Of Flame and Fate: A Weird Girls Novel (Weird Girls Flame Book 2) Read online

  Praise for the Weird Girls series

  “One of my favorite books series . . . so much action, so much violence and, oh, the lust radiating off of our heroes . . . I definitely recommend this series for lovers of all things paranormal and awesome.”—USA Today

  "Robson's blend of smart-alecky wit, good old-fashioned romance, and suspenseful episodes of fighting off evil spirits form a paranormal thriller that will make pulses pound." –Publishers Weekly

  “[With Robson’s] edgy, witty and modern style of storytelling, the reader will be drawn deep into this quirky paranormal world. . . . Strong pacing, constant action and distinctive, appealing characters—including a gutsy heroine—will no doubt keep you invested.”—RT Book Reviews

  “A healthy dose of humor, a heaping dash of the supernatural, and a pinch of mystery all laced with a heavy dollop of action . . . Robson knows how to combine all the best ingredients to keep her readers hooked and begging for another hit.”—Fresh Fiction

  “…Robson’s supernatural tale will leave readers clawing for the next installment.” —Booklist

  “Jam packed with action, suspense, kickass girls, hot guys, humor and all out weird girls, this series has me coming back for more and more.” –Night Owl Reviews (Top Pick)

  “I was blown away by the depth of passion, humor, and creativity in this story…If you are a fan of powerful, sarcastic heroines and cross-over urban fantasy / paranormal romance stories, I highly recommend Of Flame and Light.” – Grave Tells Romance

  “I fell deeply in love with Cecy Robson's sharp, funny dialogue, hilarious characters and brilliant world building.” – Book and Movie Dimension

  “When you begin, reading Of Flame and Light the rest of the world will slip away. Action-packed with heart, growth, and supernatural awesomeness.” – Caffeinated Book Reviewer

  “Cecy Robson created this amazing world full of characters that will make you laugh, love and cheer for the sisters that have always been called weird. Not to mention shifters that will knock your socks off.” – Under the Covers Book Blog

  “You will laugh, you will cry and you will seriously want to yank Genevieve by the hair so hard that you get a hand full of nothing but roots. In short- go one click this series and binge read until you get to Of Flame and Light...” - The Reading Cave

  “There is something about Cecy's writing that grips me and holds me to the page...I'm so in love with these sisters and characters. I can't wait for more books!” – My World in Words and Pages

  By Cecy Robson

  The Weird Girls

  A Curse Awakened (novella)

  The Weird Girls (novella)

  Sealed with a Curse

  A Cursed Embrace

  Of Flame and Promise

  A Cursed Moon (novella)

  Cursed by Destiny

  A Cursed Bloodline

  A Curse Unbroken

  Of Flame and Light

  The Shattered Past Series

  Once Perfect

  Once Loved

  Once Pure

  The O’Brien Family Novels

  Once Kissed

  Let Me

  Crave Me

  Feel Me

  The Carolina Beach Novels

  Inseverable

  Eternal

  Infinite (coming soon)

  Of Flame and Fate is purely a work of fiction. Names, places, and occurrences are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or deceased, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright ©2017 by Cecy Robson

  Cover design © Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations LLC

  Edited by Gaele L. Hince of BippityBoppityBook.com

  Formatting by BippityBoppityBook.com

  Content editing by Sue Brown-Moore of DaVinciKittie.com

  Excerpt from Sealed with a Curse by Cecy Robson copyright ©2012 by Cecy Robson

  All rights reserved. Including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form without prior written consent of the author, except for brief quotes for use in reviews.

  This book contains an excerpt from Sealed with a Curse, the first full-length novel in The Weird Girls Urban Fantasy Romance series by Cecy Robson. The excerpt has been set for this edition only, and may not reflect the final content of the final novel.

  Published in the United States by Cecy Robson, LLC.

  ASIN # B073RVQ2X6

  eBook ISBN # 978-1-947330-00-9

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Reader’s Guide to the Magical World of the Weird Girls Series

  Sealed with a Curse

  Cecy Robson

  Dedication

  To the “weird girls” of the world: Don’t be afraid to be different and allow that difference to shine.

  Acknowledgements

  On May 1st, 2009, I decided to write a book, just to see if I could. That book would eventually become Sealed with a Curse, the first novel in the Weird Girls series.

  The first person to believe I “had something” was my husband Jamie. The second was my friend and mentor Susan Griner. The third, fourth, and fifth were Valerie McMullen Secker, Crissy McMullen Roth, and Maria Hanley. The sixth was my agent and now best friend, Nicole Resciniti.

  I don’t know who followed next. But you all did and stood by me, even when I wasn’t sure Celia, Taran, Shayna, and Emme would continue their journey. So when the tigress roars and shows her claws, when the feisty hothead throws her sarcasm and flame, when the perky one skips forward to stab the bad guy in the heart, and when the sweet one soothes your ailing heart, know that they do so because of you.

  Thank you for believing. You have my heart.

  To my team Kimberly Costa and Kristin Clifton. I found you because you were fans of my work. Now, I’m a fan of yours. And to Gaele Hince, you get me. Even when I’m not certain I “get” myself.

  Chapter One

  I’m shoved into a cold room where a band of bloodsucking fiends tear off my clothes. Their long nails graze my skin as their master watches, his cold gray eyes glinting with malice.

  “Son of a bitch,” I say, smacking Edith Anne’s hand away when she cops a feel. “The demon’s in my leg, not my tit!”

  There’s something you don’t say every day, but then that’s why humans are safe in the world and weird gals like me are stuck with demons burrowing under their skin.

  “Just making sure,” Edith adds with a wink.

  I’m ready to punch her in the face, except I’m too busy cringing at the thing crawling beneath the length of my shin, its spindly insectoid appendages stretching the skin as it curls up and over my knee cap.

  “Get it out of me!” I screech, growing nauseous with each numbing tug it creates beneath the underlying tissue.

  “We’re tryin
g,” Agnes Concepcion snaps, like I’m somehow inconveniencing her by having an evil being claw its way through me.

  Her tiny plaid skirt smacks against my hip as she shoves me into a massive glass and tile shower. Three other vamps, dressed like naughty Catholic schoolgirls (don’t get me started) follow us in, bottles of champagne tight in their grips.

  “What the hell?” I ask, kicking as if I can somehow shake this thing loose, and certain the booze is to celebrate my grisly death.

  Bottles of champagne open with a pop, the naughty Catholics pouring the bubbly over my breasts, back, and ass. This isn’t real. This is something out of a bad porno and somehow I’m the star.

  But as the fluid reaches my thigh the lump with the creepy legs bounces, pulling at the muscle it’s crawling over, squirming to the left then right, trying find its way around the torrent of liquid they’re pelting me with.

  “Don’t let it reach her heart,” Master Vampire Misha Aleksandr orders from the opposite side of the bathroom.

  “What’s it going to do to my heart?” My head whips back and forth when none of the vamps answer. “It’s going eat my freaking heart isn’t it?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Agnes mutters, adjusting her tiny librarian glasses as she angles the bottle she’s holding.

  “Okay . . .” I begin.

  “It needs your heart to nest and lay its eggs,” she explains.

  “What?”

  “But yeah, then the hatchlings will munch on your heart like raw steak,” Edith adds. She reels me around when additional vamps swoop in with cases of wine, drenching my chest with more alcohol.

  She seems to be having fun. I’m mostly trying not to hurl and wondering how the hell this happens to me.

  Agnes is more focused. She drips the wine just above the demon, forcing it back down my leg. “Quiesco,” she says, her tone as sharp and commanding. “Quiesco.”

  My body shudders as the demon scurries downward. Its movement doesn’t hurt, surprising since I think it has pinchers, but the yanking motion is unnerving, like getting stitches while under anesthesia. My head flops forward and my vision starts to swim.

  “I don’t feel good,” I mumble.

  Agnes slaps me, the sting of the strike causing my eyes to whip open. “Don’t fall asleep.” She slaps me again when my eyelids flutter and close. “Taran, the poison the demon is spewing is numbing your skin and making you drowsy, if you succumb to it the alcohol won’t work and the demon will take you.”

  Again, her palm whips across my face. “Stay awake so we can cut this thing out of you.”

  I slap her back, knocking her glasses askew. “I’m awake, damn it.”

  She smirks because she hits harder and maybe because she likes it, too. She returns to my leg when the vamp behind her hands her another bottle of champagne. “Quiesco,” she whispers against my leg, her breath hot against my cooling skin.

  My head falls forward as I start to go under. This time, Edith smacks me.

  “God damn it,” I hiss, my right arm quaking and threatening to release my flame.

  “I was just taking my turn,” she replies defensively.

  Her gaze locks on my arm. She eases away as a spark of blue and white escapes from my fingertips, giving me and my power ample space as the surrounding vamps shower me with alcohol.

  “Master,” Agnes says, ignoring us as she concentrates on my thigh. “It’s settling. I need the knife.”

  “The wolves are bringing it,” he replies.

  “The wolves?” I ask. Okay. Now I’m wide awake.

  The doors crash open as a pack of weres in human form stomp in, the exception being an immense, midnight-black wolf with a white left paw who leads them. His lips peel back, exposing a row of pointy fangs as he growls at the vampires surrounding me. But it’s the man storming forward with dark almond eyes and a six-inch dagger in his hand that gives me pause.

  “Hi, honey,” I say, giving him a little wave.

  Funny thing, he doesn’t wave back. His gaze swoops over my naked body. “Hold her,” he snarls, ramming the knife into my thigh.

  Reality shoves aside the shock of having the man I love stab me in the leg. Like a heated blade through butter, he slices through the skin and muscle, creating a diagonal line and spraying blood across the glass shower walls. I expect pain, scorching white-hot pain, and to lose my blood supply in large volumes. But like the creepy crawly beneath my skin, I just feel that wretched pulling and grabbing.

  My bleeding trickles to a stop just as Gemini’s hand plunges deep into the incision. The image is so graphic and brutal my stomach lurches. I’m seconds from passing out. The vamps on either side of me are the only thing keeping me vertical. But when my focus latches onto the hilt of the dagger, and I realize it’s a femur—a freaking femur! — my body immediately slumps.

  Of course, that’s not the worst part.

  The tangle of bodies, limbs, and faces, carved around the hilt twitch, as if seizing, breaking free of what’s holding them to slither. Oh, and it gets better. The mouths open, singing one messed up version of O Fortuna.

  “Jesus Christ,” I gasp, my body trembling violently as their slowly amplifying voices echo across the room.

  Agnes grips my jaw, yanking my face toward her. “Taran, get it together before you set this whole place on fire.”

  I wrench my head free. “Don’t you think I’m trying?!”

  I bite back a curse, and a few more, when something scampers toward my right butt cheek.

  It doesn’t get far. Gemini thrusts his hand deep, wrenching a large, screeching lump from my leg, exciting the minute faces continuing to sing and slide along the hilt. Their voices crescendo and their bodies writhe with glee. I don’t get a good look at the demon impaled by the dagger, and I don’t want to. I only see enough to realize I was right about the spindly legs and pinchers.

  Gemini carries the shrieking demon to the sink, ignoring the way the long cluster of centipede legs kick out and clutch blindly at the air. I wish I could ignore it. But those things you can’t unsee? I’ve seen plenty in my twisted, messed up life and this is one more to add to my list.

  Gemini holds out his free hand. Without asking, a vamp drops an open bottle of vodka into his palm. Gemini pours the vodka over the demon, stunning it and causing the legs to fall open like petals—nasty petals covered with blood, pointy grippy ends, and little bits of me.

  With a turn of his wrist, he drops the demon into the sink. It falls with a sick plop.

  Agnes’s weight abruptly pulls off me when she stands and hurries to the sink. She flicks a lighter another vamp tossed her and drops it on top of the demon. “Ad infernum,” she tells it, sending it back to hell.

  The vamps step away from me as the flames spray up to lick the ceiling. The exception is Edith who remains on her knees, clutching my leg between her breasts and sealing my wound with several fast and enthusiastic strokes of her tongue.

  “Get away from her,” Gemini demands. His voice is more beast than human, setting off an orchestra of snarls from the rest of the pack.

  Like a very hungry dog with a bone, Edith doesn’t want to let go. Gemini doesn’t give her a choice. From one breath to the next, he rips me from her, wrapping me in a blanket someone hands him and carrying me away.

  “Taran,” Misha calls.

  Gemini and I glance at him. “I’ll see you soon,” he tells me with a smile and an all-too playful wink.

  The midnight wolf at our side answers with a powerful snap of his jaws, not quite loud enough to overshadow the inhuman growl from my mate, nor the choir in the knife, which is evidently having the time of its cringe-worthy existence.

  “Babe,” I begin, touching his shoulder.

  My touch is usually enough to soothe him, or at the very least keep him from mangling the closest prey. Hey, sometimes that’s the best I can hope for. To his credit, he hasn’t eaten anyone, yet.

  He reels, rushing forward, his insane speed and strong movements propelling
us down the long hall. I don’t see the splendor of Misha’s estate, and barely feel the bounce of Gemini’s feet as he leaps down the grand staircase. I’m too busy pressing against him and attempting to soothe his livid beast even as I struggle to calm my fragile nerves.

  I can feel Gemini fighting not to change, my fear urging his beast to appear. During times of stress and unparalleled danger, two wolves are better than one. They can protect and fight with graceful lethality. But the danger is over, and right now, I need the man to soothe me, not the wolves who bite.

  I’m tough as railroad spikes, aggressive as a fighter going for the championship belt, and as powerful as most preternatural beings we encounter. That doesn’t mean I don’t get scared. Me and fear are old friends, lovers, and sometimes enemies, and over the past few days fear has paid several visits, reminding me it’s never far away.

  I rub my cheek against Gemini’s chest. Just as my presence manages to keep him from munching on vampire limbs, his warmth and the familiar way his body curls around mine reminds me I’m safe.

  The moment we’re outside, a frigid wind streams across Lake Tahoe, breaking through the thick pines and sending an army of goosebumps marching down my spine. Gemini leaps from the stacked stone steps, landing beside his black Mercedes SUV. He places me in the passenger seat, slamming the door closed with enough velocity to rattle the interior cabin.

  My guess is he’s a little pissed. He tosses me a glare. Or perhaps, a lot pissed.

  His midnight twin wolf hops into the rear when Gemini throws open the door, sniffing the top of my shoulder. “I’m fine, sweetie,” I assure him.

  I take a moment to stroke his large head before clicking my seatbelt in place.

  Gemini pauses, likely sensing my touch through his twin. The midnight wolf turns back to look at him and whimpers. I think he’s sad, but then I realize Gemini is calling him back. From one leap to the next, the wolf dissolves into Gemini’s exposed back, returning home and once more becoming part of Gemini’s soul.