I hadn’t thought of that. Truth was, I didn’t care what he wanted. I wanted them close to me. They’d been my unshakable support posts my entire life. My stone-cold, ride or die, backup bitches. Men had come and gone, but my friends had remained tried and true.
Dana winked. “Tell you what, we’ll figure it all out later. Now, I want details on Brett. How is he in bed? Be graphic. Spare no details. I’m a forty-year-old woman. I can handle explicit. Plus, I love a good sex story.”
I heard movement on the back porch. The last thing I wanted to do was talk about my sex life with one of Brett’s friends in earshot. “Travis, I get you’re trying to be polite and not interrupt this conversation while avoiding tracking in mud and rain, but I have to wonder about your logic. Getting from the front to the back had to leave you ankle deep in mud!”
“Get out!”
Dana gasped. “Where in the hell did that voice come from? Ohmygod, are there demons in here still? I thought you and Marcy nearly burned the joint down to prevent this kind of thing! That’s it, I’m sleeping with holy water under my pillow.”
I stared blankly at her because I recognized the voice instantly. It belonged to my grandfather.
Just then, two men stepped into the kitchen from the back porch. Neither of whom were Travis.
They were both soaked to the bone, their dark hair clinging to their pale faces. One had steely gray-blue eyes and the other had eyes so dark they were nearly black. There was something about them both that sent my inner alarms off. If they were Brett’s officers, they had a cold air about them. One that said they were deadly. Plus, they weren’t in uniforms. Maybe they’d come over in a hurry or hadn’t been on duty when he’d called them, but something told me that wasn’t the case.
As my gaze slid over them, I noticed a mark on one’s neck and another’s lower arm. It was the same symbol I’d seen out under one of the pots. A mark that was evil.
Brett wouldn’t have guys who were evil on staff at the station.
That meant these were not Brett’s officers.
I was about to warn Dana when she shocked me and grabbed my arm, yanking me back. She tried to thrust me behind her, but I wasn’t having any of that.
The men lunged right up and over the counter at us.
Just then, the storm outside seemed to gain momentum. For a split second, I worried the house would be lifted right off its foundation and we’d land on a wicked witch in Oz.
Dana and I grabbed hands and thunder shook the house.
The men landed on their feet before us and snarled. It took my head a second to catch up with what I was seeing because it wasn’t every day that I found myself staring at fangs.
Before I could even think to react, Dana kicked one in the chest, spun and elbowed the other right in his rather interesting dental work. His head snapped back and blood came flying out of his mouth.
I grabbed for the first thing I could get my hands on, which happened to be my grandmother’s marble rolling pin. The next I knew, I was whapping the crap out of the man with the bloody mouth. He went down and I hit him over the back of the head for good measure and Dana went at the other, countering his blows as if she did that sort of thing daily.
The man she was fighting with stumbled over the one on the floor, and I used that moment to hit him with the rolling pin too. He went down with a thud.
It was then I realized I was breathing so fast it was a shock I didn’t hyperventilate.
Marcy came strolling into the kitchen as if she hadn’t heard a commotion.
She glanced at the men on the floor and then walked right by us all to the back porch.
We ran after her.
“Marcy, stop! They came in from that way. There could be more!” I yelled.
Dana and I got to the porch at the same moment, only to find Marcy there with her unopened beer from dinner in hand. She began to shake it with great vigor.
“Marcy?” asked Dana, sounding anything but winded.
The back screen door flew open and two more men rushed in. They had the same markings on them as the others.
Marcy whistled and they looked in her direction.
She cracked open the beer, aiming it directly at them, spraying them right in the face.
They grabbed at their eyes as they hissed, showing fangs as well.
Marcy hurried over and opened the screen door, standing there, getting soaked from the storm as she did.
I went at one man with the rolling pin while Dana handled the other. She lifted him off the ground as if he was light as a feather and proceeded to throw him through the opened screen door.
I hit the other again for good measure.
Someone came bursting in from the kitchen and Dana spun around as if to go at them too. She stopped at the last second when she saw it was Travis.
He was clutching his side, bleeding everywhere.
I gasped. “Travis!”
He looked around wildly. “Are any of you hurt?”
“We’re fine,” said Marcy, very calmly. “The vampires aren’t doing as well. None are deader than normal yet though.”
Dana’s head whipped around and she voiced what I was thinking. “Vampires are real?”
Marcy nodded and stepped over the man on the porch floor. He began to move, and she turned slightly and kicked him hard before going to Travis. “Come on into the green room. I’ve got something to help with that wound.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I need to get you three somewhere safe. The property is crawling with the enemy.”
Just then another came running at the back-porch door.
He was just about to it when he burst into a puff of ash that was quickly washed away by the downpour happening outside.
Right behind where he’d been was Austin. He held a wooden stake in his hand and was soaked. Yet he didn’t look shocked by anything that was happening. He seemed totally fine with it, as if it happened to him all the time.
His gaze landed on me. “Are y’all okay?”
“Travis is hurt,” I said quickly.
“I’m fine,” Travis countered. “Austin, there are hundreds of them out there.”
“I know. My people are here. We’re handling it. I’m told the wolf pack is on its way. So are Brett and Jeffrey,” said Austin.
I opened the door for him as a bolt of lightning struck the backyard. “Get in here!”
He glanced back at the yard where the lightning had hit and then back at me, his eyes wide. “I sensed you were powerful, but damn, woman. That is something indeed.”
“W-what? I didn’t do that. I can’t make it storm,” I said.
Marcy grinned lovingly. “Sure, you can’t, sweetie. Now, Travis, come with me. I’m not asking. If you don’t, I’ll curse you and make you guess what might fall off first.”
Travis gasped. “I’m coming.”
She nodded. “Good.”
Austin came in fully and touched my arm. “Are you sure you’re not hurt?”
“She’s fine. She went all Martha Stewart on them with a rolling pin. They never stood a chance,” said Dana.
I locked gazes with her. “How did you do what you did? The fighting?”
“Not sure,” she confessed. “Just did what felt right. Okay, so about what Travis said and the guy who turned into something a Dirt Devil would love, vampires are real?”
Austin nodded. “They are.”
“Swear it on Richard Marx,” she demanded.
He simply looked baffled.
She grunted. “Fine George Michael.”
Again, he appeared confused.
She let out a long-annoyed breath. “Ohmygod, Wham! Swear it on Wham.”
“On what?” asked Austin, reminding me just how young he was.
I caught her attention. “Yes. I’m going to say vampires are real. Plus, no time like the present to tell you that shifters are real too. Brett and Jeffrey are ones. They can turn into wolves.”
She was eerily quiet and then started laugh
ing. Hard.
“Dana?” I asked. “Are you cracking up in a call-the-guys-with-white-coats way or ha-ha way?”
She bent, still laughing, and then gathered herself somewhat to speak. “Jury is still out.”
There was a crashing noise from the front of the house, and I acted on instinct, running at the noise instead of away from it.
Austin yelled for me to stop, but I ignored him with Dana right by my side.
We were almost to the front door when it burst open and men came rushing in. They didn’t look friendly.
Just then, something white came flying out of the front parlor. As my mind caught up with what I was seeing, I froze.
So did Dana.
She grabbed my hand. “That sheet is floating!”
“I know,” I said, watching as what looked to be a ghost from an old black and white movie went right at the men at a high rate of speed. The ghost was just missing a low moan to complete the old-timer vibe it had going.
The sheet fell to the floor and I blinked several times as I looked right through someone I’d not seen in years. “Grandpa?”
He launched himself at the men and somehow, even with being see-through, knocked two down at once.
He spun around, offered me a sad, emotion-filled, tight-lipped smile and then vanished through the wall.
I reached in the direction he’d disappeared in, desperate to see him again, to touch him, to hug him. “Grandpa!”
“Poppy!” Dana yelled as more bad men ran at us.
Austin pushed past Dana and me and leaped into the fray.
Dana and I shared a look before we did the same.
She beat the hell out of one of them and he turned into a huge plume of ash like the other guy had.
I tried to hit one of the men with the rolling pin, but he knocked it free from my hand. He struck me hard and I ended up falling to the floor.
The front door was standing open as the storm continued to batter the house. Rain and wind came through at me and I tilted my head down some to avoid getting rain in my eyes.
Pain moved through my cheek and I cupped it as I looked out front. Suddenly I felt the strangest connection to the storm outside. As if I was on the same wavelength as the energy building out there. It felt as if something deep inside of me was reaching out to stroke the storm and coax it to me.
To us all.
One second the man who had hit me was towering over me and the next a bolt of lightning came through the open door, past me, and struck him full on.
It lifted him off the floor and he turned into ash that rained down on me.
I sat there, stunned, coughing on dead guy ashes.
“Poppy!” shouted Brett as he rushed in from out front.
Jeffrey was right behind him.
Dana flipped a man onto his back and somehow had Austin’s stake in her hand. She drove it through the bad guy’s chest like a seasoned pro and he went to ash instantly.
She stood quickly and tossed the stake to Austin, who used it to kill another vampire. The pair looked as if they’d been fighting vampires together for years.
Brett grabbed for me, lifting me off the floor gingerly. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“But the storm…the lightning,” he protested.
I touched my stomach lightly. “I, um, think I might have caused that.”
A smile touched his lips and he kissed the tip of my nose quickly. “That’s my girl.”
He set me to the side and spun.
I watched in awe as his hand shifted slightly, his fingers lengthening as sharp nails appeared. He beheaded the vampire nearest him, and it would have been gruesome had the vampire not also turned into nothing but ashes.
A vampire came through the front window that had been closed. Glass shattered everywhere as he ran at Dana, tackling her to the floor, hissing and snarling as he did.
Jeffrey reacted, ripping the man off her and slamming him into the wall, where he then rammed a clawed hand through the man’s chest. He yanked the man’s heart out and had I not been looking as it happened, I’d have missed it because suddenly the man and the heart in Jeffrey’s hand were nothing but ashes.
Brett growled and I glanced at the open doorway to find someone I never thought I’d see again standing there.
Marla.
Twenty-Three
Poppy
My gaze whipped to Dana as fear that I’d well and truly lost my damn mind came over me. “Do you see her too?”
“The barely legal trollop?” asked Dana. “Unfortunately, yes. And is it me or is she not looking so hot right now?”
As I stared at her with her deep auburn hair piled high on her head and a streak of white running through the front of it, I realized I’d seen her like that before—looking years older than she was—watching me from near the restrooms at the restaurant. As she stared back at me, I realized just how much her eyes were hard and cruel windows to her soul. Why hadn’t I noticed that before?
Her gaze whipped to Austin. “Slayer, I grow tired of you following me everywhere. Why can’t you be a good little boy and obey?”
“Yeah, well I grow tired of you sucking the life out of innocent witches and making men your bitches, succubus,” said Austin.
I gasped. “Succubus, like the demons from myths that feed off—”
I’d already had to suspend my belief in reality past the point of comfort. Buying into the woman who broke apart my marriage being a demon who enthralled men to do her evil bidding was a big ask.
For some reason though, it surprised me less than seeing my grandfather was back from the dead.
Dana snorted. “Darla is a succu-bitch. This is mint. Really.”
I couldn’t help but crack up with her. I wasn’t sure if it was from nerves, stress, or a bit of both, but the label succu-bitch was so…fitting.
“My name is Marla,” hissed Marla, narrowing her gaze on Dana as if she was about to shoot venom from her eyes.
Was that a thing?
Could she do that?
Dana didn’t seem the least bit concerned. “Oh, I’m shaking over here with your big scary glare. I’m frankly not seeing what men fall for with you, sweetheart. Don’t see the lure. Do you have a magik vag? Is that it? Once they fall in, they never fall out? Like some sort of clown car? Bigger on the inside?” She brought her hand to her mouth, faking shock. “Is it like the Tardis?”
“If the Tardis drained souls,” said Austin. “Oh, and was really a power hungry bitch.”
Marla touched the white spot in the front of her hair and then went for her cheek. It was then I noticed an age spot there that I didn’t recall her having only days prior when I’d seen her at the final signing of the divorce papers. “For hundreds of years men have followed my command. They’ve obeyed.”
Dana laughed more and pointed to Austin. “Except that one apparently. Poppy managed to get him wagging his tongue for her in two seconds. No super demon powers necessary.”
“I was once a thing of great beauty!” shouted Marla, making the walls shake as her voice echoed throughout the old home.
Austin huffed. “And you kept that beauty by sucking the souls, magik, and life out of good witches, and draining the life forces of men.”
Dana eyed me. “I feel like Glinda the Good Witch is going to show up in a bubble of power and tell us we’ve always had the power to go home.”
Her joke made some of the tension in me leak away.
Marla stomped her foot like a child. “I’m speaking!”
“Yeah, but you’re not saying anything I care to hear or listen to,” said Dana. “Blah, blah, I was a hot babe, people adored me, blah blah. Get over yourself, bitch. And learn to grow old with grace and poise like the rest of us.”
Marla lifted a hand in Dana’s direction, and something deep inside me said that could end up being bad.
I squared my shoulders. “Do anything to her and I’ll rip out a clump of your hair and cram it down your throat
.”
Wasn’t the best threat, but it was all I could think of at the moment.
Dana nodded. “Nice, Poppy.”
I shrugged. “Well, I am your backup bitch.”
She winked. “And a great one at that.”
As Marla was standing there, her hands began to wrinkle at a rate that wasn’t normal. It was like watching time-lapsed photography in action.
She gasped.
So did the rest of us.
“You burned through too much power and now you can’t sustain your own needs,” said Austin. “Your own kind warned you. I know because I ran into some of them in New York and they told me you were reckless. Woman, your kind live for nearly two hundred years naturally. But that wasn’t enough for you. You wanted to look twenty for eternity and now no amount of power will sustain your needs.”
She set her sights on me. “Her power will.”
“You’re not touching my wife,” warned Brett with a growl.
“Time out!” yelled Dana. “Wife?”
I cringed. “About that. He’s a wolf-shifter.”
“Yes, you mentioned that,” said Dana. “You said Jeffrey is one too, though I’m going to need to see it to believe it. If she shifts into a wolf, can he lick his own balls?”
Jeffrey gasped. “You told her?”
I nodded.
Dana rolled her eyes at him. “Calm down, Sparky, or I’ll toss a squeaker toy at you to keep you occupied.”
He groaned. “Great. She was already a handful.”
“You love that about me,” said Dana.
From his expression, she wasn’t wrong.
She stared at me, her head tipped, her eyes wide. “About the wife bit.”
“He claimed me,” I said.
“That means what, exactly?” she questioned.
“I’ll explain it later when my ex-husband’s crazy succubus girlfriend is no longer an issue.”
Brett positioned himself between Marla and myself more, and I noticed Jeffrey doing the same with Dana and Marla.
Marla put a hand out and her mouth tightened in irritation as hot static hit me and Brett.
He went to his knees and clutched his head, clearly in pain.
Austin and Jeffrey dropped as well.
Cloudy with a Chance of Witchcraft: A Paranormal Women’s Fiction Romance Novel Page 19
