A Witch Called Red: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 1) Read online

  A Witch Called Red

  by Sami Valentine

  Published by Pocketmaus Publishing

  www.samivalentine.com

  © 2019 Sami Valentine

  A Witch Called Red is the first book of The Red Witch Chronicles, an urban fantasy series containing magic, paranormal adventure, and vampire mayhem along with swearing, violence, and adult situations.

  Get free reads (including a novelette prequel story), updates on my new books, and the skinny on the latest hot Urban Fantasy/Paranormal titles by subscribing to my newsletter at SamiValentine.com. Click here to sign up!

  Dedicated to the people who helped encourage and inspire me to write and publish my debut novel: Jamie, Derek, Alex, and the fabulous ladies of the Get Shit Done Club.

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  Chapter One

  August 3rd, 2017, Afternoon, the Sacred Heart Hospital, Eugene, Oregon

  BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

  Smelling antiseptic, she tensed before opening sleep-crusted eyes to focus on the heart monitor screen. Consciousness hit her like a wave of anxiety. She pushed the thin blue blanket down. Wincing at a sudden pain in her wrist, she sat up in the hospital bed and swayed at the rush to her head.

  Her vision blurred as she studied the bandage on her wrist covering unconnected IV ducts. The name on her patient bracelet read Jane Doe.

  “What the fuck?” Her raspy voice sounded like she hadn’t spoken in a hundred years.

  She looked around at the white curtain surrounding the bed before her eyes found the sleeping man in the chair at the foot of the bed.

  Head tilted back, he had East Asian features and a shoulder-length mullet with short, spiky black bangs that popped up like a cockatoo’s. A faded Metallica logo on his denim vest peeked out from under his folded arms. The left arm was tanner than the right. His knees poked out of his torn jeans, and his dirty steel toe boots were propped up against the leg of the bed.

  “Hey, Mister,” she croaked out, throat dry, before she looked around and saw a small pink plastic mug on the bed stand. She pulled it over and peered at the clear water inside before drinking, then trying again. “Hey!”

  “I wasn’t there—” The man jumped in his chair, jerking his head up as his dark eyes flipped open. “Oh, shit, you’re awake.”

  “Seems like it. Unless this is one of those weird dreams where you think you wake up but it’s still a dream.” She looked around again. It felt like a dream, sitting in a hospital room with a guy who looked like a roadie for a metal tribute band. But the pain in her wrist and the general ache all over her body were evidence of reality.

  She put her hand to her chin, looking down as she struggled to remember. She remembered the blue sky, the plane overhead, and the grass underneath her. Then a shadow loomed over her, features slowly becoming clear.

  It was him. The man in the chair.

  She remembered him carrying her and settling her on a bean bag chair in a van, then only flashes of the bright lights of the hospital. “You brought me here. Um, where is here? Actually, let’s start with who are you?”

  “I’m Vic. I found you off the 126 near Coyote Creek. You’re at the Sacred Heart in Eugene.”

  “Eugene, Oregon.” She said the city name slowly as she read the patient bracelet again. She knew of it, but nothing stirred in her beyond a punchline from an old Simpsons episode. “Why?”

  “You tell me. I’m just a guy who thought he was going to take a nap in his van after a long drive. Then I found you. Your neck is all marked up, bruises and fang bites… What happened to you?”

  Fang bites on the neck?

  Like a peek behind a dark veil came the awareness that humans were far from the apex predator. She didn’t have a montage of memories; it was more like his words shook supernatural trivia into her mind.

  Fire and stakes killed vampires. Blessed silver could wound or repel them. Crosses were a toss-up. Supernatural speed and strength with fangs equipped with venom to put their victims in thrall. She might not be able to remember a single one, but she knew of them. She might not have known where she was, but she knew what bumped in the night.

  “A bite? Like a dog or a, um, vam—” She stopped herself. She didn’t know who Vic was. He could have been a trucker for all she knew.

  Vic opened the curtain a crack to glance at the sleeping patient in the other bed in the shared room. He looked back at her, an eyebrow raised. “You were going to say vampire.”

  “Would that be crazy if I did?”

  “Not to me.” Vic said. “Who are you? The police couldn’t find anything when they ran your prints.”

  She opened her mouth, but the words died on her tongue. It wasn’t as if her name was on the tip of her tongue. Her mind just felt blank. She tried to think of where she was from or who her family was, but only found more blanks. She knew concretely that she was a white woman, from America, who had watched the Simpsons at least once and knew that monsters existed. Everything else was fuzzy. “I don’t know.”

  “Where did you come from?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How’d you get out there?”

  “I don’t know, I…” She couldn’t even remember her name, let alone how she ended up by Coyote Creek.

  “How do you know you were attacked by a vampire?”

  She shrugged. That was a question she could answer. “I assumed, because you said fang bites. Oh God, what if it was a werewolf?”

  “No, it looks like a vampire’s handiwork. You have some old bite scars too.” Vic slumped back in his chair. “What color are your eyes?”

  “Um, brown?” She guessed, frowning as she realized she didn’t know. She reached up to find her hair in a bun, held back with two hair ties, and let her hair down. Looking at the wavy red hair, she bit her lip. Her hair was so long. The sight didn’t jog her memory, it just made her realize she would have to use a lot of conditioner.

  “No, green.” Vic stood and walked closer. “So, you don’t remember anything?”

  “Not about me. I think I have some general facts like Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492.” She pursed her lips, the question kickstarting her brain synapses like slapping an old TV on the fritz. “Which I have some opinions about, apparently. I know what a molecule is, and that Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston dated. Which I also have some opinions about.” She frowned. “Nothing about me.”

  “What day is it?”

  She shrugged.

  “Okay, that isn’t fair. You’ve been unconscious for a while.” Vic crossed his arms. “Who is President?”

  “Barack Obama,” she said.

  Vic tilted his head. “No, it’s Donald Trump.”

  “The guy from the reality show?” She laughed. “Okay, I know that I’m amnesia girl, but don’t mess with me like that. It’s only two years into Obama’s presidency.”

  “Two years? It’s 2018.”

  She furrowed her brow before pinching herself. “I’m ready to appear naked in English class reading a book report now.”

  “Tough titties on that kitty, Red. You’re awake, alive, and missing the last eight years. And you don’t know where you’ve been?”

  She shook her head, then frowned at him. “Red?”

  “I gotta call you something.”

  She shrugged. Red… It was better than Jane Doe. “So, what’s your deal? Hunter? Vigilante trucker? Kind of the same thing, I guess, but probably not a Bard.”
r />   “What? Why not?” Vic looked down at himself. “I am, for your information. From a long line of them.”

  “You just look so business in the front and party in the back.” Red smiled. She might not have memories, but her sense of humor still worked.

  In addition to Jennifer Aniston’s love life, she knew enough about the supernatural world to remember the players. Hunters were scattered vigilantes, bounty hunters, and people who couldn’t resist the call to fight the darkness. The Brotherhood of Bards and Heroes was an ancient order of scholars who acted as mentors to the supernatural champions who kept demons, vampires, and more dark beings at bay. Vic looked more like a drunk guy at a honky-tonk yelling for someone to play “Freebird” than a Bard.

  “I know my badass style makes me stand out from the stuffed shirts, but I have my credentials. I had at least two years at UCLA too before I dropped out,” Vic said. “I’d ask you how you know about the Brotherhood, but I reckon you’d say you don’t know.”

  Red nodded. “You said my prints didn’t come up in the check?”

  “Nope. You were in a bloody white dress, roughed up, without any ID. No phone. Nothing.”

  “Can you bring me a mirror? Anything to look at myself in.” Red asked.

  Vic nodded and looked around before grabbing a spoon off the rolling tray beside the bed. He handed it to her.

  Red looked at herself, distorted in the back of the spoon, and pulled away the bandage on her neck. The mass of purple bruises stood out first, the puncture wounds from vampire fangs nearly lost in the color. Her skin was chalky pale, and dark circles lay under her bright green eyes. She had just woken up but looked and felt like she could sleep for another week.

  “It’s weird. I’m familiar, but I wouldn’t…” How could she explain the feeling of seeing a face that she barely recognized, yet instinctively knew, reflected at her? “What happened to me?”

  “I’d hoped you’d tell me.” Vic shrugged. “My simplest theory is that you’re a hunter who crossed the wrong vamps. There are some with the gift to mesmerize their victims. But I’ve never seen anyone with their brain scrubbed so hard. You looked thrashed.”

  “Yeah, maybe the other guy looks worse.”

  “Whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Maybe that’s why you can’t remember. The vampire opened the amnesia door, and your brain said, ‘don’t mind if I do.’”

  Red looked down at the spoon again, wondering what could be so bad that she forgot not just eight years, but her whole life.

  “Or maybe it was dark fairies,” Vic said, “and you escaped from their realm, and this is just interdimensional jet lag?” He raised his hands, his voice pitching higher as he tried, and failed, to sound comforting.

  “Is that supposed to be the bright side? Because that’s not any better.”

  A male nurse wearing blue scrubs and a bright white smile on his dark face pushed a cart into the room. “Hey, hey, you’re awake!”

  Vic slipped out of the room while the nurse fussed over her. She let herself sink into the pillows. Sleep claimed her in a fitful wave as she visualized her face and found a stranger staring back.

  She woke to a parade of baffled social workers, curious nurses, and finally a detective.

  In a suit rumpled from too much sitting, mustard stain on the lapel, the bald detective took quick notes in his notepad between brisk questions. The pen stopped moving while he studied the bite marks on her neck. His beady blue eyes blinked in recognition behind his glasses.

  Familiar like a sunset, Red recognized this old pattern from law enforcement. Strange crimes with witnesses spouting fantastic tales ended up as cold cases. The supernatural might have been a secret to most humans, but she didn’t need to know her real name to know this cop had seen his fair share of the weird. He would believe her, even if he denied it, but he was just too close to retirement to chase shadows.

  “Before you go, could you give me Vic’s number? The man who helped me. I’d like to thank him,” Red said.

  The detective looked through his notes before jotting down a number and handing it to her. “Thank you for your cooperation, ma’am.”

  The nurse tried to convince her to stay in bed, but Red felt a weight pressing on her chest the longer she stayed in the hospital. Something about hospitals gave her the creeps.

  In donated baggy jeans and a T-shirt that read North Dakota: Best for Last Club, Red tied up the laces on her leather boots. She had been found wearing them. They were the only thing that she could claim. Her bloody dress and underwear had been taken somewhere as evidence. She hadn’t even seen them. She had to wonder what dress went with vintage black boots.

  Walking to the nurses’ station, she dialed the number, scanning the detective’s even scrawl, wondering what she was even doing.

  Vic picked up after two rings. “Vic. Talk.”

  “Hey, it’s me. Red.” She sighed, realizing she hadn’t exactly practiced what she was going to stay beyond that she was going crazy in this hospital. “I know this is weird, but I don’t know, you’re more useful than the cops. Can you come get me?”

  “I’m always more useful than the fuzz.” Vic said dryly. “Okay, Red, let’s be real. You’ve got no name and nothing more than the memory that something bumps in the night. I know how this ends. I’ve been there, just with more memories attached. I can help you, but you gotta choose. Those social workers at the hospital can get you into housing, maybe work, something. I’m running after jobs from the Brotherhood like a hunter. I’m not the kind of Bard you’re thinking of. You roll with me, you’ll find yourself living out of motels, hanging out in a van, always on the highway. You’ll earn a cut of whatever bounties we can claim until you’re ready to run loose. In the meantime, I control the radio.”

  Red looked around the nurses’ station. She knew what he was saying was true. No specific memories came to mind, but her left hand curled as if around an invisible stake. “That works for me. I’ll meet you out front.”

  Vic sighed. “Alright, kid. Keep in mind that this is temporary. I’m a lone wolf. You can stick around, but you’ll need to be useful. You’ll be my…” He snapped his fingers. “Intern. Prepare for danger, research, and beer runs, Red.”

  Red laughed. “I’m waiting with bated breath.”

  October 24th, 2018, Past Sunset, a gas station on the edge of San Bernardino, California, USA - Over a Year Later

  The call came in after breakfast about the murdered woman found on the beach. Red was behind the wheel before noon. Eight long hours later, they were barely in LA County.

  Red hiked up the reusable shopping bag on her jean-covered hip, rattling the six pack inside. Vic should be grateful for this beer run, she grumbled to herself, after she drove most of the way from Reno. The convenience store door dinged behind her.

  The clerk almost hadn’t accepted the twenty she had laid on the counter. The bloody thumbprint on the bill had made the Latino man cross himself and say a small prayer.

  Red had frowned when she realized she understood his words. That was a new one to tell Vic. Red didn’t know her own name, who she was, or where she came from, but apparently, she could understand Spanish. Another quirk of her supernatural amnesia.

  The last glow of the sun faded, casting smoggy shadow over the San Bernardino foothills. Her boot crushed broken glass as she walked across the parking lot of what looked like the loneliest gas station in the inland empire. Heat radiated from the ground. Dead scrub brush surrounded the lot. The old light pole painted an orange circle on the pavement. Coyotes howled in the distance. Red didn’t need the reminder that predators stalked the night.

  Stopping by the black creeper van with side and back windows spray painted, Red paused to look at the balding right front tire and put the beer on the stubby hood. Car maintenance wasn’t one of her lost skills, but she was quick with mechanics. It didn’t take her long to figure out how to fix minor issues with the van. It was what Vic appreciated the most about her, but they couldn’t ke
ep patching the tire. The Millennium Falcon, the van also affectionately known as the Falcon, needed a new one soon.

  She noticed movement out of the corner of her eye and pulled a stake out of her pocket. “I see you. Neon isn’t that stealthy.”

  The vampire stopped short from a run that would have put an Olympic athlete to shame, skateboard under his arm. Dropping the board, he crossed his arms over his neon orange tank top. His sun-streaked mop of blond hair would be the envy of any surfer. “No ragging on the duds.”

  Heartbeat picking up, Red lifted her eyebrows and squeezed the stake. She summoned her magic from the well of energy centered over her navel. It was as reliable as an old beater car, prone to stalling, but it still felt familiar like an old jacket. It had taken months for her to even float a pencil. She wouldn’t call herself a witch just yet. She had been practicing with all four elements, but only Air ever answered her call. “Do you have a soul?”