Witch Darkness Follows (Maeren Series Book 3)

by Mercedes Jade

  Phillip favoured numbers. George’s clan was known for taking in many demons after the Clan wars.

  A ready army already built and waiting, with loyalty to the hand that fed them.

  It had been a mistake to let the demons leave their ranks once the war was over. Better to have pensioned them and kept their allegiance.

  Screams were the next hint of the activities below to drift up to them.

  Henri swore and Phillip clenched his fists.

  Jordan caught up to their more hurried pace.

  Those were witches making that suffering sound.

  How long had George’s clan hidden this?

  Even prepared for what sight would greet them at the bottom of the stairs, Phillip still flinched at the chained witch slumped over—demons feeding mercilessly from her unconscious body.

  They were very visible through the iron bars of a prison type room to the side, the door left carelessly open.

  She wasn’t screaming any longer. Escape was impossible.

  “What is going on here?” Phillip thundered.

  Demons lost to bloodlust were thickheaded.

  Only one popped his mouth from the witch’s neck and looked at Phillip with shock replacing a hazy awareness.

  Jordan quickly choked the rest of the demons—a half dozen—with his air, getting their attention quicker.

  Fire shields flickered, but Jordan was a step ahead with his magic, smothering their pitiful attempts at using flame.

  “Bow your heads to the floor and beg for mercy from your king!” Henri ordered them. “Get your hands off of your throats, you measly animals.”

  Phillip walked past the demons suddenly bowing and scraping their foreheads on the floor.

  He caught the unconscious witch before she smacked her head—released from the hold of the demons who had been feeding on her.

  “Where are the keys to unlock her?” Phillip asked.

  Demon heads bobbed up, but Henri shouted at them again to all bow, then kicked just one to answer Phillip.

  “The mistress keeps them,” the demon said, his eyes rolling to the darkened hallway.

  “Precisely who we are here to see,” Phillip said.

  “Henri, we need the keys.”

  “Where is your mistress?” Henri asked.

  “In the potion room, at the end.”

  Henri didn’t wait for further instruction, turning on his heel and heading down the dark hallway.

  Once they had Lady Saldor in front of them, Philip would start the questioning with why the lady was chaining witches for demons to feed upon.

  This was unacceptable to be happening practically under his nose, the responsibility for the safety of the kingdom’s witches now his along with the crown.

  He was so maddened that the first tremors of the ground went unnoticed by him.

  Jordan shouted to him and then turned—his eyes widened with fear—as he shouted another warning for Henri.

  Phillip had barely taken his eyes off the chained witched to see Jordan panicking when the rocks above them came tumbling down.

  It wasn’t like a natural quake—no build up, not enough shaking before the earth shattered.

  Everything simply collapsed as if a series of explosions set off the demolition of the underground caverns.

  Henri and Jordan had tried to warn him of the foolishness of heading down into the Saldor’s underground lair.

  Gathering his magic in a great gust, Phillip reacted half instinctively, throwing up a shield of air that whirled around him and tunnelled upwards.

  He tried to capture Jordan in his protective magic, but Jordan had already made his fateful decision and had leaped down the hallway towards Henri.

  The dust from his air beating the falling rock blinded Phillip from seeing anything further.

  He started levitating up before the chains that bound the witch he was holding stopped him. A quick flick of his hands with an air-blade cut them, and then they were both shooting out of the ground on a stream of air within the protective whirlwind shield.

  His air pushed through the last of the overhead rock to the sky above and he dropped the shield to conserve what power he had left after that incredible burst.

  He coughed and dragged himself on his knees, carrying the witch with her cut chains clanging along the unsteady rock.

  Light weakly filtered through the dust that settled upon him to quickly make a coat of fine powder. Blinking against it only teared up his vision, blurring it further.

  All he could make out was dust and death.

  Nothing else moved. No one called out. The only sound was from the earth settling into its new crater.

  Phillip was smack in the centre of it, on top of the loose rock.

  He’d have to clamber up the sides to see if anything remained of the Saldor compound.

  First, he had to take care of the witch he’d rescued.

  Then, he would grieve the friends he’d lost.

  Bending over her body in his arms, he gave her a gentle shake.

  She didn’t respond.

  Of course, if a great quake of the earth didn’t wake her, then how could he with a simple shake?

  It was more than that, he realized, as he focused more on her, blinking away dust again.

  His magic told him that she wasn’t breathing—not asphyxiated, but the stale air in her lungs didn’t serve a living function.

  She was dead.

  Perhaps she’d already been dead when he’d first come upon her, unconscious and surrounded by feeding demons. Or perhaps, he had failed to keep her safe when he spread his magic so thin to try to shield Jorden, too.

  Phillip hugged her dead body closer. He knew little of healing and had no magic for it.

  Willing air in her lungs to move in and out did nothing to restart her heart. Her lips released the dead air that he’d spelled in his helpless attempt to do something.

  Gently laying the witch’s body down, he blinked the last of the dust from his eyes and stood.

  This changed everything.

  Under Pressure

  George

  “Dragos is beautiful.”

  George turned towards Elizabeth, seeing her eyes fastened upon the skies—likely prompting that comment.

  They certainly were closer to the dark canopy with its twinkling stars that she was admiring, standing on top of mountains that could touch the clouds.

  He and Daemon had decided to take their witch on a midnight stroll.

  They’d all worked hard together in training today, so Elizabeth would be better prepared for when they confronted the light clan.

  She’d told them something very important about her fears and her past, without realizing just how much more difficult it was going to make George’s confession now.

  He’d promised Daemon that he would share this with her. Easing her into the difficult conversation was supposed to be a job between the two of them.

  Thankfully, Daemon did jump in.

  “Are you a stargazer?” Daemon asked her.

  Perhaps she’d like a courting gift to do with astronomy. A star chart or a set of lenses for bringing distant objects into focus.

  George hadn’t much of a scholar interest himself, but he’d slept under the stars in his lands at the Wastes and admired the sheer number of twinkling lights.

  He couldn’t be alone, surrounded by so many stars.

  “I’ve never really stargazed much before. The human realm has a lot of artificial light in their cities. The few times I went to the forest to let off some lightning, I couldn’t see the stars well over the treetops,” Elizabeth answered Daemon, still looking up.

  She’d played with her magic so openly in the human realm?

  George bit back an instinctive reprimand.

  This was behaviour from her past, when she’d recklessly risked her life fighting vampires and demons to protect humans.

  Now that she was with them, George wouldn’t allow it—but no point riling her with a lectu
re from the past.

  “We can get a star chart and lenses to stargaze at my lands in the Wastes. The dark skies there are almost as magnificent as these,” George said.

  She looked away from the stars and at him.

  There was a puzzled expression on her face.

  “Do you . . . ? Are you asking me on a date, George?”

  Daemon chuckled on her other side.

  “I would like to spend time with you doing something you enjoy,” George explained.

  “She wants to know if you’re courting her,” Daemon said.

  “Yes, of course—I know what ‘date’ means,” George muttered.

  He’d spent time enough in the human realm to learn these customs when he’d rescued Victoria from her human boyfriend.

  Television had been another way to figure out disguises and behaviours that had allowed him to infiltrate the motorcycle gang Victoria had been swallowed up by back then.

  He’d seen plenty of romances along with a few good action flicks—his preference.

  “Why date me if we’re already mates?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Mates don’t automatically join,” Daemon said. “George and I talked about my greater knowledge of mates when you left us alone in the desert.”

  "Knowledge gained from the relationship of my parents,” Daemon added telepathically, letting George hear him as well.

  That was knowledge his mother would kill to learn.

  Daemon trusted him.

  “What do you mean? I thought that fate chose mates to be bonded for life,” Elizabeth said.

  George wished that was true.

  Elizabeth was another female who could reject him, and this time, the stakes were so much higher than with the witches his mother picked for their power.

  He wanted Elizabeth’s devotion. She’d challenged him in his cave at the Wastes for selfless reasons.

  The risk that he’d have crushed her had been real, thinking she was a threat to the kingdom.

  A brave witch for an earth-prince who knew he was too monstrous for most courtesans to stand more than the few minutes he needed at their wrists to feed.

  “Mates can share magic through a special bond—that’s true. What’s romanticized more is that love comes automatically with that bond. Maybe lust—” George paused and looked at her breasts, “—is instant. Priming and magic tend to make lust easier between magically compatible pairs.”

  “So, you’re saying mates go through a fuck and feed frenzy, but that doesn’t mean in the morning they’re in love?” Elizabeth asked quite bluntly.

  “Almost all strong magic matches go through a bloodlust phase,” Daemon casually imparted. “Strong emotional attachments are different. Nothing magic about them. They’re special because the heart must be wooed with more than kisses and a nice set of fangs.”

  George felt his own fangs swell in response to Daemon’s provocative challenge.

  It probably had been unintended, but with their witch unclaimed, he felt on edge. Especially with all of these underfed dragons nearby.

  “I like kisses,” Elizabeth said. “And stargazing,” she added.

  “Are you giving us permission to court you, kerashemeria?” George asked.

  “It makes sense,” Elizabeth answered, very unromantically.

  Daemon groaned. “Please tell me that sensibility isn’t how you feel towards me.”

  Was Daemon asking their witch to declare her feelings?

  Elizabeth blushed.

  Well, there was Daemon’s answer, the smug bastard.

  “I didn’t come to Maeren to date princes,” she finally mumbled, looking down.

  George sighed. “Now that is the fate part of things working. If you hadn’t come to us, I would have eventually found you. A slayer witch was a rumour I wouldn’t have been able to ignore forever.”

  “True,” Daemon said. “I had the damnedest time stopping George’s spies from finding you.”

  She turned to George. “You were the one sending demons out for me in the human realm?”

  “What? No!” George denied, a growl escaping him.

  Who had tried to harm his witch?

  “Your mother mentioned this to me. I didn’t know about the demons before. Apparently, there was a pattern of more demons coming over to the human realm through your portal in the weeks leading up to your family returning to Maeren,” Daemon said, also explaining the situation to George.

  It was unacceptable. They would put an end to it.

  “Do you have any suspects?” George asked.

  “William,” Daemon answered without hesitation.

  His brother’s name was unexpected. Although, Daemon had knowledge of William poisoning their father. It wasn’t too hard to think of his brother as damned and up to no good.

  Didn’t mean George was ready to accept how he’d missed William’s nefarious deeds all of these years.

  “How do you know? Do the demons have anything to do with what’s happening now in Maeren? It could be a coincidence,” Elizabeth said.

  Fair enough. They couldn’t blame every ill in the kingdom on their brother.

  In fact, George knew his own clan had a black reputation.

  “My mother has many demons under her control,” George said.

  “Someone was hunting you, Elizabeth. They had to know what you meant to me—why else?” Daemon asked.

  His brother was impressively holding in his anger, although the hands clenched at his sides hinted the true depth of his feelings.

  George felt the same, used to keeping his emotions under rigid control. That growl that had escaped him was a warning of how close he was to losing his own cool.

  “How could William have known that I meant anything to you? Even I was unaware of your presence in the human realm when we were children. The demons came before I returned to Maeren and you claimed me!”

  “Perhaps William used an earth-spell to track his mate?” George proposed.

  It had all been mythology and ancient history until Elizabeth proved to him that mates were real.

  There were supposed to be spells—dark magic—to tell a desperate vampire if he had a mate.

  Couldn’t those spells be tweaked to reveal location?

  “No way! I’m not a mate to William!” Elizabeth declared.

  Daemon cleared his throat awkwardly. “You probably are his mate—technically. We’re all half-brothers.”

  “How? I hate William. What about Victor? I have absolutely no interest in him and he’s your brother as well,” Elizabeth said, clearly working herself into a fury.

  “I asked my father more about mates, once he found out that you were mine. He warned me that the potential for a mate-bond often runs through brothers for the same witch. It was considered a blessing. One witch could strengthen a whole family,” Daemon said.

  “Doesn’t mean you have to like them or even bond with all of them,” George quickly added. “Better not to let William or Victor even attempt a bond. Though, it might explain why William was driven so wild by the taste of Jill’s blood that he made his first claim upon her. You are sisters.”

  “Does that mean Jill is your mate, too?” Elizabeth asked.

  “No,” Daemon reassured her. “It does not work in reverse. Jill cannot replace you. In the past, if a witch declined a mate’s bond due to non-magical incompatibilities, then he might offer a claim to her sister if she had one. Usually, it was for mere feeding purposes. The magic matched closer. Few of those bonds resulted in anything else.”

  “This is confusing,” Elizabeth said, sounding unimpressed.

  Daemon had told their mate that Jill couldn’t replace her, but that they still would be able to feed from her sister.

  How much of a dolt could his brother be to admit that to the witch they were courting?

  George knew neither of them were interested in Jill—although, he’d briefly entertained the thought of stealing Jill into his harem to protect her.

  Victor would have laugh
ed if he’d known the real reason George had fought over Jill in the castle’s practice room that day. To purposely take on a witch he’d not planned feeding upon, only to protect her.

  Instead, he’d gotten an embarrassing ass-kicking that ended with his very own mate making him shield black.

  “Magic bonds provide incentive between mates—shared power—but they don’t control the heart. Think of it on a physical level. You might be attracted to a certain look, which siblings may share to a degree—”

  Elizabeth interrupted George. “Jill and I do not look alike.”

  “Yes, I’m aware,” George said. “My point is—You know what? Never mind my point. I do not want to be with Jill for feeding or anything else. All that I feel for your sister is brotherly-like concern over her well being.”

  Elizabeth scoffed. “Not what it seemed like the first time that you saw Jill. You told Phillip and William that you wanted to claim her.”

  Daemon intervened before their witch got too angry.

  “George told me that he wanted what Victor has with his witches for Jill.”

  Elizabeth was silent for a moment as she thought it through.

  George shamelessly listened in on her thoughts, satisfied that she figured out what Daemon was saying.

  “You only wanted to bring Jill into your harem for her protection? What did you need to protect Jill from if she had William? You didn’t know he was going to do anything then,” Elizabeth said.

  “William’s claim was weak, and I was unaware of it at the time, as you recall. All of us were shocked. Jill had gotten my mother’s attention, along with you, kerashemeria. Victoria can tell you what a terrible thing it can be to draw my mother’s eyes,” George said, his tone dark.

  “So, a claim? You tried to get the twins to kidnap me for you, too, in the forest.”

  “Yes, George, tell us what you were up to trying to steal both of the Norwoods when you knew your brothers were all interested in them,” Daemon said.

  George had already told Daemon, and then, his brother had insisted he would have to confess to Elizabeth if he wanted his relationship to overcome the misdeeds that he’d committed.

  George had agreed, but he still hated being pushed into it.