Witch Road to Take (4 page)

I was astonished and uncertain. Was I still
asleep? Was this some sort of nested dream where you think you wake
up but you are still dreaming?

What jolted me out of bed was the smell of
bacon. Of all cooked meat, bacon had the most mouthwatering smell
known to humankind. I literally sniffed my surroundings like an
animal that could smell its prey from a mile away.

Bacon? I must still be dreaming!

The room was bright, the paint on the walls
a cheery mix of off-white paint and patterned wallpaper.
A plush
bed? A dresser with a mirror? A flat-screen television? Am I on the
third floor because this must be what Heaven feels like?

I threw the mound of covers off my body,
jumped out of bed and sucked sweet upstairs air into my lungs as I
stretched. The mirror on my dresser allowed me to catch a glimpse
of my attire: cool leopard-print pajama bottoms and blouse. “Not
bad. My brother has good fashion sense.” I smiled inwardly.

Things like this didn’t happen to me. I was
usually running from one big city to the next, hanging out long
enough to take in the ambience of Earth but never able to stay long
enough to stop and smell the roses. The hypnotic visual of this
world made my senses clash. I was now in my very own dream come
true.

I pinched myself.

“Ow!” Apparently, this was real.

I peered through the blinds and feasted my
eyes on a neighborhood of families and children. The ice cream
truck had its horrible repetitious music blaring from the old-style
white van as it trudged its way along the curb, enticing youngsters
to buy the frozen treats.

“This is insane,” I whispered to myself. “We
finally made it to Kansas, Toto.” I laughed at the reference.

Although this was the first time I had ever
set foot in this room, everything about it was me. A poster of La
Sera, and Celldweller, two of my favorite bands, hung on the wall.
A small serving table used as a magazine tray had the latest issues
of
Vogue
and
Cosmopolitan
. My eyes were big, my heart
pounded fast. “How did this stuff get here? Better yet, where is
here?”

The closet would be the tell-all. Before I
left the room to find out exactly where I was, I had to see if
there was anything in my closet—anything that would please my
female need for fashion. With one hand on the doorknob, I threw it
open and gazed inside a walk-in closet full of fashionable clothes
and heels. I dropped to my knees and screamed, “Yes, yes, yes!”

After my moment of glory inside my closet,
it was time for me to venture outside my room and get a good feel
for where I was. I cracked open the door to the bedroom and poked
my head out. Two people were talking—two male voices, both of which
I had never heard before. I wasn’t sure what to do.
Do they know
I’m here? Do they care?

In my leopard print PJ’s, I carefully and
quietly walked down the short hallway and out into a
retro-decorated living room. A black and white sofa hugged the
living room window with a glass coffee table adjacent. To the right
of the couch was a matching black and white chair and between the
two arms of both was an arc floor lamp.

To the left was a kitchen with a low
countertop and a kitchen table. One guy had his back toward me at
the kitchen table while the other was cooking over the stove. A
part of me wanted to slip out and back into the sanctuary of my new
room but the other—the very curious part of me—needed to know what
in the name of downstairs was going on. I stood perfectly quiet,
trying to decide which I wanted to do more…leave or stay.

Without turning around, the guy at the stove
said, “We won’t bite.”

My eyebrows came together.
How did he
know I was standing here?

He turned around and winked at me. “Well,
I
won’t, but I can’t speak for Jonas.” He pointed the
spatula toward the other dark-haired person hunched over the
kitchen table.

I half smiled.
Who in the hell are these
bozos?

The blonde guy put down the spatula, wiped
his hands on a dishtowel and reached out to shake mine. “I’m Gavin
and you must be Dhellia.”

I nodded, slightly shocked that this was
real and that I was no longer in my tiny dungeon-like bedroom in
the downstairs world.

The dark-haired guy, sitting at the kitchen
table, finally turned around. Blood dripped from his fangs and more
had dried and left a circle of red around his mouth.

Naturally, I took a step back.

Gavin chuckled. “Jonas is a vampire; I
thought your brother told you that.”

“My brother hasn’t told me anything. Last
night, I fell asleep on my bed at home and this morning, I’m
here.”

“Oh, that’s not good. Okay then, proper
introductions are in store.” He took my hand and escorted me to the
kitchen table.

I gasped when I saw a huge dead pig sprawled
out on the table with two teeth marks in its neck and part of its
side cut away.

“What are you two doing?” I asked in
disgust.

Jonas took a cloth napkin and wiped his
mouth. “Breakfast,” he mumbled.

I pointed at Jonas. “You drain a pig of its
blood,” then I glared at Gavin, “And then you carve pieces from it
and cook it in the frying pan?”

Gavin nodded with a grin on his face.

“No, thanks. Remind me that I’m a vegetarian
now.” I put my hand on my hip and narrowed my eyes at the vampire.
“Doesn’t your kind suck blood from humans?”

Jonas glanced from the pig to me and
actually pouted.

Gavin responded, “That’s a sensitive
subject, Dhell. I can call you Dhell, right?”

The blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby-faced guy
didn’t wait for me to respond.

“You see, Jonas is allergic to human
blood.”

“Allergic?”

Gavin shrugged his shoulders and scrunched
his face. “Yeah, it’s not pretty. He breaks out in blistered hives
and his tongue swells up to the size of a large fruit. I had to
whip up a potion to fix the tongue issue so that he could at least
swallow.”

My eyebrows narrowed. “This is weird. A
potion?”

“I’m a wizard.”

“You’re a little young to be a wizard,
aren’t you?”

“Am I?” he grinned.

“Is this a joke? Am I on that Candid Camera
type of thing that you humans like to do? I’m being punked right?”
I glanced around the living room and searched for the hidden
camera. “You two are a pair of wannabe demons who—”

“Hang on,” Gavin interrupted. “I’m no demon.
I’m a wizard. There is a difference.” He glanced at his friend,
“Jonas didn’t have much of a choice. He was down on skid row,
minding his own business when he was attacked by a blood
sucker.”

“Skid row? Why would someone your age be on
skid row?”

Gavin leaned in. “He had a little—”

“Do you mind?” I interrupted Gavin. “It’s
his turn to talk.” I mumbled, “I’m going to make this a Lord of the
Flies’ situation and break out the conch shell.” I waited for Jonas
to say anything.

There was no doubt that Jonas was not a
typical vampire. No way…No how. He was a timid mouse in a world of
alley cats. I couldn’t believe how human-like he seemed, yet he had
lost his soul when he was turned.

His dark brown hair was a messy mop. Strands
of his bangs covered his red eyes. His skin was flawless and pale
from the lack of UV rays from the sun, which was such a contrast to
his dark hair.

I narrowed my eyes and waited, but he didn’t
say anything. He just stared down at the table in front of him.

“Are you kidding me?” Frustration was only
one strong emotion I was feeling in this room of mishaps.

Gavin crossed his arms over his chest. “You
see, that’s why I always talk. If I don’t talk for him, he’ll sit
there like a scared puppy.”

“Do you wipe his ass, too?” Why was I in
this house with these guys? Could my brother have been that mad at
me that he would stick me with these two goofballs?

I crossed my arms over my chest and glared
at Gavin. He had no swag. He slicked down his sandy blonde hair and
parted it on the side. He wore a pair of thick-lensed glasses and
his blue eyes had gold flecks that were almost frightening in the
magnifying lens of his spectacles.

His t-shirt was yellow and his pants were
mint green. His clothes horrified me—he was a fashion nightmare.
Then there was that damn tongue of his that kept slipping out like
an iguana to lick that already chapped area above his top lip.

“How old are you two?” I was trapped in a
teenage nightmare.

“Jonas was seventeen when they turned him,
which would make him eighteen and half. Actually, it would make him
eighteen years, seven months and twenty-two days old to be
exact.”

I sighed, blowing my bangs off my face.

“And I’m twenty-one. I had my birthday four
months ago, which would make me—”

“I got it, window-licker.”

Jonas looked up at me. “What’s
he
like?”

Gavin and I both glanced at Jonas. The boy
finally said something.

“Who?” I asked.

“Your father.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You know who my father
is?” I put my finger in Gavin’s face because I sensed he was going
to talk and I wanted to hear from the vampire.

“Your brother told us everything. He asked
Gavin to put the cloaking spell on you.”

“Cloaking spell?” It only took a second, but
when it dawned on me what he had just said, I was horrified. “You
mean to tell me that I’m being shielded from my father, the king of
the underworld—the all-powerful Satan—by a cloaking spell cast
around me by this shmuck?”

Gavin shrugged apologetically. “I’m quite
good at my spells, Red.”

I had offended him. “It’s Dhellia to you.
Not Red. Not Dhell, and not any other name you can conjure up in
your pea-brain head. I’m Dhellia, the princess of the underworld,
and you’ll respect my title.”

I gasped at my claim to an underworld title.
What was wrong with me?
I despised the underworld. Words
like that had never slipped from my mouth in the past.

Maybe I felt vulnerable around two roommates
who I knew couldn’t protect me. Besides, they were a distant part
of my father’s world, yet they were a walking contradiction like
me—no a walking, no-swag contradiction, unlike me.

They were the most down-to-earth humans I
had ever met. I put my hand on my head and glanced at both their
astonished faces. “What? I went to bed in my room in Hell and then
wake up here to this. I must be going through some form of
separation anxiety.”

Neither of them said anything. And that was
my cue to leave them to their breakfast. I backed up and quickly
ran back into the semi-safe haven of my new bedroom.

I paced aggressively in
my bedroom, calling out to my brother, “Damien, I’m not playing
with you. Get your butt here right now. I need to have a word with
you.”

My mind was coiling around different reasons
why he’d hide me out in a place like this: with a vampire, who was
a timid mouse, and destined to drink the blood of an animal because
he was allergic to human blood and then, there was his mentor, a
statistical maniac who practiced witchcraft and called himself a
wizard.

What vampire is allergic to human blood?
That’s a curse from both the Halo Man upstairs and Father.

Then it crossed my mind. “Why doesn’t Gavin
cast a spell that would cure Jonas of his vampire woes?” With that
thought, I raced to my door, so I could give them this brilliant
idea.

But when I flung the door open, Damien
walked through my doorway, pushing me back inside my room. My
brother stood in front of me, slammed the door without touching it
and waited for me to say something.

“Damien? It took you a while to get here.” I
was slow to speak because he seemed at odds with something.

He didn’t say anything. His eyes were darker
than usual and I sensed an inner conflict. His body language was
aloof and he stood rigid. My brother wasn’t happy about
something.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

He walked to the window and stood with his
back toward me. He crossed his arms over his chest and stood with
his legs slightly apart, yet firmly planted. He wore a pair of
black jeans, a dark green t-shirt and his favorite boots. He was
handsome as usual, but his energy was wrong. I could see the flow
of energy around him being stifled.

My mind raced with reasons that my brother
could be at odds with me. Had Father found out about my
disappearance and decided to take it out on him? Had he come with
news that would pull me from this new home and put me back in the
hollow of my dungeon room? Rather than jump to conclusions, I
decided to wait until my brother was ready to confide in me—to
share what was going on with him.

Damien was not one to rush into verbal
communication. If someone sparked his anger, he’d tear into that
person with all of his pent-up rage. Although I had never seen that
side of him, I knew my brother, and I knew when to bide my time and
let him process what he wanted to tell me.

I sat on the end of my bed and waited for
him to talk. It must have taken ten minutes for him to absorb
whatever energy he was absorbing before he finally said something.
When he did finally speak, it wasn’t what I was expected.

“Were you shocked when you woke up here this
morning?” His back was still toward me.

“Of course, I was.”

“I wanted to surprise you. I thought you
might enjoy waking up to the sound of birds chirping and dogs
barking, rather than dad’s hellhounds hissing and people
screaming.”

“You were thoughtful in surprising me,
brother.” I hesitated. “But why—”

“Because it’s the best place for you.” He
read my mind.

I stood and crossed my arms over my chest.
“Damien, these guys, these roommates, are…well…they’re just not
right.”