Queen of the Dead (The Dead and Not So Dead Book 1) Read online

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1 - Narcissa

  Chapter 2 - Narcissa

  Chapter 3 - Raphael

  Chapter 4 - Narcissa

  Chapter 5 - Abel

  Chapter 6 - Narcissa

  Chapter 7 - Zachariah

  Chapter 8 - Narcissa

  Chapter 9 - Narcissa

  Chapter 10 - Dorian

  Chapter 11 - Narcissa

  Chapter 12 - Alaric

  Chapter 13 - Declan

  Chapter 14 - Narcissa

  Chapter 15 - Narcissa

  M. Sinclair

  Copyright

  Copyright © M. Sinclair, 2019. All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without the permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are products of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  *Fantasy Reverse Harem*

  Narc and her men swear a lot. As well, please be advised that the book contains darker themes such as gore and violence. Additionally, sexual themes are suitable for mature audiences +18.

  For those who love our over the top alpha males AND our kickass heroines.

  “Create an empire together.”

  Prologue

  Had humans always been this clumsy?

  I stalked the human male from the shadows, moving with an ease and grace that was only possible in my incorporeal form. I wasn’t positive that he was the right choice but his proximity to my goal made him seem like a tempting offer. The best so far.

  It was moments like this that I wished I wasn’t part of the larger plan. Moments where I wished to stalk up to her door and rip it off its hinges. Then she would scream. Then she wouldn’t be able to escape me anymore.

  I gave her credit though. She had been the only creature in existence to successfully murder me.

  Even in my death though, I knew I would be back and when I resurfaced it would be for the last time on earth realm.

  My last time and hers.

  I would be able to keep and control her in my realm. Over time she would learn to understand and reciprocate the strong obsessive feelings so harbored for her. If she didn’t? Well, that didn’t matter much to me.

  The human dropped the trash in the green bin to the left of his house. I slipped up behind him and without hesitation, I pressed through his weak physical barrier. I never had to worry about personal wards or property wards with humans. Their lack of knowledge regarding the supernatural made them an easy target. The boy groaned slightly as my form stretched to fit inside his and his eyes opened affording me a new view of the world. His view. The possession was complete.

  With ease I flipped through his memories and smiled at my choice. Yes. He and I had something very much in common. When I was done with him, I might even considering letting him live. After all, he deserved a reward for being such a good vessel.

  I walked around the front of the house and peered at the familiar neighborhood. Very little had changed and that didn’t surprise me. It wasn’t known for being particularly modern. I stepped up the wide front steps and a man, who my vessel regarded as his creator, looked at me in confusion.

  “Come on boy.” He shook his head in frustration. “We need to be out the door in ten minutes. This city won’t run itself.”

  I grinned realizing exactly who this man was. Yes, this really did keep getting better and better.

  Narcissa

  The dead were a petty bunch of bastards.

  Now, you may have been wondering: How the hell does Narc know the dead are petty?

  Well, that is an easy answer to give. Around the French Quarter of New Orleans, I am known as the Queen of the Dead. A pompous ego boosting title, heralded by my ancestors, and gifted to me due to my necromancer abilities.

  The funniest part? The supernatural community went along with this odd hierarchy my family had constructed. Not only went along with it, but relied on it to maintain the peace of New Orleans as a whole. So, considering the only living members of my family were my wonderfully vicious grandmother and myself, I had taken over ruling the dead.

  Unfortunately, that included dealing with the not so dead as well.

  Now, I don’t want to completely misrepresent the rest of my family. Despite their deaths they have continued to be fairly helpful and I always enjoyed my aunt’s petty commentary mixed with my mother’s daily insults. I had the ability to block them out but honestly when I was all alone in this massive Garden District home, I could use all the company I could keep. Even if that company was the dead.

  The household employees we kept were a tad awkward around me. It probably had to do with the illusion that I randomly talked to myself. Often. I wasn’t, of course. The dead talked a blue streak if you gave them half a chance, and my grandma knew that. But did she ever fucking defend me? No.

  Bitch.

  Now, you are probably wondering why I was ruling when my grandma was still alive? To that I answer, she doesn’t want to. There are many benefits to being the oldest and only other relative alive, which includes handing over the responsibilities you don't want. In this case, she didn’t want to be Queen so once I was seventeen, I took over. It didn’t help that I slipped into the position with an ease that would have surprised even the most seasoned leader.

  I loved my grandma and we had our issues, but we saw eye to eye on one thing for sure. She wasn’t very much the “leader” type.

  Despite being 103, the woman was healthier than ever. That was how it worked as a necromancer though, the more dead you were around the healthier you were. It made for a thrilling and creepy life. Our family members not given the gift lived normal healthy life spans. But my grandma, for example, wasn’t expected to pass away for nearly four hundred more years. I know. Crazy, right? Before her, our most recent gifted relative was my great, great, times a million grandma. When she passed away, I received her abilities upon my birth.

  There were really only two rules in the family when it came to our gift. You had to be a woman and the gift only resided in two people at a time. To be fair, I’m not sure they were rules as much as a pattern. Either way, my grandma and I were going to be around for some time. Something that had thrilled my mother because it had meant little responsibility for her, dead or alive.

  It was a double-edged sword though. She didn’t miss the responsibility, but she resented our nifty tricks. Mommy dearest wasn’t a fan. Instead, she and my aunt drank, often and throughout most of my childhood. She became a rowdy roommate rather than a parent. My grandma became my best friend but she, too, seemed to lack any real child-rearing skills. So I grew up with essentially no parent figure in my life despite the plethora of family members surrounding me. Dead and alive.

  Don’t even get me started on my ignorance when it comes to my father. Pair that with some emotional abuse and you’ve got a bundle of repressed emotions named Narcissa. My ability to repress emotions was nearly as good as my inability to recognize others emotions. It was a fucking talent. Although, it did make things in my life fairly black and white.

  I had been completely unsurprised when I came home from school one day to the ghosts of my mother and her sister drinking phantom coffee in the living room and gossiping shamelessly about a neighbor down the block. The two of them were freshly dead. Apparently it had been a mess of an accident. Someone plowed into their car. They hadn’t seemed upset about it, though. My mother even commented that she didn’t want to live a life where “my
mother is hotter than me” anyway.

  She wasn’t wrong. Grandma was pretty smoking.

  Honestly, death had made them ten times worse than life. They were more boisterous and petty than ever. The funeral had just been downright embarrassing. My mother had critiqued everyone’s memorial speeches while my aunt complained about how she looked. Yes. How her dead body looked. Morbid and tragically very much the norm for my life.

  So trust me, I am very well aware of just how petty the dead can be.

  The not so dead as well.

  For example, I was simply enjoying a cup of coffee on my porch just moments ago when a very familiar form began making its way down the pathway through the iron gates of my property. I knew my wards would let him through because he wasn’t an active threat to me. Why couldn’t there be wards for fucking annoying human men? Instead, I sat here looking at one of my previous senior classmates with frustration while he presented me with a stupid smirk.

  You heard that correct by the way. I just finished high school. How fucking funny is that shit? For four years I had found myself bored of that very human and state mandated requirement. Like, calm your shit humans. I’m going to be alive for half of a millennium. I’ll get my education at some point.

  Also, considering there was no class labeled “Dead People 101,” it had been rather useless.

  “Now, Narc,” he chided in a soft voice. “Why do you look so annoyed today? Don’t tell me you aren’t happy to see me.”

  I snorted and narrowed my eyes at the human. Jonathan Lourn was my neighbor from across the street and painfully unaware of the community around him packed full with monsters and things that go bump in the night. It wasn’t that he was a bad person or had a terrible personality. It’s just that a girl gets tired of rejecting someone after the hundredth time. I had a very stern no dating human rule. Actually, I didn’t really get to date anyone but that was more due to some very overprotective friends that luckily weren’t here.

  Lucky for Jonathan, that is.

  It was just a terrible idea to date a human as a necromancer. Not only would they die in less than a century, which even at eighteen I could see going miserably in the long term but usually they were so weird about magic. Pile that onto that the fact that necromancers were rumored to derive from succubae that resulted in a natural very addictive appeal and you’ve got a sticky, complicated mess.

  So, yes. Jonathan was a tad fixated but it would get so much worse if I gave him too much attention.

  Odds were I would never date or marry anyone, though. Not if my friends had anything to say about it. But that wasn’t because there wasn't any interest. The supernatural community of men liked me very much, thank you, and our effect wasn’t nearly as strong on them. If the number of Grandma’s boyfriends told me anything, it seemed the turning centuries did nothing to slow down our sex life. Gross, right? Thank the maker that my grandpa no longer hung around! I had never met the man but I imagined he would have been upset.

  But the best part of dating a supernatural though? They lived extended lifetimes like us and retained a youthful physical appearance longer. That essentially translated into a lack of a beer belly on your husband until he was at least two hundred.

  Grandma and I didn’t know for sure but, based on journals, we had estimated that necromancer aging slowed around twenty five. At that point it seemed that each one hundred years equated to twenty human years. Just like cats, you know? No. They aren’t the same really, I just like bringing fucking cats into the mix.

  As a result of this slow aging process, Grandma appeared to be in her late thirties and was a total babe. Something, as I mentioned previously, my mother hated. Me? I found it fucking hilarious.

  As I looked over Jonathan this morning, I found myself feeling very meh. It wasn’t that he was unattractive. It was that he was boring. He looked like a perfect little Ken Doll. Everything in exactly the right place in proper proportion. It wasn’t that perfectly aesthetic men weren’t my thing but I liked my men a little rougher. A few more scars. A few more piercings. The type that growl and snarl just a bit more than Johnnie here.

  I mean I am quite literally the Queen of the Fucking Dead, folks. I can’t date some polo-wearing douchebag who accessorized with a cocky jerk attitude. It would ruin my reputation. Not to mention, my friends would probably devour him whole. Some a little more literally than others. I needed them that vicious though. They helped me keep the peace.

  As a rational magic user and member of this community, I knew that you had to be a little unhinged to impress any point with the crazy, motherfucking monsters around here. So while I really did enjoy watching GOT and cuddling with cats, I had to maintain my bat shit crazy and violent reputation to keep them in line. My friends knew how much of a softie I could be but then crazy could be hella fun. Especially when they joined in. Grandma always had a good laugh when the supernatural community tattled on me and my insane violent streak.

  I was the boogeyman.

  My friends and I wielded fear like a blunt instrument to keep everyone in line. To the normals, we were a terrifying unit of powerful individuals ranging in age, experience, and power. There was no ranging the hotness though. Every one of my boys was hot as fuck. If I didn’t have such a fear of messing shit up between us, I’d be hard pressed to choose which I would jump on first.

  Our biggest secret? How cuddly and affectionate the five of us were in private. No one would take us seriously if they knew about our movie marathons, especially the Disney princess movie binge last weekend. It had been pretty fucking awesome. Lean-to fort in the living room and drunk on cheap beer.

  Honestly, I don’t know what I would do without them. So, I kept my hormones in check.

  “Narc?” Jonathan asked again as I returned my focus back to him.

  “I am annoyed, Johnnie boy.” I swung in the porch chair as I kicked my leather motorcycle boots up on the table in front of me. I had several pairs but these were my favorite because they hit a place on my calf that allowed me to keep a knife in it, while still allowing me to show off my tan legs. Priorities.

  “Why is that?” he asked in a sincere voice.

  “I was enjoying a fine cup of coffee but now you are making me interact socially.” I grinned as he scowled.

  My eyes flickered briefly to the gate as my wards pulsed. Another familiar, but very welcomed figure strode forward.

  Yikes. Bad luck Johnnie.

  “I don’t understand why you won’t get dinner with me, just once,” Johnnie huffed like the man-child he very much was.

  I smirked. “You just don’t eat at the same restaurants I do.”

  How does death and souls a la carte sound?

  He smirked. “I’ve seen you at that bar on Bourbon.”

  “Stalking are we?”

  A deep rough voice spoke right next to his ear. Johnathan jumped before letting out a curse. I bit back a laugh as Raphi rounded the human and sat next to me with a satisfied, predatory look fixed on Johnathan. His sugary scent wrapped around me as I offered him my half-filled coffee cup.

  We drank our coffee the same way. We were cute like that.

  “So, that’s it?” Jonathan asked, annoyed.

  I tore my gaze from Raphi. “What?”

  “He gets here and you’re going to ignore me?”

  Raphi let out a deep rumble. I squeezed his hand. “Johnathan, I didn’t ask you to come over and now my friend is here. I am sorry but you should have made plans if you wanted my undivided attention.”

  Not that Raphi had made plans with me in the first place, but he didn’t have to.

  “That’s what I’m trying to do!” Johnathan exclaimed loudly with frustration.

  An actual growl, very un-human-ish, came out of Raphi’s sculpted lips. His eyes flashed from a deep forest green speckled with gold, to obsidian black. Jonathan made a small noise and backed up on the stairs. He nearly fell flat on his back. I watched as he shot me a hurt look and ran, stumbling, out the gate.
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  How had he not put together the supernatural thing yet?

  I sighed with pleasure. Finally, I had my peace back.

  “I’m going to kill that kid,” Raphi admitted softly. He let his hand drift to the place behind me on the bench. I narrowed my eyes at his murderous expression. His eyes stayed focused on Jonathan even as he went into his house.

  “I’m offended,” I gasped with mock outrage. “Here I thought you were visiting me for the right reasons, like morning coffee and conversation.”

  Raphi’s head snapped toward me as he frowned. It was such a fucking cute look. Raphi was the big bad wolf, in all senses of the word, a self-exiled alpha werewolf in New Orleans. He had a hard edge to him, a bit blunt for most, but was extremely protective and passionate. Since he had no pack association, he was free to help me and powerful enough to be scary.

  We had first met back in freshman year when he had moved here with a few pack members. In most supernatural communities, the age of adulthood was seventeen. So, on his birthday he left the pack. It was a no brainer to offer him a position keeping these monsters in line. Plus, I had never got along with girls very well. Raphi stepped into the role of best friend.

  Did I also mention he’s hot? No? Okay.

  Well, he is.

  Raphael Sanchez is the poster child for a dark angel. His frame is bulkier than most of our friends and he stands around 6’2 which is short for most shifters, but that never stopped Raphi from kicking ass. He’s not a fighter by nature but necessity. When we aren’t required to act like total bad asses, I try to encourage that softer side. Just this month we had made progress. He told me that he was considering writing again. He had written for most of his life but when he departed his pack, he had taken a break. I offered to read his work. The man had fucking blushed.

  I know! I fell more in love with him, too.

  This morning his skin seemed extra clear and had a golden, amber shine to it. Scars ran along his arms and neck, memories of the abuse suffered at the hands of the pack he had left in New Mexico. The scars had turned a faint golden color and served to make him that much scarier. Once, when we had talked about them, he had mentioned the idea of getting tattoos to cover them up.