Supernatural Seduction (Book 2 of the Coffin Girls Series) (18 page)

“Ayden,” Anais said angrily.

“Most likely,” Sylvain agreed. “It could be
that he and whomever he works for now in the Vampire Council are
trying to get you all into the ‘organic blood’ movement.”

“Fuck movement,” Anais scowled. “It’s fucking
barbaric and downright evil. So how do you know that the person in
there is not Miss Suzette?”

Conall, at pains not to tell her to calm down
again, sent Sylvain imploring looks to take things down a notch.
Catching the hint, Sylvain explained, “The only beings that can
detect a changeling are fae. Luckily, I am the Fae Prince and
although the changeling would be under my sister’s rule, I know how
to identify one, and how to get rid of it.”

“And then, we have to find Miss Suzette,”
Anais demanded.

“Therein lies the tricky part,” Sylvain
stated, ignoring Conall’s glares. Anais would be a lot nicer to
Conall for protecting her than she would to him if he lied. He had
never pissed off a hormonal witch-vampire before and wasn’t about
to start. Besides, she was a woman and a friend and he would never
fight her. He didn’t care what feminists thought about that, it was
how he was made.

“But it can be done if stealth is employed,”
he explained. “The first thing to do is to find out how the
changeling plans to manipulate you. It will be something so obvious
it is overlooked. The second is to find out where it is holding
Miss Suzette. Once we know where that is, we can rescue her and
stop the changeling’s plans and kill it. Unfortunately we can’t
send it back to my sister because it has a new temporary master and
will only come back again and again until the job is done.”

“Why is it that that plan seems too simple?”
Conall asked dryly.

“Because it is,” Sylvain responded. “The
obvious is the hardest to see. Ever wonder where the adage, ‘hiding
in plain sight’ came from? Our natural inclinations would be to go
to the bayou or Miss Suzette’s house and search it. It would be
futile, because it is too complicated. The Bayou is vast and Miss
Suzette’s home is here, not there. Changelings are masters of
manipulation, but they’re also exceptionally lazy. Clues will be
found here where Miss Suzette spends most of her time going about
her daily routine and where her chicks are. I guarantee that.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” Anais cocked her
head to the side. “We’ll use magick to find Miss Suzette. I’m not
taking chances though, so I’ll ask Raulf’s second-in-charge to send
weres out in the bayou, and to her house. I’ll make sure they don’t
come close to the mansion. We don’t want the changeling to know
we’re onto it.”

“I’ve got that covered, Anais,” Conall stated
in a tone that brooked no argument. When she glared at him, he
shook his head. “Please humor me. And, you also need to be with the
girls. You have a wedding happening later, so if you spend most of
your time with me, it will raise suspicions.”

“Okay,” Anais nodded. She wasn’t happy about
it, but it made sense. “She’s the mother I never had Conall,
Sylvain.” They acknowledged her profession with gravity. The
accompanying nods held the promise that they’d do whatever they
could. Anais blinked back the threatening tears and addressed
Sylvain, “Could you please look for the obvious, Sylvain? Find the
changeling, cher. But then,” scarlet eyes flashed at them, “we kill
the fucker together.”

xxx

They were all in the kitchen, the pre-wedding
meeting having just ended. Conall and Sylvain had claimed boredom
and had joined them, offering to help. They all pitched in to
remove the dishes of food Miss Suzette had prepared for their
pre-wedding meal. Already a naturally lengthy affair, weddings at
Papillion tended to be the realization of bridal dreams and thus
tended to go on for much longer. It didn’t help for a vamp to be
hungry surrounded by that many pulsing veins nor a witch to feel
drained. The Coffin Girls were both witch and vampire, so the
amount of food and bagged blood was astounding.

“
Dieu
! I’m thirsty,” Anais exclaimed.
In a blur of vampire motion, she opened the blood fridge, warmed up
a bag, and guzzled it down without even stopping to breathe.
Technically the vampire half of her didn’t have to survive on
oxygen, but the witch part did. She felt an overwhelming need to
drink and eat as though she just couldn’t be satiated.

“Do you think it’s the baby making her that …
er … hungry?” Sylvain, eyes wide, asked Conall telepathically.

“Could be,” Conall sent back. “But, I don’t
think it is.” He cocked a brow at Rose and Sophie. Their fangs
pierced bag after bag of blood while they guzzled. They had the
same starved look as Anais.

Before Sylvain could reply, they were on him.
Literally. They pushed him onto a chair at the table and each
straddled one of his legs. Sophie was trying to ‘nuzzle’ his neck.
Rose was cozying up on Sylvain’s other side, rubbing her face in
his hair. Their eyes were vamp read, fangs dropped, and they looked
ravenous.

Anais climbed onto Conall’s lap, straddling
him and ran the tip of a fang along the vein in his neck. A pot
Miss Suzette moved to the sink slipped and the hollow sound of
metal against metal run in the air. Anais lifted her head up from
her fang-dripping administrations and shot Miss Suzette a
glare.

“Anais,” Sylvain knocked on her mental door.
“It’s the food. That’s what the changeling is using to manipulate
you. It is a ploy to get you to drink ‘from the source’.”

Startled, Anais looked at Conall.
“
Dieu
!” she swore. “Thanks Sylvain.” Anais pulled Conall
into the conversation. Because of their blood bond, she didn’t need
to knock at his mental door. “Aye,” agreed Conall. “It’s the most
obvious thing.”

Miss Suzette’s noisy disruptions provided a
perfect distraction. Recalling their newest mission, she cocked her
head to the side as she received a mental communique. “I think the
weres have found Miss Suzette’s location. Sylvain, will you bring
the fake Miss Suzette to the library while Conall and I cast a
circle. Let’s get rid of this changeling, shall we? I’d like your
throats intact.”

Sophie was doing some fang teasing of her own
against Sylvain’s skin, effectively trapping the Fae Prince beneath
her. Rose was scowling at Sophie like a bad-tempered toddler—a
tantrum was imminent and vampire tantrums were not without spilled
blood. “And our own throats intact too,” Anais added.

“I don’t want to hurt them,” Sylvain
confessed. “Anais, will you call them off?”

Anais nodded and as their maker, compelled
them to stop. “We have a wedding to prepare for, ladies. Let’s get
to it,” Anais stated for ‘Miss Suzette’s' sake. The ladies got up
from the Fae Prince’s lap bearing sullen expressions and set to
work on finalizing the preparations for the wedding.

“The guys have offered to step in during V’s
absence. I’ll be going over the security detail with them in the
library if you need me,” Anais informed the others. She sent Rose a
pointed look over her shoulder. “Rose, beverages are for our human
wedding guests, so, please no need to make that blood cocktail.”
Looking from Anais down to the ingredients for a Bloodjito
(blood-Mojito mix), she scowled and cussed under her breath,
alternating her longing stares between the blood fridge and the
guys’ necks before packing the ingredients away with an elongated
sigh.

“Any news from the weres?” Conall asked Anais
when she entered the library.

Anais shrugged, “They told me they are close
to narrowing down her location, but that’s it. I’m sure they’ll
check in again soon. I see the changeling is wearing the necklace I
gave Miss Suzette, so we can’t use the magickal GPS. The locator
spell didn’t work earlier either.”

“I imagine Raulf,” Conall referred to the
pack leader, “will seriously damage any of them if they don't find
his aunt.”

Anais nodded, then flipped a switch behind an
old tome that graced the library shelf. The shelf shifted to reveal
a hidden room. It was protected with magickal wards using the
combined royal witch magick of Anais and Conall as well as the
voodoo magick of Miss Suzette, Raulf’s wolf alpha magick, and
Sylvain’s fae magick. It represented the unity and the belief in
standing together against the bad that purported to affect the
balance of the supernatural world. And, in that way, it also
represented the mission they’d committed to for the Goddess. The
room was hidden because humans just would not understand what
wedding planning had to do with silver axes and machetes and the
type of arsenal that would make any military organization pant with
envy. Humans rarely ventured into the plantation library, but it
was not worth the risk to test that assumption.

Anais looked at Sylvain, “How do we kill the
changeling?”

“Like most things,” Sylvain answered.

Anais stepped deeper into the room to inspect
the sharp metal weapons lining one wall. The other walls were lined
with bows, guns, and knives. She easily picked up a heavy ax. This
ax was iron—the only substance that was poisonous to fae. Tossing
it from one hand to the other, she quirked a brow at him. “Will
this do?”

Sylvain blanched, and then nodded. As Prince
of Fae, he was not immune to the effects of iron, but magickal
protection helped him survive in the steel jungles of the
metropolitan human cities when required, which was another reason
why he and the fae preferred their hollows to be in remote places
like the bayou.

“Great,” Anais smiled, exiting the room. As
she passed by Sylvain, she slanted a glance at him. With the
sweetest of smiles and a good dose of vamp speed, she swung the ax
and neatly decapitated him. The head rolled onto the wooden floor
and stopped inches away from Conall’s feet. Anais’ stealth and
speed was so profound that Sylvain hadn’t seen it coming and the
head still showed the same smile he’d given Anais when she smiled
at him before beheading him. Blood spurted onto the Persian rug
that no longer looked like it could grace anything let alone the
magnificent library.

“Goddess,” Conall exclaimed, putting down the
chalk he had been pretending to use to set up a magickal circle. He
stepped over the head and went over to Anais to bring her into his
arms for a hug. “You’ve become bloodthirsty, love.”

Anais glanced at the dead fae at their feet.
“That blood won’t mar my fangs,” she growled furiously.

Impatient knocking at the library door
alerted them to the presence of others. “It’s okay,” Anais stated
then called out, “Come in. It’s done.”

Sophie entered the room first and turned
ashen at the sight of the two parts of Sylvain. She turned into the
arms that wrapped around her from behind.

“It’s okay, Sophie, it had to be done,”
Sylvain’s voice whispered consolingly in her ear. “The feelings
around death, even righteous ones, are hard for any empath.”

“I’m not upset,” Sophie, corrected his
assumption. “I’m pissed off.” She looked at the body and head
again. It no longer looked like Sylvain. Instead, it looked like a
body of a man without any distinct features, as though he wore a
camouflaging skin-colored stocking over his entire body - from top
to toe. “I hate that something,” she pointed to the dead
changeling, “thought it could fuck with us by using you. I’m just
sorry I couldn’t be the one to axe the fucker!”

A number of eyebrows rose at Sophie’s
expletives, but all remained silent. “I need some romance to wipe
away this crap,” Sophie continued her tirade. “Let’s go. We’ve got
a wedding to throw.” Again, no one said a word, although many
shielded thoughts were speculative as to what exactly had happened
at the hollow. Anais threw Conall a satisfied look. Sophie was
growing the balls Anais always knew she had – the female vamp kind.
And it was kinda nice if she got a dashing fae prince in the
bargain.

“Hello,” a strong, lyrical voice from the
doorway stopped them from heading out of the room.

They all turned to see a beautiful, petite
woman standing there. She had the pale complexion only attributed
to porcelain, which was accentuated by hair and eyes as dark as
sin. She was dressed to kill, literally and figuratively. Her black
leather bustier fit tight, but was cut to allow her all the room
she needed to maneuver. The matching leather shorts she wore were
anything, but tacky. They fit snuggly and showed just enough leg
before her black leather ensemble was completed by black leather
boots, platforms thick enough to lend her height and kick the shit
out of anyone that got in their way.

She meant business thought Sophie. Meant it,
but didn’t necessarily feel it. Beneath the bravado, Sophie
detected a hint of hesitancy of her welcome. It disguised
deep-seated, well-hidden insecurity.

“Hello, sister,” Sylvain nodded at their
unexpected guest, breaking the shocked silence. She was undoubtedly
fae and powerful. Her beauty was too surreal to be anything, but
that. That she was Sylvain’s mysterious Unseelie sister explained
the power coming off of her.

“Brother,” she acknowledged with a near
identical nod.

“What are you doing here?” He bit out.

“Oh, for goodness sake!” Miss Suzette huffed,
cuffing the back of Sylvain’s head. They all grinned at Sylvain’s
look of controlled outrage. He would never hurt the Cajun mama, but
he was still a prince and no one cuffed the back of his head.

“Don’t you be lookin’ at me like that, boy,”
Miss Suzette glared at him. “Getting yourself into a het will only
make it worse. Prince or not, no one treats family like that in
this home!”

Outrage quickly turned to chagrin. He glanced
at his sister just in time to see the smirk she’d been sporting
turn to a look of masterful innocence. His eyes practically
twitched to narrow. He looked at his friends. The grins they were
wearing like daft fools didn’t waver under his glare. His ego caved
and he strategically admitted defeat. Turning to his sister, he
stated more solemnly, “My apologies, sister. My inadequate excuse
for my rude behavior is that I was shocked at your appearance. I
hadn’t thought that you’d entered the human realm for
millennia.”