Must Love Plague E-Book

Shelly Chalmers

• Herausgeber: Shelly Chalmers
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Spreading disease isn't all it's cracked up to be. Piper Bane wants nothing to do with her pesky Pestilence bloodline and would give anything to be a Normal. In fact, she put Beckwell—land of the paranormal and home of the weird—in her rear-view ten years ago, and hasn't been back since. Until an invitation to her best friend’s wedding coaxes her back home and reminds her what it means to continue the legacy of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. She receives a typical Beckwell welcome the second she reaches the city limits where she's stalked by a toad and wraps her car around a tree. And is rescued by the one person she most wants to avoid: Daniel Quilan. Town doctor, genuine nice guy, and her ex-fiancé. Ten years hasn’t been long enough for Daniel Quilan to forget the only woman he’s ever loved. His responsibilities as Beckwell's only doctor keeps his mind off the hole Piper Bane left in his chest when she broke his heart and skipped town all those years ago. His not-so-ordinary patients and his trouble-making twin brother keep Daniel occupied twenty-four-seven, not to mention magic going haywire throughout town. But his plan to stay busy as the town's golden boy is shattered when his latest patient turns out to be Piper. How good she looks isn't his concern. How she still makes fire shoot through his veins isn't his focus. But the fact that someone wants to end the world and will use Piper to do so......that makes her impossible to ignore.

Leseprobe

Welcome to smalltown Beckwell. A world where myths hold some grain of truth, magic is real, and four women will rise to take their place within the dynasty of the four horsemen. In this town, when the apocalypse is nigh, it probably means a party. You should come - there’ll be marshmallows!

Spreading disease isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Piper Bane wants nothing to do with her pesky Pestilence bloodline and would give anything to be a Normal. In fact, she put Beckwell--land of the paranormal and home of the weird--in her rear-view ten years ago, and hasn't been back since. Until an invitation to her best friend’s wedding coaxes her back home and reminds her what it means to continue the legacy of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. She receives a typical Beckwell welcome the second she reaches the city limits where she's stalked by a toad and wraps her car around a tree. And is rescued by the one person she most wants to avoid: Daniel Quilan. Town doctor, genuine nice guy, and her ex-fiancé.

Ten years hasn’t been long enough for Daniel Quilan to forget the only woman he’s ever loved. His responsibilities as Beckwell's only doctor keeps his mind off the hole Piper Bane left in his chest when she broke his heart and skipped town all those years ago. His not-so-ordinary patients and his trouble-making twin brother keep Daniel occupied twenty-four-seven, not to mention magic going haywire throughout town. But his plan to stay busy as the town's golden boy is shattered when his latest patient turns out to be Piper. How good she looks isn't his concern. How she still makes fire shoot through his veins isn't his focus. But the fact that someone wants to end the world and will use Piper to do so......that makes her impossible to ignore.

MUST LOVE PLAGUE

A SISTERS OF THE APOCALYPSE NOVEL

by

Shelly C. Chalmers

Table of Contents

Book Blurb

Title Page

Copyright

Acknowledgements

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

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

A Sneak Peek At What’s Next

About the Author

Copyright © 2017 by Shelly Chalmers

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, things, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

www.shellychalmers.com

Cover design by Paper & Sage Designs

ISBN 978-1-7750206-0-8

Acknowledgements:

This book is for all the stubborn dreamers. Never give up. Don’t keep waiting for someone to give you a HEA – make one for yourself. I know you can do it.

Thank you to my 2014 Dreamweaver sisters, without whom this book probably wouldn’t exist. Your experience, knowledge, and support helps keep me writing. You are all an inspiration.

A big thanks to my editor, Tera Cuskaden, for helping me shape this book into something worth reading - all errors are definitely my own. Thank you to Christa Holland with Paper & Sage for the beautiful cover and your artistic vision.

This book was very loosely inspired by the wonderful small town I live near—which is so much more beautiful, welcoming, and charming than I could hope for. All the bad things about Beckwell are strictly a work of my imagination. Thank you for being a place I’m proud to raise my children.

To my critique partner extraordinaire, Shelly Alexander: you continue to help me become a better writer through your wisdom, patience, and sense of humor. Thank you for answering my many questions, putting up with me...and for going through all the incarnations this book has experienced.

To my dearest friend, Neelam: thank you for being my number one fan for years...and for never letting me get away with anything but my best. You make me a better writer, and a better person.

Thanks to my family and my friends for your love and support. Thanks to my parents for always believing in me, and my kids for being cool with cereal for dinner. You have all been incredibly supportive, and you keep me going. And if you want to skip a few scenes or chapters (you know the ones I mean), I’m totally cool with that. ;)

Last, but never least, thank you to my husband: for your support, your love, and the many times you’ve not only talked me out of quitting, but in to reaching for my own success. I couldn’t do this without you, and nor would I want to. You and the girls make me strong enough to reach for my dreams. You are my very own happily ever after.

Chapter 1

Normal was highly underrated. Especially if your entire childhood had been as distinctly paranormal as Piper Bane’s. It wasn’t as though a kindergartner enjoyed the scrutiny, the whispers about how she might end the world.

Piper tightened damp hands on the steering wheel of her rental SUV. The dark shadowy blotch of the town sign would be visible soon, welcoming her home to Beckwell, Alberta.

Rock music pulsed through the speakers, at odds with the idyllic old clapboard homestead on the right. Slate October skies roiled uneasily and brightened the soaring yellow and orange stands of trees that segregated acres of rolling fields. This late in the season, the fields all had a military brush cut, hedged in on all sides by barbed wire.

Piper swallowed her nausea. She could do this. She might have to toss her cookies first, but she could come home for her best friend’s wedding this weekend, and get out, never to return. Never to have anything to do with all the expectations, the weirdness associated with her hometown.

The SUV whizzed past the green sign marking the closest neighboring town of Buttercreek. Piper swallowed. Maybe ten minutes out now. Beckwell wasn’t on any maps, to protect all of the paranormal folks who lived there…and to protect any Normals from accidentally ending up there. Lucky buggers.

Oh, Ginny. Why couldn’t you have gotten married somewhere—anywhere—else? Antarctica is nice this time of year, isn’t it?

She blew out an unsteady breath. Coming home had seemed less insane six thousand kilometers ago, back in that lonely hotel room in Edinburgh. There was only so long you could live out of a suitcase before the hotel rooms all started to look the same, one town blurring with the next.

The tree-lined highway and the fields looked unchanged in the ten years since she’d stepped foot in Beckwell. Ten years since she’d seen the place where she grew up, where her three closest friends still lived. Ten years since Piper Bane, Pestilence clan, had anything to do with the world she’d been born into. A world where myths held some grain of truth, magic was real, her family was part of the horsemen dynasty, and unicorns could fly. Okay, that last part wasn’t true and probably wishful thinking, but the rest?

Yep, she was related to those four horsemen of the apocalypse: Death, War, Famine, and Pestilence. Who, when they weren’t off causing disaster, had apparently gotten it on with every surviving female they met, creating clans that were now large and spread worldwide. Kind of like royal family lines, where some members were rich and powerful—in both human and non-human ways. The more powerful stood the best chance of becoming the true embodiment of their clan, to ride into the apocalypse as a true horseman and carry forth destruction.

The radio station turned to static. Piper shuddered. Definitely getting close now. She pushed the button and shut the static off, leaving only the collected ghosts of memory filling the car. Her stomach hardened.

What a nightmare. She’d held out hope that someone else would gain the powers of Pestilence, because when they did, they absorbed all the powers of their clan. Poof. Piper would finally be normal. You know…for that little while before the world ended. But she’d be normal. Life would be easier if she were normal. Average. Those people got to fall in love, have kids, have happy lives.

So far, though, no one had taken a ride on that damned horse, which left her in limbo.

Even with a tiny amount of ability—her family was more along the trailer-park trash level of the Pestilence family tree—she was still like asbestos. The longer you were around her, the more likely you were to get sick. And she’d sworn ten years ago she would never make anyone sick, ever again.

She tucked her pale hair behind an ear, a faint tremble in her fingertips and a small frown tightening her lips. Living out of a suitcase wasn’t so bad. No, she could never spend more than a month in any one place. But unless she wanted to settle in a paranormal sanctuary like Beckwell, where people knew what the name “Bane” connoted, it was the closest to normal she could get.

Even if it was sometimes a bit lonely.

She fiddled with the radio controls on the steering wheel. Even cowboy music would be better than the silence, but there was only static, like jeers and hisses. In Beckwell, mystical powers ran through the ancient bloodlines of all the residents, and the nastier the family tree, the better. Having horns or being the descendant of some mythic creature no one ever liked was a good thing. Part of the town had always wanted her to be a full-fledged horsemen, willing to spread disease with a touch of a fingertip. Seriously, who wanted the powers of Pestilence anyway? Spreading disease and plague wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Yet, the other part of the town—the ones with families and a somewhat-normal existence—they’d feared her and her friends from the start. If only they’d known Piper didn’t want an apocalypse any more than they did.

She gave up on the radio, tried to relax the tightness in her neck.

Here she was. Less than eight minutes out from Beckwell. Gulp.

Ten years ago, she’d left here running. Heartbroken after she’d ended her engagement to the only man she’d ever loved with every cell of her being. Daniel Quilan.

Believing she was over him was a lot easier with both time and distance between them.

The wooden town sign hunkered in the shade of gold and yellow poplar trees and hazelnut bushes, like a gloomy shadow. Someone repainted it every year, but somehow it reverted back to peeling and foreboding. Too far away to read, she knew it said “Beckwell” in white. Her stomach churned. Could she really handle a few days with her family, possibly seeing Daniel, all the mess that was Beckwell?

Piper’s foot lifted slightly from the gas pedal.

Just beyond the sign and to the left squatted the huge Cow Palace barn, a faded fuchsia glory in the middle of the town agricultural grounds, stacks of bleachers pushed together in the off-season. To the right was Sal’s Autobody. Rows of cars gleamed through the surrounding brush.

What wasn’t visible was the town barrier that made Beckwell the sanctuary it was and protected those with latent magic in their blood. It also protected the outside world from those magicals, and all the things normal people didn’t really want to know about. The barrier sensed ability in the blood, and made Normals feel like pissing themselves. So far, worked like a charm. It usually killed their cars before they could pass through, leaving plenty of business for Sal to tow away.

Piper scrunched down in the seat and tried to imagine exactly where the border was. It creeped her out. Always had, always would. How was it not creepy—magic touching her all over, reading her blood?

Secretly, she’d always wondered if one of these days it would figure out she’d never really belonged in Beckwell, and wouldn’t let her in.

After all her travels, she’d started to wonder if there was anywhere she did belong.

She sucked in a shuddering breath that didn’t quell the nausea. The girls were waiting for her at the bar, and—glancing at the dash clock—she was already late. Ginny was her best friend. She couldn’t skip her best friend’s wedding. Besides, if she didn’t make peace with Beckwell and her past, she’d always keep looking over her shoulder, waiting for it to catch up.

Piper hit the gas. The quicker she got through the barrier, the better.

The SUV chewed up pavement. The Beckwell sign grew larger.

The engine sputtered and went silent. The dash lights went black. Piper pumped the gas, then tried to move her foot to the brake. The spike of her kitten heel stuck in the floor mat. The wheel wouldn’t turn.

She whimpered, frozen wheel clenched between her fingers, unable to look away from the rapidly approaching sign.

A large, fat toad plopped onto her windshield. Piper flinched. It turned and met her gaze, eyes huge and black, before giving an annoyed croak that sent a chill down her back.

Icy pinpricks settled over her skin. The air thickened around her, smothering her in sticky coldness like she’d been doused in wet cement. All she and the toad could do was watch the Beckwell sign and the huge old tree grow ever closer until the crunch of impact.

Chapter 2

Someone in town was planning an apocalypse. And where there was mischief, even the world-ending kind, five-to-one odds said his twin brother was in on it.

Daniel combed his fingers through his dark hair and rolled broad shoulders, weighed down after a long day of medical calls. His old truck grumbled along the road toward downtown Beckwell. The asphalt cut through thick boreal forest that concealed most of Beckwell’s small population on farms and acreages that spread out from the town center like a disjointed spider web. “Downtown Beckwell” itself was a misnomer, seeing as it consisted of the four-way stop and small assortment of businesses clustered around it. Beckwell was many things, but big it was not. You’d miss it if you blinked. There wasn’t even a traffic light to slow you down.

He still had to stop by the Senior Center and finish some paperwork. It’d been the only place in town with facilities to set up his practice and office. This last call had been out to the Ares place for chest pains. Lucky for Old Man Ares it’d been nothing more than a second helping of Mrs. Ares’s extra-spicy chili. But at least they’d called him. He’d been practicing medicine in Beckwell going on four years, but only recently had people to adjusted to the idea of asking a Fomorian for help. Usually after an encounter with a Fomorian, you needed help. Maybe even traction, or a visit to Intensive Care.

Gods, but he’d rather have been any other species. Anything other than like Dad. The bullies of the paranormal world, Fomorians were hard-living warriors with a knack for chaos, drinking and fighting. Large and muscular, sometimes even with wings, horns or tails, Dad always used to say they were made for the three “Fs”: fighting, fury, and fornicating—though Dad preferred a different “F” word.

Fortunately, Daniel was the family black sheep. He’d gone into medicine. Helped people. Healed people. Did everything to prove that just because he had Dad’s Fomorian genes, it didn’t mean he had to turn out the same.

His brother, Mal, on the other hand, had always made the family proud.

Daniel’s truck rumbled toward the stop sign. Sheila Dryad was filling up at the gas station to his right, shouting at two of her satyr sons chasing each other around the car on hooved feet, while her daughter slouched in the backseat of the minivan. Beautiful but harried, Sheila waved when she saw Daniel. A nymph happily married to a satyr, her family was one of many in Beckwell by necessity.

Unlike some of the other creatures who could blend into human society, Beckwell residents like the Dryads couldn’t live elsewhere. They couldn’t blend. Even if they wanted to. Beckwell was their haven, one of a few magical sanctuaries in this part of the world, and be darned if Daniel would let anyone—including his brother—take that away from them. He might only be the town doctor, but for better or for worse, this was his home and these were his people.

Sheila shouted at the boys again as a slick BMW pulled into the parking lot and stopped beside the bar next door. Ginny Lack climbed out from the driver’s seat, her copper hair glinting in the afternoon sun. She didn’t notice Daniel. Maybe she was distracted by her upcoming wedding. Instead, her cheeks flushed, arms waving, she spoke animatedly to her passenger.

Diminutive and black-clad Nia Amort stepped out from the other side of the car, and the two women entered the bar. Once, the two women had been his friends. Once, he would have rolled down the window and called hello. Maybe joined them for a beer. Congratulated Ginny in person on her engagement.

Not anymore.

Not since Piper Bane had left, taking his heart with her. But, despite his estrangement from Ginny and the other women, he’d still been invited to the wedding along with everyone else in town, and Ginny had sent a hand-written invite to the engagement party. And as of now, he hadn’t come up with a viable excuse not to go. To avoid seeing Piper in the flesh.

The image of clear amber eyes and hair so blonde it was almost white flashed through his mind. The woman’s hair blew across her face as her coral pink lips turned up in a seductive smile.

He shook the image out of his head and pulled up to the four-way stop. Blinked. Then leaned forward over the wheel. Was that his brother walking down the highway up ahead?

A faded 1965 custom Dodge silver convertible rolled into the grocery/gas station/bar parking lot to his right and honked, breaking his focus. The iron-haired lady who climbed out from behind the wheel was Ms. Boniface. School principal, she also seemed to feel it was her duty to direct the goings-on in town, too. She signaled for Daniel to roll down his window, approaching his truck.

He pasted on his best don’t-make-the-lady-mad smile and cranked down the window. “Good afternoon, Ms. Boniface.”

“Daniel. Any word yet when we can expect your brother to actually start performing the duties he was hired for? It’s been six months. And I haven’t seen one instance of Malcolm performing any policing duties. Instead, he seems content to get in drunken brawls with those cousins of yours and anyone else who happens to get in his way.”

Daniel rubbed the back of his neck and felt the beginnings of a headache. “I’m sorry to hear that, Ms. Boniface,” he said wearily. As though he wasn’t more than aware of what Mal had been up to. The drinking and fighting were some of the less concerning behaviors. “I’ll talk to him.” Again. Because the first five times had been so productive.

He’d convinced the town council to hire his brother as the sole peace officer. The position had been vacant four years now. It’d seemed like a good idea at the time: give Mal purpose again, and a reason to stay in Beckwell. And out of trouble.

Hadn’t worked out so well.

“Well. See that you do. With the Lack wedding on Saturday, there will be visitors from out of town who might bring who knows what trouble. Never mind the inevitable drunkenness and shenanigans that typically accompany events of this nature.”

Trust Ms. Boniface to see a wedding as a disruption.

“Yes, ma’am. And until then, you can depend on me to help out in my brother’s place.” Because there was always plenty of spare time for policing while also running the town’s sole medical practice. He needed to find some kind of twelve-step-program to learn to stop volunteering.

“Excellent. There’s a town council meeting tomorrow.” She turned to stride back to her car in the parking lot, then turned back with a frown. “And please, could you secure that sign pointing out the Lack residence? I understand the fiancé still hasn’t arrived, and we don’t need him or any out-of-towners wandering willy-nilly all over the place.” She offered a tight smile and marched off toward the bar, Lou’s Place, without even waiting for an answer.

Daniel glanced at the signpost to his left and reluctantly noted that the arrow for Ginny’s wedding did indeed look loose. For Ginny, he pulled over, and went around back to rummage in his toolbox for a hammer and a couple of nails before he headed for the post.

Said signpost was a big old clunker that pointed out all of Beckwell’s chief attractions with crooked arrows. Like the library and school. The emergency station off to his right. The Cow Palace and agricultural grounds farther down the highway.

And one crooked, faded arrow labeled “Loki.” Seeing as Loki, the reclusive town founder, was not standing at the end of the arrow, Daniel assumed it pointed in the direction of Loki’s residence. The only person Daniel knew with the cajones—and gall—to follow the sign was his brother, Mal. He’d never told Daniel what he found on the other end.

Thinking of Mal brought Daniel’s brows together, and he gently pried the foam-core arrow reading “Lack-Derth Wedding” off the post and held it as high as he could before stabbing it with a nail. One advantage to being Fomorian was nearly six and a half feet in height.

If only Mal didn’t have to relish all the other parts about being Fomorian. Not the wings and horns—none of those, thank gods, but all the rest.

Daniel missed the nail and almost hit his thumb.

Mal hadn’t been the same since he’d left the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Which was why the policing job here in town had seemed like a good idea. Give him focus again. Mal had always had a natural affinity for the dark—and his dark side—but he’d become even more self-destructive and reckless. When he was around, bad things were more likely to happen. Even if he hadn’t initiated the trouble.

Daniel hit the nail too hard and it bent. He grumbled and set about straightening it enough to hang the darned sign.

He didn’t have Mal’s charisma or fondness for mischief. At best, he was like a super-charged lucky rabbit’s foot. And he was strong—never a sick day since grade two, and that had been to stay home and take care of Mom.

But, he was the oldest by two minutes, which made it his responsibility to look out for Mal.

He pounded the nail flat and headed back to the truck. Either it was a Fomorian thing or a twin thing, but he and Mal also shared strong emotions through a mental link. And Mal had been feeling disturbingly pleased with himself these past few days, in a darkly cynical fashion.

Which probably meant he was getting into trouble. Possibly involved with this latest Beckwellian plot to start the apocalypse.

He put the truck in Drive. Beckwell was a town of outsiders and rebels. The gods and more powerful beings had ignored and taunted their unpopular Beckwell-cousins too often, which led to a surplus of apocalypse plots. This time was more dangerous because the plot was rumored to involve the horsewomen. With Piper headed to Beckwell for the wedding, that meant all four of them were back in town.

If those four friends decided to end the world, there wasn’t an earthly force that could stop them. Ten years ago, he never would have believed Piper or her three friends would consider using that deadly power. But a lot changed in ten years. People changed.

Light glinted off a car ahead on the highway. His gaze snapped up in time to see a silver SUV speed down the highway ahead and plunge into the trees.

Not again.

Chapter 3

Daniel hit the gas and made the old blue pickup grumble and rattle in protest. With the faded fuchsia Cow Palace barn to his right, he jerked the truck into Park, grabbed his med bag from the passenger seat, and jumped out, leaving the door open.

The barrier caught the occasional tourist every now and then. Usually it just killed the car. Sometimes, it killed the tourist.

Hopefully someone at emergency response had seen the crash, too, but they were mostly volunteer and he couldn’t slow now. He was the best emergency medical care available to the driver out here.

Steam rose from the SUV’s crumpled hood where it had bent around a large poplar tree, and somehow, miraculously, missed the Beckwell town sign. The engine was quiet, no visible spills, and the smell of gasoline was faint. The white billow of the air bag filled the driver’s seat and began to deflate as he ran up to the car.

He had to put his shoulder into it, but the door opened with a groan, just in time for the airbag to settle around the driver like a perverted stage curtain. The sight of that pale blonde hair, the petite body, hit him like a two-by-four to the gut.