Of Witches and Warlocks: The Demon Kiss (26 page)

“And then what?” Vance asked, becoming
quickly agitated again. “We keep him as our pet demon? Come on,
people! Think!” He looked around at all of us. “This is a powerful
warlock we’re talking about. We have no idea how this demon kiss
thing is affecting his powers! Does he retain all the power he
steals? Does it wear off eventually? If he is retaining everything
he steals, then it’s going to be a twenty-four-hour job for this
coven to contain him, if they even can contain him! And what about
when he goes into withdrawal? Are we all just going to sit there
and watch him shrivel up and die? He needs to be destroyed …
immediately.”

Everyone sat there quietly, not knowing what
to say to help make the situation better.

“You’re right. We aren’t prepared,” Dad said,
standing up to pace the floor. “We need to keep up the surveillance
for a while longer, learn his habits and his patterns before we try
to make any kind of move.”

“Thank you!” Vance said with a wave of his
arm, sounding relieved at the turn of events, before turning around
to face me. “You,” he said pointing directly at me. “Follow me.” He
strode past me and down the hall to his room.

I turned to look at Dad, in question,
suddenly wishing he needed me to continue on with the
conversation.

“Go,” he said, waving his hand in dismissal
at me.

I sighed and turned to follow down the hall
after Vance.

He was standing at the door holding it open
for me. I walked through, and he closed it behind me.

“What the heck was all that? Offering
yourself up as bait! What are you thinking?” he asked, walking up
to stand toe to toe with me, glaring down at me.

“I’m thinking I’ve nearly lost you twice
because of this man. First, when your mom took you and second, when
you left me to chase him. I won’t let it happen again,” I said
stubbornly lifting my chin, returning his glare.

“So you’re just going to sacrifice yourself
to the cause?” he asked angrily, pursing his lips together in a
flat line.

I knew he was really mad at me, as I could
see flaming red lines beginning to shoot through his eyes.

“If it’s what it takes to keep you safe,” I
answered softly, not looking away from him.

“Portia,” he said, shaking his head as he
lowered his voice a little, “you’re a walking ball of
contradictions. You keep talking about how you don’t want to lose
me. What exactly do you think will happen if he gets his hands on
you?”

I turned away from him then and walked over
toward the dresser reaching out to run my finger along the edge of
the fine wood absently.

“If I were to be captured, I know all of you
would come after me,” I said, afraid to look at him for fear of how
he would react to my reasoning. “Hopefully, he’d consider my powers
worthy enough to perform a kiss on rather than kill me or change
me. You guys could catch him, destroy him, and I’d still get to
have you. I’d just be completely human,” I stated, biting my bottom
lip in trepidation as I waited for him to respond.

“So let me get this straight,” he said,
coming up behind me, and I could feel his warm breath blowing
against my neck, he was so close. “You’re willing to risk being
captured, losing your powers, or being killed on the off chance
that it might do something to protect me?”

“That about sums it up,” I said quietly, too
nervous to turn around and confront him directly at the moment.

“Aarrrgh!” he grunted loudly, and I heard him
flip around to walk away from me, so I turned and was just in time
to see him running his hands over his face in an extremely
irritated gesture.

He went across the room and leaned up against
the opposite wall, just staring over at me.

I, in turn, leaned against the dresser,
returning his look.

“Heck, Portia. I don’t know whether to kiss
you or strangle you right now. I just don’t get how you think!” he
complained loudly.

“What’s not to get?” I said as I stepped
angrily toward him, shouting because he wasn’t listening to me. “I
love you! I don’t want to see you get hurt! I can’t lose you! How
do you not understand that?”

“Exactly!” he hollered back at me. “But
you’re willing to sacrifice yourself and put ME through the very
same horror!”

I suddenly realized what he was saying. The
two of us were fighting over the same thing.

“So it’s okay for you to do it to me, but not
the other way around?” I asked, hurt by his double standard.

He rubbed a hand over his face in frustration
once again.

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” He looked at me
seriously. “It’s my job to keep you safe, not the other way
around.”

“Maybe you haven’t heard about this woman’s
rights movement we have in society today. It isn’t your job to do
anything!” I said loudly to him. “When people love each other, they
should both be looking out for each other. I’m a big girl! I can
sure as heck take care of myself!”

He pushed away from the wall and walked over
next to me, and I could see a dangerous glint in his eye.

“You listen to me and you’d better listen
carefully,” he said deadly serious. “It will always be my JOB to
take care of you! Maybe that was a poor choice of words on my part,
but you need to get this through that thick skull of yours! I love
you, and there is nothing, NOTHING more important to me than you or
your safety. I’ll do ANYTHING that’s required of me to accomplish
that goal! Do you understand? Because I’m not going to keep
fighting with you about this!”

“So this subject is closed then? I have to do
whatever you think is best, regardless of what I think?” I threw
back at him.

“Sounds good to me,” he said, crossing his
arms over his chest, refusing to budge on the issue.

I glared up into his red eyes.

“You’re being a selfish pig!” I shouted at
him, resorting to name calling, as that was the only weapon I had
left.

“Better than a stubborn mule!” he shot back
angrily.

“Well, forgive me for caring!” I yelled back
at him, shoving passed him to go out the door, slamming it behind
me as hard as I could.

Twelve faces stared in shock at me from the
other room, and it was clear they had heard pretty much every word
we had said to each other.

“I’ll be on the beach!” I said way too loudly
to them, before striding down the hall and out the front door.

I ran down the stairwell instead of waiting
for the elevator, and I kept running, continuing through the
breezeway, past the pool, and down the concrete steps the led to
the sand.

When I reached the sand, I sat down on the
steps and removed my shoes, before walking out onto the clean,
beautiful beach.

A vendor selling straw bags immediately
approached me, trying to sell his wares to a new potential
client.

“No, thank you.” I said passing him quickly,
not wanting to talk with anyone, let alone haggle over the price of
something.

He nodded his head in passing, as I continued
down to the water’s edge, walking to a spot where no one else was
around.

I sat down, pulling my legs up to my chest
and wrapped my arms around them. The tears came of their own
accord. I couldn’t stop them, so I let them flow down my cheeks
freely, as I watched the waves rolling in to crash upon the
shore.

This was our first big fight, at least the
first that had occurred when he wasn’t going through a demon
conversion.

I didn’t know how I could make him understand
my fear of losing him. It was all-consuming to me these days. When
he had left me, it had broken my heart, not to mention the fact
that I had feared for his life. Now, after seeing his dad in
action, these feelings had only intensified. I just wished that I
could make him understand how desperate I felt about the
situation.

I didn’t look at him when he came and sat
next to me in the sand a few moments later.

He didn’t say anything, and neither did
I.

Eventually, he started digging for broken
shells in the dirt, accumulating quite a pile before he began
throwing the hard objects out into the water.

I watched them, as he would get them to skip
across the surface, amazed that he could do it over the moving
surf, but I still didn’t speak, and neither did he.

When he finally got tired of throwing things,
he laid back onto the sand, placing his hands behind his head and
closing his eyes. He was still for so long, I started to wonder if
maybe he had actually fallen asleep next to me.

I didn’t move, though, instead choosing to
continue staring out at the water in front of me.

The sun continued its trek across the sky,
until it was beginning to get its late afternoon dip.

We still hadn’t said a word to each other.
The tide had started to drift out, and he got up to walk out in
front of me, exploring over the wet sand the water had been left
behind, kicking things here and there with his bare feet.

I watched him as he walked over to where some
rough corral had been exposed, leaving some little pools of water
captured in its borders.

He sat on his haunches then and looked into
the water checking for any hidden treasures that might have been
left in the tiny pools. I saw him smile suddenly, and he pushed up
the sleeves of his sweater, reached into one of the holes and
pulled something out.

He trotted back over to me and plopped back
down into the sand by my side. He gently placed a big beautiful
white shell in the sand next to me.

I paused for a moment before I picked it up
and examined it. Whatever had lived in it wasn’t there anymore; it
was cracked open enough to show that it was empty inside.

“Clam shell?” I asked, curiously as I ran a
finger over the hard ridges in its design.

He nodded.

“It’s very pretty. Thank you,” I said, as I
turned it over in my hand, continuing to look at.

“No problem,” he said, and I turned my head
toward him.

We looked at each other for a few moments,
several emotions mirroring on each other’s faces.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” I sighed,
feeling exhausted over the whole ordeal.

“Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “I figured
when you were ready to start talking to me again, then you
would.”

“So you’d rather just sit here in silence and
let me pout?” I asked, wondering if I would ever truly understand
how the male brain worked.

“Are we talking now?” he asked, watching me
intently.

I thought for a moment before I answered
him.

“Yes. I believe we are,” I replied.

“All right, then understand this please,
Portia,” he began. “I’d rather sit right here next to you and have
you never speak to me again, than to have you walk out on me like
you did earlier. That was the most horrible thing I’ve ever
experienced, and I don’t want to ever feel that way again.”

I swallowed hard, as the tears threatened to
make their way to the surface once more.

“We’ve never fought like this before,” I said
softly.

He scooted up next to me then, placing his
arm around me, pulling me up against him.

“Don’t cry, please,” he whispered into my
hair near my ear, as he nuzzled against me. “Please forgive me for
being so awful.”

“I was the awful one,” I sniffed as I wiped a
traitorous tear away with the back of my hand.

“Okay,” he said with a little grin. “We were
both awful. How about we just call a truce?”

I nodded my head. “I want to do that, but I
still feel the same way about everything, though,” I said to
him.

“So do I,” he replied. “We’re arguing for the
same thing, though, just from each other’s different perspective on
the issue.”

“I know. I just don’t know how to make you
understand.”

He laughed then.

“And I feel exactly the same way,” he
said.

“So we just agree to disagree?” I asked,
wondering how that made things any better.

He nodded.

“On this subject, yes, I think it would be
for the best.”

“And what happens when the coven picks one of
us to be the lure now?” I asked.

“We’ll cross that bridge when, and if, we
come to it,” he stated very matter-of-factly.

“And what about the fighting? I don’t like
it,” I said, as I leaned my head against his shoulder.

“Me, either,” he replied, giving me a little
squeeze. “I hate it. But I do think it’s stemming from things that
we’ve gone through lately and things we haven‘t addressed.”

“So now we can’t handle stress?” I asked,
feeling like I was failing miserably at the tests and trials of my
life lately.

“Portia, what we’ve been experiencing does
not fall into the simple bounds of stress. We sat and watched as
three innocent people were eaten alive, ripped to shreds before our
very eyes,” he reminded me.

“Don’t talk about it!” I said sharply, as the
images I had seen flashed before me, and the awful churning in my
stomach returned instantly.

“We have to,” he said, taking my chin in his
hand and turning my face to look at him.

I tried averting my eyes.

“Portia, look at me,” he said softly, his
face filled with love and concern for my wellbeing. “We need to
acknowledge the truth. What we saw was awful and evil. But that
isn’t what’s really bothering you.”

I did look at him then, wondering where he
was heading with this conversation, but he stopped speaking as he
stared at me.

He stood up then and offered his hand out to
me.

I took it, letting him pull me to my feet,
and followed him as he led me back up the beach.

“Where are we going?” I asked, wondering why
we were leaving when we had just started communicating.

“To finish this discussion in a more private
place,” he said, rubbing his thumb over my hand as we walked
together.