Sever the Crown: Vampire Reverse Harem Complete Series

by Mysti Parker

  “Sleep well?” Charles winked at her.

  “I did.” She smiled and smoothed a lock of hair off his forehead, and they leaned into each other as they always did.

  It was nice to have someone to do that with. Really nice.

  “Have a seat,” I said. “I’ll get us some breakfast.”

  “Hey, I was thinking about something.” Wren sat at the table and hooked her bare foot behind Charles’s ankle.

  “Oh yeah?” Charles leaned into her and waggled his eyebrows. “Me too.”

  Wren smacked at him playfully. “Not that. You have Wednesday, remember? This is about Marlowe. At the tower…” She cleared her throat and closed her eyes briefly before continuing. “When I jumped out the window after you. It looked like you fire-bombed the vampire who was attacking you. Or something. Any idea how you did that?”

  “Not really. Like I said, it seems to be spontaneous.” I retrieved some blood from the fridge. Annie had stored some fresh AB negative in there with “For the Queen” written in permanent marker.

  “Maybe it’s some telekinetic thing, like in the movie Carrie. We might be able to figure out how to control it.”

  “And use it to our advantage,” Charles said.

  “Maybe. I’d rather not think about it at the moment.”

  I heated up the blood and handed it to Wren then sat beside her. She immediately hooked her other foot around my ankle. Charles and I glanced at each other. I hadn’t had time to contemplate jealousy and how much that might affect us going forward. If all this went forward, that is.

  But he just smiled at me. “No thinking until after breakfast, my dad used to say.”

  Then he picked up the remote control and turned on the TV above the stove. An MLVB game was on VTV. Some pretty boy named Ed Collins was up to bat. His eyes glowed like a bug zapper under the stadium lights. Why he was a sex symbol, I had no idea.

  Down the hall, hurried footsteps sounded, and then Zac appeared carrying a big box.

  "I went to pick up what I could of Albert's ashes,” he said as he entered the kitchen. “Not me specifically but someone on the crime scene I know. We had them boxed up for you, Wren."

  She touched a hand to her chest and pressed on it, as if to stop the ache there from spreading. "You did that for… Thank you."

  "It was the least I could do.” Frowning, Zac set the box down on the table. “The crime scene guy I asked to do it led me on a wild goose chase through several towns, likely because Queen Ravana knew of Albert’s death.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I thought the box was a little too big for just ashes, so I thought I better open it before I brought it into the bunker." He opened the box and reached inside. “That’s when I discovered two.”

  “Two?” Charles pressed.

  “Two urns.” He pulled out a gray and silver one, marbled into a pattern that looked like birds flying, and handed it to Wren. “That’s your dad’s.”

  She stared at it for a moment and then reached out to take it, a light tremble in her hands. “And the other?”

  “Ashe’s sister’s, inside of a smaller box.”

  “Jessica’s ashes are here?” Wren demanded.

  Zac retrieved the other urn, this one a subtle blue, and sure enough, etched into the side was the name Jessica Jensen, 1932-2019.

  I scrubbed my hand down my jaw, which was steadily dropping the longer I stared. How was it Jessica’s ashes had wound up here when Ashe and the quadruplet witches still hadn’t? They’d gone to pick up the ashes, not have them delivered. For the thousandth time, I wondered what the hell had happened to them and why they hadn’t turned up yet.

  “There’s something else,” Zac said, his face grave. “Something else inside this urn. It’s safe—I made sure—but…it’s a message. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it though.”

  “A message from wh—” Wren’s voice faded out, and she hugged her dad’s urn to her chest. “From who?”

  “I don’t know,” Zac admitted, sounding tortured.

  Queen Ravana’s messages were always crystal clear. We would all know if it was from her. Still, we all stared at Jessica’s urn like it might sprout demon wings and fly any minute.

  Squeezing her eyes shut briefly, Wren carefully laid Albert’s urn next to Jessica’s on the table. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

  Charles and I closed in around her, just in case, while Zac looked on from the other side of the table. Wren lifted the little lid on top of Jessica’s urn which clinked softly against the sides and peered inside. Her mouth pinched and her forehead creased as she reached in and pulled something out. It looked like a note or paper of some kind. Holding it gingerly at one corner, she put the top back on the urn and gently blew the gray dust of Ashe’s dead sister from the object.

  An old photo, taken on one of those giant Polaroid cameras from the 1980s. It showed the top of a cluttered dresser piled high with paperbacks, little animal-print chests, perfumes, and the corner of a small parasol with cherry blossoms on it. Behind the dresser was a wall painted pink with the words I’m Fine written in heavily looped cursive and without the apostrophe. At the bottom of the photo along the white strip, someone had scratched TURN.

  “This is a girl’s room,” Wren whispered. “Or what I imagine would be a girl’s room.”

  “You don’t recognize it?” I asked. “Is it Jessica’s room?”

  “I have no clue, but Jessica isn’t—wasn’t—a little girl. I think she would’ve outgrown pink as a paint color a long time ago.” She turned the photo over, but there was nothing there except for the black backing. She even picked at it a little to see if it was secure. But there was nothing unusual there.

  “Turn…” Charles flipped the picture still in Wren’s hands back over and then turned it upside down.

  I froze. There. Instead of I’m Fine, the cursive writing now read Help Me.

  It was a message all right. But from who?

  Charles tapped the photo. “I’ve seen this before. It’s a common message written just like that in suicide notes.”

  Wren whipped her head toward him. “How do you know that?”

  “My...mom did something similar,” he said with a shrug, but it was stiff. Nothing nonchalant about it.

  “Then someone sent us a scrawled suicide message on a pink wall in Jessica’s ashes?” I asked. “Why would anyone do that?”

  Vivian came in then, the frown she’d worn since she’d heard about the death of her sister deeper than ever. Dark circles hung under her eyes, and even her normally bouncy blonde curls had gone limp.

  “What’s with the secretive huddle?” she muttered on her way to the refrigerator.

  “Vivian, you’re a girl,” Charles said over his shoulder. “Do the words I’m Fine on a pink wall mean anything to you?”

  She dropped the blood packet she’d retrieved from the refrigerator and spun toward us, her jaw dropping at an alarming rate. “What?”

  With my nerves stretched tight, I plucked the picture out of Wren’s hand and crossed the kitchen to show it to Vivian.

  She stared at it, completely frozen, and then flicked watery eyes up to my face. “Why do you have a picture of my sister’s bedroom?”

  Something clicked at the back of my mind, louder than the barrage of questions that erupted behind me.

  This was a message all right, likely sent from Wren’s missing mate’s location. A message from Ashe, and I’d bet my entire SFBI career that somehow, someway, he and the quadruplets were still alive.

  And we needed to help them. Fast.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Wren

  That settled it. I couldn’t sit around and cry or drown my sorrows by fucking Marlowe again, though that was very tempting. Zac had just heated up a frozen burrito in the microwave. The timer went off, which helped me make up my mind. Also, the burrito stank like rancid gym socks. I’d have done about anything to get away from the stench.

  “Vivian, where is this place?” I aske
d.

  “It’s Ravana’s lake house just outside of New Orleans, where we first stayed when she adopted us. She liked to ‘slum it’ there sometimes, though it’s worth at least a million.”

  “Did you say New Orleans?”

  “Yes.”

  Images that haunted my nightmares pounded at my concentration, demanding attention. I pushed them aside. I hadn’t been to The Big Easy for close to twenty years. Not that I didn’t love the area. It was full of spirits and charged with supernatural energy. But it was also where I had to learn how to survive on my own.

  And where my mother had been brutally murdered.

  I stood from my chair.

  “What are you doing, Wren?” Charles asked, slowly standing as though I might launch myself straight up out of this bunker like a vampire rocket.

  He thought, as Marlowe and Zac did, that New Orleans was the last place I should be. They were probably right, but I had no other choice. The SFBI might be compromised. We couldn’t leave Ashe’s fate in their hands.

  “I’m going.”

  “No,” Marlowe said, but before I could tell him where to shove his bossiness, he stood as well, holding up a hand to keep me quiet. “If Ashe and the quadruplets were captured, something beyond zip ties and chains would be required to hold them. Unless any of you possess some other powers I know nothing about, you’re not equipped to fight through a coven of witches.”

  All of us looked at each other. When no one ripped their T-shirt to reveal a red S, I started for the door.

  “It’s suicide,” Charles called after me.

  I stopped and turned. “What do you suggest we do? Just leave Ashe for dead?”

  “We should let the SFBI handle it.”

  “Considering how they didn’t come to our aid in time the night my father died, I veto that plan.”

  “You know that look,” Zac grumbled to Charles. “She’ll do it to spite the devil.”

  “I’d fight the devil himself to protect my mates,” I snapped.

  “You can’t go alone,” Vivian said. “Seriously.”

  “Then we’re going.” I looped my finger to indicate everyone. “With Zac’s weaponry and our speed and fighting skills, we’ll break them out.”

  Marlowe for once looked at me with awe rather than doubt. “The odds will still not be in our favor. But I know someone in New Orleans who may be able to help us, though he’s not fond of vampires and witches.”

  “Yeah, he sounds perfect.” Zac got the burrito out of the microwave and plopped it on a paper plate.

  Charles, Marlowe, and Vivian wrinkled their noses. The smell was a hundred times worse with it out in the open.

  Zac took a big bite of it, which made me gag a little. Cheek rounded like a chipmunk, he spoke with his mouth full. “What?”

  “That smells disgusting.” Vivian waved her hand in front of her nose.

  “You drink blood. I find that disgusting.”

  “Touché.” Charles pointed at Zac. “Finish that rotten excuse for a dinner and come to the gym. Wren, I have something to show you before we go on another suicide mission.”

  Charles left the room. I took Marlowe’s hand, and we followed along. His sadness was palpable. It pulsed through my tattoo with a squeezing type of pressure that settled into my chest and merged with my own grief. I expected him to argue more about rescuing Ashe, but maybe he was as anxious to distract himself with a mission as I was.

  We reached the gym door, but Charles turned and took my hand before we entered. “They’re not ready just yet, but they will be soon.”

  He opened the door and stood aside as I walked in. About a dozen vampires were there doing various things—lifting weights, boxing, swordplay, wrestling. Charles whistled, and they immediately stopped what they were doing and stood at attention. They came forward and assembled in a straight line. Each one in turn made a fist and crossed it over their chests.

  “Long live the queen,” they said in unison.

  Their words swam through gelatin before their meaning dawned—they were talking about me.

  “They’ve all pledged their lives to protecting the true queen,” Charles said. “They’re still a little wet behind the ears, and I’m still in the process of recruiting more, but these are your first Royal Knights.”

  Tears filled my eyes, and suddenly I felt so small, so unworthy.

  One of the men who held a practice sword stepped forward. He lifted his face guard. Something about the young, handsome black vampire seemed vaguely familiar.

  “Vincent McNamara, Your Highness. I think I can speak for the rest of us in saying that we thought Charles was delusional when he told us you were still alive.”

  I smiled at Charles, who just shrugged.

  “Hey, I thought she was delusional at first, too,” he said. “Until I saw the tattoo.”

  My tattoo buzzed as though saying, ‘Told ya’ so.’ Charles and Marlowe glanced at theirs at the same time and chuckled.

  “That and the resemblance to Bronwen is remarkable,” Vincent said. “My father served as one of your mother’s Knights. He was one of the last to hold off the invaders so your mother could escape.”

  Vincent and Charles shared an empathetic look. Both of their fathers had died protecting my mother, and in turn, saving my life. I wished they had known that their sacrifice had not been totally in vain.

  “I think you’ve met my sister,” Vincent said.

  “Annie?”

  He nodded. “We both spent much of our childhood in your mother’s court. Our brother as well.”

  “Did he…?”

  “No, he’s still alive, as far as I know anyway. He kind of went off the grid when our parents died.”

  Knowing they’d lost their mom and dad to Ravana’s madness really hit home.

  I took his hand in both of mine and squeezed it. “I’m so sorry.”

  He smiled sadly, his voice hoarse with emotion. “Don’t be sorry. Just be the leader we all had hoped you would be.”

  I nodded and stepped back, regarding every recruit while trying to hold my head high. “Thank you. Thank all of you. This will not be an easy fight, but I think you all know that. I can’t promise you anything, except that I hope to make you proud, and I will do everything I can to reclaim what Ravana stole from us.”

  One by one, they clapped, until their applause echoed throughout the gym. I walked along the lineup and shook every recruit’s hand, making sure to pull up my spine so I wouldn’t wilt with emotion or pressure or any one of my several doubts.

  Charles spoke up. “We have a road trip to go on.”

  “Do you need assistance?” Vincent asked.

  “Not yet. You’ll be more useful here. I’m leaving you in charge of training until we return.”

  Vincent crossed his fist over his chest and nodded.

  Marlowe gripped Charles’s shoulder. “I’m impressed with these recruits. You’ve done good work here.”

  Charles lowered his head with a rare expression of bashfulness. “It’s a start. Hopefully a few more of the maybes will be persuaded to join.”

  Vivian gently touched his arm. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to stay here and keep training while you’re gone.”

  “Sure, if you’re up to it.”

  She nodded, her jaw tightening. “It would be a good distraction.”

  Behind us, Zac cleared his throat. “I hate to be the Debbie Downer of the night, but New Orleans is a four-hour drive.”

  He’d apparently finished the rotten-ass burrito, but the odor had followed him. Every vampire in the gym wrinkled their noses.

  “I have a better idea to save us a few hours,” Marlowe said. “As long as none of you are too nauseated from smelling Zac’s dinner.”

  ****

  Half an hour later, we were up in a helicopter cruising through the night sky headed for New Orleans. Zac, not surprisingly, had a pilot’s license, so he took the controls. Charles rode shotgun while Marlowe and I rode in the back.
<
br />   I couldn’t help being glued to the window. The world looked so tiny and peaceful from up here. You could almost forget that humans and vampires alike were killing each other for sport and greed and hatred down below. From this perspective, there were shadowy clumps of forests and shimmering lakes. Moonlight tipped the waves of the Mississippi like floating pearls. Golden lights from suburban houses formed multi-shaped mazes along the highways.

  Marlowe leaned closer to me, peering out the window with a disinterested expression. “What are you looking at?”

  “Are you seeing this? It’s amazing!”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Haven’t you flown before?”

  “No.” Here was yet another thing I’d not experienced that most queens probably did all the time.

  He looked again, but this time, his cinnamon eyes widened as he seemed to take in the aerial view with a new appreciation. A slow smile curled on his lips. “You’re right. It’s beautiful from up here.”

  Marlowe took my hand, which surprised me since I’d always been the one making the first move. He interlaced his fingers with mine.

  By the time we landed on a helicopter pad on the roof of a New Orleans building, dawn’s orange glow outlined the horizon.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “FBI building. I called and got clearance to land,” Zac said. “I told my contact that you’re members of a vampire rock band in need of witness protection. I’m taking you to your safehouse, or crypt, that is.”

  “Protection from whom?” I asked.

  “The mob,” Marlowe answered. “The human FBI doesn’t interfere in vampire versus vampire conflicts. Vampire versus human conflicts, they try to cover up immediately.”

  “You can say that again,” Zac growled.

  He used a thumb pad to open a steel door and ushered us ten floors down a drab concrete-walled stairwell. It led straight into an underground parking garage. We didn’t see one solitary human soul, though I could smell them through every door we passed. I assumed this path had been designed for just that purpose—keeping vampires and humans safely apart.