Order of the Akasha: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (Complete Series)

by E. M. Moore

  Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been good, and it was headed straight for Randy. I pushed him out of the way and a sharp, hot blade sank into my stomach. I sucked in a breath, but the pain seared through me like a red-hot poker. I fell to the ground and stared at the hilt of a knife sticking out of my stomach. Son of a bitch. He stabbed me. The crest of a fleur-de-lis laughed at me from the hilt, and I closed my eyes.

  A cry came from the side of the room and I blinked just in time to see Serena run at Dupre. He caught her hands, twisted her around, and a shot of blue poured out as he snapped her neck.

  My heart caught in my throat. Her body fell to the floor, her dead eyes staring our way with the unnatural angle of her body. I shuddered and waited for Dupre to advance on us.

  A loud hissing noise filled the room. My stomach twisted, and the stench of raw meat filled the air. A pitch-black snake slithered away from Serena’s body and hissed. It grew in size doubling and then quadrupling until it was standing at Dupre’s height.

  Dupre stepped back, his hands coming up as shields. “I forgot you were on her.”

  The snake hissed again, its pink, slitted tongue darting out as it coiled back, ready to spring.

  “No!” Dupre shouted. “I didn’t mean to, I swear.”

  Disregarding his cries, the snake lunged forward, taking a bite out of Dupre’s upper chest. As soon as Dupre hit the ground, it hissed a satisfied sound while growing smaller again. Back to normal size, it slithered up to us. It came up to my arm, and I froze, but it kept going after looking at my bracelet.

  Liam went to snatch it by the head to grab it, but instead, it lunged forward. I gaped in horror, but instead of it biting Liam, it sucked right into his skin, becoming the same serpent familiar it had been on Serena. Liam’s mouth dropped as the familiar slithered up his skin. It moved up under the sleeve of his arm. He pulled his shirt up and we all watched as it coiled around his bicep like a barbed wire tattoo, the familiar’s blue head stopping and laying against his own tail, which twitched as we looked on. Then, his eyes shut, and stayed shut, as if it really was ink and nothing more.

  “Liam, oh my God.”

  My voice woke everyone up. Liam fell to his knees beside me. His head bowed over and he peeled the tatters of my shirt away.

  “Fuck, Dupre’s gone again,” Randy said. He went down to one knee and grabbed my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Norah. None of this would’ve happened if I—”

  I shook my head.

  Flames leapt from Liam and started to spread over me.

  Travis and Gabe stepped back. “Dude, what are you doing?”

  Liam stared at his hands in amazement. “I don’t know.”

  My stomach twisted as the flames worked their way over my stomach and to the stab wound there. The pulsing pain started to subside. The hilt of the blade lifted higher and higher.

  “What the fuck, Liam?” Randy said, his tone in awe, yet with a hint of warning.

  “I don’t know,” he said again. “I was just thinking about how much I wanted Norah better.”

  “We can’t heal people,” Gabe said. “We’ve never been able to.”

  “Norah can,” Liam said, still watching as his magic worked the blade out of my stomach and stopped the blood.

  “A little. Nothing like this.”

  “It’s the familiar,” Travis said. “It’s lending its power to him.”

  Liam narrowed his gaze, and the blade pushed up and out and fell to the side with a thunk. Randy pulled the pieces of my shirt away and wiped at my stomach. There was just blood. No wound. No injury.

  “Holy fuck,” Travis said. “How are we going to explain that one?”

  My head fell back and hit the floor with a bang. I needed a stiff drink. And stat.

  Chapter 25

  We all left Randy’s childhood home that night and I had a feeling we all would never want to go back. The Liderc was gone, buried deep beneath the piece of shit house right where Randy’s father deserved to be. Sure, Dupre had gotten away—again, but at least we’d saved Madame Serena’s clients from anymore death sentences. When people went to someone for comfort, they didn’t deserve to be tortured and then killed. She’d understood she made a bad decision in the end. She’d even tried to help us, throwing herself at Dupre as if she could do something to him. I knew the feeling. There were a ton of things I wanted to do to Dupre, and not the least of which was see him suffer exactly like he’d done to others.

  If only we could’ve gotten the Liderc to turn on him. Urged him to take more than just a chunk of skin from his torso. Maybe next time he could take his whole head. I’d be fine with that.

  Then again, maybe Liam could. He now had a demonic familiar permanently attached to his body. Well, we hoped not permanently. As soon as we’d gotten back to his parents’ house, even before taking a shower to wash the ick off him, he’d sat himself in front of his books and laptop searching for answers.

  All Travis, Randy, Gabe and I could do was look after him. I offered to help, but he declined, inching away from me when I went to touch him. Now that, I didn’t understand. Just because he had a demonic familiar on him in no way changed the way I felt about him. I didn’t care if his body was filled with demonic familiars; he was still my Liam. Plus, a secret part of me thought the fact that he had a snake tattoo curled around his bicep was hot as fuck. I had to wait until the right time to tell him that one though.

  Randy didn’t want to talk about what he saw while he was in that house. In fact, he was the one telling us to give Liam space.

  As they made the inevitable call to Walter to tell them how the case turned out, I hid on the stairs again. Gabe glanced over at me as soon as Walter asked, “No sign of the fifth yet?”

  They all answered no, though they were happy to report that their powers had returned. They didn’t mention how the demonic familiar had attached itself to Liam either, only that it had slithered away, most likely attaching itself to Dupre before he hightailed it out of there. Instead of me getting stabbed in the stomach with a throwing knife, it was Gabe. They’d taken him to the hospital and he had to get a “shit-ton” of stitches.

  I really did need to tell them all about what Gabe’s grandfather said. And I would, as soon as we weren’t interrupted by demonic creatures, crazy psychics, and lunatics.

  I wasn’t holding my breath though. I had a feeling this was exactly what I signed up for. Actually, I hadn’t signed up for this. My magic had signed me up.

  The little bitch.

  I couldn’t thank her enough. As soon as they closed the laptop, I tiptoed forward and climbed over the sofa, landing right between Gabe and Travis. For one of the first times, Travis smiled at me, and Gabe gave me a juicy kiss on the cheek.

  I chuckled at him. “Be careful. Wouldn’t want to hurt your stab wound.”

  “What can I say? I’m a quick healer?”

  Liam frowned, but I poked him in the thigh, at least gathering the teensy bit of a smile from him. When I looked at Randy, the shadows had returned to his face, but when he saw me, they lifted as if the curtain was going away for showtime. I’d take being his only light, as long as he had light in his life. That was all that mattered.

  Sure, we went after the bad guys and won some and lost some, but what truly mattered at the end of the day was that we all ended up back here together. The day that didn’t happen was the day I was done with this Order business. Looking around at all of them made me think about how truly special, yet fragile, life really was. It was like Granny was always telling me, “You can’t crack the hard chocolate without truly regretting it, yet savoring it at the same time.”

  Yeah, Granny, I got you.

  The End

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by E. M. Moore. All rights reserved, including the righ
t to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact E. M. Moore at emmoorewrites@yahoo.com.

  Manufactured in the United States of America, First Edition April 2018

  Created with Vellum

  1

  Holy hell.

  My eyes flew open, and I laid there, staring at the ceiling, my heart thumping a mile a minute. That was…amazing, yet torturous. Yet, so fucking amazing.

  I let out a breath and sat up; the comforter dropping to my hips. I ran my hands through my hair and smiled. What a dream. A crazy Travis dream.

  That was a first, and hopefully, not the last. Actually, hopefully, it would be real this next time around. A fierce flush crept up my neck as I thought about what I’d been dreaming. It was just too yummy to put into words, and too naughty to even describe.

  Why was I suddenly having full-on sex dreams starring Travis? No idea. Call me clueless. Other than the fact that he was super-hot and had been talking to me like a human being recently, nothing else had changed in our relationship status. My body wanted its own way though, but she was just going to have to be patient because on a checklist of things I had to accomplish, screwing Travis was at the bottom, if he was even on there at all.

  So much had happened in the short amount of time I’d met my coven. I’d made a major move, shut one business down and started another, and oh, there was the whole thing about some maniac wanting me for revenge, and having to deal with people dying and me and my guys getting hurt.

  A picture of Liam popped into my head. Though his “tattoo” was hot as fuck, he’d been different since that night. Pulling away from me little by little. Even Randy hadn’t been able to get through to him as if he was trying to ostracize himself from the rest of the group. It pained me to watch him do it. Little by little, separating himself from us.

  A knock came on the door. I rubbed my forehead and called, “Come in.” I wasn’t sure why we bothered knocking anymore. They’d all seen me naked, either getting me to that point themselves, or if they were Travis, accidentally walking in on it. Maybe if he came in and saw me sitting here like this, it would push him over the edge. My animal print pajamas were hot if I did say so myself. Though, they’d look hotter on the floor under his clothes…

  “Good morning, Love,” Gabe said, walking in and kicking the door shut behind him. He smiled as he came closer, and I smiled back up at him. “Just making sure you’re up.”

  “I’m up,” I told him, if not a little reluctantly. I could’ve done with a couple more minutes in the Travis extravaganza that was going on in my head before I woke myself out of it.

  Gabe sat on the bed next to me, both arms on either side of my thighs as he leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. “This might shock you, Love, but you’re nipping.”

  I looked down and sure enough, my nipples were hard and showing straight through the cotton tanktop. I shrugged. “Crazy dream.”

  His eyebrows shot up at that. “I hope I was the main character. Feel free to tell me all about it so we can reenact it right now.”

  I chuckled to myself. The amount of sexual tension running through this house was astonishing. “Don’t you have practice this morning?” I asked, dropping my head to the side. “A very important practice.”

  “All my practices are of equal importance, but they’re still not as important as you.”

  My heart did a giddy flip. “You shouldn’t come see me in the mornings,” I teased him. “It only gets you in trouble.”

  “If that were the case, I shouldn’t look at you at all. You get me in trouble 24/7.” He shot forward and kissed me on the cheek, puckering his lips and leaving a hard smack that made me laugh. “Come on, Baby. Randy put some toast down for you.”

  I pulled the covers down to my feet, but stayed where I was, reluctant to get out of bed. I didn’t know what I was walking into down there. “How’s Liam?”

  Gabe let out a breath and stared at the comforter. “On the computer since he got up this morning.”

  “He has to go to class,” I said. Obviously, I wasn’t telling Gabe anything he didn’t already know, but it felt good to talk to someone about the whole situation. Liam was just off. Not going to class, not eating well.

  “He’s dressed today,” Gabe offered.

  I guessed that was better than nothing, but it still wasn’t great. He’d told his professors he got the flu, so he could take some time off to do research on how to get the familiar off him. Since we weren’t telling Walter and the other superiors about what actually happened, we only had to go on what we found out by scanning through texts and the internet. Liam was obsessed with it. He wanted it off, and I’d never seen him with such a singular focus before. He was determined. “I’ll talk with him.”

  Gabe traced a finger across my hand, his face thoughtful. “Just don’t get all worked up if he says something off to you.”

  “I know,” I told him, trying to smile. We’d already gone down that road. Liam blew up, had a total meltdown practically taking the rest of us with him. He’d already apologized, but I had to wonder if the familiar was making him moody or if it was the pressure he put on himself to figure out how to rid himself of the demonic serpent.

  Gabe kissed me on the forehead, and got up, reminding me again that I had toast waiting for me downstairs. I waved goodbye and took out the all-seeing-eye bracelets I’d finished making last night. I’d had my own bracelet on the night the familiar attached itself to Liam. The thing had crawled past me first but kept going to attach to Liam. If only I’d been faster with the bracelets. We could’ve avoided this mess. Leaving the bracelets out on the bed, I dragged my ass off to the shower to get ready. After washing up and throwing on a dressier outfit than my normal t-shirt and jeans, I walked downstairs with the bracelets in my pocket.

  The silence gave me pause as I reached the bottom of the steps. I checked the kitchen first, but there was no one there, only the sound of the TV talking away in the background. I looked up to find the guys’ huddled around it in the living room. The room hadn’t even had a TV before yesterday, but Gabe had practically begged for one because there were big “football” games coming up and he wanted to be able to watch them without going to a bar or a teammate’s house. Ever since the last run-in with Dupre, we tried to stick close together, so another one of us wouldn’t find ourselves alone and spelled by the bad guys.

  I walked up behind Randy and put my hand on the small of his back. His shoulders were tight, bunched up as if ready to strike. If he was shirtless, I’d probably see the ripple of muscles as he stood there, tensed. He looked down at me as I approached, his face a little on the pale side. “What is it?” I whispered. I glanced around the room. They were all there, including Liam, his laptop on his lap. For once in the past few days, though, he didn’t have his head buried in it. He was staring up at the TV.

  I looked up and gasped. Madame Serena. Her face was on TV. The headline read “Local Psychic Found Dead In Home”.

  We’d been waiting for this to happen. There was no way we could have Madame Serena’s body found in Randy’s parents’ house, so we moved her back to her place and just left her there. We figured one of her clients would eventually make a missing person’s report when she didn’t show up to the shop or a reading, and we’d been right. It took them longer than we’d thought, but they must’ve checked on her yesterday.

  The anchor on the TV spoke in her clipped monotone. “Police are saying they’re investigating whether foul play was involved in the death of a local psychic in the Salem area. Her body was found in her house yesterday after multiple calls were made to the local police regarding several missed engagements over the past week, including the non-opening of her shop in Historic Salem where she owned a spiritualist business.” A picture of the front of her shop appeared on the TV. We’d magically cleaned up the shop’s broken windows when we’d taken off with the psychic to track down Randy. We didn’t need the loc
al police following us around Salem as we tried to do the work of the Order.

  People weren’t aware of the supernatural world living around them. They didn’t know about things like Lidercs and demonic familiars. Sometimes, I wish I didn’t either. Living under a rock wasn’t in my nature though, and since I’d been born into it, I really didn’t have a choice.

  “This is good,” Travis said, nodding at the TV, though he looked troubled like the rest of us. “I’m glad they’ll be able to put Madame Serena to rest now. She helped us that night. She deserves to be at peace.”

  I blinked at him. It wasn’t as if he’d done a one-eighty since the last fight with Dupre, but he had a few noticeable changes. For one, it didn’t feel like he was searching for reasons to say shit to me anymore. It made it much more relaxing to be around him if not confusing.

  Without saying anything, Liam looked back down at his laptop and continued typing away on it. Randy followed my gaze and pushed me toward him. I went willingly. I was going to talk to him, anyway. I’d been trying to talk to him, but for whatever reason, the guys just assumed I’d be the one to get through to him when he was ready to listen.

  I made sure to come around to the side the familiar was tattooed on him. I was trying to prove a point that it didn’t scare me. He always flinched away, but before he could this time, I grabbed his forearm and sank down into the couch beside him, snuggling into his arm. “Hey,” I said, looking up at him with a big smile.

  He stilled, frozen there staring straight ahead.

  I poked him in the side. “I was wondering if you wanted to visit me at the shop in between your classes today.” He didn’t say anything, so I just continued. “You are going to class today, right? You said you’d just take a week off before you went back, so I’m just checking.”

  Liam shut his laptop and leaned over, placing it on the coffee table in front of him. He sat right back in the same position, not even looking over at me once, or even acknowledging that I was holding on to him. “I am going to class.”