Heroines and Hellions
a Limited Edition Urban Fantasy Collection
Heroines and Hellions is a Multi-Author Bundle, Copyright © 2017 by Carter and Bradley Publishing.
All individual titles copyrighted by the individual authors. Published January, 2018 by Carter and Bradley Publishing.
Cover Art Design 2017 by Rebecca Frank
All rights reserved.
Ebook Edition.
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.
Contents
Heroines and Hellions
Margo Bond Collins & Erin Hayes
Chains of Iron and Silver
Bec McMaster
Nobody’s Hero
Heather Marie Adkins
Demons are a Girl’s Best Friend
Jade Kerrion
Xin
Gina Watson
Secrets Of The King
Rene Folsom
Frigid
Melle Amade
Dark Crown
D.D. Miers
Underground Magic
Michelle Hercules
Elements
Elise Marion
The Guardians
Carly Fall
A Touch of Death
Ashley C. Harris
Jace’s Destiny
Kim Cleary
Dead Certain
Maria Monroe
City Stalker
Christina Walker
Djinn Rising
Louisa Klein
Fairy Wings
Alex Owens
Trick of Shadows
Ash Krafton
Takin’ It Back
SJ Davis
Ink
Heroines and Hellions
NO DAMSELS ALLOWED!
19 Kickass Heroines.
19 Exclusive, Full-length Urban Fantasy and Fantasy Novels.
0 Damsels in Distress.
Do you like your leading ladies to save the day...or raze it?
No matter which you prefer, this set is brimming with 19 magical stories told by some of the leading voices of urban fantasy and fantasy in the industry, including several New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors!
If you want strong female leads who strike back against the captivating worlds of vampires, elementals, fiends, and paranormal monsters, then you're ready to charge into the adventures of HEROINES & HELLIONS, a pure Urban Fantasy/Fantasy collection!
Chains of Iron and Silver
Margo Bond Collins & Erin Hayes
Chains of Iron and Silver
When Cassidy Irons’ fairy-prince boyfriend Drake is kidnapped by a werewolf, she goes against her instincts and reaches out to her cousin Blaize Silver to help her. The two of them team up to battle supernatural creatures, as well as their own personal demons, as they struggle to come to terms with their shared past and the curse that calls them to hunt the very creatures they may be falling in love with.
1
Cassidy
“I think it would get confusing for bear shifters in San Francisco.”
I snorted at my boyfriend Drake’s comment as we walked down the chilly streets of the Mission. We walked arm-in-arm, our shoulders brushing up against each other. I soaked up his warmth and his scent, sighing happily that he was with me. After all, I needed something to take my mind off Gracie.
“Why do you say that?”
He turned his dark, amused eyes toward me and gave a nonchalant shrug. “Imagine—you’re a bear shifter, and you’re new to the area, so you go onto some forum looking for other bear shifters and you find someone else…who may have a different idea.” He waggled his eyebrows at me suggestively.
I poked him in the arm. “I think bears have their own forums.” Surely. But now that I was thinking about it, I wondered if there has been confusion between the bear-shifting community and the bears of the LGBT community—those who were often larger, hairy men. The mental image I had was completely different than Drake’s tall, wiry build, his dark hair mussed on purpose, his skin a pale shade that stood out against his dark coat.
Yep, he’s completely different than bears.
But he brought up an intriguing point. And I ran through all of the possibilities. Maybe cougar-shifters had problems with cougars. Maybe...
“Watch out!” Drake said sharply, just as a car drove by too closely and nearly splashed me with water. He flipped them off before looking down at me like some sort of protector, checking to make sure that I was dry and all right.
“Assholes,” he growled under his breath before glaring back down the dark road.
“I don’t think they did it on purpose.”
His brow furrowed. “Most people are assholes, Cass.”
“Oh, and fairies aren’t?” I teased. “Remember, you and Orin got into it the other day.”
A muscle twitched in his strong jaw. He knew I had a point. After all I’m dating two other fairies, just like Drake, and I don’t mean the Tinkerbell-kind of princes. Three strong, powerful fairy princes who would otherwise be at war with each other.
If they weren’t dating me, that is. I was the glue that held them together, that kept the fairy realm from splitting apart at the seams. They had to tolerate each other because they were all with me.
But that didn’t mean that life was always easy. I was up to my neck in constant fairy-drama all the damn time.
And Drake knew it, too, which is why he shut up without further comment. I fought the urge to roll my eyes.
Men.
That particular brawl ended up with Orin heading home to the Spring Court to cool off. Avery, the prince of the Summer Court, was home as well for some family function, leaving Drake and me to have a week to ourselves, something that is hard to do when you have three boyfriends. On this particular Friday night, we decided to go to dinner at Foreign Cinema for a meal and a movie. The movie was forgettable, the food divine, and the company tall, pale, and handsome.
My Autumn Court Fairy Prince.
It wasn’t too late at night, which meant that we had plenty of time to catch up, just the two of us.
The stoplight ahead of us turned red, and we stopped, waiting for the pedestrian signal to turn back to white.
“You know, I could just change the light with magic,” Drake mused, sticking his hands in his pockets.
“You know, you could at least pretend to be human,” I told him wryly, and his only response was a wicked smile. Another couple stopped at the light, giving us a curious look. I ignored them as best as I could, but it was admittedly hard.
I always felt out of place, no matter where I was. That’s what happened when you were basically a nomad, traveling around the American West because of a curse. I never felt like I was at home, and only two people understood that feeling.
One was Gracie, who was dead.
The other… Well, short of the world ending, I wasn’t going to contact her. Not if I didn’t want to end up just like Gracie.
My hand clenched in the memory, feeling that ache in my chest at the loss of my cousin. I worried my bottom lip, trying to dampen that feeling.
Don’t ruin tonight with tears.
“Let’s go,” Drake said, taking my hand to jog across the street. The
pedestrian crossing flashed white just as we stepped off the curb, making me wonder if Drake did indeed use some magic to get us back to the apartment faster.
I decided not to complain. I nestled into his warmth, ready to get the rest of the night going. I needed this so badly.
“It’s quiet tonight,” I murmured, looking around us as we turned down another street. Other than the couple that watched us strangely, there weren’t very any people out, due to the chill in the night air. Januaries in San Francisco were some of the coldest months in the year, which wasn’t saying much for a city that never sees snow.
But it was cold enough for it to keep the crowds away, so Drake and I were alone underneath the flickering street light.
“Remind me to never wear these shoes again,” I muttered, nearly twisting an ankle as the red-bottomed soles of my shoes hit some gravel and I nearly face-planted.
“You wouldn’t listen to me anyway,” Drake said with a snicker, and I couldn’t help but smirk at him.
He knew me too well.
The shoes were gorgeous, but so damn impractical, especially for walking home at night. I may be a demon hunter, but shit, a girl needs to look her best when she goes out with one of her boyfriends. And I knew I looked good, too. Drake couldn’t keep his hands off me, as evidenced by his hand over my ass all night.
Not that I’m complaining. Especially as I gave him a come-hither look.
“You,” he whispered, pulling me to him, “are a sin.”
I raised my eyebrow. “And?”
He kissed my lips in answer. I guess that was good enough for me.
Then I felt it. A rumbling in the darkness around us. The hair on the back on my neck stood straight up in response. As I looked up into Drake’s eyes, his mouth turned down at the corners.
He noticed it, too. What’s more, there was fear in his eyes, which, when a powerful fairy prince was afraid, you knew the shit was about to hit the fan. He moved, just slightly, enough to put himself between the threat and me.
He knew that being too protective made me grumpy—I was a demon hunter after all—so for him to automatically do this...
Panic rose in my throat. “Drake…”
He didn’t get to answer, because claws reached out from the darkness and tore me away from him. Instincts took over, and I brought up my leg and slammed my red-bottomed stiletto into the face of my assailant. All of those years in ballet paid off, because I was damn flexible, and I heard the satisfying crunch of my foot into their nose.
They underestimated Cassidy Irons.
My attacker immediately let me go with a roar, and I landed on both feet. I pulled out my duo of knives from my garter. Ugh, why did they decide to attack us now, of all nights? I had dressed for a sexy night out, not for a fight among some sort of stupid supernatural creature. I wasn’t armed for this kind of shit.
At least now, I felt pissed.
I whirled on my feet, flashing my blades against the throat of my attacker, feeling the warm blood splatter against my face. Yeah, this dress was now officially ruined.
At least I got a better look at whoever thought they could start some shit.
It was a wolf. A big, furry werewolf to be exact, his eyes going wild as he collapsed to the concrete.
Werewolves weren’t my usual go-to for hunting—that title belonged to my cousin—but I could still kick their ass when I needed to.
“Who’s the big bad wolf now, bitch?” I sneered.
Then I turned to look at Drake, to see him smile and laugh that his girlfriend could kick ass, but he wasn’t there. I let out a wisp of breath, trying to wrack my brain what happened.
But the only thing that made sense was that there were more werewolves. And Drake was either fighting them or…
Or they had stolen him.
I took off at a run, kicking off the stupid, stupid shoes as I did so, pumping my legs as fast as I could, frantically looking at every shadow and everything that moved in the night.
“Drake!” I screamed. “Drake, where are you?”
Something slammed into me from the side, and I lost contact with the ground, flying into the nearest wall. I slid to the ground and tried to rattle some oxygen into my paperthin lungs. The air had been knocked right out of me, and based on how my ribs hurts, something else had been knocked loose, too.
My knives were somewhere. If only I could get my double vision lined up together, then I’d kill whoever did this.
My hands scrabbled along the concrete. Where are they? Where are they?
My fingers wrapped around one, and I brought it up in an arc to stab into the mouth of another werewolf as he tried to bite me. The blade slid all the way home into his brain, gushing blood around my fingers and thick, frothy saliva spluttered in my face.
That helped bring my double vision back together, at least. I found my other knife and stabbed it into another werewolf’s chest before throwing one into the eye of another.
Just how many werewolves are attacking us?
Too many apparently, because I screamed as I felt jaws tear into my shoulder from behind me, digging into muscle, bone, and tendons. I hoped I tasted bad for him, but he shook his big head, and I felt more of me tear within his teeth.
I spun with my other hand and jabbed the knife into the werewolf’s jugular. He gurgled a few times before his teeth slackened enough to let go, but I kicked him away, retrieving my knife from his neck.
“Drake!” I screamed again, trying to do something—anything—to get him to answer me. “Drake!”
I grimaced as the pain from my shoulder hit me again, and a claw came out of the darkness and swiped across my cheek. Stars danced across my eyes as I struggled to keep on my feet. Something wet and sticky slid down my cheek, and I hated to think that I would probably have a very visible scar after this.
I flipped the knife in my hands, brandishing it in front of me.
The werewolves didn’t relent though. I saw their eyes glowing in the darkness in front of me, their huge bodies obscured by shadows. At least a dozen of them, although I didn’t exactly have time to count.
“Where’s Drake? What did you do with him?”
I slashed my blade in front of me, and a few took a step or two back. But it wasn’t enough to stop all of them from advancing.
“Stay back, you fuckers!”
Of course, they were just like dogs; they didn’t fucking listen, and I was running out of options. I gritted my teeth, ready to move, when sirens wailing in the distance caught all of us off guard.
Maybe someone heard me screaming and called the cops. Maybe. Or maybe it had to do with some other crime—we were in a big city after all—but the sirens kept getting closer, meaning the cops would be near us soon.
One of the wolves in front of me flicked his ears at the sound, whipped his head around and snarled at his pack. A few yipped back in answer, but the first wolf snarled again before bounding off into the darkness.
The other followed suit, melting into the shadows. Some grabbed their fallen comrades and dragged them away. I watched warily as they moved in case any of them got any bright ideas.
I staggered against a brick wall just as the red and blue lights of a police car passed the street by. So they weren’t on their way to help me.
Just as well. The fuckers were gone.
I knew without looking at a mirror that I was in bad shape. Not only that, I’d been bitten by a werewolf, and I hated what I had to do in order to stop the lycanthropy from taking me over.
“Fuck.”
They had Drake. Why, I had no idea. Maybe it was some sort of fairy/werewolf drama, which I wouldn’t put it past him to be a part of. But with Orin and Avery gone, I was on my own.
Not entirely.
“Fuck,” I muttered again, pulling out my phone. I didn’t look at my shoulder or touch my cheek—I could only handle one shitty thing at a time, and this phone call was the first thing I was taking care of.
I scrolled down to the one name I r
ecognized. The one person I knew who could kick werewolf ass better than I could.
If Drake hadn’t been kidnapped, I might not have called, just dealt with the wolves on my own. But with his life on the line, I couldn’t risk it. Wouldn’t risk it.
Even still, I had to grit my teeth as I hit “SEND.”
As I heard the phone ring, a swell of emotions overtook me, feelings that I hadn’t sat down and sorted through just yet. A tear slid down my cheek, mixing with the blood as I nearly hiccuped.
As per usual with Blaize, it went to voicemail, and I nearly shrieked in anger. Still, I held back the rising panic as I said into the phone, “Blaize, it’s Cassidy. I need you to come out here. Now.” After a moment, I added, “Please.” I sounded a little more scared than I liked.
The thing is, I was terrified.
She’d follow through. Hopefully, unless she was too chicken shit to face me, which I wouldn’t put past her, considering that I hadn’t heard from her since Gracie’s death.
Don’t think about that now.
I glanced down at my ruined shoulder and immediately regretted it. Until I heard back from Blaize, I was going to have to treat my wounds.
“How fucking brilliant,” I muttered.
2
Blaize
Leave it to Cass to finally call me when I’m in the middle of beheading some troglodyte I picked up in a bar.
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