A sigh escaped the dark-skinned teenager as he ran a hand through his dreads. Could this be how Isabel felt waiting for him to wake up after his first encounter with a demon?
He remembered when they were on patrol two years ago. A demon named Marchosias was released from hell. A monstrous chimeric wolf that had the wings of a griffin and the tail of a serpent. When he and Isabel came across it, it was calling itself the "great and mighty Marquis of Hell" and that all should bow down before it. James knew that he was more advanced than most because of Isabel's training. He would admit that he let all the individual attention Isabel gave him and paid for him might have gotten to him giving him a big head. According to the rumors, Isabel single-handly took down the Marquis along with a legion of lower demons that the Marquis had summoned.
James remembered waking up the next day with Isabel sitting in a chair next to his bed, waiting for him. She asked him if he was going to continue to be foolish to waste her efforts and resources on his ego. Then, she proceeded to give him his missing homework as well as a new crammed schedule of double training and three new tutors. She became a taskmaster until he learned his lesson to follow her lead when faced with situations he had no training or business to be confronting.
His brown eyes studied the fair-skinned boy. His dark blonde hair framed his face against Isabel's white pillow. The kid looked a lot like the woman he left in the care of the White Witches and the hag Fenstermacher. When he left through the portal, the two White Witches were trembling in front of Fenstermacher with the bleeding woman. All the old hag did was raise her eyebrow at the two White Witches, it was not like she decided to cast a spell or raised book to smack them. Apparently, Isabel was right and the old hag scared most Wiccans regardless of their status.
↳Flashback Begins↰
"Get him back to the apartment and put him in my bed. I have a feeling that the night is not over yet, James. Keep him safe."
"It's bad enough that you're dragging him into our world, but now you're kidnapping him too?! "
"What's worst, James? Kidnapping him before the Coven gets to him to explain what's going on or leaving him in their hands? You know as well as I do what the Coven does to mortal survivors of demonic attacks. I'm only doing this for his own protection."
"Don't twist the situation, Isabel. You're trying to justify yourself."
"I'm not. You're the one who can't see it. I'm fairly certain by the time I get home you'll see."
"Why can't he just go with his mom?"
"And endanger the White Witches' progress on his mother? If I'm right about this, we'll be rebuking the Thubans by sunrise."
↱Flashback Ends↲
James banged his head against the door, softly to make sure he didn't wake the kid. Isabel had a knack for seeing things that no one, not even the High Priestess or the Elders ever could see. She, annoying, was never wrong when it came to these situations. James trusted Isabel, probably more than he should, but she never gave him any reason to doubt that her.
But situations like these were hair-tugging impossible to deal with someone whose brain functions on a different reality level than the rest of the world.
James stood to his feet once he noticed the shadow fall onto Isabel's moonlit bedroom. His eyes narrowed at the possibility of yet another attack. He paused when he felt the pulse of magic, there was no one that the Coven members were that incredibly foolish to come into the very private person within their Coven who made it very, crystal clear that she wanted no Coven members to enter her domain.
He was sure that the four members who were still in a coma were a sign that she was very serious about her privacy. It was the first year he spent with Isabel and it was the anniversary of his father's death. Isabel was furious. To this day, she refuses to lift her spell that put them in their comas. Isabel earned a reputation that night as the Livingstone Witch, as her heart was a hard as stone.
James sighed as he relaxed his stance when he saw one of the High Priest inner circle open the balcony door. One of the first things that he learned when he started learning offensive magic was to never show how tense or nervous he was in a fight. He watched Isabel use these tactics hundreds if not thousands of times on Wiccans, Vampires, Werewolves, mortals, Demons, and even some Fae.
James felt the headache that was surely going to form. Isabel made sure that if he was not capable of showing his unnerve, James was going to be able to at least mimic and drive his opponents angry enough to make mistakes.
"If it isn't the little apprentice! How's the cage, little birdie?"
"Isabel isn't home. She doesn't want people, fellow Coven members, or not entering her home without her permission. Leave before I have to make you leave," he said in a bored tone. Inwardly, he smirked at the annoyed look he spotted on the intruder's face. James would have laughed in any other situation, he had to remember to apologize to Isabel for complaining that he was sure to sound like a monotone answering machine. The face of the intruder was well worth it.
"Coven orders, little birdie. We're to bring the kid in," an idiot said. James winced, the fact that the Thubans knew of the child surviving was not good. Isabel was not going to be pleased to know this little bit of information. Not to mention the warning that Isabel gave him before she left to probably warn Gabrielle of a rebuking.
Wiccans gave excess magic to the Coven as tidings. Powerful Wiccans like Isabel could not survive long without a Coven to give off excess magic. Without a Coven, Isabel's magic would have eventually turned on herself. It is safer for Isabel to be in a Coven, even one like the Thuban.
↳"If there is even a single strand of hair out of place from his head, James, I'll make what we've been through this week seem like a sweet daydream that you can't wake from. He's more important than me, more important than you, more important than the Coven. I'm trusting my judgment in putting him in your protection, James. Don't let me regret that."↲
"Coven orders is one thing, I have the strict orders of my master. That kid, he is staying here," James said. The sour look washed over the man's face because they both knew that an order from a master is always higher than an order of the Coven. There is no one who would say that James was disobeying Magick's will. It was the highest order that a Wiccan could obey would be from their master, followed by the Coven they belong to, and then it was followed by a familial order.
"You're defying the Coven for a mortal kid?" James snorted. Technically, they were both defying the Coven by his logic. Within the Coven, there was a hierarchy. Council of Elders, High Priest and High Priestess, Captains of the Guard, then the other committee-like groups that were around to make the previous three groups' lives a lot of stress-free. If a Custos joined a Coven, the Custos is above even the Council.
"You're defying the orders of your patrol captain, Magick, and the common courtesy of a gentleman. Leave before I have to kick your ass, Isabel will make me mop the floors with a toothbrush if there's blood spilled in her house. She's picky like that," James said.
While he may be a sixteen-year-old boy training under a seventeen-year-old girl and got his ass handed to him every time they sparred, at least he wasn't a grown man in his prime who got his ass handed to him by said the seventeen-year-old girl on a regular occurrence. He toyed with the idea of just calling the cops; after all, he lived here and was only checking in on his so-called god-sister after hearing a strange sound coming from her room only to find a grown man sneaking into her room in the dead of the night.
"COME FORTH TO GIVE JUDGMENT, AURELIA!" The grown man called. James sighed. He really couldn't complain that he didn't get any exercise while he was babysitting for Isabel, considering the three attacks he encountered on the way to Isabel's four-bedroom townhouse.
However, he wasn't lying when he complained that Isabel would make him get on his hands and knees with a toothbrush cleaning any blood spilled on her floor. Isabel had a thing for clean floors in her home. Besides, if she's made him do it once, more than likely she'll make him do it again.
"RAISE UP, MARUT!"
He did not need to spend six hours on his hands and knees because of some idiot who decided that a few people from the Coven was more frightening than Isabel Livingstone who came home to dirty, mess floors in her house. That woman was the scariest thing on the planet when it comes to a messy house, and he's dealt with constant demon attacks for two years.
"Back down, little boy. You're no match for me."
"Oh please. Do you not know who my master is?" James pushed his opponent forward before mumbling a protection spell around the bed where the kid was surprisingly still asleep. "Isabel Livingstone is an obsessive-compulsive perfectionist who has the highest standards in the world with the most sadistic way of training a person until they contemplate whether or not dying is their only escape. The only results that she accepts are above and beyond competence results."
He blocks the oncoming spell with Marut before he felt the pricking of his magic rush down his arm, encircling Marut much like Isabel had done earlier that night with Baptiste. Charcoal grey like smoke clung to his forearm and the sword. The bronze-like glow that usually clung to him as he performed magic only shined through his eyes.
James gave a grin to his opponent who faltered as he looked with horror, "You'd think that of all people you would know this, but it's alright… I'll have to help you remember how much of a she-devil my master is by skill alone."
A voice cut through the air that halted both males before they could attack, "That's enough."
"High Priest Zerachiel!" James' astonishment couldn't be hidden no matter how hard he would try to hide it. There leaning against Isabel's desk as if he belonged there was Zerachiel Decker. He clenched his jaw, when in the world did Zerachiel Decker get into Isabel's room without his notice?!