Short sentences were best when the wind was whipping most of her words away.
“Bad witch,” Raphael replied. “Warded,” he grumbled, diving down.
They were headed towards the portal, and apparently, his trip to the human realm had been her fault for warding herself against him in her dreams.
She must have done a crappy job, if he was able to track her, despite the number of glyphs her skin was sporting.
He didn’t know she still had a few she had left inactivated, saved for emergencies, like this one.
They landed outside the abandoned industrial building housing the portal. He kept on carrying her, his long strides eating up the distance between her and an unwanted trip back to Maeren.
Jill and Kaila still needed her. She could act as a peacekeeper with her stubborn brother, and all of them could rescue Elizabeth from George’s evil clutches.
“Dragon, let me down. I can walk,” Victoria complained.
“Use my name, gaisa,” Raphael said. “Or at least, say, please,” he added.
“I know where there are some garments you may borrow,” Victoria offered, instead.
She couldn’t complain about him not using her name when she had yet to tell it to him.
Raphael put her on her feet.
“Call me Tor,” she ordered, surprised when he didn’t grab her hand or arm and start dragging her towards the portal.
She met his gaze and saw that he was just waiting for her run, and his eyes said he would enjoy the chase.
“Show me these garments,” Raphael said.
She led the way towards the portal. He was so damn big in half-form that nothing Elizabeth’s family had hidden away would fit him.
That was part of Victoria’s plan.
She gestured to a heavy steel door and waited for the dragon to put his strength into it. Jill had made the main door to be inoperable to discourage humans, but this was a dragon.
The creaking hinges screamed abuse as he pulled hard. Suddenly, the door gave, the metal knob caving into the brick wall as he lost control and it swung wide open.
He caught the door and leaned against it before it could bounce back and swing shut again.
“After you, Tor,” her dragon said.
There was sweat on his brow, but he didn’t say a thing about the difficult door. He acted the gentleman, gesturing her first.
The polite impression he was aiming for was marred by his nakedness. She was pretty sure Raphael checked out her ass as she walked past him and inside, completely destroying any hopes for more civilized behaviour.
Fine, he was a cave-dweller, after all. A very strong one.
His barbarianism really shouldn’t be such a turn on.
She walked over to where the Norwoods had clothes hidden. They usually wore Maeren appropriate clothing that would also blend in the human realm, if looking a bit old-fashioned, so there was rarely a need to use the spare changes.
In fact, she was pretty sure the dress Elizabeth had lent her last time they went to the market had been from her childhood.
Raphael hovered over her shoulder, turning to give a sneeze as she blew the dust off the box of clothes.
“These are stretchy,” Victoria said, reaching deep into the box, near the entrance.
The box was marked spare parts and there were some other boxes of really old metal parts near by. None of the parts were meant to be used on anything in here, some household plumbing elbows, a few metal brackets, screws, some masking tape, light switch covers and anything else the Norwoods had been able to dig up from their basement to fill the top of the box.
Raphael eyed the black sweatpants with skepticism. That’s right, these clothes were meant for human-sized persons, not half-dragon monsters.
“If you were able to shrink a little . . .” Victoria said.
Giving her a look of disbelief, Raphael grabbed the sweatpants from her. He tried to get one leg in, making it just past his knee.
She was tempted to topple him over as he hopped one-legged, trying to push his leg through, like sheer determination could make the material stretch further.
Not yet. If he didn’t still have wings, she would have a better chance.
“The wings,” Victoria hinted, clearing her throat when it came out more like a plea.
Raphael frowned. “I can better protect you in this form,” he said.
“Who’s going to challenge a big, strong dragon like you?” Victoria asked.
She copped a feel of one of his bulging biceps. It felt like silk-covered steel, no scaly skin at all. There were glyphs inked all over his upper arms that she would love to examine in different circumstances.
The dragon grabbed her with lightning speed. One moment she was stroking her fingers along all that power, and then he pulled her against his chest in the next, his lips crashing down on hers.
She felt a warm tingling all over her body and pulled away from his kiss, afraid he had somehow started to transport them back to Maeren already, but it was just his magic changing his form.
The magic shivered over her with a delicious buzz. She could get drunk just feeling his power.
He looked down at her.
It was her first good look at him, except for the few seconds before George had smashed his sword against the back of his head.
His hair was coal black and cut as short as her own, but whereas her pixie bordered on punk with its multi-coloured dyed strands, his own dark locks were buzzed with an impatient hand at the sides and uneven bangs stuck up from either their windy flight or his hand brushing rebellious strands off his face.
His soft, violet eyes were piercing, such a pale colour that his black pupils became the focus, dilating as she kept looking up at him, and a devilish flicker of immense power flashed back at her.
She dropped her eyes to his barely there goatee, trimmed short, but more evenly than his head, just enough scruff for half a week of not shaving his upper lip and chin.
She couldn’t remember if she had felt the prickle of it when he kissed her, and so impulsively, she put her lips to his again.
This time his tongue entered her mouth and she felt the masculine scratch of his barbered chin as he slanted his mouth to enter hers more deeply.
He took his time, learning how she liked to feel his tongue pushed against hers, and when he pulled back and sucked the tip of her smaller tongue into his mouth, she felt it down to her toes, a little electric shock of pleasure.
She curled her hands into closed fists, so she wouldn’t be tempted to grab onto him for more, knowing this one, last kiss was going to have to last her a long while.
There was no room for a dragon in her life right now.
Raphael broke away from the kiss to finish shoving his leg in the sweatpants. It was still quite the stretch. He lifted the other leg to do the same and Victoria shoved him over, still shaking off the kiss as she ran.
She wished she had Elizabeth's air to give her feet wings as the dragon roared behind her.
She quickly looked behind, but he hadn’t changed back to his dragon, anger apparently expressed with the same roar, whether he was beast or vampire.
The portal was her only chance for escape.
In Maeren, she could access the stronger magic to use those very special emergency glyphs on her skin.
She ran like the devil was on her heels.
The portal carried her back to the edge town Elizabeth and Jill had taken her shopping, just a mile out of nearest town.
Transportation magic was still sparking over her when she started running again, knowing she only had moments on Raphael.
This wasn’t quite the scenario she had planned on testing her glyphs, although the preparation work had been cut down by inking them with Elizabeth, earlier.
Even a frozen dinner needed to be heated up to eat.
There were three males at the side of the road that she caught by surprise, almost slamming into them as she exited the shelter housing the portal at near lig
ht speed.
They looked like they were trying to dress inconspicuously for travel to the human realm, the oldest male pulling on a grey t-shirt that said Pooma Athletics.
It was obviously a Maeren made, human knock-off.
She felt bad as the youngest male fell on his ass, tripping while trying to take a few startled steps back at her sudden appearance. She couldn’t read his shirt slogan but it was fluorescent pink.
The dragon would barbecue them if they got in his way.
Sparing the last male a glance before she ran past them, she shouted out a warning that would strike dread into any normal Maerenian.
Instead, the black-shirted Knike, Just Do It! vampire smiled and looked enthusiastically to the portal shelter.
The magic ripple Raphael made as he transported made her want to run even faster, but her glyphs would need priming.
She turned to make her stand in the dusty path, pulling her stick of chalk from her pocket like she was brandishing a sword.
The grey-shirted male noticed she had stopped running and gestured the pink-shirted male in her direction.
It seemed she had run into the craziest vampires in Maeren. Either that or they were part of the deaf colony Elizabeth had started and hadn’t heard her warning properly. They shouldn’t miss the feel of heavy magic stomping their way. That shifted them closer to crazy.
She ignored them and circled, tight and quick, just six inches from her feet as she turned three-sixty. The dust was stirred up by her swirling motion but she choked back a cough and barked out the command to light herself up, her glyphs glowing white hot with the bit of lightning she had borrowed from Elizabeth to set them.
Oh, Maeren, that was liquid fire! She’d never felt power like this in her life.
Her rescuer came to a halt, about a foot from her circle. He eyed her warily as she glowed dangerously.
“Tor? You’re in Maeren?” Elizabeth asked, suddenly popping into Victoria’s head.
Elizabeth was alive!
Victoria smiled, letting the magic push out and back, amplified just like an elaborate circle.
This had just been an idea, something she had hoped to try out with Elizabeth, when they came to the edge town next. It had worked even better than she hoped.
“Not by choice. The dragon woke up and kidnapped me,” Victoria admitted.
“What about my sister? My mother? Did your twin find them?” Elizabeth asked.
“Vic has Jill, and she’s safe before you worry too much. Your mother doesn’t know yet, but she’ll be sure to figure it out soon when we don’t return to the dojo,” Victoria explained.
“I’m hurrying to try to get back, but I’m really far. George brought us to the Wastes. I don’t know how far we are from the nearest portal,” Elizabeth said.
Victoria took that as a sign she should be paying better attention to what she was doing. Help was not coming.
“Want to see me make the bunny disappear?” Victoria asked. “I’m about to try out those glyphs.”
She levitated with the magic, riding wave after rising wave of power.
She wished it was her fire, but that still would take time to replace after her familiar was defeated.
Borrowing Elizabeth’s magic to store in glyphs had been genius, letting her overcome the need to have Elizabeth close by to share her magic through their Lasier bond.
It wasn’t a lot, but only a little was needed for her purposes. The other prepared glyphs for the spell would do the heavy lifting.
Uncorking her gourd, she looked for her dragon.
“Protect the witch!” The grey-shirted male shouted, urging on pink as he hesitated outside her circle, watching her with awe and a little fear.
The males had no chance against a dragon. Few vampires would, outside of the earth generals and other highly skilled soldiers, trained in overcoming dragon armour and magic like her brother, George.
As a prince, George was trained in warfare, even if it was meant for him to direct others to fight rather than battle directly himself.
William wouldn’t even dream of stepping outside of the castle to a battlefield.
George got his hands dirty on purpose, not letting the lack of active war keep him sidelined. Everyone knew George kept a network of spies and soldiers that he maintained, without needing the castle treasury to support them.
If George couldn’t keep this dragon down, then he would be an incredibly difficult opponent for anyone else, other than Daemon.
Victoria was on her own, no brothers to help or hinder.
Gathering her water in a long, thin stream she spindled around her own body, she told the awestruck boy in the pink shirt to back up.
Her dragon was still in vampire form, wearing black jogging pants with JUICY imprinted on the butt that nobody had noticed yet.
He was huge, towering even over the big male in the black t-shirt standing in his way that was—bless her luck—pulling up the stones and rocks in a five-foot radius around him as he called his earth.
George couldn’t take Raphael, she reminded herself, nervously. Elizabeth may have jinxed George a little to spare Raphael a fatal blow, but still, her dragon was strong.
He wouldn’t get killed by some random vampire with earth.
She started whispering spell words under her breath, feeling the second set of glyphs she had prepared start to slowly light up.
Mates were until death do us part, except for the parting bit, from what Kim had told her.
She needed the dragon out of her hair, alive and alone in a cave somewhere, until they were both grey haired.
Five more minutes, and he would get to experience her hard earned knowledge as a dimensional witch, able to manipulate the portal behind him to transport him to the cave where he had bitten her.
Then, she would run and hide.
“Princess, call off your earth dogs!” Raphael thundered, letting the beast bleed into his voice.
He paced in front of her, blocked by the grey-shirted and black-shirted males.
The boy closest to her started stuttering something that she made out as ‘ggg-gege-gen-nnn’ before he got smacked upside the back of his head by grey-shirt and told to take a deep breath and then another.
He calmed down enough to hold the enormous sword the older male put in his hands, clearly using earth strength to keep it up, instead of dropping it like a rock to the ground.
“Why don’t you stop roaring like a bear with a thorn in its paw and maybe the nice gentlemen will let your bad manners off with an apology?” Victoria proposed.
Another two glyphs were lit.
“No,” answered both Raphael and the black-shirted male at the same time.
Stubborn male elementals. She felt Elizabeth snickering in her mind at that thought.
“We cannot let you leave with the witch,” the grey-shirted male said, making his way back towards the two combatants.
He kept himself sideways, so his back wasn’t to either of the other fighting males or Victoria, only leaving the boy and his enormous sword to guard behind him.
Like the black-shirted male, he didn’t have a weapon drawn, facing the dragon with nothing but raw earth magic that pulled the stones up around him as he walked, but he did have a long, wood-handled scythe on his back.
The unusual weapon drew Victoria’s eye.
“Elizabeth, ask Victoria to describe the male with the scythe,” George said, sneaking onto Elizabeth’s connection somehow.
Victoria ignored George. He was such an arrogant asshole. Nobody had asked his opinion, but he was forcing himself into the situation.
“You can ask her yourself if you’re going to spy on her thoughts through me,” Elizabeth said.
“Bit busy here with a pissed-off dragon,” Victoria replied, rather than engage George.
She’d never talk to him again if given the choice.
“This witch is mine,” Raphael said to the other males putting themselves between him and Victoria.
&nbs
p; His dark voice rode his beast’s aggression. The power in it was like a slap against her circle.
“I am definitely not yours,” Victoria said. “I have a prior bond to honour,” she told him, baring her tiny tattoo from Elizabeth, with a simple yank of her shirt’s neckline.
He probably couldn’t see more than a blob from his distance, but his eyes narrowed with rage as he glared at her chest.
Another glyph lit up . . . so close now.
“Way to poke the bear, or dragon, Tor,” Elizabeth said with a laugh.
“Victoria, stop being childish. Look at the male with a scythe. I need to see if it’s who I think it is,” George demanded in a more serious tone.
“The witch was running away from you, honourable dragon,” the grey-shirted male stated.
Victoria looked at him to satisfy George, murmuring her spell words for the next glyph.
The black-shirted male took a step closer to Raphael while the other earth vampire talked, bringing his earth magic just that much closer to striking range.
“We would not be males of worth if we allowed you to drag a terrified witch off, without protest,” the grey-shirted male said, raising his hands slightly at his side as if to say he was helpless, unable to not intervene due to the dictates of honour.
“Victoria, cease your spell and circle yourself thrice. The male carrying a scythe is an earth general. Your dragon will meet his end soon,” George said. His tone brooked no disobedience.
Victoria lived to piss him off. She also couldn’t let her dragon die.
The magic could only transport one. She had to do it before anyone struck a fatal blow.
Raphael’s kiss had done something, reminded her how nice it felt to be treasured for who she was instead of what others wanted her to be.
She was going to repay Raphael, even if her mate may not see it that way.
Still whispering her spell, she lifted one hand, directing her water to unwind from her body and stream towards Raphael.
He may notice the cool feeling of her water against his skin, but he had bigger fish to fry at the moment.
“My gaisa will not be separated from me,” Raphael announced, looking at the earth general trying to talk some sense into him, and then quickly back to the black-shirted male, growling softly as he caught him taking another step forward.
No Witch Way Out (Maeren Series Book 2) Page 33
