Nightshade (17 tales of Urban Fantasy, Magic, Mayhem, Demons, Fae, Witches, Ghosts, and more)

by Annie Bellet

  The sound of glass breaking forced my jaw shut so tight the back of my teeth sang. “Will that be cash, check, or charge?”

  “Is there a problem?” one of the nuns asked. Fear blossomed in the sweat of the tallest one who peered at me with suspicion.

  One of the clerks, a fire witch who was checking out customers at the registers, gave me the look. The should-I-stop-what-I’m-doing-and-make-a run-for-it look? I wouldn’t be hearing a Braveheart rallying cry from her anytime soon.

  “I need to see about a trunk,” I said as I backed away. “Ms. Holden will assist you with payment while I make sure our staff prepares your cross. It will be a lovely addition to Sunday Mass, I’m sure.”

  The moment the sisters turned around, I hightailed it to the back office. What was left of it.

  One desk was toppled to its side, the supplies on top scattered across the floor. The new panes of glass we planned to use to replace a broken display case window had been shattered to glittery bits. And finally the coup de grâce, that stinky escapee had smashed the box of week-old donuts Bill had left out for his employees. The painfully dry strawberry jelly donuts had bled their gooey centers all over the place like fallen victims.

  There was no trunk, but a disgusting trail of grayish goo went from the center of the room to the busted-out double dock doors.

  Cinnamon, the telltale sign of spellcaster magic, briefly passed through my nostrils as I got closer to where the trunk had sat. Fear pulsed through me. Something magical had left this place.

  From behind me, the doors to the main floor opened.

  “So Nat—” Erica stopped cold. “What happened here?”

  I pointed toward what was left of the dock doors. “I think our merchandise just made a run for it.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  After five hundred dollars’ worth of haunted merchandise slithered away, the morning didn’t go as well.

  “We need to close the store and go after it,” I said.

  “We should wait for Bill,” Erica said firmly. All the while, the expression on her face was stern, but her blue-green-eyed gaze was planted to the ground. I snuck a quick glance at her. She was perfect in so many ways. Compared to my dark brown hair, her blonde curls shined like she was in a shampoo commercial with flawless lighting. Even with a back straightened in frustration and her head turned away from mine, she was still painfully pretty. After nearly six months, I had to remind myself we fought on a starry New Year’s Eve night for the ranking of alpha female and I was the one who had won. I was the one who’d snatched her dreams away. All her aspirations for an arranged marriage with the love of my life, Thorn Grantham, came to an end when I won the right to lead the pack.

  The topic of he-who-shall-not-be-named, never came up during her training as assistant manager, nor as we worked day-to-day together. It was simple in my opinion: Erica loved power and that power came with the position of alpha female. If she truly loved him, nothing I would’ve done that night would’ve come between them. As a werewolf who barely scratched her back the right way, I made a horrible alpha female and my leadership skills were quite lacking.

  Which made moments like this one a bit awkward.

  “We can’t let whatever escaped the trunk to roam the countryside.” I took a step toward her. “If that thing is recorded on someone’s phone or the public catches wind of it, we’re gonna have a lot more than Bill rubbing our fur the wrong way. When magical problems arise in New York City, the magical community sends warlocks to take out the trash.” I drove my point home. “Would you like to know what warlocks do to people like us? Would you like to know how they use us for their dark magic?”

  Erica stiffened. Her mouth briefly opened, but she sealed her lips just as quickly.

  “Would you like a bunch of spellcasters sniffing our butts?” I asked again.

  Erica didn’t dare look me in the face, but her crossed arms and stiff upper lip told me she didn’t want to be involved in matters involving the magical world.

  “Unlike you,” she bit out, “I’m not equipped to handle this. I’m not a werewolf spellcaster.”

  So there it was.

  Werewolves didn’t do magic. According to the Code, or the rules governing werewolf behavior, we didn’t dally in magic like witches, warlocks, and wizards. There was a reason for this though, and I had disobeyed such rules to save my mate’s life.

  “You must think I’m tossing around magic like it’s nobody’s business.” I held in a laugh. “It doesn’t work like that, sweetheart. Spellcasting requires a currency I’m not willing to pay.” Nor would I ever pay it if I wanted to stay with my husband. “So you and I are going outside and somehow, someway, we’re dragging that thing back in here and putting a for sale sign on it.”

  Her jaw twitched. “Fine.”

  She went to the overturned desk. I almost groaned when she reached inside the drawer for her purse. What good would that do? Then I smiled. Erica plucked a .45 from her expensive beige handbag and placed the gun into an ankle holster on her leg.

  So the woman who brought expensive sushi for her lunches was packing heat? How plucky of her. And daring as well. The Code of conduct for werewolves also forbade us from using guns.

  She saw my confused expression and blurted, “I have a Prada handbag. You can never be too careful in a neighborhood like this one.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, we’re overrun with tourists with fanny packs and old ladies with antique fetishes. The danger is crazy real.”

  Except with that thing out there, it actually was.

  Instead of closing the store, I put the college student in charge and not the chain-smoking fire witch who set the counter on fire a few months ago.

  Erica and I left through the new gap in the dock doors toward the parking lot. The overcast sky threatened to bring rain and make our hunt even more somber. Thank goodness, there weren’t any shoppers in our outdoor area. During this time of the year, we sold more merchandise on the rows of tables out here.

  “If you can’t do magic, how do you plan to defend yourself?” Erica asked me.

  “My gun is in my car. I can’t take mine to work.” I didn’t carry a gun per se, but rather a magical weapon I’d acquired during my adventures over the past year.

  On the way to my Nissan Altima, I caught a faint whiff of copper. My gaze scanned our surroundings. There wasn’t much to see. South Toms River was basically a small town.

  The strong, metallic scent of human blood drew us to the edge of the parking lot between The Bends and the next flea market next door.

  We found a pool of blood and nothing more next to a beat up, black pick-up truck.

  “It’s human blood,” Erica remarked.

  “It’s fresh, too.”

  She glanced at the busy four-lane road not far from us. The trail we needed to follow was was clear. Whatever we were after had headed straight into town.

  “Looks like it’s had its first meal. Would you like to go back and wait for Bill?” I gestured in the direction we came from.

  She ignored me and broke out into a run down the Garden State Parkway.

  CHAPTER THREE

  By the time I fetched my weapon, a handy magical blade, from the back of my car, the mid-morning sunlight was nearly gone. Dampness filled the air and signs of an oncoming rain shower increased with each southward step we took. The thick humidity made the hunt all the more miserable.

  No more than twenty feet away to our left, cars zipped past us on two lanes heading southbound on the Parkway. Clusters of trees gave us cover, but they also offered hiding spots for our prey.

  Not surprisingly, Erica took point. I was the better tracker between the two of us, but I let her lead for now. Fighting over who’d be attacked first was a waste of time.

  The goblin blade hummed in my hand. Usually as active as a fork sitting on the dinner table, the goblin blade twitched now. Almost as if it sensed something supernatural lurking nearby. The weird weapon ended up in my possession during a tr
ip to save my dad from the werewolf Russian mafia in Atlantic City. While cornering a conniving goblin bent on capturing my mate and me, I happened to take the little, silver blade he tried to cut me with—not knowing that the goblin blade transformed into a new weapon based on the nearest supernatural threat to the owner’s proximity. All the attempts I made to return the goblin’s toy failed.

  I guess it was mine for now.

  The trail took us southwest past the subdivisions. Past the little league fields and playgrounds with perfectly good morsels of humans to eat. Then the houses disappeared and our path became all too familiar once we crossed Double Trouble Road and came to a stop in front of a long driveway.

  “This place looks familiar,” Erica murmured.

  “Yeah, it would be because it’s my old house.”

  ***

  Before I’d fought Erica and moved in with Thorn at his house on the other side of town, I’d lived here alone as the pariah of the South Toms River Pack.

  I had all sorts of memories here—most of them good—but right now unease tickled the back of my neck. Normally, the forest surrounding my two-story cottage offered a wall of protection from the judgmental outside world, but with that creature potentially stalking my hallways, I felt thrown off a bit.

  “Any idea why it came here?” A hint of suspicion lined Erica’s words.

  “You have to be kidding me.” My sigh was heavy with sarcasm. “I dunno. Especially since the last crazed monster meeting I held was at my mom’s house.”

  Erica rolled her eyes. After she pulled her gun from her ankle holster, she hurried down the driveway, and I followed. As we approached the house, the shadows along the trees grew ten-fold. The cottage, with its bright red shutters and whitewashed wood, seemed more like an evil witch’s hideout from a fairytale than a regular home.

  I scanned my surroundings from the tree line to the house’s roof. Branches swayed about with a growing wind. Wildlife that roamed during the day had already sought shelter. While I checked for danger, I tried to push away the obvious.

  Erica had a right to be suspicious. Something weird had showed up at The Bends, and while it could have gone anywhere, it went straight to my former house. Not the place where I currently resided, but a place I used to live. Had an old enemy of mine sent me a gift? After everything that had happened over the past year, the likelihood that I had a cushy spot on someone’s Shit List was quite high.

  As we got closer to the house, the knife’s hilt grew warmer. My heartbeat sped up. With each step, anxiety bled into my senses, making it harder for me to focus on what I had to do.

  “You all right, Natalya?” Erica glanced at me.

  My face grew warm with embarrassment as I nodded. Hiding fear among fellow pack members was near impossible. The wolf within me whined, but I didn’t so much as speak. I came here to handle business and I planned to do it. I tossed to her the keys to the door.

  Erica fumbled with the lock then paused. Her head tilted to the right. Did she hear something I couldn’t?

  Then I heard it. A faint scratching above our heads on the porch roof.

  The wooden hilt in my hand elongated, extending until the wood became marble and the metal blade darkened from silver to black. The weapon was about my five-foot-eight height. Tiny letters, like the ones I’d seen on the trunk, were carved into the stone.

  Not good.

  Every time this damn blade transformed I had no idea what I faced. A broad sword or a battle-axe I could handle. But when the goblin blade transformed into a weapon like the one I held, I had no idea what kind of madness I was about to step into.

  For all I knew, my lance’s strange writing read, “Run stupid!”

  The scratching sound wasn’t far away now. The closest thing I could compare the noise to was fingernails dragging something heavy across the porch roof…

  Claws appeared first.

  But they were much bigger now.

  Erica twisted toward the movement, her gun drawn, but neither of us had time to react before a pungent mass flew between us. With a wet plop, the creature landed on the porch stairs.

  My face contorted with disgust.

  What I’d seen earlier had been no arm, but the legs of a beast with a serpentine body, a rooster’s head, and black, bat-like wings. Its scaly, green torso shined from the stinky, bubbling fluid covering its skin. The creature, now the size of a Great Dane, hissed at us from its hooked orange beak.

  “Oh, gross!” Erica shot first and asked questions later.

  Bullets pelleted it, but the few that hit didn’t keep it from rushing me. My lance went up in time to deflect its attack. The lance’s blade stabbed it deep in its midsection. Gotcha. It squawked and bounded away, crashing across the porch and through the living room window.

  I headed for the front door, but Erica grabbed my arm. “Are you crazy? We need to call for help against th-th-that thing. Those bullets did nothing.”

  “That thing is a basilisk.” Only once in my life had a seen one, and that particular time, I was reading a picture book. Unlike the harpies and other malevolent creatures I’d encountered in person, the basilisk was considered very rare and legendary. As gross as this harbinger of pure evil appeared, I now understood why.

  “I don’t give a fuck if it’s a chicken or a snake. It’s not natural.” Her normally refined composure collapsed as she jerked her gun toward the house. “If we can’t get help from those warlocks, then we need the pack. What about the Stravinskys?” She paused briefly. “What about Thorn?”

  Did she really just say my husband’s name? “He left town this morning on pack business. He’s not available, but I could call my family—”

  A crash inside the house told me the basilisk was wrecking my place. If it so much as broke a single…Screw waiting. I yanked my arm free and kicked down the door.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  With the curtains drawn, the inside of my house was dark except for slivers of light reaching across the floors. The living room, where the basilisk had entered, was well-lit yet trashed. The intruder’s escape path was evident from the scratches across the wood floor, the gouges it ripped into the couch as it scampered over the furniture, and finally, to the wall where it crashed into my storage boxes filled with fragile collectibles.

  Rage built in my stomach when I spotted massive dents in the boxes. “That motherf—”

  “Quiet!” Erica picked up a lamp and crept toward the stairwell. The wet path went that way. “We need to sneak up on it somehow.”

  “Don’t you have more bullets?” I hissed.

  “I haven’t been caught breaking the Code’s firearms rule yet, but I’m smart enough to not carry a bunch of extra clips around.” Her head whipped in my direction to give me a dark look.

  “Then I should take point.” Reluctantly she let me go up the staircase first. A few times on the way up, I had to hold onto the banister. Gooey shit covered everything.

  By the time I reached the top of the steps, most of the determination that fed me on the bottom floor disappeared. The stench was overwhelming—practically to the point that I couldn’t track my prey by scent.

  Where is it?

  We crept along the hallway. Two bedroom doors were open. The wet trail ended along both.

  So where could it go?

  The dead silence ended as we were thrown to the floor from above. That sneaky rooster-chicken-whatever-the-hell it was clung to the ceiling and dropped down on us ninja-style.

  I rolled from under it, jumping up to swing the lance around. Only to have it swing into the wall. Could you tell I often used these things?

  The basilisk continued to hold a now-growling and snapping Erica against the floor, the claws from its four hands digging into her torso.

  I swung the magical lance around—correctly this time—and repeatedly stabbed that son-of-bitch like my life depended on it. “Get off her!”

  The basilisk’s squawk turned into an ear-piecing shriek when one of my jabs pierced bet
ween its black wings and went deep. It whipped its long tail in my direction, forcing me back.

  With a hard twist to the right, Erica slammed the lamp across the bleeding basilisk’s head and sent it careening into my old bedroom. It landed on my bed, bleeding from its wounds and oozing disgusting goo all over the place.

  I jumped over Erica and rushed it. Hold tight to the lance, Nat. Time to end this.

  The lance’s obsidian blade slid straight through the basilisk’s body into the wall, effectually pinning it. For now, anyway. It reached for me, clawing and biting at the pole. The flapping of its wings made it hard to hear anything.

  Then it slid forward a bit along the pole, edging closer to me. Its nimble fingers got closer and closer.

  “Erica!” I gasped. If I moved back, I’d free it.

  She slowly got up, holding her bleeding stomach. Was she hurt badly? With each step she took toward me, her steps grew steadier. “I’m here.”

  “Pin it,” I grunted, jerking my head to the dresser on the other side of the room. Using her shoulder, she shoved the dresser across the floor until it held the basilisk in place.

  “I’m moving!” I warned her. I stabbed it again and again. I got in more stabs than the chicken kabobs got at my aunt’s house during Stravinsky family barbecues.

  The basilisk grew silent. When it finally moved no more, I stumbled away.

  “Is it really dead?” Erica asked.

  “Good question.” I advanced on the carcass, ready to do a few more hits for good measure, but the basilisk melted into a wet puddle. A puddle that stank just as bad as the basilisk did.

  “It’s gone,” I said.

  Erica sagged against the dresser.

  “Will you be all right?” I approached her to check, but she shied away from me.

  “It’s just a few scratches.” She shrugged, but even I could smell her pain. Her pride would keep her from showing me weakness.