Sever the Crown: Vampire Reverse Harem Complete Series

by Mysti Parker

  A second later, I followed. Charles sat alone at the table in the kitchen with a mug of blood in front of him, and while Wren crossed toward him, he glanced up at me. Surprise flickered across his face for the briefest moment, but nothing else. No disgust or judgement. Really, I shouldn't have been surprised. He knew exactly what lay underneath my mask. Going without it only confirmed that, as well as what kind of man Charles was for not recoiling in horror. I'd been wrong about him. I'd been wrong about a lot of things, and now, I saw that clearly. Maybe I hadn't just been hiding behind the mask but relying on it to narrow my vision into a guilt-ridden, pessimistic reality of my own making.

  I crossed toward the refrigerator, feeling lighter than I had in years. Or maybe…ever.

  Wren sat down beside Charles. He wrapped his arms around her and nuzzled her neck. "Mornin', little lady. Sleep well?"

  "About as well as can be expected while sharing a bed with one of my mates." Humor tinged her voice as she looked up at me and winked.

  One of her mates. I did like the sound of that, so much that I didn't immediately notice I'd pulled three packets of blood from the refrigerator. This new outlook on life was affecting basic counting skills. Oh well. I’d live.

  "Ah, come to the dark side, you have," Charles said to me in his best Yoda impersonation.

  Wren laughed into the top of his head as she attempted to kiss him there.

  "I don’t know about the dark side, but I see now that Wren is more than capable of being queen, and that we can help make that happen." I waved the extra packet at Wren. "Did I hear your stomach right in its demand for two packets of blood?"

  Wren nodded vigorously. "One for each hand. I'm starving."

  Chuckling, I popped all three in the microwave as footsteps thudded toward the kitchen. As soon as Ashe entered, Wren gasped, jumped up, and threw herself into his arms.

  He held her like she herself was the blood he needed to survive. Her feet left the floor as he crushed her to him. "This right here is what I’ve missed. So much."

  "I was almost afraid it was a dream we had you back,” Wren said, her voice teary. “That I'd go into your room and find you weren't really there."

  "I'm here." He threaded his fingers through the back of her hair to press her even closer. "I'm not going anywhere else."

  While I poured the warm blood into three mugs, I watched them, surprised that I didn't feel an ounce of jealousy. Charles didn't appear to either. This was simply the way it was, and Wren's relationship with each of us was unique but no less important or strong as any other. She needed all of us, just as we needed her.

  When I set the mugs on the table, Wren glanced over her shoulder and licked her lips.

  "Want to know how much I love you?" she asked Ashe. "I'll give you my second mug."

  Ashe kissed her with a smile. "Wow. You must love me a lot, then. You’ve got quite the appetite."

  "I can make you another," all three of us said at the exact same time.

  The four of us cracked up at that, so completely comfortable and free around each other that it felt like we were a family. The only other time I'd felt anything close to that was with Albert. My heart pinched at the memory of him, at how I’d grown to love him like a dad. It always would hurt, but somehow I'd found another family. One who didn't mind my scars, because they had plenty of their own, including the hidden kind that dug just as deep as physical ones.

  We joined Charles at the table, and after a deep gulp of my drink, I turned to Ashe. "If now isn't the time for questions, that's fine, but how did the picture of Elsie Mae's bedroom wind up in Jessica's ashes?"

  Shadows hung underneath his eyes, and his clothes draped loosely on his frame. I suspected it might take some time for him to come to terms with everything that had happened. Still, I needed to know.

  Ashe frowned down into his mug as he picked it up, his hand trembling slightly. "That was what got Elsie Mae killed. Getting a message out to save us."

  "Which makes her a hero." Wren took Ashe's other hand in hers. "We need to make sure Vivian knows this."

  Ashe nodded and looked at all of us for a long moment. If my scars bothered him, he didn’t even flinch. "After Ravana's henchmen imprisoned us but before they threw us in the crystal ball, the four witches knocked them out. We were still tied up with silver, though, and that’s when Elsie told us her plan. She and Vivian used to take pictures of the I'm Here/Help Me on their walls when they were confined to their bedrooms by Ravana for some minor infraction. They'd put the pictures down the laundry chute for the other to find, and they'd sneak each other blood, because Ravana's punishments often involved starvation.”

  “Ravana seems to really enjoy punishment.” Wren tossed back her blood in one gulp.

  “Yeah. Elsie told us that one time she’d been locked in her room for days, and Ravana had told Vivian she’d run away,” Ashe said. “They were often prevented from seeing one another, hence the workaround. Anyway, to anyone else who found the Polaroids, they'd hold it the right way and see I'm Here, which meant nothing to anyone but Elsie and Vivian, which was exactly the way they wanted it. Even if someone else did read Help Me, it likely still wouldn’t mean anything.”

  I shifted in my seat. “Professional spies in the making, it sounds like. I may need to make sure Vivian gets a promotion from the SFBI Records Department.”

  Ashe took a long drink from his mug. “Elsie fell in love with one of Ravana's servants at the lake house and told him about the Polaroids. When Doreen chanted the spell that created the crystal ball, Elsie broke free of her binds, snapped a photo, and hurled it down the laundry chute. The guards thought she was attacking them and killed her immediately. Days passed, and I didn't think her message would work. I guess Elsie’s boyfriend came through after all."

  “Why a crystal ball of all things?” Charles asked.

  “I got the impression that Doreen likes to do things with pizazz.” Ashe wiggled his fingers around while puckering his lips sarcastically.

  Wren rubbed her temple as her eyes sparkled with tears. "Pizazz or not, you thought you'd be there until your death."

  "Exactly. I'm sure Ravana was on her way herself to gloat about Jessica—" His voice broke off, and his hand shook so much that he set his mug down. "And to torture information out of me before she killed me herself."

  "Bitch must've got held up," Charles growled.

  Something sparked at the back of my brain. Something about Angelo… He'd said something when we arrived at the lake house to this same effect. Had he somehow interfered with Ravana's arrival? If so, for a celestial who swore to never get involved in vampire affairs, he sure liked to get involved in vampire affairs. Except he wasn't Ravana's number one fan, either, so it made sense.

  “The servant must’ve known who I was and maybe even that I was out of hiding to get my sister’s ashes. He came through,” Ashe continued and then turned to me. “So did your quadruplet witches. I’ve never seen anyone fight so hard to keep us all alive. They knocked out guards right and left, and while Elsie lost her life, they’re a big reason why I’m here right now.”

  I gave a short nod, thankful I’d sent them far away from here for some much-needed vacation time, but at the same time wishing I hadn’t. “They’re the best I know.”

  Zac entered then, his sharp gaze settling on me, and with a small smile, he headed straight for the fridge. "Well, shit. I was hoping I would beat you guys here so there would be no complaints about my burrito."

  Around the table, several groans and "Please, no!" erupted. I chuckled at the good-natured teasing, relief washing through me at the normalcy of it all.

  "Then I'm going to need more human food since that's all there is," Zac insisted, staring forlornly into the freezer.

  "I can send Margaret out to collect more supplies later," I said.

  Wren turned to stare at the two urns sitting on the counter, her shoulders slumping. "I'd like to have some kind of memorial for Jessica and Albert at some point." She
blinked at Ashe. "If we're all up to it, that is."

  He nodded, squeezing her hand and his mug tightly to fend off the trembling that shook him whenever Jessica's name was mentioned. He was going to need a lot of time to heal, and I hoped going forward into the likely dangerous unknown, he would have that.

  “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for you,” Ashe said.

  Wren kissed his knuckles. “No, don’t be. You did what you had to do, just like I did.”

  "Okay, well, shoo so I can eat." Zac waved us out while he placed one of his smelly frozen burritos on a plate.

  Smiling, Wren rose from the table and crossed toward Albert's urn. "How's the nose, Zac?"

  He shrugged as he set the plate in the microwave. "I've had my nose broken twice before, and each time it's healed perfectly, so I'm not worried."

  Charles pushed to his feet. "You get a lot of broken noses in the human FBI?"

  A strange look crossed Zac's face, one I'd never seen before, but he hid it as he turned to the microwave before I could get a better read of it.

  Ashe stood from the table, watching Wren trace the bird-like patterns on Albert's urn with her thumb. "I think Jessica would like it if I sprinkled her ashes around Hogwarts." Seeing my blank look, he added, "Our garden shed back home. That was her favorite place."

  I nodded, feeling his grief radiate outward in suffocating waves, and I was already drowning in my own over Albert. Someday, it would be easier to talk about our losses, but today was not that day.

  Neither, apparently, was controlling my spontaneous combustion peculiarity.

  Wren bit her lip as she glanced back at Ashe. "When we make it back there, we can, if that's what you'd like. I think I'd like to keep Albert's ashes with me."

  Charles crossed to the sink with his empty mug and put his hand on her shoulder, and she gave him a sad smile in return.

  "I think that's what he'd prefer," I said. "To be as close to you as possible."

  She bowed her head over the urn. "And to be close to you too. He loved you."

  I didn’t trust myself to speak so I stood just to give myself something to do.

  A soft clink came from the urn as she lifted the lid, and then a deeper, louder click sounded from within.

  I froze, sensing something was wrong before I knew what or how. "Wren—"

  Steam poured out of the top of the urn. Odorless. Tasteless. My muscles seized, everything locking up tight inside me even though I fought against it. I knew exactly what it was.

  "Devil's Breath!" The words twisted out of my mouth and hung there, writhing together like fiery snakes.

  It was a rare, dangerous drug that robbed you of your free will, like the phantoms were trying to do to Bronwen in the forest, only much faster. And the drug was here, in Albert's urn, the same urn Zac had brought in from outside. And it had triggered while the rightful queen and her three mates stood in the kitchen. Out of the corner of my drooping eye, Zac was falling in slow-motion.

  Maybe he didn't know. Maybe he did. But he’d been trying to shoo us out of the kitchen like he’d known something was going to happen and was having second thoughts.

  Meanwhile, I was falling too. So was Charles who had yanked Wren away from the drug steaming out of the urn. They both were. Ashe too.

  “Fuck, not this again,” Wren slurred as the five of us crashed to the ground, dropping mugs and shoving away the table and chairs as we did.

  Then quiet fell, the worst kind where you're conscious of it but can't do a thing to break it. I lay there in a heap, unable to move my mouth to form words or wiggle so much as a toe.

  Minutes passed. Or seconds. Who the hell knew? My blood boiled with frustration.

  Then, across the kitchen, the cupboard under the sink slowly opened.

  Tremors ripped up the back of my neck. Devil's Breath caused hallucinations, so I had no idea if this was real or imaginary. Charles lay the closest, staring right at it, but he couldn't move his face to give any indication of what it was. Something that had been waiting. Waiting for precisely this moment when we were all gathered in one place to take us out.

  A foot appeared at the bottom of the cupboard. Orange. Furry. That cat. Charles had mentioned he’d found a bottle of whiskey hidden in a bag of cat food down there. I’d always assumed Margaret had let in a stray from outside. Looked like I was dead wrong.

  It slithered the rest of the way out and then walked right over Charles’s head, its tail flicking this way and that. On its way across the kitchen, it stepped over Ashe’s torso like he was nothing more than a roadblock. One olive eye was crossed, and it wore a black collar with metal spikes and a charm that looked an awful lot like a real eyeball dangling down its neck. An eyeball partly covered in metallic mesh like a microphone. Someone had been listening in…

  Shit.

  Alarms blared between my ears. The cat and the Devil's Breath couldn't be a coincidence. Could it? Or was I hallucinating?

  It paused at the kitchen doorway, and from the eyeball charm came a deep voice: “Rise.”

  All five of us immediately stumbled to our feet. There wasn't a thing any of us could do about it while stripped of our own free will.

  “Follow,” the voice said.

  The cat disappeared around the corner. My legs moved all on their own, jerking me forward. We looked like a horror movie come to life, our limbs tied with wires. I tried to stop myself at the doorway, but my hands wouldn’t move from my sides. We trekked down the hallway, up the stairs, and then to the front door.

  Outside. We were headed outside where anyone could see us. Like Ravana. Was she behind this? A cold numbness dropped into the pit of my stomach. My tattoo began to pulse with a new section. A fourth section.

  The cat easily unlocked and opened the door with its paws like it had done it a thousand times. We emerged from the relative silence of the bunker into the deluge and thunderclaps of a raging storm. A motor rumbled in the darkness from a black windowless van. Its rear doors were opened, and the cat leaped gracefully inside.

  Shit. This wasn’t good at all.

  We followed, and surprise gripped me when I saw Doreen sitting on the floor of the van facing the center. Doreen, the witch who had thrown Wren back in time. She sat unmoving, seeming just as captured as we were. We automatically arranged ourselves three on one side of the interior, three on the other with Wren sitting across from me with the cat on one side and Zac and Doreen on the other. Wren’s eyes flashed with frustration.

  A large figure strode up to the van, nothing but a faceless shadow, and slammed the doors closed. Shortly after, we took off to who the hell knew where. The driver squealed around corners and smashed on the brakes like he was outrunning someone. Or just really, really pissed off. We crashed into each other and the walls of the van, unable to stop ourselves.

  The cat, unfazed by the whole thing, sat right by Wren and started to lick its butt. It would occasionally look up at her like she was the weird one. She rolled her eyes.

  I willed my fingers to move, an eyebrow, anything, but my body refused. Sweat began to pour off Doreen’s face, and then the corner of her mouth twitched. She was fighting the Devil’s Breath. But how? Would she help us? Somehow, I doubted it.

  Her lips lifted into a full grin, a malicious one that scratched icicles down my back. Then she lunged for the back door, completely free from her puppet strings. As soon as she tore it open, the van swerved hard and crashed into something. Debris pounded along the sides of the van.

  Then three things happened all at once. Doreen leaped from the van. So did the cat, a ball of orange fur at her heels jumping to the safety of a bridge. The van plummeted.

  Down.

  Down.

  Down.

  My stomach pitched into my throat. Raw panic bit at my nerves. There was nothing I could do. Nothing.

  And knowing my brand of luck, the Eternal, fiery kind, when we hit bottom, we’d explode.

  Now on to Book Four...

  RELENTLESS

>   Sever the Crown Book Four

  MYSTI PARKER

  LINDSEY R. LOUCKS

  Chapter One

  Wren

  One minute, I was basking in the afterglow of amazing sex. The next, I was in a van plummeting off the side of a bridge. As it flipped upside down, gravity flung me against the ceiling along with the four large men who had become my shadows. They crashed into me like felled logs. Someone’s elbow smashed into my ribs.

  Sucks to be me, I thought as a knee cracked my skull.

  Stars sparkled before my eyes. The next moment, we landed in a river. Water busted out the glass, rushed inside. It amazed me for a millisecond just how fast it filled the interior.

  That amazement drowned in the water that filled my ears and muffled out all sound. The murky current carried sticks and leaves and all sorts of debris thanks to the storm raging all around us. Lightning revealed brief silhouettes of flailing limbs and hands extended toward me.

  The water must have dulled the effect of the mind-altering drug we had inhaled just minutes ago. I finally had control of my body and managed to reach out. My fingers brushed against Ashe’s, but something sharp pierced my eye. With a soundless scream, I clawed at it to no avail. The water sucked him out the open back door, followed by the others.

  The river tried to suck me from the van next, but I grabbed onto the handle of the door and held on.

  Until I realized that was totally stupid. The van was sinking into the murky depths, where I couldn’t see even with my night vision. I let go and then regretted that too. The rushing current spun me head over heels. Though I didn’t need air apart from smelling, I had no idea whether I could drown. Yet another thing I had yet to learn, but I could do without the on-the-job training.

  I didn’t know which way was up. Panic set in. I pushed past sticks and weeds and swam in one direction, then another. But the river kept carrying me along. I had to calm down and think. If I couldn’t save myself, I wouldn’t be able to help my mates. I watched for the next lightning strike and swam toward the light.