Every Witch Demon but Mine (Maeren Series Book 1)

by Mercedes Jade

  “I’m not even sure there is one source of the demons. It seems like every clan is making their own demons nowadays,” Elizabeth whined, feeling exhausted thinking about it.

  She shifted her burned back in the seat, not able to get more comfortable.

  There were so many demons. They only seemed to be getting stronger and gutsier about coming over to the human side to hunt.

  “There is a source sending them to the human dimension.” Their mother seemed confident.

  “Why?” asked Jill.

  “Do you know why they send the soulless witches here?” their mother asked.

  She meant witches who had their chi drained fully by a demon—witches who no longer had significant power. Chi was considered a second soul in elementals. They still had their human-like soul, if one believed in the more religious aspect of self.

  “It’s safer for soulless witches,” Elizabeth answered. “There’s no real magic here to torment them and they can blend in with humans to lead a normal life.”

  They pulled into their driveway.

  Mom shut off the car and reached over to hold Elizabeth’s hand.

  Her back nearly burned all over again as her mother’s stronger earth healed her in moments, leaving her flawless skin shivering under the ruined jacket.

  “The queen is here,” her mother announced.

  Jill had started to get out, but got back in at hearing that and closed her car door again.

  “What?” Jill snapped.

  “Do you mean in the human realm?” Elizabeth asked.

  She quickly ran through the scant facts she knew about the royal family.

  Her mother had to be talking about Prince Daemon’s mother and not the current consort. Unless there was a misplaced queen, only one had been banished from Maeren. Her mother had referred to soulless witches.

  Prince Daemon’s mother had her chi drained when she was gravely injured, pregnant with him. The unborn infant had instinctively used the only magic available to him to survive the injuries.

  He was the first demon born as such, instead of converted, although the process had technically been the same.

  Although the queen had survived the eventful pregnancy and birth, she was no longer considered a witch worthy of the throne without her magic.

  “You both know the queen. Ms. Sun taught grade three.”

  Her mother said it like that was common knowledge.

  “How do you know?” Jill asked.

  Jill still saw Ms. Sun every week at the dojo. This had to be a greater shock for her sister.

  Ms. Sun was a tiny lady with a thing for cats. There had been this cute, golden Japanese cat statue with one paw raised that Ms. Sun kept on her desk. She had told them it was for good fortune. Each student had gotten to touch the little statue at the beginning of the year and make a wish.

  “I saved the queen,” their mother answered. “Come on. Let's go inside. This is a story that requires a cup of tea.”

  Oh boy. That meant it would be a long story.

  Everyone got out of the car, the girls with a groan that their mother ignored.

  If only she could have stabbed the demon that had gotten all of this started once more!

  A Good Deed, Punished

  Home.

  Their three-bedroom bungalow in the human realm was humble but solid. Earth witches wouldn’t stand for foundation issues.

  They had only been able to buy it once Jill got the hospital job, building up credit that hadn’t been possible for their mother.

  A witch was the equivalent of an illegal refugee, but from another realm. It was a lot easier to get paperwork for a child growing up in the system than her adult mother.

  Of course, their mother had been the one to save up the gold for the purchase over the last couple of decades. When it came to liquid assets, banks and investors weren’t too picky about where the money came from.

  It was home more than the single bedroom cottage they shared in the edge town in Maeren that was mostly used for charging their chi.

  Their castle in Maeren was in actual ruins, completely uninhabitable. If they wanted the dead to stay buried, it was best not to rake the rubble.

  They were never going back. Nothing good waited for them in the old kingdom.

  As soon as they entered the house, their mother filled a whistling kettle to heat on the woodstove. That was a comforting routine.

  They had an electric stove as well, but the woodstove was needed as a backup for whenever their magic made it fry its fuses.

  Mom had always said the tea tasted better if the water was boiled over the fire.

  They had a television, too. It was about a month old and probably number forty that they had bought. Electronics did poorly in a witch household.

  A bunch of well used Buffy VHS tapes were stacked next to the television. The VCR was less likely to break than a DVD player and a lot easier for Elizabeth to try to fix.

  Jill pulled out two folding tables when Elizabeth shook her head at her inquiry about tea.

  Elizabeth was exhausted. She laid claim to the only Lazy Boy in the house. Pulling the wooden handle at the side of the chair to extend the footrest, she leaned back to get nearly horizontal.

  Humans were geniuses when it came to relaxing.

  No technology was really needed to create a Lazy Boy. Vampire craftsmen could make the levers and pulleys, but she’d never seen anything near as comfortable in hell as this chair.

  She'd almost fallen asleep on it when the kettle whistled.

  “Wake up. You're about to find out your third-grade teacher really was an alien from another dimension.”

  “Do not call the queen an alien, Jill. And do sit up, Elizabeth. This is important.”

  “Ms. Sun gave me a C in math,” Elizabeth complained.

  She still couldn’t picture her grade three teacher as one of the most powerful witches to ever wield fire.

  The Blue Queen had been famous for shielding her entire clan for days against the magic onslaught of the king’s army during the clan wars.

  It had taken the king’s lightning to finally penetrate her shield.

  He hadn’t killed her for the resistance.

  Sparks flew between them and they married hastily afterward, pretty much nine months before Prince Daemon was born.

  “In Ms. Sun’s defence, you were terrible at math,” Jill said.

  Jill added at least five teaspoons of sugar to her tea before stirring in a dollop of cream. Tea was its own food group in this house and Jill knew how to make a cup substantial enough to substitute for her interrupted dinner due to Elizabeth’s unplanned hunt.

  Aside from Jill’s weekly chocolate eclair, it was one of the few times her sister had anything so sweet.

  “You were a bit of a daydreamer in school,” their mother agreed with Jill, sitting down with her own tea to relax in a wooden rocking chair.

  The simple piece of furniture was her mother’s favourite.

  School in the human realm had been a real challenge for Elizabeth. She had to constantly block all of the thoughts of the other students and teachers to preserve her magic.

  There had been so many children with busy minds in that little building. She hadn’t realized, growing up, how isolated her parents had kept them in Maeren.

  Her power was a freak of nature.

  She had to bind the incredible lightning in her blood. A challenge no witchling had ever borne.

  When she was younger, the demand on her blood to create sufficient magic-binding protein for her lightning had made her anemic. She had no control over her use of power, using up her blood’s supply like any powerful vampire lordling with magic to burn.

  Vampires fed from witches to meet their power’s demand for binding protein.

  She did not have the true fangs to feed naturally or the hunger for blood. It had been hard enough for her mother to persuade her to take an iron supplement to combat her anemia.

  She had disappeared a few times f
rom school, sucked back into hell to replenish when the chi drain had proven too much for her little body to handle.

  Her mother was frantic the first time it happened!

  Thankfully, even as a child, her telepathy was strong enough to let her communicate with her mother as soon as she crossed over.

  Time and experience had finally taught her how to control the balance.

  She was equivalent to a vampire in magical strength, but now had the advantage of a grown witch’s superior supply of binding proteins in her blood.

  The output of binding protein met demand since she was no longer a sickly child. Anemia was a past struggle. She’d learned to build better, complex blocks to control her use of lightning.

  Ms. Sun had been one of those teachers whose classroom Elizabeth had disappeared from before she’d gained control over her power.

  If Ms. Sun was really a witch, then that would explain why her third-grade teacher hadn’t complained to her mother when Elizabeth failed to return from her ‘bathroom breaks’ —a tactic Elizabeth had used to escape when she felt her chi going dangerously low.

  Why had Ms. Sun’s identity been a secret?

  It smelled fishy.

  “If Ms. Sun is the missing Blue Queen, why wait until now to tell us?” Elizabeth asked her mother, letting suspicion enter into her tone.

  “You were children.”

  Oh, really? Now the story positively reeked.

  “And now?” Jill prodded, onto her mother’s weak excuse like a vampire smelling blood.

  They hadn’t been children for a while, circumstances and strong powers progressing them to mature witches quickly.

  “You need to understand more about Maeren to see that demons are not just a human problem.” Their mother paused to sip her tea. “Staking them is only a temporary solution. I’m afraid the demon Elizabeth staked, without proper backup, today . . .” She sipped more tea, “. . . confirmed my fear that a challenger to the throne is responsible for this surge in demons.”

  “Still not seeing why we care,” Elizabeth said, ignoring the reprimand.

  Her mother was clearly distracted because that hadn't even been a slap on the wrist for hunting alone.

  Yes, they knew that the demons spilling into the human realm were only a fraction of the overpopulation in Maeren. It was hard to care about the greater demon problem when her family no longer considered Maeren home.

  “The royalty can blow themselves to hell and take the demon prince with them. I’m sure Ms. Sun won’t miss that magic-thieving, soul-sucking progeny,” Jill bitterly commented.

  Their mother calmly sipped her tea, arching an eyebrow at her youngest.

  Jill’s hate for Maeren wasn’t new. Hearing her favourite teacher was the missing Blue Queen wouldn’t garner sympathy from her sister’s usually gentler nature.

  Elizabeth was with Jill on this one. Screw hell.

  “Does Ms. Sun know who we are?” Jill asked.

  “Of course,” Elizabeth said. “If our mother saved her, then she would remember her.”

  Elizabeth shifted to get vertical enough to look at her mother in her eyes. “What I want to know is what all this has to do with me retiring.”

  “I have a little healing gift . . .” her mother started.

  Both of her daughters groaned.

  Their mother was one of the strongest earth witches in Maeren.

  It was one of the reasons they were in hiding. Another vampire would be only too eager to snatch their mother into his harem if they had stayed in the noble social circles.

  “When assassins shot the queen with poisoned arrows, I was there. Although it wasn’t long after I was wed, the clan wars were at their peak. All nobles loyal to the crown were called into service. Your father was at the front with the king. I was serving as the castle librarian.”

  “Wait. You were a librarian?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I was only noble by marriage. It was an honour to serve in whatever capacity the royals needed me.”

  “Are you kidding? Librarian is like her dream job. All the tea and books she could want. I bet she would have back-stabbed some other noble to get the position if needed!” Jill exclaimed.

  “I persuaded them to give me the position without stabbing anyone, Jill.”

  “Okay, Giles. Let’s get to the royal assassination part,” Elizabeth demanded.

  Her mother was barely like the English gentleman that had played the television role of Buffy’s teacher while pretending to be a librarian at her high school, but Elizabeth’s mother fulfilled a similar teaching role for her slaying.

  “The queen was pregnant when the assassins snuck into the castle gardens and shot her. Three arrows dipped in poison. The first one they sent to her stomach. The others hit her in the shoulders as she tried to protect her baby. It was probably a rival clan. The lady’s maid that came for me had been shot as well and died on the library floor. There were many that died that day. It was a fast-acting poison.”

  “Cyanide?” Jill asked, unable to suppress her academic interest.

  Earth witches were as knowledgeable in poison as healing.

  “No, it was a Maerenian poison from a plant that doesn't grow here.”

  “Where were the castle healers?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Busy with the number shot,” her mother replied. She topped up her cup from the teapot. “The queen had been abandoned after the first healer was sucked dry.”

  Jill scoffed. “How is that even possible? Only a vampire can drain a witch—”

  “She was pregnant with Prince Daemon,” her mother answered, cutting Jill off. “Healing with magic is very different from human medicine. Many small things can be done from just an earth touch or herbs infused with magic, but to pull a life from the brink of death, you need blood.”

  “They use blood here for resuscitation too,” Jill said.

  “To replace volume, mainly. Blood is just blood to humans. Magic is what an elemental needs to heal in critical injuries. The quickest way to transfer magic is through the blood.”

  “You’re a blood witch,” Jill said, awed. The surprises were stacking up.

  “Yes. And you probably are, too. We haven't had the opportunity to test it, or the need for that level of magic in the human realm.”

  Blood witches were mostly a myth. They wore a ring on their left, fourth finger.

  Human mythology held that this finger had a vein that ran all the way to the heart, connecting them.

  Romantic, but really, it was the chi that connected.

  The ring worn by blood witches had thin metal tubes, like hypodermic needles, which could be engaged on the wearer and with the person the witch wanted to establish a chi bond. It wasn’t to transfuse a lot of blood, but rather, to facilitate the mixing of blood.

  That allowed the witch to transfer their earth directly to the victim for heavy magical healing.

  It was whispered that a blood witch could even give another witch back her soul—chi—if the timing was right.

  Elizabeth knew Jill had to be full of a million questions, but her younger sister kept her curiosity quiet.

  There were more important things than hearing about the intricacies of blood witch magic.

  Learning more about their past and Maeren was filling a deep hole neither of them liked to acknowledge, especially given everything their mother had sacrificed to bring them to safety in the human realm.

  It seemed ungrateful to beg their mother to talk about what they could never have back.

  “Go on,” Jill prompted as if giving permission for their mother to move past the revelation about being a blood witch without delving further, right now.

  “The queen had been drained of her magic by her fetus. He instinctively took it to heal the wound to him when the arrow penetrated the womb,” her mother said, repeating what everyone knew. “The healer tried to cut off the supply of blood to the womb to save the queen, as she was hemorrhaging. It was a matter of sacrificing the fetus to sa
ve the mother.”

  “The healer tried to kill the prince?” Jill whispered, shocked.

  “She had to make a choice. Her magic wasn’t strong enough to heal them both.” Another sip of tea to fortify herself and their mother confirmed what Elizabeth had already worked out. “The fetus drained the healer in moments.”

  “What did they want you to do?” Jill asked even though she had to suspect.

  “Put the queen’s soul back. They wanted me to take it from the fetus.”

  “Could you? Can a blood witch really save a soulless witch?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Not really,” her mother answered. She paused as if to think about how to explain. “A blood witch could strip one witch of her magic and give it to another. She could take the soul of another witch to give to a witch already soulless, but it is impossible to strip the original soul from the demon that has it. The magic and souls meld immediately and are indivisible. I don’t even know if a witch could hold a demon’s soul inside of her.”

  Another sip of tea and her mother added, “There was a complication. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was pregnant with you, Elizabeth.”

  Witches were prohibited from using magic during pregnancy. Fears abounded, from limiting the magic of their children to causing birth defects and miscarriages.

  These beliefs had long driven the policy of placing pregnant witches under confinement until they gave birth.

  “I had to help the queen. When our chi joined, I felt the magic of the fetus. He was strong. He didn’t drain me immediately like he did the first healer. I ignored the guard’s demands to kill him. I worked on healing the queen’s physical injuries and reversing the effects of the poison on her nervous system. The fetus fed me some of his fire and I used it to cauterize her wounds.”

  “You used fire?” Elizabeth clarified, uncertain.

  Elementals were always limited to their own inherited power—except for demons, who stole extra magic.

  “Yes, I did use fire in a way. Our chi was connected and I mostly guided his magic to do the cauterization.”

  Their mother drained her cup of tea as they absorbed the idea of a fetus so powerful he could wield magic in the womb.

  “I know this sounds crazy, impossible. But it’s the only explanation for what happened,” their mother added.