Once Upon A Midnight

by Stephanie Rowe

  Her parents were gone, and now she needed to know. What did it all mean? Did this mean she had power? What kind of power? Perhaps it was curiosity, perhaps it made her feel closer to her lost parents, but Maxie had taken up the old leather-bound journals and started devouring them word for word. They explained a great deal. At first she found them difficult to believe, but Maxie’s instincts moved the lie detector needle into the ‘true’ zone very quickly.

  Her nightmares and dreams plagued her. The visions became more intense and took on a sequence. Every night the Alexe people were there, and it was as though she knew them. Every night a different scene was enacted as though it were live on stage. Scents and sounds accompanied the visions, and Maxie walked though the scene as though she were a ghost amongst them, seeing, but unseen.

  The other evening blasted her with the most vivid dream of all. She felt as though she were experiencing the sensations of the strangers in her dream. She heard their thoughts as she walked as an invisible observer between them. Walked? It was more like she glided as she drifted between them, beside them, stood right up in their faces. And the past totally unfolded for her: it was 1814, and there was a woman—not quite human—and she was threatening Julian Talbot, whom Maxie recognized at once, and his bride, her namesake, Maxine Reigate. The woman’s name was Lady Lamia DuLaine.

  DuLaine was a powerful and obsessed being who wanted Julian Talbot for herself.

  Julian knew his bride was in danger. He knew Lamia wanted to kill her, and he believed he could put a stop to Lamia’s machinations. He believed he was the only one that could.

  Maxie had always known this story, but it had never been enacted out for her as it was now in her dream vision. She had known Julian Talbot immediately because his life-size portrait hung in her father’s study. She had always had a schoolgirl crush on him, and as she moved through her dream vision she came up close to him and reached out to touch. Nothing. It was a vision of the past—no touching.

  Suddenly Julian was riding off on his horse. Why? This was his wedding day, and she sensed he was full of purpose. What was he doing? Maxie saw her ancestor, her twin in appearance and name, looking out a window at his retreating form.

  The curtain of her vision closed. She had slept after that. She didn’t need to see anymore—she knew the legend.

  Salt air filled her lungs, and she breathed in and then out. The pleasant breeze swooshed at Maxie’s clothes and blew her long, black hair around her face. She reached up to sweep it away from her eyes and lips and clipped it at the nape of her neck. The damp sand beneath her naked toes felt good, and she remembered how nice it was to be alive—if only she could banish the visions.

  Aaaaah—a bolt of pain went through her, and she bent over as another sharp blade sliced through her gut. Maxie went to her knees on the sand, and her hand went out to the boulder at her side. She collapsed and screamed, “Enough!”

  The pain subsided and then vanished. A vision remained, and it was horrendous, but the pain was gone. Had she done that? Had she managed to control and then rid herself of the pain?

  No time to think.

  Lamia’s amber eyes were glowing red. She was doing something to Julian. Lamia’s long blonde hair fell loosely over her shoulder and hung over Julian, who was lying on her Oriental rug. There was blood. It was his blood—her blood… on his white shirt sleeves. She was screaming. It had all gone wrong. Terribly wrong. Julian was a powerful Druid priest, but he hadn’t been able to stop Lamia DuLaine, and she had erred. He was fighting the blood she had poured down his throat—her blood. His body would not accept it, and he was slipping away.

  Her diseased blood ravaged Julian Talbot’s system, and he went into a coma. DuLaine raised her fists towards the Druid Realm she hated, and her scream filled her house.

  Maxie knew what was coming next. Again, she didn’t need to see it. She didn’t want to see it. She knew the next scene would show DuLaine tricking her ancestor to ride and meet with her. She knew DuLaine would have someone pull a rope across the bridle path and that her ancestor would go down. She knew that DuLaine would take a rock and with deliberation smash it down on her ancestor’s head—killing her. She didn’t need to see that. She didn’t need to see—wait… who was that—someone else was in the vision. She couldn’t see who it was. This wasn’t part of anything she had read in the journal—and then it was gone.

  Maxie leaned heavily against the boulder at her side. She needed help. Hurriedly she shoved her hand into the pocket of her sweat jacket and pulled out her cell phone.

  About Claudy Conn

  Claudy Conn, a native New Yorker, now lives with her husband, Bob; their wolf, Cherokee; and Cherokee’s son, Rocky Man, who weighs in presently at 190 pounds.

  She loves horses and riding and raised her ten-year-old gelding Southern Pride from the moment he was born. She also loves gardening, swimming, skiing, hiking, and travel—and of course, reading, writing, but no, she says, no arithmetic!

  To get her monthly news, her reviews for all her new paranormal romances, and excerpts, come on and visit her at her website: http://www.claudyconn.com

  To see pictures of Cherokee—and her shepherd-wolf son!—have a look at her Facebook page:

  http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Claudy-Conn-Paranormal-Romance-Author/135826686471445

  Broken Pieces A Patchwork Novella

  ©2016 Toni Aleo

  Editing by Silently Correcting Your Grammar

  Chapter One

  Being the oldest isn’t always easy.

  Everyone depends on you.

  Looks up to you.

  You are the poster child for the family.

  Plus, you worry about everything.

  Well, at least, I do.

  Which means being selfish isn’t possible. Maybe not selfish—that word is harsh and I’ve never really liked it, but something along those lines. What I mean is that my needs, my wants are not important when I have three younger siblings and a father to worry for.

  You see, I’m a very busy man. I have many jobs. The first and most important being to protect and love my family. With everything inside of me. It is my job to guide my brothers and sister in the right direction to be future leaders of our community. The community my family runs. A community that is unseen to the human eye, which is fine by me. Dealing with witches, wolves, shifters, and vampires, along with the Patchwork citizens is enough in my opinion. They cause enough drama for one man, yet I love them. I want to protect them.

  They are my extended family.

  Even if a faction of our Works—the shifters—wants to overthrow my family and take over, I still care for their well-being. I have to. It’s my job as a future leader of the Works. When my father decides to step down, which could be at any moment, it will be my job to step up and be the king this community needs. Not that my father isn’t doing his job; he is. It’s just…he’s old-school. Very old-school, and while all his parts are working at their full capacity, he isn’t the man he used to be. So much has changed. This isn’t the 1800s anymore, but my father apparently missed that memo. He’s budged a bit, adapted some, but he still has the same notions he had back then, and they drive me absolutely mad.

  Beyond furious, actually.

  But what do I expect? He lived in a time where a man was always right and you followed your father, your leader. After he lost his father to the plague, he became the leader and led his family. I don’t think my father meant for his life to go where it did, but it all changed when he found his grandfather’s old lab books.

  That grandfather was Dr. Frankenstein.

  The guy who made Frankenstein’s monster himself. Yes, the stories are true. But what the stories don’t tell you is that he had a son, who had four more sons, my father being one of them. With Father’s grandfather gone, and then his own father dying, I doubt anyone expected for Dr. Frankenstein’s work ever to surface again. But my father was and may be smarter than his ancestors. For when he found the books, he became obses
sed with them, and soon he developed a formula that granted a man immortality.

  True immortality.

  He soon administrated the formula to his brother, Samuel. But after their mother and two other brothers died when the formula didn’t work on them, Samuel and Father were discovered. So, of course, they fled. They had no choice. But they did have a choice when they decided to come to America and make their own clan.

  A clan full of immortal people who would follow and bow down to them. Or, really, to my father. I doubt Samuel had much say in it, but my father, yeah, he was drunk with the power he had. He knew he was the best, a god in his mind, and people flocked to him. They begged for the formula, needed it, and soon my father had his clan.

  His Patchwork.

  You would think that would be enough, but it wasn’t. Soon he reached out to the other supernatural groups. The vampires were first. The main reason was the simple fact that my uncle loved to sleep with them. The vampires didn’t need anything from my father, but he offered them an alliance, a way to get them constant blood since he had turned the owner of the local hospital immortal. As long as the vampires followed my father, he would be there to help them. As creatures of the night, and being killed off almost every other night by hunters and humans, they signed on quickly.

  Next were the witches. My father promised to export and import anything they needed or wanted on his fleet of ships. In return, he would use their spells and rituals for things he was unable to fix.

  The wolves signed on for the money. My father needed lots of guards and security support, and he paid very heavily for them. At first, it was just employment. But somewhere in there, my father worked out some kind of alliance. It’s beyond me, but he did it, and now they are basically eating out of his hand.

  No pun intended.

  The shifters are a whole other story. The resisted us, only coming to us with offers for the formula itself. Father denied them, of course, but he did ask them to join us. He offered that we would protect them and even employ some of them. He wanted to make our community complete with the five strongest clans of supernatural beings. But the shifters didn’t want any part; they were independent. That was, until people started dying and they needed the protection my father offered since no one could catch who was killing off their clan. I believe my father had a part in it, that he hired people to kill them, but he denies it.

  Either way, my father got his underground clan, and soon, the rules were in place.

  Do what your clan is expected to do. All of us have a particular job to keep the Works running. The guard support the wolves offer—along with their construction work. The spells and treatments the witches provide. The political connections the vampires play a part in. And we can’t forget the connections on Wall Street that the shifters give us. It’s simple, really. Everyone plays their part and reports back to Father. Well, the clan leaders do, at least.

  Another rule is paying your taxes. For obvious reasons, if my father is protecting your group, curing diseases, providing good housing, and everything else he does, the least you can do is pay the monthly tax.

  Lastly, don’t mix clans. Father wants to keep the purest of bloodlines, to make the future children of the Works the strongest and best—my father’s words, not mine. Now, that is the rule that gets broken the most. Mostly by my uncle Samuel and his obsession with vampires. But even with his lust for the creatures, he has never fathered a child, mostly because vampires can’t have children. That isn’t the case for other clans, though. And when it happens, I mean, when a mixed-clan child is conceived, it isn’t long after birth that the child is killed.

  That sickens me and will be one of the first things I change when I am the leader of the Works.

  I just have to get there.

  “You’re thinking way too hard for someone who just woke up.”

  I smile, my heart filling with such unadulterated tenderness for the wide blue eyes that soon trap me in their gaze. A grin pulls at my sweetheart’s lips, her long, flowing strawberry-blond hair falling every so delicately along her jaw and onto my chest as she traces the scar on my stomach.

  “I thought you were sleeping,” I whisper, my lips pressing against hers as my hands grasp the thick globes of her ass. Holding her tight against my side, I kiss her. Softly, ever so slowly, memorizing every single thing about her lips and the way they make me feel.

  Perfection. Pure perfection.

  When she pulls back, her eyes darken a bit as she throws her leg across me, straddling me as her nails bite into my chest. “I’m not sleeping,” she says, her cheeks dusting with color as I drink in the gorgeous freckles along her body. She is covered head to toe in them, and I swear, I want nothing more than to spend the rest of my days tracing each of them with my tongue, my fingers, anything. As long as I’m touching her.

  My love.

  As she moves her hot center against my growing erection, I smile. “I can see that.” My hand comes up to cup her full breast. “Whatever are you doing up there?”

  She scoffs, her wet core making every single thought from before disappear within seconds. “If you have to ask, I worry for ya,” she jokes, and I smile, my eyes falling shut a bit. Her voice, her thick Scottish brogue, does the dirtiest things to my body. Turns me on to the point of no return.

  “I thought you had to leave?”

  “I think I have a wee bit of time. Maybe we can spend it?”

  Bringing her down by a hand at the back of her neck, I kiss her jaw as her breasts press into my chest. “I know we can,” I say before rolling her over, my body pressing into hers as I push her legs back into her chest and enter her quickly. She is hot, accepting me and squeezing me, making me breathless as I stare down into her beautiful, flushed face.

  She stuns me, and I just look at her, my lips curving as my cock throbs inside of her, begging for release. But I can’t move. Not when she is looking at me like that. She reaches up, a grin pulling at her lips as she runs her thumb down my jaw.

  “Gonna stare at me, my love? Or fuck me?”

  “Stare,” I say simply, my body heavy against her legs. “I swear I’ve never seen anyone as beautiful as you.”

  Her grin grows, her body flushing even more, and my heart explodes in my chest. Cupping my face with her other hand, she threads her fingers through my hair. My body breaks out in gooseflesh as she holds my gaze. When she looks at me, I know she doesn’t see the scars or the wounded flesh, the cut marks or the gunshot wounds. She sees me, her lover.

  Because that’s all I can ever be.

  “I love you, Oceanus,” she whispers, her eyes so dark, so full of lust, and of course, love. Fuck, I love it when she says those words. Those three words that are ever so beautiful—but more tragic than one could think. Well, that is until I take over the Works. The moment that happens, which pray God is soon, I will marry my love. I will make her mine, I will put my child in her, and together we will lead the Works.

  She will be my queen.

  I don’t care that she is Taegan Conner, the princess of the wolves, because I don’t see her faction or even her family name.

  I see her heart.

  And it’s mine.

  All mine.

  Moving her hair out of her eyes, I kiss her nose before sliding mine against it. “I love you too, my love.”

  When her mouth captures mine, I lift her up, holding her ass in my hands as I fall back on my haunches, thrusting up into her. Her breath is harsh against my mouth, her breasts heavy against my chest, and as I drive into her, I don’t care about anything but her and me.

  I’m being selfish.

  I’m taking what I want.

  And I don’t care one bit.

  It doesn’t happen enough in my opinion, but I guess, being me, I don’t get that luxury.

  Truth be told, being Oceanus von Stein isn’t easy.

  But it’s who I am. And while I lose myself inside of this beautiful woman, I don’t think of anything but her, and that’s okay for
now.

  Eventually, I’ll be able to do it for the rest of my days.

  I just have to be patient.

  Because my time is coming.

  Chapter Two

  “Colin is coming home.”

  As I wrap a piece of Taegan’s hair around my finger, I smile. Not because her brother is coming home—I’m not worried about that snot-nosed brat who hooked up my sister many times—I smile because Taegan is so beautiful. Her face is flushed, her body still radiating so much heat from our lovemaking. It’s always like that with her. Only her. But then, she runs hot all the time.

  “Why is that?”

  I ask only because my father sent him away a long time ago, and I thought I’d never see him again. When Father sends someone away, it’s usually a forever kind of thing. Colin was getting too close to my little sister, and since mixing the clans is so forbidden, the poor kid had a one-way ticket to Ireland. That happens a lot when Father feels things are out of his control. They claimed Colin’s own father had sent him to care for his grandmother, but I know the truth.

  “He’s met his betrothed, is madly in love with her, and they’re set to marry by the year’s end,” she says simply, her leg hooking across my midsection. Taking a chunk of her thigh in my hand, I cuddle her closer. “My da talked to your da, and he agreed.”

  “Surprising.”

  “That’s what I said,” she says on a small chuckle, snuggling her face into my neck. I close my eyes, leaning my head into hers as her fingers trace along my chest and my nipple.

  “I thought you had to go?” I ask, not that I want her to go, but I also don’t want her to get in trouble. She had a family thing to go to. Maybe Colin’s homecoming. “What are you going for, by the way?”

  Looking up at me, she pinches my jaw, a sneaky grin turning up her lips. “Jealous?”