Third of the Winterset Coven

by T. S. Joyce

  THIRD OF THE WINTERSET COVEN

  (Winterset Coven, Book 3)

  By T. S. JOYCE

  Third of the Winterset Coven

  Copyright © 2020 by T. S. Joyce

  Copyright © 2020, T. S. Joyce

  First electronic publication: October 2020

  T. S. Joyce

  www.tsjoyce.com

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Published in the United States of America.

  Other Books in this Series

  King of the Asheville Coven (Book 1)

  Second of the Winterset Coven (Book 2)

  Contents

  Copyright

  Other Books in this Series

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  Up Next from T. S. Joyce

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  More Series by this Author

  For More from this Author

  About this Author

  Prologue

  The hallway to Nicole Rider’s apartment felt different. A heaviness hung in the air, and the fluorescent light above her flickered. Her landlady, Tanya, changed out the bulbs regularly, so this was the first time she’d ever seen a bulb stutter in the last four years she’d lived here.

  Hesitating near her neighbor’s door, she turned and looked back at the elevator she’d ridden up. There was this little voice inside of her that said she was being watched, but she was definitely alone here.

  The light flickered again and made a buzzing sound, and she couldn’t for the life of her get rid of the chills that were zinging up and down her spine. Best to get into her apartment where she would feel safe once she locked the door behind her.

  She was probably just overly on edge because of the gruesome murders. There had been three in the last few weeks in her small hometown of Winterset, Iowa. Everyone knew it was the vamps on a killing spree, but the local coven swore it wasn’t them. Yeah, right. Supes were liars—all of them. The whole town was on alert. She shook her head at how jumpy she’d become by the stories and made her way down the hall toward her door, her keys at the ready in her hand. Vamps couldn’t come inside a building without being invited, and none of the murders had occurred indoors. They were all out in the woods, miles outside of town. Campers. And that was the number one reason she didn’t do camping. Number two was mosquitos. Vamps and mosquitos—she had a thing against bloodsuckers.

  Work had been long today, and the clacking of her heels on the wooden floor taunted her. She was fifteen steps from being able to kick her shoes off and enjoy that orgasmic moment of relief when her feet were freed from harsh edges and odd angles.

  The light flickered again just as she reached her door. When she lifted her key to unlock it, she froze. The door was wide open.

  Ding, the elevator sounded softly down the hall, but she couldn’t take her eyes from the man who sat on her kitchen counter, facing the door.

  His greeting smile didn’t reach his dead, black, soulless eyes. All the devil’s smile served to do was expose a terrifying set of fangs. He had platinum blond hair and hollow features. His skin was as pale as snow, but his hands had dried blood on them, which contrasted against the long-sleeved white cotton shirt he wore.

  Nicole’s purse hit the ground. “Y-you can’t come in.”

  “I’m already in,” he said, his words echoing with an evil hissing sound.

  Move. Run.

  She could hear footsteps, and with a quick glance out of the corner of her eye, she could see her landlady, Tanya, reaching her own apartment door down the hall.

  Where the monster couldn’t see, on the outer edge of the doorframe, Nicole held up her shaking hand and hoped to God Tanya saw it.

  “A therapist,” the creature murmured, the words echoing through her mind, though his lips hadn’t moved. He scanned the folders he’d taken from her filing cabinet. “So many disasters. Their stories are very entertaining. I can see why you would want to do such a job.” He looked up at her, and the emptiness in his eyes was replaced by something even more terrifying—hunger.

  “I like when they run, and I like when they scream,” he told her.

  Tears burned her eyes, and her body froze into place like ice, her hand hovering in the air. Move. Run. He stacked the folders neatly and stood. Why couldn’t she move?

  “The others didn’t run. The others didn’t scream, but I’m learning as I go. I’m growing. I’m figuring out what sates me. Blood isn’t enough, Nicole Leanne Rider. Blood was never enough.”

  Why couldn’t she move? She didn’t understand!

  Move. Run.

  Tanya? Was she there? Help me!

  “Tonight will be different,” he said, stalking closer with graceful, predatory strides. “Tonight, you will run. Tonight, you will scream. And tonight, you will taste better to me. Can you do that? Can you be better than the others?”

  She was panting in short bursts, desperate to put space in between her and that vile thing, but she couldn’t do anything, and still…he stalked slowly toward her. He was so close to her now, so close. As he extended his hand, his claws grew longer, sharper. He rested the point of one against her cheek, then slid it down, cutting into her skin. And still, she couldn’t move. Her cheek hurt so bad, and now warmth was drip, drip, dripping down her jaw.

  When a whimper scratched its way up her throat, the creature canted his head like an animal and stared at her lips with a faraway smile possessing his. “Good girl. Now…” He took one step back. “Run to the elevator. Push the button over and over and pray it’s fast enough to save you. Don’t forget your job, Nicole Leanne Rider. Don’t forget to scream for me.”

  Nicole inhaled a shaky breath, not bothering with pointless wishes for the elevator. She wished she could spit in his face instead.

  Air exploded from her lungs, and her body was released from the monster’s grasp so fast, she stumbled backward and her shoulder blades hit the wall behind her. Swallowing down a scream, she bolted for the elevator. Tanya wasn’t in the hallway anymore. Tanya wasn’t here! She hadn’t seen Nicole’s distress signal!

  Behind her, an awful screeching sounded, and a swarm of bats followed her. Fifteen yards to the elevator. Fourteen.

  Stupid heels, stupid victim shoes! As they slammed onto the floors, she hoped to God she didn’t roll an ankle as she pushed her legs faster. Thirteen.

  Oh God, oh God! The bats were right behind her. She could feel them at her back!

  Don’t scream!

  A hand reached out as she passed Tanya’s door and yanked her inside. Nicole slammed into the doorframe and fell inside.

  Tanya
screamed as one of the bats made it inside, and she slammed the door closed so hard it rattled the floor. The bat was crawling along the floor, scrabbling for the door. Part of that vampire was in here!

  “Noooooo!” the monster roared outside.

  Terror in her eyes, Tanya slammed a wooden stake down on the bat that was trying to escape under the door. It disappeared into a poof of purple smoke just before the sharpened point pierced it.

  “Oh, my God!” Tanya shrieked, scrambling to Nicole. She was crying, tears just streaming down her face. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “Why are you sorry?” Nicole asked, clutching the woman to her.

  Tanya was shaking just as hard as Nicole was. “Because,” she uttered thickly, “I was the one who let him in the building.”

  Tanya’s tear-filled eyes searched Nicole’s, pleading for understanding, but Nicole didn’t. Why would Tanya do such a thing?

  “He’s in our minds,” she whispered.

  When the door blasted inward, splintering the wooden doorframe, Nicole shielded Tanya on instinct.

  The creature was standing there, hands braced on either side of the doorframe, eyes black as night and overflowing with fury. His skin was slick and gray, and he had two tattered wings outstretched from his back. His face was monstrous, and his fangs were so long.

  “Invite me in, Tanya Amelia Darcy.”

  Tanya’s face scrunched up in pain, and she shoved the stake into Nicole’s hand. “Kill me!” she shrieked. “Kill me, or he’ll take us both! I’m the only one who can let him in here.”

  She didn’t understand. Was it because Tanya owned this apartment? Then how had he gotten into hers without her permission?

  “Invite me in!” he roared. The walls and floor cracked and splintered, and plaster rained down from the ceiling.

  In Nicole’s arms, Tanya seized, and her pupils blew so big the blue in her eyes disappeared completely. Her lips parted as if she were about to speak.

  Nicole couldn’t take a life to save her own. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself.

  So, she threw that stake as hard as she could. As it flew end over end toward the vampire, he roared an inhuman bellow and lurched out of the way. It clattered harmlessly against the wall on the other side of the hallway, but that was okay. It’s what she’d expected. It wasn’t a kill shot. It was a diversion because the second he disappeared from that doorway, she slapped her hand over Tanya’s mouth and dragged her to the entryway table, yanked the lamp off it, and slammed it against her head.

  “You’re going to be okay!” she screamed as Tanya’s eyes closed and her body went limp.

  She didn’t know how, but they were both going to be okay.

  Chapter One

  “Look, we’re telling you all the information we have,” Aric Teague, the King of the Winterset Coven told the police officer. “We have nothing to hide. You heard the woman’s description. You know every one of my coven members, and none of them match the vampire who attacked those women.”

  Evan hated this interrogation. He didn’t like humans in general, and the police had been breathing down their undead necks lately. The three officers kept circling back to the deaths of the Winterset Coven’s feeders last year. They were predictable.

  “I find it funny that if anything bad happens in this town, the only place you look is in this coven,” Evan said.

  “Because it all revolves around you,” Officer Gerald growled. He was a big, barrel-chested cop standing quietly in the corner of the room while the other two were sitting around the dining table with the coven.

  “This one has nothing to do with us—”

  “Evan,” Aric warned.

  “But he’s right,” said Aric’s mate, Sadey. “Aric, you are so patient to answer all these questions.” She addressed the officers. “Surely, you can see we are being understanding and patient with your process, but when it comes down to it, the real killer is out there, but you keep aiming at us when we have nothing to do with any of this.”

  “Is it true you still haven’t hired on steady feeders after your others were killed?”

  “Jesus, really?” Evan asked.

  “Evan!” Aric barked.

  Officer Gerald stepped forward and slapped a stack of 8x10 pictures on the table in front of Evan. “Go on and tell us how to do our job. Go on and tell us we don’t need to turn over every stone in this town. This shit didn’t happen before you existed here!”

  If Evan had a heartbeat, it would’ve stuttered at the picture on top of the pile. Two paramedics were working on a woman in heels and a pant suit on the floor of a completely destroyed apartment. The furniture was all toppled and broken, the walls all cracked, chunks of ceiling adorned the wooden floors, and standing away from the paramedics was a woman. She wasn’t in focus, but he could see her well enough. Her hands were clapped over her mouth, and she was sobbing. Her hairband had loosened her ponytail, and her hair was a mess, falling around her face. Her eye makeup was running with her tears, and blood was streaming from a cut on her cheek.

  He moved that picture aside. This one was a photo of a woman’s body out in the woods. She had the same cut down her cheek, but that wasn’t what had killed her. Evan looked away from the gruesome gashes that had opened the pale skin of her neck.

  A vampire he may be, but he didn’t rip throats. Never had.

  “You don’t want to see the other two bodies?” Officer Gerald asked.

  Fury boiled through his veins as he looked the officer in the eyes, knowing full well what his looked like right now—pitch black. That’s what anger did to his kind. It darkened the eyes.

  He watched the blood drain from the cop’s face as his esophagus crushed inward. Evan could move things with his mind. Could crush them. He could kill this douchebag so easily. He narrowed his eyes on his neck as the man gasped for air. His buddies were freaking out, aiming guns, yelling, but all that was just background noise. Evan could hear the air molecules struggling to reach Officer Gerald’s lungs.

  Release him. Now. Aric had said the words in his mind only, and Evan’s reaction was immediate. He broke his hold on the officer and smiled when the man fell to his knees and gasped for air.

  His pupils blew at the same time his buddies dropped their weapons to their sides and stared into space. Aric was always fun to watch in action. Whatever he was saying in their minds, they would have no memory of what Evan had done. If these stupid humans knew half of the power that surged through the members of this coven, they wouldn’t be so brave with their accusations.

  Evan plucked the picture of the crying woman off the top of the stack and stood.

  “Where are you going?” Garret, the Second of the Winterset Coven, asked darkly from where he still sat on the sofa next to his snow leopard shifter mate, Dawn.

  “To do their job,” he growled, twitching his chin at the cops.

  And then he walked out of the house and slammed the door behind him.

  Catching a vampire was easy if one had the proper bait.

  Chapter Two

  Find some sort of normalcy.

  That’s what the police officers watching her apartment had told her, but as she stared at her reflection in the mirror, she wondered what normal was anymore.

  She looked shaken: her hazel eyes were dull and sunken, her hair laid in limp waves down her shoulders, and her lip twitched every fifteen seconds or so. Maybe a response to the shock of the attack. She had sixteen stitches on the slice down her face, and though the doctors had scheduled a second cosmetic surgery where the next set of stitches would be hidden, for now, she looked pretty gruesome. The swelling was awful, and she would always carry this scar. She touched it lightly. Every time she looked in the mirror, she would remember that monster.

  “It’s a calling card,” a man rumbled from behind her.

  With a shriek, she spun, and there stood a tall man with perfectly mussed black hair, a brown wool sweater over jeans, and his hands clasped behind his back. He wa
s built like a gorilla.

  She glanced back at the mirror, but he didn’t have a reflection. Vampire.

  Nicole yanked the wooden stake she kept tucked in the hem of her jeans from behind her back and screamed as she slashed at him.

  He blurred out of the way, leaving behind only a thin fog of deep purple smoke. When she turned, he was sitting on her bed comfortably, as if he’d been there all along.

  She inhaled deep to let off a cry for help to the officers outside, but he disappeared again and reappeared behind her in the span of a blink. His hand clamped over her mouth, and his other arm held her stomach firmly, flushing her back against his chest.

  “Shhhhh, I won’t hurt you. I’m not hunting you. I’m hunting the man who tried to kill you.”

  When Nicole bit his hand, he yelped and released her. She turned and kicked right for his groin, but he disappeared again and reappeared across the room. “A fighter.” He nodded. “That surprised me.”

  “Help!” she screamed.

  The man shook his head and looked annoyed. He cocked his ear toward the window where two car doors slammed. The cops were coming. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  He took a step toward her, but she held up her stake, ready to kill that bloodsucking motherfucker.

  The man snapped his fingers, and the wooden stake rocketed from her grip and sank deep into her bedroom wall. “Oh, my God,” she whispered in horror. What awful power for awful creatures.

  She’d survived the last monster only to be devoured by this one.

  “Have you ever flown on a plane before?” he asked.

  “W-what?”

  “Have you?”

  The front door opened, and the officers yelled her name.

  “Yes.”

  “This will be worse.”

  As she opened her mouth to demand what he meant, he disappeared into a puff of smoke, and then she lurched into the air to the sound of screeching bats.