Venom & Vampires: A Limited Edition Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Collection

by Casey Lane

  My mouth dropped open in shock. I’d told him about the disaster, but not those specific details, the seagull, the broken toe, and definitely not my mother’s sacrifice.

  “The railing hit me? I don’t remember that.”

  “Because it didn’t happen to you. It happened to me. That’s how it works when a guardian is bonded to a war witch. I will be eternally grateful to your mother for what she did. I couldn’t have saved you at that age. And if you had died, I would have died as well.”

  “Oh!” I looked at his poor, destroyed brow. “I can’t deal with this.” I tore myself from his grasp which had loosened with our kiss. “It's too much.” Hugging my arms around me, I turned away from him. “I’m sorry, Steinar. I’m so sorry.”

  “For something that isn’t your fault?” he said. “For fate?”

  "For my bad magic, that dragged you into my life."

  “That’s what you think? That it’s bad? How can someone be such an idiot?

  “Easy. Believe me,” I said.

  “Look at me, Saige.”

  I refused to turn back to him.

  “Saige. Look at me.”

  Stop being a coward. Nodding to myself, I swung around to face him.

  To my astonishment, Steinar grinned at me. “My parents were beside themselves with happiness. My father was so proud I thought his chest would explode. They figured out where you were and we moved to America. They wanted to make sure you and I had a safe place when the time came and we needed one, so they bought the Greely House for me. They returned to Norway two years ago after I turned 18.”

  I’d never met Steinar’s parents. I hadn’t been to his house more than a couple of times during our school years, but when I did, neither his mom or dad had ever been at home.

  “My parents wanted to meet you,” he said, “but they also didn’t want to interfere. My mother said you and I would have to find our own path. You would have recognized her instantly as another war witch, which wouldn’t have been good. Not when you weren’t ready.”

  “I don’t even know what a war witch is.”

  “It doesn’t matter. They always know when they see another one.”

  I wasn’t convinced. How could anyone be happy about any of this? I wasn’t a war witch no matter what he said. I was a fuck up and it was only a matter of time, minutes probably before Steinar figured it out. My mother had possessed incredible gifts she’d used selflessly to the end. My grandmother had real talent, too, more than the pathetically obvious illusions she used to make herself look younger. I could feel the power emanating from her whenever I stood near her.

  I was where the magical line had weakened.

  Could that be why Grandma Lida didn't love me? She'd never approved of my father. I couldn't fault her for that, actually. As a husband and father, he was a complete loser. Maybe having his blood had diluted the Fairwell blood in me until I was worse than useless as a witch, all trouble and no joy, a granddaughter she couldn’t be proud of the way Steinar’s father was proud of his son. It would suck if that was true and Lida couldn’t see anything in me that would be worthwhile beyond the magic. I’d spent so much time being invisible to others while watching how they behaved, though, that I’d learned people had limits. You can’t blame someone for failing to care if they don’t understand how to give love or why. If it’s not in them, it’s not in them.

  While thinking, I’d wandered a few steps deeper into the woods.

  "Saige, stop," Steinar warned me. “You can’t go past the salt. I can’t guarantee I can keep you safe from the parasite if you break the circle.”

  I stopped and bounced back on my feet, keeping at least three steps between me and the edge of the circle.

  “But it got in two hours ago,” I pointed out.

  “I strengthened the spell while you were unconscious. It won’t get in this time. I promise you.”

  “That thing is a parasite?” I had a hard time believing it. “It looked more like…” My brows pushed together as I struggled to recall what I'd seen of it and complete the picture. There were the skirt and black hair. It’s skin had been pale, too, almost like…

  “Yes?” Steinar urged me to continue the line of thought. “It looked like…?”

  I hadn’t wanted to face what I’d seen in my nightmare and on the roof. So far, my mind had faithfully shielded me from seeing it in detail. I still wasn’t able to visualize the face, but I could no longer hide from the truth.

  “It looked like me.”

  The panicked person inside me bolted off at a dead run again, though in reality I hadn’t moved an inch. Dread held me down, nailed in place.

  “Other than the ways the arms and legs move and that nightmare of a head, it’s me, isn’t it?”

  “No, Steinar said. “It has parts of you and was partly given life by you, but it is not you.”

  “I gave birth to it?”

  “You gave it energy after it attached itself to you. It grew off what you fed it.”

  “What did I feed it?”

  “Your bitterest wounds. The darkest part of you. Your worst desires, the ones not just you, but everyone hides even from themselves. We all have them, but for a war witch who has attracted a parasite, the ugly wishes we would never consciously think about give it something to attach itself to and grow.”

  He was talking about my grandmother. It didn’t take a psych degree to understand I resented Lida for the way she’d neglected me over the years, and also Andrea for treating me like a slave at work. What would the blackest part of my soul want to do if it didn’t have a conscience to stop it?

  Hurt them.

  “How long have I fed it all this stuff?”

  “It’s been with you for years.”

  “Years!”

  "Since you were 12."

  Nausea had me clutching my stomach. I returned to the tree and sagged down the trunk until I sat on the large root where I’d stood minutes ago.

  “Why now? Why is it acting now and not before now?”

  “Because it broke free of you two days ago. It’s self-aware now”

  “Thanks to me.”

  Steinar crouched down in front of me.

  “It’s not your fault, Saige,” he said. “It has its own thoughts. It makes its own decisions.”

  “But Coco,” I said. “It killed Coco because it knew that would hurt my grandmother. And it got that idea from me, didn’t it?”

  “No.” Steinar took me by the shoulders and made me focus on him. “It’s not your fault and no matter how hard you try you can’t make into your fault.”

  I shook my head. I had to face up to what I was. The thing tried to get into attack Lida because it thought I might like that. It destroyed Andrea’s business to get back at my former boss for making my life hell at work. Somewhere deep inside, I wasn’t who I thought I was. I must be bad. One word floated to the top of my mind and wouldn’t leave. Sick.

  “Don’t go there.” Steinar talked over my thoughts, his voice getting louder until he had my attention. “Saige, listen to me.”

  “What?”

  “Let’s say you’re on a plane,” he said. “Your seat is assigned to you by the airline. They put you next to someone who has, I don’t know, the plague. That person knows he has the plague and worse, that he's contagious, but he doesn't care. And he breathes all over you. Now you've got the plague, but you don't know it yet. So, you get off the plane and meet up with friends for dinner the next night, while you're contagious, but before you show symptoms. You, your friends, and their friends are all dead in a matter of days. Is that your fault?”

  “No, of course not,” I said. “It’s a tragedy, but what does that have to do with this? The parasite isn’t contagious.”

  “No. You’re right. However, you did sit next to someone, figuratively speaking, who knew what was going on with you and could have stopped it anytime she wanted.”

  He glanced back toward the house. Though there were too many trees in the way, his me
aning was obvious.

  “My grandmother?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “Lida.”

  “I got the parasite from her?”

  He shook his head. “You got it because after your mother died, you became Lida’s responsibility, not just as your next of kin, but as a fellow witch who should have known better. There was something she should have done but decided not to."

  “I don’t under–”

  “She didn’t help you through Initiation,” he said. “You and I, we’re both from the same line going back thousands of years. I don’t know how other witches do it. Truthfully, I don’t know any other witches except my parents and you and your grandmother, so they might not need to complete the ceremony they way ours do. But when a witch of our line, for one reason or another, doesn’t go through Initiation, they’re never whole.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They splinter. Their power, their emotions, the good parts, the bad, some believe even their souls can break into pieces. If your mother hadn’t died, she would have guided you through the transition as soon as you…” I watched him searching for a delicate way of saying what I knew he meant. “…became a woman.”

  I’d gotten my first period at 12.

  “So every witch who doesn’t go through Initiation ends up with a parasite?”

  “No,” he said. “A normal witch like your grandmother or your mother wouldn’t have the level of power to entice and attract a parasite. A normal witch who didn’t complete the ceremony would have mental problems she’d live with for the rest of her life. She might get diagnosed as bipolar, schizophrenic, or someone who has dissociative personality disorder because the doctors don’t know what’s really wrong with them. ”

  I’d heard of the first two but not the third.

  He could see I was confused and explained. “They used to call them split personalities.”

  “Oh, God. How sad,” I said.

  “Yes. Very sad. A lot of our uninitiated witches end up in institutions for life.”

  “And my grandmother knew that could happen to me?”

  "She knows about the parasite. Like I have."

  I could not get my head around the idea I’d spent almost a decade co-habiting with a parasite that had clung and thrived off such vile, if, yes, entirely human thoughts inside me. That explained why grandmother had turned colder to me over the years, keeping her distance, especially over the last few weeks. Who would want to live in the same house with me? My mind was blown that Steinar had known the parasite was there, watched it growing for years, but never shown the least bit of repulsion toward me.

  I stood and pulled myself up straight.

  "Okay," I said. "Okay. I need to take care of this."

  “Saige–”

  I lifted my hand with my palm pushed out toward him, cutting off whatever he wanted to say. “Steinar, this has to be dealt with now, before that thing hurts my grandmother or some innocent person it comes across or…” I looked him straight in the face. “…you.”

  He rose at the same time I did, planting his feet wide, the stubborn jaw going as hard as a glacial fjord back in his homeland of Norway.

  “It’s my job to protect you,” he said.

  “From outside dangers,” I said. “Not from myself.”

  “For the last time, Saige, it’s not–”

  “I got it, Pluto.” I smiled my love at him, showed him the respect I felt for all he’d done. “The thing isn’t me and I’m not it. But if I don’t take care of it, who will?”

  I’ll never know precisely what got Coco because I never got a clear enough look at it. I’m glad for that. No one should have to see what the most depraved side of their nature can turn into if it’s let loose to morph into something with a will and intelligence of its own. Some may call me a coward for not confronting my own personal abomination with my eyes wide open, but in the end I decided it was better not to look. Why give that horror the power to haunt my memories forever? To fill me with doubts about what I was and who I could become?

  My grandmother had denied me the rite of passage that belongs to every witch, and our relationship had paid the price. My lack of control over my own ability and power was the result. It was time to change that.

  Fear buzzed along every nerve in my body as I stepped outside Steinar’s protective circle, deeper into the forest. My muscles ached from when my own power ricocheted off the parasite earlier and fed the blast back to me through our link this morning, knocking me senseless. Burns I’d given myself—ones I’d been too pre-occupied to notice before now—raised searing hot blisters on my hands and along one cheekbone. An especially bad one had already popped and wept a trickle of blood along my left forearm like a slow motion suicide slash to the wrist. I felt worn down by everything I'd learned.

  What are you doing? Stop. Go back. Hide inside the circle with Steinar.

  “You won’t be hurt if I’m hurt will you?” I asked him. “My wounds won’t automatically show up in you?”

  He held up his left arm and pushed his sleeve back. His arm was perfect. No burns. “It only happens that first time for a guardian when he’s bonded to his witch.”

  I sat down cross-legged in the driest, most open spot I could find among the trees and ferns.

  “Steinar?”

  He didn’t respond, but I knew he was listening.

  “If I fail, if it overpowers me, you will…?”

  His eyes closed briefly when I looked over at him. His expression was pained. Finally, he opened his eyes again and smiled at me, that subtle curve of his lips I knew so well.

  “Good,” I said.

  Knowing he would do what needed to be done, I tuned out what was back inside the circle, Steinar, Lida, the house, Coco's grave, and concentrated only this place and its sheltering strength. I inhaled deeply of the energy around me. I couldn't ask for a more grounded place to do battle than under redwoods that had soaked up the wisdom of the earth and the stars and life-giving power of the sun for centuries.

  I didn’t have the first idea what went on during an Initiation, but considering a witch’s psyche could splinter if the ceremony wasn’t observed, I figured a young witch was meant to put away childish grievances and embrace adulthood, integrating the girl within the woman, thus becoming whole within herself. Though I didn’t know much about magic, I did understand one of its most important concepts. Intent mattered more than ritual. Ritual was important, but it was what a witch’s heart and soul embodied that performed the magic.

  It took me a while to find it, but I located the place on my body where the parasite and I were still linked. The bitch had chosen to feed directly off my heart. Opening the link a little wider, I baited the trap with power. Keen senses would pick up the scent. I hoped it would believe I’d been wounded worse than I was, was bleeding power, and would make easy prey. It craved the power like an addict. I felt its hunger. It would come.

  Time to wait.

  Mom, I love you. Mom, I want you to be proud of me.

  I closed my eyes. I would not open them until it was over, one way or another. Instead, I used my inner sight only. A virtual twang on the link near my heart told me she'd discovered the power "leaking" from me.

  Come on, you ugly ass thing. Come and try to eat me.

  I quieted my breath, stilled my anxieties. Terror would be of no use. This wasn’t a fight for my life, I told myself. It’s a fight for my right to be a witch, not a half-witch mess.

  You’re going through your Initiation. That’s all this is. The ceremony you missed when you were 12.

  It was too far away for the sounds to reach my ears, but I heard it coming.

  Girl meets the woman she’s meant to be. The two become one. Any childish anger and hurts are put aside.

  Ferns swished perhaps a hundred yards away. Close enough to hear now.

  Accept that you’re not perfect. Accept the pain.

  Its speed was astonishing. It rushed me so fast I couldn’t think,
only feel and react. Hundreds of teeth sliced down into my chest, going straight for the power flooding into its mouth from my heart. I felt death’s sharp, shocking twinge.

  Steinar’s strength poured into me. He hadn’t left the circle, but my guardian stood at my back, joining his immense power with mine.

  And then life resumed because the wicked teeth dissolved when they touched my body. Physically, I remained unharmed.

  The parasite went into a frenzy, but its fury did it no good because every bite infected the bad in it with love. I gave the creature the love my mother would have gifted to me on my Initiation. Though she may have died when I was eight, she had already provided all I needed to survive and grow stronger from adversity.

  Its will melting away, the parasite’s consciousness fractured each time it tried tearing into me until nothing was left to hold it together. Eventually, the attacks slowed and there were no more.

  I opened my eyes to a shower of black pieces falling to the moss and earth around me. Irregular in shape, they rolled listlessly about, only half-there, made mostly of shadow and disjointed thoughts. I picked up a piece and used my hands to compress it until it was no bigger than a pebble I could conceal in my closed fist. Whispering over it, I opened my fingers and in the center of my palm a dragonfly made entirely of light flitted its wings. I released it and it flew upward into the redwood canopy’s murky splendor.

  One by one, the pieces became tiny, flying lanterns carrying hopeful magic into the most shadowed corners of the forest, until none of the black was left and I could breathe free.

  Steinar came with me inside the house to collect my stuff and say goodbye to Lida. He was in full protector mode now and I could tell he would have zero patience for whatever my grandmother might dish out, so for his sake, I made it quick. I took only what I really wanted and needed.

  Lida knew we were coming and sat in the best Eastlake Victorian chair in the front parlor. She’d stashed her walker out of sight and laid on the beauty illusion with a spatula. No way would she allow Steinar to see her true self. I longed to ask her what was so bad about being the woman she was? Did she think we didn’t know what 80 looked like or that we would respect her years any less? But no. She insisted on presenting herself as the queen in her own home, one who hadn’t passed 50.