Venom & Vampires: A Limited Edition Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Collection

by Casey Lane

  She had her own rules.

  It didn’t matter that she was born to a family of Hunters, and as a Gray, she was meant to follow in her sister Faith’s footsteps. She wouldn’t kill someone for an accident of birth, and that made her different, even more so considering she was living in a secret society within a secret race. And it was why she’d popped her hand up to investigate the rumor of a Black-eyed vampire. Other Hunters would just kill the woman and be done with it, but Naomi had wanted to confirm the information. Then she’d stumbled across Subject 2013, and the puzzle it represented.

  “Naomi Castle, what a surprise to find you here.”

  Naomi stood slowly from her crouch. The tiled rooftop she’d been occupying was no longer empty, and she silently cursed herself for being so inattentive. That she’d allowed herself to be snuck up on was a bad sign.

  “Monique.”

  The woman flicked her long red hair over her shoulder, and placed a hand on her hip. She was wearing all leather, with weapons sheathed everywhere, and she maintained perfect balance on the slightly tilted roof. Her Green eyes flickered with amusement. “What brings you to this corner of the world?”

  “I’m on holiday,” Naomi replied. She kept her face, and thoughts, blank. She didn’t have natural mental defenses like her brother, Fin, but she had spent years living with one of the most powerful Greens in the world. There were few who could match Faith in ability or sheer strength, and Naomi had learned to construct a shield against her. If she could keep her thoughts hidden from Faith, she could keep them hidden from just about anyone.

  Too bad it took so much effort.

  “Really? Not spying on anyone?”

  “Now why would I do a thing like that?”

  “I don’t know. Have you met your sister?”

  Naomi wouldn’t be surprised if Faith and Monique had some kind of rivalry going on. That would just be her luck.

  “So, if you’re not spying on anyone,” Monique continued, “why are you standing on a rooftop with a really lovely view over the Grumpy Bear?”

  “Maybe I’m looking for accommodation. For my holiday.”

  “Pigs might fly.”

  “Well, I could make one fly if that would make you feel better.” It would be too easy.

  Monique took a step forward, her hand resting on one of the sheathed blades at her waist. “Just a note. If you are following a certain duke’s daughter by any chance, stop. She’s mine.”

  Naomi kept her focus on her mental shields; she wasn’t wearing an arsenal like the other Graced, but then again, she didn’t need to be. Her mind was her weapon. “I didn’t know you swung that way.”

  Monique’s mouth tightened in annoyance. “I mean it. Keep away from her.”

  Something shoved at Naomi’s brain, hard. It was blunt-force trauma on a psychic level, but even though she dropped to her knees from the pain of it, it didn’t shatter her.

  Something trickled down her lips. She licked the moisture away: blood.

  Monique crouched next to her, those Green irises burning with enjoyment. “That was but an appetizer of what I will do to you if you get in my way.”

  Naomi’s mind might have been fried, but she still had control of her ability. Shoving out with her power, she grabbed hold of the other woman and threw her over the rooftop, slamming her into the back of a redbrick chimney. A sharp crack sounded, but Naomi didn’t think it was the other woman’s spine or head.

  Naomi got to her feet and stumbled toward the other Hunter. Monique was breathing hard, her face pinched with pain, but she was conscious. Naomi leaned down and kept her voice calm and level. “You might be a Green, but I don’t have to be within your mental range to snap your scrawny neck. I’d remember that if I were you.”

  Then slowly, painfully, she headed to the fire escape and climbed down from the roof. Her reconnaissance mission was over for tonight. Her hands were shaking, her limbs like cooked noodles. Worse, her head was scrambled, and she was going to have an epic migraine in an hour or two.

  That was the problem with Greens. They always thought they were the most powerful of the Graceds, and they always tried to fuck with you.

  It was too bad for them that Naomi could level a city in her sleep.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ari scrubbed and scrubbed her skin, trying to wash away Sebastian’s smell. The water in the shower had long gone cold, and goosebumps prickled all over her skin, but she feared that his scent was implanted within her nostrils, because she couldn’t get rid of it. Her fangs were out, and her mouth watered, like this hunger he’d started was never going to be sated.

  Never, because she wasn’t going to have anything more to do with him. And she was certainly never, ever, going to sleep with him. Or bite him.

  Why is he trying to help me?

  Sure, her father must have mentioned something to him about her lack of control, and she was going to talk to Parker Ash about that tomorrow. Talk. Shout. It was all the same. But Sebastian Talien should have just walked straight out of the estate and out of her life, rather than let her follow him, open the window for her, and give her advice.

  It was only after their confrontation that she’d realized how easy he’d made it for her to trail him, and that smarted. She’d thought she was so clever tracking him. Oh, she would have been able to find him, no problem – it’s what she did after all – but not so quickly or easily.

  Shivering, she turned the faucet off and grabbed a soft blue towel from next to the shower. Drying herself roughly, she worked some heat back into her limbs, then strode into her bedchamber, dropping the towel on the floor. She stood in front of the full-length mirror, her reflection telling a story she didn’t want to see.

  Patches of fur were manifesting all over her skin, only to disappear just as fast. Added to that, a pain was growing at the back of her eyelids, like something was trying to push its way out from within.

  Her wolf.

  “I can’t let you out.” Her voice was a broken whisper in the room. Backing away from the mirror, she bumped into the far stone wall and slid down it to sit naked on the floor. She wrapped her arms tightly around her knees, her feet crossed at the ankles, and buried her face in her arms, her wet hair draping over her like a curtain.

  A mournful howl rose in her mind.

  Shutting her eyes, she tried to reason with her wolf. But all she felt was pain. Anger. Resentment.

  “It’s your fault,” she said into her arms.

  That’s why she didn’t change anymore – because she blamed her wolf for Xave’s death. Oh, it wasn’t directly responsible, and Ari had known that Xave had been unhappy, but she’d needed to run. If she hadn’t gone out, hadn’t listened to her wolf, maybe he would still be alive, would have known that he hadn’t had to make the choice he did.

  But she hadn’t realized how bad her brother was, and so she’d shifted and vanished into the woods behind the city. She’d run for hours, chasing small prey, playing with other predators, stayed out until her pads were sore and her limbs shaky, and then she’d made her way back into the estate.

  She’d never forget what she’d discovered on her return.

  Xave had been in his bedchamber, his pale skin glittering in the candlelight. A silver knife protruded obscenely from his chest as he dangled from the ceiling, a noose cutting into his neck. A chair lay broken on the floor underneath his dangling feet.

  She’d cut him down, crying, screaming for help. The servants had come running first, then her father. They’d rung for a sawbones, but he was limited in what he could do. A normal vampire or were could heal broken vertebrae without too many issues, but the silver next to Xave’s heart had been more problematic. Against all odds, he’d been alive.

  She’d sat next to his bed, in another bedroom, away from the memories of what had happened, but he’d refused to look at her.

  “Let…me…die.”

  That’s when she’d understood that he hadn’t been attacked; it hadn’t been their ol
d pack finishing what they’d started all those years ago. He’d tried to commit suicide.

  Those three words had been his last request, and he’d repeated it over and over, as if she’d change her mind the more she heard it. He wasn’t allowed to die, though. She wouldn’t let him. She’d already lost Mama and Nick; she couldn’t bear to lose Xave, too. The duke and Ari had sat by his bedside, waiting for him to heal. Days later, however, Ari and her father had stepped outside to talk. They’d been gone a mere three minutes, long enough for Xave to stab himself in the eye with a pencil.

  She’d screamed her throat raw.

  Xave had lapsed into a coma after that. A brain injury wouldn’t have been beyond the normal ability of a were or vampire to heal, but he hadn’t been pureblooded, and wasn’t a hybrid like her. He’d just grown paler and withered away with each passing week, until their father couldn’t take it anymore.

  Ari could never forgive Parker Ash for dealing out his own very specific type of mercy. No matter that Xave appeared to have been desperate for it, it hadn’t been their father’s choice to make. It had been Ari’s.

  Xave had been hers.

  Xave was his own person. He wanted to die. It wasn’t up to you to choose for him.

  She ignored that rebel thought. Oh, she knew it had broken a part of Parker to kill his son, because it had ruined her. But she couldn’t forgive him for making the decision to take away her last sibling, no matter that ultimately it might have been what Xave wanted. Ari didn’t believe Xave knew what he wanted, though, not really. His mind had been too clouded by visions of the future – he should have been stronger, should have fought it more. Shouldn’t have wanted to leave her.

  And there it was.

  He’d chosen death over staying with her.

  Was she such horrible a person that even her brother hadn’t wanted to spend any more time with her?

  Sebastian’s voice rolled through her mind. “When you get home, shift, if you can.”

  Xave is dead. Even if you never turn wolf again, it won’t bring him back.

  Keeping her wolf chained hurt, but she deserved the pain. She wanted to be punished for being a bad sister, for not being there when her brother needed her the most. For running away, when Mama and Nick died.

  “If you never let her out, you’ll cripple her, and she’ll fight you.”

  Xave’s power had crippled him, and look what had happened. He hadn’t been able to live another day with the visions that plagued him. By refusing to shift, had she only crippled herself?

  She didn’t want to know the answer to that.

  The truth hurt, worse because it came from Sebastian. Now Ari wasn’t so sure the were was as guilty as she’d believed. Sure, he’d been alpha, but it was true, he hadn’t been there the night the pack had turned. They could have gone rogue. If what her father had said was true, most of them were dead, and Sebastian didn’t seem to have a pack any more. That was the sign of an alpha who had been wronged.

  So why was he trying to assist her now? Atonement? She didn’t think so. It was certainly part of that, but not all of it. Maybe deep down, he was actually not a horrible person.

  Are you serious? You’re actually going to give him the benefit of the doubt? Just because he has a nice scent and tasty blood? And that you liked it when he kissed you?

  ‘Tasty’ wasn’t even a vaguely accurate adjective to describe his blood, but no, she wasn’t going to be swayed by that. Or by how soft his lips were, how sneaky his tongue.

  It was because what he’d said was true, and that he seemed to genuinely worry about her control and what it meant. If he’d wanted her and her brothers dead, then he would have finished the job once he’d worked out who she was., but he hadn’t even tried to hurt her.

  Lifting her head from her arms, she shut her eyes and searched out her wolf. It was there in the corner of her mind, damaged, whimpering. She called it, but her other half refused to come.

  She’d truly broken herself.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sebastian waited in the courtyard of the Ashes’ estate, silent and wary. His yellow eyes surveyed the stone courtyard, his ears perked and tail raised in defiance. A wolf in a vampire den. Some would say it took iron balls to be where he was right now, but he didn’t care. If he wanted his daughter ‘fixed’, the duke would have to put up with Sebastian’s methods.

  He wondered how long it would take Aria to track him down.

  Night had fallen, and so the blacksmiths and many of the tradespeople who worked within the estate’s walls had finished for the day. Most of the craftsmen were human, and kept to daylight hours, which was unusual, in a vampire-run city. Normally humans were forced to become nocturnal, to please their vampire bosses. It made Ash seem more human, but that wasn’t exactly a good thing – not when it came to vampires. They usually had ulterior motives.

  Sebastian noticed a slight movement in the darkness by the rear wall. There she was. She was covered by a dark-blue cloak from head to toe, her face obscured by the hood, but he knew it was her: the slight stature of her size, her bearing, and the anger that radiated from her.

  She strode across the courtyard with quick, sure steps, halting in front of him. “I thought I made it clear I didn’t want to see you again.”

  He opened his mouth and let his tongue loll out.

  Her eyes narrowed. She wore gloves today: to hide her wolf’s fight for freedom?

  “Coming here in your wolf form just makes it easier for me to skin you.”

  Sebastian snorted. He might not be wearing his human body at the moment, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t able to communicate. If she’d grown up in a pack, she would have also learned the unique body language used by wolves. She hadn’t been with other wolves in five decades, however, so he doubted she’d be up to speed on the silent lingo. Snorting it was, then.

  The hood tilted as she looked up at the quarter moon. “I have things to do. Are you going to loiter here all night?”

  He shook his head, then stepped forward and head-butted her.

  “What?” But she didn’t push him away, or hit him.

  He repeated the gesture.

  She took a step back and folded her arms over her chest, refusing to either agree or understand. That left him little choice. Shifting from wolf to human and back only took a few seconds, but the sheer agony was overwhelming during the change. Plus, it left you vulnerable, but he didn’t think she wanted to kill him. At least not right now.

  During the change, some weres screamed, others moaned. Sebastian had spent years learning to make no sound at all. Skin rippled as fur receded, and bones crunched as they re-formed into a different skeletal structure. And then he was human, kneeling on the ground, and naked as the day he was born.

  As he rose to his feet, his breath sawed in and out of his chest, but he willed his heartbeat to steady, and soon he was back in control of his body. He could feel her eyes roving over him from underneath that hood. Or her eye. She was probably wearing that eyepatch again.

  “Like what you see?” His voice came out more gravelly than expected.

  “It’s a little…underwhelming.”

  Underwhelming? Him?

  She had to be lying, because there was nothing underwhelming about a six-foot plus were, naked as a jaybird, and rocking an eight-pack, with enough muscles to put a blacksmith to shame. Sebastian wasn’t bad looking, and had a body women liked, and he knew it.

  “Someone’s a liar.”

  A huff of laughter escaped her. “So why are you here?”

  “Did you change into a wolf last night?” He’d given her the day to recover from their little meeting, but he hadn’t been able to wait much longer than that.

  “None of your business.”

  “I thought we already discussed that response.”

  Stony silence.

  “Did you shift?”

  Her hands moved in a series of agitated gestures. “No.”

  “Didn’t try? Or couldn’t
.”

  “Does it matter which?”

  He took a step forward, conscious that his…reaction to her would become very noticeable if he didn’t keep a tight rein on his impulses. He didn’t want her to take umbrage with Little Sebastian, after all. That would just end badly for everyone involved.

  He lowered his voice and leaned forward. “It matters.”

  “I couldn’t, okay?” She paced away from him. “It hurt.”

  “And the gloves?”

  She shoved her hood down – yes, she was wearing the patch – and her face was pinched, tight. “The partial shifting has gotten worse.”

  “Then come with me.”

  “Come with you?”

  “Okay, bad choice of phrase.” Considering his undressed state, a very unfortunate selection of words. Stay down, Little Sebastian. Or should it be Big Sebastian? He didn’t want to undersell himself. “Run with me.”

  “Run with you?”

  “What are you, a parrot?”

  She blinked. Or was it a wink, considering he could only see the one eye?

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “I will go running in wolf form. I am an alpha,” – although, he had the suspicion she was, too, she just didn’t know it – “and it might help your wolf find the courage to emerge.”

  It was a long shot, but if she couldn’t shift just by willing it, then Aria’s wolf needed help to escape the prison of her own mind.

  “So I run with you, as I am?”

  He nodded.

  “I have things to do.”

  “They can wait.”

  She shook her head, but he reached out and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Unless your task is more important than your health, then it can wait.”

  Aria stared at him, and then shrugged his hand away, and slipped out of her cloak. “Fine.” She gave him a lopsided smile, and something in his heart kicked. “But do try and keep up.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  They had gone into the woods.

  Naomi watched the distant figures blend into the darkness between tall oak trees, and eventually disappear altogether. She could have continued to track them, but the forest was large and dense, and her eyesight wasn’t as keen as a vampire’s or a were’s. Plus, she had to be careful. When a were went hunting, anything that moved was technically fair game; she could accidentally become their prey.