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  BEAUTY & THE VIKING

  The return of magic to the Afótama people has infiltrated the underground Vikings in Fallon, Nevada, and the rich, reclusive Andreas Toft is its newest casualty. His family’s curse has reawakened, and now Andreas has new reasons to hide. He can’t control his transformations into a beast, nor remember who he is once he’s shifted. When paralegal Mary Nissen tracks him down for a witness interview, she expects some opposition from the eccentric man. She doesn’t, however, anticipate him abducting her.

  Andreas fears that once the secret of what he is gets out, the locals will kill him. Mary’s not like the others, though. She celebrates the return of magic to their people, and wants to help him. But if Andreas can’t trust that she has his best interests at heart, he’ll end up not only gambling with danger as a lone wolf. He’ll alienate the woman his animal half has claimed for a mate, as well.

  SERIES NOTE

  Beauty & the Viking is a story set in the same world as The Afótama Legacy and Norseton Wolves, and contains character crossover from both.

  This novella is a stand-alone story and can be read exclusive of both series, however if you’ve been following either series, this story takes place sometime after The Chieftain’s Daughter.

  Beauty & the Viking doesn’t address any background plots from either series—it’s meant purely as a themed side-story as it was written for the Taming the Beast anthology.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Mary Nissen looked left, then right, and—seeing no one on the Fallon, Nevada side street in front of the neglected 1908 building—dropped to her hands and knees on the sidewalk. Tilting her head horizontally, she peered down into the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of, well, anything at all in the basement. Any sign of life would be more than she expected, but she would have been thrilled to see an actual person.

  One person in particular, really.

  She’d been tracking the slippery Andreas Toft for three weeks, and had run into dead end after dead end. If she hadn’t been so good at her job, she would have given up after a few days. Most paralegals didn’t go to such extents to conduct interviews, and Mr. Toft was a man who didn’t want to be approached. He had a reputation for reclusiveness.

  The Toft family had a long history of eccentricity. A bit of oddness wasn’t unusual in a town with a population that was nearly five percent witches, but the Tofts were the weirdest amongst the weird. The most-whispered rumors were that along with their considerable wealth came lunacy.

  Mary wasn’t put off by the rumors. Her father had exposed her to all sorts of unusual personalities when she was a child, and he—a private detective with thirty years of experience—had taught her that rumors were distractions. He’d impressed upon her to always be wary, but to also always verify.

  All she needed from Mr. Toft was thirty minutes, maybe less, for an interview, and then he could move on with his life, and she could do her stinking job.

  Seeing nothing beyond some stacked wooden crates and a hell of a lot of cobwebs, she pushed back up to standing and then wiped the dirt from her knees.

  Sighing, she tucked back the swath of hair that had come loose from her bun. “Come on, guy. I’ve got two lawyers breathing down my neck here.” She clucked her tongue and tapped the toe of her right stiletto against the concrete.

  She didn’t know where else she could look. The old store she presently stood in front of had been her last lead. The address Andreas had provided at the scene of the accident he’d witnessed had turned out to be bogus, but some of the bystanders had recognized him. After all, he was a Fallon native—and one of a certain sort—and the paranormal community was small. There weren’t too many telepathic psychics descended from Vikings living in Nevada. Or anywhere, really. Most of their kind, whom the Fallon psychics had splintered off from, lived in a community in New Mexico called Norseton. The two groups had once been friendly.

  Not so much anymore.

  They were just too different. The people in Norseton—the Afótama, they were called—had powerful magic and stronger telepathy. Fallonites were better empaths, and could discern lies before they could even leave a speaker’s lips, but they had no magic to speak of. Being empathic and able to hear people’s thoughts wasn’t doing Mary a hell of a lot of good at the moment, however.

  “What I wouldn’t give right now for a little bit of Queen Tess’s finder magic,” she muttered. “Don’t know where else to look.”

  She groaned.

  Each of the five addresses she’d checked for Andreas had been associated with county utility accounts he’d held, but he didn’t reside at any of them anymore. Checking the old Smith Building was a last-ditch effort. Mr. Toft’s grandfather had been the last to operate a business out of the big, brick behemoth, but the Tofts hadn’t done anything with the place since Neil Armstrong had pranced on the moon. Deep down, she’d known he wouldn’t be there. The building was too cluttered, too unwelcoming, and too unsafe, but she’d had to look anyway before she crossed the prospect off her list.

  “Back to the drawing board,” she said softly.

  Mary slung her tote bag’s strap over her shoulder, and was about to step over a sidewalk grate when something dark and fast streaked past the window she’d been kneeling in front of.

  She dropped the bag again, but she didn’t get on her knees. She hopped down into the window well, cringing at the impact of her heels against the concrete, and put her face right to the glass.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Although her optometrist claimed she was becoming a smidge nearsighted in her thirtieth year, she was pretty sure her vision wasn’t playing tricks on her.

  “Move again. Come on,” she pleaded.

  She didn’t see anything inside. Nothing moved, beyond some dust motes that were probably being blown around by drafts. An old building like that was bound to have some.

  “Oh, well. Worth a shot.” She notched her fingers into the sidewalk ledge above, saying a silent prayer to the Viking gods that no one was on street level who could see her graceless climb back to the surface. Then, with an oomph of effort, she heaved herself up.

  A quick glance as she smoothed down her skirt assured her that no one had seen her. There weren’t even any security cameras in the part of town. She knew that because she was damn good at her job, and maintained a log of every single device. Most building owners were happy to tell her if they had them. The ones who didn’t want to tell her still managed to give her the information that she needed when they lied. She always got an unsettled feeling in her gut when people lied.

  Clucking her tongue as she gathered her thoughts, she straightened the seams of her pantyhose, knocked some dust off her shirt, and snatched up her tote once more.

  “There’s got to be something else,” she mused as she walked toward the back of the building. She’d parked two streets away and had squeezed onto the barricaded lot through a gap in the chain-link fence. She didn’t like to think of what she was doing as trespassing. If she got caught and push came to shove, she could tell the police she was doing a “wellness check” on a client. The fact that Mr. Toft wasn’t actually her client was irrelevant. The local cops rarely followed up.

  Scrolling through the checklist she’d compiled in her phone’s note app, she pondered if there was anything she’d missed—any family of Mr. Toft’s that she hadn’t tried to contact, or even distant friends of his who might have had some idea of where he spent his time.

  There was nothing. No stone left unturned.

  “Damn,” she spat, rounding the corning of the building and walking with purpose toward the fence. “Somehow, this guy going off the grid is going to be my fault. Always blame the paralegal, right?”

  Every day a
s she walked into the law offices of Delphi, Rott, and Simon, she wondered if she should have gone into private detective work like her father had. She could have been her own boss, but her father had insisted she should shoot for a career that came with a steady paycheck and benefits. He’d been happy that she’d gotten hired by a prestigious Las Vegas firm after college, and still proud when she’d moved back to Fallon to tend to him. All he’d wanted before cancer had taken him was for Mary to be settled and secure. She was. She was also just…miserable.

  Since his death, she’d been considering making a big change. She toyed with the thought of sending a note to Queen Tess of the Afótama and asking if she would be welcome in Norseton. If Mary went, however, she could never return to Fallon. The crew in Fallon didn’t trust the Afótama—they thought they were pretentious and weak-minded.

  Mary didn’t care what they thought, though. Things had to be better in Norseton—less hostile, less distrustful. She was sick of all the damned paranoia. Being in Vegas for so long had helped her reach the conclusion that the people in Fallon were their own worst enemies. They just weren’t self-aware enough to see the truth.

  She paused at the small loading bay at the back of the building, and turned. She’d thought she’d sensed someone behind her. Had the person been like her—a little weird—their psychic pull would have been stronger. But the person didn’t hit her psychic radar the way other witches did.

  “Plain-old human?” she whispered, but no. Just a pigeon.

  Rolling her eyes at herself, she continued walking. “I think I need a vacation. Blood pressure is all out of whack, and for no good reason.”

  She hadn’t had a real vacation since her father died. In fact, she’d just finished paying off the funeral. Of course, a man who’d lived life by the seat of his pants his entire life hadn’t had life insurance. The funeral bill had been a priority. If she had to keep seeing the statement in her mailbox every month, she’d never move on to the next stage of grief. She was finally emerging from the depression part and finally moving toward acceptance.

  That didn’t mean she didn’t ask herself, Why him? Why Daddy? every evening when she ate dinner alone. It just meant that she understood that his time had been up, and that just sucked.

  She glanced down at her phone again, pondering if she should try to make another call to the lawyer she knew in Norseton, just to let him know she was still interested in a position there. But before she could slide her thumb across the screen, her body was yanked backward by her shirt. Her arms flailed as she fell, and the fear of a fall ratcheted up her pulse, but it didn’t come.

  She was instead yanked against a hard body, and a hand that reeked of oil and some sharper, medicinal odor pressed to her nose.

  Her scream was trapped beneath another hand and she threw her elbows back hard, trying to make contact with ribs or belly or anything she could reach, but whoever had her was too strong.

  Not human, but not quite like her, either.

  Definitely not that pigeon.

  As she struggled against the figure, trying to strike the heels of her stilettos against the tops of booted feet, she tried to mentally grasp the assailant’s magic—taste the essence of what made the person a little bit like her.

  There was only chaos there. No emotion she could name, just wildness and mistrust of her—or maybe life in general.

  Her head swam and eyes crossed. Her body was going limp and weak.

  What did…what did he do to me?

  The assailant dragged her backwards, and her heels scraped against the asphalt as her body drooped against his.

  She couldn’t move.

  Couldn’t keep her eyes open.

  The attacker had pulled his hands away from her face, though. She should have been able to scream, but she couldn’t convince her lungs to draw in enough air. She was growing more and more lightheaded, and not just from a lack of breathing. Her abductor had drugged her somehow—anesthetized her.

  “Why?” Mary croaked as her eyelids drooped and her body went number, limper.

  The person—the man, for his grunt was most certainly male—didn’t respond. But, just inside a narrow door she hadn’t paid attention to during her retreat, he stayed still long enough for her to crane her head back and look at him.

  Uncombed chin-length dark hair. Smoldering brown eyes. Skin that saw the sun and had certainly been kissed by it. Aristocratic nose, and full, decadent lips.

  He wasn’t handsome in the way of their kind, all of whom could be equally frightening if they gave up their denim for leather, and traded their motorcycles for longships. He didn’t have their roughened, warrior quality. He was the elegant man in the portrait of Smith Toft at Fallon’s social club, but not. He was two generations removed. Younger. Gaunter.

  Wilder.

  His eyes took on a golden cast she could have sworn was that of an animal, and she couldn’t make her body move enough to jerk in his arms.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she tried to ask, but she couldn’t. Mary was frozen.

  He kept moving. He pulled her through the doorway into the neglected old building, and then it was lights out.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Andreas paced in front of the cold wood stove and shook out the tingles from his hands and arms.

  He shouldn’t have touched her, but he’d panicked. Drugging her hadn’t been ideal. No rational man would have done such a thing.

  Also, he didn’t like touching people anymore. The magic that made him what he was made the effects of touch linger too long and too brutally.

  What choice did I have?

  She’d been too close to discovering him, and he was in hiding for a good reason.

  Pausing, he looked at the unconscious woman draped over the sofa he’d covered with drop cloths. She looked comically out of place in his building’s basement. She was prim and proper, and so pretty and blond. “Perfect Viking wench.” He scoffed.

  She was just like all the others in Fallon. They judged what they didn’t understand, and hated what they couldn’t have. They’d proven their narrow-mindedness when the Afótama queen had taken one of their men as a chieftain. Andreas heard the things the people in Fallon said about Oliver and Contessa. They called Oliver a traitor, and worse—but Oliver had done what he’d need to do to be happy. He’d embraced the magic and claimed what was his, even though what he’d gained had the taint of the Afótama about it. He’d joined their collective and became a part of something cooperative. He’d embraced the magic that Queen Contessa had pulled the stopper from. The long-absent power flowed from the old Viking gods back to the people they’d been ignoring for so long.

  “Good for him,” Andreas spat. “Someone should get a happy ending.”

  Andreas sure as shit wasn’t going to get one—not when the locals found out that the magic hadn’t stopped pooling in Norseton. It’d spread farther—all the way to Fallon, perhaps beyond. Andreas had some. He had inherited his family’s magic. Unfortunately, the Tofts’ magic was a curse that had been dormant for so long that they no longer feared it. There was no one left to tell Andreas how to control the affliction. He was the last Toft in Fallon.

  He’d already been an outcast in the community because of his wealth and eccentricities. Soon, he’d likely be chased from town for being a monster—as if he’d had a choice about being one.

  Staring at his statuesque captive, he knelt beside the chair and draped his forearms over his knees. She’d left countless messages for him at every number he still had, asking him to get involved in some legal scheme he didn’t give a shit about. He didn’t care how the arguing parties resolved their fender bender. In all the time the men spent quibbling over details, they could have settled the mess rationally, especially since both parties had been at fault.

  They knew that. Had to.

  He refused to get involved, and he needed that woman—Mary—to leave him the fuck alone.

  Closing his eyes, he leaned his head left, then right, and grima
ced at the cracks of his too-loose cartilage. His body hadn’t been quite right since before the magic had surged in him about three months prior. All he could surmise was that the animal inside of him wanted to be let out again.

  He didn’t know what the animal was. When he was in that beastly shape, his thoughts were too disordered for him to remember to find a mirror to peer into. He’d never bothered learning the details of the family curse because he’d never thought he’d be afflicted. The curse hadn’t been seen in the family since the gods had pulled back most of their magic, and that had been seven or eight centuries in the past.

  The woman—Mary—drew in a sharp breath, and her bright blue eyes flew open. Her pupils shrank, then enlarged, adapting to the dim light in the basement. She sprang upright and scooted to the far end of the sofa, as far from him as she could get.

  Slowly, he twined his fingers together in front of his belly and cracked his neck again.

  “What are you doing?” she snapped. “Why am I here?”

  Gods, her voice…

  She was always so crisp and professional when she left him those messages. Sunny, even. Her voice wasn’t sunny in his building’s basement, though. Her voice was low, and threaded with a warning he was sure she’d make good on. She’d try to, anyway. Their kind didn’t make idle threats.

  He took in a long, deep breath, and then another, and pinned her in his gaze.

  She didn’t flinch, but he hadn’t really expected that she would. She probably spoke with all manners of beasts as part of her job. Vikings. Bikers. Other assorted rakes.

  “I would have thought you wanted to talk to me,” he said evenly. “Haven’t you been trying?”

  She blinked and stared at him for several seconds, and then she looked down at the delicate gold watch on her wrist.

  Of course she’d be concerned with the time. Her life was probably perfectly structured in a way his had never been. He’d had no need for structure. He had money—piles and piles of the stuff, and no urgent need to make more.