Witch Me (Blood Chord Book 3) Read online

  Witch Me

  Blood Chord Series – Book 3

  Authoralexowens.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Book Description:

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Coming Soon

  About Alex

  Book Description:

  Death may come softly, but her fangs be sharp.

  They say no good can ever come with digging up the past. Well, those bastards were right and Claire is finding it out the hard way. With the lives of everyone she loves hanging in the balance, Claire must bring her A-game, or lose one of them forever.

  Her daughter, ex-husband, best friend, or one of her lovers; which one will it be? Even using both her magical gifts and vampire abilities, saving most of them is a long shot. But there’s no way that Claire can save them all...

  Witch Me (Blood Chord #3), by Alex Owens, is the final book her sexy adult paranormal suspense series. Be forewarned, this is not your daughter's paranormal.

  ***Sign up for Alex’s mailing list to be notified of new releases, contests and freebies!

  Chapter One

  Death may come softly, but her fangs be sharp.

  I was minutes away from murdering a man, but the anticipation was positively slaying me. My skin vibrated with electricity, my feet wouldn’t stop moving, and I was licking my lips more often than Dave Chappell impersonating a crack head.

  Don’t get me wrong—this twisted bastard definitely deserved it. Humanity would be better off without him, but I didn’t want to think about the ethics involved. I wanted to watch the terror pass through his eyes when he realized what a pickle he’d gotten himself in. I wanted to see the panic, the shock and of course, the blood. I wanted that most of all; it had been too terribly long.

  All that I needed now was my soon-to-be victim to walk out the back door like he did every night about this time. Instead, I got a phone call. I pulled my phone from my back pocket and eyed the caller I.D. It was Clive.

  “Calling to wish me good luck?” I said quietly into my phone, keeping an eye on the door.

  “So you’re doing it tonight then?” he sighed, the screen on my phone showing a tired looking Clive.

  It was no secret that he worried about me. He was hundreds of miles away and that left him feeling powerless. That, and the concept of a lone vamp hunting was one he’d left behind eons ago. One of the perks of being a Vamp Politico was that they preferred to hunt in small groups, so the inherent safety in number came into play.

  I had no such luxury. As far as I knew, there wasn’t another vamp around for a hundred miles. At least none that I knew of. I’d have to ask Clive when I wasn’t pretending to be irritated at him.

  “Gosh, all the cool kids are doing it. I’ll be fine. Why don’t you trust me?” I did my best bratty-teen impression, complete with stuck-out tongue, and that got a half-laugh out of him.

  “Point taken. It’s just... I keep forgetting how young you are, relatively speaking, and then I remember that up here we don’t let the newly-dead hunt alone for the first years. So much can go wrong,” he ran his fingers back through his hair in exasperation.

  When he got like that, all serious and caring, I mentally panicked. We didn’t have that kind of relationship. At least, I didn’t think we did. But when he said things like that I had to wonder if we were on the same page with our relationship. I made a mental note not to think about any of that anytime soon. I’d pencil that in for the twenty-second of never.

  “I’m not sure how to respond to that. Thanks? Sorry?” My focus was trained on the back door of the pizzeria. Screwing the mission up was not an option, even for Clive.

  “Just be careful.” He said quietly. “Nothing’s worth risking your life over.”

  “I disagree. There are a lot of things I’d risk my life over, but none of them have anything to do with tonight. I’m hungry, so very hungry, and this shit-bucket can’t be allowed to live one more night on this earth. I’ll be doing humanity a favor. It’s a win-win.” I argued.

  “Fine, I can see that you won’t be dissuaded...” he started.

  With my super-fine hearing, I picked up the fall of the tumblers as the handle on the back door turned. “I’ve got to go, he’s coming out now.” I whispered into my phone.

  “No, don’t hang up. Let me watch?” Clive, looking rather sheepish on the screen. “I don’t get to see much action from high upon my throne these days. Let me live vicariously through you. Pretty please?”

  He looked so freaking cute, I could hardly deny him, even if I suspected it was just a ploy to keep an eye on me. Not that he could do a damn thing from so far away.

  “Fine, whatever. I’ll place you back here on the wall. You’ll see it all... that’s what you want, right? To see me getting all dirty?” The huskiness in my voice surprised even me.

  He couldn’t even speak, only nod with a hungry look in his eyes.

  I propped the phone up on a loose brick in the wall, checked the viewing angle and slunk into the shadows of the alley. My target had his back to me, just a few feet ahead now. He tossed bag after bag of restaurant trash into the big green dumpster, just as he’d done every night at eleven for the past week.

  I’d been a very patient girl. Waiting and watching. I had to be sure, you know. I wasn’t in the habit of draining good guys, so I had to be absolutely certain Mr. Goatee here was what they call a bad hombre. On the third night trailing him, I suspected, but didn’t actually see anything. On the fifth night I was probably right, but still I had to know. Positively, without a doubt.

  After a week of nothing concrete, I’d run out of patience and broken into his house in broad daylight. For a normal person that would have been risky, but for a pale chick with a sun allergy it had been downright painful. That was one of the reasons I needed the kill, my stomach was beginning to gnaw on itself. Thank the gods I’d found my proof in the form of a basement stocked with every rusty surgical tool imaginable, a wall full of reinforced prisoner chains and enough dried blood down there to prove the bastard had been at it for a while.

  That’s why, when I was done with him I would be taking the body back to his house to be found, along with the evidence of his crimes. Hopefully that would lead to closure for many people. But first I had to do him. Not in a skanky way of course—I was aiming for painful. It was the least he deserved.

  I stopped two feet behind him and planted my feet in case he decided to run. The stench was overpowering so close to the trash—good thing I didn’t really need to breathe, that was more of a trying-to-look-human habit. I stopped inhaling and that cut the odor down significantly.

  “Hey, pecker-wood.” I called out.

  He turned quickly, startled. His apprehension quickly devolved into something else entirely when he got a load of me, backlit by the only security light in the alley. I tried to picture what he saw—a short, curvy brunette wearing only a white tank and fitted blue jeans. The twinkle in his eye said I was jus
t his type. Good. It was about time that caught up with him.

  He turned on the charm. “Can I help you, Miss?”

  I could see how he’d worked for oh, so long. Gone was the ragged pizzeria cook, and in its place was a personable, non-threatening middle aged man. Time to poke the façade.

  “I doubt it. I don’t think you could help me even with someone else’s dick.” I sneered and looked him in the eye.

  The tiny slip in his smile told me I was on the right path. Time to hammer it home.

  “Why, I was just talking to a woman out front, and she told me that not only do you have the smallest dick she’s ever seen, but you couldn’t even get it hard enough to do anything with it.” I waggled my little finger limply towards him and laughed as hard as I could.

  Red faced and full of rage, he lunged at me. I never flinched, only laughed harder as he approached. At the last second, when he was inches from putting his hands on me, I grabbed him by the throat and launched him backwards. He hit the metal dumpster with a thump.

  Before he could regain his bearings, I was all over him. I clamped one hand over his throat to stifle any screaming, then snapped the fingers in his left hand. No sense in completely immobilizing him yet. I wanted him to think he stood a change for a little bit longer.

  Crouching down over him, I leveled my eyes with his own. “Oh, Norman. You’ve been a very bad boy. For all the things you’ve done, I’ve come to pay you back. Just call me Karma, bitch.”

  His eye grew wide at that, then even wider still when I dropped my fangs and clacked them in his face. I hoisted him up by the throat and pressed him against the brick wall. His feet dangled several inches off the ground. I pushed up his shirt and tore a hole in his side with my teeth. There wasn’t really much in the way of decent blood flow there, not enough to drink anyway. The wound was purely for pain purposes. He struggled against me, flicking little blood droplets onto my face. I licked them away, fighting the urge to skip straight to the meal part of my plan.

  I bit my own lip, bringing forth my own healing blood, and sealed his wounds. No sense in leaving teeth marks all over the body to set the police off on a wild dog chase. Seeing the hope in his eye, I quickly tamped it down.

  “No, I’m not helping you. I’m helping myself. Can’t have you bleeding out on me before I’m good and finished with you.” I smiled garishly.

  The poor bastard began to cry in earnest then, but I had no sympathy. All I had to do was picture his prior victims begging for their lives as he did unspeakable things to them. That gave me a renewed sense of purpose as I began my brand of torture all over again.

  Normally, when I fed from a victim, I wanted them calm. If necessary, I even pushed feelings of joy or pleasure into them. Not this guy though. Into him, I shoved all the fear and terror I could muster. I wanted him to suffer, and suffer badly.

  And suffer, he did.

  I’d like to pretend that I didn’t enjoy it, but I’d be lying, and I try not to do that if I can help it. Killing him felt natural; it felt right, as twisted as that was. After all, Vampires are made for death and destruction. A beast that lives on the blood of humans is always above them on the food chain. Should the leopard become an herbivore simply because the gazelle doesn’t want to be eaten? Of course not, that’s not the way the planet works. That’s not how any of this works.

  “Have you had enough?” I gazed down at his bloody, broken body and waiting for the begging to begin.

  “Yes.” He whimpered, snot hanging from his nostrils. “I’m sorry, for whatever I did. Just please stop... I can’t... take any more.”

  I kicked him in the ribcage and he howled.

  “You’re sorry for whatever you did? Are you kidding me? You know your sins as well as I, and unless you start naming them, I’m going to keep on torturing you until there isn’t a scrap of skin on your body.” I snatch off a ribbon of skin from his arm for good measure.

  He let out a guttural wail, loud enough that I worried if I played too much longer, someone would come out and catch me bloody-handed. It was time to wrap it up, unfortunately. Not for the first time I considered that I needed to have some sort of set up like the good-guy-serial-killer Dexter from the popular television series. Remote location, plastic covering every surface; I could have so much fun if only I had the time and privacy.

  Whoa, I mentally slapped myself. I constantly skirted the line between light and dark these days and I had to be careful. It was like the old Native-American tale...

  The wise Grandfather says every person has a good wolf and a bad wolf inside of them, fighting for control. The Grandson asks, “Who will win?”

  And the grandfather responds, “Which ever one you feed the most.”

  Or something like that. I was probably butchering it horribly, much like my almost-dead sadist. The point is, I had to be careful not to stray too far over the line, or spend too much time in the darkness, lest I be unable to step back into the light one.

  With that thought in mind, I pulled my victim up by his shirt collar and sank my fangs deep into his neck one last time. When it was done, when he was done, I let go of him like I was discarding the trash.

  His body fell to the pavement with a crack and I turned and licked my lips for the camera, adding a little extra swing in my steps back to retrieve my phone. I hoped I’d given Clive enough of a show to keep his motor running until he could visit again. That, or reassure him that I was perfectly fine hunting on my own—I still wasn’t sure of his motivation for watching.

  It didn’t take me long to figure it out though. As soon as I reached my phone I had my answer. He sat there, big grin on his face and his dick in his hand. I should have known; that man hadn’t an ounce of shame in his un-dead body.

  “Pervert.” I groaned and terminated the call.

  I pocketed my phone and went back to collect my trophy. We had a ten minute trip to make and I’d prefer not to get caught with the body before we’d even started.

  He was heavier than he’d been a few minutes earlier. Most likely my body was coming down from the high and I was actually feeling his full weight as I lifted him and slung his body over my shoulder. A quick jaunt to my truck parked back in the shadows and away from all CCTV cameras, and we were on our way.

  While parking down the street from my destination, I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. I ignored it and finished the plan. When the neighbors awoke the next morning and saw his door ajar with blood smeared all over the jam, someone would surely call the police and that would be that. Mission accomplished.

  Driving away, I checked my phone. I had a text message from Clive. I shook my head and smiled. That man was going to be the death of me one of these days.

  It read:

  I wouldn’t have to handle things myself if you’d just come wrap

  those pretty lips of yours around the head of my cock ;-)

  Chapter Two

  There is very little in life that brings me pure joy; dying will do that to you real quick.

  My daughter Quinn was that singular thing, my purpose and my salvation. Spending time with her was my number one priority, so the next night I decided that we needed to have some quality time together.

  When the sun was setting low, bathing my yard in a subdued golden light, I started charcoal burning inside the grill. While that heated up, Quinn and I ran around the yard chasing fireflies and depositing them into an old Ball jar I’d found in the gardening shed. We laughed until we were short of breath, then plopped down into the hammock to admire our magical catch.

  Quinn held the jar up into the dying light and the bent reflection danced over her cute little face. It’s something to watch a child play... they enjoy life without over thinking, they see the magic in everyday things; children see the world as pure and without complications. I’d taken that for granted for years. Now, without the pressures of maintaining a marriage, keeping the household finances solvent and other things that typically make adult-ing suck, I was able to appreciate t
hose things once again.

  But children, like their childhoods, never sit still long.

  Within a few minutes, Quinn left the hammock to collect flowers for a fairy crown, so I decided to check the grill temp and putter around in my garden for a few minutes. At least then I could make sure that Quinn didn’t go near the corner of the garden that I’d labeled off-limits to everyone, save myself and Cassidy. I’d even gone so far as to fence off that portion to make it a more difficult to access.

  The plants that grew there were still part of my magical education, or at least that’s what Cass called it, but each deadly in its own way: wolf’s bane, bitter lupine, monk’s hood, white baneberry, columbine, belladonna, jimson weed, and hemlock. Outside of the gated section of the garden, various other herbs and plants grew rampant. Just to name a few, there were: Echinacea, lemon balm, lavender, arnica, elderberry, valerian, peppermint, and Sage – lots and lots of sage.

  The fact that even the plants had a light and dark side was not lost on me. Nature is always trying to achieve a balance, in all things, every day.

  I was woefully behind in my magical training, as Cass liked to point out every so often. I had no idea when I would ever use the knowledge she insisted on beating into my brain; it was a lot like the Geometry I had to take in high school. That is, useless, in my opinion.

  I wandered through the garden, occasionally catching a glimpse of Quinn as she dashed up and down the orderly rows of grouped plantings. I inspected the squash plants for insect damage—I’d had a round of that earlier in the season—and then I moved over to check the ripeness of my heirloom “Roma” paste tomatoes. They were well. Fat and happy with the leafy basil plants I’d nestled in with them as companions. An old woman at the local farmer’s market told me that the secret to making a killer pasta sauce was to plant the two together—the basil infuses the tomatoes with a fuller flavor. She was right, of course. Old women usually were.

  I stopped beside the deeper bed of puny carrots. I had no idea what I was doing wrong, but they just weren’t flourishing. Instinctively, I placed my hand deep into the loamy soil and mentally thought, “Grow, grow” but of course nothing changed. I can only influence emotions and feelings, not make things or people do my will. Wouldn’t that be a nifty skill to have though?