THE WITCH AND THE VAMPIRE Read online

  THE WITCH AND THE VAMPIRE

  BY

  FAWN LOWERY

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The Witch and the Vampire

  Copyright ã 2007 Fawn Lowery

  ISBN: 1-55410-797-0

  Cover art and design by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by eXtasy Books

  Look for us online at:

  www.extasybooks.com

  To Tina, my friend and mentor. Thank you for your encouragement and faith in my ability as a writer.

  CHAPTER 1

  Ronna Gentry stood aside while the two men from the antique shop maneuvered the heavy suit of medieval armor inside her third floor loft apartment. After a month long search of every vintage boutique and antique shop in Brooklyn, she had finally come across the perfect housewarming gift for Pam Sheffield, her closest friend and employee at The Witches’ Nook, the small novelty shop Ronna owned on Brooklyn’s upper west side.

  “This thing weighs a ton,” one of the men commented.

  “Yeah. The guy who wore this suit had balls.”

  Once the heavy armor was standing in the living room, Ronna gave the movers generous tips and closed the door behind them. Perhaps she would call them again—when she got the armor polished up and ready to present to Pam. She heaved a long sigh and thought about her friend. She was getting married in three weeks, going on a honeymoon to Hawaii for a week, and then upon the couple’s return, they were moving into their new house. A wave of envy careened through Ronna’s insides. She would never be like Pam—falling in love and getting married.

  “Witches don’t have ordinary lives.”

  She shook her head, pushing aside the realities plaguing her and turned her attentions to the massive suit of armor standing in the middle of her living room floor. It was incredibly tall and broad. The chest bulged and the legs were as big around as tree trunks. She tilted her head and gazed up at the large helmet situated on the broad shoulders.

  The man who wore it had to be a giant.

  When she found it sitting in a dark basement corner in the last antique shop she had ventured into, she knew for certain it would make the perfect housewarming gift for Pam and her new husband. With her mind set to haggle over the price, if necessary, she sought out the old man who owned the shop and began bargaining.

  “Is it English?”

  “Yes. Twelfth century. It’s quite valuable.”

  “It’s rusty.”

  “It’s only in need of a good polishing.” He looked at her with a slanted grin on his wrinkled face. “You can have it gleaming in a few hours.”

  Realizing he thought himself too sly to barter, she merely cast a spell on him, and bought the armor for a fair price.

  She walked around the armor, surveying the backside as well as the front and decided she’d need a gallon of metal cleaner—and a bottle of burgundy to get started. She shrugged out of her summer cardigan and headed for the kitchen. She wasn’t a heavy drinker—witches weren’t known for being able to hold their liquor and she was no exception. Once, she had consumed too much champagne at a friend’s wedding, and been sick for days.

  “All of my friends are getting married.”

  She wrinkled her forehead. Since learning of Pam’s upcoming marriage she had been inundated with feelings of growing old alone. In the past year she had been to five weddings. Once Pam married Lee, she would be the only single female in the group.

  Taking a bottle of merlot from the refrigerator, she poured herself a glass. But then she was the only witch in the group—a fact that she often times overlooked when considering how old she was becoming. She raised the glass and took a sip, tasting the sweetness of the wine on her tongue.

  Being the only witch in Brooklyn—or at least she surmised she was the only witch in the city—meant she had to keep what she was a secret from everyone else. Not even Pam knew of her talents.

  A blond brow lifted. She preferred to think of herself as a talented person—since she couldn’t openly flaunt her witchcraft. She opened the small novelty shop selling party supplies, holiday decorations, and gag gifts, once she realized she couldn’t confide in anyone about her abilities. Selling oddball things for parties and holiday celebrations occasionally gave her the opportunity to utilize one of her many talents—without the customer being any wiser.

  She had grown up in foster care—never really understanding how or why she had landed in the system. She had no known relatives that she was aware of. She used to wonder if she had just dropped out of the sky one day since no one seemed to have any record of her birth or any other pertinent information about her. She was seven when she realized she could do a number of things the other children in the orphanage couldn’t do. Her first ‘strange’ achievement, as she came to call her attempts to make things happen, had occurred after one little boy snatched a stuffed teddy bear out of her hand. She had gritted her teeth and silently commanded him to eat the teddy bear, button eyes and all. Moments later, the house mother was pulling cotton out of the kid’s mouth and vowing never to let him play with a stuffed toy ever again. Ronna had smirked for the rest of the day.

  When she reached her eighteenth birthday, she took her few possessions and left the group home, vowing she would never look back. A month later she opened her store and began concentrating on casting spells on her customers to make them buy her merchandise. It worked so well that within a month she needed to hire an assistant and she had settled on Pam—once she found that Pam believed in the supernatural and ghosts, and vampires, and—

  In fact, there wasn’t much Pam Sheffield didn’t believe in.

  The thought made her giggle. She finished the wine in her glass and poured herself another helping.

  The years had passed quickly. She was twenty-eight years old and resigned to being a closet witch—never to reveal the multitude of wonderful powers she possessed to anyone. She was a mystery unto herself. Just last week she discovered she could levitate—a little trick she found amusing and a bit scary.

  She pushed aside the personal thoughts and took her glass of wine into the living room. She only had three weeks to get the armor polished and by the looks of the thing, it might take the entire three weeks working day and night.

  The late afternoon sun was gleaming through the double windows in the room, bathing the interior of the loft in summertime heat. She set her glass on the coffee table and pulled her sleeveless cotton sweater over her head. Clad only in a lacy pink bra and white short shorts, she turned her full attention to cleaning the armor.

  “Where to start?”

  She gathered her cleaning supplies, stepladder to reach the head and shoulders of the suit, and began the chore. Pam would be delighted with the gift—once it was presentable. It would stand proud and tall in Pam’s front entry, greeting her guests with regal formality.

  She decided to start on the bottom of the armor and work her way up. Seating herself on the wooden
floor at the large feet, she wet a clean cloth with metal polish and began scrubbing. The heavy metal bore decades of tarnish and every effort to break through the blackened surface, seemed to prove futile. After several minutes of hard scrubbing, she realized the task ahead was worse than she first thought.

  “I’ll have to resort to a spell—otherwise I’ll never get it looking presentable for Pam.” She had thought she would do the cleaning by hand, feeling that she would be giving Pam a special gift she had given careful attention to instead of resorting to witchcraft, but like a lot of her ideas, it held little promise. She shrugged her shoulders. She supposed Pam wouldn’t know one way or the other.

  She skimmed her gaze over the tall monstrosity while she thought about the spell to make it clean and sipped the glass of merlot she had brought into the room. It was huge. How could a warrior possibly maneuver the heavy structure into battle? Had it been worn battling the Crusades? She shook her head, unable to imagine the man or the time period when the armor might have been used.

  Her gaze traveled upward, along the legs of the suit, to the crotch. Her eyes widened at the sight of the juncture between leg and groin. The armor disappeared and was replaced by a heavy woven fabric—iron mail—at the crotch. Curious, she scrambled to her feet to take a peek.

  “What have we here?”

  She giggled. Her head was swimming from the effects of the wine she had consumed. She placed one hand on her forehead and blinked her eyes.

  “Witches can’t drink.”

  She steadied her feet, bracing them apart and leaning one hand on the chest of the armor until her vision cleared. She swiped one hand across her forehead. It was hot in the room or she had drunk too much. She felt extremely overheated. For a moment she considered removing more clothing then giggled when she realized she only wore shorts and a bra. She ran one hand across the swell of her breasts, feeling the moist sheen of sweat lying on her skin. Her fingers trailed the heavy gold chain around her neck to the large amber colored amulet nestled between her plump breasts. It weighed a ton sometimes, or it felt like it since she was destined to wear it forever. She had given up trying to remove it when she was seven. The chain appeared to be too short to allow her to take it off over her head and there was no clasp, as most necklaces had. She grasped the amulet in her palm and held it away from her chest. There were times when she wished she could remove it and throw it away. So far, it had proven useless. It neither helped when she cast spells, nor brought her any good fortune.

  She heaved a sigh and released the amulet, her thoughts once again on the crotch of the armor. A woven cloth hung from the metal covering the abdomen, hanging loosely as though worn by the inhabitant of the suit. She took hold of the fragment—time had ravaged its edges and made it horribly stiff. She gingerly raised it. Bending her head, she peeked beneath the scrap—only to see a darkened space inside the suit.

  Shaking her head, she chided herself for thinking she might see something unexpected.

  She turned and picked up her wine glass. It was too hot to work without benefit of cool refreshment. She sauntered to the kitchen, her feet slightly unsteady on the polished wood floor.

  Returning, she reminded herself that she wasn’t a drinker, regardless of how hot it was in the room. She returned to the chore of cleaning the armor, going over the spell she would cast to make it clean, when she became fixated on the large helmet. It sat precisely on the broad shoulders, domed with a tall crest and sporting a hinged face cover. She pulled the small stepladder she had fetched so she could polish the upper portion of the armor into position and stepped up on it.

  Curiosity fueled her movements as she peered through the hinged face cover. A scrap of cloth was visible—as though a head was covered inside. She pulled in a quick breath, drawing back in surprise. The old antique dealer hadn’t mentioned that there was anything inside the armor. Surely there wasn’t a statue stored inside—or God forbid—a dead body of a soldier.

  She considered her options. She could get off the ladder and get sloppy drunk, leave the cleaning of the armor until later when she could think clearly—after the effects of the wine had worn off—or she could lift up the hinged face shield and appease her curiosity.

  She grasped the face shield and pushed against the rusty hinges on either side of the mask. It refused to budge. Too many years of tarnish had made the mechanism cease to move.

  “Crap.”

  She propped her hands on her hips. Maybe it had been a mistake to purchase the armor in the first place. It was rusty and tarnished. Actually it was quite ugly. And she might never be able to get it looking presentable to give to Pam. She stepped off the ladder and glared at the suit of armor.

  A bead of sweat rolled down her spine and oozed between her butt cheeks.

  “Damn. It’s hot in here.”

  She reached behind her back and released the clasp on his bra. Peeling the lacy cups from her breasts, she tossed the garment in the direction of the couch. Skimming her hands across her breasts, she sighed. It felt good to be free of the confining bra. She lowered her hands to the zipper of her shorts and slid it down, then pushed them from her hips.

  Feeling better because of her near nudity, she considered removing her bikini panty -but then decided to leave it on. She raised her hands and lifted her long hair off her shoulders. Gathering it in one fist, she went toward the bedroom for a scarf to tie it up. It was almost sundown and the temperature would be cooling off soon. Where had the day gone?

  Had she wasted the better part of the afternoon trying to clean the suit of armor—or deciding whether to zap it into oblivion?

  Refreshed, she returned to the living room and stood before the huge metal suit. She was intrigued by its size and the thoughts that accompanied the time period when it might have been used for battle. The whole mystery surrounding it had fueled her need to purchase it.

  The spell to clean it started to take shape in her mind. She would have its tarnished metal gleaming but what of its fragmented mail? Curiosity pulled her nearer the suit. The crotch intrigued her to no end. How big a man had to be to wear the suit amazed her. She smiled slightly, imagining the size of a man’s cock hidden behind the drape of mail.

  She lifted the fragment with tentative fingers, and then thrust her hand into the darkened interior of the suit.

  “What the hell—“ She jerked her hand away.

  Startled, she staggered backward, careening into the coffee table and bumping her calf.

  She glanced down at her hand, still feeling the imprint of something against her palm. Surely she hadn’t pressed her hand against male genitalia. Or had she?

  She lowered her butt to the couch and stared at the armor, blinking her eyes. She was drunker than she initially thought. She was imagining things—and this time it was nothing of her own making. She stared at the face shield, feeling suddenly as though someone was staring back at her. A shiver of cold dread raced across her flesh. Suddenly she was very aware of her nudity. She levered herself off the couch and raced toward the bedroom for a robe.

  Leary but intrigued, she hurried back into the room. Her fingers shook as she cinched the tie belt on the satin robe. She had set some eerie motion into play with her curious inspections. Her senses seemed to be alerted—in a foreign way. She pulled in a long breath. Her nipples were taut. She glanced at the front of her robe. Why was she feeling aroused?

  She walked around the protective suit, her gaze traveling over it as she locked her fingers behind her back. She had the uncanny desire to touch the metal, to stroke the cold surface.

  “Mmmm.”

  The sound seemed to echo inside the room—or had she imagined hearing something? Perhaps she had made the sound.

  “That’s what I get for drinking.”

  She shook her head and tried to push aside the unfamiliar feelings wafting through her insides. She felt strangely drawn toward the armor as though an invisible force was summoning her.

  “Maybe I need another drink.
”

  She circled the armor, ending up at the couch where her wine glass sat on the table before it. There was still a swallow of wine left. She picked up the glass and raised it to her mouth—then stopped suddenly as she glimpsed movement out of the corner of her eye.

  Jerking her head around, she saw a swirl of gray mist seeping slowly through the face shield of the helmet on the armor. Alarmed but incredibly fascinated, she stared in bewilderment as the mist grew in size and gathered in height, seemingly mounting upon itself in a shimmering wave. She drew back slightly, a tremor of fright gathering in her stomach.

  The smoke colored mist swirled, drawing upon itself as it left the faceplate in soft undulating waves, cascading downward to grow and take form on the floor. An alarming eeriness accompanied the mysterious vapor, as though a presence was invading Ronna’s solitude. She was fixated on the sight—unable to look away as her nerves trembled in warning.

  The formation grew, towering in the room and rapidly taking on form. Ronna drew in a surprised breath as she realized the mist was gaining substance and taking the form of a man—a tall, well-muscled man. She raised one hand to her breast, clutching the amulet around her neck as she made out the entirety of the manifestation.

  As quickly as it began, so it ended. She blinked her eyes, disbelieving.

  The waving mist became dense, taking on substance with breath and height—a transformation right before her startled eyes. She felt the urge to run—though her feet felt heavy and rooted to the floor. A measure of fright gathered inside her—though she sensed it was temporary and unwarranted. She curled her fingers around the cold amulet suspended around her neck, her nails biting into the palm of her hand as she stared at the apparition standing mere feet away.

  CHAPTER 2