Of Witches and Warlocks: The Demon Kiss (4 page)

I matched his pace then, crossing the room
toward him, meeting him in the middle, with all sorts of thoughts
tumbling in my mind, relief and anger being the foremost ones.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, stopping
just short of me, as if he was afraid to touch me, and I saw the
uncertainty flash over his face.

“I came to do this,” I said, my emotions
threatening to boil over the surface in that very moment.

I swung back and punched him in the jaw as
hard as I could.

He fell back a step, his eyes widened in
surprise, and his hand reached up to rub his jaw while he worked
his mouth out for a second.

“What was that for?” He looked completely
confused, as if I had suddenly sprouted two heads or something.

“That was for leaving me and going off on
your own, you stupid knucklehead!” I yelled at him, my eyes
flashing in anger.

“Portia, I was trying to protect …,” he
started to explain, but I didn’t let him finish.

“Don’t you DARE try to feed me that ‘protect
you’ line of bull again!” I shouted at him. “I have had it with
you, Vance! I think I’ve proven, on several occasions, I’m not the
one who’s been needing protection!”

He watched me, his eyes growing wide in
amazement over my little emotional display.

“Wow! You’re really angry!” he said, and it
took me a second to realize that he had said it into my mind.

“Get out of my head!” I continued, shouting
back to him out loud. “You’ve lost the right to be there! You cut
me off without any warning whenever you feel like it, only to step
right back in whenever you want!”

I turned away from him and started walking in
a huff toward Brad and Shelly, who were both looking very
uncomfortable at the moment.

Vance grabbed me before I could take two
steps away from him and swung me back around to face him. He pulled
me into his embrace with one arm while grabbing my hair in his
other hand, tilting my head back as he lowered his face and started
kissing me.

“I love you,” he said, his words penetrating
my mind, as his lips ravaged mine, obviously not caring one bit
that I had just told him to get out of my head.

I tried staying stiff in his arms, but I was
having trouble resisting him, I had missed him so badly.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to hurt you.
Really,” he spoke into my head, and I felt his tongue trace lightly
over my closed lips. “I just wanted to keep you from any
danger.”

I stood still only for a moment before I was
unable to fight him any longer. I felt my arms go up to wrap around
his neck then and I really kissed him back.

We held each other tightly, our reunion
becoming heated very quickly. I kissed him like I hadn’t seen him
in years instead of just days. I ran my hands through his hair,
over his face and down his neck, forgetting completely about Shelly
and Brad standing in the doorway behind us.

His mouth moved away from mine then, and he
began kissing across my cheek. I found that I instinctively leaned
my head over to the side to give him better access, and his lips
traveled down my neck. His tongue snaked out to lick seductively
over the spot where he had bitten into me before.

I flinched involuntarily.

Suddenly he released me, pushing me away from
him and taking several steps backward.

We just stood there staring at each other,
our breathing ragged from our encounter, and I could feel the
sparks flying between us.

“I need you to leave now, Portia,” he said,
his teeth clenched as he spoke. “You aren’t safe here.”

“Why? I’m not afraid of your ….”

“Because of this,” he said, cutting me off
and stepping closer to me, but making sure not to touch me.

I felt a streak of terror pass through me as
I watched his eyes flash a dim shade of red, not wanting to believe
what I was seeing.

“No. I’m not leaving,” I said flatly,
standing my ground against him.

“Don’t you get it?” he replied in
frustration, his voice getting louder. “I still taste you! I still
want you! I could kill you right now!”

He reached out to grab me to him again but
was suddenly stopped by some sort of magical force field which had
popped up between us.

“That is what I’m here for,” Brad said, and I
noticed his hand was between us, creating the barrier which had
stopped Vance.

“What the heck?” Vance said, stepping back
from Brad, looking at him incredulously.

“Let’s you and me take a little walk,” Brad
said, nodding his head in the opposite direction.

Vance looked in amazement between Brad and
me, as if searching for an explanation, before he turned to walk
with him away from me.

“Are you okay?” Shelly asked softly from
behind me, placing a hand lightly on my shoulder.

I sighed deeply.

“I’ll be fine,” I said softly and glanced
back at her before returning my gaze to the two young men across
the room.

“All I can say is … Wow! The two of you are
intense! I seriously thought I could break the two of you up?”

“Apparently,” I said with a small smile.

“Well, I’m an idiot!” She laughed.

“You weren’t exactly yourself at the time,” I
reminded her.

“That’s true.” She moved past me slightly.
“What do you think they’re talking about?”

“Beats me,” I said turning away from the
scene in a huff. “He still isn’t letting me listen.”

I left the room and wandered back out into
the hallway we’d come through when we had first entered the
building.

Leaning up against the wall, I was suddenly
very tired, so I slid down the surface until I was sitting on the
floor and held my head in my hands.

I knew the exact moment when Vance came to
stand next to me, because all of a sudden his mind was completely
open and unfettered toward me.

“If there is any chance of us making this
little reunion work, then I’m going to have to be completely honest
with you,” his voice spoke into my head.

Sighing, I looked up into his eyes, not
replying. Brad and Shelly tried to sneak past us to go outside.

He crouched down to be at my level, resting
his arms against his knees, and his gaze bore into mine. At that
moment, everything he had been holding back began to slam into me
like bricks hitting a wall.

His memories raced through my mind, starting
at the moment the explosion had happened at the high school. I
could feel his terror and pain as he rushed to try to get to me
through the panic-stricken halls.

Then his mom was suddenly standing in front
of him. He only had a second to register the shock before he had
felt a sharp stick from behind. The needle stabbed into his neck
knocked him out instantly.

He had awakened later to find himself
magically restrained in the room I had discovered him in, at the
bar. Krista had taunted him for hours with stories of her life
since she had left him. He had kept his mind closed to protect me,
even though he didn’t know where I was or how badly I was
injured.

His mother had begun to feed on him
regularly, as well as taking a lot of blood from him to store up
for his father. She hadn’t been quick about it either, enjoying the
torture of him, though she made it clear she intended to change him
first and then take him to be reunited with his dad.

She had to push him to drink her blood in the
beginning, literally pouring it down his mouth and forcing him to
swallow. After a while, he began craving the blood as the change in
him started, even though it made him sick.

He lost consciousness frequently during the
process and was often overcome with horrible spasms and vomiting.
Krista would clean him up when he was finished and start the
process all over again, all while he suffered in silence, never
speaking a word.

I felt his horror as he realized that I had
found him and he knew I wasn’t safe. Then his emotions changed to
terror when he realized that he wanted nothing more than to kill me
as he had been instructed to do.

He had no intention of letting me live until
he heard me say I loved him before he bit me. Those words had been
the only thing to break through the confusion in his mind. I
realized he had felt something that must have been close to ecstasy
for him, as he tasted me for the first time, the fresh blood, laden
with all that uncontaminated power. It took everything he had to
hang onto the one moment of sanity that allowed him to destroy his
mother, even though his heart ached by doing so.

It was the thirst which had awakened him for
the first time, after I had brought him back with me, thirst that
was all-consuming to him above anything he had ever experienced. I
saw that he only thirsted for my pure blood, not the demon blood
that had belonged to his mother.

His anger and hatred overwhelmed me as I
continued to refuse him the one thing he most wanted. He knew he
had to have a drink or it would mean death, and I felt his
crestfallen spirit finally accept defeat when he knew he was going
to die.

And then I had fed him. He had wanted to
consume every drop at any cost. I had reached him once again by
telling him I loved him.

Then his feelings turned, and desire began to
course through his body. He lost all sense of his moral compass. He
would let me live, but he was determined to have me physically, one
craving being traded for another of equal power.

I felt the pain coursing through his veins at
this time, and I started speaking the words of our binding spell to
him, as if fire were racing though his very body, melting
everything inside. The pain had been so bad he had wanted to scream
out, but he had been frozen by the power, unable to move. The
change had happened as the white light that consumed us both began
to stop his demon transformation.

He held me for only a moment after I had
passed out, laying me gently on the floor and scooting back against
the wall. He sobbed in anguish, racked with guilt over what he had
done.

He watched without moving; my dad and my
grandma rushed back in to pull me out of the cell and then sealed
him back in again.

They left with my body, and he had waited in
agony for word on how I was doing. When they finally returned to
speak with him, he had to work hard to convince them he had truly
changed.

They were reluctant to let him out of the
chamber. After a day, they finally believed him and set him free.
He had come directly to my room and crawled onto the bed, lying
down next to me. He had entered into my unconscious state.

He had held me in my dream, in my field of
flowers, and was explaining to me how everything worked. While he
held me, he felt the first stirrings, the cravings threatening to
raise their evil heads once again. He knew then that I had stopped
the conversion, but the desire was still there. He had to leave, to
see if he could put an end to this once and for all. He refused to
risk being so close to me, afraid he would harm me once again,
knowing he would never be able to live with himself if he did.

He had gone back to his home to find all his
things had been taken, so he went to my house and got some of his
stuff from there. That was when he had seen the camera I had given
him. He took it with him and developed the pictures at a one-hour
photo place, while he wrote me the letter he had left for me.

Even while he was away from me, preparing to
leave, he still felt the cravings at regular intervals. He knew he
was going through withdrawal. He had to get away from me. He had to
protect me, that thought being first and foremost in his mind.

It had been difficult for him to part from
me, in fact excruciatingly painful. He had tried to concentrate on
the job in front of him, though he had to stop several times during
his searches, overcome with the need for blood, and wait for the
attacks to pass. He knew he had been right to leave when he
realized it was specifically my blood he craved, though he wished
desperately it wasn’t so.

In spite of all that, I experienced the first
surge of joy he felt when he realized I was standing behind him
today, followed by the second surge of fear that he would lose
control.

He had been truly surprised when I had hit
him, but he wasn’t angry. He felt like he deserved it. If it were
up to him, he would have let me beat him to a pulp.

When he had grabbed me and kissed me, it had
been with good intentions, but the force of his emotions had
quickly changed everything. Without realizing it he had begun to
crave another drink of blood, the sound of it racing through my
veins calling out to him in the heat of passion.

“Don’t you get it?” he asked me softly, his
blue eyes streaked with shots of red in them staring deep into my
soul. “I want all of you. I crave all of you. My body is demanding
to have all of you, and my emotions are always right behind them.
I’m always teetering on the brink of disaster. One second, I just
want to sink my teeth into you; the next, I want to throw you down
and have my way with you. It hurts to be away from you, but I think
it might hurt more to be with you. If I slipped, just once, and did
something bad to you, I’d never be able to forgive myself. I’ve
gone too far already. That is why we’re in this mess.”

He stood up and paced away from me over to
the opposite wall, which he slammed hard with his fist, causing me
to jump as cracks appeared in the thick block, and I wondered if he
had broken every bone in his hand.

“What do I do, Portia?” he asked quietly,
without turning, hanging his head in frustration. “I’m completely
out of control.”

I stood and walked over next to him, reaching
out to place my hand on his shoulder.

He flinched away from me as soon as I touched
him, leaving my hand in mid air, before I slowly pulled it back and
lowered it to my side.