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

by Sami Valentine

  Red hid her peeping eyes behind her sunglasses. “What’s on the agenda, Mister?”

  “The night’s still young,” Lucas said. The worry in his gray eyes didn’t stop the small grin tugging at his lips. “There’s a poker game that I heard brought in real power players. I’ll buy into the next round. Might have to wait for the action to start.”

  His arm still rested on her shoulders. She didn’t know if she should cuddle in to keep their cover or if she wanted to do it. She compromised and tilted her head back on his arm. Red looked up at the sign, and a sudden curiosity struck her. “Were you there when Pabst got its one ribbon in 1893?”

  Red didn’t know what accounted for small talk with vampires, but historical beer trivia had to be a safe topic. Unless he’d had some dramatic moment with Juniper at the World’s Fair.

  Lucas tilted his head, confused before he noticed the sign. “No, I wasn’t in America then. London, or maybe Dublin? I spent a lot of ‘93 drunk. Both ‘93s.”

  “Bad boy from the start?” Red tipped her sunglasses down.

  “What can I say, I’ve always been a rebel. What about you?”

  “I’m…” Red licked her lips. She didn’t know what she had always been. She knew what she had been for the last year. Everything else was a game to jog her memory. “...an explorer. It’s probably why I’ve been traveling in that van so long. There’s something about the start of a journey, that next horizon. You never know what you’ll find, for better or worse.”

  “What do you think of what you found in LA?”

  “I’m still deciding.” Red smiled before sipping her beer.

  “Let me know what you decide.” Lucas said before he looked over to the bar and rolled his eyes. “For fuck’s sake.”

  Red followed his stare to the center of the bar where Quinn stared down two male vampires in leather and denim.

  “How do I know this fucker?” The barrel chested one with the cauliflower ear asked his friend who wore a red-stained jean jacket patched with a faded Hells Angels logo.

  The ginger-haired vampire at the card table chuckled and called out, “That's Bloody Quinn Byrnes himself, boyos.”

  The Hells Angels vampire looked back at Quinn and crossed his arms. “Now, what is Quinn the defender of downtown doing in the Valley?”

  Watching the drama unfold from across the bar, Red rolled her eyes. “And I was the one who was going to attract too much attention?”

  “Rub it in my face later.” Lucas took her hand and pulled her forward in a wide circle around the bar to stand behind the bikers. “Go to the car.”

  Red wished she could disagree, but she only had the stake taped to her back. Two master vampires couldn’t take on a dozen each even with a hunter’s help.

  She looked over her shoulder at a reedy vampire in an Iron Man shirt trying to sneak behind a cluster of biker chicks toward the door.

  It was the vampire who was smart enough to run from both Quinn’s office and the Pandora Hotel. He didn’t have his friend TJ to hide behind anymore.

  She nodded to Lucas before she followed the nerdy vampire out to the main warehouse floor.

  In the bright lights of the warehouse, she noticed the fleur-de-lys pin on his backpack along with the other fandom pins. He must have been a Francophile who loved the show Wynonna Earp—a well-rounded geek. She kept her pace casual.

  He looked at her and ran, an action more prey than predator.

  The vampire bouncer at the door, noticing Iron Man fan fleeing, lumbered over to the bar as he cracked his knuckles.

  She looked back inside to see Quinn and Lucas circled by six minions holding pool cues and broken bottles. The two souled vampires stepped back deeper into the bar.

  Lucas grabbed a pool cue swung by a snarling vampire in fringed leather before he slammed the handle against the vampire’s forehead.

  Quinn blocked a knife from a lanky vampire in bell bottoms before punching his attacker in the gut.

  The other four minions rushed them, to the hoots and cheers of the stomping crowd.

  Red tried to focus and summon up her magic, but the energy didn’t answer her call. A shaman told her once that she had a capacity of an ocean of power in her, but Red barely felt a puddle. She shook her hand before sighing. Fuck sticks. She was still regenerating her energy levels. Looking around, she wished for her revolver loaded with wooden bullets. If wishes were weapons…

  Red noticed a pegboard lined with hanging keys on the wall over a low desk. Checking the tags, she noticed that they matched the licenses plates of the vans. Grabbing a fistful of keys, she ran to the vans and unlocked one.

  This was a crazy idea, she told herself as she breathed deep. Red might have been rolling with immortals, but she wasn’t one. She looked around, trying to think of something less dangerous than ramming a van into a crowd of vampires.

  She saw a stack of bricks and rushed to grab two.

  Going back to the van, she stuck the key in the ignition and angled the wheel. She pulled two thick hairpins from the back of her wig and stared at them, hoping they would be strong enough. She put the hairpins upright on the carpet of the van, propping up the gas pedal before she put the brick on the pedal. The hair pins wobbled and started to bend as she set the van into drive. She didn’t have long.

  Running around the back of the van to the next one, she unlocked it and turned the van on. She pulled out another hairpin from her wig and placed it under the pedal. She angled the steering wheel, then dropped the brick on the gas pedal and jumped back. The van zoomed forward toward the open garage-style door of the illegal bar.

  Red ran to the front warehouse door before looking behind her shoulder to see the van hurtle toward the bar. The second one rocketed behind it. The first van slammed into the wall of the warehouse. The other careened into the open garage door, mowing through the crowd of vampires circled around Lucas and Quinn. She hoped that was enough of a distraction.

  Red sprinted to Quinn’s closed-top convertible, but when she got there she realized she didn’t have the keys. Quinn had them in his pocket. She rushed over to Lucas’s bike to see if he had left his keys. Of course not.

  She had just kicked over the wasp nest. She needed to run.

  Vampires were about to spill out of the warehouse, stronger and faster than she was. She needed more of a head start. She looked up to see Lucas and Quinn sprinting from the warehouse. Red hopped on the back of Lucas’s bike and grabbed a helmet from the unlocked back pannier and put it on. “Let’s roll!”

  Lucas was on the bike in front of her before she could blink.

  “Split up.” Without opening the door, Quinn leaped into his convertible.

  Red wrapped her arms around Lucas before the motorcycle spun out, sending gravel flying behind them, and burning rubber out of the parking lot onto the street. She clasped her arms tighter around him.

  Lucas drove like the devil was on his heels. The bike passed cars on the shoulder at 80, turning south down Coldwater Canyon Avenue.

  The rev of motorcycles echoed behind them.

  Lucas sped up, passing a semi-truck before darting through an intersection on a yellow light. He weaved through traffic to take a wide left at the next street, following a sign for the 170.

  “Don’t take the freeway! Not with a vampire gang on our tail.” Red shouted to be heard through the helmet and over the wind. The second they got onto the highway, the risk for being spotted by cops or hurting bystanders rose a hundredfold.

  Taking a sharp right, Lucas began a twisting route past strip malls and neighborhoods in North Hollywood.

  Red looked over her shoulder and saw a motorcycle following them. She glanced to the side. Her eyes widened.

  A second vampire biker drove across the two-lane traffic, fangs flashing, and slammed into their back tire.

  Fear spiked in her before impact. Her magic rushed to her in a panic, and she opened herself up to channel the energy. The moment was too fast to form words for a spell. A cushion
of air wrapped around her as she flew off the motorcycle and bounced onto the sidewalk. The second bounce broke her magic bubble. She gasped as her helmet slammed against the concrete, knocking the wind from her.

  She looked up in a daze to see Lucas regain control of his bike and spin it to a stop beside her.

  Lucas jumped up, letting the bike fall, to kneel beside her. “You okay?.”

  She nodded and pulled the helmet off. It took the wig with it. Panting, she stared down at the ground, realizing how close she had come to a broken neck. Maybe that specter in Oklahoma had been right about her mother being a witch. The rev of an engine made her gasp and look up.

  Lucas jumped up and charged the motorcycle rushing toward them. He stopped the wheel with two hands. “Mistake.” He reached out and yanked the bigger vampire off the bike and over the handlebars.

  Pulling the stake from her back, Red rose to her feet. She saw the other vampire in bell-bottom jeans out of the corner of her eye. He charged her, denim flaring around his legs. She raised her arm, catching him in his run with a stake to the chest, letting his own momentum power the blow.

  The vampire dissolved into bones.

  Red looked back at Lucas before bending over to pull the stake from the bare rib cage. “Need a stake?”

  Lucas had the undead biker by the hair. He punched him in the face, then twisted the vampire’s neck. “Just in time.”

  Red tossed him the stake. He caught it over his head without looking.

  Lucas slammed the stake into the vampire biker’s heart. He turned to look at Red before he ran to her side. He brushed the loose locks of red hair escaping her bun back to examine her face and neck. “How are you okay? You flew off the bike.”

  Red smiled. “Magic. Sometimes it comes through in a pinch. Let’s get out of here before the others catch up.”

  Lucas nodded before picking up his bike. Red took a deep breath and put on the scraped helmet, leaving the wig, before she got onto the back. She set her hands on his waist and held on tightly.

  “You up for round two?”

  “I’m cool.” Red said even as her legs shook.

  Lucas sped into the night, back onto Coldwater Canyon Avenue.

  The road grew hillier as the houses got bigger and more private with old growth trees and high fences. They whipped through winding roads over onto Mulholland Drive as LA spread before them. The city lights glimmered brighter than any star.

  Her heart pounded in her ears even as the danger passed.

  She kept looking behind her, but she didn’t see a single biker. They came upon Sunset Strip quicker than she would’ve imagined and turned onto a side street toward the Pandora Hotel. Red hopped off the bike when Lucas parked in the garage. She pulled off the helmet, her hair falling loose from the bun, and set it on the bike with trembling hands.

  Her mind raced, but she pulled out her cell phone and sent texts to Quinn and Vic that they had arrived safely at the hotel. She looked up to see Lucas staring at her. “What?”

  “You could have died.” Lucas shook his head, guilt in his gray eyes. “I shouldn’t have let Quinn bring you along.”

  Red put her hand on her hips, annoyance powering through the fear. “What are you talking about? I’m the reason you two got out of that bar alive. It was my two vans that mowed down those bikers. You’re lucky I was there.” Shaking her head, she turned to walk to the elevator. She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling suddenly cold as the adrenaline settled in her body.

  “Didn’t mean it like that.” Lucas appeared at her side. “You did a cracking job. I was the wheelman that let you get bumped off my bike.”

  Red shrugged. “I don’t want to get on a bike for a while, but I’m fine. My magic doesn’t always listen to me, but it pops out when I need it.” Red smiled wanly and pushed the elevator button. “Put away the guilt. I’ve done this before.”

  “You’re a witch?”

  “Sometimes,” Red said, blushing. She knew after using so much magic she wouldn’t be much of one for a while. Only her near-death experience had wrenched what was left in her out in defense.

  The elevator door dinged.

  “You have to stay here while I find Quinn and pull him out of whatever fight he is in,” Lucas said, putting his hands in his pockets.

  “Fine.” Red stepped inside and pushed the button for the 8th floor before glancing out the door. “I guess this is good night?”

  “It should be, but not yet.” Lucas stopped the door from closing and stepped through. He brought his hand to her face before he pulled her in for a kiss.

  Red tugged him closer. The rush of surviving fell upon in her the security of the elevator; the buzz in her ears and the thump in her chest told her she was alive. Her breath grew heavy as she pulled back. She stared into his grey eyes, then kissed him again.

  Their hands roamed over each other’s back with frantic energy.

  Lucas pressed her against the wall of the elevator. His tongue brushed against her lip before he deepened the kiss. His hands circled her waist, pulling her closer.

  Breaking from the kiss, Red nibbled along his jaw to his neck, her hands running through his hair. She leaned her forehead against his neck.

  He lifted her, palms under her ass to wrap her legs around his waist before he kissed her again.

  Red threw her arms around his neck.

  The elevator door dinged open and a panicked voice squeaked, “I’ll take the next one!”

  Red looked over Lucas’s shoulder and blushed, then buried her face in his shoulder as the door closed on the 4th floor. She bit her lip and put her legs down. “Okay, time for a cold shower.”

  “You’re remarkable, Red.” Lucas tipped her chin up with his finger. He kissed her again, this time slow and soft.

  Red’s phone vibrated in her hip pouch. Her eyes remained closed from the kiss.

  Lucas said, “You’re buzzing too.”

  She licked her lips before pulling out the phone out to see Vic’s name. She answered it as the doors opened on the 8th floor. “Heya.” Her voice cracked, and she looked at Lucas, blushing. “Hang on, I’m right outside." She stepped into the hallway and went to open the hotel suite.

  “Are you okay?” Vic asked from the couch, hand in a bag of chips. “Quinn called twenty minutes ago. He said he saw one of Kristoff’s buddies with a mess of minions at that bar. The bastard blew his cover, apparently. He was still trying to shake off Valley minions.”

  Lucas gritted his teeth. “I thought I recognized that ginger wanker. Fucking Novak has eyes everywhere now.”

  Red looked away as she stepped inside and set her purse down. She had told Lucas and the gang that Kristoff had found her cleaning out the Falcon last night, but she didn’t tell them that Kristoff had told her his side of the Juniper saga. Or that he promised they would meet again.

  Had Kristoff sent his buddy to watch her? No, it didn’t make sense, because no one besides Vic knew where they were going. The ginger vampire had been settled in that bar when they had arrived. He hadn’t noticed her either. She had certainly surprised those minions, especially with the careening vans. Only one seemed to recognize her. “I saw the nerdy vamp that roughed you up. He ran from the bar before the action started.”

  “He wasn’t the only rogue minion,” Lucas said, rocking on his heels as his jaw clenched in thought. “Two dozen in that bar, and I recognized a third of the lot.”

  “I was afraid of that.” Vic rolled up the chip bag one handed and sat up on the couch. “I managed to get into Julia Crispin’s files, and she was into some heavy shit. She was investigating the rising vampire population in LA, trying to figure out which vampire went rogue. The Brotherhood has a truce with the supreme master here, but Julia went deep undercover and kept it a secret from everyone.”

  “That explains why a lesbian Bard was seen on dates with male vampires.” Red sat down next to Vic. “Did she find out who?”

  “I only have her early notes with write-ups on pl
ayers like Delilah, Michel, and Cora. I think the later stuff was on her stolen computer. Had to be something big.” Vic tossed the chip bag on the coffee table and crossed his arms. “Hired goons is one thing, robbing a hotel like this is another.”

  “Whoever killed her must have wanted her secrets buried too,” Red said. “Why else go after the laptop?”

  Vic nodded before he looked at Lucas as if noticing him for the first time. “Hey! Why aren’t you out there finding Quinn?”