Sever the Crown: Vampire Reverse Harem Complete Series

by Mysti Parker

  Gripping the familiar shape of the microphone, I stepped up to the front of the stage. Amused glances from a few patrons followed. The rest carried on as though I wasn’t here. That was okay. I just wanted to sing, to pretend for a minute that I had a normal life.

  I waited for the cue. Then I sang the shit out of that song.

  Hawk went slack-jawed. Everyone in the bar went quiet. When I sang the last note, everyone clapped. The drunker folks hooted and screamed, “More! Sing another one!”

  The deejay grinned from ear to ear. “You totally hustled me, Miss Melody. Tell me what you want to sing. I’m here all night, and if I ain’t got it, I’ll find it for you.”

  He cued up the next song, a Pat Benatar classic, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot.”

  A man in a suit came up to Hawk’s table. Hawk tore his gaze from me and gestured for the guy to sit down. This had to be our contact. But he looked familiar, really familiar, and not in a good way. Where the fuck had I seen him before?

  Chapter Six

  Hawk

  With a name like Kinky Friedman, how could he not go into vampire politics? I had to admit, though, that when he showed up, I almost didn't notice him standing there. Listening to Wren sing put me in some sort of...heavenly trance? I wasn't sure how to describe it, but if I'd sat there for hours, I wouldn't have even cared. Even the constant hammering pressure in my head eased some while listening to her, which was strange in a loud, crowded place like this. Her voice wrapped me up in it. Completely intoxicating. Like the woman herself.

  I cleared my throat and gestured for Senator Kinky to take a seat.

  "Not your usual venue, is it?" He sat and mopped at his receding hairline with a handkerchief, not because he was worried about sweat, but because he was constantly obsessed with face shine. I could smell the powdery makeup he must’ve had hidden in his pocket from here.

  "I try not to make too many habits," I said. "I need a favor."

  "Don't we all?" Kinky blotted more powder across his nose and cheeks. It wasn't working, and in the dim bar lights, it looked like he'd had a run-in with an oversized yellow crayon.

  "I need you to reinstate a celestial's license for me. Fast."

  He looked at me with those beady, muddy orange eyes of his. "You can't go to the VDMV?"

  "It's a bit more complicated than that. His license was taken away permanently."

  "So you want me to pull some strings."

  I leaned into him, keeping my voice low even though the bar was hopping. "I'll make it worth your while."

  He looked at me sharply.

  I nodded. "The next one's on me."

  "For free?" He grinned and sat back, swatting the tabletop. "That’s a hard deal to pass up."

  As I knew it would be. Kinky's vampire senate opponents often found themselves minus one family member, and one who deserved my brand of punishment. His last opponent’s brother used to torture cats when he was younger. I'd found photo proof, released it to the press, and killed the asshole where he stood. Kinky won by a landslide, over and over again. Even vampires who sided with Ravana found animal tortore to be distasteful.

  "Well, all right,” he said. “I'll text you a name and an address, but he won't be there when you arrive."

  "And that helps me how?"

  "Keep your shirt on.” He whipped out his cell from his pocket and started swiping. “He doesn’t technically live at this address, but I'll tell him you're coming tonight. Drives a 1987 yellow Camaro with racing stripes down the sides. When you see him arrive, flash your lights twice so he knows it’s you. There. Sent."

  My phone buzzed in my pocket, but I left it alone. "He's trustworthy?"

  "Well…" Kinky shoved his phone into the inside pocket of his jacket. "As compared to whom?"

  "Yeah. Got it." I sat back in my seat and glanced at the stage. Wren was in the middle of a song by Adele, I thought. Something about rumors? She sounded amazing, and the crowd was eating it up.

  "Anyway,” Kinky said, “he'll give you what you need so long as you have cash up front. I added his price to the text I sent you, but wait until tomorrow night for your friend to drive with his new license. That'll give me time to have a friend slip a line of code into the VDMV to make it official."

  "Thanks, Kinky."

  "Don't mention it. Who's the girl you keep eyeballing, huh? Hell of a voice on her."

  I shrugged. "My chair just happens to be aimed that way."

  "Sure it is, big guy." He stood and slapped me on the back. "Sure it is. When you’re done with her, let me know."

  With one more powdery swipe around the edges of his face, he was all colored in and fit to leave.

  As soon as Wren finished her next song, I stood and tried to catch her eye over the cheering crowd. Done with her? I’d never share any woman with that sleazy politician.

  Her green-contacted eyes connected with mine, and a ripple of energy stretched like a livewire between us. It was damn hard to ignore, especially with the tattoo beating a constant reminder into my skin and through my dead veins. She gave the subtlest of nods and then smiled out at her adoring fans.

  This was where she belonged, where she thrived, on a stage with a microphone. I could just tell, because it's how I felt when I was on the job. Free. Alive. Yet at the same time, making the world a better place. For her, with music. For me, taking out the garbage of humanity and vampirekind.

  "I'm afraid it’s time to say goodnight," she said, and a chorus of boos followed. "Tell you what, how about I come back sometime?"

  The crowd agreed with a roar, and she hopped off the stage to meet several high fives and chat with some of them. Charles stood from his table in the corner and slid me a tense look, clearly uncomfortable with her being surrounded. But she could handle herself. She moved with the grace of a feline, always aware of her environment. Just like me. A killer.

  She trotted up to my table, the lights in the bar throwing a glow over her. As she neared, she transformed from adored singer to ruthless queen in the span of a few steps.

  She jabbed a thumb toward the exit. "That was your contact?"

  "You know him?"

  "Not personally, no. But I've seen him before." She stretched up on her tiptoes and leaned close. Her candy sweet smell invaded my senses like a drug, and her lips brushed my earlobe, jolting my whole body to attention. "I saw him at Ravana's weird sex cult party a while back. Are you sure we can trust him?"

  "Yes.” I moved away from her some. I had to so I wouldn’t take her right there. “I offered him a deal."

  Her eyebrow rose. "Do I even want to know what kind?"

  "I'm sure you can use your imagination." Just like I was using mine. Hell, I had to hold the edge of the table to keep from throwing her on it, spreading her wide, and feasting like my cock and every other damn part of my body was begging me to do.

  "I can." A devious grin spread that fuckable mouth, and her gaze dipped briefly to my lips. "And I will."

  I growled low in my throat. "Then let's go. I have an address."

  "We can get it tonight?" She blinked her big eyes at me.

  "I told you I had connections."

  "You have no idea how relieved that makes me. The thought of burning in hellfire for eternity really wrecks your nerves, you know? Now I just have to deal with—" The relief vanished from her face, an almost painful thing to witness.

  Almost like a reflex, I took her hand and squeezed. "One step at a time."

  She looked up at me and nodded, but she'd already locked away the crippling doubt and fear she must've been feeling so deeply, that my simple words wouldn't reach it. I would've done the same thing if I were destined to cause the end of the world.

  Charles walked up to us, a toothpick in his mouth and his fedora low over his eyes. “We good?”

  “Yeah.” I slapped him hard on the back so the toothpick fell out. “You can go now.”

  He looked down at the toothpick on the dirty floor and then back up at me. “You’re a real d
ick, you know that?”

  Wren got him another one from the dispenser on my table. “We’re getting the license tonight. You really can go, Charles.”

  He snorted. “And leave you with this kidnapper?”

  “She’s safer with me than you,” I said.

  “Doubtful.” He gave me a hard glare and then glanced down at my tattoo. Rolling his shoulders back, he faced Wren again. “Keep your cell phone on. Check for bedbugs. Take no prisoners.”

  Wren laughed as she leaned up to kiss him. “Hopefully some of those won’t apply tonight, but I will. Hawk will send you the address so the Knights can circle the neighborhood.”

  While I did that, we stopped at a nearby gas station to fuel up and so I could get the money for the license from an ATM. Then, using GPS, Wren drove the route to the address on the outskirts of town where the potholes were plenty and the stop signs leaned almost parallel to the street. She rolled to a stop in front of a house that was two steps away from four walls leaning against each other. The neighboring houses didn't look much better.

  "Well,” she said, cutting the engine, "this reminds me of every bad horror movie I watched as a kid when we were lucky enough to have access to a TV."

  Grunting, I sat back in my seat. My head was killing me, so I rubbed at my temples, which didn’t do a damn thing.

  "I hate waiting," she muttered and then glanced over at me. "And I hate waiting in silence even more."

  "Are you whining?" I asked, searching the street for anything that looked off.

  "Just stating a fact. Staying in one spot for long drives me crazy. An effect of my childhood, probably." She shrugged and flipped the station on the radio from a commercial about car insurance to a mellow jazz song. "What should we do to pass the time?"

  I could think of one or two things, but distractions could get us both killed, especially out in the open like this. "We sit and wait."

  "Ah, you're used to this with your job, aren't you? I usually take a more direct approach." She reclined her seat a little and gave me one of those devilish little smiles of hers. "Truth or dare."

  I shook my head. No way were we doing this. "Neither."

  "Then let's make a deal. You play this with me and answer every truth honestly, and I'll try to use Angelo's feather to help your grandpa. Angelo said his feathers are lucky, so maybe they’ll help."

  "What?" I'd heard but…what?

  She nodded as she watched her promise slowly register inside me. "Truth or dare, Hawk."

  I turned in my seat to better look at her. "You would use a celestial's feather to help my grandpa, who you've only just met and never had a conversation with, if I play a game with you."

  “It's not just a game,” she said. “You're closed off, and this is me trying to open you up a little. See the prize inside. Like a box of Cracker Jacks."

  "By bribing me."

  "By making you a deal, and I know you're a fan of deals."

  I shifted to stare out the windshield again. "That's all you really need to know about me, then."

  She shook her head in my periphery. "I'm afraid not. Not if you're interested in being a part of my harem. And whether you choose to be or not, it won't change my promise to try to help your grandpa."

  Who would do that for basically a complete stranger? Not many. I could count on one hand the number of people I'd ever known who would do that, my grandpa being one of them. It said a lot about her that she'd promise something like that for a man I would do anything for. Had tried to do everything for.

  "Truth," I finally said.

  Nodding, she aimed her bright eyes out the windshield and smiled. "Why an assassin?"

  "It pays the bills."

  She snorted. "I'm going to need more than that."

  "Well, it's…" Complicated. More personal that it probably should've been. "I choose which hits I take very carefully."

  She looked at me then, silent, waiting.

  I rubbed my temples, the familiar ache behind them a constant sharp edge, like the blade of a knife piercing my skull again and again. "I look at the target's past, the reasons someone wants them dead, at the target themselves. If the target deserves to die and the world would be better without them, then I take the job."

  "What if you're wrong and they don’t deserve to die?"

  "They do deserve it. Always. Like my grandpa has never been wrong about his visions, I'm never wrong about a person's character once I dig into their past." I looked away from her out my window, but instead of seeing a bike lying on its side in the neighbor’s weed-infested yard, I saw Zac shoving a fat envelope of money at me with a job offer: assassinate Wren. Obviously, I didn't take the job. I couldn't. Despite what he told me, I didn't find a reason myself that she deserved to die.

  "Like Devin." She spat the name like it tasted as bad as expired blood. "You weren't wrong about him."

  "No. I wasn't. Jessica showed me pictures of him and what he did to her, and it was in them that I saw the truth. Not just in what he did to Ashe's sister but what he did to your mom. The betrayal. The lies. He needed to go.”

  I remembered Devin’s face when I killed him, seconds before Ashe arrived. There hadn’t been an ounce of remorse on his face. Just disbelief. Like how could I kill him of all people?

  Easily.

  Wren was staring at me with her lips parted. “You-you literally saw what he did with a picture?"

  I nodded. "Grandpa's visions come to him in thoughts. Mine come to me in pictures. Photographs. After looking at one, I see everything the target has ever done, good and bad and neutral, and it's downloaded into my brain."

  "Wow…" She stared at me for a long moment, opening and closing her mouth. "Do you… Do you consider yourself like a god since you decide who deserves to live and die?"

  I grunted, not sure how to answer. "Grandpa calls his visions a blessing. Still would, even if—when—he wakes up. Even after only seeing people's devastations. For me, it's just something I have to do."

  "Have to?"

  "I get crippling headaches if I go too long between kills," I said, rubbing my temples again.

  "Which is why you want us to stay out of your way when you're on a job." She nodded and then winced. “They're bad?"

  "Worse than bad. Grandpa says it's God erasing the old targets from my brain with a hammer. The sound of a ticking clock usually helps, not sure why. But that’s why I live in a clock tower."

  "Did you always get headaches before you started as an assassin, then?"

  "No. It wasn't until I saw a picture of the serial killer known as The Dracula Killer in the newspaper. Ever hear of him?”

  She swallowed hard. “Thankfully I missed out on that.”

  “Well anyway, just by looking at his picture, I saw everything terrible he had ever done. The headaches came when I knew about it and didn't act on it immediately. Then I finally went after him, and the headaches stopped…for a while. Maybe I should've been horrified by what I'd done, but I felt…relief, not just for me though. When I found him, I also found three young vampires locked in a closet, still alive."

  "You saved them." Awe filled her voice, but I wasn't so sure I deserved that.

  I did my job because I had to, but did murdering a murderer make what I did okay? I told myself every day that it did, but I wasn't my grandpa. I didn't have unshakable faith in God or believe that my visions were blessed. They were just something I had to deal with to survive.

  "My turn," she said, looking at me closely. "Ask me truth or dare."

  I shifted in my seat. "Uh, truth or dare?"

  "Dare,” she said, and then a slow smile crept across her face.

  I didn't have the first clue about what to dare her to do, except for just one thing. One thing that slipped out before I had a chance to reel it back. "Kiss me."

  "I was hoping you'd say that." Sliding her tongue across her lower lip, she leaned toward me, held my face between her hands, and kissed me. Soft. Nice. Over too damn quickly before she pulled back ag
ain, her eyes half closed, her fingers touching her lips.

  I shouldn't want any more than that right then. But my tattoo beat a persistent rhythm straight to my cock, making it impossible to concentrate on anything else but her. I swept one hand behind her back. The other touched her cheek, and I hauled her from her seat to mine so she straddled me.

  The current between us twisted like a screw, drawing us even closer together. I brushed the hair from her face, grazing her skin, feeling how well she fit against me. Then pulled her head down to mine.

  We kissed again. Hard. Better than nice. Wren sank deeper into me with a moan. Her chest rubbed against mine, and she ground against my thickening cock. I wasn't aware of who did it, but the seat suddenly reclined, giving us even more room.

  I squeezed her tight little ass closer to me, sliding my fingers between the backs of her thighs. Her pants were in the way. All of her clothes were in the way.

  As I pulled away from her kiss, my fangs came out, and starting at her neck, I dragged them down her shirt and the strap of her bra one agonizingly slow inch at a time until they fell on the floor in tatters. Her breasts were bared. Full and perfect with nipples that looked mouthwateringly sweet, they were even better than I'd imagined. I drew a tight nipple into my mouth, my fangs still out and grazing them just slightly against her flesh.

  “Yes.” She threw back her head and arched her back.

  Her skin felt like silk under my rough fingers, and the smell of her arousal turned me into a wild animal. I wanted so much more.

  While I sucked and licked and bit one nipple and massaged the other, I undid her pants. She held to my head, her hips bucking harder when I shoved her panties to the side.

  “Oh god, Hawk,” she moaned.

  Her addicting scent drove me crazy. I pulled away from her nipple to watch her face while I felt just how wet she was.

  But headlights swept over the road as a car turned up ahead and headed straight for us. A yellow Camaro with racing stripes.

  I froze. "Fuck."

  Wren was already rolling off my lap and pressing her scraps of clothing to her chest, looking over her shoulder.