Of Witches and Warlocks: The Demon Kiss Read online

  Of Witches and Warlocks

  The Demon Kiss

  By

  Lacey Weatherford

  Book Two of the Of Witches and Warlocks Series

  Copyright 2010 Lacey Weatherford

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Published by Global Authors Publications

  Smashwords Edition

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is available in print at most online retailers.

  DEDICATION:

  For all of my readers, who love “LOVE” just as much as I do.

  May dreams of Vance and Portia continue to dance in your

  heads!

  Chapter 1

  I had tasted a love stronger than any emotion I had ever felt in my life.

  It was a bold statement for a sixteen-year-old girl to make, but it was the truth.

  I thought back to the first day that I had realized that our school’s resident bad boy, Vance Mangum, had an interest in me. My connection with him had been instantaneous. There had never been any question that he was the one for me, even after I found out that he was a powerful warlock who was running from his past.

  My mind began to run over everything that had happened in the last few months of my life with him.

  I had found out on my sixteenth birthday that I was a witch, descended from a long line of witches and warlocks. I had learned my grandmother and father were leaders of a magical coven. And I had discovered the coven had been protecting the person I loved most in this world from a horrible danger, his own father.

  I had fallen in love with Vance Mangum and had almost sacrificed my own life to save him from what should have been a certain death. But when I awoke from all the trauma, it was to find him gone from my life, set on a collision course with the very evil which had almost destroyed him once before.

  I took a deep sigh and looked back into the eyes of the young man who faced me now in my living room. Disbelief and deep confusion were etched upon his face.

  “This is a lot to comprehend.” Brad let out a deep breath as he leaned back into the chair, clearly finding it difficult to believe anything I had been saying to him for the past hour now.

  “Show him something, Portia,” Shelly suggested, sitting down next to me, urging me to be a little more forceful in my demonstration.

  Figuring she was probably right, and knowing that I needed to get things moving along, I did as she suggested. I sighed as I lifted my hand into the air and motioned for the magazine next to Brad on the table to come toward me.

  The magazine lifted easily, floating through the air to me, and was soon settled into my outstretched hand.

  “Wow!” Brad jumped from his chair to his feet. “That’s intense!” After a short pause he grinned at me and added, “Do something else.”

  “Brad,” I complained, walking over to drop the magazine back onto the table, “I really don’t have time to do a magic show for you. Time is of the essence right now, and I need to know if you’re in or out. What’s the verdict?”

  He pondered this carefully for a few moments before he answered me.

  “I’m in,” he said with a bigger grin and nodded between Shelly and me. “But we’re going to need to come up with something to tell my parents.”

  “That’s all taken care of,” Shelly replied. “We had to tell my parents everything. They’re going to cook something up about sending us on a vacation to recover from our traumatic event, which in a sense will be somewhat true.”

  The traumatic event she was referring to was an explosion that had happened at Sedona High School a couple of weeks prior. Several of our classmates had been killed in the disaster. As a matter of fact, I had been the only one to survive the blast in the classroom where the explosion had occurred, thanks to a magical shield that had protected me.

  It had turned out the explosion had been orchestrated by an evil coven in order to capture my boyfriend, Vance. Vance’s mother, Krista, had been the one who had taken him, but it was his father, Damien Cummings, who had been behind the scenes planning everything.

  While Vance had nearly been changed into a demon, he had actually been the one to vanquish his mother in a last ditch attempt to save my life. I, in turn had healed him, but then found out he had left me to go find his father.

  I had been very angry when I found out that he had gone off on his own. His dad would be way more powerful than his mother had been. He had no protection of any kind. He was reacting to some misguided thought that he had to do this to protect me, so we could have a real life together.

  My best friend, Shelly, had inadvertently been placed in the middle of all this when Vance’s mother had cast an evil spell over her and used her as a puppet. Shelly and I were now trying to explain to her boyfriend, Brad, all the things that had happened over the last little while. He up until this time had been pretty much in the dark about everything that was going on in our lives.

  We were going to go after Vance, and we were asking Brad if he wanted to come with us.

  “It’s all set,” I said to my dad, Sean, as he walked into the room. “Shelly’s going to take us in her car. Brad is coming with us.”

  “Portia, I’m very apprehensive about sending the three of you out alone to do this,” my dad said, shaking his head slightly. “What if something were to happen to you? You’re the only witch in this group of yours. If you were to somehow come upon this demon coven, it could be disastrous. You can’t fight off a whole coven by yourself, you know.”

  I let out a big sigh before I spoke, feeling a little overwhelmed.

  “We’ve been all through this, Dad. We won’t get involved with the demon coven in any way. As soon as we locate them, or Vance, I promise you that you’ll be the very first call I make,” I said, my hand gently on his arm, trying to reassure him.

  “Make sure that you do. I don’t even want you getting remotely close to that coven,” he replied, looking very concerned for my well being.

  “They aren’t looking for me anyway,” I reminded him. “It’s Vance they’re after. If they find him alone out there ….” I trailed off as I sighed again in frustration over the whole matter. “Why did you let him go, Dad? It’s like he’s serving himself to them on a platter.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with that,” my dad said, lifting his hands slightly before dropping them dejectedly back to his side. “He left without consulting any of us. I would’ve tried to counsel him differently had he come to me.”

  “It’s my fault,” Shelly piped up, looking sadly at me. “He came to me with this. I should have talked him out of it. I just didn’t know what to say to him.”

  “Would all of you just stop?” Brad piped in, glancing around at all of us with an irritated look on his face. “It isn’t anyone’s fault. Vance is eighteen and an adult. He made this choice, and whether or not it was right or wrong lies solely with him. We just need to find him before something else happens to him, because he shouldn’t have to face what he is looking for alone.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed, feeling more than grateful to hear Brad was taking things in stride and on my side of the issue. “Take Shelly to go get things squared away with your parents. If they’re cool with everything, you can meet me bac
k here in an hour. I’ll be packed and ready to go by then.”

  After walking them to the door, I opened it to let them out and closed it behind them. I slid down to the floor in exhaustion, a sudden wave of dizziness threatening to overwhelm me.

  “You’re still so weak, Portia. Do you think this is wise?” my dad asked and squatted down next to me with a concerned look upon his face. “Why don’t you stay here and rest for a few more days?”

  I was weak because I had given almost every drop of blood in my body to feed Vance, in a desperate attempt to keep him alive after his near demon conversion. I shuddered as I realized how close I had come to losing him completely, and I felt the unease moving down my spine when I thought of how close he had come to killing me in return.

  “I’ll be fine, Dad,” I replied, pushing the unwelcome thoughts from my head, trying to concentrate on the present situation at hand. “It gets better with every passing hour. Just give me a minute, okay?”

  He nodded and sat with me for a few moments, never taking his eyes off me, before offering a hand out to help pull me up. Then he walked with me up the stairs to my bedroom, placing an arm gently around my waist to give me support along the way.

  I had an empty suitcase lying on the bed, and I slowly moved around the room, packing it up with a few items I felt I might need while I was away. I didn’t use any magic since I was trying to conserve my strength.

  The final thing I picked up to place in my suitcase was the last thing Vance had given me.

  It was a letter explaining that he had decided to leave me and why he was doing what he was doing. It was full of beautiful pictures the two of us had taken on an outing together. I had already stared at them so many times that a couple of the edges were beginning to look worn. They were my most precious worldly possession.

  “What direction do you think you’ll head?” Dad asked, pulling me from my reverie. I placed the letter and pictures into a safe spot in my purse, where they wouldn’t get crumpled.

  “I’m thinking east, toward Albuquerque,” I replied, looking over to him. “That was the last area where you’d tracked his father’s coven to, so I’m thinking he probably would’ve gone there. I’ll just have to follow my instincts and see if I can feel him, using my senses.”

  Vance and I had performed a binding ritual together early in our relationship in an effort to make a more permanent commitment to each other. The binding spell had been so intense that we now had a strong physical pull toward each other. When we were together, everything was great. When we were apart, it was like being physically sick, with an ache that actually caused us pain.

  I had used the power of our physical pull to help me find him the last time he had been taken. I was banking on the same thing this time to help me out.

  We had also discovered, because of our link with each other, we had an excellent mental connection, too. When the distances between us weren’t more than a few miles, we could actually communicate by thought.

  This didn’t always help me, though, because Vance had an extreme control over his mind, a control I hadn’t mastered. Whenever he deemed something to be too dangerous for me to know, he would close his mind like a steel trap against me. After he would do that, I could no longer hear him, and reaching him was almost impossible.

  I planned on giving him an earful about this the next time I saw him. I was sick to death of him always shutting me out for my own protection. I felt I had proven on several occasions that I didn’t need to be treated like something that was going to break, seeing how he was currently alive because of me.

  At my dressing table, I paused to check my appearance in the mirror. I looked pitiful. I picked up a hairbrush and combed through my shoulder-length black hair, deciding to pull it back into a ponytail.

  There was nothing I was going to be able to do about the deep dark circles under both of my eyes. My skin was even more pale than usual after Vance had drunk so much blood from me. The large purple bruise with several puncture marks on my neck was proof of all that had happened. I ran my hand absently over the damaged tissue, which would most assuredly carry a permanent scar.

  I didn’t hate the mark, though. It was proof he had been there, that he was alive now.

  “Can I carry your suitcase downstairs for you?” my dad asked, and I dropped my hand and moved away from the mirror.

  “Sure,” I said, nodding my head as I turned to face him, trying to muster up a smile for him. “Thanks.”

  “No problem,” he replied and picked the piece of luggage up and carried it out of the room.

  I dropped the brush I was still holding in my hand back on my dressing table, grabbed my bag, after rechecking it for my proper identification, and proceeded downstairs toward the living room. I heard a knock on the door just as I entered the room.

  I went to open it and was surprised to find Grandma Milly standing there, a small box in her hands.

  “Hi, Grandma, come in,” I said, stepping to the side so she could enter. I closed the door behind her.

  “I’ve brought you some things to take with you,” she explained, her hands gripping a box.

  “Okay,” I replied and followed her over to the sofa and sat down next to her, curious about what she had.

  “As I am sure you are aware, your dad and I have been very leery about letting you go off on your own to search for Vance, especially after everything that has happened lately,” she began, watching me with a serious expression on her face. “You will be the only source of magical protection for the three of you, which doesn’t give you very good odds if you run into some sort of problem. So we put our heads together, and I think we may have found a way to help out with that a little.”

  She opened the box then and pulled out a red ruby amulet on a gold chain, followed by two smaller boxes. She opened each of them also, to reveal the contents inside.

  One box contained a flat silver ring which held an onyx stone in the center. The other held a similar ring in gold, with the same red-colored stone in the middle of it that was in the amulet hanging from the chain.

  “These are for Shelly, Brad and Vance,” she explained. “The one for Vance has been charmed with spells of protection for him. I don’t know how helpful those will be for him, seeing how the demon coven has gotten around protection spells we’ve had on him in the past, but I figured something is better than nothing.”

  She then held up the other ring and amulet, so I could see them better.

  “These other two items are a little unorthodox. They were made specifically for Shelly and Brad,” she explained. “These are not made from regular stones, but magical stones that carry some serious power in them. The wearer of these will actually be able to use the magic as their own to some extent. While they will never make them as powerful as a real witch, of course, it will significantly enhance their ability to be magical.”

  “How do they work?” I was deeply interested in the whole idea of a charmed item that could be used in this way.

  “Well, these particular ones work on a purposeful action. The ring has to be twisted in a half turn for the magic in it to work,” she said, making a twisting motion with her hand in demonstration. “The necklace’s power is released by placing one hand over the stone. They are both easy actions, but Brad and Shelly will probably have to practice with them a little bit to get the feel of them before it becomes natural to them.”

  “Does the magic ever wear off?” I asked, as she placed the amulet in my hands so I could examine it.

  “Not as long as the wearer doesn’t ever remove it,” she replied. I handed it back to her. “The fail safe of the charm is if the jewelry is ever removed from the wearer, it will cease to work.”

  “So what kind of powers will they be able to perform?” I asked, curious about how much magic they would actually be able to wield.

  “Anything the person wearing it asks of it, to a certain extent. For instance if the wearer asked for something to levitate, it would, albeit it might
be a bit shaky compared to you and if you asked something to levitate. Also, if the wearer has any kind of natural ability, the amulet will enhance that power.”

  “Like what exactly?” I wasn’t really following what she meant.

  “For instance if someone were to have psychic abilities, the charm would enhance the power greatly, even if they aren’t a witch,” she explained.

  “Oh, I see. That’s kind of cool.” Brad and Shelly were probably going to eat this stuff up.

  “Yes, well, there are a lot of other things I need to teach you, but they’re just going to have to wait for another day,” she said, with a look of regret moving over her face.

  “Well, I thank you for these. Hopefully we won’t ever have to use them, but I’m sure they’ll come in handy if we do.” I smiled, reaching over to pat her hand.

  “Portia, I’m sorry if I’ve failed you in any way,” she said somberly, reaching out to cover over my hand which I had just placed on hers. “Your powers are so different from anything else I’ve ever encountered before. I’m just not wise enough to instruct you. In some ways you’re the teacher; you just don’t know what you’re doing or why you’re doing it.”

  “Grandma, you’ve been a wonderful teacher. We’re all learning from this experience,” I replied. “You know the old saying: That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

  “I never intended for that verse to apply so literally to you, though,” she said sadly with a shake of her head.

  “Hey! I’m not dead! So that means I am stronger, right?” I smiled softly at her, wanting to cheer her up a bit. “Besides, it wasn’t like I wasn’t warned or anything. Vance had always been afraid he might do something someday that would end up hurting me.”

  “He still could,” Grandma stated, looking at me with an expression of warning on her face. “He had to fight his attraction for the dark arts even before he was nearly changed into a demon. It could be even worse for him now, something like an addict going through withdrawals I would imagine.”

  “But I healed him,” I said, thinking her comment didn’t make any sense.