by Mia Archer
Fang U
Mia Archer
Contents
1. Lisa
2. Lisa
3. Lisa
4. Ivy
5. Lisa
6. Ivy
7. Lisa
8. Lisa
9. Ivy
10. Lisa
11. Ivy
12. Lisa
13. Lisa
14. Ivy
15. Lisa
16. Ivy
17. Lisa
18. Ivy
19. Lisa
20. Ivy
21. Lisa
22. Ivy
23. Lisa
24. Ivy
25. Lisa
26. Lisa
27. Lisa
28. Ivy
29. Lisa
30. Lisa
31. Ivy
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Also by Mia Archer
Fang U
By Mia Archer
Copyright 2019 Mia Archer
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Individuals pictured on the cover are models and used for illustrative purposes only.
First digital edition electronically published by Mia Archer, February 2019
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1
Lisa
I ran through the forest, blood pumping through my veins. I was being pursued. I didn’t know by what, but whatever it was terrified me to the very core of my being.
And it was gaining on me. It wouldn’t be much longer before the creature had me.
I stumbled and caught myself against a tree. Took in deep gasps of air. The night closed in around me, and I couldn’t even take comfort from the moon up above. There were too many trees blocking her light.
I closed my eyes and said a quick prayer to the pale mother above to lend me aid in my time of need, but I could hear the creature moving through the forest. Closing in.
It wasn’t even bothering to hide itself. That or it wasn’t very experienced, but that wasn’t likely. I knew the creature pursuing me was as ancient as it was terrifying.
I didn’t know how I knew this. Just that I did.
And I knew my death was imminent if it wasn’t even bothering to hide its progress through the forest. It would be any moment now.
Something moved through the darkness ahead of me and I cried out in terror. Branches reached out for me like grasping creatures in the night, but I knew they were nothing compared to the monster lurking out there in the darkness somewhere behind me.
I held my hand up and light danced from my fingertips. Just enough to illuminate the area around me. Just enough that I’d see something coming at me before it reached me. So little that hopefully it wouldn’t alert anything out there to my presence through the thick growth.
I hoped.
Even that felt wrong though. Light dancing on my fingers? That was the magic, but the magic hadn’t come to me yet.
Everything about this was wrong. Confusing.
Despite that confusion I knew I could do so much more if I could be free with the magic, but it would violate the covenant.
Not that. Never that. My terrified gasps filled my head as I turned in a circle looking at my dark surroundings.
It was all wrong. The trees were supposed to be a comfort. My friend. Yet here they were closing in around me. A threat. Concealment for…
Whatever in the six hells was out there trying to find me.
Movement again. Something tugged at my shirt. I looked down and blinked several times just to be sure that what I saw down there was actually true.
It was impossible. Something wet dripped from my shirt where it was torn. Those clothes hadn’t been torn a moment ago. I hadn’t even felt pain aside from the slight tug.
I fell to my knees, feeling lightheaded already as the lifeblood drained from my body.
Only I knew that was nothing compared to the draining to come. A shadow fell across me even as the light I’d summoned winked out leaving just the trees, the faint light of the moon filtered through those sinister branches, and the shadow.
It was difficult to make out any features in the darkness, but I felt fear going down to the core of my being. The fear of a hunted animal knowing it’s over.
Predator was going to win out over prey this night. Briefly the thought of caking myself in mud to hide myself from a predator filled my head, but that thought felt all wrong. As though it belonged in another time, another mind.
I collapsed the rest of the way to the ground and whatever thoughts had been filling my head disappeared. I looked up through the trees that reached towards me with their skeletal fingers. They seemed like death reaching out for me.
There was no comfort in those branches. Not at all like home. How had I gotten here from home? The last I remembered…
But I didn’t remember anything. This was all wrong. I couldn’t remember how this had started. I only remembered running in terror.
The shadow stepped over me and blocked the moonlight. The scattered moonlight played off of a mess of brown hair that fell down past her shoulders almost to an ass that I somehow knew was the most shapely and distracting thing I’d ever seen, though oddly enough it was difficult to think about that ass as I stared up at the most piercing deep brown eyes I’d ever seen.
I was dying and yet the only thing I could think was how beautiful she was. Pale in the moonlight with her fangs extended.
“I am sorry about this,” she said, shaking her head and almost looking as though it was true.
Though that couldn’t be true. She was a monster. I opened my lips to say something, but the only thing that came out was something warm with a tangy salty taste.
I knew that was what she would taste in a moment with those fangs. Robbing me of my lifeblood.
I had to say something though. It felt wrong, but I had to get something out. I coughed a couple of times and broke through whatever was keeping me from speaking.
“I hope you choke on me you sparkly bitch.”
The girl arched an eyebrow. Smiled. It was a fetching smile, and it was a damn shame that smile was plastered on the fanged face of a bloodsucking bitch who was about to kill me.
She leaned down and darkness took me.
2
Lisa
My eyes flew open and I screamed. The sisters to either side of me held my arms down so I didn’t harm myself or go flying into the bonfire piled high for this ceremony.
Chanting surrounded me. A comforting sound that reminded me of my childhood. That reminded me of who I was. What I was.
What I was doing here. I wanted nothing to do with what I was doing here, but the real bitch about being in the coven was what I wanted didn’t amount to more than a hill of eye of newt in this crazy world.
I took in deep gasps of air just to make certain that I still could. The memory of taking my last breath was still there. It still felt so real.
After the first breath came the sobs. Great sobs that shook my whole body.
Arms wrapped around me from behind. I squeezed my eyes shut as tears streamed down my face, and I shouldered the arms away.
“I know what you’re going to tell me, and you can go fuck yourself,” I said. “I won’t feel a thing my ass!”
“Well then,” a knowing voice said from behind me. “It sounds like you had a time wherever you went.”
“Step away from the child,” a harsh voice rang out.
Mother made an annoyed noise in the back of her throat, one last gesture to tell me she
was there and would protect me as much as she could, and then she was gone.
Only I knew she couldn’t protect me. Nothing could protect me from what I’d volunteered for. Nothing could protect me from the Coven Mother once she had it in her mind that I’d seen something.
Only the magic could protect me, and it hadn’t come to me.
Yet. I told myself it hadn’t come yet. I almost believed it.
“Did you see her child?” Coven Mother Smith asked. It always struck me as odd that the head of the coven would have such a mundane name to go with such an ancient and auspicious title.
I tried to speak but my mouth was dry. I’d heard of people using magic to live someone else’s memories, but it had never occurred to me that someone could use that magic to live out someone’s last moments. The memory of dying was still so real to me.
Though at least the memory had stopped short of showing me what happened when Selene crossed over that threshold. There was only darkness at the end. No plumbing the mysteries of beyond the veil for me.
I was sort of glad for that. As far as I knew no witch had ever managed to do that with their magic, and something told me that being the first would be a very unpleasant experience.
I resisted the urge to touch my stomach just to reassure myself that I was in one piece in the here and now. To remind myself that was a memory, and there were no claw marks there.
I would only embarrass myself in front of the sisters if I did that.
“I saw her, Coven Mistress,” I said.
I saw her and she was beautiful. Gorgeous. It was as though the woman I’d been dreaming of my entire life had stepped out of the shadows in that memory and burned herself in my mind.
And she’d killed one of our sisters. Of that there could be no doubt.
“Then you are prepared to take on this task we have given you?” she asked.
I licked my lips. I didn’t know if I was prepared at all. I’d barely reached the age of ascension and the magic hadn’t come to me.
I was the last person who should be taking this task. I was the last person who should be seeking revenge on behalf of the coven. On behalf of Selene. And yet I was the only person who could.
So what choice did I have?
Mother would tell me I did have a choice. That I could turn this down no matter what the Coven Mother said. I could go to college and ignore everything happening in the shadows at the university.
Assuming none of the irregularities that happened there on the regular found me, that is. Like they’d found poor Selene. Fat lot of good having the magic had done for her, in the end.
But of course I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t very well go to a place knowing there were vampires preying on innocents. Never mind that I’d known there were vampires preying on innocents for a few years now, the Coven had known there were vampires preying on innocents since it was founded, and we’d never done anything about it before.
Not until they attacked one of our sisters and broke the covenant. The bastards. I thought of feeling Selene’s lifeblood running out of her. Running out of me.
Had that bitch dined on her blood? I shivered again thinking of her leaning down and grabbing at her neck. Pulling it back and pressing her lips against my own.
The shiver that ran up and down my body had nothing to do with the terror of a vampire attacking.
“Sister Lisa,” the Coven Mother snapped. “Would you care to share with the rest of us why you’re so distracted when we should be discussing our vengeance?”
“I’m sorry Coven Mother,” I whispered. “I am prepared for the task at hand.”
“No you are not child,” she said, putting a finger under my chin and looking me up and down with a more than critical eye. “You are probably the least prepared of all of us. That is why your only assignment is to find where these creatures are making their lair and let us know so that our more experienced sisters can deal with them.”
She spoke of the vampires like they were vermin to be exterminated. In a way I suppose they were. Filthy creatures that preyed on humans and drained them of their blood. It amazed me they were allowed to exist at all.
But there was the truce. The covenant. At least there’d been the truce. I’m not sure if that would last if our coven followed through on the threat, but the vampires broke it first, and what I thought of dealing with them hadn’t mattered even before they broke it.
My thoughts on the matter certainly didn’t matter now. I had a task, and that was all that mattered.
“I will do my best to observe and report, Coven Mother,” I whispered.
Only I had a difficult time believing myself as I said it. Selene had been a friend.
I still remembered playing with her around the bonfire when I was a little girl. I remembered braiding each other’s hair and with the flowers that grew and glowed with magical energy during the moon dances.
I recalled how excited I was for her when the magic took her on her seventeenth birthday. A year younger than I was now.
I tried not to be bitter at the thought.
No, instead I focused on how sad I was when she went off to college and how excited I was at the prospect of rooming with her when I joined her the next year. This year.
None of that was going to happen now. The news that she was dead hit me like a punch in the gut. The news that my best friend had been killed by a vampire who violated the covenant and shattered the truce filled me with a white hot rage.
I looked up to the Coven Mother and smiled. Tried to look meek.
Even if meek was the last thing I should be considering the task at hand.
No, I would hunt this vampire down and make her pay for what she did to Selene. I was going to make her pay for every moment of terror my friend felt running through those woods knowing she was about to die.
I was going to make her pay, and then when I was done I might kill her. Or I might not. I’d heard that one of the unpleasant side effects of undeath was someone with a mind to could keep a vampire alive in suffering for as long as they wanted.
The only problem was I had no idea how I was going to do any of that without the magic.
“I don’t like the look on your face child,” the Coven Mother said, pulling me back to reality. “You’re thinking dangerous thoughts.”
“My apologies, Coven Mother,” I said.
“They’re not dangerous to us. They’re dangerous to you. Know that you’re a child being thrown into a den of wolves, and the wolves would happily devour you if you make yourself known.”
A sob from behind me. Mother. She hadn’t approved of this plan from the beginning. She didn’t understand that I had to do this. I had to avenge my friend. I had to make them pay.
“I will be cautious, Coven Mother,” I said.
“No you won’t child,” she said with a sigh. “But maybe we need some of that spirit in this hunt. After all, that lack of spirit is what got Selene killed.”
I looked up at her, wondered what she could possibly mean by that, but then she turned and was gone, her robes billowing behind her and reflecting the starlight above as well as reflecting stars that had never existed in any sky I’d seen.
I glowered at her back. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I was going to show her. I’d show all of them. I was going to kill that vampire.
I didn’t care if Selene’s memory had shown me that she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. A woman who’d haunted my dreams since I was a young girl. A woman I’d long thought was fated to be mine.
I guess she was fated to die at my hands instead. Fate and prophecy could be funny like that, and I would have to make do with the hand it dealt me.
3
Lisa
I moved through the woods. Branches reached out and grasped at me. As though they were in league with what was chasing me. Trying to keep me from escaping.
A tree leaned in. The rotted holes made it look like a skull and I cried out in terror. This wasn’t supp
osed to happen. The trees were supposed to be our friends, but they were like twisted monstrosities trying to take me. Hold me. Keep me.
Branches wrapped around my wrists. Held me in place. The wind rustled through the leaves like cruel laughter.
The branches spun me around and I saw her. A shadow darker than the darkness between the trees. She stepped forward and the moonlight filtering through the rustling leaves illuminated her face.
It was her. The one who was here to kill me.
And yet.
I knew I should feel danger, terror. I knew I should try to escape, but as I looked at her I couldn’t help but notice the elegant lines of her face. The confident way she held herself. Her hair that floated ephemerally on a breeze that wasn’t there. The way her green eyes seemed to pierce me.
She looked me up and down and smiled. It was a predatory smile, but not unpleasant. It wasn’t the look of a hunter seeking its prey.
That was the look of a woman looking at another woman and enjoying what she saw. There was a time when that thought would have brought me shame, for all that the coven was far more understanding of that sort of thing than the rest of the world, but no longer. Part of learning to accept yourself as a witch was learning to accept yourself as you were.
