by Lucy Lyons
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
(Untitled)
The Hunted
The Vampire Spell, Book Eight
Lucy Lyons
© 2017
© Copyright 2017 by Persia Publishing - All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
The information herein is offered for entertainment purposes solely, and is universal as so. The presentation of the information is without contract or any type of guarantee assurance.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE 4
CHAPTER TWO 13
CHAPTER THREE 26
CHAPTER FOUR 36
CHAPTER FIVE 49
CHAPTER SIX 61
CHAPTER SEVEN 72
CHAPTER EIGHT 79
CHAPTER NINE 89
CHAPTER TEN 100
CHAPTER ELEVEN 116
CHAPTER TWELVE 127
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 138
CHAPTER FOURTEEN 149
CHAPTER FIFTEEN 161
CHAPTER SIXTEEN 173
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 182
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 191
CHAPTER NINETEEN 203
CHAPTER TWENTY 212
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 226
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 238
CHAPTER ONE
Sweat flew off my face as I hit the mat with a thud that forced a grunt out of me. I threw an elbow into my opponent’s throat as her grip slipped off my wet skin and rolled away before she could bring her fist down on my face. I somersaulted backward into a crouch and skittered to the side. She leaped forward and stomped, trying to get me off balance and force me to my feet again.
Portia growled and backed off, pacing the edge of the practice mat and motioning me toward her with wicked-looking talons. I couldn’t help but grin at even a partial change before I’d shifted one hair.
“Portia, sheath those claws. We’re not demonstrating shape-shifting here—just judo,” I chuckled, and she hissed and shook out her hands, her fingers returning to their bronze-skinned human forms.
“Getting a little full of yourself lately, Clay,” Portia grinned, but hers was full of malice. She’d hated me from the moment I walked through the front door for the first time, and I had yet to learn why.
“Don’t be sore at me, Portia. You’re a great teacher. I like how much I’ve learned from you,” I laughed and feinted before side-stepping and dancing out of reach again. “It’s no secret you think I’m a sign of the decline of the dojo, but you’ve taught me so well you haven’t even drawn blood yet, despite those gorgeous, obsidian talons of yours.”
My instructor preened automatically at the compliment and shook her crown of feathers back off her shoulders. Portia was one of the last of her kind, a shifter, but not like me. She was a Cetan, a bird shifter with a crown of red and gold feathers when in her bird form and a woman with waist-length, red and gold hair when in her human form.
Unlike me, Portia’s ability to shift wasn’t tied to the moon or any force of nature—she was a force of nature unto herself. She hadn’t been attacked to earn her animal form either. She was a queen among her clan, marked as royalty by the tattoo of a feather just below her collarbone and an air of entitlement she wore like perfume.
Those claws were deadly, tipped in poison, and after our first match I’d had my first trip to the underworld ER because I hadn’t moved fast enough. After that, I thought Maria would keep us separated—instead, she paired us up daily, and I made new friends with the doctors and nurses at the hospital for shifters over the subsequent weeks. Much to Portia’s dismay, I survived, and her beloved dojo continue to be sullied by my presence.
“You aren’t worthy of the dojo, pup,” she snarled as she began her characteristic slow, weaving advance. She shook out her feathers and I fought to ignore the mesmerizing flicker of light that played off them.
“That trick won’t work on my anymore, Portia. Why don’t you put those feathers away and show the students how they should fight instead of showing your unique predatory skills?” I blinked, and she was on me. I bit back a curse as I ducked, narrowly missing the swipe of her glistening, venomous talons.
“One day, they won’t be able to revive you,” she scoffed. I kicked out low and caught her knee, making it buckle. She shrieked in pain, and I danced away from her as the students cheered me on.
“The way you’re going, one day I’ll be immune, and won’t that just ruin your chill?” As a matter of fact, I’d already spoken to Dr. Poll, a shaman and my new personal physician, who had given me boosters of her poison over a matter of weeks in preparation for the next time I failed to evade her.
With a grunt, she slashed out at my face, and I bobbed and fell back, dancing on the balls of my feet. She was cheating again but transitioning from the light, mobile judo forms to boxing was easy enough, and I didn’t complain. The students were watching intently, and since this fight was, for all purposes, a “real” combat situation, I figured it was right that they learn more than one fighting style.
She swung again and missed, her strikes growing wilder with her increasing frustration, and the students cheered louder with every whistle of air as her bird talons flew past my hair. I let one more swing through then struck with a foot again, kicking low then spinning around for a roundhouse that caught her square on the jaw with my heel. She flew across the room and landed outside the chalk circle we’d drawn, landing on her ass and staring wide-eyed at me.
“Your first win against the master, Clay. Good work,” Maria called out from the doorway. In an instant, the students fell silent, and we stood at attention.
“Thank you, Master Shedu,” I said softly and bowed low to her. I then turned to face Portia and bowed to her as well, keeping my eyes on her as I did. She curled a lip and refused to bow in return, so I ignored her and turned back to the students who had lined the wall to ask them questions about the fight.
“You will bow to the victor, Portia, or lose your standing in our fighters’ league,” Maria snapped, and I saw Portia bow slightly at the neck out of the corner of my eye. Instead of grilling the students, I dismissed them and asked Maria and Portia to stay behind. I’d waited for as long as I could for answers, and I prayed the boosters I’d received were enough to protect me from Portia if she took offense to the discussion.
“You have a questi
on, Alpha?” Maria asked, reminding Portia of my place as a leader of my people.
“Yes, Master, I have a question for Master Cetan of the Red Dagger Fighter’s League.” Maria nodded, and I turned so I was facing Portia, while placing Maria between us. I knew I might not be fast enough to stop Portia without hurting her, but Maria was a Shedu, a High Fae, and I had yet to meet a person in the dojo or the underworld who was willing to cross her.
“Ask your question, peasant,” Portia spat, and I laughed without thinking.
“You are such a bitch, Portia. My question is why me? What possible reason could you have for hating me so much if I’m beneath your notice?”
Her face blanched before carefully rebuilding her facade and the imperious scowl she always wore.
“Your kind are not pure Fae and never have had a place at our table before. You’re the failed result of a dying breed to retain its place in the wild hunt, and everything you do is a perversion of our ways,” she declared, each word a crescendo as she trembled with barely controlled rage.
“So, you’re mad because we exist, and there’s nothing that will change that, even though we’ve been an autonomous people for centuries.”
“I remember where you came from, and I’ll be here long after your people,” she spat, “are gone.” I grinned, speechless for a moment at the sheer irony of such elitism from someone forced to live underground because of what she was.
“I don’t know, Portia. We’ve got breeders now. What are you going to do as our pack grows, not by attacks but through good, old-fashioned lust and love?”
She shuddered and scrunched her nose like she were smelling something foul and turned her back on me. I glanced at Maria, her face pensive and closed, as usual. Whatever it was she felt about the shifters who carried wild magic without being Fae, she kept it to herself. But she’d welcomed us to the fold, and I wasn’t leaving again just because my blood wasn’t pure enough for some. We’d earned our place at the Fae table. We’d shown ourselves worthy of being part of the greater Fae community the moment we saved a pack of underage shifters from their sadistic pack leaders.
Maria had watched, and, somehow, she’d helped me unleash the wild magic inside me that my best friend, Caroline, had always insisted was there. That magic had been in me before my attack and made my “Fae side” strong enough to give me a voice among the Fae, which was what Maria instructed me to do and what creatures like Portia were fighting.
“Maria, I respect you and the Red Daggers and the dojo. But the next time I fight old vulture claws over there, I won’t pull my punches. Do you want me to train your students in hand-to-hand combat with other Fae or with halflings like me or the vampires? Because I am happy to show them how to take that,” and I pointed at Portia’s shimmering, feathered back, “to the floor so she can’t get back up.” I looked in Portia’s direction even though she hadn’t turned around. “Don’t forget, Cetan, you’re long-lived, not truly immortal. If your unrelenting stupidity ever finds its way out of this dojo, you’ll learn the difference, to your detriment.”
I glanced at Maria, who nodded in agreement. It was my first real challenge, and I’d felt like throwing up the moment the words left my mouth, but I’d endured and refused to see Portia cause any of my people pain or injury. We’d worked hard over the months to come together as a pack, mostly because of Rae and Dirk and their impending bundle of joy. I wasn’t about to let some ancient, self-important aristocrat tell my people they didn’t have the right to exist—especially not when we endured enough of that from the human population.
I stormed out of the room, confident that Maria wouldn’t let Portia rip my lungs out through my back, and made my way to job number two just down the street at the nightclub Pulse, owned and operated by the vampire Nicholas and his lovely wife Caroline. A former vampire hunter of the society of the Venatores lamiae like I was, Caroline had paved the way for some of us to dissent and still lead us to some degree.
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CHAPTER TWO
Grateful that I’d made it without being shot in the back by an angry Fae, I waved to Shayla, the newest bartender for Pulse and yet another member of the pack who had found their dream job working for our friendly neighborhood vampire. On one hand, I appreciated the understanding Nick had for our special full-moon needs and the dangers that faced the newly furry, like Shayla. On the other, I still wasn’t entirely sure he didn’t have ulterior motives. Some vampires could control or “call” werewolves. Nick couldn’t—but somehow Caroline, the sorceress and necromancer, could. Because of that, she could keep wolves from shifting if they were losing control. She could also call the wolf from inside any of us, which scared me on multiple levels.
Caroline constantly reassured me that she’d never push the limits of our friendship and the loyalty of the pack like that, but I’d seen her pull magic out of her sleeve that I’d never thought possible in times of need. I knew that loyalty or friendship would be the last thing on her mind if she were trying to save her family. So I winked at the pretty vampires running around backstage waiting for the burlesque show to begin and gave a little prayer to whomever was listening that I still sat on the “family” side of Caroline’s proverbial fence.
Of course, you’re family, you nitwit. Also, you need to work on your control or every time you’re mad at Ashlynn, she’s going to hear everything you’re thinking and not just what you tell her.
I jumped, startled to hear Caroline’s voice inside my head while I was alone in the elevator. I’d only just started being able to send my thoughts to people and only with great difficulty and pain. Doing it accidentally shocked me and made me nervous about entering the vampire hive beneath the club. The last thing I needed was to start transmitting random thoughts to the vampires.
Nick and Caroline were friends, but not all vampires were friendly, and Caroline had a strict policy of no mindreading. She’d been victimized by our mutual friend and her fellow Venatores for years without her knowledge before finding out he was a psychic vampire. She refused to commit that kind of egregious invasion of privacy on anyone, even to find spies among her own people.
“Is it safe down here for a mutt?” I muttered, trying to feel the difference between a controlled transmit and my previous blunder.
Don’t be silly. We’re not the elitist snobs you’re hanging around with now, are we? Caroline’s mocking was apparent even in her thoughts. We’re in the training room. I can tell you’ve had enough for the day, so there’s no need to change your clothes.
I glanced down at the practice judogi I was still wearing and sighed. Portia had gotten to me more than I wanted to admit, and I’d left without changing or grabbing my day clothes. With a sigh that sounded drenched in self-pity even to me, I made my way through the underground labyrinth to the combat training room where a remarkably fit-looking Caroline was fencing with Colette, her second-in-command.
Colette had bonded with Caroline over mental torture and defeating the vicious vampire master who unwittingly helped my Venatores society turn me into the furry, fanged alpha I’d become.
“Hey, I didn’t think you’d want to spar after coming from work,” Colette grinned, tossing her headgear to the side.
“I don’t, but I was not in a hurry to stick around there any longer. It was just one of those days,” I chuckled. Caroline removed her headgear and gauntlets and tossed them to Colette before she shrugged off her chest guard and handed it over as well. “Good golly, Caroline, you’re going to need all your stealth gear retailored for, uh, motherhood,” I quipped, and she glanced down her front and raised an eyebrow.
“Tell me a
bout it. That’s possibly the most diplomatic version of ‘Whoa, your boobs got big’ that I’ve heard yet,” she replied.
“Sorry, sis. How is everything with little Rowena anyway? Any idea what she’s going to be when she grows up?”
“Not really,” Caroline sighed. “I mean, I always know when she’s hungry or distressed because she projects it to me before she cries, but I don’t know if that’s her or if it’s me . . . We sent blood to Simi to have it tested for whatever it is that makes vampires so sensitive to the sun . . . I don’t know, Clay. I worry that having her was selfish, that we didn’t do the right thing,” she confessed. I glanced at Colette but wasn’t surprised by her lack of reaction. If Caroline was anything, it was open and honest about herself, even if it meant sharing her misgivings.
“It was a lot of sacrifice and hard work for a selfish act, Caroline. Thanks, by the way, for giving so much help to Dirk and Rae without all the strings attached that the Night Mother tied you guys up with.”
“I’m not a vampire queen,” she laughed. “No agendas here, except to get used to people telling me how my body has changed. I’m happy to pass on what I’ve learned to any werewolves who have lived in the human world.”
“Oh no. Are my people being intrusive?” I cringed at the possible offenses committed by the wolves who were prone to saying anything they thought. The pack shared thoughts anyway.
“No, it’s just uncomfortable to speak with a wolf or a wererat and have them cut me off and tell me they’ll wait if I want to nurse Ro, just to have my milk let down seconds later,” she stressed. “It’s like those preternatural senses of yours allow you to know my body better than I do, and I already know what a novice I am at the whole motherhood thing.” She paused and frowned. “I’ll let you answer that. I have a feeling it’s important.”
