The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance

by Trisha Telep

  I grimaced. “You prey on helpless, innocent victims?”

  “No, I prey on dying, suffering victims. More specifically, on suffering victims who would prefer not to suffer any longer.”

  My conscience rolled that one around for a while, but I couldn’t quite figure out what I thought of it. I tentatively decided it wasn’t much worse than what I did, if indeed it was worse at all.

  “And what about Elizabeth?” I asked.

  Something that looked like it might be genuine grief crossed his face. “Elizabeth had ovarian cancer. She had some particularly brutal surgery, and then she started chemo. The side effects of that form of chemo can be excruciating, and she seemed to have every one. Her future would have been filled with pain, more surgery and long hospital stays. She’d loved me for quite some time, and I was fond enough of her to want to give her some happiness before she died. So I married her shortly after she was diagnosed, cared for her and eased the way when she was ready to call it quits.”

  I stared at him sceptically. “And convinced her to leave you half her estate.”

  He waved that off. “That was her decision, and I didn’t know about it. I’d have stopped her if I had. I don’t need the money, and I certainly didn’t need to give Jeffrey any more reason to hate me.”

  Call me an old softie, but I believed him. Mainly because of all the bad things he could have done to me by then but hadn’t. I hoped that the fact that I lusted after him wasn’t any factor in my decision, but I can’t say for sure.

  “So you’re just an all-round nice guy, huh?” I said.

  “Something like that. Now are you leaving or staying? Because if you’re staying, I’m sure we can find somewhere more comfortable than the foyer.”

  The glint in his eyes told me just where he had in mind for us to go. Temptation swamped me, though I figured it wasn’t exactly professional for me to sleep with my supposed target.

  A smile curled my lips as a thought occurred to me,

  Blackburn’s eyes widened. “Now that is a truly evil smile,” he told me. “Do I want to know what you’re thinking?”

  “You said you were planning to disappear from Jeffrey’s life.”

  He blinked at what must have seemed like a non sequitur. “Yes,” he answered cautiously.

  “Would you be willing to do your disappearing within the next two weeks?”

  He cocked his head at me, brow furrowed in puzzlement. “May I ask why?”

  “My agreement with Jeffrey was that you would disappear, never to be seen again. And that your body would never be found. I didn’t actually say I would kill you.”

  Blackburn threw back his head and laughed. “So you claim to have ‘taken care’ of me, and you’ll take Jeffrey’s money?”

  “I get my money, Jeffrey gets his revenge and neither one of us has to die. What more could you ask for?”

  He was no longer leaning against the wall. Now, he was stalking across the foyer towards me in his full predatory glory. The door no longer seemed even remotely tempting.

  “Oh, I can think of a few more things to ask for,” he murmured as he took up his former position, crowding into my personal space.

  “What makes you think I’d give them to you?” I asked. “You were a total asshole last night, and you’ve been an insufferable bully so far tonight.”

  His crooked grin made my libido dance a jug. “Oh, and you would have been the soul of courtesy and hospitality if you’d found an unfamiliar vampire on your doorstep? And then discovered she meant to kill you?”

  I had to grant him that. I still don’t get why you let me go last night.”

  He shrugged. “I found you entertaining. And I knew you’d be back.”

  Arrogant bastard! “It would have served you right if I’d staked you as soon as you opened the door,” I grumbled.

  He pressed up close against me, letting me feel his own, er, stake. I guess death threats were a turn-on for him. “If you find me so terribly unappealing, you could always leave,” he said. “I won’t try to stop you, and I’ll even disappear for you so you can collect on your contract.”

  I glanced pointedly at his ring, though I made no attempt to move away. “Aren’t you in mourning?”

  A shadow of grief crossed his face. “When I lost Elizabeth, I lost a dear friend. But not a lover. If we were to explore our mutual attraction, I would not feel it disloyal to her memory.”

  I was running out of reasons to turn him down. And truthfully, there were many advantages to having a vampire lover. Especially one as smoking hot – and relatively decent (if such a term could be applied to any vampire) – as Ross Blackburn.

  “OK,” I said. “I’ll take you for a test drive.”

  He smirked at me in a way that would have infuriated me if he weren’t so damn sexy. I grabbed double fistfuls of his hair and pulled his head down to mine. And believe me, that smirk died a quick and glorious death.

  The Righteous

  Jenna Maclaine

  Castle Tars, Ireland,

  The warrior stood with his hands braced on the huge oak table, his brow creased in concentration as he studied the map laid out before him. The flickering flames of the firelight played over the thick muscles of his chest and cast his face into shadows, As she watched, he tucked a lock of hair behind his ear. How she longed to reach out and brush his hair back, to feel the soft strands that changed from black to brown to coppery blond between her fingers. He looked so very young tonight and yet centuries had passed since he’d been born into this world. Physically, he appeared as though he’d seen no more than 25 years, but his age showed in the hardness of his eyes and the sharpness of his tongue.

  “Morrigan, if you must be here the least you can do is not skulk about in the shadows,” he snapped.

  The goddess sighed and stepped into the room. “Good evening my love.”

  He raised his dark angry eyes to hers, “I am not your love.”

  She felt a surge of pleasure as she noted the way he watched the sway of her hips as she walked towards him. “Such harsh words from your lips that used to speak naught but tenderness to me,” she said.

  He grabbed her wrist as she reached to lay her hand against his cheek. “Any tenderness I felt for you died when you killed me.”

  She cocked her head to one side. “Do not act as though you were not complicit in your own downfall.”

  “You deceived me,” he growled.

  “And you betrayed me,” she pointed out. “And yet I have made you a king.”

  He released her wrist suddenly and turned his back to her, surveying his map once more. “I grow weary of this argument, Morrigan. I will not have it with you again.”

  She nodded. “Fine. I didn’t come to argue with you.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Your vampires are killing my humans, even though you have forbidden them to do so.”

  “My vampires? They are your creation. Why is it that when they misbehave they are my vampires?”

  “Because you are their king. You have set down their laws and now you must make them abide by those laws.”

  He made a sweeping gesture towards the map. “I rule two kingdoms, Morrigan. My lands encompass the majority of the known world. I cannot be everywhere. I am not a god.”

  She laughed. A man who didn’t think he was a god. What a novelty. “May I make a suggestion?” she asked sweetly.

  He gritted his teeth and nodded.

  “My creations of the night fear nothing and it has made them overbold. I would now give them something to fear, as humans fear the Wild Hunt on a moonlit night.”

  “And what exactly would put that kind of fear into the undead?”

  “I want you to create two groups of slayers, one here in the west and another in the east. They will be judge, jury and executioner among our vampires. So that they are free to travel at will their rank will be above that of any king or regent. They will be answerable only to you.”

  He considered i
t for a moment and then asked, “I suppose you have someone in mind for this Herculean task?”

  She looked down at the map, tapping her finger over the city of Vienna. “The King of the Eastern Lands already has a trio of warriors that will suit our needs but he keeps them in the capital as his own personal guard. I want them to travel through his lands and execute any rogue vampire who does not adhere to our laws.”

  “Drake will not like the removal of his personal guard.”

  She arched one black brow. “You are the High King and he is your vassal. Make it so.”

  “Do you truly believe that three vampires can control the entire population of a kingdom?”

  She laughed. “It has been too long since you have moved in the human world, my love. Humans are rules by words in books. They follow the laws of their gods, against their baser instincts, because they fear punishment in the next world.”

  “But you’ve created vampires to be almost immortal. They have little fear of what comes in the next life.”

  The goddess smiles. “So we will give them something terrible to fear in this life.”

  He ran his hand over the map of his kingdoms. “It could work. I will send a messenger to the Eastern King. And what of my western lands?”

  She walked around the table, trailing her long, shiny black fingernails across the wood. On the far side of the room, next to the King’s bed stood a white marble pedestal and in that pedestal rested the great Book of Souls. She made her way to the book, her book, and reverently touched its solid gold binding. It contained the names of every vampire who owed fealty to the High King. Opening it, her hand hovered over the pages and they turned without a touch until she found the name she sought.

  “This one,” she said, tapping the page.

  Curious the warrior king came up behind her and peered over her shoulder. “What makes this knight so special?” he asked, hating himself for the trace of jealousy he heard in his own voice.

  “He is a good man, a righteous man, and he will make fine warriors for my cause.”

  “I will summon him.”

  “No,” she said quickly. “Not yet. There is something he must do before he is ready.”

  He glanced sideways at her, frowning. “Are you matchmaking again, Morrigan?”

  She smiled. “Send him to Paris. There he will find what he needs to become the man we wish him to be.” She turned quickly and he reached out, grabbing her shoulders to steady them both. “Now, why don’t you let me give you what you need,” she purred.

  “I want nothing from you,” he spat, yet he didn’t drop his hands or turn away.

  “You need my blood,” she murmured, running her fingertips over his bare chest, then down his stomach. She lingered over the bulge where his body strained against his breeches. “You may not want me but your body tells a different tale.”

  He closed his eyes, trying to ignore the throbbing that only she could cause. “Do you really want this, Morrigan, knowing how much I hate you?”

  She leaned into his body. “There is such a fine line between love and hate, my King. This will do . . . for now.”

  He opened his eyes and looked down into her strong, almost masculine features. Her black eyes flashed with triumph and her sharp, high cheekbones were flush with the lust she felt for him. Her full lips parted on a sigh as he grabbed a fistful of her jet-black hair.

  “I hate you,” he whispered, though the words held less conviction than he would have liked.

  “I know,” the goddess whispered back. “But you will always love me.”

  Paris,

  The woman was dead before he found her. A vampire cannot drain a human in one feeding but this poor soul had run afoul of three of them and together they had bled her dry. He couched on the rooftop, waiting. The girl he had been following, rooftop tp rooftop through the winding streets of Paris, would happen upon this massacre at any moment. He shifted his weight to the balls of his feet and watched.

  She was tall for a female, perhaps only six inches shy of his six foot four. He had laughed when he’d first caught sight of her tonight, clad in her dark, unadorned man’s attire. She wore her pale wheat-coloured hair pulled back in a ribbon at the nape of her neck and the features of her face were partially obscured by the wide-brimmed hat she wore. He could make out her aquiline nose and full, sensual lips but not the colour of her eyes. How he wished he could see her eyes now as she stepped from the shadows of the alley and came upon the three vampires finishing off their victim.

  She swept her coat back and from somewhere under its black folds produced a long-handles axe fitted with a wooden stake on one end. She swung and the vampire feeding from the woman’s wrist lost his head in the first stroke. He was old and with his death his body turned to little more than dust and bone. The other two looked up in surprise and the girl’s foot shot out, sweeping the legs out from under the vampire closest to her. He went down with a shout and she twirled the axe around, impaling the stake in his chest with one thrust. This one was young and there was no dust, only a dead body on the ground. The man on the rooftop figured that the older vampire was probably out teaching two newly-made vamps to hunt. He figured this because the last vampire standing didn’t have the sense to run.

  “Slayer,” the vampire sneered. “There’s a price on your head. The Regent will pay me well for your lifeless corpse.”

  She dropped the axe on the ground and the man on the rooftop tensed. He watched, ready to intervene, as the vampire rushed her. She didn’t panic. She took two deliberate steps towards him, grabbed him by the front of his coat as he reached her and pitched backwards, using his momentum against him. The vampire went sailing through the air and the girl ended up on her back on the cobblestones. As the vampire gained his feet and strode back to her she rolled, flipping herself up and into a crouch in one smooth movement. Her hand snaked out and grabbed the handle of her axe, as of she’s known exactly where it would be, and she sliced upwards with it as she spun around to face her attacker. She caught him cleanly in the neck and his disembodied head hit the street with a thump.

  The man on the rooftop let out the breath he had been holding. She was amazing. No wasted movements or unnecessary commentary, just a clean execution. By God, this girl fascinated him. After three-and-a-half centuries on this earth and a well deserved distrust of the female gender, that in itself was quite an achievement. He watched as she knelt down to make certain that the vampires’ victim was dead. She sighed and he thought he heard a prayer on her lips as she closed the woman’s eyes. Getting to her feet, she stepped over one of the vampire bodies and swooped down to retrieve her fallen hat. She paused and glanced up, almost as if she could sense him. He slid back into the shadows and smiled. Her eyes were the colour of Louis XIV’s great blue diamond. She slapped the hat onto her head and stalked off. He followed, his mind filled with plans of when and where he would finally meet her.

  There were many things she loved about being the reigning darling of the Paris Opera: the stage, the costumes, the music. She loved to sing and she had a voice that was considered by many, including the great Jean-Baptiste Lully, to be unparalleled across Europe. It had brought her fame and fortune and the attention of kings. It had brought her up from the gutter to the glittering world that now surged forwards to offer its congratulations at yet another stellar performance at the Palais des Tuileries.

  This was the only part of her life that she hated – the long walk from her dressing room to the carriage that awaited her. At one time it had been a heady thing, to have rich and powerful men offering her anything she desired for her favours. She had become the mistress of the Sun King at the tender age of 17. A few years later she had enjoyed the generosity of England’s Charles II. That she had been the mistress of kings had only increased her value to the men who moved in Louis’ privileged world and she used their ambition to her advantage. She had chosen her few lovers with discrimination, selecting only those who would bring her closer to her goal. She now pos
sessed her own house, casks of jewels and enough money to live comfortable for the rest of her life, if she was frugal. Most importantly, she was able to care for the only thing that truly mattered in her life: her sister.

  And so she smiled and nodded and politely declined the offers made to her by the gentlemen of the court. She had thought that eventually their attention would wane but the fact that she had not taken a lover in over two years had only fuelled their interest in her. Briefly she wondered how much they were now wagering on who she would chose as her next protector.

  In truth she missed having a man in her bed but she could not tie herself to another aristocrat who would expect her to be available whenever he wished. Her nights were now filled with darker things than illicit rendezvous with powerful men. The denizens of Louis XIV’s court would leave the opera tonight and spend their evening drinking and gambling and speculating as to why one of the most desirable women in Paris would choose to go to her bed alone. But Justine Rousseau would not be found, this night or any other, in her bed. While darkness blanketed the city there were more important things to do than sleep. There were vampires to hunt.

  As her carriage crossed the Seine at the Pont Neuf, Justine pulled the powdered wig from her head and ran her fingers through her long, pale-blonde hair. She noted the grand, awe-inspiring silhouette of Notre Dame cathedral looming in the distance as the carriage turned to go deeper into the city, as it did every night. Rolling to a stop in front of the Ursuline convent of Rue Saint-Jacques, the carriage would wait until she tapped on the roof and then it would return her to her house on the Rue des Tournelles.

  Her sister Solange had been a boarder at the convent school for the last ten years. Their parents had died of smallpox when Justine was only 16. She often wondered if she had done right by Solange. It had been her intention to keep Solange with her but she hadn’t known, in the beginning, what kind of life she had chosen for herself. She hadn’t wanted her sister to grow up learning to be a courtesan, so she had enrolled her in the convent school at the first opportunity. It had been the beginning of the end of their relationship.