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

by Sami Valentine

  Lucas took the helmet and shook his head. “Your hair looks beautiful.” He turned around quickly and pulled her purse out, handing it to her without a glance.

  Red smiled and settled the purse strap on her shoulder. “Thanks for the extraction.” She tilted her head. “Do you ever go by Luke?”

  His shoulders tensed, and he shook his head tightly before walking to the elevator from the underground parking garage to the hotel lobby.

  Her kitten heels clicking on the concrete, she hurried after him and frowned as she caught up with him at the elevator. The up button blazed red.

  She noticed his lack of reflection in the steel elevator doors. That myth about vampires was true, but with exceptions. Vampires with weak blood, minions, still showed an outline. Lucas was strong enough to be completely invisible. Red had forgotten what he was as they sped down the freeway, even holding onto him and not feeling him breathe.

  Lucas stepped into the elevator, his eyes darting to her as he put his hands in his pocket. “Luke is what she called me sometimes. Only her.”

  Red nodded. She knew who “her” was. Juniper. She pushed the button for the 8th floor and pulled the hotel card key from her purse, inserting it into the slot. “Thanks for trusting me with that. I can tell it’s not easy to talk about her.”

  Looking down, Lucas shook his head. “It’s easier around you.”

  The elevator doors opened at the lobby, and a crowd entered.

  Red tried to keep from looking at Lucas over the other hotel guests. When they finally reached their floor, she followed him out of the elevator and opened the door to the hotel suite.

  Vic lay sprawled on the couch, head tipped back, arm in a white cast, his laptop on his belly. The flat screen TV blared a news program.

  Red walked to the coffee table and grabbed the remote, turning off the TV. Pulling the laptop off him, she set it on the table. “Hey, sleeping beauty.”

  Vic snorted and coughed as he woke up. “Back from bringing home the bacon?”

  “Yeah, make some space and I can tell you all about it,” Red said, sitting on the couch beside him while Lucas sat in the nearby chair. She delved into the story of her day, leaving out the parts about organizing their files and focusing on the facts of the new possible victim, Georgia Erickson, and that the three models were all trying to leave their contracts. “Kristoff Novak did a photoshoot with each of them in the month before they died.”

  Red had been surprised to learn that Kristoff was a photographer, but he appeared to do many of the ad campaigns for Novak and Novak Company which included an impressive portfolio of nightclubs, restaurants, and even a casino on the West Coast.

  “Well, your day was more productive than mine. Julia’s passwords were harder to crack than I expected,” Vic said, a yawn bursting through. “She’s definitely done a lot of research on the vampires in town. I just can’t access the full documents on the thumb drive. She even has audio and video in there. I sent copies to Fat Crispin, but it was late in the day in London. I haven’t heard back. It kills me to say it, but I hope they have more luck than I did.”

  “Hey, you’re tired and on painkillers. It’s alright. You can try again in the morning.” Red patted his shoulder. “You can take a break. It can’t be comfortable on this couch.”

  “No, I think I have a crick in my neck,” Vic said, stretching. “I’m going to bag my arm and hop in the shower.”

  Red nodded. “Good. You have a lot of Dorito dust on you.”

  “It’s the fuel for the madness.” Vic laughed and walked into his room, closing the door.

  Red turned to Lucas. “Are you heading back to Quinn tonight? Can you fill him in?” She bent over and slipped out of her kitten heels with a sigh and leaned back against the plush couch. “What’s the deal with Delilah? Quinn brought us here because he was too close to the case. Ex-wife, sire, I get that, but I think I saw her at Club Vltava, walking in with Michel and Cora.”

  “Michel must fancy her because he has no love for me. Once upon a time, he would have used the pretense of challenging Kristoff’s claim to crucify me.” Lucas shook his head and sat down next to her on the couch. His voice turned confidential. “Don’t say anything to Quinn. The poor bastard already knows the frog is her boyfriend. Delilah always loved being in a power couple with a powerful man. It doesn’t matter if he has a soul or not. Maybe it makes it easier for her.”

  “Oh…” Red pursed her lips. When she had imagined souled and unsouled vampires in social situations, she assumed they would have a dodgeball game style split with the remorseful on one side and the gleefully demonic on the other. Not dating each other. “Bad breakup between Quinn and Delilah, then?”

  “It’s never good, but they always make up. This has been the longest they’ve gone without getting back together.” Lucas shrugged, but his expression showed more concern than his casual words. In vampire terms, they were his family.

  She didn’t know what that word meant for her, let alone for him, but she knew it meant something. “Why do they even live in the same city?”

  “Some people just can’t stay apart.” He looked away.

  Red glanced down, swallowing thickly, then turned back to business. She repressed the urge to put her hand on his arm to comfort him. “She’s our best suspect. She had motive and connection to the victims. What will he do if it turns out to be her?”

  “It won’t.” Lucas shrugged. “If Delilah wants someone dead, soul or not, she’s not going to get caught like this.”

  “You sure about that? You think it’s Kristoff?”

  “Think a lot of things about Novak.” Lucas leaned over in his seat, looking at the laptop. “The Bard’s daughter had more information here than just about Delilah, right?”

  Red nodded and stood to grab a small bottle of pinot noir from the fridge. “What happened to laughing at the conspiracy idea?” She unscrewed the small bottle and took a sip before stepping out on the balcony.

  Lucas followed her out on the balcony and leaned against the railing. “That’s when I thought it was some out-of-towner getting sloppy.”

  “Enjoy the red pill.” Red sipped the wine before handing the bottle to Lucas who took a drink and gave it back.

  “You thought pretty quickly on your feet with the viper queen glaring down at you. That’s impressive.”

  “She didn’t have shoulder pads on that dress, but I could feel their aura. She had a power stance.” Red gestured to her shoulders before setting the small bottle on the patio table. “Hey, I have to tell you… You drive like you’re in a car chase.”

  “You held on just fine.”

  “I managed to keep on my heels, but next time I’m on the back of that thing, you’d better obey the speed limit.”

  “Next time?”

  Red leaned toward him, laughing. “What? You wouldn’t pick me up again?”

  Lucas brushed his fingers across her cheek. His pale grey eyes focused on her face as if they were alone in the City of Angels. He leaned forward, his lips whisper-soft against hers. His voice pitched low. “I’d always pick you… up.”

  Placing her hand on his, Red let her lips part.

  His voice echoed in her ears, sounding so much like the mystery man in her dreams. Was it a doppelgänger transference? His touch felt the same as the mystery man’s as he put his arm around her waist and pulled her closer. The hint of sandalwood rose from his leather jacket. He deepened the kiss, and his fingers trembled as he ran them over her hair.

  Goosebumps rose on her arms as Red wrapped them around his neck. There was none of the awkwardness of a first kiss, banging arms or noses. Feeling him against her felt so familiar. She bit her lip, pulling away for breath, and stared into his eyes. Gray bored into green.

  Red dipped her head. “What are we doing?”

  “I don’t know.” Lucas grinned before kissing her quickly and murmuring against her lips. “You seem to like it.”

  “Oh my god, I’m going to hurl.” Vic mock gag
ged, wearing a bathrobe with a towel wrapped around his head as he stared at them through the open balcony glass door from the living room. “Can we keep the PDA to a minimum?”

  Red glared at Vic, blushing, as she pulled away from Lucas. She stepped from the balcony toward Vic. “Can you say that louder? I don’t think the people in the penthouse heard.” She rubbed her neck and ducked her head. “Lucas, it’s time to go.”

  Lucas grinned at her before nodding at Vic. “I’ll show myself out.”

  Vic watched him go, holding his tongue until the door closed behind him. “Bad news bears, kid. What are you thinking?”

  “He kissed me first!”

  “I don’t know if you have a big brother, but I’m filling those shoes right now. Watch out. He might be a reformed lady killer, but he can still break a heart.” Vic shook his head and went into his room.

  Red touched her lips. She knew when she was kissing Lucas, she was thinking of him. Who was he thinking of?

  Her or Juniper?

  Chapter Ten

  October 28th, 2018, Past Midnight, The Pandora Hotel, Los Angeles California, USA

  Hours later, sipping a glass of wine, Red sat crossed-legged on the floor of her room’s balcony. Two dozen tabs lay cramped and open in her computer browser. The camera in their hallway had been on the fritz at the time of the break-in. It got them a few complementary days at the Pandora Hotel, but it meant a dead end on that lead. That left only the information sent out by Fat Crispin. She had been reviewing the Olivia Greene file, even though she wished she could get her hands on the hotel footage.

  Red had checked out the murder scene days ago, pacing around the secluded beach where joggers had found her. She had looked over the photos of Olivia, washed up on the sand, lying prone in her long sleeve dress. The coroner had taken pictures of the mark left on her of the snake eating its tail.

  It was easier to think about the case than kissing Lucas or joking with him or fighting beside him or how her eyes couldn’t help but be drawn to him whenever he walked through a room.

  Yeah, she would rather read more about murder than think about the warm fuzzies that she was developing for a vampire.

  She opened another browser tab. The dated database portal looked like it was built on GeoCities, but it housed the digital collections of the Brotherhood of Bards and Heroes. Registered hunters and Bards like Vic—or whoever had their passwords—could get access. It had been down for maintenance for the last week.

  She typed Delilah Byrnes into the database before scrolling through the dropdown menu to select vampire for the species. A picture of Delilah taken at the height of 80s power businesswoman fashion appeared on the page. Scrolling through the entry, she picked up the main points in Delilah’s biography: turned into a vampire by Alaric in 1672, left her sire to travel with Quinn, and mayhem followed.

  Red’s finger started to ache as she scrolled through the massacres that Delilah had either caused, participated in, or finished.

  She paused as she noticed a painting of Delilah dressed as if ready for a ball at the court of Versailles. A golden ouroboros pendant necklace hung between her cleavage.

  A sentence in a nearby paragraph caught her eye. “The local priest reported seeing the ouroboros carved onto their skin…” She read through the paragraph about a massacre outside Madrid in 1738. Quinn and Delilah had left only the local priest alive in the village.

  Red scanned through the rest of the biography to get to the part where the Byrnes were cursed by the soulmancer. She expected an epic blow-by-blow account, yet only one line spoke of the curse that tipped the vampire world into chaos.

  “On August 1st, 1900, Delilah Byrnes fell to a soulmancer’s curse upon attacking the Brotherhood of Bards and Heroes alongside Quinn Byrnes, Justine Byrnes, and Lucas Crawford. See entry on the Defense of Stonetree Monastery.”

  Red tried to click the link, but the database denied her clearance. She surfed to all the Byrnes’ entries, ignoring a pang of jealousy at how beautiful Justine Byrnes was, and found the same line. She furrowed her brow before scrolling up on Lucas’s entry to look for a mention of Juniper St. James. She found a quick mention of a redheaded human companion in Brighton and reports that she had died in Lisbon.

  The entry writer noted that the records are confusing, and the later reports of another redheaded woman with the Byrnes in Prague could have been the same woman. The last reference to the mysterious female is to her death in Dresden, which set Lucas off on a vendetta against the famed Witch hunter, Peter Svoboda. In an editor’s note, the biographer mused on the likelihood of a single human surviving eight years with an evil vampire and theorized that Lucas must have had multiple redheaded claimed humans. Not even the Bards seemed to know about Juniper.

  Red gulped down the last of her wine before she finished reading the scant details on Lucas post-souling. There was a note about him moving to America, starting hunting monsters, and a paragraph about him helping to destroy Alaric, the founder of the Alaric Order, ten years ago.

  She closed her laptop. This was the reason other hunters were laying low during the Blood Summit. Vampires were never simple, even if they had souls. They lived too long for that.

  Gathering up her mess on the balcony, she yawned and told herself no more research. She brushed her teeth and hair before she got into pajamas and laid down. Turning and wrapping her blankets around herself, she tried to sleep but only managed to toss and turn like a fish dropped in the desert.

  Red sighed and re-dressed. If she was going to be awake, she might as well be useful. The hotel suite was immaculate, and she needed something to do with her hands.

  Leaving the room, she searched for something to do before she found herself rummaging through the back of the van, tossing blankets into a plastic bag.

  Vic had been attacked in the van, and it still looked like it. Half the van looked like a stoner den with bean bag chairs and Christmas lights hanging, while the other side was pure storage with plastic and metal crates tied down with weapons, dry goods, and supplies. She made notes in her phone of what they were running low on and what could be replaced. She still hadn’t gotten used to the idea of having money. She felt like she had to spend it quickly before it was taken away.

  Cleaning usually soothed her. She was waiting for the soothing part to kick in.

  A scrape of a pebble on concrete ripped through the quiet underground parking lot of the Pandora Hotel.

  Red grabbed the shotgun loaded with wooden tipped bullets from the open gun box beside her. She turned around in a crouch to the open back door of the van.

  Kristoff stared at her, hands behind his back, dark suit jacket revealing a white shirt. The bright lights of the parking garage reflected the golden strands in his dark blond hair. His lips quirked into a small wistful smile as he stared at her. “Red.”

  Red cocked the shotgun, wondering how the hotel’s no violence sanctuary spell dealt with self-defense. She should have fired. Instead, she said, “You finally learned my name.”

  “I keep trying to learn more, but you’re a tricky woman to research.” Kristoff grinned, blue eyes twinkling, and the dimple deepened on his chin. His chest only moved with breath when he spoke.

  “That’s intentional.” Red lifted the shotgun higher. He didn’t have a soul, she told herself. The bastard hadn’t just bitten her, he had claimed her. Red knew where that road led: being a 24/7 blood bank. Juniper St. James might have lasted eight years as Lucas’s paramour back in his bad boy days, but Red didn’t like her odds with Kristoff. She tried to call on that well of magic within, but ever since she’d thrown TJ the vampire through the window of Quinn Investigations, her energy had been tapped.

  “This isn’t what I imagined you driving.” Kristoff looked at the van.

  Red pressed her eyebrows together at the mundane topic change. Pride in the black-painted van, ramshackle and smelling of Mountain Dew as it did, rose up in her. “Hey, this is the Millennium Falcon. It made the Kessel Run in
less than twelve parsecs.”

  Kristoff chuckled. “You never were the pretentious type.” He shook his head, smirking. “I’m not surprised that in your next life you’d be a sci-fi fan traveling with a hunter.”

  Red frowned. Lucas had kissed her tonight, and all she could think about was if he had been kissing her or imagining a dead woman. Now, Kristoff was making small talk as if she was his blast from the past. Her life was on the line, and it was still about someone else. “How would you know? You just met me and then claimed me like two seconds later. I’m not Juniper St. James.”

  “Then who are you?” Kristoff tilted his head. “You may not be her, but you seem to be just as mysterious.”

  “I’m a hunter, so you’d best give me some space.” Red gestured with the shotgun for him to move back. She slid forward to hop out of the van, neck already stiffening from her awkward position in the van. The vampire bite throbbed as if sensing the fangs that had made it close by.