by Lia Davis
Fighting for Them
Witches of Rose Lake
Lia Davis
After Glows Publishing
Fighting for Them
© Copyright 2018 Lia Davis
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Published by After Glows Publishing
PO Box 224
Middleburg, FL 32050
AfterGlowsPublishing.com
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Cover by Covered Creatively
Formatting by Glowing Moon Designs
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All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
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AfterGlowsPublishing.com
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Marked by Darkness
Dark Scales Division
About the Author
Note from the Publisher
Fighting For Them
I’m not running anymore.
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I’ve spent half my life trying to escape a father who wants me dead, and Salrus drew his last card when he took two of my five loves from me. Zane, Wyatt, Trevor, and I will stop at nothing to get Dimitri and Wade back. But we have issues other than my demonic father to deal with.
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The Council’s army is growing and they are using ancient relics to make them more powerful and dangerous than the half-breeds they’re hunting down.
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Half-breeds like me.
Chapter 1
I will find you. Then I will make your death slow and painful.
A snarl that would make my wolf-shifter boyfriend, Zane, proud ripped from my throat. I stared into the crystal bowl of water I used to search for my two loves my demonic father stole from me.
My father. Ha. I knew him as the monster who marked me for death at the age of ten. Although I hadn’t a clue why he marked me at the time. He popped into my room, placed his claim on me, then left. No words. I was terrified and confused.
What I didn’t know at the time was that Salrus had also marked my guys and demanded them to search for me and kill me.
While the marks were the same in appearance, the intent was difference. Mine was some kind of beacon for the demon. The one he placed on my guys was to call in a favor. To kill me.
Things didn’t work out like the demon planned.
Salrus had never been a parental unit in my life. We shared DNA, but the only thing he provided was heartache, my own demonic side, and the need to live on the run.
I wasn’t running anymore.
Until recently, I pushed my dark magic to the back of my mind and soul, refusing to use it. I focused on my white powers and small spells. The last two years I spent medicated in Happy Rose Mental Hospital, hiding from my growing powers and my father.
Since meeting Zane, Dimitri, Wade, Wyatt, and Trevor, I’d learned to embrace it. Little by little, I used it for my purpose and mixed it with my witchy side. I would need to call all my magic and use it to kill Salrus.
Before he got me first.
The fear and anger battling inside me ate away at my soul. So did the mounting frustration. I was jumpy, moody, and wanted to know where the hell Dimitri and Wade were.
I was so desperate and out of options, I paced the ritual room on the third floor of Dimitri’s house and talked to the ghosts who hung out there.
The house was more like a miniature mansion. It was three stories with two wings—one on the north side of the house and the other on the south side.
The ritual room was the whole north wing of the third floor. I imagined the large, open space filled with thirteen witches at a time for rituals of all types. The walls on either side were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Along the back wall, across from the door was a set of French doors that opened to a balcony.
The center of the room, surrounded by a circled burned into the hardwood, was the ritual workstation. It was about six feet long and four feet wide and reminded me of a kitchen island with wheels—convenient for moving around the room.
On the other side of the third floor—the south wing—was an empty space Dimitri used to store his deceased parents’ belongings.
My heart ached. I missed D and Wade.
Tearing my gaze from the scrying bowl, I stared at the ghosts hovering along the back wall. Their faded, see-through forms watched me. There was about a dozen of them. Each one met a slightly different death. A few had burns on them. Some had open wounds. Others had no physical signs of how they died.
Wade said they were members of the coven. That meant they all died there at the coven. I never knew why they were there, watching me. They never spoke. At least not to me.
Wade, my ghostly love, could get them to talk. Maybe they trusted him. After all, I was half demon. I was also half hedge witch. Communicating with the dead was one of my specialties.
Yet I couldn’t get them to talk to me.
Wade had died at the age of seventeen, the guys’ graduation day. Salrus made him an example to the others as a motivation to track me down to do the demon’s bidding. I saw the accident, Salrus slamming Wade’s head into the window of the SUV they were in. The scene was burned into my brain. Not because I was there to witness it. The guys were about ten years older than me. No, I saw it in a vision when I first touched Wade.
That was another one of my witch powers when dealing with the dead. The first time I touch them, I see how they died.
Wade had found me hiding in a mental hospital, medicating to numb my powers and the ability for Salrus to find me. After the vision of his death popped in my head, I couldn’t ignore his pleas for me to follow him to Rose Lake Coven, where I first met Zane and Dimitri.
Dimitri. Wade.
A sigh slipped from my lips as a tear rolled down my cheek. I would get them back.
Glancing back into the scrying bowl, I tried one more time to see where my guys were. I placed the fingers of my right hand on the rim of the glass bowl, then waved my other hand over the calm water. “Show me Dimitri.”
“If you were a demon, where would you hide your prisoners?” I spoke the words out loud to no one in particular. Deep down I hoped the Universe would give me some kind of sign.
Several minutes went by and nothing. Frustration mounted within my soul. The urge to throw the bowl across the room was too strong. Instead, I picked it up, held it tight in both hands, and turned to the sink behind me. When I reached the small vanity a couple of feet right of the door, the water rippled with energy. Then Salrus’s face appeared. He winked and gave a shit-eating, cocky grin as if he could see me.
His dark eyes turned crimson and he snarled. Then his voice was in my head. “You can have them back, if you can find them.”
Fury fired to life in my blood. I slammed the bowl into the sink. It broke in half. The bastard was taunting me.
It wasn’t like I was sitting around moping. Well, I was at the moment, but I had searched in a few obvious places.
The Underworld was my first thought. But I checked the dark, aphotic copy of the natural world. None of the demons there had seen Salrus since he’d been summoned by the council. That was ten years ago.
Interesting.
The mansion where the council held their meeting and gatherings was my second guess. Not really sure why other than a feeling I had. I learned a long time ago to listen to my instincts. Problem was, I didn’t know where that was. The house was spelled to change locations every couple of years or so. Mom told me when she was still alive it followed a pattern. She tried to explain it to me, but I never understood the logic of it.
I was a child then, twelve, I think. However, she wrote everything down in her magical journal. I’d lost the journal the night Salrus killed her and left the huge, ugly scar that ran from the base of my neck, just above the collarbone, down my arm to the wrist. Another growl escaped me as I cleaned the glass out of the sink.
Wade found the journal. However, there were a number of pages that were blank. And there was no mention of the council’s mansion. Had the council erased it?
I knew the house was moved to keep people from finding it. The council was a paranoid bunch.
I glanced up at the spirits again. They never spoke, just stared at me, watching. Crazy creepers. “Why won’t you talk to me?”
“Reese, yelling at the ghosts isn’t going to help.” Trevor’s voice was soft and soothing. It glided over me, calming. He stepped closer and wrapped his arms around me from behind.
I sank into him, loving the comfort and calm he provided me. His clean, earthy scent enveloped me. “I want them home. I want Salrus dead. I want to make the council pay for everything.”
“So do I.” He kissed my neck then my shoulder. “Zane is home and I think he has news.”
I whirled around and framed his face in my hands. His blue eyes lit up at my smile. Worry mixed with a spark of hope flowed from him, touching my awareness. Our marks we got from Salrus bound us together. I strengthened that bond when I claimed his demon mark as my own.
When I met Trevor, he suffered from nightmares that made it impossible for him to relax and sleep from more than a few hours at a time. When I cut off Salrus’s connection to him by claiming Trevor as mine, the nightmares lessened.
Trevor was more relaxed and playful.
I rose up on my toes and kissed him. He tightened his arms around me and thrust his tongue inside, twining it around mine. Pinpricks of desire raced over my skin and in my blood.
Breaking the kiss, I rested my head on his chest. All the while, wanting to race downstairs to my alpha wolf.
Normally, I’d sense Zane, but he shut off his emotions from me by blocking the mating link. It was something only an Alpha could do. Since he was born to be the Alpha of his pack, he possessed the power that came with the job.
Our anger was too intense flowing through the mating bond. I didn’t like to be shut off from him, but I understood why.
“Go. Zane is waiting for us.” Trevor kissed my forehead and released me.
With a smile, I darted out of the room and raced from the third floor to the first. The rumble of male voices coming from the kitchen told me where my guys were.
When I entered the kitchen, Zane and I locked gazes for a moment. His green eyes lit up and his lips lifted in a brilliant smile. I flew into his arms, hugging him tight. He’d been gone for two days, but it felt like a lifetime. He lifted me off the ground and I wrapped my legs around him. “Please tell me you know where they are.”
His arm circled me and tightened the embrace like he was trying to squeeze the air out from between us. The mating link opened and I was flooded with his emotions: Love, lust, anger, and hope.
I buried my nose into his neck and inhaled. While I had Wyatt and Trevor with me the past two days and I loved every moment with them, I missed Zane. My Alpha wolf.
“I found the council’s mansion.” He held me tight against him.
I perked up. “Where? How?”
He lowered me to my feet right before he sat on one of the chairs at the kitchen table, then opened his arms. I instantly climbed into his lap. The need to be near him, touching him, was too strong. Zane had once told me it’d be that way between us as a bonded pair.
Wow, losing D and Wade had made me clingy. I really needed to get a grip.
Zane rubbed circles on my back as he spoke. “The traveling spell in the mansion follows the moon cycle. The location varies depending on the season. The council changes it every few years so it’s never in the same place.”
“That’s why it seemed so random and never made sense to me. Mom tried to explain it to me, but I never paid too much attention to it. Nor did I know why she bothered to explain it to me. I hated the council. Still do.” I thought about it, bringing in all the information I’d learned over the last few months. Deep down I knew she was warning me, preparing me for when I’d have to face Salrus and the council.
Trevor entered the kitchen and stood next to Wyatt. “How did you find it?”
Zane’s green eyes flashed brighter and the corner of his lips twitched. “I was the heir of the Cater Moon Pack. It was my job to know each of the council members and where they lived. It didn’t take me long to find one that was going to the mansion.”
“So, you followed him?” I asked.
After a slow nod, Zane kissed my forehead. “I did. But the odd thing was he drove to an empty field with a rundown barn outside of town. By the time I got there he was gone, but his car was parked inside the building.”
I frowned. Why would he drive out to an old barn and then vanish? “Do you think he teleported? Or maybe there was a portal around.”
Zane shook his head. From behind me, Wyatt grunted and pulled out a chair, the legs scraping against the floor. Trevor sat across from him.
“There was no portal. Not that I could see, anyway.” Zane’s body tensed under me. “I went back to his home and searched for the location.”
I was growing impatient. He could have saved me the details, but I guessed he had a reason for telling them to me. Before I could speak, he placed a finger over my lips. “I found it. Apparently, the mansion was just moved. He left the email open on his computer.”
My wolf was skilled in breaking and entering, and computer hacking. There was so much I didn’t know about him. However, a council member wouldn’t just leave his email account open. “You’re not concerned about the email conveniently being open for you to nose around?”
“Of course, I am. He wants us to find it.”
Dread settled deep in my soul. “So, where is it?”
Zane smiled and kissed my nose. “It’s in the middle of the south Pacific Ocean.”
Wyatt made a growling sound from his throat. “How that hell are we supposed to get there?”
“We teleport.” Zane tapped me on my hip.
I sat up, knowing right where Zane’s thoughts were. Shaking my head, I glanced at Wyatt then Trevor. They were looking at me like I was the answer to some great mystery. “I can’t do it. I travel from this world to the Inbetween and the Underworld. I don’t teleport.”
“You should be able to. You’re half demon.” Wyatt’s reminder of my heritage caused me to whirl around and snarl at him. He raised one brow, making him hot as hell.
Glancing at the other two guys, I dropped my shoulders. “I’ve never done it before. I’m not sure how to do it. Not all demons can.”
The thought never crossed my mind to try. Some witches, if they were powerful enough, could also teleport by using the Inbetween. Was that the same thing?
Damn, I wished Dimitri and Wade were here. One or both of them would know. Sadness fell over me and I slouched against Zane.
He enveloped me in his large a
rms and hugged me close. “We’ll get them back.”
Wyatt and Trevor reached for me, most likely sensing my mood through the demon mark that bound us together. The one my father marked them with and I claimed as mine.
Taking a deep breath, I waved them off and repeated Zane’s words. “We’ll get them back. And I’m going to learn to teleport.”
Chapter 2
An hour later, we stood in the center of the coven where a lot of the community rituals and gatherings were held. I imagined it used to be a beautiful courtyard and playground for the kids. Now it was a pile of broken swing sets and monkey bars. The small crape myrtle trees—I assumed that was what they were at one time—had been uprooted and scattered about. The paver stones smashed and ripped out of place.
The only thing left was the fountain in the middle.
It broke my heart that the coven still lay in ruins. Then again, there hadn’t been anyone to fix it. All the residents were either dead or hiding from the demon. Some of the deceased hung out in the ritual room of D’s house.
Our house.
It was all of ours—Zane’s, Wyatt’s, Trever’s, Dimitri’s, and my house.
Together, after Salrus was dead, we would fix it up. A feeling deep down drew me to the coven like it I was meant to be here. Rebuild and convert it into a sanctuary for all half-breeds to come to live without fear of harm. It’d be my first stand against the council and whatever evil plan they plotted. Like a “Fuck you, we will survive whatever you throw at us” kind of thing.
