Blood of the White Witch (25 page)

Shoving hard at him with my free hand, I
closed my eyes, waiting for the pain, but it never came.

I heard Brian grunt, and I opened my eyes
just in time to see him ripped away from me and flung clear across
the room, hitting the far wall.

“Portia, get out of here!” Vance yelled at
me before he turned his attention back toward Brian, and I felt the
murderous rage that threatened to consume every fiber of his
being.

I couldn’t move, though, because my legs had
turned to jelly. I sank to the floor in semi relief at his
appearance.

Brian hopped up in an instant, easily
jumping onto one of the large metal preparation counters in the
room, before flinging himself across the open space toward
Vance.

He hit Vance in his midsection, and the two
of them skidded across the floor, slamming into the opposite
wall.

Brian rolled away quickly, before Vance
could get a good hold on him, standing to throw his athame at him
with deadly accuracy.

Vance immediately shielded himself, causing
the knife to hit and bounce away from him. Brian reached out with
his hand toward the knife as it slid away, and it immediately
jumped back into his outstretched hand, but he wasn’t finished. All
the knives in the entire kitchen suddenly lifted and shot straight
at Vance.

Vance stood quickly raising his arm and
waved it in a circle over his head, finally pointing directly at
Brian.

The knives turned and headed back toward
Brian who stood shocked for a moment before throwing a barrier up
around himself.

Suddenly one of the metal countertops
loosened, flipping off its surface, plowing through the air toward
Vance.

Vance threw his hands out in front of him
and released a giant arc of flame into the metal, stopping it in
mid-flight while Brian kept pushing at it with his magic from the
other side.

The metal surface was frozen in place
between the two forces that struggled over it. Soon it began to
overheat and started to melt in the middle, until it snapped into
two pieces.

Brian used the momentum to hurtle the
severed sheets at Vance from both sides. They just missed slicing
him by mere millimeters, continuing on past him, where they slammed
into the wall, sticking into the ancient stones there.

“Impressive,” Vance said, and the two
circled, facing each other in a stand off, looking for an opening
against the other one. They were both breathing heavily from their
exertions.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Brian
smirked, taunting him, attempting to bait him.

“Yeah? Like what?” Vance replied, quirking
an eyebrow at him, though never letting his guard down for a
moment.

“Like how I’m going to steal your Portia
over there and make her forget she ever knew you existed.” He
grinned while he goaded him, looking over at me with a seductive
wink.

“Wrong answer!” Vance replied, seeing his
opening. He ran toward Brian and levitated, launching himself into
the air before somersaulting past Brian, to land behind him in a
crouch.

Before Brian could register what had
happened and turn around, Vance stood quickly, reaching out to grab
him around the neck with one hand, yanking him hard against his
body. He held him prisoner with only one arm, his muscles flexed
and bulging.

Vance’s eyes were hard pinpoints in the dim
light.

“I told you if you ever spoke her name I’d
kill you,” he stated flatly, his voice sounding deadly, and his
hand began to glow the molten color I had seen it do before.

Brian lifted his arm, trying to swing it
backward so he could stab Vance with his athame, but Vance yanked
the arm hard behind him until I heard the bone snap in two.

Brian screamed, and Vance released the arm,
which flopped down to dangle limply at his side. Brian reached up
to his neck with his good arm then, clawing desperately at Vance’s
now flaming red hand.

I could smell the sickening scent of burning
flesh when the skin on Brian’s neck and face began to smoke under
Vance’s grasp.

Brian continued to claw and grab, unable to
loosen the strong grip that held him, and then suddenly I heard him
gurgle, and blood gushed out from between Vance’s fingers.

Vance didn’t let go. I could see the light
fading from Brian’s eyes as death overtook him. Still, Vance
continued to hold onto him until I actually heard bone crunching
beneath his fingers. Brian’s head suddenly sagged and fell off his
body to the floor with a loud thud.

Vance finally released Brian then, letting
his body tumble carelessly to land near the severed head.

I sat, frozen in place, with my hands
clasped over my mouth, my eyes wide in horror when Vance turned to
look at me.

I could feel the deadly fury that moved
through every part of him with each beat of his heart. His eyes
locked with mine, and I felt sorrow shoot through him when he took
in my expression.

He took a faltering step toward me before
stopping.

“I’m sorry, Portia,” he said, swallowing
hard when I continued to look at him, completely aghast.

I was unable to answer him after what I had
just witnessed.

He stared hard at me for a few moments
before he walked briskly out the door.

I was still sitting on the kitchen floor,
staring at Brian’s gruesome corpse, when my family arrived back
with the groceries.

Dad flipped on all the lights as he entered
the room, stopping cold when he saw the scene in front of him. His
eyes trailed over the body and across the floor to where I sat
shaking against the refrigerator. Shelly screamed when she came
into the room behind him and dropped the bag of groceries she had
been carrying. She buried her face in Brad’s shoulder.

“Portia!” my dad called to me, quickly
setting his bags on the counter. He rushed over to my side. “Are
you okay? What happened here? Did you do this?” he asked in rapid
succession.

My teeth were chattering as I tried to talk.
“Brian snuck up on me. He threatened me and tried to bite me. Vance
found us. They fought, and Vance …Vance … he …,” I trailed off,
looking at the body in front of me.

Grandma dug through a drawer, finding and
grabbing a linen tablecloth. She pulled it out and began to cover
the body along with the severed head.

My dad shook me hard trying to get me to
focus.

“Portia, did Vance kill Brian?” he asked me
staring straight into my eyes with a look of concern.

I nodded.

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t know. He left,” I said, and my
voice quivered uncontrollably with the shock of what I had
witnessed.

“He left you here? Alone? With this?” he
asked incredulously, gesturing to the scene behind him.

“Yes,” I said, and a sudden wave of guilt
washed over me. “But it was my fault.”

“How’s this your fault?” my dad replied,
moving to stand over me, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I’ve never seen anything like that before,
let alone coming from Vance. I mean I’ve always known he was
powerful, but … he scared me,” I explained. “He saw the look on my
face afterward, apologized and then left.”

My dad turned to the others who also had
stricken looks on their faces as they stared back at me.

“Brad, Shelly, go find Vance,” he ordered.
“And tell him I said to get back here right now!”

“No!” I said, and I slowly rose up to my
feet, trying to summon up my courage. “Let me go.”

“Are you sure that’s the best thing to do?”
my mom spoke up. “What if there are more people from Douglas and
Fiona’s coven out there?”

“Brian was said he was looking for me on his
own. No one else knows where we are. He was gloating over how he
found me without their help. It’ll be fine, Mom,” I said, and I
hesitated over the sheeted body.

“Portia, we’ve got this taken care of,” my
grandma said. She placed a hand of restraint on my shoulder. “Go
find your husband.”

I looked at the sheet one more time, wrapped
my arms around myself and headed out the door.

I knew exactly where to look for him. I
exited the keep and headed out into the night air.

Slowly, I moved across the grounds of the
massive structure until I reached the remains of the old crumbling
Kirk.

I could see his outline in the darkness. He
was kneeling over the remains of the ancient altar, his head held
in his hands.

Moving quietly, I walked up the stone-strewn
aisle, until I reached his side and knelt beside him.

He didn’t move or acknowledge my presence,
and the wall in his head was firmly up between us.

I stayed there for a long while waiting for
him to say something, anything. But the words I waited for never
came.

I finally decided to be the one to
speak.

“Lord,” I prayed out loud, and I looked up
to the starry heavens that showed through the giant holes in the
beamed structure. “I’d like to thank you for all the many blessings
I have. I’d especially like to express my appreciation to you for
my loving husband, who would do anything in his power to protect me
from harm. Please, please let him know how much I love him, even
when things scare me unexpectedly. I love him with all my heart.
Amen.”

I knelt with him for a while longer as he
continued to wrestle with his demons. Some time later when he still
hadn’t spoken to me, I stood up and walked out of the church. I
went back to the keep, thankful that I didn’t pass anyone as I made
my way up to the bedroom.

Closing the door behind me, I changed into
my night clothes and then crawled into the massive bed, pulling the
down comforter over my head.

I snuggled into the cozy space and waited
for him.

It was a long time before he finally crept
quietly back into the suite. I heard him move toward the bathroom,
and soon the sound of the shower was running behind the closed
door.

A short while later, I felt him lift the
covers and slide into bed with me, and the air filled with the
sweet smell of his aftershave, soap and shampoo.

“You didn’t have to wait up for me,” he said
with a sigh, not touching me with any part of his body.

“But I wanted to,” I said a little sleepily,
and I rolled over to lie across his chest, letting my hair spread
over him in the way I knew he liked.

I heard his breath catch in his throat when
I touched him, and I knew my gesture meant a lot to him.

“I’m sorry, Portia,” he apologized again,
and he lightly reached out to stroke the strands of my hair.

“Sorry for what? Saving me?” I asked
him.

“No, for being so brutal about it … for
scaring you,” he replied. “I let myself get carried away with
anger. I couldn’t stand that he touched you.”

I lifted my head to look at him in the dark,
laying one of my hands against the side of his face.

“Vance, had the tables been reversed and
someone who was purely evil was making moves on you, I would’ve
felt the same way,” I said, lightly stroking his face. “The fear
came from the fact that I’ve never really seen the full extent of
your powers before. Everyone is always telling me how you’re this
super powerful warlock, but other than a few isolated incidences,
I’ve never seen you at maximum capacity. For a single moment it
made me question whether or not I really knew who you were. I
didn’t recognize you.”

He was quiet for a moment before he
spoke.

“I never meant to scare you. I’m sorry I
did. And just for the record, you know all the important things
there are to know about me. Who cares about whether or not I have
strong powers. The strongest things inside me are my feelings for
you. Brian threatened those tonight, and I reacted accordingly,
completely violent and with unnecessary roughness.”

“You don’t need to try and explain to me. I
get it. I just want you to be happy with yourself. Yes, you were
brutal, but the fact is Brian was evil and needed to be destroyed.
It was something we knew we were going to have to do eventually. It
just happened sooner rather than later.”

“When I heard you scream into my mind, it
was as if my heart stopped beating and my blood ran cold,” he said,
and I felt a tremor move through him. “I was so frightened while I
was running to you, feeling like everything was moving in slow
motion, and I couldn’t get to you fast enough. I was so afraid he’d
kill you before I could get to you.”

“It’s over now,” I replied, and I kissed his
lips softly. “Put it from your mind. There’s no sense in reliving
it.”

We were both quiet for a minute before he
spoke again.

“Thank you for your prayer,” he whispered.
“It meant a lot to me. I thought I was losing you.”

“Never, ever,” I replied, kissing him
again.

He hugged me tightly to him, and when the
kiss was over, we spent the rest of the night together in a soft,
tender embrace, just holding one another, until we drifted off to
sleep.

The morning light found us much too soon
since we didn’t want to get up yet to face another day.

I was happy to see that Vance was much more
like his usual self than he had been last night. Every now and then
I would catch a look of question in his eyes, though, when he would
stare at me. I could see he still had doubts about whether or not I
was really okay with everything. I was going to have to do my best
to prove it to him.

“You know I love you with every fiber of my
being, right?” I asked him once when I caught him in the middle of
one of those reflective stares.

He didn’t answer me for a minute, and he
brushed his hand lightly over my head, moving down the surface of
my hair.

I started to worry then.

“You do know it?” I asked again, feeling my
heart flutter a little.

He stared straight into my eyes when he
answered.