Black-Hearted Devil

By Sierra Dean

The ghosts of the past are haunting Genie McQueen.

The dead have been trailing in Genie’s shadow for months, but now they’ve decided to step into the light. When her supposedly dead mother returns from the grave very much alive, Genie knows trouble is stirring.

Mercy McQueen isn’t interested in mother-daughter bonding time. She’s back with vengeance on her mind and will stop at nothing to make her children’s lives a living hell. She’s brought along some spooks from Genie’s past—familiar faces and ones she had forgotten—to turn every waking hour into a nightmare.

The young werewolf alpha will need to use every trick up her sleeve if she’s going to get the dearly departed back into their graves. And she’ll need to face some skeletons buried so deep in the closet she forgot they were there.

Defeating Mercy will take Genie from the depths of the bayou to the streets of New York, and might just need a little something Secret to get the job done.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Publishing
• Release date: May 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781094440682

Sierra Dean

Sierra Dean is the kind of adult who forgot she was supposed to grow up. She spends most of her days making up stories, and most of her evenings watching baseball or playing video games. She lives in Winnipeg, Canada with two temperamental cats and one sweet tempered dog. When not building new worlds, she can be found making cupcakes and checking Twitter.

Book preview

Chapter One

I’m not sure how most people would react when their once-beheaded mother returns from the dead, but I ran.

My mission had been grim but simple: dig up my mother’s head and give it to Beau Cain as payment for services rendered. What I hadn’t counted on was finding her makeshift grave empty.

What I really hadn’t counted on was turning around to find the formerly dead Mercy McQueen standing behind me, head planted firmly on shoulders, telling me what a naughty, naughty girl I’d been.

Frankly: fuck that.

I took off running into the trees, the sound of her laughter crackling like wood in bonfire, echoing in my ears as I tried to put enough distance between us to feel safe again.

How much distance would that be? I wasn’t sure I could run all the way to Australia.

I had some experience with encountering nightmares when I was awake. For over a year the specter of a burned woman had been appearing to me at very inconvenient times, doing her part to convince me I was losing my mind.

Except I knew she was real because I could smell her.

If there was one sense a werewolf learned to trust implicitly, it was their sense of smell. And much like that charred ghost, I’d smelled my mother with such clarity the scent of her was in my nostrils even now.

She had been real.

How she had been real was another question entirely, but one I hadn’t been about to stick around and quiz her on. I had literally seen her head in a box after my sister cut it off. That was a complicated enough story on its own. We didn’t need a second chapter.

Yet there she’d been standing only a few feet away from me, and her head had been perfectly in place.

Her laughter grew quieter but no less chilling as I ran.

There was one kind of death no one came back from, and that was beheading. Vampires couldn’t heal themselves, werewolves couldn’t, fey couldn’t. I knew of no single being that had the ability to reattach a severed head.

If I’d been a scientist, perhaps my mother’s return would have been exciting. An unexpected opportunity to learn about supernatural reanimation. But as it was, I knew what a monster she’d been in life. There was a reason Secret had lobbed Mercy’s head off in the first place, and it was better for all of us if that bitch had stayed dead and buried.

She wasn’t a ghost. The smell was a big tip-off there, but so were the words she’d spoken. Not the content of them, so much, but the fact she could speak at all. Ghosts had no lungs—they were dead, after all, and had no corporeal parts—so they couldn’t speak.

So, she couldn’t possibly be alive, but she also wasn’t a ghost.

My mind was racing almost as fast as my legs were. I barely noticed the dried branches lashing at my face and bare arms. It might have been early November, but I had planned to be digging, and werewolves tended to run warm at the best of times. I hadn’t needed a sweater.

Now I was being scraped up, and I was covered in a thin sheen of sweat, making the cold air cling to me. I’d had to go deep into the woods on my uncle Callum’s property to find the place my aunt Savannah had put Mercy. No one had wanted to keep her anywhere near the house.

Was this why?

Had they known this was a possibility?

After a few minutes of breathless headlong running, I broke through the denser brush of the woods and hit a small creek that circled the rear of Callum’s property. Under normal circumstances I might have gone a few feet up the shoreline to find the little footbridge. Instead, I didn’t even slow down. I charged through the shallow stream and up the other side, barreling through the old trees that hung heavy with Spanish moss.

As soon as I saw the lights of the compound, I let out a little cry of relief.

Almost there.

A circle of small cabins were built up at the back of Callum’s palatial plantation mansion, each simple building painted a different bright color. Only a handful had lights on—they weren’t always occupied, but rather served as temporary housing to pack werewolves in need—but the lights at the pack bar, The Den, were blazing bright.

I made a beeline for the wood-slat building, the sound of laughter and music rolling like a fog over the lawn towards me.

Then someone grabbed me from behind.

I hadn’t heard anyone coming, hadn’t smelled anything. I’d been so totally focused on getting back to Callum and the other wolves I had barely believed it was possible she might actually be following me.

I screamed, and spun around, fingers curled into the human approximation of claws. Wrenching myself free of my attacker’s hold I swiped at their face, making sharp contact.

"Ow, a man’s voice said. Jesus fuck, Genie."

I froze.

A man’s voice.

Wilder’s voice.

Oh my God. I held his chin in my hands, and he jerked away, not surprisingly. A thin line of blood trickled down his cheek from where I’d gouged him below the eye. I’m so sorry.

What the hell? He touched his cheek gingerly, and looked at the glimmering red liquid on his fingers.

The wound would heal in minutes, but that was really beside the point.

"I’m so sorry," I repeated.

Being in his presence, in spite of my maiming him, put me at ease in a way I couldn’t articulate. All the tension and terror that had driven me through the woods melted away, leaving me sweaty and trembling, but with a real sense of I’m safe now coursing through me.

Wilder Shaw, my sometimes bodyguard and recently my all-the-time boyfriend, was exactly the kind of man you’d want by your side in a fucked-up scenario like this one.

He must have seen something on my face—perhaps the horrifying dread I was feeling—because his annoyance at being attacked quickly dissolved and his hands went to my cheeks, cupping my face.

It wasn’t until that moment that I realized I was crying.

"Genie, what happened?"

Under different circumstances it probably wouldn’t have seemed all that strange for someone to be crying after they returned from their mother’s grave. This was hardly what I would call normal circumstances, however, and Wilder knew full well that my relationship with Mercy hadn’t been a close or loving one.

Plus there was that whole being terrified thing. My heart must have been beating a hundred miles a minute, and he was close enough there was no doubt he could feel it, and that he could smell the fear coming off me.

Werewolf senses made it hard to keep stuff like that hidden.

Not that it mattered right now. I was in no state of mind to pretend everything was okay. Everything was definitely not okay.

M-Mercy, I stammered. I went to get her skull for Beau, and… her grave was empty. Beau, being Beau Cain, a man who had done me a pretty massive favor, but like all his other favors it came with a steep price tag.

Someone took her head?

I shuddered. No.

I don’t understand. He’d moved his hands to my shoulders, rubbing the bare skin on my arms. I was completely covered in goose bumps and no matter what Wilder did I couldn’t shake them.

She’s alive.

He stopped rubbing my arms.

For a moment, he was so still the only motion I saw was the wind ruffling his dark blond hair. Sorry, what?

Now that I’d said it out loud, it seemed to remind me she was still out there, and even though I hadn’t heard her chase me, that didn’t mean she wasn’t making her way here as we spoke. Something had brought her back, after all.

If Mercy McQueen had returned from the dead, she had a little more than haunting on her mind.

Chapter Two

Genie, slow down.

I had all but dragged Wilder behind me as I hauled ass into my uncle Callum’s mansion. We’d bypassed the rowdy noises coming from The Den, because I knew perfectly well the werewolf king wouldn’t be there.

Sure enough, we found him settled in behind his expansive wooden desk, a small banker’s lamp the only thing illuminating the room, while he filled out some paperwork by hand. I slammed the office door behind me, getting his attention.

Eugenia, I was wondering when I’d see you.

In my haste to get the dirty business of digging up Mercy, I had bypassed the appropriate polite greeting I owed him as my king. Family or not, there were rules to be followed. I automatically dipped into a quick bow, knowing it would be easier to do things this way than to tell him it wasn’t important.

I didn’t have that kind of breath to waste tonight.

Beheading, I blurted. Beheading is supposed to kill anything.

He lifted an eyebrow, the only indication of confusion he would allow. His handsome face rarely changed its countenance, as he tried to always look completely impassive.

I’m afraid I don’t follow. To his credit, he didn’t look at Wilder for clarification. If he was going to seek and explanation, he would get it from me. That was how the hierarchy worked. I was an Alpha. I had my own pack. Wilder, while he was genetically primed to be an Alpha, and had spent time in Shreveport at an apprentice to their Alpha, had since tied himself to me, meaning he accepted that I outranked him. Callum would always look to me before Wilder. Gender didn’t matter here.

Mercy is alive.

No, she certainly is not. He seemed almost offended that I would suggest it.

Yes. She. Fucking. Is. I knew I should have tried to keep my temper in check, but I just couldn’t. Not now. Not with her potentially coming for all of us.

Eugenia. He made my name sound flat and empty, a magical intonation usually reserved for parents who were trying to keep their shit together. Callum wasn’t my father, but he was the closest thing I had to one, and I know he loved me as if I were his own daughter.

Which was probably the only reason he wasn’t throttling me right now.

Look, I’m sorry, but you weren’t there, you didn’t see what I saw.

And what, precisely, is that?

Mercy is alive. She’s alive. Not a ghost, not a figment of my imagination. A living breathing woman who I could see and smell and hear.

A few different emotions seemed to flicker over his face all at the same time, and I knew he was trying to decide which direction to take this in next.

Where did you see her?

At her grave. Where Savannah buried her head.

A tick in his jaw told me he wanted to say more about this, but apparently he had other questions instead. And you said you could smell her?

Now we were getting somewhere.

Yes. It was her, Callum. Please believe me. I wouldn’t be telling you this if I wasn’t a thousand percent sure of what I saw.

He sat back in his chair, his face thrown into shadow now that it was out of the lamplight. Scratching his chin he looked up to the ceiling as if to ask, Why me? and then leaned forward again.

You understand why I think this is madness. Beheadings are permanent. They’re one of the only absolutely certain ways to kill any supernatural. Vampire, werewolf, fae. There’s no coming back from a beheading.

Tell that to your sister, I countered.

She wasn’t even buried with her body.

I know. The rest of her remains had been disposed of at my grandmother’s farm in Manitoba, up in Canada. I never asked how Secret had disposed of the body, but I assumed a bonfire was involved. Fire, like beheading, was one of those reliable ways to get rid of pesky paranormal creatures.

This isn’t possible, Callum said.

"If you asked someone on the street five years ago if we were possible, they would say no, so let’s maybe no throw that word around like it really means something."

He sighed.

Wilder cleared his throat. Sir, for what it’s worth, I saw Genie when she came out of the woods, and I’ve never seen her that scared in my life. And we just exorcised a demon a couple of weeks ago, so that’s saying something. She doesn’t scare easily.

She’s a McQueen. There was the faintest hint of pride in Callum’s tone, under all the annoyance.

Please, I begged, not even sure what I was asking for. Did I want him to deal with it? To go look for her? Or did I simply want him to believe what I was saying?

He pushed back his chair, and this time he didn’t sigh or make a show of it. Callum was a large, imposing man, and on his feet he dwarfed me, making me feel like the subordinate I was. Instinctively I bowed my head again. He just had that kind of effect on me. I glanced over and saw Wilder doing the same.

Wilder, who was naturally taller than me, had stooped down, making sure he didn’t challenge Callum for height.

My uncle pushed past us and opened the office door. It was then the smell of smoke hit me for the first time. It wasn’t the pleasant, campfire aroma that sometimes came from the back lot, but rather an acrid, unpleasant odor that made me wrinkle my nose.

Something wasn’t right.

Callum sensed it too, even before we heard the shouting.

The three of us took off running for the back, where a dozen or so pack members were creating bedlam. Two men, both in a state of panic, collided with each other at top speed, collapsing to the ground on top of one another.

Beyond them, was the source of the nightmare, and the smell.

The Den was burning.

It hadn’t been much more than a little wooden cabin to begin with, probably not to code, and most likely the highest order of fire trap, but I don’t think any of us had ever thought something like this would happen.

Callum, Wilder, and I stood dumbfounded, watching as the blazing hot tongues of flame climbed into the night sky, raining down ash over the whole scene.

And there, at the edge of the woods, barely visible through the haze of thick smoke, I saw my mother watching.

She smiled.

Chapter Three

The sun was already rising when we finally got the fire out.

Light shimmered in bright orange-yellow cutouts through the trees at the edge of Callum’s property, dappling the ground with a warm patchwork of shadows. Dew glimmered in the tall grass like diamonds. It would have been pretty if it wasn’t for the smoldering ruins of what had once been the pack’s beloved bar.

Quick efforts by the pack members on hand had kept the fallout limited. The Den was a goner, but there was only minor smoke damage to the exterior of the mansion, and a shed near the bar would likely need to be torn down thanks to extensive heat damage to the outside walls.

The cabins were fine. The house was fine.

Still, large flakes of gray ash skittered over the lawn, and the charred skeleton of wood where the bar had been was a reminder that everything was not okay. Whether or not anyone believed me, I knew what I had seen, and I knew Mercy was responsible for this.

Everyone had been a bit too busy keeping the fire in check for anyone to go out into the woods to look for my mother, and now that the yard was swarming with human firefighters, it was hardly the time to press Callum for action.

I sat on the back steps of the main house, an afghan draped over my shoulders, and an untouched cup of coffee in my hands that had been pressed there by Lina, the housekeeper. Poor Lina, she had arrived an hour earlier, prepared to start the day’s work of feeding hungry werewolves their breakfast, only to find the estate in chaos.

She hadn’t said anything to me when she gave me the cup, simply smoothed my hair down in her gentle, maternal way, and returned to the kitchen.

Mouths still needed feeding, and Lina could be counted on to jump into action even at the worst of times. I could already smell bacon frying from inside the house. The men and women out on the lawn would be starving, no doubt.

Me, I couldn’t even fathom the idea of eating.

Callum was walking alongside a man in a crisp, official looking fireman’s uniform, not the soot-covered jumpsuits worn by those who had put the blaze out. The man exuded an air of authority even from where I was sitting.

Amelia, Callum’s second in command, trailed a few feet behind them, listening dutifully to everything being said. I suspect there was a lot of talk about unsafe structures, insurance money, and possibly arson investigations. Callum wouldn’t want an investigation. The last thing the pack needed was outsiders traipsing all over the grounds, especially those looking to uncover secrets.

No, he’d forgo collecting any insurance money if it meant avoiding an investigation.

The two men shook hands, then the fireman put a business card in Callum’s palm and wandered back around to the front of the house, where all the cars were parked.

Callum handed Amelia the card, then returned to the still steaming pile of rubble. A few other members of the pack were standing nearby, wearing similar shell-shocked expressions to one another. It was hard to believe something like this could happen on our property.

This was where we were supposed to be our safest. If we couldn’t feel protected here, how could we expect to find sanctuary anywhere?

Wilder, who had launched into action immediately last night, pulling people from the burning building, carrying heavy loads of water, doing anything in his power to keep order, was standing a few feet away from Callum and the others, his expression difficult to read.

The bar hadn’t meant much to him, he’d barely had time to take advantage of it, since we so rarely found ourselves at Callum’s compound these days. Yet he’d put his own life on the line to save the property and those who lived here.

His cheeks and forehead were black with soot, and his favorite army-green T-shirt was absolutely ruined.

I got to my feet and moved towards him as a moth might move to a light bulb, drawn with magnetic force to the only person on this property I wanted to be near right now.

I approached him quietly, his whole body so rigid I could feel the tension coming off him in waves. He started slightly when he realized I was standing next to him.

Handing him the cup of coffee Lina had given me, I wrapped the afghan around his shoulder so we were both pressed together inside its warmth. He took a sip from the mug before putting an arm around my waist, leaning the weight of his body against me.

I must smell terrible. He sounded exhausted, every word a struggle.

Nah. You smell like campfire. It’s nice. It was, admittedly, a weird thing to say while staring at the arson-destroyed remains of a beloved home bar, but sometimes you just needed to say the inappropriate thing.

The truth was, it didn’t matter that Wilder smelled like sweat, and anxiety, and burnt wood. He still smelled like Wilder, and it was a scent I had come to think of as home.

It was Mercy, you know. I took the coffee cup when he offered it back to me, finally taking a sip. Lina sure knew how to make a mean cup of chicory coffee. I handed it to him again.

This? He nodded to the burned shell in front of us.

Yeah. I saw her last night again, after we got back to the house. I saw her after the fire.

Did you say anything to Callum?

Not yet. He’s been a little busy. And I’m still not sure he believes me.

"I’m not sure I would have believed you six months ago. But damn if spending all this time with you hasn’t taught me that anything is possible."

I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or not.

Just a fact. He smiled, and in spite

Reviews for Black-Hearted Devil

[ngan tran · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Good book. Fun and interesting reading. Good twists and turns.