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Supernatural Syndicate: A Limited Edition Collection of Magical Mafia Stories
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Supernatural Syndicate
A Limited Edition Collection of Magical Mafia Stories
Contents
Savior
Thea Atkinson
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
About the Author
More From Thea
Midnight’s Dilemma
Margo Bond Collins
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
About the Author
Join Margo Online
Read More of Margo’s Books
Double Linked
Lexi Ostrow
About Double Linked
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Epilogue
About the Author
Join Lexi Online
Read More of Lexi’s Books
Paranormal Mafia
Nicole Zoltack
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
About the Author
Join Nicole Online
Read More of Nicole’s Books
Blood Curse
Angela Sanders
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
About the Author
Join Angela Online
Sett’s Salvation
T.K. Eldridge
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
About the Author
Join T.K. Eldridge Online
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Sold To The Mob
Dany Stone
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
About the Author
Join Dany Online
Read More of Dany’s Books
Cursed Vampire’s Touch
Lashe’ Lacroix
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Afterword
About the Author
Join Lashe’ Online
The Mafia Boss’s Water Nymph
Elvira Bathory
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
About the Author
Join Elvira Online
Collapsed
Imani L Hawkins
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Rook Unleashed
Pepper Paris
About Rook Unleased
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
About the Author
Join Pepper Online
Supernatural Syndicate: A Limited Edition Collection of Magical Mafia Stories © 2021 Margo Bond Collins, Dangerous Words Publishing
All individual story copyrights remain in control of the individual authors over their own works:
“Savior” © 2021 Thea Atkinson
“Midnight’s Dilemma” © 2021 Margo Bond Collins
“Double Linked” © 2021 Lexi Ostrow
“Paranormal Mafia” © 2021 Nicole Zoltack
“Blood Curse” ©2021 Angela Sanders
“Sett’s Salvation” © 2021 by T. K. Eldridge
“Sold to the Mob” © 2021 Dany Stone
“Cursed Vampire’s Touch” © 2020 Lashe’ Lacroix
“The Mafia Boss’s Water Nymph” © 2021 Elvira Bathory
“Collapsed” © 2020 Imani L Hawkins
“Rook Unleashed” © Pepper Paris
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
These are works of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
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Savior
Saints Hood Book One
Thea Atkinson
About Savior
Hale Saint has 48 hours to live.
The crucifix that holds the demon within him at bay has cracked and now the demon is seeping through. Unless he can find a way to keep it from returning to Hell, the last 50 years are going to catch up to him with a deadly vengeance. Not to mention the havoc the demon will wreak on the world when it takes over his soul.
When he learns that a witch in the Shadow Bazaar might be able to replicate the spell that keeps the demon docile, he decides to ride one of the gates into the bazaar. The biggest problem isn't that he can't find her, it's that she is indentured to the fae-kin mafia, and the underboss wants Hale dead. Like. Dead, dead.
If he's lucky, he'll find the witch before the dark fae discovers his plans.
If he's unlucky...
1
There's nothing so unsettling as seeing an incubus demon set loose in a convent of nuns. I'd seen plenty of terrible things in my century of life, some of them horrifying enough to make a blind man grateful for his lack of sight. But right then, standing in the middle of a convent, that one had to take the prize.
I clutched my threadbare bible in one hand, h
olding it aloft like a shield. In my other, I held my crucifix, clutching it by Jesus's foot. His left, the one splayed over the top and pinned to the metal by a golden nail, had long ago been worn down to a nub of ivory. The nail's head bit into the pad of my thumb as I worried it back and forth.
The incubus I'd been brought here to expel had no idea I had entered the room. Neither did the nun the incubus was riding. Both were too lost in the throes of his feast to find any awareness of anything except their own lusts. That they were so lost in it they couldn't feel the shift in electricity of the room as I shouldered my way past the cluster of nuns crying outside in the hall was indicative of how gluttonous this incubus was. He should have sensed me by now.
I paused two feet from the bed. I tried not to look at what was happening on top of the aged sheets and woolen blanket. For her sake I would avert my gaze, I told myself, but I knew later I'd have to admit it was for my own. The room smelled of sex and incense.
Whispers from the Mother Superior fed my hearing from behind me. I kicked the door closed behind me, cutting off her prayers and the knowing weeping of the nun's peers who had clustered around the doorway long before I arrived.
There was evidence they'd tried to exorcise the demon themselves. In the faint light of the one LED night light, I could make out an incense brazier toppled onto its side as it rolled into the corner. Several rosaries had broken and their beads and strings lay scattered across the wooden floor.
Cigarette-box sized was a generous exaggeration to describe the size of the room, so those beads and strings crunched under my boot as I stepped closer to the foot of the bed. Its iron wrought headboard racheted against the plaster wall, letting the awful kathunk kathunk rebound on every surface in grotesque amplification. Each time it struck the wall, a new wail went up from the hallway.
I felt my gorge rise at shame this sister would feel later because I knew there'd be no way to assuage her guilt about it. Not with the things she was letting the demon do to her, that she was doing to him. I doubted she'd even find solace in her God when this was all done and she was free. Didn't matter that she wasn't at fault. Didn't matter that she couldn't have done anything any differently than she was doing right then.
Demons are cunning and they are powerful. And I knew it all too well.
All I could do for her was stop this madness as soon as I could and let her find her peace wherever she could in the aftermath.
It wasn't for me to ask why she was so entranced. Whatever had happened in this convent to let a demon infiltrate was none of my business.
I was here to complete my job and move on.
I lifted my Bible, aiming it at the incubus's back.
I heard the demon suck in a breath just a moment before I struck the thing over the head with the book. Hard enough that it fell sideways. Like hitting a bear with a fly swatter. It would be stunned for a second but just wait for the response if you dared.
"Bastard," I said and clotheslined it with my elbow as I fell onto it, throwing my entire weight onto its ribcage. I pinned it there, wriggling over top of the aged nun. It went to smoke before I could sear it with the crucifix.
I was left lying prostrate across the nun's lap. The little night light bled a golden glow over her brow. Her eyes fluttered.
"Get your asses in here," I hollered over my shoulder. My knee crabbed down between spindly old shins as I tried to free myself from the wool blanket she was tangled in. "Sweet Jesus, if you don't hurry the hell up..."
The door rattled open and I heard the rustling of nightgowns and whispers of terrified women. I patted the old nun's cheeks with my fingers, gently at first, then rougher as she moaned with residual pleasure. She hadn't yet started the ascent into consciousness. She was still in the throes of it all and while her writhing hadn't stopped, it was at least, mercifully, abating.
Not fast enough though.
"Fuck," I said because the next creepiest thing to a an old nun succumbing to an incubus demon had to be her ankles hooking mine. I crab-walked my way off the side of the bed, my throat thick with revulsion and pity. I swung my gaze to the terrified eyes of the Mother Superior.
"Get her out of here," I said. "Now. This room is tainted."
I could smell it stronger now that I was on the bed, that clotted stink of arousal and magic. The aroma of sulfur just beneath it all.
Several of the women brushed past me to help the old nun from her bed. They swaddled her in the blanket and eased her to her feet. She swaggered, drunk on demonic power, and a ghost of a smile swept across her face.
"God help us," one of the younger nuns said. One look at her face in the golden light told me she knew the expression on the old nun's face well.
I hovered near the wall and watched them wrestle her from the room.
"Not you," I said to the abbess. "You stay."
She paused and it took a long time for her to turn around to face me. When she did, she wouldn't meet my gaze.
"I'm not interested in what invoked the demon," I said and I thought I saw her shoulders sag in relief. "I need supplies."
"I know who you are," she said, crossing herself and touching her forehead with her thumb. "Have we exorcised one demon to be replaced with another?"
I barked out a laugh. "A devil's bargain, you mean?" I said and crossed my arms as I shook my head. "I have no intentions of slipping into your bedchambers one by one and deflowering you all. I gave up Christian love a century ago."
She leveled me with a black-eyed stare. "You know what I mean."
"No," I said. "I don't. Your order paid me to come. They asked me to provide a service. I expect to complete it as bargained and move on."
"It's not done?" she said, wringing her hands. Several liver spots caught the light as her hands moved over each other. I guessed her to be younger than the afflicted nun. Her hair spilling out behind it still had thick swaths of red.
I leaned over the bed to extract my Bible from the tangled sheets. A stain of blood peeked out from beneath and I jerked the top sheet over to cover it up so she wouldn't see it while I was there. It might save some of the humiliation if she thought I'd not noticed it. The book, I laid down on the nun's night stand. Sheaves of paper from inside, delicate and gilt-edged, fluttered to the floor.
"You have an infestation of them," I said as I met her gaze again. "Not just one. I can smell them. And no. It's not over. It fled when attacked but it will be back. Probably with its host."
She chewed her lip and sank onto the edge of the bed. It creaked and when she heard the noise, so reminiscent of the sounds it had made just moments earlier, she bolted back to her feet.
"It can't come back. This has been a nightmare."
I didn't want to know any more about the nightmare than what I'd already witnessed. It was my experience that too much information was usually way too much information. I deflected her obvious plea for comfort with an order. One I thought she could use and one I could control.
Shit needed to get done and yakking about it was not going to get us anywhere.
"I need you here in the room with me," I said. "You're going to be the bait."
I yanked the sheets up over the mattress and smoothed them out. "Now," I said and extended my hand toward her. "Come lie down."
She was an older woman. I guessed somewhere in the neighborhood of 60. She'd been beautiful once because she still retained a porcelain skin with bright green eyes to go with that red hair. A China doll, really. Whatever had driven her to take vows, it wasn't because she thought she'd lead a spinster's life. Looks wouldn't matter, though. Incubi didn't care about age or looks.
"Lie down," I said again.
She touched down on the mattress with a tent of fingers before slowly perching on the edge of the bed. When she looked up at me, it was with grit in her features. She would do what she had to in order to save her women, even luring a demon to her bed. I had to admire her spunk.
"I will not undress in front of you," she said and lifted bare,
delicate feet onto the mattress. Her nightgown lifted high enough that I could see all the wear in her body had gone to her knees. They were red and rough from hours of kneeling.