Nightshade, p.1
Nightshade, page 1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, locales, events, social sites and incidents are either 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.
Copyright © 2025 Lynessa Layne
Fast Layne Independent Publishing
As adapted from original manuscript Copyright © 2014 Lynessa James; Copyright © 2020 Lynessa Layne
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, training AI, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention Permissions Coordinator” at lynessalaynelit@gmail.com.
eBook ISBN 978-1-956848-46-5
Paperback ISBN 978-1-956848-47-2
Hardcover ISBN 978-1-7371323-7-0
Cover art and editing by Belle Ames. All rights reserved.
All musical references are for entertainment purposes only. Reader assumes responsibility for legally obtaining content.
No AI was used in the creation of this manuscript and is 100% a product of the author’s imagination and creation.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Dear Reader,
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For AJ, the Lieutenant Commander who taught me to take control of my life and crap from no one.
&
For you, dear reader. Typing made me a writer. Publishing made me an author. You make sharing worth the effort.
Chapter 1
KLIVE
Murder was never my intended occupation.
“Please! I don’t have your gold!” He darted a frantic look over his shoulder and rushed away from the festivities.
“Liar!” I stalked after him like an immortal serial killer. “I saw you onboard The Banana Hamick in the flotilla! You stood right next to the scalawag who stole my treasure! The chest was open at your feet! Where is it?!”
My hand rested on the handle of the long sword holstered in a scabbard at my waist. I debated whether to use the period piece or pull my modern pistol. A pirate would’ve used a sword, but the blood would cast off and make a mess. Shots kept the scene clean.
He tossed a handful of doubloons and a string of plastic pearls like he still marched in the parade. “This is all I have!” A miniature rubber duck fell from his pocket and squeaked under my boot seconds later. Gone was the smiling pirate who’d floated in beside the Jose Gasparilla and helped secure the key to the City of Tampa. Now, having cornered himself between a building and the choppy waters of the bay biting the bulkhead, he turned into a coward. His shaky finger pointed at the ground. “I promise. That’s all. That’s the gold that was on our boat. It’s not real. They’re replicas.”
I paused my pursuit and dug the toe of my boot against the coin, watched the trinket disintegrate into white powder worth its weight in gold. “Exactly, mate.”
The black makeup around his eyes ran in sweaty rivulets down his beaded cheeks. He shook his head, his hat wobbling. “I don’t understand.”
“Oh, I think you do,” I said with a cruel smile. “Did your boss give this as a free sample? A treat for your being a good little minion? Where did he put the rest?”
“I promise, I don’t know!” He sobbed when another pirate stepped around me. Four more fell in around us. He twisted, eyes darted every direction, devoid of solutions. His neck tensed while he swallowed, lips quivered as he raised his hands like he was under arrest. “I swear! I—”
“Enough!” I shouted.
His knees buckled before he fell, hands splayed on the concrete. Almost every digit decorated with costume jewelry.
My heavy foot falls stopped shy of grinding his fingers into the ground. I squatted and displayed my left hand beneath his eyes. “See this ring?”
“Mmhmm.” A tear splashed the toe of my boot while his hat toppled from his head.
One of my Krewe kicked him in the stomach. “What’d you say, you disrespectful sonuva—”
My palm silenced him while the man wretched like he may vomit. I gripped his sweat-soaked hair and commanded him to meet my eyes. He blinked rapid tears until they trailed down his face. “Please. Please, don’t kill me. I didn’t know what they were. I thought they were fake—”
“Where. Are. They?!”
“Last I saw, they’re still on the boat. Mick told us to grab the beads and leave the treasure, that it was too heavy to carry.”
My chin jerked to three of my men. One lifted a phone and told the others to board the cigarette boat bobbing in the bay. I kept my grip on the man’s hair and lifted him to his feet as I stood to my full height and looked down on him.
“Please—”
“Silence.” I released his hair and stepped back, pulled my sword. His knees turned to jelly again. One of my remaining Krewe caught him under the arms. “Here’s what’s going to happen, mate. You have two choices. Walk the plank, or lose your head.”
He balked as his chin snapped toward the white caps slamming the bulkhead. His lips formed voiceless words like silent prayers. He nodded, and I allowed my man to release him. We watched him turn toward the violent churning and march like a man determined to die with dignity.
“Oh, and before you go,” I called, “if you live through this and we learn you lied, Nightshade’s coming for you, and it won’t be my men. I’ll take personal pleasure in hunting you myself. Clear?”
His chin trembled once more before he stammered, “Ye-ye-yes, s-sir.”
Like a man who’d lose his nerve if he lingered a second longer, he got a running start and his limbs flailed as he jumped over the edge and landed in the water. We watched as several pirate-themed rubber ducks floated to the surface and carried out with the current.
I sheathed my sword and toed the discarded beads, found another coin.
“Think he’s drowning?” Eric asked me.
“Unless he strips out of his costume under there, yeah.” I passed him the coin, watched him inspect the detailing.
He twisted and turned the shiny sheen in the twilight, nodded his approval. “They’re exquisitely done. Beautiful work, Boss.”
“Thanks, mate. I need you to join Nightshade and take the treasure to the locker for distribution. Make it look like you’re actors cleaning up your boss’s boat after the parade.”
“And The Banana Hamick?” Eric and I rolled our eyes at ‘Mick’s’ play on words with the bright yellow cigarette boat. “Want us to weigh anchor and let her float out to sea, make the captain go down with the ship?”
“Hell no. We’ll take The Banana Hamick on a victory voyage to show Mick what it feels like when someone steals his treasure. Then maybe we’ll toss him overboard and paint it black. Keep it for Nightshade.”
“Now, that’s a fun idea.”
As I watched Eric place the cocaine doubloon on the planks beside the water’s rising edge, I dug into my pocket for a fist-full of purple petals, then laid them in a row where they’d catch the lip of the wood rather than billow away in the breeze.
Atropa belladonna, also known as Deadly Nightshade—a poisonous plant producing edible fruit featured in Macbeth to stupefy an army before slaughter. The physical property of Satan himself, psychoactive or medicinal depending upon the hands wielding the power of the tiny flower—these I mixed with violet rose petals.
As we searched the white caps for signs of the pirate’s body, I pondered whether Eve had eaten from a nightshade species in the Garden of Eden. Through Nightshade the knowledge of good and evil traversed hands to mouths, pricked between toes and fingers, inside forearms, snorted up noses, dipped inside body cavities depending upon a user’s drug of choice. No longer was cocaine a thing of the past, but making a comeback. While others killed their customers with fentanyl, we preferred repeat clientele.
Eric and I blended into the crowded chaos of the Gasparilla festival-goers. The family-friendly daylight faded into merry mischief. A man in a kick-ass costume took the stage and sang the beginning of Renegade by Styx. The audience joined like a choir, then burst to life when the instruments decimated the last remaining calm.
Eric tipped his hat and headed in the direction of the flotilla. I mounted an elevated platform and smirked to myself as I looked over my proverbial kingdom. The wealthy elites bought and paid their way onto those parade floats they’d waved from earlier in the afternoon. I was one of them, but I was also one of few with true power, as were my hunters. We preyed under the shade of night, hence Nightshade.
Boisterous laug hing accompanied clinking goblets and drunken jokes.
Within shadows of their play, we performed tricks in their distraction much the way puppeteers cast terrifying images across a backlit sheet from clean hands. Nightshade were masters of illusion, confusion, manipulation, and chaotic creation, all while blending into and within our environment. Magicians with manslaughter on our minds.
Ways to slaughter the prick from The Banana Hamick went into overdrive when Eric said through the bluetooth in my ear, “Mick’s in the wind. He left in a hurry and took the gold. One bag fell from the chest. A trail of coins led us to the parade route.”
I cursed. “That means he hopped a float, the little prat.” I trotted down the platform and stalked toward the exit. “He fucked with the wrong kingpin. I’m going to the office to get out of this bloody costume, then going hunting. Meet me at the locker in an hour.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
Chapter 2
KLIVE
The cacophony faded to white noise as I walked to the high-rise. I entered the car park and took the stairwell up to the second floor, then entered the building and called for the lift. A janitor paused vacuuming.
“Damn!” Sam gushed. “Best costume I’ve seen all day. I almost didn’t recognize you with eyeliner, Mr. King.”
“Thanks.” I chuckled, pleased I now had a witness with a timestamp.
“Is that a real sword?”
The lift arrived with a ping. “Ask me no questions.” The doors split, and I stepped aboard. “I’ll tell you no lies.” I tapped my smile. “Have a good night, mate!”
“You too!” he called just as the doors closed. I pressed for the twenty-seventh floor, leaned against the wall, and fished the Bowie knife from my coat. The tip of the blade dug gingerly beneath one of my fingernails, removing what I surmised to be my vic’s makeup stained sweat.
The elevator halted on the twenty-second floor.
“What the—who the bloody hell is working on—?” My question died as the doors divided. My stare landed on round hips wrapped in leather pants, corset, cleavage adorned with a bow, slender throat, lacy choker, parted lips. The knife fell to my side while my mouth dried and fell open. Damn.
“Whoa!” She backed away. Beautiful green eyes, clouded with smeared mascara, widened. “I didn’t expect anyone else.” She shook her head, top hat firmly in place. “I’ll catch the next one.”
“I don’t mind sharing,” I said, a mite breathless, and forced a swallow.
“That’s okay,” she insisted too forcefully, “I’d rather be alone. Thank you.”
My brows drew together. Why call for the lift, then? How would it stop unless she’d pressed to go upstairs? Was she headed to the atrium?
The doors closed, but I shoved the blade between them, sliced them apart.
“Oh, no!” Her palm shot out while she stumbled back. “No! No, thank you! You go!”
“Wait.” I took in my knife, then ripped the blade flat against my chest. “It’s not what it looks like.”
“You leave, or I’ll call the cops!”
“No, love, I didn’t mean to use the bloody knife to open the lift! Gah! I mean elevator!”
High-heeled boots dashed behind the vacant reception desk. “I mean it!” she yelled. Fingers fumbled with the phone until the receiver clattered off the edge. “Oh, shit!” She sprinted down the hallway, tested office doors like a bimbo in a B-movie, a cell phone in her free hand.
“Look, I’m leaving!” I pressed for the parking garage rather than my office upstairs. “You have nothing to fear!” I sheathed the knife. Pathetic girl. I ought to show her how to escape a killer rather than cornering herself!
The doors closed, and I descended. Maybe I could change into something Nightshade had in the storage locker?
Why was her makeup messed up? Was someone with her? The more I thought about her odd behavior, the phone in her hand, her choosing the reception phone instead, the more her panic spelled the sort after trauma. Recent trauma. Was she attacked? Did they attack her here? Was she running right back into danger?
I hit the button for the next floor on the countdown. Exiting the elevator, I jogged back upstairs into the reception area, padded across the lobby, and re-cradled the screeching phone receiver. I saw no sign of her. Had she fled into the other lift? I looked up at the floor indicators. The one I’d departed continued down the floors to the parking garage. The other sat idle on the twelfth floor.
In the silence, a woman’s voice drifted as a distant echo. The lavatory!
My six, nine, and twelve were clear, but I pulled my knife from inside my coat again and inched along the hallway of locked office doors. Darkness showed beneath sets of closed vertical blinds. I studied each for movement beyond, shoes beneath, reached for the sixth sense of lurking eyes. Every whispered step closer to her grieved voice amplified my adrenaline. I refused to heed the voice of reason shouting at me to flee as if I were prey. No attacker jumped to face me. No one scurried to escape from any of the offices I passed. No one in the lobby called for the lift. The atmosphere radiated the presence of the two of us alone.
“—ugh. Why won’t anyone answer? Please …”
My ear pressed against the door of the ladies’ room. Overhead, a florescent light twitched. The buzz mixed with the young woman’s voice leaching through the wood.
“Daddy, something—” She strangled a sob. “—awful happened at the festival!” Sob. “Did Nate tell you what he did?” Hoarse cry. “He—I can’t anymore.” Throat clearing. Sniffling. Stronger tone. “I’m okay. My phone is dying. If you can’t reach me, don’t freak. I might stop at Constance’s place tonight. Wanted you to know. Love you.”
The beep of disconnection echoed off the tile walls. Unable to see her, I assumed the smack afterward was her phone against the granite countertop.
“Stupid, Kinsley! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” she shouted. I cursed under my breath and pulled away to spare my eardrum before braving the door again.
Silence. Sniffles.
Kinsley ….
I pressed harder to hear her, hoped she wouldn’t scream again. She released a heavy exhale. “Okay, Kins. Don’t be a coward. Call the cops. Let them deal with those creeps and that psycho with the knife, then go home. No one will know it was you. Totally anonymous.”
Cops?
Wait—was I the psycho with the knife? I hadn’t done anything!
I clutched the door handle.
She blew her nose, sniffled again. Before I did something daft, like walk in on her and demand an explanation, I lost my give-a-damn and strode to the lift. She was fine. This floor was empty. All drama and foolishness. Let her report a pirate in a building! The police had thousands to sort through tonight.
I paused before the door to the stairwell, but why take the stairs if I had nothing to hide? I’d committed no crime…here. My thumb pounded the call button, then I pulled my pocket watch and cursed the lift’s sluggish climb back upstairs, the time I’d wasted worrying over the little wench, the change in my plans. At the sound of her gasp, the halves of my watch snapped shut in my fist, heart lurched to my throat.
“You said you were leaving,” she said.
“And you said I was a psycho with a knife. Therefore, we are both liars.” The lift arrived with a ping. I kept my back to her as I boarded, then braved her beauty with a scowl on my face to conceal my inexplicable nerves and prior awe. “I came to check on you, however, I now find it best to leave you to your pity party.”
Her cheeks blossomed with embarrassment. The apprehension in her frame sagged with shame. Her skin wasn’t a mess anymore, but her nose was pink. Somehow the color amplified the emerald tones in her bright irises, so beguiling, bewitching, bewildering ….
