A Curse of Nightshade (Witches of the Gilded Lilies Book 1) Read online

  A Curse of Nightshade - Witches of the Gilded Lilies Book One

  © 2021 Amber Lynn Natusch

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  Ebook ISBN-13: 978-1-7365427-6-7

  A Curse of Nightshade is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Amber Lynn Natusch

  Cover by Trif Designs

  Ebook Formatting by BookMojo

  Editing by Kristy Bronner

  http://amberlynnnatusch.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  Next in the Series

  BOOKS BY AMBER LYNN NATUSCH

  The CAGED Series

  A Caged World Series

  CAGED

  HAUNTED

  FRAMED

  SCARRED

  FRACTURED

  TARNISHED

  STRAYED

  CONCEALED

  BETRAYED

  The UNBORN Series

  A Caged World Series

  UNBORN

  UNSEEN

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  UNMADE

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  The BLUE-EYED BOMB Series

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  LIVE WIRE

  KILLSWITCH

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  The FORCE OF NATURE Series

  FROM THE ASHES

  INTO THE STORM

  BEYOND THE SHADOWS

  BENEATH THE DUST

  THROUGH THE ETHER

  Contemporary Romance

  UNDERTOW

  The HOMETOWN ANTIHERO Series

  DARE YOU TO LIE

  DON’T SAY A WORD

  COME OUT AND PLAY

  More Including Release Dates

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  CHAPTER ONE

  The sharp crack of a whip split the air right before it bit deep into my side, tearing through my paper-thin skin until it met bone. Blinding pain shot through me, and had it not been for my arms shackled above my head, pinning me to the rocky wall, I’d have crumpled to the ground. The steel resolve that had fueled me for weeks or months—or possibly longer—was failing with every gash, every beating, every broken bone. I was too battered and weak to endure much more.

  My intense desire to defeat my captor had slowly given way to the quiet promise of peace my death would bring.

  Blood trickled down my face and dripped on the sharp stone at my dirty feet, and I fought to lift my head. Sweat and tears stung my eyes as I prepared to face the orchestrator of my torment for what would be the last time.

  “You can have it!” I said, forcing the words past my cracked lips. “You can have it…”

  The phrase he’d been waiting to hear for so long echoed off the cavernous walls, summoning him. Seconds later, a shadowy figure appeared and slowly solidified into a hulking silhouette of leathery black flesh before me. His burning red eyes were drunk with anticipation and victory. He’d finally broken me.

  His long-sought prize would soon be his.

  “Say it how I told you,” he replied, his voice like silk through a grotesque mouth full of fangs. “It will not work if you do not.” The blade-sharp edge of his obsidian claw dragged down my face lightly, an encouragement and a warning wrapped into one, for I knew what he would do with it if I disappointed him yet again. The scars etched deep into my skin were evidence of that truth.

  “My soul is yours to take…”

  Though I barely breathed those words aloud, I knew he’d heard me. The flash of pointed white teeth gleamed in the firelight as he ripped my shackles free. For a fleeting moment, I thought that he might be letting me go—that his sick game had come to an end—but then a burning sensation flared in my chest and I collapsed to the ground, clutching it tightly. The demon’s claws wiggled above my heart, and I watched in horror as a plume of wispy white smoke drifted up from my chest to swirl around his fingers. The pain grew with every passing second, and I folded in on myself, as though I could somehow hold on to what I had just promised him. As though I could escape my fate. But like sand, it slipped through my fingers along with my life, the trail of white now glowing brightly. The very essence of my being was being torn from me, and I looked on helplessly as it circled up his thick arm and around his shoulder, headed for its final destination.

  The searing pain slowly gave way to numbness, and weakness plagued me as I slumped to the floor.

  Soon…it will end soon…

  The massive demon uncurled from his crouch to loom over me, but I hardly took notice. My vision waned as the final shreds of my soul drifted toward him, leaving me vacant and fading. I knew how it would end—with my death and nothing more—but in my final moments, the survival instinct took over, and my hand shot forth to catch the tail end of glowing light. My will to live renewed with the contact and I pulled on it, my body fueled by the delusion that I could draw what I had freely given back into me. The demon roared his displeasure at my defiance and struck me hard, but it mattered not. What was done was done and could not be reversed. The demonic spell had already been cast.

  And as my body gave out and the shadows closed in, all I felt was peace as I took my last breath.

  A fierce, biting wind jostled me awake, and I wondered if hell wasn’t truly hot at all—if instead it was a frigid wasteland where I would spend eternity. But even through bleary vision, I could see that something was wrong. A bustling street filled with horses and carriages and tall buildings on the other side stretched out before me. Even in the faint glow of the gaslights, my russet-brown eyes burned, and I shielded them with my arm as I tried to block out the punishing noise surrounding me. The clomp of horse and carriage, the din of unfamiliar voices, and the squeal of police whistles stunned and overwhelmed me, and I steadied myself with deep breaths, though the tang of the air made that hard.

  Confusion, then panic coursed through me as I tried to make sense of my surroundings. If I was not in hell, where in the hell was I?

  I fought against my weakened limbs and pushed myself up to sit in the shadows, pressed against the brick wall at my back, but the foul stench of rot and manure assaulted me, nearly knocking me down again. As my eyes focused, I realized that I was tucked away in a building’s alcove. No one rushing by seemed to notice me, and for a moment, I wondered
if I was invisible—if I was a ghost.

  That theory seemed easy enough to test, so I tried to stand and walk out into the street; but my legs gave way, and I crashed to the stone beneath me in a lump. My hand shot out to brace my fall and struck a weathered wooden door to my right. Moments later, it flew open. A nun, dressed in a black habit, poked her head out to see who had knocked. Her wrinkled face turned as she searched the street before her, her rheumy eyes finding nothing. Then her gaze fell upon me, slumped against the wall, and she gasped, then backed into the building.

  Not a ghost, then…

  As I tried to stand again, another figure stepped out to join me in the alcove: a stunning, chestnut-haired woman with dainty features, dressed in silken finery. She could have been an angel if it hadn’t been for her lack of wings. She extended a gloved hand to me, but I didn’t take it.

  “You need not fear me, Oleander.”

  “How do you—”

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” she continued with a smile. “We all have. Won’t you please come inside and join us? We have much work to do.”

  Before I realized it, I was on my feet, ready to follow her, but the bite of jagged brick against my palm as I leaned on the wall for support helped clear my head. “Who are you?” My dry throat made my voice so hoarse that I could barely be heard.

  “My name is Ivy Foxglove.”

  A deadly flower… just like me…

  “How am I here?” I wondered aloud.

  Her damn smile widened. “Would you like to come meet the others?” she asked, as though she already knew the answer. A little breeze swept into the alcove, nudging me forward a step.

  I dug my fingers into the cracks in the façade and held on for dear life. “The other who?”

  Her head canted to the side and she looked at me with a quizzical expression, as though the fact that I had no idea what was going on had just occurred to her. “Why, the other Lilies, of course. Your sister witches.” Her voice wrapped around me like a blanket, comforting me. “Now come,” she said, motioning for me to follow, “you’ll catch your death of cold if you stay out here all night.”

  “But I am dead,” I replied, my voice as empty and hollow as my soulless chest.

  She turned to assess me like I’d taken leave of my senses. “You are most certainly not dead. Wherever would you get such a strange idea?”

  “The demon—”

  “Shh!” The harsh sound of her attempt to silence me was in stark contrast to her previous gentle demeanor, as were her firm hands on my shoulders as she hauled me inside the building. She leaned in close, pinning me to the door as she shut it. A warning niggled at the back of my weary mind, but Ivy’s voice silenced it in a second. “There will be no talk of such things in this place, do you understand?” Though I didn’t, I nodded anyway. She brushed my sweat-soaked black hair from my face and straightened my soiled shirt on my shoulders. “You are tired and confused, which makes sense given where I can only assume you’ve just come from, but this world does not know of such things and therefore must be protected—which is precisely why we summoned you.”

  She took my hand in hers as she stalked through the stone building that reeked of frankincense and was filled with crosses and statues and tapestries, each depicting Mary or Jesus or some saint I couldn’t identify because I’d never bothered to learn. She moved with the grace of a predator, smiling and waving to the nuns as she passed, but Ivy was clearly no nun. Her use of the word ‘witch’ spoke to that fact.

  She prattled on about ‘the others’ as she turned a corner leading to a narrow spiral staircase that seemed to go on forever. My exhaustion and hunger knew no bounds by that point, and my mind struggled to process her words as I stumbled to keep pace. We rounded the final steps to a wash of firelight, illuminating a massive library filled with walls of books. She strode to the far wall and pulled one free. The bookcase moved, exposing a room with a large wooden table covered with bowls and jars and things I couldn’t place, more shelves of books, and in the middle of it all, sprawled on a sofa and a chaise, three women of various ages staring back at me.

  “Lilies!” Ivy called as she drew me into the room. “Our Daughter of Fire is finally here. We are now complete!” Their eyes raked over me as I stood before them, addled and ready to collapse. Then Ivy turned her warm green gaze to me. “Oleander Nightshade…welcome to the guild.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Six Months Later, 1855, New York City

  My heart pounded wildly in my chest, blood rushing in my ears as I chased Freddie Conroy—the man I’d been sent to kill—through the back alleys of New York City. My boots slapped hard against the stone pavers, and spray from puddles full of things I didn’t want to think about shot up around me as I gained on him. I could hear him breathing hard, could see the terror on his bloodied face as he looked back and found me closing in on him. As realization set in, he cried out for someone to help him, but nobody in that neighborhood would come to his aid; the very neighborhood from which he’d plucked young girls to work in his brothel.

  He’d been there that night to steal another.

  But he’d found me waiting instead.

  As he rounded yet another corner, he ran into a dead end. Surrounded by brick and imminent death, he made one final effort to get free. Charging me like a bull, he dropped his shoulder to drive it into my belly, but a quick sidestep and carefully placed foot brought him down to land face-first in yet another questionable puddle.

  I snatched him up by the hair and threw him into the wall, cracking his skull with great force. I might have been a witch with fire magic at my disposal, but nothing felt better than roughing up a man like him the human way. I found such satisfaction in every bone I broke. In every gash I split open. And once my blades came out, the real fun began.

  Mr. Conroy spat blood at me, but he backed down quickly when he saw my dagger appear. He backed down further still when I sliced through his ribs, and his chest opened wide. “Please!” he cried, extending his hand to ward me off. His body was so battered and broken from the beating he’d already taken that he was half dead already, but that didn’t stop his pleas. “Please don’t kill me. I’m begging you!”

  They always begged in their final moments—pleaded for mercy they didn’t deserve—but every time, it fell on deaf ears. They’d earned their deaths with every woman they’d raped, every innocent they’d killed, every child they’d whored out to men just as sick and twisted as they. As far as I was concerned, there was no fate painful enough to punish their evil deeds, but every time I wiped one from the streets of New York, I did my best to come close. I was judge, jury, and executioner. I cleansed their souls with fire and brimstone in preparation for hell, because that was where these vile men ended up—if you believed in that sort of thing. I’d been there before, but I’d seen no damned souls there, apart from my own.

  And many, many demons.

  “I can pay you—I have money!” The walking dead man staggered away from me, as though his retreat could influence his impending demise. “Lots of money!”

  “I’m well aware of your financial status, Mr. Conroy...and how you came to achieve it. You earned if off the backs of children,” I replied, “exploiting them in every fashion possible. But tonight, your empire falls.”

  “No! Please no. I’ll do anything!” he said as he fell back against the brick wall of a decrepit building.

  “Anything?”

  “Anything! Just name it.”

  I feigned interest for a moment, allowing hope to blossom in his black heart. “I’ll make you a deal. I already know about the girls in the Seventh Ward brothel. If you tell me where the others are, I’ll spare you.”

  He hesitated for a mere second. “There’s another in the Fifth, just down from the tannery on the left. Second floor.”

  “How many girls?”

  “I’m not sure. The sickness came through. I haven’t been there since—”

  I whipped a dagger at his head, and
it grazed his ear before it bit into the mortar. A warning shot. “How. Many. Girls?”

  “A dozen, maybe...if they’re still alive.”

  I pinned him in place with my icy stare as I rubbed the iron cuff bracelets encircling my wrists. The metal slowly gave way, morphing into two black snakes—my familiars—who wound their way up my arms to perch on my shoulders, citrine-colored eyes gleaming brightly as they awaited my command.

  “What in the name of all that is holy—”

  “There’s nothing holy to be found here,” I said with a smile, stroking Zella as she swirled around my neck. Hagan’s tongue flicked at my ear, a silent request for his orders, which I quickly gave as Mr. Conroy looked on, his flushed appearance now as pale as death. “I need you two to find Ivy and give her this message.” I traced the instructions I’d been given into the air, fire sparking from my fingertips as I wrote. Once the words were etched in flame, it flared, then snuffed out to nothing but smoke. It trailed its way into Zella’s mouth and disappeared.

  Then my familiars did as well.

  Mr. Conroy fell to his knees and stared at me in horror and awe. “What are you…?”

  I took a step closer and drew another blade from a sheath at my back. “There are many terms for what I am, but you would best understand ‘witch’, I think.” His brown eyes went wide at my admission, and wider still when they saw the blade drawing near.

  “Wait! You said you’d spare me!”

  I looked at the tiny dagger, turning it over in the scant moonlight that reached that deep between the buildings. “I am. This will be far less painful than burning alive.”

  The sniveling coward made a move to run, but it was cut short with a blade through his throat. One quick flick of my wrist and it sliced wide open, spilling his blood for the rats to drink up. He collapsed to the ground at my feet, gurgling as he choked.