Urban Fantasy Romance With a Heaping Side of Hexes, Spells, and Magick!
Demon Assassins, #1
By Ann Gimpel
Dream Shadow Press
66K words
Release Date: 9/6/16Genre: Urban Fantasy Romance
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Urban Fantasy Romance with a heaping side of Hexes, Spells, and Magick!
Book Description:
One
of three remaining demon assassin witches, Colleen is almost the last of her
kind. Along with her familiar, a changeling spirit, she was hoping for a few
months of quiet, running a small magicians’ supply store in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Peace isn’t in the cards, though. Demons are raising hell in Seattle. She’s on
her way to kick some serious demon ass, when a Sidhe shows up and demands she
accompany him to England to quell a demon uprising.
Gutsy,
opinionated, and outspoken, Colleen refuses to come. Witches need her help, and
they trump everything else. Despite breaking a prime Sidhe precept concerning
non-interference in mortals’ affairs, Duncan offers his assistance. Colleen
fascinates him, and he wants to discover more about her. Lots more.
The
Sidhe might be the best-looking man Colleen’s ever stumbled over, but she
doesn’t have time for him—or much of anything else. She, Jenna, and Roz are
Earth’s only hedge against being overrun by Hell’s minions. Even with help from
a powerful magic wielder like Duncan, the odds aren’t good and the demons know
it.
Sensing
victory is within their grasp, they close in for the kill.
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.”
******
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