The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance

by Trisha Telep

  Julia could feel the heat from Henry’s body behind her. She didn’t want to turn. She didn’t want to say anything else. She knew what would happen if she couldn’t convince Evan to turn around and leave with her. He’d kill Henry with no more questions asked. It didn’t matter how long they’d been brothers, how long they’d lived and survived. One would be dead. And she was sure that Henry wouldn’t raise a finger to defend himself. He’d spent his existence trying to keep his younger brother out of trouble; he wouldn’t fight to the death against him.

  She knew it was impossible to have fallen in love with somebody in a matter of minutes - to love them so deeply that you’d be willing to change your life in order to save them. And yet, that’s exactly what she was doing. She’d leave with Evan if it meant saving Henry’s life.

  It was crazy, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. She’d never felt so sure about anything before in her entire life. She loved Henry, and she didn’t want him to die.

  “Don’t do this,” Henry whispered into her hair. “Let him kill me. It’ll be easier for everyone involved.”

  “Shut up,” she told him.

  Evan frowned as he continued to speak to whoever was on the phone. “I don’t understand. Very well, if you insist.” He looked again at Julia and Henry. “It’s the witch who performed the soulmate recovery spell. She wants to be put on speakerphone.” He pressed a button and held the phone out at arm’s length.

  “Hello, can you hear me?” the witch said.

  “Uh . . . yes,” Julia replied.

  “Loud and clear,” Henry said.

  “Very good.” The witch cleared her throat. “I’m afraid there’s been an error and I’m not quite sure how it happened.”

  “An error?” Evan sounded disturbed. “What do you mean?”

  “When you were here yesterday, Mr Frost, I felt as if there was something awry. The feeling has lasted until a moment ago when I got a surge of power here in my lair. My crystal ball lit up like a lantern. And I knew then, without a shadow of a doubt, that something was horribly, horribly wrong with the recovery I did for you yesterday.”

  Evan still clutched the machete as he gazed wistfully at Julia. “There is nothing wrong. I have found my true love with your help and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Every penny of your fee was earned. She is mine for ever. Our souls reunited. I have never felt such deep love in my entire existence.”

  “Julia Donner is not your soulmate,” the witch said simply.

  “Excuse me?” Evan replied. “I don’t think I heard you right.”

  “I know, it’s very unusual. I found the wrong one. The energy I channelled yesterday pointed in the wrong direction but I don’t understand why. No one else was with us. There was no other life essence that I could have drawn from. I can’t understand this.”

  “Well, I was there.” Henry’s voice was soft.

  “Pardon?” the witch said.

  “I was there,” Henry repeated. “I’d followed Evan. I wanted to find out the location of his soulmate so I could find her and murder her so she wouldn’t exert her evil influence on my brother ever again.”

  There was a pause. “And is she dead?”

  “No, still alive,” Julia spoke up. “Very confused, freaked out and generally shaken, but alive.”

  “Then that must be the answer,” the witch said. “OK, that totally makes more sense. I thought I’d screwed up and that never happens, thank you very much. Hello? We’re talking a millennium of perfect soulmate recovery here. I have a very good rep. for this sort of thing, you know - the best in the biz, in fact. I didn’t realize that there were two Frost brothers in attendance at the recovery yesterday. It’s obvious to me now that I channelled the wrong essence and found your soulmate, Henry. Not Evan’s.”

  Henry and Julia looked at each other. He swallowed. “That’s impossible. I don’t have a soulmate.”

  “You’ve never found her before probably because you didn’t have my help, but there she is. Congrats. Live happily ever after. I’ll send you my bill.”

  Julia was stunned. More stunned, that is. So it was true? That deep and nearly immediate connection she felt for Henry was because they were soulmates who’d just never connected before?

  “Um,” Evan said, the machete now lowered to his side. “What the hell?”

  The witch cleared her throat nervously. “So very, very sorry about any inconvenience, Evan. If it helps, I did manage to locate your true soulmate, formerly known as Katerina.”

  Evan’s previously dejected expression turned optimistic. “Where is my truest love?”

  “It’s a good news, bad news situation. She was reincarnated as a pit bull terrier. That’s the bad news.”

  His shoulders slumped. “What’s the good news?”

  “She’s in the same city you’re in right now. If you want to see her again.”

  Evan chewed his bottom lip. “Yes, I’ll be needing that address.” He took the phone off speaker. “Henry,” he said. “So sorry about the mix up. No hard feelings?”

  “Consider it forgotten,” Henry replied.

  Evan wandered off with the phone pressed to his ear.

  “So . . .” Julia began after a few moments of silence. “Strange night, huh?”

  Henry swallowed hard. “I deeply apologize from the bottom of my heart for everything that has happened here.”

  She pressed her lips together. “You should probably know that I’m still not totally convinced about this whole soulmate thing.”

  “No?” He raised an eyebrow.

  She shook her head. “It’s a bit outside my comfort zone of knowledge.”

  He nodded gravely. “I would assume so.”

  “However . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I suppose I’d be OK with learning more about it.” She grinned at him. “That is, if you wanted to teach me.”

  “I could easily be convinced.” A smile touched his lips. “So you forgive me for trying to kill you?”

  “No. But if we potentially have forever together then I’ll probably get over it eventually.” She reached down to take his hand in hers. “But how about we start with drinks back at the bar and take it from there?”

  “I’d say that’s an excellent start.”

  The world seemed much bigger than it had before. Full of strange things like handsome vampires and soulmate-recovering witches.

  Was Henry the one-eyed vampire her soulmate? Was he the man she’d waited her whole life - possibly several lives — to find, only to have him fall into her arms at a most unusual moment?

  She was definitely willing to find out.

  Blue Crush

  A Weather Warden story

  Rachel Caine

  I love the ocean. I love the pounding heartbeat of waves on shore. I love the way sunrise turns the endless glitter into a bowl of spilled jewels - rubies, sapphires, with glints of diamonds everywhere.

  I love the ocean, but I don’t swim in it.

  This is the same reason that Weather Wardens - who have powers that can affect the air and water - don’t like flying. You’re suspended in an alien environment, one that is instinc-tually aware of you and the potential threat you pose. The air always fights back. The ocean chooses its moments, and in a way that’s worse; you can trust it until you suddenly can’t.

  So, I don’t swim. Instead, I put on my bikini of the season and lie out on the sand, and occasionally tickle my toes in the rushing cool surf when I get overheated. But sometimes, as I bake on the beach, I watch people playing in the waves, and I long to be having that much fun.

  “We should go out there,” David said. Reading my mind, as usual.

  I turned my head and skinned my sunglasses down my nose to meet his eyes. My lover was lying in the sun in a pair of black swim trunks and nothing else - a very pleasant picture indeed, and not just for me. David is a Djinn, one of those old-time genies from the bottles; he can be anything he wants to be.

  For me, he�
�s always the same: tall, with the lean, sleek muscles of a runner. Defined, not bulked. His skin is this gorgeous tint somewhere between gold and bronze, a shade you’ll never find in any tanning booth or bottle, no matter how hard you try. He was slightly turned towards me, raised up on one elbow. David likes to wear round, scholarly glasses, but he’d left them off today, and it raised his hotness alert level from smoking to nuclear. His hair was a little shaggy, and it caught the light in gleams of auburn and gold.

  “Out where?” I asked, as I allowed my inspection to move from his gorgeous face to his strong neck, his firm chest, down to the ridges of his abdominal muscles. “Because you look good right there to me, mister.”

  David has the most sincerely dangerous smile I’ve ever seen — dangerous not because it is so lovely (although it is that) but because it just brims with possibilities begging to be explored. The first time I’d seen him, we’d been enemies; the second time, he’d been trying to help me, or I’d been trying to help him, however you score these things. But it had been that smile that had thrown me off balance, and made me vulnerable to him.

  Still did.

  “You never swim,” he said. “You should. Seems like a waste to have all this ocean at your front door and never enjoy it to the fullest.”

  “I enjoy it academically,” I said. “Besides, I need to work on my tan.”

  “Your tan is perfect,” David said, and drew a gentle finger down my arm, soft as a feather. “I want you in the water.”

  The hot flash that washed over me had nothing to do with overheating. “Public beach,” I said, but it was a weak defence, at best. His smile widened.

  “We don’t get many vacations,” he said. “When we do, we should make the most of them. And you know I can keep us from being seen, no matter where we are.” Two fingers this time, dragged slowly and provocatively down the tender inner aspect of my arm. “No matter what we do.”

  I was having trouble keeping my breath. “Man, you’d make a very dangerous criminal.”

  “So I have,” he agreed. “From time to time.”

  Different masters holding his bottle, I thought, but I didn’t say that. David wasn’t in a bottle any more. David was the conduit, the power connection between the New Djinn - Djinn who’d once been human - and the sleeping power of Mother Earth herself.

  In short, he was the boss.

  On the other side of the organizational chart were the Old Djinn, or - as they liked to call themselves - the True Djinn, which tells you something about their arrogance. They had a conduit, too, his name was Ashan, and he was a right bastard who didn’t like David, didn’t like me and didn’t like humanity in general cluttering up his planet.

  Mutually assured destruction kept the peace between the Djinn.

  “You’re going to have to tell me a story sometime,” I said. I rolled over on my side to face David and propped my head on my arm. My long, dark hair slithered over my shoulders and cascaded down, curling at the ends in the moist breeze. “About that part of your life.”

  “I’m not sure you want to know.” He considered that for a moment, and from the wry twist of his lips, he knew how wrong that was. “All right, I’m not sure that I want to tell you.”

  “If we’re together, we’re together. Good times and bad.”

  “I’ve got plenty of bad,” he said. “I’d rather make some new experiences with you. Pleasant ones.”

  “After you tell me a story.”

  He tried to suppress a smile. “Can it be a bedtime story?”

  “You wish. Something personal. About your - criminal past.”

  I think he might have actually started to open up to me. His lips parted, and I saw the resignation on his face - and then a shadow fell across both of us. A big shadow, maybe twice as broad in the chest as David, with biceps as large as my thighs.

  A bodybuilder. One with so much overdevelopment that you could almost smell steroids in his sweat. He’d adopted a stiff military-style haircut, and a lot of truly ugly tattoos.

  And he had friends. Four of them. Although none of them was anywhere near his desperation-level of intimidation. Lots of tattooing and attitude. They weren’t exactly fitting in, but then, they didn’t intend to.

  Muscles stared down at David with what I suppose he thought was ferocious menace. “Move,” he barked.

  David looked up at him, eyebrows arched, perfectly at ease. “Why?”

  Apparently, Muscles wasn’t prepared for anyone to ask a reasonable question. “Because I said so,” he blurted back, and then pulled his face into a frown that looked very odd on a grown man’s face. “Because you’re in our spot, asswipe. Get your punk ass up.”

  Here’s the problem with being supernaturally gifted: you really can’t go around blowing away every goofball idiot who tries to make himself your problem, no matter how convenient it might be. Muscles might think he was badass, but he wasn’t up to going one round with me, never mind David. It’s always difficult to break that fact to them gently, without wounding their sensitive, macho feelings of inadequacy.

  David was already moving forwards on that. “There’s plenty of beach,” he pointed out.

  “I said this is our spot. Now get up and leave before we bury you in it.”

  David looked at me, and I saw the frustrated humour in his shrug. I sighed and started to gather up my things. It wasn’t worth the fight.

  At least it wasn’t until Muscles said, “Not you, bitch. You, you stay. We need us some candy.” He stuck out his tongue and fluttered it in the approved Gene Simmons manner, although he was nowhere near able to pull it off like His Rockness. Meanwhile, his friends spread out around us, trying to cut us off. I noticed that other people who’d parked their towels and coolers nearby were hustling away, sensibly thinking that maybe they had better places to be right now.

  I sat up and pulled my knees together, wrapping my arms demurely around them. “Excuse me? Did you just call me ‘bitch’? Because I’ve got a name. In fact, every girl you leer at has a name. Mine’s Joanne. Hi, nice to meet you.” I let a slow, wicked smile spread over my lips. “Now take your inked-up posse of posers and find another spot.”

  “Oh, here we go,” David murmured. He flopped down on his back, hands crossed peacefully on his chest.

  Muscles stared at me like I’d grown another set of breasts. “What? Bitch, did you just tell me to move on?”

  “Wait, let me go to the instant replay - the judges say ‘yes’, And congratulations on mastering listening for comprehension. Your mom must be so proud.”

  I lost him on that one, so he took the shortcut straight to the point. “Shut the fuck up, or I’ll fuck you up, bitch!”

  Muscles was waiting for David to leap to my defence. He kept glancing down at him. David responded by moving his hands from their resting position atop his chest to a more comfortable behind-the-head pillow.

  “Don’t look at him, look at me,” I said, and shook my hair back from my face. “This is between the two of us, right?”

  “Bullshit.” Muscles decided to get proactive, since he really wasn’t into fighting girls, at least as a first choice. He raised one massive foot and brought it down on David’s stomach. Well. He tried.

  David didn’t bother to so much as flinch, but then, he didn’t need to.

  I reacted for him.

  Muscles let out a raw yelp of surprise, and his back foot disappeared into the sand to the depth of about three feet as I instantly pulverized and dried the sand underneath him, making it as fine as powder. He flailed, fell backwards, and poof, disappeared in a puff of dust. I let him drop about two more feet beneath the surface before I hardened the sand again, added a little water for thickness, and helpfully raised him until his mouth and nose were in the air, gasping for breath. I left him there, buried to the chin.

  His friends stared down at him, dumbstruck. Muscles let out an inarticulate yell of rage and fear. Under the coating of dust, his big domed head was turning brick red with fury. Well, he
could flail all he wanted, he wasn’t getting out of there. Not on his own. Amazing how heavy a little damp sand can be.

  A couple of his friends looked at me and David, and at least one of them looked willing to take up Muscles’ cause. I softened the sand under their feet just enough to let them sink in about a foot. “Whoops,” I said. “Quicksand. Who knew that kind of thing was a beach hazard in Florida? Hey, dude, how you doing down there?”

  Muscles yelled. I didn’t listen. His lungs were fine.

  “What do you think?” I asked David. “Maybe we should go get him some help? You know, eventually?”

  “You mean now you want to go?”

  “Well, he’s very loud. It’s harshing my calm.”

  David shook his head, but I could tell he was more amused than annoyed. I took my time gathering up my stuff, folding my towel, packing the lotion and water. Muscles continued to howl, mostly inarticulately, but sometimes treating me to whole new vistas of insults. His buddies had prudently backed off and were watching from a distance.

  “What if they’d been armed?” David asked me, very quietly, as he leaned over me to pick up the picnic basket. I gave him a one-shoulder shrug.

  “We’d handle it. But honestly, it’s pretty tough to hide a gun in your swim trunks without getting rousted for lewd behaviour. Not that much of a risk.”

  “You were just looking for a fight.”

  “No, they brought me one. I just didn’t walk away from it.”

  David looked at me from the distance of a vast ocean of years. There were times - rare, but striking - when I realized just how old he really was, how full of experiences. “Sometimes you should try walking away,” he said. “In the old days, honour said no one could back down from a fight without bringing disgrace on themselves. Today, you have a choice. You should exercise it once in a while.”

  I kissed him. I couldn’t help it; his lips were close, and parted, and warm. It was lingering and sweet and had the dark, yummy promise of a whole lot more yet to come. “How about over there?” I asked, and pointed down the beach, alluding to an area just around the bend, where it was deserted. “Out of sight, out of mind?”