Shifter Witch On Hell's Road: Book One (4 page)

The eyes of the elders fell on
Balthazar. Quizzical expressions colored their faces. As the oldest of the council, Dagon was their leader. He sat at the far end of the table. His dark cinnamon skin glowed in the firelight behind him and the light streaming through the tall glass windows. His black hair hung down his shoulders in tiny sleek braids over his tailored black suit.

“Come sit
, Balthazar,” Dagon said, motioning for him to move forward.

Balthazar found a seat
between two elder halflings who smiled at him as if he were a child. Indeed, this was Balthazar’s first time in the field. Eva had summoned him in the middle of a debaucherous world tour. He heard her call through the expanse of space-time. He was drawn to her like a the tide to the shore. It was inevitable and unexpected.

He was only twenty-five years old— decades and even centuries younger than the elders. Unlike humans, halflings had an exceptionally long life. One halfling might have a dozen or more slayer charges during his or her lifetime. Eva, was his first, and she was quite the responsibility.

“We were just discussing your
slayer Balthazar.”

“So you know about the attack already?”

“Yes. We know it happened out in the open. In a sex club of some kind. That there were multiple witnesses. We know your slayer works in these sex clubs and has no training whatsoever. We also know that she rejects you.”

“What you say is true.
But, Eva no longer rejects me.”

“Good news,” Dagon said. His tone was slightly mocking.

“Eva was not born to slayers. Her awakening was late in life, and her creation was unusual. She was initiated by witches and received her power via witchcraft. This is the primary reason her training is so lacking.”

“
As we all know, Eva is special. And that specialness extends beyond her origins.”

“Have you told her?” said Bast.

“I have not had the appropriate opportunity. You understand, the transformation was traumatic for her psyche. Her shapeshifting abilities almost caused a psychotic break. We are lucky she is still sane. I have tried to make things easier on her. I can’t pile anything else on her right now.”

“You must work quickly
Balthazar. She must trust you. She must connect to you. The war is coming. She must understand her role. She must be ready to preform her duty.”

“It will be done,” he said, standing, “I must return. I should not have left her this long.”

I opened my eyes
, and it was early morning. Gray dawn rose silently over the wet forest. Balthazar was gone, and I was cold as fuck. Where did he go? I suddenly felt a little lost without him. It was a new feeling for me. I’d always been a loner, independent of everyone and everything. Then I felt pissed. Why did he leave me? There were demons after me for fuck’s sake.

Leaving me alone on the side of the road was pretty messed up.
Fuck him.
He came into my life, screwed it all up, nearly gave me a nervous brake down, brought demons down on my ass, and then he just ditched me. I decided if he ever came back we were through.

I climbed into the front seat and started the car. It rumbled to life with no problem. I turned around and drove down the hill into the closest town. It was one of those smal
l Oregon farm towns with a feed store the size of a Walmart and a main street lined with mom and pop shops that sold hardware or outdated clothes.

My head pounded
, and I needed coffee. I pulled in front of a diner and slipped on a new pair of shoes from the shopping bags in the back seat. The sky above the diner was filled with dark gray clouds and cold air already crept into my car. I pulled on my parka and shivered as I opened the door. Once outside, I locked my car and hightailed it to the diner entrance.

Inside, a blast of warm air thawed my numb fingers. A chesty brunette waitress in her mid-twenties
, whose name tag said ‘Verna,’ showed me to a booth by the window and poured me a steaming cup of coffee. I filled it with fresh cream, three spoonfuls of sugar and stirred. The creamy brown liquid lapped against my throat and felt like heaven as the caffeine seeped into my brain.
Much better.

Verna
returned, and I ordered strawberry pancakes and a side of bacon. The coffee made me feel better, but I still felt totally annoyed that B-Zar had left me. I was starting to, you know, have feelings. They were new feelings, tender feelings, vulnerable, girly feelings. I instantly hated him for making me feel them. I hated him for making me feel what I felt now. Was it heart brake? Loneliness?

I gritted my teeth and growled inwardly at the idea of fe
eling heart broken over my half-demon stalker. Verna brought me my strawberry pancakes, and I tore into them. The sweet, syrupy flavor mixed with the greasy bacon really hit the spot. I was sucking the syrup off my fingers and taking my last gulps of coffee as a familiar form entered the diner.
Oh crap.

He came walking up to me all decked out like some kind of white gangsta. His baggy blue jeans hung down his waist under an over-sided hooded Raiders coat. He sat down at my table
acting all cocky, and I rolled my eyes. Verna poured his coffee looking half afraid, and half aroused. I glared at him with dagger eyes as Verna walked away.

“What are you doing here?”

“You knew I was coming back.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Are you pissed.”

“Very.”

“So, that means you have feelings for me. You missed me.” He sipped his coffee without taking his eyes off me.

“I didn’t say that.
Demons are after me. They could attack at any moment, and you just took off. This is all your fault you know.”

“My fault? If its anyone’s fault
, it’s Julia’s.”

“Hey, don’t you dare talk shit about her.”

“I’m just calling it like I see it.”

I threw some
dollar bills on the table and got up to leave. B-Zar got up behind me and followed me to the cash register. He tried to put his hand on my shoulder, but I jerked it out of reach. Verna came back and took the receipt out of her pocket and rung me up. I paid for my breakfast, and B-Zar’s coffee. I didn’t want to be rude to Verna by making her ring up another check for seventy-five cents.

“Have a great day you two,” she said as we walked out the glass doors.
Not a chance
, I thought as I let the door slam on his face.

I
got in my car without unlocking the door for B-Zar and started the engine. I pulled out of my parking spot, leaving him standing on the sidewalk. A moment later he sat in the passenger seat smiling at me like an asshole.

“I didn’t invite you.”

“Do we have to do this all over again, Eva? I thought we got past this last night.”

“That was before you
ditched me,” I said pulling onto I5 south.

“I had to take care of some business. It was very important and couldn’t wait. You weren’t in danger. I wouldn’t have left you if you were.”

I looked over at him. His eyebrows were drawn together with concern and he wore an incredibly convincing pout. The mass of his body beneath his hip hop clothes called to me and reminded me of the heat we experienced last night. I felt a twitch in my underwear and squeezed my legs together as I drove.

“Fine,” I sighed, “I forgive you.”

“Good because we have some serious work to do.”

“Work
?”

“You
preformed admirably in the battle last night, but that was just a taste of what’s to come. You need to train, learn to use your sword and your body more effectively.”

“OK. But my next gig is
in San Francisco the day after tomorrow. Christmas Eve”

“Must you continue with this ridiculous strip tease tour?”

I looked over at him. His outside appearance said gangsta but his words said ‘period drama’.

“This is what I’m doing, and
I’m doing it. Julia tried to talk me out of it too.”

“But why?”

“What else am I supposed to do?”

“Eva, you’re a demon slayer. You slay demons…”

“Yeah, there’s that, but that isn’t like, you know, a career.”

“And taking your clothes off in front of strangers is?”

“Hey, it’s what I got. OK? Don’t be a hater.”

“Alright. We
will go on to San Francisco. I suppose it won’t make a substantial difference. Right now, I am certain the demons are marshaling another attack effort. We begin your battle tactics training right now.”

If these demon
assholes were going to keep showing up, I wanted to know how to deal with them. I was irritated and kind of scared. I hadn’t exactly dreamed of being a demon slayer when I was a little girl. Even though I was still kind of pissed, I figured I should probably go along with B-Zar for now.

“Where?”
I said.

“I will find us a place to train. I’ll be right back.”

Balthazar disappeared from the passenger seat. The depressions in the chair slowly filled in from where he had been a split-second before. It always startled me when he did that. This whole thing startled me. I mean, seriously, shapeshifting, demons, popping in and out of space? Who wouldn’t be freaked out?

I continued south along the highway and a light snow began to fall as I approached Grants Pass. I was thinking of stopping again for a snack when B-Zar popped back into the car.

“Holy crap!”

“What?”

“Can’t you give me some kind of warning when you do that?”

“Not really. OK. I found a place we can train. Take the next exit.”

I pulled off into Grants Pass and followed his directions out into the surrounding farmland. We went down a country road that cut through big, open hay fields where cattle grazed on short winter grass. We drove up a hill into a dense forest and continued through the rural farm country. We crested a hill that looked down over an expanse of rolling fields.

“Pull over here,” he said pointing at a turn out.

“I don’t see anything. I’m not training outside in this cold.”

“Don’t worry about that.”

I parked the car and got out into the cold air, crossing my arms around my stomach. My breath blew from my mouth and nose in a misty cloud. I felt kind of stupid standing on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. B-Zar slammed his door shut and walked around to my side of the car.

“Now what?” I said, looking up at him. His face was rugged an
d tan in the gloomy, gray light. As he stood in front of me, the passion from the night before seemed to well up and overflow. It hit me like a hammer, and I could hardly stand. My annoyance clashed with my lust for him, and I shuttered, trying to keep up my boundaries. It didn’t work. He enveloped me in his arms, and I tilted my head up to let him kiss me.

The next thing I knew, I was standing in the middle of a barn. The sweet scent of clover hay wafted up through the air. It must have been twenty degrees warmer than outside.

“The hay bails insulate the building and no one should be around. This barn is fairly far from the main farm.”

“What now?”
I said as he let me go. The space between us felt like one of the barren fields outside. I didn’t want to let him go, but made no moves to hold on.

“We need to work on your technique. Obviously, you have natural talent. But when the demons come in full force you will need more than that to defeat them.”

I decided to get down to business. Learning to defend myself was more important than whatever sexual tension I was feeling. Part of me didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he made me so hot.

He
positioned my body and instructed me on how to stand to keep myself balanced no matter how I punched or kicked. We went through basic martial arts forms— how to attack and counter attack. My body moved instinctively as if I had been practicing the discipline all my life. I was sure my gymnastics had helped, but there was something new as well, a kind of inner knowing that should only come with dedication and time.

After we covered the basics we progressed onto combination moves. I started getting pretty warm and threw off my parka and so did B-Zar. He showed me how to throw punches and kicks together in one seamless movement. I wanted to show off a little
so I let my body slightly shapeshift so that I was super light and buoyant.

When
he showed me how to do a twist-slice and kick, I let my body launch into the air so that I flew above him. My leg slashed over the top his head, and I landed effortlessly on the ground in front of him. He looked at me blankly and crossed his arms.

“I understand that you think this is funny, but I assure you this is no joke.”

“This ‘one, two, three, four’ stuff is boring.”

“Fine, we can spar. We’ll see just how talented you are.”

I threw a punch and smacked him squarely in the face and then laughed loudly. His nose looked red for a few seconds while he stared at me with disgust.

“I’ll give you one shot. That was it.”
He said moving into fighting position.

He thrust a strong left hook at my stomach
, and I twisted away just in time. I put my fists up in a defensive position in front of my face and balanced myself like he had shown me. B-Zar had about thirty pounds on me, and that was pure muscle. He could take me down with one good hit.

I narrowed my eyes at him and circled around him stepping lightly and evenly to keep my body in a balanced defensive position.

The sound of an engine buzzed outside, and his eyes darted to the left. I took the opening and threw a swift jabbing punch into his jaw. He backed up just in time and corrected himself, smiling at me and bouncing in place with this fists in front of his face.

He threw another jab at me, but I could tell it was weak. He didn’t intend to hit me. As
I bent out of his reach I swipe kicked under his knees and sent him reeling down to the ground. As he fell, his foot connected with my ankle, sending me right down on top of him.

I felt on his chest. My face hung inches over his
, and I felt his body respond instantly to my contact. I tried to get up but B-Zar swung over on top of me and pinned my arms down to the barn floor. In this position I had almost no defense. I tried to knee him in the gonads, but he pinned my legs down with his knees.

I struggled against his arms but he was so much stronger than me, I could barely budge.
The sense of helplessness went from infuriating to tantalizing. Overwhelming desire trickled through my adrenaline soaked blood, and my eyelids fluttered. My body melted into the floor. His mouth leaned into mine and pressed hard against my lips. I struggled a little, just so he didn’t think I was giving in so easily. But not for long.

The feeling of him holding me down, pressing my body into the hay littered floor,
made moisture seep between my legs. All my defenses evaporated, and I let his tongue into my mouth. I felt his cock hard and solid against my stomach. He let up the pressure on my legs and slid between them as I wrapped them around his waist.

His thick tongue licked my neck
, and his hands searched under my shirt. He ripped my bra down and enveloped my breast in his mouth, teasing my nipple with this tongue. I groaned and reached for his cock. I wanted it inside me. It felt like I’d been waiting forever for this. My pussy throbbed in anticipation of the thick lance I’d held the day before.