A Witch Among Warlocks: The Complete Series Box Set

by Lidiya Foxglove

  “I could try to compel them,” Montague said. “But everyone’s watching. It would be too easy to break my spell.”

  “Wait!” Daisy came running across the grass from the guest housing. “Piers, wait!” She skidded to a halt like an overexcited cat. “Piers—don’t do this. Don’t hurt him.” She couldn’t help looking at Alec and nearly doing a double take. I mean, I could not blame her. If Alec was hot on a normal day, shirtless, tortured, and in chains? Somebody hose me down.

  Piers, meanwhile? Well, he noticed. He definitely noticed that his wife-to-be, the one he supposedly once said he was going to ‘tame’, was looking at Alec and her mouth was sliding open. So far Piers seemed like he’d been nothing but awkward and boring with Daisy, and he looked pissed.

  “So, you’re saving me, huh?” Alec asked him sarcastically.

  Piers started speaking in ominous Latin (well, most Latin was actually pretty ominous to my ears), practically standing on his tiptoes as he lifted his wand. Professor Pacetti started joining in, while Professor Stamos was keeping a close eye on us.

  When the spell hit Alec, he screamed and collapsed to his knees. With his hands bound, he lost his balance more easily, and it was a hard fall. His red eyes glowed.

  “Please!” I cried. “Please!”

  But it was useless. Piers was getting his revenge for not being able to purify me, plus, I guess, his revenge for Alec being hotter than him.

  Alec hunched forward, in obvious agony. His skin broke into a sweat. He retched just like Lucas, though I guess there wasn’t much in him. I still caught my breath in horror, especially as dark smoke started wafting off him like it had off Lucas.

  Daisy pushed her way through the boys toward us, her eyes puffy. “I’m so sorry, Charlotte.”

  “Fight it, Alec!” Montague shouted. “You can fight it!”

  Piers chanted more loudly, trying to drown Montague’s voice out.

  “It’s better not to fight it.” I jumped as Lucas suddenly loomed behind me, a calm smile on his face. “The purification spell helped me a lot. I used to be angry. I’m not angry anymore.”

  “Yeah, now ya just creepy,” Daisy said under her breath.

  “You are not wrong,” I said. “Anyway, Alec’s not angry. Literally the only thing about Alec that isn’t easygoing is that he needs to put out.”

  “And looking at him, nothing wrong with that,” Daisy said.

  Alec screamed again, and this time it sounded like this low, primal roar like I had never heard from him before, and believe me, I’d heard a fair amount of interesting noises coming out of him by now. This was different. This sounded they were killing him.

  I made one last effort to push forward to get to him. Professor Stamos, of course, was ready with a spell that froze me in my tracks with one sharp flash of light that burned my skin, like my entire body had grabbed a hot potato. I’d managed to get closer, but the pain made me afraid to try anything more.

  “Come into the light of Etherium!” Piers said. “Any part of you that is untouched by the realms of virtue, let it be banished…”

  “Alec…!” I could see it happening. Half of his blood, half of his personality—gone. Stamped out.

  And it was the sexy half.

  But no matter how much I personally enjoyed it, it was just who he was. The person we had all known. He would never be the same again. I couldn’t believe I had to watch as they destroyed something that had never been broken.

  “Alec! No—please, stop! Stop! He’s a good person, just the way he is!”

  The professors were totally ignoring me. This was a holy mission for them.

  Alec thrashed. He wasn’t screaming now, but roaring like a dragon. The chains that cuffed his hands back snapped. “I’m sorry, Char,” Alec gasped.

  “No!”

  Alec broke away from the spell, turning his back to us, and the dark smoke that had been wafting off of him sort of…sucked back into him.

  Professor Stamos and Professor Gruben tried to rush up the stairs to help Piers and Pacetti contain him, although they were both ancient, so they were like, holding onto the handrails and moving carefully. Alec seemed to be getting bigger and all of a sudden wings sprouted from his back, horns from his head, and a tail from his…tailbone. Between the tail and his larger body, his pants were splitting and threatening to come off his body entirely. His skin was glowing from within, but with some reddish light. He whirled on Piers, his eyes glowing bright red, and roared at him again.

  “Alec unlocked Omega-Chou mode IRL,” I breathed.

  Piers took a step back and almost crashed into shaky-kneed Professor Gruben as Alec now turned to Professor Pacetti. Pacetti was chanting some new spell, and Alec grabbed his wand and broke it in half, then grabbed Pacetti by the lapels and shoved him toward the wall of the church.

  “You think I need a wand to fight a demon? Regna terrae, cantata Deo—” Professor New Jersey was in full force as he chanted back at him, managing to make his Latin spell sound like he was arguing with a cab driver.

  Alec backed off, spread his wings, and took flight, vanishing almost as soon as he did.

  The absence of Alec’s thrashing and roaring left a sudden hush in its wake.

  “That was not what I expected to happen,” Montague said, sounding stunned.

  “I am so sorry,” Daisy said. “Suddenly Piers was banging on the door, demanding I cast a spell to find this Wyrd tree. If I didn’t do it he was going to lock me in the room. He seemed so frantic. I freaked out. I didn’t know he was going to take your wand and make Alec the star of the sex demon awakening show for all the world to see although—damn, I really thought his pants were just going to full on rip off his body…”

  “Someone expected this, I think,” Harris said, locking eyes with his cousin. He walked up the steps, deftly dodging the spot where Alec had thrown up on the steps. Piers definitely looked calm for what had just happened.

  “Alec Lyrman rejected the purification,” Piers said. “This only proves our methods. His inner nature was corrupt and it seems we were not able to save him. He is lost to Sinistral now.”

  “You drove him to it,” Harris said. “Alec was about the most decent person I know!”

  “He made his choice, and he chose darkness,” Professor Pacetti said. “If he comes back I’d be happy to go a second around and obliterate him.”

  A lot of the students were murmuring nervously about this turn of events.

  “No more questions!” Piers said, throwing up his hands.

  “Hey—cousin,” Harris said. “When you’re considering what to tell the council, don’t forget to lie. Tell them Alec was always trouble, that the purification spell failed because he was the one who was tainted. Don’t mention that you forced him into a spell that wasn’t tested because you wanted to show off. Cover your own ass.”

  “Your friend,” Piers said, “was a demon. I think you just don’t want to face it.” He stormed off, cape fluttering.

  I looked at Montague. “Where did Alec go?”

  “The only place he can go, now,” Montague said. “Sinistral.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Alec

  Where am I?

  Who am I?

  I tore away from the world I knew and landed in a world that was strange and shadowed. My wings were shaky and I hit the ground so hard that I felt bruised and broken even though my body seemed even bigger and stronger than before. I was in a forest, and glowing eyes peered out from the trees.

  I heard a scream.

  “Melanie!”

  My familiar was in her human form, and some kind of slithering dragon-y looking creature was snapping its jaws at her. I clambered to my feet, picked a huge fallen branch off the forest floor, and slammed it into the dragon’s head. Hard headed as it was, the branch cracked, but it seemed stunned and scared, and hauled ass back into the woods.

  Melanie, meanwhile, had collapsed to the ground. Her skin had turned white as a sheet.

 
“Melanie?” I scooped her up in my arms.

  “Alec…” She smiled weakly. “You’ve certainly grown up nice and strong. I helped you grow up. Charlotte is waiting for you. I’m not in any pain, so don’t be sad, okay?”

  “What are you talking about? Are you hurt?”

  Melanie brushed her hand across my cheek as her body seemed to get lighter and lighter in my arms. She started fading away. Her body just…vanished.

  “Melanie! Melanie! Where are you?” I screamed, knowing it was futile. Shouldn’t she have just turned Sinistral?

  I looked at my arms, still marked with tattoos, but they were stretched a little thinner across my larger arms.

  Demons didn’t have familiars. I must have…lost what was human, instead of what was dark.

  If that was true…

  It must be true. Melanie was the proof.

  All the discipline and hard work I had put into embracing my warlock side and making my dad proud—gone. The companion who had seen me through my childhood and teenage years, the little spider on my shoulder who was shy and wise, but could also be playful and who once said, “Alec, let me…,” as she brushed a frail human hand over my shoulder, encouraging me to relieve my tensions with her…

  Melanie had never been my lover, despite the fact that we had sex. But I did love her. Every wizard loved their familiar; it was the most private and intimate relationship we would have, shared with no one else.

  Sinistral was my home now, and this was what I was.

  But I didn’t really have a home. I had no place to rest my head.

  I heard crows screeching ominously from the trees. The rustling and movement of disconcertingly large creatures in the dark brush. As my eyes adjusted, I saw that I was watched by scaled and furred creatures.

  A nymph melted from the trees, appearing to me naked, her hair to her knees. “Are you lost?” The sound she made was like a purr as she came to me boldly and trailed her fingertips over my bare chest, making me shiver with need. Her hand dropped to my pants, ripping off the remains of the half-shredded fabric, and wrapped around my cock. It had grown with the rest of me and I thought, this is too much for Charlotte now.

  In the Fixed Plane, I would still take my human form, but I would no longer be able to use my warlock powers in the Fixed Plane. The power of a demon became very limited in the human world.

  “No,” I said, trying to shove the nymph away. “I already have a girl.”

  Her laugh was like a little whispering hiss. “I see no girl here,” she said, her hand gripping me even tighter than before. She opened her mouth wide, revealing two rows of razor sharp teeth.

  “Oh fuck!” I tried to shove her back again, and her hand sprouted claws that pricked into my tender skin. I had no choice but to fight her, scraping her arm with my own claws and using the full force of my strength to throw her off. She screeched, jumping onto me and biting my shoulder, tearing out a chunk of flesh.

  I slammed my shoulder into the nearest tree, and then ran back to the clearing where I had landed, spreading my wings and taking shaky flight just to get away from her. My heart was pounding.

  The crows took off from the tree, following me, landing on me to peck at my skin. I dodged, shaking them off, grabbing a few off my head and throwing them, but lost control of my wings, crashing through the trees.

  I lay there, panting. I tried to get back to the Fixed Plane. I didn’t know how to leave this place.

  “Char! Charlotte!” I called her name. She was my anchor. “How do I get out of here…”

  I saw the crows whirling back down toward me.

  Before they could land, a blast of fire scorched them right out of the sky. A woman appeared like she came out of nowhere. For a second, I saw the long brown hair, slightly windswept, and the curve of familiar eyebrows and the particular tilt of a nose, and I thought Charlotte was there, wearing a black dress with long sleeves and a tulle skirt.

  “You stopped pretending,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You stopped pretending to be a nice little college boy,” she said. “I told you this is what you were meant to be. The Ethereals were just holding you back.”

  “You’re…Charlotte’s mom, aren’t you?”

  She nodded and crouched near me. I started to try to move into a more modest position, and she smiled. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “You’re an incubus. Your assets are your magic. You might as well use it.” She smoothed her skirts, looking briefly pensive. “Alec, is it…?”

  “Alec,” I confirmed.

  She made me nervous, Charlotte’s mom. What did it do to a witch to be in Sinistral for so long? I saw sadness in her eyes.

  “She was a baby once, in my arms…newborn. Evan put on music, right away, trying to make a musician out of her. And I marked her with a binding to keep her magic safe. We all try to make our children be what we wish them to be, but you become what you truly are when you are free of us…”

  “What about you?” I asked. “Is that why you’re here? Are you what you truly are?”

  “The Ethereals are like parents who never let you go,” she said. “They tell you what to do until they day you die. I don’t want Charlotte to be a part of that world. Alec…please. Tell her to come here and be with us. Montague and Firian could be here too. I am so proud of her already. I have watched her from afar, and knowing that she has gone for what she wants and ignored the voices that try to oppress her… She would be a wonderful Sinistral witch and no one will ever try to control her again.”

  “So…what about her dad?” I was chilled by the distance in her voice, the yearning in her eyes.

  A little chill passed over her. “I can’t. He’s happier without me.”

  “He wouldn’t be happy without her,” I said. “Charlotte loves her dad. I wish I was as close to my dad. And he still loves you, too, from everything I’ve heard.”

  “He doesn’t. He couldn’t.”

  “Sure he could.”

  She shook her head quickly, drawing back. I was scaring her in some way.

  “What about Wyrd?” I asked. “You were trying to get there, right? With Samuel and Ignatius?”

  She looked troubled. “The faeries are impossible,” she said. “They are too cold. They have no passion. They don’t understand humanity—or demons, either. This is the only place where you can be completely free…”

  Alec…

  I felt Charlotte, heard her call my name from some place that had been distant, and suddenly became close enough to touch. My body caught fire at the sound of her voice, and I felt power uncoiling from inside me, reaching out to make her mine. I would be stronger with every taste of her.

  Sinistral melted away, replaced by the sight of Charlotte in her bed. She opened her eyes slowly. “Alec…”

  She was dreaming, but more than dreaming, pushing off the covers to reveal the cotton shirt and underwear clinging to her fertile curves as her eyed widened with a mixture of anticipation and fear at the sight of me.

  I wondered if some of her mother’s words were right, after all.

  This is what you were meant to be.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Charlotte

  He came to me when I slept.

  Like I thought he would.

  Like I feared he would.

  Like I knew he would.

  There was still some of Alec in his eyes, but also a lot of…something that was not Alec. He stood over my bed, muscular and huge, with dark bat wings spread behind him, his black hair tousled by the newly sprouted horns on his head, and then there was the lashing length of his tail. Plus, he was naked, and he looked like he was meant to be naked. Like, I could hardly imagine dressing him in anything. The tattoos seemed like adornment enough. His cock was the size of a small arm, erect and pulsing.

  His hands were spread, his chest rising and falling with quickened breath. “I need you, Charlotte. I have so much to tell you and I can’t think of a single word.”

 
He stepped closer to me and I felt legitimately a little terrified. I mean, it was Alec. But also, this was like—a legit demon. I shied back a little.

  “Don’t be afraid.”

  “I’m—I’m not sure if I can—uh…”

  “You can and you will. If I can’t have you, I will lose myself to Sinistral. I can’t undo this.”

  He pulled me up off my bed and took me onto his lap, holding me tenderly, folding his wings around me. His claws gripped the neck of my t-shirt and tore it off, and then he held my breast, pinching it as he kissed me from shoulder to ear all the way to my eyes.

  “You’re mine,” he said. “I have to have you now.”

  He took control of my body. He gripped my breasts as his powerful thighs moved beneath mine and shoved them open so he could enter me. I screamed as his demon cock drove into me, but this was still a dream.

  There was just enough dream, just enough to bridge reality, and it felt like my entire body was nothing but a place for him to enter. It seemed like I could feel him just a little deeper inside me than any man could go. He lifted my breasts, contorting me back across his arm so he could suckle them as he fucked me. Somehow it seemed like it was his dream and it worked.

  In fact, even as I considered this, I realized the room we were in was full of large mirrors with gilded frames, as if we were a Renaissance painting. I could see myself in the glow and shadow, my spine curved back, my legs spread wide as his cock split me open, my hair spilling across my shoulders, and his body—huge and dark, his wings folded over me. His tail slithered inside my ass like it belonged there, his clawed hand rubbing between my legs, and I was getting fucked so silly I think I drooled a little.

  My first orgasm didn’t even make him pause. He seemed to release some extra scent that kept me aroused, and now he took my small hands in his and lifted them into the air, guiding them behind me to tug on his hair, which I did—hard.

  He grunted like a beast as he switched position—oh god—his cock now sliding into my ass while his tail wormed its way into me.

  “It’s a dream, Charlotte,” he said. “It’s all a dream. So don’t ask me to clean you up.”