Alejandro's Sorceress Page 8

  “This we worry about much, much later,” Alejandro said firmly.

  She laughed and kissed him with all the love in her heart, and then she shared another secret. “So, you know how I’ve been talking about going into business with a line of potions for every conversational need? I found a possible business partner, and I set up a meeting for when we get home. I’d love for you to meet him, but you have to promise not to shoot him.”

  Alejandro tilted his head. “Why in the world would I even think about shooting your new business partner?”

  Rose grinned at him. “Mac told me you might try to shoot him. Because, and keep an open mind here--"

  “Just tell me,” her wonderful, sexy, impatient husband urged.

  “He’s actually kind of a troll.”

  * * *

  NOTE FROM ALYSSA DAY:

  I have a crazy family. There, it’s out there. We were Air Force brats as kids, and then I grew up and married a Navy Guy, so life has been one adventure after another.

  So my “What if?” for this book – and I always come up with my book ideas by following “What if?” down twisty paths – was “What if a family as crazy as mine also happened to be a family of witches?”

  And the Cardinal Witches were born!

  I’m thrilled to announce that the Cardinal Witches will continue for at least nine books in total, and you’ll be able to read the continuing adventures of Rose, Alejandro, Granny and the rest, coming soon!

  If you want the scoop on all new releases, behind-the-scenes details, and the chance to win prizes, Text ALYSSADAY to 66866 to sign up for my newsletter. I promise never to sell, fold, spindle, or mutilate your information so you will get no spam—ever—from me.

  You can also follow me on BookBub if you only want new release news.

  Thanks again for reading—you rock!

  Alyssa

  Excerpt: William’s Witch

  William Pemberley woke up with a blazing hangover and realized that, yet again, he didn’t know where or when he was.

  The where was a fairly common occurrence and had been for at least the past few decades, so it didn’t bother him all that much, but the when was a relatively new development, and he didn’t like it at all.

  Even worse—his skin was itching. Badly. So either he was caught in the first-ever underground pollen storm, or somebody was throwing around a lot of fairly powerful magic in the vicinity. He contemplated rolling over and going back to sleep until the headache wore off or the magic went away, but the persistent itch and the general discomfort of lying on top of a three-hundred-year-old coffin combined to make him change his mind.

  He shot up through six feet of soil into the moonlit quiet of a church graveyard, landing in the middle of a standoff between a couple of knife-wielding thugs and a woman wearing a lopsided pair of plastic wings. The woman was the one casting the spells—the thugs weren’t casting anything but a major case of body odor.

  Whatever they’d been doing or shouting or threatening stopped the moment William appeared, and all three of them looked at him with varying degrees of shock (the thugs) and suspicion (the…fairy? Butterfly? Victim of a low-rent Halloween costume shop?).

  “Who the hell are you?” the taller of the men shouted, clutching his knife closer to him as if it could protect him from the Big, Bad.

  “A tuxedo? Really?” the woman drawled in a rich, sultry voice that made him think of aged whiskey and dark chocolate. She looked William up and down and curled her lip. “Isn’t that a little old school?”

  William glanced down at himself, mildly surprised to find that he was, indeed, wearing a tuxedo. He grinned at the butterfly. “Apparently, I had a very good time. What year is this?”

  She snorted in a very unfeminine way that, oddly enough, turned him on a little. “2016. Vampires are out, shifters are in, hashtag it’s a new world, baby.”

  William had no clue what she was talking about, but the shorter thug took that moment to try to sneak up behind him, the pathetic excuse for a dagger raised in one hand. Before the human could slash out and ruin a perfectly good jacket, William whirled around, picked him up, and threw him twenty feet across the graveyard into a pile of leaves.

  “You killed Henry!” the taller one shouted. Then he attacked, proving once again that some humans had the IQs of turnips.

  William sighed, but before he could raise his hands to counter, the idiot froze in mid-leap and then fell to the ground and lay there, unmoving, his wildly beating heart the only sign that he was still alive.

  The butterfly started laughing and lowered her own hands, which were glowing faintly with the sparkling residue of magic. “Wouldn’t want you to wrinkle your fancy suit, Drac.”

  “My name is William,” he said mildly, torn between the urge to get the hell out of…wherever he was…and the budding curiosity about this witch who was so unafraid of him.

  “Of course it is,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Because I break my rule about tequila on first dates one time, and I get groped on a balcony, mugged in a graveyard, and bothered by a vampire named William.”

  She took a step closer, out of the shadows and into the moonlight, and William’s brain forgot how to make words. She wasn’t very tall, but she was wearing impossibly high heels to make up for it. Her softly rounded body was clad only in a tiny red dress and those ridiculous wings. Her eyes were enormous and dark—he couldn’t tell their exact color—and her softly waving hair—also dark--hung down in a thick fall all the way to her waist.

  Curiosity turned to something hotter. More primal. Predatory, even.

  He wanted her.

  It was nothing new, wanting. He was a vampire, and he hadn’t survived for hundreds of years without wanting. When he wanted, he took. Power, territory, women. And then he moved on, because ultimately he discovered, every time, that he never wanted anything or anyone for very long at all.

  Those who live forever are easily bored.

  “Hey! Are you listening to me?” She snapped her fingers in front of his face. “I asked you if you killed that guy, and if you’re going to be a problem for me. Because, frankly, I’ve had enough crap tonight, and I really don’t need any more. I’m glad to go our separate ways, no harm, no foul, whatever. But I can kick your ass for you if you feel the need to fight.”

  In spite of his attraction to her, the predator in him registered the threat. His fangs descended, and he offered her his coldest, cruelest smile. The smile that had once made a murderous warlord piss his pants and beg for mercy.

  The butterfly didn’t beg for anything. Instead, she yawned.

  Suddenly he wanted her with an intensity he hadn’t felt in more than a hundred years. She was beautiful, and she was bold, and she wasn’t afraid of him at all.

  He took a step toward her and almost laughed when she backed up and then glared at him, as if she were furious that she’d shown a drop of weakness.

  “To answer your questions: First, he’s not dead. I threw him in the pile of leaves on purpose, and I’m not hungry enough to drain the blood of an imbecile. Second, yes, I am absolutely going to be a problem for you. You may as well tell me your name and where we are, since we’re going to become so intimately acquainted.”

  She stared at him with no change of expression except for the slightest widening of her eyes, but William could hear her heart beat, so he wasn’t fooled. She wasn’t scared, but she was something. Perhaps intrigued.

  Perhaps annoyed.

  It was always hard for him to tell the difference.

  “Sure. I’ll play. Why not?” She laughed again, but this time it was as bitter as the almost-forgotten taste of nettles and despair. “My name is Amy. This is Garden City. Tequila is a curse on womankind.”

  He opened his mouth to respond—with what he didn’t know—but instead he sneezed, hard, and the gorgeous Amy took advantage of his distraction to flick an immobility spell at him.

  Nicely played.

  He watched her walk away, her world-c
lass ass swaying in that shimmery little dress, and he could almost taste the anticipation of how much fun he was planning to have pursuing her.

  She stopped at the corner of the church, glanced back at him, and blew him a kiss. “It’s been fun, Drac. I hope I don’t see you around.”

  He waited almost a full minute after she disappeared around the corner before he shrugged off her spell. Just in case she came back. It wouldn’t be any fun if he gave away his secrets too early in the game.

  A tiny, rational corner of his mind tried to raise the question of why a vampire who was allergic to magic would want to get involved with a witch, but he’d had a lot of practice ignoring anything that sounded remotely like the voice of reason.

  “It’s William,” he repeated, happier than he’d been since the end of Prohibition.

  And then he launched himself into the cold night air so he could follow his butterfly—at a discreet distance--all the way home.

  BUY WILLIAM’S WITCH HERE: William’s Witch

  Excerpt: Damon’s Enchantress

  Washington, D.C.

  * * *

  Damon Jones yawned and showed his teeth to the ringleader of the smuggling ring, who promptly fell to the floor in a dead faint.

  This wasn’t all that surprising.

  Damon had very large teeth.

  “All right, Jones,” his partner, Zane, said. “Enough with the lion form. Time to switch back into a human, because I’ll be damned if I’m doing all the paperwork this time.” Zane cuffed their captive--who currently stank up the Number 3 spot on the FBI Paranormal Operations Division’s Most Wanted List—just as the scumbag twitched his way back to consciousness.

  Damon looked at both of them and then casually extended the claws of one dinner-plate-sized paw.

  Number 3, who’d just come around, made a moaning sound and passed out again.

  “And quit playing with the prisoner! You damn cats. Always playing with your food.” Zane was six feet of attitude wrapped up in bad ass, and one of the few people—in or out of the FBI—who dared to mouth off to Damon.

  Damon was currently in his alternate form: six hundred pounds of pure Barbary lion. He’d measure nine feet long from head to tip of tail, if anybody had ever dared to approach him with a tape measure, and his head was at the level of Zane’s shoulder. He stretched and then shifted back to human form in a shimmering kaleidoscope of magic.

  “Your analogy sucks. I’d never consider that moron to be food,” he said, grinning. “Nice call on barricading the warehouse exits, by the way. Sam caught two of this idiot’s flunkies trying to sneak out of the second story window.”

  Zane stared at him. “How could you possibly…oh. You smelled them? Also, did I mention how glad I am that you don’t shift into a naked human? I really, really don’t want to see your dangly bits.”

  “I heard Sam report in on your radio. Cat hearing, remember? And, sadly, nobody has seen my dangly bits in far too long.” Which was for the best, probably. The last thing he had time for was emotional entanglement, with a job that kept him working and traveling 24/7.

  Their backup rushed in and put the cuffs on Number 3, who moaned and whimpered as he was dragged away.

  “Not very impressive for a so-called drug lord. Especially one who must have a death wish to play with the Winter Fae lords and Ice,” Zane said, shaking his head, as they followed Number 3 out of the dingy Chicago warehouse that had been home to a fairly substantial Ice-processing operation until just about five minutes earlier.

  Ice was the massively hallucinogenic drug that some enterprising criminals were manufacturing, using water from the cold, clear mountain springs in Winter Fae territory. The drug was a mild party enhancement to anyone with Fae blood. For humans and shape shifters, it was the most powerful drug ever invented—it made meth look like baby aspirin—and the trafficking in it was worth billions. When the Fae caught intruders in their territory, though, death and dismemberment—and not in that order--followed shortly thereafter.

  Ice was a ticket to torture in a tiny plastic baggie. It had the nasty habit of killing at least a quarter of its addicts in particularly horrible ways: seizures that went on for hours, bleeding out, loss of all neurological function and control. For some reason, that didn’t stop any of the fools from using.

  “I don’t get anything about any of this. Why they’d defy the Winter lords--who are seriously bad ass dudes—to steal the stuff, why anybody would use it when they could die miserably…why jelly donuts exist.” Damon scowled. “Who the hell wants jelly in a donut?”

  Zane laughed. “Dancing Donuts get your order wrong again? I wondered why you were in such a foul mood this morning. Usually a take-down puts a smile even on your grouchy mug.”

  They headed out of the warehouse and into the parking lot, which had been transformed since the op went down from an empty, weed-infested patch of gravel to a space filled with cop cars, evidence pick-up vans, FBI sedans, and an SUV that probably chauffeured the mayor and/or the chief of police around. The reporters were showing up, too. The TV station vans were shuffling for access at the edge of the lot already.

  Made sense. All the politicians were going to want to get in on this one. Bagging the local head distributor and an estimated twenty-five million dollars’ worth of Ice was going to be major news, and everybody would want a piece.

  All Damon wanted was to get out of there before somebody shoved a camera in his face.

  “You’re gone,” Zane said, sighing. “Leaving me to deal with this--"

  A crack ripped through the air—the kind of sound that caused even lion shifters to want to dive for cover. Nothing else sounded like a high-powered rifle.

  Instead, Damon leapt into the air, shifting mid-leap into his lion form, desperate to put himself between the bullet and his partner. When the freight train slammed into his shoulder, he knew he’d succeeded. The velocity of the hit knocked him to the ground just long enough for him to bounce back up, snarl at Zane to get his ass to cover, and head for the outside stairs to the roof.

  Whoever was up there shooting had better be prepared to die.

  Ignoring the shouting coming from the cops on the ground and the pain in his shoulder with equal determination, Damon raced up the rickety stairs that barely clung to the side of the old building, not landing on any step long enough for it to decide it couldn’t carry the load of a quarter ton of seriously pissed-off lion. The creaking sounds were ominous enough, though, to give him the passing thought that the staircase might not hold on his way down.

  He sure as hell didn’t want to die when his last bite of food on the planet had been a damn jelly donut.

  Screw it. They could chopper him out.

  He hit the roof in a flat-out run, but the sniper must have seen him coming, because he was crouched in the corner of the roof, braced against two walls, and aiming the rifle at Damon’s face.

  Before the man could get off a shot, Damon leapt into the air with the preternatural speed and power that was a gift of shapeshifter magic. No mere lion could have moved so fast that he was a blur in the shooter’s eye.

  No lion could have leapt fifty feet across the rooftop in the span of a single heartbeat.

  But Damon could—and did—do both.

  He smashed the sniper’s body down to the concrete and then broke the rifle in half with one bite of his powerful jaws. It took every ounce of control in his body to keep from doing the same to the shooter.

  Instead, he stalked around the man’s prone and trembling body and roared out his fury.

  In his peripheral vision, he saw Zane rushing across the roof toward him.

  “Time to back off the puny human, Damon. I know you’re ready to rip his head off at the neck, but we need to interrogate him first.”

  The shooter made a moaning sound at the word “first,” as Zane had no doubt intended. It was enough to help Damon calm down, which his wily partner had also probably intended.

  When the shooter dared a glance at h
im, Damon snarled, showing all of his teeth, and the man turned pale.

  “I won’t talk!”

  Zane looked at the shooter, and then at Damon, and then he laughed. “Yes, you will. They always do. Ten minutes alone with a lion…you’ll be begging us to listen to you talk.”

  Damon snarled again, but this time from pain. The shoulder was burning, which meant the bullet was still in there. The very fine Ulfberht .338 Lapua Magnum--that he’d reduced to expensive kindling. He needed a few minutes alone to focus, so he could force it out of his muscle.

  He’d worry about that later, because –

  Oh, hell.

  He had to deal with it now.

  He had a plane to catch.

  While agents took the sniper down off the roof, Damon closed his eyes and pushed; every muscle straining to rid his body of the foreign object. After about thirty long, painful seconds, the bullet popped out of his shoulder and hit the floor.

  “Bonus! Evidence,” Zane said, using tiny tongs and an evidence bag to secure the bullet. “Good kitty.”

  Damon bared his teeth at his smartass partner before transforming back to human. “One of these days, you’re going to seriously piss me off.”

  Zane just laughed, and headed for the ladder. “Yeah, whatever. I already figured out that my black ass is safer with you than without you. Nice try on the intimidation, though. Definite six out of ten.”

  “Like you need me to feel safe. You make half the suspects piss their pants just from catching a glimpse of you,” Damon told his Oxford-educated partner, who had the brains of a rocket scientist and the muscles of a body builder. “One of these days you’ll give me a ten on something, and I’ll pass out from the shock.”

  “One of these days, maybe. But right now you need to catch that plane to go play big, bad lion in the middle of the scary conclave of pretty, pretty garden witches,” Zane said, doing a fake shudder, his eyes widening as he mocked his partner.