Sever the Crown: Vampire Reverse Harem Complete Series

by Mysti Parker

  Just in case the night went south despite what Zac said.

  Just in case, bomb or no bomb, this was still a trap with Wren as the target on stage. With Wren as the target anywhere, really.

  I needed to hurry.

  While Wren signed autographs for the squealing tweens, I pocketed some wire cutters lying on top of one of those giant speakers, then searched the backstage area until I found a ladder leading up to a catwalk that stretched all the way across the stage. I lifted my foot to the first rung like everything was cool, like I knew exactly what I was doing. Which couldn’t be further from the truth. I didn’t even know if the two screens were hanging with wires and if a wire cutter would do any good.

  At the top of the catwalk, heat from all the equipment and the overhead swirling lights pressed down. Luckily the lights shone away from me onto the stage. I walked through thick shadows toward the top of the first screen, the metal plank narrow enough that I had to concentrate where I put my feet. To my left was a guard rail. To my right was a whole lot of nothing and then the stage fifty feet below.

  I neared the first screen. Ah, yes. Wires. A whole tangle of them shooting from the top and coiling deep into the shadows above. I suddenly felt like part of the bomb squad myself. Which wire did I cut to shut the power off to it but not make it crash to the stage? Wren would be on any minute.

  Fuck it. I cut through all of them. The screen was already blank, and it didn’t fall. Good enough for me.

  Just as I took a step toward the other screen, the catwalk shuddered under my feet. I had a feeling I was about to have company up here.

  One more to go. Maybe I should’ve taken Ashe with me to do this. Two screens. Two of us. It just made good math.

  Too late now.

  The crowd roared as Wren/Vivian took the stage. The second screen, the one I hadn’t cut yet, flickered to life. It showed her walking toward the mic with her head bent down, sticking to the middle of the stage and away from the front row. She aimed a shy smile at her feet and waved at the audience. She wasn't wearing her sunglasses now, so as soon as she looked up and the giant screen captured her face in HD clarity, the crowd would know it wasn’t really Vivian Bravo.

  I'd better be quick. I readied my wire cutters and focused on the placement of my feet so Wren wouldn't get a surprise guest performer falling on top of her.

  The catwalk shook violently below me, threatening to spill me over the side, as someone else quickly climbed up. Likely to investigate why the first screen wasn't working.

  Almost there.

  Through the shadows ahead, some guy stepped onto the catwalk. "Hey!"

  But Wren was already belting out the first note to the song, with the crash of drums and a loud cheer right after.

  The back of my neck prickled and I turned. A second vampire crested the ladder. I was surrounded, and they were closing in fast.

  I reached up and snipped the wires of the second screen. It blacked out just as the guitars' first wails rang across the stage.

  The two guys were near enough that the colored overhead lights spun across their scowls. I charged the one to my right first, careful of my feet. Behind my back, I readied my dart pen and then thrust it upward.

  But the guy, who was as big as a linebacker, blocked it. His forearm was about twice the size of mine, and the force behind it just about knocked the pen from my grip. He swung again with a meaty fist, and I ducked, barely in time. I paid him back with an elbow jab to his sternum and then a swift uppercut that probably hurt me worse than it did him. He punched me right in the face, and I swore I saw stars. I staggered back, nearly misplacing my feet.

  Yeah, this was not a good idea to do this fifty feet above a live concert on a rickety metal catwalk.

  Behind me, the other vampire fiddled with the wires on the first screen. Could he fix them? Shit.

  Time to play dirty.

  I let the guy in front of me hit me again, just one more time, right in the eye hard enough to make me think he'd cracked the socket. I pitched backward and staggered to my knees, looping my arm behind me around the guardrail.

  He came at me again, his size thirteen ass-kicker boots beating toward me and making the whole catwalk bounce. A quick glance behind me, and the second vampire thudded toward me, too, as big as a bear and looking pissed as hell.

  I stayed down, until the last second. When the first guy fisted his hand into my jacket collar to drag me up, I slammed the pen down into his boot, high enough on his foot so I could puncture above the steel toe in his boots. He went down on his back, springing the platform up and down like a diving board from the force of his fall.

  Without missing a second, I pivoted on my toes, took the other pen from my pocket, and jammed it upward. I aimed for the other guy's reaching arm, but at the last second, he snatched it back.

  So I got him right between the legs.

  Shit, dude. Fighting 101: don’t leave your balls vulnerable during an attack.

  His mouth opened in a horrified O.

  Mine opened in a "Ffffuuck" because he was falling, falling toward the stage.

  I reached out. My stomach launched into my throat. Time slowed, as it tends to do when a bear man is tumbling toward an oblivious drummer down below. My fingertips grazed his belt, and caught around the buckle. I hauled him back to safety, the muscles in my arm straining, and then laid him out so he straddled the catwalk facedown.

  There. Problem solved. I never wanted to do this again.

  Now that I was able to focus on something other than another man's balls, I gazed down at Wren. She was fucking owning the stage now that the two screens weren't showing her face. Even while singing teeny bop songs or whatever, her voice dominated every lyric, every note. She was holding back her usual huskiness to sing like Vivian, and she did sound like her, only ten times better.

  And the crowd adored her. Their constant roar nearly drowned out everything else.

  I stood there, gazing down at her in total awe, when I thought I heard my earpiece crackle.

  "Yoga, you there?" I said into my watch.

  Even with my vampire hearing, I couldn’t hear jack over the concert. If he'd even answered. I looked at my watch. No texts showing up either.

  I walked over the guy on my right since there was no other place for me to step, and I probably dug my heels into his stomach harder than was necessary. I needed to get somewhere quieter so I could hear if there was a problem.

  Wren's song ended to eardrum-shattering applause, and then once it died down, she said, "You all are seriously the best."

  The vampires obviously agreed and raised their volume even more.

  She held her hand to her forehead to block out the bright lights as she scanned the boxed seats. "This next song goes out to a special someone sitting on the third level in a private box. They know who they are, and they know I'm still here. And they’re seriously afraid. This one’s called ‘Shut Your Mouth.’”

  Damn. I would love to have seen Queen Ravana's face when she’d heard that so I could see that karate chop diss split her from head to ass crack.

  When I reached the ladder, I discovered someone else climbing up. Fuck. I didn't have time for another bear man battle, so I whipped out another dart pen and stepped into the thick shadows next to the far wall. As soon as the guy's head appeared level to the platform, I dove for his neck. The guy slumped and lost his grip with the ladder, falling fifty feet to the ground below behind the edge of a curtain.

  But he was a vampire. He'd be fine.

  Except I wouldn't be if I couldn't get off this damn catwalk. That was the last dart in both my pens. Surely someone had seen him fall and was coming to investigate, so I rushed back across the platform, stepping over the two unconscious lumps, toward the other side.

  As fast as I could, I climbed down, skipping several rungs on the ladder altogether. I jumped the rest of the way and slammed to the floor in a crouch behind the edge of the curtain.

  Right in the path of a roadie who
looked like she could bench press the linebacker bear men I'd just fought off.

  So I surged to my feet and ran. Because that's what smart vampires do.

  I ripped toward where I’d left Ashe, scanning the area. Where was he? He was supposed to stay within eyeshot of Wren. Unless he'd gone somewhere to hear what Yoga had to say.

  A huge locker with a pink silk scarf poking out over its lid sat up ahead, and I dodged around it, slithering into the space behind Vivian’s slimy manager’s back.

  The roadie barreled right past. Sucker.

  The manager was slapping his scrambled cell phone, trying in vain to get it to work, so he didn’t even notice me relieving him of his wallet. Tonight’s after-party would be on him.

  I pushed out of a door into a relatively quiet hallway.

  "Yoga? Are you there?" I hissed into my watch.

  The earpiece crackled again. As soon as I reached up to wiggle it in hopes of a better signal, a loud explosion, louder than the concert itself, shook the walls. It tore the ground out from underneath my feet. I went down hard on my tailbone.

  A bomb.

  Oh fuck.

  Wren.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Wren

  Chaos. Pure and simple.

  The arena erupted into screams. Fleeing vampires formed blurred paths throughout the seats as they zigzagged to the exits at lightning speed. Plaster rained down from overhead.

  I lay there on my back, stunned from where the blast had thrown me against a speaker. Metal squealed as a light fixture swung loose from its framework. It broke free and fell straight for me. I watched, transfixed for a moment as it dove like a sparkling orb. Then I came to my senses and rolled out of the way. It crashed onto the stage. Glass shattered, some of it hitting my face, as the light emitted one final burst of sparks before going out.

  One by one, lights and other overhead fixtures tumbled down. Some kept swinging by a thread of bent metal or straining wires. The speakers emitted ear-splitting feedback that almost drowned out the screams of those who were trying to escape. I rolled off the stage and sheltered beneath the metal stairs leading up to it.

  Peeking out, I knew I had to get my bearings before my own panic set in. I couldn’t tell how much damage had been done to the arena. There was too much smoke and movement.

  The power went out, plunging the arena into darkness. My night vision kicked in, but with the smoke and broken overhead fixtures scattered around me, it didn’t make much difference. I still couldn’t tell where the explosion came from or how bad it was. The speakers no longer squealed, but now all I could hear was shouting, sneakers squeaking on the floor, little ones crying. To my left, at one of the closest exits, a writhing mass of vampires pushed and shoved through a bottleneck of their own making.

  “Zac!” I yelled, hoping our signal still held out. But then I felt for my earpiece. It was gone. It must have fallen out in all the chaos. On my smart watch, no texts came up. After a few attempts with my shaking fingers, I texted, Are you all okay? and stared at the screen, hoping beyond hope that Ashe, Charles, and Zac were still alive.

  No one answered. Ashe and Charles had a lot better chances than Zac, unless they got caught in the explosion and resulting fire or were impaled in the heart by falling debris. I pulled up my sleeve. The two points of the symbol on my arm still glowed as they had before. I hoped that was a good sign.

  My wig had gotten lopsided and had fallen into my eyes, so I just tore it off and tossed it. I didn’t care if someone recognized me. I had to go find my guys.

  A woman screamed a few yards from me. I could see her trying to crawl out of the crowd, on her elbows, as rampaging feet trampled her back down. She kept reaching out, screaming, her fangs fully extended, but helpless under the strength of the vampires treading all over her.

  I started to go the other direction, but the fear in her eyes and screams wouldn’t let me. I darted out from under the stairs, grabbed one vampire after another, pushed them off her, and then took her by the hands and yanked her up.

  “Thank you,” she wailed as I led her over to the stairs.

  “Take cover under there.”

  “No, my little girl. I have to find her!”

  “Is she in the crowd?” The bottleneck was narrowing as traffic finally started flowing through the door. If the vampire child had been among them, chances are she’d already been trampled. Not that it would kill her, but the pain could be unbearable for a little one.

  “I don’t know. She was with me, but we got separated. She’s only seven.”

  Orange light flickered from the opposite end of the arena. Flames lapped up the wall near another exit. No wonder everyone was trying to get out at this one. A small silhouette stood still in front of the fire. I wasn’t sure if she was this woman’s kid, but that didn’t mean she didn’t deserve help.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Rhiannon.”

  Like the Fleetwood Mac song, I thought sardonically. Will you ever win?

  “Stay here,” I told the woman, hoping I could reach the kid in time.

  I negotiated an obstacle course of overturned chairs, broken light fixtures, twisted metal, and shattered glass. I almost slipped in a gooey pile of what once was a vampire. All that was left was the rebar sticking through the Vivian Bravo T-shirt he’d been wearing. But I finally made it to the other side. The kid stood on an upper level. The stairs were blocked with broken concrete that had fallen from above.

  A quick glance told me that the debris came from the private box that had held my aunt and her entourage. Whether she had been in it at the time or not, I had no idea. With any luck, she’d be dead, but then again, I wouldn’t have the pleasure of killing her.

  With a giant leap, I scaled the bars and landed where the child stood frozen in fear.

  The fire’s heat scorched my skin. The child’s cheeks were already blistered. She stared up at me with huge eyes, with irises the color of tangerines. In her white-knuckled fist, she held a scrunched-up empty blood pouch. I couldn’t help but wonder if vampire concert snacks were as overpriced as human concessions.

  “Are you Rhiannon?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay, I’m here to help you. Your mom’s over there. Come on.”

  I picked her up, holding her tightly as I jumped back down to the ground level. We wound through the obstacles again. Another hulking piece of metal and lights came crashing down in front of us. I turned her away, shielding her from the impact of glass shrapnel. The tiny projectiles pierced my back, stinging like I’d fallen into a bed of cacti.

  We had no time to waste. From the sounds of cracking concrete and squealing metal, it sounded as though the roof might cave in. I ran as fast as I could without tripping over all the debris and handed the girl off to her very relieved mother.

  She clung to her daughter with one arm and grabbed my shoulder with the other. “I can’t thank you enough.”

  “You can thank me by getting the fuck out of here while you still can.”

  She nodded, but then stared me in the eyes. “You…you look like…Queen Bronwen.”

  “Uh...” Fuck it, why not be honest? “That’s because I’m her daughter.”

  The woman let go of me, her jaw dropping as her eyes widened.

  I tried to sound like a confident queen, even though I felt anything but. “This bomb is Ravana’s doing. I won’t let her get away with it.”

  “Then I hope you take the crown back from that bitch. She doesn’t deserve it.” To my surprise, the woman bowed, as did her daughter, though she looked terribly confused as to why.

  “That’s not necessary.” My watch buzzed. I glanced down to see a text from Ashe.

  Wren, where are you? Are you ok?

  Relief flooded through me and made my eyes well up. I texted back: I’m by the stage.

  He replied: I’m coming to get you.

  “You need to get her out of here,” I told the mom, who had finally stopped bowing. “I think this
place is coming down.”

  The exit had finally wound down to a steady stream of fleeing vampires. Some were limping. Some had bloody wounds. One young girl’s arm was mangled into tattered shreds at her elbow. I wasn’t sure if that would grow back or not. I’d never lost a limb.

  I ushered the mom and kid to the doors and watched as they disappeared in the remainder of the crowd blurring out of this concert turned hell. On the other side of the stage, I heard people yelling, “Vivian, where are you?”

  It must have been her handlers or band members. I didn’t see where they had gone once the bomb went off.

  They’d be looking in vain. Hopefully, my aunt’s minions hadn’t roughed Vivian up too bad, thinking she was me. I rubbed off the beauty mark and sparkly lipstick, then ripped the long sleeves off my one-piece lace bodysuit. It had been a while since I had exposed my tattoos in public. It seemed fitting in this environment.

  The lady with the clipboard and the slimeball manager ran past me. The lady was missing a high heel and an earring, but she’d managed to hang on to that clipboard like it was part of her body. I was tempted to hurl a piece of rebar at the manager and make a shish-kebab out of him, but whatever. I had to find Ashe.

  Near the exit on the other side of the stage, I saw him standing there, scanning the arena. His gaze locked on mine finally. The immense relief and worry I saw in his eyes summoned a sob from my throat. We ran to each other and folded ourselves into an embrace that said a thousand things we couldn’t put into words.

  He held me tight, stroking my hair. “I’m so glad you’re okay. We have to get out of here.”

  “Yes.”

  Before we could make a break for it, a weak voice came from the rubble under where the private box used to be.

  “Help me, please.” Was it Ravana? I couldn’t be sure.

  All I could see was the pile of rubble. Someone could have been trapped under there besides her and her mates. There had been several concert goers sitting under the box.