Cimmerian Shade: A Limited Edition Paranormal Romance & Urban Fantasy Collection

by Kiki Howell

  He promised to claim her.

  Right.

  No more romance novels at night before bed for her. Hunky warlords sweeping up gowned women and ravishing them against a stone wall? Damn. Just the thought of it made her sigh.

  Diana snorted, more than a little aware of how desperate and foolish that sounded. And she did have a date coming for her. Just not the one she wanted.

  Trust no vampire.

  Well, sure. But it was even harder to trust a figment of her lusty imaginations. Grandma always said they had sex magick in their lineage but no one that she’d ever encountered had made her want to explore that particular option. Until her hunky vampire dream guy.

  And then there was her date.

  Virgil was expecting her to attend some sort of museum opening tonight. Her second soon to be encounter with the vampire Regent had left her more than a little confused. Diana nibbled on her lip, not at all sure if she should just break it off with him now or wait.

  It was politics, him asking her out and she knew it. She’d met him a couple of weeks ago after she’d returned from one of her antiquing trips one evening when he’d stopped in in her shop. Tall and imposing with his suit and slicked back long hair tied into a small ponytail, she’d found him staring at one of the spell secured cases behind the counter.

  “Can I help you?” She’d sauntered up, eyes half on her watch and the five minutes before the shop was officially closed, the other half on the vampire standing in front of her. As she approached, his gaze locked on hers and his nostrils flared. Vampire. His pale, almost luminous skin gave him away, along with the way he stood, so very still and hardly breathing.

  “Yes.” He glanced back at the case and pointed to a piece of jewelry, rendered harmless now that it was bound by three levels of blood and earth magic, ready to shipped off to a buyer. “May I see it, please.”

  Diana crossed her arms and slid her eyes just out from under his gaze. Her grandmother didn’t raise a fool and looking a vampire in the eye? Not going to happen. “The broach?”

  “Indeed.” He replied, the thinnest hint of a smile tilting up the corners of his mouth. “I’m Virgil Asher. And you are?”

  “Diana Robichard.”

  “Of course you are.” He nodded. “I’ve heard of your shop and wanted to see it for myself.”

  “Thank you. I didn’t know cursed antiquities were a topic that had vampires buzzing.”

  Soft laughter spilled from his lips. “Touché. But are we not cursed antiquities ourselves?”

  Diana’s brows shot up in surprise.

  “Is that your version of fishing for compliments?”

  Virgil laughed, only this time it was a heartier, more honest sound.

  “No. But I was fishing, as you say, for a dinner companion. And as I notice by your eyes flitting to your watch that your shop will be closing soon, I hoped you might accompany me, Diana Robichard.”

  She started to make a quip about hoping she wasn’t on the menu but bit her tongue. Suddenly the idea of having a frozen pizza and a glass of wine in her apartment above the shop didn’t hold much appeal after all.

  “I would like that, actually.”

  And she had.

  Oh, he was polite, for a vampire, and the dinner had gone fine. No untoward moves as he chatted her up over a platter of crawfish etouffe at one of her favorite haunts. She didn’t ask what he was having when the waiter brought him a glass of what appeared to be red wine. He was, she decided, a nice date. But ever since that night, she’d been plagued by dreams and it was damned annoying.

  Tonight she planned on confronting him, to see if he’d been working a little vamptastic mojo in her direction. Diana didn’t like feeling manipulated and after she’d made the mistake of overhearing some of the witches talking down at the local supermarket on grocery day, she was even more convinced he came on to her as a ploy and not any genuine interest.

  “She’s dating the Vampire Regent. Can you believe that?”

  “I know. Trouble breeds trouble. I don’t know why he’d pick her family after what happened to her parents. And that ancestor of hers? Messing with demon magic? I think they got what they deserved. Besides, my lineage is much more suitable to a cross species alliance.”

  “Well, word is he’s only after her to sink his fangs into some sort of piece she might have come into contact with.”

  “Goddess knows she’s not going to attract a man with her history. Let him have his fun. He’ll use her and be on to the next witch soon enough when he realizes.”

  The other woman snorted, pushing her cart past the aisle where Diana had been standing, a flush slowly creeping up her cheeks. A younger Diana would have cried, but after years of being taunted it was almost old news.

  The bad part was, nothing they said was untrue.

  Her family was tainted with demon magic. Grandma Grace had admitted as such when Diana had come home crying one day from school with a note from the principal for fighting. It was completely true. They had a history of dark magic and from what she understood there had even been an ancestor murdered for her part in a war between the vampires and wolves.

  She could have lived her whole life not knowing that little tidbit of horrible truth, but as it was, the girls in her school and even her fellow witches in the coven loved to rub in the fact that her family’s gene pool held a taint.

  Well, why stop at one?

  Demon magic. Sex magick.

  Magic with a c or with a k. Whatever.

  A spell was still a spell, no matter what spin you put on it.

  Bitches. The lot of them. And if that was the real reason he had asked her out, it would be a cold day in hell before he’d get a sniff at anything of value-either in bed or out. What is it they said about those who fight monsters? Yeah. That. You had to understand how to curse before you could unroll one.

  Middle finger in the air. She started humming the song by the same name that she’d heard on the alternative radio station she listened to and smiled.

  Fuck them all. She was tired of this shit.

  Before she realized what she was doing, Diana let the power spool down her arms and into a small black ball. She tossed it down the aisle after the two women, smiling as the black spell hit its target, the other two women none the wiser.

  A little demon magic in aisle ten.

  Oops.

  Barely restraining a giggle, she snagged a package of kettle chips off the shelf next to her and kept walking. Next the deli. Some nice rare roast beef was in order and maybe some Havarti with dill. And don’t forget the whole wheat bread. She was here for a reason and she wasn’t going to let some sour faced asshats ruin her day.

  Karma was a bitch and Diana didn’t mind borrowing her claws when it was needed. She’d give it about twenty minutes until they turned into the swine they acted like. If they were so interested in the dark side, let them roll around in it for a while.

  It was a shame really, if what they said was true. Virgil would have been a swoon worthy subject too. But it wasn’t his eyes she saw when she lowered herself into the bath at night and let the warm water lap at her lady bits. The worst part was...she couldn’t pin point where the impression was coming from other than when it started. No. This was more of a feeling. A feral sense of longing that made her tingle inside. And the eyes that looked back at her from the dark when she rested her head on her pillow at night.

  No. That wasn’t right. It all began with that damned dagger. She couldn’t even leave it out of her sight and now she had it rigged to her belt like some sort of urban fantasy character from one of her favorite paperback reads.

  Goddess how pathetic.

  But it felt...right.

  And with the blade’s weight, she carried something else with her as well. Him.

  It was his eyes she saw in the shadowy place between sleep and dreaming. His lips that teased hers open with a searing kiss, stopping just short of making a meal out of her.

  Goddess, it was frustrating
. Leave it to her to fall for an imaginary lover tied to a centuries old blade.

  But alas, reality beckoned.

  Her date.

  Either way, she needed to either get ready or let Virgil know she wouldn’t be coming. She’d gotten a cryptic text from him when he should have been sleeping.

  Need to talk to you. Will come around at sundown.

  That had been an hour ago and still nothing. Her texts to him had gone unanswered.

  Diana frowned. Her phone had been blowing up in her local witch’s messaging group but she muted the conversation, weary of all the distractions and pointless chatter.

  She stood, shaking out her legs and walked up to the front window, staring out into the night. Fire trucks, sirens flashing rolled by and she could hear others in the distance.

  What the hell? She reached for her phone and brought up the local news.

  “Authorities are now responding to multiple outbreaks of violence around the city. What appear to be bombs were thrown into Blackthorn House, the known residence of the local vampire Regent Virgil Asher and his coven. It is not known at this time how many casualties are at the residence, nor the secondary scene at the Randolph Museum where the opening night for a showing of artwork from the paranormal community was to take place this evening.”

  Stomach in knots, she watched the film clips on her phone’s small screen, horrified at the extent of the damages. People were dead. Vampire. Wolf. Human.

  Was this the work of a new threat? The wolves and vamps had been going at it for months now and it had taken all she had to keep the drama and politics out of her shop. Especially having the daughter of the local pack Alpha in her employ.

  Anger stirred in her blood, energy snapping along her fingertips and her hand automatically going for the blade at her hip. But the emotion quickly turned to worry as she realized Celine was late. Like more than five minutes.

  It was not like her. At all.

  Shit.

  Diana also needed to talk to Celine and Gabby and she dreaded the conversation. One of the shop’s newest pieces had turned up missing after their shift. Gabby had taken the necklace in while she was held up out of town at a meeting with the antiques broker a few days before. All she had of the thing was a hastily snapped picture from her niece’s cell phone and a selfie of her and Gabby cutting up, the necklace around Gabby’s neck.

  What had happened to the piece?

  Diana gnawed on the inside of her cheek and sighed.

  It was gone and a sickening feeling in her gut pointed to exactly where it might have gotten off to. There was a reason Celine was helping out at the shop. Diana’s sister Sarah had insisted. One day she dropped her off after school, her long dark hair wound into a bun, fire snapping in her eyes. Goddess but she looked so much like their mother, it hurt.

  “She listens to you. Knock some sense into her before she gets arrested for arson and I have to visit her at one of those work camps.” Sarah rounded on her.

  Diana had raised an eyebrow. “And why am I suddenly the patron saint of troubled teenagers?”

  “You really have to ask?”

  Shit.

  Her sister was right. Maybe that was one reason she hadn’t settled down and had kids of her own. Payback was a bitch and she’d given her parents a run for their money when she had been that age. And her grandmother too for that matter, but by then Nana was the only one willing to take a chance on a young witch with attitude and a penchant for trouble. Apparently it ran in the family.

  Magic for Diana was like a drug. It tickled and grew and before she knew it, she was drunk with power, using it for her own ends. Money machines. Hacking into the school computer to change grades. There was nothing a teenage Diana wouldn’t do. But it wasn’t to fit in. She could have given a flying crap monkey for what the Society witches thought of her. No. She did it for the high. Each time she tipped the line into forbidden magic she felt the thrill of it resound deep into her bones. Even the forbidden sex magic she’d heard of. And done-on a dare.

  And Diana paid for it in the worst way possible, reliving the event whenever she closed her eyes. Fire licking at the house she called home and enveloping her parents in one agonizing instant. The charred ashes of lives prematurely lost. Her parents died. Because of her.

  Goddess.

  Every time she saw her sister, the knife in the wound twisted all that much deeper. She would try and atone for her sins and use her magic for good. But it was hard. The easy road came well...too easy. And the excitement of the hunt? It still beckoned. And she hoped she could help Celine before she made a decision that haunted her the rest of her life.

  But Celine hadn’t given Diana a lick of trouble. No smoke. Not even a cigarette. Her friend Gabby on the other hand was another story. One day after school she appeared and with the blessing of her uber sexy dad, the local pack Alpha, Aristide Benoit, and she’d stayed.

  Diana was drawn to him but she couldn’t tell if it was the magic talking or something deeper, so she stayed away. But still his amber eyes called to her and sometimes, when she turned to watch him go after coming to check on Gabby, she caught him looking her way. She was trying to help Gabby, not sleep with her father.

  “Gabby’s gotten a few hard knocks and she’s made some mistakes. With her mother passing and things happening with the pack, it would be great if she had a place to come to. Get her mind off school and stuff at home.”

  Of course she couldn’t say no. It would give Celine someone to talk to other than the shop’s ghost and maybe it would maybe spur her niece to take things up a notch and try harder in her studies. So far her family’s witch heritage was lost on the girl.

  But they could both learn how to catalog antiques. The curse working-or unworking, would have to come as Celine’s powers developed. Or not.

  Diana had the feeling that was also what Sarah had in mind. Her sister had been a natural witch from the age of five. In true sibling rivalry fashion, Sarah had relished the fact that Diana had to work for her magic. But once the spark had hit when Diana turned fifteen, it was a toss-up as to who was the more powerful witch. But then it all went to hell and she was still trying to dig her way out.

  The shop was the key to everything. Structure. Family. A home where she belonged and could use her gifts toward the right purpose. Diana nibbled on her lip, only half listening to the reporter on scene at the museum.

  A few little things had gone missing of late but she hadn’t thought anything of it. A misplaced book here, a silver lipstick case that spelled its wearer to tell the truth...those things she figured would turn up. But the amulet...from the moment her eyes had grazed the picture she knew it had to be dealt with and its powers expunged before whatever magic was embedded in it rippled through the shop.

  It wasn’t just that, she’d realized. The piece looked...familiar. And not in a good way. Diana just had to pinpoint how.

  She’d texted the girls back.

  Don’t handle it. Put it in the locked case and leave it with the spelled cloth. I mean it. Both of you.

  They’d both responded. Late. But they were kids. Hopefully they wouldn’t feel any sort of lure to touch it. Gabby had the wolf to help guide her and sometimes she feared the wild spirit led her places best left undiscovered. At least for now.

  She should know. It took one to know one and Gabby was a rebel through and through.

  Diana thought about the uber short shorts the girl showed up for work in right before she left town and had to consciously bite her lip not to overly comment when she sent her home to change. Gabby stomped out in a huff but as she turned to walk out, she could see a spark of something in the way the girl’s lips tilted up in a smirky little smile.

  Happy that someone had held her accountable? Maybe. Annoyed that she’d been sent home from work. Oh. Absolutely.

  Diana sighed, rubbing her eyes. That didn’t change what had happened though.

  One of the girls had taken the amulet in while she was away. There wasn’t
any other explanation. It had been pretty enough. The green sparkling diamond flanked with swirls of silver was stunning. But there was something about the piece that set her teeth on edge. She’d planned on putting it into a lead lined case and running some tests on it when she got in today but in the flurry of last night’s curse working and the intake of new items, it had slipped her mind. But when she checked the case this morning she noticed the amulet was missing.

  Had one of the girls borrowed it?

  It was the only explanation she could think of. But damn it, they knew better. Hadn’t she trained them enough that unknown magic could be deadly? A pretty, glittering jewel could suck your soul in if you weren’t careful.

  As if laughing in response, the blade at her side vibrated.

  “I ought to remember my own rules, right?” She murmured, letting her fingers caress the bejeweled hilt.

  Gabby was the last one to have worked, but she knew better than to take things that didn’t belong to her. At least, she thought she did. Especially with a father like Aristide Benoit. Her pulse sped up just thinking about the sexy shifter. Between her dream lover and the wolf that haunted her day time imaginings, her battery operated boyfriend was getting a workout.

  Just then a text came through from Aristide.

  Are you okay?

  Yes.

  Gabby. Is she there with you?

  Diana stared at the words, dread clawing through her stomach.

  No.

  I’m coming. Stay there.

  She and Aristide had met two years ago right after Celine had introduced her to Gabby. Conveniently he’d come across an old pack artifact and wondered at its magical properties. At the time she wondered if it was a ruse to talk to her. She’d touched the old pocket watch and immediately doused the thing in salt, whispering an incantation over it. The trail of tainted magic was broken as quickly as it had come into the shop.