Watch of the Wicked (Devil's Witch Book 3)

NOCTUS

Three days have passed since my brethren have taken over this crumbling town.

It proved no difficulty with my apparent absence in the department. The accumulated deaths have mounted to well over a hundred. Each and every business owned by the coven has been destroyed in less than a week, and with the governor’s approval, we’ve exterminated most of the most toxic craft users who could pose a threat to us after the devil’s coming.

A miniature mosaic of Valerie is situated right above the door of my office. Now that the town is under such duress by my own people, she will soon wholeheartedly put her trust in me to handle it.

I will never let her down, but I hope to get her to see things from my perspective. I rather not watch her leave to the other realm because she very well may not want to come back after the devil returns.

I sit back in my chair, kicking my feet up on my desk while folding my arms and wondering how I’ll manage to persuade her to stay with me. For a long time, I stare straight ahead at the door contemplating over my plans. The broken conversations going off on my police radio become quieter and eventually go completely ignored as I close my eyes drifting off.

“Hello, Ms. Parway,” I answer while absentmindedly thumbing through the pile of folders on my desk.

She stands at the entrance of my office wearing her black gown and striped stockings holding something behind her back with a timid expression.

“Nick, please tell your people to leave the coven alone. They’re trying their best to find Patty, and if the police continue to threaten them, we may never find her.”

I lean forward, enjoying her attention. “Surely, things haven’t gotten so bad. Truthfully, I’m not really sure I understand what you’re expecting me to do, Ms. Parway. You’re probably better off asking William to speak with them.”

“I don’t know if I can talk to him about that after...you know.”

“A pity,” I feign disappointment as I get up from my chair, “I’ll figure out how to make him understand the damage he’s done.”

“That...isn’t necessary,” she says with hesitation.

Ah, there it is. Her uncanny habit of avoiding admitting her desire for my help. She really does still question my motives. I wonder what lead her to think she’d find me here? Surely, she must still be reaching out to William, but it can’t be helped now that my brethren have made their move.

She’s still paused in the doorway looking around my father’s office that I’ve only recently reclaimed as my own. When her gaze reaches me, I step out from behind my desk watching her hair float off her shoulders as her patience with me thins. Her magic presses against the glass casings of the office and the picture frames on the wall rattle.

“How did I know you’d still be here?” she questions in a broken voice while aiming the gun I gave her at my chest.

So that’s what she was hiding behind her back.

Her hands are steady.nI try not to chuckle at her attempt to threaten me. My followers already alerted me she entered the church over an hour ago. She must have been waiting out in the lobby debating whether to pursue me or not. She knows beneath my jacket exists my bulletproof vest.

If she really wanted to hurt me she would use our magic.

I click my tongue. “My father’s belongings need to be cleared out of here. I rather not have the coven confiscate things like this and hold it against me.”

She steps forward with the gun still aimed at me. “I don’t see any boxes. What are you doing here? Don’t make me ask twice.”

I step back unsure if she will still shoot. I may not die from the shot, but it’d still hurt more than I’d like. She lacks the proper experience of a true police officer that I gained over a year’s training at our state’s police academy. Catching her off guard, I use my speed to my advantage assuming I’ll be able to easily swipe it out of her grasp.

However, she doesn’t let go so easily and the best I can do is get the barrel of the gun aimed away from me and toward the ceiling. She still shoots sending a hole in the old chipped paint above us startling me. Hearing the sound, she jumps. Valerie loses her grip after the recoil and I manage to take the gun from her. I toss the gun onto the floor behind me and she scrambles back away from me while I adjust the collar of my vest.

“I’m not the one you should be afraid of. Your people have failed you time and time again, but have I?” I probe while walking in her direction.

Her pouting lips twist into a scowl. “I need to know what’s going on.”

At her words, her wondrous magic zips by my cheekbone cutting a nice slash through the side of my face. I’m so amazed at her successfully using our conjoined magic that a warm pleasant feeling grows within me. I grip both her trembling hands in mine. Little does she know the pull it can have over us in real life. I step backward pulling her with me as I stride behind my desk.

“You have to tell the police to stop attacking the witches.”

“What do you think will happen if I do that?”

I sit down on my chair and watch with amusement as my goddess perches right down on top of me. She proceeds to list off her other worries unaware of her new position. Her black and white striped stockings peek out from the slit in her black dress. I lick my lips watching her cross her legs.

“I can’t force them to obey. I can only try to reason with them and even that would cause little change. If you wish it though, I will consult with William about it. If he’s unwillingly to listen, then I will find another way to make him more accommodating.”

The slit in her dress travels higher on her leg passing where her stocking ends exposing the rest of the milky white skin of her upper thigh.

She shifts on my lap a little to look back up at me. “Please.”

Her eyes search my own and my gaze falls further past her lips. I smirk staring down at her cleavage that I can’t help to ignore looming over her from my height. Although, I’d be lying if I said wasn’t already enjoying my visual voyage when her back was turned to me.

“I will,” I promise.

It pushes me over the edge when her warmth and softness accidentally presses up against me as she tries to modestly lift herself off of me. I wrap my arms around her kissing her fully on the lips. She sinks back down onto my lap as I pull her with me further back into my seat. The chair tips further back, but I manage to leverage our weight with my foot on top of my desk.

After a few minutes, I let the chair slide out from under me and I happily plop onto the ground with her falling right on top of me. Our kiss is not interrupted and I grip onto the back of my chair sending it flying across the room so it’s out of our way.

She giggles hearing the sound of the chair slam against the wall and land on one of the glass casings with a loud crash. I could just lay here forever with her listening to her giggle. However, the coven still has yet to be wiped from existence and the only reason we can be happy is if we hide. Her legs still straddle me just like they did naturally to break her fall, but I don’t think she knows what it does to me.

At any rate, my goddess sits up slowly and pats her hair in place while looking down at her black dress spilled over top me with a yawn. I withdraw my hand from her waist and my other hand from her thigh unsure how to take her silence. Is she satisfied or disturbed by our kissing session?

We may be dreaming together, but it is widespread knowledge when those in a conjoinment dream they are making active decisions. We are both consciously making our choices no different than if it were to be real life. I have no influence over her behavior here. This is not the first time we have kissed either and the other times I don’t think I was mistaken thinking she enjoyed herself.

“Was ist falsch?” I ask her wondering if she will understand my words.

Valerie doesn’t make any response and just lays back down against me nestling her head against my chest leaving me wondering if she knows what I said. She falls asleep against me and I pet her hair confused by her sudden sleepiness as I sit up on an elbow looking down at her sleeping form curiously.

The scene around me changes. I stand in my office again, but this time I’m alone.

I’ve already seen the effect my blood has over Valerie, but I’m not so used to feeling the pull she has over me. Even so, my body moves against its will as I step out of the church. It must be her first time using our conjoinment to summon me. Surely, we must have just experienced the same dream only moments ago. It makes me wonder if she’s testing the strength of our bond.

No, she must think I’m still in town and she is right to suspect that. I’m not sure though if she is doing this on purpose or accident. I walk down two blocks beyond the church behind me. Suddenly, her pull over me leaves my body and I hold my chin with curious thought.

I didn’t mind being controlled because I knew to who and where I was headed. If it were anyone else, I would have killed them by now. My phone rings in my jacket pocket and I sigh.

“William, we can’t talk just yet,” I mumble in a clipped voice.

My phone continues to ring until he eventually gives up trying to call me.

I catch movement in the alley next to me. I slink back deciding whether to investigate, then I follow the shadowy figure moving about in the dark. They jog behind a dumpster and I walk around the fallen garbage on the street in pursuit of them.

I don’t like being spied on especially by my naive stepbrother, Jackson.

He scampers off in his wolf form and I find his pack waiting for him by the chicken wire fence in the back of the bar. The big wolf I recognize as alpha of the black diamond pack. He’s the biggest wolf with black fur. The same shade of fur coats his pack members have, Jackson included.

This will be problematic. I did not know his mother and him were back in town. I knew the wolves were leaning toward siding with the coven, but of late, they had slipped my mind while I was handling the affairs of my own people. I’m sure all his pack members are on board with killing my kind alongside the coven.

The werewolves truly have no idea what they are doing because, like the humans, they are clueless to our legends and history. They’ve got my goddess duck taped in the back of one of their cars and they all shift into their human appearances to drive her off probably to her death. I don’t know why she won’t attack them because they stand nothing against her.

Perhaps she hesitates because Jackson is among them? They had gotten a hold of her before and bit her out of fear. I see another bite mark, but it’s on her shoulder rather than her arm this time. It gushes with blood and I already appear in my ultimate form blending in with the shadows of the black brick buildings on both my sides.

I try to stop, but wolves stake me. David staked too, not doing good. Your mind not let me in earlier, but I keep try reach you. Sorry savior, they set us up. I hope you not go too. I think too late for goddess, my follower speaks into my head with panic and distress.

I swallow hard knowing I must have been asleep when Heinrich tried calling out to me. Valerie’s face is greying more and more by the second. Cold hands grab my arms from behind me and a sharp knife stabs into my back deeply. My flesh mends around the knife, but it’s too late. My heart has been pierced and fire erupts within it.

My magic disperses around me instantly turning the wolves into explosions of blood and bone in my rage and utter shock. Patricia Gild steps out in front of me with the stake in hand as I fall to my knees completely at her mercy. She slashes the knife across my neck, but my magic has already been severed from me in its attempt to protect Valerie’s life above my own.

I will not heal effectively to survive my fresh injuries.

I’ve been completely exposed and made vulnerable by the short seconds I risked letting my guard down to tend to my goddess. Patricia vanishes into thin air as her followers summon her away from me.

I will not die here.

I shift into my snake form and slither back down the alleyway dragging the blood of the dead wolves with me and debating whether or not to use their blood to meld myself a new body or not. If I do, it will surely hinder my appearance of a pureblood vampire hybrid. I rather die here beneath this dumpster than let their damn dirty blood taint me!

After I tell my followers where to find my body, my thoughts remain on my dying goddess and I say a silent prayer, but not to my father. He surely will not listen and just mock me. I tried to play god and...failed. One way or another I’ll drag that damn witch to hell where she belongs. I’m more concerned about my goddess though. She doesn’t deserve to suffer.

“Please, don’t let her die,” I mumble into the dark to the god long dead in my mind.

The one who sent my father to hell when I had hoped to do the deed myself. The very god my father worshipped in his first life. I gave up on the god long ago seeing things just like this happen. Good people like my own suffering as Valerie does now. No god I ever heard of in this life could understand my pain and vision for the future. No one, but I, can truly understand and save my goddess.

Yet, here I lay in a pool of my own blood and that of the blood I shed while she loses her life slowly because of the damned mutts and witch who kidnapped her.

I hear the sound of voices, and watch in agonizing pain, as the witch’s daughter comes running with some short brunette witch following close behind her. I choke on blood, coiling up in my last moments stunned at their...abrupt arrival.

New life floods into me and I stare in amazement as my goddess stands before the dumpster I lay beneath when moments ago she was dying in the back of the opened truck of one of the mutt’s cars. She looks heaven-sent and I have no explanation for how she knew me to be over here or how she has healed herself in amazing time. She uses our conjoined magic to heal me and I slither reluctantly out from beneath the dumpster fully healed now too.

Patricia is nowhere to be seen and when my goddess’s friends spot me on the ground they scream in horror.

“He saved me,” Valerie defends while bending down to my level and petting my head.

She’s mistaken though, with her injury she should have died and even if she is healed there is a chance she may turn into a werewolf. My blood boils at the thought and I can’t fight the urge to claim her salvation as my own triumph.

“It’s true...” I lie in a light hiss.

New bitterness grows within me knowing for once I felt completely out of control. Lost and alone, before death took me. I had become so weak and delirious to rely on the strength of someone beyond myself. Well, even if I didn’t save her from death, I will still technically be saving her from turning hybrid.

I’ll unturn her soon.

I’m still her savior. If not her god, I’m still the god of my followers. Those things will never change. How can I call myself her savior though if I can’t even save myself? I’m not entirely sure if our conjoined magic really could have saved both of our lives. It puzzles me, but I’m wary of thinking more about why that might have been.

She’s my goddess after all and capable of much more than me as I continue to find over and over again.

My phone rings on my desk waking me from my deep slumber and I sit up. That was my second dream with Patricia Gild catching me with my goddess. This time, she nearly killed me and Valerie too. Dreams are merely dreams, but I must be cautious more now than ever.

If the sound of my ringtone wakes me up then the sound of my followers speaking in my mind should too in the case of an emergency such as I dreamed. Still shaken from the vivid dream, I can’t ignore the feeling of terror remembering my helplessness to save my goddess in my final moments.

After reading the caller ID on my cellphone though my worries don’t echo so loudly in my head. I smile leaning back in my chair answering the noisy device.

“Hello, Mr. McCaster.”