Of Witches and Warlocks: The Complete Series

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Vance paced the small room like a caged animal, and I could feel the tension rolling off him in waves. It was making me antsy, too.

Having lost track of time, we had no idea how long we'd been here—days, weeks, months, I didn't really know. There was no way to gauge whether it was day or night. Occasionally, meals would arrive for us on what we assumed was a somewhat regular schedule. Sometimes, though, they seemed paced farther apart.

Vance once tried to attack when the door was opened again, but it activated the shield, bouncing his magic harmfully around the room, narrowly missing me before it dissipated. He never tried again after that.

Asking regularly about his mom, no one would reply. In fact, no one spoke to us at all, if possible. Krista hadn't reappeared since our first day in this crazy cell—we hadn't even seen Douglas and Fiona again. Our only contact was with Colin and Darcy when they delivered the things we needed. Even then, the door wasn't always opened, many items being passed through to us via the window in the door.

Desperate for something to do to fill the time, Vance began coaching me, teaching me to channel some of my powers more efficiently, which helped things flow a bit easier, though I still didn't feel like it was natural.

Try as I might, magic was simply not the first thing I fell back on in any given situation. I often became discouraged when he would set up little tests for me to magically respond to. More often than not, I responded with a completely human reaction, being momentarily stunned or paralyzed, until I realized he was trying to elicit a magical response from me. To his credit, he never lost patience and always encouraged me.

Vance also used the opportunity to test out some of his new powers. Even though he knew he had acquired all of Damien's magic, he didn't necessarily know what those powers were, since they weren't natural to him. Basically, he discovered things completely by trial and error.

One of the things he'd discovered, was there was now an electrical element to his magic that hadn't been there before. He could send out sharp bursts and shocks of electricity. I watched him with fascination as he practiced with it, making currents sizzle in his hands and float around the room. This course of action sometimes led to disastrous situations, though, since he wasn't well in control of these newfound abilities yet.

On one occasion, when experimenting with some new energy forces, he accidentally blew up our bed, while I was sitting on it. I wasn't hurt, thankfully, since only the bed frame and not the mattress was destroyed, but he determined in that moment there would no longer be testing of powers until we were safely escaped from this place. Thankfully, he was able to magically reassemble the bed, too. No one was any the wiser.

After that accident, we resorted almost exclusively to talking—talking to each other until we had nothing left to talk about, having covered pretty much every topic under the sun. While I enjoyed the fact that all that talking brought us even closer together, it proved to be a dangerous thing for us, too, as our long-term, self-proclaimed abstinence became unbearable and we would resort to kissing. Lots and lots of kissing, and stroking—in every position, and on every surface possible.

At this particular moment, all the previously stated kissing and stroking had led us to our current situation. After being involved in a pretty heated exchange, making out on the bed, Vance was pressing against me so hard that he actually ripped a seam in my pants. I couldn't help the frustrated laugh that escaped, and Vance immediately jumped from the bed, stalking as far away as he could, which in this case was about five feet away against the opposite wall. The mental link between us wasn't even open and still I could feel the emotions about to boil over inside him.