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

by Annie Bellet

  “Still wondering why I didn’t follow her?” Brennan asked as they both stood and watched the two guys, now still on the ground. “If this is like her others, those two will eventually get up and go to a police station and turn themselves in,” he added, and Nain nodded.

  “She’s fucking scary,” Nain said in a low voice. “She was in there, messing with their minds. They were terrified,” he told Brennan, and all Brennan did was nod. “She can’t just run around doing that shit.”

  “She’s on our side,” Brennan said.

  “For now, sure. Who knows when she’ll decide that her goals have changed? Did you hear what I said? She was manipulating their thoughts, taking things out, putting other things in. Do you have any idea how fucked up this is?”

  Brennan shrugged. “I’m happy she’s out there, and she’s one of the good guys.”

  “She—”

  “I’ll say this once. One time, and that’s it,” Brennan said, and his tone was one Nain had never heard from the normally mellow shifter. Steel. “If you go after her, I’m out. She turns up dead, I’m gonna know it was you. That happens, and I swear I’ll kill you myself and then I’m gone.”

  He met Brennan’s eyes, saw every bit of the feral animal the other man could become.

  “I’m not going to kill her,” Nain said. “I want to.”

  “But you won’t.”

  “No. But we have to keep tabs on her. It’s not safe. For anyone.”

  Brennan looked away, then took a deep breath, as if trying to clear his head. “You could recruit her.”

  “You mean have her join our crew?”

  Brennan nodded. “She’d be a good ally, if she’d even have us. And then you could keep an eye on her.”

  “Yeah And you could, too,” Nain muttered, and Brennan didn’t answer. “She’s not pretty. Kinda creepy, really. I don’t even get it, man.”

  “Let it go. I meant what I said.”

  “Fine. Let’s go home. If I’m going to try recruiting her, you all need to work harder on making sure your mental shielding ability can stand up to her.”

  ***

  Nain sat in his truck, silent, summer night humid and empty around him in the derelict neighborhood. He stared at the garage he’d watched the Angel duck into. It leaned as if a slight push might make it fall over. Brennan had finally relented, after a few days of Nain pushing him to find out where she was, and he’d told Nain to head toward this mostly-abandoned neighborhood. He’d caught sight, by sheer luck, of a black Barracuda. Nice car, and his target was driving it. He’d watched her park, jog to the garage, and duck inside.

  As soon as he saw the three guys appear, pulling up in a van, and he guessed they were who she was lying in wait for. It was all so quick. Minutes, and two of them were down, crying and screaming on the sidewalk. The third guy, who was clearly smarter than the other two, ended up opening the back of the van, and three teenage girls stepped out. Gagged, tied with duct tape. They went to the Angel, and she said a few words to the guy, and he drove off into the night.

  The two guys she’d beat up were still on the ground. She gave one a hard kick as she walked past, the three girls trailing behind her. He watched the Angel and the girls get into her Barracuda and drive off.

  He tailed her.

  Through the city. Over to the southwest side, where she dropped each girl off at a house. He heard the joyous shouts as each girl was welcomed home. He’d seen them all on the news, he realized. Taken right off the street on their way home from softball practice.

  His gaze went to the Barracuda. The police had barely made any progress. And here she was, bringing them home and beating the shit out of their kidnappers.

  She pulled away after dropping the last girl off, and he tailed her.

  He realized somewhere around downtown that she knew he was there. She started randomly turning onto side streets, slowing down, then speeding up. He wasn’t exactly trying to hide from her.

  Tonight. He’d talk to her tonight.

  To recruit her.

  He followed her a while longer, and eventually, she pulled to a stop at a curb near Campus Martius, in downtown. He watched as she got out of the car, slammed the door, and stood, arms crossed, glaring back at him. He’d brought the truck to a stop right behind her car.

  He studied her for a moment before moving. She was good and pissed. Not afraid. Her thoughts were a running commentary on assholes who stalk women, and he smirked. Brennan hadn’t been kidding; this broad swore like a sailor, even in her mind.

  Nain opened the door and climbed out of the truck. He walked toward her, and she kept her eyes trained on him. Gray eyes, he realized. Skin that looked like marble, thin eyebrows furrowed as she watched him.

  She liked the way he walked, he picked up from her thoughts. Respected his attitude.

  He liked her a little more for it. Men usually just felt the need to immediately start posturing to match him. She just stood there. In her head, she was wondering what she should say to him. Was he going to ask her name? Would she even bother telling him, saying ‘My name is Molly Brooks?’”

  Molly. It didn’t match her icy attitude, her sailor’s mouth. Definitely didn’t match the way she made grown men cry and roll around in agony.

  He stood there watching her. Her thoughts were getting more irritated by the second.

  “Okay, fine. What do you want?” she asked, glaring up at him. She looked like a pissed off little fairy. Like a little goth fairy, he corrected himself.

  “That was some work you did back there,” he said, feeling her power wash over him, and realizing that she was so much more than she seemed. Telepath, yeah. Telepath who could fuck with people’s minds, yeah. But her power felt familiar.

  Demonic.

  Something inside him tightened at the realization.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  He kept his eyes on hers. “Mind control is a very dangerous skill, Molly.”

  Her name felt good on his lips.

  And where the hell had that come from? He wondered for a second if she was messing with his mind. He watched her tense, then he felt her power draw up, as if she was readying it.

  “You never saw me,” she said, and he knew that she was pushing power into her voice, because fuck if it didn’t almost work. He focused harder, keeping his mental shields strong.

  He hadn’t even had to think about doing that in nearly a century.

  “That doesn’t work on me,” he told her. “You’ll have to try something else.”

  Her mental “shit what the hell is this guy?” almost had him laughing, but he kept a straight face.

  “Who. Are. You?” she repeated. Not backing down. He gave a small nod. He noted her hands form into tiny fists. Fists that, he now knew, impossible as it seemed, sent much larger men to the hospital.

  “What are you going to do? Beat me up? I’m not some street thug.”

  “Am I going to have to?”

  Damn, this broad had balls of steel. “Believe me, the last thing I want to do right now is get into a fight with you,” he told her.

  “You can start by telling me your name, and why you were following me.” He noticed her hand moving, picked up from her thoughts that she was reaching for her pepper spray. Right pocket.

  “You’re not going to need that. My name is Nain.”

  Her movements halted, and she looked up at him with doubt.

  “Is that your real name?”

  “Close enough. Le Nain Rouge. Red Dwarf. Red Gnome. Lutin. I prefer Nain.” And where the hell had that come from? He was good at keeping his past, his story, the mythology that surrounded him to himself. Why did all of that just come tumbling out?

  “Right. Okay. I don’t believe in fairy tales,” she told him, rolling her eyes.

  “It’s no more far-fetched than someone controlling people with her mind,” he told her, and her gaze shot up to his.

  Pretty eyes, he picked up from her thoughts, and he found himself stup
idly swelling with pride. He tried to shake it off, and they spent a few minutes establishing that she was pretty sure he was nuts and he tried to prove that he wasn’t. Apparently, he wasn’t all that convincing, because she opened her car door and got ready to leave.

  “Stay away from me or you’re going to be wearing your balls as earrings. Understand?” she said, in a voice that said she clearly wasn’t taking any bullshit from him. She ducked into her car and slammed the door, hard.

  Or we could just converse telepathically, he thought at her.

  She got out of the car, glanced at him, and muttered, “shit.”

  He found himself walking with her. Answering questions about telepathy and how many others there were. And as they talked, his path became clear. And it most definitely didn’t involve killing her.

  “Your thoughts are wide open, Molly. That can be dangerous.”

  He watched her concentrate, trying to hear his thoughts. “I can’t pick yours up,” she said after a moment.

  “I have a lot of practice with shielding. It’s automatic at this point,” he explained.

  And, he had her. Right there. He watched as she thought it through. “So someone can only hear your thoughts if you want them to?”

  Yes. And only that person. No one else, he thought at her, and noticed a slight blush color her face.

  And then he pissed her off by telling her that her powers were something different, that they could be used for bad shit, that he didn’t trust her, and the blush faded away, replaced by that cold anger again.

  “And, what? You want something from me? Is that it?” she demanded.

  “No.” Yes. “All I want to do is help you learn to control your telepathy. Learn to shield yourself.”

  After a moment, she said, in a low voice: “there’s no such thing as something for nothing.”

  So little trust, he thought to himself as he studied her. The decision had already been made. He just had to get her to agree. “You’re right. I do want something. I want you to come and work for me.”

  “I work alone,” she said immediately, waving him off.

  He hated being waved off, dismissed like that. And she knew it. She could feel his irritation.

  Wait, what?

  Feel his irritation.

  Holy shit.

  “What was that? You can sense emotions?”

  “Stay the hell out of my mind,” she said, stomping her foot in irritation. Then she stormed away from him. “It’s a real violation, that you just keep doing that. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”

  He watched her walk away, and then he caught up with her. “Yeah, and putting thoughts in someone’s mind, making them do what you want, isn’t a violation at all.”

  Faster than he would have guessed, she spun on him, glared up at him, and jabbed a finger toward him. “You know what? Screw you. I do that, and I save lives. You followed me tonight. Those three girls would have been out on a corner within a week.” She wasn’t wrong. To say that Detroit had a human trafficking problem was an understatement. It was something he’d known for years, but the media just now seemed to be picking up on. “I saved them from that,” she finished.

  She looked up at him, gray eyes glittering in anger, her thoughts anything but complimentary toward him. He had the sudden urge to taste her lips, just to see what she’d do.

  Most likely, turn his balls into earrings.

  He didn’t doubt that she’d at least try. Broad was completely nuts, but he liked her.

  Well. There was something new. Most beings just irritated him. He’d been alive too long, seen too much. How long had it been? Over half a century, when all he cared about as far as women were concerned was his own release. Nearly a decade, at least, since he’d even bothered to show any any interest in anyone.

  He shook the thoughts off. And he wouldn’t be interested in this one, either. Not that way. That was just asking for trouble.

  “Easy to abuse that power, once you decide you’ve got something to prove,” he said to her.

  She muttered something about having shit to do and then she told him to stay away from her. He watched her climb into the Barracuda and speed off, squealing her tires for good measure.

  He was surprised to find himself grinning.

  He’d see her again. He knew it as confidently as he knew that the sun would rise tomorrow and that assholes would continue to be assholes. He’d see her again, and she’d join him.

  His crew. She’d join his crew, he clarified as he climbed into his truck.

  It was just a matter of time. What would her fans think, he wondered as he put the car into drive, when they found out that their Angel was allied with a demon?

  Colleen Vanderlinden is the author of the Hidden and Soulhunter urban fantasy series, as well as the Copper Falls paranormal romance series. The third Hidden novel, Home, was a finalist for RT Book Reviews’ Editors Choice Awards for best self-published urban fantasy novel of 2014. Her books have consistently received positive reviews, and RT Book Reviews has called her storytelling “electrifying.” She lives in the Detroit area with her husband, kids, demonic Basset hound, and two lazy cats.

  You can find out more about Colleen’s books at colleenvanderlinden.com, or follow her on Twitter, where she’s @C_Vanderlinden.

  Dragon’s Fury

  Phaedra Weldon

  A tragic part of Crwys Holliard's past is revealed when his lover becomes a target in a serial killer's vendetta against women who have crossed Crwys's path. Unfortunately, this also makes Crwys the prime suspect in their deaths.

  Chattanooga, Tennessee, 2009

  Detective Crwys Holliard slammed his fist on the captain’s desk. “You can’t do this!”

  “That,” Captain Charles Denton said as he pointed a long, thin finger at Crwys’s closed fist still resting on his desk, “is exactly why I have to remove you from this investigation. Your quick temper almost got your partner killed and I can’t lose any more detectives. We’re understaffed as it is. Look,” he leaned back in his chair, unwilling to let this young hothead detective ruffle him. At least not visually.

  But Crwys knew he’d gone too far and fought to rein in his temper. If he wasn’t careful, he would set something on fire as he felt his internal furnace ignite, spurned on by overwhelming feelings of loss and failure. As he waited for the captain to finish, he took his fist away and stepped back. “Look at what?”

  Denton put his hand on a stack of brown folders. “Nine dead girls, Crwys. Nine. Emma Crossley would have made ten if you hadn’t gotten to her apartment in time. I can’t ignore the fact you are involved with Miss Crossley or the evidence you were involved with all of them.”

  “I wasn’t involved with all of them,” Crwys said and took a deep breath as he raked his fingers through his hair and tried not to pace the captain’s office. He was aware of the eyes of the bull pen on the two of them through the glass of the captain’s office, especially those of Ben Rhames. He was the oldest detective in the small police department of Chattanooga, Tennessee and the lead for the Fugitive Unit, one of the six units within the Special Investigations Division, or SID as everyone called it. Rhames was a bully. It didn’t get any clearer than that. He’d tried bullying Crwys, but that didn’t work. So when Rhames requested him as his partner, Crwys knew the bastard was out to get him fired.

  Denton hadn’t said who brought him this new evidence that Crwys’s path had crossed with every dead girl, but he was pretty sure it was Rhames.

  “Close those blinds,” Denton said as he picked up the stack and fanned them over his desk.

  Everyone but Rhames looked away when he approached the window. Crwys shot the man a bird and closed the blinds. Yeah, that was childish, but the guy was a real boil on the butt of SID as far as he was concerned.

  “Crwys, just listen, okay? Don’t interrupt.” He waited until Crwys pulled up a chair and sat on the opposite side of the desk. “First girl,” and he opened the file to a surveillance picture
inside of a bank. Crwys was at the window conversing with the teller, the victim. “Yolanda Dice. There you are at the window.”

  “I was depositing a check. She worked at my bank.”

  Denton pulled out the second folder and opened it to another surveillance picture, this one taken inside a local supermarket. “Olivia Crone.”

  “She was the cashier at the grocery store!”

  “I know that. And look here at the third victim.” Denton opened another folder to a printed picture from someone’s camera. This one showed his red 1964 Mustang Fastback being washed at a local car wash by a young lady. “Udele Knightly. She was a high school senior, Crwys.”

  Crwys pointed to the picture. “I know. I took the car there to help support them because Emma’s their basketball coach and it was a fundraiser. Captain…Emma is the only one of these ten women I have been intimate with. We’re dating. We’ve been openly dating for three months. Everyone here knows that.”

  “Calm down,” Denton picked up the remaining folders and set each one down in a stack as he said their names. “Alice Wilson, Rachel Merit, Eva Sanchez, Mary Golden, Ingrid Bernard, and Nancy Shona. There are pictures of you with all of them. Most are from surveillance footage in public areas because they were all working at the time.”

  “I haven’t slept with any of them.”

  “I would be impressed and a bit envious if you had,” Denton said with a slight smile. “But you’ve crossed their paths. All of them. They’re all dead, their necks snapped. This isn’t normal, Crwys. It’s not enough to base an inquiry or an investigation on, so there’s no Internal Affairs needed. I don’t believe you’ve done anything wrong. But this case has garnered national media coverage, and I can’t afford anyone else zeroing in on this anomaly until I’ve had a chance to investigate it. That means taking you off the case.” He sat back and his chair creaked. “Now before you go off on me again, this isn’t official in the sense that I’m demanding your gun and badge. You and I are in here having a civilized conversation, understand? You’re concerned for your girlfriend and you want to be there for her.” He pulled a form and a larger folder out from his desk drawer. Denton tossed the form at Crwys and gathered the victims’ folders together. “You’ve requested some time off, citing stress and mental…I don’t know…make something up. But fill out that paper so I can make this legit.”