He could have blocked her stars with a larger rock from the rubble lying around, but he sent out pebbles about an inch in diameter to intercept each star’s trajectory.
He’d knock the fire-stars off just enough to miss his body.
That was even more impressive than it looked.
He stomped his booted foot into the ground to knock more of the pebbles loose that he wanted and then levitated them. Almost faster than her eyes could follow, he directed each pebble individually with a flick of his fingers, like shooting marbles.
“Me next,” Jill called out.
She’d never tire of playing with her magic on the Maerenian side. Power was literally in the air, here.
Victoria took her at her word, calling back some of her fire-stars by their water-core to sling at Jill.
Stomping her foot down like Alexander, Jill tried to call up all of the small rocks to defend herself.
A cloud of rocks and dust exploded upwards.
Victoria said some choice Maerenian words. Alexander coughed. Her mother hollered Jill’s full name.
“Put me down,” Victoria said, laughing.
Jill looked over and realized that she had elevated so much dirt and rocks that she had taken Victoria off of the ground with her magic. The water princess was suspended a few feet in the air.
Jill let everything drop.
Victoria screeched and her mother’s air breezed past to catch the princess before she landed unceremoniously on her ass in the dirt.
“What did I say about your magic in Maeren? Less is more,” her mother lectured.
“I know, I know,” Jill muttered. She started dusting herself off.
“No harm done. Good to see young enthusiasm. Alexander can show you some exercises for building control,” Torsten said.
Jill eyed Alexander’s huge, muscled form.
He didn’t have a delicate bone in his body, a typical, mountainous earth-lord.
If she hadn’t seen him demonstrating such precision moments ago by flicking pebbles, she would have thought he was as dense as he was thickly built.
“How about an earth-sword?” Jill asked.
She remembered the sword that Alexander had been swinging the first time they met.
He had divided her from her dragon target with a single swing that caused a wall of stone to rise where he’d pointed.
“You should work on controlling your magic without a weapon first, then it will become an extension of your will,” Alexander suggested, perhaps a bit arrogantly.
Jill walked up to him and put a single finger on his sweaty, dusty chest.
She drew a big J on a hard pectoral, swiping at the grime covering him, while she simultaneously sent a wave of healing through his body. She knitted the little cuts leftover from his play with Victoria.
It seemed he hadn’t avoided all of Victoria’s stars.
“Inexperience in Maeren is not equal to being incapable. I’ll learn to sip,” Jill said, looping the end of her initial that she had outlined on his chest.
Alexander’s body shivered, nearly imperceivable, except under her touch.
“Apologies, my lady,” he whispered to her, his eyes still amused. “Thanks for the healing.”
“Jill, don’t you have something to share with the group? Play later,” Victor reminded her.
His sharp tone slapped at her. Someone sounded jealous.
She took her time turning around and giving Victor one raised, sardonic brow. She hadn’t forgotten his threat to put her over his knee.
He wasn’t getting an inch more than she had to give.
Still, he was right. They all needed to talk about the creatures that had attacked at this field.
“Tor, do you know any spells that could transform a vampire into a zombie, like the one that fed off of my sister?” Jill asked Victoria, skipping most of the explanation for expediency.
Her mother could fill the rest of them in on the details. She probably already had with the older adults, while Jill and Victor had their discussion.
“Not much call for zombies. The whole living in a dead, rotting body isn’t appealing. I would need my books,” Victoria answered.
The books would be at the castle, of course.
“Perhaps it's earth-related,” her mother suggested. “Some kind of healing spell, gone wrong.”
“Seems more like a curse,” Jaeson said.
“Poison, tempered to leave some function,” Torsten suggested.
“An attenuated poison, laid with an earth-curse, to transform someone into a zombie,” Jill said synthesizing their ideas.
There were a few nods.
“What good would that do? The bodies can’t last forever, especially without fresh blood—I presume, at least, from the ferocious feeding we saw,” Jill said.
She felt sick to her stomach thinking about her sister’s mauled wrist and the smell of that rotting vampire as he fed.
Elizabeth had scrubbed her wrists raw the entire week afterward, like she’d developed some obsessive-compulsion to get off the feel of the dirty bite under her skin.
“How many were there in this ‘horde’ of zombie-vampires?” Torsten asked.
“A few dozen,” Jill admitted.
“The three of you—alone—took on dozens of hungry vampires in bloodlust?” Victor bit out.
Fuck, it sounded bad. Each word was like an arrow to her chest. Sharp projectiles that found their target.
“They were sick. Weak,” Jill reminded Victor.
“The zombie-vampire that fed, ripped Elizabeth’s wrist open. The same lightning-witch that took down a dragon—singlehandedly? How ‘weak’ were these ‘sick’ vampires?” Victor angrily pushed.
“The zombie-vampires were strong, but a stupid kind of strong,” Jill defended.
“We were doing a simple blood trade,” Victoria added.
“They’re fodder,” Alexander said, interrupting the threatening explosion.
Victor had already been over this with her. She didn’t know why he was getting so mad.
“Obviously, we were tricked with the feeding, but I hardly think we were fodder,” Jill said. “We took care of the problem. The next zombie-vampire will think twice before taking more than the nip out of a witch he paid for, unless he wants to be burned extra-crispy.”
Alexander sighed. “Not you, the zombie-vampires were fodder.”
Her mother caught on first. “A zombie-vampire army.”
“A few dozen doesn’t make an army,” Torsten said. “Although, it was foolish for three young witches to take them all on by themselves.”
“Do you think the dragon tracked down the rest?” Jaeson wondered out loud.
Victoria shrugged when they all looked at her. “The topic didn’t come up, frankly, between the kidnapping and the teleportation spell.”
“We don’t need a dragon. Show me a spot where some of those monsters bled,” her mother said.
Torsten put a hand on her mother’s shoulder.
He was a good head taller than her. Somehow, it didn’t look like he was pushing her mother down, but rather, as if he was providing the simple weight of his presence, knowing that her mother could hold it up.
Her mother didn’t have to do this alone.
“We don’t need to sniff out burial sites. There was a dismembered arm in that tree over there,” Torsten said, pointing. “We placed a preservation spell on it and stored it.”
“We tracked it to a large cottage not far from here, abandoned,” Alexander said.
“And then?” her mother prompted.
“It was a dead end. We were going to return the next day, but we ran into Victoria and Jill on the way to town,” Alexander explained.
“You couldn’t have mentioned any of this earlier?” her mother asked, looking at Jaeson pointedly.
“The scene was tainted by the dragon that came later. We weren’t sure about it,” Torsten said. “It was better to get the girls’ memories of the attack without influencing
their testimonies.”
“We’re wasting time. Elizabeth is stuck in the Wastes, while you try to solve this puzzle one clue at a time. I want to see this cottage,” her mother insisted.
“I second that,” Jill said.
She insisted to herself that her motivation wasn’t trying to avoid going back to the inn and the promise of Victor’s five minutes.
“I’ll lead the way,” Torsten offered. “Kaila, walk beside me. I want to hear more about Elizabeth, and how she ended up in the Wastes with Prince George.”
Her mother snapped her head over to Torsten. She should have expected to be interrogated after all of their hints. Better the rest of the story came from her mother than Jill.
Jill didn’t want to be blamed if more was revealed than her mother was comfortable telling others, even if they were technically family, too.
Well, not Alexander.
Not ‘uncle’ Jaeson either, although he certainly seemed to have a past with her mother.
It made Jill curious, wondering what had driven Jaeson to come along on the search for them, after so many years apart.
If Elizabeth were here, Jill would be whispering to her sister about her theory that Jaeson was their mother’s childhood sweetheart.
Was Jaeson trying to rekindle something now?
“Come along,” Alexander called to her as Jill fell behind the group. She’d been lost in her thoughts.
Victor was ahead of her, discussing something with his sister.
Jaeson was actually taking the lead, letting the general talk with his daughter.
Alexander had the rear.
They’d all assumed their positions without discussion. Already, their group functioned fairly well together.
It was like the three earth lords had enfolded them within their own unit, keeping them protected until all of them got to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses better.
“Do you work for my grandfather?” Jill asked Alexander. He’d quickly caught up to her.
“The general?” Alexander asked.
He must have been thrown off by Jill referring to Torsten in familial terms. Her mind called him ‘grandfather’ or by his name now, most of the time.
‘General’ felt too distant.
She nodded to Alexander.
“I’m in your clan, Jill. We’re not blood-related, but you know how Maerenian clans work, right?”
“Yeah, of course,” Jill said, nodding again.
“I work for the clan, fulfilling my duties. This is my first private mission with the general. Usually, I liaison with the east-water clans, maintaining the borders with the Wastes. Dragon troubles, you know?”
“We were told that dragons steal witches,” Jill said, turning to face Alexander with interest. Here was an unexpected source of information. “Have you ever found a kidnapped witch?”
“They’re not really kidnapped. Well, some have been, but the dark enforcer has taken enough heads to remind the dragons that such actions have consequences.”
“Prince Daemon? Does he chop off a lot of heads?” Jill asked, feeling a shudder ripple through her at the memory of those spiked dragon heads that had sent her family fleeing Maeren.
“Only banished dragons. They manage themselves like most clans, and those that disobey clan laws are banished. It’s punishing the ones that are deserving. The dragons still have a better chance than their actions have earned them. Prince Daemon fights them one on one, putting his own life at risk to deliver the kingdom’s judgement,” Alexander explained.
It still was a brutal kind of rule, but most clan laws were primitive.
They were a realm of monsters. A gentle hand couldn’t be expected to regulate bloodthirsty fiends, the few that let their vicious souls choose their actions.
Control was everything. Jill was a firm believer in kindness, but she drew the line at letting others make victims of innocents.
Had Daemon been misjudged by their family?
Was Victoria being pursued by an evil dragon?
Those weren’t questions she could ask Alexander.
“Why does the kingdom tolerate dragons if they’re so wicked?” Jill asked instead.
Alexander sighed, then stepped closer to her.
Jill briefly glanced up at Victor—ahead—but he hadn’t noticed the other vampire getting near his claimed witch.
No matter, Jill knew Alexander was purposefully breaking protocol. It had to be for a good reason.
She let Alexander get closer, so he could whisper.
“The general supports the dragons. He doesn’t say it out loud, but he’s been known to shelter lost dragons, feed them blood, and get them reconditioned enough to return to Dragos. Even banished dragons who he feels deserve a second chance. Ever since the poisonings—which affected the females disproportionately—the dragons have been driven all the way to the edge to find blood.”
“He helps them? Isn’t that against the law? What if Daemon . . . ?”
“The general’s careful. We have many deep caves that belong to the clans. There are clan-bound who serve in the royal castle and report back before any surprise visits from the king’s guards . . . usually,” Alexander said.
“Usually?” Jill asked.
“When Prince William came to see the general, it was very unexpected. He was alone, which is unheard of for that prince. He asked for you to be returned,” Alexander said, giving her a questioning look. “What is your relationship with him?”
Jill blushed automatically.
It wasn’t fair to hold back on answering what was a natural question, especially when Alexander had been generous in satisfying her curiosity.
“I fed Prince William. He claimed me. It didn’t last. He wasn’t strong enough to keep me safe when Prince George challenged the claim.”
“There were princes fighting over you?” Alexander asked, sounding awed.
“Uh, kind of,” Jill said. “It was all a ruse, anyway. We didn’t really care which prince claimed me, as long as my sister was able to hunt—” Jill cut herself off.
Her mother might not want all of their secrets revealed, especially ones that involved Elizabeth.
“Hunt? Was Elizabeth on a mission?” Alexander asked.
“Yes,” Jill answered.
No harm in admitting that without further details.
The mission had been one they’d been set on by the Blue Queen. That part was another secret they really ought not to share too easily.
“It wasn’t a clan mission,” Alexander said. “The general would never have allowed witches to risk so much to serve the clan.”
“No,” Jill agreed. “We were on a mission of our own. Women in the human realm don’t need permission from male guardians to do whatever they want. We are independent witches.”
Alexander hadn’t moved further away from her yet. He leaned down—toward her ear—to whisper very quietly.
“The general never asks a witch or a vampire to do anything he wouldn’t be willing to do himself. It has nothing to do with your sex, Jill.”
Her blush came back with a furious heat.
Perhaps she’d been too hasty in her statement of independence. Alexander was also much too close.
She turned, her hands on his chest to give him an earth powered shove.
He smiled at her, his feet planted and his hands suddenly cupping her face.
“Remember, you initiated this by putting your hands on me first,” he cryptically warned her.
He brushed a soft kiss on her forehead.
“I’m claimed!” she said at him with a hiss as he kissed her forehead again, compounding the offence.
“Use your words, Jill. Tell me now and I will desist in kissing your sweet brow. But don’t let fear of Victor’s claim rule your heart. Maeren’s rules are different. Clan law allows more than one suitor—or spouse—for that matter.”
Before she could respond to his sudden declaration of feelings—Where had those come from?—they were both soak
ed in water that had poured over them from above.
Very cold water.
Jill screeched, letting go of Alexander to ball her hands at her sides and pivot.
Victor had to be the culprit responsible for cooling her off, literally.
Shockingly, Victoria was the one with the uncapped gourd.
Jill burned the water off with a quick blue-shield. Unfortunately, her clothes were still damp, liable to catch fire if she pushed too hot for too long. At least the damp was warm now.
“You should seek your grandfather’s permission before flirting with any other males, Jill, since that’s the condition my brother’s been given. Make it fair!” Victoria insisted.
Victor had his arms crossed, fire in his eyes. He didn’t say anything.
The three older adults ahead, stopped, clearly hearing all of the fuss going on behind them.
Alexander laughed, good naturedly. He shook his head, droplets of water going everywhere.
“Good one, Princess. I already have the general’s permission, but thank you, for ensuring your friend’s well being and that protocol was followed.”
Victor uncrossed his arms and stalked over to them. He stood in front of Jill, but addressed Alexander.
“Jill doesn’t like to be touched without her permission. Ask first, never assume. Don’t force, let her choose. She responds to direction as long as you ensure she’s in charge of whether to follow or refuse.”
Jill stomped her foot for attention. The earth trembled.
“Are you giving him instructions or tips?” she asked in a bitter, angry tone.
“Oh? That was a warning. Let me spell it out for you,” Victor said, his tone as icy as hers had gotten hot. He looked Alexander in the eyes. “Touch Jill without her leave again and I’ll kill you.”
He looked back at Jill. “Satisfied with that ‘or else’ this time, darling?”
“Soldier! Come scout ahead with Jaeson to search the cottage for any vagrants before the witches step foot into it,” Torsten shouted, delivering an order to avoid any further death threats between the competing suitors.
Her grandfather obviously was used to hot-headed young males.
Alexander immediately started forward, not giving a come back to Victor or a glance at Jill.
Witch Darkness Follows (Maeren Series Book 3) Page 15