Blood Witch: A Vampire Fae Paranormal Romance (Highland Blood Fae Book 4) Read online

  BLOOD WITCH

  HIGHLAND BLOOD FAE

  A.S. GREEN

  TORTOISE HOUSE PRESS

  Copyright © 2022 A.S. Green

  ISBN: 978-1-950270-79-8

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Sanja

  CONTENTS

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Also By A.S. Green

  About A.S. Green

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Hello, reader. Personally, I’m uneasy when I don’t know how to pronounce a character’s name. If you’re the same…

  The ancient witch Bé Chuille is pronounced BAY KU-luh (with a hard guttural K).

  Hope that helps!

  PROLOGUE

  370 years ago

  Night settled over the Scottish Highlands, enveloping a small settlement of ba’vonn-shees—a race of blood-drinking fae. Eleven-year-old Alastair Collins opened his eyes, sleep receding. The small house was quiet. No snores from Lachlan and Liam, his two older bràithrean in the loft above him.

  He rolled out of his nest of blankets by the stove and stumbled toward the one private room in the house where his parents slept. He pulled back the heavy curtain and found his mother staring out the window into the blackness.

  She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Go back to bed, Alastair.”

  “Where is Father?”

  She tucked a lock of auburn hair behind her ear; it was the same color as his own. “He’s gone out.”

  “Did he take Lachlan and Liam hunting? I want to go, too.” Alastair was new to the hunt but just the thought of red deer—their blood thick on his tongue—was enough to make his teeth sharpen, drawing his own blood from the inside of his bottom lip.

  “No,” she said. “They’re not hunting. Go back to bed.”

  “I can’t sleep.”

  She sighed. “Try.”

  “Maybe if you told me a story…”

  She turned back toward the window. “You’re too old for stories, love.”

  “I know. I just like the sound of your voice.” It soothed him in ways nothing else ever could.

  He caught the reflection of her smile in the window before she spoke, her voice warm with memories. “Thousands of years ago, there was a witch named Bé Chuille.”

  Alastair climbed into his father’s side of the bed. The sheet was still warm.

  His mother turned to him, putting her back to the window, but stayed where she was. “Like all witches, Bé Chuille was descended from a goddess and from the fae. In her case, she was the youngest daughter of the goddess Fliodhas and a handsome faerie chieftain who returned to the land of Tír na N’Óg before Bé Chuille was old enough to come into her magic.

  “After her father died, her mother grieved him so violently, she left her youngest child behind and returned to the gods. Alone, with no one to guide her, Bé Chuille went in search of her two older sisters, hoping they could teach her the ways of magic.

  “She searched the forests for many months, finally reaching a forest that seemed to hum with magic.”

  “Her sisters’ magic,” Alastair interjected. He’d heard the story a hundred times before.

  “That’s what Bé Chuille hoped,” his mother said with a small smile. “So she crept closer, all while staying hidden behind a large outcropping, just in case she was wrong. She hid and waited to see if her sisters would reveal themselves.

  “Hours passed and after a while, two beautiful raven-haired women emerged from the trees and looked around. All they heard were bird songs.

  “‘Who is the Caller hidden beyond those stones?’ one of them asked.”

  “What’s a ‘caller?’” Alastair had never wondered about it before, but it seemed important now.

  “I don’t know. That’s just how the story goes. Now, shhh.”

  Alastair pressed his lips together, and his mother glanced nervously over her shoulder at the window before continuing. “So they asked, ‘Who is the Caller hidden beyond those stones?’ And Bé Chuille revealed herself, stepping cautiously into view. ‘It is only I,’ she said. ‘Your sister. Come to learn the ways of magic.’

  “Now her sisters were jealous because they sensed Bé Chuille’s magic would be greater than their own. So they quickly seized upon a plan. They told her that the future of the fae depended on whether she could pass a test.”

  Alastair interjected. “But they told her they had to go collect the ingredients for the test first.”

  “That’s right. They told Bé Chuille they’d return soon, and then they left.”

  “But they never came back,” Alastair said.

  His mother’s lips twitched into an almost-smile. “After that, Bé Chuille waited for many years. Year after year, century after century. But her sisters never returned to teach her the ways of magic. Eventually, Bé Chuille realized her sisters had abandoned her, just like her parents had left her before.

  “Deprived of love, the little powers Bé Chuille had waned even further—just as her sisters had hoped—until one day, a handsome faerie prince stumbled into the forest and—”

  Glass shattered from outside, and Alastair’s mother shrieked, turning abruptly toward the window.

  Alastair threw back the blanket. “What is it?”

  “Go, Ali. Go!” She lifted her skirts, grabbed a small knife from her stocking, then ran for the hearth room with Alastair close on her heels.

  “No!” she cried. “Hide!”

  Startled by her tone, he ducked behind the thick curtain that divided his parents’ room from the rest of the cottage, just as the door burst open, its hinges groaning as they bowed.

  A large human male filled the doorway. His dark eyes narrowed under a protruding brow. He wore no jacket, only a long black waistcoat over a blood-stained shirt. His body braced as if expecting an attack, but seeing only Alastair’s human mother, he relaxed.

  He shouldn’t have. She sprang into motion and buried her blade in the man’s spleen. The man howled, then jerked out the knife. Blood spurted across the kitchen, the scent tickling Alastair’s senses and making him salivate.

  The man tripped forward, then crashed to the floor hitting his head
against the stone hearth. Dead.

  Another man rushed into the house, his waistcoat embroidered with hundreds of tiny shamrocks pierced by swords. His gaze landed on the crumpled corpse, then shifted to the blood dripping from the knife now back in Alastair’s mother’s hand. The second man charged, knocking her to the ground. He jerked the handle from her wet fingers, turned it, and buried the blade in her heart.

  The scent of his mother’s blood ripped a scream from Alastair’s throat.

  The man tore back the thick curtain, and Alastair did the only thing he could think to do. He lunged forward, swinging his fist.

  But he was no match for a full grown male, not even a human one. The man blocked Alastair’s punch, then thrust him back against the wall. The iron band on the man’s wrist pushed against Alastair’s throat.

  It was such a simple weapon—iron—but so effective against the fae. The metal burned Alastair’s flesh and he felt his consciousness slipping away. He squeezed his eyes tight, waiting for the inevitable.

  He was too young and too unpracticed to tilt out of this situation, and now the iron made him too weak as well. This was how it would end. He would die here alongside his mother. His father and brothers would return to find them here in a puddle of death. The agony of that image lodged a cry in Alastair’s throat.

  Blood oozed from his mother’s lifeless body, crawling across the wooden floorboards as if pleading with him to do something.

  From outside he could hear the sound of male screams, followed by the gurgling of bloody deaths and dying whimpers. What was happening?

  The intruder raised the knife, just as another male voice barked from the doorway. “Their queen is dead. Let’s go.”

  Alastair’s heart clenched. First his mother, and now their queen was dead? No ba’vonn-shee clan could survive without a queen. Without her, they’d all go mad, first withering then dying like grapes left too long on the vine.

  The man with the knife hesitated, his eyes burning into Alastair’s. Then slowly he lowered the weapon. Obviously, he too understood the significance of a ba’vonn-shee queen. Time would finish their dirty work. In a matter of months, without a queen, they could all be dead.

  Agony bubbled up, overriding Alastair’s thoughts. Doing the only thing he could think to do, he leapt onto the man’s torso and sunk his sharpened teeth into the man’s neck.

  The man howled, but he grabbed Alastair by his thick red hair and tore him away. Then, holding him at arm’s length, the man made four quick flicks with his blade.

  Alastair’s cheek burned like fire. Blood trickled down his face, running along his jaw.

  The man sneered at his handiwork, then tossed Alastair into the corner and left.

  Minutes later, still dazed but with a blood lust born of rage, Alastair staggered out of his cottage and to his neighbors, Andrew and Mairéad. Their front door gaped open, the wood splintered. Andrew's flesh was burned with iron. His human bloodwife’s throat was cut. Both pairs of sightless eyes stared up at the ceiling.

  Alastair found the same scene in all of his other clan mates’ houses: the grown males all dead, the human bloodwives slaughtered. He found his father and two older brothers’ lifeless bodies ten feet from the clan’s mutilated queen. If not for the flowers already blooming around her body—a reaction to her lingering magic—Alastair would have never recognized her.

  All that was left of Clan Collins were a dozen male youths—powerless, and now parentless and queenless. Alastair turned away from the queen, catching his own reflection in a darkened window. The letters BC were carved into his cheek. The mark of the faes’ ancient enemy: St. Patrick’s disciples, the Black Castle Brethren. They’d pledged to the so-called saint that they’d rid these lands of all the fae races. And now they were one step closer to their goal.

  The reflection of wee Dougal, only eight years old, appeared in the window beside him. Dougal’s mouth opened in horror as he saw the shameful mark on Alastair’s cheek.

  Alastair swallowed hard. “Let’s go.”

  Then he tore his eyes from his reflection and—already half delirious—he and the other eleven surviving youths headed out into the night.

  1

  Current day

  Somewhere in the Scottish Highlands

  Alastair Collins sat on a thick, moss-covered log and tended to the latest blister on the back of his heel. After so many years, he was alone again, and the woods were quiet, save for the birds and the chattering of squirrels.

  At one point in his life, Alastair had been used to the quiet. After watching the other eleven survivors of Clan Collins wither and die without a queen’s sustaining power… After falling asleep each night to the sound of another young blood brother taking his final breath…calling out for his mother…he’d actually learned to love the quiet.

  But that had been years ago.

  For the last two centuries, Alastair had been part of a clan again, the Campbell Clan. He lived in a grand manor house; he had the support of a new queen; and he had the camaraderie of new bràithrean—if not by blood, then by fate. He’d grown used to the noise and the laughter, the good-natured teasing and even the fights.

  So it was odd for the world to be so quiet again. But here he was, alone in the woods. It felt like a dream. Like he’d fallen into a time warp and any minute he’d see his mother’s face.

  Of course that was just fantasy. He wasn’t in a dream. He was on a job.

  Two months ago, his brother Callum Campbell had uncovered then translated an ancient message carved into the back of a standing stone. The message was that Bé Chuille, the ancient witch, would call the fae refugees living in America back to their ancestral homes to fight their mutual enemy—the Black Castle Brethren—and reclaim the lands that had once been theirs.

  The only reason the fae hadn’t suppressed the human enemy before was that—back then—there’d been no unity between the races. It would have never occurred to them to work together. After so much time in America, that old way of thinking had changed. There was a fae council among the Irish-born fae, and they had assisted their Scottish cousins when Alastair’s chieftain, Alex Campbell, needed help in finding their kidnapped queen.

  In short, there was a new motto among the fae, one they’d learned in America: United we stand, divided we fall.

  And Bé Chuille could finish the job of uniting them.

  If only he could find the old crone. If his mother’s stories had been true, the witch would have to be over two thousand years old. It was a longevity that came from being a half-goddess, half-fae. Though, like the fae, most of the witches’ lives had been cut short during the great witch hunts of a few centuries earlier.

  It was for that reason that his brother Finn Campbell doubted Bé Chuille was still alive. If she’d survived, certainly there would have been whispers about her.

  Still, Alastair understood why his chieftain had selected him to discover the truth. Alastair had had the experience of wandering the wilderness for years as a child. And he’d worked as a nature guide during the clan’s years in Minnesota.

  And perhaps most importantly, he wasn’t bonded to a bloodwife who needed him at home.

  Now, after months of searching, Alastair was beginning to think Finn had been right. He stopped in every pub in every town he passed to talk to anyone and everyone, hoping to get even one small piece of helpful information.

  He’d had to be subtle about it. It wasn’t like he could ask outright, “Seen an old witch?” No, he’d tried to have more finesse, and finesse had never been his strong suit.

  Alastair wasn’t a chieftain like Alex Campbell, with his power, money, and prestige. Neither did he wear fancy suits, or have Alex’s suave manners. And he wasn’t handsome like the rest of the clan with their perfect faces.

  No. Alastair had always been more like an ugly bull in the proverbial china shop, always wanting to fade into the background and to go unseen, but always too big to go completely unnoticed.

  He adjusted
his oversized body on the log, balancing himself while he rubbed some salve onto the blister on his heel. Then he put his shoe back on, set his foot on the ground, and leaned forward—forearms to knees.

  At the last pub, he’d told the bartender he was searching for his granny, who’d been estranged from the family for decades. The times before that, he’d pretended to be a real estate investor and asked if they knew of any old women who lived alone…maybe out in the woods…who might be interested in selling their homes.

  He’d searched graveyards to see if any magical residue remained. It wasn’t likely a witch would be buried on church grounds, but stranger things had happened. And when the opportunity arose—usually when he got a local barfly talking—he’d ask about urban legends and old crones who dabbled in herbal remedies and the like.

  He’d gotten his first significant lead a week ago, which had led him to this wooded acreage. The air was foggy with gray wisps that licked around the tree trunks. The ground was wet and springy underfoot. The scent of decomposing pine needles tickled his nose, along with the odd waft of…oak gall?

  He braced his hands on his lower back and arched. Maybe he could find a decent place to sleep tonight. Someplace dry.