Demon's Moon: A Celia Winters Novel Book 2
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Authors: D. L. Harrison
Demon’s Moon
A Celia Winters Novel (Book 2)
Author: D. L.
Harrison
Copyright 2016. This is a work of fiction. Names,
Characters, Places and incidents are either products of the author’s
imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or
persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No
part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
permission.
Darrell Watkins started to get more than a little nervous.
He was in a cell, had been for seven days without even one visitor. His maker
had told him to be careful, to avoid towns with large numbers of witches. He
had been arrogant, thought himself indestructible, immortal, and untouchable. He’d
thought the world was his for the taking, that he could do whatever he
pleased. He should have listened to his master.
He grabbed for the bars again, but his hands started to burn
from the spells invested in the bars and he pulled his hands back with a hiss,
his fangs dropped and a feral growl escaped his lips. He couldn’t help it, he
was starving. He was also terrified. He regretted now, not listening to his
maker. He was only a year old as a vampire, and now he was a prisoner of some
witch coven in Albany, N.Y.
He sat dejectedly on the small bunk in the small windowless
and barred room. He was afraid to die, but after a week of sitting in this
cell with no contact with anyone, he was starting to worry more about what they
had in store for him.
He heard a door open and jumped to his feet. He moved as
close to the bars as he could and tried to look down the hall, and growled in
frustration since he couldn’t see at all. He had in fact, already known he
wouldn’t be able to.
“Hello, what do you want with me? Release me or I’ll kill
you and bathe in your blood!”
He heard a deep chuckle as someone finally came into view.
It was a man in his fifties, with a look of such evil in his eyes that he took
a step back.
The man smiled knowingly, “Sorry about the accommodations, I
merely needed to hold you until the full moon.”
The man threw Darrell a bag of blood through the bars, which
he ripped open with his teeth and sucked down quickly. It was life, and he was
so thirsty he couldn’t control himself. When he finished he looked up at the
man with the dead eyes.
“What do you want with me?”
He grinned, as if amused by the question, “You’ll find out
soon enough.”
Darrell’s eyes felt suddenly heavy, and everything went
blurry. The last thing he remembered seeing before passing out was the wide
grim smile of the evil witch in front of him. What had been in the blood?
He woke up slowly to chanting. He was filled with intense
feelings, half shocked joy and half terror, that he was still alive. He looked
around, he seemed to be in a witch’s circle, the evil witch intoning words
before him, yet he couldn’t move at all, being restrained by some magic.
He looked around, the circle was drawn in blood, and there
were twelve other witches surrounding him all around the circumference. It
took him a moment to understand, they’d kept him until the new full moon so
they could perform a spell rite. But what spell? He tried to move, but
couldn’t even budge an inch with all the strength of his vampire nature.
“What are you doing? I demand to be…”
He gave up and hunched his shoulders. They didn’t even
respond to his voice, they simply continued to chant creepily in a language he
didn’t recognize. The floor lit with a blood red light that felt… evil. He
had often wondered if he was evil, the way he craved blood all the time. He’d
even killed a few people by accident, and had been more upset about that fact
that those deaths hadn’t made him feel at all guilty than anything else.
Still, he could feel it now, he wasn’t evil, or at least,
not nearly as evil as what he felt rising up through the floor. This was true
evil, and insanity. He gasped as red shadowy smoke gathered around him, and
shuddered in horror as it flowed into his mouth. He wished that he’d listened
to his master one more time, and it was the last wish he would ever make…
Celia Winters stared into the mirror feeling a bit
conflicted. It had been three weeks since Berny had dragged her out of the
store to update her wardrobe. The young woman had made a lot of good points.
She was wearing tight dark gray jeans, almost black, with
calf high black leather boots that had two inch heels. She wore a white
stretchy curve hugging shirt, with a loose red blouse over it mostly
unbuttoned. She had to admit that she looked better than when she’d been
wearing loose blue jeans and t-shirts.
That was an understatement she reluctantly admitted, she
looked beautiful, and sexy… it gave her a major confidence boost along with
being a shifter. She’d been passably attractive before, but with her shifter
side kicking in she’d noticed she was more graceful, and between the physiology
and her daily intense workouts, she’d become a lot more toned and shapely, and
the new clothes showed that off to great advantage.
But… she also felt like a fake, she wasn’t used to it yet
and it just didn’t feel like her, she felt like she was dressing up as someone
else.
She blew a breath through her lips as she saw something out
of the corner of her eye. It looked like the air was much thicker in a small
area across the room, about the size of newborn baby. She just ignored it.
She’d started to see things a couple of weeks ago. At first she’d panicked,
but she was getting used to it now and disregarded it more than not. Once she’d
even seen something in the candle flame as she meditated, it scared the hell
out of her, but when she turned her head and focused on it, there wasn’t
anything there.
The problem with that was she always felt magic nearby when
she saw something, as if something was really there. It didn’t seem it had any
harmful intent to it, but instead just watched her. But then hallucinations
were supposed to be realistic right? Her mind was probably just messing with
her. Either way, they’d never done anything to her. If they were real her
wards had no effect on them.
She knew if she turned her head now, the thick air wouldn’t
be there anymore. It was just one more thing to add to the crazy list, Silva
wanted to pounce it, but she sent calming thoughts to her tiger half. She
hadn’t made much progress magic wise, maybe between a two or three on the scale
before Silva would freak out and she’d lose her concentration. So far she’d
been lucky and hadn’t needed it. A little preparation making personal wards,
plus her shifter abilities, seemed to be carrying her through.
She just hoped that would remain enough.
She shook her head at her reflection, and then grabbed a
coffee before heading downstairs and opening up the store. She sat down, it
was still a little before eight and she felt a little restless, despite running
twenty miles this morning she knew her inability to sit still was from the
shifter side of her. She wondered if all shifters were like this all the time,
or if it was just her.
After all, she had a lot more magic being half witch, than a
typical shifter. She assumed her shifter side had full access to the magical
core inside of her, to the point she was sure Silva could cast spells as well
as she could. But there was no way to prove it, since Silva herself wouldn’t
go near magic if it could be avoided. But she had endless energy, almost to
the point where she was jittery, luckily she wasn’t quite that bad, just… very
alert all the time now.
She didn’t suppose that was a terrible thing, but it made it
more difficult to get to sleep at night.
Her phone went off and she snatched it up of the table, it
was a text message from Ella, the tiger shifter on the local council, and
Paul’s sister. She looked at the text and there were two simple words,
No
match,
and she stared at it for a few seconds before replying with thanks.
She didn’t need clarification, she knew what it meant,
neither Paul nor Ella was related to her, which was both a relief and a
frustration right now. Since Paul was gone it wasn’t really helpful. A few
days ago, Paul had indicated there wasn’t much more to teach her about fighting
moves or style. She still had a long way to go, but improvement would come
with pure practice and innovation rather than instruction.
After that, they’d only met once more two nights ago, where
he’d told her he needed to leave for personal reasons, and he wasn’t sure when
he’d be back here, just that it would happen sometime. Damn tiger shifter… her
libido was going to kill her. She was tired of waiting, her newfound energy
seemed to apply to all of her bodies… needs. More food, more activity, more…
well, no sex actually, that was the problem.
Still, she had the iron control and discipline of a witch.
It wouldn’t kill her to wait, or so she told herself. Unfortunately regular
human men just didn’t do anything for her, and though she liked the wolves as
friends, going farther was actually a little repulsive to her. No doubt a cat
and dog thing, but there it was. A witch would have been acceptable, but she didn’t
want a one night stand either, cravings or not, she didn’t want her libido to
control her life, and none of the men from the coven seemed interested in more
than that.
It was quiet right now, but the next shifter thing that came
along she’d be working with Josh. He was a temporary replacement, she hoped.
Oh, Kelly’s mate was a good enough man, but he was young for a shifter and had
a short temper, to be fair though she hadn’t talked to him much since
delivering rose, so maybe he wasn’t so bad. She’d find out.
Her business had equalized, she hadn’t lost any customers in
over a week, and she’d even gained a little back from some curious witches
who’d heard of her. Most likely so they could brag about knowing her for shock
value when someone gossiped about the evil shifter witch in Rock Hill, but that
wouldn’t stop her from selling to them.
Crap. She saw another one of those air things in the
corner. This one was different, it was… almost agitated, the magic she felt
was vibrating strongly and she got the sense of danger. Great, she was going
crazier by the second.
But then the door opened. She looked up expecting to see
Berny, or a customer, but it was a tall thin man wearing a ski mask, and he was
lifting a gun with his finger on the trigger.
“Die abomination!”
As he pulled the trigger, she used her power over air to
push the air inside the barrel of the gun to the side. She couldn’t do much,
but it was more than effective as the bullet passed to her right as she rolled
off the stool and onto the floor behind the checkout counter. Well this was new,
her first assassination attempt. Her blood was pumping and her heart was
pounding with exhilaration. She felt the excited smile on her face, and was
surprised. There was no fear in her at all. She didn’t think she’d have
reacted this way, but it was almost like relief that she wasn’t bored anymore.
She was crazy, or at least she thought so, and Silva was in
agreement, although her cat had no room to talk, she was excited as well.
She peaked around the right side of the counter, and shot
him with a stun spell while setting off a small flare of fire in his eyes. The
spell bounced off, so he was a witch, but the fire caused him to scream and
flinch back. She grinned with feral joy and dashed out from behind the
counter. Her speed was incredible, and her senses were tightly focused. She
heard the sound of him pulling back the trigger again and dodged to the side as
she did the air trick again.
She wondered when she’d become an adrenaline junkie… because
she’d never felt so alive as she did right now. She’d probably freak out about
it later, think herself suicidal, but right now she was having too much fun to
care.
He held onto the gun tightly, but failed to hit her as he
pulled the trigger again, between the dodge and the air fouling his aim, he
missed her by at least two feet. He didn’t get third try as she was there, and
grabbed his wrist, twisted the gun out of his hand, and then flipped him on his
back. She kicked him in the head, holding back enough to merely daze and
disorientate, not kill, and then stepped on his throat and ripped his ski mask
off.
She didn’t recognize him. She waved a hand and started to
batter at his wards with her magic, casting a series of dispersal spells. It
took almost a half a minute since she was limited in how much magic she could
channel, all while he struggled to breathe underneath her boot, before his
wards fell. Then she spelled him asleep. She hadn’t been purposefully cruel,
but he couldn’t talk with her boot on his windpipe, that meant no casting for
him either.
She guessed his primary gifts, those used without spells,
like her control over weather, air, and fire, weren’t offensive gifts for him.
Otherwise he probably wouldn’t have used a gun, and her approach would have
been much less effective.
She walked into the back with him thrown over her shoulder
and tossed him on the shipping table and started to go through his wallet. Shit,
he was from Charlotte, and a young man. Obviously the council hadn’t sent him,
but he must be in their coven.
That spelled something very bad. She verified her magic
would hold for a while and walked back out front to call Ed…