about how easily he had sliced into a dragon.

  For the first time, she realized, she might not make it out of this cave alive.

  George had lightning, too, and if he knew how to block her, then his physical strength and magic might allow him to end the threat to his kingdom, right here.

  Would he be satisfied with just her paying for the crimes against his family?

  “Witness to murder doesn’t exactly blacken your character, little one,” George mumbled into the pillow, rolling his shoulders under her massage.

  She was using a little lightning to warm her hands and make his rock-hard muscles more pliant, as she did for her mother’s bad leg. It still took all her strength and his shoulders refused to submit, as impossibly tens
e as when she’d started.

  She scratched her nails down from his shoulders to his back, scraping just hard enough to make an impression.

  He shuddered under her and she started massaging his shoulders again.

  “I wasn’t expecting security to be so lax when I was exploring the castle,” she said, finally responding to his question.

  “Spying,” he corrected, stretching under her like a big, powerful cat, lying in the hot sun. “You said you were spying, not exploring.”

  She dug her nails into his muscles again, this time leaving little red moons.

  “Yes, I was spying all by myself, planning how to carry out the poisonings.”

  He sighed. “Why?”

  “Why?” she echoed.

  The motive for her lie wasn’t ready to roll off her tongue.

  “Leave off why you were in the library wing, instead of the personal quarters, if you were exploring the castle to find a way to poison the king, and tell me—”

  “I didn’t poison the king!” Elizabeth shouted, horrified.

  The words were out of her mouth before she could think of what she should and should not be telling George.

  George hardly reacted to her passionate denial, giving a shrug under her hands.

  “It may have been difficult for even you to poison the king, while you were sleeping,” he said, reminding her that the king had disappeared when she had been recovering from the fight in the dragon cave.

  She had put the dragons to sleep, so all of her companions could escape, and in the process, she had fallen under her own magic.

  The dragon minds were different from other vampires, some animal part to them that forced her to slip deeper into their subconsciousness than she normally would to use her magic.

  Not being blamed for the king’s poisoning provided little comfort.

  Her mother and Jill had been by her side the whole time, nursing her, but who was to say they hadn’t poisoned the king themselves?

  It looked fairly incriminating.

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  She stopped massaging his shoulders, and waited to hear her fate.

  She wouldn’t go down without a fight. If the two of them went at it, then there was a chance she could take George with her in death, even if she couldn’t defeat him.

  Her mother and Jill were strong enough to escape Victor, and she doubted that Daemon would waste his time chasing after them.

  After all, Daemon had been the one to kill his father, and Elizabeth was the only witch with the power he wanted.

  She still didn’t want to die.

  “No, little one, I’m not here to kill you,” George said.

  She started massaging again so he wouldn’t flip over, fighting back her tears of relief.

  “Why would you think such a morbid fate awaits you?” he asked.

  It did seem kind of overblown, now that he’d reassured her.

  “It’s just, if you thought I had anything to do with the attack on the king, isn’t death the penalty?”

  “The king is not dead, only sick from poisoning, and it’s hardly the first time. I already told you that we know it wasn’t you, and I’m fairly certain it wasn’t your family, either, although they will have to stand trial, given the trick you played on all of us,” George said. “Perhaps if you would tell me why you poisoned all of the princes with minor ailments and, I suspect, the twins with something different, then I’ll be able to provide you with help during the trials.”

  George wanted to help her?

  “If I confess to all of the poisonings except for the king, of course, will my mother and sister still have to stand trial?” she asked.

  There was a glimmer of hope.

  George seemed to be reasonable almost, surprising as that was after her other less reasonable encounters with him. The word compromise may not be completely foreign to him.

  “What’s there to confess? Didn’t you already tell me that you controlled their minds and made them do everything, while you kept your hands clean?” George asked, sounding bored. “I want to know why.”

  She shifted her hands down his body, thinking of what to say.

  He wouldn’t let it go, digging for her motivation.

  What would he say if she told him it had been all about a love that she now knew was false?

  Could she share with him the attacks in the human realm, the lawbreaking vampires and demons that she had been trying to track to Maeren?

  He had witnessed the comedy of errors that had been her last hunt.

  “I’m sure you’ve already worked out motivation if you’ve decided to arrest me for trial,” she said, unable to open up to George.

  The pain was still too fresh to tell a stranger, just to satisfy his curiosity. She shouldn’t be naive enough to believe that George would help her.

  “I told you that I did everything and that should be enough for a conviction. You’re wasting your time arresting my mother and sister, too.”

  “Such omnipotent brainwashing must be second nature to an evil witch like yourself,” George said, sounding disappointed. “I suppose you just read the potion ingredients from your mother’s memories to make the poison you forced your sister to ingest. Ingenious to hide it in her blood. A gentle young lady like Jill offers her wrist so prettily that a male would feel like the greatest buffoon to spurn her offer, even if she had the bite marks of his brothers decorating her skin.”

  She massaged lower, pounding his lumbar muscles with her fists, flattening before kneading.

  The stubborn male didn’t give an inch, pushing up against her hands.

  Jill had fed George?

  Her sister had sacrificed more than Elizabeth could repay. Jill would have been frightened after that right in the practice room when George had challenged William’s claim.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t bite a girl before getting to know her first,” Elizabeth suggested when George stopped explaining his version of the events.

  He sounded pissed off that he had fallen for one of the oldest tricks in the books. He wouldn’t be the first male or the last to fall for Jill’s pretty face or to mistake her quiet demeanour for a lack of wits.

  “I was surprised that you recovered so quickly from your magic burnout to put your plan in motion. The poison would have taken at least a full day and night to prepare and that is without gathering the rare ingredients. How you learned the gardens so well to steal the valerian and wolf’s bane . . .”

  Elizabeth recognized valerian as an herbal sedative, but although she had heard the name of wolf’s bane, she didn’t know what it did to the body. It sounded like a poison.

  Probably it was what her mother used to cause the vomiting, diarrhea, and muscle aches. Mixed with the sedative valerian, it would have mimicked the beginning of a flu infection.

  “I couldn’t attract William myself but I forced Jill to do it and he showed her where the wolf’s bane grows at the back of the greenhouse,” Elizabeth said, quickly spinning a story.

  She remembered William’s warning at the breakfast after the ball, about where good witches shouldn’t explore because of the dangerous plants grown for darker earth potions.

  George flipped under her.

  He did it so quickly that there was no way she could stop him. Her hands dangled uselessly, while he turned. She was suddenly straddling his pelvis instead of his buttocks and now posed to massage his chest.

  She tried to cover herself up with her hands, cursing. Her massage had been more stimulating than she’d wanted by the sudden glimpse down she got at George, before she squeezed her eyes shut.

  “There was no wolf’s bane, little one,” George said, ignoring her embarrassment.

  Oh, no. It seemed George wasn’t the only one to fall for simple tricks.

  She’d been caught lying.

  Working it Out

  Stupid.

  George had caught her out lying about things she didn’t know.

  Stick to the story and
don’t elaborate on details.

  She shouldn’t have commented on the herbs, only the effects the poison had intended, the facts she knew she could support.

  “I’m not saying anything more until you take me back to my family!”

  George had a smirk on his lips that really pissed her off. He certainly didn’t look like he was going to obey her demands.

  “What kind of pressure can I put on you, to tell the truth, if I let you collaborate with your family first?” He asked, tracing his calloused fingers up the outside of her thighs. “Victor is going to bring Jill and Victoria back to the castle for interrogation. Your mother will likely follow them.”

  They were trapped!

  Desperate, she plunged past the flimsy barriers into George’s mind. His thoughts were easily breached, but a bit chaotic.

  He had been looking at the massive dragon inked on her skin and not her naked body.

  There was fear in his mind, and determination, too.

  He wanted to feed on her, was challenged by the thought of slipping under his older brother’s claim.

  He wanted to suck on her tits, teased earlier by the feel of her rubbing against his back every step of that hike, and unbearably aroused now by the sight of her soft breasts swaying as she moved to cover up.

  He wondered if she would like him to feed while she straddled him. He could play with her body, when he drew from her neck, find out if her breasts would cup nicely in his hands, as he suspected.

  Elizabeth ought to be embarrassed by his raw, sexual thoughts, but this wasn’t the first male mind she had dipped into and then found herself the star of his fantasies.

  Male vampires were sensual by nature, especially around powerful witches. He had to be starving for blood. She was lucky he hadn’t tried to ravish her on the ground, when they’d first arrived.

  Still, now she knew what he was thinking about her body, she needed to take control.

  She dressed herself in his mind, with the clothes she had been wearing when he staked her, sans the leather jacket. It left her in a sleeveless black tank and her favourite skinny black jeans.