Witchy Boys: The Complete Collection Read online

  Witchy Boys: The Complete Collection

  By Katey Hawthorne

  Witchy Boys: The Complete Collection

  Witchy Boys: Sexy Stories for Dark Nights

  "Blood Magic and the Mini Zombie Apocalypse"

  "Præsidium"

  Witchy Boys 2: Something Wicked, Something Hot

  "Bourbon Barrel Blues"

  "Tattoo You"

  Witchy Boys 3: Full Moon Rising

  "Moonlight Motor Inn"

  "The Full Moon Husband"

  Copyright © 2016-20 by Katey Hawthorne

  Digital ISBN: 9781735785400

  http://www.kateyhawthorne.com

  No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed without prior written consent from the author.

  Cover by Natasha Snow Designs

  http://natashasnow.com/

  "Præsidium" was originally published in Haunted Hotties Vol. 1 from Torquere Press, October 2015.

  All other stories were first published as part of the Witchy Boys series. This edition collects all three Witchy Boys books into one.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and places are the product of the author's imagination; any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  These stories are about adults aged 18+ and for adults aged 18+.

  Table of Contents

  Blood Magic and the Mini Zombie Apocalypse

  Præsidium

  Bourbon Barrel Blues

  Tattoo You

  Moonlight Motor Inn

  The Full Moon Husband

  About the Author

  Also by Katey Hawthorne

  Blood Magic and the Mini Zombie Apocalypse

  "Nah, man, no fucking way." Blythe tried to shut the door in my face but caught my steel-toed boot.

  "Please," I said. "Ain't no one else can help me."

  "Last time you brought your black magic shit up in here, I had to do a cleansing ritual every five minutes to get rid of it." But Blythe opened the door enough that I got a good look at him. He wore a pair of running shorts and a seventies-looking Star Wars tank top. Tattoos of sorcerous symbols snaked around his arms and chest—they were steady, but had the mesmerizing effect of false motion. He looked great, even if no one with legs that blindingly white should be wearing shorts, let alone shorts that showed most of his thigh. Nice thighs, don't get me wrong, but that ain't right.

  "I fucked up last time," I admitted. "I'm sorry about that. I didn't know the spirit would attach itself to you."

  "This is why I don't touch black magic, Griff." Blythe narrowed his big, baby blue eyes and tried to look mean. Might've even worked, if he hadn't reached into his shirt and plucked out the pentagram he wore on a chain, then rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. He'd done it as long as I'd known him, any time he was conflicted. Nice to see some things hadn't changed. "It always fucking backfires. Always."

  "No black magic this time," I promised. It hadn't been that black last time anyhow, just a little hint to make the summoning stronger so—

  Blythe asked, "Then what? You got nothing else."

  That was not untrue, I admit it. "I know other—"

  Blythe tried to shut the door in my face again. This time I grabbed it in one hand. "Hear me out, I'm begging you."

  Blythe cocked a dark eyebrow. His hair was shaved on the sides and long on top, like a floppy Mohawk, and bleached blond. It shouldn't have worked with his dark eyebrows, but it did. The look he was giving me was full of innuendo. "Begging, huh?"

  I tried to act offended. "I ain't offering a trade."

  "Ass, grass, or gas." Blythe snorted out a laugh that said he wasn't even a little serious.

  "Grass," I suggested anyhow. I had some, if he really wanted it. Not that I'd mind some ass if—

  "Shut the fuck up, man; I don't want anything." He sighed. "What do you want, Griff?"

  "Can I come in?"

  He stepped back and gestured for me to come in.

  I did. His apartment always smelled like sage… but that might've just been from the copious cleansings. Was he still doing them because of that summoning gone bad? That had been a year and a half ago.

  Probably better not to bring it up.

  "So," I began the second he closed the door behind me, "you remember Cathy?"

  "Dominatrix witch?"

  Most of us magical types used the word "practitioner" and didn't like the word "witch". Bad connotations, Salem and the Inquisition and shit, and we weren't organized enough to reclaim it. So we used it for people who… well, who did the kind of shit the Inquisition accused us of. "Witch" was one of those words that made the hair on my arms and the back of my neck stand up, because it meant death to our kind—or had until recently.

  That's what Cathy was, though. She was a witch, and she meant to do bad things. And I'd be damned if I let her. "Yeah, that's the one."

  "Sure." Blythe led the way into his kitchen. His aesthetic was "magical drunk": empty whiskey bottles overflowing with flowers. Pretty cool.

  I settled on a bar stool, and he poured large whiskies. After he handed me one, I took a deep breath, knocked back a long drink, and then admitted, "We did this ritual last year. To kind of, uh, get ready for this one."

  "October full moon?" He sounded level enough, but there was a furrow between his eyebrows that said he already didn't like where this was going.

  "Yeah, exactly."

  "Let me guess: there was a lot of blood and sex involved in this ritual?" Blythe rolled his eyes.

  I nodded. He could roll his eyes all he wanted, but that was some powerful magic.

  "Okay, so she's been gathering power all year, and now…?" He gestured for me to finish his sentence.

  "Well, I thought it was because she wanted to summon her ancestors and get some answers. Like, she did this DNA test and it showed—"

  "I don't give a shit if she's really 1/100th Cherokee or an Irish princess." Blythe tossed his head to get his floppy hair out of his eyes. "Get to the real reason."

  I shifted in my seat and took another long swig of whiskey. "Mini zombie apocalypse."

  Blythe just looked at me for a long moment, his pale brow scrunched. Then, finally, he said, "You have the worst fucking taste in women."

  "My taste in men ain't great either," I admitted.

  "Fuck a duck." He facepalmed.

  I figured it was best to get on with it. "So, you can see why I need a strong white magic practitioner to—"

  "And now I pretty much have to say yes or we get a mini zombie apocalypse." Blythe scrubbed his hand over his face, then leaned a hip against the counter. It pulled up his shirt so I could see his pale belly and a dark happy trail disappearing into his shorts.

  This was the source of my bad taste. I had a white trash weakness. Fuck.

  "Describe this mini zombie apocalypse," Blythe said.

  "You know Hirsch Cemetery? The real old one? We did the ritual there last October on the full moon. She said it was just so she could gather her power and talk to her family this year. But then I found the spell we did, and it said it's for waking the dead—like, corporeally." My face heated. I felt like such a goddamn idiot. "And there's a lot of dead in there. They ain't gonna be happy if she wakes them up."

  "Why in the hell would you not read up on it before you agreed to something that—?"

  "I know, I know, I fucked up." I was always fucking up, was the problem. Always jumping in head first. Always following people I thought loved me off cliffs like a magic-happy lemming. "I just want to make it right, now. And I can't do it alone."

  "No, you fucking can't." Blythe finished the rest of his whiskey in one shot,
then slammed the glass down on the sink. "What's her game, anyhow? Why would she even want that?"

  "She, uh…" I blew out a long breath. "Cathy was writing this book called New Necropolis when we were together, about this woman who had an army of undead servants who went around fucking up everyone who ever did her wrong and built her this crazy city and... I thought it was just fiction."

  "But it's an actual design for life?" Blythe was always pale, but now he was the color of curdled milk. "Unreal. How does someone so stupid live to be thirty?"

  "Are you talking about me or her?" I asked.

  "Yes," he said.

  I couldn't honestly answer. I wondered myself, sometimes. So instead I tried to explain: "Look, I just wanted her to be able to connect with her past. I thought I was doing a good thing for someone I—I loved." I didn't like admitting it, but it was true, and I didn't mind groveling a little if it meant he'd help me fix what was fucked. "Black magic can be good, man, you know it can."

  "It's a fucking shortcut, and shortcuts are dangerous," he grumbled.

  "Please, Blythe." I sounded pathetic in my own ears, but whatever, right? "I'll do whatever you want, seriously. I'll owe you big time. I'll—"

  "No more blood magic," Blythe said.

  That drew me up short. "Like, ever?"

  "Ever. After this is done, we're gonna do a binding ritual to hold you to it, too."

  Fuck.

  But since I was over a barrel here, what could I do but nod?

  ***

  Don't listen to the negative hype: black magic is not "bad". It is dangerous, yeah, and Blythe was right, it's a shortcut. But what makes any magic bad isn't how you make it happen, but how you use its effects. Sometimes it's even as simple as the intention behind it. Blood magic always gets lumped into the black magic thing, which is fair enough because it's definitely a shortcut. Blood is the most powerful substance on earth; blood carries life and there's no other energy like life in the world. So if you cast a spell and use blood in the ritual, that amps it up. That's it, that's all the difference.

  I always figured, it's my blood, my life energy, why can't I use it however I damn well please? Not like I'm sacrificing virgins. (That's a myth, by the way, about virgin blood being more powerful. Like, what is a virgin anyhow? Someone who never had a penis in them or put their penis in anyone else? What is this, 1600AD? I call bullshit.)

  Blythe wasn't interested in any of that, though. As we drove toward the cemetery in my raggedy pickup, he held onto the "oh shit" bar and looked grim. "Yeah, Griff, I'm as up on magical theory as you. That's what makes it so stupid, is that you know this shit and you still end up using it wrong."

  "It ain't wrong," I insisted. "I just got tricked, is all."

  Blythe looked at me sideways. "I know it."

  "Well?"

  "You get tricked a lot, is all I'm saying. You believe what people tell you. You believe in their intentions."

  I frowned. "Why not?"

  Blythe snorted. "Because shit like this happens. Because I end up with a pissed off spirit in my apartment for five months."

  "I said I was sorry about—"

  "I forgive you." He sounded weirdly sincere for someone who'd just tried to shut his door in my face. Twice. "It's just fucking frustrating to watch you, sometimes."

  I frowned. "Watch me?"

  "Get suckered by people who want your power." Blythe bounced when we hit a pothole, then went on, "I've seen you do it three times and I've only known you for five years. That's bad odds."

  I tried to think what the third one was, then remembered. Alessio Stefani. I met Blythe through him. Alessio tried to form a magical coven, but it turned out he just wanted to prove he had the biggest magical cock. I used all my contacts to help him recruit, and he dicked us all over—or tried to. Tried to use all our magic in one big spell to make him more powerful or some shit. Was never gonna work, but—"Yeah, all right, I see your point."

  "It's dangerous for someone with power like yours," Blythe said.

  "Like mine?"

  "Ah, fuck you man, you know you're powerful." Blythe looked out his window so I couldn't see his face.

  I guessed I was. I worked hard on it, though. I spent all my spare time reading old books and shit to find new spells and energy sources.

  "You're powerful and you're naïve and you're pretty and it's a deadly combination," Blythe said. "Makes you attractive to all the wrong people."

  "Who are the right people?" I wondered. It was nice he'd called me pretty, but not nice enough to take away the sting of all the other crap he'd said.

  He shot me a dirty look that was no answer at all, and I kept driving.

  ***

  "We have a few hours before sundown," I said. "Plenty of time to prepare some safe spaces or—whatever."

  "Whatever we white magic practitioners do, yeah." But all the ire had bled out of Blythe while we finished the drive. He hefted a leather messenger bag over his shoulder and started for the closest mausoleum.

  I grabbed my own bag of tricks, and then trotted to catch up with him. When I did, he said, "I just need a few flat spaces for my protection circles. Hopefully we won't even need them."

  I said, "The ritual says that since my blood was part of the energy that made this shit happen, I should be able to control… some of it?"

  "We can't be that lucky." He shook his head. "Lemme see this ritual."

  When we got to the mausoleum, we sat on the steps and I pulled out my tablet. "Cathy told me she got it from this notebook from the 1830s—some student's notebook. After she got super weird and we split, it was nagging at me, so I went to the Historical Society and spent a few days trying to find it."

  "Good detective work." Blythe almost looked impressed. "That's not much to go on."

  "It was fun. I like old stuff." I flipped through my photos of the notebook's pages until I came to the ritual. There was an illustration of a chick sitting on a dude's lap—naked, ala cowgirl style. Not exactly quality porn, but for a quick sketch not bad. "Here."

  Blythe's blue eyes moved back and forth, back and forth as he read the ritual. "Once I finish the circle here, show me where you did this ritual last year. We'll claim it—if she's not already there."

  "No reason to be, since she buried the focus wand somewhere else." I shrugged. "But okay."

  He handed back my tablet and rifled through his bag, drawing out a piece of chalk and a nub of a white candle. "What part of ‘have sex with my girlfriend in a mausoleum and let her slit my neck as I fill her with cum' sounded like a good idea to you, out of curiosity?"

  He was obviously paraphrasing, but that was the gist of the ritual. I sighed. "Honestly?"

  "Honestly."

  I bit at my bottom lip, then admitted, "It was kinda hot."

  To my surprise, Blythe barked out a laugh. "Fair enough. Seriously though, semen and blood? When's the last time that combo was used for anything good?"

  "Probably never." Hindsight, right?

  He grunted, but there was still a smile in his eye as he drew his protective circle. He lit the candle and dripped some wax in the middle, blew out the flame, and stuck the butt of the candle into the wax so it'd stay. "Okay. Show me where."

  The mausoleum Cathy and I had used for the ritual was all the way across the cemetery, in the old, raggedy part. On the way there, Blythe made a few stops to draw up emergency protective circles we hoped we wouldn't have to use. "You realize all I can really do is a banishing ritual, right?" he asked once we were almost to the mausoleum.

  "Yeah, but you're real good," I said. "Meticulous. I always liked watching you work."

  "Seriously?"

  "It's satisfying." I shrugged and hefted my bag on my shoulder, feeling a little awkward.

  It was quiet for a second, just the chirping of the cicadas and bird flapping from the trees. Then he asked, "What'd you mean when you said nobody else could help?"

  I flushed. "Well. Cath got a lot of our friends in the breakup. She's ch
arming as shit. Always makes people think what she wants is their idea, that kind of thing. I didn't really stick up for myself. I mean, after losing a bunch of friends over the thing with Stefani back in the day, then a couple of possessive significant others…"

  "What made you think I'd help?"

  Fair question. Truth was, "You were always a good guy. I liked being around you. I know it seems like I trust anyone, but I don't; I'm just blind when I'm in love. I always thought you were trustworthy and trying to do the right thing. And honestly, the fact you stopped talking to me—"

  He looked up sharply and cut me off. "I didn't."

  "Uh, yeah, you did. I don't blame you or—"

  "I didn't." Blythe stopped walking and turned to face me. "After that night with the summoning, I never heard from you again. You came into my house, we did a cool spell, it went wrong, and you ditched."

  Suddenly, it didn't sound like he'd forgiven me. "I thought… Benito said you were pissed and didn't want to see my face again." I could remember it like it was yesterday. I'd been disappointed as shit, because I kind of got the idea Blythe was flirting with me that night, and he's fine as hell.

  Blythe snorted. "Lemme guess: Benito tried to fuck you soon after?"

  I blinked in surprise. "How did you know?"

  Blythe started walking again, so I had to hurry to catch up. He said, "He knew I was interested. That fucking cock block."

  "In me?" Then I winced. "Fuck, sorry, yeah, obviously. I just—I thought you guys were friends."

  "Since middle school." Blythe shrugged one shoulder. "Mostly because our parents are friends. He's always been a possessive, lying, spoiled little cockbag."

  "Shit."

  "Tell me you didn't fuck him," Blythe said.

  "We made out but it got weird," I admitted. "I bailed."

  "I'll take it."

  I didn't mention that I started dating Cathy like the week after that. Didn't seem like it'd make Blythe feel any better. So I said, "I wish I'd known. I mean I kind of did know, but after the fuck up…"