Of Witches and Warlocks: The Demon Kiss

Of Witches and Warlocks

By

Lacey Weatherford

Book Two of the Of Witches
and Warlocks Series

Copyright 2010 Lacey
Weatherford

ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED

Published by Global Authors
Publications

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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!

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 back 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.