Of Witches and Warlocks: The Demon Kiss (34 page)

“You’ve lost the right to call me that,”
Vance said, and I noticed that the red flames had shot instantly
back into his eyes.

“What, no kiss for Daddy?” Damien asked in
feigned shock, placing a hand over his heart as if he were mortally
wounded by this. “Portia was kind enough to give me one, weren’t
you, baby?” he added, inadvertently using Vance’s pet name for me
as he winked at me.

I felt Vance’s temper flare, and he pushed me
behind him, shielding me from Damien. I also noticed the two men
who had been chasing us in the hallway had finally caught up and
were closing in on us from the rear.

I placed my back against Vance’s as I watched
them approach, never taking my eyes off of them, watching as their
demon masks slipped into place.

“You got those two covered?” Vance asked into
my mind, as he continued to face Damien.

“Yes. You take care of your dad,” I replied
back into his head, not wanting him to be distracted.

Damien continued forward, goading Vance as he
walked.

“I must applaud you on your taste in women,
son,” he said. “She certainly is a delicious little thing. I quite
enjoyed the little taste I had of her.”

“You won’t ever touch her again,” Vance
replied, his voice sounding furious and deadly.

Though I could feel his emotions boiling to a
whole new extreme, I chose this moment to attack. I threw my hands
out right then, shooting from my palms and catching both guards in
the chest with stakes of ice.

The two of them registered a look of shock
before falling to the floor, writhing in pain as they clutched at
the ice, their shirts quickly becoming stained with the blood they
were losing.

I turned back to face Damien.

“I’ll let her live if you’ll join me, son,”
Damien said.

Vance snorted.

“Why, so you can have her? I don’t think so,
Dad.” He sneered. “I don’t want her to be anywhere around you.”

The three of us slowly circled around each
other. “Forget the girl then,” Damien said trying a different
approach. “There’s a whole magical world out there, just waiting
for us to take control of it. We could rule it together. Think of
all the power we could have.”

“You mean all the power Vance would have. The
ones you’d try to steal from him, right?” I spoke up, clarifying
what he had said to me earlier.

“Shut up, you little witch!” Damien said
glaring at me as his face transformed into his demon features.

He took one step toward me, raising his hand
into the air, and Vance threw a fireball straight at him.

Damien pivoted and waved his hand, deflecting
the fireball away from him and moving it toward me with a burst of
magic. I had to duck quickly to prevent being hit by it.

“Portia!” Vance called out to me, and I knew
he had hit his boiling point then.

I saw his eyes flare with a strength I had
never seen before as he turned back to face Damien.

Vance raised his arm and shot out a
continuous arc of flame at his father this time, stepping toward
him ominously.

I had to move several steps backward, raising
my hands involuntarily into the air to protect myself from the wave
of heat that washed over me.

Damien raised his hand, and a force field
shot up in front of him, deflecting the fire harmlessly around
him.

Vance continued to send the flames toward
him, this time raising his other hand, throwing flame from it as
well, and I could see that Damien was slowly being forced backward,
as he tried to maintain his field of protection.

Warily they circled, neither one giving in to
the other, and I scooted silently back away from the intense heat,
moving farther across the floor.

I didn’t consciously realize how close Damien
had gotten to me, until suddenly I could see he was standing
between Vance and me, and I realized I hadn’t been paying enough
attention to my own position. I tried to run, but I felt a sudden
magical restraint take hold of me, and I was unable to move.
Damien’s arm snaked out and grabbed me, pulling me up against his
body.

He dropped the magical restraint that had
contained me, diverting the bulk of his power back to the shield
that was protecting him. I pushed against his chest as I struggled
to get away.

“I’ll kill her!” Damien shouted out, and
Vance immediately dropped the flame, taking a step back away from
him.

“Let her go!” he shouted, his chest heaving,
as they continued to face off against each other.

“I can’t do that.” Damien smiled shaking his
head. “She’s the only leverage I have.”

He yanked my head roughly to the side and
sank his sharpened teeth into my neck, and I screamed loudly.

“No!” Vance yelled and ran toward us, fear
tearing across his face as he approached.

Damien threw his hand up then, sending out a
burst of power that sent Vance soaring across the room, slamming
him up against the opposite wall.

Struggling against the horrible pain of the
bite, I tried desperately to pull away from him. Damien just yanked
me harder against his chest in an iron grip. I could feel the
weakness starting as he drank from me, my knees threatening to give
a little under the onslaught.

Slowly, I lifted my hand to cover his heart,
and summoning all the energy I could muster, I slammed a giant ice
shard right through his chest.

I felt the gurgle as he let go and fell away
from me to the floor, releasing me so suddenly that I stumbled
backwards, grasping at my neck in an effort to try to stop the
bleeding.

I watched for one second as Damien struggled
for breath, crawling away toward the doorway, gasping as he moved.
Then I turned and ran haphazardly over toward Vance, who was slowly
regaining his feet. I tripped and fell into him heavily, leaning on
him for support.

“How bad is it?” he asked, as he pulled my
hand away from my wound so he could check it.

Instantly I realized this was a mistake, and
I felt the craving as it leapt through him when he saw the blood
running from my neck.

He let go of me as if I had burned him with a
hot poker, and he stepped back from me.

This is not good, I thought, as I saw the
yearning for a taste pass over his face, his longing being very
evident.

Vance eyed me warily, his expression a mask
of both desire and despair as he watched me, and I could tell he
was struggling with a decision.

A loud grunting sound which came from across
the room made us both turn away from each other to look in that
direction.

I was horrified to see Damien slowly stand
up, and the ice shard I had shoved into him began to push backward
out of his chest, until it fell out, shattering into a million
pieces on the floor.

We both watched in amazement as the hole in
his chest closed and he was completely whole once again, as if he
had never been touched.

A low laugh escaped his lips as he took in
our expressions, and he began walking toward us slowly.

“Let’s finish this, son,” he said
seductively, calling out to Vance, enticing him with the call for
blood. “I can see the desire ripe in your eyes. You want her badly.
Do it! She’s yours for the taking. Nothing can stop you now.”

I looked at Vance, and I could feel the
emotions warring inside him. I began to taste a little bit of fear
in my mouth.

There were two forces here, and I was caught
between them. If Vance turned against me, then all was lost. There
was no way possible for me to survive this without him. I couldn’t
fight them both.

I placed my hand back over my neck, trying to
protect myself as he watched me, and began to back away, until I
realized that I was moving away from him and toward Damien. I
stopped, not knowing what to do.

“Take her, son! Now!” Damien yelled at
Vance.

Vance reached out and grabbed me then,
pulling me hard up against his body, and I felt his desire shoot
through him.

“Do you trust me?” his voice shot through my
head, thick with some unseen emotion.

I hesitated only a second.

“Yes,” I replied back to him.

He yanked my hand away from my neck and
covered the wound with his mouth, sucking hard as the blood flowed
freely into him.

I grabbed at his shirt with both hands trying
to keep myself standing as I felt the weakness enter my limbs
almost instantly. He was drinking in earnest now, both of his arms
wrapped tightly around me, and I could feel his body singing
against me as he drank my blood.

“Yes, son!” Damien cheered with an evil
laugh, as he walked up next to us. “Yes!”

He watched as Vance continued to feed on
me.

“Now let me perform the kiss, son, before
she’s too far gone,” he instructed him. “We can take all of her
powers, too.”

“You want a kiss, Dad?” Vance said, and he
let go of me so suddenly I slumped to the floor. “Then go ahead!
Take it!”

Damien hesitated for a moment, in perplexed
surprise, as he looked at me on the floor in front of him. I saw
Vance reach behind his back to pull an athame out of the holder on
his belt.

Vance raised the weapon up, shooting his hand
out and yanking Damien to him. He moved so quickly that I hardly
registered the sight of the knife slitting Damien across the
throat.

Damien grabbed at his neck with both hands as
the blood started to pump out.

Vance dropped the athame and grappled Damien
by the collar, pulling him right up next to his face, dropping his
jaw.

I watched in horror as I realized it was
Vance who was performing the kiss on his father, not the other way
around.

Damien tried to scream but couldn’t with his
cut throat, instead making a horrible gurgling sound.

I found that I couldn’t look away, and I
watched Damien convulse, his blood spraying, as all his powers
drifted up out of his body and into Vance’s.

Vance’s veins began to glow, and Damien
became weaker, until it was only Vance’s brute strength that was
keeping Damien standing.

I could see Vance was beginning to tremble as
his body was trying to absorb the massive amount of power it was
receiving.

He dropped Damien to the floor and took two
steps backward before he started to shake violently.

The veins in his neck and arms were
protruding, and his face was beaded in droplets of sweat. He
dropped to his knees, falling forward slightly, unable to keep
standing with the force of everything.

“Vance!” I cried out hoarsely, reaching for
him.

“Don’t touch me, Portia!” he hollered with
great effort, as the magical currents continued to fight in his
body.

Vance gave a loud yell as he arched his back,
flinging his arms out away from his body, and sparks shot out the
ends of his fingers, followed by little bursts of flame. It was
almost as if he were being electrocuted, as wave after wave of
shocks rolled through him.

I cried as I watched him being wracked with
pain.

He convulsed that way for several moments,
then he finally fell to the floor in exhaustion, as the effects of
the exchange subsided. He collapsed in a heap right next to
Damien’s body.

I crawled over to his side, passing by
Damien, who was still and pale, lying in a puddle of his own blood.
I could tell by the flat vacant stare that he was really dead this
time.

“Vance!” I called out as I slouched next to
his limp form, placing my hand on his blood-splattered face.
“Vance! Please answer me!”

His eyes opened into tiny slits, just large
enough for me to see the clear, blue eyes there, which surprised
me.

“I’m okay,” he breathed heavily, as he looked
at me. “What about you?”

“Well, I feel better than I did the last time
you did this to me,” I replied as I continued to hold my wounded
neck.

“I’m sorry about that,” he whispered, as he
lifted his blood-covered hand to rub down the side of my face, then
thinking better of it.

“It’s fine,” I said back to him as the tears
dripped from my face and onto him leaving wet spots to mingle with
the blood on his shirt.

He slowly began to sit up on his own,
reaching over to pull me into his embrace, cradling me tightly to
his chest.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” I asked him,
searching him over for any damage I might have missed.

“I think so,” he replied, as he ripped off a
part of his t-shirt at the hem, folding it into a thick square and
placing it against my neck and applying pressure there. “That was
quite a trip.”

“How did you know to even try that?” I asked,
with an incredulous look upon my face.

“It was something you’d said,” he explained,
holding the tight pressure against my skin. “You said I had more
powers than I was aware of. I just had the thought that he always
wanted me so he could perform that stupid demon kiss. I suddenly
realized that maybe that was the power he was after specifically. I
figured if I strengthened myself with your blood, then maybe there
was enough demon in me to try it myself.”

“You took a huge risk, Vance! What if it
hadn’t worked?”

“I still had a big knife.” He smiled and gave
me a wink.

He stood then and pulled me to my feet after
him, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me into his embrace.
He tilted his head a little to observe the bleeding at my
throat.

“I need to heal this, Portia. But I’m not
sure if my powers might be adversely affected.” He sighed, seeming
concerned about it.

“Just do it, Vance,” I said. “I trust
you.”

“Are you sure? I don’t like taking risks when
it comes to you,” he replied, his eyes flitting over my face.

“So bleeding to death isn’t a risk?” I asked
him with a small laugh.

“I see your point,” he smiled, and I felt a
warm heat pass through me as he cupped my neck in between his
strong hands. “Kiss me,” he said when he was finished, looking down
at me tenderly.