Energy surges up and swirls around me, throwing furniture at the Anti-Alice, knocking her across the room and into my father's antique record player.
The Mad Hatter is there, helping me to my feet, and offering up his bloodied wrist at the same moment. Even though my dad's looking, and Edith's screaming, I take hold of it and drink as deeply as I can, the coppery sweet taste of his blood tainting my lips.
There's an immediate relief in my arm, but no relief in the battle.
Something else is coming through the Looking-Glass, and it's not one of my boys.
Two thick arms claw their way through, followed by a bulbous body and a face with horns protruding from the lips. The thing crawls through and shakes its blubbery, brown body out.
Doesn't take a genius to recognize the Walrus.
He looks like a goddamn ogre, with a massive underbite and tiny, beady little eyes.
And here I was, thinking everyone in Underland was attractive. My bad.
"Alice, don't," the Mad Hatter says, grabbing and jerking me back before the man finds his feet and grins at me, tipping a tall, vinyl top hat in our direction.
"So we finally meet the Alice," he growls in this guttural Scottish accent. "Plucky little thing, ain't she? I'd like to throw her over my knee and give her a good spanking." He smacks his big lips at me as the Mad Hatter curses under his breath. "And you," he says as the sound of a struggle echoes from just outside the front door. When I glance over my shoulder, I don't see Tee, March, or the Mocking Turtle, and that scares the shit out of me. My head whips around as the Walrus takes a step toward us, smelling like the rotten crabs my mom bought for Christmas dinner one year and then forgot in the trunk of her car. Death, rot, and crusted sea salt. That's what the Walrus smells like. "You made a bargain with the King of Clubs, and you broke it. You won't get that chance again."
The Mad Hatter grabs me and moves me just in time to avoid the slither of a massive head through the Looking-Glass.
It’s a jabberwock, but it isn’t North.
No, and it’s not alone either.
On top of its massive skull sits a man that’s all skin and bones, with sunken cheeks, and a wooden leg. He has a fucking axe cradled in his scrawny arms.
The Carpenter.
“Oh shit,” I whisper as the Mad Hatter inserts himself between me and the jabberwock. It seems to get stuck on the other side of the mirror, one arm in the living room, smashing furniture as it struggles to crawl through.
“Oh shit is right,” Raiden says, his pupils dilating as the Carpenter climbs off the dragon’s head, and it retreats back through Looking-Glass. I’m just standing there staring, and all I can think is I need to get that mirror before something breaks it. Because … because … if I get separated from Underland, I will break. I will shatter into nothing and float away on the wind.
The Anti-Alice is pushing to her feet, pink bow fluttering in the breeze from the open door. It’s then that I see the photo hanging on the wall beside her, of Rhoda cradled in my mother’s arms at the hospital. And … she’s wearing a pink bow on her head.
Bile fills my mouth and I almost throw up.
The Anti-Alice … is my sister?!
I shove the Vorpal Blade inside its sheath at the same time that I dive forward to grab the Looking-Glass, struggling with its weight as I do my best to stand up and beat a hasty retreat.
I’m about ninety-nine percent certain I’d have died right there if the March Hare didn’t lift the Looking-Glass up and over my head, and kick my legs out from under me at the same moment. The Anti-Alice’s bone scythe lands, and buries itself in his chest as he stumbles back, blood spurting from the wound.
I struggle to stand up, slipping and sliding in the hot crimson flood as the Mad Hatter takes the Looking-Glass from March and carefully sets it in my father’s favorite chair. In the same breath, he catches the March Hare as he falls, and thrusts his wrist against the Rabbit’s mouth.
“Well, now, this looks like a whole heap of fun, wouldn’t you say, brother?” the Walrus chortles, his blubber jiggling as he laughs, his whisker-covered cheeks reddening. “There’s nothing I love more than blood, death, and a screaming woman trapped beneath me.”
Swear to fuck, I puke a little. I don’t mean to; it just happens.
I back up next to the Mad Hatter and the March Hare as the latter finally seems to find his feet, standing up and shifting all in one breath. In the span of an instant, I have my hand on the bloody, furred flank of a bandersnatch.
Yet somehow, I’m still worried.
“Focus on the Anti-Alice, no matter what,” Raiden says, his mouth twisted into a severe frown. I don’t like that look. That look says we might not win this. Holy hearts and diamonds, what the fuck?!
“Rhoda?” my dad steps forward, forgotten and standing by the bay window. His expression is rife with pain as he moves toward the undead monster that used to be my sister. Without thinking, I snatch the Vorpal Blade up and move between the two of them.
I don’t see Dee, Edith, or the Cheshire Cat anymore, and I’m starting to panic.
One thing at a time, Allison, I tell myself.
“Free up one of the twins for me,” Raiden growls, and the March Hare goes trotting out the front door. My dad barely looks at the giant, fantastical beast in his living room. He only seems to have eyes for the Anti-Alice.
“You’re going to face off against us alone?” the Walrus asks, glancing over at his brother. “Who knew this would be so bloody easy?” With a roar, the Walrus’ body ripples, his fat ballooning until he’s almost too big to fit inside the house. He has a tail instead of legs, and by some stretch of the imagination, I can see why he’s nicknamed the Walrus. He almost, almost, looks like one
Another scream tears from his throat as he thunders toward the Mad Hatter, at stark contrast with the skinny, creepy little Carpenter who’s still standing there and watching me. He reaches down and strokes the bulge in his pants, making me sick to my stomach.
We are outclassed, outmatched.
Without more help, we are fucked.
And yet, the Looking-Glass is quiet, the walls are spattered in blood, and I have no idea what I’m doing here.
We are so screwed.
Holy fucking hearts, please help me.
To Be Continued …
Thank you so much for reading Allison and the Torrid Tea Party! If you are reading this note then you've survived Underland and all of its glorious madness! Writing this book was quite the adventure, so much so that it ended up being over twice as long as the first book in the Harem of Hearts series.
In the final book, Allison Shatters the Looking-Glass, we'll see more steamy scenes, more romance, and of course, more tea parties.
Look for a release on or around October 22nd, 2018.
Thank you again for reading, and I'll see you next time!
P.S. If you enjoyed this book, will you please consider leaving a review? It's reviews from people like you that make books like this happen. Also, if you enjoyed Allison and the Torrid Tea Party!, you might want to check out some of my other young adult fantasy or reverse harem reads. Just keep turning the pages for more info.
Kisses.
C.M.
Harem of Hearts, Book #3!
The Seven Mates of Zara Wolf, Book #3 - Available Now!
A surprise Halloween reverse harem release …
Epic Kitsune Urban Fantasy.
An academy dedicated to magic; a girl with six ghostly lovers.
Flip the page for an excerpt of chapter one.
Chapter One
Brynn
The instrument of my own destruction loomed above me, casting a long shadow in the bloodred rays of a dying sun. Its crumbling facade was decorated with a morbid metaphor of a face—soulless eyes, a gaping mouth, tangled green locks. Okay, so I was exaggerating the broken windows, the front entrance with its missing doors, and the cluster of wild blackberries that had morphed into a monster of their own making, but co
me on: the former Grandberg Manor was bust.
“This is the place?” I asked, hoisting my equipment up on one shoulder and eyeing the crumbling old house with a raised brow. “It looks half-ready to collapse. You know me—if there's an even the slightest opportunity that I might trip, I will. Just be honest: am I going to fall straight through the floor?”
“Probably,” Jasinda said, moving around me and over the twisted, rusted remains of the front gate. Once upon a time, this place was crawling with nobility from around the world, and its gardens … even the drawings were enough to make my mother's green thumb well, green with envy. “Air and I have a bet going on whether or not you'll make it out of here alive.”
She thew a smirk over her shoulder at me and I pursed my lips.
Jasinda and Air were always making bets about me despite the fact that Air was the flubbing prince and shouldn't be making bets with anyone, let alone my handler. I had to admit though: if there was anyone around that was worth betting on, it was me.
First off, I was a half-angel which meant I could see spirits. And second, I was a half-human which meant those spirits actually deigned to communicate with me. A full-blooded angel was too haughty and highbrow to give any ghost the time of day, and a full-blooded human couldn't see one if they tried.
This special ability of mine did end up getting me into heaps of trouble. For example, there was that one time I followed a ghost straight into the queen's chambers and found her, um, indisposed with the head of the royal guard who, you know, also just happened to be my mother.
Then of course, there was the fact that I had the small, slight frame of my mother's desert dwelling ancestors but the wide, heavy span of wings from my father's side. Let's just be frank and say I toppled over a lot. Oh, and I ended up having long, in-depth conversations with people who weren't really people but were, in fact, very tricky ghosts. Even my first kiss had been with a spirit.
I took a deep breath of the cool, lavender scented air and followed after Jas, tripping and cursing in my own made up language.
“Go flub yourself,” I growled at a thick tangle of blackberry that had gotten wrapped around my ankle. “You bleeding blatherer.”
“Are you making words up again?” Jas said, parking her hands on her hips and sighing at me. “Can't you just say you bleeding bastard like everyone else? And don't even get me started on you using the work flub instead of fuc—”
“Hey!” I snapped, putting my palm over her lips with one hand and pointing at myself with the other. “Half-angel over here. Just hearing somebody use a word with an extreme negative connotation makes me lose a feather.”
“Oh, please,” Jas said, pushing my hand away from her full red lips and smirking at me as I tried to rub her makeup off on my breeches. “That's a myth and you know it. Air told me that when you were kids, he used to chase you around the castle saying damn and bastard and the like, just to see if you'd lose any feathers—you didn't.”
I narrowed my eyes on her as she turned and headed up what was once an impressive flight of marble steps, now cracked and chipped like an old beggar's teeth. I shivered and followed after her, examining the red stain on my palm that stunk like copperberries. A lot of women painted their mouths with the stuff, but to me that fragrant floral scent was tinged with a metallic sting, like copper. Like blood. Thus, the name—copperberries.
As I hurried up the steps, I kept my eyes on the decaying black facade of the manor, all its intricate moldings and details stripped away by time and rain, the harsh winds that curled across this part of the kingdom in summer.
“Let's do a quick walkthrough and see if you can't sense any residual energies,” Jas suggested as I set my black leather satchel on the floor and knelt beside it. The ground around me was littered with debris—leaves, twigs, bits of crumbling plaster, a dead mouse.
“Oh, that's flubbing sick,” I whispered as I caught sight of the creature's spirit hovering nearby, its furred sides almost completely translucent as it took long, heaving breaths. Of course, the mouse didn't need to breathe anymore, but it didn't know that.
I pulled a dagger from the sheath on my belt—please Goddess, don't actually ask me to use this thing in combat—and prodded at the mouse's body with the jeweled hilt.
Fresh blood stained the white leather pommel and made me shiver.
“Jas,” I started, because a long dead carcass was one thing, but a fresh one? Hell's bells—since Hell was an actual place it didn't count as a curse word so no lost feathers for me—but I hoped it was just a cat that had taken the rodent's life and not … something else.
“Brynn, you need to see this!” Jas shouted and I sighed, wiping the mouse's blood on the already dirty leg of my breeches and tucking it away. Before I stood up, I clasped the silver star hanging around my neck with one hand and reached out to touch the mouse's spirt with the other. The poor thing was too scared to even shy away, its soul becoming briefly corporeal as my fingers made contact with its fur.
“Goddess-speed and happy endings,” I whispered as the image of the mouse morphed and shivered, turning as silver as a beam of moonlight and fading away until there was nothing there but the warped and rotted boards of the old floor.
I stood up, leaving my satchel where it was on the ground and rubbing my shoulder as I followed the sound of Jasinda's voice. The road up to the manor was riddled with broken cobblestones, weeds, and the skeletons of long abandoned carriages. It was too rough for any sort of pack animal to make the trek, so we'd had to carry ourselves on foot, lugging all the equipment that a spirit whisperer—that's me—might need to exorcise a ghost or two or ten.
“Jassy?” I asked as I moved past the formal foyer with its double staircases, and down a long receiving hall that would've been used by servants in times past. The wallpaper was peeling like old skin, leaving behind water stained walls and flaky plaster. At some point, thieves had come in and stripped the old place of its wood moldings, sconces and chandeliers; they'd left nothing but a skeleton behind.
“In here!” she called out, drawing me through an empty archway where a swinging door might've once stood and into the kitchen. As I moved, I was conscious of keeping my wings tucked tightly against my back. My clumsiness was not limited to my feet. I was notorious among the castle staff for breaking things with the feathered black wings that graced my back. As a kid, they used to call me Pigeon Girl because I caused ten times as much damage to the royal halls as the flying rats that plagued the old stone building.
“What is it?” I asked as I leaned against the wall outside a small servant's room—a tiny square that would've belonged to the head cook. “Jas, there was a mouse—”
“Flub mice,” she said, only she didn't actually say flub but I wouldn't lose a feather even thinking about the F-word that famously rhymes with duck. As a half-angel, my powers were bound to the light goddess and she was a serious stickler for avoiding words with negative connotations. I supposed I couldn't blame her; the very words I spoke held power. The more positivity and light I imbued those words with, the more powerful I was. “Look at this, Brynn. There's a distinct spiritual signature written all over this room.”
The room itself was so small that with the collapsed remains of a small bed and a sagging dresser, there wasn't space for us both. I waited for Jas to step out, pushing her long dark hair over her shoulder, sapphire blue eyes sparkling with a scholar's excitement.
“Brynn, this could be it,” she said as I took a deep breath and stepped into the room. “Our big break.”
Jas was always looking for that one case, that one unique spirit that we could exorcise that would prove our worth to the scholars at the Royal College. In just two weeks, I'd be turning twenty-one and that'd be it; that was the cut off date for acceptance into the prestigious training facility. It wasn't that Jas cared about the status of being a student there, or the potential for a high-ranking position after graduation, it was the library. Only students of the Royal College were permitted to use the
vast, twisting hallways of the catacombs. There were books there that couldn't be found anywhere else—not to mention ancient artifacts, exemplary professors, and vast resources that could be used for research.
It was Jasinda's dream, even if it wasn't mine. I hoped she was right; I hoped this was it.
I stepped over a small hole in the floor and into the tiny windowless room.
As soon as I did, it hit me, the pressure of an angry spirit, bearing down on me with the cold burn of something long dead and waiting. Waves of icy winter chill tore across my skin like knives, despite the warm evening air that permeated the rest of the building. Whatever this was, it was powerful.
I grasped the silver star at my throat and closed my eyes.
“Haversey,” I whispered, invoking the name of the light goddess.
If I were Jas, I knew what I'd be seeing: a girl shrouded in silver moonlight, her tanned skin pearlescent and shimmering, her hair as white as snow lifted in an unnatural breeze.
I opened my eyes slowly and bit back a gasp.
Every inch of the walls was covered in the word Hellim, the name of the dark god. What I had originally thought were decorative splotches on the wallpaper were actually his name, written in blood a thousand times over. It had been impossible to see in the dim half-light, but now that I had my second sight open, the letters glowed with a strong, angry spiritual signature.
I started to take a step back when my foot went through the hole in the floor, and the rotting boards around me creaked and toppled into a black pit below.
“Brynn!”
Jas screamed my name as I fell through cold shadow and frost, hitting the soggy wet earth with a grunt and a crack of pain in my shoulder that almost immediately went numb. That was bad, really bad. Pain was one thing, but numbness meant that what'd just happened to me could be really serious.
I tried to stand up, but my arm gave out and I found myself lying in a mound of decaying wet leaves and dirt, the scent of rot thick and cloying in the air.
Allison and the Torrid Tea Party: A Dark Reverse Harem Romance (Harem of Hearts Book 2) Page 34