SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (100 page)

His skull pounded. Had someone mugged him? That’s how it felt.

What was the last thing he remembered?

He reached into the haze of his mind: he and Michelle, strolling down Esplanade, arm in arm, fattened up with the wine, étouffée, and Bananas Foster they’d devoured in a low-lit cafe. As they walked, they’d been laughing, looking into each other’s eyes while jazz from a bar back in the Quarter haunted the midnight streets. Then…

Then he’d heard the footsteps behind them. Felt a
smash
at the back of his head.

But what came after that?

A raging shiver attacked Matt as he bolted to his knees, crazily looking around.

“Michelle?” he shouted.
“Michelle!”

It didn’t take long to find her.

As his gaze met hers, she shook her head, unable to talk with the piece of cloth tied around her head, gagging her. She was bound to a fat tree trunk with what looked like silken rope, branches dipping down so far it seemed as if they were about to scoop her up so the oak could devour her.

A burst of pain smacked Matt where he’d been hit on the head, but his adrenaline pushed him toward her, his fingers digging into the grass, his nails gouging the dirt—

Two rusty swords clattered to the ground in front of him, and he reared back, his pulse exploding until his body screeched all over.

Swords?

“A fight for honor, sir,” said a smooth, vaguely accented voice from above him. “Choose your saber.”

Matt looked up, but the only thing he could see was a dark silhouette against the nearby streetlights. Numb, he focused on the swords again.

“I don’t understand,” he said, his voice a scratch.

“Your choice of saber, sir.” The words were crisp. “I must, however, apologize for the conditions. These are all I have with me this night, and we have no seconds to witness our duel.”

Matt only stared at the curved blades. He heard a muffled cry from Michelle, saw her shaking her head even harder, digging her feet into the ground. She’d lost one high heel somewhere along the way.

Panic clawed its way up his chest and into his throat. “I still don’t under—”

“Choose!” The shadow above him planted his hands on his slim hips. Matt could barely see knee-high boots polished to a moonlit sheen. “It is a fight until one or the other of us is disabled. As I said, this is a matter of honor.”

“What?”

“
My
honor.” The shadow tilted his head. “You don’t recall?”

This couldn’t be real. If Matt didn’t know any better, he’d say that he’d fallen into a time warp, and some fool Creole gentleman was calling him out for a duel.

But Michelle’s sobbing was very real. So was the throbbing at the back of his skull.

The shadow’s tone settled to a disbelieving whisper. “You
don’t
recall.” He chuffed, straightened, his face still featureless and dark. “All I wished for was a moment with her, and you did me the disfavor of turning your back. I do not suffer such slights.”

A moment with Michelle? Matt’s brain whirred, riffling through all their tourist adventures tonight, trying to isolate anything that would identify this freak.

There was Bourbon Street…full of douchebags asking Michelle to lift her blouse to flash her stuff for some beads. There’d been a drunk who’d bumped into them as they’d been searching for a restaurant on the fringes of the French Quarter. There’d even been a weirdo who’d lingered in a corner of darkness when they’d turned onto Esplanade, where their bed and breakfast was, but Matt had thought he was just a drunk street actor who belonged back in Jackson Square, hustling his act for money.

“May I?” the man had whispered as they’d passed him on Esplanade. He’d been bowing as they ignored him.

Five minutes later, everything had gone dark for Matt.

Now, as the shadow took a step forward, his face was revealed in the faint light. Recognition dawned in Matt just before the freak stepped back into the darkness.

It was the drunk from Esplanade. But why was he still wearing those timeworn, old-fashioned clothes and that nineteenth century hair…?

Michelle was trying to yell something at Matt, and with a surge of protective alarm, he blindly grabbed at a sword to defend her, cut her loose, get her out of here. He stood, and the weapon dipped in his hand, heavier than he’d thought it’d be.

“Oh, my,” the shadow said, quickly swooping down for his own sword. “Have you no sense of decency? There are rules to a duel—”

Matt desperately lunged toward the shadow with his weapon.

But all he heard from his opponent was a sigh, then the fast, bladed whisk of the man’s own sword as it ran him through.

Matt’s mind scrambled as he was lifted into the air, perched there until he slid down the blade. At the same time, his assailant propelled him backward and around, and Matt crashed into the oak where Michelle’s muffled screams cut the night.

Pinned to the trunk, his feet dangling, Matt didn’t feel the pain. He only felt the blood running out of him as the shadow retreated, shaking his head like he was profoundly disappointed.

Matt looked down and cupped the blade with his hands.
This can’t be real…

“You didn’t have to die,” said the assailant, almost sorrowfully. He backed away from Matt. “Not all duels end in killing.”

As Matt’s sight began to fade, his head felt heavy, and it lolled to the side, where he could see Michelle straining against her bonds, staring wide-eyed at him from the ground, yelling his name against her gag.

“There, there,” the assailant said, going to her and bending down so he was facing her. “Do not despair. You are mine now, my darling. All mine.”

He reached out to touch her cheek, and she cringed away from him, screaming louder.

“My love?” he asked, his voice thick as he tried to touch her again.

Michelle kicked at him with her remaining heel.

With all the strength Matt had left, he strained to get the sword out of him. He didn’t want to die, couldn’t die. Even if Michelle had taken self-defense classes, she needed him. He’d told her once, when he’d first known they were in love, that he’d never leave her…

“Stop!” the assailant yelled, hunching toward Michelle as she kept wailing against her gag. He reached for her throat, shaking her. “You’re mine!
Mine!
”

In the distance, Matt thought he heard more yelling. Someone coming to the rescue. Someone who could save Michelle?

When her screams went silent with a snap of her neck, the assailant tripped back from her. In pure shock, Matt groaned, his energy bleeding out of him as he let go of the blade, his vision darkening, the pain finally searing him. He could still see the attacker standing, stumbling away with one last look at Michelle that seemed to be full of yearning, even in the darkness.

The last thing Matt witnessed before he died was the duelist disappearing into the night, fading into his surroundings.

Just like a phantom from hell...

Shadows Till Sunrise: Chapter Two

LILLY

When I awakened in a bed in a rundown cabin lit by lanterns, I had no recollection of anything.

Not even my name.

But the odd woman sitting beside me did seem strikingly familiar as she touched my shoulder and comforted me with a hushed, “Shh…It’s fine, you’re safe.”

I froze, scanning her. She wore a beige robe tied by a sash, had frizzy red hair, a dimple in her chin, and distinctive lips that were so red they seemed to have been stained by juice. Perhaps the most unsettling detail, though, was the white cloth that covered her eyes. It had two dark circles where eyes should have been.

“Know your name or who you are, child?” she asked in a backwoods voice that told me she was young, although her appearance hardly confirmed that. She could have been twenty or seventy. I didn’t bloody well know.

I sifted through my memories, and when I realized I didn’t have any, my nerves howled, compounding my confusion.

She sighed as she squeezed my arm in reassurance. “Of course you haven’t a recollection. Now you just stay put and don’t be testin’ me, Lilly.”

Lilly. My name?

A teen girl with dark, braided hair stepped forward, her head down as she slid a computer onto my lap.

A computer. I knew what
that
was. But nothing else?

The girl backed away, watching me with a shy gaze.

“Much obliged, Jean-Marie,” said the blind woman, gesturing for me to sit up.

As I did so, I felt something clinging to my legs. One glance down at them startled me to a jump, nearly spilling the computer to the wood floor.

“Easy now,” the woman said soothingly, resting her hand on my arm again.

Indeed, her touch assuaged me, even as I marveled at the sight of vines wrapped round my calves, aping the appearance of boots.

“What the devil?” I asked.

The boots tightened on my skin, as if taking affront to my surprise.

The woman motioned to the computer. “Go ahead, turn it on, Lilly. Sure ’nuff, you know how to do that.”

Questions swarmed me as I focused on the black screen, where an arrow indicated I should press Play. How in the world I knew that much, I couldn’t say. I couldn’t explain anything—the reason I was dressed in a long T-shirt and tracksuit shorts, the whys and hows of being in a cabin with covered windows, bare-bones furnishings, and what appeared to be a sheet-veiled mirror near a nightstand.

So I made the computer play for me, and almost immediately, a video of a twenty-some girl filled the screen: blondish hair sliced to the shoulders in a bob, green eyes, a slightly tilted nose, and an overbite. She was wearing a variation on the clothing I had on now.

I touched my face.
Same, same
.

“Yes,” said the woman next to me as she continued to wait by my bedside. She folded her hands in her lap. “It’s you, Lilly. Now listen up to what you have to say.”

The boots tingled on my legs, as if warming to me.

“Delighted to see you again, Lilly,” said the girl on the computer. “I hope you enjoyed a refreshing sleep, luv. You’ll find that it’s dusk outside and time to be up and about.” She smiled. “And you’ll find soon enough that we’re not the regular-hours type.”

I certainly sounded chipper, didn’t I?

Other Me gestured off-screen, toward the blindfolded woman. “By now, you’ve no doubt met Amari. She’s the witch who gave you these magic boots you’re wearing, so thank her now. I’ll happily wait.”

“Thank you?” I automatically said to Amari, in spite of not quite knowing what the gratitude was for yet.

She nodded graciously and indicated the screen, because Other Me was speaking again.

“You made this video after Amari made it clear that explaining the story of your life to you time and again was tedious. You see, you forget many memories every time you awaken, and this is how you relearn. How tedious for
you
, but relearning is so very necessary, because your problems go far beyond having your memory disappear every day.”

“But how…?” I started to ask, wanting to know about these boots that felt as if they had a living heartbeat in them, as if they were a part of me that clung and hung on.

My alter ego explained. “Fortunately for you, Amari saved your life after a very bad…Well, for now we’ll call it an ‘incident’ that happened not long ago. She’s a white-magic witch, and those boots you wear are the only thing making you so blooming lovely.” A saucy grin. Then a sobering pause. “However, there’s a cost to the magic, Lilly. The bayou vines—nature itself—work with you. They use the energy round us to wipe away the terrible physical and mental state you were in, but as they replenish, they take
your
essence and energy. While you’re awake, they sap you mentally by drawing memories from you, although occasionally, you’ll see that they give some memories back, as if you’re a child and they’re the adult, handing out sweets.”

Apparently agreeing, the boots wiggled, pleased with the Other Lilly’s description.

“You’ll find,” she said, “that they parse out these memories on a need-to-know basis so they conserve their energy—energy they need to keep you healthy. They also drain you physically by forcing a deep slumber when the sun comes up. You remain that way till it sets. In other words, Sleeping Beauty, while you shut down during the daylight hours, your body is revitalizing those boots. Now, this is important, so listen carefully.” She pointed at the screen. “At dawn, you will collapse wherever you are, no matter what you’re doing, so you must be somewhere safe when the sun rises. This is rule one. Do you understand?”

It was as if she was waiting for me to nod. I absently obliged her.

She went on. “In Amari’s words, ‘Nature give you health and healing, but it need to take, too.’
You
need those boots as much as they need you, and after you’re done reenergizing, you both awaken at dusk.” She relaxed. “This is the price you pay for being in the shape you are, and if you should ever take those boots off—even though you, yourself, cannot do so without incantations—you would return to how Amari found you after…” It was her turn to sigh. “I reckon I should start at the beginning.”

The Me on the computer, who was on this same bed, lit by the glow of lanterns, pulled her legs to her until she sat cross-legged, the vined boots gleaming in the low light. “Your name is Lilly Meratoliage, and you’ve got quite the loving, aristocratic family across the pond, with Americanized branches over here. And I say ‘loving’ with all the sarcasm I can muster.”

Did this other Lilly sound…hurt? I thought it must be so as she continued.

“Their bloodlines stretch for centuries and, once, you were an important part of them. They were the keepers and protectors of a master vampire known as the dragon who had been buried and sleeping for centuries.”

My boots dug into me, and I sucked in a breath as one of those need-to-know images filled my mind.

A fanged, serpent-like creature going up in flames…my fault that the vampire hunters had breached the underground caverns where the dragon had been sleeping…an explosion that flamed over my skin…