Otherworldly Discipline: A Witch's Lesson (29 page)

What sort of dark devilry would even create creature likes these?

She easily had never been so frightened in her life, and her body froze as if she was suddenly made of stone, although her eyes brushed over the features of these creatures. Her
knuckles
balled and she visibly snarled.

Which was new. She’d never snarled in her life; she surprised herself by baring her white teeth at the creatures.

“What do we have here?” said a voice from behind her.

She closed her eyes and wondered how this nightmare was going to continue when she turned around. She couldn’t imagine scarier than the cloaked beings in front of her, but she braced herself for worse, none the less. Slowly, she tilted her head, and saw a blonde
haired handsome, tall man right behind her, coming along her side to stand in front of the hooded demon
like men.

Yes, the man was handsome; even in the dim light she could see that; but he was frightening. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood up promptly. “What sort of girl goes around bumping into things this time of night?” the man asked.

Her lip moved over her teeth, and she stopped
baring
them as she looked at him pace around her. Now, she was too bewildered by him to put an intelligent sentence together. “I…I…” she stammered. There was something about this man that was dangerous—everything in her gut told her so beyond common sense. She could see that this man wasn’t keeping the monsters at bay—he was their master.

He smiled and looked her up and down. “You’re dressed very interestingly. I’m guessing you’re not from far away. Where are you from?”

She swallowed. “I-I’m trying to get to Earthside,” she rasped.

“No, no… That’s where you’re going. I’m much more interested in where you’re from. You look… familiar.” His blue eyes blazed into her.

He suddenly stepped close to her and wrapped his arms around her, pinning her hands to her side, and then leaned his head in to smell her. “Mmm. The smell of a witch.” He grinned. “Mixed with something else… Hmm.”

“I’m not a witch,” she said, trying to struggle out of his firm grasp.

“You’re from Ashcroft of Medwin’s. From the tower over the hill? Fascinating. I swear that man is collecting a whole harem of witch pussy. But
why?” He let her scramble out of his grasp and she fell on her ass in the snow behind her. He hummed again. “Who is your sire?”

“I’m not a witch!” she hissed again, glaring up at him.

“I will let you live if you tell me your sire’s name. What faction are you?”

She had no idea what he was talking about.

He sighed. “Fine. If you won’t play with me, I’ll let them play with you. They love playing with their food, you know. Do give me a shout when you’re willing to cooperate.” He snapped his fingers and even more demons—even ones that looked different; these were tall and pale with claws—came out of the dark shadows falling around her.

They lunged towards her.

It was a blur what happened next. But she knew that something within her stretched threateningly towards the ground and lunged back, tearing with her nails and fingers and legs at whatever she found with them.

She had never fought in a war before, of course. The last one had happened about a century before she was even born. But she had heard others talk about battle with a glint in their eye. The other nymphs would giggle how they and the Valkyrie in the South could give any monster a run for their money. They might be small, but they were vicious as a venomous snake.

But she felt more so, because after she crunched her palm through a sharp
toothed face, she turned her hand and blasted a strong current of electricity and wind toward a backward attacker. She didn’t seem to even have to touch them. When there wasn’t anything around her to attack, she settled over her fifth body and panted, looking around her dizzily. The blond wizard laughed and clapped his hands with delight. “Mmm!” he hummed, delighted. “What are you?”

“Come here and find out,” she hissed, her eyes wandering towards the tree lines to her left and right. Creatures were assuring that her fight wasn’t near over. But she could take a wizard down—maybe not an army of monsters.

He snorted. “And spoil my own fun by ending the festivities too early? I haven’t been this entertained in quite an age.” He snapped his fingers at more monsters that were waiting in the wings for her.

She took a deep breath. She was so tired; her brain felt stretched like she had been working brain teasers all day without stop. But she tried to focus; she would not give the wizard the satisfaction of her loss. She didn’t want to further her acquaintance with him.

But quickly, she found herself overpowered, overstretched, waiting another wave while she sat back in the snow after shooting off a last spell.

   She tried to scramble against the snow until her back hit up against a tree. She then saw something small and furry sprint through the shadowy darkness behind the monsters. Probably something else that wanted to eat her…

She saw a flash of red sprint past the blonde man, and the cloaked creatures, and then it reared in front of her, facing them, in a protective, aggressive stance.

It was a fox—a very beautiful, black-eared fox with very white and sharp teeth. It was growling ferociously, like it wasn’t afraid of hooded, hungry demons at all. The demons looked at him, their hollow-red eyes looked confused, but then they continued to descend.

And then the fox wasn’t a fox anymore. It was a man—a man with two very sharp rapiers who knew how to use them. He was so quick, so graceful, and the weapons moved like they were attached to his body. It was over quickly—black blood spattered everywhere, two demons were minus their heads and crumpled against the snowy ground—but it was hypnotizing while she watched it. Without getting a good look at him, he lunged towards the blonde.

The blonde man laughed, side stepped, and then tossed a glowing spell at him.

The spell, which moved quickly through the air like a glowing red orb, deflected off of the hero’s blade. The blonde stopped smiling and sneered. The hero made a lunge, but in the second it took to reach the blonde man, he’d disappeared.

The hero growled lowly, but then turned and marched toward her, putting his blades into the sheathes hanging at his waist, staring at her with a dark look. “Moriarty!” she breathed.

For a second, she was very, very happy to see him. Her heart fluttered.

In the next second, when he yanked her gruffly out of the snow and bent her over his arm, planting five very quick, very hard slaps against her cold, numb bottom, and then she clasped her hands over her hind end and stared at him with a hurt expression on her face. 

Silence engulfed them both as he grabbed her upper arms into his firm hands. “Why did you leave me?” he demanded, his own expression beyond hurt.

“I—” she began, but then didn’t follow it up. She merely dropped her eyes to the snow. How could he play at not knowing why she’d gone.

When she’d made it clear that she was too ashamed to answer, he said, “What
are you?”

Her head snapped up and she looked at him horrified. He further explained, “I’ve never seen a nymph do that, Alice. I’ve never seen a nymph fight that way. You were using magic. You were like a witch.”

“I… I don’t know. I’ve never done that before, either,” she admitted, panting. She was happy to change the subject. “I don’t understand why they’d come after me.”

“Because you’re in the Northwest Realm and its sundown,” he countered crisply. “There’s always things waiting for a quick meal, checking the tower for weaknesses. I don’t know why
Lachlan
was here…” He stared in the place where the wizard
had stood
.
His face was very, very stone-like and dark.
“Come. We have to talk to Ashcroft. And after that, I’m introducing you to your hairbrush.” He quickly began marching her back in the direction of the tower.

That… that didn’t sound like it was going to be very fun. Despite the fact that Moriarty was easily the most overly groomed male she’d ever seen, he had a feeling that he wasn’t talking about primping her. She pulled against him. “Moriarty, no! Wait, I—”

“Shh!” he shushed, his voice demanding. “Those aren’t the only things out here that would like to have you as a morsel,” he gestured to the bodies.  He continued to drag her, but got quickly tired of her trying to catch up with
his
long stride, then bent just to haul her over one of his shoulders. He kept one arm around the back of her knees, and then other on the hilt of one of his rapiers.

She was about to further complain, but as the sky went black and the moon rose,
and
she could only make out the snow on the ground and dark shadows, and sometimes a glowing set of eyes watching them. “Moriarty,” she whispered. “There are things… out here.”

“I know,” he replied quietly yet curtly. “It’s night. Obviously, you didn’t talk to Charlotte long enough today to learn from any of the small amount of experiences she’s actually had. Just close your eyes, Alice.”

Yeah, right. She’d never close her eyes again. “Why’d you come get me?” she asked quietly.

“Why do you think?” was his retort. “I told you to stay where you were. I was gone less than one hour! I needed to clear my mind. I like to think that if you needed to do the same, I wouldn’t climb out of a forth-story window to take advantage of your absence. Especially if you stayed by my bedside for a whole month, trying to ease your suffering, barely sleeping or eating right along with me. I’d like to think I’d grant you a small amount of leniency, even if
you
did act slightly insensitive for a moment or two.”

She never had been lectured before. This was a good one. She frowned, feeling quite chided, although the blush he was sending to her cheeks from his obvious concern to her was actually quite nice. “I might have reacted poorly. But my feelings were hurt,” she admitted.

“I’m sorry, Alice. But that certainly wasn’t my intention. Surely, I will be
hurting your feeligns unintentionally in the future
as well, and I would appreciate it if you didn’t go frolicking about at dusk in the Otherworld without even leaving a note as to where you thought you were going,” he snapped, sounding completely exasperated. She made him emit something sounded like a cough, a grunt, and a sigh. “I’m just getting angrier every moment. And sick, because you have no idea what nearly happened to you!”

“Gory death?” she guessed, feeling like a
well
lectured child. She felt a protective squeeze on the back of her thigh where is hand was holding her in place. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how dangerous it was,” she told him.

Moriarty locked his jaw and was silent as the trudged on towards the tower in the distance.

*
*
*

Moriarty wasted no time in finding Ashcroft, who surprisingly was in the middle of having what sounded like pretty graphic, violent sex with Charlotte. The man was understandably
vexed
when he answered the door to find him there, but he immediately dropped his surly attitude as soon as Moriarty said what happened, and even more
so when Moriarty was halfway through the name of “Lachlan”, which caused Ashcroft to turn back into the room, grab his shirt, for he wasn’t wearing one, and then was close behind Moriarty all the way up to his bedroom, where he had put Alice.

Alice had quickly washed up, and now her hair was wet, efficiently rid of the black demon blood that had covered her and her coat, and she met them in her towel.

When he had carried her back to the tower, Moriarty had felt sickened to his stomach. Not because she had just foolishly left him during dusk either, but because he found it impossible not to consider what had nearly happened to Alice. The sensation he had felt was like having his stomach stretched, maybe because it had spent so much time in his throat as he’d rushed to track down where she had gone.

And certainly he was upset with her. But seeing her now, in nothing but a towel, unable to even make eye contact with him because of her obvious remorse, he felt nothing but absolute adoration and concern.

He was pleased by the way Ashcroft looked at her thoroughly without him having to demand it, making sure she hadn’t come to harm, making sure not to touch her in any way that would make Moriarty or Alice uncomfortable. But the man couldn’t hide his confusion—he wore it like a mask on his face, obvious to all.

“She is certainly an odd nymph. I understand why Lachlan couldn’t place what she was,” Ashcroft finally said, his voice in a hum. “Do you have any idea as to who your sire was, Alice?” he asked her.

*
*
*

Alice couldn’t help but be intimidated by the wizard from the moment he had stepped into the room, and wondered how it was possible that Moriarty wasn’t intimidated, although she did realize that he called him ‘Master’, a term for which she had never heard outside of books. She wondered if Moriarty was
Ashcroft’s
slave
for a moment
until Ashcroft
seemed to
bend to Moriarty’s obvious concern by overlooking her arms and legs and face, looking for bruises or signs that might give him clues as to the night’s mysteries.