Of Witches and Warlocks: The Demon Kiss

by Lacey Weatherford

  “I’m thinking I’ve nearly lost you twice because of this man. First, when your mom took you and second, when you left me to chase him. I won’t let it happen again,” I said stubbornly lifting my chin, returning his glare.

  “So you’re just going to sacrifice yourself to the cause?” he asked angrily, pursing his lips together in a flat line.

  I knew he was really mad at me, as I could see flaming red lines beginning to shoot through his eyes.

  “If it’s what it takes to keep you safe,” I answered softly, not looking away from him.

  “Portia,” he said, shaking his head as he lowered his voice a little, “you’re a walking ball of contradictions. You keep talking about how you don’t want to lose me. What exactly do you think will happen if he gets his hands on you?”

  I turned away from him then and walked over toward the dresser reaching out to run my finger along the edge of the fine wood absently.

  “If I were to be captured, I know all of you would come after me,” I said, afraid to look at him for fear of how he would react to my reasoning. “Hopefully, he’d consider my powers worthy enough to perform a kiss on rather than kill me or change me. You guys could catch him, destroy him, and I’d still get to have you. I’d just be completely human,” I stated, biting my bottom lip in trepidation as I waited for him to respond.

  “So let me get this straight,” he said, coming up behind me, and I could feel his warm breath blowing against my neck, he was so close. “You’re willing to risk being captured, losing your powers, or being killed on the off chance that it might do something to protect me?”

  “That about sums it up,” I said quietly, too nervous to turn around and confront him directly at the moment.

  “Aarrrgh!” he grunted loudly, and I heard him flip around to walk away from me, so I turned and was just in time to see him running his hands over his face in an extremely irritated gesture.

  He went across the room and leaned up against the opposite wall, just staring over at me.

  I, in turn, leaned against the dresser, returning his look.

  “Heck, Portia. I don’t know whether to kiss you or strangle you right now. I just don’t get how you think!” he complained loudly.

  “What’s not to get?” I said as I stepped angrily toward him, shouting because he wasn’t listening to me. “I love you! I don’t want to see you get hurt! I can’t lose you! How do you not understand that?”

  “Exactly!” he hollered back at me. “But you’re willing to sacrifice yourself and put ME through the very same horror!”

  I suddenly realized what he was saying. The two of us were fighting over the same thing.

  “So it’s okay for you to do it to me, but not the other way around?” I asked, hurt by his double standard.

  He rubbed a hand over his face in frustration once again.

  “Yes. No. I don’t know.” He looked at me seriously. “It’s my job to keep you safe, not the other way around.”

  “Maybe you haven’t heard about this woman’s rights movement we have in society today. It isn’t your job to do anything!” I said loudly to him. “When people love each other, they should both be looking out for each other. I’m a big girl! I can sure as heck take care of myself!”

  He pushed away from the wall and walked over next to me, and I could see a dangerous glint in his eye.

  “You listen to me and you’d better listen carefully,” he said deadly serious. “It will always be my JOB to take care of you! Maybe that was a poor choice of words on my part, but you need to get this through that thick skull of yours! I love you, and there is nothing, NOTHING more important to me than you or your safety. I’ll do ANYTHING that’s required of me to accomplish that goal! Do you understand? Because I’m not going to keep fighting with you about this!”

  “So this subject is closed then? I have to do whatever you think is best, regardless of what I think?” I threw back at him.

  “Sounds good to me,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest, refusing to budge on the issue.

  I glared up into his red eyes.

  “You’re being a selfish pig!” I shouted at him, resorting to name calling, as that was the only weapon I had left.

  “Better than a stubborn mule!” he shot back angrily.

  “Well, forgive me for caring!” I yelled back at him, shoving passed him to go out the door, slamming it behind me as hard as I could.

  Twelve faces stared in shock at me from the other room, and it was clear they had heard pretty much every word we had said to each other.

  “I’ll be on the beach!” I said way too loudly to them, before striding down the hall and out the front door.

  I ran down the stairwell instead of waiting for the elevator, and I kept running, continuing through the breezeway, past the pool, and down the concrete steps the led to the sand.

  When I reached the sand, I sat down on the steps and removed my shoes, before walking out onto the clean, beautiful beach.

  A vendor selling straw bags immediately approached me, trying to sell his wares to a new potential client.

  “No, thank you.” I said passing him quickly, not wanting to talk with anyone, let alone haggle over the price of something.

  He nodded his head in passing, as I continued down to the water’s edge, walking to a spot where no one else was around.

  I sat down, pulling my legs up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. The tears came of their own accord. I couldn’t stop them, so I let them flow down my cheeks freely, as I watched the waves rolling in to crash upon the shore.

  This was our first big fight, at least the first that had occurred when he wasn’t going through a demon conversion.

  I didn’t know how I could make him understand my fear of losing him. It was all-consuming to me these days. When he had left me, it had broken my heart, not to mention the fact that I had feared for his life. Now, after seeing his dad in action, these feelings had only intensified. I just wished that I could make him understand how desperate I felt about the situation.

  I didn’t look at him when he came and sat next to me in the sand a few moments later.

  He didn’t say anything, and neither did I.

  Eventually, he started digging for broken shells in the dirt, accumulating quite a pile before he began throwing the hard objects out into the water.

  I watched them, as he would get them to skip across the surface, amazed that he could do it over the moving surf, but I still didn’t speak, and neither did he.

  When he finally got tired of throwing things, he laid back onto the sand, placing his hands behind his head and closing his eyes. He was still for so long, I started to wonder if maybe he had actually fallen asleep next to me.

  I didn’t move, though, instead choosing to continue staring out at the water in front of me.

  The sun continued its trek across the sky, until it was beginning to get its late afternoon dip.

  We still hadn’t said a word to each other. The tide had started to drift out, and he got up to walk out in front of me, exploring over the wet sand the water had been left behind, kicking things here and there with his bare feet.

  I watched him as he walked over to where some rough corral had been exposed, leaving some little pools of water captured in its borders.

  He sat on his haunches then and looked into the water checking for any hidden treasures that might have been left in the tiny pools. I saw him smile suddenly, and he pushed up the sleeves of his sweater, reached into one of the holes and pulled something out.

  He trotted back over to me and plopped back down into the sand by my side. He gently placed a big beautiful white shell in the sand next to me.

  I paused for a moment before I picked it up and examined it. Whatever had lived in it wasn’t there anymore; it was cracked open enough to show that it was empty inside.

  “Clam shell?” I asked, curiously as I ran a finger over the hard ridges in its design.

  He nodded.

 
“It’s very pretty. Thank you,” I said, as I turned it over in my hand, continuing to look at.

  “No problem,” he said, and I turned my head toward him.

  We looked at each other for a few moments, several emotions mirroring on each other’s faces.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” I sighed, feeling exhausted over the whole ordeal.

  “Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “I figured when you were ready to start talking to me again, then you would.”

  “So you’d rather just sit here in silence and let me pout?” I asked, wondering if I would ever truly understand how the male brain worked.

  “Are we talking now?” he asked, watching me intently.

  I thought for a moment before I answered him.

  “Yes. I believe we are,” I replied.

  “All right, then understand this please, Portia,” he began. “I’d rather sit right here next to you and have you never speak to me again, than to have you walk out on me like you did earlier. That was the most horrible thing I’ve ever experienced, and I don’t want to ever feel that way again.”

  I swallowed hard, as the tears threatened to make their way to the surface once more.

  “We’ve never fought like this before,” I said softly.

  He scooted up next to me then, placing his arm around me, pulling me up against him.

  “Don’t cry, please,” he whispered into my hair near my ear, as he nuzzled against me. “Please forgive me for being so awful.”

  “I was the awful one,” I sniffed as I wiped a traitorous tear away with the back of my hand.

  “Okay,” he said with a little grin. “We were both awful. How about we just call a truce?”

  I nodded my head. “I want to do that, but I still feel the same way about everything, though,” I said to him.

  “So do I,” he replied. “We’re arguing for the same thing, though, just from each other’s different perspective on the issue.”

  “I know. I just don’t know how to make you understand.”

  He laughed then.

  “And I feel exactly the same way,” he said.

  “So we just agree to disagree?” I asked, wondering how that made things any better.

  He nodded.

  “On this subject, yes, I think it would be for the best.”

  “And what happens when the coven picks one of us to be the lure now?” I asked.

  “We’ll cross that bridge when, and if, we come to it,” he stated very matter-of-factly.

  “And what about the fighting? I don’t like it,” I said, as I leaned my head against his shoulder.

  “Me, either,” he replied, giving me a little squeeze. “I hate it. But I do think it’s stemming from things that we’ve gone through lately and things we haven‘t addressed.”

  “So now we can’t handle stress?” I asked, feeling like I was failing miserably at the tests and trials of my life lately.

  “Portia, what we’ve been experiencing does not fall into the simple bounds of stress. We sat and watched as three innocent people were eaten alive, ripped to shreds before our very eyes,” he reminded me.

  “Don’t talk about it!” I said sharply, as the images I had seen flashed before me, and the awful churning in my stomach returned instantly.

  “We have to,” he said, taking my chin in his hand and turning my face to look at him.

  I tried averting my eyes.

  “Portia, look at me,” he said softly, his face filled with love and concern for my wellbeing. “We need to acknowledge the truth. What we saw was awful and evil. But that isn’t what’s really bothering you.”

  I did look at him then, wondering where he was heading with this conversation, but he stopped speaking as he stared at me.

  He stood up then and offered his hand out to me.

  I took it, letting him pull me to my feet, and followed him as he led me back up the beach.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, wondering why we were leaving when we had just started communicating.

  “To finish this discussion in a more private place,” he said, rubbing his thumb over my hand as we walked together.

  We entered the condo quietly, and he led me into his bedroom where he shut and locked the door behind us.

  I went over and sat on the end of the bed, looking up at him as he moved to stand in front of me.

  “You’re frightened because he’s my father,” he said, jumping right back into the conversation without any preamble to give me warning where this conversation was headed.

  I shook my head as I looked away from him. “No,” I said, unable to meet his gaze, as he was hitting far too close to the truth for me to feel comfortable.

  “Yes,” he said, as he knelt down in front of me, forcing me to look at him. “It’s all right, Portia. I’m not going to turn into him.”

  “How can you know that for sure? It’s been his intention for you since you were young. He’s been chasing after you your whole life, not to mention that he almost succeeded with his plans once.”

  “But he didn’t, thanks to you and your magic.” he replied, reaching out to take both of my hands in his.

  “Yes. And you just keep running back to him now, don’t you?” I said with a hint of accusation in my voice.

  “Is that what you think?” he said, looking up at me, searching my eyes. “That I want to go to him?”

  “It’s all you talk about,” I said, my emotions beginning to surface once again. “It’s always about leaving me, to protect me, and going to find him. I can’t take it anymore.”

  “But I’m doing it because I love you and I want a life with you,” he sighed in exasperation.

  “I know, but it still seems to bring the same result,” I said, really trying to explain to him, to help him understand what I was really feeling. “You’re gone, and we’re not together. Whether it’s because you’ve been taken against your will, or because you’ve chosen to face it head on, it always results in you leaving me alone, and it hurts.”

  “Oh, baby, that’s not my intention,” he said softly. “Not ever. It hurts for me, too, when we’re apart, remember?”

  “Yeah, but that never seems to stop you,” I replied, honestly, wanting to let him know just how much it wounded me.

  “Well, consider it stopped as of right now then. I promise not to ever leave you behind again,” he stated, a light beginning to shine in his eyes. “All right? We’ll fight this thing together or not at all.”

  “Really?” I asked him, afraid to believe in what he was telling me. “No more of this super protector thing?”

  “Who am I kidding?” he laughed. “You’re the one who’s done the majority of the saving in this relationship. Maybe my ego is bruised and that’s why I’m acting this way.”

  “Whatever,” I said, with a small smile, loving that his sense of humor was surfacing.

  “Are we good?” he asked with a smile.

  “We’re good,” I said, returning his smile.

  “Come here,” he said, as he stood back up and pulled me tightly into his strong embrace.

  I wrapped my arms around his neck, laying my head against his shoulder, my eyes watching his pulse beat strongly in his neck.

  He clasped his hands together around my back, squeezing me hard in a giant bear hug.

  “I love you so much, Portia,” he said softly against my ear. “I wish I knew how to show it to you so you could really understand.”

  “Just having you here with me shows me enough,” I said, tipping my head back to look up at him.

  He bent over then and kissed me.

  Chapter 19

  It was evening when we had finally finished up dinner with everyone and gathered to discuss things once more.

  “So, let’s try this again,” Dad said, giving a warning glance over toward Vance and me.

  “Wait,” Vance said abruptly, and all eyes turned to look at him. “I have something I need to say to everyone.”

  “Go ahead,” Da
d replied, turning the time over to him.

  “Well, first I’d like to apologize on behalf of Portia and myself for our behavior earlier. We’ve been under a lot of strain lately, as you all know, and we’d reached a breaking point. I know this doesn’t excuse the way we acted, but we’re both truly sorry for any discomfort we may’ve caused any of you during our little tirade.”

  Everyone nodded his or her heads in understanding.

  Vance looked around at each one of them before he continued.

  “The second thing I need to tell all of you is, regardless of however we decide to handle this thing, neither Portia or myself is to be used as the person who will draw my dad out into the open.”

  Everyone looked up at us in surprise.

  “Under the circumstances, we feel it to be in the best interest of our relationship to remain together in our approach of this thing,” Vance said as he reached over then and took my hand. “Using one or the other of us is just too difficult for the person left behind to handle.”

  There was silence in the room as everyone absorbed what he was saying. I knew this had been a difficult thing for him to do, since he strongly felt he should be the bait in this situation, since it was his father we were dealing with. He was doing this for me, to protect my feelings once again, placing me first in front of everything else in his life.

  “All right,” Dad said after a minute, nodding his head in understanding. “We appreciate your openness, and we’ll see what we can do when and if the situation arises.”

  “Thank you,” Vance said, pulling me close up next to him. “It means a lot to both of us.”

  Dad turned back to face the rest of the group. “Does anyone else have anything to add?” When no one answered, he continued on. “Very well then, I took the liberty of drawing up some surveillance itineraries. Basically it’ll just be more of the same. Watching the warehouse, which I think Juan could easily keep track of for us, and of course keeping a heavy scrutiny on the house or possibly tailing Damien if the need arises. Are we all onboard with that?”

  Everyone seemed to be in agreement.

  “Now obviously we can’t afford to spend Vance’s entire trust fund renting fishing boats to keep an eye on the place. And after what happened before, I think it would be in our best interest to remain away from the regular marina just in case things aren’t as patched up as we hoped they’d be with Enrico and his crew. So my suggestion is the purchase of a regular motor boat and a trailer, something small enough that we can pull into the secured parking lot here during the day and take it out at night when we might need it.”