The Chosen Coven Series Box Set

by D L Blade

  I took a deep breath after he let go, and for the first time, I noticed boxes down the hallway. “What’s in the boxes?” I asked.

  “Oh, I didn’t want to bring it up yet, since you’re still confused about a lot of things, but, we’re moving,” he explained.

  Moving? I didn’t even know where I was yet.

  “Where are we now?”

  “Salem, Massachusetts. We sold our home, and we’re moving to California. I have business there and we have a home waiting for us right on the beach. We leave tomorrow.”

  I was familiar with the geographical landmarks, but I had no emotional ties to Salem. I looked out the windows but all I saw was the night sky.

  “Shouldn’t I be in a hospital?”

  “No, Mercy. You don’t have amnesia. A witch took your memories away. No doctor can help you.”

  I thought about what he said. “But why would someone do that to me?”

  “Because you’re a powerful witch. You were born years ago; 1674 to be exact.”

  1674?

  I’ve had centuries of memories and I couldn’t remember them?

  “You, too?” I asked.

  “I’m much older,” he explained.

  “Are you also a witch?”

  He smiled. “No. I’m something else.” He opened his mouth and his incisors protruded. I gasped and took a step back. My heart pounded hard against my chest. I didn’t want to fear this man whom I felt was an important part of my life, but I did.

  “You’re a . . .”

  “Yes, but I won’t hurt you. I’ve never hurt you. I’ve never hurt anyone. I only drink donor blood from a hospital.”

  He retracted his fangs, and I relaxed a little, but the fear I had felt at seeing him transform into a vampire still lingered.

  I took one more step back to create more distance between us, but he grabbed my hand and gestured toward the hallway. “I’ll show you around. Maybe the more you see, the more memories will come back.”

  During the entire tour of the house, my nerves wouldn’t settle. Yes, I had memories with him that felt familiar and safe, but the moment he shared with me that he was a vampire, my defenses stayed up. I couldn’t relax. I must have not cared, or why would I be dating him? I had hoped the memories of a world filled with dark creatures only seen in movies would flood over my mind, but they didn’t.

  I steadied my breathing as we walked down the hall, taking in my surroundings.

  We entered a room on the first floor, and it had mostly been packed, but there were a few pieces of furniture, and nothing looked familiar to me. I spotted a dresser in the corner and opened the drawer. Female clothes. Underwear and socks in the first drawer, pajamas in the second, and shorts in the bottom.

  “Mine?” I asked.

  “I don’t live with anyone else. Of course they’re yours.”

  My cheeks flushed with embarrassment, and I looked down again at my apparel, then eyed the bathroom connected to the room. “Mind if I take a shower? I feel dirty. I’d like to clean up and change my clothes.”

  The truth was, I needed to step away from him so I could absorb everything he had shared with me and the visions that I did have.

  “Can I join you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Okay, I understand. Shower. Take your time,” he said before leaving me alone in the room.

  I grabbed clean underwear, plaid shorts, and a t-shirt from the nightwear drawer and entered the bathroom.

  During my shower, I thought about what I had seen. I knew I was a witch. I felt it, and I saw it in my visions. I didn’t fear it, though. The thought hit me that witches are real, so vampires and whatever else was out there should be just as familiar and normal to me. I shouldn’t fear it, right? If he was going to hurt me, he would have done it by now.

  After a nice, warm shower, I put my pajamas on, pulled my hair into a wet bun, and rubbed some lotion I found in one of the drawers on my face. I brushed my teeth and re-entered the bedroom. Maurice lay on the bed, resting on the pillow closest to the window. He had the blankets pulled back, leaving an empty space below the other pillow.

  Was I supposed to lay with him? Of course he’d assume that, if that was our normal routine.

  I didn’t want to upset him, so I climbed into bed and laid down. “Maurice, I don’t . . . I’m not ready to do anything with you.”

  He smiled. “I won’t touch you, yet. But we’ve been together for over three years, Mercy. I hope all your memories come back so we can get back to where we were before we were attacked.”

  I gathered my thoughts, then asked, “Are we really moving? Shouldn’t we be trying to find out who took my memories away, and more importantly, why?”

  He shook his head. “This isn’t new. You have been targeted for centuries. You are a powerful witch, and those who want to hurt you will stop at nothing. That’s why we have to leave this place. We need to find a new home where your enemies can’t find you.”

  I looked up at the ceiling, still feeling confused and unsure about everything, but the fact that he was the only one here, the only one I had even the slightest memories with, happy memories, showed me I could maybe trust him. I had to. I had nowhere else to go.

  “Okay,” I said, smiling and placing my hand on his cheek. “I’m sorry I don’t remember everything, but I promise I’ll keep trying.”

  He leaned in and kissed me on the forehead, then the cheek, then the lips. His hands lingering by my hips, caressing my skin, and inching under my shirt and up my stomach. I placed my hand on his, stopping him. It felt good. My God, did it feel good, but I couldn’t be intimate with someone I didn’t remember, let alone a vampire who frightened me.

  He pulled his hand out and kissed me on the lips. “Goodnight, Mercy.”

  I closed my eyes, facing away from him now, but his arms were wrapped around me, holding me close to his chest. He didn’t try to kiss or touch me, but he held me until we fell asleep.

  Mercy

  The next morning, I awoke to the stench of bacon. I had to hold back the nausea as I entered the kitchen.

  “Good morning, beautiful. Here.” He placed three strips of bacon on a plate, and I just looked at it. “Are you not hungry? I’m sorry, I don’t eat food. I only drink blood. Was there something else you wanted me to make you?”

  I looked up at him and back down at the bacon. “Not this.” I admitted. “I don’t think I ate things like this.”

  “Bacon?” He paused. “Oh, meat? No, you definitely eat meat.”

  “Are you sure? Because the smell alone is making me nauseous.”

  His face grew hard. I must have offended him. He picked up the plate of bacon and let the strips slide off the plate and into the trash. “I can make you something else,” he said, “like a smoothie?”

  When I smiled and nodded, his frown faded into a grin and he perked up. The change in his mood helped me relax.

  He pulled frozen strawberries from the freezer, grabbed orange juice from the fridge, and poured them all into a blender.

  “Bon appetite,” he said as he handed me my smoothie.

  “Thank you.” I smiled and sipped slowly. It was good. The strawberry and orange juice was the perfect combo I had been craving.

  “I have a few friends stopping by here this morning, then a moving company is coming over to help us pack the rest of our things.”

  “What are we taking? That’s quite a trip to take all this stuff.”

  “Most is being sold or being donated. We’ll ship a few things to Huntington Beach. We just need to pack our clothes and some of the personal items we own.”

  Maurice’s phone rang and he answered on the second ring.

  Once he answered, he excused himself from the kitchen.

  After I finished my smoothie, I stepped outside and took a deep breath, taking in the air around me. I looked over the balcony and saw a few deer run through the clearing near us.

  Where were we exactly? All I saw was a forest surrounding us.
No other houses, not even a road.

  I turned around and Maurice stood near the sliding door, watching me, but he didn’t step outside. I walked up to him and slid the door back open. “It’s nice today. Maybe we can have breakfast out here.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “You can’t come outside?”

  I looked up. Rays from the morning sunrise shone onto the deck. “Oh, of course. I’m sorry. Vampires can’t go in the sun, right?”

  He nodded.

  But then I thought about where we were moving today. “But aren’t we moving to California? It’s sunny 300 times a year there. Seems a vampire would avoid a place like that.”

  He looked irritated, keeping his mouth in a straight line and flaring his nostrils when I asked my question, but I couldn’t understand why. Was he just going to hide inside all day?

  He relaxed his expression and grinned. “That is why we are moving there. There’s a witch in Los Angeles who’s a good friend of mine. She plans to create a more permanent solution for vampires. We lost all hope when we realized we were wrong about the witch who we’d thought for centuries was going to be the key to remove the curse of the sun. So, now, we have to figure it out on our own.”

  As much as I still feared being this close to a real vampire, the fact that he couldn’t enjoy the sun beaming down on him every day made me feel sorry for him.

  “I have a meeting with a few of my colleagues. How about you read a book or watch something on my computer in the office? I have a bookshelf full of books you love. Maybe they’ll trigger more memories.”

  I looked past him and saw a man and woman standing in the family room. I didn’t recognize them, no memories came back, but they were pale, just like Maurice. A vampire trait, I assumed. An anxious feeling came over me as I narrowed my eyes at them. Maurice being a vampire is one thing. He was someone I remember caring for. Those two in the family room were strangers. Undead strangers. My stomach twisted in knots, and I wanted to hide in my room until they left.

  “Please, come meet my friends first.”

  I stared at him with a pleading look, but he smiled and grabbed my hand gently. “It’s okay. They won’t hurt you.”

  He escorted me to the front room where the two stood and gestured to the dark-haired guy with light scruff on his face. “This is Julian. He joined my business a few months ago. And this is Jade.” I looked to the redhead next to Julian. She had dark auburn hair and her skin was a bright shade of white. She almost looked like she had no pigmentation at all aside from her red hair.

  They both smiled at me awkwardly, and it made me uncomfortable. Their eyes spoke to me as if they knew something I didn’t, and they seemed to take pleasure in that.

  “Jade and I have known each other for years. She has been traveling around Europe this last year and joined my company a month ago,” Maurice explained.

  I swallowed hard and felt a painful lump in my throat go down slowly. Something was off about all three of them.

  Way off.

  “What do you do, Maurice? For work?” I asked.

  He smiled as if he was excited that I was finally asking the important questions. “I run a blood donation corporation,” he said, and I looked at him with skepticism. “You see, not every vampire wants to drink from humans,” he said. “So, we provide a solution by draining blood from willing donors. Then, we sell it for profit.”

  “They’re all willing?” I asked. Just the mere thought of blood made me queasy.

  He chuckled, and Julian and Jade joined in. “Most of them, sweetheart. You see, that same witch who we thought could save us now wants to kill us off. We’ve also learned of witches who can manipulate someone’s face. If a vampire doesn’t realize they’re drinking from her under this disguise, they would become human again. We can’t have that.”

  I swallowed deeply. “Well, I don’t know. I’d think being a human would be a good thing, unless you like being this way.”

  After I said this, all three narrowed their eyes at me and tightened their lips.

  I gulped but continued, hoping my voice didn’t sound too nervous. “How do you know the donors aren’t this witch? In disguise?”

  He reached up and brushed the hair from my cheek, then leaned in and kissed it gently. “We inject them with a potion. If she changes back, then we know. If they don’t, we take as much as they’re willing to give, without killing them.”

  “That . . . that sounds wrong, Maurice.”

  He walked closer to me, and I backed up. “Which part, my love?”

  I looked at the others, then back to Maurice. “All of it.”

  His frown turned into a side smirk. “What is the difference between a human donating their blood to save another human’s life and what we’re doing?”

  I didn’t know how to answer this without upsetting him. He had been nice since I awoke on that couch yesterday, but I really didn’t know him.

  He shrugged when I didn’t answer. “It doesn’t matter. Once we move, I won’t be running that business anymore.”

  I looked at Jade, who was snickering to herself.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because that witch is no longer a problem,” he explained, and that was the last thing he needed to say. I was a witch, which meant this other witch he spoke of could be a friend. She could be family.

  “I’m going to go use the restroom. Excuse me.” I shifted toward the hallway, but Maurice grabbed my arm and I winced. “You’re hurting me. Please let go.”

  “Is there something else you’d like to say to me?” he asked.

  “Nope.” I shook my head. “I just really have to pee.”

  He flashed me a forced smile that made my stomach churn. It was sadistic and unkind. “Be quick. Jade and Julian are taking us to the airport. We leave in an hour.”

  He released my arm, and I hurried to the bathroom. I didn’t need to go. I just needed a moment away from those three. I looked in the mirror. I didn’t recognize myself, and I desperately needed to know if everything he’d told me since I awoke on his couch was true. Why would anyone try to hurt me? That question didn’t seem to press Maurice. He should be wondering why this happened and trying to find a solution, not moving across the country. I couldn’t just leave on a plane with someone who was a stranger to me, regardless of these fragments of memories I had of him. I had to get out of here.

  After I looked around the bathroom for anything to defend myself with if he or his two minions tried to stop me, I saw the window above the bathroom sink. I double checked that I had locked the door and moved to the window, unlocked it, and slowly cranked it open. I pulled myself up, climbed out the window, and dropped to the grassy lawn below me. Since it was daylight out, I was able to check around at my surroundings to locate an escape, except, there wasn’t one. The only relief I felt was that the three vampires were still inside, and even if they wanted to come outside, the sun would stop them.

  I snuck around the corner just in case, and when I turned, I ran into a chest.

  His chest.

  He looked down and smiled. “Where on earth do you think you’re going, my love?” Maurice asked with a sinister grin. I looked behind him, and there stood Jade and Julian. The sun beamed down on them as if my theory was only something you’d see in a movie.

  “Magic,” he said.

  I blinked. “What?”

  “You’re asking yourself how we are able to walk in the light, aren’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “You see, when we found out that this witch couldn’t actually allow us to walk in the light unless she turned us human, we found a witch who created a temporary spell for when we needed it. It only lasts about ten minutes, so we need to get back in the house.”

  When I tried to back up, he grabbed my arm and yanked me toward him. “I would never be with someone as evil as you,” I said.

  He gripped my arm so hard I knew there would be a bruise the next day. “I know you wouldn’t.” />
  That was when I screamed. I screamed the entire time he dragged me by the hair back into the house, flailing my arms and kicking my legs. I screamed for help, but nobody came. I wailed as I scanned my surroundings. It was just us. The house stood deep into a property, surrounded by nothing but trees. No neighbors, no road, nothing. No one would hear me. Maurice told me that my powers came from my hands, so I lifted my hand and focused on this energy I supposedly possessed, but nothing happened.

  Maurice threw me into a corner of the family room, and Julian walked toward me. I cowered the closer he came.

  “Let’s try this again, shall we?” he said to Julian. “She is to remember she’s a witch, but our attacker took her ability to use her magic. She’s too powerful of a witch to not feel her powers inside her. She also needs to know about the existence of vampires so she isn’t afraid of me,” Maurice commanded. “Just make sure she doesn’t know everything about who she is.”

  “Her mind is too strong to take away everything, Maurice, but I’ll try.”

  They spoke to each other as if I weren’t even in the room. My heart still pounded hard against my chest.

  Julian looked down at me as panic filled my entire body. This guy Julian wasn’t a vampire. He was a witch.

  He fisted my hair and yanked me down to my knees and placed his hands over each side of my temples, then chanted. My head screamed in pain, and fear engulfed every part of me . . . until it went dark.

  Caleb

  I looked at Dorian’s car on the side of the road at the corner of Chestnut and Parker Rd. Someone had broken the front windows, and Mercy’s purse was still on the floor of the passenger’s side. I turned to Lily and saw Bradley holding her tightly. She cried in his arms. Turning to my right, Riley was barely holding himself together. His hands were in a tight fist, and if it weren’t for Amber caressing his arms to calm him, he’d transform into his werewolf form.