Paranormal Horror Romance Short Stories: Avenge Me by Tamela Miles + giveaway

Costly mistakes release wicked consequences that may have them paying for eternity…

Avenge Me
by Tamela Miles
Genre: Paranormal Horror Romance Short Stories
Costly mistakes release wicked consequences that may have them paying for eternity…

In the collection:

Hands Clean: Afterburner
A costly mistake, that set in motion a horrific chain of events, seemingly have Lili paying for eternity. One being, walking the world’s oldest streets and dirt pathways, has the power to save her - if there is any of her soul left to save.

Witch Bitch: Assassin
To the people in Mason’s world, Luna deserves every bit of sympathy as his grieving girlfriend. But does she, really? A long buried and probably best forgotten secret fuels the fire of a vengeance that keeps Mason alive and guarantees the demise of unfortunate others.

GPS
Zayne is having a bad week. He’s lost his girlfriend, his part time job, and he’s failing two classes. The only bright spot in his life is time spent in his car, talking with his technologically enhanced GPS. The navigation system seems to truly know and understand him. It also knows things, dark things, that may put him on the path towards an evil force that just won’t quit.

XO
Lauryn is not the girl she used to be. Her demanding life as a struggling, single mom takes its toll and leads to a night out with friends and poor choices - choices that open a door to an otherworldly force that’s straddling the fine line between not so good and ungodly.

Hotel Paper
Las Vegas is losing its charm, but Zach and Paris decide to stick around for one more unforgettable night of sin. He finds himself in her embrace in the darkest of ways and begins to question how well he knows Paris - and how well he knows himself.

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EXCERPT:
(from the short story, “Hands Clean: Afterburner”)
Perry, as he was better known, stood on a grassy hill, overlooking the expanse of the beach and the churning waves just past sunset. Warm fur rubbing against his ankles reminded him he wasn’t alone, and he looked down with a gentle smile. A black cat weaved her away around his legs, purring loudly and looking up at him expectantly.

“Calling you “Cat” sounds straight ridiculous, but you refuse to tell me your name.”

The cat meowed and he chuckled. “Fine. Just “Cat”, it is.” He lifted her into his arms and rubbed noses. “It’s not often I ask animals to do my dirty work, so I thank you and promise to feed you.” Perry locked eyes with the cat and spoke softly in her mind. “Do you remember the plan? Are you ready to strike? When you get to the bar, be sure to give me a visual.”

At her reassuring purr, he put her down and let her run to her destination. He kept his eyes trained on the huge wood door of the Blue Rose bar, which stood several yards from his position on the beach hill. Cat approached the bar’s entrance and sat on the walkway, patiently waiting, as she licked a paw. Soon enough, the heavy door swung open, and a laughing couple emerged from the bar. Cat darted inside the dimly lit front area and, within seconds, gave him the visual he needed.

Perry almost immediately spotted his target, seated at a table with a large man. She was unchanged, both in face and body, even after a millennium.

About the Author:
Website-FB-Instagram
Bluesky-Bookbub
Amazon-Goodreads
Tamela Miles is a California State University San Bernardino graduate student with a Bachelor of Science degree in Child Development and a former flight attendant. She grew up in Altadena, California in that tumultuous time known as the 1980s. She now resides with her family in the Inland Empire, CA. She’s a horror/paranormal romance writer mainly because it feels so good having her characters do bad things and, later, pondering what makes them so bad and why they can never seem to change their wicked ways.

She enjoys emails from people who like her work. In fact, she loves emails. She can be contacted at tamelamiles@yahoo.com or her Facebook page, Tamela Miles Books. She also welcomes reader reviews and enjoys the feedback from people who love to read as much as she does.

Follow the tour HERE for special content and a $20 giveaway!
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Death Comes Slow in the Bayou: The Witch, The Bookseller, and The Bride by Nick Mendoza

Welcome to the tour for horror collection, Death Comes Slow in the Bayou by Nick Mendoza!

Death Comes Slow in the Bayou: The Witch, The Bookseller, and The Bride
by Nick Mendoza
March 11, 2025
Genre: Southern Gothic Horror/ Short Stories
Tropes: Southern Gothic horror, witches, folklore curses, haunted brides, psychological unraveling, vampires with a folkloric edge.

Something lingers in the Louisiana night—watching, waiting. Vengeance seeps through the swamps, and the past refuses to stay buried.

In this chilling Southern Gothic horror anthology, author and screenwriter Nick Mendoza weaves three haunting tales of supernatural terror, psychological dread, and creeping folklore. These are stories of the cursed and the desperate—of those who seek answers in the dark, only to find something staring back.
The Witch of Acadiana
When his young son falls gravely ill under unexplainable circumstances, a skeptical father dismisses the whispers of an old woman’s curse. But as the sickness deepens and reason unravels, he’s forced to confront the terrifying possibility that folklore isn’t just legend.

Mirrored Opposition
A distraught young man scours the French Quarter for his missing girlfriend, only to discover her last known whereabouts tied to a reclusive bookseller—rumored to have made a deal with the devil. As he searches for answers, he begins to wonder: what if the rumors are true?

Valeria
In the heart of the South, where secrets fester and grudges never die, a charismatic bachelor offers his quiet coworker advice on how to take control in his relationship. But when the bride-to-be finds out—and a series of catastrophic, almost unnatural events unfold—he begins to wonder if she’s coming for revenge… and if anything can stop her.

 

Mirrored Opposition was a Nashville Film Festival Semifinalist screenplay, and the full collection has earned accolades from over a dozen domestic and international competitions, including Cinequest, Vail Film Festival, ScreenCraft, and the Manchester Film Festival.

Perfect for fans of:
Gothic horror
Psychological thrillers
Supernatural folklore
Dark folklore

Dripping with dread and steeped in Southern mystery, Death Comes Slow in the Bayou is a chilling journey through whispered legends, buried guilt, and inevitable fates.

Triggers: Death, grief, psychological distress, supernatural violence

Amazon

About the Author:
website
Nick Mendoza is a writer and Nashville Film Festival Screenplay Semifinalist who blends a background in software development and technical writing with a deep love for storytelling. After earning his B.S. in Computer Science from California State University, Fullerton, he authored a comprehensive book on PHP development and an in-depth video series on WordPress website management.

His creative journey led him to screenwriting and filmmaking, where he wrote and directed the indie horror feature "Video Tape Terror." His screenplays have earned over 20 domestic and international accolades, including recognition from Cinequest, Vail Film Festival, ScreenCraft, and the Manchester Film Festival. His feature "Operation Wandering Soul" has also been recognized by Stage 32, the Dallas International Film Festival, and the Page Turner Awards.

His debut horror collection, "Death Comes Slow in the Bayou", adapts several of his award-recognized scripts into chilling Southern Gothic short stories.

IG: @rrbooktours
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#rrbooktours #rrbtDCSITBTour #deathcomesslowinthebayou #nickmendoza #southerngothichorror #gothichorror #pararnormalhorror #horrorbooks #spookyreads #anthology #shortstories #halloweenreads #booktours

The Exchange and Other Calamities by Mallory McCartney

The Exchange and Other Calamities
by Mallory McCartney
Evil lurks in the darkness, clawing its way towards unsuspecting victims . . .

A woman living with fibromyalgia finds an artifact that unleashes a reality she never thought possible . . . at a steep price.

Two high school seniors take part in a tradition that brings them face-to-face with the monstrous truth behind a haunting, dark urban legend.

The face behind a popular YouTube ghost hunting show travels to the scene of a horrific event to find fresh horrors there.

Fate takes a bite out of a young woman who ventures into the wilderness to grieve her mother.

Best-selling author, Theo Anderson, takes part in a sleep study that turns her into the very thing she fears.

Hold your breath as you immerse yourself in five harrowing stories written by bestselling author, Mallory McCartney. Fans of her gripping Black Dawn series will be kept on the edge of their seat by this horror collection inspired by real life events!

About the Author:
website
Mallory McCartney currently lives in Sarnia, Ontario with her husband, their dachshunds Link, and Leonard and their sphynx cats Luna, Legolas, Ivy and Lily. When she isn’t working on her next novel or reading, she can be found day dreaming about fantasy worlds or bingeing her favorite horror movies.

10th Anniversary release: The Dark Will End the Dark by Darrin Doyle + read the new story here!

Darrin Doyle is celebrating the 10th anniversary of his story collection The Dark Will End the Dark with a cool new release and a brand new story included. The stories all revolve around body parts, and they are incredibly unsettling.

 “In these haunting stories, our gods are dead, our beloved are ghosts, our body parts are burned, deformed, missing, even fed to our children – and still we humans go on hoping, wanting, hurting, and hungering.”
               --Kelcey Ervick, author of The Keeper

The Dark Will End The Dark
by Darrin Doyle
October 7, 2025
A group of tugboat passengers grapples with a disturbing loss. A record-holding hiccuper confronts his condition—and a troubling secret. A wife wonders what to do when her husband’s head stops working—but his body stays alive. A man struggles with the memory of the time he saw his friend swallowed whole by a neighborhood girl with supernatural powers.

In this classic set of Midwestern Gothic stories by Darrin Doyle, we see the strange hold hands with the familiar—and seem all the more strange as a result. A set of tall tales (and medium-height ones) told with Nabokovian prose, this stunning and visceral collection by the author of The Beast in Aisle 34 will linger long after the last page.

Originally published in 2015, this revised tenth anniversary edition features a new introduction by American Mythology author Giano Cromley.

Reviews
"Doyle's stories are lamentations, demented fairy tales, and quests for enlightenment in which the author explores bodily dysfunction and ungainly lust while familial love hums in the background. In the manner of George Saunders, Doyle uses his smart, light language to lift readers above the darkness of shame and humiliation that brings so many of his characters to their knees."
— Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of Once Upon a River and American Salvage, finalist for the National Book Award

"Darrin Doyle's a mad scientist who has stitched together a hauntingly beautiful collection from tattered body parts and a strange, ragged heart. It is only after you've been defibrillated by the stories in The Dark Will End the Dark that you realize you've been dozing through the days. Doyle's got his fingers on the pulse of our brave new American psyche and his writing blazes electric."
— Jason Ockert, author of Wasp Box and Neighbors of Nothing

"The human body, logic, and language are all rent apart and remade dazzlingly anew in these fourteen stories. With the droll fabulism of Nikolai Gogol and the moral heft of Shirley Jackson, Doyle's characters face problems both surreal and all-too-real...Fantastical yet close to the bone, these stories are both wounding and wondrous."
— Monica McFawn, author of Bright Shards of Someplace Else, winner of the Flannery O' Connor Award

"Like the Dadaist collages of Raoul Hausmann, The Dark Will End the Dark presents a startling disjunction of body parts—head, foot, mouth, neck—arranged so artfully and terrifyingly by Darrin Doyle that one is confronted with the human body's beauty and brokenness. In these haunting stories, our gods are dead, our beloveds are ghosts, our body parts are burned, deformed, missing, even fed to our children—and still we humans go on hoping, wanting, hurting, and hungering."
— Kelcey Ervick Parker, author of For Sale By Owner

 

Darrin Doyle
Face

Another morning, another foggy mind clinging to the silky threads of dream. Daylight merely a hope, an assumption. Daylight an arrival counted upon for no reason other than each day preceding.

The man washed at the sink. He lathered his cheeks and dragged the razor over the skin. He heard a prickly scraping sound as the blade shore the stubble.

The man tried to recall a moment in his life when he wasn’t standing at the bathroom mirror. Memories floated like vapor. Was he a father? Yes, it seemed so. Were his children boys? Girls? Either way they were not here, either moved or dead or never born. Would he see them again? Yes or no, it was a fifty-fifty proposition. Those odds had a nice balance.

Symmetry in the natural order. Day and night. Light and dark. His face. The distance between eyes. Width and length of nostrils. Equality of the lips.

His wife’s face – if indeed he had a wife – had been beautiful in her symmetry. The lovely harmony of her teeth when she smiled, wrinkling her cheeks which in turn wrinkled the skin around her eyes. The connectivity – yes, it had been inscribed upon her features.

The children had hugged and laughed with him. His wife had hugged and laughed with him. He had reciprocated. Theirs had been a world of connection and balance.

He rinsed the excess lather. He brushed his teeth with a motion that resembled the whorls on his fingerprints.

His life began each morning. Every morning he brushed away the dust of sleep, the encroachment of decay.

In the mirror, the man noticed the aberration.

His left eye had scooted or slid, he didn’t know. The eye was centered, socket and all, on his cheek. He tried without success to push the eye back where it had been, where it had resided his entire life. (Unless, perhaps, it had done this before?)

His face no longer resembled his face. Or it looked like his face but a comical or tragic version. A dis-repaired self, one not ready for the stage of life.

The man’s nose and mouth had also switched positions. His face appeared to scream without sound, then to frown. His nostrils flared while shaving lotion burned his nose hairs.

He wondered if he should cry out. He wondered if it would make any difference if he cried out.

Would his wife come rushing up the stairs? Would his children trail behind?

If she flung open the door, what would she see?

Would she be able to mentally reassemble the man’s face – the face she had presumably fallen in love with? Would she believe that this man was, indeed, her husband?

Or would the man find his wife’s face now unrecognizable?

Her features the same, but out of order. A chaos of identity like a broken vase. Her nose jutting from her temple; eyes looking out from her chin; lips vertical and set where her nose used to be.

His children would huddle behind her, their faces puzzles unassembled.

Together they would be a collection of strangers frightened.

The man would turn calmly back toward the mirror, flip up his shirt collar and loop his necktie. There would be no reason to panic. This sort of thing was bound to happen eventually.

The family would return to their respective rooms, their private locations in the universe.

The house would remain silent, as it was now and had always been.

And the man would stand at the mirror, securing his tie, waiting for order.

About the Author
website
Darrin Doyle has lived in Saginaw, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Osaka, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Manhattan (Kansas, not the other one). At long last, he has settled in Mount Pleasant, MI, where he teaches at Central Michigan University. He is pretty sure Bigfoot exists but has no evidence. He likes to play a variety of musical instruments, mostly stringed ones. He searches for food that is too spicy.

His short stories have appeared in Puerto del Sol, The Long Story, Cottonwood, Alaska Quarterly Review, Night Train, Harpur Palate, Laurel Review, The MacGuffin, and other journals. He has received fellowships and scholarships from the Sewanee Writers Conference and the NY Summer Writers Institute.

The Pumpkin King and Other Tales of Terror & Asteroid 6 and Other Tales of Cosmic Horror by R. David Fulcher + Giveaway

 Step into a world where the Pumpkin King reigns supreme, and other tales haunt your every thought.
Or step out of this world into the sheer terror of the unknowable and incomprehensible deep space.

​The Pumpkin King and Other Tales of Terror
by R. David Fulcher
August 19, 2023
Genre: Horror Short Stories
Gravelight is pleased to present the first volume in a two-book series collecting the horror fiction of R. David Fulcher!

THE PUMPKIN KING AND OTHER TALES OF TERROR offers up 20 works by Fulcher, each updated and revised by the author. Each tale has been fully revised by the author, making these the definitive versions of the stories.

The collection Includes
*Eulogy to E.A. Poe
*Marienburg Castle
*The Pumpkin King
*Heavenly Strains
*A Matter of Taste
*My Days With Mahalia
*A Night Out With Mr. Bones
*Merry Are We of the Lake
*The Night Flyer
*Pumpkin Seed Spit
*A Night for Animals
*The Man Next Door
*Extra! Extra!
*The Flight Dummy
*For the Children
*The Watcher’s Web
*Dreaming, The Copper City
*The Huntress
*The Faerie Lights
*The October Man

Features a wrap-around cover and contemporary design. Perfect for Halloween or dark, rainy nights.

Amazon * Bookbub * Goodreads

 

 

 

 

 

Asteroid 6 and Other Tales of Cosmic Horror
by R. David Fulcher
October 31, 2024

Genre: Science Fiction Horror Short Stories
Introducing ASTEROID 6 AND OTHER TALES OF COSMIC HORROR! The companion book to R. David Fulcher's 2023 indie horror hit, THE PUMPKIN KING AND OTHER TALES OF TERROR!

In this newest collection, Fulcher explores concepts of the insignificance of human existence, terror of the unknowable and incomprehensible, and more motifs found in edlritch horror. Fulcher draws his influence from a wide assortment of authors ranging from Poe and Fritz Leiber to Stephen King and Dean Koontz.

The title story features an astronaut named Jones who, while on asteroid-clearing duty, crash lands onto a massive asteroid where he is drawn to an alien monolith and discovering an ancient race trapped in stasis. Does he dare set it free?

Don't miss this one-of-a-kind collection!

Amazon * Bookbub * Goodreads

 

 

About the Author:
website-X-Instagram
Goodreads
R. DAVID FULCHER is an author of horror, science fiction, fantasy, and poetry. Major literary influences include H.P. Lovecraft, Dean Koontz, Edgar Allen Poe, Fritz Lieber, and Stephen King. Fulcher’s first novel, a historical drama set in World War II, Trains to Nowhere, and his second novel, a collection of fantasy and science fiction short stories, Blood Spiders and Dark Moon, are both available from authorhouse.com and  Amazon.

FULCHER’S work has appeared in numerous small press publications including Lovecraft’s Mystery Magazine, Black Satellite, The Martian Wave, Burning Sky, Shadowlands, Twilight Showcase, Heliocentric Net, Gateways, Weird Times, Freaky Frights and the anthologies Dimensions and Silken Ropes. Fulcher’s work can also be found in the DPP collection Halloween Party 2019, available at Amazon and at the DPP online store. A passion for the written word has also inspired Fulcher to edit and publish the literary magazine, Samsara (samsaramagazine.net), which has showcased writers and poets for over a decade. Fulcher resides in Ashburn, Virginia, with his wife Lisa, and their rambunctious cats.

Giveaway
$50 Amazon
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Cover Reveal: Winds of Change: A Steamy Paranormal Romance Collection

Winds of Change: A Steamy Paranormal Romance Collection
by Katrina Louise, Elvina Payet, Josie Caporetto, Fleur Blüm, Savannah Blaize, Cassandra O'Leary, Andra Ashe, Antonia Garofalo, Sandra Carmel, Michelle Somers
Publication date: October 31st 2024
Genres: Adult, Paranormal, Romance
An accident and a magical breeze will forever alter their destinies…

Weird stuff happens in San Destino. Some accept it without question. Others know and protect its secrets.

Cross the bridge over Starfall Bay to a town where the paranormally gifted live in peaceful anonymity. When ten couples are drawn together during the mystical time of Beltane, their hearts and minds will be challenged and changed.

Whose magical world is threatened? Whose ordinary world will be transformed by magic? Find out in this limited-edition collection of steamy paranormal romances by established and emerging authors.

Goodreads-Pre-order

Fantasy Author: Jean Marie Ward - Something Old, Something New – Assembling a Collection from the Inside + excerpt

Something Old, Something New – Assembling a Collection from the Inside
by Jean Marie Ward

When I received Ginger Blue Publishing’s offer to publish a collection of my short fiction, I thought I’d landed on the publishing equivalent of Easy Street. After all, I have published A LOT of short fiction. How hard could it be to copy and package the highlights in a single document?

There were the three Lord Bai stories. Who doesn’t love a shapeshifting foodie dragon scouring Imperial China in search of dim sum, sweet buns, and the occasional dancing girl? There was the science fiction story about the quantum-enabled refrigerator that was an Asimov’s Award finalist and translated into Chinese. There was the good-time god navigating his way through a pandemic with a little help from a brand ambassador in sneakers and a tutu, and that one scifi con guest of honor who was stranger than her fiction. There were contemporary stories of romance, mystery, and one about a young girl trying to save her best friend’s dog, all set in the real world. Together, they amounted to more words than contained in most supermarket paperbacks.

“Not enough,” decreed my editor. “You put cats in the title.”

I put cats in the book. A cat named Pandora plays her part in that dog story I mentioned. The collection also boasted a flash fiction about my cat’s price for saving me from a really bad dream, and two stories about a paranormal investigating team of…cats. They weren’t enough for my editor or, apparently, anybody else on the production team. So, three more, never before published cat stories made their way into the mix, including two about a kitten who’s a real demon. But adorable. Of course he’s adorable. How could he be anything else?

New and never-before-published material turned out to be A Big Deal. By the time we were finished, ten of the twenty-seven stories in the collection were brand new, including a high-stakes dragon adventure in medieval Mongolia, a small nod to The Arabian Nights, and a vampire story set in 1723 New Orleans that had been kicking around inside my head since my first visit to the Crescent City in 1997. That last one is my editor’s favorite. I think she would have asked for more stories about the protagonist, but the book had entered production, and my brain was already panting like it had run the equivalent of the original Marathon. In hoplite armor.

In short, the process was a lot more challenging than I ever imagined. But I think the results justify my aching typing fingers. It doesn’t hurt that every one of those twenty-seven stories is adorned with its own illustration. Some of my characters are getting swelled heads. Perhaps my head expanded a little bit too. The introduction to the collection by Jody Lynn Nye is everything a writer could ask for. But my editor will never let my head get too big. Several hundred miles from their desk, I can hear their foot tapping impatiently.

The writing never stops. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Dragons, Cats, & Formidable Femmes
By Jean Marie Ward
July 16, 2024
Genre: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Romance, Mystery, Dragons, Cats, Vampires
Meet Lord Bai, a very classy dragon, two cats who channel a top paranormal investigative team, very spiritual flies, a kitten who’s a real demon, a dedicated lover of gold, some wild Greek demi-gods, and many more fun, fierce, and fascinating characters, including a refrigerator that is far more than it appears to be.

This witty, gritty, and whimsical collection brings together a plethora of offbeat and unexpected tales, some never-before published, to entertain and amuse. Flash fiction, short stories, novelettes, and novellas all combine to create a collection that’s perfect for whatever reading mood you’re in.

Don’t delay – flights of fancy, daring deeds, and all manner of exploits and adventures await you. Curl up with this collection and your beverage of choice and enjoy your travels into the imagination of Jean Marie Ward. (With an introduction with Jody Lynn Nye.)

Amazon-B&N-Kobo-Apple Books

Read an excerpt

 Animate paper centipedes and shape-changing foxes aren’t standard fare at a government conference. But then, neither is Lord Bai.

Nanjing, 1421

“What do spells, copying, and writing have to do with pirates?” Lord Bai, White Dragon of the West, whined—no, repined in a light baritone befitting his human form.

It was a reasonable question for a gathering that billed itself as China’s First Imperial Conference on Magic Piracy. But he could have misunderstood the conference’s keynote speaker. Professor Yeoh was orating at the front of the hosting restaurant’s second floor banquet hall, while Bai hid among the sorcery students at the back.

“Not ‘copying and writing’—copy rights,” whispered the student beside him. “Like Professor Yeoh said: All magicians are endowed as creators with certain unalienable rights, including the right to profit from all original spells, amulets, and charms.”

“Even if somebody else does the copying?”

“Exactly.”

But didn’t writers pay printers to publish their work? Or was it the other way around? Who knew with humans? The longer Bai spent at the conference, the more at sea he felt.

Based on the invitation sent to Master Lao, Bai’s self-appointed human teacher, Bai assumed the conference concerned pirates and magic treasure—subjects dear to every dragon’s heart. When Lao forbade him to attend under threat of several exceptionally creative dooms, Bai had grown even more excited, certain it was one of those conferences—a four-day, Mandarins-only orgy of dim sum and dancing girls. But Bai had searched the venue from foundation to rafters and found no pretty women, no pirates, no treasure.

No food.

None for the students anyway. The attending scholars lounged around capacious tables, feasting at the Emperor’s expense on every delicacy on the restaurant’s menu. But between the professionals’ gourmet paradise and the students’ hellishly hard benches lay a wide aisle patrolled by waiters more vigilant than soldiers on the Great Wall. Bai couldn’t even savor the aromas thanks to the mages’ fondness for patchouli and the absence of anything resembling a breeze. The sliding doors to the loggia had been shut for “security reasons.” In the middle of summer!

Concealed within his perspiring human form, the spirit of Bai’s dragon tail thrashed irritably. He was experiencing a growth spurt and overdue to molt, magnifying his discomfort. He longed to depart, only he couldn’t risk drawing attention to himself. Lao didn’t look like much, but his sorcery could boil a dragon’s eyeballs in their sockets.

That’s when Bai saw it: the answer to his unspoken prayer. A fat red centipede—his favorite treat from the time he was a little wyrm—wriggled into the aisle.

Another steam basket-laden waiter barreled toward the door. Caution fled. Lunging off the bench, Bai snatched his prize from under the very shoe of doom. He popped it into his mouth.

It tasted like paper. He spat it into his hand. The centipede was paper—cheap red paper covered in smeared black ink. What was a paper magic centipede doing crawling around a magicians’ conference? Was it some kind of joke?

Bai glanced at the students. As far as he could tell, they were all enraptured by Yeoh.

Could it be a message? Bai scanned the tables for a likely sender. Officials of the Department of Rites, their blue-violet robes emblazoned with the embroidered panels of their respective ranks, fanned themselves with painted silk paddles. Shaven-headed Buddhist monks traded superior looks with Daoist priests in crimson coats. Women physicians from the Imperial Palace held court behind latticework screens. At the foreigners’ table, Arab scholars and Delhi astrologers scribbled notes with reed pens instead of brushes. No one was looking at the back of the room, not even Lao. The scrawny old reprobate rested his cheek on his upraised hand. Faint snores ruffled his wispy moustache. From the platters and wine pots massed around him, he had, as usual, consumed enough for three.

“That’s the least of what we can expect if this deplorable state of affairs is allowed to continue,” Yeoh warned. The silver gilt designs on his wide purple sleeves flashed as he thrust a pearl-ringed forefinger overhead. “The criminals engaged in the unlicensed reproduction, distribution, and sale of our spells, philters, and talismans are pirates as surely as the Wokou marauders of the Eastern Sea. Magic piracy is not a victimless crime. These spells are our livelihood. Every unauthorized copy is theft and should be punished as such. By stealing our intellectual property, they steal the rice from our mouths, strip the altars of our ancestors, and beggar our children. They must be stopped!”

Applause thundered in the closed room. Conferees jumped to their feet, including several at Lao’s table. Lao jerked awake. Bai lowered his head and clapped furiously.

Another red centipede crawled into the aisle.

“Thank you, Professor Yeoh, for your brilliant summation,” the master of ceremonies boomed as the centipede inched across the floor. “Friends and colleagues, the issues are clear. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Now, let’s hear some solutions!”

A wizened scholar jumped from his seat. He jerked a brass wand from his sash and sliced the air in a wobbly arc. “There can be only one!”

Everybody ducked, including the students. Bai bisected the centipede with a discreetly extended claw, hoping to learn its origin. The halves reverted to paper. Each scrap sported the partial outline of a centipede and the characters of a basic animation spell, which only established it wasn’t made by Lao. His perfectly scissored paper servants needed no ink.

“Close the printing presses!” the old scholar bawled.

The crowd shifted. The papers skidded away on the draft. Not good.

“Professor Deng,” the master of ceremonies soothed, “we want to protect legitimate printers, not close them down. We need printers to publish our books. More importantly, we need them to print the money for our salaries.”

“Paper money! Bah!” Deng flapped his wand. “Silver was good enough for my daddy, and it’s good enough for me.”

“I hope your daddy’s silver was good enough,” Lao drawled. “He ran the Imperial mint.”

Deng squawked as laughter burbled across the room. The master of ceremonies bleated, “Gentlemen! Gentlemen…and ladies!”

Phantom spines rippled uneasily under Bai’s human nape. Paper servants had no will of their own. Someone directed those centipedes his way. But who? The why was easy. Many magicians coveted a dragon’s abilities—to fly, to summon storms and disperse them, to speak any tongue—and the medicinal value of their individual parts.

Maybe he owed his tutor an apology. Maybe Lao’s threats were a misguided attempt to protect him. From paper centipedes? They were spelled for motion, not poison.

Besides, how would anyone know there was a dragon to find? Other than a faint smoky tang to his perspiration, practically imperceptible amid the patchouli-pickled primates, there was nothing to distinguish Bai’s current guise from that of a young human man. Unlike lesser species, dragons transformed completely, including their shadows. A powerful mage might detect the subtle difference in his aura, but only if they concentrated. But who, other than Lao, was strong enough and knew to look?

Engrossed in a quarrel about the cost of astrology manuals, none of the assembly seemed aware of his presence. Then again, anyone using something as inconspicuous as a paper centipede was trying hard not to be noticed. They wouldn’t reveal themselves if they thought anyone was looking. Bai needed to act oblivious.

He pretended to stifle a yawn and slumped forward. Several overlong moments later, a russet-robed wizard with a fat topknot of white hair eased a bamboo tube from his sleeve. Shielding his face with one hand, he angled the tube under his mustache and inflated his cheeks. A red pellet dropped to the floor, unfurled into a centipede, and crawled toward the aisle.

The dragon waited until the centipede was a hairbreadth from his shoe before “accidentally” grinding it into the floor. The wizard’s shoulders fell. Color drained from his face. One of his companions mouthed a question. Bai retrieved the centipede and snuck across the aisle.

He hadn’t realized the aisle acted as a metaphysical barrier as well as a physical one. Once he crossed it, a dozen powerful magical auras blazed in his dragon sight like New Year fireworks. Crap. That changed everything. If the owners of those auras trained their occult senses on him, magic centipedes and Master Lao would be the least of his problems.

He was considering a strategic retreat when Deng hoisted his wand again. Suddenly everyone was too busy dodging the professor’s swings to notice the dragon in the middle of the room. Bai hurried to the wizard’s table. There was something odd about the group’s magical auras—not strong, not bad, just…musky.

Bai could handle musky. He bowed.

“Did you lose something?” He dropped the centipede on the table.

The wizard squealed and sprang from his seat. The master of ceremonies called for order, Bai peered at the wizard’s incongruously delicate hands. He didn’t smell like an old man, either. Bai seized the wizard’s whiskers. Beard and mustache came away in his grasp, revealing a smooth, sweetly rounded face with lips too pink and ripe for any man. The wizard was a woman. A very pretty woman.

All thoughts of danger and centipedes fled from Bai’s head. “Hel-lo,” he purred.

The young woman screamed. Her voice rang like a giant bronze bell, vibrating through muscle, bone, and brain. Bai’s vision blurred. Humans rocked in their seats. Some lost control of their bladders.

Hoisting her robes over her shapely legs, the woman darted toward the paper-screened doors to the loggia. Bai gave chase, muscling aside the dazed magicians staggering from their seats. The woman burst through the latticed panels and leapt onto the railing overlooking the street.

He lunged. She jumped. Her robe grazed his fingertips as she plunged out of reach.

Hair spilled from her topknot, darkening to black as the strands swirled around her shoulders. Her robes billowed. For an instant she seemed suspended midair. Then she vanished. Her garments crumpled against the road in front of the restaurant. A three-tailed fox scuttled from under the pile. She dashed between the feet of the nearest sedan-chair driver, lashing her tails against the man’s bare legs. He started. The poles on his shoulders pitched dangerously.

The woman was a fox? That made no sense. Foxes were masters of illusion, but even the strongest was no match for a dragon. Why tease him with centipedes, then run away?

Behind him, Lao yodeled, “Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiii—”

 

 

About the Author
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Jean Marie Ward writes fiction, nonfiction and everything in between, including novels (2008 Indie Book double-finalist With Nine You Get Vanyr) and two art books. Her stories have appeared everywhere from Asimov’s to the anthologies of Zombies Need Brains. The former editor of Crescent Blues and currently author interviewer for BookBale.com, she co-edited the six-volume, 40th anniversary World Fantasy Con anthology Unconventional Fantasy. Learn more at JeanMarieWard.com.