Bewitch – First draft underway and here’s a sneak peek!

Bewitch – Sneak Peek

One of Payne’s leads had led him here, to a whole fae town hidden beneath the grounds of an elegant palatial mansion in the English countryside. Fae lived in the mansion too, the elite of that world. Everyone down here were merchants, plying their wares to make ends meet. Payne had thought witches had higher standards but there were probably hundreds if not thousands of them here, trading with other creatures, selling spells, ointments and god only knew what else.

A group of young females passed him, dressed in the traditional garb of witches, long black featureless dresses that swamped their bodies and concealed their curves. They tittered amongst themselves, their eyes on him, blushes heating their cheeks. His incubus side rose to the fore and he shot them a smile, earning giggles and a few sultry smiles in return. The incubus in him loved every second, lapping up their desire, draining it from the air around him.

Payne tamped it down and his vampire side took control again. The witches’ looks turned dark and he knew they had seen the red in his eyes. Strange how they would toy with an incubus, one who wanted them purely for sexual gratification, but they would scowl at a vampire. His incubus nature was more likely to kill them.

He took the steps on the left down to the cavern floor, his eyes on the town, studying it. There were larger buildings near the edges of the town. Banners hung on their walls. He recognised a few. Not just covens. There was a shapeshifter pride. A wolf pack. Ogres too. There was even a succubus clan. He didn’t need to recognise the banner on that particular building to know what type of creature lived within its walls. There was a steady stream of men coming and going, and some succubi were hanging out of the open windows, calling to them and teasing them with flashes of flesh. The fae equivalent of a bordello.

He shook his head and focused back on the witches’ district. He was shit out of luck if the street signs were in fae. The fae language was extensive and his knowledge of it was limited. He knew the basics but names were often written in a special way. He had never learned those characters. He looked down at the markings that tracked up the underside of his forearms and disappeared beneath the charcoal grey rolled up sleeves of his shirt. They were shifting in hues of dark blue and burnished gold. Not a sign of his incubus side. His markings shone bright gold and cerulean when that was in control. No, this was apprehension.

Understandable considering he was about to enter a world that prided itself on bloodlines and purity.

An abomination like him was liable to end up deep in shit. He wasn’t sure which role to play. The vampire or the incubus? They were more likely to accept his demonic lineage and most of the creatures in the area he needed to head into were unlikely to be able to sense the vampire in him.

Incubus it was.

He hated that.

He reached the bottom of the stone steps and the crowd immediately swallowed him. Women dressed in very little tossed provocative looks his way and his incubus side purred from their attention. He wanted to tamp it down but his vampire side had a tendency to show when he forced it to the fore to obliterate his incubus hungers. He couldn’t risk them seeing he had a dual personality.

Payne preened his long fingers through the dirty blond spikes of his hair and the women hissed at him and disappeared. Fairly standard behaviour for a succubus when it saw an incubus. He grinned to himself, remembering how Chica had reacted to him in such a way when she had first come to the theatre. Succubi were weaker than incubi, and it had led to the incubi taking advantage of them more than once, and trying to kill them too.

He found his first street sign at a junction between four shops all selling herbs that stung his nose. Each plump female owner stood outside, trying to outshout the others. Payne covered his sensitive ears and glared at the wooden post in the middle of the busy crossroads.

Just as he had expected. He was shit out of luck.

He didn’t recognise any of the symbols on the wooden boards. He jammed his hands in his jeans pockets and not just because he was frustrated. He had been bumped more than once and he was damned if he was going to have his wallet nicked. That would be the turd icing on a crap cake.

A woman with milk white skin and hair the colour of snow approached him, the crowd parting to allow her through. Her starlight coloured robes flowed ethereally around her, revealing more than they were concealing. She looked like a ghost. Payne stood his ground, his vampire senses sparking high alert, and steadied himself. Every instinct said to roar and scare her away.

Phantom.

He had never seen one before but he had heard that a phantom’s touch could make a man incorporeal. A phantom too. It was the only way for one such as her to mate. She needed to make her male as intangible as she was. When he had first heard that, it had sounded as though it might be fun. Then he had learned that once a phantom, always a phantom. The male never got his corporeal status back and was destined to roam the world as a hollow husk when the phantom cast him aside.

Her palest silver eyes slid to him and she held her hands out.

Payne reacted on instinct, his eyes darkening to crimson and his pupils turning elliptical. He bore his lengthening fangs at her and growled. She halted and even moved back, but she didn’t leave. She stared at him and her white lips moved. No sound left them but he heard in his head what she had said.

Unfortunately, he didn’t understand most of it. He caught fae words for ‘fated’, ‘bond’, ‘blood’ and ‘death’.

Before he could ask her in English what she had said to him and what it meant, she swirled into a smoke and disappeared. He looked around at the people now staring at him, his skin crawling from their attention and the way they were looking at him as though the phantom had just announced his death sentence. He let his fangs recede and his eyes change back to dark grey, and then singled out one of the witches who had stopped to stare.

“What did she say?”

The woman frowned at him. Just great. It seemed their looks of horror were because he had flashed his vampire nature. No one else had heard what the phantom had told him and he was damned if he could remember what she had said to repeat it to them.

He didn’t need this shit on top of everything else.

Payne stared at the street sign and decided to go left. He was feeling in a sinister mood after all.

He reached another crossroads and was in the process of deciding which route to take next when a huge could of sparkling grey dust exploded off to his right. People ran from that direction, pushing past him. He braced himself and frowned over their heads. There was a shape in the dust, small and curvy, and she wasn’t alone. Four larger shapes surrounded her.

That didn’t seem like a fair fight to Payne.

He ran towards the fray and broke through the dust. Storeowners were screaming at the fighters, some of them ferrying their wares inside where it was safe and others standing in front of them, physically protecting them.

The female he had seen through the cloud of dust stood her ground before him, feet spread shoulder width apart beneath the hem of her drab black dress, the long chestnut waves of her hair tangled in the pieces of straw sticking out of it. Grey dust sparkled across her backside. She must have hit whatever had exploded and sent the dust into the air.

Four large males stood opposite her, each of them hunkered low, assessing her.

They were witches too. What did they want with the female?

Her heartbeat was frantic. Frightened.

One of the males lunged at her and she turned on the spot, throwing herself forwards and rolling towards Payne. She found her feet just a few metres in front of him and her eyes widened as they met his. Smudges of black ash dotted her pale face but Payne didn’t notice them.

She was beautiful.

Entrancing.

Her silvery eyes sparkled like stars.

The male grabbed her from behind and she landed a series of devastating blows on him. Her foot slammed into the man’s left knee, hobbling him, and then she jammed her elbow into his face, right into his eye. Payne winced when the man howled and dropped the petite firecracker and she turned and landed a hard kick to his balls. The man hit the deck, clutching himself and groaning.

The sight of her so easily dispatching their comrade didn’t stop the other three. They attacked as one with magic, catching her right in the chest and sending her flying. She tumbled through the air, the skirt of her dress hiking up to reveal sinfully red knickers. Payne had intended to catch her but the sight of them froze him right to his boots. His incubus purred. The vampire in him purred too.

The female landed hard in the baskets outside one of the stores to his left, scattering their contents. Snakes slithered over the cobbles and frogs hopped, making a break for freedom. The elderly witch who owned the store added insult to injury and beat the poor female with a broom. The beauty got to her feet by rolling unceremoniously into the cobbled street, her dress still tangled around her middle, flashing her knickers and a lot of smooth creamy leg.

He wasn’t the only one the sight of her had frozen. The three males were all dumbstruck too, staring at her exposed skin.

She got to her feet, grabbed a length of thin silver rope that had fallen from one of the baskets, and brandished it like a whip.

She lashed out at the males, cracking the end of the rope across their chests and legs. The males reacted then, each making vain attempts to close the distance between them. Even teleportation spells didn’t help them. She struck them before they could fully disappear, stopping them.

Payne stared. The sight of her with the makeshift whip, dominating the more powerful males with it, was arousing to say the least. He knew his eyes were glowing blue and gold, and he knew he should get his hungers under control before they took him over and made him do something he might regret, but by god almighty he wanted the little witch.