The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance

by Trisha Telep

  They reached the rock pile. Nassar paused, measuring the height of the rubble with his gaze. It was almost three floors tall. He glanced at her. She saw the confirmation in his green eyes: it was too easy. He expected a trap.

  “We go slowly,” he said. “We must touch it together.”

  She nodded.

  They climbed the pile of debris, making their way higher and higher. Soon they were level with the first floor of the neighbouring buildings, then the second. The flag was so close now, she could see the thread weave of its fabric.

  The cold magic slammed her. Grace screamed. A lean shape burst over the top of the pile - half-man, half-demon, surrounded by marrow worms, the summoning stone on his chest glowing with white. The beast hit Nassar in the chest. Nassar reeled, the refuse slipped under him, and he plunged down, rolling as he fell, the dark worms swirling over him.

  Grace ran after them. Below, the beast that was Conn Roar tore at Nassar, all but buried under the black ribbons of worm bodies.

  She wouldn’t get to him in time. Grace jumped.

  For a moment she was airborne and falling and then her feet hit hard concrete midway down the slope. It gave under the impact, pitching her forwards. She fell and rolled down, trying to shield her head with her arms, banging against chunks of stone and wood. Pain kicked her stomach; she’d smashed into a section of a wall. Her head swam. Her eyes watered. Grace gasped and jerked upright.

  Ten feet away the marrow worms were choking Nassar.

  Magic surged from her in a sharp wave. The blast ripped the worms clear. They fled.

  Nassar lay on his back, his eyes staring unseeing into the sky. Oh no.

  She killed the panicked urge to run to him, crouched, and picked up his axe from where it had fallen. Her own knife was gone in her fall.

  A dark shape launched itself at her from the pile. She whipped about, reacting on instinct. Nightmarish jaws snapped, her power pulsed, and Conn Roar bounced from the shield of her magic, knocked back. His paws barely touched the rubble before he sprung again. This time she was ready and knocked him down once more, deliberately.

  Conn snarled.

  She backed away towards Nassar’s body.

  “He killed my brother,” the demonic beast said. His voice raised the small hairs on her neck. “Let me have Nassar and I’ll let you live.”

  “No.”

  “You can’t kill me.” Conn circled her. He limped, favouring his left front paw, and a long gash split his side, bleeding. Nassar had got a piece of him before he went down.

  “Of course, I can kill you,” she told him, building up her magic. “I’m a Mailliard.”

  She only had one shot at this. If she failed, he’d rip her to pieces.

  Conn tensed. The muscles in his powerful legs contracted. He leaped at her. She watched his furry body sail through the air, watched his jaws gape in joy when he realized her Barrier wasn’t there, and then she sank everything she had into a single devastating pulse. Instead of a wide shield, she squeezed all her power into a narrow blade.

  It sliced him in two. His body fell, spraying blood. His head flew by her, its four eyes dimming as it spun.

  She didn’t give it a second glance.

  “Nassar?” She dropped the axe and pulled him up by his giant shoulders, sheltering a weak flutter of magic emanating from him with her own power. He was covered in blood. Her chest hurt as if she’d been stabbed. “Come back to me!”

  He didn’t answer.

  No! Grace dropped and put her ear to his chest. A heartbeat, very weak, faltering, but a heartbeat.

  She wiped a streak of blood from her eyes with her grimy hand so she could see. She couldn’t help him. She didn’t know how. But his family would.

  Grace looked up at the pile of concrete and rubble, to the very top, where a white flag flailed in the breeze.

  Nassar leaned against a tree across the street from a brick office building. Grace was inside. He couldn’t sense her, not yet, but he knew she was inside.

  He vividly remembered waking up to the familiar vaulted ceiling. He’d whispered her name and Liza’s voice answered, “She’s alive. She dragged you out, and I released her and her family, like you wanted.”

  He didn’t believe her at first. He knew how much he weighed. No woman could have dragged his dead weight up that heap, but somehow Grace had done it.

  She had left no note. No letter, no message, nothing to indicate that she didn’t hate him for dragging her into the horror of the game. He thought of her every day while he lay in his bed waiting for his body to heal.

  It took a month for him to recover. Three days ago he was finally able to walk. Yesterday he was able to make it down the stairs unassisted. Now, as he leaned against an old oak for support, his left arm still in a sling, he wondered what he would say if she told him to leave.

  He would say nothing, he decided. He would turn around and go back to the airport and fly back to his life as the cursed revenant of Dreoch Tower. Nobody would ever know what it would cost him.

  He wanted to hold her, to take her back with him, to have her in his bed, to taste her lips again, and to see the sly smile hidden in her eyes for him alone.

  The door opened. Three women stepped out, but he saw only one.

  Grace halted. Nassar held his breath.

  She took a small step towards him, and then another, and another, and then she was crossing the street, and coming near. He saw nothing except her face.

  Her magic brushed him. She dropped her bag. Her hands went up to his shoulders. Her brown eyes smiled at him.

  She kissed him.

  Once a Demon

  Dina James

  Kyle tried to suppress a derisive smile at the monument that had been erected next to the one he was visiting. It was a large, weeping angel, prostrate over a fat marble block. A bouquet of faded flowers rested at the base. It hadn’t been there the last time.

  It almost matched the fountain monument on the opposite side in size. Truly, a working fountain. Who chose a fountain as a monument? Perhaps the departed had been fond of gardens. Even in death there was competition.

  Let them compete with one another, Kyle thought as he laid his single, perfect, long-stemmed rose upon the ground below the monument that overwhelmed both the plot it sat upon and the markers on either side. It was a hulking stone dog with wings — a gargoyle most called it -with a bowed head. It was chained to the pedestal it sat upon with a thick, heavy chain attached to its metal spiked collar.

  It was no average gargoyle. It was the Guardian of Hopes and Dreams, and when Kyle had seen it he knew exactly where it belonged and had it installed. Seven feet tall from the base to the tips of the wings, the monument dwarfed any other in the graveyard. Unless someone built a mausoleum, it would remain the most prominent.

  Kyle kissed his fingertips and touched them gently to the petals of the rose before disappearing.

  A reflection that had been shimmering in the water of the adjacent fountain smiled and disappeared also.

  Red liquid swirled gently around the crystal wine glass held between his middle and fourth fingers.

  Elegant.

  That was the word for it.

  Of course, the gesture was as purposeful as it was elegant, as were all of his gestures. It kept the liquid from congealing so that it was drinkable.

  Cold, but drinkable.

  If he could be bothered to drink it, that is.

  His pale sea-green eyes were focused on the flames in the hearth, though his mind was elsewhere. Watching a fire flickering in the dark always brought him a modicum of comfort and helped him arrange his thoughts. It afforded him perspective.

  Most of the time.

  He smiled wryly as he sensed a presence, and though he didn’t bother to lift his eyes to acknowledge it, he did greet it.

  “Rude as ever, Destrati.”

  “Did you expect otherwise?” Nikolai countered as he all but swaggered to the mantelpiece to lean against it indolently. “T
he day you consider me polite is the day I cut that ridiculously long hair of yours, whether or not it would grow immediately back.”

  Kyle arched an eyebrow and his wry smile grew a bit wider as he reached to smooth his chestnut ponytail mockingly. Held in place by a strip of leather, it fell down his back to rest neatly between the blades of his shoulders. Long, perhaps, but well kept. Such had been the style back then.

  “And what brings the Destrati Sovereign to breach the solace of my home and my dinner hour?” Kyle asked, eyeing Nikolai pointedly.

  “I have a standing invitation,” Nikolai defended with a smirk. “Or so it could be interpreted, no? I believe you said I could return anytime I wished, though I’m sure you meant in order to check on Trina while she was here. I merely took ‘anytime’ in the broader sense.”

  Kyle rolled his pale eyes. A human gesture, to be certain, but appropriate.

  “You have learned much more than how to master your power,” Kyle said dryly. “I didn’t teach you to find loopholes.”

  “I was always good at interpreting things to my advantage,” Nikolai said. “Besides, I knew you’d never invite me here. Invitations are an annoying necessity for everyone, even for a Sovereign. Besides, Trina wants to see you, and I said I would ask. You’re welcome in our home, you know. Not that you would ever impose. Though, truly, it wouldn’t be an imposition.”

  Kyle didn’t reply as he contemplated his glass and the deep red liquid within.

  Nikolai seated himself on one of the chairs facing the hearth and waited. After a long few moments of being completely ignored, he rose and spoke. “Well, I said I would tender the invitation, and so I have. After all, it’s not like you have a postbox, nor would you give anyone the address even if you had. Trina is trying to bring Clan Destrati out of the Dark Ages. I’ll remind her that her attempts should not extend to you.”

  With a bow he knew Kyle wouldn’t see or acknowledge, Nikolai took his leave, vanishing as easily as he’d appeared.

  Kyle brought his glass to his lips and drained the liquid within. Cattle blood never tasted the same as human, but it served a purpose, without the hunt. Hunting grew tiresome after a while, no matter the prey.

  “Did you ask him?”

  Katrina slid her arms around Nikolai’s neck and kissed him deeply, welcoming her husband home.

  Nikolai allowed himself to forget about everything except her touch for a moment and, when the kiss broke, he nodded. “What?” he asked in reply to Katrina’s expectant look. “I tendered your invitation. I told you it wasn’t likely he would accept.”

  Katrina sighed and scolded him in a mutter of her newly acquired Italian before she spoke again. “Send me there,” she demanded. “I know you. You didn’t even ask. You said something like ‘come visit’, didn’t you?”

  Nikolai looked guilty and didn’t need to answer.

  “Honestly, Nik, you and your ‘doing without asking’ thing! Now send me there. Kyle will send me back.”

  “Damned right he will,” Nikolai said with a scowl, gesturing at his wife reluctantly.

  Nikolai had made Katrina immortal when they’d married, but thankfully he hadn’t made her a vampire or given her any ethereal powers. If he had, she’d be an even bigger force to be reckoned with.

  Kyle smiled as his sanctuary was breached for the second time in less than an hour, and this time by a presence that was more human than ethereal. Immortal, yes, but human. Truly, one of the rarer of her kind. There were very few immortal humans, and Katrina was one of them.

  “I’m sorry for Nik’s likely rudeness,” Katrina said as she appeared in Kyle’s formal dining room. “And for mine, appearing unannounced like this, but you can’t say you didn’t expect me.”

  Kyle held up a hand as he continued gazing at the flames in the hearth at the end of the room. “He was not rude,” he replied. He looked up at Katrina. “Well, not as rude as the Destrati have been known to be in the past. Your influence, I am sure.”

  Katrina blushed - an attractive feature vampires were incapable of — and stifled a giggle. “He’s much better, really,” she said, taking a step towards the very dangerous and formidable Kailkiril’ron. Kyle was known by many names, and though he preferred “Kyle Carillron” these days, he was known in legend among the vampire clans as “Kail the Betrayer”.

  She crossed the room slowly, giving him time to adjust to her presence. For everything he was to everyone else, he’d never been anything but kind, gentle and warm to her. But she didn’t know how she hadn’t felt the danger in his presence before, when she was still human.

  “Because then you were under my protection,” Kyle answered her thoughts aloud. He held her dark eyes. “Now you are not, and Nikolai sends you alone.”

  “I ... I asked him to,” Katrina said, though the defence in her tone didn’t quite cover the slight tremor that his thinly veiled warning involuntarily elicited. Though she knew rationally he had protected her before, she was certain he could harm her with a thought if he were so inclined. “Well . . . ‘asked’ insistently.”

  The corners of Kyle’s mouth twitched as he raised his glass, and Katrina knew she was responsible for his almost-smile. Kyle drained the glass and set it aside on the mantelpiece above the hearth.

  “I never really got the chance to thank you for what you did for us,” she continued. “And I don’t quite trust that Nik expressed it the way he should have.”

  “No thanks are necessary,” Kyle said.

  Katrina laid a hand on Kyle’s arm. He looked down at it and arched an eyebrow.

  “Please come,” she asked softly. “At least—” her eye caught the now empty glass, and she looked up at him meaningfully “—have a drink with us.”

  “You don’t have to provide for me,” Kyle said, wondering why the suggestion raised his ire. “I don’t drink from men, and I don’t want any of your willing blood slaves attending me.”

  “Don’t be disgusting,” Katrina said, scowling at him. “Clan Destrati doesn’t do that any more. Everyone has their means, and it isn’t as barbaric as you make it sound.”

  Katrina eyed him. Kyle was the epitome of tact, couth, civility and elegance. Something was bothering him if he was being anything but.

  “And I wasn’t offering any of that,” she continued, meeting his pale eyes. “Just . . . company. An evening with friends. Everyone needs that now and again.”

  Kyle regarded her with a raised brow.

  Katrina returned his look without flinching. She was serious. “If you don’t want to come with me, then send me back alone,” she said with a shrug. “Either way, I’m asking you to come and visit.”

  Kyle sighed. “I’m afraid I’m not very social, tonight or any night,” he replied.

  “Maybe that’s because you haven’t had anyone to socialize with,” Katrina said, giving his arm a little shake. “Please? If you don’t like the company you can leave any time you want and we won’t question or pester, I promise. Please, Kyle? It’s been months since we’ve seen you, and I can’t bear the thought of you sitting here alone. We’re not your enemies any more, though to hear Nikolai tell it, we never really should have been. The Destrati, I mean. No doubt you’ve done your share to alienate the rest of the clans.”

  Kyle threw his head back and laughed at her last half-teasing statement, then looked down at her with a smile. No one ever teased him. No one had the gall to. “My lady, I doubt in the whole of your existence that you have ever uttered so gross an understatement as that,” he replied. “Though, as I cannot bear the thought of your very human worry over my happiness, I will accompany you on your return home and ‘at least have a drink’ with you.”

  Katrina smiled. “I’m ready when you are.”

  Within moments, they vanished together, materializing on a moonlit veranda where Nikolai stood next to a tabletop, filling three glasses.

  Katrina had been right.

  The company had been a welcome change, and the conversation had been more inte
resting than he’d considered it might be. As with the hunt, one also became bored with seeing paths and futures and with hearing the thoughts of others.

  Though far from omnipotent, Kyle knew a great deal about a great many things - so much, in fact, that he sometimes forgot all he knew and understood until he had cause to remember it. What he didn’t know immediately, he could easily learn through various means, but he tried to avoid infringing on the free will and privacy of others.

  It was only polite; something many individuals, both ethereal and mortal, could do well to remember.

  Nikolai had gone to oversee an issue in the Council chambers, though Katrina stayed behind to entertain their “guest”.

  “If the queen is needed . . .” Kyle said, offering Katrina a low bow.

  Katrina blushed. “Stop that,” she said nervously. “I don’t feel like much of a queen, to be honest. I mean, just last year I was an American grad student on a spring break trip to London. Now I’m the wife . . . wife ... of a gorgeous Russian guy who, as far as my mother knows, is some kind of banker, though Mom is thoroughly convinced Nik is part of the Mafia, running guns or drugs or something. Getting her to accept that he’s not only not any of those, but only a couple hundred years old and immortal - and oh, yeah, I am too, thanks to him - is hard enough without throwing some kind of pseudo-royalty into it.”

  Kyle was impressed. “My lady is displeased?”

  Was that disdain she heard in his question? If it was, she ignored it. “No, not really,” Katrina sighed. She turned, resting her hands on the balustrade as she looked out into the dark garden lit only by the three-quarter moon. “It just . . . gets a little hard sometimes, you know? And these people . . . um . . . well, they’re not people, really, but they are ...” Katrina put her face in her hands and sighed again.

  Kyle waited a moment for her to collect her emotions. When she looked up at him, he returned her look just as frankly. He was so calm and collected all the time. Nothing seemed to bother him.

  “Now, now,” Kyle said softly. “Do not attempt to pry into my thoughts, my lady. You’ve learned much from Nikolai, but some things aren’t for your knowledge. Not even if I were Destrati. Besides, it’s impolite to enter without an invitation, and that doesn’t extend solely to this realm.”