Rampant, Volume 1

by Amy Lane

  There were nods all around, and I suddenly felt less freaked out.

  “We’re good people—we like each other. If we can just keep that in mind, we can make it through tomorrow night and do what we came out to do.”

  I sighed then and met my accidental lover’s eyes. “I’m just sorry we’re going to be dealing with this… random chaos generator with your parents here, Nick. It could make things a little bit awkward—and I don’t think you can explain it to them either.”

  Nicky shrugged. “I still say 50 percent of yesterday was my mother.”

  I looked at him and made sure our gazes stuck. “And I still say I’m sorry.”

  Nicky nodded. “You take on too much. Next thing you know, you’ll be apologizing for—”

  “Don’t even say her name,” Bracken snapped, and there was a chorus of nods from the group.

  “She’s not a demon!” I said, trying to keep my humor.

  “Says you!” Renny piped up, and I had to laugh. Okay, okay, Annette was the devil—we all agreed, and so be it.

  Nicky rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but the good news is, if you say her name backward and offer to get her off, she’ll disappear!”

  We all looked at him. “Awk-ward,” Max said into the silence. I had to agree.

  “Please tell me that was the chaos thing,” I begged, and Nicky shrugged.

  “Probably—but that is why we broke up. She kept begging to get married, to… you know… ‘consummate the relationship.’ I told her I wasn’t that serious, but I could….” Finally—finally—he flushed. “She told me I was trying to cheapen our relationship, and dropped me before prom.”

  “Un. Believe. Able.” I could barely look at him, I was so embarrassed—and appalled.

  “Moving right along…,” Bracken said, trying for innocence, and I had to laugh.

  “Absolutely. Okay—good news, right? Focus on good news.”

  “The good news is, the bodies have been reported,” Teague said. He had a beer in his hand.

  “Good news!” I crowed, pumping my fist in the air. To my amusement and relief, the roomful of people followed with pumped fists and a chanted “Good news!”

  LaMark spoke up. “Good news is, we didn’t get pancaked!”

  And the chorus again. “Good news!”

  “Good news is, I kept Teague off the Most Wanted list,” Renny said, and we all pumped our fists in the air and shouted, “Good news!”

  “Good news is, Lambent hasn’t set anything on fire yet!” cracked Mario, and we followed it up with “Good news!”

  “Good news is, I never have to sleep with the demon prom queen!” Nicky hooted. Oh yeah! “Good news!”

  “Good news is, Cory performs tomorrow night!” Bracken threw in smugly. I groaned and covered my face with the bed pillow, but that didn’t stop the delighted chant of “Good news!” from echoing yet again.

  And so on. We managed to celebrate the research we’d accomplished, the lake outside that everybody loved, the fact that our vampires would arise tonight, and each other. By the time we broke up to go out and swim in the deepening shadows of evening, my headache was gone and I thought that maybe, just maybe, we’d survive this little vacation alive.

  Exclusive excerpt

  Lady Cory has carved out a life for herself not just as a wife to three husbands but also as one of the rulers of the supernatural communities of Northern California—and a college student in search of that elusive degree. When a supernatural threat comes crashing into the hard-forged peace of Green’s Hill, she and Green determine that they’re the ones in charge of stopping the abomination that created it. To protect the people they love, Cory, Bracken, and Nicky travel to Redding to confront a tight-knit family of vampires guarding a terrible secret. It also leads them to a conflict of loyalties, as Nicky’s parents threaten to tear Nicky away from the family he’s come to love more than his own life.

  Cory has to work hard to hold on to her temper and her life as she tries to prove that she and Green are not only leaders who will bind people to their hearts, but also protectors who will keep danger from running rampant.

  Coming Soon to

  www.dsppublications.com

  AND AFTER all of that, the bitch still insisted on coming with us to the damned vampire bar. It’s a good thing I’d had a few hours to cool off, or I might have killed her—literally and for good and forever—just for suggesting it.

  But I did have a few hours to cool off, and good hours at that.

  After our boat picked us up—precariously balanced with far too many people on it, but we didn’t care—we puttered around until we found a deep inlet, one with a narrow neck so none of the passing boats could see us. Lambent asked permission and then set a geas on it, a sort of “vague feeling” or repelling spell to keep the other campers away. Everybody stripped naked—Renny and Lambent, mostly—or shape-shifted, or did a combination of both, and either jumped in the water or took turns sunning on the boat, and generally we hung out as a big, rowdy, happy group. Bracken had brought an iPod and a speaker jack, and we plugged it into the boat and played that puppy as loud as we wanted. I sat in the shade and knitted with Katy and Renny, pleased that my waterproof bag had kept the water out during its little adventure. The fact that the yarn was double bagged in a ziplock helped too.

  Green visited my mind as I sat—he’d been there when the water closed over my head, his presence keeping me from panicking completely—and although we did little more than bump telepathic noses, that soothed me too.

  When it got too hot, I put the knitting down and Bracken came to my side and helped me in the water. No judgments were passed as I took deep breaths and clung to his hand, and the splashing and horseplay toned down even when I sighted a spot on land and took off in determined strokes to a place where I could feel, however fleetingly, slippery mud under my toes. Bracken evenly kept pace beside me, and every now and then he would go upright and extend his feet or go under to tell me how much farther I had to go.

  I felt accomplished—absurd, because I’d been swimming in lakes since I was very small—but the feeling stayed with me nonetheless. I’d conquered a fucking fear, no matter how irrational. Go me!

  When we returned to the boat, it was time to go back to the cabins and rest, then rehearse. The iPod jack came in handy then too. I practiced matching my voice, my pacing, and my blocking to the music, positioning people randomly and then moving seductively around the men to strip off their breakaway clothing and reveal their marks.

  I could do it when the music was on—but when Bracken killed the sound to tell us to take a break for crap’s sake, I was right in the middle of tiptoeing my fingers up Jacky’s chest and crooning the throaty opening line. As the music died, we looked at each other blankly, and then personal space reasserted itself and we almost killed ourselves trying to get away. We heard a bizarre snorking sound, and together we looked down to see Teague, sitting on his ass in the dust, cracking up as though he’d never laughed before.

  I blinked.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard him laugh like that,” I said. Jack and Katy looked at me in complete bemusement.

  “Man, it must be that random thing,” Katy said, “’cause I ain’t never seen it either.”

  “Two years,” Jack said, shaking his head with affection as another round of laughter shook his beloved. “Maybe chaos isn’t such a horrible thing after all.”

  That made me laugh, and then Annette walked up and shit all over our mood.

  “You all practicing for a show or something?” she asked brightly, ignoring the wall of icy hostility radiating at her from the eleven of us.

  “Go back to your cabin, Annette,” Nicky said seriously. She tried another sunshine-and-sugar smile.

  “Now you aren’t going to hold that against me today? It was a joke—you know, like the way you were laughing just now?”

  I turned toward her with a hint of laughter in my own eyes—the nasty, corrosive kind of laughter that remind
s you that everyone can be fucking evil.

  “Yeah, Annette, it was hella funny watching you skim across that lake. Did you want another demo? Because I think if I tried that here, you’d have some serious road rash before you hit the water.”

  She blanched, and I amped that evil smile up a little, willing her to go away. Instead she tried a game smile and ignored me.

  “I was just thinking,” she said, trying to make eye contact with Max and Jack, “that maybe I could come with you tonight when you go to meet the vampires. It sounds like fun.” Max bent down and scratched Renny behind the ears, and Jack deliberately helped Teague up—and then hauled that bandy little Irish body into his own long embrace, just to squick her out.

  Teague went, though. I wondered if he’d been afraid of the force of his own laughter, because there was that almost shivering air around his body that spoke of a man who needed comfort. The two of them became their own island, a bubble in time, as Jack whispered in his ear, and I turned back to our enemy, daring her to say anything.

  “You can’t even look at our vampires!” I was stunned—not just by her boldness, but by her stupidity.

  “Well, if I’m going to be a part of Nicky’s life, maybe I should.”

  I blinked at her slowly, and Nicky started to laugh—loud and long and as violently as Teague had. He walked up to her slowly, still chuckling, and bent a tender head toward her while she watched with enchanted eyes. He didn’t touch her, just leaned into her space, and she smiled sunnily up at him as though he was about to answer all her maidenly prayers.

  “I’d sooner fuck a garbage pit,” he said succinctly. She took a step backward.

  “You don’t mean that,” she said stubbornly. He nodded, looking at me with sincere exasperation.

  “You can bet your bubble ass I do,” he said and then walked past her, meaningfully headed for his parents’ cabin.

  I looked at her as she stood alone, her face a study in naked hurt, and I tried not to let any of my pity leak through. I loved Nicky, but that had been harsh. I shook my head. Forget my pride. I’d pulled back—I could have hurt her, really hurt her, but I hadn’t. Those were the boundaries on Green’s hill, but they weren’t the boundaries here, and they certainly weren’t the boundaries in a kiss of vampires that was sheltering a predator.

  “You’re so mean,” she said, sounding like a lost second grader. “He can’t like you better when you’re plain and mean. You’ll see. If we could only get someplace with normal people, he’d see you’re not much at all.”

  “Vampires,” I said carefully, talking to the child she apparently was, “aren’t normal people. What I did to you was playing. It was nothing. It was swatting at a fly. What the people we’re going to see will do to you will be for real. I can’t offer you protection.” I looked around at the people I cared for, the people who had “handled” me all afternoon to make me happy because they knew I’d put it on the line for them, and my face and voice hardened and my power leaked into it.

  “I will not offer you protection. I can’t stop you from following us tonight, but you can’t ride with us. When you walk into that bar, it’s going to be naked and alone. Nobody here will look out for you. You’ve been protected here. You’ve been associated with Nicky—but you are no longer a part of his family. He’s made that clear. My people will not put themselves out to keep you alive. We have real business here, and we can’t afford to let you fuck it up.”

  When I stopped speaking, an honest-to-Goddess chill breeze swept over us, and I realized my power had leaked into my words. Oh, crap—it was a binding. I’d lost control of my power, and it had become a binding. I looked around with almost wild eyes, and my people—all of them—were looking back with bemused, besotted expressions on their faces.

  They wouldn’t help Annette pick up her fork, much less look sideways at her to save her life. I had actually bound them from any action to help her.

  I looked at Bracken, who was squinting through the binding with a pained look, and I knew I was right. “Oh, shit.”

  More from Amy Lane

  Little Goddess: Book One

  Working graveyards in a gas station seems a small price for Cory to pay to get her degree and get the hell out of her tiny town. She’s terrified of disappearing into the aimless masses of the lost and the young who haunt her neck of the woods. Until the night she actually stops looking at her books and looks up. What awaits her is a world she has only read about—one filled with fantastical creatures that she’s sure she could never be.

  And then Adrian walks in, bearing a wealth of pain, an agonizing secret, and a hundred and fifty years with a lover he’s afraid she won’t understand. In one breathless kiss, her entire understanding of her own worth and destiny is turned completely upside down. When her newfound world explodes into violence and Adrian’s lover—and prince—walks into the picture, she’s forced to explore feelings and abilities she’s never dreamed of. The first thing she discovers is that love doesn’t fit into nice neat little boxes. The second thing is that risking your life is nothing compared to facing who you really are—and who you’ll kill to protect.

  Little Goddess: Book Two, Vol. 1

  Cory fled the foothills to deal with the pain of losing Adrian, and Green watched her go. Separately, they could easily grieve themselves to death, but when an old enemy of Green’s brings them back together, they can no longer hide from their grief—or their love for each other.

  But Cory’s grieving has cut her off from the emotional stability that’s the source of her power, and Green’s worry for her has left them both weak. Cory’s strength comes from love, and she finds that when she’s in the presence of Adrian’s best friend, Bracken, she feels stronger still.

  But defeating their enemy is by no means a sure thing. As the attacks against Cory and her lovers keep coming, it becomes clear that their love might not be enough if they can’t heal each other—and themselves—from the wounds that almost killed them all.

  Little Goddess: Book Two, Vol. 2

  Green and Bracken’s beloved survived their enemy’s worst—with help from unexpected vampiric help.

  But survival is a long way from recovery, and even further from safety. Green’s people want badly to return to the Sierra Foothills, but they’re not going with their tails between their legs. Before they go home, they have to make sure they’re free from attack—and that they administer a healthy dose of revenge as well.

  As Cory negotiates a fragile peace between her new and unexpected lovers, Green negotiates the unexpected power that comes from being a beloved leader of the paranormal population. Together, they might heal their own wounds and lead their people to an unprecedented place at the top of the supernatural food chain—a place that will allow them to return home a better, stronger whole.

  Little Goddess: Book Three, Vol. 1

  Humans have the option of separation, divorce, and heartbreak. For Corinne Carol-Anne Kirkpatrick, sorceress and queen of the vampires, the choices are limited to love or death. Now that she is back at Green’s Hill and assuming her duties as leader, her life is, at best, complicated. Bracken and Nicky are competing for her affections, Green is away taking care of his people, and a new supernatural enemy is threatening the sanctity of all she has come to love. Throw in a family reunion gone bad, a supernatural psychiatrist, and a killer physics class, and Cory’s life isn’t just complex, it’s psychotic.

  Cory needs to get her act and her identity together, and soon, because the enemy she and her lovers are facing is a nightmare that doesn’t just kill people, it unmakes them. If she doesn’t figure out who she is and what her place is on Green’s Hill, it’s not just her life on the line. She knows from hard experience that the only thing worse than facing death is facing the death of someone she loves.

  Loving people is easy—living with them is what takes the real work, and it’s even harder if you’re bound.

  Little Goddess: Book Three, Vol. 2

  Cory’s newly bound f
amily is starting to find its footing, which is a good thing because danger after danger threatens, and Green can’t be there nearly as often as he’s needed. As Cory learns to face the challenges of ruling the hill alone, she’s also juggling a ménage relationship with three lovers—with mixed results.

  But with each new challenge, one lesson becomes crystal clear: she can’t be queen without each of the men who look to her, and the people she loves aren’t safe unless she takes on that queendom with all of the intelligence and courage in her formidable heart.

  But sometimes even intelligence, courage, and steadily increasing magic aren’t enough to do the job, and suddenly the role of Cory’s lovers becomes more crucial than ever. Nobody is strong enough to succeed in every task, and Cory finds that the most painful lesson she and her lovers can learn is not just how to deal with failure. Cory needs to learn that one woman is only so powerful, and she needs to choose wisely who sits outside her circle of family, and who is bound eternally in her heart.

  Readers love the Little Goddess series by Amy Lane

  Vulnerable

  “What can I say about Amy’s writing that I haven’t already said? Not much. She’s fantastic, I love everything she writes. Her plots are complex, as are her characters.”

  —Love Bytes

  Wounded

  “There is much darkness in this book, but there are rays of light as well. I look forward to furthering this series.”