A Girl’s Best Friend Read online

  A Girl’s Best Friend

  Moonlight Detective Agency™ Book Three

  Isobella Crowley

  Ell Leigh Clarke

  Michael Anderle

  This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2019 Isobella Crowley, Ell Leigh Clarke & Michael T. Anderle

  Cover by Fantasy Book Design

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  This book is a Michael Anderle Production

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  First US edition, November 2019

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-64202-593-4

  Print ISBN: 978-1-64202-594-1

  Contents

  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

  Epilogue

  Author Notes from Isobella Crowley (AKA Ell Leigh Clarke)

  Author Notes from Michael Anderle

  Books written by Ell Leigh Clarke

  Books By Michael Anderle

  Connect with Michael Anderle

  The A Girl’s Best Friend Team

  Thanks to the JIT Readers

  Dave Hicks

  Kelly O’Donnell

  Dorothy Lloyd

  John Ashmore

  Micky Cocker

  Charles Tillman

  Jackey Hankard-Brodie

  Jeff Eaton

  Deb Mader

  Misty Roa

  Nicole Emens

  Jeff Goode

  Larry Omans

  If I’ve missed anyone, please let me know!

  Editor

  The Skyhunter Editing Team

  To Family, Friends and

  Those Who Love

  to Read.

  May We All Enjoy Grace

  to Live the Life We Are

  Called.

  Prologue

  Scalion Vampire Coven, Flushing, New York

  Not far from the Queens Botanical Garden, a secret passage under the street could be located if one knew where to look. It was the only entrance that led directly to the vampire coven’s audience chamber from the surface. Half a dozen other tunnels, however, also led to it from other points underground.

  Scalion himself now sat on his high-backed oak chair within the chamber, the other four vampires within his sphere of influence seated a little below him, two on the far side of the table and one at each end. Their thralls gathered in the shadowy open space behind them.

  One of the four, a svelte, dour-faced woman with reddish-bronze hair wearing a flowing white dress, looked at their leader.

  “Scalion,” she inquired, “why, exactly, are we here? Is this about the messages?”

  He smiled grimly. “Of course it is, Ravenna. There are a few other housekeeping matters to discuss, routine things of minimal consequence. Let us get those out of the way first. Then we’ll serve red salt tea and talk of this…person who seems to think she is our long-lost ruler.”

  Contemptuous chortles and half-snorts of derision went around the table. It had been a long time since anyone had dared to threaten them. The last time it had happened, the fool who’d uttered the threats had lived barely long enough to regret his hubris.

  The vampire leader ran a hand through his black hair that he wore slicked back behind his ears in what he liked to think was the traditional fashion. “The nerve of these little foreign upstarts,” he muttered.

  The thralls stood, waiting, as he began the meeting. “First, in addition to a minor slip-up in which a human witness may require a mindwipe, our blood bank has experienced slight overdraft issues lately—”

  Gazes wandered upward and around as he spoke. Long before, the chamber had been a crypt in service to one of the first European families to inhabit this land. Scalion had taken it over not long after that. He’d ensured that it was kept separate from New York’s collective basement-labyrinth of sewers and subway tunnels, while also connected it to places of interest to himself, not least his own estate.

  His thralls, abetted by the occasional human hireling, had expanded and improved upon the chamber until it resembled the black fane of a deconsecrated church. The ceiling of the space almost passed for vaulted arches and scarlet hangings of finest silk and velvet.

  Here, he and his underlings could forget the crassness that went on daily above their heads.

  The dull, prosaic matters passed through the discussion quickly enough. Once they’d all come to satisfactory agreements, they moved on to the subject that truly interested them.

  “Now, then,” Scalion proclaimed, “let us elaborate on the matter of the oh so polite letters which, as I understand it, each of us received at home. We will compare them to ensure they are identical, but I suspect we all were sent the same message.”

  The four nodded.

  Smirking, he proceeded. “And I suspect our mysterious friend will receive five resounding answers of ‘no,’ of course.”

  Behind them, before any could answer, a voice echoed. All their heads snapped toward the sound.

  “Thank you,” the newcomer intoned, “for your prompt reply.”

  It was a woman, tall and curvy, with square-cut black hair that stopped above her shoulders, a dusky complexion, and large, almond-like eyes. She wore a reddish-brown dress and a gold necklace. Her sonorous voice was somehow both full and dusty sounding and thick with a curious accent, vaguely Middle Eastern.

  Silence reigned in the chamber for a moment as their visitor scanned the scene before her slowly. Those gathered there simply stared in response.

  Scalion spoke first. “You must be Moswen Neith,” he stated.

  Slowly, her lips smiled but the expression didn’t reach her eyes. “Yes.”

  Ravenna scrutinized the woman, half-squinting and her mouth twisted in a sneer. “Hah! You do not look so imposing and magnificent as your arrogant missive seemed to suggest. Are we to suppose that now, we should quake with fear because you snuck in to stand before us while we spoke?”

  “Of course,” Moswen replied. “Unless, of course, you heed my offer.” She stood utterly still and watched them.

  The other woman looked at her leader.

  He sat and glowered at his uninvited guest, his demeanor cool, haughty, and almost bored. Finally, he snorted.

  “None of us,” he began, “have even heard of you, Ms Neith. Your pretentious offer was the kind of thing we might expect from a celebrity or a ranking member of the Vampiric Order. It would seem you are a medium-s
ized fish used to ruling a small pond. Here, suddenly, you find yourself in the sea, surrounded by sharks. I advise you to go home.”

  An almost lazy wave of his hand capped off this recommendation as if shooing her off.

  But beneath this veneer of arrogance, he was not entirely certain if Ms Neith would be dismissed so easily. A cold tension seemed to have wound into his gut and something in the air itself seemed off, somehow, like the shifting of charges that preceded a powerful storm.

  She took two steps closer.

  The thralls, two dozen in all, roiled like masses of heated liquid and fell back from the dark woman, yet poised themselves for action at the same time.

  Scalion watched them and his jaw clenched. They were intimidated by her, he concluded. They would attack if ordered to do so, but they were unused to such casual defiance of their master by someone who, just maybe, was not an utter fool.

  He raised his hand again, now with a firm motion and his palm outward. “Stop,” he commanded and put the full force of his preternatural abilities into the word. Humans on the receiving end of such a command would have frozen instantly in their tracks and most lesser vampires would have stalled.

  Instead, Moswen strolled two more steps before she came to a halt. Even then, it appeared to be entirely of her own will as though she’d thought it over and paused simply to humor him.

  “Scalion.” Her voice had grown husky. “I am not here to waste time posturing. My ultimatum was clear, and it extends to all of you. Join me and serve me or die.”

  Ravenna had stared intently at the interloper but now, she turned to look sharply at her leader, her frown deeper than usual and her eyes blazing. Cold fury was there, but something else as well—fear.

  Scalion made up his mind to sic the thralls onto their new friend. From the sides and behind, they could take her and distract and immobilize her, while the five vampires closed in from the front.

  But first, he intended to have the last word.

  “Ms Neith,” he jeered and trailed off into a brief chuckle as her dark eyes fixed on him, “congratulations on having demonstrated a basic degree of competence in being able to resist a command. But I’m afraid your little exercise in poorly thought-out swagger has come to an—”

  Suddenly, she was airborne.

  He bolted from his chair and found his feet, his vampiric reflexes overcoming his shock. In the same moment, the four seated below him darted up too. They yelled protests as their hands twisted into claws.

  The henna-and-golden streak pounded into him and through him before he could even so much as raise his hands.

  Shouts turned to screams, flesh rent, and wood snapped and tumbled against stone.

  Choking and sputtering, Scalion stumbled back into the space where his would-be throne had been. Moswen had toppled it as she passed. There was also a gaping, bloody crevice under his chin where his throat had been.

  He collapsed to his knees, his hands clasped over the blood-gushing hole. His vision blurred and dimmed and he knew with a cold fear that he would not be able to regenerate a wound like this before she finished him off.

  Unless his followers could kill her first.

  Pandemonium had already erupted. The interloper was perched on the far wall behind him like a spider, and Ravenna and the other three already began to race toward her in a bestial rage while the thralls moved forward to engage the intruder.

  In the next moment, Moswen was behind him. Her hand ripped through what remained of his neck. His head tumbled behind his body to land atop the debris of his chair.

  His followers attacked. Ravenna and one of the other men vaulted toward the walls and maneuvered around and above the intruder, while the other two attacked her directly from the front.

  The thralls moved to join the action and were only a few paces from the empty table, but the battle between preternaturals was unfolding so fast that they might not have time to play a role in it.

  Moswen and a bald male vampire met each other in mid-air, and it was the latter who fell back as both plummeted to land hard. The dark woman’s hand had punched all the way through his chest to emerge with his heart clutched in her fist.

  A few of the thralls in the front rank hesitated and stumbled, their programmed loyalty momentarily overridden by sheer horror and terror.

  Forms flashed and darted, screams echoed, and blood sprayed. In the space of a few eyeblinks, the foreign vampire had ripped the others to shreds. The entire alcove where Scalion’s chair had stood was spattered with the pieces and fluids of the slain.

  The thralls stopped. Those who had possessed them as masters were now dead. In slack-jawed silence, they watched as Moswen crawled out of the carnage and arrayed five heads on the table—Scalion’s in the center and two of the others’ on each side.

  The vampire stood before the uneasy throng. She licked the blood from her lips, raised a hand with her fingers spread, and felt for the thralls’ brands.

  All two dozen of the slaves clenched as pain suffused their bodies. The markings over their hearts placed there by their deceased lords and ladies glowed with the light of various different colors. All quickly transformed to the same amber-golden hue which flashed from her eyes.

  They were hers now.

  Moswen’s consciousness expanded. Her terrible will extruded into the feeble minds of her new slaves and she drank of their fear and submission, finding it almost as satisfying as blood. They, the lowly, would serve the exalted, as was their destiny.

  The power of her mind enfolded the thralls, drew them closer to her, and secured them. That accomplished, it reached still farther outward.

  Like a bird of prey gliding over a desolate wilderness in search of a hapless wounded rodent to descend upon, the vampire’s will hunted. There was one particular rodent she sought and she was certain he was still in New York City.

  She sensed him only dimly at first, a small point of mortal heat in a cold landscape that pulsed faintly with the residues of her own power as well as the stink of enemy influence. The man called Alexander Thomas, her traitorous former servant.

  “Good,” she whispered.

  Moswen retracted the power of her mind and brought it to bear upon the thralls in Scalion’s chamber. At her insistence, half of them shuffled down one of the branching corridors toward his estate and she strode behind them. The other half of the throng fell in at her rear to guard her passage.

  Alex still lingered in this city as the new lackey of Taylor Steele, exactly as she had expected. If she found him, she would find her foe.

  The vampire was more powerful than Scalion had been, but she felt no fear of her. She, too, would be eliminated like the pretender she was. And then, Moswen Neith would be the sole ruler of what was, in this present age, the greatest city on Earth.

  As for Alex, she merely hoped that he knew she was coming for him. In the shadows of the tunnel, the corners of her mouth turned upward and the fangs showed beneath her lips.

  Chapter One

  Moonlight Detective Agency Offices, Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York

  “Bullshit!” the client bellowed and pounded his fist on the desk. A few papers dislodged from their piles and fluttered like giant confetti. The overturned coffee mug also rattled and threatened to fall and shatter on the floor.

  David Remington, who worked under the pseudonym Remington Davis, adjusted his tie and kept his attention fixed on the hulking troll all the while. On the desk in front of him, only a few inches from the client’s club-like hand, was a scan of the incriminating photograph.

  “It’s the truth. You know how women are sometimes. Can’t live with ʼem, can’t, uh…”

  The huge bluish humanoid made a choking sound and his eyes appeared to be turning red. I must have said something wrong, Remy surmised. And I only attempted to be empathetic.

  They’d received the present client, a Mr. Shauckburn, in the back office with a curtain drawn to divide them from the front reception area. It wouldn’t do to have human cli
ents traipse in and potentially glimpse a preternatural creature out of his disguise.

  “Can’t what? I can’t what?” the troll demanded.

  The door opened behind him and Taylor stepped in. “Excuse me,” she said in her soft voice, “is something wrong?”

  “Wrong?” their customer raged and flung his heavy blue-green arms up over his head. “Did you hear what this son of a bitch said? He said I can’t live with my wife. And anyway, that photo could be doctored.”

  Remy tried to think of a clever response to the ridiculous accusation, but it took a second. During that time, Taylor glared at him with her black eyes, turned toward the troll, and spoke first.

  “Mr. Shauckburn, first, let me apologize for my colleague’s clumsy usage of a human expression that is unlikely to make sense to members of your community. He’s lapsed back into a bad habit I’ve tried to cure him of.”

  “Nonsense,” Remy retorted sharply when he found his voice again, “I have no bad habits whatsoever.” That’s, uh, not entirely true, though, he admitted inwardly.

  She ignored him and continued to talk to their client while she rested a pale, red-nailed hand gently on his thick arm. “I am terribly sorry about the news of your wife’s infidelity. However, we have no reason to doctor a photograph. First of all, that kind of unprofessional dishonesty would damage our excellent reputation.”