I also hadn’t expected to get into a fight to the death on the first night I spent in the house. Sure, for me it’d been a week with brewing the night potions, but real-world time I hadn’t even been at the ranch for twenty-four hours yet.
I wondered if I was crazy for not throwing my stuff in a bag and getting the hell out of there. But nowhere in my world was safe, and as I’d mentioned before, I liked them so I might as well take a stand here, or I’d never stop running.
I needed a distraction. I rolled out of bed and padded lightly out of the room and down the stairs. The kitchen light was far too bright, and it took my eyes a moment to adjust before I moved to the coffee maker and started a mug.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
I almost jumped out of my own skin as I spun around, only to see a concerned look on John’s face. He also had a sabre strapped to his hip.
He chuckled, “Sorry, I saw the light go on.”
I nodded, “I slept a full seven hours, not eight hours ago. One of the hazards of having a mound where time and space is yours to control.”
He smirked, “Understood. Can you time travel with it?”
I laughed as I splashed a little milk into the mug, then took a sip.
“No. Well, I could move forward in time in a moment, or spend years in there when only a few seconds out here passed, but no going back I’m afraid.”
He grinned, “The fae usually don’t share information.”
“I’m a witch too.”
He snorted, “Like witches ever share secrets.”
I giggled, “Point, but given what happened last night it seemed prudent to share a bit. I leverage the ability for storage, and for growing herbs, but usually avoid it myself. I don’t want to live out my three hundred years, when only a few have passed out here. Life and death situations are an exception.”
He nodded, “Three hundred?”
In truth, I had no idea how long I’d live. I knew witches lived about a century and a half, fae were practically immortal, lived thousands of years. Other fae-witches lived about twice as long as witch blood alone, but there was that third race in the mix which was half my being.
No one knew how long they lived, because they were usually killed on sight. All I knew was I still looked eighteen at twenty, which didn’t say anything really. Even a pure witch would still look to be a teen, until their thirties. It was probably a moot point anyway. Our world was violent, and few lived to their full potential in age.
“A guess.”
He grunted, “I’m pretty young for a vampire, just fifty. My master was building a private army of sorts, for a coup against the coven leader. I was less than two months old when the one that turned me, and all the rest I’d known for that time were found out and slaughtered by his master. It’d been the luck of the draw that I was the one he’d sent out that night to collect blood. I came back to a burning house, and I could scent all the dead inside being consumed.
“I was marked for death at that point. The coven never would’ve accepted me, so I left the area. I was completely ignorant of how things worked, wandered for a lot of years before I found this place, and Abby. That’s a story for another time.”
Vic stalked into the room toward the coffee pot. He was in a pair of shorts, and that’s it, which was quite distracting, all those muscles, his big hands, and ruggedly handsome face.
I walked over to the table and sat down, just to keep some distance between us.
“Morning.”
I replied, “Good morning.”
Vic said, “We usually spar between now and dawn, but given we’re about to get attacked we should skip it today.”
I could agree with that. Vic would need all his magic, and if John or I accidentally got hurt it’d take time to heal, even with a healing potion.
Vic asked, “Did I interrupt story-time.”
John snorted, “Just reciprocating a bit. She opened up last night, saved your life, and is standing with us.”
Yeah, a bit, he’d given me the sound bites of a fifty-year saga.
Vic shook his head, and grumped, “I was bitten by a rogue, story time’s over.”
I laughed, and John snorted.
That actually told me a lot though. A rogue had no pack, so neither did their bitten progeny. It left a lot of questions, but at least it told me why he was in a group on the edges of society and not a pack. Shifters could be bitten, they could also be born, there was no biological difference, a shifter was a shifter, but there was a social difference. A pack alpha would only accept a bitten by one of his pack.
For people like me it was obvious, mutts had no place with any of their races, but for the pure ones like John, Vic, and Abby the circumstances and reasons were as varied and random as life.
The front and back door boomed, unearthly howls of anger breached the house, and Abby’s scream rose at the same time, all four of those things simultaneously. The attack had started.
Chapter Eight
“Demons,” I warned, as I spun out of my chair and stood, my hand simultaneously pulling the pistol with holy water tranquilizers.
I hated being right. They’d kill us, or at least break the wards and soften us up for Adele and her sadistic shifters to finish off.
Boom!
The front and back door sounded again. The thick wood doors already starting to split, and Abby’s voice rose in volume as she came down the stairs, chanting a spell. It was obvious that the demons hitting the wards was hurting her somehow.
John ran at the door, and opened it with his left hand, his right-hand lunging with the sword. He’d timed it perfectly, because his silver sword sunk into the flesh of the demon right as the front door banged again.
The demon was humanoid in shape, with ash gray skin, red eyes, small nubs for horns marking him as lower level, and wings and a tail.
Of course, being run through by a sword would just excite a demon, they liked pain and torture, including their own. They were all sadists and masochists both. Well, not just, because the demon did bleed, and enough damage would send them back to hell.
Vic raced out of the room and I heard the crackling of his bones. I could only assume he thought we could handle back door demon, and he was going for the other one.
I had a better alternative than letting him soak up insane amounts of damage, and I unloaded my pistol with rapid squeezes. Two of them hit his shoulder and neck, two more went into his ugly face, and the fifth went over his head as he ducked incredibly fast.
Which, not so incidentally, made John’s sword do nasty things to his innards.
Point being, the demon definitely noticed the holy water pumped into his body. They liked pain, but not that pain, and the roar of torment that left its mouth was pure agonized despair.
John went flying backwards, the crack of his ribs loud, but he managed to hold onto his sword as he steadied himself.
I lunged for the door. The demon’s body already had smoke pouring off its skin. It was already banished, it just didn’t know it yet. I kicked the demon out of the doorway and slammed the door shut. I spared a look to John who looked like he was healing, with an empty potion bottle in his hand, as I ran out of the room.
The wards would hold long enough to end the bastard at the back door, there was no point in weakening ourselves further by engaging it. We’d still have to face the sadistic four when the two demons were banished.
No wonder those groups had been annihilated, and I grudgingly admired the tactic, even if I’d never use it.
My holy water pistol was empty, so I stuck it into the bag, and it disappeared and reappeared back into my hand in a split-second, fully loaded. Thank you, Muriel.
I hesitated a moment when I saw the front door wide open and the demon and Vic were ripping chunks out of each other. Then said screw it, a little holy water wouldn’t hurt a shifter if I accidentally hit Vic instead. I was faster than Vic, but not faster than a demon.
That’s when Abby finished her spell and the
wards erupted in lightning, blasting the demon away from Vic and off the porch. It’s skin smoking and charred. It didn’t move, and I suspected it was cooked through and would shortly decompose and be sent back to hell, but why chance it. I shot it five times quickly, which made it start smoking even more. Then I swapped out that weapon for the pistol with knock out potions that would work against a witch or the three shifters.
“Nice spell.”
Abby laughed, but it was a little hysterical. Clearly, she hadn’t believed at all that Adele would stoop to summoning demon allies. To be fair, it was a very dangerous undertaking. Adele’s enemies would die, but the demon would much rather drag their summoner to hell and torture them for eternity, and that’s what would’ve happened if Adele lost control of them.
That kind of hunger for power, to take that risk, was just insane. That said, she was fairly safe from that now, because I planned to end the bitch and send her to hell myself.
Vic looked fine. His flesh rebuilt, but I had no idea how much magic he had left to face the four that were our true enemies. John appeared next to us, sword in his hand, but he was obviously favoring his left side. The ribs were still healing.
I doubted that thirty full seconds had passed since the attack started.
The doorway filled with fire, but it didn’t get past the wards.
John said shortly, “I’ll flank,” and moved so fast I barely tracked him with my eyes, and the back door opened and closed a second later. It was a wise decision, since vampires should never run through flames.
Vic howled in pain, he was out there alone for the moment, so as soon as the fire of Adele’s attack fell, Abby and I raced out the door. Abby casting another spell, and me letting my pistol lead.
I could cast some spells. I was a witch after all, but in combat it was just best avoided. My potions were strong, but I doubt my spells could get through a witch’s personal protections, not a powerful one at any rate. My spells were just too weak, as a half-breed.
Vic was fighting both a tiger and wolf. I didn’t recognize the wolf so I assumed it had to be Cerise and Jacob, since I’d have recognized Jason’s wolf form from the fight last night. He wasn’t doing all that great, and he was fighting completely on the defensive. That was good enough though, he was distracting two of the enemy until we could take out the true threat.
I didn’t see Jason at all, and that was a problem. I snapped off two shots toward Adele, but the tranquilizer darts sparked and were burned out of existence before they could hit her. Shit.
Before I could fire at the tiger or wolf, Jason made his presence known by rounding the house on the porch and lunging at me with deep growl. Fae weren’t as fast as vampires, but I was faster than a shifter, and managed to get off a shot.
Jason’s growl cut off, but I was still hit by over two hundred pounds of solid muscle mass, blood, and bone. It knocked me over sideways, and the wolf’s dead weight landed on me as we slid across the wood porch. It hurt, and I think a few ribs broke as the air was knocked out of my lungs and I was gasping for breath.
Three things happened then, almost simultaneously.
Fire exploded from Adele’s hand toward Abby, but before it could arrive Abby’s spell finished as well and fierce winds redirected the stream of fire. Adele’s own attack curved in a semi-circle and slammed into Jacob, setting him up like a pyre.
Jacob’s body was healing as fast as it was burning, but it also caused enough pain he fell to his side and didn’t move, which let Vic focus on evading and fighting with Cerise only.
That third thing I mentioned, it was also apparent John was waiting for Adele to cast her spell, because less than a second later he blurred around the house from cover, and his sword swung cleanly at the stationary burning target.
Jacob’s wolf head rolled away from his body.
Adele screamed in outrage, as Vic and John squared off with Cerise, and for the first time Vic was going on the offensive while John waited for an opportunity to lunge in and take her head.
I rolled the huge bulk off me, with effort, and slammed a dagger into Jason’s neck with my left hand, right up into his brain cavity. There was no way to heal that, two down, two to go. I also wasn’t wielding holy water this time, so I couldn’t afford to shoot into the blurring bodies and hope for the best. John would be resistant to the knockout potion, but Vic wouldn’t be if I hit him on accident.
Adele and Abby were casting again.
Adele was protected from them, or at least she could burn them off with her protections, but… could she burn off a whole dagger? That was a lot more mass than a thin and very small metal shell holding a potion.
I pulled the dagger out of the dead shifter, and prepared to throw it, but my pistol came up instead and emptied it out in four rapid pulls, without really thinking about it.
Cerise had managed to get a hard swipe in on Vic, which had sent him tumbling away from the other two. Which had given me that opening, but it was my pure reflex that had taken advantage of it. Three of them still missed, but I got her hindquarter with the last dart and Vic lunged back in to take her throat before she’d even fallen to the ground.
His massive jaw locked down on her neck and squeezed, until her magic ran out and her neck snapped, permanently.
Adele looked panicked at that point, all her sadistic followers were dead, and while John was hurt, and Vic was low on magic, and I had bruised if not cracked ribs, we were all still alive. To her credit, she continued to cast her spell, the arcane words spilling from her lips confidently, despite the look of panic on her face.
At least, until I threw that dagger, at her face. The dagger didn’t get through her protections, and it was ruined as it was half melted when it fell to the ground at her feet, but it did make her flinch and her spell faltered.
It’d been worth it, and I was an earth witch, I could fix the dagger later.
Abby finished her spell, and jets and blades of air cut into Adele’s protections, and the last couple scored her skin with deep but thin cuts through her clothes. Adele screamed in disbelieving rage. A second later, John took her head. With her protections down, there was nothing to stop the sword.
John cleaned the blood off of his sword using her clothes, then sheathed it.
Abby sighed, “Let’s get this cleaned up, we open in two hours. That could’ve gone a lot worse. I had no idea she’d bring demons.”
I hated killing, but I’d be lying if it wasn’t a thrilling feeling to be alive, and to put down those four sadistic bastards. I was just glad I hadn’t been hit by fire, because not burning would’ve been hard to explain. There was a reason I didn’t fear fire, it had no effect on me whatsoever.
Vic shifted back, and I politely looked away. No, that’s a lie, I totally looked as he casually walked over to the porch, and he pulled on a pair of shorts. Let’s just say he had absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.
What was the point in hiding it, he could scent my attraction, and arousal. Might as well get an eyeful at what I was avoiding so assiduously. It was obvious he wanted me too. That said, I’d made the mistake of letting chemical attraction sweep me away, and shifters were dogs.
If I kept telling myself that, I might not do something stupid.
John said, “It’s almost dawn, let’s just get them bagged up and in the basement. I’ll take care of dumping them tonight when I rise.”
Vic asked, “What was in those potions, those demons would’ve had us far more hurt without them.”
“Holy water. It’s one of the only things a demon is truly vulnerable too.”
John said playfully, “Be careful with that stuff around me.”
I snickered.
He was actually joking. Holy water and garlic had no effect on vampires, only the sun and decapitation part was true. Of course, decapitation killed anything. Even demons, though decapitating a demon was all but impossible. Stabbing them a lot worked, eventually sent them back due to damage, and wasn’t all that hard, but they wer
e very resistant to cutting wounds.
At least the demon bodies cleaned up on their own, we only had to deal with the other bodies.
Abby said, “Glad you had it, this doesn’t sit easy with me. I’ll get in touch with the other leaders, at a reasonable hour.”
We had just enough time to clean up, shower, and eat a quick breakfast before starting our day.
Chapter Nine
The horse neighed and tossed his head a little nervously, when I looked askance at the saddle so high off the ground.
The morning had gone well, I’d brewed two sets of potions back to full inventory, and I’d cleaned up after myself. Based on inventory and expected sales, I was done for the day if not several days. I’d also checked on the rejuvenation brew, and it was going well, it’d be ready tomorrow afternoon. Lastly, I’d replaced my own used stock of potion over the last day, though I’d have to go to a church to replenish the holy water. I also wasn’t worried about it overly, I had plenty on hand. Not only preloaded darts, but a few small casks of it which would fill thousands of darts.
Vic had asked me if I wanted a riding class after lunch. So far there’d been very little riding, it’d been about how to act around horses, don’t walk behind them unless you’re very close or far enough they can’t reach with their hooves, all that stuff. The tack, saddle, straps, adjusting the stirrups, how to make them go, stop, turn, and all that.
We’d also had lunch. Abby had talked to the other leaders that morning, and two were on board with the plan. Gabe wanted nothing further to do with it, he was the vampire that led one of the three other groups, and with Adele gone just wanted to go his own way. However, both Stan the fae, and Sally the water witch were in.
I wasn’t a group leader, so I wasn’t going to worry about it overly, not past how it affected me personally.
Hexes and Hellfire: Kyra Bell: Book One Page 6