Shades of Pink

by 33 authors

  Not to say that the time he did get with her wasn’t worth it. Nobody had ever regarded Adam in such esteem before. He had admirers, yes, and women from all social castes were more than happy to try seducing him, but Rachel had been the first to demand he ignore his limitations. The fact that she was white, the educated daughter of one of the city’s most prominent lawyers, only made her passion for him more astonishing.

  “What’s the point of having dreams if you never try to make them real?” she always said.

  When he tried to use his mixed heritage as an excuse, she scowled and brushed it away. “That bird don’t fly. You are the epitome of all that is great about New Orleans.”

  Though he knew the world was more black and white than she believed, he let her push him anyway. He sought more clubs to play at, even allowing her to come and watch him perform. He accepted opportunities he wouldn’t have taken before, all for the chance to see her brilliant smile in the audience, her applause afterward cheering him on.

  He began to believe with her. When she was in his arms, anything truly was possible.

  That had been his greatest mistake. Because he had known all along the real world wouldn’t tolerate what it couldn’t control.

  Their enemies hadn’t come from Rachel’s family as he’d always feared. It came in the form of a jealous girl who had no qualms calling on the dark magic of her Caribbean uncle to punish Adam for choosing a white woman over her.

  * * *

  They stood at her back gate, mere hours before dawn, clinging to each other in desperate denial they had to part. Her body was still loose and warm from their lovemaking, her embrace languid, but her kisses were as hungry as they’d been at the night’s start, and his head spun with the desire to take her again, their location be damned.

  “Some day,” she murmured against his lips. “We won’t have to hide in the shadows.”

  “Some day,” he echoed. In that moment, he even believed it.

  Someone nearby chuckled. “Lovesick idiots, the both of you. Don’t you know there are worse places to be?”

  They both stiffened at the unexpected intrusion, though Adam’s arms tightened instinctively around Rachel as they both turned. Maggie, a woman he’d had to spurn repeatedly over the past few weeks, separated from the darkness. Her features were obscured, but the disdain in her voice sent a chill through him. It was one thing for her to watch him and Rachel from afar, but to come to Rachel’s home? She couldn’t mean to tell Rachel’s family, could she?

  “Go away, Maggie,” he warned. “This is no place for you.”

  “And it is for you?” She kept her distance, but as he focused on her, the murk around her sharpened, more details coming into view.

  His heart thumped. She wasn’t alone.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t be long.”

  Before he could respond, her companion spoke, the foreign words too raw and guttural for Adam to discern. Maggie’s smile flashed white, but as the shiver ran down his spine, Rachel made a small choking sound and went limp in his arms.

  “Rachel?” He caught her closer to him as the shift in her weight forced him to adjust his stance. When her head lolled back, he saw how lax her swollen mouth was, the emptiness of her blue eyes. Panic singed away his hesitation, and his trembling fingers fumbled to touch her face, searching for any sign of life as he repeated her name over and over again.

  He never found it.

  “What did you do?” But when his head whipped around toward Maggie, she was gone. So was her companion.

  Adam was alone.

  * * *

  He scrubbed the unshed tears from his eyes before anyone noticed and began staring at the mess of a man on the grass. Her first death had been the hardest to bear. He’d had no choice but to leave her on a bench in the back yard for one of the servants to find in the morning, but he’d watched from afar as her family mourned and then as she was buried.

  When he’d gone to Maggie to demand to know what she’d done, he discovered she’d left town, a move probably for the better because he would’ve killed her if he found her. He did learn, however, that she’d turned to her family in search of a suitable punishment for Adam, but it took time for him to find out for himself what the curse entailed.

  It started with dreams. Every night when he finally fell asleep, sometimes sober, more often drunk, he dreamt of a small town he didn’t recognize, a minister with a northern accent, a house full of children. Always, the details were the same, so specific that he wondered if he was going mad. They gradually shifted, honing in on the youngest, a tow-headed girl who never smiled no matter what efforts her family put in.

  He’d been having the dreams for over two years when he heard someone mention the same town he visited in his sleep, talking about a firebrand minister who’d relocated from Boston. The coincidence was too acute. Adam had always assumed he made the place up, but the more he listened, the more similarities he found.

  That was the day he packed his meager belongings and left New Orleans for good.

  The town was in West Virginia, a much different place for a man of color. He couldn’t ask questions about a white minister without drawing suspicion, but words were unnecessary. He knew this place. He found the Baptist church on his first try. The minister’s home was even easier. On his first Sunday in town, he made sure to be in the area when the family left for services, each member exactly as he’d dreamed. The youngest held her mother’s hand as they headed for the church, her thumb in her mouth, but they hadn’t gone more than a few feet before her gaze wandered to where he stood across the street.

  She froze in place, her eyes wide. He saw the moment she recognized him, like a window being thrown open. She yanked her thumb out of her mouth and, in her lisping child’s voice, shouted, “Adam!”

  This drew the attention of her mother, but when the minister’s wife attempted to pull the girl away, the child jerked free and darted across the street.

  Adam didn’t run, too shocked that the girl knew his name, so he still stood there when she threw her pudgy arms around his legs. He glanced down at the same time she looked up, and that was the moment he recognized her.

  Rachel.

  It was there in her eyes, older than a toddler’s should be. He barely had time to process it before the mother scooped her into her arms and backed off to a safe distance.

  “Who are you?” she demanded.

  The child cried out, a sound so eerily reminiscent of the night Rachel had died that goosebumps erupted across Adam’s exposed skin. Her mother tore her attention away from Adam to focus on her daughter, but whatever she saw in the girl’s hidden face terrified her enough to scream for her husband.

  Adam ran then. What else could he do? He couldn’t explain what had happened, even if they would believe a strange colored man new to town.

  The child died that day. He never dreamed about the minister and his family again.

  Bit by bit, he put the pieces of Maggie’s curse together. Soon after Rachel died, Adam would start having dreams about her new life. He tried staying away as long as he could, but something always drew him to her in the end. As far as he could tell, Rachel had no memories of their time together until the moment she saw him, but the second they made physical contact, she died yet again.

  She died two more times before his first suicide attempt. When he tried to shoot himself and the gun failed, he discovered just how insidious Maggie’s curse really was. He couldn’t die. Nothing he did worked. The power went out before he could electrocute himself. The rope snapped when he tried hanging. He was doomed to live forever while Rachel died again and again.

  For over a century, it had been the perfectly constructed hell.

  Suddenly weary, Adam laid back to stare up at the cherry blossoms rustling overhead. It was the ideal vista to have for what he hoped were his final moments, pure and bright, a celebration of a short-lived beauty that offered hope and peace while they bloomed. He didn’t deserve it, but h
e hoped that whatever deity might be up there overseeing this big mess of humanity would have mercy on his tainted soul anyway.

  “Adam?”

  The sound of her voice startled him from his reverie, and he half-rolled onto his side to see Rachel standing a few feet away. Every lifetime changed her physically, but this version was startlingly close to what she’d been like the first time around. Her brown hair was slicked back into a low, no-nonsense ponytail, highlighting the soft planes of her heart-shaped face. Her lack of make-up meant he could see every freckle splattered across her pert nose, but it was her all-knowing, wide-set blue eyes that cemented the resemblance, thrusting him into the past he’d never truly been able to escape from.

  “Oh my god...” she murmured. “It really is you.”

  When she took a step toward him, he finally reacted. Berenice had only one instruction for the ring. If he didn’t move quickly, all of this would be for naught.

  He scrambled to his feet, reaching for Rachel before she could do something foolish like throw her arms around him. His left palm settled on her breast, the ring nestled squarely over her heart.

  “I release you,” he said in the odd language Berenice had taught him.

  Confusion darkened Rachel’s eyes. Her lips parted to speak, but as the last syllable slipped from his tongue, the magic in the ring erupted, freezing both of them where they stood.

  Adam had never come close to death. Not once. So when the cold rushed in to replace the warmth he’d soaked up from the spring sunshine, he almost gasped. So this was what it felt like, this sinking as the world tunneled into darkness around him. He lost sight of the trees, the grass, the people. The scent of the cherry blossoms faded along with the tang from the Tidal Basin. All he saw and smelled and felt was Rachel, as it should’ve been all along.

  His knees buckled. Rachel cried out in alarm, but its hollow sound echoed inside his skull like it came from the other side of the water.

  He ended up on his back, looking up into the trees again. He smiled as they dimmed.

  It was a good day to die.

  * * *

  He felt like he was being smothered. Weight pushed down on his chest, but his arms were too heavy to push it off. When he tried to suck in a breath, something blocked his nose, and he choked on his own bile. He gasped once, and the pressure instantly vanished.

  “Adam?”

  It sounded like Rachel, but that was impossible. Death was playing tricks on him. Was this hell? Would he forever be tortured with her pleas?

  He let the darkness drag him away again, but his respite was short, thwarted by the return of the weight on his chest. This time, it pulsed rather than remained static, unexpectedly soothing in its regularity. Giving in was easy. Once. Twice. Three times. More until he lost count.

  When it disappeared, he yearned for it to come back and inhaled again, this time more successfully. No burning but it wasn’t enough, not when he swore he could smell Rachel’s skin.

  “That’s it. Don’t you dare give up on me now.”

  All doubt fled. It was Rachel, and he poured his efforts into opening his eyes, desperate for this last glimpse of her. He blinked. There was nothing to focus on, the shadowed world a blur. But sounds had joined the other sensations, the rustle of clothes, the call of birds, voices he didn’t know.

  “Is he coming around?”

  “That ambulance is never going to get through this traffic in time.”

  “Adam? Can you hear me?”

  The dimness lifted, and he realized that Rachel had been hunched over him, blocking out the daylight. He had to squint to see her, but the cherry blossoms behind her helped block out the worst of the painful sun.

  Her mouth had been firm, but as Adam focused on her, it wibbled, her eyes welling with tears. “Thank God,” she said. “Now just breathe, damn it. The ambulance should be here any second.”

  “Why...”

  “Don’t talk. Save your strength.”

  “But—”

  “Your heart stopped. You really want to risk that again?”

  But each breath he took made him feel stronger, the gray at the edges of his vision dispelled so he could see the crowd that had formed around them. He lay on the ground where he’d fallen, but most importantly, he was alive.

  He stared at her in awe. “What did you do?”

  She smiled. “I’d be a pretty sad med student if I couldn’t do basic CPR.” As she reached for his face, her fingers shook, but he couldn’t feel the tremors when she skimmed over the planes of his cheek. “I’ve missed you so much,” she whispered. “I’d dream about you without knowing who you were, and I was always so happy then, but then I’d wake up and you weren’t there and I just wanted to crawl back into the dreams again. But now here you are, and I know, I remember.” She laughed. “And you’re still prettier than me.”

  “Never.” He caught her wrist before she could pull away and turned his head to press a kiss to her palm. “You saved me.”

  “We saved each other,” she corrected. “And now we can finally get the lives we deserve.”

  In the distance, he heard the faint sound of sirens grow louder as it approached the park. He tensed. “You’re coming to the hospital with me, aren’t you?”

  She nodded. “You’re stuck with me. For better or worse.”

  Though she protested when he moved, Adam stretched to kiss her the way he’d wanted for too many years. He’d been wrong about what today would bring.

  It was an even better day to live.

  ~~~

  Three time EPPIE winner, Vivien Dean is a firm believer that love doesn’t care about gender, so her titles include both het and GLBT, erotic and sweet, as well as a wide variety of genres. She currently resides in northern California with her British husband and two children. You can find more information at http://www.viviendean.com/.

  BLOOD LUST

  DJ Shaw

  Catriogwyn Stacey has been around for two hundred thirteen years and has seen a lot in that time. When her Great-Great-Niece, the last of her living family, dies she discovers there's more than she thought. Will her family secrets consume her?

  ~~~

  CHAPTER 1

  Catriogwyn was in shock. She just couldn’t believe her eyes. She read the professional looking letter again, trying to convince herself that what she was seeing was real.

  Dear Ms. Stacey,

  We at Kemp and Evans Esq. wish to extend our condolences on the death of your Great-Aunt Prudence as well as inform you of the date we will be reading her will.

  The reading will be taking place August 6th, 2013 at nine o’ clock in the morning. The address you shall find us is:

  2828 Hershey Ave.

  Wilshire, ME 67219.

  You need to be present at the reading to accept any and all items bequeathed to you.

  Again, please accept our deepest sympathies on the loss of your Great-Aunt Prudence.

  Sincerely,

  The Staff at Kemp and Evans Esq.

  Cartiogwyn sat down hard in her easy chair and let the letter fall from her numb fingers. She couldn’t believe that her Great-Aunt Prudence was dead. Though she hadn’t known her very well, she’d been family. In fact, she was the only family Catriogwyn had left walking the green earth alive.

  She was surprised that she’d been included in the will. She hadn’t seen Prudence since she’d been a little girl, and even that had been from a distance. She supposed that if you wanted to get technical, Catrigowyn could be called Prudence’s Great-Great-Aunt.

  Catrigowyn wasn’t human, and hadn’t been for a long while. She’d been taken from home, late one night. Long ago, she’d lived with her sister, Freya, and Freya’s husband, Aidan. The couple had two children, Kristen, who had been four at the time, and Thomas, who’d been two.

  On that night, and often most nights, Catriogwyn had taken a walk in the woods behind her sister’s house. She knew that Freya and Aidan loved her and wanted to help her, but she had also felt th
at they’d been wishing for more time alone, to be a couple and a family. To give them that time, she made it a habit to take long walks in the woods shortly after dinner.

  Most nights it was peaceful and she’d reflect on her lot in life. But on that particular night, something had been waiting for her in those woods. Something that would change the life she knew forever.

  Catriogwyn and Freya were only half-human and both had heightened senses, so she could hear small footsteps walking alongside her, deep within the trees, but she had written it off as an animal. Turned out she had been only half right. She could remember that night like it had happened yesterday instead of two hundred and thirteen years ago.

  The damn full skirts, along with all of the undergarments they had to wear were ridiculous not to mention hindering. But a daughter of Lauren Stacey would not be allowed to dress in a way that was beneath their station, so Catriogwyn and Freya would be woken up before the sun and helped into all their clothes.

  After their father had disappeared, their mother had become extremely aware of position and station. Back then, it was almost unheard of for a woman to retain their station after their husband had vanished. Lauren Stacey was quick to remind her girls of that. When their mother died, Freya was free to marry the stable boy she always fancied. That was around the time that Freya noticed that she was different. She tried to talk to Catriogwyn about it, but it never seemed to be taken serious.

  It was shortly after Freya had married Aidan that she tried to discuss the situation with Catriogwyn. She’d told her sister that after her first time with Aidan he’d seemed sluggish. She wasn’t sure if that was normal. But Catriogwyn seemed uncomfortable talking about sex, much less her older sister having it, so she’d let the subject drop.

  Catriogwyn continued thinking about how many times her sister had tried to talk to her about how Aidan had seemed drained of energy after they would have sex, but she felt extremely energetic and full of life. That one phrase kept turning around in her mind while she wandered aimlessly through the woods. The small sounds that had been accompanying her on her walk had gone quiet. That’s when she stepped into a clearing and saw the man standing there. He was mostly hidden in the shadow of the trees, on the edge of the clearing, so she couldn’t see him really well. From the shadow all she could tell was that he was tall, around six foot eight though he was hunched slightly, and wiry. What made him stand out was his height and leanness.