Murray: Perry’s Nest: Paranormal Romance, page 1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
World Castle Publishing, LLC
Pensacola, Florida
Copyright © 2023 Kathi S. Barton
Paperback ISBN: 9798891261204
eBook ISBN: 9798891261211
First Edition World Castle Publishing, LLC, December 8, 2023
http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com
Licensing Notes
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.
Cover: Karen Fuller
Editor: Karen Fuller
Prologue
Murray didn’t know what to think about the newly appointed town board members who were there as soon as he arrived at his parents’ home. While they were standing around, talking to anyone who came by, and there were plenty of visitors at the home, he snuck his way into the large castle by pulling the shadows around him as he went to find his parents. He just happened to find his father first.
“Dad? What’s with the news crews and police here? Has something happened?” Dad told him that it was a nightmare. “Dad, there are times when you think something is somewhat of a nightmare when it just takes a little adjustment here and there to fix. What’s really going on?”
“The new board members, I’m sure you saw them, are saying they have decided to put a road through our land that will go right by the house with only mere inches to spare. And in that, they’re going to have to tear down our home. I had no idea they were running a stupid road through—tell me, son, where would it go to or even, for that matter, come from? There is nothing beyond here but more of our land, and it just comes from the town that we mostly own as a starting point. They’re not even going to—I’m not telling this well as I’m very upset. They only just sprung this on us this morning. And they’re saying that the equipment will be here in the morning to tear it down. I’ve never—aren’t they supposed to give notice of something like this? At least have a meeting with me? I’m in a fubble, son. A huge fubble.”
“I’m not entirely sure what a fubble is, Dad, but let me see what is going on here.” With the shadows drawn around him once again, Murray wandered around the yard and home to see what he could glean from other people’s minds. Twice, he heard that someone thought that the mayor was going to be living in the castle once it was updated, and then he heard that once the road was started, it would finish up right at the castle gates and be used as a tourist attraction when the road funding would suddenly disappear. Since there was very little money for anything like a single parking space, much less a road, he believed that one more. His parents were being duped.
Murray only knew one person who could get to the bottom of things, and that was his good friend, Brad Kirk. The man was like a dog with a bone. Chewing on every inch of it until he got all the marrow or, in this case, information that he could out of it before he was ready to say that he had all there was to have. And he would have it, too. The man was a diligent investigator when someone asked for his help.
He’d been around for such a long time that Murray was surprised that he’d been buying up land not far from where his parents lived. Reaching out to him to see what he might be able to dig up, Kirk was just as happy to hear from him as he was contacting him.
“You’re not going to believe this, but I read about this shit in this morning’s paper. I even went back a few years looking online, and there isn’t one mention of this road to nowhere going on. If what you’re saying is, in fact, the truth of the matter, Hamish will need to be involved. Since he’s king, no one can buy or sell land without giving him first dibs on it. It’s not his rule, but one that has been around for a long time. I mean, you can still inherit it from your father, but if you were wanting to sell, he gets to be the first to turn it down. I think it has something to do with the money owed to baby vamps that might turn up later to claim the land or something like that.” Murray said that he remembered that law from a long time ago. “I only just remembered it when I was looking into the land ownership. Also, neither the mayor nor the board members can simply buy up land that has been in a family for centuries by Eminent Domain by claiming that it’s reasonably shown that the property is to be used for public purposes only. Also, they’d have to compensate them for all the land and the castle at fair market value. I don’t think there is enough money in the entire town to show that they can do that, even with a loan from the state or country. I don’t know how they’d be able to get someone to come in and value the land and the castle, but I would imagine that it would be in the hundreds of billions of dollars just for the castle and the lands around it. Doesn’t that sucker sit on about fifty thousand acres?”
He told him that his parents also owned more than half the land that the town was residing on, and they paid rent to his family to use the land for their government buildings as well as roads and homes.
“The rents, which aren’t extraordinarily high from the city for the rent they pay, has been behind for the last four or five years too.” He thought of something. “Could that be the reason this is going on? Do they want to get out of paying the rent they’re being sued for? I know that the last time I was home, Dad had a law firm looking into just how to get the money from the cities.”
“I’ll be there in a few days. Stall all you can. Call Hamish and let him know what is going on as well. He has the money and kingdom to toss around to get things going in the right direction.” He told him about Cal and how he was now the king of all burin. “Well, if that don’t beat all. He should have been a long time ago if you were to ask me. All right, call him too. It might be funny to see a bunch of bears roaming around the land, scaring the shit out of people that have no right to anything that they’re doing. This could be more fun than I thought it would be.”
Murray made sure to call Cal first. He knew that if he were to call Hamish first, he’d never get off the phone with him. He’d want every detail about his family, including his brother and sister, and then he’d ask about his parents before he ever got to the point where he could tell him what was going on. Even then, he’d want details he wouldn’t have until Brad got back to him. Cal was still laughing when he hung up with him, telling him that there was a fairly large burin right around there of about a thousand bears, and he’d have them roaming the property to keep it safe. Murray couldn’t have asked for better news. Then he called Hamish.
After explaining to his wife as Hamish was taking care of some stupid shit—her words—with his new job, she’d help him out. She sounded like she was going to not just help him out but also she was going to have the best fun ever in helping him. Yes, Murray thought, he was going to enjoy this much better.
Thirty minutes after talking to Lander, he got a call from someone by the name of Rosie Thimble. She asked if she could speak to the man in charge; however, she asked if there was an FBI agent there, the highest ranking one. While he didn’t know how to tell one from the other in the way of rank, he did find someone to help him with that.
He didn’t walk away. It was his phone, after all. He could hear the woman’s voice. She was screaming into the phone. The man listening on his end would say things like ‘yes, sir’ ‘I’ll get on that right now, sir’ and other things that made him think that the woman on the other end had to be some ball buster to make a grown man sputter and spit like he was.
When the call ended, and the phone was handed back to him, the agent walked away. Murray was positive if the man had had a tail, it would have been right between his legs. Since Murray didn’t know if she’d hung up or not, he said hello into his cell phone. She asked him who he was.
“Murray Phelps. This is my parent’s home that is being invaded by the idiots.” She agreed with him that they were all fucking idiots. “Can I ask you what your part in this is?”
“Yes. I’m FBI. And since about twenty minutes ago, I’ve been promoted to Agent in charge of this shit storm. Like, I don’t have a million other things that I should be working on rather than a land dispute with some moron that thinks just because his brother-in-law has a job working at the White House—as a dishwasher, I might add, that he could help his family take over homes of people that have been around a hell of a lot longer than the fucking White House where he works has been. Fucking stupid people. I hate them all.” He couldn’t help it. He laughed. She wasn’t just honest as hell, but she didn’t pull any punches when talking to people, either. “You’d not think this was so funny if you were where I am right now, trying to get an autopsy done by exhuming a body only to find out that there is no fucking body, not even sandbags, to make the weight of the thing believable.”
“Are you coming here to this shit storm?” She told him that she didn’t have much else to do, so she had to go there and roll some heads. “I’d like to see that. I’m betting all my fortune that you’re going to do a very good job of it. What is going to happen anyway?”
“If that dumb fuck I just talked to does what I told him, the mayor, his wife, two children as well as the secretary, her staff, as well as
When she told him she had to go, he dejectedly hung up the phone. But he did mark her number in his caller ID with her name. In the event, he told himself that he had another question to ask her along the lines of asking her out to dinner or something.
The people that Rosie had mentioned had been arrested by the time he was in the yard again. Mom and Dad were sitting on the porch watching the events, too, when he sat down on the swing and joined them. A van pulled up about an hour later, and not only was it filled with more agents, but a woman dressed in jeans and a very skin-fitting blouse also got out too. The way she was talking, he just knew that this was the woman who had saved the day.
She didn’t make her way up to the porch right away. Which he was fine with. Watching her ordering people around, once pulling out her gun and firing it into the ground, had him and his parents laughing. Apparently, the mayor thought of himself as well above a female FBI agent who carried a gun, and he was taken away in one of the city’s new cruisers alone.
Hamish and his new mate also showed up. They didn’t come up to the porch where they were before talking to two of the agents who had shown up with who he assumed was Rosie. She was pissed, every line of her beautiful body showed it, but once Hammy hugged her tightly in his arms, she seemed to calm down a bit. When she went back to the van, he thought for sure he was going to miss talking to her face-to-face when she reached in and pulled a large dog from the back.
The dog was hers. There was no doubt about it when he matched her step to step, never leaving her side without a lead on him. Joey, Murray heard her calling him, kept up with her, but never stopped looking around for whatever might hurt his mistress. Finally, she made her way to the house where he and his parents were.
Hamish introduced her as Cal’s sister-in-law. Then he told her about his family’s long history of being here in this spot. She was polite, very much so, but he could tell that she didn’t like being held up when there was work to be done, but she tolerated it well. When he watched her turn her head when his father went to kiss her, he laughed again.
“You were the little shit on the phone.” He said that was him. “You know, you could have told me that it’s your family that I was helping. I could have had you or one of them taking care of the mayor. Did you know that he’s been stashing cash on the upper floors of the library that his wife has been using for her office? They’ve been crooks for some time now.”
“I don’t live here with my parents any longer, so, no, I had no idea what was going on until I came here to visit my family.” He put out his hand to touch her in the guise of a handshake. “My name is Murray Phelps. I have a lot of titles, too, but that should help me learn your name.”
The moment that he touched his hand to hers, he felt a feeling roll over him akin to his skin being set on fire. Not only his skin but where her fingers were touching his. He could feel the iciness of her anger like it was his own. Closing his eyes to the onslaught of not only her anger but every memory that she’d ever had. He could only wonder what she was getting from him.
~*~
Cal had no idea what had happened to Rosie or Murray, but every time he looked at him, he would burst out laughing. Not only was he still unconscious, but his forehead was bleeding still, and he was sure that the old vampire had broken a couple of fingers trying to hold onto Rosie when she was blasted away, much like Warren told him that he had when meeting Lander for the first time. When Murray sat up in bed, yelling out Rosie’s name, he laid him back on the bed and told him to calm down.
“Where is she? She’s powerful.” Cal said that he’d gotten that, too. “Where is she, Cal? I think she’s my mate.”
“According to her, and if I were you, I’d take this as gospel, she’s not going to be anyone’s plaything until she says so. Not to mention, being married or mated to a man that has no more sense than to get himself fixed up before being put to bed is going to expect her to baby and coddle him, and she’d rather stake you than to be around your whiney ass. What did you say to her when she helped you up off the floor?” He said he didn’t remember that at all. “I’d start with that. It might, well, more than likely not go over better than you telling her you’re her mate again. I think you’ve told her nearly a thousand times since the two of you were blasted apart.”
Cal laughed again. “Now, what’s so funny?” He laughed harder. “Tell me what you find so funny, or so help me. I’m going to kick your ass three weeks into next year.”
“You. My god, Murray, how long has it been since we’ve been all together? Marshall isn’t here yet, but he’s on his way, and Hammy’s grandda is having a grand time having all these beautiful women coming around all the time. He’s just the same as he was all those years ago, too.” Murray asked again where Rosie was. “She’s working. I’ll tell you now that she’s a great nurse but a better doctor than I’ve ever met. Right now, she’s working on something for the hospital that has needed attention for some time. She and her sister are also working at the Health Plex part-time until we can get it up and running better. It’s doing well, but it needs some of the things that no one ever thinks about when they’re putting together a place for people to get help. Understand?”
“Yes. Can I go and see her, or will that just be causing me more pain?” Cal told him he hadn’t any idea as he tried very hard to stay on her good side. “Probably a smart move. The only times I’ve spoken to her, she seems to fly off the handle pretty easily.”
“Usually, she doesn’t. She’s calm and cool. But when she’s upset, there is no comparison to her anger. To say that she doesn’t suffer fools easily is an understatement. When we hired a head of surgery for the clinic we’re funding, he told her that she’d be better off being his secretary rather than an RN. He had no idea she was a better-qualified doctor than he was at being a man. I kid you not, Murray. She’s got balls too. If I were her mate, I’d just step back and let her run the show. She’s not much into cuddling, either. Just the opposite of Ruby, her sister. Though here lately, she’s just as bad. I love them both.”
Getting out of the bed for Murray seemed to be a lot more difficult than he thought it should have been for the man. Deciding to take him to the hospital to see Rosie seemed like a better idea, even if it was to have her pissed off. Whatever had zapped him when they touched seemed to have had no effect on Rosie at all but had seemingly all but drained Murray all the way to his toes.
On the way to the hospital, he pointed out some of the projects they were working on. The new grounds for the schoolyard were the best, he thought. While driving around, they came across his daughter with the babies, and he introduced Murray to them as well. By the time they were at the hospital, Murray was dozing off and on and didn’t look all that well. Almost as soon as they entered the hospital, Murray asked for a wheelchair and for his mate. Reaching out to Rosie, she came to him quickly.
Taking him to her office, Cal stayed with the couple. He was worried. More worried than he had been about anything else in his life. Once he was wheeled into the office, the door was locked and the shades drawn. Hamish appeared in the office when Rosie simply stood in the middle of the room and shouted his name. One look at Murray, and he asked Rosie what she wanted to do.
“How the fuck am I to know what to do? You’re in charge of shit. Fix him up so that he doesn’t look like every horror picture show they’ve ever made about vampires. You’re the ding dong in charge.” Hamish glanced at him, then turned back to Rosie. Whatever she thought of, she wasn’t the least bit happy about it. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me? He needs my blood? Mother fuck, I don’t even want him, much less his munchers in my neck. That’s what it is, isn’t it? He’s hungry, and I’m the only one who can feed him. Like I’m on the menu or some bull fucking shit as that.”
