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

I wake up with a start hearing the baby crying in its makeshift cauldron crib. Groggily, I sit up and pull the covers off of me to check on him. Then I turn on my lamp. I peer over the side of my bed staring down at the wailing child. I pick up my oven mittens and put them on before picking up the vamp baby up. After I scoop him up in my arms, just like Stella discovered two weeks ago, its claws extend from its tiny fingernails as it wails in its sleep.

We learned the hard way the claws only elongate when it’s hungry. Stella got cut across the face its second night here because she leaned down over his crib and startled him awake when she fixed his covers.

During our meals, we spoon feed him cow blood drained from steaks and burger. In the middle of the night like this though, I don’t have the energy to go downstairs and feed him. It’s not like I’m trying to wean him on my own blood or anything, but it doesn’t really hurt anymore when he bites me.

I lay back down on my bed wedging myself up a little on my pillow. His claws retract when I take off my oven mitts and he clamps down on my index finger. I really shouldn’t keep letting this happen and it should worry me now that he grabs my finger the moment I pick him up when he wakes up hungry. He usually doesn’t feed from me until I settle on my bed and he never drinks enough to make me lightheaded anymore because he’s pretty filled up already with the blood he drank during the day.

“Where’s your mommy?” I coo after the baby finishes drinking probably about a half a cup of my blood. It looks so cute in the black and white striped baby outfit Stella bought for it this week.

It giggles when I tickle its stomach, but then its drifts upward floating out of my arms. It crawls in the air by way of what I’m guessing is its own magic, but that can’t be. Its aura is red, unless...someone is hiding the fact that their child is a hybrid. Well, I guess the answer’s right in front of me. It must be a vampire hybrid part seeing as it’s using its own craft to maneuver through the air over to my broom!

Before I can get to the baby, its little hand reaches out toward my broomstick. It moves from the corner and underneath the baby’s small form. The window opens letting in the crisp fall air and a bunch of dead leaves too since I took the screen out to clean it this morning.

I rush over to the baby, “Wait!”

I grab the broomstick in one hand and go to grab the mischievous baby with the other, but my broom darts forward out the window with the little vamp perched right on top. Naturally, I climb onto it to avoid letting the baby fly off somewhere alone on its dangerous adventure.

By the time we’ve exited out through the window, I clumsily straddle the broomstick between my thighs leaning forward and pulling the baby in my arms. We fly up above the house and I sigh in relief knowing I’ve gained some amount of control over the situation. What would have happened if I was asleep and it went around flying outside on its own? How does it even know what a broom is? Did its parents take it for frequent rides?

“This is not the best time...” I grumble feeling my stomach twist in knots as my curse mark acts up.

It’s been at least a month since I caught a demon in town. Up until now, I was starting to finally think the devil may have forgotten about me and finally taken care of the demons for himself. Well, at least I’m not so cold now that my work outfit has been conjured onto my body by way of my employer, the devil.

“H-hey!” I holler in shock when my broom moves vertical to the skyline and we shoot up like a rocket.

I hold the baby to my chest while holding onto my broom with the other. My dress dangles below my feet fluttering below me rapidly as we go higher and higher into the night sky. The baby laughs like it’s having the time of its life while I’m screaming like an unlucky live chicken about to be thrown into the broiler. I grit my teeth wondering if it’s using its magic again to try to control our little ride.

The clouds we head toward are a mix of black and greys peaking out from behind the crescent moon. Finally, my broom comes to a slow and it rotates itself level with the ground that we hover at least thirty stories above.

I’m starting to think it may not be the baby possessing my broom, but the devil. A young vamp baby wouldn’t know anything about broom flight or how to fly.

My stomach burns and now that we are upright, I loosen my hold a little on my broom and cradle the baby closer to me while searching the ground below. It’s too dark to see anything on the ground from up here though. I can’t see auras through any of the buildings, but I do see a few yellow and blue ones moving about over toward town.

I will my magic to try and guide my broom, but it still proves useless. Could someone be controlling it still? I shiver at the thought because there’s only one person I can think of that would logically be able to have control over my powers...and things like my broom that are warded for my use only.

It’s just another reason why conjoinments are outlawed.

My broom still moves beneath us and by the direction we’re headed I’d say we’re being guided right into the middle of town. My stomach lurches as my broom picks up speed and carries us out over to the other side of town. My hair gets blown backward and my face gets hit by gushes of icy air. I lean forward putting all my weight toward the upper end of my broomstick as we pass over the outer edge of the town.

_______________________________________

Stella

I wipe the sleep from my eyes while sitting up a little in bed. It’s almost midnight and in just a few minutes will also be Halloween or the start of Samhain as my mother would have boasted. I turn on my lamp, a little in the mood for a snack. Then I grab a piece of candy from my candy dish on my nightstand.

A cold draft enters my room and makes the old floorboards of my room creak as I hear the soft ring of the ward around the house tremor. I nearly choke on my candy and swallow hard while scurrying out my bed. I pick up my bathrobe from the end of my bed and pull it on while rushing out my bedroom.

“Valerie!” I yell throwing her door open.

However, I find her sleeping in her bed. Was I imagining things? No, I know I heard the ward tremor. Someone either came in or left the house. It wasn’t me and since it didn’t break it would have had to have been me because I’m the only one in the house right now who helped remake it. I look down at my phone in my hand seeing no messages from Will or even the headmistress.

Nothing.

Although, the window is wide open letting the freezing air pour into her room. On my way over to it, I glance in the cauldron crib seeing the little vamp asleep and snug in its blankets. “Jeez, I’m turning into my mother...” I mumble while eyeing the little devil as I pass it by.

When I reach the window, I close it. The ward’s wall is still up and if someone uninvited would have entered or left it would be shattered. It tremored though, I know it did. Yet, it’s still intact and the only reason that would be is if Valerie or I crossed through it. Maybe I was hearing things.

I look down into the yard as if expecting to see the culprit, but all I see are our Halloween decorations that Valerie put up mostly herself. I was pretty much cooking all day in the kitchen making treats. Not for the kids tomorrow, but myself. Valerie made a cemetery maze for the neighborhood kids to play in tomorrow.

She made the headstones out of styrofoam and spraypainted them silver. We bought a bunch of fake bones and she set them up around the graveyard. Most of them were just arms and skulls that she placed in front of each grave. She put together a PVC pipe fence that squares off the perimeter of the maze.

She even glued some fake skulls on the fence posts, but I don’t remember being with her when she bought a full life-size skeleton to put up by the maze entrance. I close the curtains inwardly grumbling about the cost of the decorations.

In afterthought, I re-open the curtains to latch the window closed. It might have opened on its own unless she went to sleep with it open which I doubt. I glance down into the yard and stiffen when I see the skeleton guarding the maze entrance gone.

Something lands on my shoulder and I turn around with my magic at the ready.

“Stella?” Valeria yawns and I relax a little.

“Your window was open and I thought I heard the ward tremor. I think I saw something in the yard...”

She walks up next to me and peers down into the yard looking sleepy. Then she looks at me shrugging her shoulders and closing the curtains.

“Probably just the wind.”

“I saw a skeleton and then it disappeared.” I clarify and she raises an eyebrow.

“Where?”

I can’t help, but shout because I’ll admit I’m freaking out because I swear that creepy satanic boyfriend of hers never truly left our little town.

“In the yard! It was right outside your little cemetery. I locked your window closed and then looked down there again and it was gone!”

It’s that hybrid. She won’t admit it, but I will. He must be sending his other cursed followers to keep an eye on her or something, but that thing out in the yard must have been something else entirely. Maybe the devil himself.

“A skeleton? There’s a bunch of bones out there. You need to go back to sleep and don’t worry about me. The window’s old and needs replaced.” Valerie yawns and I break out in a cold sweat when Valerie itches the side of her head.

There’s dried blood trailing down her pale arm to her elbow and a giant sloppy looking bite mark on her wrist that is scabbed over, but I can still make out the bite marks. She follows my stare and cries out in panic while stretching her arm out in front of her like it doesn’t belong to her.

“You’ve been bitten!”

“It had...had to of been the baby. Maybe it bit me in my sleep?”

“It’s sleeping in its bed, Valerie.” I chew out having enough of her denial.

Someone was in here. Someone was in our house! Tomorrow starts Samhain and I’m sure those vamps knew they had to take her from us before then. So why didn’t they? Why did they bite her and leave? Did they feed Val their blood or is she...

I guide her over to her bed and she sits down looking like she’s ready to have a panic attack.

“First, Colin...now me. Why is this happening? Do you think I’ll turn?”

Her forehead feels cold, but she doesn’t look ill, “I don’t know. How are you feeling?”

“Fine, I think.”

I brighten my voice to try to lift her spirits, “Alright, well I’m looking around. Maybe they left something behind to give us a clue. They had to of been in here.”

I duck down looking beneath her bed seeing nothing, but a beat-up looking cardboard box and discarded tissues and crumbs. I stand up and she hugs her arms looking somber as she peers down at her bitten wrist. I march across her room gazing over the floor and the clutter of the things resting around her room. Nothing seems out of place. I wander over to her closet and open it without much thought.

When I open the closet door I scream seeing the giant german police officer with the accent crammed inside the small space. He muffles my cries with his meaty hand, but when I elbow him in the gut he releases me and I turn toward Valerie. My blood goes cold seeing the walking skeleton standing right in front of me hiding something behind his back -- her.

I gag at the sight of him and smell. His teeth are stained in a shiny crimson and the blood drips down from them onto the bone of his chin to even further below where it disappears into the moving mass of his “skin”. I’m unable to comprehend how the walking demonic man’s skin moves around his bones or how his red soaked outfit is held together when it clearly is composed of bright red blood.

I’m tempted to throw up seeing a trail of slimy blood shine in the moonlight leading behind him and back to the window. It’s the same color as the blackish looking blood where his skin should be. I think he might have just stepped straight out of hell. Could it be the devil? I can see him hiding Valerie behind his back because her long white hair drifts around in the air behind his shoulders.

I scream even louder and muster my magic around me trying to use it to expel them out by activating the ward. It tremors and shatters with a high pitched awful sound that almost is as loud as my scream.

The smiling skeleton man speaks in a menacing tone as his jaw opens, “Mach sie zum Schweigen!”

I don’t know what he said, but he sounds livid. The floor beneath my feet vibrates and the furniture in the room shakes violently as the red shine of some kind of red craft etches a six-pointed star with us in its middle. When the star is complete, the ground disappears and the air becomes frigid as my surroundings change to that of the woods.

Some vampires are here waiting for our arrival it appears. They lift the underbrush of the forest away from the doors of the cellar -- the portal to the other realm. Valerie slowly starts walking in the direction of the portal where a bunch of vampires lurk like vultures to scoop us up and drain us dry once she’s done their dirty deed of activating it.

“No!” I yell in protest.

My mouth gets covered again and a vampire appears from out of thin air beside me shoving the vamp baby in my arms.

Valerie stops right in front of the doors. Behind her, the walking ghoul cuts his wrist and lets the blood pour onto the ground. Then he grabs Val’s injured wrist and bites into it while holding her weak body against him like a doll. After a long moment, he finally quits drinking her and holds their blood-covered hands out toward the doors of the cellar.

Robed vampires stand in a circle that I sadly also must stand in against my will. Fire stretches in a circle behind us and I whimper seeing its blazing trail stretch in multiple lines. It forms a pentagram around Valerie and the horrific thing trying to make her open the portal.

Valerie’s voice sounds sluggish and weak as she speaks the spell, ”Patentibus."

The doors to the portal burst open and dozens upon dozens of spine chilling voices of evil laughter fill the air. Mangled up dark shapes dart out of the cellar and run by me making me go hysterical. They’re demons and there must be hundreds of them.

“Close your eyes Gild girl.” The vampire behind me says and I want to wring his neck because he told me a second too late.

I’m already scarred for life and about to be snuffed out of existence locked up in some underworld if the stories of my ancestors are right. I watch the skeleton demon man guide Valerie down the steps that I’m dragged toward.

The vampire baby in my arms claws at my arm and I grimace in pain. We go down the cellar steps. When we reach the bottom, I moan in disgust seeing the skeleton man’s face buried in the crook of Valerie’s neck as he makes her walk backward with him toward the wavering portal wall. When he’s got Valerie cornered between him and the wall he pulls away from her and pats her rear end with a lewd lingering gaze. Who knows what else he did to her before we got down here. I shudder at the thought.

His hand stays on her guiding her like she’s his prized horse until she completely disappears into the wavering grey wall of the cellar ahead of me. Then he returns to the steps watching me and the vampire.

“Bye now, be good. I come pick you up soon.” The german vampire tells me after a suffocating bear hug.

Then he pushes me and the baby roughly the way Valerie went -- through the wall of the portal.