The Crow’s Murder

by Tate James

  Once upon a time, the area we lived in was the richest part of Lakehaven, with marble streets and sprawling mansions for the Teichian nobles. That was before our deities tried to kill us all with the Age of Darkness. Before the droughts that took away our water and storms that plunged us into two years of darkness and rain.

  Before the plague.

  Now, that area of the city was a relic, a painful reminder to us all not to piss off our gods.

  Streets that were once walked by women dripping in gold and jewels, escorted by their wealthy husbands and fathers, now lay under a foot of murky water. Technically, that area of town was supposed to be off-limits. The buildings were too damaged to be safe, and the water seemed impossible to drain.

  Technicalities never mattered much when you had nothing and no one.

  It took no time at all for those abandoned mansions to become the new homes for those of us without one of our own … and so The Pond came to be. Our very own water-logged slum bordering the palace grounds.

  “That,” I announced, spotting my target. We'd been trailing along the street some distance back from the royal emissaries, but kept them within sight. As they approached each house, one of the guards would withdraw a tightly rolled invitation from his jacket and hand it to the steward, who would then present it to the household.

  It was a huge to-do. The girls would come rushing out to receive their invitations and gush and cry as though they had no idea they'd be getting one. All within view of the street, of course. What good would it do to be chosen by the palace and not rub their neighbors’ faces in it? It took ages, too; in the time we had observed them, only three invitations had been successfully delivered. No wonder Tubby looked half-asleep.

  “The invitations?” Flick squeaked in surprise.

  “Yup,” I nodded. “See how they all keep them in their left inside breast pocket? Tubby over there at the back hasn't taken any out, but you can see he has some from the way his coat sticks out a little on that side. He's also only bothered to fasten two buttons, so it should be a cinch to slip a little hand like yours in there and snag one.”

  Flick chewed at his lip in nervous anticipation. He was usually pretty confident, so his anxiousness was out of character.

  “Hey, I'm going first remember? I'll show you exactly how to do it. Follow me and repeat what I do; you can't go wrong. Okay?” I bopped him on the head and tucked a stray piece of my own straw-blonde hair behind my ear.

  “Okay,” he nodded. “Let's do this.”

  “Remember, watch me closely. I will meet you at the Pig and Ferret when you're done, yes?” I eyed him sternly to make sure he understood. It was protocol to split up once you'd made a snatch and run, that way if you got caught you weren't dragging your partner down with you.

  Not that I did this sort of work much any more. Pickpocketing was for the children, like Flick. He was barely eleven, but well old enough to earn his keep and pay back his debt to Master Bloodeye.

  He gave me a nod of encouragement, and I melted into the crowd. It took me less than two minutes to reach my mark, divest him of one scroll, and then slip back into the excited spectators. Then again, I was one of the best. At age eighteen, I'd already gained quite the reputation for myself in Teich. I was the notorious Rybet, protégé and suspected favorite of Master Bloodeye.

  It was no mistake my name sounded like the noise a frog made. Technically, it wasn't my name, it was a nickname given to me at age five when Master Bloodeye saw how easily I could slip in and out of buildings and crowds unnoticed … slippery, like a frog. I had no idea what my real name was, since he found me as a four year old right after the Age of Darkness.

  The guardsman barely even blinked when my hand slipped inside his coat, lifting the rolled up piece of parchment out and slipping it up my own sleeve. That was the benefit to having so many people around, for sure.

  When I’d made it further down the street, I glanced over my shoulder to ensure Flick was doing as instructed, repeating exactly what I'd just done.

  Our meeting point, the Pig and Ferret, was only a few hundred yards away, but I needed to keep an eye on him to make sure he wasn't cocking it all up. My gaze tracked him as he made his way through the crowd and approached the same tubby guardsman who was yawning heavily.

  Flick's back blocked his hand from sight, but I knew he'd be making the transfer from the guard’s pocket to his own sleeve, and then … I released a nervous breath I’d been holding as Flick moved away. The guard was none the wiser.

  Good boy!

  Letting the tension drop from my shoulders, I turned my back on him to hurry my ass along to the Pig and Ferret, so he wouldn't know I stayed to watch. I wanted the kid to think I trusted him to do it all on his own.

  Just as I laid my hand on the heavy wooden door of the inn, a commotion broke out in the street behind me. Dread pooled in my belly and I turned to see what was causing such a fuss.

  “Aana's tits,” I cursed ignoring the gasp of shock from a passerby as I rushed back into the crowd. As if I was the only one to curse using the names of our deities.

  I still needed to get closer to see what was going on, but when I did my heart lurched.

  Flick, his wrist held firm by that same overweight palace guard, the stolen invitation being brandished in his panic-stricken face. Shit! How?

  It didn't matter how, though. I needed to get him free of those guards or he stood no chance. The palace didn't care if he was only a kid. He was a Pond-dweller, and they saw it as their civic duty to cull our numbers any way they could.

  “Flick!” I yelled, pushing forward faster only to be grabbed from behind with an arm like steel, and dragged into a dark alleyway between two ostentatious mansions.

  Fight or flight instinct was a powerful thing, and I had both. Thrashing hard, I threw elbows and heels into my captor to try and release his hold on me, but he didn't for a moment waiver. His arms held me firm against a strong body and a large hand clamped down over my mouth before I could scream.

  “Stop it!” he hissed in my ear. “Stop fighting, boy! Does your life mean so little to you that you'd throw it away to save a Pond orphan?”

  Of course not, you idiot!

  I wanted to scream the words at him, but it would be too hard to explain that I had no intention of being caught, simply giving Flick time to get away. He called me boy, though, which was good.

  “You caught a live one,” another man chuckled, as if I wasn't already outweighed by the first one. I didn't stand a chance against two grown men in hand-to-hand combat. The last thing I needed was to fight off a rape at a time like this.

  There weren't many girls in my line of work. When you grew up in the slums, there was really only one career choice for a pretty girl. Whoring. That had never sat well with me, and thankfully Bloodeye had seen talents beyond the income I might earn on my back with my legs in the air.

  I fairly much lived in boys’ clothes: a loose shirt and leather breeches with an oversized tunic to hide my womanly curves. It had clearly been too much to ask of Aana, our Goddess of Fortune, to bless me with a boyish frame. Thankfully, this guy seemed too distracted to notice as he restrained me.

  “It's too late for him,” the man snapped in my ear, and I got the distinct feeling he thought he was saving me. “They've caught him red-handed. There's nothing you can do now.”

  Sure enough, the palace guardsmen were already binding Flick's wrists and throwing him over the front of a horse to be taken to the royal dungeons. It was a crime to steal in Lakehaven. Hell, it was a crime to steal anywhere in the Kingdom on Teich, but it was a whole other thing to steal from the royals themselves.

  As the tubby guard rode away with my little friend, the man's grip loosened on my face, but not from around my waist.

  “You can thank me now, boy,” he muttered sarcastically. “I just saved your life.”

  “You can let me go now, letch,” I sneered back at him, pitching my voice a little lower than a girl’s and peering dow

n at the hand still clamped firm across my abdomen. Any higher and he would have felt the evidence that I was most assuredly not a boy.

  A gold ring on his pinky finger gave me pause and I leaned a little closer to make out the crest. Then gasped in horror.

  “Your Highness,” I breathed with dread and revulsion. I'd just tried to kick one of the Royal Princes in the balls with my heel.

  “Shit,” the man—prince—holding me cursed and the other man groaned.

  “Seriously? You forgot to take off your ring? I'm never letting you sneak out with me again, little brother.” The second man sounded exasperated, but also a touch amused.

  I just wanted to get the hell away from them. Little brother meant that this was another of the crown princes!

  “Please, Highness,” I whispered, “Let me go, I swear I won’t tell a soul that you're here in the city.”

  The one holding me released his grip abruptly and I stumbled forward a few steps, letting my hood fall further over my face to hide my features.

  “Go, then,” he snapped. “But we were never here.”

  Nodding as frantically as I could without displacing my hood, I kept my gaze firmly on the ground to avoid any further insult as I sketched a shaking bow and backed out of the alleyway. As I reached the crowd, I couldn't help myself, I glanced back into the shadows to get a look at the princes.

  Could anyone blame me? No one had laid eyes on our Frog Princes in ten years. Not since they'd ended the plague by summoning hundreds of drachen--a magical creature that was actually a small variety of dragon, but looked a lot like a frog. The drachen swept through the land, devouring the insects which carried and spread the plague, and within a year, it was extinct.

  Typical of my luck, though, all I could see in the shadows were three sets of men's boots, and a ripple of fear ran through me. Three. All three princes were within breathing distance of me … and I'd walked away with my life.

  The notorious Rybet Waise didn't rise to such heights of crime in such a short time on luck alone though. No, I had a natural instinct towards danger. Premonition, Bloodeye liked to call it, but I preferred instinct. After all, none but the royals possessed any magic since the Age of Darkness.

  My instincts, the ones I’d trusted all my life to keep me alive, told me that this wouldn't be the last time I'd encounter the three Frog Princes of Teich.

  DARK GLITTER

  The Wild Hunt Motorcycle Club #1

  By Tate James & C.M. Stunich

  Ciarah O’Rourke was born into torture.

  A human spirit reincarnated in the body of an ancient fae goddess, she’s spent the last five years in iron shackles, her mind poisoned with magic for secrets she doesn’t know.

  Waking up in a dirty alley with no memory of her escape, Ciarah finds herself in the hands of The Wild Hunt Motorcycle Club--a ruthless and violent group of bikers with faerie blood in their veins.

  Arlo. Reece. Killian.

  Three men drenched in death, sin, and old magic.

  From their clubhouse in the middle of the Louisiana bayou, they’ll offer Ciarah the keys to unlock her memories and control the veil between worlds. But even her knights can’t erase the twisted scars that remind her they aren’t the only ones who hunt.

  When The Wild Hunt rides, the souls of the dead join their parade.

  All that’s missing now is their queen.

  THE NINE

  Foxfire Burning #1

  By Tate James and C.M. Stunich

  Tricky, like a fox.

  As a kitsune—a fox shifter—I have to be to survive.

  Sometimes it seems like the whole world wants me dead.

  Ironic, considering that’s my job—to kill people.

  Thea Hunt, professional assassin at your service.

  But that’s not my only vice.

  I’m also attracted to the darkest denizens of the supernatural world, the men I should run from instead of fall for. Men like Mikhail, the leader of the assassins’ guild, Bennett, the local alpha wolf, and Nix, the skinwalking coyote that’s likely to bring the entire shifter community to their knees. And then there are my exes—Riot and Fin.

  Somebody’s cursing old gods, stripping shifters of their ability to change. And a trapped shifter doesn’t last long without losing their mind. Nix knows; Mikhail wants me to kill him; Bennett wants me dead. Oh, and Riot and Fin are determined to make my life a living hell.

  As the youngest kitsune to ever get nine tails, I should be able to trick my way out of this one, right?

  Right?!

  ELEMENTS OF MISCHIEF

  Hijinx Harem #1

  By Tate James and C.M. Stunich

  Four hunky, supernatural plumbers.

  One reluctant, slightly drunk human.

  A match made in heaven … or in the bathroom, rather.

  My name is Arizona Smoke, and I'm the proud owner of a house haunted by my dead Gram, best friend to a cocktail dress loving werewolf, and apparent soul mate to four plumbers who also happen to be elemental dragons. Besides rippling pectorals, tattoos, and … uh, nice, long pipes, the guys also have control of the elements.

  Supernatural law (whoever heard of such a thing anyway?) dictates that since I stumbled upon the guys in their alternate forms, I have to marry them. All four of them. Oh, and apparently one lousy (okay, awesome) night of sex means that I'm an elemental, too—and no amount of magical penicillin can cure this disease.

  All I wanted was hot running water and toilets that flushed, but now I'm dealing with monsters lurking in the sewers, supernatural politics, and four penniless (but totally hot) plumbers living in my crumbling old Victorian.

  I'm Ari Smoke, wine aficionado, ex-barista, and a girl who is completely out of her element.

  Having four hot husbands is nice … but the death threats, not so much.

  SLOPES OF SIN

  (Originally published in Snow and Seduction Anthology)

  By Tate James

  "will these winter wankers be my ho ho holiday treat?"

  After securing a job as Santa’s Little Helper in a swanky ski resort, all I needed to do was show up, do my job, and hopefully win the Candid Moments Photography Exhibit. Sounds easy, right?

  When elf slippers, ice and an out of control snowboarder combine, I’m forced to watch while my dreams slip through my fingers and shatter at my feet.

  Things rapidly turn from bad to worse, when I lose my job and then my home. What other choice do I have, but to accept help from the ones who started this whole mess? The Kings of Snow.

  Four of the most elite snowboarders ever to step foot on the snow--notorious for their party boy ways and disposable women--suddenly want to help me. Thrust into the media spotlight, everyone either wants to be my friend or sell me out. But who am I to warrant such attention?

  I’m just Mila, the Elf.

 

 

 

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