Billionaires and Bodybags: Forbidden Fangs, Book 1

by Keira Blackwood

  She bit her lip, hiding the burst of laughter I knew she was suppressing. “Uh huh,” she said. “And how did that go?”

  “Turns out I can’t manipulate shifters.”

  “Tell me you tried to make him do something heinous. Horribly, disgustingly hilarious.”

  “I was looking to feed on him,” I told her. “He insulted His Lordship.”

  “No.”

  I nodded.

  “I knew he was no good,” she said in a mocking tone. Then more seriously she said, “Shifters are the worst. But if he makes you happy, I’ll try to be nice.”

  “Thank you.” He did make me happy. Maybe happy wasn’t the right word. He excited me. He thrilled me. He rocked my world. I decided not to pass any of that along to Kelly, or I’d face more teasing.

  She rubbed her hands together. “So that plan I’ve been brewing.”

  “Uh oh.”

  “Forbidden has a morgue, right? I mean they have to do something with the dead. They probably call it Dastardly Dead or the like.”

  I snorted, but I wasn’t entirely sure I liked where this was going. “Yes, there’s a morgue.”

  “Lead the way.”

  The morgue was attached to the clinic. Like most of the town, there was the distinct, hair-raising feeling of shifters in the air. I didn’t know what her plan was, but I knew she’d take full advantage of my special ability.

  “Remember, my power doesn’t work on shifters,” I told her.

  “Uh huh.” She climbed through the bushes and peeked through one of the windows, probably invading some poor patient’s privacy. Hopefully it was just a lobby or they’d shut the blinds.

  “And I can feel shifters here,” I said. “Can’t you?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  These vague answers made me question whether she was listening to me at all.

  “There’s a man-sized dildo dancing down the street,” I said, and waited for her to respond in any way. “It’s coming right for you.”

  “Mmm,” she said.

  I climbed into the bushes after her and grabbed her arm. She spun around and looked at me.

  “I was listening,” she said. “You have dicks on the brain. And shifters. One shifter dick in particular?”

  “That’s not—” I pinched my brow.

  “Come on, this is going to be great.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me to the back door.

  A super tall, super skinny, super startled man greeted us inside with a confused scowl. “You can’t be here.”

  He’d inexpertly gelled his black hair back to the point that it looked like a helmet, and he had a crooked nose that was reminiscent of a bird’s beak. Perhaps the coroner was a bird shifter of some sort. His lab coat had a mystery black fluid smeared across the front. I wasn’t particularly good at guessing people’s ages, but he had the round cheeks of a small child, so I was guessing he was young.

  Kelly plastered an expression on her face that was half-predator, half-delinquent. “Hi,” she said, then shoved me into the bird man’s chest. “Have you met Marla? She’s charming.”

  “Whoa!” He leaped back like I was the one with fluids on my shirt.

  “Go on, Marla,” Kelly said. “Show him your charm.”

  My face was hot, and probably as red as my favorite cherry shade of lipstick. I didn’t have much of a choice, but if this guy was a shifter, all of this ridiculousness would be for nothing. Well, Kelly would get a good laugh out of it.

  I sucked in a deep breath, hating the fact that my power required me to flirt with my target. He wouldn’t remember after, but I would. And I only wanted to flirt with Grayson. Hell of a time for that revelation.

  With what I hoped was a sweet smile on my lips, and a thick-lashed wink, I leaned forward and grabbed bird boy’s collar. “What’s your name, handsome?”

  His pupils dilated. “Jess—Jessie, ma’am.”

  Kelly barked a laugh. “You just got ma’amed.”

  I ignored her and brushed his wrist with my finger. “Jessie, that’s a nice name.”

  He nodded, a stupid smitten smile overtaking his features, and his muscles relaxed. It was working, no question. Jessie was definitely not a shifter.

  “It’s my granny’s name,” Kelly whispered into my ear.

  I swatted her away.

  “Tell me, Jessie,” I said with a tilt of my shoulders that showed just an extra inch of cleavage. “Are we supposed to be here?”

  He blinked hard, opened his mouth, and snapped it shut again. “Are you supposed to be here?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yes,” he repeated.

  I turned to Kelly, who appeared more than a little amused. She was the Cheshire-freaking-cat.

  “Don’t say a word,” I said to her. Then I added, “But what exactly is your plan here, Kelly? I did what you asked, but I draw the line at messing with the dead.”

  “We are the dead.”

  “No,” I said. “We’re the undead. There’s a difference.”

  She shrugged. “It won’t hurt to take just a few little pieces. Dead guys won’t miss a toe or two.”

  “No.”

  “A little pinky. Maybe a slightly rotting nose, for the smell.” Clearly enjoying her pun, she put her hands on her hips, waiting for my retort.

  “No way. They’re people.”

  “We eat people,” Kelly said. “We can eat this guy right here, and he’ll say thank you, won’t you, Jessie?”

  Jessie looked at me and waited for me to tell him what the answer was.

  “Our plan will not involve biting Jessie,” I told Kelly. “You were skulking in the bushes, and we could have been seen. It’s full light out. We can’t very well have Jessie go home and sleep it off without losing him his job. He’s what, eighteen?”

  “Twenty-four,” Jessie said.

  I ignored him and continued. “We leave Jessie alone. And we gather supplies to make it seem like there’s a body. No real bodies—”

  Kelly raised a finger like she wanted to say something.

  I didn’t give her the chance. “Or body bits.”

  She dropped her hands to her sides. “Fine.”

  Her expression tightened, like she had a sudden stab of pain in the center of her forehead. Her eyes glossed over and she swayed her hips and her hands and she burst into song. Just like I had to flirt to manipulate, Kelly’s gift came with its own unique quirk. She belted out “Fortune Teller,” an oldies song I hadn’t known until I met Kelly. When she got a vision, she looked like a tap-dancing marionette. It would have been hilarious if her power didn’t tend to bring bad news. Objectively, it was still amusing.

  Halfway through the ditty, her eyes refocused, and I moved to catch her so she wouldn’t fall. She leaned into me.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “No.”

  “What did you see?”

  “He’s almost here. We have twenty-four hours at best.”

  The two of us shared a moment of silence, letting that sink in. We’d already known Andy was coming, but a day wasn’t much time to finish preparing. My stomach twisted at the thought of Grayson being hurt. But Kelly being here, having a heads-up as to what was coming, it would be enough to keep Grayson alive. It had to be.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked. Then I looked again at Jessie’s soiled coat. “Maybe they have...juices.”

  Jessie looked down. “Prune juice.”

  “Body bags,” Kelly said, jabbing a bossy finger at Jessie. “Where do you keep them?”

  Jessie was still looking at me, so I repeated Kelly’s question to him. He was of course thrilled to show us where to find the body bags. Kelly would have been happy to take the bags and run, but I wasn’t. Actions always had consequences, and if we stole their body bags, it could mean they didn’t have one when they needed one. Maybe they had a tight budget. It was wrong to steal, so I gave Jessie some money for what we needed before we left. And I left him with orders to forget we’d com
e and not to use as much product in his hair in the future.

  It wasn’t until we were standing outside again that it dawned on Kelly and me that we didn’t have a way to get the body bags anywhere without dragging them through the streets. It was strange the way Kelly’s plans ended up being both practical and reckless at the same time. So I called Grayson and asked him to pick us up without offering an explanation.

  “If you won’t let me steal any body bits, how do you expect to create the distinct odor of the recently departed?” Kelly asked.

  That was a great question. “I haven’t figured that part out yet,” I told her honestly. “I know a pair of witches who might be willing to help.”

  Grayson pulled his Mercedes up to the curb in front of the clinic.

  “He’s here,” I told Kelly. “Come on.”

  The two of us ambled out from our hiding spot in the shadows, struggling to hold onto a stack of slippery bags without tripping or dropping anything.

  “I get to see you a little early.” Grayson shut his car door and approached. His cloudy-sky eyes were alight and seeing him looking at me like that made my heart wish it could beat, just to skip once for him.

  And then he noticed what we were doing. The glimmer in his eyes faded and he stopped in his tracks, crossing his arms in a guarded, sexy, putting-his-foot-down kind of way.

  “Whatever this is,” he said, and turned his attention on Kelly. “No.”

  “I didn’t ask for your permission,” Kelly said.

  A V formed between Grayson’s eyes and he looked at me. “You’re not planning on filling those with actual bodies, are you?”

  “I have a shifter in mind who can fill one,” Kelly grumbled. “Move over, we need to put these in your boot. You can deliver them to the shop for us.”

  Grayson backed up toward his car. “There’s no space in my trunk.”

  “Bullshit.” Kelly dropped her end of the bags. I lurched forward, trying to catch myself and our precious cargo. She grabbed Grayson’s keys right out of his hand.

  I set down my side of the bags and reached for her because if it came to a fight between the two of them, I honestly wasn’t sure who would win. Grayson had plenty of strength and speed, but Kelly? That woman was pure vitriol.

  I wasn’t fast enough. Grayson threw himself across the back of the car, arms spread, while Kelly tried to shove him out of the way and pull the latch. They were acting like children, which, if I was being honest, was better than they’d acted when they’d first met.

  Grayson knocked the keys from her hand.

  “I will break you,” Kelly hissed, showing him her fangs. “And then your back window. The break will make a perfect hole for stashing my goods.”

  Grayson growled. “You’re the most obnoxious person I’ve ever met. Haven’t you ever heard of manners? Asking nicely when you want something?”

  “Nope.” Kelly kicked the back of his leg, knocking him off balance.

  He recovered quickly and shoved her back.

  “The point of calling for help was so we didn’t have to look like crazies in the street,” I told Kelly.

  She stuck out a pouty lip and crossed her arms.

  I turned my attention to Grayson. “You came here to help us, to help me. I need to put these in your car before the two of you attract the whole town’s attention with your nonsense.”

  Grayson frowned, and reached for the handle. “Okay. I give in.”

  He opened the hatch, and my mouth fell open when I saw what was inside. It was a mountain of stuffed animals. There was a chicken with weirdly long legs with the words Clux of Redemption embroidered onto the left wing. There was an oyster with Alabama’s state flag where a pearl would be, a crab, a lobster, and more teddy bears wearing t-shirts than any human, vampire, or shifter was meant to own.

  Kelly burst out laughing. “This is why you didn’t want us in here.”

  Grayson’s frown deepened.

  Kelly slapped my shoulder. “Your boy toy has a plushy kink. I bet he wears a giant version of this turd for sex.” She pointed to a stuffed animal that did in fact look like a giant turd.

  “That’s a coffee bean,” he said, and tossed the turd to the back of the stack.

  “For the record,” I said, “Grayson does just fine in bed without a poop suit.”

  Kelly laughed harder.

  But why did he have a thousand stuffed animals in his trunk? I guessed everyone had their hobbies. It wasn’t the strangest I’d seen.

  Grayson gave me a crooked grin. As if he could read the question in my head, he said, “Also for the record, these are for my nephew.”

  I didn’t even know he had a nephew. There was so much we didn’t know about each other, and I wanted to know everything about him. But those kinds of thoughts were dangerous. If I wasn’t careful, I might let myself fall for Grayson. If I didn’t love him, maybe that would be enough to save his life.

  “I pick one up in every town I visit,” Grayson said. “He lights up whenever I come to visit, and I’m overdue.”

  “Clearly,” Kelly said.

  “I think that’s sweet,” I told Grayson, because it was.

  Grayson cleared a space by stacking things differently, then set the bags carefully beside the mountain.

  “What is the plan with the bags?” he asked.

  “We fill them up,” Kelly said.

  “Not with bodies,” I added.

  Kelly rolled her eyes. “Not with bodies, sure. Then we make them just the right amount of stinky. And he’ll show up where we’re waiting for him, instead of ambushing us when we least expect it.”

  “It would be best to find somewhere that we have good cover to watch, and is far enough that we’re not leading Andy to innocents who could get caught in the crossfire,” I said. “And I was thinking Pearl and Cordelia could help with our stink problem.”

  Grayson nodded, then clicked the trunk shut. “I spent some time exploring today,” he said. “I might just have the perfect spot. We can call Pearl on the way.”

  Kelly added a flat and sarcastic “woo.”

  12

  Grayson

  Instead of driving straight to the B&B, I drove us on a side road that was little more than a dirt track, barely wide enough for a four-wheeler. Branches scraped against my car’s paint job, but I wasn’t worried about it. In my mind, a vehicle existed to take me places. It didn’t have to be pretty to do it.

  But of course Kelly was full of snark. The back seat should’ve been renamed Snark Central.

  “Grayson, aren’t you worried about your car?” she said. “What kind of car is this, anyway? Some kind of fancy Italian thing I can’t pronounce?”

  “Sounds about right,” I said through gritted teeth.

  She followed up with, “Grayson, I think the shiny fancy paint job is chipping away. Grayson, the plush animals in the boot are crying.”

  Marla, probably sensing I was about to lose my cool, turned around and gave Kelly what can only be described as A Look. I caught the reflection of Kelly shrugging in the rearview mirror.

  It was still strange to me that vampires showed up in mirrors. In the case of Kelly, I didn’t view this as a good thing. She flipped me off.

  I returned my focus to the road, but I kept sneaking glances at Marla. Her blond hair was up in a ponytail again. I loved it when she wore it down, but also amazing was the view of her long, slender neck. She’d bitten me, but I wouldn’t mind giving her a bite—a claiming mark. My inner wolf rumbled in approval.

  “About those plush animals,” Kelly said. “I have an idea.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Could you stop being a wanker for two seconds?” she asked. “It’s a brilliant idea.”

  Marla reached over and took my free hand. She calmed me, helped me feel grounded even when my inner wolf was growling and aggravated. There was something troubling her. With the way she was looking at me, I assumed it was anxiety over Kelly’s warning that someone close to her would die. S
he seemed sure that it would be me. In the quiet moments between conversation, I’d catch glimpses of worry on her face. I hoped my touch could be as calming to her as hers was to me.

  Sighing deeply, I said, “Okay, Kelly. What’s your idea?”

  “It requires the use of those plush toys in the boot.”

  “No.”

  “Hear me out.”

  “No.”

  “Stop being so bloody stubborn!”

  “Okay, stop it, both of you,” Marla said.

  A line of stress had formed between her eyebrows, and I immediately felt guilty for causing it.

  “Grayson,” she said, “trust me, we don’t want to ruin your nephew’s gifts—”

  “You’re in on this plot, too?” I said. Unbelievable.

  “We need something to fill the body bags with,” she explained, her voice calm. “The stuffed animals would be perfect, and they’d be all zipped up inside. No chance of getting dirty or ruined. I won’t let Kelly cover them with guts or anything.”

  I didn’t like it. Seemed to me that there was huge potential for something going wrong. Baylor would be crushed if I didn’t bring him some gifts. And he would only be eight for so long...eventually, he wouldn’t care about getting “stuffies” as he called them. Eventually, he wouldn’t want anything to do with his old uncle.

  Marla squeezed my hand again. “If you have a better idea, we’re all ears.”

  “I’m not,” Kelly said. “This is the best idea.”

  “I hate to agree with Kelly,” I said, “but it is the best idea. I can pick up some different animals for Baylor if these get ruined somehow. We will need to let Declan know what’s going on.”

  “Oh yeah,” Marla said.

  “Is he the big bloke with brown hair, sort of a Grayson clone, but with green eyes and no beard?” Kelly asked.

  “Yep,” Marla said, “although he only looks like Grayson as far as hair color and height.”

  “Yeah, I have face blindness, so whatever,” Kelly said. “Anyway, if that’s him, it looks like we won’t need to call him,” Kelly said.

  I glanced out Marla’s window and sure enough, there was Declan, following alongside us in the forest and waving to get our attention. I wasn’t driving fast, but he still had to run to keep up. I let up on the gas and Marla rolled down her window.