Amber- Shadow Witch Page 3

  That night I took a portal to China, of course it was early morning there. I kept my long black hair, but changed my eyes from jade green to brown. I also modified my features enough to pass as Chinese. It almost wasn’t fair to their counter-intelligence people. I didn’t approach May, I simply hit her with a modified communication enchantment from across the street as she walked toward her car.

  It wouldn’t last more than a day or two, enchantments didn’t hold well to flesh, bodies just changed too much the way they constantly replaced cells and all. Not wanting her to get into an accident, I waited until she was at work before contacting her. I just hoped she didn’t freak out and scream or something.

  I sent, “May, don’t get upset or speak out loud. I’m speaking to you in your mind, if you want to talk back just imagine yourself doing so in your head.”

  She replied, “Who are you, and what do you want.”

  I replied, “May, I work for the American government, we were told you wanted to defect. If that’s not true I’ll leave now and never contact you again. Trust me, your government will never know I was here.”

  I felt a surge of relief along with her reply, “You will get me away from here? Give me a lab and let me release my inventions?”

  I sent, “I believe that’s the plan yes, I specialize in extraction, someone else will debrief you and get you everything you need.”

  I could sense her nerves, but she told me she was ready.

  “Go to the restroom, or somewhere private, let me know when you’re alone.”

  She replied, “How will that help?”

  I sent a smile, “The spells I put on you have more tricks than telepathic communication.”

  A few minutes later she sent that she was ready.

  The spell package included telepathic, location, bug detectors, and of course a portal spell with Langley hard wired into it. I told her what to expect and activated her portal as I stepped through my own.

  I smiled at the woman that came through the portal. Her picture really didn’t do her justice, she had a presence about her that made me take notice.

  “Hello May, it’s nice to meet you.”

  She bowed a little, “You as well, if it is not offensive, what are you?”

  “I’m a witch, partly anyway. I’ll escort you inside and introduce you to your contact. She’ll be able to get whatever you need.”

  She nodded in acceptance and I took her inside. I was relieved when Susan showed none of her antipathy toward me when I introduced May and left her in Susan’s hands.

  I reverted to my natural look, left the building, and took a portal home. I was getting a late snack when I got the memory transfer from Dawn. I spent some time going over it and it was fascinating. Dragons, who’d have thought? I didn’t see anything alarming about the other world, at least for Earth, but I couldn’t help but notice Dawn hadn’t gathered a whole lot of information.

  When I finished my snack, the phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and saw Sam’s name. Sam was one of the managers at the club my sister owned, he was also my unofficial spy there. I liked to keep an eye on my family.

  “What’s up?”

  His voice sounded rattled, “Dawn was shot at by a crazed woman. She’s not hurt or anything, the cops just took the woman away. Thought you’d want to know.”

  My mind was racing as I replied, “Thanks for letting me know.”

  We hung up and I stood there thinking. That was odd wasn’t it? I wanted to see this woman for myself although it was probably nothing more than a kook, but why take chances? It didn’t take long for me to figure out what precinct she would have been taken to. I took the time to get dressed in work clothes so I’d look professional and headed out the door…

  Chapter 5

  Getting to the precinct was easy. My CIA badge was worthless however in getting in to see a prisoner so I didn’t even try it. We had no jurisdiction locally. So I used a time honored tradition to get access, I used my inner succubus and flirted my way in.

  Men were so easy.

  I found out she would be transferred in the morning for psychiatric evaluation. But I didn’t need all that long. I just peaked in and used my power to pull out one of her hairs. If the officer was surprised I left so quickly he didn’t let it show. I walked down the block to an all night café and grabbed a coffee. Then I dove into the woman’s mind.

  What I found surprised me, and within five minutes I was livid with anger. One of the least talked about powers of a succubus was the ability to mesmerize, or as it was otherwise known in fictional literature, compulsion. A succubus was a huntress, no man, or woman, could resist us if we brought that power to bear. Most of us never bothered to us it.

  For one it was morally questionable, it was akin to rape. Two, we could get an extremely high percentage of the population in bed without it, it seemed almost pointless. But mesmerizing could be used for a lot more than getting someone in bed. It was immediately apparent the woman was forced to try and kill my sister, she had no choice.

  What had me livid however, was I knew exactly who did it. I just wasn’t sure what to do about it yet. I wanted to kill the two faced evil bitch but the truth was I was much more worried about how Dawn would take it. No, I needed to cool off and think about this for a while, my sister was safe enough for now.

  I went home and decided to just get to sleep, tomorrow was Sunday, my one day off so I’d have plenty of time to deal with it then…

  Nothing is ever simple, the next morning Dawn sent us all her dream of Rafe. The dragons weren’t as peaceful as she’d thought. It wasn’t long after that when Cat sent out a message to let us all know to get together on Monday morning. I also still had that other issue to deal with and I didn’t know enough about it. I’d identified the culprit, but not why.

  I dressed in casual shorts and a t-shirt, and slipped on some tennis shoes. I closed my eyes and connected to the communication necklace to locate where Dawn and Lily were. I clenched my teeth, they were at the beach. Good enough though, I opened portal to the hallway at the top of her club.

  With a single thought and a trickle of magic I heard Lily’s lock click open and let myself in. I headed straight for the bathroom, suppressing the murderous rage I felt and pulled a hair from her hairbrush. I loved my sister, there had to be a way to protect her from this. I knew Dawn cared for Lily a lot, if not loved the selfish bitch. Sometimes it drove me nuts how trusting she was.

  I took a portal home, embraced my magic, and dug into Lily’s memories. It took a while to piece together the story. Lily was an opportunist. Dawn her roommate had been hot, great in bed, and rich. That only went so far though, Lily was tired of her after so many years together, but she didn’t want to give up the club and didn’t think Dawn would as well.

  Lily was too afraid to hurt Dawn herself, she was afraid of Dawn’s family. So the stupid slut had the idea to mesmerize and force a human to empty a clip into my sister. Lily knew about the shields, but apparently had never seen them in action, she thought it would be enough.

  After all, it would have killed any other succubus.

  Of course, I also picked up the new memory where my sister confessed her love just minutes ago, I saw red. I planned torturous affairs, at least twenty ways to kill her and hide the body, each one more painful and gruesome than the previous. Then I meditated on it, I couldn’t let my anger get the best of me, I had too much power. It would be so easy to become a monster myself.

  I started to make other plans by focusing on Dawn instead of Lily, finding out the truth would destroy her. I knew just finding out that Lily didn’t love her would hurt her tremendously, much less finding out that Lily was her would be murderer.

  It wouldn’t be as satisfying of course, I’d have to let Lily live, but I had a plan I thought would work. It was getting late and I needed to feed so I went to a local bar. I was kind of on automatic, I let myself be picked up by a beautiful wild woman who wanted to share her boyfriend. It was okay, and I got
well fed and fucked, but that night I was just going through the motions…

  I called work to let them know I had personal stuff to take care of. When I got to the family meeting, and saw Dawn, I was once again fighting down the rage on her behalf. I was even kind of bitchy toward her because of it, as if that made sense? We suggested she go to the magic human world to find stuff out, I wasn’t really sure she’d be the best for the job, but I backed her as it would fit in nicely with my plans.

  It would be the perfect opportunity to deal with Lily with her off world.

  She left pretty much right after the meeting, so I put my plan into play. I opened a portal to Lily’s bedroom and stepped through. Tony was there in bed with her, I assume Dawn had left them there when she went to the meeting. I hit Tony with a sleep spell to make sure he didn’t wake up, then picked up Lily with my mind and slammed her against the wall to wake her up.

  “What the fuck,” she screamed.

  I felt a tiny bit guilty for doing this, but I didn’t want my sister hurt, at least, not more hurt than she was going to be.

  My voice and countenance were icy, “Shut up bitch. I know what you did. I’d like to torture you a few hours then end your miserable life, but my sister was dumb enough to fall for you so here is what’s going to happen. You will avoid her, you won’t call her, you won’t allow yourself to be in the same building as her.

  “Eventually she’ll decide your simply rejecting her love, and she’ll dig into that twisted little brain of yours to figure out what’s going on. Don’t worry, I’m currently blocking off all the sick twisted shit in your mind into a separate area and protecting it, she won’t find it with a standard mind scan. She’ll probably pick up some things, like your scared shitless of me, but not why.”

  The stupid girl looked mutinous, “What about the club?”

  I snorted, “You’ve actually met my sister right? She’ll offer to buy your half or sell hers and let you decide. She loves you remember? I’d advise you when that happens to offer her what it’s actually worth, buy her out, and stay the hell away from her. If you can manage that you get your wish. You have the club, and she’s out of your psychopathic hair.

  “Keep in mind the only reason I’m letting you live is to spare Dawn the truth, but I’m keeping the hair I have of you and will be checking up on you. If you have any crazy ideas to get revenge, or kill her anyway after you get what you want, I’ll make sure you live just long enough to regret it.”

  She finally looked scared and I’m ashamed to say I rather enjoyed it.

  Lily nodded, “If it goes like you think it will, I’ll follow your plan. When she’s gone I’ll never talk to her again.”

  Would one broken bone really matter? Shit. Yes it would.

  I let her fall to the bed and lifted the spell off of Tony as I opened a portal and stepped through. I wondered for a moment if I did the right thing, the woman was nuts, and probably already a murderer. Was my sister’s state of mind more important than that? Yes, to me it most definitely was…

  A lot happened over the next couple of days. Work was pretty slow which was a good thing. My plan for dealing with Lily worked out almost exactly like I expected, what I didn’t expect was to have my sister as a neighbor. When she asked me about it I let her know there was a place available in my building.

  We also learned the human version of events that led to the war between the dragons and magic world. I was a little worried about things, but we weren’t sure what, if anything, to do. For now we were watching, we’d gotten the word out to all the witches to watch out for dragon auras. They really shouldn’t be hard to find if they come to scout our world.

  The other thing we were doing was trying to figure out a way to stop dragons from using world gates to our orbit, just in case things got dicey. The problem was we had no idea what their range was, if we came up with something to block all the way out to say, the moon around earth orbit, could they just come in there and fly the rest of the way?

  How long and how far could their magic take them in space before it failed? We were also unsure how exactly to go about it, it was too much space to cover. Then there was also the idea that they might not be hostile even if they scout. I wasn’t trusting but I also wouldn’t assume they were going to turn out hostile.

  While blocking such a large area of space was hard, detecting a world gate should be easy, it caused a decent sized ripple in space time. Since it was one enchantment I created a number of enchanted objects. They were like wards that would alert me if a world gate was opened. Then I put them up like satellites in high earth orbit.

  So we couldn’t determine motives, but at least now we’d know if they sent any more scouts. That was assuming of course, that they weren’t already here.

  A couple of other things happened, we let Dawn know to help the humans of magic world if she wanted, and we got the memory of Rafe telling Dawn the dragons side of the story. It sounded about right, both sides coming at it from their point of view.

  It’d been five days so I dug out Lily’s hair, besides some wishful thinking about seeing me dead she hadn’t truly been plotting revenge. She hated and feared me, but that was okay, actually that was kind of good. I also took the time to do a little research on Dawn’s new lovers. I was jealous of course, the woman went from heartbroken to three lovers in a matter of days, including Rafe of course. Although she hadn’t had a date with Trent yet. They both seemed to be good, or at least, not psychotic, so I kind of let it go.

  It made me want to rethink my relationship with Terry, and strangely enough it made me think of Bryce as well. I growled, being a succubus and CIA agent was lonely at times, but I hated dwelling on it. There were more important things in life, or so I told myself.

  Friday night I decided to have a night out. No mission involved so I got to be myself. It was kind of a relief, in a way it was fun to be a redhead, or a blonde for a while. But I felt most comfortable in my own skin so to speak. My features looked so much like my mothers, but I loved my long raven hair and green eyes that I’d gotten from my father.

  I put on a red dress that showed my perky C cups to advantage and hugged every curve of my body sinfully. It also managed to cover down to mid thigh, when I was standing anyway. I slipped on a pair of four inch red heels putting me at an almost average height at five foot eight. I even broke out the nicer jewelry and put on diamond and sapphire earrings and a matching necklace.

  I wondered at myself as I looked in the mirror, usually I’d just hit a local bar and let someone take me home. I hadn’t been clubbing in a long time, it was more my sister’s style. Maybe I just needed a change. Great, midlife crisis at the ripe old age of twenty three. Maybe I was just finally growing up, the fast easy meals were growing unappealing. Maybe it was just my sister’s success in that area that was making me take a good long look at myself and my life. I wasn’t sure how going to club would change that though, same thing, different scene.

  I was heading out the door when my phone rang. Terry… I considered letting it go to voicemail, I wasn’t in the mood to dodge his advances, or maybe I just didn’t want to anymore. Oh girl, this is such a bad idea.

  “Hey Terry, you caught me heading out the door, what’s up?”

  He replied in an almost whining voice, “I’m hungry.”

  I suppressed a giggle, I didn’t giggle, ever.

  “So eat something,” I said slowly in full sarcasm, as if I was talking to a mental patient.

  He made a considering noise, “What are you in the mood for?”

  I raised an eyebrow despite him not being able to see it, “I see, did we have a date?”

  “Of course,” he replied innocently, “You know you want to, who doesn’t like food?”

  I shook my head in disbelief; did he really expect that to work? Still, it made me smile. Screw it.

  “How about Italian?”

  He replied, “Filomena? In Georgetown? Give me a half hour.”

  “Alright, see you out
front,” and I hung up the phone, then stared at it. Apparently it had worked for him.

  I looked down at myself, probably not the best thing to wear. Then again, if he saw me in this we may not get inside the restaurant. I went back into the bedroom and put on a more appropriate dress. It was still form fitting, just not skin tight. It did show cleavage but the hem was down to my lower thigh and was much looser over my legs. I also changed to a pair of sandals with two inch heels.

  I had my doubts about this, it was a horrible idea. I was also excited and had butterflies in my stomach, I was so screwed. I thought for sure I was setting myself up for failure, but also thought that I was way too cynical for someone so young. In short I argued with myself for a half hour before I opened a portal to the side of the restaurant and walked out front.

  I felt his familiar aura right away and made my way over. It looked like he may have come here straight from work, he had on a pair of gray pants, and a button down shirt. He also had a five o’clock shadow going. His eyes lit up as he took me in, I almost regretted changing. Almost.

  “I hope you brought your appetite.”

  I smiled wide, “You have no idea…”

  I took his arm and we headed for the door when my stomach dropped and I froze for half a second. I could feel it inside, exactly like it felt in Dawn’s memories. The magic and aura of a dragon. My alarms hadn’t gone off, so exactly how long had it been here? How many others?

  Terry asked, “You okay?”

  “Hmm, oh, yeah I’m fine.”

  Terry opened the door and held it for me, as I walked in and scanned the room. The dragon was tall, at least six foot ten, and stood out so well a five year old could have spotted him. He didn’t notice my entrance at all, which surprised me. I turned and put my attention on Terry while I thought it through. Rafe had felt and hunted down Dawn’s witch magic, maybe he just didn’t have a spell active for it? Wait, the dragon shifter had red hair, which meant red dragon, no spell casting. Although he did have a natural shield, so I didn’t think I could just grab a hair out of his head, he’d also have no problems detecting my magic if I tried.