White Witch (Haven Book 1)

by Lil Hamilton

  “Would his mate know his Name?”

  “It is possible, but unlikely.”

  I thought it was very likely. The uttermost sign of trust, or love, with a demon was them granting you their name, giving you power over them with the faith it would not be used. Eadon was young and in love. Such a dramatic statement would appeal to him.

  “And if he was called by the people who held her captive would he give out his name to save her? Or in his state would he willingly give his name to her, under duress, if she begged him?”

  He was silent for a long moment. Long enough for me to grip the steering wheel tightly, already knowing the answer.

  “I see your point. I’ll go check.”

  There was a backlash of air and heat as he teleported out. “Well see ya later,” I remarked dryly to thin air. Imagine him getting miffed at me going to my patch, when he ditches without a by-your-leave as well. I was impressed by his ease in teleporting, but then he did come from a good bloodline. I really could envy that skill. Lesser demons needed a portal just as I needed to spell a circle, but true blooded demons teleported easily. I had seen them pop in and out of space in the middle of a battle or to move swiftly and it never ceased to impress me.

  Fricken hobgoblin whoremongers! My mind didn’t want to think about what I just saw and what it meant. I was furious. How dare anyone bind a demon to their will? That was slavery and I loathed it. I knew what it felt like to have my will and freedom taken by another’s mere whim. Then there was Lily. Kidnaped, tortured and used against her mate. I couldn’t afford to get emotionally involved in this case. When I did I would bug out and an insane half-demon wouldn’t do anyone any good. My cousin was likely insane enough being bound, watching his mate tormented. I slammed my palm against my steering wheel. I couldn’t afford to think about it. I needed to do something about it.

  I made record time back to my place. Called demon plus black coven spelt witch problems. Witches were extremely competitive and we had the three major Covens in the country. By themselves, most of them had very diluted blood lines and were not capable of much. Linked into a coven it was a different story altogether, assuming they could merge together in thought and action.

  I pulled in the driveway and shut the engine down, just as the stereo system had kicked in. I hoped Warren was awake because he was the next lead. Obviously Lily had managed to attract a lot of attention and too many people in high places. It was disturbing that for all the stir and interests in her, we had picked up no rumors of her actions in the witch community. The vampires wanted to turn her and were all over her. Likely they had watched her for months, prior to Eadon even showing. Yet, as Matt believed they hadn’t succeeded in taking her, if the demon called was Eadon because obviously a black coven would have access to Eadon’s name and thus Lily. It could be that Warren sniffed Lily out because of Vincent’s attention. Or Eadon’s. A demon porting into the border realm caused some hefty rip tides witches could pick up on. It didn’t matter how it had all begun because in the scheme of things Lily had been screwed one way or the other, but Vincent didn’t usually let his prey just go like that. I had to leave Viv on the trail she was on, to make sure, but I strongly suspected that was a dead end. I dearly hoped I was wrong and this was a different demon, but even if it was, that too had to be dealt with and quickly.

  When I entered the house I immediately went downstairs to check on Chera. She was not in the main room and when I went into the storage room I discovered why she had volunteered to watch the slaver. Warren was secured to a chair and wrapped in duct tape. That had been Lan. He had gone a bit over board with it really. I had secured the warlock myself and shielded the room, and those still held. Although Warren was awake, he wouldn’t be able to spin a spell to escape. In his current state I didn’t think he would manage it. It looked like someone had used him as a punching bag, likely cause someone had. Chera was sitting astride him, her hand on the side of his battered face. She was staring intently into his eyes.

  I stepped in slowly as not to startle her. When I noticed Warren was bleeding a little out of his eyes and nose I thought I better interrupt before the poor man’s brain popped. Not that I’d shed a tear. “Hey, Chera,” I called softly. “See anything good in the scum filled mind?”

  Chera looked up, her eyes bright and a little crazed. “I found out where he took them all. Lily. Nemnae. All of them. I had to check. I did a scry on Vincent‘s and found no trace of our target. Not even a psychic trail. So I had to check.”

  I rocked on my heels. That was very good news. I thought I would have to check out every coven. Warren being a harvester could have been hired in as I suspected or he could be freelancing and selling people off as he went along, or to black covens locally, internationally. One coven in charge was easier to take down by far.

  “What are you doing to him?” I asked, politely, calmly.

  She smiled, a feral smile, for a girl who rarely smiled. Yet with tears rolling down her cheeks. My heart cracked seeing her suffering while rage burned in me to find someone to crush to pay for her pain; and that someone was right there. “I’m imposing on him the pain he inflicted on those he held, making him feel what they felt. I’m allowed my own punishment before we send him in.”

  At that moment I didn’t want to send him in. I wanted to shred him with my demon claws until there was not enough left to identify him by. Unfortunately, that was the sort of satisfactory denied me by the Accords. Just because he was earth bound and mortal born, a witch, I couldn’t kill him and I made fae binding oaths to that effect. Except in self-defence and he didn’t look up to attacking me at the moment. Although, I was not above getting someone else to do my dirty work for me. Maybe Dill or Viv would accidentally take care of business for me before we ever managed to report this to Inter. Inter had not done a damn thing about what he had done last time. They had handed it over to the Accords witches who had slapped him on the wrist and tossed him out of Haven for the crime of harvesting children potentials like Chera, ripe for the turn as vampires would say, and selling them to vampires.

  “I don’t mind at all. I would do worse if I could,” I said. There were many tormenting things I could do to his fragile human mind that he would never fully recover from. But when I had pulled him to me like a dog, it reminded me too much of Faerie. I wouldn’t be like them. Especially not to those who had no defence against my attack. Although with Others I had more leeway on my morals. They were far from defenceless. I wouldn’t be like Seelie fae, no, but if I were not bound by oaths I would just straight up kill him.

  “I would like to know what you got from him.”

  Chera nodded her eyes clearing of whatever was tormenting her. “Oh, of course.” She pulled her hands away and he slumped forward.

  I let out the breath I was holding. I hadn’t wanted to freak out on the girl, but nor did I want the warlock dead. Not until I was sure I got what I needed from him.

  “Let’s go get comfortable. We’ll deal with him later,” I said to get her away from him.

  Chera nodded again; looking a little deflated and shaken. “He deserved it.”

  I escorted her out with hand around her waist. “He did. And more.” I peeked at him as I closed the door. Looked like he was breathing and that was good enough for me. “I hope you left some of his higher functions intact. The paperwork will be a bitch if he is fried.”

  She smiled slightly. “I can’t do that sort of thing. I can force impressions into him and maybe pull some out, but I can’t do any damage.”

  I snorted. “Don’t underestimate yourself, darling. I hardly think he enjoyed that.”

  I grabbed a few beers and we sat down. “So.”

  Chera took a sip of the beer and her hand shook. “I’m sorry. So sorry. I’ve never done that to a person before.”

  “You’re not a white witch, to follow a code of do no harm. He did deserve some true pay back.”

  Chera smiled limply. “I may not have had a great life. And I’ve e
very reason to deny God, but I’m psychic and I see too much not to believe in God. I may not know the shape and form of it, but I believe. I believe he, she or it, doesn’t give a damn about me and I’m fine with that. To believe in God though, for me, is to believe in cosmic balance, karma and that everything happens for a reason. There is no excuse for using my ability to thrust on that man such pain, even if he was the one to cause it. It’s inexcusable.”

  Tears brimmed in her eyes and she swiped them away with an angry gesture. Girl never gives herself a break.

  I stilled while I saw the sorrow written on her face and reflected so clearly in her eyes. I’m a fickle being, but I generally fluctuate from very happy to very angry. Her history caused neither; instead it was a very cold, very calculating fury that swept into me. Seeing her pain, knowing the man that caused it was so very close to me was making me clench my fists with the strong desire to calmly get up, calmly go into the storage room and calmly rip his head off. I let the emotion go with a sigh. Deep, primal and raw emotions were not something I was safe to feel. They were triggers to the not so friendly me.

  “Hmm. I hear what you’re saying, but it’s like a foreign language,” I said and she gave a shaky laugh. “I’m fascinated with the human concept of sin, but trust me, it’s a human concept. Not universal at all. No universal morality is floating around separate from human nature. That ‘do no harm bit’ is a fast way to get killed in the circles I walk in. The fae believe in survival, might is right and if you’re alive in the end then that’s a victory. Humans fear death because it’s the great unknown and because they fear death they create pretty stories of an afterlife. Some sort of hells for the sinners, which, let’s face it, would be everyone and some sort of heaven for those few perfect people. They create absolute good and absolute evil and a system of morality to keep people on the good side, or show them to be on the evil side. They divide it and discuss it. Murder is good if it is for god, for country or in defence and bad if it is for anything else.”

  “The fae have no morality. They are alien in their thinking. You’re more human than they are,” Chera said, but I was pleased to have jarred her out of her shock.

  “Exactly. Oddly enough as a half-breed I am. And my morality is situational at best. The concept of sin, however, while intriguing is not something I think in terms off. Even demon kind doesn’t understand it. They are hedonistic with their pleasures and feel no shame for it. They have an honour code which substitutes for a moral system, but diverging from its code is on the oath breaker and has no eternal consequences.”

  I thought I had made my point. If there were no universal truths on the matter, then she could make up her own mind on what was good, just and moral. Not shade it by omnipotent beings and guilt.

  “Maybe so. In those worlds. On this plane the rules are different. You cannot say they are not, when you can see the weight of it on an aura. When you can feel the taint on the aura of a leaching witch. When there is a price to pay for that crime.”

  I sighed. We sat in silence for a bit; drinking and thinking. There was a gap I couldn’t cross when I was an outsider speculating rationally about human nature. When my understanding of right and wrong was entirely different. Living with humans had definitely broadened my prospective and shaded how I acted, but that was a far cry from how they felt on a daily basis. I often played by human rules because the Queen demanded I follow the Accords, as I was in the human arena, and the demon in me was honourable enough to feel that when in Rome do as the humans do. “I can’t argue with that, Chera. All evidence points to the fact humans experience reincarnation and a fractured existence through time. All evidence suggests a leaching witch experiences the pain they do from cheating the system. But, assuming in enough lifetimes a human, reaching some state of balance that doesn’t mean there is any end goal, any heaven or anything but an end. Even assuming there is you know most people run gray and that it is near impossible for a witch to be pure white. No one can know the rules of the game either, or escape the fact that in some situations wrong is right. I don’t think it is wrong you imposed on that weasel the pain he inflicted on his victims. I think that is true justice. In a perfect world such men should truly feel what their victims do.”

  “It may not be wrong,” Chera said, her eyes sliding away from me and looking so pained. “No, it may not be wrong, but the intent was to harm.”

  “As I said, the universal rules of what darkens an aura couldn’t care less about intent. If a human were to kill someone, accidentally, or to save themselves or to save their child… it has the same price as if they did it for monetary gain or any other selfish reason. You’re not perfect. You’re permitted to want justice and you are permitted to take that justice in your own hands. Cosmically speaking I couldn’t even tell you if that was wrong or right.”

  “He laughed at me when I walked in to check on him. Laughed.” She chugged back at least half the beer and then lit a joint. She took a few drags and then handed it off to me. I took a long drag and let it out slowly before handing it back. Like Chera, I did indulge in the few substances that tended to dull the raw edges being in the border realm caused me. Although, in my defence, I also used meditations and filter spell work. Or took a nice holiday in my patch. At the same time, being fae I liked mind altering drugs. I found them entertaining, since it was not a real illusion or change, but my own mind messing with itself. It wasn’t the same for a human though, it could mess them up and what came out of their minds was a lot more confusing.

  “I got a feeling he knew something. I just knew it. So I had to look. He had Lily, Nemnae and so many more in his warehouse. He was hired in by a coven and was sweeping the city. I thought for sure Lily was caught because Vincent had been showing an interest in her, Warren would have known that and he’s been known to steal and prize only to sell it back for a profit. But it was his partner in crime that specifically sent him to get Lily. Nemnae went to them, looking for the faelings so they said they would take her to them.”

  “How did he get Lily?”

  Chera laughed, with a bitter edge. “Not everyone missed the vampire attack on her. Some people with enough power to get through her shields discovered what she is. His partner is a powerful witch in her own right. His memories say she said a demon had mated the girl and Vincent had missed his chance to take her so it was the perfect time to take her themselves, since the coven would pay double to have a demon to use.”

  I remembered when I first had been on the take down of Warren’s operation with Inter. All those small barred cages, sized for a dog, composed of cold iron, silver, copper or whatever held back what was in it best. With emancipated witches and Unseelie breeds huddled inside. They had been spelled into a state of deaf, blind and mute. Chera had spent months there before she was sold to a vampire camp. Since that camp had not been authorized by Vincent and was within his territory he hired us to go in and kill the vamps running it. Vampires treated humans like animals that needed to be trained, but occasionally fed on. Just thinking about the whole thing and how Chera had been when we first found her made me want to go kill Warren again, but slowly.

  “They did a Furmonts Triangle to break in.”

  I raised a brow.

  “The Triangle has three witches cutting off a designated area and trapping those within it. What it essentially does is draw all energy from the area creating a void. Magic cannot be done in a void. Then he used some nastier bits, to make her stunned. The rest was brute force. Doesn’t really matter how. What matters is it is one coven holding them all. Then there is Warren’s partner… or I should say the coven’s partner, since she works with them. She was just assisting in the harvesting picks and chose from those they hold to bring to her whorehouse. I know Lily is held with the coven, cause they wanted to use her mate. Nemnae will be sent to the whorehouse but right now is at the warehouse to be spelled. Warren‘s mind was full of this half-breed witch spelling the new slaves in a new way. He was terrified of her I think. She mig
ht still be there. But, Ray, I don’t think we can get any more details from him, awake or not.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s got spell restraints on him. I guess to protect who he is working with. I go in on a different level so I got more than most would. Images and snags of conversations. And maybe I can try again. But when I got too close to some things it cause him pain and I knew if I pushed he would have been fried.”

  “Hmm. There are ways around such spells. But, unfortunately, they take a while. Not to be rushed without causing brain damage. But an option. We go with what we have.”

  I grabbed us some more beer and slouched in my chair. “Okay. So of the three big registered Covens we can take the Whites and Greys off the list. It has to be a black coven. The Blacks are always likely suspects. Because that’s how they roll.”

  “The Blacks don’t do obvious things like kidnap witches. Why bother? They claim to do blood magic, either of the body or a donor, but everyone knows they are leaches. Because leaching doesn’t leave bodies, or if they drain someone dry, it doesn’t leave marks on the bodies that raise alarms. They don’t kidnap witches. They kill them and they get away with it. Unless she rubbed them the wrong way or she had some sort of information on them, then they would not care. I get no sense that she pissed off the wrong witch. I get the sense she did everything she could not to attract the notice of the larger Covens.”

  “Very true. Which does bring us to motive. Since it is extremely likely Lily’s demon lover is now on the rampage. They are calling him. It could be she was specifically targeted to get access to a demon. Honestly, I think he was a bonus. They stirred up some trouble in the Gutters and are using that tool to knock down the competition.”

  She let out a breath. “Inter call you in?”