Chapter One.
I ground my teeth as Drake completely overlooked my directions and took a turnoff that led to God knows where. Imbecile. Did he think that because I was a woman, I couldn’t give directions? Chance, in the front passenger seat, groaned as I growled at Drake.
Drake ignored me, but Calamity swapped a worried glance with me.
“Drake, you took the wrong turn off!” I blasted Drake.
“No, I didn’t!” he shot back.
“Who has the map, fuckwit?” I retorted. Oh, right, because he was President of Rage MC, he couldn’t be in error at all!
“Babe,” Drake muttered, and that one word said everything.
“You think because I’ve got a pussy, I can’t read a map?” I snapped.
“Don’t answer that! It’s a trap!” Calamity exclaimed, and Rosie elbowed him in the ribs as I turned to glare.
Drake and Rosie spoke together.
“Brother, I can bust you down to prospect!” Drake challenged, but it lacked heat.
“Stay out of it, or we’ll find out how long you can last without sex,” Rosie threatened her husband.
Calamity subsided. Wise man, not wanting to upset his wife; unlike my own darling, bull-headed husband.
Ha! I shook my head. Typical man, threaten his sex life or manhood, and they fell into place.
“Brother, you took the wrong turn off,” Chance agreed. He rubbed his MC patch that proclaimed him President of Hellfire MC.
“Did not!” Drake rumbled, annoyed.
“Wanna bet one hundred bucks?” I retorted.
“Done! And you’ll owe me a blowjob!” Drake growled out.
“Yeah, I’m more likely to bite the fucker off right now, Drake. Jesus, this is horrendous,” I hissed, looking out of the window.
We weren’t at home. No, we’d driven across state lines to Nebraska.
This year, I hadn’t put on a fright night; we were still recovering from the war, and it didn’t seem important.
Drake had noted how down I’d been and booked a stay for several of us at a haunted hotel.
It had been a nice thought, but we hadn’t expected the weather…
At half-past twelve, the sky had turned darker than anything I’d ever seen. The clouds were heavy and clashed together with ominous thunder. Within moments, the rain-clouds broke open, and the rain lashed down. Drake had slowed the car as visibility worsened with every passing moment.
We were now an hour behind and totally lost. The sat nav had crashed, and Drake was winging it.
Luckily, I was a paranoid bitch, and I’d made sure we had a road atlas with us. I navigated the map while Chance helped Drake keep an eye out for hidden dangers. Visibility was so poor, we’d be on top of something before we realised.
Clio, sitting beside me in the middle of the minivan, swapped glances with me. Chance’s wife had stayed quiet, but she was clearly worried. She’d been following the directions too and looked concerned as the rain came down even harder. Drake was driving at a slow crawl, and I was a little scared.
“Shit,” Drake murmured moments later as tree branches whipped at the car windows. Lightning flashed across the sky and lit the way momentarily.
“Wrong turning, twatwaffle!” I crowed. Drake had turned us down a one-lane street, and now the minivan’s suspension was taking a battering as we bounced down the uneven road surface.
“There’s nowhere to turn around,” Chance muttered as he tried to peer into the darkness.
“Phoe said you’d taken the wrong road!” Calamity stated.
“Shut up, who needs your opinion?” Drake hissed.
Calamity chuckled. “Clearly not you, brother.”
Drake began muttering threats under his breath.
“Look, is that a light?” Clio cried and pointed over Chance’s shoulder.
Chance leaned forward, trying to see what Clio had seen. He squinted and then his body slammed to the side as Drake swerved. A tree crashed down behind us as Drake hit the brakes.
“Oh my God!” Rosie squealed as she and Calamity spun around and peered out of the rear window.
“Drake, that was fuckin’ close!” Calamity exclaimed as he gazed at the thick branch lying in the road.
“There’s no way back,” Drake said.
I noted the worry in his voice. Drake caught my eye in the rear-view mirror. He smiled briefly, trying to reassure me, but I knew he sensed my fear.
“Maybe we should just park up?” Clio suggested.
Then, a creaking noise made Drake hit the accelerator, and we shot forward as another branch came down.
“There!” I yelled as I saw a flickering yellow light in the distance. “There’s a building ahead.”
The minivan started crawling again, its high beams barely piercing the darkness, and we drove through a set of open wrought-iron gates. “The Washington Manor,” I read the words woven into them.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Clio muttered, her eyes wide and peering around.
“Yeah, me too,” I agreed.
Nobody said a word as Drake continued driving forward. The lane was heavily overgrown with trees, and it was awfully reminiscent of a horror movie.
A huge building came into sight, and I baulked. I loved Halloween, but nope. Not setting foot in that for love or money!
Emmaline
“Anything?” I asked my husband desperately as Vladimir tried accessing the mirror network again.
“No, darling, I’m sorry. Whatever this storm is, it’s messing with Mary’s mirrors,” Vladimir replied.
“Oh God, Vladimir, what if the others are also cut off from getting home?” I worried.
“They won’t be. Babe, a storm can’t harm the Legendary Shifters.
Jase’s target was at sea; he and Willow will shift into their merforms and dive deep if they have to hide.
They won’t be found. Lanie and Mac are in England, so they’ll be away from this storm.
Dale was the only other one who went hunting,” Vladimir said thoughtfully.
“And Dale will simply shift into Invisible Man and disappear if need be. He’ll be safe,” I murmured more to reassure myself than Vladimir.
“Exactly, don’t worry about them. I don’t know where we are, and the sat nav being broken isn’t great.”
“The weather is shocking,” I complained, looking out at the dark afternoon. The storm had hit out of nowhere and scared me half to death. Sure, a storm wouldn’t kill me, but even so, this was nature at its most furious, and it worried me.
Vladimir and I had come to Nebraska to feed Bloodlust. The target who’d appeared in Vladimir’s mirror portal had been a particularly nasty person.
Once Vladimir had fed the Sin of Bloodlust, we’d attempted teleporting back through Mary Worth’s mirror network, and we’d failed.
At first, neither of us were concerned. Vladimir had tried a different mirror and then several others.
None of them allowed us to open a portal home.
Knowing we were with a dead body, Vladimir got us out, and we escaped to our hire car.
Hell, we didn’t want to be caught red-handed with the victim.
Well, the dead guy wasn’t exactly a victim.
He’d butchered over a dozen people and was a serial killer, one who had evaded the authorities’ notice.
The Sin of Bloodlust had fed and was satiated. But we’d been stuck.
I’d agreed with Vladimir when he said hanging around would be bad, so we raced to the car, a few streets away, and drove off.
We’d driven all morning trying to find a mirror that worked, and none did.
Vladimir had tried calling for a private plane, but our phones wouldn’t work either.
It seemed everything was against us, and now this storm had fallen, and we were lost.
Honestly, I was a little scared, but not overly so. Vladimir and I could always shift into our vampire forms and protect ourselves should the need arise. Anyone attempting to mess with us would be in for a shock. We certainly weren’t defenceless.
A huge house appeared, making me gasp, and then I frowned. “Where did that come from?”
“Don’t know, but it might provide us some protection from this storm,” Vladimir replied.
Horrified, I gazed up at the structure. “Nope, I don’t think so. Ain’t going in there.”
Vladimir peered up and shuddered. “Yeah, it’s kind of somewhere you’d expect to find vampires.”
A laugh left me at his dry tone.
“Really?” I asked in disbelief.
“Come on. It’s probably got fires, and we can get warm,” Vladimir suggested, and I shivered. It was damn cold here, he was right.
As we looked on, we saw headlights appear. We weren’t alone anymore!
James
“Dickhead,” I muttered at Inglorious, who scowled.
The President of the Unwanted Bastards MC hunched over his steering wheel, trying to see ahead of him. Any fool could have told him that was impossible.
“Shut up,” Inglorious retorted.
“James isn’t wrong,” Nanci replied, sounding unamused.
“Babe, I love ya…” Inglorious started saying, and his old lady scowled.
“Don’t patronise me!” Nanci snapped, and I grinned. Inglorious subsided and then flared up again.
“Where did you want me to go? The road in front of me was flooded!”
“Duh, I specifically told you to turn around. But no, you spotted a side turning and thought you’d get past the flood!” Nanci berated Inglorious.
“So? It should have worked!” Inglorious retorted.
“Make-up sex between them must be so hot,” Kate murmured, and Nanci gaped at Kate before throwing her head back and laughing.
“We’re not into voyeurism!” Nanci exclaimed, and my beautiful wife blushed.
“Nanci, I didn’t mean it like that!” Kate hissed, and I grinned.