Chapter 2 – A Father's Promise

In the days following Misty's brutal death in childbirth, the coven was in mourning. Cordelia took it the hardest of course. Myrtle did everything she could to console her and get her mind off it – taking her out to have fancy dinners and drinks at the finest restaurants in town, taking her to the kitschy boutiques in the French Quarter, but nothing was a balm for her soul. She lost Misty for a third time. It was too much to handle. It was bad enough a deal had to be made due to the conditions of the underworld, but this was just not fair. The Supreme felt so selfish wanting Misty and her light nature around, but she also knew this was not fair for her either. Going to and from the underworld and being bound to it was hell on its own, let alone actually spending time down there.

Out of all the witches, Mallory spent the most time with the baby girl. Cordelia had elected to stay at the school, leaving her all alone for the task of nurturing her. Myrtle had booked a luxurious hotel suite for her and the baby to stay in safely. She was not given a name, although she was tempted to name her herself. Despite the newborn's demonic heritage, Mallory made the most of her time with the baby and even got a bit attached. She fed her, but she did not take well to formula – instead, she preferred cow or goat milk, or smoothies of blended raw offal. Mallory, upon discovering her appetite for raw organs, was creative with liver, gizzards, hearts, and even tongues to make these special smoothies and put them in bottles for the baby to easily consume. Of course, being a baby meant having to burp and fill a diaper. Mallory had to grin and bear doing both of these things and was even shocked at the results. The baby girl burped like a champ, as though her bottle was filled with Alka-Seltzer. The diapers were too much to imagine, given that she was fed pureed raw organs and either cow or goat milk through a bottle – some days, it even made Mallory retch with disgust.

It was about two weeks into this endeavor of safe-keeping that Mallory had run out of supplies, so she decided to go out of the hotel, baby in tow, to the butcher to get the organs she needed to nourish her. When she reached the destination, she made her order, only for the employee behind the counter to furrow his brows in shock.

"I need chicken hearts and gizzards," she ordered. "Oh, and livers with that, if you can. I also need a whole cow tongue."

"Miss, what exactly are you makin'?" the butcher asked with confusion. "May as well kill the thing yourself."

"Oh, just… a special version of paté," Mallory fibbed with a charming smile.

While waiting for the butcher to procure what she ordered, she paid for it with the cashier helping her. As she swiped the black titanium credit card Myrtle gave her, she felt as though a pair of eyes was watching her and the baby in her right arm. When she heard a happy coo come from the little girl, she turned to look at her and then back behind her only to see no one was there. Shrugging, she gathered what she purchased and walked out of the store. Yet all she could do was peer behind her shoulder every few houses she passed, and she could see the faint shadow of a tall man with long, shoulder-length blond hair and a fedora coming toward her. Without hesitating, she paged down the nearest taxi as soon as she could and hopped in without explaining a word to the cabbie.

"Ritz-Carlton," Mallory said. "Fast."

Without hesitating, the cab driver hit the gas, making streak noises in the street as he came up to the small line of traffic before him. Mallory closed her eyes and prayed silently that the man she got a glimpse of wasn't Michael – yet it was so convenient. It was hard to rule out the possibility that it was not him and instead some stranger who wanted her number instead. Not likely, she thought. The traffic moved along, and as they turned a block onto the next street, she could clearly see, for a split second, who it was – a handsome, ironically angelic man with wavy long blond hair to his shoulders. He was wearing a red linen scarf with a black velvet dinner jacket, slacks, and boots to his knees. It was enough to send chills down her spine. While still in the cab, she dialed Cordelia on her cellphone and the Supreme answered promptly.

"Mallory? Is everything alright? How is the baby?" she asked.

"I… I think Michael is following me," Mallory replied worriedly.

There was hesitation in the reply that followed: "w-what do you mean? Where are you?"

"I just flagged a taxi. I'm in it now. I had to get food for the baby."

"I will be right over," she said. "With Myrtle, and with Zoe. Don't let her out of your sight."

"I won't."

Then she hung up. Within five minutes she was in vicinity of her destination, she tapped on the cabbie's shoulder, and he looked back, halting his driving for a moment.

"Please," she ordered, "take me to the back of the hotel, in the back-parking lot."

"Why?" he asked. "The entrance is right here."

Mallory knew to use her concilium to get him to comply: "this is a matter of life or death for me, sir. I'd appreciate you take me to the back of the building."

Without further questions, the cab driver complied and did as asked. Mallory looked around for a back entrance, and with the baby and bag of offal she got from the butcher shop, she left the cab and ran to it. Finding it was locked, she used telekinesis to unlock it and was able to get in. To cover her tracks, she did the same maneuver to lock the door back up again, and she travelled through a series of hallways all leading to the front lobby through a special employee door. The concierge and front desk receptionist noticed this, and made mentioned.

"Hey, you're not an employee, you're not supposed to…"

Using concilium once again, Mallory waved her hand in the air directed at them to silence them and make them forget she was even there. She hopped into the nearest elevator and was the only one in it going up to the seventh floor. As she and the baby went up, she heard cooing and whining coming from her little body.

"Shh…" she said softly. "Quiet, now."

When she got off the elevator, she got the key card for her room out, and when she looked up, Cordelia, Myrtle and Zoe were already there, waiting for her. Mallory, with a sigh of relief, smiled at them.

"Thank god," she said. "I was beginning to worry."

"Don't mention it," Myrtle replied, putting her hand on her shoulder and taking the bag of animal organs from her possession. "If he wants to kill you, he needs to go through us first."

"Thank you so much," Mallory said. "For everything."

Sliding the key card into the receiver, she opened the door and let her sister witches walk in. However, Cordelia stopped in her tracks and nearly screamed to see the very person Mallory was avoiding sitting down in the living area with an insincere, victorious grin on his face, his hands and fingertips together in tandem, and his light blue-green eyes staring at the baby girl. His golden waves were neatly combed and atop his head rested a black fedora.

"I find it so hilarious how you think you can trick me," he said menacingly, telekinetically slamming the door shut behind the witches and standing up. "Very clever."

"Michael…" Cordelia began, stern yet keeping her anger in check. "Misty is dead. We know you killed her! Don't feed us this bullshit about loving her… if you loved her that much, you would have kept your end of the deal and not given her such an excruciating way to go."

"My own mother died the same way," Michael said unsympathetically. "At least my bride is with me now. Forever." He paused for a moment, approaching Mallory and staring down into her calculating, soft brown eyes. "You take from me the one person who never betrayed me, and now you keep from me my own flesh and blood. I already told Cordelia here what I would do with all of you, but now, you've made your graves so much deeper."

"You aren't fit to raise a child!" Myrtle snapped; even when angry, she sounded eloquent and refined. "What in God's name would you do with her? Take her to hell where she will never see the sun a day in her life. Ugh! Sounds like such a dreadful existence! I'd pray for death."

Furious, Michael did not hesitate to telekinetically launch the elder carrot top witch back into the heavy wooden door behind her, creating a huge thud sound as her back and head hit the surface. Cordelia gasped and rushed to her aid, as did Zoe, who crouched next to her and saw that she was unconscious. With tears in her eyes, Cordelia screamed hysterically with worry about Myrtle's fragile state at her age, and looked to Michael with pure odium.

"I was wrong… you have NO HUMANITY!" she yelled. "What is it you want?! Leave us be!"

"Give me back what is rightfully mine and stay out of my fucking way!" the Antichrist hissed, looking over at Mallory. However, he was distracted by the smell of the raw organs she still had in the bag. The young witch, still holding the bizarrely calm baby, stared at him with fright as his eyes flashed black at her before turning into their human intense blue-green color.

"It's good to see you've been taking care of my daughter," he said with a sly smile. "Livers… hearts… tongues…"

"S-She won't take to the formula," Mallory said, her voice shaking as she struggled to stay calm. Cordelia and Zoe looked at each other in horror as the young witch bravely tried to diffuse his dangerous temper. She's been feeding that baby organs, the Supreme thought to herself with disgust.

"I hope you've had fun playing the nanny, but she is my daughter," Michael snided, holding out his arms. "Give her to me."

"I… I can't…"

"If you do," Michael offered suspiciously, "I will leave you bitches alone."

"Michael," Cordelia asked, standing up and facing him. "W-Why was Misty so heavily pregnant when she came to the mortal coil a few weeks ago?"

"Oh, she'd been with child since about December or January," he replied. "Demon births last about three months, but since she is half human, she was in for five."

"And… what about that… slithering feeling?" Zoe asked in horror.

"It's normal for our kind," he said. "I bet she clawed out of her like a bat out of hell."

Myrtle, who was coming back into consciousness, looked up at him hazily; "she certainly did."

Michael closed his eyes and took a deep inhalation of the air and energy swirling around him, exhaling softly before he spoke again: "a deal is a deal. If you give me my daughter, I will leave you bitches alone."

"What happened with the last deal?" Cordelia asked irritated. "You killed Misty."

"No," he disagreed, pointing at his baby in Mallory's arms. "She killed her."

"I don't…"

"Mark my words," he cut in, "if you decide to bother me or my daughter, or step in my way, you will all die painfully. It will make Misty's passing look like the fucking flu."

I have no choice, Cordelia said, tearfully looking at her protégé holding the infant. Mallory sighed sorrowfully, looking down at the baby's pretty blue eyes. They reminded her so much of Misty in the brief period she knew her. At this point, she was starting to get little blonde wisps of hair on her bald head. She was exquisite.

"Mallory," she said, "give him the baby."

"But you said-"

"I know what I said," Cordelia snapped. "Give him the baby."

She relucted in doing so, but Michael held his arms open for his baby daughter, who started to coo and smile up at him as though she were happy to meet him for the first time. Embracing her small body in his arms made his heart feel full, enough to make him shed a jovial tear or two. She was dressed in a plain pink cotton onesie and a small white blanket. She began to coo and laugh even more as he smiled down at her grandly.

"My own father rejected me to my face. My own mother tried to kill me," he said, looking at his daughter as the witches all looked at each other in shock to see such a human side to him. "Your mother is in the nether realms, but I am here. I promise you, from the bottom of my heart and until there isn't a single breath left in my body, I will love, protect and cherish you… Melanie… Macaria."

The witches looked on, and at each other, at the spectacle before them. He held the baby upright so her chin was on his shoulder, and patted her back with a kiss on her soft, fair cheek. Cordelia looked down in shame, not fully trusting him or the situation. It was all a ruse just to get what he wanted. She knew full well that their lives were at stake – on a grander scale, the world was still in peril.

A/N:

Thank you to those who read the first chapter and wrote Reviews! I appreciate it so much. Just a word in here, from this point, I should be getting into the meat of the story. The first two chapters started this story slow but I hope to get to where it's got to be soon.

For those curious about the face claim and more about Melanie, visit my Wattpad book of Original Characters an click the chapter under her name! Warning, it does contain some spoilers!

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