Shotgun Sorceress by Lucy Snyder

The Warlock pulled off the highway onto a dirt road running between two cornfields.

“This should be it,” he said, glancing down at the magic compass he’d brought along.

“Karen, you got Riviera’s token?”

“Right here,” she replied, patting the small white beaded purse in her lap. She was wearing a long-sleeved sea-green silk gown and long strings of pearls; the outfit must have dated back to the 1930s, and it looked good on her.

We got out of the Land Rover. The ground was soft and damp, so I was glad I wasn’t in high heels. The weird calliope music of my familiar Pal’s flying spell was loud overhead. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and began to follow Mother Karen and The Warlock down a corn row.

Cooper nudged my backpack. “You could leave that in the car, you know.”

“If something happens, it’s not going to do me a lot of good if it’s locked in the car a mile away.”

“The Seelies are probably just going to make you check it at the door.”

I shrugged. “Checked at the door is still closer than locked in the car.”

We came to a clearing where a battered old scarecrow hung crucified on a couple of rake handles. A cloud of dust rose as Pal touched down, and Cooper spoke an ancient word to turn off his invisibility.

A tin cup had been tied to the straw fingers of the scarecrow’s left hand.  When we got within ten feet of the scarecrow, my stone ocularis started to itch in my skull. I blinked through to the gemview that had shown me the invisible door in Karen’s back yard. I saw an odd double-image of the scarecrow and a set of bronze-reinforced oak doors big enough to admit an elephant.

Mother Karen dug the token — a small golden coin — out of her purse and stepped up to the scarecrow.  She dropped it in the tin cup. The scarecrow shuddered, the tattered old black suit expanding as it filled with ogrish bone and muscle. The creature broke the rake handles like straws and leapt to the ground, glowering at us with coal-black eyes.  It dumped the token out into a mottled, callused gray palm.

“Who seeks entry to our realm?” Its voice rolled like thunder.

Mother Karen stepped forward. “Karen Mercedes Sebastián, daughter of Magus Carlos Sebastián and Mistress Beatrice Brumecroft. And associates. We come at the invitation of Maga Riviera Jordan to dine with her at the tavern.”

He turned his baleful face toward me and pointed a long black claw at my ocularis. “We don’t like spies.”

“What? I’m not a spy.” My voice shook.

“Don’t try to be clever with that sight-stone, or someone will pluck it right out of your pretty head.”

I quickly blinked back to the gemview that showed the world simply as my flesh eye did. “Is this better?”

“It is acceptable.”

Still scowling, the scarecrow reached into the air where I had seen the bronze handles on the great oak doors. He pulled, and suddenly the doors were visible to the naked eye, swinging wide to reveal a twilight-dimmed forest lit by a huge harvest moon. A road of ancient silver coins sunk in the damp earth glittered before us. The evergreen trees swayed gently in a brush of night wind, and tiny glowing creatures flitted through the branches.

The air from the forest smelled of midnight’s denizens, deep dark earth and night-blooms headier than any liquor.

“Follow the silver path to the tavern,” the ogrish guardian ordered. “Stray from it at your own peril.”

“We better hold hands,” Cooper said. “Things can get pretty weird in Faery.”

We followed Mother Karen and the Warlock inside; Pal followed along behind us. The scarecrow shut the door after my familiar stepped onto the path, and almost instantly, the darkness seemed to solidify around us like a crush of unseen bodies just beyond arm’s reach, the breeze like soft cold fingers brushing across my shoulders and the nape of my neck. Cooper’s hand tightened around mine; I could tell he felt it, too.

“Girl …” a voice whispered.

I turned toward the sound, the will to simply not look somehow beyond me. A golden-haired young man stood in the trees, slender and pale, dressed only in a kilt of sheer material that left just enough to my imagination. I felt a dizzying, primal lust for him; he was everything I found physically sexy about Cooper amplified and intensified a dozen times over.

“Come here,” Golden-Hair said with a smile that made my legs turn to water. He knelt and plucked a dandelion and blew the feathery seeds at me. “I’ve got something to show you.”

Cooper’s hand was growing slick with sweat. I glanced at his face; he was turning red as he stared at Golden-Hair, looking equally embarrassed and angry. “Don’t listen to her,” he whispered, pulling me along.

“Don’t,” echoed Golden-Hair, suddenly appearing from behind a tree in front of us, his voice like windchimes. “Don’t just walk away … don’t you want to see what your man sees? Don’t you want to see what delightful things we could be doing, the three of us? All you have to do is take a little peek.”

“Don’t listen to it,” Pal warned inside my head. “It’s a trick. Stick to the path, no matter what.”

What are you seeing when you look at it? I asked Pal.

“I’d rather not say,” he replied.

Golden-Hair popped up in the wildflowers a few feet away from me, sitting cross-legged. “Boots? You wore nasty ol’ boots!” he cackled. “Who dressed you this morning, your father? He should have tied a bell around your neck, because you lumber like a dimwitted cow. I’ll bet your mother was some plow-pulling beast of burden your father turned into the shape of a woman after he couldn’t stop himself from rutting on her in the barn. I bet the Virtus Regnum cut her into steaks and ate her after they killed her.”

It paused, staring intently at the trails of smoke curling from my opera glove. My pulse was pounding in my head despite my attempt to breathe slowly and stay calm.

“Ooh, everyone hide, the cowgirl’s angry now! Stop chewing your cud and come over here! Show me who’s boss, Bossie. Come over and try to shut me up.”

For a long second, I thought about taking him up on his offer. My ocularis was itching like mad, but the scarecrow’s warning stopped me from blinking for a better look, stopped me from leaving the path. We weren’t here for me to get into a fight and endanger everyone else.

Golden-Hair kept after me, whispering seductions one moment and mockeries the next. I kept my gaze focused on the lost treasures imbedded in the path: ancient drachms of Hermaeus and Menander, shining argentus nummus, Ottoman akçe and Indian rupees, mottled Liberty dollars, plus dozens of exotic coins stamped with the pale faces of dead kings I’d never seen in any book.

Finally, the path ended at what at first looked like a vine-covered walls, but then I realized that the vines were the walls. The front door was a tall, thick oval mat of purple-flowered Clematis lianas hinged on living tendrils; it swung open with a swish of leaves and a creak of green wood, and we filed into the tavern, everyone looking relieved to be free of Golden-Hair.

I quickly realized that the entire tavern was built from still-living plants enchanted or artfully cultivated to form a functional architecture, although certainly not one that had much use for straight lines and 90-degree angles.  The interior walls and floor were formed by smooth, densely woven strangler figs. Ivory-barked trees rose like support columns for the leafy ceiling high above us, and luminous bracket fungi growing on the trunks cast a soft golden light throughout the rooms and passageways. Redwood-sized tree stumps served as tables, and the woody figs rose from the floor to form trestle benches and stools.

The patrons seated at the nearby tables were dressed in antique finery from various eras; they scarcely gave us a second glance. Looking at them straight on, they appeared perfectly human; glimpsed from the corner of my flesh eye, some became large insects, creatures of twisted bone, or strange fungal conglomerations. It was just a little unnerving.

A tall, beautiful woman in a diaphanous Aegean-blue chiton stepped toward us. Maybe she floated; I couldn’t really see her feet. She was like a nymph straight out of Greek mythology: her glossy black hair was piled in ringlets atop her head, and her skin was sun-bronzed. Her eyes were the color of storm clouds rolling over the ocean. She glanced briefly at my backpack, but didn’t seem the least bit concerned about it.

“Please follow me,” she said, her voice a rush of sea breeze through a mountain olive grove. “Your party awaits.”

She led us through a winding passage to a room with an enormous tree-table. Riviera Jordan, dressed in a silver gown and shawl, sat on the opposite side of the table, flanked by six Governing Circle agents in crisp black tuxedos.

“Y’all have a seat,” Riviera said, rising from her strangler fig bench. “We have a lot to talk about.”

We took our places at the table. At each setting was a single white, highly-polished plate; there were no glasses, no cutlery, no napkins. I at first assumed the plate in front of me was porcelain before I saw the fine, concentric grain beneath the shine.

“Wood?” I asked Cooper.

“Probably,” he replied. “Or maybe some kind of gourd or tuber.”

Riviera was busy looking over some papers in her lap, so as quickly and surreptitiously as I could, I lifted my plate and licked the edge.

Instantly, I was standing on a wind-blown hill, rearing back to shake off the horrible jabbering prairie apes clinging to my shaggy fur, trumpeting my anger and frustration to the sky as one of them scurried between my front legs and jabbed a sharpened stick up between my ribs –

– I managed to stifle a gasp as I came out of the death memory.

“It’s wooly mammoth tusk,” I told Cooper. “Very old.”

“Oh. Wow.” He gazed down at his plate, looking impressed. “I’ll be careful with it.”

And then I nearly dropped my plate when it spoke to me: “Now really, it doesn’t really seem very useful to lick me before the food’s been served, does it?”

An amused elfin face was staring at me from the surface of the plate.  I quickly set it back down on the table.

“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I was just trying to see what you were made of –”

“Rather nosy of you, don’t you think?”

“I’m very sorry. I wasn’t expecting sentient tableware.”

Plateface sighed dramatically and rolled its ivory eyes. “Apology accepted, I suppose. Beverage?”

“What?”

“A drink? You know, something liquid that helps the food go down and prevents unsightly choking?”

“Oh. Uh. Water will be fine.”

Another eyeroll. “Boring, yet vague. Do you want it hot? Iced? Room temperature? Sparkling? Paris bottled? Detroit municipal? Dipped from a Mongolian horse trough and filtered through a wool sock?”

I frowned. “I’ll take Evian natural spring water, no ice, forty degrees Fahrenheit.”

There came a faint cracking noise from the table. A straight green tendril sprouted from the polished surface. It quickly formed a large bud that elongated and split open to unfurl a spiral of waxy lavender leaves that fused and rose up into a vaselike hollow flower. The remains of the bud shell thickened into a sturdy green calyx base supporting the flower, which quickly filled with a clear liquid.

“Your water, mademoiselle,” said Plateface. “And for your meal you’d like …?”

I blurted out the first thing that popped into my head; I suppose I was partly jonesing for more of what I’d had for breakfast and partly channeling my wish to escape: “A Monte Cristo.”

Plateface sighed. “Still very, very vague. Do you want the whole sandwich dipped in batter and fried, or just the bread? And what kind of cheese?”

“Just the bread … and Swiss. No, wait, gruyere.”

“Since you seem indecisive, I’ll give you both. And the usual assortment of condiments.”

Plateface vanished, leaving me staring at the shiny blank ivory.

The table cracked again as a woody sprout erupted beside the plate.  In the space of a few seconds, it grew into a small bush that produced one large red bud and three smaller purplish buds.  The buds flowered into pretty blossoms that quickly shriveled, overtaken by swelling fruits covered in thick, veined skins. The big red fruit expanded like a balloon, steam rising from its green veins, until it ruptured with a pop! and a hot, sugar-dusted Monte Cristo sandwich toppled out onto my plate.  The other, smaller fruits dropped off the bush beside the sandwich and split open, revealing what looked like strawberry jam, honey mustard, and clotted cream.  A small branch I hadn’t noticed fell off the bush and dropped beside the plate; it had a single long, serrated bladelike leaf at its tip, and I realized it was meant to serve as a dinner knife. A large, velvety leaf sprouted on the plant and fell beside the twig knife: a napkin.

I’d been so focused on Plateface and my lunch plants that I hadn’t been paying any attention to how the others were faring. Beside me, Cooper was pulling the purple skin off a huge berry of shrimp carbonara; he had red wine in his drinking flower. The Warlock had a T-bone and a baked potato, and Mother Karen’s plant was dropping perfect little cucumber and smoked salmon tea sandwiches onto her plate. Pal was already gnawing on a large joint of some roast beast. Across the table, Riviera Jordan’s plant was growing and shedding a variety of leaves and vegetables to fill her plate with salad; her bodyguards had gotten burgers and other sandwiches.

I nudged Cooper and pointed at the crispy bits of bacon scattered amongst the shrimp on his fettuccini noodles. “Aren’t you worried about getting a death vision off those?”

“No more than you are, I guess.”

“What?”

He nodded at my sandwich. “That’s a Monte Cristo?”

“Yes?”

“Ham. Turkey.”

I stared at it. “Oh, crap, I forgot. I only remembered it had cheese on it.”

He laughed. “It’s faery food … I wouldn’t worry about it.”

I cut my sandwich in half with the twig knife and blew on it to cool it a little.  The bread was fluffy and moist under the crispy egg batter, and the inside was stuffed with cheese and turkey and shaved ham.  I bit off a corner, expecting a kick of pain, but felt absolutely nothing. It certainly looked and tasted like meat, but I might as well have been eating a napkin for all the spiritual residue it contained.

We finished our meals in relative silence. When most of us were finished, a handsome young man in a kilt of ivy leaves shuffled into the room. Each of his eyes was covered with a bright red poppy blossom, and his face was frozen in a smile. He began to uproot the spent dinner plants onto the dirty plates and clear the table. His hands moved fluidly one moment, jerkily the next.

Mother Karen stifled a gasp when the young man took her plate; I gave her a quizzical look.

“It’s Rick Wisecroft,” she mouthed at me.

Her prodigal foster son? No wonder he’d left her house so abruptly. Clearly he’d crossed the wrong people. I watched him more closely as he gathered up my plate; he moved like a marionette, and I saw thin silver chains on his wrists.

Mother Karen was staring at Rick, her face flushed, tears welling in her eyes; clearly she wanted to do something to rescue him from his slavery, but she couldn’t do anything without risking her own freedom and probably ours as well. I felt myself getting angry again. Given our warm reception in the woods, I doubted that getting Rick as our busboy was any accident. The Seelies really seemed intent on provoking us. Part of me wondered how they’d cope with a little incendiary ectoplasm, but the rest of me considered Rick’s predicament and realized that was a bad, bad idea.

© Lucy Snyder 2010

Writer’s Bio

Lucy A. Snyder is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the novels Spellbent and Shotgun Sorceress and the collections Sparks and Shadows, Chimeric Machines, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger. Her writing has appeared in Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, Hellbound Hearts, Masques V, Doctor Who Short Trips: Destination Prague, Chiaroscuro, GUD, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. She was born in South Carolina but grew up in San Angelo, Texas. She currently lives in Worthington, Ohio with her husband and occasional co-author Gary A. Braunbeck.

Want more? Check out our feature interview with Lucy Snyder on the Wicked Jungle Blog!

Fatal Circle by Linda Robertson

There was a time when Persephone Alcmedi thought her life was hard to manage, what with wondering how to make sure she took adequate care of both her grandmother and her foster daughter, Beverley, whether she’d end up in the unwanted pos

ition of high priestess of a coven, and whether her wærewolf lover, Johnny, would resist the groupies who hang

around his band Lycanthropia.

But that was before the fairies started demanding that Seph’s frightening, unpredictable ally—the ancient vampire Menessos— be destroyed . . . or the world will suffer. Seph and Menessos are magically bonded, but that’s a secret she dares not reveal to her fellow witches lest they be forced to reject her and forbid her use of magic. And, despite the strain this casts on her relationship with Johnny, as a showdown with the fairies nears, she and Menessos badly need the wærewolves as allies.

Life, death, and love are all on the line, but when destiny is calling, it doesn’t help to turn away. With the individual threads of their fates twisted inextricably together, can Seph, Johnny, and Menessos keep the world safe from fairy vengeance?

CHAPTER ONE

My living room clock read two-forty-six a.m. It was no longer Hallowe’en night, but All Hallows Day. Or, as some called it, All Saints’ Day. But it was no saint who held me in his arms—it was a wærewolf.

“I think you’d like my apartment, Red.” Red. That’s me. Persephone Alcmedi to the rest of the world. Seph to some. Red only to Johnny, my not-exactly-Big-Bad-wærewolf. “It has that open-living concept.”

I wasn’t fooled. “It’s a glorified dorm room, isn’t it?”

“If, by ‘glorified,’ you mean it has a private bathroom, then yes.” Johnny sniffed, affecting annoyance. “Something I sacrificed when I moved in here.”

I’d had to forfeit my home’s vampire defenses three weeks ago to save a friend’s life, Johnny had temporarily moved into the third-floor attic room—for protection purposes only. In the three weeks since, those defenses had since been reinstated, but he’d remained. Being the epitome of “tall, dark, and handsome,” I hadn’t complained.

“C’mon.” Johnny’s deep blue eyes glittered seductively. His voice dropped low. “Nothing’s more romantic than a bachelor pad.”

We’d both had a hell of an evening. Words like “hectic” or “demanding” didn’t begin to cover it. I must have been the only one suffering from fatigue.

His band, Lycanthropia, had played at the Hallowe’en Ball. Johnny was the vocalist and guitarist for the techno-goth-metal band, and he’d given his all on stage. He should have been as exhausted as I was.

Of course, I’d made quite an effort on that stage, too. I’d fought and killed a fairy in front of hundreds of witnesses who’d applauded afterward, thinking it simply part of the Hallowe’en show.

Killer fairies and rock-n-roll: that was only a small part of what we’d dealt with this evening.

“Do you honestly want to show me your apartment now?”

“My one bulb is burned out so there’s not much you’d actually see.” His lean-muscled arms slid around me. I felt so grounded and safe in his embrace. “But I promise, what you feel will make up for it.”

What Johnny wanted was crystal clear, and so was the reason why he thought going elsewhere was a good idea. I’d already mentioned my fears about the rest of the household learning we were intimate, so he was trying to keep the secret. At his apartment we could have assured privacy and we wouldn’t have to retire to separate bedrooms like we did here. Cuddling and sleeping together after sex would have been nice.

Apparently, to him, if we weren’t actually seen together we had plausible deniability. Not that my live-in grandmother, I call her Nana, would ever believe that we’d visited his apartment in the middle of the night just so he could give me the nickel tour.

Nana and my nine-year-old foster daughter, Beverley, were asleep in their bedrooms—each just a hall’s width from mine. The old saltbox farmhouse had paper thin walls. Even the layers between second-floor ceiling and attic floor lacked the ability to dampen noise. I’d heard Johnny playing his guitar up there when the little amplifier wasn’t cranked up to “1.”

Still, there were things he didn’t know. Like, “The lucusi is coming here at dawn, Johnny.”

He pulled me closer. He’d gotten a shower after the show, washing off the smell of leather stage-clothes and leaving only the cedar and sage that was his unique scent. “Had to try.”

His breath on my neck was warm, his voice just rough enough to catch in my ear and tingle down to my toes. Parts of me were suddenly insisting they didn’t qualify as weary. It made me reconsider the definition of tired. “It’s just so far to drive. All the way back to town, only to turn around and come back here by dawn.”

But people in the throes of new love did crazy things like that.

Did I just think the ‘L’ word?

I stiffened just as he suggested, “You could fly.”

He was right, I could. Due to my performance a few days earlier in the Eximium, a high priestess competition, I’d been inducted into the powerful lucusi led by the Eldrenne Xerxadrea that was due at dawn. A real witches broom was one of the perks. “But…”

“You don’t want to fly?” He nuzzled my neck.

“It isn’t that.” Running my fingers through his long , dark hair, I looked up—way up, he’s six-foot-two—and let him see I wanted him, too. “I have a better idea.”

“Do share.” Another nuzzle.

“There’s only one place in my house with any kind of soundproof privacy.” Tiptoeing, I kissed him lightly before answering. “Your kennel.”

“Oh, that is sooo hot.” He rubbed up and down my backside and couldn’t suppress his grin.

Carrying a lit jar candle and blankets, I led him outside and around the house. Johnny pulled the slanted metal doors open and I descended the concrete stairs.

While Johnny shut the cellar doors, I placed the candle in the middle of the floor and spread the blankets over the freshly straw on the floor of the cage. I glanced into the shadows at the door of the rearmost steel kennel. This was where his beast was unleashed, where the animal in him took over. A shiver of desire ran through me.

When I heard Johnny’s footsteps had reached the bottom stair, I asked over my shoulder, “I don’t suppose you could help me out of this costume?”

He stopped in his tracks.

I tugged on the lacings of the bell-sleeved velvet mid-driff bustier—part of my costume for the Ball—and smiled.

“Actually—” His voice was a little higher than he intended. He stopped to clear his throat and started over. “Actually, I can help with that.” He was by me in an instant, deftly working the knot. Seconds later, the fabric loosened and I took a satisfyingly deep breath. Then those skillful fingers touched the bare skin at my waist, thumbs drawing little circles. “Anything else I can help you out of?”

“I’m not technically out of this.”

“Oh,” he said softly. “My bad.” He began loosening the lace-up strings even more. “Up or down?”

Though I knew he meant should he lift the shirt over my head or push it down over my hips, I went with the word that had more impact. “Definitely up.”

He was so gentle, moving so slowly, careful of my hair and the mask. He was just removing my shirt, but he made it sensual, as if he were rubbing lotion all over me. Tanning lotion. The cellar was suddenly so warm I could have been standing in summer sunlight. The bustier fell into the blanket-covered straw at my feet.

As I kept my arms raised, Johnny placed my hands on the bars atop the open cage door, and squeezed my grip to indicate I should let them remain there.

His warm fingers traced every contour of my arms, slowly descending until he could brush my hair away from my ear on one side. He put the line of his body against the back of me and nuzzled against my ear. While he sucked gently on my earlobe, his hands shifted toward my breasts.

A trembling resonance fluttered up my spine. Heat was building low in my abdomen, and under my sternum. Sensations jolted through me like electricity, and all thought of tiredness fled.

Abruptly, the cellar door creaked open and crashed loudly against the ground outside. “I locked that,” Johnny muttered.

Someone was coming down the steps. We turned as one to see who—

Menessos.

Wolf’s Cross by S. A. Swann

Maria lives a simple life in a small Polish village, working for the lord of the nearby fortress. Motherless since birth, Maria has been raised by her father and stepmother. Around her neck she wears—as she has always worn—a silver crucifix, to protect her from the devil. Or so her father tells her.

But when a contingent of badly mauled Teutonic knights, including a handsome and gravely wounded young man named Josef, ask for succor at the fortress, Maria’s quiet and comfortable world shatters. For the knights are Wolfjägers, an order dedicated to the extermination of werewolves, and Maria, unknowingly, is one of the creatures they hunt. Only the crucifix about her neck prevents her body from changing into a lethal killing machine.

When Maria meets Darien, a wolfbreed bent on exacting a terrible revenge on humans, she will learn the truth about herself, and find her loyalties—and her heart—torn in two.

Read the Excerpt

Interlude : Anno Domini 1333

Her name was Lucina, and she didn’t remember who had named her.  She lived in the deepest woods east of Gród Narew, and lived mostly ignorant of the humans dwelling there.  The people who lived on the fringes of these woods, especially those whose families had spent generations in its shadow, knew of her and her kind.  Lucina’s ancestors haunted the tales that had been spoken of in hushed tones ever since the land had become Christian.

However, it had been a long time since Lucina had family.  And a long time since her kind haunted these woods in any numbers.  She was alone, and the tales of the old folks about wolves clothed in human skin had become less urgent, less of a deterrent for hungry men who needed to hunt for their family’s larder.

Lucina would watch these men as they made their weak attempts to hunt.  Sometimes she would watch with the eyes of a wolf, sometimes with the eyes of a raven-haired maiden.  She would watch them come into her wood, and more often than not, return empty-handed.

She watched, not out of any malice, but out of curiosity and a deep loneliness.  She was the last of her kind in these woods, and she thought perhaps the last of her kind anywhere.  These men who came to find game, they all had a home to go to.

Home was as alien a concept to Lucina as having to trap her prey or shoot it with an arrow.

Each winter, her despair grew deeper.  She would always be alone, and she envied these human women who sent their men out to parade in front of her.  Why?  What could these frail human women give that she could not?  She was stronger then they were, faster, and a better hunter than these poor men. . .

It was not long before she decided that there was no reason she couldn’t have what they had.  When she decided this, Lucina studied these men with a new eye, looking for someone she could love, and could love her back.  She watched how they moved, how they hunted, how they carried their kill.

And only days into the winter, when the snow barely dusted the needle floor of her woods, she saw the man who would become her mate.  This man had broad shoulders and a stature above all the others who braved her forest.  He carried a masculine scent that made Lucina lick her lips in anticipation.

This was the man who would free her from her solitude.

#

When Karl met her, a light snow was falling.  Lucina stood in a clearing, white dusting a red cloak she had stolen from a cottage close-by to the woods.  She smiled at him from under the hood, smelling him, watching him.

She stood between him and a dead hart.  The freshly killed animal lay sprawled in the snow, slowly leaking blood from the wound Lucina had torn from its neck.

“What is this?”  He asked.  “Who are you and why are you alone in the woods?”

“My name is Lucina,” she said, her voice horse from so long without speech.  “These woods are where I live.”

“It is dangerous, the animal that killed that deer may still be about.”

She walked up to him and placed a hand on his chest.  When the cloak parted, it became obvious that the cloak was the only thing she did wear.  His breath caught, and in his scent Lucina could tell he did not dislike what he saw.  She leaned forward and whispered, lips brushing his ear, “The kill is mine.”

He didn’t move, didn’t speak, as her hand found its way under his shirt.  “Do you wish some of it?”

“That is your kill?”

“I smelled it, tracked it, and tore its life-blood free with my own teeth.”  She licked his ear tasting his sweat, smelling the first hint of fear.

“What are you?” He asked.

“You know,” she said, “these are my woods.”  She caressed him, running her hand down the side of his chest.  “Do you want a share of my kill?”

“What are you asking?”

“A leg perhaps?  The meat would feed several mouths.”

“You would give that to me?”

She brought her face around in front of his, their lips a finger’s breadth apart, “In return for something.”

“What?”

Her hand traveled lower, into his breeches.

“Respite from my loneliness,” she said before she kissed him.

I may have been fear, or shock, the thought of a hungry family, or simply the heat of Lucina’s skin so close to his own.  It may have been the fact that her loneliness was manifest in every word she spoke.  It may have just been the fact that Karl was a man, and men are weak.

Whatever the reason, any or all, Karl did not pull away from Lucina when he could have.  He tasted her mouth, and let her place his hand on her naked bosom.  Her cloak fell away and she led him down to the snow-covered earth and buried him under the weight of her solitude.

He came to her many times that winter, and each time her heart grew fuller at his presence.  To him, she was a secret vice, a spirit that lived in another world of trees, and snow, bloody carcasses, and lovemaking in the snow.  To her, he was a reason to live, a joy, a lover and a husband in what sense she could understand the term.  They spoke little, he walking in his dream, she drinking in obsession beyond words.

There was no doubt in Lucina’s growing heart, that the next time Karl came to embrace her, he would tell her that he would stay.  It was that hope that carried her trough the depth of winter.  And it was that hope that slowly died in the spring.

As the snow melted, and the ground softened, the men who braved these woods stayed upon their plots of land to till the soil and grow the harvest that would keep them and their people through the next winter.  There was no one to explain this to Lucina, for all the watching of the men in the forest, to all the listening to their language, she didn’t understand.  All she knew was that as the first buds grew, her Karl did not return to her.

Many times she stood, in her red cloak, next to some beast she had taken.  She attacked larger and larger prey, as if Karl might be enticed back; bucks, a bull elk, a mountain cat, a bear.

As the months passed, her heart shrank, and her belly grew.

And as summer became verdant, and Karl’s seed grew large within her, her heart grew black and cold.  She had been cast aside in worse isolation than the loneliness she had thought to escape.  As gravid as she became, it became impossible for her to change, to run as a wolf does.  Hunting became difficult, and she became gaunt.

When she gave birth, it was with blood and screams and the rending of flesh.  However, she survived, as she could bear far more injury and insult than any human woman.  Three children she had, all girls.  And as she licked the blood off of Karl’s daughters, she decided that Karl would have to come help care for them.  And that meant she had to take away any reasons he had for staying away.

#

She found Karl’s farm in the midst of a horrible storm at the end of harvest season.  Ice fell like needles from a sky boiling and black as ink.  The wind howled and bit with a force that felt as if it could tear flesh from bone.

Her howls were louder than the storm, louder than the thunder.  Karl heard her cries as he huddled with his family around the fire in their cottage.  At first he didn’t want to admit to himself that he knew what made those terrible, terrifying sounds.

But he knew.

Even though he had never seen his dreamlike winter lover in other than her human guise, he knew.  Just as he knew that his trysts were no dream, and the wood where they had happened no fairyland.

He had bought more than meat, and at a much dearer price.

Karl took an axe and told his wife to protect their young son, to bar the door and shutters, and let no one in before morning.  Not even him.  Then he left the cottage to face the beast that cried for him in the storm.

She stood in front of the cottage, waiting for him.  She was naked, but no longer human.  Lips that had bore his kisses were curled in the lupine snarl of a feral she-wolf.  The hands that had caressed him were now dark-furred and long-fingered, ending in hooked claws.  The legs that had straddled his body were now the crooked legs of a wolf.

He didn’t want to know her.  He wanted this apparition to be something new and strange to him.  But he looked into her eyes, and he knew who he faced, and what.

“You left me,” her voice, always rough from lack of use, came out of her lupine throat as little more than a growl.

“I had to tend the harvest.”  The words were empty in Karl’s mouth.  She had come to him, true.  She had been the one to place her lips on his— but he never pulled away.  He had never said that he had a family, a wife, a son.  He had pretended that because the situation was unreal, that it wasn’t real.  That because she wasn’t human, it didn’t matter.

And the horror he felt was more for what he had done than for the monster standing in front of him.  She panted, steam rising from her muzzle as lightning carved highlights from black ice-matted fur.

“You left me alone, with child.” She growled and took a step toward him.  His axe dangled impotent from his hands and he shook his head, trying to deny the truth of the allegation.

“I didn’t know,” he said finally, as knives made of falling ice scoured the tears from his cheeks.

“I birthed your whelps, alone in a cave, and swaddled them in the skin of a bear I had killed. . . for you.”  She stood before him, barely taller than he, and starvation thin, but still seeming to loom over him.  He felt her breath on his face as she growled lowly.

“I didn’t know,” he said, as if those were the only words left he knew.

“You will care for our children.”

She stared into his face, the head of a starved she-wolf, ice matting her fur into spikes, muzzle wrinkled into a snarl.  But the eyes were hers, and in them he saw the pain, the loneliness.

“Yes.”

The creature before him froze, as if she couldn’t quite understand his words.  Her muzzle lost its snarl as she pulled back from him.  “You will come back with me.  To your daughters.”

“I will go with you,” Karl said.  He thought of his wife and child, barricaded in the cottage.  He couldn’t leave them to the anger of this beast.  Better that the she-wolf received what she wanted, what he implicitly promised her.

“You will come back?  With me?”  The voice softened in her inhuman mouth, and her eyes shone from more than melted ice.  In a flash of lightning, Karl may have seen one side of her mouth pull up in a melancholy smile.  “Our children are beautiful.”

“Take me to them,” he said, all the time thinking of his wife and son, in the cabin.

In a moment of fear and weakness, he glanced back.  He knew it was a mistake as soon as he turned his head, because he could hear Lucina growl.

“Liar.”

He turned back and said, “No I—”

She backhanded him in the chest, a blow that knocked him rolling into the icy mud of the path.

“Liar!”  She shrieked at him, jaws snapping at air.  When the lightning lit her face, he saw nothing but fury.

He raised a hand, hoping to pull back the thread of hope he had seen in her eyes a moment ago.  “No, I will—”

She pounced on him, knocking him to the ground, pressing his shoulders to the ground with her massive clawed hands.  “You will tire of me, like you always have.  You will come back with me, but you will leave.  Like you always have.  You will always come back here.”

“No, not this time.”

In another flash of lightning, he saw her lupine mouth smiling again, but this time it was the rictus grin of death staring down at him, dripping saliva onto his cheek that burned in contrast to the icy needles of the storm.  She bent down so her muzzle was next to her ear, lips brushing him as they had the first time they met.  “No,” she whispered, “not this time.”

She leapt off of him, growling words that had lost their meaning in her fury.  To his horror, she ran to his cottage.

His wife.  His son.

The sudden threat drove all thought of his own guilt away.  The woman Lucina had been was wiped from his mind as he saw this atavistic shadow bearing down on his family.  As she attacked the door, slamming herself against the splintering wood, he pulled his axe out of the mud and ran after her.

Strong as she was, she had been weakened by her troubled childbirth and months of hunger.  Were she the same Lucina that greeted Karl in the woods, naked under her red cloak, the door would have given way with a single blow, but now she splintered one board at a time, reaching in with a furred arm to cast aside the bar sealing the door.

Karl came upon her as her shoulder pressed against the hole she had smashed between the planks of the door.  She turned her head to see him, and as the axe came down on her neck, he saw resignation in her eyes.

The first blow was grave, an awful wound tearing through her neck, spilling her life out over frozen black fur.  Had she run then, she might have survived, healed from even such a massive insult.  She didn’t run.  Instead, she used all her strength to say to words to Karl through her damaged throat.  The words came in a froth of blood.

“Our children.”

The second blow came down before Lucina’s weakened body could begin to seal the damage from the first.  The third took Lucina’s life.  The fourth was just the formality that completely removed her head from her body.

#

Karl left his wife, and son, and his dead lover, to find his daughters.  He slogged through the ice storm, deep into the dark woods, to the clearing where he had made his trysts with the wolf.  As he searched he raged and cried, cursed himself, and Lucina, and God.  As he stumbled in the dark he selfishly hoped for the peace death would bring him.

Then he heard an infant’s cry.

He found them in a shallow hollow in a hillside, wrapped in the raw hide of a bear that smelled foul with decay.  For two infants, it was already too late.  Their bodies were blue and cold.  The last child was pink, and healthy, and screamed as the ice bit its skin.

He brought all three home, the tiny corpses slung across his back in their rotting bearskin.  His one living daughter he carried tightly inside his shirt so she would have his body for warmth.  When he came home, the storm had broken, and a cold dawn had begun chasing clouds from the sky.

Writer’s Bio

S A. Swann is married and lives in the Greater Cleveland area where he has lived all of his adult life. He has a background in mechanical engineering and— besides writing— works as a Database Manager for one of the largest private child services agencies in the Cleveland area. He has published over 20 novels over the past 17 years with two more coming over the next year.

For more fun reading check out the Author Spotlight on S. A. Swann.

Demon’s Are a Girls Best Friend by Linda Wisdom

DEMONS ARE A GIRL’S BEST FRIEND

By Linda Wisdom

Chapter 1

Oh yeah, just another Saturday night hitting the clubs, watching the dancers, feeling blood stream out of my ears.” Maggie O’Malley winced as Static-X’s Destroyer screamed from the state-of-the-art speakers embedded in the club’s walls. Still, she couldn’t stop her hips from moving to the throbbing music. If she wasn’t there on business she would have been out there dancing. “Why don’t you just shoot me now?”

“Any females get naked yet?” the voice of Frebus, one of her team members, rumbled from the mic in her ear. “It’s only a matter of time ’til somebody gets caught up in the moment and starts tearing off their clothes. You gotta love shapeshifters cuz they’re always the first to get down and dirty.”

Maggie played idly with the crystal earring that dangled almost to her bare shoulders. She considered her jewelry a much better look for a mic and earpiece than the usual spy gear. If only she could mute the music for an hour. Or ten.

“Sorry sweetie, I’m only seeing half-naked, but think positive. The evening’s still young.” She grinned as she heard the low groan in her ear. Frebus and her other backup, Meech and Tita, were strategically placed around the interior, on the lookout for one particular degenerate in the sea of questionable characters.

She made her way through the hordes of glassy-eyed, gyrating dancers, skillfully avoiding the groping hands on her ass and breasts. She muttered a spell against any who returned for another feel. Nothing like a magickal zap to the genitals to spoil the mood. Judging from the yelps that followed her there were at least five who tried.

Maggie didn’t believe in giving anyone a second chance.

She viewed the large creature-populated underground club with an expression of distaste and the desire for her olfactory senses to be on the fritz.

“Haven’t some of these guys ever heard of deodorant?” she muttered, passing one scaly creature that fell in the ‘totally gross’ category. It peered at her through red slitted eyes and hissed, its forked tongue flicking toward her. Maggie hissed back and moved on.

The club’s name, Damnation Alley, fit the interior with its glossy black walls, black glass bars pulsing with neon, ice blue and black lights casting an unearthly glow on the preternaturals thronging the interior. Any unlucky human who managed to get past the door didn’t exit in a body bag or someone’s stomach.

She’d hoped to spend tonight with a bowl of popcorn and DVDs at home, but one of her team members got word that a fugitive they’d been after for the past month would be at the club tonight. Maggie and her team were sent here to bring it in.

She locked gazes with a vampire she remembered going up against a year ago. He flashed fang. She responded with a smile that promised a repeat of what had happened before. The vamp wisely turned away.

At first glance, Maggie looked like a typical party gal in her barely there black skirt and bandeau top. Shiny silver glitter accents covered the fabric that bared her shoulders and taut midriff and only she knew of the protective spells woven into the fabric. A dazzling diamond-encrusted black widow spider with ruby eyes was tattooed on one bicep. Dangerous bling. Don’t leave home without it. Her chin length pale blonde hair was sleeked back with glittery gel, making her features look sharper than usual tonight. She smiled at one man, who focused his attention on her mile long legs ending in black stilettos.

Maggie believed in themes and tonight it was dangerous sexy female on the prowl. The better to destroy you with, my dear.

She cast her senses wide, searching for her prey. Her gaze skittered to a halt when it reached a man standing in the doorway leading to the private rooms.

A few inches taller than her almost six feet, he was also dressed in black, but he didn’t look like the typical club goer. The silk shirt and slacks looked well-tailored and suited his tanned skin, dark eyes, and spiked hair. He oozed danger. Judging by the hungry looks women were directing his way, they didn’t mind the danger part at all. Maggie didn’t miss that most of the females were much more generously endowed than she was. She normally didn’t mind her slender athletic figure, but there were times it would be nice to have more to stuff into her bra than a middling B cup.

No time to play, pretty boy. Maggie’s got other creatures to fry. But stick around and maybe we can fit in a dance later on.

What a concept. Your everyday witch having an evening out where she could flirt with a gorgeous guy, get in some dancing, and just talk. When was the last time she’d had a date? Did she have enough fingers and toes to count back that far?

She purposely looked away until her stare slammed into an odd looking creature standing at the rear bar.

“Okay, that thing is butt ugly.” Maggie noted the bloated body dressed in rags. She was positive he wouldn’t smell all that good either. Not that it seemed to bother those around him.

“Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, blondie,” Meech’s disembodied voice reminded her. She caught a glimpse of the big blue-skinned monster on the other side of the room, guarding a side door. He was grinning as his voice continued through the mic. “While some think you’re smokin’, all I see is that you’re damn scrawny, your nose is out of place, and those pearly whites aren’t jagged enough, plus they’re not healthy unless they’re gray or yellow.”

“Aw, baby, you know just what to say to make a girl feel good about herself.” She took a quick glance down to make sure the girls were at their best advantage. Nothing like giving a perp something to look at while she takes him down.

Not that anyone around here would notice. They’d just think it was another S&M show. Another thing Damnation Alley was known for. Although at present she didn’t notice all the sex shows that had gone on here when Ratchet owned the club.

“Oh Frebus, you bring me to the classiest of places,” she purred.

“Better than that tavern two months ago. Plus, this one needs to be put down before he causes any more trouble. Him being here tonight is pure luck for us.”

“Just stay on alert in case I need back up. Bloaters aren’t the type to go quietly.” Maggie put her hips to work as she glided over to the bar. She could feel the dark-haired man’s eyes on her with a searing intensity, but she kept him on the back burner.

“Hi.” She flashed her sultriest smile at her quarry.

The creature looked up, revealing a puce-colored fleshy face, round chartreuse eyes, and a dark slit for a mouth.

“You are witch.” His hissing words resembled a serpent’s sound as he looked at her from the top of her head to the tips of her shoes.

“No one’s perfect.” She rested an arm on the bar top, acting as if the putrid stench emanating from his skin didn’t assault her olfactory senses. “Buy me a drink?”

“Witches do not drink maiden grog.” His gray claws wrapped around a clay goblet.

“The main element in the grog is a virgin’s urine,” Tita whispered in her earpiece.

Maggie’s smile didn’t slip even as her brain screamed euuwwww!

“You’d be surprised what I drink.” She cocked a delicate brow. “They have private rooms here.” She ran a scarlet polished nail over his claws while moving forward enough to brush her breasts against his arm.

At the same time the creature’s gaze fastened on her bare skin, she whipped iron-laced restraints out and slapped them on his wrists.

“You bitch!”

“Aw, now you’re just sweet talking me.”

The Bloater roared, rearing back and striking her with his chained claws, sending her sailing up onto the top of the bar.

Maggie didn’t have time to react, finding herself thrown down the slippery slab. Drinks scattered everywhere and ear-splitting shrieks rose above the din. As she slid to a stop, she saw her quarry trying to escape, scrambled to her feet, and ran after him while others tried to stop her.

“Cerberus Guard!” she shouted, even as she knew there would be those who didn’t appreciate the authorities being there.

Before her prey reached an exit door, Maggie launched herself with a leap worthy of a football player and tackled him to the floor.

“You are under arrest,” she began even as she realized he was inflating like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon, and it didn’t look like he intended stopping any time soon.

“We’re on our way!” she heard Frebus shout from her earring.

The second her three team members shouldered their way through the watching crowd, Maggie’s prisoner had reached the breaking point.

And that’s when he blew up, splattering pea-green goo everywhere.

###

“‘Easy peasy,’ he says.” Maggie’s fulminating glare sliced through the hulking creature shuffling beside her as she and Frebus crossed the parking lot to the waiting SUV. Everyone else stayed out of range as the thick liquid dripped off her body. No wonder. She’d be a mile away if someone was walking around with Bloater goop on them. “‘It’s just a Bloater. We’ll be in and out in seconds. No one will even notice what’s going on. No mess,’ he assures me.” Her fingers flicked angry magick in his direction.

He hunched his shoulders up around his large head. “Intel told me—”

“Your Intel sucks rocks.” A shower of said stones rained on the furry beast. She wiped the pea-green liquid cement from her chest. A few muttered words turned it to puke green ash. She wasn’t happy she couldn’t do the same to the glop that coated her skirt and top. No way she’d go naked in front of her crew. “Frebus, I am not happy about this. Plus, he managed to explode, so I don’t have anything to take back but this!” She flicked the glop at him.

He hung his head in shame, his shaggy blond fur draped around his wide face.

“Where do I send the bill?” A new voice reached her from behind.

Maggie’s temper was already at the boiling point. Turning around to face the sexy man she had locked eyes with in the club was all she needed, considering her look was now somewhat less than “dangerous sexy female.” She only wished they could have danced before she got slimed.

“I am impressed, Cerberus Guard,” he commented. “You were in my club barely ten minutes and you managed to destroy one of my bars and the surrounding walls.”

“Two words. Soap and water.”

His dark eyes glinted with laughter under the orange phosphorous lights that dotted the parking lot.

“Is this something you do on a regular basis? If so, I will have to look into sturdier furniture. I’m also curious. Where exactly did you hide those restraints?” His gaze swept over her with an alarming thoroughness. “Tell me something. Do people tell you you look cute when you’re carrying a weapon?”

“Not if they don’t want to end up seriously hurt.”

Maggie walked toward the man. Her nostrils flared as she caught the faintest hint of sulfur before it drifted away to be replaced by a whiff of sandalwood and male.

Demon blood.

“And you are?” She already knew he wouldn’t reveal his true name, since demons held them close to the vest. A body held too much power if they knew a demon’s real name.

“Declan.”

His voice washed over her head like a warm shower. Not good at all.

Says you. The words raced across her skin, meaning Elegance, her spider tattoo, was making her feelings known.

She lifted her chin.

“Declan what?”

“Just Declan.” He tucked his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. Just another guy looking to make time with a pretty girl who just happened to splatter Bloater goop all over the main floor of his club. Oh well, no one’s perfect.

“And demon.”

His eyes flashed silver for a moment. “No one’s perfect… witch.”

“Aw, and here we were just getting to know each other.”

“Are you this brave when your muscle isn’t close by?” Declan asked, his gaze briefly resting on the creatures lounging against the SUV.

A smattering of laughter and guffaws sounded.

Maggie waved a hand. Bubbles of protective power enclosed each team member, but Declan had no doubt that they didn’t hide behind the protection if their leader was in trouble.

“I’m the muscle, sweetheart. But I wouldn’t discount my backup, because they don’t like it if anyone makes me cranky.” She cocked a shapely hip. “I suggest you vet your clientele more thoroughly if you don’t want further visits from the Guard.”

“We don’t exactly run background checks.” His dark gaze wandered over her body, sending prickly heat along her nerve endings. “Perhaps you’d care to come back in for a drink and we could discuss how to better safeguard my club?”

She glanced toward the door where the oversized guard stood glaring at her. “The Cerberus Guard is always ready to protect those that need our skills. Anyone in the Houston area knows where we’re based and how to contact us. And once we’ve finished our job …”

Maggie’s smile brightened as she lifted her hand and snapped her fingers. The parking lot lights winked out leaving the area in darkness, as though a heavy blanket had dropped over the area.

“Fuck me!” Declan widened his eyes and even then he couldn’t see a thing.

Before he could draw a second breath, the lights came back on.

Maggie and her team were gone.

His shoulders shook with his laughter. “I must say the witch knows how to make an exit.”

Writer’s Bio

Linda Wisdom was born and raised in Huntington Beach, California. She majored in Journalism in college then switched her major to Fashion Merchandising when she was told there was no future for her in fiction writing. She held a variety of positions ranging from retail sales to executive secretary in advertising and working for a personnel agency.

Her career began when she sold her first two novels to Silhouette Romance on her wedding anniversary in 1979. Since then she has sold more than eighty novels and one novella to six publishers. Her books have appeared on various romance and mass market bestseller lists and nominated and winning a number of Romantic Times awards and Romance Writers of America Rita Award. A number of Linda’s backlist, including her Hex paranormal series, has been optioned for film and television.

She lives with her husband, Barney, spoiled mini white Schnauzer, Syd, an equally spoiled parrot and Florence, her tortoise with attitude in Murrieta, CA

Want More? Check out the Linda Wisdom Author Spotlight.

Dark Oracle by Alayna Williams

TARA SHERIDAN HAS A GIFT . . . AND IT ALMOST KILLED HER.

As a criminal profiler, Tara used science and her intuitive skill at Tarot card divination to track down the dangerous and depraved, including the serial killer who left her scarred from head to toe. Since that savage attack, Tara has been a recluse. But now an ancient secret society known as Delphi’s Daughters has asked for her help in locating missing scientist Lowell Magnusson. And Tara, armed with her Tarot deck, her .38, and a stack of misgivings, agrees to try.

Tara immediately senses there is far more at stake than one man’s life. At his government lab in the New Mexico desert, Magnusson had developed groundbreaking technology with terrifying potential. Working alongside the brusque but charismatic agent Harry Li, Tara discovers that Magnusson’s daughter, Cassie, has knowledge that makes her a target too. The more Tara sees into the future, the more there is to fear. She knows she has to protect Cassie. But there may be no way to protect herself—from the enemies circling around her, or from the long-buried powers stirring to life within. . . . Read more

Stripped by Marcia Colette

Alexa Wells wants her life back. She’s just not sure what that life was. The memories inside her head—a stripper’s—aren’t hers, and before she humiliates herself onstage one more time, she sets out to collect the scattered pieces of her mind. The trail leads to Boston, charges of identity theft and murder, and the real bombshell: a forgotten werewolf lover who insists she’s a werewolf hybrid.

Matt York doesn’t care that she looks at him like he’s been smoking crack between court cases. Now that he has her back he’s not about to let her go it alone, even if she can easily kick ass and take names all by herself. Amnesia only scratches the surface of her problems, and like it or not, she’s stuck with him.

She’s also stuck with Robert Gamboldt, a venture capitalist who’s not above murdering his way to the top. He’s not about to lose his prize possession without playing dirty. It’s a simple enough offer. Be his personal assassin, or go to jail.

With options like that, it’s enough to make a hybrid go full-blood.

Warning: Delicious sexual tension with a werewolf who’ll wait as long as it takes for his hybrid werewolf mate to come around.

Free Excerpt: Stripped

Matt’s wild scent came through like fresh cologne. I smelled him all the way over the railing and into the bushes where he had disappeared.

Woods enveloped my surroundings. I leaped over large boulders and rotted stumps, following his trail. Strange that I honed in on it among the woodsy scents. I could even pick out the fresh rabbit trails and deer that had left crisscross paths along the ground. When I came to a small ravine, I slid down the incline and splashed into the frigid brook at the bottom. Matt’s scent had disappeared, but I continued in a straight line anyway. There was no reason why he’d head downstream unless another animal was after him and he wanted to lose the scent. Grabbing a thick root, I climbed up the opposite side of the hill.

I stopped and whiffed the air. Still, no male wolf smell. Damn. Maybe my senses were wrong after all.

Stupid as it sounded, my instincts urged me to go down on all fours. It was a good thing I was in the middle of the forest or I’d never have lived this down. After dropping to my knees, I pressed my face close to the earth and sniffed around for a scent. I must have looked like a wild woman raised by dogs, pushing my way through leaves and twigs.

A smell hit me. On the smooth surface of a small rock, I found a piece of Matt. Excited, I continued searching, picking up more and more until I found the right direction again. I hopped to my feet and darted through a thick copse.

Branches and twigs snagged my sweats and pricked my calves. Twice, I tripped on rocks and thick roots, but they didn’t stop me. I needed to find him before that maniac hunter put a bullet in his ass. I was sure he wasn’t hurt or I would’ve smelled blood on the air.

Something about this experience brought back pieces of my dreams with me running through the woods. I half-expected a pack of wolves to filter out of the shadows and run with me. They didn’t, of course, but in a way, I wished they had. At least those shadows were friendly. Heaven only knew what awaited me out here.

A black wolf leaped from a band of thick foliage. I stopped and threw my back against the nearest tree, cold bark biting into my back.

Matt—my gut said it was him—growled. His ears flattened on his canine head and his lips peeled back to reveal a set of serrated teeth. The only signs of his human half were in his mahogany eyes. However, with the searing hatred burning through them now, I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure about that.

He lunged.

I ducked to the right and threw my fists in front of me, ready to fight him off. I guess I was wrong about anything human behind those eyes once he had turned into a wolf.

Matt landed somewhere behind my tree. A man screamed and stumbled backward. The wolf’s powerful jaws remained clamped around his assailant’s arm. Jerking his head from side to side, he hung on until bones cracked like a person biting into an apple. The yanking had turned into a pull as he tore the arm off and let it fall to the ground. Matt lunged at the man’s throat, silencing his horrific screams.

The savagery of his kill bothered me, though I knew it shouldn’t. If my dreams were correct, I had killed a few werewolves of my own, only I didn’t have sharp teeth to do it with. However, that cute butt and those adorable dimples didn’t seem cute anymore. Part of him was human, but full acceptance meant choosing the beast inside him too. That scared me. I didn’t want to be a savage like that.

Matt stumbled away from the unmoving body. In fact…he stumbled a lot.

Any doubts I had left me. I ran to him and dropped to my knees.

A whine came through his closed muzzle as he walked with a slight limp. Whenever he stopped moving, he lifted his left paw off the ground or barely let it touch.

“Come here, you big baby.” I snatched him by the scruff of his neck and buried his head between my breasts. That might be just the thing he needed to calm down. “Let me see.”

He groaned and pulled away. I got rough with him this time. Matt tripped into me, so I wrapped one arm around his neck and held him still. He was a powerful animal, but I held my own and examined his shoulder. Maybe this was the best way to respect the wolf side of him. Through power and strength, seeing as he seemed to understand that most.

Blood matted his fur. At first, I thought it was from the man he had killed, but even after I cleaned it with my fingers, more appeared. Jagged pieces of skin about the size of a quarter kept pooling with blood. It looked like a graze, which meant he’d be okay. If he were human. Being a werewolf, I couldn’t be sure.

“You need to change,” I said. “You up to it?”

This time, Matt pulled away and settled down on his belly. His head lowered between his front legs and he closed his eyes.

His fur rippled. Seconds later, something began slithering underneath his bubbling coat. Several cracks jolted his legs and back. His tail was the first to go. It began receding into his tailbone until it disappeared. His face broke in several different spots just as his pointed ears began to round off and shrink back to where they were level with his eyes. Clawed paws elongated into fingers, thumb pressing out on the sides. With the exception of his head, his black hair had thinned out like a man balding on a time-lapse camera.

Minutes later, a naked man lay on the ground with one leg bent and the other one sticking straight out at me. Had the circumstances been less urgent, I might have sat there and admired the view.

I got to my feet and hurried to his side. The graze on his shoulder was just that. Although it looked like a nasty burn, at least he’d live. The sissy. He was probably faking just to get my attention.

I combed my fingers through his sweaty hair. More sweat covered his body, glistening under the half-moon sky. Human or werewolf, the man was gorgeous. Not only that, he had saved my life.

Matt mumbled something. His head lifted and he looked at me with a lethargic gaze.

Paranormal author Marcia Colette was born in upstate New York and holds a bachelors degree in biomedical engineering and a masters degree in information technology. She is now living in the south again in the lovely state of North Carolina with her mom and beautiful daughter.

Marcia is a member of the Horror Writers Association, Paranormal Mystery Writers, and Romance Writers of America. The best place to find her is on her blog (marciacolette.wordpress.com) where she loves connecting with readers and other writers. Conferences/conventions where sci-fi, fantasy, and horror reign supreme are a good bet, too, along with the occasional romance conference.

Read more of Stripped! Buy your print or ebook copy today on Amazon.com.

Mind Games by Carolyn Crane

Mind Games heroine Justine Jones isn’t your typical kick-ass type – she’s a hopeless hypochondriac whose life is run by fear.

She’s lured into a restaurant, Mongolian Delites, by tortured mastermind Sterling Packard, who promises he can teach her to channel her fears. In exchange, she must join his team of disillusionists – vigilantes hired by crime victims to zing their anxieties into criminals, resulting in collapse and transformation.

Justine isn’t interested in Packard’s troupe until she gets a taste of the peace he can promise. Soon she enters the thrilling world of neurotic crime fighters who battle Midcity’s depraved and paranormal criminals.

Eventually, though, she starts wondering why Packard hasn’t set foot outside the Mongolian Delites restaurant for eight years. And about the true nature of the disillusionists. Read more

Embers by Laura Bickle

Truth burns.

Unemployment, despair, anger–visible and invisible unrest feed the undercurrent of Detroit’s unease. A city increasingly invaded by phantoms now faces a malevolent force that further stokes fear and chaos throughout the city.

Anya Kalinczyk spends her days as an arson investigator with the Detroit Fire Department, and her nights pursuing malicious spirits with a team of eccentric ghost hunters. Anya–who is the rarest type of psychic medium, a Lantern–suspects a supernatural arsonist is setting blazes to summon a fiery ancient entity that will leave the city in cinders. By Devil’s Night, the spell will be complete, unless Anya–with the help of her salamander familiar and the paranormal investigating team –can stop it.

Anya’s accustomed to danger and believes herself inured to loneliness and loss. But this time she’s risking everything: her city, her soul, and a man who sees and accepts her for everything she is. Keeping all three safe will be the biggest challenge she’s ever faced. Read more

Vicious Circle by Linda Robertson

Being a witch doesn’t pay the bills, but Persephone Alcmedi gets by between reading Tarot cards, writing her syndicated newspaper column, and kenneling werewolves in the basement when the moon is full–even if witches aren’t supposed to mingle with wolves. She really reaches the end of her leash, though, when her grandmother gets kicked out of the nursing home, and Seph finds herself in the doghouse about some things she’s written. Then her werewolf friend Lorrie is murdered…and the high priestess of an important coven offers Seph big money to destroy the killer, a powerful vampire named Goliath Kline. Seph is a tough girl, but this time she bites off more than she can chew. She needs a little help from her friends–werewolf friends. One of those friends, Johnny, the motorcycle-riding lead singer for the techno-metal-Goth band Lycanthropia, has a crush on her. And while Seph has always been on edge around this 6′2″ leather-clad hunk, she’s starting to realize that while their attraction may be dangerous, nothing could be as lethal as the showdown that awaits them. Read more