Lilith Mercury, Werewolf Hunter Series (Boxed Set, Books 1-3)

by Tracey H. Kitts

  I opened the lid and saw the universe, somehow contained within the small space. Immediately, an image of Marco appeared, like a snapshot in my hand. His deep chocolate brown eyes stared back at me as if the image were alive. I placed it in the box. Other things began to come to mind. Another snapshot went into the box, this one of the mural that adorned the ceiling back at headquarters. And then a closer shot of those piercing emerald eyes. After several minutes like this, a key appeared in the lock, and I stepped inside.

  The room, as always, was equipped with whatever I had need of, and at the moment, I needed to talk to Mathias.

  His voice was suddenly in my mind, “What troubles you?”

  “Why are my injuries healing so fast?”

  “Have you not recovered faster since your attack years ago?”

  “Yes, but this is different.” I told him what happened a few months ago when several deep puncture wounds on my arm healed almost instantly after Alfred and I had sex.

  “And during this encounter, did you use the voice of seduction?”

  “Yes, I did.” My heart was already beating faster in reaction to what I was afraid he was going to say. Mathias proceeded to describe the feeling that had washed over me during orgasm, and flowed into Alfred.

  Then, without warning he said, “The voice is a form of vampirism.”

  “What?!”

  “Have you ever heard of an incubus, or succubus?”

  “Yes. They feed off the desires of their victims,” I said softly. My chest hurt and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. “So, I fed off of Alfred? I used him to heal my injuries?” I was horrified.

  “Not him, his desire. It is a rare ability to say the least. However, I assure you, you did not steal his strength nor in any way compromise him.”

  “Didn’t in any way compromise him? How can you say that?! I fed off of his desire. Is there any way to not do this, I mean, can I control it?”

  “Of course. You do not automatically do this. However, if you have sex while you are injured in any way, you will feed in order to heal yourself. That is simply the way it is. As I said, this is a form of vampirism. A true incubus or succubus, who needs to feed in order to survive, could potentially—”

  “Potentially what?”

  “Love someone to death.”

  “I suppose it’s inevitable,” I mumbled.

  “What is?”

  “In one way or another, I’m destined to be a monster.”

  Mathias’ deep throaty laugh drifted through my mind.

  “You are not a monster, and neither was I.”

  “How can you be so sure?” I pleaded.

  “Because I have met real monsters before. It is not what a person is that makes them a monster, but what they do.”

  What Mathias said made a lot of sense, and it helped to ease my mind.

  “How long has it been since you have rested?” he asked.

  “I’ve slept, just not well.”

  “You must stop worrying. I am aware of all the things running through your mind, and there is not one that you can change.”

  I knew better than to ask him to elaborate. I was certain he was referring to all of the things I had placed in the small silver box before entering. Finally he said, “Will you let me help you?”

  Mathias’ help was not always straight forward. I hesitated before asking, “What did you have in mind?”

  “Look to the table,” he said softly.

  Beside the sofa which was always in this room of mine, there was a table with many layers of shelves. On the top shelf sat a blue shimmering bottle labeled “peace of mind.” I knew how to use the bottle, but before I did so I relayed a message, “Aldan Medwin says hello.”

  To my surprise Mathias’ laughter echoed through my mind again as he replied, “I suppose this is his way of rubbing it in.”

  “Rubbing what in?”

  “I seduced his sister years ago and he told me, in a fit of rage, that his revenge would be to thrive when I was little more than a memory.”

  “He serves on the council in your place.”

  “And he well deserves it. Aldan was a good man. I would not have wanted someone like me near a female relative of mine either.”

  I went on to tell Mathias about my conversation with Aldan, and how I had instantly liked him. I also told him of the effect that the briefest touch of my power had on Aldan.

  He laughed again. “Then that explains it, he has forgiven me.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because he now knows what his sister was up against, and for him to speak to me again, even through a passed along message, says he now understands that. Trust me, I knew him for two hundred years before he finally stopped speaking to me.”

  I decided to take his word about Aldan. There was another question I was dying to ask. “Have you ever known an incubus? A real one?”

  “Yes.” He grew uncharacteristically quiet after this reply. I waited for more of an explanation, but none came.

  “Mathias? Please, tell me about him.”

  “I offered him an alternative to what he had become. I thought I could help him.”

  “Did you help him?” I asked hesitantly.

  “To become more dangerous, yes.”

  Mathias was obviously upset over this past incident, so I didn’t push the issue further. I waited silently for him to change the subject.

  A few minutes later, he said, “You need some rest.”

  I agreed. I took the shimmering blue bottle and placed a drop of its milky contents onto my finger. Next, I applied this drop to my forehead between my eyebrows, and slightly up. I stretched out across the sofa and covered myself in a blanket that looked to be made of thousands of tiny leaves. It was the best sleep I’d had in months.

  *****

  Over the next few days, I did my best to not be bothered by what Mathias had told me. However, my very best efforts could not distract me. It was nearly a week later when a better distraction than I could have created on my own called me out of the blue. Alfred was in town, and I was just stepping out of the shower when the phone rang that morning.

  “Hello.”

  “Lilith Mercury?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Alek Ambrose, I’m the wizard who—”

  “I know who you are,” I interrupted, “but why are you calling me?”

  Alek Ambrose was the wizard originally offered the council seat vacated by Mathias Alexander forty years ago. When he was only twenty years old, Ambrose had defeated a goblin army conjured by the dark wizard Tavarius Maeryn. However, he turned down the appointment, saying he had not defeated Maeryn in order to obtain the seat; he had simply done the right thing.

  “I felt that I should,” he said, “and I learned a long time ago to take my feelings seriously.” He had a sexy hypnotic voice, smooth as silk, and welcoming as a warm fire on a cold night. “Perhaps, if you tell me a little about yourself, we might both be enlightened as to why I called.”

  “How do I know you’re who you say you are?”

  The question had barely left my lips when I felt his power break over me. A threat, a hint, a promise of what he was capable of.

  I gasped. “What would you like to know?”

  Over the course of the next forty minutes or so, I found myself opening up to a complete stranger about my private life. I was able to talk to Alek as if he were Kat. I felt like I had known him for years. But it wasn’t just me opening up. I was eager to know where Alek Ambrose had been for the past forty years. To my surprise, he told me. Alek was calling from England where he had lived for the past forty years in hiding. Well, not exactly hiding, but no one had really considered he would be writing and directing plays in London. At least that explained the accent. He didn’t possess the magical voice of seduction; Alek simply had a sexy voice. I could have listened to him for hours.

  “So, you’ve been in theatre for forty years?” I asked.

  “Precisely.” Alek had a way
of enunciating his words where every syllable was clearly heard. His voice, though sexy, was also powerful. It was a commanding voice, and even though he was not harsh with me, I felt compelled to obey.

  “You’ve never gone back to Terra in all these years? Even once?”

  “Once,” he admitted. Then Alek seemed to slip into a pleasant dream as he retold what happened in the moments before he returned to Earth. “Are you familiar with the large pool near the Council Tower?”

  “I am.”

  “As I passed this, I saw a woman. She was lovely, a vision to be sure.” He sighed. “I watched while she stripped naked and went for a swim under the moonlight.”

  My heart was hammering violently in my chest. Surely, I wasn’t the only one to ever skinny dip in the lake by the Council Tower?

  “Why didn’t you speak to her, or do you just like to watch?”

  I’m not sure what made me say it, but his response answered the question I had not asked. “Because she was there with one of the Icarum. As a matter of fact, he appeared to be sketching her portrait while she swam. So, after a moment’s fascination, I left.”

  “It was me,” I confessed.

  “And what did the Icarum gentleman do to deserve a naked picture of you?” he asked softly.

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”

  “Blackmailed you did he?”

  “What makes you jump to that?” I laughed nervously.

  He paused, and just when I thought he wasn’t going to answer he said, “The way you just laughed at it.”

  “What are you, a mind reader?”

  “No. I’m a person reader.”

  “And what did you read from watching my midnight swim? Or were you just hoping to get a good flash?” I couldn’t resist asking.

  “You are certainly beautiful,” he began slowly. “However, as I watched you sit on a large rock under the stars, something interested me that had nothing to do with your breasts.”

  “And what would that be? My ass?”

  “No. You were sitting on that.” His sarcasm made me smile. “What I saw was a woman who was comfortable in her own skin, and that is very appealing to me.”

  “Damn.” I sighed. “You’re good.”

  “Well, I’ve had practice.”

  “Did you practice this conversation?”

  “No. I actually called having no idea what I was going to say.”

  “What made you think I wouldn’t hang up on you?”

  “I hoped that you would give me a chance to explain,” he said with a laugh. “Or, at least enjoy a good obscene phone call.”

  “Well, it isn’t obscene yet. There’s been the vague mention of my ass, but other than that …”

  “Would you like it to be?” he inquired softly.

  I paused, not sure how to respond.

  “I’m only teasing, darling. Have no fear that I shall cross the seas to molest you. It’s simply my personality.” I could hear the smile in his voice, and having a flirtatious personality myself, I could relate. If that’s how he wanted to play it, I wasn’t about to be outdone.

  “So, is this where you were planning to offer to show me your magic wand?” I laughed. “Or don’t you guys need any sort of stick to perform magic?”

  He laughed, and it was wicked. “Darling, I assure you my stick isn’t the only thing that’s magic.”

  “Really?” I said, as if I wasn’t buying it.

  “You give me a few hours, a blindfold, and some leather straps, and I’ll show you magic,” he purred into the phone.

  I shivered. “Mmm, I’m all aquiver,” I said, still sarcastic.

  “What’s that noise? I keep hearing something,” he said.

  “I’m drying my hair with a towel.”

  “You mean to tell me that you’ve been wet and naked through this entire conversation.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” He sounded deprived.

  “You didn’t ask.”

  I then informed him that as much as I had enjoyed our conversation, I was getting cold. “I should go,” I added.

  “So, you’ve enjoyed talking to me, have you?” He paused. “Why have you enjoyed talking to me?”

  Something about Alek told me that he would understand my next remark perfectly. There are people who might need an explanation after a reference to soul music. But I didn’t think he was one of them.

  I asked him, “Have you ever heard the expression that if God had a human voice, he would sound like Aretha Franklin?”

  “I have.”

  “Well, if the devil had a voice, he would sound like you.”

  He laughed, a wicked and evil rumble that did things to me a stranger’s voice shouldn’t have.

  “I should be wet and naked again about six o’clock tomorrow,” I volunteered.

  “Until then,” he replied, and the line went dead.

  Chapter Five

  Over the next two weeks I became almost closer to Alek than I was to Kat. Our flirting remained relatively innocent, and neither one of us tried to make it anything more. I told him about Alfred. Not because he’d asked, but because it was the right thing to do. I was enjoying our newfound friendship, but I wanted him to be clear, it was a friendship. Neither one of us had a clue yet as to why he had felt led to call me, and we hadn’t discussed it since that first day. One oddity I noticed about Alek was that he never said hello or goodbye. When I asked him about this he told me he never put any thought into why he didn’t say hello. But goodbye was the last thing he said to his father before he was killed in an accident. Alek was eight. I was contemplating the tragedy of this when someone rung my doorbell.

  No one I knew ever rung my doorbell. I had a large silver door knocker in the shape of a lion’s head with a ring hanging from its mouth. It was one way of telling who or what might be on the other side of the door. Most people liked the door knocker. I looked out the window on my way downstairs, dusk had just fallen over the landscape, and I was alone. Alfred had gone to visit my father for a few hours. The only person who had rung my doorbell recently was Marco. Unconsciously my heart began to flutter at the thought of him standing on my front porch.

  However, it was not Marco who awaited me. Upon opening the door I saw a tall dark skinned woman. Her tan went well with her almost ebony hair and heavy lidded eyes. She wore a long flowing skirt of many colored silks, and a soft lavender blouse. She looked like a gypsy.

  “Lilith Mercury?” she asked with a strong Romanian accent.

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Annabel, may I speak with you?”

  “Yes, come in.” I wasn’t sure what else to say.

  I led Annabel into the kitchen where she refused any kind of drink, but took a seat at the table.

  “Thank you, Ms. Mercury, for allowing me into your home.”

  I put some water to boil on the stove, having had a sudden craving for hot chocolate. Could it have been thinking about Marco that gave me the urge for chocolate? Possibly.

  “What can I do for you, Annabel?”

  “You will please forgive me if this is rude, but I will get to the point,” she made it a question and seemed to pause for my approval. I nodded. “I am a vampire,” she blurted out, “and I quite understand if you wish to revoke your invitation without hearing what I have to say.”

  On the contrary, I was intrigued, especially after what I had learned recently about myself. I was definitely in no position to judge. I put the pack of cocoa I’d been holding on the table and took a seat opposite Annabel. “Please, go on.”

  She seemed relieved. “I am here on behalf of the Vampire Council.”

  I hadn’t known a Vampire Council existed. “All right.”

  “Surely you must know of the recent changes in regards to the rights of the wolves. It is our desire to obtain the same recognition.”

  “I can sympathize with your situation, but how does that involve me?”

&n
bsp; “It has come to the attention of the council that you are not entirely human.”

  “You mean they’ve been spying on me, but go on.”

  “We felt that you might be more understanding due to this fact, and you are also known as the best in your field.”

  “What is it exactly you want me to do?”

  She toyed absently with the fringe on her skirt and for a moment would not look at me. “The original has been missing for some time.”

  “The original what? Vampire?”

  “Yes. We believe if he were to speak on our behalf before The Wizard Council, like the alpha werewolf did for his people—”

  “Then you could be granted the same privileges.”

  “Yes.”

  The vampire population had kept themselves remarkably quiet over the years, not living in the open nearly as much as werewolves. I knew of their existence, but I’d never sat at my kitchen table and had a polite conversation with one before. They handled their own business, took night jobs where available, and no one was the wiser. In short, they didn’t cause a problem. Nobody knew exactly where vampires had come from, or how vampirism was first started. It just sort of happened somewhere along the way. To my knowledge, it hadn’t been consciously spread like lycanthropy. I understood where Annabel was coming from, but this seemed way out of my area of expertise.

  “You know, this isn’t exactly what I do?”

  She mentioned an obscene amount of money, but price was not my concern.

  “I realize that,” she began. “But you would have a better chance than any of us at finding him.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “He knows when we are near, he can sense us and has avoided us for years.”

  “I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

  “Where you find werewolves, you will find him. He prefers the taste of their blood.”

  The kettle started to whistle and I jumped. I took the pack of cocoa with me to the counter and mixed my chocolate while I considered what she was saying.