The Ladies’ Paranormal & Adventure Club #1
Five Supernatural Girls Plus One New God Equals Trouble!
The Shapeshifter, the Elfin, the Vampyre, the Mage and the Earth-Angel... Five Supernatural Girls against the World!
The Ladies’ Paranormal & Adventure Club #1
From soulmatepublishing.com
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The Players The Ladies Paranormal and Adventure Club The Shapeshifter – Jayne Constantine Discovered as a feral child in Germany’s Black Forest, somehow Jayne grew up to be a powerful, well-balanced werepanther. At this point in time she has no idea who her parents are, nor how she came to be abandoned in the wild. After several years in her late teens in the covert Supernatural army tagged as, Finnegan’s Irregulars, she played at being a mercenary for a while. Then she cofounded the 2J’s bodyguard agency with long-time friend, Jake Rivers, the werewolf. Lost her heart in her teens to the sorcerer, Stephano Angelus. The Elfin – Anya Grith-Vøs-Danka Born on a world half a heartbeat away, where the High Elfin clans rule the endless forests and glens, Anya was a warrior-princess to her people; the apple of her brutal father’s eye. Having been found cheating on her husband, she was subsequently banished to Earth in 1990’s London, England, where she soon carved a small empire for herself. She now splits her time between being a professional dominatrix and doing rather messy enforcer jobs for the Russian Mafia, all around Europe. Betrayed her husband and her clan with the sorcerer, Stephano Angelus. The Vampyre – Silver Karnstein Born from Undead parents in Little Transylvania, New York City, Silver grew up a spoilt daddy’s girl. Even though her father is one of the most powerful Vampyres in the Principality, she is always bending the rules and went through a string of both human and Undead lovers. What she was good at was writing – so she now runs various ‘kiss and tell’ Blogs and writes spasmodically for the underground Supernatural press. Her other hobby is helping herself to shiny things that don’t belong to her. Broke her father’s black heart by running away with the sorcerer, Stephano Angelus.
The Mage – Raven LeCoix With her French celebrity mother one of the top-ten of sorcerers of all-time, Raven struggles to live up to the family name. Whereas her older half-brother and her nine sisters worked their way through the standard eighty to ninety year period of intense study to become Mages, Goth-girl Raven is always looking for a short cut to become a star. At twentysix, she is the youngest and most headstrong of the Girls Club. With her speciality in elemental magik being Fire (the most difficult of the five elements to control) she has a bad habit of making dangerous mistakes. Lost her virginity at eighteen to the sorcerer, Stephano Angelus. The Earth-Angel – The Lady Cleopatra Victoria Defoe Reborn on the streets of San Francisco in the year 1830, Cleopatra is the divine combination of two souls. The most powerful being that of a Seraphim Angel slain in battle at some point lost in Earth’s distant past. Her mortal side was the original fifteen-year-old Cleopatra Defoe, attacked and killed by a Wraith in 1708. She is the group’s one true immortal, who is constantly in turmoil with her other self. An avenging vigilante who has tried to retire to more scholarly pastimes, the secret world keeps dragging her back into adventure and danger. Only now she drags her girls with her. Upon her resurrection, she was seduced and made whole by the sorcerer, Stephano Angelus. The Gentlemen, mostly in name only. Chairman of the Diogenes Club (MI5 Occult Division) – Lord Theodore Buckley Raised in an undisclosed Stately Home, somewhere in the county of Kent, England by doting parents and a rather Arian nanny named Helga, Buckley’s whole family seem to have been involved with the British Secret Service at one time or another. He often recalls Uncle James coming round for tea, during those balmy, endless summers of his
Young Blood 5 childhood. But it was Azrael Fireheart’s Propriety School for Young Gentlemen, in Dublin, Ireland that shaped the man we see today. Definitely not a ladies man, young Buckley had a blinding one-night-stand with the sorcerer, Stephano Angelus. Young Blood - Ikarus, Master of the Coming Dawn. Smuggled as a baby across the Great Divide from the dimensional Refuge to Earth, Ikarus was brought up by adoptive mortal parents until the age of seventeen, when he was contacted by the Thirteenth Family and told his true Primal heritage. Leader of the disparate group of Young Bloods, he uses a mechanical set of wings stolen from the da Vinci family. What this new generation of gods will do on Earth, remains to be seen. Until meeting Jayne Constantine, Ikarus had never heard of Stephano Angelus. Master Mage - Edwin Daark. Thanks to his own rewriting of history, Daark’s origin is as murky as his name. Records of his magical procrastinations can be found as far back as the 11th Century, but then they may be planted falsehoods. But it is fair to say, despite being a manipulative bastard and a practiced liar, Daark is a romantic at heart. His true reasons for bringing Jayne and Ikarus together are yet to unfold. He rues the day he first met Stephano Angelus and introduced him to the mysteries of the Craft. The Shapeshifter – Jake Rivers. A Tennessee-born werewolf built like a brick outbuilding, bearded Jake is Jayne’s best buddy. Possibly the most laid-back Supernatural in the world, this cowboy just enjoys getting through the day with as little stress as possible. With Misty Rain as their bodyguard company’s sole client, this is not always an option, annoying little monster that she is. He has a past which he likes to keep as that – in the past. Once thumped the sorcerer, Stephano Angelus and laid him out cold. Wishes he could do it again. The late Mage – Stephano Angelus. Never has a man used the powers of Magik for
more selfish reasons than Angelus. Having been apprenticed to the duplicitous Daark to learn the mysteries of the Craft, he promptly stole most of the Mage’s best arcane tomes and went solo. It is reputed that, in his day, he seduced over a thousand women with his love spells and potions. Some sceptics claim that this guesstimate is on the low side. A rogue, a vagabond, a thief and a serialadulterer, Angelus stated on numerous occasions that he loved every single woman that he bedded. Until fate finally caught up with him and he met his fiery death at the hands of Cleopatra and her protégé, Raven LeCroix… or so legend has it. Stephano Angelus, the world’s renown sorcerer, is probably his own biggest fan. Ladies in waiting. Young Blood nymphomaniac – Desiree. Granddaughter to Edwin Daark, she has practiced her skills as a paramour on all her godly cousins – of both sexes. Classed as the Young Blood godette, she embraces life amongst the stupid mortals, where with the wink of an eye she can con the most stoic shop-assistant to give her bags full of free stuff. Until the Girls Club trample all over her life, she was the supreme diva of the Supernatural world. Her Magik skills are questionable, although she has picked up a working knowledge of the basics from Daark. She never slept with the sorcerer, Stephano Angelus, but lied that she had after he was gone ¬ which really pisses her off. Supernatural rock star – Misty Rain. In a world fixated on celebrities, Misty ran away from her folks and became a rock sensation at the age of thirteen. Her voice is her power, as she can evoke a range of emotions from her adoring fans with every sung word. Under the wing of Jayne and Jake, she treads the rights side of good, although she is partial to the odd cigarette now and again. A young fifteen, she finds all the romantic shenanigans of her peers a bit of a joke. But when she grows up, she wants to join the Ladies Paranormal and Adventure Club to kick some serious ass. Rather smitten by the sorcerer, Stephano Angelus, but too shy to act on it.
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YOUNG BLOOD: SAMPLER, Love & Monsters and the name Rikki Sharp Š 2012 Rob Sharp. All rights reserved The right for Rob Sharp to be identified as the author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. YOUNG BLOOD, Kindle edition published by Soul Mate Publishing, LLC. Further information can be obtained by contacting avalonrjs@gmail.com This Sampler should only be copied or transmitted by any means for the sole purpose of advertising the full novel, YOUNG BLOOD by Rikki Sharp. It must not be reprinted in any other way. Illustrations & Design Š Rob Sharp 2012
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Prologue By the golden light of a roaring log fire, Lady Cleopatra sat and penned her latest romantic recollections of her other self. The evenings were becoming cooler in the timeless city of Venice, as the ancient room wrapped itself around her like a familiar warm coat, its panelled walls stating age and respectability, the lines of dark portraits showing the various generations of the Defoe family, indicating pedigree and status. Although the slender woman with the ivory white complexion, caught somewhere in her eternal twenties, wore an antique dress reaching back over a century in its design, her bobbed, vivid red hair courtesy of L’OrÊal-Paris was pure 21st century. She wrote this lost history of an ancient world with the pen given to her after the Battle of Ypres by a grateful English officer for saving his life. She may have saved that poor man from death by fire and brimstone, but she had stolen his heart, leaving the officer to die lovelost and alone barely a year later.
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Which was the better way to die? She often pondered over that conundrum, in those secretive, small hours of the morn when sleep eluded her. Then who had that nameless soldier fallen in love with ... her, or the angelic half of her dual soul? As the pen left its marks across the velum page in her leather-bound volume, chronicling ancient battles and broken hearts that had long slipped from mortal recall, a log shifted in the vast arched fireplace, sending sparks dancing up the chimney. Suddenly, she stopped. Placing the cap back on her pen, she set it down in the groove made by the book’s spine. “Who’s there?” said Cleopatra into the red heat of the fire. “Who is watching?” The flames refused to answer for a moment, until she twisted the oxygen around them with a graceful gesture of one hand and they began to burn bright blue. “You know who is watching. You always have ...” replied a sigh, trapped within the blue fire. Lady Cleopatra Victoria Defoe stiffened slightly, catching her breath. “This has to be a trick ... It can’t be you, Angelus. You’re dead, my love!” “When has that ever stopped me before?” laughed the voice from inside the flames. Then its tone changed, to one of utmost urgency, as it issued a prophecy. “You get this one warning, sexy, then it’s over to you and your heavenly peers. They are returning to the Waking World. They’ve stayed in limbo far too long and now they’re making a comeback.”
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Lady Cleopatra’s knuckles showed white as she gripped the edge of her writing desk. Just for a second a shadow washed across the room, like those of a great bird’s wings, and there was a distant sound of feathers rustling in an imaginary breeze. But she held her other soul back, keeping the Scourge of Heaven locked deep inside of her, for everyone’s sake. “Who is coming back, if that really is you, Angelus?” He was the one man she had ever really loved. The magician who had stood up to her trumpets of holy righteousness and stripped the clothes from her back, to make love to her right there in that tavern lost in the Himalayas. Rescued the passion of the woman from the soul of an Angel. “What threat are you trying to warn me about, damn you!” she called out bitterly. The voice in the fire laughed softly. “Call yourself an Earth-Angel? Why, it’s them of course ... the gods. Time for holy swords and shields again, sweetheart, it’s Armageddon, version 2.0!” Cleopatra snarled, marring that alabaster face for just a brief moment. “Again? Bloody fantastic,” she swore, with all the breeding and sarcasm one of the Lord’s warriors cast down to Earth could muster. Sweeping her writings to one side, she broke out the ancient faerie maps and the zodiacal charts of the Thirteen Houses, stepping out of her refined gown as she did so. Dropping her petticoat and shrugging off her bodice, she procured a far more modern black Lycra suit from thin air, followed by her favourite pair of Pirate boots that reached just over her knees.
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Dressed for battle, Cleopatra tied the leather choker with its bloodruby totem around that pale, consummately English throat, trying not to think of who had given her the psychic warning, but of what it meant. Gods walking the world again, bringing power and glory, death and destruction—she really couldn’t allow that to happen. But to stand in their way, to stop the past becoming the present once again, she was going to need some Supernatural help. Picking up the octagonal dice carved from the bones of trolls, she cast them across the map of the Hidden World and watched them fall where they may.
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Chapter One At the precise moment Lady Cleopatra threw her dice, somewhere in the heart of London, Jayne Constantine, bodyguard to the rich and famous, thought she saw something silhouetted against the sun. It looked for all the world like a man with metal wings. “Did you see that?” the lithe mixed-race woman with the spiked short ebony hair asked the wall of a man who stood next to her. Jake Rivers grunted, taking off his shades. He looked like a WWE contender crossed with a grizzly bear. Bearded and tattooed, then sewn into a dark business suit to match his partner. “See what?” he answered dryly. “I...” Jayne faltered, feeling like someone had just walked over her grave. She felt cold then hot again, all at the same time. For a second, her teeth seemed to elongate just a touch, the dark lipstick smile turning onto a snarl. Then she was back to full-human form. “Ignore me. I’m getting jumpy in my old age. Where is the damn kid anyway?”
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“She needed a whizz. Nice to get five minutes free from her bitching. How a fifteen-year-old got so darn mean-mouthed, I’ll never know.” The Shapeshifter looked skyward again, up through the old and the new buildings of London. It was a beautiful day in the capital and the sky was a piercing bright blue. What she thought she had just seen was impossible. Then again ... “You two planks standing here all day? I thought we had a signing to do?” The grating underage tones of Misty Rain, the girl with the voice of an angel, cut through their day. The under five-foot gum-chewing punk was her usual caustic self. “I’ll call the car,” said Jayne, tapping her Bluetooth. “You do that, pussycat. There’s a hell of a draught in this alley that’ll do my lovely voice the power of good!” Jayne Constantine growled low. “Misty, I’ve told you before ... don’t call me pussycat!” “Well, that’s what you is, isn’t it?” The fifteen-year-old grinned up at her maliciously. “I thought hiring Supernaturals was bang on trend!” “Maybe it is, maybe it ain’t. But we ‘Supernaturals’ are sensitive souls and don’t like our presence broadcast by every smart-mouthed diva on the block!” snarled Jake, jamming his shades back on to hide the animal begging to get out. The girl just looked at him in distain through her panda-eyes, caked with far too much makeup, and hissed through her teeth in that petulant way.
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It was going to be one of those bloody days, Jayne thought, as she gave the codeword to their driver, that shape-in-the-sky still bothering her like an old itch she couldn’t quite scratch. *** High up on the rusting fire escape, he landed with hardly a sound. Worn leather boots touching down, his leather kilt stirring slightly, the beaten gold breastplate protecting his broad chest containing a carved image of a face in the sun. On his muscular back, metal wings glinted in the morning light. As those wonders of mechanical science folded away, he pushed a visor up onto his forehead. Long blond locks fell over his eyes, part of an ‘80’s bad hair style, but with his looks and heavy bone structure, he got away with it. Ikarus stared over the railing as the two Shapeshifters waited with their charge for the hired limo. He could tell they were changelings, part of the ancient slave menagerie. He could smell their animal persona. The woman was holding her dark feline form barely in check. Werepanther probably. The man stunk of timber wolf, but he was more laid back, comfortable in either skin. If he was going to snatch Misty away from under their very sensitive noses, he’d have to have a plan. Swooping down from out of the sun didn’t cut it any more. Things might get a bit violent with her two special bodyguards. He had to become a little more creative. But at the moment he was revelling in his freedom. Back amongst the teaming billions of human lives, just one of the guys. It was almost intoxicating. Returning this world to the Golden Age of the gods was going to be fun.
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Chapter Two Anya walked purposefully around her slave, swishing the leather whip with its metal studs against her leather-clad thigh. Blond, beautiful, with an impossibly wide sensuous mouth, she naturally touched six feet in height, but her steel high-heels elevated her into the realms of a goddess. “What have you got for me today, little worm?” she taunted the man hooded and tied to an old iron bedstead. “N-Nothing, mistress. The streets are quiet,” the overweight slave in his mid-fifties babbled. It was what Anya had heard all week. But the Diogenes Club, that occult arm of the British Secret Service that had been in existence since the 14th
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Century, was never quiet. Those devious bastards were up to something. “Tell me!” she pressed the slave harder, one stiletto placed against the man’s groin. “Tell me now!” As she clenched her serrated teeth together, muscles rippling down her square jaw, the tip of each gracefully pointed ear showing through her iron-straight hair, she was tempted to take a chunk out of her slave’s throat, but that would have been rather bad for business. “Nothing!” he squealed. “Nothing, but ...” “But?” She increased the pressure of her heel. The slave groaned in the pleasure of the pain. “A name. I–I’ve heard a whisper of a name on the streets.” Anya bent low, those savage teeth millimetres from the man’s face. “Tell me!” she breathed in his ear. “Primals,” was all he said, before passing out with ecstasy. Outside in the plush ladies rest room, Anya peeled off her dominatrix uniform, slinging it into a large laundry basket in the corner. Standing at the hand basin naked, she wiped the harsh makeup from her face and scrubbed her arms and body vigorously. She was late for her next appointment and didn’t have time for a shower. As she washed, the door opened and a small curvaceous brunette wandered in, dressed in a red PVC devil’s suit. “Hi, Anya. We’ve run out of coffee again in the hospitality room,” the devil said conversationally. She tried not to openly stare at Anya’s nude body. The woman was lean and toned like an athlete, the muscles in her arms and legs rippling as she shifted her body weight and continued to
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wash. She had a figure to die for topped by full, natural breasts. Then there were the scars. Myriads of scars. “Well I bought it last time,” muttered the dominatrix, brushing her long straight blond hair, covering the pointed ears once again. “Must be Helena’s turn. I’ll kick her arse. She never pays her way!” The curvaceous devil repaired her makeup as she stepped out of her own costume, then watched in silent fascination as Anya took a specially crafted set of dentures from her bag and placed them neatly over her own jagged teeth, pressing them firmly into place with her long red-nailed fingers. “Are those sharp teeth really yours? I thought they were the fakes?” the devil asked, curiously. “And the ears ...?” “Plastic surgery. Cost me a fortune. It was more effective to have my own teeth filed down, so when I bite my little boys, they know it’s real!” The devil gave a little nervous laugh. There was something slightly weird about the tall blond Polish girl. But then again, this job did rather attract the sexual extroverts in life. “Ooo. Is it me, or is it cold in here? I just went all goosebumpy.” Anya Grith-Vøs-Danka of the Forest of Mac-Mørn slipped on her tight purple mini-dress, Celtic-band watch, and patent leather high-heels, dropping her whip, handcuffs, and various other S & M accoutrements into a deep leather shoulder bag. “It’s you. Well, that’s me finished for the day,” smiled the High Elfin, even though she had felt a momentary chill as she changed. “I’ve a lunch date ... better move.”
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The devil watched her go, wishing her legs were as long and slender as Anya’s and her boobs as real. But then every client at Nero’s had a different taste. Cheekily swinging her devil’s tail in one hand, she went back to work. The exotic-looking blonde slipped into the midday pedestrian throng of the busy London street, its daily commuters having no idea that such a den of ill repute existed mere yards from where they were walking. She was late for her lunch date with Krychek, but he’d wait; he always did. Besides, she had this new bit of intel called ‘Primals’ to unscramble, so time didn’t matter. Hunting down the cruel and the bizarre in this overcrowded world had started as a hobby for the exiled princess. But protecting the weak and persecuting the wicked had slowly changed into a personal crusade. It gave her centre, helped her cope with a life not her own, but it was a lonely occupation, and like all such extreme sports, it required constant funding. As Anya hurried to her next appointment with the Russian Mafia boss to pay for her expensive hobby, she became so engrossed in thought that she failed to notice a blur following her at a safe distance. A figure moving so fast it was hard for the human eye to focus on him. But Anya wasn’t human either, so the cocky Young Blood, Nick Mercury, was going where daemons feared to tread. More fool him. *** “Cleopatra ...” hissed the woman jogging in Central Park with the rest of the health nuts. She wore a sleeveless grey hoodie and tracksuit bottoms, her right arm flashing a masterpiece of gothic tattoos. Across the Pale, the
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Wicca felt the dice fall and fate tug at her life-strings. “Interfering old cow!” Pretending to stop for a breather, she leaned forward with her hands resting on her thighs. A long tangle of dark hair hung down over her face. Clutching at the totem she kept in her tracksuit bottom’s hip pocket, Raven LeCroix whispered a string of cantrips under her breath. But away from her hidden sanctum and without some serious kick-starting, she just picked up arcane static. With a sigh, she plucked out her cell. What kind of way was this for a White Witch to communicate with her apprentice? “Mitch?” Raven started, “Is that the cloister bells going off in the background? Shit,” she managed to get out over the slightly hysterical teenager blabbering on the other end of the line. “Just get yourself together, and I’ll be back as soon as I can. It’s the Earth-Angel again ... playing dice with people’s lives! Yes, we are talking some serious mumbo-jumbo here, and before you say it, this is not cool!” Raven snapped the phone shut, then tightened the Velcro fastenings on her sport’s gloves, clutched her enchanted Zippo lighter in her left hand, gritted her teeth, and continued her run. It was only when she managed to duck into a clump of bushes out of view of prying eyes, could she whip up some serious hexing and spirit herself away, back to her Greenwich Village apartment. Then she braced herself for a serious bad-mouthing session with Cleopatra, the bane of her mystical life. Five minutes and a rather curt conversation later via her crystal Ocular, Raven had to reluctantly eat humble pie. Skateboard in hand, dressed in her usual street-wreck attire, sixteen-year-old Mitch Vinny stood and gawped at her mentor. “Is he back again? Mister Perfect?” she jawed. Raven was in no mood for her pet runaway’s attitude. “Something came
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through the Divide, which may or may not be Angelus. The dude is dead ... I should know I vapourized him myself.” “Trouble is, Stephano Angelus doesn’t know how to stay dead,” grumbled her apprentice. “If you’re going to be playing kissy-kissy with him again, I’m locking the place down. Last time you did the evils with Mister Perfect, stuff blew up!” Like she needed to be reminded of that. Angelus was her kryptonite, the magikal Yin to her Yang. The trouble was, the guy had no idea how to keep it in his pants where the rest of the sisters of the Supernatural were concerned. “Break out the primo incense and my soul-gun, Midge. I’m going on a road trip!” the Wicca finally spat out. “No touching the enchanted stuff whilst I’m gone, no parties for your scuzzy friends, and try not to set fire to the damn place this time!” “Am I allowed to say ‘wicked’?” “Go on then.” Raven smirked, clicking nervously at her Zippo and charging up her inner-eye. So her teen ward did—three times for luck— because Midge knew she, as the youngest Wicca in town, was going to need it.
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Up above the clouds, touching the very edge of the sky, fly the Seabirds!
On the eve of war between Great Britain and Nazi Germany, every man is expected to do his duty – but what about the women? Turning their backs on becoming simple housewives, leaving the pots in the sink and the beds unmade, three girls from very different backgrounds strive to beat the men at their own game and become pilots. They are the Seabirds, flying from Britain to France on missions for the secret service, they are a force to be reckoned with! But when the adventures end and they are back on the ground, how do the men in their lives fit in?