Every Witch Demon but Mine (Maeren Series Book 1) Read online

  Every Witch Demon but Mine

  Mercedes Jade

  This is a work of fiction.

  First edition. Nov 2018.

  Updated version Oct 2020.

  Copyright © 2018 Mercedes Jade.

  Written by Mercedes Jade.

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Foreward

  Prologue

  Twenty-five years later . . .

  1. Banished from Hell

  Elizabeth

  2. Lightning Connection

  3. Just Slay Me

  4. Mother Knows Best

  5. A Good Deed, Punished

  6. Queen of the Blues

  7. How to Train a Slayer

  8. Dressed to Kill

  9. Dance with the Devil

  10. Lie to my Heart

  11. A Rat in the Maze

  12. Blind as a Bat

  13. Make the Bed You Lie In

  14. Nowhere to Hide

  15. Claimed in Darkness

  16. Rise and Shine

  17. A Spoonful of Sugar

  18. There is No Good Cop

  19. Where There is Smoke

  20. A Lick of Magic

  21. Too Hot to Handle

  22. Made an Impression

  23. If You Give Him a Taste

  24. In your Fantasies

  25. Water Thinned Blood

  Victoria

  26. A Cold Trail

  Elizabeth

  27. Drink Me In

  28. First Times Hurt

  29. What Nightmares Come

  Undeclared

  30. Black Magic

  Eizabeth

  31. Red Handed

  32. Welcome to the Jungle

  33. Forgotten Trust

  34. Diamond in the Rough

  35. Blood Sworn

  36. Flower by Another Name

  37. Enemy of my Enemy

  38. Ripping Off the Bandage

  Jill

  39. Snake Eyes

  Victoria

  40. Bringing the House Down

  Elizabeth

  41. The Power of a Quiet Mind

  42. Fool for Love

  Bright and Dark

  No Witch Way Out

  Elemental Magic

  Glossary of Terms

  Also by Mercedes Jade

  Acknowledgement and Notes

  About the Author

  To Cheryl.

  Author’s Note

  This book is written in Canadian English.

  If you find any typos or have other concerns about formatting or grammar, please forward them directly to me at my email for prompt attention:

  [email protected]

  I would be thrilled to hear from you!

  This is a reverse harem romance, meaning the main female character will find happiness with more than one guy. She doesn’t have to choose only one.

  There is a glossary and elemental magic classification at the end of the book for your reference.

  Chapters narrators are listed in the subheading when introduced or changed. Most of the first book is from the main heroine’s perspective.

  Foreward

  Bloody History

  Witches came before vampires and demons.

  Humans had their biblical creation story switched around. Any fool in the kingdom of Maeren could have pointed out the flaw in their logic that males came first.

  The secret to understanding it was to know that vampires, demons, and witches all came from the same species. They were elementals, a magical branch that had long since divided from the human realm.

  Vampires and demons were male. Witches were female. Dragon shifters could be either sex, but the males were as vampiric as their non-shifter brethren.

  What mattered was the blood. That was what divided prey from predators, in a tale as old as time.

  Thus formed what was an essential tenet of the Maeren realm: Vampires needed blood. Witches bled.

  A quirk of biology had led to this dependency of males on females. Some still called the practice preying, and it was true that males had been known to feed indiscriminately upon females to slake their bloodlust.

  Anything for the ability to harness power.

  The males needed the magic-binding proteins produced in abundance by females in their blood. Although magic could be absorbed from the environment by any elemental, it couldn’t be used without the proper binding.

  A fire lord might build enough power in his blood to ignite the world, but if he didn’t get it bound, the excess of power could be as unstable as explosive nitrogen in his veins.

  All it took was the deadly rays of the sun to burn any unbound magic to a flashpoint in the blood, power boiling to escape back to the environment from which it was absorbed.

  Scalding from the inside out was a very unpleasant way to die.

  Most preferred staking, which was usually survivable in the human realm if done properly.

  Stabbing the magical chi of an elemental’s soul, which surrounds the heart, would release all of its power to its environment.

  Magic always travelled back to the source of its true origins when freed. The released chi could get sucked back into Maeren from the human realm.

  Who would want to stay in the human realm, anyway?

  It was now dearth of magic. A wasteland, where the banished were exiled, never able to access true power again.

  Thus, it was hardly surprising humans had gotten so much wrong about which sex came first. They were simply ignorant of what power existed outside of their beliefs.

  They trusted in science, not magic. Vampires, demons, witches, and even dragons, were all part of the old lore that was no longer taught to the next generation.

  The Maeren realm knew better than to burst that bubble of magical disbelief.

  Prologue

  The First

  She was born ordinary.

  All infants were alike. One couldn’t tell potential from a squalling face. It took a test of their blood to search for the spark of magic all parents hoped to be present: fire.

  She had air. Her magic was common amongst the elementals. Mediocracy immediately became the denominator that measured her future.

  She was average, not better. Her prospects were plain.

  The royal match her father envisioned was killed as dead as the cold hearth ashes, leaving a soot he couldn’t wash easily from his reputation.

  He rushed the infant home with her mother, hiding them both away in their castle.

  Time didn’t fix born flaws. Her air was a gentle breeze compared to her mother's gale force. A tiny boat that paddled against the current of greater powers.

  Blowing kisses was cute. She was a sweet cherub for her mother to cuddle, a gentle daughter to make the loneliness away from court bearable.

  Her father’s disdain was borne with a child’s oblivious giggles. He preferred her quiet. He said he was almost able to forget she was in the room until she made that dreadful noise.

  As if he could deny her very existence.

  Nobody.

  He vowed to never speak her name.

  Was the firstborn to be so easily dismissed because of her ordinary magic?

  Fire had flash.

  Earth gave a quaking impression.

  Air could blow one over.

  Water made a big splash.

  Imagination was all in the mind.

  The Second

  Jill was born special.

  She was fêted for her powerful blue fire, as confirmed by the royal taster before even the blood of her arrival to the world had been washed away.

  The second b
orn was fated to be a fire princess. She had so much magic that the king would be informed by the dawn’s rise of this newest prospect for the future harem of one of his sons.

  Jill’s father couldn’t have been prouder, calling for all of their family and friends to come to his castle to celebrate.

  The firstborn was forgotten, but she didn’t become jealous of her sister.

  She could hardly understand all of the fuss.

  Jill had fire to burn and earth to stomp her feet. The younger sister grew into her strengths, but they were not that impressive to either of the little girls.

  Those elements of magic were less exciting than making a book come to life in their minds, with the firstborn’s secret power of imagination.

  The eldest used air to flip the pages of the book, if their parents stared at their giggling heads, reading her younger sister another adventure that played in their minds.

  Lightning was the pinnacle of fire. The extraordinary thing was the eldest had no true fire, as the tasters had declared at her birth.

  The lightning she possessed was independent. The intricate way she used the power to control electrical signals in the brain, singular.

  The girls were too young to comprehend the eldest’s greatness back then.

  Power meant nothing to children. Jill was special to the eldest not for her fire, but because she was a friend.

  They shared everything. Nobody else was allowed to divide them.

  The eldest imagined. Jill dreamed.

  Then one day, the castle they had built in the clouds tumbled down.

  Twenty-five years later . . .

  Banished from Hell

  Human Realm

  Elizabeth

  Vampire problem? The slayer would take care of it, yet again.

  Just why hadn’t this bloodsucker waited until tomorrow to cross over?

  Sometimes Elizabeth wished she had followed in her younger sister’s footsteps. A steady human job had to be better than this slaying gig, leaving her at the mercy of whatever elemental decided to make an unsanctioned trip over to the human realm.

  Jill had great pay with benefits, some really cute nursing scrubs, and most importantly: a weekly schedule.

  Slaying was such a thankless job. The whole point was for no humans to become aware of Elizabeth or the monsters that she staked.

  Anonymity also meant being on call all of the time. There was no one else to replace her. No hazard pay. No reward but her satisfaction.

  Oh, and the bloodstains were a Shakespearian joke. Black clothes were her go-to on this job for a bloody reason.

  Yep, black was back.

  At least, she had dressed for this kind of work tonight, but that was only due to a stroke of luck and a small wardrobe.

  It wasn’t even the witching hour yet. More like, barely dusk. She normally wouldn’t have had to clock in for hours.

  This realm hopping vampire must have gotten his days mixed up with the nights or he had forgotten how to calculate the standard human realm time switch before he booked his portal.

  Anemia tended to make bloodsuckers stupid hungry.

  She could have used a damn snack. His arrival had interrupted her trip to the corner convenience store for some chips and chocolate.

  Mom was out at her book club, Jill was working a night shift at the hospital, and Elizabeth had made plans to watch Netflix from her favourite cozy chair.

  She had queued The Fifth Element, all of The Matrix movies, and Sense & Sensibility for tonight. The latter was in case Jill wanted to watch something together after her shift ended. Jill was an incurable romantic.

  Elizabeth liked her romance cut by some karate chops.

  The fun was now going to have to be rescheduled.

  Too bad, her irritation about it wasn’t going to slay the unwelcome monster for her, no matter how sharp the daggers were in her gaze as she eyed the street for him.

  He was close, but she couldn’t see him yet.

  On top of the insult to her by showing up at the wrong hour, he was going to make her hunt for him.

  Leeches were utterly selfish. Suck. Suck. Suck. Where were the males who knew how to service a witch before feeding their own needs?

  Between the covers of storybooks, that was where they lived. A place that was firmly in the realm of fantasy.

  No daydreaming.

  With a sigh, Elizabeth reached for the last of the stakes hidden in the inner pocket of her leather jacket. The leather was bloodstain proof. Excellent gear for fighting in.

  All she had left was a birch stake. She patted her pocket harder, but no other stake suddenly materialized.

  Mom would harp on her being unprepared if she knew how low Elizabeth had let her stash get.

  Birch was never her first choice. A hardwood like oak had the kind of strength necessary to push through ribs, even when her aim was a bit off.

  On the other hand, the birch stake had a flexible bend that couldn’t be discounted. It was able to pop into the smaller spaces from the back of her targets.

  Jill would call the birch a ‘lady’s stake’ because of its diminutive size. Her younger sister would then waggle her eyebrows and add that: ‘you never see the little ones coming.’

  Elizabeth was petite. She probably stopped growing vertically around fourteen. Jill ‘the giant’ had nearly a foot of height on her.

  Neither of them let the other forget it. Mom said: ‘height doesn’t matter.’ It did. She and Jill both knew it.

  Elizabeth was going to have to be flexible tonight. She patted her last stake once more and whispered a soft curse, not really happy but unable to do much about it.

  It was such an inconvenience that stakes incinerated with the vampires!

  Whatever! She could always make more.

  Her greater concern was why there were so many bloodsuckers keeping her busy lately.

  Male elementals used to be a rarity outside of Maeren.

  Why bother to drain a human for the diluted magic in their blood when a few sips at the wrist of a willing Maerenian witch could satisfy them?

  Besides, the human realm had a sun with a much higher UV light. Although most male elementals were able to stand the Maerenian sun, it still weakened them when they had a lot of unbound magic to burn.

  Put those same male elementals in the human realm and they were turned into toast—the nasty, flesh-burning stench of a crispy monster kind of toast.

  Humans had gotten that one right. Vampires torched. Witches didn’t have quite the same degree of difficulty with the sun since females had plenty of magic-binding proteins in their blood.

  No free magic in the blood meant nothing for the sun to burn up.

  Still, shining sunlight at the bloodsuckers hadn’t been enough to solve this pest problem in the human realm.

  It needed a more direct approach.

  Feeding on humans was illegal. Like most outlawed practices, it only presented a problem when the offender was caught. It was so difficult to enforce laws from a king that ruled a different dimension.

  Humans were considered by many elementals to be the equivalent of junk food: cheap, fast, and of low magical quality.

  The human and elemental species were similar enough that there had been interbreeding over the centuries. It gave human blood a trace of magic-binding proteins. Feeding on a human could sustain a desperate male elemental.

  It took a lot of human blood.

  That was how she had first gotten involved.

  After she witnessed her human best friend drained to death by a rogue vampire, she chose to take on a slayer role.

  It wasn’t condoned in Maeren for a witch to fight, but she had played by different rules her whole life.

  Only her family knew about her slayer duties. They had all coped with their exile to the human realm, a couple of decades ago, in their own ways. This was hers.

  Mom binged Buffy reruns, volunteered at the legion, and led a book club. Jill healed and made money. Elizabeth staked—a
lot.

  Powerful witches like those in their family were not meant to venture outside of Maeren. They were much too valuable.

  Everything they were doing was punishable in Maeren, but like the vampires who traipsed here without care, their family was rebelling the orders of the realm.

  Except, their family was not hurting any innocents to do it.

  Her life would have been so different if they had stayed in Maeren. She was considered to be at the perfect age for a vampire harem at twenty-five. Able to be bred and bled.

  Barbaric? Yeah, but what else did one expect from bloodsucking monsters?

  She would rather fight than offer her neck and part her thighs for a leech.

  The price of nonconformity was banishment. Their family had run. Maeren could keep its traditions and they would create new ones for themselves.

  The first was that humans had to be protected.

  Being a slayer was a damn hard job, but somebody had to do it.

  Lightning Connection

  Stakes were a girl’s best friend.

  Well, diamond-tipped stakes would be really kick-ass, but the thought of digging through an ash pile to retrieve the gems once the stake was burned from chi incineration took the shine off of that idea quite literally.