There was no way to replenish magic sufficiently in the human realm once used, just like it was impossible to breathe underwater without gills. What was leached was lost and unrecoverable.
She didn’t need much power to read the demon’s dark, greedy thoughts.
The broken bulb should keep the girl from seeing him until it was too late, and she was already headed down the park pathway. It would be easier to ambush and drain her from the cover of the bushes.
Time to mess with his plan. She used the darkness the demon created with the broken bulb to her advantage.
An illusion stretched his shadows to hide her stake in hand.
It was almost too easy. His fire might be a bit of a problem, depending on its heat. Most demons were at the white-hot end of the spectrum.
“Elizabeth Jane Norwood! You will head to the nearest coffee procurement establishment and wait for me!” hollered her mother’s voice through her mind.
When Mom was too upset to focus on using the more human slang they had picked up living in this realm, she sounded like a thesaurus.
Ugh. Jill must have ratted her out. Her sister wasn’t telepathic, but her speed with texting on her cell could rival even lightning.
It would be impossible for Elizabeth to claim she hadn’t heard her mother’s summons.
Elizabeth always kept her mental barrier open to her family during a hunt, despite the burn on her power. Only their conscious thoughts, however, not rifling through their minds like she had done with the demon.
It was extending the passive range of her power, but specifically to her family.
“Good evening, Mother. Five more minutes and it will be over. The demon won’t let me leave this park,” she quickly told her mother.
She plucked the demon’s fantasy of drinking her to a human death from his thoughts and sent that to her mother as well.
That wasn’t a scare tactic. Vampires drinking from witches were a normal part of life in Maeren. Her mother already knew the rogues who came to the human realm didn’t have much regard for the king’s law or human life.
“Walk away!” her mother demanded.
She knew her mother was going to be furious if she ignored that order, but there was no turning back now.
This demon was hungry. He would feed on the next unwitting victim to enter the park if she escaped.
Not on her watch! Never again!
Elizabeth declined to say anything back to her mother’s unreasonable demand. Now wasn’t the best time to get into an argument. Her mother would see what she was doing as long as she kept the connection between their minds open with her power.
Jill was still in the break room, watching as a silent observer.
Elizabeth sat down on a swing in the playground of the park, a little too hard, her temper driving her.
She grabbed onto the chains as the swing took off, nearly losing the stake grasped in her hand in the process.
Crap! She just saved herself from tipping over onto the ground like a drunk college kid, swinging to her missed childhood dreams.
Who wrote that maudlin crap in movies, anyway?
Swings were not comfortable, somewhere around the age of twelve or thirteen, when puberty gave a girl a butt and hips that did not fit in a little rubber saddle.
It only mattered if the demon thought her young enough to be the easy prey he craved. The demon didn’t know her butt was big.
She used an illusion to give herself a girlish giggle and a tiny butt.
“Wicked to Glinda,” she sent privately to her sister.
Jill ignored her.
Fine.
She got her feet back on the ground to push off for more momentum. The swing squeaked a complaint as she really got it going.
Like being in a dark, forested park at night with a demon wasn’t creepy enough?
It sent another shiver up her spine, despite knowing she was more dangerous than the demon stalking her.
“Thanks for telling mom, rat. I’m going to curse you when I get home!” she threatened Jill.
“Unless you plan for it to be a deathbed curse, maybe you should leave and wait for mom to get to the park,” Jill unrepentantly suggested.
Her sister took one last bite of her apple, the taste of sweet-tart juice in Elizabeth’s mouth before she could block the thought of it.
Her stomach rebelled this time. She really wasn't in the mood. It was like being offered a bottle of water before a race.
“I’m a full-grown wicked witch. I eat demons for breakfast,” she reminded Jill.
Her family was overreacting. This wasn’t her first demon. In fact, he was the third demon in as many weeks.
She counted her icy breaths as the demon slipped around her in the dark. He was getting impatient, and she had thwarted his initial plan by not going down the forested pathway.
Hungry thoughts pinged her mental barrier faster and faster as he closed in for the kill. He had stopped planning, letting primitive drives push him forward, unaware of the trap she had set.
“Duuunn dunnn . . . duuunn dunnn . . .”
The famous Jaws theme was in her mind and shared with her family before she could dam the leaked thought.
It was better to be playful than letting herself feel only terror.
She suddenly left the swing, hopping off.
The creepy squeak of the swing continued without her.
She had created a fully-fledged illusion of the younger version of herself still swinging, merrily unaware, in the demon’s mind.
The burn of using so much lightning at once in the human realm was a familiar warmth that actually felt good, like stretching muscles she didn’t get to use enough. Her lightning wanted a good run.
The demon didn’t know she had left the swing. Her power fired his neurons as she subtly tricked his brain from seeing what he wanted into what she needed him to believe.
Her illusions controlled all of the senses, so they were perceived as reality unless something interrupted her signals, causing a misalignment in perception.
How the brain under her magic’s influence would interpret such a disturbance was dependent on which sense was affected, but often it was vision that gave away her illusion first.
That was why people always blinked at hallucinations. It was a quick reset of the brain’s light-perceiving neurons.
In the case of her magic, an illusion would start to shake visibly when it was misaligned. That was when she knew time was up on her act.
She had only started with this demon. She slipped further into his subconscious, deeper than she usually let herself sink for a simple ‘flash and stab’ trick.
For most vampires, she just flashed them with her illusion while she stabbed their stupefied asses.
Jill compared it to a thief flashing her boobs at Mardi Gras while pocketing a drunk’s wallet.
The simple distraction technique was how Elizabeth so often got away with sending male elementals back to hell without them ever seeing her face or knowing it was a lowly witch who had staked them.
It made her more a cautionary tale, one whispered to the fools still thinking of crossing realms.
The slayer patrolled that portal.
This time, she needed the demon to come to her. Distraction wasn’t enough. She had to lure him. A trick like that was more complex.
She had to change his plan to jump her on the pathway, but at the same time make him think the change was his own choice.
She needed to know what made him tick for this to work. Digging deeper into his mind, she looked for his motivations.
Stupid girl, followed him into the park, but then sat down on the swings. She might be waiting for someone; a boyfriend, perhaps?
He had to leave his hiding spot to sneak closer.
She should have come to the path where he had broken the bulb, leaving glass fragments for her to step on, loud popping—
The demon wanted fear.
Her illusion lacked the emotional bait he thri
ved on and his mind was wary.
She rose out of his subconscious and modified the illusion.
“Who’s there?” the girl-illusion called out.
The illusion’s voice was younger than her own and trembled.
Snapping a stick under the demon’s foot as he crept closer to the illusion—still using her lightning—she choked back laughter as he was the one to jump up, startled.
The girl-illusion stopped swinging.
“I can hear you,” she cried out.
She stayed on the swing, frozen except for loud, frightened breathing.
The back of the girl-illusion was facing the approaching demon, leaving her looking as vulnerable as a young doe feeding in an open meadow. That was a very big carrot to wave at a hungry monster.
He could feel the cool leather of her jacket under his fingertips as he grabbed the girl from behind, ready to sink his fangs into her neck.
“Please, don't,” the girl-illusion sobbed.
Elizabeth raised her stake and snuck up behind the vampire caught in her web.
He squeezed the shoulder of the girl-illusion hard as he cruelly wrenched her neck to the side with his other hand, fisted in her hair.
The swing set shook with a tiny tremor.
Elizabeth took a calming breath.
Her illusion was shaking.
Not good.
This monster would never taste her blood. She fed more magic into the illusion, adding details.
The scent of perfume and her weight tugging away from him as she faked a struggle to slow him down.
It was second nature for her to focus on two realities at once, so the half of her that wasn’t calmly creating the illusion was panicking as she saw the thick leather of the trench the demon wore from up close.
It wasn’t the type of thin, manufactured clothing so common in the human realm but real, tanned leather, thick and impenetrable to her weaker birch stake.
Even with air to power the stake down, the wood would snap like a toothpick against that kind of armour.
The demon had been better prepared, after all. When did the monsters start coming over, equipped with the equivalent of Kevlar vests?
“Burn it, Wicked!”
All the swings were vibrating now as her illusion and reality overlapped.
“I don’t have fire, Glinda.”
The first hint of nausea portending vertiginous misalignment of her illusion hit her.
“Lightning burns,” Jill insisted.
“Blind him!” her mother ordered.
Mom was trying to get Elizabeth to play up her strengths while keeping her true power hidden. Jill wanted something flashier.
Her family was throwing ideas at her together, stretching even her concentration thin as she struggled to keep her illusion together.
The trembling of the swing-set got harder until a little earthquake was under it.
She backed up as the demon dragged the girl-illusion off of the swing.
He was still ignorant of her real body behind him. He hadn't noticed the vibrational dissonance of the illusion either, too caught up in his victim’s fear feeding his subconscious desire.
The hunt. The kill.
It was now or never.
She cut off the images she was sending her family moments before her attack.
Lightning was too volatile to allow them to stay connected to her when she used it for brute damage.
Her whole body glowed. Air levitated her to keep the charge from grounding. She hummed with energy. It made a tiny sound that humans would ignore as a mundane, mechanical noise.
Not so, a creature from a pre-industrial world.
The demon dropped the body of the girl-illusion and pivoted.
She blinded him.
Her lighting quickly fed him the illusion that she had attacked with pepper spray. She forced his eyes to squeeze tightly closed against the stinging chemical as she fired pain neurons with her magic.
This was more of a ‘flash and stab’ now.
He went wild, swinging around and striking out randomly.
Her target was suddenly a rampaging bull and she had to mount from a running start.
Thankfully, her family wasn’t connected to her mind to see this disaster!
She needed that thick trench coat off of him.
With his eyes closed, he would never know if it was fire or lightning that burned him.
It would give away that she wasn’t a human—or a soulless witch—but even an idiot demon like this would have probably figured it out after she staked him twice.
She let some lightning go from her hand towards him.
It got him in the shoulder with all his movement.
Immediately, the demon threw up a shield of blue fire.
The girly scream that came from her lips was embarrassing. Her own sister was a blue-fire witch! She should be cooler around fire.
That first moment when Elizabeth saw flames, fear always overrode common sense, and her childhood nightmare came rushing back.
She cursed, dropping with a pained grunt and letting her lightning discharge with a rush into the ground before her intended victim caught sight of it.
The demon’s eyes opened as soon as his shield went up. His fire blocked the delicate lightning she was using for the illusions of pain and blindness.
A lightning bolt would overpower his shield, but as she was sending this demon back to hell—Maeren—and not killing him, she couldn't reveal her real power.
It was one thing to let him know that she was a witch. Revealing her lightning would result in a hunt that would drive her family from their life on the edge of the human realm and back into Maeren.
The only places left were the wilds of hell, where even demons feared to go.
All the demon’s swinging around had him facing away from her when his shield went up, her sole bit of luck.
Her girly scream at seeing his flames had told him what direction she was hiding.
“Witch!” the demon shrieked in anger as he pivoted to face her.
She could see the confusion on his face that she had gotten so far away from him in seconds.
His brain likely found unnatural speed easier to accept than the possibility of there being two of her—one simply made from illusion.
He was bigger than she had realized. That trench covered up a beefy chest to match the heavy bulk of his belly. The blue fire of his shield felt hot even from the distance that separated them.
She forced her heart’s pounding to slow and her brain to logically evaluate his strengths and weaknesses.
This wasn't some vampire that snuck over to taste a forbidden human. The demon was a trained warrior, powerful, and very angry at her.
Why hadn't she noticed he was muscled during the first time she’d staked him?
That was the problem with the flash and stab. The anonymity it provided went both ways.
She shielded air and levitated again, floating to the shadows. There was no use pretending to be human. It would likely get her killed faster.
“Demon, don’t you know this town is protected?” she asked.
She let her air give depth to her voice. Too bad, it couldn’t make her taller by a foot.
“A little witch is protecting humans?” He sneered at the shadows hiding her. “Traitor.”
“Traitor? Me? Since when does the king let demons hunt humans?”
She opened her mind to her family again, so they could see the fire-shielded demon. She’d already broken enough rules.
“Humans breed like rats. What do a couple of runts matter?”
The demon was getting braver as she hid away. He took a few steps closer to the forested path. No way was he giving up.
It probably helped that he had enough fire to burn every tree around her to the ground.
“Did the king send you here, rat catcher?” she taunted, drawing him further into the shadows.
He couldn’t shield blue fire forever.
Her ow
n magic had taken a huge hit on the illusion, but she had the advantage of being used to performing magic on the human side. All she had to do was tread water while the demon learned how quickly high-level magic sapped strength here.
She'd ruthlessly drown him once he’d drained.
“The king knows nothing about this edge shit-hole.” He stepped with conceited boldness into her web. “That old man lacks vision and power.”
The demon lacked a brain. Why chase her when there was easier human prey outside the park?
“Do you still have your stake?” Mom calmly asked.
“Yes, of course.”
“What a pretty blue. Mom, can we keep this demon as a pet? We can feed him real rats. The ones behind the barn are the size of ponies,” Jill said, her heart palpitating in her chest even as she tried to make fun of the dangerous monster.
“The king cannot save you, witch,” the demon informed her.
Well, yeah. The King of Maeren didn’t know she existed.
She wasn’t expecting anyone to ride in on a horse to protect her. Dreams were for little girls. The Maerenian royal princes didn’t date fireless witches.
This girl could save herself.
She quietly trod water.
“I remember you now.” The demon squinted at the shadows around her. No special night vision, like she said. “You’re that slayer.”
It wasn't like that was a secret, secret.
She was a little proud and mostly worried that the demon knew about her. Making ‘the slayer’ more urban legend than real had been the goal in discouraging predatory elemental visitors from Maeren.
Souled witches, with their chi intact, weren’t supposed to be living in the human realm.
“Butty, maybe you don't understand how things work around here,” the demon joked, chuckling to himself.
Buffy, dickwad.
She was tempted to correct him, but that would defeat the purpose of hiding.
Maeren didn’t have television, so she doubted the demon would be up to date on that pop-culture reference.
All that mattered was he knew she was a vampire slayer.
Jill laughed. “Ignore him. Just show this Count Chocula that you eat your Wheaties when you send him back to hell.”
“Wait for it. You’ll get one chance.” Her mother’s hands gripped on the car’s steering wheel with the tension she was feeling.
Every Witch Demon but Mine (Maeren Series Book 1) Page 3