by Manuel Tiger
San Francisco Covens
Crucible – Book One
Manuel Tiger
Copyright © 2018 Manuel Dwight Tiger
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner or form without the written permission from the author, Manuel Dwight Tiger.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be interpreted as true. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Cover Art and Design By: https://www.wickedsmartdesigns.com
San Francisco Covens: Crucible – 1st Edition
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Novels by Manuel Tiger
Authors Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
The Story of Daman and Henry
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Dedication
To Heather T.
Thank you for always being a friend.
Novels by Manuel Tiger
The Chosen Witch Series
The Chosen Witch: Awakening Book 1
The Chosen Witch: Missing Chapters: Carrie Saint James
The Chosen Witch: After the Storm Book 1.5 (forthcoming)
A Chosen Witch Story: Rougarou (forthcoming)
The Hybrid Chronicles Series
The Hybrid Chronicles: The Devil I Know Book 1
The Hybrid Chronicles: Still Waters Book 1.5 (forthcoming)
Author’s Note
First, this novel contains male on male relationships and sex scenes. If that is not your cup of tea, please find another novel that is more suitable to your liking. Second, this novel contains some adult matters that some readers may find triggering of child abuse and sexual abuse in regards to a character. Please, do not read if such topics will be triggering for you. Thirdly, this novel takes place in the same universe as that of The Hybrid Chronicles and The Chosen Witch Series. There will be some references to both novels, some answers could possibly lurk in these pages that tie back or expand further on ideas hinted at in The Chosen Witch Series and for those of you that are fans of Avril Harrington from The Hybrid Chronicles, there is a reference to him. It won’t be in bold, but there is a passage in regards to him, a line of dialogue. Only hint that will be given.
Lastly, you do not need to have read the novels mentioned to get the references, but as with most of my work so far, there are crossovers that will occur at least in the first novel of each series.
Until then, happy reading.
Manuel Tiger
Chapter One
San Jose, California
April 2016
This is not a life.
I took a hit off the cigarette and stared out the open window onto the street below as the sun began to rise over San Jose. A few delivery vans were already out and passing below me making their whooshing sounds, but I paid them little attention as my focus is on the sun which continues to ascend, to spread its warming glowing rays that snake through the streets to chase away the shadows of the night.
I took another slow draw off the cigarette pinched between my lips, holding the smoke within my mouth where I could feel it curling, expanding. Finally I shaped my lips into a perfect O and blew it out the window where it was caught by a breeze which carried it away.
The sun by then had finally risen high enough that its warming rays now bathed the apartment, striking me, coating my naked body in its warmth.
I glanced down at the ring that I wore on my right ring finger. It is fancy even for me who had once been surrounded by the trappings of wealth and now found myself sometimes down in the gutter.
The ring is silver, the centerpiece that of a carved crane head with glittering ruby eyes. I sometimes think about taking it off, setting it aside and standing in the sunlight to see how quickly I will turn to ash, how fast this body frozen in time will burn away.
Yes, I am a vampire and have been for ten years.
Ten years.
Really? It seems only yesterday I woke in that house outside that small Virginia town that I had lived in with…
No. I won’t think of him, the one that changed me against my will, who left me like this.
He left me in other emotional states as well, but I will not think of them today. Maybe in two days when it is my birthday when I would be thirty-six by mortal time. Then I will allow the tears, the hatred and anger toward him to rise, to overcome me and reduce me back to that morning ten years ago which found me confused and fucking scared out of my mind about what I had become.
The ring is a reminder that not all vampires are assholes.
Some can be gentlemanly assholes.
I flick the cigarette out the window and turn around to look at the occupant of the bed, the owner of this apartment which my pathetic one can fit in two times and still have enough room to swing a cat. All that peeks out of the covers is tufts of blond hair. I don’t even know his name, but can recall a cute face and a nice toned body. That was enough for me in my lonesome and hungry state.
Yes, I was craving affection last night even if it was false. I was craving contact, needing to feel alive, to be told I was handsome and desirable. Now I’m left feeling regretful, hating myself, damning myself.
There had only been one that made me feel those things without being told them, only one that made all the fucked up shit that had happened in my life not matter, that did not use it against me, hold it over me as others had.
Stop thinking about him!
Easy to say than do.
I move quietly about the bedroom gathering up my clothing; dress boots, socks, jeans and shirt. I find my messenger bag in the hallway with the contents spilled out onto the floor; camera, pens, notepad, tape recorder, cell phone and my wallet. I scoop it up after I dress, giving myself a quick once over in the full length mirror that hangs in the hallway.
I have rather classical features, at least that was what I was told a few times in my mortal life. My hair is dark brown and often kept short, although I have allowed it to grow out. My eyes are a blue-gray coloring, sometimes bluer depending on my mood. My nose is what could be called Romanesque, aquiline. It’s straight, but not too long and comes to a nice point. My lips? They are suitable for my face. They are not overly large or too small, a perfect fit. My body, which measures six foot two, is toned, muscular though I work out still when I can, but being a vampire promises that I will always have a nice body for eternity, however long that may be.
By the time I exit the apartment – in record time for I’m not one for awkward mornings – and hit the elevator my cell phone is starting to chime. I sigh. I have few friends and there are only two people that tend to text or call me, and the latter most times is due in part to butt dialing.
I’m not entirely a hermit. I go out. I have to. It’s just that…I prefer not to unless I really have to. Last night was the lonesome taking hold, the desire to be held. And that is all I was going out for, but ended up back here in San Jose entwined with Nameless Face. I took a little of his blood, enough to have made him woozy and pass out. When he wakes he will feel like he has a hangover, and not remember my face, only that he was with someone last night.
And a planted thought that I was the best fuck he ever had.
What? Like you wouldn’t do the same if you were a vampire? Besides, it’s the old whore rising up in me
that suggested that.
And whores are only meant to be used and cast aside.
I dig my cell phone out of my messenger bag along with my sunglasses that I slip on. My phone chimes again telling me I have a waiting message. The elevator arrives at the lobby, the doors opening as I step out and head toward the front doors like the hounds of hell are after me. I see the message is from Scott who is my editor and boss at the newspaper I work at.
Newspaper.
That’s a laugh.
It’s an underground paranormal rag that has a readership of less than a thousand. I don’t even know how we stay in business to be honest. Then again, Scott is a trust fund brat. His parents bought the publication as a hobby for him, something safe and mundane since his other siblings are something of a mess and well known to the courts.
Before I read the message I look up and notice I don’t have need for my sunglasses. A storm has suddenly arrived, the sound of thunder rumbling overhead and I can smell the rain coming in off the sea, but the storm seems centered directly over San Francisco. “Sully! Get your ass in gear boy,” I read the text message aloud, but hearing it in Scott’s hyped up voice. “Need you to get to this marina! A witch was found floating dead this morning! Call me back for directions!”
A witch huh? I wonder if Heather knows them, or knew them.
Since becoming a vampire I had been quickly crash coursed into the supernatural, finding out that everything I thought was nothing more than Hollywood magic was real, just like magic.
I head over to my car which is a late model Ford mustang. It was something I bought when I used to be on top of the world, when I was a journalist sought out by Time, Newsweek, and The Washington Post. But my addiction demons got to me, took over my life and I crashed and burned.
The car represents a moment in my life when I achieved everything by my own hand, my own hard work, and didn’t rely on last name or family connections to achieve it.
Now, it needed a new paint job, the seats reupholstered and probably new tires at some point.
It would probably be better off in a salvage yard as a little metal cube.
Or bring it back to the apartment for a nice conversation piece, if I ever had guests over.
Rain starts to fall on me as I unlock the driver side door and toss my messenger back into the passenger seat. I climb in while removing my sunglasses and hit the dial option on the message from Scott and he quickly picks up.
“Where are you at Sully?”
“San Jose.”
“What the hell are you doing there? This story is breaking! They still have the body in the water! A witch that floats! Maybe we can use that as the headline! Water rejects the evil witch! Just like the tests they did in Salem!”
Did I mention Scott is a rather excitable person? If we were living a few centuries back he would have probably been a PT Barnum type. Every headline we have is something so out there I have to not laugh when he presents it to me.
“I’m headed to San Fran now, Scott,” I say starting up my car. “Be there in forty minutes, maybe thirty.”
“You better be there! I want this in our afternoon edition!”
We publish a physical copy once a week at the end of every week. We’re nowhere near the end of the week. I’m not sure why he thinks we’re some big name newspaper, but I do nothing to pop that little bubble of his.
I like him as a friend, and he’s one of a few who knows what I am. When he found out he just stared at me for several minutes, jumped up and down then began shouting “I knew it! I fucking knew it!” then asked to see my fangs and if all the stories about vampires were true.
And if I sparkled in the sun.
I sometimes regret saving him from that mugger that night, but he’s adorable in his own little way. And I’m short on friends, on human contact.
I pull out onto the street and head back home.
II
“She was a good one.”
I look across the table at Heather who is looking out the window of the coffee shop. She was already at the marina before me, standing on the dock watching as the police secured the area. I managed to get a few photos of them loading the body bag into an ambulance and hope it’s enough for Scott. Then again, he will probably get creative in Photoshop and have the witch as some ghastly ghost floating above the marina.
“I felt her death,” she says turning her attention back on me, wrapping her hand around the Styrofoam cup of coffee. Outside the storm has not let up. If anything it has gotten worse. I never saw the likes of it in the ten years that I have lived in San Francisco. “Nature mourns her passing.”
I say nothing, nod my head instead and focus on the pastry before me.
“You have a good time last night?”
I look up arching a brow.
“I can smell the scent of another guy on you,” she says with a wink. “Will you see him again?”
“In the three years that you have known me have I ever dated anyone?”
“No, and I think you need to fix that. To find someone to date. Maybe you won’t be so moody, so grumpy.”
“I’m not fucking grumpy,” I say tearing off a piece of the pastry and shoving it into my mouth.
“At least if you were in a regular relationship or seeing someone on a daily bases you would get fucked more often. All this moodiness is due to SRS.”
“Why Miss Heather Oakdale! My ears!” I said effecting a Southern accent.
“Cut the accent, Sully,” she says with a smirk. “You’re from Boston and while you have tried to lose that accent? It still comes out on certain words.”
Over the last ten years I have tried my best to cease sounding like a Beantown inhabitant. It was the only hint as to my origins. Only she and Scott knew I was born and raised in Boston. Anything beyond that I don’t share. I made up a new identity for me, well, background. I still use the name I was born with – Henry Sullivan, only, I have added an O to the Sullivan. Things like a new social security card and birth certificate were all created for me to help start over fresh.
“Anyway,” I say as my clever retort, “What’s SRS? I hope you’re not saying I have SARs?”
“Sperm Retention Syndrome,” she replies. “The male version of PMS. If you were releasing it on a daily bases? Not being backed up with it you’d be happier and content.”
I simply stare at her until a guy in chain mail walks by the window drawing both our attention until he passes out of sight.
“That reminds me,” she says as she moves her hand through her fiery red hair. Currently it is streaked with varying shades of purple. In fact, her outfit today is another purple creation that she made. Some days she looks as if she steps out of the forties complete with matching hair style. Other times she looks modern. I think the forties styles suits her the best though. “There is something I want you to attend with me tomorrow night.”
“A costume party?”
“No, a museum gathering.”
“Museum gathering?”
“I can get you a tux.”
“I may have one,” I reply. “But why me? Don’t you have one of your numerous boyfriends to pick from who would be eager to go with you?”
“I got bored with all of them and sent them on their ways,” she says wiggling her fingers. “I want to be single for a while.”
“So what is going on at this museum gathering?”
“A showing of a collection of priceless artifacts which my coven wishes me to steal one of.” She said it as casually as if she was telling me the time.
I stared at her while she sipped her coffee nonchalantly and looked out the window. I glanced around to make sure no one had heard her then lean forward, lowering my voice.
“Did I hear you correctly? Did you say…did you say steal an artifact?”
“You did not mishear,” she says looking at me with a bright smile. “And I need you for you are a vampire.”
“Hey! Shush!” I glance around again. “Not so loud!”
“What? Why? We are in San Francisco and just saw a man in chain mail walk by!” she reminds me. “Watch,” she orders as she stands up. “Attention patrons! I’m a witch!” she announces to the coffee shop while doing a slow turn with her arms out.
“I’m an alien!”
“I’m a lizard!”
“I’m a dog trapped in a human body!”
The coffee shop went back to normal, or as normal as could be, with a few snickers and laughs.
“See, Sully?” she said upon retaking her seat. “No one cares! It’s San Francisco!”
I sigh. “Yeah, I see,” I say rubbing my cheek, feeling whiskers starting to sprout. “I need to get back to my place to have a shower.” I drop my hand and pick up my cup of coffee taking a sip of it.
“So you agree to be my date?” she asks fluttering her eyes at me.
I roll my eyes. “I haven’t and you haven’t told me why I being a vampire will be needed for this?”
“Because the artifact my coven wishes me to retrieve is going to be heavily guarded. I need someone to distract the guards and work their vampiric charms on said guards.”
“Can’t you cast a spell?”
“I will be, but it’s a complicated spell that requires some time to set up. That is why I need you to go with me and work your charms on the guards.”
I sat back in the booth and drummed my fingers on the top of the table. What did I have planned for this week? Oh! That’s right! Nothing. Same as the day before and the day before that one and so on and so forth. My whole life revolved around the newspaper, tracking down witnesses to get firsthand accounts, taking photos of the places where whatever creature of the week supposedly was spotted and…and my life is a shit bowl.
The only reason I worked for Scott was due to the flexible hours and the fact that I felt it was where I belonged coupled with the fact that it made me feel like I was doing honest work instead of tricking, which I had first done upon my arrival to San Francisco. But that ended one night after a particular brutal hook up with some old rich white man that liked my youthful features who had wanted me to act younger. I was being paid eight thousand for the night, so figured why not? Yet the things he wanted me to say, to play as, brought back all the memories of when I was twelve, when…