Plaidypus: a Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count) #19

Nadine knows one thing for certain: her backwater town is too small for everybody coming to pay her family of two a visit. Maybe she doesn’t have a male platypus’s venomous spurs, but she’s ready to put up a fight to protect her brother, and not even the sexy plaid-clad stranger strutting his stuff is going to lure her away from home.

Assuming she’ll be given a choice in the matter is only the first of her mistakes.

Warning: this novel contains the mythical plaidypus and other deadly puns, romance, bodies, a minimum of two Canadians, and a mandatory magical adventure to Australia.

Proceed with caution.

Plaidypus can be read as a standalone.

Plaidypus is book nineteen of the Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count) series.

Where to Purchase

eBook: Patreon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Apple Books | Amazon | Smashwords

* Print, Paperback (6×9): Bookshop | Barnes & Noble | Amazon (Blank Edges)

Audiobook: Patreon | Kobo | Audible | Chirp

* Note: All 6×9 Paperback editions have forced print edges unless purchased at Amazon.

From Chapter One…

The zombie moose was back, shuffling around my front yard in search of something to eat. Since the night I’d hit her with my truck, resulting in more chaos, mayhem, and tragedy than I needed in my life, she insisted on following me around. I suspected she wanted to eat my brother, who’d emerged from the crash with a severe case of vampirism. Unlike my brother or the moose, I’d come out of the accident still kicking and breathing.

Fortunately for my brother, rather than fall over dead, I’d come down with an advanced case of the lycanthropy virus to go along with my natural-born shapeshifting tendencies. Thanks to the virus, my brother still lived, as in the hours following his rise from the grave, he’d drained the poor moose dry and had done some serious damage to my blood pressure before returning to his senses.

Without the hotspot, I would have been like the moose: dead, dead, dead. With a zombie moose and a frenzied vampire to contend with, I suspected I would have ended up deader than either of them. I resented my status as grateful for the hotspot preserving my life. While being a shapeshifter improved my general durability, the lycanthropy virus had helped me survive through a thirsty vampire fresh from death and in dire need of blood.

My life would have been much easier without the damned moose paying me a visit every day, likely seeking out revenge for her early demise. Taking out my truck should have counted as revenge enough. While the insurance payout would keep us fed for a while, there’d be no new truck in my future.

I wanted to cry over that, as I’d saved every penny for years to buy my baby, the perfect truck for the harsh winter conditions of our northern Ontario town.

Oh, well. I could save up again—assuming I survived through my brother’s thirst and my lycanthropy infection.

As I hadn’t quite been bold enough to go to the CDC about my infection status, I had no idea what counted as normal or not. I’d done my due diligence researching my new situation on the internet, studying how I needed to protect others from contracting my infection.

My fledgling virus worked overtime to supply me with enough blood to keep my brother as alive as a vampire got. If anyone in our small town discovered he’d come down with a severe case of vampirism and bit me on a daily basis, they’d take him out back and execute him for the sake of everyone around us. They’d be polite about it, apologizing even as they pulled the trigger, cut off his head, staked him, and reduced Matthieu to a truly dead corpse. That was how they handled all the undead running around town, thanks to the hotspots that kept popping up and killing off the local wildlife.

Then the townsfolk would try to pamper me and match me up with one of the local men in an effort to cure me of my grief.

Sooner than later, we needed to get the hell out of town, and I gave it until the next time I tried to get a job, went to a doctor’s appointment, or otherwise needed to be scanned before our ship was sunk.

There was only one problem: I’d sworn I’d never leave home, and I’d meant to keep my promise. If it meant protecting my brother, I would, but it would only happen if we lacked any other options. My brother being turned into a vampire meant we would run out of options sooner than later, especially considering how the people in town reacted around the undead.

I heaved a sigh and stared out the window at the moose. In some ways, I wouldn’t mind somebody coming over to escort her to her final rest, assuming I could figure out how to trick them into believing my brother hadn’t become a vampire. Rather than do whatever it was moose did at the start of winter, she loitered in our yard and plucked at our grass.

In reality, I could dig out my hunting rifle and take care of the zombie moose problem myself, but my guilt kept getting in the way. While I’d accepted there hadn’t been anything I could have done to prevent the crash, the hotspot had given the moose a second chance, and I refused to kill an animal I didn’t intend on eating.

When I hunted, I made certain to steer clear of any hotspots.

The last thing I needed was my dinner getting up and seeking out revenge.

Instead of dealing with the zombie moose, I worried what would happen the next time I needed to go to town, as the CDC liked springing surprise testing on us, which they paid for.

I couldn’t blame them for keeping a close eye on things, although I resented how difficult a time I’d have convincing them I could be a shapeshifter and a lycanthrope. I wrinkled my nose, staring out into the trees in the general direction of the nearest magical hellhole infecting our area with the undead. On the other side of town, the hotspots liked turning the townsfolk into living, breathing predators, capable of killing off the undead they generated with little fuss and their natural weapons if necessary.

No matter which way I turned, I just couldn’t win.

Life in rural northern Ontario along the Quebec border left a lot to be desired if one wanted to enjoy nature. With a zombie moose snuffling around my front yard, peace and quiet were things of the past. Add in the vampiric foxes, the death beavers of doom, and the other undead life roaming the hotspot-infested forests surrounding the house, and it amazed me we’d survived for as long as we had.

Heaving a sigh, I observed the moose from my perch in the bay window, grateful she was too damned stupid to charge the house. If the zombie moose charged our home, she would win, and the last thing I needed was an undead animal wrecking everything we owned.

The destruction of my truck had been bad enough.

“This is all your damned fault, Matthieu,” I complained, getting up from my spot to wander into the kitchen and put the kettle on so I could enjoy a warm beverage to go with my show of a zombie moose rummaging around my yard. With my luck, the vampiric foxes would come out to play along with the beavers. The beavers scared the shit out of me; whatever the hell type of undead they were, they could take out wolves and bears without much of a fight.

That the wolves and bears often got back up after being killed didn’t help matters for us.

I didn’t need some mutant beavers coming after me along with a pack of undead wolves and angry, rotting bears.

My vampire of a brother strolled into the kitchen, and when he yawned, he showed off his pearly fangs. “Eh? What did I do now?”

“The moose is back.”

He headed into the living room to check out the window, returning while I was digging through the cabinet for my hot cocoa supply. “Until she starts stinking the place up, I can’t say I mind. The ice starting to build up on her coat is a little weird, but if she’s standing in the right light, she shimmers. I am jealous she can go out in the sunlight and I can’t, though. I’m somewhat grateful for my gamer tendencies now. Nobody has any trouble believing I’d send you to town to do everything while I rot my brain playing some new game.”

With the insurance payout from the truck, I could pay the rent for a few months, keep me fed, and keep him fed. Once the insurance payout ran out—or the dinky piece of shit the neighbor had given us died—we’d both be in a lot of trouble. While I didn’t want to leave home, I would—assuming our parents would be willing to come to the rescue. I assumed they would, as they insisted we could call them for any reason at any time.

I didn’t look forward to testing their open-door policy or confessing I was the reason my brother was a vampire.

Only chocolate could salvage my day, and as I loved my brother, I asked, “Want any hot chocolate?”

“Sure. I thought vampirism would have put an end to all eating, but I’m glad to see I can still handle hot chocolate. I’m not brave enough to try a beer, though. I can’t find much on the internet about vampires, oddly enough. There’s some mention there are a few vampire chefs, so maybe I can have something other than your blood?”

“What happened the first time you tried that?” I demanded, shooting my brother a glare.

“I got a little snappy.”

“Literally. You tried snapping those pearly whites at my jugular. No. We are not trying that experiment again. I’m able to keep up with you, so we will not fix what’s not broken. We’ve got this figured out for the moment, and unless something changes, we aren’t fiddling with the routine.” I’d have to fiddle with the routine eventually, as I would need to find work somewhere. I held some hope I could get a remote job for some cable company or something. Half the town worked remotely, as many of the in-person jobs had left within a year of the hotspots churning out an unusual number of undead. The town on the other side of the border suffered from similar difficulties, although those from Quebec tended to be more inclined to deal with the undead in violent and permanent fashions, essentially creating a defensive perimeter around their town center.

I gave it a few months before the competitive nature of the two provinces reared its ugly head and hunting season opened on anything that moved without breathing.

That worried me, as Matthieu struggled with the breathing thing. Upon rising, he’d stopped, although if he concentrated, he could pretend he still lived and breathed.

The foxes sometimes breathed, especially after a successful hunt. For a while, they resembled the living well enough to fool just about anybody. In a way, I liked the vampiric foxes.

They left me alone.

I thanked the lycanthropy virus for my newfound ability to scare off the local critters. The scent of platypus rarely inspired anything other than interest. The lycanthropy virus had a more predatory edge, one that convinced most of the local wildlife and undeadlife to give me a wide berth.

“I’m really sorry about that,” my brother muttered.

“I’m not mad at you for being a blood sucking vampire out for your next taste of delicious, tasty sister. But we do not toy with my jugular. You may snack from my arm, and that’s that.”

We’d learned early on one of the fleshier bits of my arm hurt a lot less than the wrist, and it meant he drank slower. When he drank slower, my virus had half a chance to keep up with him, especially when I ate while he topped up his tank.

From as far as we could tell, a pint a day kept the vampire at bay, although he could get through on only half a pint in a pinch. He tried to take only half a pint once a week to give me a chance to rest and recover.

Neither of us were brave enough to skip a day, not after the first time he’d gone for my throat.

I waited for my kettle to whistle and inform the local wildlife I was about to indulge in chocolate. Glaring at the shiny metal didn’t make the stove heat my water any faster, and I tapped my foot in a futile effort to circumvent basic science. “I still think the water should boil faster because I’m watching it.”

Matthieu laughed, and because he knew better than to argue with me on the science of boiling water being watched, he returned to the living room to watch the undead invade our front lawn. “This should be interesting. The beavers are back.”

“No. There are no beavers in our front yard. Do you know what happened the last time the beavers came over?”

“They thinned the fox population by three, the squirrel population by at least twenty, and did a freaky little beaver dance around the corpses? I’m not sure they’re undead beavers, though. Maybe they’re superhero beavers.”

“I am not going outside to find out if they are undead beavers, superhero beavers, or undead superhero beavers, Matthieu. Only an idiot goes outside to face off against beavers capable of taking out a zombie moose. You better say your goodbyes to your zombie moose, though. She’s toast if they decide they’re taking her out.”

“That’s sad. I actually like her.”

He would. “Tell me if the beavers actually do something interesting.”

“They’re in a standoff with the foxes right now. There are three foxes and six beavers. What are groups of beavers called again?”

“Colony,” I replied. “The foxes are skulks, and we don’t discuss groups of moose.”

“Mating or pissed off we’re near her baby,” my brother replied in amusement. “The moose is minding her business, and the beavers seem interested in the foxes. The foxes are chittering threats at the beavers. The beavers are snarling.”

Only someone with a death wish bothered a snarling beaver. To bother six snarling beavers? We had a skulk of suicidal vampiric foxes on the loose, and our front yard was doomed to become a warzone. “I’d say tell them they have to wait for my hot chocolate to finish, but the beavers might win, and I am not inviting any other vampires into my home. The one vampire I have is enough for me.”

“Says the platypus with a lycanthropy infection.”

“I was born perfection. Because do you know what the platypus is? Perfection, my dear brother. And the hotspot was just making it so I could keep the neighbors from decapitating you upon discovery of your new nature. The magic understood I would go on a one-woman mission to eradicate it for all eternity should you be decapitated as a result of its shitty idea of a joke.”

In reality, I had to thank the hotspot; without it, my brother wouldn’t have survived the crash at all. I’d gotten off lucky with minimal cuts.

The moose had gone through the truck’s windshield on his side of the vehicle.

The average moose cow weighed in at several hundred kilograms. A direct collision with several hundred kilograms of moose through a windshield typically ended in death. In the case of our accident, my brother’s death.

I’d have nightmares for a long time about the crash.

My kettle whistled, and I went the heathen route, using water instead of milk for my hot cocoa. Armed with my drink, I joined my brother in the living room, snuggled into my nest in the bay window, and joined him in observing the drama unfolding on the front yard.

The moose pawed at the snow-encrusted grass, her coat shimmering from the ice building up on it. A light snow began to fall. The foxes grouped together, barking at the beavers, who circled their chosen prey while snarling threats. “You should record this. We could put it on the internet with ads enabled and make a fortune. I’ll even give a play by play.”

Matthieu snickered, but he dug out his new phone, the last thing he’d purchased before the crash. Unlike mine, which could barely make calls and held on by a thread, his had all the bells and whistles. In our original plan, I would have gotten an upgrade in a few months, after we’d saved up enough to get me something decent.

He loved the bright and shiny, and I was happy with functional.

Laughing more than I’d heard since he’d been transformed into a vampire, he said, “If you make a fortune off this video, I’ll be truly impressed.”

I needed to make a fortune off the video, else we’d be up a creek without a paddle or a boat with a blizzard on the way. “If I don’t make a fortune off a zombie moose and a congregation of various critters of the undead variety, I’ll be truly disappointed.”