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We Built This City
Bloome
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These assholes. Who did they think they were? We’d been in this city for two centuries. Without so much as a peep from vampires, except the occasional attack when one would think we were unsuspecting humans. Now these jerks want to come into my city—our city—and tell us what to do?
Well, fuck that and fuck them.
No, what Amara did wasn’t right. She wasn’t in our coven and we’d looked the other way at the crap she was doing. It was her coven’s responsibility to button her up and set her straight. But there was no way I was telling that neanderthal with the beard that. He and his leech friends weren’t going to be privy to all the covens in the area. I could handle him just fine.
“How come our magic didn’t work in there?” Brantley asked me.
I looked at him. He was a young, new warlock who had been raised in foster homes and had no idea what he was until we caught him doing clumsy magic one day. He was super bad at it, too. We took him into the coven about six months ago and taught him proper magic.
“They must have paid a witch to put a blocking spell around their club. I could feel the negative magic when I walked in. I tried to blast him off you, but it didn’t work. I didn’t figure it would, but I had to try.”
He bumped his hip against mine and said, “Thanks, girl. I know you tried.”
The walk back to our house was only a few blocks. I’d given Shadow a hard time earlier about giving me thirty minutes to have us ready, but it wasn’t hard. I just liked ruffling his feathers because he was such a dick.
A dick I wish was uglier and nicer because he was neither of those things. I hated to admit my attraction to him. It infuriated me. I was taught my whole life to avoid vampires. They were soulless and unfeeling. Had no regard for human life or the rules. They were physically strong, and we were no match for them in that way. But it seemed all those things were contradicted by the way Shadow and his biker club friends behaved. Yes, I was sure they were stronger, but they didn’t seem soulless or unemotional. And they seemed to care about humans more than the average vampire. I was going to have to do a little digging into these Nighthawks. I hadn’t heard of them before they’d shown up in town a few months ago.
Still, we weren’t going to be told what to do. I would admittedly be keeping a closer eye on some of the sketchier witches in town, just to keep these vampire vigilantes off our case and out of our business.
Skyla used her key to open the front door. “I’m gonna go take a bath. I feel gross after being around all those nasty vamps.” She dramatically shuddered for effect, her blonde ringlets bouncing.
I laughed with a wave. “Knock yourself out.”
I glanced around the house and closed my eyes to ensure everything was still in balance. I felt no strange magic, nor did I detect any sort of intruder or stranger had been inside during our absence.
The house was over one-hundred years old, and we’d worked hard to keep the original Victorian look to it, while modernizing the bathrooms and kitchen to make things easier on us. Boiling things in a big cauldron over a fire was the way of witches from a century ago. Ain’t nobody got the energy for that type of time-suck anymore.
Six of us lived here, and we each had our own rooms. Our coven consisted of twenty witches, all females except Brantley. Some had families and lived on their own. Others just chose to live elsewhere. We held monthly coven meetings, and tomorrow, during the last night of the blood moon, we would hold our next one.
I went into my room and set my small purse on the bed. After peeling out of my black leather pants and red crop tank, I stood in front of my standing beveled mirror and gazed at my body. Too fat, I thought. My ass was a bit too big for my liking and my stomach could be flatter. I pulled at the fat on my hips and wished they were smaller. At least I liked my boobs. They could fill out a bra nicely but weren’t so huge to where people made comments. Poor Skyla used baggy clothes to cover up her triple Ds and I wondered why she didn’t just go have them surgically—or magically—reduced.
Sighing at the mirror, I frowned. I was only twenty-six... why was I putting on weight? I tried to watch what I ate but no amount of magic could keep me from the curse of aging or reverse my love for burritos and chocolate.
“Illusio,” I said, waving my hand while colorful sparks of magic floated from my fingertips.
In the mirror was now the woman wearing the body I wished I had. Tiny waist, slim but rounded hips, slender thighs. Cute bubble butt without a lot of jiggle. Sighing, I waved my hand again and it went back to the regular me.
“This is why I can’t get a guy,” I snapped at my reflection. “Then hit the gym, you lazy bitch,” I countered.
Great. Now I’m talking to myself.
I gazed at my deathly pale skin in contrast to the black bra I wore. Admittedly, we witches kept to a night schedule. The sun empowered us as we slept, but the moon gave us the real power we craved. I’d been raised by witches and knew every spell and trick in the book, but it was the night that made me feel alive and powerful.
It reminded me of vampires. They couldn’t go out into the sun and kept to the night schedule, just like us.
Vampires...
Like Shadow. That arrogant dick. Watching myself in the mirror, I reached up and touched my full bottom lip where he’d kissed me last night. Why had he done that?
“It was the only way to shut you up,” he’d said.
Rude. I didn’t need shutting up.
When I’d slapped him, I knew it wouldn’t hurt him, but I couldn’t let him get away with kissing me without my permission—even if I did find it hot. I found myself wishing he would do it again, and that really angered me.
Me... kissing a vampire. As if! Me... fucking a vampire... I wondered how big his cock was. He sure acted like he knew how to use it. I grew annoyed when my nipples pebbled in response to a mere thought about having sex with him. That broad chest, that deep, throaty voice. That beard and those full lips. Great, now my panties seemed to be getting warm and damp. Dammit! I blew out a breath and shook my head.
“Stop it, Bloome. You’re not going to sleep with this guy. This vampire. He’s dangerous and also a big, raging asshole!”
Still talking to myself... I’m surely going mad.
“Get a grip,” I snapped at my reflection.
Putting my sexual thoughts away, I began to wonder how old he was. I knew those vamps never aged, which was also such a mystery to me. How was that possible? Magic?
I stripped out of my underwear and bra and threw on a tank and some pajama bottoms. After tossing my hair into a claw clip at the back of my head, I wandered downstairs into the library.
After flipping on the light, I wandered over to the right side of the bookshelves. “V... vampires.”
I pulled out a large book with Vampiric History written on the side. I blew off the dust and went to sit on the small, covered bench that sat under a huge picture window. Glancing outside, I could see the street was quiet, the almost full moon glaring bright to illuminate the street.
With my back against the wall of the cove, I pulled my knees up to my chest and set the book against them. I began reading.
The usual lore about Vlad the Impaler came up, and I turned the pages. I’d read the books and seen the movies on Hollywood’s take about vampire beginnings. This book I held, though, was three hundred years old. I had to be careful with the crispy, yellowed pages.
Something caught my eye. “...cursed to walk the earth, not aging or able to die,” I read aloud. Wow, that sounded terrible. Why did vampires continue to make more vampires then? Wasn’t that an awful existence?
But those Nighthawks vampires didn’t seem miserable. Maybe they liked never growing old or dying. Me, personally... this world was so full of evil and fucked-up people, I was happy to do my eighty or ninety years and move on to the next life.
I continued to read aloud. “Lilith, first daughter of God and first witch, knowing Judas Iscariot had betrayed the Son of God, told him any offspring he created would also be cursed in the same way.”
I put my finger on the passage and stared out the window into the night sky. “Harsh.”
The moon reminded me of werewolves, and I vowed to pull that book next. Who else had pissed off an ancient witch and had been cursed to live as bloodthirsty animals once a month?
“Strength and rapid healing will compensate for the curse of never dying, keeping the man alive and impervious to aging, diseases, and plagues.” I chuckled. “Of course. If a worldwide pandemic comes around again, these fuckers are gonna survive it.” I shook my head.
In all honesty, we would too, as we had very powerful healing spells and herbs to keep us from getting sick. I’d heard of flus and colds but had never experienced them myself, as my mother had always kept us healthy with her spells and herbs. In fact, I’d never even been under the care of a human doctor in my life.
I flipped back to the beginning and read the table of contents until I found the section I was looking for: How to kill a vampire.
Running my finger down the page, I stopped when I came to the part I was looking for. “No creature can live without its head, so that is obvious. Keep your blades as sharp as possible. Removing the head is the easiest way to end a vampire. A stake of any material into the heart will also cause it to turn to ash and die. Any other method of killing, such as poison, smothering, arrows, or extreme blood loss will not kill the creature. You must destroy the brain or heart.”
Interesting. Not that I was too surprised by the facts.
Could I kill Shadow and his friends? Yes, yes, I could. Would I be able to do it while Shadow looked at me with those strange gray eyes while I did it? I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that our lives here in New Orleans had been perfectly content until these bossy and intrusive vampires had come to town, and there was no way I was going to sit back and let them tell me or my coven what to do.