Dirty Deeds

by R. J. Blain

  Muzzle open, fangs dripping with the contagion of were-taint, the gray wolf leaped at the circle. Stretched out. Claws sharp as knives and black as the night sky.

  Bedelia

  “To me! To me! Silver. Fire at will!” Lincoln’s battle cry echoed over the grassy land and rolled down the cliff to the water. At the sound, something brittle as glass shattered within her. Icy power rushed through her and back out again, leaving her cold as the undead. His fear and fury pounded through a bond she hadn’t known was there. Fear, fury, and… love.

  Shotguns discharged. The concussive force made her instantly deaf.

  Her eyes opened. Linc was in midair, leaping higher than was possible. Ten feet off the ground. Something hit him. Bowled them both toward the circle. Bedelia’s entire body clenched, ready for the pain that would come when the magics—

  Somehow, Linc rolled into a ball and spun to the side. Missing the circle. A creature she had never seen before had clamped its teeth onto his shoulder and neck. Savaging him. Werewolf. Half-human, half-wolf, fully a monster.

  The shotguns boomed again and again. Two other werewolves fell, full of silver. Writhing in agony on the ground. Bee knew they’d been taken down with silver because they didn’t start to shift back to human to heal and live. Two vampires disappeared into the darkness, watching for more, on guard. Another finished off the downed wolves with multiple head shots before reloading. Bedelia was glad the darkness hid the gore from her.

  Linc however, was still fighting the gray wolf. There was blood. Too much blood. He was injured. Fear spiraled through Bedelia.

  Clara Anne waved her arms to get their attention. She pointed at the fighting werewolf and mouthed the word, “Shania Mayhew.”

  “Oh no,” Bedelia said. “We called her. We called them.”

  “She’ll want to get in here with us,” Clara Anne said, heard over the clamor still sounding in Bee’s ears.

  “Linc won’t let that happen,” Bedelia said, knowing that he would protect her to his last breath. Tears pricked beneath her lashes.

  Linc rolled across the ground, the wolf snapping, body whipping. Trying to get another hold on his shoulder, flank, or into his gut. Nubit raced close and aimed at the fighting pair but couldn’t get a shot that wouldn’t injure Linc as well. Were-creatures weren’t the only ones for whom silver was lethal. Silver could be fatal to vampires, too.

  The werewolf dodged to the side, aiming for the circle and the power they had unleashed.

  Linc moved faster, cutting the wolf with silver blades. He stabbed straight out, into her left jaw. She squealed. Jerked back on four paws as if to run away. Faster than Bedelia could see, Linc picked the wolf up and threw her against a tree trunk.

  She landed hard.

  A crunch even Bedelia could hear indicated broken bones.

  The wolf was still alive, but she was stunned. Lincoln cut down and hamstrung her before he stepped back. He was breathing hard. Bedelia had never seen him breathing hard. Ever. He was covered in blood.

  Mary, the vampire who had been watching the house and who’d brought them the items of calling, approached the wolf and fired a shot point-blank into the wolf’s left hip. She handed Linc the lead-lined box, and Linc applied three silver cuffs around the wolf’s neck like a dog collar. Without human hands, the witch would be unable to remove them, and with her body full of silver, she couldn’t shift to human and heal.

  “Watch her. Kill her if she manages to shift. She’s a witch and a werewolf, and might have tricks we don’t know about,” Linc said. To the others, he said, “Two of you, attend me.” They approached and one of them turned the garden hose onto him, washing off the were-blood. Another swiftly cut Linc’s clothing away and left them in a pile. Linc was… still beautiful. So very beautiful. Naked in the faint light of the moon just beginning to rise. And so very wounded. Gashes and bite marks were all over him, dark in the night.

  Linc’s eyes met hers and he grinned, insouciant, impossible, infuriating man. Together he and his vampires vanished into the dark.

  “What are they doing?” Clara Anne asked.

  “He’s hurt,” Mabs said. “They can heal him with their blood. But it means them bleeding onto his naked self and him drinking their blood and probably a lot of sex.”

  Bedelia looked down at her hands. And there, right there, was the reason why she and Linc had never worked out. She had been a one-man woman, and Linc had been a vampire, always and forever. She sighed softly. Her hearing was mostly back, so she said, “Rule of three. Three called, three answered. Evil sought the power and evil was defeated, as the Coraville prophecy claimed. Our time is done, this circle is no longer needed. Let us reseal the energies.”

  “Let the energies we have used return to the guardianship of the buried stones,” Clara Anne said.

  “May the moonlight protect it,” Mabs said.

  “May the earth and the plants, may the air and the rain, may all that is good within the earth and wrought by the Devine protect this ancient place and the circle of three that claims it. Seals it.”

  Together they raised their hands, mimicking the first time they’d sealed the energies into the ground. They brought down their hands flat upon the ground. Together they said, “It is done. And it is good.”

  Bedelia pushed upright and felt movement from the cliff. She started to turn to see.

  “Down,” Nubit screamed.

  Bee dropped flat. The shotgun boomed, boomed, boomed. A massive brown wolf landed in the center of the circle, so large the ground shook. The vampire landed beside him. “Close your mouths,” Nubit shouted over the ringing in their ears. “Don’t breathe!”

  She fired. Fired. So many times. Reloaded and fired some more.

  Blood went everywhere. All over the witches. All over the vampire. Were-taint. It was carried in saliva and blood, which was all over them.

  A moment later icy water cascaded over Bedelia. Garden hose. Any in their mouths or up their nasal passages, in their eyes, or a tiny cut… Holding her breath, she stood and turned in a circle and let the spray hit her. She pulled off her clothes and stood naked letting the water douse her.

  “Inside with the others,” the woman said, barely heard. “Into the showers. Strip them and get them clean.”

  “Apply your blood all over them,” Linc said. “Let them sip and spit and then drink. Hurry.”

  “Yes, my master,” a man said.

  “Bee,” Linc said. “Sip. Wash out your mouth and spit.”

  Bee opened her mouth. Linc’s blood flooded in. She swished and spat and then his wrist was pressed against her lips. She drank. The first sip flooded her mouth and his fear crashed against her, through her. That bond she hadn’t known existed opened wide and she burst into tears as his love and horror flooded through her and twined her heart. She drank.

  “I’m going to wipe you down with my blood.”

  “I am uninjured, my master,” the female vampire said. “I have washed myself clean of the were-filth. May I take your place?”

  “Yes, Nubit. You’re right. Hurry,” Linc said. Eyes still closed, Bedelia felt the cold, bloody vampire hands patting her down. A blast of icy air crested the cliff; the night breeze froze on her wet, and now blood-wet skin. But Linc and his vampires were fast and they quickly wrapped her in a blanket that smelled a little of Linc and a lot of horse. “Into my SUV,” he instructed.

  “My things,” Bedelia said.

  “Contaminated,” Nubit said. “I will burn them all for you. I will care for your personal items, anything that could call you. I will burn them into ash and mix them with the earth.”

  “You know our ways,” Bee said, finally opening her eyes, to see the woman. She hadn’t paid attention to Nubit when Linc first called her over. Nubit was short, broad-shouldered, and dark-eyed, with dark skin. She wasn’t exactly pretty. She was far more. A warrior. A fighter.

  “Yes. I come from a people who had a holy woman. We all knew how to protect her.”

&n
bsp; “Thank you, Nubit,” Bedelia said.

  “I’m putting you into the SUV,” Linc said.” A helicopter’ll be landing here soon to pick me up.”

  “You’re going after Liz, aren’t you,” Bedelia said.

  “With the others, yes. I’ll bring her back safe.”

  It was a promise he might not be able to keep, she knew that, but she knew he was her daughter’s best bet.

  “And Bee. I’ll see you just after sunset.”

  “Mama—”

  “Is asleep with the sun.” And he was gone.

  Bedelia

  Bedelia checked on her mama one last time. She was asleep. Snoring softly. She closed the door and padded barefoot away, her favorite housedress swishing around her calves. It was an hour after sunset. She settled on the screened porch, stretched out on a chaise lounge. On the table between the two reclining chairs were two bottles of wine, a white in a terracotta chiller for her and an unopened red for Link. She sipped, waiting. Knowing, from the moment he woke, that he was thinking about her. Knowing that he was on his way. By full dark, Linc was here.

  The outer perimeter dinged, a soft note. The central ward dinged, his distinctive notes, as he walked through the woods. Bedelia’s heart leaped, and this time she didn’t try to still her heart. Where once she had made him knock, mostly to let him know that the power between them was hers, she deliberately pressed the bloodstone amulet between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand.

  The hedge of thorns fell in that delicate sprinkling of darting fireflies. The lights of the falling hedge cascaded across Linc, brushing over him and bursting into that rich red color as they fell, his unique welcome. When he crossed the hedge, she closed it and dropped the inner ward. He stepped onto the deck, opened the screened porch, and entered. He lay a single red rose across her lap, opened the red wine and poured a taste.

  “Nice,” he said, taking the seat beside her, as if he had always done so. Tonight he didn’t smell of barbeque. He smelled of a fresh shower and his heart was full of hope.

  “Thank you,” Bedelia said. “Thank you for making certain my witches were safe. If it hadn’t been for you and your people, we would have been dead or furry by now.”

  Linc made a soft, hmmming sound.

  “And thank you for your part in saving Liz and Cia.”

  “They are brave and powerful, and I am mighty proud of them,” he said. “Have you ever told them? About us? About me?”

  “No. But I’m rethinking that now. They have a right to know about you.”

  “I’d be honored for them to know me. And the other girls.”

  “The problem comes not with the girls. But because of Evangelina, and between us, as it always has.”

  “Bedelia, forgive my interruption. But I came here to say something.” He put down his glass, swiveled his long legs to the side facing her, and moved the table out of the way. He put her glass aside too and took her hands. “When you ran me off, I was still young for a Mithran. Hot-headed. Difficult. Selfish. I was full of piss and vinegar, and I believed any woman should be tickled pink to be with me. I did not regard you with the respect and honor I should have. And you left.” He went silent, staring down at their hands, his thumbs rubbing over her knuckles.

  “When you left me, I fell into the vampire ways for all I was worth, thinking that if you thought I was horrible, then I’d just go ahead and be horrible. I hated myself for every single one of those moments. I missed you every single one of those moments. I regretted what I had done and who I had become every single moment. Then one night I woke up and… I was done being a man without honor.

  “In the last fifteen years, I have neither slept with nor had sexual relations with another person, not a Mithran, not human, not anyone. I came dangerously close with your Evangelina, under her compulsion, but I did not consummate with her.” I was able to keep that much of myself from her, because of my love for you. Because you didn’t want a man who couldn’t be true to you. I have been faithful to my love for you for fifteen years. I do not deserve the love of a woman like you. But I profess my love to you, forever, for as long as you shall live. Bedelia Everhart Shaddock, will you allow me to court you once again? To show you, to prove to you that I am yours now and always?”

  The bond between them was open, free, and she knew he spoke the truth. Bedelia was smiling softly, her eyes on their joined hands. “Yes.”

  Linc leaned over and kissed her hands, one and then the other. Moving slowly, in case she might pull away, he leaned in and kissed her gently on mouth. He was smiling and so was she when he eased away.

  “Linc,” she said, softly. “We still have a lot of talking to do. But. Something you might ought to know. You can’t live here because mama would turn you into a toad if she knew we were taking up again, but I never did sign the divorce papers. We are still, legally, married.”

  She yelped at the sudden motion, and then she was in his arms, being held like a baby, or like a starlet in an old a movie, and he was twirling them. Laughing. That laughter twined through her own heart and set her soul free. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held on tight.

  Copyright © 2021 by Faith Hunter

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The Pixie Job by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  The Pixie Job

  Diana Pharaoh Francis

  Copyright © 2021 by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Diana Pharaoh Francis writes books of a fantastical, adventurous, and often romantic nature. She holds a Ph.D. in Victorian literature and literary theory. She’s owned by two corgis and a mini blue heeler, and spends much of her time herding children and avoiding housework. She likes rocks, geocaching, knotting up yarn, and has a thing for 1800s England, especially the Victorians.

  For more about her books and to sign up for her newsletter, visit www.dianapfrancis.com

  Chapter One

  The thing about taking a vacation is that you always feel guilty that you aren’t being productive, or someone wants you to do something you don’t want to do. Case in point: the ghost elf sitting on the lounge opposite giving Mal the fish-eye stare because she refused to go train.

  “I told you. I’m on vacation. I promised Law, and the other ghosts, and So’la. I’m not supposed to do anything but relax for an entire month.”

  Mal reached for her mimosa and sipped it deliberately. She wasn’t generally a drinker, especially in the morning, but Edna, another of her ghost companions, had encouraged her to try it out. She could have done without the champagne in the orange juice but whatever. She was on vacation, and apparently this is what people did on vacation. She wouldn’t know. She’d never actually taken one before.

  Merrow’s lips twisted downward. She looked entirely out of place. Well, generally ghosts did look out of place among the living, especially since generally the living made sure they were exterminated like vermin. Mal used to be one of those exterminators until she couldn’t stomach it anymore. Now she had her own family—collection? cult? hangers on? —of ghosts.

  She had eighteen of them, now that Merrow had joined. They fed off her magical energy, which they needed to survive. Which was sort of an oxymoron but whatever.

  Anyhow, Merrow had been an elf. A militant one, part of an elite fighting force. She’d been betrayed by her own and killed, then joined Mal in order to get revenge. She’d achieved that and Mal thought maybe she’d have crossed over in whatever way elves do, but she’d stayed.

  Merrow was bored.

/>   Law, Mal’s boyfriend and the blood-bound security witch of Effrayant—where Mal was vacationing, just as she’d promised after her most recent near-death experience—had arranged charging stations for the ghosts so they could go anywhere and find sustenance. This was not an unselfish act. He’d been motivated by a desire for privacy with Mal, but the ghosts were grateful.

  Most of them.

  Once Mal had recovered enough from her injuries, Merrow had dogged her, glaring silently when she wasn’t actively nagging at her.

  Anyway, under ordinary circumstances, Merrow would have looked extra-specially out of place with her armor and elven looks. Since Effrayant was a supernatural luxury hotel that catered to the weird, strange, outlandish, and just plain bizarre, Merrow didn’t rate even a raised eyebrow.

  “You should try relaxing,” Mal suggested. “It’s strange but oddly nice.”

  She reclined in a chaise next to an enormous pool with various levels and waterfalls, surrounded by greenery, boulders, and a winding river. It covered an entire five acres all by itself and sat on top of one of the auberge’s towers. Effrayant was made up of several massive towers and some smaller buildings, plus about six hundred acres of land. It contained sixteen restaurants, a dozen coffee shops, and bunch of stores of all varieties.

  Merrow’s lip curled. “I don’t think so.”

  “Then maybe you could go rain on someone else’s parade?”

  The elf frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you’re about as fun to be around as a plague.”

  Merrow’s brow smoothed. “You waste my time and yours. You lack fighting abilities. You should be practicing.”

  “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

  Another frown. “Who’s Jack?”

  “He’s this kid who went up a hill to fetch a pail of water and ended up bonking a girl named Jill. It didn’t end well. She got pregnant and was totally ostracized. He left her to deal with the baby by herself. Karma got him, though. He ended up with syphilis. Totally melted his brain.”