Love, Blood, and Sanctuary

by Brenda Murphy

  Laurel’s mind skittered to the images of the children in the basement, to Manny with his throat slit wide, and her parents burnt and twisted on the sidewalk. A ball of hot energy gathered in her core. It spun and gathered, whirling and twisting like a cyclone.

  “It’s over, Marcus.” Laurel flexed her energy. Her skin glowed with purple light. Marcus’s hand smoked where it held her hair.

  A sharp howl escaped his lips. The purple light melted the blue goo. It puddled and sizzled around Laurel. The smell of burning flesh filled the room. Marcus wrapped his burning hands around Laurel’s throat, his claws digging into her neck. “Not so easy to kill me, is it?”

  Over his right shoulder Catherine appeared, the glowing kris in her hands. She raised it high, both hands wrapped around the hilt. A hum of words filled Laurel’s ears as Catherine chanted while she lowered the shimmering blade. She drove it deep into Marcus’s back. The point of the blade protruded from his chest. His energy vanished, his power shuttered as if by a switch, and he crumpled to his side.

  Laurel crab-walked away from him and then stood.

  Catherine withdrew the glowing blade. Marcus rolled to his back, his eyes wide. “You!”

  “Yes. Me.” She grabbed his hair with one hand and placed the edge of the kris against his throat. “Surprised? You should’ve taken better care who you paid to do your dirty work, Marcus.”

  Manny appeared and placed his hand on Catherine’s wrist. “Don’t.”

  “Why not?” Catherine’s teeth pulled back in a snarl as she lifted the blade and offered it to Manny. “You want to do it?”

  “Not me.” Manny stepped aside. The legion of children from the pit hovered behind him, their eyes fixed on Marcus.

  Marcus eyes widened. “What? No. No. End me. Do it.” He clutched at Catherine’s leg.

  “Oh no, Marcus, I think Manny has the right idea. I’m sure they’ll show you the same mercy you showed them.”

  The children gathered around Marcus and lifted him, their hands latching on to him as he scrabbled in a vain attempt to escape. His screams filled the room as the children bore him away to the cellar. Manny nodded to Laurel and Catherine. “Thank you.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The sun shone in though the living room window and lit the space. Catherine gazed out at the smattering of people hurrying down the sidewalk. “Take me to your favorite place to eat.”

  “You just had breakfast.”

  Catherine patted her stomach. “I have spent years in this house dreaming of all the things I would eat when I had a body again. Let’s go.”

  Catherine extended her hand and Laurel took it. The electric current of their connection flared as she led Laurel down the stairs. Laurel opened the door and Catherine stepped back.

  Laurel laid her palm on her arm. “Are you okay?”

  Catherine turned to Laurel. “I don’t even know.”

  “If you’re not ready, we can wait.”

  Catherine firmed her chin. “I’m not worried.”

  Laurel raised her eyebrow.

  “Much.” Catherine took a small step forward.

  “I’ll be with you.”

  Catherine grimaced. “Even you couldn’t save me from oblivion if we’ve miscalculated.”

  Laurel drew herself up. “I would find you. Travel all the way to the depths of the abyss to bring you back.”

  Catherine tilted her head. “You already did.”

  “Would you like to check out my restaurant?”

  Catherine started. “What?”

  Laurel grinned. “As Marcus’s only heir, I now own his share of Sanctuary.”

  Catherine tucked her clutch under her arm and smoothed a hand over her skirt. “Am I overdressed?”

  Laurel raked her gaze over her thick curves set off by her mid-century skirt and sweater set. “Not at all.” She held out her hand. “Come on. They do a great brunch. The stuffed French toast is to die for.”

  “Interesting choice of words.”

  “Not what I meant but I know you’ll love it.” Laurel lifted her hand and pressed her lips to her palm. “And then we can come home and work off the calories.”

  “You are incorrigible, now that you’ve got your feet under you.”

  Laurel kissed her wrist, her lips lighting a fire under Catherine’s skin. “Do you want meek, unsure Laurel back?”

  “Never.”

  Laurel pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Let’s go.”

  They stepped out of the townhouse and walked down the stairs hand in hand. A few folks looked up from their phones, but most people ignored them. Catherine’s long legs and quick pace had Laurel hustling to stay even with her. “Slow down, please, it’s not a race.”

  Catherine glanced at Laurel. “I’m sorry. I almost want to run. I can’t believe I’m outside.”

  Her giddy laugh made Laurel laugh too. She glanced at Catherine’s pumps. “You can run in those?”

  Catherine laid her hand on Laurel’s arms. “Darling, I’ve destroyed armies in heels. I have centuries of practice.”

  Catherine glanced up as the rows of town houses gave way to high-rise buildings. “There was the most delightful deli on this corner.” A frown swept over her face and she slowed her steps. “This was a neighborhood. Town houses and apartment buildings.” She stopped as they reached the corner and turned in a slow circle. “There was a school down that street. And shops. Gone.”

  Laurel touched her arm. “This way. It’s in the next block.”

  Catherine pressed her lips together and followed Laurel to the coffee shop door that led to Sanctuary.

  *

  Their brunch had not disappointed. Laurel lay on the sofa and rubbed her tummy. “I think I hurt myself eating.”

  Catherine snorted. “Like that could happen.”

  “Did you like it? Being outside?”

  Catherine shrugged. “Not as much as I thought I would.”

  A frown swept over Laurel’s face. “We could go somewhere else next time.”

  “It’s not where we go, it’s the things that are not where they used to be. The feel is different.”

  “Sixty years is a long time.”

  Catherine huffed. “I’ve lived centuries, but never been shut off from the world, never as a prisoner. I would change as the world evolved. I feel out of step now. I don’t know if I want to stay on this plane.”

  Laurel hugged her close. “You’ll catch up.”

  “I don’t know if I want to.” Catherine pushed back from Laurel’s arms and left the couch. She paced the living room. “You don’t have to leave this world. You’re young. And now you have many lifetimes to explore in this dimension. I don’t want to hold you back.”

  Laurel frowned. “You want to leave me? Aren’t we bonded?”

  “A bond is not a prison. We set the rules, we will always have a connection. I don’t want you to stay with me if you want to stay here, if you have places you want to travel to. Or others you want to be with.”

  “Is this about Carla? She always flirts. There’s nothing between us.”

  “Do you wish there to be? She is exquisite.”

  Laurel stepped in front of her, blocking her path, and placed both hands on her shoulders. “I want you, Catherine. I want to be with you. I don’t have any interest in Carla or anyone one else. I want you. However that is. Wherever that is.” She squeezed Catherine’s shoulders. “We can take as much time as you need to feel comfortable in the world again. Or travel to whatever dimension you want.” Laurel cupped her face. “What’s the use of being immortal if I can’t spend it with you?”

  “You say that now. What will you say three hundred years from now? You’re what? Thirty-two? How can you be so sure?”

  Laurel gripped her hips and brushed a kiss over her lips before she spoke against her mouth. “I’m thirty-six and I don’t know what I’ll say in three hundred years. Guess you’ll have to stick around and find out.”

  Catherine tugged her close and held tig
ht. “Always?”

  “Always.” Laurel rubbed her back in small circles. “Come on, I have some new ideas for the playroom.”

  “The playroom? We have a playroom?”

  Laurel stepped back and held out her hand. “We do now. And you mentioned a kneeling bench you wanted.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Oh, I most certainly did.” Laurel walked backward toward the stairwell.

  “Wait. We haven’t decided anything.”

  “Do we need to decide now? You have a schedule, or appointment, I don’t know about?” Laurel stepped up on the landing, unbuckled her belt, and stripped off her jeans. She tossed them aside before she pulled her shirt over her head and let it fall to the floor. She crooked her finger at Catherine. “Come on. We can be serious tomorrow.”

  “You said that yesterday.”

  “We have all the tomorrows we need to figure things out.” Laurel’s mouth turned down. “Unless—” she crossed her arms over her chest and a flush colored her pale skin. “—you’re done with me?” The fear and uncertainty in her voice broke open Catherine’s heart.

  “Never.” Catherine strode to the landing, swept her hands under her legs, and lifted Laurel into her arms, holding her close to her chest. She peered into Laurel’s eyes and held her gaze. “Never, my love.”

  Laurel wrapped her arms around Catherine’s neck and snuggled into her skin as she carried her up the stairs. The stairwell transformed into a mountain path, trees grew up thick, jeweled orchids flowered, and dark-purple vines twisted in an arch over them. A riot of color and floral scents blended with cedar and pine as their energy twisted and twined together as they climbed toward their future.

  Acknowledgements

  This collaboration is a result of several virtual meetings between two of my favorite people in the world. Fiona and Megan had charmed me with their published works before we ever met in person. It was a joy to work on this project together. I look forward to many more years of friendship and future collaborations. My editor, Elizabeth Coldwell’s steadfast support and encouragement makes everything seem possible, and for that I am grateful. To my Con Misfits and Lesfic Sprinters, my world is brighter because you all are always there for me, thank you.

  About Brenda Murphy

  Brenda Murphy writes short stories and novels. She is a member of the Golden Crown Literary Society. Her novel Double Six won the GCLS 2020 Goldie for Erotica. When she is not loitering at her local library and writing, she wrangles one dog and an unrepentant parrot. She writes about life, books, photography, and writing on her blog, writingwhiledistracted.com.

  I hope you enjoyed reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it. For information on book signings, appearances, work in progress snippets, previews and sneak-peeks, sign up for my email list at:

  Website

  www.brendalmurphy.com

  Facebook

  www.facebook.com/Writing-While-Distracted

  Twitter

  @bmurphysideshow

  Other NSP books by author

  Dominique and Other Stories

  One

  The Rowan House series

  Sum of the Whole

  Both Ends of the Whip

  Knotted Legacy

  Complex Dimensions

  Double Six

  University Square series

  On The Square

  Lockset

  With Megan Hart

  Soul Burn

  We Choose to Be

  Megan Hart

  For everyone who loves a little bite.

  Chapter One

  “That’s all there is to it? I thought there would be…more.”

  The man in front of Hadassah wore his business suit like it had been grown on him—both in its perfect fit and in the way she could not have imagined him in anything more casual. No golf tees and khakis for this guy, no way. He leaned forward now, his big hands on the tabletop, the wound on the back of his right one still slightly seeping below the gauze pad. Sweat had pearled in his hairline. His lips, chapped and raw, showed where he’d been chewing them.

  It was almost always the same with these people. The same questions, the same fears, the same irrational demands. Many of them had already made their way through a plethora of fortune-tellers, psychics, tarot card readers, crystal-ball gazers, and tea-leaf interpreters before they found their way to Hadassah Batrivka’s office, but invariably, they expected her to somehow put on the same kind of spectacle. Like a sideshow performance. She was used to it, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t also tired of it.

  “That’s it,” Hadassah said calmly as she slipped a hand beneath the table, ready to trigger the alarm that would send Sanctuary’s security rushing in to help her. It wouldn’t have been the first time, but she always hated having to do it. People came here for help, and even if they deserved the rough exit, having them hoisted out by the scruffs of their necks always seemed to upset the balance of things. Ruined the rest of the day, for sure.

  “Listen here, you…” Words failed him, and he became visibly smaller. Shrunken. He let his head fall onto the table as his shoulders heaved with a series of guttural cries that would have broken her heart, if this guy wasn’t such a colossal piece of human garbage.

  He didn’t deserve her compassion, not really. He’d come to her, after all, with the desperation born of someone who’d tried every other avenue without getting the answers he wanted. But they were the only answers she had for him, and possibly unlike the others whose advice he’d sought, Hadassah could be sure that hers was accurate. At least until and unless he made some changes in his life, and he didn’t seem the kind of guy to take any kind of personal responsibility for anything. It was always going to be someone else’s fault. Someone else to blame. No matter what she’d told him about his part in his own destiny, he wouldn’t believe her.

  “But you took…you took my fucking…blood,” he gasped out. “How can you read my blood and not be able to tell me what I want to know?”

  Hadassah spoke sharply, well beyond the limit of her patience with this guy. Her fingertip stroked the call button, but she didn’t yet press it. “I told you what you wanted to know. That does not mean it was what you wanted to hear.”

  Mr. Businessman lifted his head. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. Stubble dotted his cheeks and chin. He passed a fissured tongue over the wreckage of his lips. His fingers twitched on the tabletop. The blood had stopped leaking from the slice in the back of his hand.

  Hadassah’s didn’t move her hand, but she relaxed a bit, now. Years of dealing with people like this guy had honed her skills in disarming a situation. She didn’t need blood to read every single emotion or potential reaction.

  “It’s time for you to go, now,” she said, still calm, her voice still soothing. Not giving him an option, but not being aggressive either.

  “Do it again. Take more this time.” He pushed up the sleeves of his jacket and shirt to expose a wrist encircled by a very expensive watch. “Take it from here, right from the vein. You didn’t get enough the first time.”

  “It doesn’t make a difference where I take it from. The answers are the same. And it doesn’t matter if I take more,” she added, “because the answers aren’t going to change.”

  Not without some kind of changes from him, first, she thought, but didn’t say aloud. She’d already gone through all that with him. How he had the responsibility for his own future, and she was only an interpreter of what she read in his blood. Clearly, he hadn’t listened, but she didn’t make the rules.

  He stood and shook a finger at her with a trembling hand. “Damn you. Right to whatever hell will have you.”

  “You can find your own way out,” Hadassah replied without raising her voice.

  He did, stumbling a bit. His reaction to what she’d revealed to him had been so extreme that she hadn’t offered him a cup of the restorative herbal tea she usually gave her clients to counteract the effects of what she’d pulled out of them.
It was not the blood loss, since nobody would ever be adversely impacted by losing less than what they took if you needed your cholesterol checked. It was what she removed along with the blood that left her clients weak and shaky, on unsteady legs. Some took it worse than others. This guy was pretty bad off, but Hadassah didn’t care if he fell flat on his face in the street and broke out all his teeth. As far as she was concerned, someone who’d taken another life on purpose deserved whatever punishment they got, and probably worse than they ever would.

  “Bitch,” he tossed back over his shoulder as he passed through the doorway.

  Hadassah waited until he’d slammed the door behind him before she relaxed in her chair. She’d been called worse, by better people than that asshole. Still, the negative energy he’d been pushing at her for the past hour had left her in dire need of her own restorative, and she was not going to find it in the form of herbal tea.

  Quickly, she put away the tools of her craft. As a hemomancer, she was immune to all blood diseases, but she put the sharp into the biohazard container anyway—her practice might be magic, but Sanctuary’s rules for renting space followed all current legal and health guidelines. She tidied the remains of the alcohol prep pad, cotton balls, and adhesive bandage she hadn’t even used. Her ancestors had simply sliced a vein with a thorn, a pine, a needle, or in some cases, an exquisitely honed bone, but modern times demanded updated practices.

  By the time she’d finished clearing her workspace, the clock showed three in the afternoon. Never mind that “it’s five o’clock somewhere” baloney, it was wine o’clock right now. Fortunately, the bar at Sanctuary was always open, and it took only a few minutes to get to it from her office.

  *

  “Hey, Red.” Hadassah tipped a nod at the bartender.

  “The usual?” asked Red, a statuesque, flame-haired witch who’d never, in Hadassah’s memory, gone by any other name.

  “Yes. Thank you.” Hadassah settled onto her favorite seat, the one at the end of the bar, and accepted the generously poured glass of house red wine. She’d never asked what it was, a Cabernet, a Merlot, a blend, but she had a suspicion it was something special to Sanctuary. Therefore, like everything and everyone else in this place, it was unique and unclassifiable.