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  Whiskey Ginger

  Phantom Queen Book 1 - A Temple Verse Series

  Shayne Silvers

  Cameron O’Connell

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Shayne Silvers & Cameron O’Connell

  Whiskey Ginger

  The Phantom Queen Diaries Book 1

  A Temple Verse Series

  © 2018, Shayne Silvers / Argento Publishing, LLC / Cameron O’Connell

  [email protected]

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

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  BOOKS IN THE TEMPLE VERSE

  CHRONOLOGY: All stories in the Temple Verse are shown in chronological order on the following page

  PHANTOM QUEEN DIARIES

  WHISKEY GINGER

  COSMOPOLITAN - PREORDER NOW! - JUNE 19, 2018

  OLD FASHIONED - PREORDER NOW! - JUNE 26, 2018

  DARK AND STORMY - PREORDER NOW! - JULY 10, 2018

  FEATHERS AND FIRE SERIES

  UNCHAINED

  RAGE

  WHISPERS

  ANGEL’S ROAR

  BOOK #5 - COMING SUMMER 2018…

  NATE TEMPLE SERIES

  FAIRY TALE - FREE prequel novella #0 for my subscribers

  OBSIDIAN SON

  BLOOD DEBTS

  GRIMM

  SILVER TONGUE

  BEAST MASTER

  TINY GODS

  DADDY DUTY (Novella #6.5)

  WILD SIDE

  WAR HAMMER

  NINE SOULS

  BOOK #10 - COMING SUMMER 2018…

  CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER: TEMPLE VERSE

  FAIRY TALE (TEMPLE PREQUEL)

  OBSIDIAN SON (TEMPLE 1)

  BLOOD DEBTS (TEMPLE 2)

  GRIMM (TEMPLE 3)

  SILVER TONGUE (TEMPLE 4)

  BEAST MASTER (TEMPLE 5)

  TINY GODS (TEMPLE 6)

  DADDY DUTY (TEMPLE NOVELLA 6.5)

  UNCHAINED (FEATHERS… 1)

  RAGE (FEATHERS… 2)

  WILD SIDE (TEMPLE 7)

  WAR HAMMER (TEMPLE 8)

  WHISPERS (FEATHERS… 3)

  WHISKEY GINGER (PHANTOM… 1)

  NINE SOULS (TEMPLE 9)

  COSMOPOLITAN (PHANTOM… 2)

  ANGEL’S ROAR (FEATHERS… 4)

  OLD FASHIONED (PHANTOM…3)

  DARK AND STORMY (PHANTOM… 4)

  SHAYNE AND CAMERON

  Shayne Silvers, here.

  Cameron O’Connell is one helluva writer, and he’s worked tirelessly to merge a story into the Temple Verse that would provide a different and unique voice, but a complementary tone to my other novels. SOME people might say I’m hard to work with. But certainly, Cameron would never…

  Hey! Pipe down over there, author monkey! Get back to your writing cave and finish the next Phantom Queen Novel!

  Ahem. Now, where was I?

  This is book 1 in the Phantom Queen Diaries, but books 2-4 will launch within a 30 day period starting June 2018, tying into the existing Temple Verse with Nate and Callie. This series could also be read independently if one so chose. Then again, you, the reader, will get SO much more out of my existing books (and this series) by reading them all in tandem.

  But that’s not up to us. It’s up to you, the reader.

  What do you think? Should Quinn MacKenna be allowed to go drinking with Callie? To throw eggs at Chateau Falco while Nate’s skipping about in Fae? To let this fiery, foul-mouthed, Boston redhead come play with the monsters from Missouri?

  You tell us…

  Chapter 1

  The pasty guitarist hunched forward, thrust a rolled-up wad of paper deep into one nostril, and snorted a line of blood crystals—frozen hemoglobin that I’d smuggled over in a refrigerated canister—with the uncanny grace of a drug addict. He sat back, fangs gleaming, and pawed at his nose. “That’s some bodacious shit. Hey, bros,” he said, glancing at his fellow band members, “come hit this shit before it melts.”

  He fetched one of the backstage passes hanging nearby, pried the plastic badge from its lanyard, and used it to split up the crystals, murmuring something in an accent that reminded me of California. Not the California, but you know, Cali-foh-nia—the land of beaches, babes, and bros. I retrieved a toothpick from my pocket and punched it through its thin wrapper. “So,” I asked no one in particular, “now that ye have the product, who’s payin’?”

  Another band member stepped out of the shadows to my left, and I don’t mean that figuratively, either—the fucker literally stepped out of the shadows. I scowled at him, but hid my surprise, nonchalantly rolling the toothpick from one side of my mouth to the other.

  The rest of the band gathered around the dressing room table, following the guitarist’s lead by preparing their own snorting utensils—tattered magazine covers, mostly. Typically, you’d do this sort of thing with a dollar-bill, maybe even a Benjamin if you were flush. But fangers like this lot couldn’t touch cash directly—in God We Trust and all that. Of course, I didn’t really understand why sucking blood the old-fashioned way had suddenly gone out of style. More of a rush, maybe?

  “It lasts longer,” the vampire next to me explained, catching my mildly curious expression. “It’s especially good for shows and stuff. Makes us look, like, less—”

  “Creepy?” I offered, my Irish brogue lilting just enough to make it a question.

  “Pale,” he finished, frowning.

  I shrugged. “Listen, I’ve got places to be,” I said, holding out my hand.

  “I’m sure you do,” he replied, smiling. “Tell you what, why don’t you, like, hang around for a bit? Once that wears off,” he dipped his head toward the bloody powder smeared across the table’s surface, “we may need a pick-me-up.” He rested his hand on my arm and our gazes locked.

  I blinked, realized what he was trying to pull, and rolled my eyes. His widened in surprise, then shock as I yanked out my toothpick and shoved it through his hand.

  “Motherfuck—”

  “I want what we agreed on,” I declared. “Now. No tricks.”

  The rest of the band saw what happened and rose faster than I could blink. They circled me, their grins feral…they might have even seemed intimidating if it weren’t for the fact that they each had a case of the sniffles—I had to work extra hard not to think about what it felt like to have someone else’s blood dripping down my nasal cavity.

  I held up a hand.

  “Can I ask ye gentlemen a question before we get started?” I asked. “Do ye even have what I asked for?”

  Two o
f the band members exchanged looks and shrugged. The guitarist, however, glanced back towards the dressing room, where a brown paper bag sat next to a case full of makeup. He caught me looking and bared his teeth, his fangs stretching until it looked like it would be uncomfortable for him to close his mouth without piercing his own lip.

  “Follow-up question,” I said, eyeing the vampire I’d stabbed as he gingerly withdrew the toothpick from his hand and flung it across the room with a snarl. “Do ye do each other’s make-up? Since, ye know, ye can’t use mirrors?”

  I was genuinely curious.

  The guitarist grunted. “Mike, we have to go on soon.”

  “Wait a minute. Mike?” I turned to the snarling vampire with a frown. “What happened to The Vampire Prospero?” I glanced at the numerous fliers in the dressing room, most of which depicted the band members wading through blood, with Mike in the lead, each one titled The Vampire Prospero in Rocky Horror Picture Show font. Come to think of it…Mike did look a little like Tim Curry in all that leather and lace.

  I was about to comment on the resemblance when Mike spoke up, “Alright, change of plans, bros. We’re gonna drain this bitch before the show. We’ll look totally—”

  “Creepy?” I offered, again.

  “Kill her.”

  Chapter 2

  I figured I had a little time before they made a move, so I shrugged off my thick woolen peacoat and hung it on a nearby chair as the band advanced.

  No sense ruining a perfectly good coat on these amateurs.

  You probably think I’m insane for taking on four vampires at once, but I’d grown up in South Boston and had seen my fair share of fights, with the scars to prove it; by now, I knew how to read a dangerous situation—and this didn’t cut it.

  I mean sure, Mike and his band of Gothic Beach Boys were vampires. They’d killed people. But that didn’t make them tough, it simply made them killers. One look at their twitching fingers and shifty eyes told me all I needed to know about my chances.

  These posers had never been in a real scrap in their lives.

  In fact, it was painfully obvious they had no idea that attacking as a group—even if that group happens to have preternatural reflexes—hinged on somebody getting the party started. They had, on the other hand, figured out that—no matter how good your odds are of jumping someone and leaving them a bloody mess on the floor—whoever goes first has the highest probability of taking a lick or two.

  Of course, I wasn’t about to wait around for that.

  “Mike the vampire,” I muttered under my breath as I drew my contingency plan from where it hung at the small of my back. The kiss—that’s what you call a cluster of vampires, by the way—halted as one and stared at the multi-colored monstrosity I held in my hands. I cocked it a handful of times and smiled.

  Then I pulled the trigger.

  I left a few minutes later with the paper bag in hand. On my way out, I passed one of the concert staffers rushing down the hallway. You know the type—the crew members dressed in uniform shades of black who are always chittering away into their headsets and running around before a show starts—the ones who can’t stop looking at their clipboards.

  “They should be out here by now,” he muttered as he passed by.

  “Oy!” I called. The staffer turned, and I realized he was just a kid, really. Probably fresh out of high school, his cheeks still laden with baby fat. I sighed, then shot him in his poor, innocent face.

  “What the hell, lady?” he yelled, raising his clipboard—told you so—to shield himself from the stream of water spewing from my Super Soaker 2000. He spluttered and tumbled backwards, completely doused in holy water.

  “Sorry, boyo,” I said as I headed towards the stairwell that led to the alley outside. “Had to be sure they wouldn’t snack on ye.” I slung the water gun’s strap over my shoulder and slid it out of view beneath my coat, choosing to ignore the steady stream of curses being directed at my back. Still, I felt bad for the kid. I could only imagine his terrified reaction when he finally walked into that dressing room; the skin on Mike’s face had only just begun growing back by the time I left.

  Once outside, I took a deep breath of the crisp winter air, holding it in for as long as possible, ignoring the faint odor of trash wafting down the alleyway. I cursed inwardly for putting myself in such a shitty situation; I put on a tough front, but things could have gone a lot worse if any of the vampires had been the least bit scrappy. I finally felt my heartrate begin to slow.

  “Seems like you did us a favor,” a man said, stepping out of the God-damned shadows.

  “Jesus Christ!” I yelled, whirling.

  “Whoa!” The vampire held up both hands in surrender, his eyes wide, staring down the nozzle of my water gun with a grimace on his face that took a moment to fade. He tilted his head a fraction, looking past the nozzle to me. “Truce?”

  Here’s the thing about vampires: I hate them. Have for years. They’re like cockroaches. I mean I get it: they’re simply scuttling around doing what they need to do to survive just like the rest of us. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel the urge to squeal and stomp the second I see one. Unfortunately, in my experience, vampires are almost as hard to kill as cockroaches, so—when a fanger offers me a truce—I usually take it.

  “Truce,” I said, lowering the weapon.

  “Super Soaker, huh? That’s a new one,” the man said, drily.

  I shrugged, deciding it better not to tell the strange vampire that every undead precaution I’d taken before coming here came straight from The Lost Boys, circa 1987—I’d left my garlic necklace at home; it hadn’t really gone with my outfit.

  “Well,” he said, stepping into the light, “we appreciate it, in any case.”

  “We?” I asked, glancing warily down both sides of the alley.

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’m the only one of our number that remains. Once we heard their screams, we decided it was best not to interfere. You left them alive, I trust?”

  “Aye,” I said, after a moment’s hesitation, uncomfortable with the vampire’s casual reaction to what had gone down in that dressing room. I mean, who listens to the sounds of tortured screams and thinks “I’ll just leave them to it?”

  Fucking vampires, apparently.

  “Excellent,” he said. “I believe our…lesson would be a little redundant, in that case. We couldn’t allow them to go around pretending to be what they are. I’m sure you understand.” The vampire smiled a perfectly ordinary, if a bit too white, smile.

  That was the trouble with vampires; their fangs were retractable—which meant he and his kind could pass for human most of the time. Very pale, nocturnal humans—completely indistinguishable from your average late-night radio DJ, the stripper who always gets off a few hours before the rest of the girls, or the nurse who prefers the night shift…basically, don’t trust anyone who sleeps while everyone else is awake, people.

  Of course, that didn’t mean this vampire was exactly average. In fact, he gave off an older, more alien presence than Mike and his bandmates. It didn’t help that he loomed over me, which meant he had to be pretty damn tall; at six-foot, I was well above an average woman’s height, and I wasn’t used to being looked down on, literally or figuratively.

  I didn’t like it.

  I realized he was taking my measure as well, arching an eyebrow at whatever it was he saw. I briefly considered saying screw it and dousing him anyway for being such an annoyingly tall, ancient breed of cockroach, but decided it wouldn’t be worth the trouble. Until, that is, I caught him staring into my eyes the same way Mike had earlier in the evening.

  The vampire gaze.

  It was a handy parlor trick in a vampire’s arsenal, sort of like hypnosis on crack—I’d seen a cop point his gun at his best friend under its influence. Of course, the fact that it didn’t work on me at all meant he was wasting both our time. “Are ye done?” I asked.

  He blinked rapidly, then tried to cover up his surprise with a charm
ing smile and a shrug, as if to say I couldn’t blame him for trying. I’d seen men at the bar do the exact same thing after grabbing a girl’s ass as she walked past. A few guys had pulled the same shit on me, once or twice; I’d done my best to make sure those sorry bastards never breathed through their noses again.

  What can I say?

  I’m big on boundaries.

  “Ye know, where I come from, that could be considered breakin’ terms,” I said, casually pumping my Super Soaker.

  “And where do you come from?” he asked, clearly intrigued by my ability to ignore his date-rapey attention. Apparently, being a vampire didn’t make him any less male.

  “Wrong question,” I quipped.

  He frowned. “What?”

  I turned and headed towards the street. “Getting’ colder.”

  “Wait! Who are you?”

  I reached inside my peacoat, pulled out a slick purple orb and tossed it over my shoulder. The water balloon broke behind me, releasing a spray of holy water. I heard the vampire behind me hiss as he danced backwards.

  “Ice cold,” I called as I turned the corner, took hold of what lay inside the brown paper bag, and promptly became invisible.

  Chapter 3

  My name is Quinn MacKenna, and I’m a black magic arms dealer. If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry, you aren’t the only one. Basically, when the real monsters that go bump in the night need something, they call me. Of course, by monsters, I mean Freaks—that’s the preferred term, though I’m not sure how politically correct it is in comparison. Freaks come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from your average citizen with supernatural abilities to fabled creatures from folklore and fairy tales.