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

by Erin Hayes

  For the moment, at least.

  Then, finally, the two paused, smelling a number of humans teeming with testosterone and alcohol and, yes, even opium. Dumb, drunk, and doped; a greater recipe for fun the two had not yet found a match for. They shared a look, then a grin. Ezra threw the bottle to his brother, and a human couple followed the blur motion before it stopped in Jerrick’s hand.

  Bill and Linda Turner’s anniversary evening was turning, in Linda’s opinion, at least, into the most magical evening she could have ever dreamed of.

  Their reservations at La Casa Bonita, made nearly three whole months earlier, had been upgraded to one of their private dining decks on the second floor. Though Bill denied having any involvement in the cooperate decision, what they explained was a “technical oversight” that resulted in a double-booking on one of the first floor tables. Whether or not her husband had staged the event or not, the upgrade came with a magnificent view of the city, a complimentary bottle of their best wine, and a menu of the chef’s specials reserved for their exclusive guests (what usually fell into a short list of politicians or celebrities that frequented the restaurant).

  As Linda looked over the list of specials, already falling in love with the stuffed duck breast served on grilled asparagus, she’d found herself wondering about Bill’s involvement in all of this and asked herself if it might be another one of his tricks to coerce her into finally giving in to his requests for anal sex. When a violinist stepped onto the balcony and began playing their song, ‘She Will be Loved’ by Maroon 5, she decided he’d finally get his way.

  A five-course meal that ended with a pumpkin crème brulee served atop a house-made vanilla wafer and garnished with genuine gold flakes had lifted Linda into a state of euphoria that she’d only thought possible in Disney movies and carried over to the Antique Theater for a private screening of Gone With the Wind, a favorite of hers since she’d watched it almost twenty years earlier with her grandfather.

  Finally, drunk from the greatest night of her life (and a little more than half of La Casa Bonita’s finest wine), Linda leaned against her husband as they made their way down the street. She was already set on giving him her sole remaining virginity in a spectacular display of choreography she’d cooked up in her head while Scarlett O’Hara drawled and prattled about the screen. Halfway through a mental rewrite of her dialogue—was “make love to my ass” really as corny as it sounded in her mind?—Bill had stopped her in mid-step to avoid taking a flying bottle across the face.

  Blinking at the sheer speed the projectile had whistled by at, she barely had enough time to wonder who the intended victim of the attack must be before it was caught, upright and without spilling a drop of its contents, by a towering brute of a man who made her heart thunder in his chest. Even with the terrifying scar that was practically glowing across the front of his exposed, muscled torso, Linda found herself wondering if she’d ever seen a more perfect man and, with less guilt than she’d have suspected, wondered who she’d prefer taking her from behind at that moment.

  Still swooning, she turned to see if the man’s companion was as beautiful as he was, she turned her head back, seeing then that he was gone—vanished! Stunned, she looked back, hoping to fill her vision (and other things) with the specimen that was holding the bottle now, only to find that he, too, was gone.

  Certain that she’d just witnessed some sort of crude street magic, perhaps another “accident” orchestrated by Bill for their anniversary, Linda applauded the empty street while her husband of four years ushered her down the street.

  Thinking back on the scarred mystery man and all those muscles, Linda resigned to an imaginary headache and decided that Bill would need to start working out before enjoying her back door.

  Ezra had taught Jerrick to resent their parents for making them what they were. Though times had changed and minds had opened a great deal, the union of vampire and therion was still one that, for many, was too taboo to consider outside of fantasy and pornography. For what they were, the brothers had faced unspeakable torture and seen firsthand the sort of ugliness the world had to offer. In the end, it had also gotten their parents killed, which had freed Ezra of the nauseating dilemma of doing it himself.

  While this was case, even Ezra and his unbridled animosity had to admit that he and his brother were a sight to behold…

  Assuming, that anyone could actually see them.

  In the blink of an eye they were gone from the street and standing in the depths of a parking garage. The massive concrete structure was empty, save for a single light-blue Prius—Ezra stifled a wretch—and, of course, the ones that had lured them there. By the time the brothers had popped back into sight, crossing several blocks and six levels of the garage, he imagined the drunk couple they’d left behind had only just begun to let out a gasp at their disappearance.

  Though the trip from the street to there hadn’t taken the two a second to cross, they’d had enough time during their journey to wonder if it was worth it to transform before arriving. Though they resented what their parents had made them, there were, undeniably, some perks to be had.

  A vampire’s speed and agility.

  A therion’s hidden inner beast, just waiting to break free.

  And a greater strength than any of them knew on their own.

  And while the idea of arriving—of popping into sight like some sort of rabbit from a magician’s once empty hat—in their monstrous forms was an entertaining one, it also threatened their fun. It was more fun when their prey stayed, when their prey fought, when their prey didn’t see that they were already looking upon their death. While there was a certain thrill to be had in the chase, and there would most certainly be a chase if their prey set sights on their inner beasts, it also ended things far too soon. Three seconds of sort-of-fun chasing was nothing when weighed against—Ezra sized up the four and played with some estimates on their abilities, hmm—maybe a full minute of this-is-why-we-live fighting.

  In the end, in that fraction-of-a-second between “there” and “here,” they’d decided to delay the inevitable and stay in human form.

  And, since picking up the scent, their four would-be prey had found enough time to acquire a piece of prey of their very own:

  The woman, the owner of the Prius, Ezra guessed, was already mostly stripped and gagged with what looked to be a length of pantyhose. What was once a likely professional look had since been rendered far from; expensive-looking work clothes reduced to rags on the ground, makeup streaked an smeared and clumped around new bruises, and hair tangled and out of place with only a few pins and clasps to hint that it had once been tidy and done up. By day a stunning vision of business savvy; by night an ill-used plaything.

  The whole thing seemed a rather humorous summary of American culture.

  As they stepped out of the shadows, letting their footsteps be heard, all five looked in their direction.

  The woman, a redhead with the signs of late-thirties beginning to outweigh those of early-thirties, whimpered a plea around her makeshift gag as a fat, short penis with an uncircumcised head that stabbed out from a nest of matted pubic hair thumped once more against her cheek, its owner wavering unsteadily at the sight of the newcomers. The laughter of the men died down as the woman replaced them with a series of muffled sounds: cries and calls for help, from the sounds of them.

  Did she really take the two of them for some sort of heroes?

  Ezra and Jerrick shared a look at that, hovering somewhere between bemusement and disdain.

  “If you’re here to enjoy the show,” one of the men—thankfully not the one belonging to the cheek-penis (Ezra wasn’t sure how he’d take listening to that try to negotiate with them)—called out to them, “then I guess we can’t stop ya, though we hate to perform for free.”

  Jerrick’s lip curled then. “And if we’re not here to just watch?” he asked.

  The man sighed and began to fix his belt back into place. “Look, I’m being polite just offer
ing that much, pal. If you’re looking for more then you two homos should probably find a corner on another level to go jerk each other off on!”

  Nobody moved while the last few words echoed in the garage for a moment, then, with the silence still hanging between them, Jerrick struck.

  While Ezra saw the attack as clear as day, he knew that the four men and their prey did not. Jerrick had been careful to begin and end in the exact same place at Ezra’s side, and in the immeasurable moment in between—a moment where Jerrick crossed the distance and clawed from gut-to-gullet in one strike before returning again—four became three. It took the other three a moment to figure this out, though. When the two brothers seemingly made no move to advance or retreat, another of the four, this time the one owning the cheek-penis, decided to contribute his own input. He laughed. At that moment, with the hollow barks of laughter sparking a new set of echoes in the garage, Jerrick’s victim coughed up a torrent of blood and his torso splayed open and birthed his steaming intestines across the concrete floor.

  Cheek-penis stopped laughing.

  Suddenly everyone, the woman included, was screaming.

  While cheek-penis stammered, neither able to come to grips with the sight nor able to run with his pants around his ankles, the other two men ran. Jerrick was on them in an instant, vanishing from Ezra’s side again and appearing before the two, this time in his other form. He was framed in much the same way as a jackal, lean and fit, while not large, certainly threatening in other ways. His teeth were bared, and his claws were held up as much in display as they were in anticipation. Ezra shook his head at the sight and smirked. Jerrick was always one to show off.

  As the screams began from the two runners, Ezra began at a slow pace towards cheek-penis, who had yet to look away from Jerrick’s corner. It wasn’t until the sound of Ezra’s breaking and reshaping bones rose that he turned to see what was coming.

  “Ezra the bear,” he thought, stooping his head to keep it from knocking against the top of the parking garage’s roof. They used to call me “Ezra the bear.”

  The woman’s screams doubled over.

  Cheek-penis didn’t get a chance to start.

  The muffled screams carried through as the brothers fed on the four, and they only intensified when they turned their sights on her. It was only after Jerrick was halfway through her abdomen and Ezra finally aimed his jaws for her throat that they ungodly racket was silenced, and the two were free to finish their meal in peace.

  It wasn’t enough, though!

  They were famished for more!

  Horny for it!

  Hell, they were rabid for more!

  The walk into their magical anniversary evening hadn’t seemed so long as their walk from it was turning out, and Bill was beginning to regret not hiring a limo driver for the evening. Between paying for the upgrade at the restaurant and buying out the theater, however, it’d be a miracle if he could afford to keep paying off his secretary to keep from telling Linda about their affair. While the option to come clean and hope for forgiveness was available, what he and his secretary shared was, while perhaps not a beautiful thing, a thing that he nevertheless didn’t want to see an end to.

  Besides, she did things that Linda would never do in a million years. And, yes, he still loved his wife (enough to never think of doing those sorts of things with her, in fact).

  While he recalculated next week’s expenses in his head, he absently listened as Linda continued to go on about the strange men from earlier, slurring around a strange repetition of “muscles,” “scar,” “gym,” and something about “cherries”—though he was certain she’d more than eaten her fill at La Casa Bonita. It seemed her drunken, nonsensical ramblings might go on until they reached their apartment when a melodic clink resonated from behind them. Before either of them could turn, however, a familiar looking albeit now very empty bottle rolled past their feet and came to rest a short distance ahead of them.

  Bill Turner had come to respect his wife in ways he’d never thought he could respect a woman. His father’s views and the habits that mirrored them had put a distorted—if not totally shattered—approach on how he raised his son to treat women. It was a surprise to many that the notorious womanizer Bill-“The Dunker”-Turner was actually getting married, and even moreso to those same that they’d been together long enough to celebrate a single anniversary, let alone four. And while he had, as many had predicted, taken to cheating with countless other women behind Linda’s back, he dismissed their reasoning with one of his own: respect. He’d never known what it was like to respect a woman, and, should his past-self ever be asked how he’d felt about such a notion, he might have quipped that he’d lose respect in himself for sticking around a broad long enough to ever reach that point. So, for the sake of his respect of Linda, he’d taken his devilish impulses elsewhere.

  As he looked down at the bottle and felt the hairs raising on the back of his neck, though, he began to feel another emotion welling up within him that his past-self would not have recognized:

  Regret.

  Bill Turner’s last words would never make sense to his wife, though, in his defense, they weren’t meant for her, either: “I’m so sorry, Linda.”

  Linda Turner’s last words would never make sense to anybody, though, in her defense, she was drunk in more ways than one from the most magical evening of her life: “Ish thish anuddah mahjik trick, Bill?”

  Through the Storm

  Zoey woke the next afternoon feeling much better than she had the prior night. Whether this had more to do with the combined auric energy she’d siphoned from various passersby on the walk from the club or the sex she and Isaac had had upon arriving she neither knew nor cared to know. It didn’t matter, anyway. What did matter was that she had a clear and satisfied mind (even if it did come with some lingering soreness). She was certain that her old friend and clanmate, Zane, would have some lewd joke waiting were he there to see her flinch as she adjusted her legs under the covers—Zane always had some comment about Isaac’s immense size or her not-so-immense size in contrast. Sighing, she realized with no real resentment that she already missed her friends back at home. Sitting up, she stretched her arms and let the rest of her body follow, the tightness and soreness from great sex and deep sleep popping and melting away into a satisfying, full-body alertness. Relishing in the satisfaction of the moment, ready to relinquish it to the reality of the job they were there to do, she waited a moment longer before she finally turned to look down at Isaac, who was still asleep beside her. A goofy, almost dog-like grin—one that he typically fell asleep with after they were intimate—still showed on the half of his face that wasn’t buried in a pillow, and Zoey felt her own face begin to twist to match his smile. Catching sight of a loose bang that had fallen over his eye and, as she reached out to tuck it behind his ear, she saw that her hand had completely healed during the day. Feeling her fingertips against his forehead, Isaac’s smile broadened and his arm snaked around her waist and went to pull her back down in bed.

  “Just stay in bed a little longer,” he mumbled.

  “We’ve already slept most of the afternoon away,” she giggled, still letting him pull her back down beside him. “At some point we need to step out at least to prove that we aren’t dead.”

  “Hm… There are other ways to prove that we’re not dead,” Isaac grinned, not bothering to open his eyes as he pressed his growing erection against her thigh.

  “Oh my… JEEZ!” Zoey jumped at pressure against the top of her leg and laughed. Reaching down to rest his manhood atop her thigh, preferring that over letting it stab into her thigh, she gave him a look. “Was last night not enough?” she asked.

  “Well, I mean, look at you, Zoe!” he eased the pressure by rolling more onto his back, making Zoey’s laughter double over again as the covers rose to form a tent that hung just over a foot above his torso. Ignoring his own display and her laughter, he said, “Would you ever not want you if you were blessed to share a bed
with you?”

  Zoey giggled again at that, averting her gaze from the throbbing mockery of a Native American teepee at her side and shrugging. “I’m not really my type, I guess.”

  “Maybe you should be,” Isaac said. “Because you’re definitely my type, and… well, you’re definitely his type,” he nodded towards the teepee.

  Zoey laughed again. “Alright…” she resigned, moving over his body and straddling his waist as she leaned down, teasing his lips with her own. “So what did you two”—she bobbed her buttocks against his shaft to emphasize her choice of words—“have in mind?”

  “I was thinking I’d just ravage you on the spot,” he said with a grin, surprising Zoey by tilting himself to one side and letting her fall off him and onto her side. “But first,” he raised an eyebrow at her, “I think I want to teach you a little lesson in loving yourself.”

  Zoey blinked up at him, a pout beginning to tighten at her lips. Though she hadn’t woken up with it, Isaac’s words and his eyes—that intense, fierce spark that never failed to capture her and entrance her—had the familiar heat growing in her lower belly. It was beginning to spread like a wildfire. She adjusted herself on her side and felt just how wet she was in that instant, and a whimper echoed up her throat as she fought to cope with Isaac’s words.

  “Loving… myself?” she echoed the words, not sure why it was so hard to understand them. She’d been braced for Isaac’s normal ferocity, was eager to feel his strength and power at that moment. In her mind she’d seen it play out: watched him yank the covers that divided them away without sacrificing her position over him; saw his large, strong hands take her hips and move her with a precision and speed that would totally overwhelm her for that instant (just as it did every time). But while Isaac was many things, he was not predictable—a cunning predator in all aspects of his being, be it as a fighter or as a lover.