Reggie's Story

Before you read, please know that this is a short story about Reggie. She is a character from my novel Wings Of Momentum. Reggie played a significant role in that novel as Ayda’s best friend, so she deserves a small story of her own. In the second installment of Ayda’s story, Heart Of Hell, Reggie won’t be as active, so I wanted to give her some well-deserved credit by providing the readers a blip into her back story as well as a peek as to what she is up to while Ayda is in Hell trying to keep Lou from being dethroned. I hope you can enjoy it, and please read Wings Of Momentum if you’re curious about Ayda and the other characters that help her grow.

Reggie will be back, and depending on how well-liked her short story is, I may also find time to bring her side of things to life. Thanks and take care! XXo

It was dark, and damned streetlights were flickering in and out as I came up the side road by my house. It usually would annoy me, but I stayed feeling content anyway. Ayda was learning to open up. She needed to. Plus, I was safe from that crazy bitch that kidnapped me. Through it all, I’d found the sexy man, or wolf, of my dreams.

I was never into dating, let alone sleeping with Others. I was quite against it. However, when I met Pheral for the first time, it was like love at first site. Or was that lust? Either way, his tall, dark, and quiet demeanor swept me out of my striped socks. Did I mention he was sexy? With those almond shaped exotic eyes, he could melt the polar caps.

When I pulled up along the stone walls shielding the houses, my heart held a beat, hoping he was there, but I knew he wouldn’t be. Pheral’s boss, and pack leader, Cash, took on their pack as the new Alpha in charge. Pheral was helping with the transition. He isn’t an Alpha, or a Beta, just another wolf.

“Ah, damn, well, I guess it’s me and a glass of wine tonight! Maybe even some smokey smoke?”

I was talking to the charm on my wrist, but it didn’t answer. It never does. But one day soon, I hope. My mother said it held my familiar’s soul and that it would need my help to find its body. She also said once, “When it speaks, you’ll eventually regret wishing it did.”

After parking my car under the strobing street light, I walked up the stone steps to my house. It wasn’t big but sat on a hill, squashed next to other tiny houses. The neighborhood’s littered with Others like myself. All I saw were dollar signs, though. I was their fortune teller, making a fortune in return.

Other than that sexy hunk of wolf meat, there was nothing surer of a wet dream than the almighty dollar sign, to me at least.

Unlocking my door, I realized I had missed the familiar scent of sage and lemongrass. It wafted towards me as I closed the door behind me.

“I’m home,” I said to whoever or whatever was listening.

Flicking on the lamp next to the door, I headed for my candles. It was the first step in my personal comfort and feeling of protection.

“Light to fill dark, fire to warm the soul, Goddess of Protection, please bless this home,” I murmured, my voice carrying around the house.

Once I was done saying my prayers, I walked over to the small kitchen. My entire house was an open floor, other than the bathroom and bedroom, so it was nice because I could see the TV as I worked on my little island in the middle of my little kitchen.

I have two doors in my kitchen and one that is hidden. The bathroom and back patio door was obvious, but my basement, or magic dungeon, as Ayda would call it, was behind the tall pantry-type cabinet by my fridge. I needed a place to store my mixers, potions, and valuables for the craft, and the small basement the house came with was perfect.

I grabbed the Western History book that sat amongst random books on karma sutra and dishes to eat off the body and pulled it. The latch clicked behind it, and the cabinet popped forward. Why that book, you ask? Well, think about it. Most people find history boring, and when surrounded by delicious, exciting things to look at, who’d choose something simple?

I plugged in the two thousand fairy lights that took Ayda and me three days to hang, and the entire basement lit up like Vegas.

Walking down the old stone steps, I could feel the energy from Ley lines that crisscrossed everywhere under the ground. I wasn’t Fey, but I could still feel them.

A knocking sound and then a banging of boxes suddenly filled my ears.

“Hush it, or I’ll start a fire and roast marshmallows over you!”

Among some of my most valued items, some things were priceless or dangerous. The most priceless are the demon’s soul, a fairy’s essence, and a vampire’s body parts. They weren’t items, just the boxes that housed them.

All bad seeds, of course, but there they sat in my basement. Three boxes, by my shelves, out of the prying eyes of curious cats.

I’m not in the business of bounty hunting anymore, and it’s a piece of me that Ayda doesn’t know about. So when she visits, and they cause a ruckus, I tell her it’s from magic, and she shrugs, ignoring them. I prefer it that way, for my safety and hers.

There was furious scratching coming from one of the boxes.

Snapping my fingers, they all started in on the “Poor me,” “Let me out,” and my favorite complainer, the demon, “Where the hell you been?”

Taking a deep breath, I sat at my big wooden circle table top, propped on an old wooden whiskey barrel, and said, “Okay, one at a time. I’m not staying down here all night. I have wine waiting and some herbs to partake in.”

“Me first, me first! Please let me out! It’s been ages since I’ve seen the sun. I really need to see the sun!”

I laughed, “You’re a vampire! And you used that excuse last month! If I let you out, and the sun hit’s you, you’re just another pile of dust for me to clean up. Negative, nope, you are stuck serving eternity. That was the agreement between your master and me. It’s not my fault you drained an entire village! NEXT!”

This time it was the fairy, and she was a trickster down to the bones, a deadly one.

“Reggie, love, aren’t we friends? It’s been, what, over a hundred? Don’t you think I’ve learned my lesson? I am sorry, and because I’ve had soo much time to think, I want to repay them for what I did. So please let me out, and I promise I will never do it, again. I’ll become a nun, or something.”

Rolling my eyes at her promise, I responded, “Nun, my ass! You drugged AND slept with a King, under the guise of his own daughter! Do you realize the mental trauma you inflicted on the Queen, and her younger brother, when they walked in? It isn’t happening, doll. You still have 600 years to serve, NEXT!”

There was silence. Interesting.

“I said next?”

Still no answer.

“Awe, come on, Steve, don’t pout, let it out. Once my ass is on the first step of those stairs, I ain’t coming back down here,” I said, waiting.

The demon, who I call Steve because his name is bizarre and hard to pronounce, isn’t an ordinary run-of-the-mill demon. He was actually banished from Hell and refused to tell me why, but I still ended up sticking his incorporeal form in a small box. Remember all those railroad killings in the 1890s? Yeah, it was Steve.

“Alright, honey bunnies,” I said, standing and walking over to the shelf, grabbing a small box of special herbs, “Rejection session is over. Good night, everyone!”

I walked back to the stairs and was about to snap my fingers to quiet the whining and protests when Steve finally spoke, the bastard.

“Where were you?”

I sighed and looked at the small box, debating if I should stay or should I go.

“I was busy being kidnapped, trapping, and sending one of your previous associates back to Hell. Oh, and meeting a sexy werewolf along the way. Anything else?”

“Are you okay?”

I laughed. Steve is cunning and knows how to control a conversation.

“Yes, but let’s not talk about me. What do you want to say today, Steve? It wasn’t your fault? You didn’t do it?”

“Why would I? You never believe me anyway.”

I turned and sat my butt on the cold steps.

“Bingo, I never do. Because if it were true, we both would know it by now, right? You were possessing that poor innocent man and then killing all those women before I pulled you out of him. There’s no denying that!”

The wooden ammo box he was trapped in shook and banged on the ground when he yelled, “It wasn’t me!! I never killed anyone! I swear!”

A little dirt flew around, and I started thinking I needed to clean the place when he finally stopped and got quiet.

“Are you done?”

He didn’t answer me. I figured he wouldn’t because he knows he’s given me the same innocent song and dance for the past hundred and thirty years.

“Look, sugarcakes, if I had a way to prove that two lower-class demons could possess the same body, I would speak to my contact from Heaven and have them investigate. I would even talk to Ayda about it. But there was no way you were in there with another demon. I would have felt it. The damn thing would have been pulled right out with you. So, let’s stop here, okay? I’m tired and really need a drink.”

I stood up and snapped my fingers right as Steve said something that made me snap their voices back to audio.

“What did you say?”