A Witch Called Red: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 1)

by Sami Valentine

  Arno and Kristoff exchanged a glance.

  Kristoff dipped his head. “He challenged my claim on a human. I reacted. Apologies.”

  Lucas gritted his teeth and cracked his neck.

  “Je m’en fous!” Michel spat out, clearly not giving a shit as he straightened his lapels. “I expect more from the Novak Brothers, since the Master of Portland speaks so highly of you two.” Michel turned his glare to Lucas. “And you. Get the fuck out before you draw any more attention. If Cora hears that you were challenging a claim… you know the rules. You’re lucky Delilah has me wrapped around her finger, or I’d bring you to the supreme myself. Test me, and I will.”

  Nodding, Lucas stepped back. He glared at Kristoff before looking back at Michel. “Already gone, mate.”

  Red caught Lucas’s eye and gestured to the elevator. She stepped through the dancers, still clutching the bleeding mark on her neck, the pain making her grimace at each bump of an elbow or a shaking booty.

  Lucas caught up to her at the elevator and reached out to take her wrist to stop her before he stilled himself. He handed her a black bandana instead. “How’s the bite, Red?”

  “Doesn’t feel great. Let’s get out of here.” Red took the cloth and pressed it to her wound before walking into the open elevator and hitting the button for the ground floor. The pain didn’t hurt as much as the humiliation of being so stupid.

  Kristoff Novak. She recognized the name from her research on the club, but she hadn’t expected anything more than the usual vampire deflecting banter. Maybe some threats. Not whatever the hell that was.

  Stupid curiosity had had her chatting with Kristoff like a teeny bopper expecting sparkles instead of fangs. After a year of hunting, Red should’ve known better. Vic taught her that you kept out of a vampire’s sight until you were fixing to kill them. Now, she had new marks on her neck. And a question that wouldn’t go away. Who was Juniper St. James?

  “Your chest is covered in it, kit—er, Red.” Lucas distracted her from her thoughts before he pulled off his jacket and put it around her.

  “Thanks. I definitely can’t return this dress now.” Pulling the jacket on, the smell of leather and sandalwood enveloped her. Red tipped her head down before she stepped out of the elevator to the front entrance. The bouncer came into view. She glared at him as she stomped forward. The feel of eyes on her back made her look over her shoulder as she walked onto the sidewalk.

  Kristoff called out behind her. “Lucas was the one who was kicked out. You should stay, Red.” His voice said her name slowly, as if to roll the word over his tongue to taste it.

  “Fat chance.” Red glared at him as she pivoted around.

  “Doesn’t matter. I can always find what I claim.” Kristoff smirked. His suit jacket had disappeared in the scuffle, leaving only his slacks and gray shirt, ripped at the neck, revealing some of his toned chest. Blue eyes raked over her body before softening on her face.

  “That’s a myth.” Red flipped him off as she stormed away with Lucas on her heels.

  He wasn’t the first vampire to have tried that on her. It had to be a myth. If vampires could always find their claimed humans, then wouldn’t the mysterious vampire who had roughed her up outside Eugene have found her already? She might not remember what had been done to her, but she didn’t need to be claimed again and find out what she had missed.

  “Lady made her choice, Novak.” Lucas smirked and held up his hands.

  Kristoff crossed his arms, his blue eyes following her. “She doesn’t know what she’s choosing.”

  Chapter Six

  October 25th, 2018, Night, Alley behind Club Vltava off Sunset Strip in Los Angeles California, USA

  Red held her tongue until they turned the corner a block away from Club Vltava. “What was that back there? Who the hell is Kristoff Novak? More importantly, who does he think I am?”

  “You live long enough, you see some faces again. Never thought I’d see hers. Not when she died over a hundred years ago.” Lucas looked away as if the sight of her hurt him.

  “Juniper St. James.” Red furrowed her brow, and the realization hit her like a shovel to the face. She didn’t know how she felt about being a doppelgänger. Or the fact that more and more vampires seemed to recognize her in Los Angeles. Now, she knew why. “Is that why you and Quinn have been acting weird? I look like someone you two knew back in the day?” She shook her head. “Why didn’t you tell me? Or at least tell Vic? He’s sensitive and took all the cold shoulder personally.”

  Lucas chuckled, then grew serious. “Because that sounds insane. ‘You look like my dead girlfriend that Kristoff always had a thing for so stay out of LA for a while.’” He shrugged. “Seeing your face… It brought up a lot of memories.”

  “Bad ending?” She looked down, wanting to wince at her words. Of course, it was. Two feuding vampires and one dead woman wasn’t the sign of a happy ending. How could something between a vampire and a human end well?

  “Something like that.”

  “I’m sorry. You cared for her. That was callous to say.”

  “I loved her as much as I could without a soul. Not nearly enough. Fair warning, I’m the original bad boyfriend.” Lucas put his hands in his pockets. “She was nice like you are.”

  “I’m not fucking nice.” Red crossed her arms before looking down and stepping aside to avoid tromping on a praying mantis strolling the sidewalk.

  “You’re a little Billy Badass.” He shook his head to hide a smile, but then his face fell. “Let me see that bite.”

  “I think I have had enough vampires in my face.” Red pressed harder on her neck wound.

  Lucas arched an eyebrow. “I have vampire vision. I don’t need to loom over you.”

  Red pulled up the jacket and the black bandana to reveal the two fang marks on her neck. The bleeding seemed to have mostly stopped. She mopped up the drying blood. “Hurts, but I’ll live.” She sighed. “As a claimed human. It’s a territory thing, I know. I’m like a hydrant that he only peed on so you couldn’t.”

  “That’s one way of describing it.” Lucas shrugged. “Might not be far off. The bastard didn’t waste any time, that’s for sure.”

  “What does that even mean in a city like this?” Red wasn’t a scholar of vampire society, but she knew enough of the rules, and when vampires set rules, they could always break them.

  The Blood Alliance was the vampire UN, but each supreme master ran their city differently and interpreted the Dark Veil policy in their own special way. Older than the Blood Alliance, the Dark Veil was the agreement made by the supernatural community to stay hidden from humans. In Oklahoma City, the Dark Veil was upheld by leaving no witnesses.

  Vic and Red had barely gotten out of OKC alive.

  Los Angeles had the most souled vampires in the West. A catch and release rule would have gotten supremes ripped off their thrones in other cities. Where did that leave claimed humans in this land of the cuddly vampires? She had already learned that Cora didn’t have the out-of-towners under the same control as her own people.

  Red hugged an arm to herself. “You know him. How fast should I be running?”

  “He can’t turn you in LA county. Even if you didn’t have the Brotherhood behind you, Cora keeps tight control on our numbers.”

  “No, but he can put me in a car and take me up to Portland.” Red pressed the bandana back to her neck and shivered. “I got blood on your coat. I made it more punk.” She sighed and started walking down the sidewalk to the opening of the alley behind Club Vltava. “You’re welcome.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I might as well do my job, between all the macho brawling, I didn’t get to do much sleuthing. Give Vic a text, and tell him to bring the van around.” Red didn’t look back. Fighting monsters, solving crimes, that was something she could focus on. This doppelgänger business only made her head hurt, while thinking of Kristoff’s claim chilled her.

  She pulled off her heels one at a time as
she walked, putting them in her purse before jamming the flats on her feet, mentally cursing herself for listening to Vic. Her ankle tendons stretched in painful relief to be on flat feet.

  As she walked down the alley, lights came on from hidden sensors. Club Vltava took up the corner of the block with three back exits in the alley. She was impressed by how clean and well-lit it was. Kristoff might not have been able to keep the dead bodies off his doorstep, but he certainly took out the trash.

  Red pointed at the cracked surveillance cameras above the doors. “Someone’s taken out the cameras.” She squinted. “Looks like they threw a rock at the lens of each one or something. That wasn’t in the police report.”

  She stepped under the police tape and looked for where Julia had been found. In the crime scene photos, Julia had huddled in a corner made by the fence and dumpster. One arm stretched out towards the bottom of the dumpster as caught trying to lift herself up.

  Red looked up at the fire escape, then crouched by it. Partly to see better, and partly to stretch her hamstrings. Julia had been found with her face looking toward the club. Tilting her head, she tried to focus on what Julia had seen.

  “Red, you should be getting a plaster on that wound,” Lucas murmured behind her.

  “If you had finished draining someone, would you just drop them?” Red asked over her shoulder.

  “Not my game anymore, ducks.” Lucas put his hands in his pockets.

  “Hmmm, but if you did now…”

  “I wouldn’t leave them near the rubbish.” He said, his voice low.

  Red looked over at the dumpster before studying the alley floor. . The crime photos Fat Crispin had sent rose in her mind. Julia had been bruised on her face and hands, but her wounds were defensive, not from torture. The Bard’s Daughter had fought to the end.

  “I’m doing a bit of pop psychology to guess if it was a souled vampire or not.” She flipped to the crime photos on her phone gallery, stood, and handed him the phone. “What do you think?”

  Lucas took it, fingers avoiding hers, and looked down. He swiped to the next. “A rush job. Looks like a quick feed and dash.”

  “Except they had enough time to take the cameras out.” Red looked at him with her phone. “Hey, no more swiping.”

  Lucas gulped as he stared down at her phone. The torn sketch of the blindfolded woman that she had found in Quinn’s safe stared back. He handed it back to her. “How’d you find this? It was lost.”

  “Then I guess I found it. It was on the floor when those guys did the smash and grab at Quinn’s office. I noticed the creepy weird resemblance. It’s her, isn’t it?” Red studied his face.

  “It’s Juniper.” Lucas turned away to hide eyes troubled with memories. He put a hand in his pocket, rocking back on his heels, before he turned around. Steadying himself on the dumper with a thud, his fingers dented the metal. “That should have stayed lost.”

  “Then you might want to ask Quinn how it ended up in his safe.”

  “Do you have it? The full sketch?”

  “No, I just saw that one piece and put it back in the album it fell out of.”

  Headlights flooded the alley. A breeze pushed an old styrofoam cup out from under the dumpster.

  Red put her phone in her purse and looked over her shoulder to see the Falcon before she looked back to Lucas. She shifted her feet. They were strangers who had met before. She had met him in dreams, and he had loved a woman with her face. What did that leave them? “I’m guessing that this sketch is from your bad no-soul days.”

  “I wasn’t just bad, I was the worst. And I taught Kristoff everything I knew.” Lucas warned.

  “I’ll keep that in mind about the both of you.” Red put her hand on her hip, trying to strike a pose that was something other than creeped out. A claim mark on her neck felt as terrifying as the idea that she was a double for a dead woman. “Let’s do what we came here for.”

  She refocused on the alley. The crime scene techs had picked it clean, but the breeze and Lucas’s bear grip on the dumpster had freed trapped rubbish. A glimmer reflected in the dirt and wrappers on the ground. “Hey, can you move that dumpster?”

  Lucas nodded and pushed it aside like a human man would move a cardboard box.

  Vic hopped out of the van. “Come on, idjits. Stop playing with trash.”

  Lucas stepped toward him. “Took you long enough.”

  “I had to get out of a paid parking garage.” Vic scowled.

  Red let the bickering roll over her as she walked over to the dumpster and pushed her foot around to move the few pieces of litter. She bent over and picked up a small circle of old gold—half of a locket. She turned it over to see a small sepia portrait of a petite blonde with wide-set eyes and a coy smile.

  “Vic, get the first aid kit ready. I’ll join you in the van in a second,” Red said.

  Vic gave her a look that said they were talking later.

  Red shrugged out of the leather jacket and walked it over to Lucas. “Thanks.” She bit her lip, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking. “Do you only see her when you look at me?”

  “I’m trying not.” Lucas cocked his head. His brows drew together, his mouth soft as his gaze seemed to memorize her. As if she would fade like a ghost.

  “What happened to her, to you?”

  “I got a soul. She was murdered by hunters.” Lucas shook his head. “Kristoff left her to die to save his own ass.”

  Red blinked, and the vampire was gone, leaving her alone with her long shadow cast in the van’s headlights. She looked down at the locket half and brought it close to her chest. She wasn’t thinking about the woman in the locket, she was thinking of another woman from the past.

  Juniper. Her dopplegänger.

  Who was this woman who had captured the hearts of two master vampires and held them even a century after she died?

  Chapter Seven

  October 26th, 2018, Just Past Midnight, Los Angeles California, USA

  Vic drove, his fingers clenched on the wheel, listening to her story in silence as they drifted through the lighter night traffic back to the motel. When he pulled into the motel parking lot, he glanced at her. “We can’t stay here.”

  She wasn’t surprised. They traveled light, just in case they needed to make a quick getaway.

  “We can’t keep driving on the donut.” Red got out of the van.

  The two moved quickly into their motel room. She changed out of her club clothes in the bathroom, wiping the blood off her skin, surprised to see the fang marks already scabbing up. She stepped out of the bathroom to see Vic pulling the linens off the beds.

  Red tossed the bloody green cocktail dress into the lined waste bin.

  Vic poured some beer onto the blankets and sheets on the floor to ensure they were laundered.

  They worked together to make sure to clean up all the trash, stray hair, and wipe down their fingerprints before they carried the small plastic waste bag into the van. They would burn the contents later. Scents, prints, blood, all could be used to track them either magically or the old-fashioned human way. These were the first things Vic had taught her: fake names, no traces, keep moving.

  “You’re freaking me out, Vic. You’re not talking.”

  “I’m thinking.” Vic put the van in gear and sped out of the parking lot, turning right. “We can’t stay in LA. Quinn pulled us into some deep shit and didn’t give me any warning.”

  “Agreed,” Red said.

  Vic shook his head and pounded the steering wheel. “He could have mentioned you’re a dead ringer for a long dead girl. I would’ve never taken you to that club, if I knew. This is fucked up. Vampires don’t just claim humans and defy a supreme master for kicks. If there’s bad blood between him and Lucas, you’re right in the middle of it now.”

  “You didn’t see the fight. It isn’t just bad blood. It’s some serious hate. I stumbled into old love triangle drama.”

  “You don’t want to be the chew toy stuck between
those dogs. Lucas can be a dick, but he has a soul. I don’t know Novak, but he’s got you in his sights.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To get some answers. I’ve lost one partner on a hunt. I’m not losing another.” Vic gritted his teeth as he took the off-ramp toward Culver City.