A Very Paranormal Holiday

by J. T. Bock

  The summerhouse was curved like a half moon, the center given over to a living room with a panoramic window that looked out over the edge of the property. The lights of the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club were just visible through the bare trees on the right. The vast and depthless shadow in front was Lake St. Clair.

  Scott pressed a button on the wall and there was the immediate glow of electric radiators along the wall.

  “You knew this was here,” I accused him. “You planned this.”

  “I admit only to having stayed at this house before.”

  A clever evasion. I snorted, caught between being annoyed and flattered. The man was an outright fool, but he was an outright fool for me. That had to count for something.

  There was a tempting sofa that ran most of the length of the room, but I ignored it for the view of the lake, dark as it was, and pressed myself to the window. Snow had begun to fall heavily now.

  Scott’s strong arms slipped around me, sliding between me and the window pane, forming a barrier against the cold night outside. Even through our layers of coats and jackets, I could feel the heat of his body. It would be so easy to let myself go, to relax into that warmth. And so wrong.

  Then why does it feel so right?

  His breath tickled my ear and his lips pressed against my neck.

  A first kiss, unless I was going to tumble headlong into his delusion that we’d been lovers for two hundred years.

  Enough.

  “Scott, for heaven’s sake, I’m dying. The doctor can’t give me an exact date, but—”

  “That’s because he has no idea what’s happening. And you’re not dying, Manda; your body’s shutting down.”

  “Forgive me if I drop dead while we discuss the semantics.”

  “It’s not unimportant,” he said. “Dead is dead, and maybe dying is inevitable. However, a body that is shutting down can be halted. The process can be reversed.”

  “You fool. You utter fool.”

  I laid my head back, unable to resist the pleasure of his kisses on my throat.

  My heart rate climbed dizzyingly, and a small part of me noted that the numbness in my limbs had eased off.

  Score one for lust.

  Why not? If I couldn’t live a little when I was about to die, when could I?

  It was crazy.

  I turned, trying to push him away. It only served to loosen our clothing.

  My hands somehow slipped beneath his coat, beneath his jacket, up against the silky texture of his shirt. His body called to me with the liquid thudding of his heart underneath my fingers. His skin burned with a fire that time could not quench, and I longed to touch it, nothing between his flesh and mine.

  “Trust me, Manda. Trust me completely.”

  “I’m dying, Scott. I can’t let you love me, knowing I’ll be gone soon. Listen to me. I can’t bear the thought of hurting you.”

  “Allow me to be the one who makes decisions on whether I will be hurt or not.”

  My traitorous hands plowed deep furrows in the rich weight of his hair, pulled his face down so that his lips could burn my cheek with his kisses.

  “As for love,” his voice rumbled in my ear, “I have always loved you.”

  What were those erotic margin comments my crazy hand had written in my notes at that preliminary consultation?

  My tongue has described the contours of your chest.

  My lips know your subtle taste.

  My hands have caressed every part of you

  And I have held you in my arms the night long.

  She’d written that, the old me. No, I’d written that. Long ago. I was her. I was going crazy. I couldn’t have. I couldn’t possibly be the woman who took that photograph in Cologny. Scott was human. I was human. We weren’t immortal, I was dying and he wasn’t a vampire, an Athanate.

  What I was, was a selfish bitch, willing to scar his heart for the brief respite of pleasure that his body promised me. Still, I couldn’t stop his hands slipping the coat from my shoulders. It wasn’t cold, not in the reach of his furnace.

  He was burning me up. He’d consume us both. I was pouring gas on the flames and dancing.

  My jacket and shirt joined the pile of clothes pooled around my feet. His fingers found the catch of my bra.

  “I shouldn’t,” I said. “You shouldn’t.”

  As the bra fell away, his hand came up and cupped my breast. My nipples ached for the touch of his lips and my back arched.

  I needed him so much it hurt, and the burden on my soul was the same for the thought and the deed, wasn’t it?

  “Tell me you don’t want this,” he murmured, his breath caressing my skin. “Tell me you can’t remember.”

  “Only a therapist and a lunatic could possibly be having a conversation like this while they make love,” I said, the words blurring together and tumbling over each other.

  My body answered his question. I stood on tiptoes to offer myself, and, cupped in the warmth of his hand, my breast finally felt the graze of his lips.

  I groaned inarticulately. His tongue circled my painful nipple and his mouth hungrily closed over my breast.

  He burned like I did. I could feel the urgency in his body, the failing control as his muscles began to shake with a fever of lust. He wanted to crush me to him and take me hard.

  The feelings were intense, shooting through my body like storm lightning over the lake.

  Too intense. I wanted him to stop, but I also wanted him not to stop, ever.

  His lips moved from my breast and his mouth pressed against my throat.

  My heart tried to break my ribs.

  Selfish. Selfish. Selfish.

  Just do it now. Bite me. Make love to me against the wall. Whichever it is. Anything. Just now. Now.

  “Now,” was all I could manage, my voice hoarse. “Please.”

  “Manda,” he whispered against my neck, and the name sounded so right.

  He didn’t bite, he didn’t take me against the wall, and he wasn’t trembling now. He started to kiss my skin, hard, every kiss a little star of desire, trailing down my chest, over my breasts, too fast, too slow. Down my belly like a shower of stars in the night.

  Every sensible thought I’d ever had was wiped away as he stripped my underwear off.

  His shoulder easily bullied my thighs apart. I climbed on him, twisting and turning, trying to guide his elusive tongue where my need was like a raging fire.

  He was strong as a great oak in the wind, swaying and firm, not to be moved from his course.

  His hands gripped my butt and I cried out at the touch of his tongue, so familiar, so new, so confident in my pleasure. A confidence born of intimate knowledge and experience. Of me.

  I clenched my hands in his hair so tightly it must have hurt, but he didn’t complain, didn’t stop.

  “I want you so badly I can’t think,” I groaned.

  I was falling. He was rising. His lips returning up my belly. The sparks of his kisses reignited my tinder-dry skin until I was all aflame, wreathed with longing in every part of me.

  I slid down his trunk, our four hands removing his clothes, mine clumsy with urgency. Sliding down him eagerly, guiding him inside me.

  The wooden wall of the summerhouse joined my protests as it bowed under the pressure of his first thrust. His weight pinned me—poor, pale butterfly, faint with pleasure—against the sweet-scented pine.

  The wind screamed outside. I matched it.

  Images poured through me, shaken and disjointed, snapping behind my eyes like a flag in a gale. Scott, walking beside a cliff. Naked in bed. Rising from the bathtub, with water cascading from his body.

  Stop. This was now. The feel of his back. My fingers digging into flesh slippery with sweat. The iron band of muscles bunching as he thrust. The strength. Such sweet familiarity and yet new every time.

  Maddeningly slowing down. The closer I came, the slower he drove into me, until I was on the very brink, the point of no return, and my voice was wrecked with
begging.

  “You can heal, Manda,” he gasped. “Everything I’ve ever said to you is true. Tell me you can’t remember us.”

  We’d made love before. Many, many times. My body insisted it was true. No one else could be able to do what he’d done to me.

  “Yes,” I shouted, my voice thin and broken as the wind itself.

  “Heal, and we can be together again.”

  “We’re both crazy. You can’t make those promises to me.”

  “Make them to yourself. Live, Manda! Be what you are. Be healed. Alive, you can make the difference you want.”

  His face was pressed against mine, cheek sliding against cheek, slippery with tears. His and mine. Something had to break. Something had to.

  “But Scott,” I groaned, “you’re not a vampire. You can’t really do this.”

  “Think,” he said hoarsely. His hands gripped my thighs and his hips made another slow circuit, stirring my body with his. “Use that memory. You can remember everything if you try. Think of what I said and trust yourself. Your body knows.”

  I didn’t want to think. My mind was reeling, forgotten sensations flooding through me. I needed him to finish me. I couldn’t think of anything else. I clutched at his back, slid my hands down and pulled his butt toward me.

  He’d never once said he was a vampire. Never once.

  Oh, my God! – ‘There’s a vampire in the room.’

  That’s what he’d said when he’d come in first. That’s what he’d said.

  “Yes. Ohh! Ohhh! God, yes. Yes! YES!”

  I felt as if I was melting from the inside out. My body burned with pleasure. Our bodies fused together like rivers of lava merging in a volcano. The summerhouse shuddered around us.

  He was inside my body, inside my mind; bursting through the walls I’d built, tearing them apart and flinging them away.

  Barriers crumbled. The floodgates opened.

  My memory returned. Yes, the grief too, the crippling grief, but I wasn’t crippled any more. I had Scott back. I could live.

  And I understood it all at last. I didn’t break his beautiful construct. Instead, I was crowned at its very tip, like some glittering fairy, incandescent with pleasure. Still the new me, just with the old breaking through.

  I sank my fangs into my faithful kin’s neck. The taste of his Blood burst across my senses, making me gasp, drawing his Blood into me, inhaling his strength, filling my throat and chest with sweet flames.

  The sense of vigor detonated within me. My screams were muffled against his neck as the first of the explosions of joy, power and healing began to wrack my body.

  Series schedule, reviews & news on www.athanate.com. If you’d like to receive notifications for Mark’s new releases, email him at: Mark@athanate.com

  Facing

  the Darkness

  by Susan Illene

  Chapter 1

  “What are we doing here?” Kerbasi asked, scowling at his surroundings.

  Melena guided the Jeep through a neighborhood in Fairbanks he’d never visited before. Most of the homes on the street were small and had fallen into disrepair. He didn’t see any residents hanging around outside, but the frigid cold probably had something to do with that.

  “Something good. I hope.”

  She came to a slow stop in front of a gray house on the right. It was one story and shaped like a box with snow drifts packed along its walls. A small cement porch and steps jutted out. Something about the place disturbed Kerbasi, but he couldn’t determine the reason.

  “Please tell me you didn’t take the maid service job. I doubt these people will pay very well,” Kerbasi said, turning his gaze toward Melena.

  Since her last boss died a few months ago she’d dragged him to many job interviews with no success at finding employment yet. Her lover, Lucas, had offered to help but she’d refused his aid.

  Melena’s slim fingers tightened on the wheel of the Jeep. “No. I did not get a job as a maid.”

  “Then why are we here?” He studied her more closely. Her long auburn hair covered much of her face, but he caught the tense set of her jaw.

  “We’re here for your latest lesson in humanity,” Melena said, unbuckling her seatbelt.

  He sighed. Not that nonsense again.

  She was a sensor. A rare breed of humans who had heightened senses allowing them to detect any supernaturals, spells, or emotions nearby. Sensors also had immunity to magic. The supernatural community hated her kind for their abilities, but she’d managed to gain some allies from among them. Even then, he was surprised she’d survived this long. Her new immortality probably had something to do with that, as well as the archangels who watched over her race.

  They were the ones who’d bound him to her because they believed he needed rehabilitation and that she could help. More than six months had passed while he resisted her efforts. Kerbasi was weary of her pathetic attempts to make him more kind and understanding. As a guardian of Purgatory—or at least he would be again someday—he didn’t need those kinds of qualities.

  Ruthless and uncaring. That was what he needed for his job.

  He scoffed. “I’ve told you before that I do not heal humans and you cannot force me to do it.”

  “I’m not going to.” She opened her door and got out of the Jeep, but popped her head back inside. “All you have to do is keep a sick boy company. Find a way to bring him comfort and happiness.”

  “You can’t be serious.” Kerbasi didn’t move from his seat. Melena’s latest plan was beyond preposterous.

  She gave him a stern look. “It’s almost Christmas. The lesson has to be bigger this time and you have to make a real effort. Be rude to me all you want, but this is an innocent kid who is dying. He’s only got his mom and aunt and they’re both working overtime to pay for his medical expenses. Someone has to keep him company when they can’t. That someone is going to be you.”

  “How did you even find out about him?” Kerbasi asked.

  “Cori told me,” Melena replied. “But don’t you dare take it out on her. She was just telling me about the situation because she’s friends with the boy’s aunt. It was my idea to bring you here.”

  “Then why not get a vampire to heal him with their blood?” Not that Kerbasi condoned cheating the natural order of things, but the sensor rarely accepted fate without attempting some sort of intervention. He was a poor choice if she hoped for positive results.

  Melena’s gaze turned distant. “He’s got leukemia. I’ve been told a vampire can’t help with blood diseases and no one else around has strong enough healing abilities to do anything.”

  Ah, yes. Undead blood wouldn’t help in such cases. Not that he was an expert on such things, but he’d picked up a little about earth over the centuries through the books he’d managed to obtain. Humans were such frail creatures, but they made up for it by breeding incessantly.

  “I still do not understand why you wish to foist me off on an unsuspecting child. Surely you do not think I’ll be of any benefit to him?” Even Kerbasi knew he wasn’t the most pleasant man to be around.

  Melena came to the other side of the vehicle and jerked his door open.

  “Let’s just say I have faith that you’ll try even if you don’t believe it yourself.” She took her bag from the floorboard by his feet. “Now stay invisible until I tell you otherwise. I don’t want his mother, Tricia, seeing you.”

  At least that much about this plan made sense. Unless he used magic to alter his features, he tended to scare adult humans and then he had to compel them to calm down. Children, on the other hand, found him fascinating—to his annoyance.

  “Very well.” He faded his form until no human eye could see him and got out. “But you shall see soon enough this is another wasted effort on your part.”

  He followed her footsteps across the lawn, cursing the snow that stuck to his new leather boots. Kerbasi had never experienced snow until coming to earth about six months ago, but his interest in it had died quickly. I
t was difficult to trudge through and blinding to the eyes during the day. Why anyone would want to stay in a place where there was so much of it was beyond him.

  He much preferred the dark icy caverns of Purgatory. It was comfortable and familiar, whereas Alaska had a bitter cold in the winter even his immortal body couldn’t ignore—and it was only December. He’d been told it would be worse in January. The very thought of it made him long for home. A place he doubted he’d see for a long time.

  They reached the porch and he took greater care with his steps. There wasn’t any ice, but with his luck he’d slip and fall anyway. Then Melena would laugh like she did every time he did something clumsy. She didn’t understand that gravity was lighter on earth and he was still adjusting. The silly sensor thought it was just the heat and lack of oxygen weighing her down when she’d visited Purgatory before.

  A woman with shoulder-length curly blond hair opened the door before Melena could knock. She couldn’t have been more than thirty, but the dark circles under her eyes and lines across her forehead made her look older. Judging by the dark pants and familiar restaurant logo on her red shirt, she was either about to head to work or had just come home.

  “Oh, good. You’re here! Thank you so much for doing this.” She ushered Melena inside. “I’ve had the worst time finding someone to watch Edan until my sister finishes her shift. We just couldn’t get our schedules lined up right this week.”

  She shut the door in Kerbasi’s face. He rubbed his nose where the solid wood had thudded into it. This was what he got for playing along with Melena’s schemes. He flashed into the living room and found the two women still talking.

  “Edan’s settled in his bed in his room. There’s really not much else to do for him.” She looked away. “Just make sure he’s comfortable.”

  “Tricia.” Melena put a hand on the woman’s arm. “I’ll keep a close eye on him. Don’t worry.”

  A tear spilled down the woman’s cheek. “It’s so hard to leave him like this. Every time I go I wonder if when I come back…”

  The sensor pulled Tricia into her arms and hugged her. Melena squeezed her eyes shut as she took in every bit of the other woman’s emotions. One of her inborn gifts was being empathic and she couldn’t shut it off. Kerbasi had many abilities, but he was grateful that wasn’t one of them.