The Witching Hour: 11 Enchanting Novels Featuring Witches, Wizards, Vampires, Shifters, Ghosts, Fae, and More!, page 49
“You think that there’s going to be an uprising among the vampires,” Franny said, popping in beside us. “You think they’ll start a mass attack on people?”
I grimaced. “Franny, you have to keep quiet about this. We can’t have it getting out.”
Closing my eyes, I remembered that last day, standing atop the hill in Romania as we watched a village burn to the ground. Fata Morgana and Cassandra and I had tracked them down. After my fires destroyed them, we walked away, becoming the party girls of the century. I had tucked away the blade and stake that had tasted so much blood, swearing never again to use them.
Flesh to fire, fire to flesh. Time to weave the silver mesh.
Time to hunt the bloody fiends, time to stake and burn amends.
“Do you think we’ll have to do it again? The world is so different now.” Sandy bit her lip.
“The world is vastly different, which means there are so many more people to hunt. So many more ways to vie for control. Aegis will fight with us.” I paused. “You know, when sailors committed mutiny, they were left on an island with a gun with one bullet in it. I have the feeling that’s what Aegis’s ring is. Apollo’s gift to him. A way out.”
Aegis and I still hadn’t talked about his ring. Every time I started to ask about it, he changed the subject. Some things were better left until it was the right time.
Standing, I slid the dagger into a sheath, and the stake into a matching one. Slipping both into my bag of magical tools, I closed the lid and turned to Sandy.
“Do you really want to do this?” she asked.
I stared at the trunk. “No. Not really. I didn’t think I’d have to ever revisit this path. But I guess we don’t always get what we want, do we?”
“No, Mick, we don’t.” Sandy gave me a quick hug. “But I’ll be there. Cassandra and Mad Maudlin back in action.” She paused for a moment. “Do you think we could find her?”
A shiver raced down my spine. “The question is, do we want to?”
“I miss her, even though…” Sandy shook her head. “I can’t help but wonder where she is. We’d know if she was dead.”
“Yeah, I know. She was the crazy one, you know. Not me. I ran wild. She was wildness incarnate.”
Sandy gave me an uneasy glance. “Yeah.” Then, sucking in a deep breath, she said, “Let’s get back to the party. You have B&B guests coming tomorrow and you’ll want to be ready to open.”
And tomorrow, any vampire that wants can walk into this house without asking. But I left my thoughts unsaid, and instead just nodded, pasting a smile on my face. My Prosperity spell had worked. In the past week we had booked every room for the rest of the year and into January.
“Come on, let’s go drink and dance the night away.”
The band was taking a break from their set. I walked out to the back patio, freezing in the dark of the night, but unwilling to go find my coat. As I stared up at the stars cluttering the sky, Aegis joined me. He wrapped an arm around me and kissed the top of my head.
“Where did you and Sandy go?”
“Up to the attic. Well, one of the storage closets.” I inhaled the sharp tang of snow and cold and wood smoke.
“You’re wearing your weapons again, aren’t you, Mad Maudlin?”
His voice was so soft I almost missed what he said, but then it seeped through and I slowly turned to face him.
“The blade and the stake, aren’t they? Rumors say they’re sterling silver, with a core of adamant.”
Barely able to breathe, I forced out my words. “You know about them?”
“Of course I know. Don’t forget, I’m far older than you and have walked the back paths of the world for centuries beyond centuries. I told you, I knew who you were the day after you bought this house. I did my homework. Before you told me about it, I knew you were Mad Maudlin, vampire hunter. One of the most successful in history.”
“What else do you know?”
He laughed. “I know that you hunted down Dracula, that you traced his family and destroyed most of them. I know about the fires that haunt your dreams, and why you don’t like to talk about the past. I know that it was Dracula who turned the love of your life.” Aegis’s eyes flared, crimson for a moment, then back to their sparkling depths.
I leaned against him. “You know all of my secrets. But I didn’t tell you one. Essie knows who I am.”
He tilted his head to the side for a moment, staring at me, his expression unreadable. After a moment he held out his hands. “And that’s why you must wear your weapons, my love. Maddy, you and I bridge the gap. The bridge between the living and the dead can be a narrow one, but we manage it. I trust you.”
I reached out, the fingers of my left hand wrapping around his. And in the core of my heart, I could feel the stirrings of doubt, but they fell silent as his lips neared mine. “I trust you, too, Aegis. And yes, we will manage this bridge.”
And right then, in that moment, he leaned down and kissed me, and I left behind the guilt over loving him. As he wrapped his arms around me, the stars sparkled like diamonds and everything felt clean and new. And at that moment, Mad Maudlin returned and I welcomed her into my heart.
The series continues with Maudlin’s Mayhem.
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Sacrifice Me
Season One
Sarra Cannon
I
Episode One
The Demon
Prologue
When you are about to die, they say your life flashes before your eyes. Life's last gift. A single moment of clarity so you can see all the things you did wrong.
Every bad decision.
Every mistake.
Every horrible word you said to someone when you really just wanted them to love you as much as you loved them.
It’s easy to get lost in the regrets of our past, thinking that if we’d only chosen something different, we might have been able to save ourselves a hell of a lot of heartbreak.
Only, the thing is, we should really be giving ourselves more credit for just surviving the best way we know how. It’s not like we made those bad decisions on purpose. Well, not most of the time, anyway.
At any given moment, we’re all just doing the best we can to survive and make a place for ourselves in this shit-storm we call life.
Looking back, it’s easy to forget just how broken we were when we made those bad decisions. And most importantly, it’s easy to overlook the fact that if we were really able to go back in time and change things, sure, we might avoid some of the worst heartaches of our lives, but at the same time, we also might not be standing here, right now, with the one person we love most in all the world.
What if I'd never opened that invitation?
What if I'd thrown the whole thing in the trash and gone about my life?
What if I'd never stepped foot inside Venom?
These questions flash through my mind in those last moments, but then all I can think is that one small change—one “better” decision—and I might have missed him altogether.
So, you know what? If I had the chance to go back and do it all over again, I wouldn’t change one painful, gut-wrenching, dangerous, terrifying moment of what I’ve been through over the past two weeks.
Even knowing it meant the death of me, I’d go through it all over again, just for him.
1
Little Bird
Two Weeks Earlier
“Happy Birthday, sleepy head.”
I pulled my pillow over my head, trying to ignore my roommate, Katy, but I should have known better. She was not one to give up easily when she set her mind to something.
“Get up,” she called in that sing-song morning voice I hated and loved at the same time. “I made you breakfast and everything.”
I peered out from under the pillow, one eye open. “Chocolate chip pancakes?”
She raised an eyebrow and tilted her head to the side. “Of course.”
“With maple syrup?”
“I even made a Starbucks run this morning and got you a Caramel Macchiato,” she said. “You’re all set to go into a sugar coma before your first class of the day.”
I rolled over and grabbed her hand, bringing it up to my lips in a quick kiss. “I don’t deserve you,” I said.
“You deserve so much better,” she said. Her mouth twisted into a frown, and I knew she was thinking about my mother.
Katy had been my best friend for as long as I could remember, and I knew that look. She was feeling guilty because on her twenty-first birthday, a month earlier, her mother had shown up in a limousine to take her for tapas at Mercat.
My mother, on the other hand, was nowhere to be found. She disappeared on my eighteenth birthday, three years ago, without so much as a fuck-you.
“Don’t give me your guilty face,” I said. “I don’t want pity pancakes.”
She rolled her eyes. “These are not pity pancakes. They’re friendship, happy twenty-first birthday pancakes and they were made with love,” she said. She smacked my bare thigh. “Now get your ass out of bed before it gets cold.”
I groaned and forced myself out from under the warm covers. Twenty-one. A major milestone in the lives of Americans everywhere, but I wasn’t any more excited about this birthday than any of the twenty that had come before. Not that I could remember every single one, but you get the point.
I had already been drinking with a fake ID for the past two years, so the idea of going out to a bar didn’t excite me. And the idea of being one year older was more terrifying than anything else. One year older meant one year closer to graduating and having to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life.
But the smell of pancakes and coffee cheered me up.
Katy had set up our breakfast for two on the small bar that separated our tiny living room from our even tinier kitchen. Beside my plate, there was also a long silver box with a dark red card on top.
“What’s this?” I asked, eyeing her. We never exchanged gifts. Mostly because I could never afford it and she lived in constant guilt about being rich. “Katy, what did you do?”
She shook her head and sat down, taking a bite of pancake. “It wasn’t me, I swear. Someone delivered them while I was out getting the coffee. They were waiting by the door when I got home,” she said. “Have you been seeing someone new?”
This was such a ridiculous question that I didn’t even justify it with an answer. She should have known better.
I was never seeing anyone new. Or old for that matter. I didn’t believe in relationships, and no matter how many times Katy tried to set me up, nothing ever stuck.
I stared at the box as I took my first bites of birthday pancakes. I couldn’t even think of one person who would have sent me flowers. I had no family. No close friends outside of Katy. I had never been in a serious relationship.
And nothing good could come of birthday flowers from a stranger.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” she asked.
I eyed the silver box, a strange feeling fluttering in my stomach. “Eventually,” I mumbled, mouth half full. “Maybe.”
She grabbed the card off the top and waved it in my face. “Just see who it’s from. Maybe you have a secret admirer.”
I set my fork down and swallowed, hesitating. Part of me wanted to dump them, unopened, into the trash.
But my curiosity got the better of me. I lifted the silver lid off the box. Inside, nestled in black tissue paper, were the strangest, most beautiful black roses. I'd never seen anything like them, but they were exactly my taste. Rare and dark.
I bit my lip and shifted in my chair.
My hand trembled as I took the red envelope from Katy and tore it open. The paper was heavy. Expensive and smooth to the touch.
Inside, there was a short note written in large, swoopy black letters.
Happy Birthday, Little Bird
Don't you think it's time you learned to spread your wings?
VENOM, Hubbard Street, Chicago
My stomach twisted at those two handwritten words near the top of the card.
Little Bird.
It was what my mother had always called me.
2
Catch-22
I couldn't get my mind off those black roses. I walked around the whole day with the strangest feeling that someone was watching my every move.
I had become so paranoid that I nearly made some freshman piss his pants in the hallway of the student center. I thought he was following me. Apparently, he was just lost.
I didn't like the thought of someone sending me flowers and knowing my birthday and my mother's pet name for me. It had completely unnerved me, which I also hated because I figured that was probably the point of someone sending me black roses in the first place. By the time I met Katy for coffee after our last class of the day, I was a complete mess.
“I know you don't want to hear this, but what if the roses are from your mom?” Her forehead wrinkled as she said it, as if she half expected me to haul off and punch her in the face for even suggesting it.
The truth was, I had already considered that myself. Considered it and dismissed it. “She would never send me something so expensive,” I said. I pulled the note out of my backpack where I had stuck it inside my Economics book. “Black roses can't be cheap, and did you feel this paper? No, someone spent some money on this. Definitely not my mother.”
“What does this bottom part mean?” she asked. “What's Venom?”
“I'm not sure, but Hubbard is just south of here. I think this is close to the House of Blues,” I said. “There are a lot of clubs and bars down there. Maybe Venom is a bar.”
She started to speak, but I held my hand up, knowing what she was about to suggest.
“Not a chance,” I said.
“But—”
“No.” I slid the card back inside my book and pulled out a copy of today's newspaper. “I've actually been thinking maybe I'll stay in tonight. I don't really have the money to go out, anyway. I need to find a new job. Do you want to order pizza or something instead?”
I opened the paper and skimmed the help-wanted ads looking for something close to campus. I'd been working at a twenty-four-hour diner a couple of blocks north of our dorm for the past six months, but I'd had the privilege of being fired two days earlier.
It wasn't even my fault. One of my labs ran long and there was no way to sneak out without getting slammed with another absence. As much as I couldn't afford to lose my job, I definitely couldn't afford another absence in that class.
I was barely hanging onto my grades as it was. I had to maintain at least a B average to keep my financial aid and just one month into the first semester of my Senior year, I was already at risk of getting a C in two classes.
Of course, with my life, it was always a Catch-22. I was behind on my grades because I had to work nearly full-time to afford tuition and basics like, you know, food. But I was late for work because of class. Keeping things balanced was a nightmare and some days I felt more like a professional juggler than a college student. I resented people like Katy who didn't have to work at all. But I'd been making this work. Three long years of busting my ass to put myself through school all on my own. I wasn't about to watch it all go down the drain with less than a year left.
I needed to find another job.
“Pizza, are you kidding me?” she asked. “Seriously, what do you want to do? I told Jennifer and Ash I'd text them as soon as I knew where we were meeting up.”
“I'm not going out,” I said, burying my head deeper in the paper. Usually I was the first one up for a good time, but those roses had left me with a churning stomach. Besides, I was on the cusp of poverty.
Katy slammed her hand down on my newspaper and stared at me until I lifted my eyes to hers. “You can look for a job tomorrow,” she said. When I reached for the paper, she pulled it farther out of my reach and stuffed it in her purse. “Please. Just for one night, let's go out and have some fun, okay? I need this.”
I leaned back against my chair. “Well, as long as it's all about you,” I said. “That really takes the pressure off.”
She rolled her eyes and downed the rest of her coffee. “You know what I meant,” she said. “We've all been looking forward to taking you out tonight. It's going to be fun, I promise. Just give me one night. Let's let go of the stress of jobs and school and guys and all that bullshit and just have fun, okay? You deserve it. You've been working so hard lately. It'll be good for you.”
I sucked a deep breath in through my nose. I knew she was right. I really did need this. I was no fun when I was stressed and ever since the semester started, I'd been a big old ball of stress twenty-four-seven. Being without money and having no one to rely on sucked.
“I don't have any money,” I said.
“It's your birthday. We'll take care of everything. All you need to bring is you. Besides, you'll get a job. You always do.”
I could see the sympathy in her eyes, but I also knew she didn't truly understand what I was going through. She'd never had to work a day in her life, and if she ever needed money, all she had to do was call her mom. She had no idea how lucky she really was.
“Come out with us,” she said, taking my hands in hers. “I'm begging you. We don't have to go to that Venom place if you don't want to. We'll go to Smart Bar or something. I promise, we'll make it a night you'll never forget.”
