Stake and Dust (Stake and Dust series, Book I)

Stake and Dust

Karen Michelle Nutt

Smashwords Editon

Stake and Dust

Presented by
Published by Rebecca J.
Vickery

Copyright © 2015 Karen Michelle Nutt

Cover Art Copyright © 2015 Karen Michelle
Nutt

Edited by Cathy Nickol

Produced by Karen Michelle Nutt

Design Consultation by Laura Shinn

(Stake and Dust was inspired by Mistletoe,
Stakes, and Yuletide Cheer, a short story that appeared in the 2012
Christmas Collection
. It has been revised, re-edited, and
made into a full-length novel.)

Smashwords Licensing Notes

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of the author.

Stake and Dust
is a work of fiction.
Though actual locations may be mentioned, they are used in a
fictitious manner and the events and occurrences were invented in
the mind and imagination of the author except for the inclusion of
actual historical facts. Similarities of characters or names used
within to any person – past, present, or future – are coincidental
except where actual historical characters are purposely
interwoven.

Dedicated always to my family.

And to all the fans who wanted more of
Tremayne and Cassandra. This story is for you.

To view more of Karen Michelle Nutt's work or
stories, visit: www.kmnbooks.com

A Lamia, a sea creature worthy of John Keats'
prose, teams up with a vampire with serial tendencies. When young
promising artists are found dead, the Preternatural Bureau sends
Cassandra Hayes to the Hamptons to help a fellow hunter track down
this lethal duo. She's only spoken to Mr. Green once on the phone
and when she meets him in person, he is not what she expects. His
hunting skills are spot on, but there is something the man is
hiding, and she's determined to find out what it is despite the
attraction developing between them.

Tremayne Graystone, a vampire from one of the
oldest septs, is not pleased when he finds a dead hunter left on
the doorstep of his pub. He should have never answered the hunter's
phone, but someone is trying to frame him and he wants answers.
Surely he can masquerade as Mr. Green, the hunter Cassandra is
supposed to meet, before she figures out his true identity and
stakes him. She's a Hayes, from a long line of vampire hunters, and
fraternizing with the enemy is simply not done, but as they work
together and follow the clues, the lines become blurred when he
falls for the hunter's charms.

Chapter One

"I got this, Georgina," Tremayne Graystone
said as he caught sight of his employee dragging the garbage bags
toward the back door of his pub. "
Jaysus
, these are heavier
than you," he said with a chuckle.

"Thanks, boss," he heard Georgina say as he
stepped outside into the cool air.

Once he successfully deposited the bags
inside the trash bins, he turned to go back inside, but a rancid
stench caught his attention, and it had nothing to do with garbage.
This scent could only mean something had died.

He glanced around the bin and spotted what
had offended his senses. If it hadn't been for the smell, and the
way the man was sprawled in an awkward pose, he might have believed
the guy had one too many drinks and decided to sleep it off.

He crouched down on his haunches for a closer
look and wrinkled his nose in disgust. The man faced the wall with
one arm pinned behind him and his legs bent at the knees. He wore a
peacoat, dark dress shirt and jeans. His tennis shoes didn't look
as if they'd been broken in with their white accents in pristine
condition.

Tremayne's ears could pick up the slightest
beat of a heart and this guy's ticker no longer functioned, but he
went through the motions and pressed two fingers to the bloke's
carotid artery. Of course, one glance at the man's profile – ashen
gray skin, bluish-white lips – only confirmed the
I-am-dead
conclusion he'd come to know as the truth.

His frown deepened as he thought of the
implications of finding a corpse on the back steps of his pub,
Eternal Bliss. "This won't bode well for business," he murmured
under his breath. Not to mention he'd been on the top of the GOJ's
crapola list for the last year, and all because one of his patrons
happened to be on the most wanted list. Something to do with
selling souls with some dirt bag in Boston—a Grim Sith gone rogue.
He didn't know either of the blokes personally, only chatted up the
guy who had purchased the souls. He had no idea of his illegal
activities. Their talks had been about books. The guy should have
kept to the classics and his dream about opening up a used
bookstore.

"I really don't need the flying monkeys
breathing down my back again," he said to the corpse. The monkeys
he referred to were the Nephilim, and they not only ran the GOJ,
but now they opened up a new organization, the Warriors for the
Light or WFTL, and they were taking in new recruits, not just
Nephilim, but Fae, werewolves, vamps, you name it. "No thank you,
bob
." Their high and mighty attitudes of doling out justice
really pried on his nerves when they were running the show all by
themselves, and now they wanted to suck – no pun intended – the
vamps into the mix. He was an Oiche Sith, a vampire, and his sept
knew how to govern territories. They were one of the oldest septs
in Ireland, and they got on just fine. They didn’t need guidance
from the Fallen Angels'
get
.

For the last decade, Tremayne had governed
the Hamptons and it was his duty to keep the supernatural elements
in line, but lately it had proven a challenge. If he didn't contain
the problem, the GOJ or the WFTL would step in and he'd be looking
for a new job.

He glanced at the corpse at his feet and
pursed his lips. In the last six months, a number of missing
persons had been noted with not only the police but with the GOJ as
well. He had a hunch the missing weren't trying out for the
magician of the year award for the best disappearing act. He
especially didn't like where the clues ended up, which was back to
his pub. The missing persons reports actually stated they were last
seen at Eternal Bliss.

For the life of him, he couldn't think of who
would want to frame him, but leaving a dead body on his back step
like a demented gift basket, pretty much proved his suspicions.
Someone wanted him to take the fall, but why?

There was no blood trail or splatters on the
wall, so he could only assume the bloke had been killed somewhere
else unless he'd simply succumbed to a heart attack or a drug
overdose. He really hoped it was something that simple.

He rolled the dead guy over onto his back to
get a better look at his face and found the reason breathing had
become difficult. A gaping hole where his throat should have been
would be the official cause of death. "Bloody hell," he cursed. Why
couldn't it have been an old fashion drug deal gone wrong? No,
couldn't be that easy. A missing jugular pretty much screamed
preternatural being or wild animal. Unfortunately, in this area,
women carrying ankle biters in their purses and passing them off as
dogs, didn't qualify as 'wild animals', though if anyone bothered
to ask him, Chihuahuas were vicious little creatures.

"Let's find out who you are, shall we?" he
murmured to the corpse. He lifted the man's wallet from the pocket
of his pants and flipped it open. He pulled out the driver's
license. "Gerard Green." He glanced at the man. "Well Gerard, I do
wish I could say it was nice to meet you, but you've put me in a
right bind. I can't leave you here to rot, now can I? Besides, your
stench would prove bad for business. Sorry bloke, but it's the ugly
truth."

Rifling through the rest of the wallet, he
found fifty-four dollars. Clearly not a robbery gone wrong, but
he'd pretty much already ruled that out when he'd seen the throat
removal. There were no photos of a family, but there was a business
card for his pub,
Eternal Bliss
. He flipped the card over,
revealing a handwritten message. "Meeting 3 AM." He returned the
contents to the wallet and flipped it closed. Couldn't have been 3
AM this morning. It was now six-thirty in the evening. Mr. Green
had been dead at least a day, maybe two – if the ripe scent wafting
off of him could lend him a clue to the time of death.

Next he fished out the guy's mobile phone. He
had quite a few numbers with prefixes he recognized as listings for
the UK and Ireland, making him believe he hailed from there or at
the very least had close ties with those countries. Perhaps Mr.
Green was a tourist and no one would be looking for him any time
soon. One could only hope.

As he checked the history of calls made, his
ears picked up the sound of a boat engine starting up at the
marina. His pub sat on the boardwalk, with shops on either side of
his place, a coffee shop farther down, and a flower shop on the
other end.

Mr. Green's last phone call had been to
Cassandra Hayes at four a.m. two days ago, a mobile number most
likely and one here in the States. "Hayes?" He frowned as he gazed
at the man in a new light.

The Hayes family was a well-known hunter
family and he didn't mean deer hunters. This family took hunting
preternatural beings to a new limit. They staked and dusted his
kind before breakfast then headed out to behead a few werewolves
before nightfall.

"So you're either a hunter, Mr. Green or you
were asking for a hunter's help." Neither proved a great prospect.
"Just what were you hunting?" He might guess vampire, but a missing
throat was a bit dramatic even for his kind, but it could possibly
be a newly made vamp or a vamp trying to throw off the GOJ. Funny,
he couldn't detect a distinct scent to indicate which preternatural
being had killed the bloke. Someone went to great lengths to cover
it up.