by Renee George
I rushed to Baz's side and choked on a sob when I saw the silver stake impaling the left side of his chest.
"Baz. Goddess help me. Bazyli. Cripes. How did this happen?"
"You made him mortal, you simpleton," a sinister voice said. I turned sharply to see Rogerio standing over me. "It made it so much easier than I imagined to kill him."
"Why?" I asked. "Why do this to Baz? You're a vampire? Why would you side with these humans against your own kind?"
"My own kind," he hissed. "Vampires are not my own kind. I was a sabbatianoí, blessed by divine Saturn himself to rid the world of these abominations. And they wiped us out, all of us. My sire thought it was justice to turn a few of us, but it wasn't justice. It was cruelty. To live a thousand years, knowing it was at the expense of my brothers was too horrible for words."
"Why now? Your sire doesn't even exist anymore? Your revenge is hollow."
He laughed. "You such a child in your thinking, witch. Or is it necromancer? Both, I believe. This isn't revenge. I have spent the last five hundred years rebuilding my army."
I looked around at the carnage and the chaos. "Your army has fallen apart."
He sighed. "That is the problem with humans. The next time around, I'll make vampires who kill vampires." He smiled. "After all, in a few minutes, I'll be king."
"I think you’re jumping the line, brother," the tall guy who had come in with Gigi and Monty said. "I'm still here, and if you want my crown, you'll have to pry it from my head." The tall guy tackled Uncle Asshole, and they went rolling away in a fight for supremacy.
Baz coughed, blood dripping from his lips. I cradled him. "I need a healer! Monty!" I rocked Baz in my arms. "I need a healer."
His fingers twitched against my hand. "Love...you," he said.
"Shut up, you great fool. Now is not the time for declarations. Save it for when we get you better."
"Dying," Baz wheezed. He coughed again.
"Don't make me punch you," I told him, as every bit of fear I'd ever felt magnified a bazillion times infinity inside me.
He chuckled then hacked and hacked. "Don't make me laugh," he said.
"I'm trying to make you live!" and I was, but neither my witch nor my necromancer magic was doing anything to make his heart beat faster or stronger. Impulsively, I yanked out the silver.
Baz groaned with pain.
"Pain means you're alive, Baz. It means you're alive."
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
"For what?"
"For not keeping my promise. I'm sorry I couldn't keep me safe for you." A hiss left his chest, and his sightless, golden eyes stared at the night sky. His pupils were dilated and fixed. His heartbeat was gone. Death.
True death.
"No!" I screamed as the pain of loss ripped through me. Tears scalded my cheeks as I hugged Baz against my chest. "Goddess!" I cried out. "Not this." The next words were a whimper. "Not this."
Gigi was at my side. "What's--" She gripped my shoulder. "I'm sorry, Drag. I'm so very sorry."
A choking sob wrenched from me. "I didn't tell him," I said.
"Tell him what?"
"I love...loved him. He told me, and I didn't say it back." Rage and anguish consumed me every cell as I stood up, looking for a place to focus my wrath. "There he is," I said with metal in my voice. I dropped my shields, prepared this time for the bombardment of magic as it filled me until every part of me vibrated with power. I turned that power on Rogerio Delgados, who had managed to get the upper hand in the fight with his brother.
"Bye-bye, Bunting, momma's gone a-hunting. Gone to get a vampire's head, and there I'll leave him very dead." I twisted my fingers on the last word, and I watched with grim satisfaction as Rogerio's head shot off his body like a cannonball. And I was certain, because of my power over the dead, that I didn't need to stake this asshole, but I'd did it anyway. I walked right over to his lifeless torso and plunged the same silver stake he'd used on Baz right into his miserable, cold, dead-dead heart.
I went back to were Baz lay and slumped to the ground, not feeling any less grief than I had moments before. Only now, I didn't have a bad guy to take it out on anymore. So, I sat there with him while the rest of the RMCA and Legabute Ravenblood's people cleaned up the mess around us.
"Did you mean it?" Baz asked.
I looked down at him, his golden eyes looking back. "You're--"
"Dead again," he said. "No biggie. I've been dead before."
I swiped at the tears on my cheeks. "But how?"
"My body was mortal, but my vampire--What did you call it, parasite?--is still very much alive. I'm back to the way I was before you, you know," he smiled, "raised me from the dead."
"You asshole."
"You love me," he said.
"You're a jerk."
"But you love me."
"Yes," I sighed. "I do love you."
Six months later...
"Isn't it tacky to get married in white when you’re six months pregnant?" Time Bomb asked.
"Not as tacky as my maid of honor giving me shit on my wedding day,” I said, rubbing the lacy white satin over my bulbous belly. "Now, do my buttons in the back, or I’ll kick your ass.”
"Are you kidding? You’ve hit me with your belly about a thousand times already.”
“You try walking around with a bowling ball strapped to your stomach and see how well you get around.”
“Humph. How do you even get pregnant by a vampire?" he asked.
"Lots and lots of really glorious sex while the vampire is a live body. Nothing to it. Why? Would you like a certain raven-haired beauty who smells like mushrooms to knock you up? I could probably arrange that."
"She says I smell like buttercups."
"Ah, the mate scent," Brita, one of my bride's maids said. "I think it's sweet that you found it with a vampire. Especially since you both like to bite," she teased.
Gigi rounded the corner. "Are you guys ready?" She was doing the traditional bride giveaway, since marrying Baz meant she was actually giving me away. "The groom and his retinue are at the altar."
Time Bomb did my last button. He gave me a quick squeeze at the shoulders and said, "You look beautiful." My hair had gotten pinker since the pregnancy and was now more dark fuchsia than hot pink. I'd had to admit to everyone that the color was natural. But now I knew why. The necromancy gene. Just another thing that marked me as different.
I patted my best friend's cheek. He wore a black tux with a thin cummerbund and a white tie. He'd shaved for my event, and I appreciated his efforts. "You look beautiful, too."
Brita, whose red curly hair hadn't been tamed by none of the twelve beauticians Baz had hired, said, "What about me?"
"You're gorgeous," I told her. "We all are. Now, let's get me hitched!"
Fifth Element’s I'm In Love With A Monster poured out slowly from a sextet with three cellos and three violins, slow, haunting, and more beautiful than I had dreamed. Time Bomb walked with Dee, who was Baz's Best Woman, Brita, who had been like a sister to me, walked with Baz's brother, King Legabute Ravenblood. She didn't even look the slightest bit intimidated.
When it was my turn, I took Gigi's hand. "Are you sure you want to do this?" she asked. "I've plotted out five escape routes, and I could have you out of here in under a minute."
"I'm sure," I said on a giggle. "I'm happy, Gigi. Happier than I thought possible in this world."
"Then I'm happy for you," she said. "It's been my pleasure to be your friend."
I nodded. "Don't make me cry. Julia, the make-up lady will kill me if my mascara runs."
Then the bridal march sounded, signaling that it was my turn. The alliance between the Ravenbloods and the witches had been signed three months ago, and it warmed me to see vampires and witchkind in the same room as friends, not enemies. But my eye was on my prize. Bazyli Adonis Delgado waited for me at the end of the aisle, his gorgeous smile beaming as I drew closer to him, and when I took his hands, I dropped my shields so that I c
ould feel every bit of his warmth and power.
"You're magnificent," he said.
I gave him a slow blink. "I am going to marry the shit out of you," I said.
He chuckled. "Vampires," he said. "Don't poop."
The Ever-loving End
To check out all the side-splitting books in the
Magic and Mayhem Universe,
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My Peculiar Road Trip (Peculiar Mysteries In Between)
Magic & Mayhem Universe
Sometimes you ride the road to adventure and sometimes the road rides you, which is exactly how I’d felt as I sat up and picked ditch gravel from my elbow and tall grass from my hair. All I’d wanted was a girls’ weekend away from home, a sort of double bachelorette party for two of my friends who were both getting married soon. No guys, no kids, no restaurant.
But right now, as I cataloged the bumps and bruises, I only knew two things for certain: First, we were no longer in Reno, and second, Hell had a new name--Assjacket.
When human psychic Sunny Trimmel and her three best friends decide to go on a weekend getaway to Reno, they get away all right— into an alternate reality where cats talk, her Shifter friends are stuck in their animal forms, and they’re dumped into a rural hell known as Assjacket, West Virginia.
Thanks to a vengeful witch’s magic gone wrong, the girls are sucked into one of the most peculiar adventures they’ve ever had. People and landmarks are disappearing all over town. Sunny will have to rely on her faulty psychic visions, her friends, and the crazy townsfolk to solve the mystery—or they might never find their way home.
Suck it, Dorothy. Tornadoes have nothing on this twister of a tale.
Chapter One (Preview)
Somewhere I’m not supposed to be...
SOMETIME YOU RIDE the road to adventure and sometimes the road rides you, which is exactly how I felt as I sat up and picked ditch gravel from my elbow and tall grass from my hair. All I’d wanted was a girls’ weekend away from home, a sort of double bachelorette party for two of my friends who were both getting married soon. No guys, no kids, no restaurant. Co-owning a vegetarian restaurant in an all therianthrope town was no easy task.
Take getting paid, for instance. I’d gotten a check, finally, from the Tri-State Council, the head-mucky-mucks of therianthropes in Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas, for the food we’d provided at last year’s Jubilee. Frankly, after the whole kidnapping-slash-serial killer debacle, I’d written off the idea of getting compensation.
Anyhow, Chavvah, my best friend who was also my husband’s sister, was getting married. And her honey, let me tell you, is a hunka-hunka-sweet ass man. Imagine Jason Mamoa with silver hair and silver eyes. In other words, fine. Very, very fine. My own guy, Babe, is not too shabby either, but this isn’t about me. It’s about Chav. I used the money to book a girl's weekend in Reno for me, Chav, and two other friends, Ruth Thompson and Willy Boden. Since Willy was getting married as well, at the time, it seemed like a win-win foursome.
But right now, as I cataloged the bumps and bruises, I only knew two things for certain: First, we were no longer in Reno, and second, Hell had a new location--Assjacket, West Virginia.
The last thing I remember before dying...
CHING, CHING, CHING, dinga-ding-ding sang the slot machines as we walked through the Harrah’s casino. I felt light-headed and dizzy, which probably had more to do with twenty hours of no sleep rather than the crisp cool air circulating in the place.
“I heard they pump oxygen into casinos here in Reno to keep people wide awake.” I yawned deeply, almost painfully. The extra oxygen trick wasn’t working on me. The only thing keeping me awake was my screaming feet. If I were less a lady, I’d kick off the heels and walk around in my stockinged feet.
Oh, who was I kidding? I was totally less of a lady. I took my shoes off and shoved them into my red hobo bag purse. It was huge but stylish, and it matched my outfit. Willy was the only one to grumble about getting dressed up but getting girly every once in a while, was good for the soul. Besides, she looked dynamite in her green pencil skirt and black silk blouse.
“That’s an urban legend about the oxygen,” Willy said, fluffing her mass of red curls. Willy was a were-bobcat who had recently moved to our small Ozark town.
“Willy’s right,” Chavvah said, which in my eyes was a complete betrayal.
I stared daggers at her. “What happened to having my back?”
“I've got your back, front, and sides.” Chav sucked in a deep breath through her nose. “But the evidence is in the air. All I detect is air-conditioning coolant, cologne, cigarette smoke, various kinds of booze, coffee, and the acrid aroma of desperation.”
Since she was half coyote-half wolf, I didn’t argue. Instead, I sniffed my armpits. My deodorant seemed to be holding up, but as the only human in the bunch, I was nose-blind compared to my compatriots. “You’d have one less thing to smell if you’d let me go back to the room to shower.” And sleep for eight hours straight, I wanted to add. I hadn’t had that kind of sleep since Jude was born, and now that we had a new baby, our little Dawn, sleep was a place that I rarely got to visit, and I knew in my heart I’d never live there.
“Oh, hell yes,” Chav exclaimed.
Awesome, she was going to parole me from this casino prison. “Thanks, babe. I appreciate—hey, where are you going?” Okay, parole was off the table.
Chav made a bee-line for a lit-up neon door that proclaimed to house Reno’s most highly sought-after psychic, Madame Jane Tennison.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I groaned.
“Finally.” Ruth, the fourth in our quartet, and a deer shifter and an even dearer friend clasped her hands together. “It’s something on my bucket list.”
“You’re not dying, Ruth,” Willy said. “You only get a bucket list if you’re dying.”
Ruth, who had the skin and facial features of a Disney princess, gave Willy a disappointed look. “If I was dying, I wouldn’t be spending my last precious days in Reno. Besides, it’s not that kind of bucket list.”
“Please, don’t make me,” I whined to anyone of my friends who would listen. “I’m the thirty-something mother of two, and I’m not as...sturdy built as you therianthropes. I need my sleep.”
Chavvah, who’d finally come back after reading a sign hanging on the door to Madame Tennison’s, harrumphed. Ruth and Willy both shook their heads.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” I complained.
“Did you get one of your visions?” Chav asked, clear concern on her face.
I thought about lying for a hot minute, but I couldn’t make the words cross my lips. While I was a bonified psychic, unlike Faker-McFakee my friends wanted to consult, I had not had a vision about the fortune teller. But I’d seen enough of her kind when I was growing up to make me sick. My New Age parents loved the idea of people who could talk to the dead. When I first started getting visions of my own, they jumped all over themselves to take credit. It’s no wonder I took the first bus out of commune-central when I turned eighteen.
I shook my head. “Fine.” I crossed my arms across my recently deflated boobs, down two bra sizes since weaning my youngest. “But under protest. Fortune tellers are nothing but charlatans and con artists.”
Willy snorted. “I can’t believe you are a non-believer.”
“I’m a psychic, not a circus act. Only a liar would say they can predict someone’s future accurately.” My visions tended to be unhelpful and ambiguous, and worse yet, I had no control over how or when they happened. To top it off, I was usually neck deep in doo-doo before I figured out what the hell they meant anyhow.
Ruth pointed half-way down a list she’d printed at home. “Madame Tennison is ranked number five as a must-see-attraction in Reno.”
“On a review written up by someone whose Twitter handle is @Antsyinmypantsy.” Willy laughed. “I don’t know if he or she is a credible source.”
Ruth cove
red the left side of her chest with her hand. “The heart wants what the heart wants, and I want to check out the Madame Jane Tennison. But since this is Chav and Willy’s bachelorette weekend, they should have the final word.”
“I’m in,” Willy said.
Chavvah nodded. “For sure. Me too.”
Ruth grinned at me. “Come on. It will be fun.”
Famous last words. Ugh. I think the fact that Ruth had drunk three glasses of champagne at the VIP table at Reno’s Queens of the Desert drag show had a lot to do with her push to walk on the wild side. “It’s after midnight. I’m usually in bed by now.”
