Not Just Voodoo

by Rebecca Hamilton

  www.nathansquiersauthor.com

  Another Freebie from Megan & Nathan

  Zane’s horrific past is forever etched into his skin. His anger and pain overcome his body and turns him into the beast he’s come to accept himself as. But, is there a way to save himself from the beast he has become? Especially when the anger makes him feel complete…

  Serena can’t let go of the past, and, in the spectral embrace of her murdered lover, Devon, she has little reason to... Until Zane arrives on her doorstep (and blows it into splinters). However, she can’t deny the true desire she feels in Zane’s strong embrace. Will she be able to resist Zane’s mysterious allure, despite her own budding passion? Especially when the passion makes her feel complete…

  As their personal pasts continue to haunt them, the future for them and their clan grows evermore in jeopardy of the malicious schemes of a familiar force. Can an untamable beauty finally submit to her destiny, and can a slaughterous beast be swayed of its catastrophic nature?

  Or will the lover and the fighter be doomed to lose themselves amidst the chaos?

  Get it for Free!

  More from Megan & Nathan

  Xander Stryker’s legacy is only beginning...

  Xander Stryker wants to die.

  Ever since witnessing his mother’s murder at the hands of his abusive stepfather when he was a boy, he has spent every day trying to reach that goal. But every night he’s denied the death he craves. As his eighteenth birthday approaches, a chance for change is offered when his life is plunged into a supernatural world of vampires and other creatures of darkness.

  Caught in the depths of this new reality, mysteries of his vampiric lineage begin to unravel and he’s offered the ultimate choice: Continue on with his wretched human life or begin a new one as the vampire prodigy he was always meant to be.

  Unfortunately, the supernatural world can be just as unforgiving and brutal as any other and Xander’s choice is met with disastrous consequences.

  Now, with little support and even less hope, the chaos of his new world collides with his torturous past and threatens to crush him once and for all.

  Get it for Free!

  The Witch and the Thief

  Katerina Martinez

  1

  “Are you going to invite me in this time?” Clarke asked.

  I stared up at him in the aftermath of the question, and he held my eyes as if blinking might make me disappear. My back was up against the firm front door of my house. He had one hand on my cheek and another on my waist. My blood ran hot, heart thumping like a jackrabbit. But I had to shake my head.

  He tilted my chin up with his fingers and pressed his lips against mine. My defenses cracked, yet I scrambled to maintain control of myself. “I can’t,” I said into his mouth. “Not tonight.”

  His breath smelled like the iced donut we had just shared; sugary and sweet. I tugged on his collar and kissed him more deeply, lips parting for his. Ten minutes passed, or maybe an hour. I wasn’t sure. He said my name over and over in his head, showing me glimpses of our bodies entwined beneath white sheets, his desire shining brightly in his mind and transmitting into mine.

  I couldn’t help but giggle. He had no idea I could hear his thoughts.

  “What?” he asked, smiling.

  “I should go,” I said.

  “Five more minutes?”

  “I can’t. I have to work in the morning.”

  “It’s Tuesday, Nicole. We all gotta work.”

  I gave him a soft smile and let my head cock to the side. He liked that. “I know,” I said, placing my hands on his chest, “But I’ve got a big client coming in tomorrow and I need to be at my best. Soon, okay?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “If I pushed, I mean.”

  I shook my head. “You’re fine,” I said, “My mom is just very traditional, you know that. I don’t want to deal with the fallout if she catches us.”

  “You’re twenty-five years old.”

  “I know, but the family house is hers and I want to respect that.”

  “Okay. I had a good time though; a great time.”

  “I did too. Let’s do this again; maybe Friday?”

  “Friday? Why so long?”

  I gently rubbed his chest, smiling at him. “Because maybe—just maybe—we’ll end up in a part of town closer to your place than mine.”

  “Does that mean…”

  “Is it supposed to mean anything?” I asked, a grin spreading across my face.

  “I love that smile.”

  “Do you, now? What else do you love?”

  “Those brown eyes, this long, dark hair—” he kissed my neck and I arched into him, sighing as his fingers pushed into my braided black hair, clutching at my coco brown skin. But I couldn’t give into him.

  “Easy, big boy,” I said, “Don’t get too excited.”

  He walked backwards, nodding and smiling at me. “Friday,” he said. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

  “I said maybe. You know what maybe is?”

  “Maybe means I’ve got a shot.”

  “And if you don’t have a shot?”

  He shrugged. “I’ll take you out anyway.”

  I watched him walk along the short path from the front door to the gate. He waved one last time before turning the corner and disappearing into the street. Butterflies danced around in my stomach. I turned, stuck my keys into the lock, and stepped inside.

  The house was dark and still, and the lingering scent of warm brownies filled the air. I headed into the kitchen, grabbed a brownie from the container my mom had set out on the table, and made my way up to my room where I removed my jacket and ate the brownie while scrolling through my phone.

  I crossed to the dresser in the corner of the room and lit my night candle before killing the lights. The candle itself was purple, but it was a long way from being a solid block of wax. The candle had started to turn inward from use a couple of weeks ago; I would be lucky to have another week of this one.

  I placed my hands on either side of the candle, palms down, and closed my eyes. The voices at the edge of my senses, voices I couldn’t hear while I was with Clarke, started to press in around me like the growing hiss of a whispering crowd.

  Breathe, I thought, in through the nose, and out through the mouth. But the voices grew louder and louder, closing in on me from the dark. These weren’t the voices of people. I couldn’t hear people’s thoughts unless they thought about me specifically or I knew them well enough to catch glimpses of what they were thinking.

  These were the voices of the dead. Of the swamp. Of the old, ancient spirits of New Orleans; relentless, uncaring, ever wanting to tell their story to anyone who would listen—or anyone who couldn’t stop themselves from listening.

  I willed my own inner light, my magick, to manifest, flexing a spiritual muscle as easily as drawing breath. A warm rush radiated from my chest and into my arms, heightening my senses and opening my mind further. The whispers became a roar, but I kept my eyes shut and spoke the words of my family in the French of my ancestors. My mind is my own. My mind is my own.

  The night’s tension, the excitement, melted away and then the voices died down to nothing more than a soft murmur. They wouldn’t leave—they never left—but with magick I could suppress them. Manage them long enough to allow me a normal night’s sleep, if nothing else.

  But sleep didn’t come easily. I tossed and turned; too cold outside of the covers, too hot under the covers. Spring was a few months away still, but I was used to this cold, wet weather so this couldn’t have been it. Wave after wave of soft whispers broke against my closed window. Once I even sat bolt-upright, my skin prickling, convinced the whispers were inside the room.

  Just a shadow, I thought, or my oversensitive mind picking up random psychic signals.

  “Go away,” I said into the dark, and saying the words helped ease my heart enough to let me lay my head on the pillow. But I should have paid more attention. If I had,
maybe I could have pre-empted what was about to happen.

  2

  All around me was white. I couldn’t see where I was walking, but the musky smell of wet earth surrounded me. The ground was cold and damp beneath my feet. Grass. Soil. I took a couple of steps, hands outstretched, and bumped into something solid with my knee.

  A tombstone.

  I couldn’t read what’s on it. The writing was faded and worn with time and the elements. But I knew it was familiar, or at least it was supposed to be. Was it mine? I couldn’t tell. Maybe it was papa’s. But it couldn’t be; we had a mausoleum. Thinking of him made my heart contract inside my chest, bringing pain like a vise-grip.

  Someone spoke nearby. I followed the sound of the voice, but it had barely been louder than a whisper. It sounded like French, but it wasn’t French. Maybe it was Creole? I could pick some of the words out, but not enough to identify what was being whispered.

  The voice grew louder, perhaps because I was slowly padding my way closer to it or because the speaker’s words were becoming more forceful.

  My fingers caressed the body of a tree. It was black, and withered, and leafless, but thick enough to mask my presence as I peered around it. I concentrated on seeing the person speaking, and as the white—mist?—around me started to clear, I realized that I was dreaming. I was in my bed, in my house, and dreaming.

  One of the spoken words then registered in my mind. Sorselri. Definitely Creole, and it meant “sorcery.”

  The moment of understanding allowed my senses to punch through the mist and form a clearer image of what was in front of me. A tall, stone structure stood hunched, nestled beneath the barren leaves of another black tree. Tiny statues of fat, child-like angels surrounded the building, but their little faces were twisted as if in anger. A large, blood-red door barred entrance to a person wearing a dark cloak. The person spoke, waved his hand, and the door trembled. The black tree shuddered and twitched. The angels’ faces contorted into soundless screams and protests.

  My heart started to race as I recognized the structure; a mausoleum—my family tomb.

  I reached out with my mind to touch the person in the dark cloak and my psychic fingers brushed a shoulder. The person turned, but I didn’t see a face, only a patch of darkness beneath the hood. I ducked behind the tree, my heart thumping now, beads of sweat forming on my forehead.

  When I peered around again, the person wearing the dark cloak was gone, but the mausoleum door stood open. The angels silently wept, some were gasping. One of them looked right at me, its face twisted into the expression of someone about to witness something terrible. The cherub screamed my name and its shrill, painful voice plunged into my head with the force of an ice pick.

  I awoke with a start, my heart wedged firmly in my throat, a searing pain in my right temple. Night was in full swing. The wind whispered, but the bedroom was still. Immediately I became aware of the thin film of sweat around my neck. My clammy skin buzzed, not with adrenaline but with fear.

  Catching my breath was a struggle. I pressed my hand against my chest and waited for the moment to pass. Unlike most dreams, this one stayed with me. I remembered the way the tree shivered as the cloaked figure spoke, the way the door shuddered, the sound of the angel’s voice.

  Nicole!

  I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and checked the time. 3:07 AM. I had barely been asleep a couple of hours, but I was wide awake now—eyes darting from one side of the room to the other, chest and arms tingling, right temple screaming with pain. No way was I going to put my head down on that pillow again.

  Go to the graveyard, I thought, and for an instant I considered it. But was I really going to go to the cemetery at three in the morning?

  The structure I had seen in my dream was my family’s mausoleum. No doubt about that. Every detail was there, from the angels, to the black tree, to the red door. And there was something else, too. It was crazy, but I had the bad feeling that something was happening to my family’s resting place.

  Right now.

  A strange urgency gripped me, and all I could think about was getting up and getting out. It was crazy. I’d thought this before. But five minutes of breathing and calming down later, the anxiety remained. I had to go and check the place out, and I had to do it on my own. I didn’t know why this was, but involving my mother or even the police was not an option.

  Had I woken my mom or called cops and sent them all to the graveyard at three in the morning only to find nothing wrong, they’d think I had lost it.

  I got up and dressed without another moment’s hesitation, and fled the house as silently as I could.

  3

  Icy fingers nipped at my nose and ears. Stars twinkled in the sky above while New Orleans slept. The Saint Louis Cemetery wasn’t far from my house, only a few blocks away. Walking distance. There were no cars on the street at this time of night, no people—not even strays; only myself and my footsteps wrapped in an eerie silence.

  I walked with my hands in my pockets, my heartrate steady, but heavy. I turned the corner onto Basin Street, crossed the road, and approached the Saint Louis Cemetery gate hoping not to find it open. It wasn’t. And there wasn’t anyone around, either. I turned on the spot, scanning left and right for signs of people. Nothing. Just orange street-lights.

  An owl hooted nearby. Goosebumps spread over my arms and shoulders. Behind me, a harsh sound disturbed the silence—the screech of metal. When I turned to look at the gate, it stood open. My heart jumped into my throat and beat so hard I thought it would stop me from breathing. I swallowed, pushing the feeling down, desperately fighting the tremors rushing through my body.

  I approached with an outstretched hand, inching toward the gate until I could touch it. I gently pushed it farther to allow me to enter, then squeezed through the gap into the graveyard. A floral scent came rushing at me and my eyes started to sting. Then I heard the gate snap shut, though it wasn’t on a spring mechanism.

  I turned away from it and committed to walking along the path toward the Harriman mausoleum, wiping at my eyes with the back of my hand.

  Navigating the graveyard in the dark was nothing like walking the path during the day. For one, the graveyard was dark at night, and the cloudless, moonless sky didn’t offer much ambient illumination. I also didn’t want to turn my phone’s flashlight on in case I drew unwanted attention.

  Instinct guided me along the twisting gravel walkway. When I got to the first crossroads I took the left path, then a short while later took the right path. My heart continued to thrum inside my chest, the sound joined only by the crunching of my feet on the path and the low hooting of that owl I hadn’t spotted earlier.

  Then I saw the light.

  It was only there for a moment; a soft, yellow glow that seemed to blink in and out of existence. I stepped off the path and onto the grass. It was wet beneath my shoes and within only a couple of seconds the cold had started to touch the skin inside them, but I ignored this and pressed on. In front of me was the tree; the same one from my dream. I went for it and peered around its trunk in the direction of my family’s mausoleum.

  The building was dark, but lighter than the darkness around it. I could see the round bodies of the cherubs, the sharp angles of the roof and the outer walls. The door was shut and near black in the darkness but the glow I had seen a moment ago was coming from inside, illuminating the cracks on and beneath the door itself.

  Just like in my dream, someone was in there.

  My heart started to race again. Leaving wasn’t an option. I had come this far, and whoever was in there had a head start. Who were they, and what did they want? I needed to know, needed to find out. People didn’t just break into other people’s mausoleums that I knew of, and nothing like this had ever happened to my family before.

  I swallowed the hesitation and approached, walking along the grass so as to not make too much noise. But visions of the dream came rushing at me, shredding my composure before I could even reach the door
. In the dream, the person I had seen had used magic to open this door, and they had upset the angels in doing so. There weren’t many ways to interpret that.

  I reached the door again with my hand outstretched, only this time I didn’t push. Instead I focused on remaining as quiet as possible, listening for whoever was inside. Murmuring. Someone was speaking, only I couldn’t recognize the language or the words through the thick door.

  “Protégé moi,” I said under my breath, in my mind imagining the spirits of my ancestors swooping down from the heavens to offer me their protection and aid.

  Gently I pressed both palms against the front door and—flash.

  I was down. My head was spinning, ears ringing. I struggled to get to my feet, or to roll over, but my body wasn’t listening. My hands burned as if I had pressed them down on hot stove-burners instead of a cold wooden door. I couldn’t tell if I was screaming or not, but I didn’t think so. When the burning sensation finally hit my brain, I seemed to snap back into my mind and start processing things again.

  I sat up, digging my hands into the cool grass to soothe the injuries. The door swung open and a soft glow spilled out. It was candlelight, but the candle was inside a lantern—a lantern someone was holding. The breeze tugged at their cloak, causing it to waft softly.

  “Who are you?” a man asked. I couldn’t recognize the voice. Maybe it was the daze, maybe it was disguised. I didn’t know.

  “That’s… my family tomb,” I said.

  “A Harriman witch,” he said. He advanced, pulling something free from his belt. “How did you know I was here?”

  The thing in the man’s hand gleamed against the lantern light. A knife.