Every Witch Demon but Mine (Maeren Series Book 1)

by Mercedes Jade

  She could just imagine her weapons were blinged out. Getting stabby with style.

  That put a swagger in her step, although there was no one around to appreciate her attitude.

  The peaceful streets of their border town, on the edge of the realms, were deserted at this time of night. All of the good humans were sleeping in their beds or watching television, unaware of the monsters like Elizabeth, who roamed outside.

  She was free to hunt.

  Lightning made tracking the bloodsucker easier. She could ping her magic against all of the minds in the vicinity to search for the monster’s unique signal.

  The electrical signals of everyone else’s thoughts were easily picked up and interpreted by her magic, which acted as a radar in this case.

  Her use of it should be undetectable to anyone without rare lightning.

  She didn’t know this for sure. They had never run into anyone else with her kind of magic.

  Mom believed Elizabeth was the only elemental in the realms who could use lightning independent of fire.

  Yes, her mother had made a ‘Chosen One’ reference.

  Elizabeth had rolled her eyes and stuffed another piece of chocolate in her mouth at the reference. She and Jill knew better than to dispute anything related to Buffy in front of their mother, who was their resident expert on that old television series.

  Elizabeth’s lightning was as quirky and unique as Buffy, so her mother kind of had a point.

  The ‘ping radar’ was one of Elizabeth’s singular uses of her magic. She could make lightning bolts as flashy as the best of the royals, but she found the mind was a much better target for her unique gift.

  The power of her imagination was where her magic really excelled.

  She wielded it carefully. Being unique meant she had no one else with similar magic to train her. Everything she knew had been intuition and educated guesswork based on her mother’s knowledge of magic.

  Mom had air, like Elizabeth, but her mother’s real strength was earth. A disparate power from Elizabeth’s lightning. Mom liked things solid, real. Elizabeth specialized in illusions.

  It had been a heck of a learning curve. The growing pains, however, had been worth the gain. Elizabeth had honed her power for this one task: slaying monsters.

  Like this demon.

  She had recognized what she was tracking as soon as her magic wrapped around the bloodsucker’s consciousness.

  Crap. It wasn’t the first time she had caught this particular demon on the wrong side of the portal. The electric signature of his thoughts was familiar to her.

  Demons were worse than the less powerful vampires from which they had started out as in life.

  A demon got his extra magic by fully draining a witch and stealing everything in her chi—so the witch was left powerless in turn.

  The worst demons preyed on youth as much as blood. If a demon drained a young witchling to turn, then he would always seek children to match the intense potential of that first witch’s blood. The demons were hooked and prone to kill again.

  The boogieman kind of vampire that had starred in the blood-drenched nightmares of their family.

  Jill still screamed on the bad nights.

  It was in the past.

  That nightmare would not be repeated tonight.

  Elizabeth ducked into a dark alley to regroup her thoughts. Peeking around the corner, she watched as the demon crossed the street.

  His image reflected from the dark storefront windows. He was surprisingly short. Usually, the biggest, toughest soldiers were chosen for their brawn to convert to powerful demons in the king’s army.

  Accidents must happen.

  This rogue was more like the dirty pervert she imagined would be the type to check out porn mags in the convenience store, even if some kids were browsing nearby in the candy aisle.

  He was balding, had a bit of a beer belly, and was wearing a long, leather trench despite the heat.

  Who knew what he was hiding underneath the trench, but she hoped not to find out.

  Demons usually were more sunshine adverse than vampires because their blood overflowed with stolen magic. May as well throw gasoline on one and light a match if a demon came over here at noon.

  This one was lucky today had been cloudy. The sun had also dropped below the horizon while she stalked him, making it safe for him to openly hunt his prey.

  She wished she could take the chance and just stake him before he took a victim, but they were still on the main street. Humans had cameras everywhere. Mom would pitch a fit if she so much as gave the demon a sliver while being recorded.

  Continuing to follow him was her only reasonable choice.

  Justice burned under her skin. Hot blood full of her recently charged lightning begged her to fry this repeat offender, instead of merely staking him back to the hell realm he had sprung from.

  The demon clearly hadn’t gotten her point the first time.

  “Knock, knock. Where’s the wicked witch of the west?”

  Jill’s sudden intrusion into her mind came at an unwelcome moment.

  Her younger sister didn’t possess telepathy, but Elizabeth’s lightning allowed her to connect to the thoughts of their family, making it a nonissue.

  All Jill had to do was send her thoughts out, as she had learned to do when they were just toddlers.

  With Jill’s timing, Elizabeth could swear sometimes that her sister had lightning telepathy, too.

  How else did she know when Elizabeth was about to do very bad things?

  Jill was like her conscience but worse.

  Elizabeth had to look at this ‘conscience’ in her innocent, blue eyes every morning while they ate breakfast together.

  What Elizabeth kept from her sister wouldn’t be allowed to ruin their cereal routine.

  She stopped her mind from responding yet, firming up her mental barrier.

  Jill was the nice sister. Elizabeth knew it, without a doubt, because she could read everything her sister thought unless she actively blocked Jill, like right now.

  Jill’s thoughts were all Glinda ‘the good witch,’ hence their analogies.

  Jill didn’t stab vampires or electrocute them. She was the ultimate do-gooder as a selfless paediatric nurse in the human realm.

  Heck, Jill would probably patch up wounded vampires if they wound up in her ER.

  A pink Hello Kitty bandage on a hairy demon chest would be hilarious.

  Focus. Elizabeth had to hurry. The demon was getting away from her while she dawdled in her distraction over Jill.

  Her sister would wait.

  The demon was making his way out of the downtown area and moving into the residential. He was headed towards the biggest park in town.

  It made her stomach twist, knowing what kind of prey he hungered to taste.

  The last time she dusted him had been at dusk, in a smaller school playground. He had been risking a serious sunburn to trap a couple of human kids in the tube slide.

  She scared the bejeezus out of the kids when she’d yanked the screaming demon by his boots down the slide and quickly staked him, getting dust all over herself in the enclosed, tight quarters.

  The kids had yelled out ‘Monster!’ and scrambled down a pole to escape when they’d gotten a look at her dark visage.

  They weren’t wrong.

  She was a witch. Her magic could kill.

  “Knock, knock. Where is the wicked witch of the west?”

  Jill was sending out the same thought over and over in hopes that she’d crossed back over from Maeren. Jill knew her schedule.

  If Elizabeth didn’t answer her, Jill was going to start singing silly songs to get her attention. It always escalated into something too cute to resist.

  She needed to concentrate on the task at hand, not her sister’s games.

  “I’ll stick my broomstick where the sun doesn’t shine, Glinda,” she told Jill, using her lightning to connect their minds.

  “Ha, ha. I think it’s po
litically correct to refer to the hell-spawn as sun impaired and the stake goes into the chest. Trust me, I remember that much from my morning anatomy classes.”

  Elizabeth could read the relief in Jill’s mind, despite her humour.

  Jill never stopped worrying. She was going to give herself an ulcer.

  Reluctantly, Elizabeth sent her sister an image of the demon she was tracking. Jill would worry more if she didn’t tell her what she was up to right now.

  “What do you think, Glinda? Isn’t he the same demon from last week? The one you reported hanging around the school playground? This time he’s at a park. Thankfully, there are no children, but there may be some stupid teens out here, necking.”

  “Too far away to say if it’s the same demon.”

  Jill’s thoughts seemed distracted as she replied.

  Elizabeth slipped further into Jill’s mind to connect with the neurons controlling her vision. It let her see what her sister did.

  Jill was recording a child’s vitals before the doctor came in.

  Her younger sister took her job as seriously as Elizabeth did her hunts. Their family’s ability to keep living in the human realm depended heavily on Jill’s regular employment. She was their money maker.

  “Trust me, Glinda, this demon has to be the same one.”

  Mental signatures were the same as fingerprints for her magic. No two were alike.

  “Give me a minute, Wicked, and I’ll text Mom for you.”

  Cell phones were the kind of human technology that couldn’t be transported to Maeren.

  Elizabeth didn’t even bother with one since she was always sneaking back over to Maeren for a magical recharge.

  With telepathy, she could talk to her family when she wanted, and Jill knew it.

  “Don’t you dare rat me out. This demon is not going to wait, and you know Mom is doing her book club tonight. By the time she gets here, the demon will have fed!”

  Jill busied herself doing her job.

  Elizabeth sighed, ensuring to convey that telepathically as well.

  It was time to focus back on her target. The park the demon was lurking in was deserted and dark.

  She sauntered right onto the main gravel path leading into the park with a sense of purpose but feeling a lot like a horror movie victim as the moonless night swallowed her small figure.

  That was okay. Some real trepidation would only make her illusions stronger when she used them.

  She drew her hoodie up from under her jacket to cover her chin-length, white-blonde hair, that shone like a flashlight.

  Her looks were pale and petite with her porcelain doll features of blue eyes and blonde hair. Too noticeable to be passed over for a regular human if anyone got a good look at her without her lightning manipulating their perception to add some flaws.

  She stood out in a way that someone in her profession couldn’t afford.

  Hoodies were a damn good disguise item.

  The sweating from her layers did nothing to stop the goosebumps that rose on her arms at the eerie silence in the park.

  She was just waiting to be pounced on.

  He wouldn’t snatch the bait right away. Few of them did once they had been staked by her the first time. They checked for the trap the second time.

  Bloodsuckers may not always be smart, but they could learn.

  She reached again for her birch stake from her jacket’s inner pocket and then grabbed for the demon’s mind.

  She used an illusion on him to hide her weapon in plain sight.

  He was looking at her, although his thoughts told her it was for something other than how to drink her blood.

  He leered at her breasts from a safe distance, salivating over the way her t-shirt stretched as she dropped her stake arm to her side in readiness.

  He didn’t see the stake itself as her illusion worked on modifying his perception.

  Males could be so disappointingly predictable. The distraction of her sex appeal had been unintended, but she rolled with it.

  She added a little bounce with the illusion that her breasts couldn’t really achieve in an athletic bra, then tried looking around for the demon.

  He should be by the tree-lined part of the path, just past the playground equipment.

  Her blue eyes squinted as she tried to adjust her vision to the darkness past the streetlights.

  A night-blind witch?

  Being supernatural didn’t give her special night vision. She just barely needed glasses at the weakest prescription for distance, which her third-grade teacher found out when she squinted at the board.

  Reality was better a little blurred, in her opinion.

  Glasses would only handicap her when she was in the middle of a fight and they went flying off or if she got them smashed into her face. Ouch!

  Contacts were out because she really didn’t want to think about what could go wrong with little discs of human plastic on her eyeballs if she accidentally transitioned to Maeren from chi incineration.

  The heat of transformation from the body turning into energy could be disastrous.

  Still, the dark in the park compounded her vision difficulties. What was usually a very mild nuisance could quickly turn dangerous if she wasn’t careful.

  Vampires also didn’t have night vision. Super hearing, extraordinary strength and the ability to hypnotize were some of the mythical powers of vampires that were exaggerated.

  Okay, earth magic made vampires and demons stronger, but so were the witches with earth like her sister and mother.

  Elizabeth had reached the sand surrounding the playground equipment.

  She let her sister see the park, so Jill had her exact location, by transferring the image her blurred eyesight picked up and adding to it with her memories of what the park looked like in the daytime.

  She always told someone in her family where she was in case something went wrong. It was one of many rules her mother insisted on to let her hunt.

  When she used her lightning to connect their minds, it let them see and hear what she did. It would play in their thoughts like a daydream.

  Although it could be distracting, her family was able to partly ignore the daydream to pay attention to something else happening in front of them. If they blinked rapidly, she knew it was the signal for her to pull back her thoughts.

  Nobody was as good at splitting their attention like her. She was used to being more into the minds of others half the time than just her own.

  “Wicked, give me a minute to go on a break before you play with the demon,” Jill asked her, finally acknowledging her again.

  She pulled back on the image of the park she was projecting, waiting quietly at the back of Jill’s mind. She had already broken enough rules tonight.

  Jill quickly went to the break room. She grabbed her lunch out of the fridge and crunched an apple, sitting on a couch to mindlessly stare at a television.

  Her sister always ate to calm her nerves during Elizabeth’s hunts.

  Elizabeth never said anything, knowing her own stomach twisted in such knots that she would be embarrassingly sick if she tried to eat before a staking.

  All Elizabeth took was a taste, using her lightning on the juicy apple before she focused back on the park.

  It was showtime.

  Just Slay Me

  “Something wicked this way comes . . .”

  Elizabeth sent the thought to her family, prepared for the beast lurking in the shadows and salivating after her powerful blood.

  He was going to get more than he bargained for when he tried to sink his fangs into her illusion.

  Nobody could save her or him. It was a primal battle between two monsters.

  Elizabeth knew she wasn’t supposed to take on demons alone. Yes, that was another rule—with good reason.

  Demons were especially dangerous. They were hungrier than normal vampires. Their stolen soul of witch magic often made them a much harder opponent and unpredictable in power scope.

  Most
elementals inherited power from their parents: either a double dose of one power or two different ones. It was like eye colour, with some variation within shades, such as the strength in which different powers were expressed.

  Some elementals were born with rich magic brimming in their blood, others had more common strengths. They even held ‘tasting’ ceremonies in Maeren at the births of all infants to test the blood for their powers.

  The newborn’s whole future could be directed by the way the blood rolled on the taster’s tongue.

  Demons subverted their birthright limits. They could steal a third power or gain incredible strength in a single power when they drained a witch to transform themselves—more than any other elemental had the right to wield.

  Elizabeth was not just any other elemental, however. It was her trick up her sleeve—or in her blood, to be more precise.

  She wouldn’t hesitate to use the surprise about her hidden strength to her advantage.

  The demon’s thoughts as he tracked her entrance into the park tickled against her outer mental barrier.

  Her magic passively tracked him back.

  He didn’t recognize her from the last time she staked him, which caused her to downgrade his intelligence with his danger rating.

  He should have suspected the same individual who sent him back to hell—excuse her, Maeren—the first time, could have tracked him down when he dared crossed over again.

  Dumbly, this demon wasn’t worried about getting caught at all. He was thinking of her like a hot meal that walked right into his trap.

  Well, at least something was going right. This might not take as long as she had thought. Big, dumb, and hungry might just throw himself on her stake for her, so she could get back to movie night.

  She peeked at his thoughts again. Using her lightning on his mind intermittently was equivalent to dipping her toes in the water before a swim. She had to conserve her strength.

  The human realm leached away magic with every stroke as she swam against a constant current. That was what it felt like to elementals. Everything that came so naturally to them through magic was a greater effort on this side.