Page 77 of A Velvet Kiss After Dark

Tabitha whipped around and took aim with her gun. The front door had shot off by the sheer force of power this woman had. The door crashed against an end table housing some of her photo frames of she and her dad.

"Who are you?" Tabitha demanded. "You don't belong here! Get out!"

The woman seemed to float as opposed to walk, her feet scantily caressed the floorboards like a floating corpse. The black, tattered dress she wore hung limply from her shoulders as if it'd been stretched too large for her to fit properly, like it was made for someone larger than her.

A pair of ominous black eyes stared at her, lacking any sense of iris or pupils. "I am…a witch."

Tabitha shook her head and the gun in her hand wavered dangerously. "No, no…I know you. I recognize your face. You're…you're…" She struggled to recall, but her brain couldn't process the data quickly enough.

The woman cast a moue as she floated closer. And as she progressed, the room suddenly began to cloud with a cold fog. Ice formed across the windows in fractal-like snowflakes. Fog formed with each breath Tabitha took and she shivered as the temperature plummeted dramatically to a frigid degree.

"That's enough! Stay right there!" Tabitha shouted. "Or else I'll shoot!" Already her heart thundered with panic. Always it seemed like this, like she was forever one moment from death; like everyone was out to get her.

"You recognize me?" hissed the woman in black. "Little old me? Listen, human, or should I call you witchress? For you are only partially human now." The woman's voice crept like a thousand snakes breathing.

Tabitha quickly ran through all the infamous individuals she'd ever encountered. She'd always had a good memory at remembering a face. It was a useful skill as a gossip columnist for recalling high-society members.

Suddenly, Tabitha gasped. "You're…the black witch everyone speaks of. You're…Alpha Ezekiel Hunter's mate…Olivia Hunter"

The woman shrugged petulantly. The reaction reminded Tabitha of how a child would react than an adult.

"I heard you were being kept away from the public until Zeke could…until he…" Tabitha floundered for word, only to end on a whisper as the she-witch stared at her as if seeing through her very soul.

"Until he what, witchress? Until he cured me of the most sacred and giving energies that lies on the face of this earth? Death!"

Tabitha took a step back at the look that swept across the witch's face. She was a killer.

"I am here for one thing only, Tabitha. Let us not spill blood, shall we?" the black witch said.

And then the gun suddenly tore free from Tabitha's grasp, grazing her harshly in the process, her skin ripped open and blood leaked down one finger. Tabitha trembled but faced off against her transgressor.

"I don't want to fight you, Olivia Hunter," she said in a calming tone. "I do remember you. I remember what happened to you." Tabitha's brain summoned up old news reports and rumors, most of which she'd freely written herself from many of her undercover operations. But this woman's story had taken her to heart at the time she'd uncovered it.

The dark wizard, Les the alleged "Revenant", had captured this woman, once a prodigiously powerful white witch from her own unique bloodline, and tainted her with incurable darkness. Pure evil. For hundreds of years she was held captive to his dark magic, until finally her beloved mate had found her and freed her. But, she'd never been the same since. She was a harpy of terror. A danger to others. No longer pure of heart and mind or body. She was a killer. And so Alpha Ezekiel had been forced to confine her someplace remote as he actively sought a cure for her malevolence. Hence, Kane Gunner's task in Hell of which she'd become so involved with. The relic of souls was supposed to cure his mate…

And the terror itself had come to salvage it…

Olivia, the name so absurd and human when one transposed the title across this evil she-creature, stepped over ever closer, moving like she was doing a hop-scotch game. "Step on a crack, break your daddy's back. Step on a dime, make your mother sublime! Eat for a week, bleed so neat!"

Just as the freak-show of a woman moved to come at Tabitha, a large overpowering figure stepped inside her doorway.

"Get away, Olivia," the man said.

Tabitha's heart leaped even as she moved backwards to put distance between her and this she-devil. Truly, she didn't want to kill the maddened woman if she could help it.

The woman growled and spun around. "You still live!" She sounded aghast and surprised.

The man stepped forward and moonlight spilled through the frosty windows and across his handsome visage. It was Zeke Hunter.

He stepped forward, his body coiled tight as a steel bar. His face was battered as if he'd just come out of a bad bar fight. "Of course I do, sweetheart. Can't leave home without you," he responded dryly, while he remained unmoving, as if not wanting to divulge his true motivations.

"I thought I killed you!" the black witch screeched, and as she did so, her black hair began to float in a morbid halo around her; as if compelled by some electrical force to stand on guard for her.

"Tabitha, I want you to come with me now," Ezekiel commanded with his southern drawl loudly on display. He made a come-hither motion in Tabitha's direction, but before she could so much as take a step, Olivia suddenly shouted, and it was no ordinary sound. The sound was so loud, so vociferous that the windows along her penthouse floor shattered miraculously.

The power flickered once, then completely went dark.

"I'll kill you, wolf-dog," Olivia seethed as she floated closer to attack.

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