Witch’s Bounty, #1
by Ann Gimpel
Publisher: Dream Shadow Press
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Romance
Urban
Fantasy Romance with a heaping side of Hexes, Spells, and Magick!
Excerpt from Witch’s
Bounty:
Rain worsened from a steady drizzle to
a pounding, punishing deluge of icy sleet. Colleen Kelly strengthened the spell
around herself. It sizzled where it ran up against the droplets. At least she
wasn't quite as wet as she would have been without its protection. Pavement
glistened wetly in the last of the day's light. It was just past three in the
afternoon, but December days were short in the northern latitudes and Fairbanks
was pretty far north.
“At least it’s not snowing,” she
muttered as she pushed through a nearby glass-fronted door into the magicians’
supply store she owned with two other witches in the older part of downtown.
Bells hanging around the door pealed discordantly. She sent a small jolt of
magic to silence them.
“I heard that. Not the bells, but you.
It’s supposed to snow this time of year. How could you possibly be pleased the
weather patterns have gone to hell?”
Jenna Neil stalked over to the
coatrack where Colleen stood. Blonde hair, hacked off at shoulder level, framed
a gamine’s face and shrewd, hazel eyes. Jenna towered over Colleen’s six foot
height by a good four inches, and her broad shoulders would’ve made most men
jealous. Between her trademark high-heeled boots and a scruffy embroidered red
cloak tossed over skintight blue jeans, she looked as exotic as the anti-hex
hoop earrings dangling from each ear.
Colleen rolled her eyes, shook out her
coat, and hung it on the rack. “Spare me your lecture about global warming,
okay? It’s cold enough to snow. It just isn’t, for some reason.”
“Mmph.” The line of Jenna’s jaw
tensed.
Indian spices wafted through the air,
mingling with the scents of herbs, dried flowers, and desiccated body parts
from small animals. Colleen’s stomach growled. Breakfast had been at six that
morning—a long time ago. Pretty bad when even dried newt smelled like food.
“Did you cook something?” she asked.
“And if you did, is there any left?”
A terse nod. Jenna turned away,
walking fast. Colleen lengthened her normal stride to catch up. “Hey, sweetie.
What happened? You can’t be in this big a snit over the weather.”
Jenna kept walking, heading for the
small kitchen at the back of the store. “A lot of things. I was just having a
cup of tea. Shop’s been dead today.” She disappeared behind a curtain.
Colleen glanced over one shoulder at
the empty store. The phalanx of bells around the door would alert them if
anyone stopped in. The minute she tugged the heavy, upholstery fabric that
served as a kitchen door aside, the pungent tang of Irish whiskey made her eyes
water. “You said tea.”
“Yeah, well I spiked it.”
Colleen grunted. “Smells like you took
a bath in booze. What the fuck happened?” She grabbed the larger woman and spun
her so they faced one another.
“We got another pay-your-tithe-or-die
e-mail from our Coven.” Jenna’s nostrils flared in annoyance.
“So? That’s like the tenth one.” There
were new policies none of them agreed with, so they’d joined with about twenty
other witches and stopped paying the monthly stipend that supported their
Coven’s hierarchy.
“It’s not what’s bothering me.” Jenna
pulled free from Colleen, tipped her cup, and took a slug of what smelled like
mostly liquor.
Colleen fought a desire to swat her.
Getting to the point quickly had never been one of Jenna’s talents. She clamped
her jaws together. “What is?”
“Roz called with…problems.” Jenna
turned and started toward the steep staircase ladder leading to her bedroom
above the shop.
“You can’t just drop that bomb and
leave.” Colleen made another grab for Jenna to keep her in the kitchen. Worry
for their friend ate at her. Of the three of them, Roz was by far the most
volatile. “What happened? I thought she was in Missouri, or maybe it was
Oklahoma, visiting that dishy dude she met online.”
“Didn’t work out.” The corners of
Jenna’s mouth twisted downward.
Colleen quirked a brow, urging her
friend to say more.
Jenna plowed on. “He only wanted her
for her magic. Turned out he preferred men.”
“Aw, shit.” Colleen blew out a breath.
“She must’ve been disappointed.”
Half a snorting laugh bubbled past
Jenna’s lips. “Maybe now she is. At the time, furious would’ve been closer to
the mark.”
Colleen’s throat tightened. “Crap!
What’d she do? She didn’t hurt him, did she?”
“Not directly. She turned him over to
the local Coven.”
“Thank God!” Colleen let go of Jenna
and laid a hand over her heart. Roxanne Lantry was more than capable of killing
anyone who pissed her off. It was how she ended up in Alaska. Roz hadn’t
exactly been caught when her cheating husband and his two girlfriends went
missing, but she hadn’t stuck around to encourage the authorities to question
her, either.
Colleen and Jenna had already left
Seattle when that little incident went down. Roz repressed her antipathy for
Alaska’s legendary foul weather and joined them. Magically, she was strong as
an ox, and she had a hell of a temper.
Colleen’s stomach growled again.
Louder this time. It didn’t give a good goddamn about anything other than its
empty state. She pushed past Jenna to the stove, lifted a lid, and peered into
a battered aluminum pot. Curry blasted her. The spicy odor stung her eyes and
made her nose run.
“Whew. Potent. Mind if I help myself?”
“Go ahead.” Jenna sat heavily in one
of two chairs with a rickety wooden table between them. She picked up her mug
and took another long swallow.
Dish in hand, Colleen slapped it on
the table in front of the other chair and went in search of a mug of her own.
There weren’t any clean ones, so she plucked one out of the sink and rinsed it.
Back at the stove, she tipped the teakettle. Thick, amber liquid spilled from
its stubby snout into her waiting mug. Jenna waggled the whiskey bottle in her
direction.
“Nah.” Colleen settled at the table.
“It would go right to my head. Maybe after I get some food on board.” She
tucked in. After the first few mouthfuls, when the curry powder nearly
annihilated her taste buds, the pea, potato, and ham mixture wasn’t half-bad.
Jenna drank steadily, not offering
anything by way of conversation.
When Colleen’s dish was empty, she
refilled her mug with tea, filched a couple of biscuits from the cupboard, and
sat back down. “Are you going to talk to me?”
“I suppose so.” Jenna’s words slurred
slightly.
Colleen cocked her head to one side.
“I suggest you start now, before you forget how.”
“Oh, please.” Jenna blew out a breath,
showering the small space with whiskey fumes. Colleen waited. The other witch
could be stubborn. Wheedling, cajoling, or urging wouldn’t work until she was
good and ready to talk.
Finally, after so long Colleen had
nearly chewed a hole in her cheek, Jenna finally muttered, “Roz called.”
Colleen ground her teeth together.
“You already said that. It’s how you knew what happened with the guy.”
Jenna nodded. “There’s more.” She
picked up the whiskey, started to pour it into her mug, then apparently changed
her mind and drank right from the bottle. “She’s in Seattle. Checked in with
Witches’ Northwest, just to say hello, and because she wanted to touch base
with people she’s known for a long time.”
Another long pause. Colleen batted
back a compulsion spell. It wasn’t nice to use those on your friends. She
shoved her hands under her bottom to reduce the temptation.
Jenna lowered her voice until Colleen
had to strain to hear. “The Irichna demons are back.”
“But our last confrontation wasn’t all
that long ago. Only a few months. Sometimes when we best them, they’ve stayed
gone for years.”
Colleen shook her head. Even the sound
of the word, Irichna, crackled against her ears, making them tingle
unpleasantly. Irichna demons were the worst. Hands down, no contest. They
worked for Abbadon, Demon of the Abyss. Evil didn’t get much worse than that.
No wonder Jenna was drinking. Colleen held her hand out for the bottle—suddenly
a drink seemed like a most excellent idea—and picked her words with care. “Did
Roz actually sight one?”
“Yeah. She also asked if we could come
and help. More than asked. She came as close to begging as I’ve ever heard
her.”
“Erk. They have a whole Coven there.
Several if you count all the ones in western Washington. Why do they need us?”
Colleen belted back a stiff mouthful of whiskey. It burned a track all the way
to her stomach where it did battle with all the curry she’d eaten.
Jenna just shot her a look. “You know
why.”
Colleen swallowed again, hoping for
oblivion, except it couldn’t come quick enough. She knew exactly why, but the
answer stuck in her craw and threatened to choke her. The three of them were
the last of a long line of demon assassins, witches with specialized powers,
able to lure demons, immobilize them, and send them packing to the netherworld.
When things worked right.
They often didn’t, though, which was
what killed off the other demon assassin witches. It didn’t help that demons as
a group had been gathering power these last fifty years or so. Witches lived
for a long time, but they were far from immortal, and demon assassin ability
was genetic. She, Jenna, or Roz would have to produce children or that strain
of magic would die out. So far, none of them had come anywhere close to identifying
a guy who looked like husband material…
Colleen looked at her hands. Even
absent a husband, none of them had a shred of domesticity. Certainly not enough
to saddle themselves with offspring.
“What’s the matter?” Jenna grinned
wickedly, clearly more than a little drunk. “Cat got your tongue too?”
As if on cue, a blood-curdling meow
rose from a shadowed corner of the kitchen and Bubba, Colleen’s resident
familiar, padded forward. When he was halfway to them, he gathered his haunches
beneath him and sprang to the table. It rocked alarmingly, and Jenna made a
grab for her cup. The large black cat skinned his lips back from his upper
teeth, bared his incisors, and hissed.
“Oh, all right.” Colleen clamped her
jaws tight and summoned the magic to shift Bubba to his primary form, a gnarled
three-foot changeling.
The air shimmered around him. Before
it cleared, he swiped the liquor out of her hand and drained the bottle.
“Would’ve been a good reason to leave
you a cat,” Jenna mumbled.
He stood on the table and glared at
both of them, elbows akimbo, bottle still dangling from his oversized fingers.
“If you’re going to fight demons, you have to take me with you.”
“No, we don’t,” Colleen countered.
“You don’t follow directions well,”
Jenna said pointedly.
“Isn’t that the truth?” Colleen
rotated her head from side to side, starting to feel the whiskey. At least once
when they’d humored the changeling, he’d almost gotten all of them killed.
Problem was she couldn’t predict when he’d follow her orders, and when he’d decide
on a different tack altogether. Then there were the times his fearlessness had
saved them all.
Bubba might be a wildcard, but he was
her wildcard.
“You forgot when I welcomed your
spirit into my body—and kept it alive—while the healers worked on you.” Bubba
eyed Colleen, sounding smug.
“If you hadn’t decided to play hero,
and needed to be rescued, the demons wouldn’t have injured me.” Colleen winced
at the sour undertone in her voice. That incident had happened five years
before. Maybe it was time she got over it.
“Nevertheless.” He tossed his shaggy
head, thick with hair as black as the cat’s. “When you conjured me from the
barrows of Ireland, and bound me, we became a unit. You can’t go off and leave
me here. It would be like leaving a part of yourself behind.” His dark eyes
glittered with challenge.
“I hate to admit it—” Jenna sounded a
little less drunk “—but he’s right.”
“See.” Bubba leered at them, jumped
off the table, and waddled over to the stove with his bowlegged gait. Once
there, he opened the oven, climbed onto its door, and peeked into the pot. He
started to stick a hand inside.
“Hold it right there, bud.” Colleen
got to her feet, covered the distance to the stove, and dished him up some of
the curry mixture. “Get some clothes on and you can have this.”
He clambered down from his perch and
over to several colorful canisters scattered around the house where she stashed
outfits for him. Keeping Bubba clothed had been a huge problem until she’d
hatched up a plan, and sewn him several pant and shirt combos with Velcro
closures, since he didn’t like buttons or zippers.
The changeling dressed quickly and
took the bowl from her. “I could’ve gotten my own food.”
“Better for the rest of us if you keep
your paws out of the cook pot.” Jenna stood a bit unsteadily. “I’ll be right
back.”
Bubba stuffed food into his mouth with
his fingers. “Where’s she going?” His words came out garbled as he chewed
open-mouthed.
Colleen looked away. “Probably to pee.
Maybe to throw up. Um, look, Bubba, it might be wiser if we took a quick side
trip to Ireland and released you.”
She glanced sidelong at the changeling
spirit she’d summoned during a major demon war forty years before. He’d been
truly helpful then, especially after he’d mastered English, which hadn’t taken
him all that long. In the intervening time, he’d mostly clung to his feline
form, eating and keeping their shop free of mice and rats. They’d lived in
Seattle the first ten years or so after he joined them, relocating to Alaska to
conceal their longevity. She dragged the heels of her hands down her face,
feeling tired. It was getting close to time to move again, but she didn’t want
to think about it.
Bubba shook his head emphatically.
Food flew from the sides of his mouth. He scooped a glob off the floor and ate
it anyway. “I have to agree to being released. I don’t want to go back to my
barrow. I like it much better here.”
Colleen sucked in a hollow breath,
blew it out, and did it again. Bubba was right. Rules were rules. He’d had a
choice at the front end. He could’ve refused her. Witches respected all living
creatures. The ones on the good side of the road, anyway. No forced servitude
for their familiars, despite rumors to the contrary.
Jenna lurched back into the kitchen
looking a little green. “You okay?” Colleen asked.
“Yeah. I drank too much, that’s all.”
She rinsed her mug at the sink, refilled it with tap water, and sat back down.
“Did you two come up with a plan?”
“I’m going.” Bubba left his dish on
the floor and vaulted back onto the table.
Jenna rolled red-rimmed eyes. “That
was the discussion when I left.”
“Your point?” Colleen swallowed
irritation.
“Nothing.” The other witch sounded
sullen, but maybe she just didn’t feel well.
“I offered to free him—” Colleen
began.
“I refused,” Bubba cut in. He shook
his head. “No recognition for all my years of loyal service. Tsk. You should
be—”
“Stuff it.” Jenna glared at him. “We
have bigger problems than your wounded ego.”
He stuck out his lower lip, looking
injured as only a changeling spirit could, but he didn’t say anything else.
“I suppose we have to go to Seattle,”
Colleen muttered, half to herself.
“Don’t see any way around it.” Jenna
worried her lower lip between her teeth.
“What exactly did Roz say?”
“We didn’t talk long. Her cellphone
battery was almost dead.” A muscle twitched beneath Jenna’s eye. “She’d just
stopped in at Coven Headquarters and the group mobbed her. Said we had to come.
They’ve already lost about twenty witches to stealth demon attacks.”
Colleen’s heart skipped a few beats.
Twenty witches was a lot. Maybe a quarter of the Witches’ Northwest Coven.
“Crap. When did the attacks start?”
“Only a few days ago. They’d planned
to call us, but saw it as goddess intervention when Roz showed up.”
“Damn that Oklahoma cowboy.” Colleen
pounded a fist into her open palm. “If his Coven doesn’t flatten him, I will.”
“He wasn’t a cowboy.” Jenna’s voice
held a flat, dead sound. “He was supposed to be a witch. You know, like us.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Do you want to close things up here,
or should I try to get someone from our Coven to fill in at the shop?” Jenna
looked pale, but the tipsy aspect had left her face.
Colleen shook her head. “We haven’t
sold enough in the last few weeks to make it worthwhile to pay someone to clerk
for us.”
“Okay.” Jenna’s hazel eyes clouded
with worry. “When do you want to leave?”
“If you asked Witches’ Northwest, we
probably should’ve left three days ago.”
“How are we getting there?” Bubba
squared his hunched shoulders as much as he could and eyed Colleen.
“Excellent question.” Jenna looked at
Colleen too.
She raised her hands in front of her
face, palms out. “Stop it, you two. I can’t deal with the pressure.” Colleen
clamped her jaws together and considered their options. Roz already had a car
in Seattle. It didn’t make sense to drive their other one down, plus it would
take too long. Flying with Bubba was impossible. He looked too odd in his gnome
form and his cat form didn’t do well with the pressure changes. They had to
teleport, which would seriously deplete their magic and mean they couldn’t
fight so much as a disembodied spirit for at least twenty-four hours after they
arrived.
Jenna screwed her face into an
apologetic scowl, apparently having come to the same conclusion. “Look, I’m
sorry I’m not more help. There’s something about that particular mix of earth,
fire, and air that I always bungle.”
Air whistled through Colleen’s teeth.
It had been so long since they’d teleported anywhere, she’d almost forgotten
Jenna’s ineptitude with the requisite spell. “How about this? You go down to
the basement and practice. I’ll get a few things together…”
“What do you want me to do?” Bubba
asked.
“You can help me,” Jenna said. “I’ll
do better if I have an object to practice with.”
The changeling scrunched his low
forehead into a mass of wrinkles. “Just don’t get me lost.”
“Even if she does, I’ll be able to
find you.” Colleen tried to sound reassuring. She was fond of her familiar. In
many ways, he was very childlike.
Heh! Maybe that’s why I’ve been so
reluctant to have a kid. I already have one who’ll never grow up.
The bells around the shop door clanged
a discordant riot of notes. “Crap!” Jenna shot to her feet. “First customer in
two days. I should’ve locked the damn door.”
“Back to cat form.” Colleen flicked
her fingers at Bubba, who shrank obligingly and slithered out of clothing,
which puddled around him. She snatched up his shirt and pants and dropped them
back into the canister.
“I say,” a strongly accented male
voice called out. “Is anyone here?”
“I’ll take care of the Brit,” Colleen
mouthed. “Take Bubba to the basement and practice.”
She got to her feet and stepped past
the curtain. “Yes?” She gazed around the dimly lit store for their customer.
A tall, powerfully built man, wearing
dark slacks and a dark turtleneck, strode toward her, a woolen greatcoat slung
over one arm. His white-blond hair was drawn back into a queue. Arresting
facial bones—sculpted cheeks, strong jaw, high forehead—captured her attention
and stole her breath. He was quite possibly the most gorgeous man she’d ever
laid eyes on. Discerning green eyes zeroed in on her face, caught her gaze, and
held it. Magic danced around him in a numinous shroud. Strong magic.
What was he?
And then she knew. Daoine Sidhe. The
man had to be Sidhe royalty. No wonder he was so stunning it almost hurt to
look at him.
Colleen held her ground. She placed
her feet shoulder width apart and crossed her arms over her chest. “What can I
help you with?”
“Colleen Kelly?”
Okay, so he knows who I am. Doesn’t
mean a thing. He’s Sidhe. Could’ve plucked my name right out of my head.
“That would be me. How can I help
you?” she repeated, burying a desire to lick nervously at her lips.
“Time is short. I’ve been hunting you
for a while now. Come closer, witch. We need to talk.”
Author Info
Ann Gimpel is a national bestselling author.
A lifelong aficionado of the unusual, she began writing speculative fiction a
few years ago. Since then her short fiction has appeared in a number of
webzines and anthologies. Her longer books run the gamut from urban fantasy to
paranormal romance. Once upon a time, she nurtured clients, now she nurtures
dark, gritty fantasy stories that push hard against reality. When she’s not
writing, she’s in the backcountry getting down and dirty with her camera. She’s
published over 30 books to date, with several more planned for 2016 and beyond.
A husband, grown children, grandchildren and wolf hybrids round out her family.
Author Links:
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