Sever the Crown: Vampire Reverse Harem Complete Series

by Mysti Parker

  A sickening roll started up in my gut, triggered by a dawning realization I couldn't yet put into words, let alone thoughts.

  Albert dabbed at the sweat trickling down his temples while he pinched one of his ears and wiggled it. "I don't suppose they're gone?" He spoke a lot louder than necessary.

  Shaking her head, Wren crossed toward him and took his hand in both of hers, her gaze aimed at the bell rope hanging above his head. "‘Fraid not."

  He chuckled and glanced beyond her. "You hear that, Bronwen? Boy, we did good with this one. Brave, smart, beautiful…"

  It was amazing to me that they were so comfortable around each other, even in a time like this, and trying to make each other feel better. It was really something to get to witness, given that loving parents was such a foreign concept to me.

  "Let's make a plan and help keep her that way, then,” I said. “We have about an hour or so until dawn, and before that, they'll have to leave."

  "Wait.” Wren grimaced like she’d smelled expired blood. “You're saying we hole up here and fight it out with them if necessary for a whole hour? Longer, since some of them aren’t vampires at all. What about backup?"

  I dug my fingers into the wood behind my back, grateful it was there to hold me up, because if what I suspected were true, it would knock me down. The words left a slimy trail on my tongue as they tumbled out:

  "They're not coming."

  "What?"

  "They would've been here by now, easily. Which means my call was intercepted or the dispatcher’s been compromised. Maybe worse than that." Like the whole office. Or the entirety of the SFBI.

  "Can't you call again?” she demanded. “Talk to someone you trust?"

  I sighed. "The only people I trust implicitly are the quadruplets with Ashe, and Briggins, the Director of the SFBI, who's on holiday in Vienna."

  Wren speared her fingers through her hair, spiking it into disarray, and her gaze landed on her tattoo. "Charles. We can call for him."

  "And put more of your mates in the same location that's not a bunker?" I shook my head and tried for a comforting smile. "An hour."

  Wren looked to her dad, and her concern for him creased every soft plane of her face. "I've never been so anxious to see sunrise in my life."

  "There, there.” Albert slipped his hand free of hers and squeezed her shoulder. “I'll make us some tea, and everything will be fine."

  I wished it were that simple.

  Wren settled in on the bench surrounding the bell, which still swung slightly, while Albert busied himself with the teapot and hot plate. He kept wagging his finger at the empty space next to him and muttering something about fly fishing. I honestly didn't know if he was aware of our situation, but I wasn't about to tell him either. Let him talk to his dead wife about fly fishing. That was much better than our reality anyway.

  I stayed pressed next to the window, occasionally peering out and then immediately regretting it. If anything, it seemed like more people had gathered around the tower, or it could be my rising unease making me see double. The houses in the distance were all lit, but their occupants must've been juggling the pros and cons of getting involved. Maybe they were even convincing themselves that nothing was happening.

  Albert brought us tea and then sat next to Wren, his teacup in one hand and his other wrapped around Wren's.

  At the bottom of the stairs, blows pounded the door.

  Wren caught my eye, her whole body tightening, a livewire of crackling tension.

  We weren't going to make it to sunrise.

  Dread sank in my stomach like a stone in a torrential river. Fuck. This could end really badly.

  "You two stay as far away as you can from the stairs," I ordered. "Rip off chunks of wood from the banister or the walls, the pointier the better."

  “Let’s go, Dad.” Wren took her dad's arm and helped him to his feet, and together, they circled around the bell to the other side. Their heads were both bent in solemn prayer, or maybe defeat, or maybe they were whispering so quietly I couldn't hear, sharing a few more secrets between father and daughter.

  I turned and followed my own advice, tearing off parts of the planks on the wall to be used as stakes, then stuffed them into the back of my jeans for later.

  Down below, the door burst open.

  I forced my clenched muscles to loosen, to find my center, as I crossed to stand next to the stairs. I'd been trained by the SFBI and in several martial arts. Fighting wasn't new to me, but I had to wipe my mind clean to do it right.

  I glanced up at Wren and Albert, who armed themselves with spears of tower wood. There was no way I could wipe my mind clean with their lives at stake.

  A herd of feet pounded up the steps. They shouted and jeered.

  "Take her head and do what you want with her body," one yelled, followed by shouts of agreement.

  Rage ignited inside me, a firestorm of hate. I crouched down out of sight and balanced on my toes, ready to spring, my gun at the ready.

  Their roars and footsteps grew even louder, but one thought broke through the chaos and almost drowned them out. If anything happened to Albert and Wren… The idea made me sick, the kind of sick that chewed me up and spit me back out even more deformed than I already was.

  I shot up and started firing, expert kill-shots right through the heart, again and again. When I'd dropped enough vampires and human minions to briefly slow the rest, I reloaded and continued firing.

  But like I'd already figured, there were too many of them and not enough silver bullets. As soon as I threw my empty gun down, they swarmed the upstairs, a massive wave crashing down on me, their nearest target. I couldn't let them get to Wren and Albert.

  I threw elbows, punches, kicks, hard enough to shatter bone and splinter their hearts. Not enough to kill, but to incapacitate to buy me time to skewer others with my wooden spears before I turned on the rest.

  I was fast, faster than them with their barely contained beer bellies. But they had guns and seemingly endless bullets. Several bullets chipped my mask. One tore through my ribs, much too close to my heart.

  I was losing.

  In my periphery, someone flipped over the ledge, and seconds later, a loud clang thrummed through the bell tower. Where that person had once been stood Wren, stakes gripped in each fist, and a deadly gleam in her yellow eyes I'd never seen before.

  She grabbed the nearest guy and used him as a shield for oncoming bullets. Then she shoved him into another guy, and they both plummeted over the ledge into the bell. She knocked a gun out of another's hand and leveled six men within seconds. Moments after, she grabbed a guy's gun hand, pulled his back against her chest, and staked him while firing his gun and dropping six more.

  She was so fast. So deadly. Absolutely mesmerizing.

  We weren't trapped up here with them. They were trapped up here with us.

  Seeing her fight fueled more power behind my killing blows, sometimes spearing two, even three vampires and their minions through their hearts with one thrust. Dead bodies piled up around my feet.

  Then several things happened at once. The curtains fluttering above the hot plate near me burst into flames. It must’ve been left on. Either that, or it was my fire curse.

  And then a scream. "Wren!"

  It wasn’t the spreading fire that bolted me to the floor, but the shout. It turned my frozen veins even colder. It was Albert, a vampire behind him with a stake to his chest.

  “No!” Wren streaked toward them, but even she couldn't make it all the way around the bell in time.

  The vampire grinned and shoved Albert over the ledge like garbage, his focus now solely on Wren.

  Time slowed, the seconds glued to a clock before they dried up completely.

  In one fluid motion, Wren leapt onto the vampire, took his head between her hands, ripped it off, and continued as fast as she could toward Albert. Still falling. Reaching his hands up as if for help.

  Oh god. I couldn't help him. The man who'd become like a
father to me.

  Could Wren?

  She reached for him, and their fingertips brushed. Almost, but not quite. Then she tried again—and grabbed him by the wrists, struggling to pull his weight back up over the rickety railing around the bell.

  I didn't have time to feel relieved, because time surged forward again and left me far behind.

  A shotgun shell tore through my chest. Red-hot pain engulfed me.

  Another vampire was already charging me, almost on top of me, stake raised.

  I didn't have time.

  He barreled into me, flying me backwards across the broken glass on the floor, and then soaring us both out one of the windows. We began to fall, the flaming curtains flapping behind like hellish wings.

  And all I could think about was Wren and Albert.

  Chapter Eleven

  Wren

  Time is an asshole. I’m convinced it fast-forwards during moments of joy and slows to a crawl during those moments that break you.

  This was one of the latter.

  Everything moved at half speed. Albert’s wrists were slipping from my grip. A vampire cleared the top of the stairs and rushed toward me in slow motion with a stake raised high. Another crashed into Marlowe, sending them both through the window and the burning curtains. Flames hopped onto the floor and the table and the rafters overhead, igniting the hundred-year-old wood.

  My father’s panicked eyes softened into the loving eyes that had once been foggy in my memories. Those images suddenly became clear as a full moonlit night. Dancing with him, my tiny feet on his, holding his hands as those same eyes smiled down on me. My mother’s laughter tinkled all around us, sweeter than the music she played on the piano.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I love you. Always.”

  The vampire caught in half speed wore a gleeful smile as he raised his stake higher, already too close. When time resumed, he’d be upon me in a sixteenth of a second. If that.

  I had to make a choice. Pull my father back over the rail and get staked in the heart myself or let him go and dive after Marlowe to save my mate from certain death.

  “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  He smiled and nodded as I let go of his wrists. He slipped into the darkness between the bell and the railing in a tortuous slow fall toward a few more vampires and redneck minions who waited below.

  Time resumed its normal pace and gave me no chance to see what became of him. I ducked the charging vampire’s attack as the stake aimed for my heart stabbed at the air over my head. Swinging my leg around, I kicked his feet out from under him. Before he fell to the floor, I swiped his stake and pierced him through the heart. Then I surged toward the fiery window on the other side of the bell tower and made everyone regret it who got in my way.

  I dove out the window. Marlowe and his attacker hit the ground and rolled down an incline. They landed with the vampire on top of Marlowe, ready to drive the stake in his chest. Marlowe held the guy’s wrists, warding him off, but if I landed on top of him, I’d do the job for him instead of saving my mate.

  Just before I hit the ground, Marlowe’s attacker rocketed into the air with a trail of fire behind him. He passed me on his way up as I spun my body out of his path and landed in a crouch beside Marlowe. Shock widened Marlowe’s eyes as he stared at his smoking hands. A moment later, the charred vampire landed on the ground beside us and burst apart in a cloud of ashes.

  Fanning the airborne vampire remnants away from my face, I scrambled to my feet and held my hand out to help Marlowe up. But that’s when I noticed the blood seeping from the wounds on his chest. It was a fucking shotgun blast like I’d been shot with at the club back in Faymont. I squatted and helped him get to all fours. He was in no condition to fight, but at least he was alive for now.

  “Stay down!” I jumped up as two rednecks on motorcycles sped toward us.

  One of them was none other than the last of my mother’s killers. Now was my chance to end him once and for all.

  The other redneck fired off a shot. It missed and hit the wall of the bell tower right behind me. Stone and wood fragments pelted my back. I grabbed the stake that lay in the pile of vampire ashes at my feet and hurled it at the shooter’s motorcycle tire. It lodged in the spokes and hit the front suspension.

  The wheel locked up, and the bike flipped rear over front, throwing the driver off. His cervical vertebrae crunched as he landed on his head with his limbs in very unnatural angles.

  I dove on top of Marlowe and flattened us both to the ground as the motorcycle kept going and flew over us. One of the tires tore into my back before the bike hit the now flaming bell tower wall. Gasoline and four-cycle engine oil spewed out and ignited. We sat up as the still-spinning rear tire fanned the acrid smoke and threw out flames. A fiery spark landed on my shoulder and burned through my jacket. I smacked the fire out and then turned to Marlowe to help him to his feet. He stared up at the spreading fire, the blaze highlighting the gold in his mask. His cinnamon-colored eyes were lit with terror.

  “Come on,” I said and hauled him to his feet.

  On the other bike, the murdering fucker’s eyes widened. I caught a whiff of his fear as he turned his motorcycle around, spinning grass and dirt as he revved it up and sped off in the opposite direction. The few mob members who were left must have taken that as their cue and fled in all directions, leaving their leader behind to deal with me.

  “Wren, don’t!” Marlowe grabbed at my hand, but I bolted toward the fleeing biker.

  As long as he was on the slick grass, I could outrun him. If he reached the road, he’d have enough traction to get away.

  My feet pounded the ground, but with every footfall, pain surged through the wounds on my back. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was removing this redneck’s greasy head from his fat shoulders. I closed in on him. My fingers brushed his leather jacket. One surge forward, and I’d finally have him.

  But then a horrific scream echoed from within the bell tower. I skidded to a stop and looked back, afraid someone had ambushed Marlowe.

  Marlowe held his side and ran around the tower. Relief followed by indecision tore at my cold, dead heart as I watched my target’s motorcycle reach the pavement, gaining traction as it backfired its way into the night.

  Crying out in frustration, I sped around the tower to find Marlowe entirely too close to a raging inferno, one arm held up to shield his face from the heat. Flames rolled out the tower door. A piece of burning roof plummeted down toward us. I pulled Marlowe back just as it hit the pavement. Inside, another long wail. Then a charred, flaming body fell out the door and lay there a moment before a superheated gust from the fire blew my father’s ashes into the early morning sky.

  “No!” I rushed forward, but Marlowe held me back this time.

  Sirens blared. Red, white, and blue lights flashed through the trees as first responders finally arrived on the scene. They might have been able to save the main sanctuary of the church. But they couldn’t have saved the tower. Or my dad.

  I fought against Marlowe anyway, even as Albert’s ashes swirled around us like a miniature tornado. But Marlowe finally clamped his arms around me as both of us hit our knees, unable to remain standing under the weight of helplessness and grief.

  “It’s too late, Wren. He’s gone.”

  Sun pinkened the horizon. It could burn me to a crisp for all I cared. I’d found my father just to lose him again to the same monsters who killed my mom.

  The emergency vehicles arrived. Among them, a black van with dark-tinted windows labeled SFBI skidded to a stop beside us. The door slid open. Zac motioned frantically for us to get inside.

  Marlowe stood then pulled me to my feet and ushered me into the van. As we sped away, devastation crashed down on our heads. Marlowe and I held each other and cried. He was hurting just as much as I was, and I understood why.

  We’d both lost a father tonight.

  ****

  “You need to eat,” Charles said as Zac and an SFBI doctor w
heeled Marlowe out of the infirmary.

  After the doctor had removed the silver shot and bandaged him up, he had injected Marlowe with enough painkillers to put a horse out for a week. Marlowe would stay in my suite. It was the most comfortable bed in the whole bunker, so I insisted that he take it.

  “I’m fine.” Of course, my stomach begged to differ and protested loud enough to wake the undead—you know, the lucky ones who were asleep in their peaceful homes this morning.

  “Yeah, well, you’re eating anyway.”

  Two women lingered out in the hallway. Charles motioned them in. One was the secretary, Margaret. The other was a plump and pretty young black woman with long, straightened hair parted in the middle and a kind smile.

  Margaret introduced her. “This is Annie. She’s one of only a few DBDs that we trust to keep us fed when fresh blood is needed.”

  “Hi,” Annie said. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

  I wasn’t sure why she’d be honored to meet a filthy vampire who wasn’t quite a queen and certainly not any authority over humankind. But I simply answered, “Thanks.”

  “My great-great grandmother all the way up to my mother were DBDs for your mother. My mother stayed with your mom until the very end."

  "You mean she..."

  "Yes."

  "I'm so sorry."

  Annie smiled and nodded. "They both loved her very much. I never thought I’d get to follow in their footsteps.”

  Now I understood why she seemed so excited to be here.

  “Do you like AB negative?” Margaret asked. “It’s the rarest type and the best tasting, in my humble opinion.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I grew up eating from rats and dying people. I’ll take your word for it.”

  Both women grimaced. Charles gestured for me to sit and pulled up a chair for Annie. She sat beside me. Margaret donned gloves, cleaned Annie’s wrist with alcohol, and made a small slit across her skin with a scalpel. Annie didn’t even wince. As soon as the blood started flowing, she nodded. I took her hand and drew her wrist up to my mouth. My fangs emerged, but I resisted the urge to bite down and simply closed my lips over the wound.