by Hugh Howey
He ran his hands along the curves of her body and purred in her ear, “Your kisses are sweeter than honey, your skin as soft as rose petals… ”
Quent’s purple prose and pure passion finally clued her in and brought her back to her senses. She forced herself to stop listening and looked over his shoulder at the table. The glass jar that had held the love potion was empty. The dosage was supposed to be three drops a day over the course of three weeks. Taken all at once…
“Uh-oh.” While she enjoyed his kisses and caresses, none of it was real. Honey wanted to cry, but instead, she broke away from his embrace and went to the table. “What did you do with the stuff in that jar?”
“The purple lemonade?” He came up behind her and put his arms around her, nuzzling her neck. “It was a little too sweet and watery. It quenched my thirst, but not my desire for you.”
His lips traced kisses along her neck. Honey swooned, nearly giving in to her desire for him. She barely heard the tinkle of the bell over the door in the front room. Breathing hard, Honey disentangled herself from his arms and headed for the front. “That’s the customer for her love potion. I’ll have to put her off another day.”
“Why?” Quent asked. “Just give her this.”
Honey whirled around to find him taking a jar of lavender-colored liquid from the jelly cabinet.
“You— That’s—” Honey stammered in confusion. “Y-You said you drank it.”
Quent set the jar on the table. “I know better than to drink anything sitting around in this kitchen. Besides, I recognize a love potion when I see it.”
The heat rose in her cheeks from embarrassment. “Then you… you were teasing?”
“Oh, no.” Quent went to her and put his hands on her shoulders. His voice lowered intimately. “While I was away, I decided I was going to do something about the way I feel about you when I got back. I wasn’t sure how you’d react if I flat out told you I wanted us to—y’know, get together. Then I saw the love potion and thought it’d be a good way to see if you felt the same. If you didn’t, then I’d say it was a joke to keep it from being weird between us. But you feel the same, don’t you?”
Honey nodded with a sigh of relief and put her arms around him.
“I’m not wrong, am I?” Quent murmured.
“No, you’re not wrong,” she whispered. “You’re just right for me.”
Quent kissed her again, the first of many more, with as much passion as she could ever want.
Lanette Curington
lives in rural west Tennessee with her family and a clowder of cats. She is multi-published and author of the critically acclaimed futuristic romance novel Starkissed, available at Samhain Publishing. She writes erotic romance as Lani Aames. She has been e-published since 2000, currently with Ellora’s Cave, Samhain, Loose Id, Amber Quill, and Silver Heart Books. For more information about Lanette’s other books, visit her website.
Lanette Curington’s Website
Table of Contents — Author Register — Genre Register
Urban Fantasy
Crescent Moon
Ela Lond
The moon outlined the roofs and chimneys before a cloud veiled it and the world descended into darkness, dispersed only by the weak light coming from the streets below.
A vibration shook the inner pocket of Uriel’s jacket. He took out his phone and a smile appeared at the name written on the display. Then he frowned. “Jen,” he answered the phone. “Is something wrong?” He ignored the curious gaze of his companion, Michael, a white-haired man, who stood beside him.
“Am I bothering you?”
“You could never bother me,” he said. “Why are you up? Did something happen?”
“I woke up and can’t fall asleep. You’ve been gone for two days now and you said it would only take two hours. When are you coming home?”
It was three in the morning, and he, with his men, only planned to remain on the lookout for the Shadows for another hour and then progress to the clean-up stage, regardless of if they appeared or not. With ten men with him, the clean up should take an hour maximum. “Around six.”
“In the evening?”
“In the morning.”
“This morning?”
“Yes.”
“Really?” Excitement laced her voice.
He imagined himself coming home, opening the door of the apartment, and her rushing toward him, with her bright eyes glittering, her bow-shaped mouth upturned and her short red curls in wild disarray. “Yes, really.”
“That’s great. I’ll make you breakfast. Not really breakfast, you know, but I’ll take something out of the freezer for you. We still have the bags Gillian brought the last time she visited us.”
He looked at the street below, at outlines of wiry frames that crawled across the building’s walls. “Don’t worry about me, I’m planning to grab something on my way. Do you need anything?”
“I’m low on bread, so if you pass some bakery on your way home…”
“Bread. Will do.”
“The one at Arlington’s is the best.”
Michael nudged him and with his chin indicated the end of the street, where darkness screened the street lamp.
“I have to go. We’ll see each other later.”
“Looking forward to it.” Jen sent him a kiss in goodbye and then cut the connection.
He pocketed the phone, then faced his white-haired friend. “Are we ready?”
Michael nodded. “You have become quite Mamael-like.”
“It’s nice. You should try it.”
“I doubt all Mamaels are as open-minded about blood-sucking immortals like Jen is. Anael told me that she’s still a part of that vampire hunter group.”
“Yeah.” Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to convince Jen to withdraw from her vampire-hunting hobby, but at least Michael’s sister was keeping a close eye on her. He glanced at the men standing on his left. “Shall we?” he asked then, without waiting for them, he slid down the sloped surface and over the roof’s edge. He landed on the ground with his knees bent and his gloved hand against the pavement. He straightened then strode to the hole in the wall at the end of the alley. From the sheath tied across his back, he pulled a katana.
Michael, who appeared beside him, produced a khopesh, a sickle-like sword.
The men following them had their swords drawn too.
Uriel walked through the hole into a dark narrow hallway.
Muted screams and hushed noise drifted toward them.
He rushed across the hallway, then down the stairs into another hallway, where the stale air stank of methane and ammonia. He picked up the steel pendant he had around his neck and put it before his mouth, then pressed on the circle in the middle of it. Small pieces of metal snapped out of it and covered his lower face like a mask.
The hallway opened into a hall.
In the muted light coming from the narrow holes above on the ceiling, Uriel saw that the space was a set of rooms, with half of the walls demolished. There, just behind the remains of a wall, a pile of bodies huddled together. Translucent shapes flew above them, circling them like a predator circles its prey. They were Shadows, creatures with a fog-like mass and solid core that fed on life energy, most often on Deadeaters; vampires, as Jen called them.
He ran to them and, with his sword high above his head, he jumped up, toward the Shadow at the edge of the group, aiming for its core. He cut through it.
The thing shrieked and curled into itself then, as a fist-sized broken shell in the shape of a ball, it fell on the ground.
Dark blobs of fog wheeled around and, like arrows, shot at them and surrounded them like a dark, impenetrable, moving wall. He was ready for them, as were his men, who stood beside him with their swords drawn. Like one, they dashed forward, their blades slashing through the darkness. In the foggy wall, large holes appeared, accompanied by screams of agony. Broken Shadows’ core crashed down on the ground, until only a few Shadows remained. They scattered.
Ela Lond
writes paranormal and fantasy aimed primarily at young adults. A lover of adventure and intrigue herself, she has long enjoyed exploring supernatural beings and the worlds they inhabit along with her adventurous heroes and heroines.
Ela Lond’s Website
Table of Contents — Author Register — Genre Register
Mystery — Thriller
Buck Hunt
Livia Harper
Maybe the fourth lemon-drop had been a bad idea.
Lilly clutched at the bridal veil her friends had made her out of a trash bag, trying to keep it in place as the April breeze slid over the dark hills of the golf course. Twelve of her besties stood behind her. A line of men stood in front. The men wore sneakers, swim briefs, and flesh-toned plastic deer masks with horns curling out of the top. That was it.
Lilly shivered. The whole thing reminded her of that Kubrick movie with Tom Cruise. This was probably her cousin Madison’s idea. She wished to God she hadn’t let her mom talk her into letting Madison be a bridesmaid, especially after the wedding dress incident. But it was all in the interest of family peace, she supposed.
“What is this?” Lilly asked, her face reddening. “I said no strippers.” She really wasn’t that kind of girl, and her fiancé, Eddie, wasn’t that kind of guy. He was studious, sweet. The kind of guy who buys you a book instead of roses. In other words, perfect.
“Prude much?” Madison said, her golden hair blowing in the wind like some model/goddess. It was irritating how pretty she was.
Lilly scowled.
“They’re not strippers if they’re already naked,” Fiona laughed, then glared at Madison to shut it. Fiona was her best friend, maid-of-honor, and, truth be told, the wild to her mild.
“You guys promised.”
“Calm down, sweetie,” Fiona said. “This is Eddie-approved. No one’s going to gyrate anything against you.” She turned with a grin toward the gaggle of girls giggling behind their hands. “Welcome to the first ever Bachelorette Buck Hunt!”
The girls cheered, pulling guns from under the seats of waiting golf carts and jamming them up in the air: a bizarre, cocktail-dress militia.
“Are those…?” Lilly said.
“Just paintball guns,” Fiona said.
“No. Oh, no.” They looked real. And painful.
“Oh, yes,” Fiona said.
“You’re insane.”
“And you’re doing it.”
Fiona slapped a paintball gun in Lilly’s right hand and a bottle of tequila in her left.
Well, Lilly thought, bottoms up.
Fiona fired and the men took off, scattering in all directions, their beige horns swallowed into darkness like billiard balls sunk in the pocket.
The girls divided up into two teams, pink and yellow, with colored ammo to mark their kills, then piled into golf carts.
Fiona fired again.
Next to Lilly, Madison’s cart screeched away. Of course it did.
Lilly rolled her eyes at Fiona, who was sitting next to her.
“I know,” Fiona said as she took off. “But she’s been so helpful with everything. I think she’s really sorry.”
Lilly raised her eyebrows in disbelief, but Fiona wasn’t paying attention to her anymore. She was staring at something over Lilly’s shoulder.
“On your right, Lils!” Fiona said.
The cart lurched to the right and Lilly’s vision whirled from the liquor. When her eyes cleared, she saw a guy, short and chubby, huffing his way toward a tall oak.
“Shoot him!” Fiona shouted. It took a moment for Lilly to realize Fiona was shouting at her.
Lilly lifted her gun, aimed, and fired. A splatter of glow-in-the-dark yellow nailed a tree a few feet to the guy’s left. He heard the blast and ran harder.
“Again!” Fiona shouted.
Lilly lifted her gun and tried to steady him in her sights, but everything was spinning. Then she heard a shot, felt it sail right past her, so close the air rippled against her cheek.
“Ugh!” the guy yelled, neon-pink dripping down his back. He turned and smiled at them, then made a show of his untimely demise, clutching his heart and hitting the ground hard, feet up.
Madison’s smug face pulled up next to them. “One-nothing ladies.”
It was just like Madison to cut Lilly down when it was Lilly’s turn in the spotlight. Or, you know, cut grandma’s wedding dress to shreds when she heard Lilly was going to wear it first. There was that.
Lilly had to stop herself from shooting Madison in the back, right there.
Instead, she grabbed the tequila and took another swig.
It was on.
They chased and they shot, boy after boy falling on a Jackson Pollack-splattered battlefield. After an hour, it was a tie.
Fiona crested a hill and Lilly spotted the very last guy just below them. Lilly had to get him. Had to.
Then Madison crested the hill behind her.
Lilly snapped to position, aimed through her boozy haze. Something about the guy caught her attention. The build of his back, the swing of his arms. He hadn’t been in the lineup. She would have noticed. Her heart sung, like it did every time.
She looked to Fiona, who was grinning.
“No way,” Lilly said. “How’d you get him to do it?”
“He wanted to surprise you. Shoot him! Before Madison does!”
There was no way Madison was getting him. He was hers.
Lilly lifted the gun and shot, but nothing came out. She was empty.
Madison caught up, her cart right next to Lilly’s.
Lilly pawed the floor for extra ammo, but didn’t feel the box. It was gone. Dammit.
She turned to Madison, but instead of firing, Madison just stared at her, face blank.
She smirked and tossed her own gun to Lilly, who caught it, surprised.
“Your kill,” Madison said.
Lilly couldn’t believe it. Madison was letting her win? Maybe Fiona was right.
Lilly lifted the gun. It felt heavy in her hands, different than hers. She put him in her sights. And shot.
BAM.
Just like that.
She’d think about that moment for a long time. How cold the trigger was, how it kicked her shoulder when she pulled it, the blur of Eddie’s body as her shot hit, square in the back, the back she had kissed so many times, vertebrae by vertebrae. And red.
Not pink. Not yellow.
Red.
Livia Harper
When she’s not hanging out with her ginger husband and two stinky basset hounds, Livia Harper writes modern thrillers and mysteries in the vein of Megan Abbott’s Dare Me or Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. Her debut novel, Slain, tells the story of a teen girl, murdered in a fundamentalist megachurch that’s full of secrets, and the fallen pastor’s daughter who must solve the crime. Read the first chapter for free at her website!
Livia Harper’s Website
Table of Contents — Author Register — Genre Register
Horror
Flashlight
Griffin Carmichael
There was a lot of screaming for just the usual summer-overload rolling blackouts. Not that she wasn’t making plenty of noise herself, fumbling around in the sudden darkness. But she really, like, really needed a flashl
ight. The lights had only been out a few minutes, and judging from the utter lack of illumination in sight as she looked out the window as it happened, this was a city-wide blackout.
Nothing new now that the worst of the summer heat had arrived, which was why she kept a flashlight handy in every room. Part of living in the city nowadays. If only she could find the damned thing, she’d take the light and see what was causing all the noise, where all the screaming was coming from.
She bent over to check the last desk drawer, flinching when something hard jammed into her thigh. Of course, her cell phone. How could she have forgotten that? She could hit a button and have a small glow from the screen, enough to finally find the flashlight. The situation must be making her more nervous than she’d thought.
She took a moment to stand up enough to fish the cell phone from her pocket, another second to bring up the home screen. She nearly dropped it when there was a sudden rise in the thumping and screaming outside her apartment. Hands shaking, she turned the cell’s screen toward the floor and pulled the deepest of the desk’s drawers open. Shoved in the back, behind a bag of energy bars and diet shakes—and the pink wool mittens she’d lost two winters ago—was the flashlight. She heaved a sigh of relief, which she could barely hear over the noise from outside.
Well, at least she could see what was going on now. People must be really panicking out there. Maybe a transformer had blown. Maybe somebody’s house was on fire. Could be injuries, maybe even somebody dead.