Strange Brew (37 page)

Nielsen stood up, reaching for her necklace clasp. Bentley drew his knife and Luna grabbed for it, the two of them wrestling. Trotter looked at the four of us, eyes wide.

“Don’t,” I said to Nielsen.

Her lips curved up. “Don’t what, Sunny? Don’t kill you? Don’t take out one of the few witches who could be a problem to me while I have such a perfect chance?”

“Don’t kill him,” I said, pointing at Trotter. Nielsen moved her hands away from the clasp of her necklace.

“You know, considering how tricky you are when your magick is up, I think we’ll do this the old-fashioned way.” She picked up Bentley’s knife from where Luna had beaten it out of his hand and advanced on Trotter.

I froze, watching the scene play out in my mind. Blood spatter, Trotter twitching in his cuffs, the glamour coming to take his place…

Nielsen put the knife to Trotter’s throat. “Do something!” he screamed at me.

I’ve been in exactly two fights in my life: with Joey Grant, an odious boy who threw my sandwich into the sandbox in first grade, and Mary-Anne Price, the girl in middle school who started calling me “Blood-freak.” She was a lot bigger than me, and she won. I got a black eye and would have gotten worse if Luna hadn’t pulled her off me and broken her nose.

Luna and Bentley were still fighting, he powered by blood and she by rage. I was on my own.

This sucked.

I had no magick, and all I could hear was my heart beating. Nielsen pulled Trotter’s hair back and put the knife to his throat. And she
smiled
at me, like she knew I had no hope of winning.

Something inside me snapped. I lunged for Nielsen and caught her around the waist, knocking her away from Trotter. She fought me off, long manicured nails scratching for my face, and I balled up my fist and hit her, right in the eye.

“Ow!” Nielsen shrieked. “That
hurt
!”

My fist twinged and there was blood on my knuckles. Luna made that look so easy.

I grabbed Nielsen’s necklace and pulled. “That’s the idea.”

The cord snapped, and I felt the magick flood back over the room. I’d let Nielsen’s power free, but my magick came back to me, hot and white with the adrenaline in my blood. I looked at Trotter. “Do you want to die?”

“No!” he yelled.

“Then you better help me,” I ordered, and reached for my caster.

Nielsen’s power came up at the same time, and it was like standing under a thirty-foot wave. I threw up a shield, a wall of pure energy, and I felt Trotter’s join me. He wasn’t very strong, but he had precise control.

Nielsen laughed. “This is great. You really think you’re going to hold me off until what? The cavalry comes? ASA Nielsen can make you all look like a bunch of crooked cops and crazy witches, and Ginger will make sure that if that doesn’t work, your bodies will never be identified.”

She pushed again, and I staggered, feeling blood come from my nose. Nielsen was laughing. Trotter and Luna were screaming at me, but I couldn’t hear them.

Nielsen could beat me. She could beat me easily and she knew it. I gasped, going to one knee, and let my shield crack, just a little.

“Gods!” Trotter yelped. “What’s going on?”

I watched Nielsen through my lashes as she closed on me. “She’s weak, is what,” Nielsen said. “And you’re next. Ginger can’t be stopped.”

I gathered my magick to me, in a tight, hot ball of shield. I was going to get only one shot at this.

“Ginger is going to kill you, Sunny Swann,” Nielsen singsonged. “How do you feel about that?”

I met her eyes. “Bitch, please. We all know that’s not your natural color.”

My magick flew from my caster, singing through the air and spreading like a battering ram, catching Nielsen’s burgeoning shield. It threw her backwards into the wall, smoke coming off her caster and her hands. I kept pushing her until there was nothing left and I fell on the floor, for real.

The next thing I remember is seeing Luna standing over me, blood running from her cut lip, grinning.

The prison doctor patched us up and declared us fit to leave. Luna radioed for someone to collect Nielsen and Bentley, who looked like he’d been slammed repeatedly into the grille of a Mack truck, and the U.S. Marshals to move Trotter to a different prison. He barely looked at me as we went by his holding cell, and I sniffed, “You’re welcome.”

“You did good, Sun,” Luna said when she came over to the car. I was sitting on the hood, letting the sun warm me. I ached all over from the fight with Nielsen, and my head buzzed as my drained reservoir of power echoed inside.

“I learned from you,” I said. Luna waved it off.

“No. You’ve got a lot of spine, kid. You should let it out more often.”

“Luna?” I said, sliding off the hood and opening the passenger door. “It’s been fun, foiling a magick conspiracy and all, but if you
ever
hear me suggest that I should do something like this again, do me a favor?”

She dug in the glove compartment for a pair of sunglasses. “What?”

“Shoot me before I can say yes.”

“Fair enough.”

I settled back against the seat and shut my eyes. “I did pretty much kick ass, though, didn’t I?”

Luna laughed as she started the motor and pulled onto the highway. “You want some tights to go with that cape and cowl?”

“Oh, Hex you.”

“Hey, I’m just saying…”

I let her talk while we drove back toward my real life, mundane and magickal only in ways that didn’t hurt. I wasn’t going to start running around protecting the weak, but the small warm thought grew in my mind that I’d used my magick down and dirty, gotten into a fight, and felt the euphoria of life-or-death.

And I gotta admit, I kind of liked it.

Caitlin Kittredge
is the author of the Nocturne City series, featuring werewolf detective Luna Wilder, and the Black London series, featuring mage Jack Winter. She lives in Olympia, Washington, with two pushy cats, and wears a lot of black, thus fulfilling two writer clichés at once. She maintains a popular blog about writing, films, and life at
www.caitlinkittredge.com
.

Dark Sins
Jenna Maclaine

Venice, 1818

My body hit the wooden floor with a loud thud. I’m not sure if it was the fall that knocked my breath from my chest, or the naked man who landed on top of me. Either way, I was left lying on the cold floor, blinking up at the ceiling, and trying to drag some air back into my lungs. I don’t
have to
breathe, you understand, but it’s one of those human quirks, like a love for whiskey and chocolate, that being dead just doesn’t change. You see, I’m a vampire.

“And a very bad witch,” I muttered, trying to push Michael’s body off of mine.

He groaned and rolled to one side. “You are not a bad witch, love. But I think you might have dislocated my knee that time.”

I gave him an arch look. “Where the hell are our clothes?” I asked.

We both sat up and looked back at the bed. Sure enough, there were our clothes, lying on the sheets as if our bodies had simply vanished from them. Which they had.

“Oh, damn,” I spat. “We were supposed to end up naked in the bed, and the clothes were supposed to end up on the floor!”

Michael smiled at me indulgently, his blue eyes twinkling. “Yes, dear, I know. You’re getting better, though. We were just a few feet away this time.”

I growled in frustration as he stood, scooped me up, and tossed me on the bed. He started at my right ankle and began slowly kissing his way up the inside of my leg.

“I am a bad witch,” I said. “I’ve spent the last three summers in Inverness with my aunt Maggie, who hates me, and the best we’ve accomplished is to give me enough control over my magic so that things don’t blow up or burst into flames anymore. Even Maggie thinks I’m a bad witch. And possibly evil.”

“She doesn’t hate you, darling. She’s just afraid of what you are, and I think she’s also a bit jealous.”

“Of me? For the love of the Goddess, why? She’s got more magic in her little finger than I could even think about calling.”

He stopped kissing the side of my knee and looked up at me. In the candlelight, his cheekbones stood out in sharp relief, making his beautiful face look more than a little dangerous.

“Not more magic,” he said, “and not better magic. I’ve seen your magic, Cin, and your aunt cannot even come close to it. She’s just better at working with what she has than you are. Be patient, love. You’ll find your way. I believe in you.”

I smiled and reached down, pushing a lock of dark blond hair off his forehead. “But what if I never figure it out, Michael?” I asked softly. “I have all this power, I can feel it inside me, but I just can’t seem to get it to work the way it’s supposed to. My spells are a disaster and only work a fraction of the time. The rest of the time I have to be careful that I don’t accidentally…”

“Turn someone into a weasel?” he asked.

And, yes, I had done that once. I groaned and flopped down against the pillows.

“Cin, sweetheart, love of my undead life,” Michael said as he trailed kisses up the inside of my thigh, “it’s only been three years. You’re the first witch anyone’s ever heard of who’s been turned into a vampire and still kept her powers. We have eternity ahead of us. Have some patience, and it will come to you.”

I snorted. “You know very well that I’m the least patient person—”

“Are you going to talk the entire way through this?” he asked as his breath caressed the most intimate part of me. I shivered as his mouth hovered there, almost touching but not quite, and everything I was about to say went clean out of my head. “Because I have more interesting things you can do with your mouth,
mo ghraidh
.”

I giggled and raised my arms over my head, grasping the headboard, stretching my body across the decadent satin sheets to display my curves and valleys to their best advantage. “Oh, no,” I replied with a wicked grin, “I’m finished. Please continue.”

He lowered his head, and I heard the wood under my fingers crack as I called his name.

Sometimes i have premonitions. It’s a gift I inherited from my father, as I inherited my magic from my mother. What I feel is never a solid knowledge of what’s to come, but a nebulous feeling of unease that something is wrong, or about to be. It happens sporadically enough that I know that just because I don’t feel that I’m in danger, it doesn’t mean I’m not. On the other hand, whenever I
do
feel it, I know without a doubt not to ignore it.

I woke with Michael’s body curled against my back, his right arm slung over me. I blinked several times, wondering what had pulled me from my sleep, and then I felt it. My stomach dropped, as if I’d just fallen from a great height, and chills broke out along my skin. I threw the covers off and jumped from the bed. I checked the lock on the door, then starting tossing clothes at Michael.

“Michael, get up. Something’s wrong,” I said, and threw his boots at him.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied, “it’s only a feeling, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to get caught naked in bed by a bunch of vampire slayers. I have no wish to repeat what happened in Austria last year. Fighting naked is just awkward.”

I struggled into the leather riding breeches I’d had on last night. Getting into them was not easy, but the only things I’d unpacked thus far were dresses. I would rather not fight in a dress if I had a choice in the matter. Actually, I would rather not be fighting at all. Michael and I, along with our companions Devlin and Justine, spent most of our undead lives hunting and executing rogue vampires but this trip to Venice was supposed to be a holiday. As a human, I had always wanted to see the city and it was one of the places Michael had promised to take me when he’d turned me into a vampire three years ago. Pushing down all thoughts of romantic gondola rides, I pulled my boots on. I had just reached for my dagger when the first blow hit the apartment’s door. I winced and hoped that Devlin and Justine had heard the crash from their rooms down the hall. If it came to a fight, I certainly wanted our friends at our backs. Michael grabbed his claymore and stalked from the bedroom, wearing nothing but his pants and boots. I hastily pulled his shirt on over my head, tucked the dagger into the waistband of my breeches, and followed him.

The third blow cracked the frame, and the door swung drunkenly in on one hinge. Five men and two women swarmed into the room. I choked on the smell of sulfur and blood. Witches, then. Ones who practiced dark magic. Michael glanced at me, and then pulled the great claymore from its scabbard. A tall man, apparently the leader, stepped forward. The wizard wore dark clothes and a black cloak. He might have been handsome, even with his slightly receding hairline and a nose that was too large for his face, if it hadn’t been for the fact that evil and dark dealings radiated from him like heat from the sun. The tip of Michael’s claymore came to rest at the man’s throat.

“
Cosa volete
?” Michael asked. “What do you want?”

Despite this invasion, Michael would be reluctant to run the man through. The Dark Council and the High King himself frowned on vampires killing humans, and the wizard had not offered us violence. Yet.

The man never spoke. He simply raised his right hand to his mouth, palm up, and blew across his palm. A cloud of pink powder swirled into the air and, before I could shout a warning, Michael’s sword clattered to the floor and he collapsed beside it. I rushed forward, falling to my knees next to him. I turned Michael’s face to me, and brushed his hair away, running my fingers over his lips, across his sculpted cheekbones, over his dark brows. I knew he wasn’t dead. Without whatever magic animated a vampire he would be nothing more than a seventy-year-old corpse, dust and bone in my fingers. He was alive, but he wasn’t breathing. I knew he didn’t have to, but in the three years we’d been together I had never seen him not breathe, even in his sleep. Whatever the wizard had dosed him with had put him so far under that there was no consciousness left.