Love's a Witch (3 page)

Jake’s voice joined the conversation. “So what are we doing by shopping her out to local covens? Could we be putting her more at risk? Are we just advertising her to someone who would take her for their own use?”

There was a pause in the flow of conversation followed by a slap. Usually this happened when Jake was using his super brain to process something. Amber liked to slap him to get him out of it.

The first time I saw him go full-on statue I thought he was having an episode. Amber said he just worked things through his skull in a different way than normal vampires. She said she hit him to get the normal processes started up again. I think she just liked slapping him around.

“Crap. Why didn’t you say something before now, Craig?” Amber’s voice projected in a different direction.

Smack. Sounded like she hit Craig that time.

“I didn’t see the point. She needs to find someone who can teach her control, along with basic magic skills and energy manipulation. She definitely has fire down.” He grumbled the last part and I mentally flipped him off for the dig. “It’s not my fault she stabbed someone at the last coven.” I heard his chuckle rumble through the van. “Lady was not happy about that one.”

“Damn her blood was tasty though. Does all witch blood taste better than regular human? I am really grossed out that my best friend tastes better than most people.” Amber’s desire to drink my blood was weird. I guess I had to take it as strangely flattering.

“It is the power. They taste better because their essence holds more power than regular humans. Less scrupulous vampires tend to keep witches as blood slaves. They drain them like milking cows.” Jake spoke as if he really was talking about cow’s milk. An image of my body with blood udders distracted me.

Well, damn. That was a new one. I always learned something juicy when they thought I was asleep. It would be nice if I could get this kind of info from regular conversation, but being the weak little human made a bit of deception necessary.

Craig was still talking about how helpless I was. “It’s just another reason we need to help Mary come into her power. She’s so vulnerable right now, and so tempting.” Craig expelled a breath and I had to wonder how much I could tempt him if he never came near me. “Vampires and wolves can identify witches by smell, but she is in a position to combat that. She knows about us. If she learns some masking spells, perhaps she can at least hide herself effectively.”

This shielding business was new to me. If I could shield myself, I might lose a bit of the overprotective parent vibe I got from Craig. It was the same thing from Amber and Jake. Part of me wondered if I wasn’t already shielding myself by trancing and making my pseudo-parents think I was asleep.

“I thought they were coming after me,” Amber said. “Which I still don’t understand completely, but why would they be after her?”

Love my bestie to death, but quite often it was all about her. Even when she was saving me.

Jake cleared his throat. He did that when he was about to say something Amber didn’t want to hear. He did that a lot. Not that he even needed to clear his throat. Hell, vampires didn’t even need to breathe. I was still trying to figure out how they function. There was so much to learn. Amber told me it wasn’t any of my business. I think she didn’t know either, and it freaked her out when I asked.

“Dammit, Jake. What don’t I know now?” There was no better way to piss off Amber than to make her feel like you were keeping something from her. The irony of that with my current situation was killing me.

“Besides the basic principles of financial management?” Craig was going to blow my cover if he kept cracking jokes.
Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh.
Someone else needed to talk, or I was going to out myself.

I heard Amber smack him, or at least throw something at him. Craig recovered easily. “We told everybody around her at that showdown she was psychic, Amber. You were out of it, and we were trying to save you. We knew you needed human blood. We knew witch blood would be better. I…shit, I didn’t mean to say it out loud, in front of all those vampires. I asked Shelly if she thought the psychic power would be an added bonus, or if we should find another witch.”

Shelly was Jake’s sister. She risked a lot to help Amber survive her change, and help us get away. We hadn’t spoken with her since we left three weeks ago, but she had started popping up in my dreams lately. Not the swirly smoky ones, just the regular ones. Something told me she had been reaching out for me, but that made no sense. How would a vampire be able to dream walk? I couldn’t figure it out so I didn’t mention it. I didn’t know if I should take it as a warning or a threat, or if I was just having dreams about Vampire Barbie.

These powers I have really were waking up inside me, but I was sick to death of having all kinds of information without any clue what it meant, or what to do with it. So like always, I kept my mouth shut.

“Great. So what do we do now?” I locked onto Amber’s voice. She seemed to be done beating people for the moment.

The van rocked a bit, and Craig’s voice came closer and closer as he spoke. “I am only good for money and muscle, Amber. We need to keep helping Mary develop her powers.” I felt a blanket float over me. A lock of my hair got swept behind my ear.

It was Craig. I knew his voice, and I could feel my skin sizzle where he touched me. I always felt the magic moving through supernatural beings, but it was more with Craig.

The van took a sharp turn and I nearly rolled off the seat. Pretending to be asleep and holding on were almost mutually exclusive. My nails dug into the cushion. For the time being, I hadn’t given myself away.

“Craig is right,” Jake said. “We must keep moving, and help her get her defenses up. I can draw from the past, and you have amazing instinct about the present, Amber. Craig can keep us from living out of a cardboard box, and when Mary learns all she is capable of, we will have the best grasp on how to attack the future.”

No pressure there. Geez.

“I still want to talk about changing her.” Amber’s pout came through in her tone.

Wait. Whoa.
What
?

“Amber, as I said before, this is not the time to discuss that.” I agreed with Jake about a lot of things. This was not one of them. Luckily he was still talking. “This is not something you want to discuss casually with your best friend. I worry we have overwhelmed her as it is. There is bad karma associated with changing someone purely for the pleasure of their company.”

Sure I knew there were issues with turning. Especially after seeing Amber almost die. Hell, when I first saw her in the parking lot they dragged me to, I thought she was already gone. Her cheeks were sunken in. Her eyes were cloudy. I am glad I saw her waking up. If they had made me leave at that point, I’d have had nightmares for years. Despite that, I knew what had come out of her turning was epic love, and even more epic strength. Seemed worth the risk to me.

“You know there’s only one acceptable reason for a change,” Jake added.

“What are you looking at me for?” But I didn’t even register Craig’s words. I was up and leaning over the seat next to him.

“You can change me? Oh my god! Do it! Do you think I’d get eyes like you, Amber? I’d love your eyes!”

Amber and Jake were still as statues, and Craig gawked at me like I had grown another head.

I shrugged. “So you thought I was asleep. I fooled you. Get over it. Now about this change thing, when do we start?”

We pulled over to a liquor store about five minutes later. Craig said he needed something stronger than the coffee we had swiped from the hotel.

Chapter Four

Craig

The bottles clanked on the counter. Seventy-five bucks later I was sitting behind the liquor store. I couldn’t dazzle people, but I found an intimidating stance, a growl and a bit of werewolf eye flash is very convincing for the employees to allow you to use their back exit.

In the absence of moonshine, I went for the highest percentages of alcohol they had. The Everclear hit my gut hard. If there was ever a liquor made for nothing else other than becoming intoxicated, this was it. Three long swallows and I let the burn hit my gut. I hoped it would be enough.

I wasn’t really sure what upset me more about the scene in the van. Mary had really fooled us. She explained to Amber she was using her ability to trance to influence her breathing and heart rate. There was more to it though.

No one in our group had any psychic or mind reading abilities, but we should have been able to tell the difference between trance and sleep. Part of me wondered if Mary wasn’t inadvertently blocking us. I didn’t even know she was moving until she was right next to me. I should have heard her.

Did one of the other witches teach her how to disguise her life force? How could she do it so well? How long had she been doing it? I took another swig of the liquid burn. This stuff was terrible, but now that half the bottle was gone, the world held a glorious soft glow.

The intoxication wouldn’t last long. So when I did empty the bottle, I immediately moved on to the 151, and hoped it would continue to make my mind mush. I didn’t want to think. I was pissed off. Why was I so upset Mary wanted to be turned? It would keep her from being such a liability. Completing a transition like that wouldn’t be an easy feat since we had to keep moving, but it could be done. With both my other traveling mates being hybrids it was not a good idea for Mary to take their blood. Hybrids were a risk at the best of times, and with Mary the only human blood line on tap there was no one to feed a vampire part of her.

That left me as the supernatural being of choice. The thought of sharing my blood with Mary…of having her skin between my teeth… I took another gut turning gulp of alcohol.

“You do realize this collection of booze is probably enough to pay for an entire night of accommodations for us, do you not?” Jake’s proper vernacular floated through the cloud of alcohol.

“Blow it out your ass, Alpha.”

Were I still in a Pack, what I just said would have sent me to the ground and beaten to a pulp. I wasn’t even sure Jake was my Alpha. This whole Clan situation with Amber in charge was fascinating to me on an academic level. I was curious, and I could sense a power in Amber that was so much stronger than any I had felt before. My wolf was just as intrigued by being led by her as I was. Now I almost wish I hadn’t come. This whole situation was messing with me.

“Is this where I am supposed to growl at you and force you to the ground in submission to your superior?” Jake’s voice let me know the idea of rolling around on whatever coated the ground behind a liquor store was not in either of our best interests. He had some serious juju himself, but I wondered how the guy lived with his woman holding the reins like she did.

Jake turned to look around the doorway and peek in the window. His matemark stared at me. The guy was old-fashioned to a fault, but forgoing tradition and standard practice, he seemed happy to wear his mating on his neck like a damn female. He gave up everything for his mate. No longer with his Family, no longer in a stable home, and despite his sister taking on the Protector role for Matheo Meyers, he still had a horde of vampires that wanted his skull on a stick.

“You are the last one I want to roll around on the ground with. Just because you have a matemark doesn’t make you enough of a chick for me to enjoy that.”

Those silver eyes took careful stock of me. “Why do you do this?”

“Do what?” I guzzled some more of the cinnamon liquor. That bottle was nearing the end as well.

“Why do you belittle my mating, just because it does not follow your view of how the world should be?”

“It’s weird.” I finished that eloquent argument with a belch.

“That is a coward’s way of dismissing something he refuses to learn about or understand.”

I think the guy just called me racist. I drank more and finished the second bottle. All this talk was killing what little buzz I worked so hard for. Freaking werewolf metabolism burned through enough alcohol to kill a normal man. This was annoying.

“I just want something to make sense for a few minutes, Jake. I don’t deny anyone their happiness. And trust me, with how thin the walls have been at the last couple of hotels, I, and everyone else on the same floor, are very aware of how happy you and Amber are.” I picked up the third bottle of booze, still in its bag, and stood. Seemed I wasn’t getting out of this conversation, and talking would keep me from drinking fast enough to shut out the world. Drinking this now would be a waste.

With Jake in front we walked along the alley behind the row of brick stores. The dumpsters behind the employee entrances smelled like dead animals, spoiled food, and the air hung thick with nicotine from frequent smoke breaks.

“You are a member of this Clan because you chose to be here. Sometimes with how much you protest I wonder if you would be happier returning to the Paulson Pack.” Jake looked over his shoulder and I felt our connection waver. He would release me if I wanted to go, just like Alpha Paulson had. I wasn’t a prisoner. I wanted to be here. What Amber and Jake were creating with this Clan was important, and they needed me to keep them out of the poor house. I needed to feel useful, and I felt valuable with the Clan.

“I don’t want to leave. I just need some down time. Every time I think I have a handle on how this Clan works, every time I think I have a handle on our mission, something comes plowing out of left field.”