by Michele Hauf
“Truly?”
“And then kill you.”
Constantine nodded, accepting, and then a broad grin stretched his pale mouth. The man drew up his shoulders, exhibiting a shadow of the great tribe leader he must have once been. “Vaillant. That is a fine name. You, who are my son. Do you know how I have longed for a son over the centuries?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Vail said.
And it didn’t. He didn’t care what his father had thought of, strived for, or suffered over the years. None of it could ever erase the horrors Constantine had visited upon his mother.
“So you’ve come to kill me?” With a resolute nod, Constantine pulled a dagger out from a sheath behind his hip. He set it on the table beside him. “You would take away your only family, son?”
Vail cringed at the label. Constantine had no more right to call him son than he had to call him father. If anyone deserved the right, it was Rhys Hawkes, for his kindness and unconditional support.
He stepped forward, and touched the hilt of the dagger. Such close proximity to Constantine allowed him to sense the elder vampire’s heartbeats; they were slow and tedious. He smelled dusty, like something long forgotten in a dark corner.
Gripping the dagger hilt, Vail drew it up to inspect the blade. He eyed the flash of silver, but on the one side of the blade his father’s deep blue eyes distracted him. “They are the same,” Vail said softly. “Our eyes.”
“Boy,” Constantine said. “Take your revenge, if you dare.”
Vail held his father’s eyes just one moment longer, then flipped the blade expertly in his hand, caught it and placed it on the table.
He took a step back and nodded, confirming what he’d known all along but had never the sight to believe it. “This is not my revenge to have. You may be blood, but you are not family. You have been cruel and malicious to Lyric’s mother. You drove my mother insane. You have never accepted your own brother—”
“Because he is a bloody half-breed! An abomination!”
Vail winced at his father’s vehemence. For a moment he had hoped there was a chance, the slightest possibility of mutual acceptance, but it was not to be. “And what of your son who grew up in Faery and believes all vampires abominations?”
“You’ve been poisoned by the faeries! I, your blood father, am vampire.” He pounded a fist against his chest. “You, Vaillant, are bloodborn, the most regal and powerful of our breed. Come, my son.” Constantine held out his arms.
Vail felt the gentle pressure of Lyric’s hand upon his back. She wanted him to step forward to embrace the man he could not conceive of loving? Blood was one thing, but he’d meant what he’d said about family. Constantine was not. Lyric, Trystan and Viviane, they were his family. He knew that now.
A shout outside alerted them. An SUV parked in the yard, the headlights still on. Figures moved in front of the lights, and Trystan rushed inside but slapped his hands on the door frame and paused on the threshold.
The brothers exchanged glances. Then the huffing werewolf asked, “That’s him?” Vail nodded.
“Who is this?” Constantine demanded.
“It’s Vail’s brother,” Lyric provided. “Trystan Hawkes. Your nephew.”
“Viviane is in a mood,” Tryst said. “Rhys thinks it best to allow her to see him, but I’m not so sure, man. You didn’t kill him?”
Vail almost laughed. He did like where his brother’s head was at. “No.”
“So this is your half-breed brother,” Constantine said from behind Vail, not disguising the contempt.
“I’m one hundred percent werewolf,” Tryst said. “Want to test my talons, longtooth?”
“Tryst.” Vail shook his head subtly.
The werewolf was shoved forward into the hall as Viviane pushed by him and clambered into the room. Her azure eyes were bright and seeking. She held beauty captive in her pale skin and dark features.
No, Vail thought, I have my mother’s eyes.
He stepped aside to clasp Lyric’s hand and hold her beside him. He couldn’t know what was best for his mother right now, but if Rhys wanted to allow her this moment, he would not interfere.
“Viviane,” Constantine said on a gasp.
Rhys Hawkes stepped beside his werewolf son. The two exchanged tense nods.
“It is you.” Viviane, her long, midnight hair bedraggled, and the hummingbird pin hanging low near her shoulder, boldly stepped forward and slapped Constantine’s face. “Two centuries!”
Emboldened by his mother’s brave approach, Vail hugged Lyric closer to him. Finally, Viviane would be granted the revenge she deserved. He could never understand her suffering, but would stand behind her no matter the outcome of this bizarre reunion.
“You bastard,” she hissed at the cowering vampire. “I am not dead! Do you know I thought of what I would do to you every day I was imprisoned within that hideous coffin?”
“Viviane, I wanted you,” Constantine pleaded ineffectually. “You were cruel to me, ignoring my affections, my kindnesses, my gifts! I would have given you the world.”
The vampiress snarled and slashed her clawed fingers across Constantine’s neck.
Vail stirred at the blood scent. His brother growled lowly. Rhys held an emotionless expression.
“Yes,” Constantine offered quietly. He stroked a finger through the blood on his cheek and wiped it along a pant leg. “You must take your anger out on me. I deserve it. And yet, you’ve given me the greatest gift. A son.”
“Never for you,” she murmured. “He is my dark prince. Not yours!”
Constantine winced and bowed his head. “What can I do to atone for my crimes against you?”
“I want to win this time,” Viviane said, head bowed and eyes raging.
Vail sucked in a breath. He felt his mother’s rage swell in his heart and fill his lungs with a smothering heat. And he knew she had held that rage far too long; it was what had made her insane.
The vampiress shoved her pointed fingers into Constantine’s chest. The vampire howled and gripped the vampiress’s wrist. Viviane was too quick. She twisted her hand inside his body and yanked out a heavy mass of bloody muscle.
Vail pressed back Lyric when he felt she wanted to rush forward.
“I have your heart, Constantine,” Viviane pronounced coldly. She held up the pulsing muscle and squeezed. Blood spattered her face and Constantine’s. “I win now.”
“So you have.”
The vampire Constantine de Salignac ashed. His body, formed of ash in human shape before Viviane, hung there momentarily, then dropped into a pile.
No one had moved to stop her. Vail, every muscle in his body tight, released Lyric and slapped his hands to the wall behind him for support. He thought he heard Lyric whisper “Sorry,” but the thud of his heart drowned out noise.
Viviane turned and dropped the heart, which ashed before it hit the floor and dispersed in a gray cloud that settled upon Vail’s boot toes.
The vampiress’s bold stare sought everyone in the room, moving slowly from Lyric, to Vail, and then to her husband and werewolf son. She had destroyed her tormentor. A rightful death.
Reaching out, she gestured for Trystan to approach, and he did without pause. She hugged him to her chest. “My son. It is over.”
Vail swallowed, holding down his heart for fear it would dredge up a scream. He grasped blindly at his side, and Lyric’s hand slid into his.
Viviane’s bold blue eyes found his, and she smiled. It seemed genuine. Real. She smiled at him? A gesture with her free hand beckoned him forward.
Vail took a step. She wanted him to approach her? He rushed into his mother’s arms, beside his brother.
“My boys,” she cooed. “I love you both.”
EPILOGUE
DOMINGOS LAROQUE, a vampire friend of Vail’s, played cello in the background as Lyric walked down the aisle in the garden behind the Santiago mansion.
Clad in a long white sheath of silk, Lyric, newly blonde, walked baref
oot through the grass toward her destiny.
Destiny resembled a man who wore black and silver as if royal raiment, and who sported Green Snake—a symbol of change—curling about his left trouser leg. His bare feet curled into the soft grass strewn with rose petals. He was her rock ’n’ roll faery vampire lover, and she wouldn’t have him any other way.
Forgoing the dramatic walk to the cello’s wedding march, Lyric tossed the bouquet of red roses aside and ran up to Vail. He caught her and kissed her deeply before the new family they would now share.
Rhys and Viviane Hawkes held hands beneath the cherry tree, both with irrepressible smiles. And Trystan, Vail’s best man, tapped Vail on the shoulder when the officiant waited for them to say their vows. He handed Vail a ring encircled with black diamonds.
“Mortal diamonds,” Vail said, as he slid the sparkler onto Lyric’s finger. “This makes you mine.”
Lyric leaned in and kissed him. “And that makes you mine.”
They promised to love each other. Forever.
Vampires.
* * * * *
Be sure to check out
THE WITCH’S QUEST
by Michele Hauf
Kelyn Saint-Pierre and Valor Hearst are circling the globe on a dangerous mission that pushes them scorchingly close together, but surrendering to passion may only further bind them in pain…
Keep reading to get a glimpse of
THE WITCH’S QUEST
CHAPTER 1
The gnarled oak tree behind her looked…angry.
Valor Hearst straightened her shoulders and tried to avoid turning around to cast a glance at the disgruntled tree. Because the moment she started to look closer, things could become real. Especially in an enchanted forest such as the Darkwood.
She knelt on the forest floor, carefully plucking the Amanita muscaria mushrooms from a thick and curly frosting of moss. Normally, she would wear gloves to remove the poisonous red-capped shrooms, but having forgotten them, she instead used an entomologist’s tweezers.
Dried yet still glossy trails from snails streaked across a head-sized fieldstone, which she scraped into a plastic baggie. The powder would serve as another fine ingredient for future spells. She’d decided that since she had risked coming here, she’d take a few minutes to gather spell ingredients before settling down to do the real work: enacting a spell that would, with hope, lure love her way.
Valor had never dared enter the Darkwood, but on this day she was feeling her confidence and was pretty sure that the warnings against witches venturing into the enchanted forest were nothing more than blather. Mortals and other paranormals visited the darkly mysterious woods all the time. She was no different than any of them. Save that her air magic packed a wallop when need be.
“So take that,” she said, yet still couldn’t avoid a suspicious glance over her shoulder.
Had the tree’s bark curved downward in chunky folds to form a craggy frown? She narrowed her gaze, which was followed by her own frown. The bark hadn’t been shaped that way when she first kneeled down before the mushrooms.
Maybe?
“Quit spooking yourself,” she muttered. “Crazy witch.”
The Darkwood was off-limits to and unsafe for witches. That was what her friend and fellow earth witch Eryss Norling had said to her last night when they closed the Decadent Dames brewery together and wandered out to the parking lot under the half moon.
Valor happened to be attracted to most things that were off-limits and unsafe. Whether they be events, challenges or even men. Most especially men.
She tucked the red-capped mushrooms into her fishing tackle box. It was painted in olive-green camo and might have a fish hook or two in it, as well—ice-fishing in the wintertime? Yes, please—but she mostly used it to collect herbs and spell ingredients. A tiny jade cricket that she had disturbed from sleeping under a mushroom leaped onto the edge of the tackle box.
“You’re lucky you have a heartbeat,” she said to the insect. “Otherwise, I’d pulverize your wings and use the dust in a spell.”
The insect chirped and hopped off to a more private leaf.
And Valor pulled out a small mason jar half-filled with angel dust to use as a marker for the ritual sigil she now intended to create. A collection of rose petals she had gathered surreptitiously from a floral shop before heading out here today would also serve in the design.
No time to back out now. She’d come here with the intent of finally serving herself what she deserved. “Here’s to love.”
Cupping a handful of fine angel dust and funneling it through her curled fingers, she marked out on the thick moss the pattern that she’d studied in her Great-Grandma Hector’s grimoire. Small, smoky quartz crystals were then placed at the compass points and rose quartz along the borders of the sigil. She kissed and blessed the flower petals, then placed them on the moss.
Leaning back to inspect her work, she decided the design looked much like a voodoo veve. But this sacred sigil, infused with her light magic, would wield so much more power.
She didn’t notice the darkening sky as she laid a crow foot, a mouse rib and a dried rat heart at the center of the sigil. Red and pink candles were tucked into the moss, and with a snap of her fingers they ignited. So she had a little fire magic to her arsenal, as well. It was just for small tasks. A witch should never risk invoking more fire than she could handle.
Now the invocation—
Valor’s hand slipped on the thick moss, and her leg suddenly slid out from under her kneeling position. She hadn’t made such a move. Something tugged her ankle roughly.
She slapped the moss with both palms and yelped as her body slid backward across the forest floor, dragging her hands through angel dust, petals and crystals. Twisting at the waist, she searched in the dimming light. One of the tree roots had wrapped about her ankle, clasping the leather combat boot in a painful pinch.
“What in all the goddess’s bad hair days?” She kicked at the root with her free foot.
And then the frowning bark opened wide and growled at her. The tree had a merciless hold on her. And the root only grew tighter about her ankle.
Valor had heard of faery trees. And this woods was a place where the sidhe mingled with those from the mortal realm. Another reason she’d been warned away. Faeries who did not live in the mortal realm generally didn’t like witches.
She hadn’t an enchanted sword to cut her way free. But she did have witchcraft.
“Loftus!”
Her air magic whisked over the ancient tree bark with the waning effect of a whisper. And the tree actually seemed to chuckle as its trunk heaved and the bark crinkled. The root about her ankle tugged again and her boot disappeared into the soft, loamy ground at the base of the tree.
She groped for the moss, on which the candles had extinguished and the angel dust sigil had been disturbed. It was out of her reach. So was her tackle box, in which she’d stashed her cell phone.
This was bad. On a scale of one to ten for oh-my-mercy-this-is-bad, this probably rated a seventy.
“I’m fucked.”
* * *
Valor had parked on a turnoff from the gravel road that wound about three hundred yards away from a highway. It was set near a gape in the forest and not easily seen or even known about. At the time, she’d been pleased that no one would see her car. And she’d entered the forest from the opposite end of the woods where Blade Saint-Pierre lived for the specific reason she hadn’t wanted anyone to think she was trespassing. That vampire did not own the forest, but he acted as a sort of portal guardian, keeping others out of the forest.
For their own good.
Witches and the Darkwood? Not cool.
Valor tugged futilely at her pinned legs. Yes, now both were being sucked slowly down into the earth beneath the tree. She’d been here two hours for sure, and no matter how she tugged she remained pinned into the mossy ground by the oak roots. And that was exactly what had happened. She’d been pinned by a faery tree.<
br />
What she knew about such wicked magic was that eventually she’d be sucked completely into the earth and, perhaps, even into Faery. But she wouldn’t make the journey alive. And judging by how far in she’d been drawn, she suspected the process generally took less than a day. She didn’t even want to calculate how much time she had left.
She’d tried speaking a releasement spell. That had only bothered the crows perched in the crooked elm boughs overhead. They stared with beady black eyes her like vultures waiting carrion. She’d tried apologizing to the universe for stepping on sacred Faery grounds. She’d felt the earth shudder then and had quietly lain there, palms clutching at the dried leaves and undergrowth, her cheek wet with tears.
All she’d wanted to do was invoke a spell. For her. For once in her long lifetime, she’d finally thought about herself and what she wanted.
Eyes closed now, she thought the loamy scent of moss and earth were too rich for such a fool as herself. The crisp promise of crystal-clear water babbled from somewhere behind her. Even the bird chirps seemed to admonish her for an idiot.
Would her friends think it was odd she did not show for work tonight at the brewery? Of course Eryss would wonder. Give her a call. But Valor often did not answer her phone. Eryss would shrug and figure Valor had forgotten. It was a Thursday night. Never too busy. Instead of a staff of three, the Decadent Dames could easily manage the micro-brewery with two.
They might not bother to drive by her loft at the edge of town in Tangle Lake until the next day when Valor didn’t show to help carry in a delivery of grains that was expected to arrive in the afternoon.
She’d be dead by then. Even now she sensed her energy waning, seeping from her. Bleeding her life into the ground.
“Stupid tree,” she muttered. “A simple lash across the face would have served me well enough.”
But she knew faeries—and their trees, for they were alive and sentient—never did anything half-assed. Be it mischief or unspeakable malice, it was either all in or all out.
Clasping the moonstone amulet she always wore strung from a leather cord about her neck, she bowed her head to the leaves on the forest floor before her. It was time to start thinking of leaving a message for her friends. Who may eventually find her decayed corpse still pinned to this earth, perhaps one clawing hand still sticking out from the ground, surrounded by the malevolent tree roots.
