Poison and Potions: a Limited Edition Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Collection

by Erin Hayes

  "Like you? Is that how...?"

  "It is. And it seems he plans to keep you this way – human –for as long as he needs you to feed his addiction."

  "And then?"

  "And then he will either decide to take that final swallow and make you one of us, or not."

  "Oh."

  "That's why I gave you the silver. Ambrogio is the oldest, the first vampire. He doesn't believe he has to follow the rules the rest of us do. What silver does to me, does one thousand times worse to him. Proving yourself more valuable than being just his human lover is your only hope of staying alive. His...seed...will do its work as well as any plasma will."

  "So he can come for me again."

  He put his foot on the windowsill. "Yes. If he continues to give you that, then he plans to keep coming back for you."

  Keep coming back and draining me nearly to the point of death only to fill me again with his seed so that I could heal so that he could come back again. An infinite loop that guaranteed I would be his ever ready and personal candy bar. Magnus didn't have to tell me what it might mean when Gio stopped giving as well as taking.

  "Then I guess I should be grateful."

  He shrugged. His blond hair moved in the breeze, making him look even more like an old world Viking. "What you really should be is diligent. Use the silver. Find the priestess."

  In the next instant, he fell out the window, and I had the feeling that the black shadow that I saw covering the moon was more than a cloud.

  Use the silver and find the priestess. It seemed that whether I liked it or not, I was in the game. Suffer Gio's attentions until I could defend myself against him. If the answer lay in finding him a priestess, then find a priestess I would.

  I was spent and weak even the next morning, but I bolstered myself with coconut water after researching online how World War I soldiers used it as a replacement for plasma while they were in the Pacific. I was far from fully recovered, but I gathered the rental clerk's borrowed clothes into a bundle, jammed the bracelet onto my wrist, and called a cab.

  It couldn't be coincidence that Magnus needed me to recruit what he termed a priestess when he knew I'd been dressed as one at the party. The fact that he took the bracelet and tossed it to me meant that he knew exactly what he was asking for.

  So many days after Halloween, the shop looked as good as abandoned. I collected my bundle and paid the cabbie.

  "Wait here," I told him. If Magnus was only in town for another week, I wasn't going to waste an hour. Surely, if I delivered the woman, he would pay the cab fare. "I could be a while, but trust me, you will be paid."

  He rolled his gum over in his mouth and blew a bubble. "I got time for a smoke?"

  "Smoke until you're preserved for all I care," I told him and pushed out of the cab.

  She was standing behind the counter when I entered as though she was waiting for me. She looked every bit as sassy as the first time I met her. This time, however, I was less grief-stricken and frantic. This time, I was just terrified.

  "Flip the sign." She jerked her chin at the door when she caught sight of me. "And lock it."

  I did as I was bid, then turned toward her. "We have to talk."

  Without a word, she turned away from me and moved toward the narrow steps behind the counter. I followed her, watching the way she climbed, placing each foot perfectly in the middle of each tread. There was no sway to her hips, only a masculine and perfunctory stride.

  I dropped the bundle of clothes onto the nearest chair.

  "Bacalou has you," she said. A strange glint lit the green flecks in her mocha eyes. "I told you to come back. I told you."

  I took a step toward her. "I couldn't. But I can undo it."

  Instead of answering, she turned heel for the small kitchenette and dug beneath the cupboard. She came up with a wide stainless steel basin that she filled with water.

  "Help me," she said pointing at a narrow side table with her chin.

  I pulled it from its spot and set it in the middle of the room. She placed the bowl on top and then gathered the card-table chairs and placed them on either side.

  "Sit." She gripped my wrists over the table, wrapping her fingers around the bracelet. Grateful for an opportunity to rest my weary legs, I collapsed into the chair opposite her.

  "What..."

  She placed an elegant mocha finger against her lushly balmed lips, shushing me. "You're weak."

  I bristled under the accusation. "You would be too if you'd been dumped after four years, after giving every last bit of yourself away to a man who didn't appreciate it."

  Straight back to him again, I thought. After all I'd gone through the last week, it all came back to how he'd drained me of my self-esteem the way Gio had drained me of my blood. I wasn't sure which one was more insidious.

  "You expected a man to appreciate it?"

  She pinned me with her direct stare. For the first time I noticed a sprinkle of freckles made tiny constellations across her nose, that her complexion other than that was so smooth and fine it could have been lightly creamed coffee. While her hair had been a mushroom around her head the last time I visited, this time it was styled into short dreadlocks held back by a broad bandanna.

  She shifted in her chair, her attention moving briefly to the basin of water. "Truth be told," she said. "Even a woman can't appreciate complete surrender. I don't think it's in our nature to ever really give it."

  She pulled my hand toward her and flipped it over so that it was palm up. "But that's not what I meant by weak. You look even more like a pile of shit than the first time you came."

  "Oh."

  She dug her thumbnail into the middle of my palm. Although it hurt, I didn't have the strength to pull away. "Look into the water. Tell me what you see."

  At first I saw nothing, but the more she squeezed my hand, the more the water became like a window. I looked through it to see a black sky, clouds shifting and wavering until they spread away from the face of the moon.

  "It's what I see too," she said.

  I flicked my gaze upward to see her watching me intently.

  "You said you could undo it."

  I nodded. "I can. Come with me."

  "Come with you where?"

  I could tell she was testing me; it was as clear from her face as it was from her tone. I had to be careful.

  "To Bacalou's."

  She shook her head with a slow smile. "No, ma chere. Bacalou is here. You dealt with me long before you became the vampire's."

  I couldn't stop a gasp that escaped my throat as she twisted my wrist.

  "You think I don't know?" she accused. "You think I don't know what you are? A thrall is so easy to control. He just made it easier for me."

  She released my hand, putting both of her palms against my cheeks, pulling me across the table to stare into her face. She smelled of cinnamon and sandalwood, her breath like licorice.

  "That bracelet makes you mine. You accepted it."

  As quickly as she cupped my face, she let me go. I slumped against the back of my chair, completely spent. The only thing keeping me conscious seemed to be the electricity in the air. She stood from her side of the table and rounded the corner, slipping her fingers behind my ear to cup the nape of my neck.

  "The bones have their own magic. Through them, you are joined to the spirit who wore them in life."

  "And who was that?"

  "She was my lover."

  Full-blown panic spread razor wire through my chest. Each breath came at the cost of burning sharp pain slicing through my lungs. She gripped my neck as though she sensed I was about to bolt, and I gripped the edge of the table to force myself to stay calm.

  "I don't believe in zombies," I hissed. There was no way, just absolutely no way all this was happening to me.

  She smiled, giving me the impression that she completely understood the irony. "There are all sorts of zombies, ma chere. You can call yourself whatever you like."

  "And what would you c
all me?"

  I felt the pads of her fingers massaging my occipital bone. "I'd say you were my bitch."

  She leaned down and placed her lips on mine, pulling from each searing breath until I felt as though I could focus on each morsel of tissue in my body, each throb of every organ, and I knew I was more than the sum of my parts. I knew I was more. Period.

  There are certain things about life that a gal takes for granted. She imagines she will be healthy. She imagines she will grow old someday but not today, and she imagines that whatever nasty thing is happening at the moment, hell, it could always be worse.

  She also imagines she will be the only one in her skin as she lives that life. And I knew in that moment that being a solitary person wearing my flesh was just another thing I had been taking for granted. I belonged to Bacalou, and Bacalou wanted her lover returned.

  I couldn't imagine things being worse.

  Chapter Nine

  WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

  If I thought life sucked when all I had to worry about was working for a Viking vampire as a live-bait recruiter while simultaneously trying to avoid an altogether different and even more ancient vampire's oppressive lust for me and my chianti-tinged blood, life certainly became a vacuous suck-fest of monumental proportions as a minion for Bacalou.

  Magnus and Gio. Two very old vampires who seemed to believe I was now their possession, and the priestess Bacalou, who claimed to hold the same deed of property. It was enough to make even the fully-hemoglobined dizzy. To quote my long deceased grandmother who was fond of quoting the good book even if she did get the words wrong, "A house divided cannot stand, for man cannot serve God and mammoth."

  Well, maybe man just didn't have his servitude skills down good enough, because it certainly seemed as though woman could serve three masters at once and still be expected to hold down a full-time job. Which I'd lost, actually, because I'd been too punch-drunk to make it to work the day after the Halloween party that bound me to three masters. Try explaining that one to your boss: sorry, I can't make it in today. Somebody drained almost all of my blood and I'm having a devil of a time getting the little drinking bird to tip forward long enough to spill my half vat of remaining fluid into my feet so that I could fall out of bed and into my shoes.

  If I had somebody I could text who cared about me, or a social media presence with any friends at all who hadn't disowned me, lil ole Jade would be posting FML all over the stratosphere to anyone who would listen in the hopes someone would try to ferret out my troubles. As it stood, I'd left all of those people behind when I moved to the city with the rat of a fiancé who dumped me to pursue skirt on the same level of monumental proportions as my present suck-fest.

  Seriously. It was almost comical.

  The city was hot and sweltering the summer I came here with Mr. Lick-his-dick and it was hot and sweltering now, even in early November just a week after the Halloween party that changed my life and put the F in my personal FML.

  Yet, one week was far too late to start resenting the fact that I'd gone to that party in the first place with a stranger - who just so happened to be dead now, his blood drained in front of me by the deadly gorgeous afore-mentioned Viking-esque vampire in a fit of rage. Or had it been pique? I certainly wouldn't know; the only exposure I'd had up to that point to the undead besides bad movies and bad fiction was to bare my throat to Gio like a simpering bondage chick and wait for the punishment. I wasn't exactly an expert on vampire emotion. So rage or annoyance? Don't ask me which had made Magnus murder my date; I was beginning to think that vampire mood swings were controlled by blood more than a poor breeding female suffering PMS. VMS to coin a new acronym. All I knew for sure was that the hot as hell Sam, who had brought me to that fateful party, was a recruiter for the undead. He'd lured me as a tasty morsel of bait for Gio, who loved grief and vulnerability more than any other taste. Imagine that: meeting two vampires in one night. A vampire in a lifetime---hell, a vampire at all in a rational, human inhabited world---how lucky could a gal get?

  Luckier than that, it turns out, because as dame fortune would have it, (a lady who, if you ask me, was most definitely on the rag Halloween night)I had the added benefit of tasting as sweet to this vampire as his first draft of chianti back in the old country when he was human. Ah, PMS. You do know how to bring a man to his knees.

  I suppose my vintage made each belt that much headier for the greedy and ancient Gio. He loved it so much he wanted to enjoy me over and over again. And in order to help me rebuild my strength once he drained me, he primed me full of his disgusting vampire seed as a sort of medicinal internal poultice. Talk about bad S&M. I was caught in an endless loop of sex, draining, and sex again. I was sick of it. Sick unto death.

  Too bad for me I had an incredible survival instinct that just kept me going. My Viking benefactor, who just so happened to be the owner of an elite club Sam recruited for, offered me a way out of my mess. All I had to do was recruit human blood bags for him and get a job at some government agency--heaven only knew why or cared. All I knew was that his next recruit needed to be a priestess.

  I had no idea about the job, but I did know a priestess. Just so happened that I'd run into one when I'd been looking for a costume. Granted, I hadn't truly believed she was the real thing at the time. And it was none of my business why Magnus wanted either one of them, I just knew I wanted out. Out. If it meant sacrificing somebody else that I could've cared less about - so be it. That chick's ass was grass.

  Except, joke on Jade. The bone bracelet that bitch tied on me so magnanimously as she gifted me a costume, also tied me to her. Bacalou indeed. Who could imagine that this priestess actually had the true juju? Bacalou must mean she who will screw you over in Haitian because now it seems I've ended up with that bitch's lover inside me. And not in a good, moan-against-the-sheets kinda way. No. The lover is long dead and has taken up residence in my body as a ghost or some ridiculous thing.

  All remarkably unbelievable shit if you ask me, but since all the other remarkably unbelievable shit is true, then why the hell wouldn't this particular turd be.

  Some part of the old Jade crept out from the cupboard she was hiding in when the woman delivered that news. I told the Haitian bitch to go fuck herself.

  I took the time to look around her apartment, sniffing, trying to make out the aroma in the air. She noticed and moved behind me, putting her palms on my shoulders.

  "It's just garlic," she said, kneading my shoulders. I tried to shrug her off, and she made a low, rumbling chuckle "Don' worry, my lamb. Bacalou will see she doen' pop out till we have t'ings good and straightened away."

  "I don't want her popping out at all. And what the hell is up with the accent?"

  "It's what you expect, isn't it?"

  "I don't expect anything anymore."

  "Good girl."

  I glared at her. "I just came for a costume. That's all I wanted."

  "And you got one."

  "It wasn't supposed to be a double." I hated the self-pity I heard in my voice. "And now look at the mess I'm in."

  "You want to keep being that vampire's fuck puppet?" the priestess said, giving me a wary eye like she expected her lover to pop out right there and jump her bones.

  "Hell no," I told her. "And I won't be your anything else puppet."

  I wouldn't hold her eye. Not that I was afraid. I wasn't. Not anymore, not after what I'd gone through, but a gal has her pride; I didn't have to meet a gaze head on if the other onlooker was a sociopath. We'd work something out if I had to, but I would not show her that kind of respect. She could interpret it however the hell she pleased.

  The woman ran her finger down my forearm and toyed with the bracelet. "You are mine."

  "Right," I rasped. "I belong to Bacalou. And Gio. And Magnus. So many owners except the right one." I met her moss-colored gaze finally, but I put all the vitriol in my own as I could. "What the fuck happened to Jade?"

  It was becoming painfully obvious that Lady Luck w
as suffering PMS something wicked.

  She grinned, unaffected by my malice. "She's still in there, hiding behind her ruined ego."

  "Indeed," I said. "And now it seems there's someone else behind that ruined ego."

  She sighed with an air of expectancy. "Not too far behind. Now, you will have to undo his hold, like you said you can. I won't share with a vampire."

  I grabbed onto that. She believed I had the means to break Gio's hold. It was the first bit of fresh cleansing water on a shit-soaked day.

  "Come with me." She quirked her head at me, letting a brow match the angle. "It is I who command you, ma chere. Go. And come back when you are free."

  And so here I was two nights later, dropped off by a cabbie, standing on the doorstep of my Viking benefactor, wondering if a gal should ring the doorbell of an undead hottie or if she should just sort of hang around until he smelled her racing pulse.

  I wiped remnants from my mouth of a chocolate bar I'd crammed into my gob as I contemplated ringing the bell. It had been the only thing I'd eaten all day, hoping the sugar would inject some energy into my muscles. I didn't even have a chance to savour it, and I was a bit cranky that I'd been so hungry that the thing disappeared in ten seconds flat. With a sigh, I stuffed my hands into each panel of my jacket and shoved them beneath my armpits, wondering if I'd ever be warm again. I was stomping my feet on the stoop, trying to move the remainder of the lazy blood Gio had left me with, feeling each bit of movement sending waves across my vision when the door opened. Apparently, my racing pulse was as good as a shrill bell.

  It took a moment for my vision to stop swimming, and when it settled, it landed on Magnus's steely gaze. He'd shaved since the last time I'd seen him, and I couldn't stop remembering how quickly the teeth beneath those perfect lips had turned feral. I had to force my gawking eyes to his throat just to find some sort of composure. Once I could drag my stare there, I swept it down his shoulder to find his hand planted on the doorframe as he leaned against it. The fingers were splayed toward me, all meaty and calloused. I suffered a moment of panic as I imagined him pulling a long sword from behind his back and swinging it at my head. Then I remembered his teeth against Sam's throat when he'd brought him unceremoniously to my apartment, his mouth on mine, the taste of blood as he swirled his tongue around mine and dipped it deep.