by T. S. Joyce
KING OF THE ASHEVILLE COVEN
(A HARPER’S MOUNTAINS SPINOFF SHORT STORY)
By T. S. JOYCE
King of the Asheville Coven
Copyright © 2016 by T. S. Joyce
Copyright © 2016, T. S. Joyce
First electronic publication: July 2016
T. S. Joyce
www.tsjoyce.com
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
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 construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.
Published in the United States of America.
Contents
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
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Chapter One
“All units, automobile accident, ninety-two and Quail Ridge.” The voice over the intercom called over the alarm.
“About time,” Aric Teague muttered as he threw his crappy poker hand down on the table and jogged after the other two firefighters on shift tonight.
Chief Lang was already in the turn-out room handing out gear. Aric readied in a daze, his muscle memory remembering everything he needed to without much mental attention. His head was somewhere else. It was already on the automobile accident on ninety-second and Quail Ridge.
Dressed in the heavy gear, he bolted for the passenger’s side of the fire engine. He pulled himself up, only to be yanked back down. “You’re the new guy on the truck, vamp,” John ground out. “Get in the back.”
Vamp. Aric barely had resisted the urge to crawl into the asshole’s mind and make him piss himself when John shoved him roughly toward where Nick was climbing in the back of the truck.
He missed Asheville.
With a low hiss in his throat, Aric climbed in the back and ignored Nick’s dirty look and muttered curses. As Chief hit the gas and turned onto West Court Avenue, Aric busied himself making sure his radio was working and his gear was fastened. John bitched on and on about why Chief had approved a supernatural for the house.
“Because we have to consider all applications, John.”
“So it’s fair that he gets to only work night shifts, while we have to work twenty-four-hour shifts away from our families?”
“He might have a family, too, and supes work different than us.” Chief Lang was being overly patient. Aric’s last fire chief would’ve told John to get over it and quit whining already. Aric got it, though. He was new to the house, and he’d shaken up a routine they had all been used to.
“And when he gets hungry during a call? When he sees the blood and goes on a killing spree? He probably eats little babies—”
“Enough!” Aric yelled, fury blasting through his veins. “I’m fine on calls. I’ve worked this job for a decade and have never tasted a drop of any of the victims. Go do your fucking research online and keep your pissing and moaning to yourself. And no, I don’t have a family. I have a coven under me. Tread lightly with how you talk to me.”
“You’re a king?” Chief asked carefully over the blaring of the sirens. “You should’ve told me that on your application.”
“What difference does it make?” Aric added darkly as he watched the small town of Winterset blur by the window. “You and I both know you had to hire me.”
And it was true. Twenty-five years ago, shifters came out to the public and fought for their rights. Vampires came out soon after. Supes, as the humans liked to call them, had to be considered for the same jobs as humans now. Aric got through the door of the Winterset Fire Department based on what he was. Now he had to prove he was an asset to this truck by showing his crew who he was.
God, he missed his old life. He missed the Bryson City Fire Department and the guys he had worked with there. He missed the way his coven used to be before he had to force his people to flee the wrath of the Bloodrunner Crew.
As long as he lived, he would never put his coven in danger from another crew of shifters again. He winced as he rubbed his forearm, still sore from his last encounter with Harper Keller, the Bloodrunner Dragon. She’d shoved his arm in the sunlight and threatened to wage war on all vampires. Crazy fire-breather probably would’ve done it too. He should’ve killed her and claimed all her territory.
Instead he was in fucking Nowheresville, Iowa with a pissed-off coven under him and an acute hatred for these ball-busting idiots on the truck.
A police cruiser was already on the scene up ahead, and Aric muttered a curse when he got his first glance at the wreckage. The older model, black SUV had careened off into a deep ditch and was on its side. Beyond, there was only darkness, which meant the car was being propped up by something he couldn’t see from here. It must’ve rolled because the driver’s side door was caved in and a mess of metal.
“Jaws of life…” John was saying into the radio, but Aric was already bolting from the truck. The smoke billowing from the engine said they didn’t have that much time.
“Help me!” the police officer yelled. “Hurry!” He was standing on the toppled SUV, straining against the door.
Shit. Aric slid down the steep ditch, dislodging leaves and earth as he went. The others were yelling behind him, but fuck it. They could get their equipment. Aric had something better.
He began to climb onto the SUV, but it rocked dangerously backward. Too much weight. “Get off!” he ordered the officer. “We can’t both be up there, or it’ll start rolling again.
“It’s only propped up by a couple of trees,” he said as he climbed down, his face pouring with sweat. “Just saplings holding her up.”
Her. Damn, he hated when he lost women and children. Stop it. She could still pull through. You haven’t even seen her yet.
One look inside the shattered window, though, and his heart dropped to the ground. He’d been able to smell the blood from the fire truck, but seeing the gore was a different story. Her hair was such a light shade of blond, it almost looked silver. Her long tresses were curled on the ends, and she wore a dress as though she’d been going somewhere nice. She was completely limp, held in the driver’s seat by only her seatbelt.
“Ma’am, can you hear me?” Aric asked, reaching in to check her pulse. It was there, but too fast and too faint. He searched the mangled door for a week spot he could bully into opening. “If you can hear me, my name is Aric, and I’m with the Winterset Fire Department. We’re going to get you out of here.”
Smoke thickened the air, and the SUV heaved backward and settled again. He could see it now, the deep ravine below. It had been veiled in darkness, but the
boys were now shining lights on the wreckage, illuminating the entire scene. He didn’t mind heights and would survive, but this woman? No chance in hell if he couldn’t pull her out in time.
Gritting his teeth, Aric pulled on the door. It groaned and gave a little, but not even his supernatural strength could pry it open. “Where’s the jaws of life!” he yelled over his shoulder. Fuckin’ humans taking too long.
The smell of gas and blood and smoke was dizzying, and the SUV leaned again with a groan of metal. The snapping of a tree sounded. The officer on the ground held onto the sidestep of the car, legs locked against the uneven footing as he tried to keep it steady.
Aric strained against the door, pulling until his muscles burned and felt like they would snap in half. His skin was tough, but his hands were bleeding from prying the jagged edges of the door.
He could hear them now, the crew. They were securing ropes onto the SUV to steady it from above, but it wouldn’t save her from the fire that had sparked to life in the front of the vehicle. John had an extinguisher on it already, but couldn’t get under the hood at this angle, and that’s where the real problem would be.
This woman had just run out of time. “Shit,” Aric muttered, unfastening his turnout gear.
“What are you doing?” John screamed.
No time to explain he couldn’t shift in clothes this heavy, he yelled, “Get back!”
One of the ropes snapped, and the backend of the SUV rotated down the hill. There was pandemonium behind him from the others, but Aric couldn’t pay attention to that now. The flames up front were getting worse, and he could feel the heat radiating from the interior now. He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t watch this woman burn alive, couldn’t watch her roll to her death in this car, couldn’t lose another. Every lost life stayed with him, wrecked his dreams, made his eternity hellish. He kicked out of his fire resistant gear, reached inside the window, pulled her seatbelt to his lips, and bit through. One down. He had the belt on her lap to go before he could free her.
“Aric, it’s going!” John yelled.
He could feel the exact moment the rope gave. The exact moment the fire blazed up and consumed the hood. The woman lay there limp, her arm in his grip. He had to commit fully to the pain if he wanted to get her out.
Everything slowed as the SUV rolled.
Aric dove forward, pulled the belt off her lap, and bit it as hard as he could. The trees below were coming toward the window fast, and one branch through his chest could be his final death. He wasn’t ready. Wasn’t ready to die, but wasn’t ready to watch this stranger die either. She smelled good. Blood and something more that sang to him like a siren song. Can’t lose her.
When she slipped free of the belt, he grabbed her waist and pulled with all his strength. There was no more time. They were both about to be crushed. Flames reached for her as Aric pulled her body through the shattered window, and bunching his muscles, he blasted upward, giving his body to the bats and smoke that were always there for him. His body shattered, but he held on to the woman. Held on as the flames exploded toward them, held on as he went airborne with her. The bats and smoke were hard to control, contorting this way and that, but always around him, around his center, around the part of him that still felt like it existed.
He lowered to the street below and landed hard. His boots caved in the concrete where they hit, but he wasn’t done yet. She wasn’t saved. So much blood. Smelled so good. Stop it.
Aric laid her down gently and pulled himself together, morphed into his fully human form again. The crew was yelling about something below, and he could make out the glow of a raging fire over the ledge of the ravine, but Aric didn’t care about that right now. He checked her pulse. Way too faint, worse than it was before.
She was losing too much blood, and he could only guess at her internal injuries. “I need a C-Collar and a board!” he yelled at Chief Lang, but the statuesque man with the gray, animated brows was staring at Aric in revulsion, completely frozen where he stood holding a radio to his lips.
His shifted form did that to people. It was probably the bats.
“Chief!”
“C-collar,” the man said on a breath, seeming to come back to life.
Aric had all the paramedic certifications and knew what to do, but for some reason, this woman under his probing hands felt different. She felt important. He couldn’t explain it, but if he lost her here, right now, it would hurt him.
He had to find out where her bleeding was coming from. Had to stop it so he could buy time to get her to survive the ambulance ride. In a rush, Aric ripped off her tattered dress and wiped the dark fabric over the deep gashes in her chest. The blood washed away, but no new crimson welled up in the cuts. What the hell?
Aric leaned closer and studied the pink of the muscle cinching itself up. This woman had accelerated healing. Shocked, Aric eased back and studied her face. She was beautiful with long, snow-white blond hair, skin as smooth as a polished eggshell, pert nose, full lips, and perfectly arched eyebrows just a few shades darker than her hair.
Suddenly, the woman gasped, her back arching against the asphalt, and instinctively Aric cradled her shoulders. It was then that he smelled it through the fog of blood. Fur.
Her eyes opened, and Aric had to force himself not to blast backward in defense. Her irises were a blazing gold, becoming brighter and brighter as her pupils constricted and focused on him.
No, no, no, there were no shifters in Winterset. There weren’t! He had checked, and no crews were registered to this area, so why the fuck was he here, in the dead of night, hugging an obvious apex predator shifter to his chest?
She panted too fast, too shallow. She was going to pass out soon. At the sound of Chief Lang’s boots approaching behind Aric, her eyes widened with fear.
“Please,” she whispered.
“Please what?” Aric asked.
“Please don’t tell them what I am.” A long, soft breath escaped her lips, and then her eyes rolled closed as she went limp again.
Stunned, Aric dragged his gaze down the curves of her body, then back up to her face.
She hadn’t come up as registered because she wasn’t.
This shifter was rogue, and she’d just asked him to cover for her.
Chapter Two
Sadey Lowen winced at the soreness in her body. She peeked her eyes open and grimaced at the brightness of the fluorescent lighting and, for a moment, couldn’t figure out where she was. A high-pitched beep, beep prickled her oversensitive ears. One look at the monitors she was hooked up to, and she panicked. What was she doing in a hospital room?
“You don’t want to report her because she’s human, just like you,” a low timbre said.
Sadey jerked her attention to the window dividing her room from a sterile looking hallway. Right outside stood a man who brought everything crashing back to her. The truck that had chased her down and driven her off the road, the fear, the pain, and then waking up to that man hugging her. She wouldn’t have known he was supernatural, but his eyes had changed color right in front of her, from a soft gray hue to demon-black in an instant. He wasn’t a shifter; she hadn’t smelled fur or feathers on him, but once he’d opened his mouth to speak, his canine teeth removed any further doubt of what he was. They were too sharp, and long. A vampire.
She should’ve been terrified of him because she knew the terrible strength and heartlessness vamps were capable of. But in a panic not to be found out, she’d pleaded for his help instead.
Propped up on the bed, she canted her head and studied him as he talked low to a nurse outside her room. He struck a handsome profile, with eyebrows the same chestnut color as his mussed, stylish hair. His jaw was clean-shaven and chiseled, and his lips too sensual for his own damn good. His nose was straight and strong, his neck thick and muscular. His defined pecs pressed attractively against the thin material of a navy T-shirt, and she could just make out his arms as he rested his hands on his hips in what looked like an irritated ges
ture. Tattoos stretched from below his short sleeve to his elbow, all black ink in swirling symbols she couldn’t quiet decipher, but that wasn’t what tripped up her gaze. On his forearm, there was a perfect line that divided the pale skin of his upper arm from the red, raw skin that covered his elbow down. Vampires healed as fast as shifters, but this injury looked as if he’d had to regrow the skin that had been fileted off. Maybe he’d exposed it to sunlight or something.
She swallowed hard at how painful that must’ve been, and then a wave of guilt washed over her because perhaps it was a new burn, and maybe he’d gotten that saving her tonight.
The nurse walked in, followed by the vamp, who crossed his arms and stood against the wall. He avoided Sadey’s gaze. Even from all the way over here, she could feel the heavy power he emanated. There was no doubt in her mind he could off her in an instant. Maybe that’s why he was here. Vamps liked drinking shifters. Rumor had it she tasted better to the undead. Maybe he was here to make a meal of her when she was released.
The nurse, Jody, her nametag read, had a strange, vacant look on her face when she bent over and took Sadey’s vitals. “I’m not going to report you because you are a human,” she said in a monotone voice.
“O-okay,” Sadey said. “That’s right. I’m a human.” What in heavens was happening right now? Obviously she wasn’t a damned human. Her wounds were already healed.
“I think she’s fine to release,” the man in the corner said. “Don’t you, Jody?”
“Release forms,” the woman said vacantly. Her pupils were blown out so completely, Sadey couldn’t even guess what color her real eyes were. The nurse opened her mouth and froze, lips parted, eyes dead for the span of three breaths before she blinked slowly and said, “You’ll need release forms, and then you are free to go. I’ll have to take you out in a wheelchair because of hospital policy.”
“That won’t be necessary,” the vamp murmured soothingly.