The Queen of Witches

by Brandi Elledge

  His eyes gave me a thorough sweep before he glanced over to Jamison. “What do we have here? Prince Jamison and the mighty Undertaker working together?”

  Jamison’s face showed nothing but boredom. “We’re all out of pleasantries. Why don’t you tell us what you want before we die of boredom?”

  Curiosity was killing me. “Who is this guy?”

  The boy gave me a smile that was more of a leer. “Oh, I’m sorry. Where are my manners? I’m the Demon Prince who will soon be King. My sister took the crown off of my dying father’s head. To be quite honest, I’m not convinced she didn’t kill the old man, but none-the-less, I’ll have her crown soon.”

  Tandi’s nose wrinkled. “This is some straight up Jerry Springer stuff. I wouldn’t be surprised if he said he was carrying his sister’s baby.”

  The Demon Prince completely ignored her. “I’m here for the key. Those things really are like bartering chips. You wouldn’t believe what people are willing to do for one.”

  “Sorry, I think I nodded off,” Wes said. “I’m sure you were trying to make a point. This is literally a snooze fest. Should we go change into our pajamas?”

  “Cute.” The Demon Prince studied our surroundings. “I like what you’ve done with the backyard. Where’s the guest of honor, Warren, my infamous sorcerer?”

  “You mean that weak little man that looked like a pterodactyl?” Jamison pretended to think for a second. “Oh, yes, now I recall what happened to him. He accidentally fell into a self-made pit of lava. Did you need him for something?”

  “Killing my sorcerer won’t get you on my good side.”

  Jamison and Wes both chuckled at that.

  The Demon Prince was barely holding onto his anger. The vein in his temple bulged. “There was a demon who recently crossed over from a portal. After reaching out to me for sanctuary, he earned a job. He was supposed to bring me a key. My sources said he was here. Since I’m talking with the lot of you, is it safe to assume that Ellon, the demon, is no longer with us?”

  “I think the more important question is why the demon would show up here with the key? Why risk it?” I asked. “A bird in the hand and all that.”

  “Apparently, you killed his twin brother. His revengeful nature made him disobey me and obviously got him killed. I had been forewarned he would come here; that is why I sent the sorcerer. To protect the demon who carried the key. This attack was nothing personal.”

  “It felt kind of personal, wouldn’t you say?” Jamison asked us and we all nodded.

  “Regardless, I’m going to need that key. It will give me the crown. What do I have to barter with you in order to make this happen? I can grant you anything your heart desires.”

  No one mentioned we didn’t have possession of the key. Instead, Jamison said, “Over my dead body.” Then he nodded at Wes. “Even Death will tell you that accomplishing that feat is possible, but not probable.”

  The Demon Prince’s lips stretched over pointy teeth. Seeing he wasn’t getting anywhere with the prince of wolves, he turned his attention to the Undertaker. “Have you heard the good news? The Vampire Queen is trading her daughter for a key.” He wore a look of amusement. “Rumor has it that the daughter is a very powerful Zombie Queen. Sounds like a conflict of interest for you, Undertaker. I could take care of her for you.”

  “If you’re looking for a key, why don’t you just take the Vampire Queen’s?” I asked.

  The Demon Prince shrugged. “I was hoping this avenue would be easier.”

  Jamison scoffed. “Guess again.”

  The Demon Prince’s blue eyes turned red as blood. Fury was blanketing his features. I didn’t need my intuition to know that the Demon prince would bring us trouble. “I will get that key. One way or another.” With his last words, his image flickered and disappeared.

  “We need to get that key,” I said to no one in particular. “Where did that pit of lava lead?”

  Jamison answered. “My guess? To the Underworld. Sorcerers can’t open portals, but they can open the gates to other dimensions like Hell. Good thing your brother can close the gate.”

  “Hell is my playground, little sister,” Wes said. “I can retrieve the key, but then after that I have business to attend to.”

  I looked at my big brother and studied his determined profile. “What kind of business?”

  “I have to go find this Zombie Queen and kill her,” Wes said.

  I slapped him on his shoulder. “You can’t just kill an innocent girl!”

  “Seriously?” He smiled at me. “I’ve heard of this ‘innocent girl.’ She’s a vampire princess and a zombie queen all wrapped up in one. There’s nothing innocent about her.”

  Jamison pointed out, “If she’s evil, and he doesn’t do what is necessary, she could make it hard on us to win the war.”

  “Oh, for the love of everything fried, I’m going to bed. Today has been exhausting,” Tandi said with mock disgust. “I don’t care if we’re safe here or not, I’m not moving from this house. It seems to me no matter where we go, danger will be there.” Tandi walked toward our house. “And I have a date with Netflix and a fluffy couch. Zombie vampire queens, flying bird-men, and crazy witches can all take a back seat for a hot minute. I’m tired.”

  Wes chuckled. “If y’all will excuse me, I have a date with a warmer climate.” Smoke gathered around him before he completely disappeared to go find the key.

  “Then there were two.” Jamison wrapped both arms around me. “I’m sorry for not telling you about your brother.”

  “Just no more secrets, okay?” I traced his five o’clock shadow. “You know, I could get use to this scruffy look.”

  “You like, huh?” He bent his head toward mine, slowly kissing me on each side of my mouth before kissing me squarely on the lips. As he deepened the kiss, my body melted into his. All of a sudden, the kiss ended with Jamison pushing my body from his and roughly shoving me behind him. I was still in a daze, wondering what was going on with my angel when I heard a noise in front of us. I peered around Jamison and was shocked at what I saw. Mother trucker. Could we not have a moment of peace?

  Chapter Eighteen

  There stood the biggest demon we had yet to see so far. He was at least eight feet tall with bulging muscles and horns sticking out from his head. An instant later, the demon transformed into a middle-aged man wearing a suit. Now, he looked completely boring, with mousy brown hair that was receding and pallid skin. I blinked a couple of times to make sure that what I just saw really happened and wasn’t just a figment of my imagination.

  The man smiled. “Hello, Prince.” He nodded at me. “Witch.”

  Jamison all but growled, letting me know this wasn’t a friendly visit. “How long have you been on this plain, François?”

  “Too long. A demon has needs that cannot really be met here.” He leered at me, giving me chills. “She is beautiful, like her mother.”

  I felt Jamison tense. “Why are you here?”

  “I think you know why. You’ve really pissed off the boss man. The demon prince sent me to retrieve his key.”

  “That’s going to be a problem, considering I don’t have it.”

  “Well, that is a problem for you.” He eyed Jamison with a calculating look. “Tell me who does.”

  Jamison shrugged. “I can’t really remember his name off the top of my head.”

  The demon smirked right before I felt an invisible force tug me toward him like a magnet. My arms were pinned helplessly at my sides; I looked down to see what was constricting me. There were tiny wisps of gray vapors, almost like tiny hands, holding onto me, wrapping me in a tight vise. My body was trapped against the demon in less than a second. Then from thin air, a silver dagger with foreign words embellished on the side materialized in the demon’s hand, halting Jamison from moving closer to us.

  “Good wolf.” The demon put the cold blade underneath my chin. “Before you use any powers, doll face, you need to know that one small cut from this b
lade and your blood will be poisoned. The only way you can cleanse yourself from the curse of my blade is by me removing the curse. Otherwise, you will die. Do you understand?”

  Careful not to move too much against his blade, I said, “Perfectly.”

  “Great. Now, wolf, you know how this works?”

  Jamison tightened his fists. “If you hurt her, I will kill you in the worst possible way.”

  The demon laughed out loud. “That is rich. You think you can do anything to me that hasn’t been done before?”

  “I’ve been told I’m very imaginative. I’m sure I could come up with something excruciating and original. What is it you want me to do, François?”

  Terror wrapped around me in an iron grip like a python squeezing its prey. My breath felt like it was being squeezed out of me as the demon applied pressure, and the blade cut into my neck, drawing blood. He bent his head toward me, and I could feel his nostrils flaring against my sensitive skin. “Oopsie. I think I slipped. Can you smell that from there, Prince? Even with her blood now being tainted, she still smells divine. Mortals, they are so fragile, aren’t they?”

  As blood dribbled down my neck, I panicked. Was this how I died? How long did I have to live?

  Jamison’s hands were clenched so tight I could see the veins bulging in his arms. “I will kill you for this.”

  “You will try,” the demon replied.

  “I will succeed. Tell me what you want.”

  The demon eased up on my neck, and I closed my eyes in relief. “I want the key, of course. The Underworld has been an extra level of Hell with the Demon Prince trying to figure a way to overthrow his sister. I can win favor with our soon-to-be, newly crowned king if I can obtain the key. You will have twenty-four hours to give me the key, or you forfeit her life.” The demon nuzzled my neck, and bile rose in my stomach. “You know my name. All you have to do is say it out loud and I’ll come.”

  More grey wisps covered my body, and then I was standing alone. The demon was gone as fast as he’d come.

  “Are you all right, love?” Jamison asked, running a gentle hand over my neck. I felt the bleeding stop under his fingertips.

  No. No, I wasn’t all right. My brother would be collecting my soul if he didn’t soon return with that key.

  “Can all demons come and go like that?” That was a scary thought. I would never be able to close my eyes in the shower again.

  “No. They can’t. That blade he carries has power.”

  As he cradled me in his arms, I asked, “What do we do now?”

  He held my head to his chest and said, “I go after the key.”

  “But my brother’s gone after it. He might have already found it by now and is on his way back.”

  Jamison squeezed me to him. “What if he hasn’t found it yet? What if he gets waylaid? I can’t risk all the ‘what if’s,’ Charlie.”

  I looked over nervously at the hole in the ground. “Entering Hell will hurt you, won’t it?”

  “Yeah, but it won’t kill me. You would never survive the first realm of Hell, so that's why you have to stay here. I'll be back before you know it.”

  What if he didn’t come back? A sharp stabbing pain hit my heart. I was in love with the prince of wolves. Somewhere along the way, I had come to rely on his presence. It was something I couldn’t fully explain, but I needed him. Trying to keep my emotions in check, I said, “Come back to me in one piece.”

  “And if I don’t, then it’s no biggie. I regenerate at a fast speed.”

  “Smart-aleck, you know what I meant.”

  Pulling me to him, he bit my bottom lip before kissing me thoroughly. “I will always come back to you.”

  Somehow, I knew he meant those words, and that in itself was encouraging. “Wes probably closed the gate behind him. How are you going to get to Hell?”

  “Easy. I know the Demon Princess; well, I guess she is the queen now—I know her full name. I’ll summon her and explain to her about her brother double-crossing her. I’ll give her my promise to kill him myself if she allows me safe travels throughout the Underworld.”

  “What the hell? I was gone for ten minutes, and you’ve already attracted another demon?” We turned around to see a disheveled Wes with smudges on his face, burnt places on his arms, and holes in his clothes.

  I ran over to him. “What happened?” My hands reached out and patted his still smoldering shirt.

  “What do you mean, what happened? I went to Hell and back.” He leaned his head forward, dusting ashes out of his hair. “I’ve sent a lot of souls to Hell, and nobody wants a reminder of why they’re there in the Underworld. Let’s just say, I had a highly aggressive welcoming committee waiting at the gate for my arrival.”

  “Did you get the key?” Jamison asked.

  I stared at my older brother in amazement as I watched his wounds heal right in front of my face.

  “What the hell kind of question is that?” Wes said. “Of course, I did. I had to wrestle it away from a troll. You know how that goes. He didn’t want to let go of his treasure. I ended up throwing my watch at him to distract him. It was a damn good watch, too.”

  “We need to call that demon, so he can remove the curse,” Jamison said.

  “Whoa! What?” Wes asked.

  I told Wes of the demon who showed up in his backyard. After I was done, Jamison added, “Not just any knife. It was the dagger used by Abadiar.”

  “The what of who?” I asked.

  Jamison said, “Abadiar is, or was, one of the most powerful under lords in the Underworld. There are twelve under lords reigning under the King or Queen in this case. He’s under lord of the Western part of Hell. He rules, or ruled, with a very magical dagger. With one wave, the dagger can call thousands of demon soldiers to his side in an instant.” Jamison ran a hand over his stubble. “So if François has the dagger, it means he’s taken out Abadiar and is now the lord of the West. Which explains why he reeked of power and was so sure of himself.”

  “I assume you have a plan?” Wes asked.

  “He said we had to give him the key. He didn’t say we had to let him keep it. I’m going to give him the key, and then we’ll take it back from him. We have twenty-four hours to come up with something before the curse sets in.”

  We were all quiet for a second. It seemed like this was our fate. Get the key, lose the key.

  “So when we’re ready, we just call out his name?” I asked.

  “Something like that,” Jamison said.

  Wes threw an arm around me. “I’m the Undertaker. I would know if you had an expiration date above your head. You are not going to die. Everything will be fine.”

  But would it? We all headed back towards the house. I didn’t feel like I had been cursed, but I knew that the under lord didn’t lie about my fate. I didn’t want to summon him and perhaps his army, but I also didn’t want to die. I briefly made eye contact with Jamison before I averted my gaze. His eyes told me what I already knew. He cared for me deeply. It was written all over his face and I couldn’t stomach the thought of leaving him. I’m too weary to pretend that this thing between us is just an attraction. It’s deeper. His hand reached out and snagged mine.

  He waited for Wes to get far ahead of us before he said, “It will be okay.”

  I felt my eyes water. “How do you know?”

  He closed his eyes for a moment before he spoke. “Because I can’t lose you.”

  This time I was ready for his kiss. His mouth crushed mine telling me exactly what he was feeling without ever saying a word. When he released me were both panting for air. My head dropped to his chest where he murmured sweet words while stroking my hair. I had to believe that everything would work out because I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him. If we could just secure the key–but every time we got close to it, we lost it. I was starting to think it was never ours to keep.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The first thing I did when I got in the house was ask everyone for a moment al
one then I excused myself so that I could have a mental breakdown. I headed straight for the upstairs bath in hopes I would have no witnesses. With the way our luck had been running, there would be some kind of Degenerate showing up soon, looking to maim or kill one or all of us. I didn’t care what kind of evil came knocking on his door. The next forty-five minutes were reserved for me soaking in the tub because I deserved a little downtime, damn it to hell.

  As I soaked in the tub, I thought about what the kids at school would say if they knew I was a witch. Flicking a bubble with my toe, I smiled. Tandi was probably already making a list of things she wanted me to do to Jenny, to hone my craft, of course, not because she loathed the girl or anything. There were five more months left of my senior year, but going back to school seemed impossible now. How did one sit and listen to anyone teach about history when the future hung in the balance? If this curse was lifted from me and there was a tomorrow for me, I wasn’t completely sure what my future held, but my gut said it involved Jamison. It also told me that I was going to have a part in helping the Lux secure the second key.

  Climbing out of the bathtub, I quickly got dressed in a clean pair of jeans and a tank top. I didn’t know the proper attire when calling a demon under-lord and I didn’t care. I walked down the stairs and quietly opened the study doors where a snoring Tandi was sprawled out on the couch. Pulling a quilt over her shoulders, I said a silent prayer that she would stay asleep through this whole summoning-a-demon thing. She had been traumatized enough for one day. I closed the doors behind me and headed for the living room where I heard voices.

  Wes stood five feet away from Jamison, each of them flanking the fireplace. It was amazing how one looked like an avenging angel and the other like hell on wheels, and yet both were deliverers of death.

  Wes was saying, “I send people to Hell. I don't receive visitors from the Underworld. This is a whole new concept for me.”

  “Well, what do we do now?” I asked. “Figure out a way to get the key and then keep it from any sorcerers, demons, or fake hologram-y people?”