Wicked Good Witches- Complete Series Bundle

by Ruby Raine

  She couldn't fault him for checking out. She'd done the same thing. She'd hidden in her bedroom and refused to participate in life. Only difference, she showered now and then and had a bed to sleep on, rather than a sidewalk.

  In the end, he was human. Imperfect. Broken. In need of mending.

  That was something she understood too well. But she wasn't used to being the one trying to help, most especially when it came to the vampire.

  Melinda's head flicked upward. A sweet singsong voice was echoing into the still of the night. She watched William groan and lift himself with a shake of his scraggy head, and eventually climb to his feet. He staggered to balance himself and blinked a few times to clear his vision. He heard the voice... it even called his name.

  A sickening sweat chilled Melinda, her nerves singed in fear.

  It was a vampire calling for prey.

  Shit. Was this the night William was turned? It would make him thirty-one, so a few years had passed since his wife and child had died.

  But this wasn't the night it happened.

  It was the night he met and was seduced by a vampire.

  A female named Mina. Who cleaned him up and used him as her own personal blood bank.

  That first night she'd used her persuasion to lull him to her. But after a few days it wore off and he stayed on his own accord.

  Why?

  She was feeding off his blood, and he was feeding off the erotic pain. For the first time in years, he was feeling—something. Anything other than numbness and being lost at the bottom of an empty bottle. He practically begged to be brought to the brink of death. It became a nightly obsession. An addiction.

  Melinda found herself the unseen observer to a horror flick shuttering in and out all around her in too many parts to watch all at once. All around her were flashes of the next months of William's life.

  Blood.

  Pain.

  Frenzied feedings.

  Near death after so much blood loss, so many times.

  A haze of hours and days and weeks passing without a care other than to feel something.

  But something else was rebuilding inside William too.

  Slowly, the pain, the ability to feel it, began to do something else to him. He started to heal.

  He started to feel true emotion again. And what he'd become sickened him. It besmirched the memory of his lost wife and child. He was feeding an abomination. A monster that should not be allowed to live.

  Mina had kept him alive, only because he fed her. And she got a sick thrill out of torturing him with the pain he needed to rebuild himself again.

  But it had to stop. He needed to leave this behind him and find a way back to living again.

  The shuttered images of blood, vampire, and William fluttered to a stop, just one scene playing out. Oddly, William fixed his gaze on Melinda like he was speaking directly to her. But there was no intimacy in his speech. Only explanation.

  "I plan to revolt tonight. Mina must die. When she comes to feed and is in the throes of the blood gushing in her veins—" he pulled out a wooden stake. "I will end her swiftly, as I should have done the first night she called to me. I should never have given myself over to her. I need to end this torment. I need to find some way to repent for what I've done. For what I've allowed to happen."

  His head lowered, shamed. But he lifted it and forced his gaze to meet Melinda's.

  "I may not have been the one to strike the deathblow, but I watched Mina drain human after human, and never once tried to stop her. All because of my own delusion and addiction. Staking her is merely the first step in my redemption, but I fear true redemption may be lost upon me."

  Melinda didn't breathe.

  This is where it all started. William's need to make up for his past. The sins he needed to repent of. The transgressions which still followed him today. And while what he said was true, he'd been a broken man when Mina dragged him into this life. She'd used his vulnerability to her advantage.

  Or perhaps, Melinda was just turning a blind eye to the truth. In part, maybe. Knowing what he'd gone through, what he'd lost, watching him sink lower and lower... he had no one but himself to help him recover from his tragic losses. And worse, it lingered so much longer than it should have because of Mina.

  She arrived to feed on him.

  He offered himself as usual.

  And when her fangs were buried deep, he yanked out the stake from underneath the sheets to plunge it into her back. Only, it didn't even cut into her skin. She moved to quickly. She'd suspected something had changed. He hadn't been careful enough. And as payment she ravaged his vein with the intent to suck him dry. He'd outworn his usefulness and she could always find another poor wretch to suck from.

  She pulled out and let his body drop.

  William's eyes rolled up in his head—death was close. So very close. And that's when Mina heard his final request. He spoke so quietly Melinda didn't hear him. But the grin on Mina's face was vile and her eyes painted in cruelty.

  "You want to be reunited with your wife and son."

  Melinda knew what was coming next and it was still jarring to watch. She wrapped her arms around her center trying to hold herself together. Nightmare, indeed. But unfortunately, the reality of William's life. The night it was snuffed out and forever altered.

  Mina was not going to allow William this final request—to be allowed to die. She slit her own wrist and shoved it against his lips, forcing him to feed from her. She leaned over him and gave him a bloody, final kiss.

  "Welcome to the rest of your very long life, Vilhelm Wakefield." And she snapped his neck, stripping away his humanity. Rebirthing him into a new form. And abandoned him right where she left him, never to appear in his life again.

  Melinda wondered if the bitch was still alive after all these years?

  William lay still. Dead. But not dead. His body transitioning into the vampire. And she stared helplessly like an observer watching the scariest and saddest horror flick ever. And she had a deep, sick feeling, the nightmare was not nearly over, but merely beginning.

  She'd wanted to know more about William's past.

  And she wasn't sure yet whether either of them was better off for it or not.

  William's limbs began to twitch. His eyes to flutter. His tongue sliding along the new fangs protruding against his lips. He sat up with a deep inhale, emerald eyes bright and starving and fixed on Melinda.

  She stepped back, like that would do any good.

  "Have you ever been hungry?" he leveled out at her. "Starving? So hungry, it drove you to madness?"

  She didn't answer, only took a rock-hard swallow.

  "You've never known true hunger until you've fed off the blood of the living." A flash of movement later he was on his feet and staring her down like a predator. But she held her breath and stood her ground. "I wanted redemption. What I got, was hunger."

  And no one to help him understand how to live as a vampire. Or how to live without feeding on humans. Not like they were doing back home with Courtney—ack. Melinda couldn't even think about that topic.

  With a snarl and another flash of movement, Melinda gasped and once again was stuck in the middle of a horror movie unraveling all around her. Except this time, it was like she was running in place, trying to get away from the violence and blood raging all around her. Her feet moved, but she might as well have been on a treadmill for the distance it got her.

  But there was no escaping the macabre reality that was William's first years as a vampire unless she closed her eyes and refused to look, and for reasons that made no sense to her logical, stay safe brain, her eyes had never been so open.

  On all sides of her flashed scenes of a feral monster, feeding. Stalking its prey. Hiding in the shadows. Fangs striking into skin. Blood spattering all over the place.

  But he never killed.

  He made a bloody mess but never drank to death.

  He always managed to pull away, collect some measure of control, a
nd leave his meals before he drained them of too much. Somewhere deep inside the monster he still grasped to a thin string of humanity.

  And even though it was difficult to see William living in this way, the gore, sickening, the fear he caused making her own heart race like it was running for its own life... above it all, she wondered just how he had risen above this horror.

  How did he rise above what he had lost? His wife and child. His humanity. Being abandoned by the one who turned him? Left to maneuver through a new, dark world he didn't understand. Left to fend for himself. How did he leave behind the feral monster to become the William Wakefield she knew, and loved?

  She watched it unravel. A slow decay of time. A loathing of himself he could not run away from. The need for redemption stronger than ever—but not stronger than the need to feed.

  He tried to stop. He truly did. He didn't want to be the monster stalking dark alleys and preying upon unsuspecting humans.

  He fed from rodents and other animals. But it didn't satisfy him. And after weeks of the hunger not getting satisfied, chaos broke free. A frenzy. Not so unlike when he'd been tortured by the Feyk and Riley, and was out of his mind and high on human blood.

  Once he had surrendered to the need, and fed, it ignited a fury of hunger that only screamed in his veins—more—more—more. And continued on and on from one victim to the next. Until the flashings of horror changed. They slowed. Merging into one graphic scene. The end of the frenzy.

  A young woman.

  Pretty, but sick and dirty and probably living on the streets.

  William, his face ravaged in red, approached her in a drunken savagery.

  She didn't even put up a fight. Death was a gift over her life. Ending it now was a grace and a blessing. She wouldn't suffer anymore.

  She was on the cusp of her last breath when William pulled out of her like he'd drank poison. It hit him all at once what he'd done. How far he'd fallen. That he'd gone too far.

  He stumbled, with her, to the ground, wailing and begging for her to live. But he'd gone too far. He'd drank too much. She was growing weaker by the second and he panicked, slit his own wrist, and fed her his own blood in hopes to save her.

  Save her to what end? To be like him? To be stripped of his humanity.

  She could choose not to live, and end the new life given. He could offer her that much. A choice.

  She died, and turned.

  Reborn into a new life.

  Melinda watched it all happen and realized shockingly, that Courtney wasn't the first human he had turned. He'd done it at least once before. Melinda sucked in and pushed out some shaky breaths. So many things she did not know about him.

  However, unlike his own sire, he did not abandon this young woman.

  Instead, he became utterly determined to have her lead a better life than he had. He taught her from hour one to only drink animals. Never from a human. There were scares over the next weeks and months, but the young woman, named Annie, never strayed under William's watchful eye.

  But while he preached it, he wasn't able to live it. Still sneaking off to feed on humans himself. But he never again gave into the frenzy. He never allowed himself to starve and get to the point of another frenzy being possible. As he taught Annie, he also taught himself. He became determined to make sure she lived a better life than he had.

  She became, in a way, his anchor to sanity. To keeping and remembering his humanity.

  He took care of her like they were family. She became his connection to life again. Gave him the strength to control himself.

  Melinda watched all of this unfold as she spiraled into a cacophony of emotions.

  He'd turned this woman. Her life had clearly been shit and she'd welcomed death. But it didn't just make his actions acceptable. But it also changed him. It was the revelation he needed to regain control of his future. To have that chance at true redemption. Turning her started him on the path to the William he was today. But it had taken stripping away a human life to get there. But William hadn't abandoned her like his own sire had. He'd stuck around and saw to it she made better choices.

  No one did that for him.

  But was that enough of an excuse to wave off his previous shortcomings?

  Why were there always two equally important sides to every story?

  And why did the bad always far outweigh the good? And how much good did it take to properly redeem oneself? Melinda had felt certain his recent torture to save her life alone, was far and wide enough.

  Damn. Life could be shit sometimes with the thinking and the knowing of things.

  They jumped further into the future again.

  William treating Annie like a daughter, even though she was a grown adult. Over the years they carved out a life for themselves. They moved around. Explored entire new countries with the cover of moonlight. But each time William looked at Annie, it was like he'd just taken her life all over again.

  He was consumed by guilt—although, she seemed to take a liking to being a vampire. Even claimed it saved her from a terrible fate as a human. Because rather than the quick death offered by William, she'd have suffered for years and still died, without ever having truly lived.

  But this wasn't enough validation for William and he grew more and more withdrawn. He saw Annie as something he'd used to regain his own control. He felt as though he'd turned her simply to relieve his own guilt at what he'd done. And felt as though he'd used her as a tool, a prop, to keep himself in check.

  She never saw it that way.

  Their views were quite opposite of each other.

  One thing that had not changed—William was just as stubborn and unforgiving of himself then as he was today.

  Annie feared a breakdown if the guilt continued to consume him. She feared losing him.

  And it was this time when they befriended another vampire. Her name was Jean and Melinda's first impression of her was mother nature incarnate. A walking form of art. And she was like Annie, only drank from animals. And she told William it was possible for him to live this way too. Because she'd once been like him.

  He didn't believe her at first. Mostly out of fear and self-preservation.

  But Jean, William, and Annie, became fast friends. Kindred spirits even. And after some time, William agreed to try it. The first step, and the most brutal, was a human blood detox.

  If Melinda thought she'd witnessed hell already, this was right up there with it.

  It was a brutal finale to all she'd seen from his past. Even right up there with watching him get tortured for hour upon hour. He sank in and out of consciousness and mumbled incoherently. And when done looked as though he'd been raked over with a metaphorical bomb. He explained his mind had taken him to dark places. Forcing him to relive all he'd lost. All he'd done. All he still sought redemption for.

  Not unlike what was happening now.

  Is this what was going on? Was William going through another detox? To get the human blood out of his system? It made sense. Only this time he'd somehow tagged Melinda along for the ride. She was positive it was not by his choice. Because William in his right mind would never have wanted her to witness any of this. Not because it might taint her opinion of him. In fact, part of her was surprised he'd never used any of this to try to push her away.

  It would merely be because he was letting her in. Letting her see the real him. Letting someone into his dark world. His past. And that meant letting himself trust someone enough to do that. Or in this case, loving someone enough to let them see all he was.

  She refused to be judge and juror.

  She was learning, hard and fast, there wasn't any such thing as pure good or pure bad. But often a fine line between both. She could not judge the vampire on his past any more than he'd ever judge hers.

  And even though all of this stirred up a ton of emotions and questions, it didn't change the fact that she still loved him. With all his faults. With all her own. Who was she to turn on him because of his past? Didn't it matter m
ost who he was today? That he had spent all these years since turning Annie making up for his mistakes.

  Fuck, though.

  Courtney...

  What about her?

  Seeing what William went through the first time he changed someone, finding out he'd done it again, this time unknowingly, might be his undoing.

  But there was no hiding it. No denying it. He would find out.

  "All the times you told me," she muttered softly. "That you were a monster seeking its prey." Hearing it was one thing, seeing it, experiencing it firsthand definitely put a new perspective on it. "You did the best you could with what you were given."

  She heard a sigh behind her and twisted to see William—her William, standing and watching as if he'd been reliving all of this right alongside her.

  "You always give me more credit than I deserve."

  "Perhaps. But that's what it means to love someone. Unconditionally."

  "You cannot allow love to blind you to the truth, Melinda."

  Had love blinded her?

  Had never forgiving himself, blinded him?

  Perhaps they were both fools. Neither seeing things for what they really were.

  "This is what I am capable of. What you've seen is all true. Not some distorted memory. I did all those things."

  "And have spent the rest of your life trying to make up for it."

  "How much time is enough? What can I ever do to repent for all my transgressions? I am a vampire. I will always be a vampire. Those things that I did are always with me. I am a monster. And I will never deserve the way you look at me. The way you see me. The way you love me... because to do so would taint something pure and right in this world. You deserve something better than a monster waiting to break free."

  "You act as though I'm some angel, William. I'm far from perfect. We all make mistakes in this life. I think what makes us worthy of anyone's love, is what we do to make up for those mistakes. If we learn and grow and change and prove to those we wronged that we won't make those mistakes again..." she stopped herself because William had made the mistake again. He just didn't know it yet. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  Melinda wished there was a way to go back in time and stop the whole Courtney thing from happening. Because, if William, after hundreds of years, was still guilty for his crimes back then, he'd never forgive himself after he found out what had happened.