Spellbound Desire Read online

  Spellbound Desire

  Angelia Sparrow & Naomi Brooks

  On the Nightside of Memphis, werewolves teach college, zombies load trucks and private investigator D.J. is hard at work finding missing persons, solving cases and drinking herself into an early grave. Then Bran walks into her office, asking for help in destroying the demon Oeilett, and everything changes.

  Something about the battered, scarred combat mage ignites all the lusty feelings D.J. thought she had successfully drowned in rum. The mana he exudes weaves a web of desire over her, clouding thought and making the sultry summer even steamier.

  Bran’s body and face may be marked by his previous battles, but everything under the black leather kilt works perfectly, and D.J. learns there are more things in Memphis, the hell-planes and her own heart than she had ever imagined.

  Spellbound Desire

  Angelia Sparrow & Naomi Brooks

  Author Note

  Welcome to Memphis. This is not the Memphis that Angelia lives in every day, for the most part. The buildings are right, but you’ll find the people slightly changed.

  This is a Memphis where werewolves drive trolley cars, teach college classes and open shops. Where zombies load trucks and gremlins abandon the closed amusement park to go to the Tunica casinos. And where Elvis is still the King—of the vampires.

  D.J. Admire first appeared in 1984, during a creative writing class exercise in naming characters. She’s knocked around off and on, turning up during a collective story written on the vampyres@guvm mailing list, making her first professional appearance in a short story for a now-defunct press and nudging Angelia into three novels that sit, with one chapter apiece, on her hard drive. Angelia had already decided that D.J. operated in the same universe as her gay Christmas werewolves and was toying with the stories off and on.

  When Naomi turned up with a new muse this spring, poured him into a leather kilt and gave him new tattoos, well, it happened just like in the book. He walked in and D.J. sat up, made grabby hands and announced, “Want THAT!” And the pair made us write day and night for five weeks until their story was told.

  Special thanks go to Briana, our indefatigable editor, who got these crazy kids into shape. Kiwi Carlisle (who remembered D.J. from the long-ago mailing list), our tireless first reader. Extra love to Mudd, Angelia’s husband, for the character of Jinx. And to Joy Coop and Cat Emerson and Angelia’s mom, Sue, and everyone who listened to bits, offered advice and commentary and was generally supporting of our first cheerful foray into heterosexuality.

  We hope you enjoy our version of Memphis as much as we enjoyed playing in it.

  Manu forti!

  Angelia and Naomi

  Memphis, TN and Toledo, OH, 2012

  Chapter One

  D.J.

  Thursday afternoon spread itself across my desk like a sleeping bag lady, and only half as attractive. No cases for a week. No work meant no money and we were hitting the end week of June. Rent was due and I was broke, as usual. Outside, the Memphis summer sweltered, and inside, my poor overworked air conditioner fought to keep the air breathable.

  I had just decided to call it a day—hell, a whole week—and start on my weekend drinking when the baddest bad boy who ever went from bad to worse strode through my door.

  He was all black leather and had to be dying from Memphis heat. Black hair with a lot of gray in it dripped sweat from the humidity. A goatee didn’t even come close to covering the deep scars on his face. If anything, it emphasized them. More scars showed on his sweat-sheened bare arms, crossing the protective tattooed armlets and bracers. The silver knives gleaming across his chest in their black bandoliers told me this guy was trouble.

  So did the aura of power that damn near blew my door off. Most combat mages don’t live long enough to go gray. And if this guy had the sheer steel nerve to walk down a Memphis street wearing a black leather kilt with chains, a black leather vest and combat boots, he could probably take me. A quiet voice from somewhere deep inside, one I had never heard before, added in a silky, insinuating tone, “And not just on the sparring range.”

  That was an odd thought and I didn’t like it. My steady lover was Captain Morgan. I’d never had any use for men, or women either. Over the years, I’d assumed I was pretty much asexual. Nobody did it for me. I’d given up going to movies when I realized I really didn’t care about those extra-pretty people and their extra-pretty problems, whether romantic or explosive. People laughed when I said I didn’t date. And no one believed I was still a virgin since I had passed forty. The few orgasms I’d had never seemed worth the hassle and certainly not worth the time and trouble of getting involved with another person.

  He walked in and planted both fists on my desk. I could smell him, all leather and clean recent sweat, with scotch underlying it. “Miss Admire, you’re having a problem in your town.”

  I hated being called “miss” but I let it slide as his brown eyes pinned me to the chair. I studied them a second. Know thy enemy and all that. He was as human as mages got, but his eyes were deep, showing his power to any who cared to look. I was willing to bet they went jet black during intense castings. Right now, his eyes were the color of whisky, the kind that had aged in the wood about twenty years.

  That silky, insinuating voice was back, telling me I wanted to slurp him up, just like that whisky. I scowled, trying to shut it up. I couldn’t let him know he was getting to me, so I shrugged.

  “I always have a problem in my town.” It wasn’t an exaggeration. It was always something, whether succubi, lycanthropic drifters or vampires acting up. “Right now I’m thinking the fact there is even an itinerant combat mage in my town is a problem.” All the major cities had at least one group of combat mages. Most people thought they were just a motorcycle club. But he was the traveling kind, the kind who only showed up when there was trouble of the apocalyptic sort brewing.

  “I am the least of your problems.” I couldn’t place his accent. British Isles somewhere, northish maybe? “You’ve a demon, a powerful one.”

  “Every city does.” I wasn’t giving this guy an inch. He disturbed me. I didn’t like things that disturbed me, which is why I was licensed to shoot most things that disturbed me. Unfortunately, humans were not on the list and sexual attraction was not considered a valid reason to shoot someone.

  “Oh aye. Every city has its own individual demon, and the others that flock to whatever it may become. But you’ve a new one coming. A prince, no less.” He backed out of my face and sat down, taking the scotch smell with him. I made myself not follow it. “I’ve been chasing him for years.”

  I just raised an eyebrow. He looked like he’d been through a lot of hunting and fighting in his years. Then again, combat mage. He carried it around him like Marines carry their attitude or really wealthy people wear their money. He’d dialed it back after the entrance, but the power just rolled off him.

  I’d seen mages that powerful before. They’d walk down the street and people would get out of their way without even seeing them. If you asked the passerby later, they’d have said it was body odor or something. Most people didn’t know magic when they saw it or felt it.

  I was one of the unlucky ones. I knew magic when I saw it. People like me, we weren’t quite human and weren’t quite mages. We lived in the shadows of the Nightside, that second layer of existence where an English professor turns into a wolf on the full moon and zombies load trucks and magic works. The Nightsiders know me and know my business. That’s even worse than just being exiled here without any magic of my own. The benign ones hire me. The nasty ones, well, let’s just say I don’t wear the silver necklace as a fashion statement.

  I shushed that voice and calmed
my body, which was definitely doing odd things. I didn’t want to be around this man. He was carbonating my hormones and it needed to stop. I couldn’t even think coherently enough to ask the next logical question.

  “Bran McKay,” he said, answering it before I could ask. He dropped into the chair opposite my desk, planted his well-worn black combat boots on the desk, pulled a clay pipe from his vest pocket and lit it with a fingertip. “The Witan told me you’re good, so stop gawping at me like a moonstruck ninny and tell me what’s happening new in this city.”

  I shut my mouth with a snap and quit trying to look up his kilt. I was acting like an idiot, like I’d always griped about other women acting. I shook my head and took a drink from my coffee cup. There wasn’t any coffee in it, can’t stand the stuff after lunch, but I’d already poured it half full of the good Captain. Right now, I needed him to steady my nerves. My usual lover slid down my throat smooth and spicy, glowing all the way. My visitor raised his perpetually quirked right eyebrow at me.

  “Streets are quiet. Haven’t even had a ‘thrope killing in six months. Zoltan must be stepping up, though he’ll never be half the wolf his old man was or his nephew would have been.”

  He waved away the werewolf politics and kept staring as I took another drink. He sniffed and smiled. It pulled the scars on his cheeks in funny ways, but oddly, a dimple still showed at each corner of it. “Rum, is it? Pour me one.”

  I got up and got my other coffee cup, the one from Hellzapoppin, the local demonic strip joint, from the drainer. He got a full cup and I topped mine off.

  “My cousin has terrible taste in gifts,” I explained as I handed the cup to him. At least the rum was cool enough that the printed succubus’s outfit didn’t melt away from the heat.

  “Pixie gangs are quiet. They haven’t even had a rumble in the last month. Zombies are just working like always. No word from the vamps, so the King must be keeping them busy. I got nothing. No Nightside activity at all.”

  He sat and drank, staring at me like he was waiting for more. Well, he’d already cadged a drink off me, and interrupted my weekend. I’d told him everything I could think of off the top of my head. I nuzzled up to the Captain and decided to wait him out. I had the feeling it was going to be like trying to wait out Stonehenge.

  He finished the rum and set the cup down. “Notice any strange smells lately? Like sulfur?”

  I shrugged. “Every time the wind blows from the south. We have three refineries not five miles away. This town always stinks of something.”

  “That’d make a good way to cover up.”

  I finished my drink and poured a third without offering him more. I really wanted him out of my office. I wanted to quit staring at his legs. His long, sturdy, scarred legs that were propped on my desk and distracting me from my usual weekend pleasure. I wanted to run my hands over them and lick them. I wanted to lick the tattoo on his calf, tracing every line of that multicolored Celtic knot, one color at a time. Every time he opened his mouth and that sexy voice came out, all I wanted was to hear him say my name, tell me I was so hot he couldn’t stand it another minute and— I cut off that train of thought.

  “Nothing on the Nightside. But what about humans? One of these churches is having a big deal in a few days. They got a hotshot get-rich seminar coming in. So big they moved it to the Pyramid even. Could that be the way our boy is arriving?”

  He kept staring at me like I was turning green. In this town, it’s been known to happen. I stared right back, looking over his face. Scars curved across both cheeks from mouth to ear, deep and wicked, and two more angled down each cheek and split his eyelids. I didn’t want to know how much energy it had taken him to grow new eyes after that attack. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what had gotten him, but I had a sneaking hunch I already did.

  “Seminar, that sounds right. Could be worth checking out.” He didn’t sound enthused.

  I rummaged in my trash can, the sudden movement upsetting the Captain who was already in me. I stifled a belch and dug a little deeper. I found the plain white flyer under a sandwich wrapper and wiped off the mustard that had smeared on the corner. “Here. These went around to everyone in town.”

  He took the flyer and read it over. I’d glanced over it a couple of times, but no obvious spells or key words jumped out at me. I watched him read it four times.

  Prosperity, Wealth and Blessings, it read in big black letters, can all be yours. Mark Roark, CEO, millionaire and philanthropist will be on hand to share his secrets of wealth and success in a special free seminar, June twenty-ninth. Celebrate your independence from poverty and let financial freedom ring! The border was decorated with bright red carnations and multicolored fireworks. The word “Free” was blazoned around the edges about twenty times too, in alternating colors with the fireworks.

  McKay nodded. “Aye, that’d be him.” He tapped the carnations on the border. “Seen it a hundred times. He starts a seminar, gets a lot of people worshiping and chanting, and if there’s enough power, Oeilett can become corporeal.”

  Everything in my body clenched at the way that last word came out. It was a bad feeling, like a full-body cramp that wakes you in the night and tells you the flu is coming on and coming hard. I didn’t give a damn about his demon right now, I just wanted him—and all that leather and his accent and the power I could feel crawling on my skin like cool fire—the fuck out of my office. Or fucking me in my office, I wasn’t sure which. I silenced that small corner of my mind, getting madder by the second. I’d never had thoughts like that about anyone.

  “Once he’s corporeal.” There was that damn clench again and I nearly launched myself over the desk to pummel him until he left my office. Bad idea, Admire, we don’t arm-wrestle the supernatural. I realized he was still talking. “He’ll start granting wealth in exchange for people succumbing to him entirely. I’ve stopped fourteen manifestations in the last twenty years. And I failed on one. Chernobyl was not pretty, girlie.”

  That was it. I’d had enough of him. Nobody called me girlie in my own office. I gave him my best impatient smile, the one that’s halfway to a sneer. “I think we’re done here for today.” I held out a card. “Call me if you turn up anything you need my assistance on, although a big bad combat mage like you probably won’t need any of the help I can provide.”

  “Aye.” He took the card and tucked it into a pocket of the vest as he stood up. “I’ll be in touch. The Witan seems to think I can use you.”

  I ground my teeth at the double entendre. Bastard paused at the door and took a deep sniff. Then he flashed me a wink and a smile, complete with dimples in his cheeks.

  At least my cup was empty when it shattered on the door behind him.

  Chapter Two

  Bran

  I stepped out of her office and leaned against the wall, letting the grin break out all over me face. I heard the smash of the crockery on the door and wondered if it was the mug with the wee sooky on it. Her cousin must be a right bampot to get her that one, and I wondered if she even understood the joke. Probably not, being a Yank and all. A wee sooky back home in Glasgow and points north wasn’t the tiny succubus she’d handed me, but a long low-down kiss. I could enjoy a wee sooky from her. Been a few years since I’d had one.

  The old men what had given me the name and address when I found out Oeilett was on his way to Memphis didn’t tell me much about Admire. Hard drinking, abrasive, hard to work with, but nothing more. I’d been expecting a chap, Humphrey Bogart and all that rot, and instead I got Miss Porcupine, all bad temper and overheated sex drive. Her knickers were so hot for me, I could smell it all over the room. It looked like she didn’t know what to do about it neither, so I let that part of the conversation lie. Wouldn’t have minded bending her over her desk, though and pounding the fury right out of her.

  I expected a wee peekie under the kilt would have had her ankles over her head in that Murphy bed I’d seen the frame of. Been a long fair while since there’d been any sweet stuff le
t go for me. Aside from me Ma and sibs, nobody wanted me to hang around much. The ladies and bairns went screeching from my face. The bolder lads always wanted to take me on, see if I was as tough as the scars.

  No one with a lick of mana even tried, though. The weak ones practically pissed themselves when I got inside a half-kilometer. The more powerful ones backed down.

  This Admire woman, she had enough mana to know what I was, to feel my power. But she wasn’t running. I think it just made her more pissed.

  Dried-up old Witan pricks back in Salem’d sent me out on this one. They didn’t see a problem with me hunting a fewking demon until I dropped dead of old age. And a very old age it’d be if they had their way. Fifty was almost twice the usual combat mage life expectancy. And for a man, it meant this was my last job. The ladies had to work to fifty-five. I thought it was right unfair, but they had to take a couple years off to have the required two babies. We boys just donated once a year to the cause of making more wizards. I could retire if I survived. I expected the Witan didn’t want to see that. My big sister had embarrassed them enough by being the first combat mage in seventy years to retire. Now it boded that two of us were going to manage it.

  They couldn’t have the combat mages expecting to live to old age. In our job, we take Death as our lover and live with her close to hand. No mage ever has a choice of vocation. I had to go where the mana sent me and learn what it wanted of me before I could control it. It’s the same for everyone from the weakest talismonger to the most powerful sorcerer.

  Dried-up old pricks the Witan were, and they wanted mine to dry up just as bad, I thought. Been six years since I’d had a woman, and her I’d had to pay. I could practically smell Admire even through the door. So much adrenaline and all the sweetness of a lady and just a little sweat she’d worked up being mad at me, I breathed it all in like perfume.