A Muse for Mishka (Wiccan-Were-Bear #12)
Read A Muse for Mishka (Wiccan-Were-Bear #12) Online
Authors: R.E. Butler
Tags: #vampire romance, #vampire coven, #wiccan were bear
A Muse for Mishka (Wiccan-Were-Bear #12)
By: R. E Butler
Copyright 2016 R. E. Butler
A Muse for Mishka (Wiccan-Were-Bear #12)
By R. E. Butler
License Notes
This book is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other
people. If you would like to share this book with another person,
please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re
reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased
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for respecting the hard work of the author.
Cover by CT Cover Creations
This ebook is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s
imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is
coincidental.
Disclaimer: The material in this book is for
mature audiences only and contains graphic sexual content and is
intended for those older than the age of 18 only.
* * *
Editing by Jennifer Moorman
* * *
To my best sisterfriend, Joyce – I’ve got a
permanent reservation at Bistro Rouge with your name on it! Love
you!!
Thanks to Shelley for beta-reading.
To Aunt B. L. I love you dearly!
* * *
To the fans who have been waiting since 2011
for Mishka’s story, I hope you enjoy the male he’s become.
Table of Contents
Coming Soon…The final book in the Wiccan-Were-Bear
Series
A Muse for Mishka (Wiccan-Were-Bear #12)
By R. E. Butler
Mishka, the five-hundred-year-old vampire
master of the city of Cleveland, prides himself on having one of
the largest covens in the Midwest. Although he has a life envied by
many, the only thing he is missing is a mate. How to begin to find
the right female for himself is a mystery, and the lonely nights
are starting to get to him.
Musical muse Harmony Celeste has been
traveling the states for the last two years trying to find her
beloved mate. After a vision showed her with a golden-haired male
with fangs, she knows for sure that he’s a vampire, but his
location is a mystery. With her band in tow, she visits every major
vampire coven in the states and uses her muse power to not only
feed herself but also, she hopes to find her mate.
When Mishka and Harmony meet, sparks will
fly, but they won’t be the only ones who notice. Human enemies have
never stopped watching, and they take every opportunity to try to
destroy vampires and those they love in the name of humanity. When
Harmony is taken, Mishka knows it’s only a matter of time before
she’s killed.
This is a Wiccan-Were-Bear story with a
vampire who has been alone long enough, a muse who likes to play,
and an enemy who will stop at nothing until all vampires are wiped
from the face of the earth. Expect fangs, blood, and scorching sex
between a vampire and his beloved mate.
Chapter 1
Mishka stood behind the one-way mirrored
glass that allowed him to see into his club, Fang 21, without
allowing anyone to see him. Behind the glass was a private viewing
room where he retired from time to time to escape the noise of the
crowds. He lived and worked at Fang, as did most of his coven. He’d
been master vampire of the city of Cleveland for decades. His coven
was the largest and most powerful in the Midwest.
Turning away from the glass, he settled onto
a plush leather couch and tried to relax. A knock on the door
interrupted him, and he growled before standing and moving to the
door. Pulling it open, he saw Brone – one of his vampires – and his
beloved mate, Arissa.
“Are we bothering you?” Arissa asked.
Mishka pushed open the door farther and
gestured inside. “Of course not.”
“We were looking for you in the
family
room,” she said.
Brone sat on the couch and pulled his mate
onto his lap. Arissa was a sweet Wiccan who protected the coven
with her powers.
Mishka’s
family
comprised his inner
circle of seven vampires. They shared a private room on the second
floor of the club, with guards posted at the stairs. Mishka
normally spent time in the
family
room, but tonight he’d
wanted to be alone. Shutting the door, he opted not to sit and
instead paced by the glass. “What can I do for you?”
“I was making plans for the Saints and
Sinners party,” Arissa said. “For the last few years, you’ve used
the house bands, and this year Cella and I decided to search out
new talent. We’ve got some bands lined up this week for auditions,
and I wanted to get your input.”
“As long as they play by the rules of the
club, I’m fine with whichever band you choose. You know that I
trust you and Cella to handle these sorts of things.”
“I know. You’ve just been…distracted
lately.”
Mishka rubbed his temples with a sigh.
“You’re sweet to be concerned, but I’m fine.”
“Cella also wanted to know what you’d like
your costume to be this year,” Arissa said as she eased off Brone’s
lap and stood.
“I always go as a sinner. Tell her I’d like
to be a saint this year.”
Arissa grinned. “I’m sure she’ll come up with
something amazing.”
Brone, who didn’t speak much to anyone except
to Arissa, nodded at Mishka and escorted his beloved out of the
room. When the door was shut and the room was once more empty,
Mishka sank onto the couch and closed his eyes. He envied Brone,
who had spent a thousand years as an unmated male, but had found
completion with the redheaded Wiccan. Mishka was only five hundred.
A long life compared to fragile human life but just a drop in the
bucket of eternity. He wanted to find his own beloved, if only he
knew where to look.
Chapter 2
Harmony stood offstage and watched the crowd
as they swayed to the music pumping through the speakers.
Bait
,
the vampire-run bar in the middle of downtown
Cincinnati, Ohio, had red walls that glistened like something
unholy had been splashed on them. Humans wearing little more than
pasties and G-strings packed the space. She’d been in numerous vamp
bars over the years, but she’d never been in one that made her want
to take a bath in a vat of hand sanitizer quite like this
place.
Bridge, her friend and bandmate, cleared his
throat.
“What?” she asked without turning her head to
look at him.
“You’re not feeling any connection.”
It was a statement and not a question, but
one she’d been mulling over herself ever since she came into Ohio
the day before.
Sighing, she crushed her empty water bottle
and turned to face him, tossing the bottle into a nearby trash can.
“No.”
“Then we should go.”
“We have another set at midnight,” she
pointed out.
Her band, Fluffy Venom, had been performing
in vamp-run bars across the country for the last two years. As a
musical muse, she had to not only emotionally feed off of humans
and supernatural creatures to stay alive but she also was looking
for her truemate.
Bridge looked over the top of her head, which
was no hard task for him – she was a petite five-foot-four, and he
was six and a half feet tall. “They don’t care what they hear.
They’re drunk on you and the food.”
He couldn’t hide his distaste for the club
from her, but she ignored it. Bridge didn’t think much of vampires
who treated the humans who fed them as commodities to be bartered
and traded. Bait was the sort of vamp bar that he thought should be
shut down permanently.
Turning back to watch the crowd, Harmony
touched her power lightly and felt an answering flare of energy
bounce back toward her. She was at the zenith of her power, so
feeding anymore wouldn’t benefit her. The vampires in the club were
feeling elated thanks in part to her power. When she sang, her muse
power mimicked the powers of the ancient sirens – she could make
the listeners happy or sad, depending on how she used her power.
She never liked to make anyone feel bad, so she always opted for
the positive spectrum of emotions, like love and joy. The emotional
reaction of the listeners then fed her nature. The happier the
listeners were, the stronger the feedings were. Conversely, if she
were interested in making people miserable, she could take them to
dark places emotionally. Those feedings, using the dark side of her
power, were intense and potentially addictive. She’d been taught at
a young age to steer clear of the darker side of her powers and
instead focus on making people happy.
“You’re right,” she said. “We can take off.
Let me check in with the owner.”
She passed by her other two bandmates, Tamar
and Wyst, and told them to pack up. Bridge followed her as she made
her way through the crowd to where the owner, a skinny male named
Pietro, sat on a maroon couch with several half-naked women hanging
on him.
“Done so soon?” Pietro asked as he rubbed his
fingertips over the still-open wound of a bite mark on one female’s
throat. She was so blissed-out on Harmony’s muse vibes that she
didn’t even seem to care that he was touching the raw spot on her
neck.
Harmony never told anyone outside of her
close friends that she was searching for her truemate. As far as
Pietro, or any other vampire master of a city knew, she and her
band just liked to travel.
No one ever seemed to care what her
intentions were. It was no secret she was a musical muse and that
she used her supernatural abilities to make people happy and feed
off their energy. What wasn’t well known was that she’d had a
vision about her soul mate two years earlier on her twenty-fifth
birthday. A male with long, dark-blond hair, golden eyes, and
fangs. There was no doubt in her mind that her truemate was a
vampire. The only thing she didn’t know was where the hell he
lived.
“Everyone’s happy,” she said to Pietro,
gazing briefly at the human stretched out on his lap who wore a
goofy smile on her face.
“Indeed,” he said. Bringing his bloody
fingertips to his lips, he licked at them like a cat while he held
her gaze. It was about as erotic as watching paint dry, except it
made her want to vomit, too.
“Thanks for opening the doors to my band,”
she said, turning abruptly and moving as quickly though the mass of
bodies as she could. “I need about ten showers and a rom-com
movie-fest to get this grossness out of my brain.”
Bridge snorted in agreement.
She met up with her bandmates at the back of
the club, where they were loading the equipment into their van.
“He give you any trouble for backing out of
the last set?” Tamar asked, his gaze lifting past her to the club,
as if he expected a pissed-off group of vampires to come out and to
force them to perform.
“Of course not. He had a good feeding.”
When humans were truly blissed-out on her
power, their blood tasted extra sweet to a vampire. The result was
a strange side effect of her abilities.
“That guy,” Wyst said as he lifted his guitar
case and put it gently on the floor of the van, “was one of the
slimiest-looking vamps I’ve ever met.”
“I think so, too,” she said. Maybe it was the
shiny leather pants and the shirt open to the waist. Or maybe it
was the way he looked as if he was picturing her and every other
woman naked and spread before him.
Bridge said, “I’m fucking glad he’s not your
truemate. I’d think your nature was on the fritz if he was your
one-and-only.”
She shivered in disgust. “I’m thankful for
small miracles.”
“Enormous miracles,” Tamar corrected.
When the last piece of equipment was loaded
into the van, Harmony opened her phone’s calendar and said, “We’ve
got a stop in Columbus tomorrow night, and then Saturday night is
some kind of special party at a club in Cleveland.”
“Party?” Tamar asked.
“According to the email, it’s a Saints and
Sinners party.”
“What the hell is that?” Wyst asked.