The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance

by Trisha Telep

  Sol’s chest felt so tight with longing he thought he was drowning. She was a goddess, an Aphrodite. He loved her. It was kismet.

  “So how long have you been a vampire?” she asked blowing out a cloud of smoke.

  Sol turned on his side and leaned his weight on his elbow. He tried to make his eyes heavy lidded and sensual like Brice’s. “A long time,” he lied. “And you?”

  “A couple of decades. I was touring Italy after graduation and met this Florentine count. He seduced me, bit me and abandoned me. The rest is history. You like the life?” She drew deeply one last time on the cigarette before looking around the dresser for something to use as an ashtray. She found a plaster cast of an upper jaw, turned it over and stubbed out her butt on the palate.

  Sol felt a brief annoyance until he became distracted by the smooth curve of her buttocks.

  Her voice held a trace of irritation too when she spoke again. “I said, do you like the life? You know, the restrictions and all. I have to use artificial tanner now. I used to love the Hamptons.” She sighed and gazed somewhat forlornly at the beige bedroom wall.

  “I’m OK with everything.” Sol answered, fixating on the pink top hat of her right nipple. “It’s been a great boost for my dental practice and I was always a night owl anyways. You ready to come back to bed?”

  The night began to fade away and the horizon became a bright line in the East over the roiling waters of Gowanus Bay. Sol felt panic stir in his stomach. He couldn’t bear to let this nymph, this Venus, this peaches-and-cream titbit for his love bites leave his arms.

  “Er,” he said as the blonde lay on her back staring at the ceiling, her expression unreadable. “I know this will sound a bit sudden, but –”

  She turned her head on the pillow to look at him. “But?”

  “It’s nearly daybreak. Why don’t you hang out here for the rest of the weekend. I just bought a new plasma TV and I own an extensive CD library. It’s quite impressive.”

  “OK,” she said, her voice curiously flat. She studied him for a moment and squeezed her eyes shut. “Sol,” she said. “How do you feel about me? Tell the truth.”

  Sol’s tongue felt too big for his mouth. “The truth? To tell the truth I’m crazy about you. I hope it doesn’t scare you off. I . . . I don’t want you to ever leave.”

  The blonde sat up and turned her lovely back towards him. She slipped out of bed and went to the dresser to retrieve another cigarette. Her fingers with their red tips seemed to shake a little as she pulled a Camel from the pack. She scrabbled among the spilled contents of her purse for the lighter, then flicked it, the flame lighting up her face. Her blue eyes glittered as she turned to Sol.

  “I’ll have to bite other guys, you know.” Her voice was a challenge. “A girl has to eat.”

  “No problem! Me too, I mean I guess me too. It’s just a meal. We can work it out.” His brown eyes lit up with hope. “Are you saying –”

  “Yes? Yes. I’m saying yes. I mean in this life it’s hard, difficult, to find somebody with the same – the same outlook. You know what I mean?”

  Sol didn’t, but nodded. His gaze had fallen to the intriguing darkness between her thighs and his attention had drifted to other things.

  “What I’m saying is,” the blonde continued, “we only just met, but sometimes you know right away that this is it. This is the one. Is that what you’re saying to me?”

  Sol dragged his thoughts back from her crotch. “Bunny, I mean, Sunny, you are the woman I have dreamed about,” he said with total candour. “Whatever you want, it’s fine with me. Are you nearly done with that cigarette?”

  She stubbed it out and moved languidly; her movements were fluid, graceful and erotic as she came back to the bed and stretched herself next to Sol. She wound her arms around his neck and kissed him, her tongue probed his mouth. He briefly thought of her overbite: new invisible plastic braces, the best ones on the market, will fix it. Then Sol stopped thinking of anything.

  Later, in the dim light of a gathering dawn, London also known as Sunny – or if Sol preferred Bunny (she had made the names up anyway) – spoke again, her tantalizing lips just inches from his. “Solly,” she whispered and his heart fluttered, “I need to know, are you really making a commitment to me. Me, nearly a perfect stranger?”

  “I feel as if I’ve always known you. I’ve dreamed of you. Longed for you.” For Sol that was as close to poetry as he had ever come. “I’m yours. For ever if you want me. Whatever you want I’ll give you.” He was a man who had lost his heart. Reason had flown. He was driven by a primal need to merge and release the hungers gathering in his soul.

  The blonde smiled, her teeth very white. “You know, I think I want to rearrange the furniture in the bedroom. I’m very into feng shui,” she whispered.

  “Huh?” Sol’s eyes fluttered a little as he felt her fingers move over his belly.

  “But later. Right now, take me, you mad fool.” She giggled and spread her legs to receive him once more.

  The bed shook. The walls vibrated. The dresser holding the blonde’s purse rocked. A business card, which had been resting precariously on a tissue, tumbled to the floor. It lay there face up and, if Sol Tytel had not been occupied elsewhere, he could have read:

  Blanche Stein, Matchmaker

  ‘I will find someone perfect for you’

  Brooklyn, New York

  -555-

  Author’s note: Any similarity to real persons living or dead is purely coincidental and that includes all my relatives in Brooklyn and Florida, especially my cousin Glenda.

  Hunter’s Choice

  Shiloh Walker

  “Shit.”

  The cold wind cut through her clothes like she wasn’t wearing anything, blew her hair into her face, made her eyes water and generally made it twice as hard to do what she needed to do. But she didn’t look away from the couple in the alley and, other than that quiet curse, she made no noise, made no movement.

  She held a crossbow in one hand, kept the other on a pair of military-issue binoculars with night-vision capabilities and a built-in digital camera. She was more used to using the cross-bow than the binoculars, but up until a year ago, the only time she’d ever used the crossbow was out on a shooting range.

  That had been another lifetime ago.

  Before 22 February 2007.

  The day her life changed forever – the day her twin brother and his wife, Sara’s best friend, were found murdered in their hotel room while on their honeymoon.

  Joseph and Darla had been the only family she had left and to lose them would have been devastating, no matter what. But to have them so brutally murdered and to live with the gut-deep belief she’d never know who’d killed them, made it so much worse.

  The question of who would go unanswered. But Sara knew what had killed them. A creature that couldn’t exist, that shouldn’t. A monster that looked just like a man, acted, walked, talked, sounded like a man. She’d been watching this one for a week now. Something about the way he moved, the way he watched people, had set off an alarm in her head.

  He shifted a little, lifted his head away from the woman in his arms. The lighting in the alley was too damn dim but Sara was used to it. These freaks never made a move unless it was someplace dark and shadowy. Through her night-vision binoculars, Sara watched as the woman unbuttoned the man’s shirt, pressed her lips to his bare chest.

  The man’s head fell back and Sara grinned with fral satisfaction as his lips parted, revealing exactly what she’d suspected.

  Two sharp, ivory fangs.

  “Got you,” she muttered, snapping a picture, then setting the binoculars aside and lifting her crossbow. The woman was about to get a very rude awakening but Sara figured it was better the woman see somebody get shot in front of her than have some bloodsucker drain her dry.

  Behind her, the wind kicked up. Her ears caught a strange rustling sound, a quiet, muffled thump, and then she heard a voice. A familiar voice.

 
“Not a good idea, Sara.

  She spun around, keeping the crossbow aimed and ready, as she faced the man she hadn’t seen in a year. Wyatt Cooper. Blood rushed to her face and a sick sensation of panic exploded inside her.

  Stunned, she blinked and squinted at him in the thin light, but there was no mistaking that face. With her heart racing, she lowered the crossbow to her side. “Wyatt?”

  He glanced over her shoulder and she had the weirdest sensation that he knew exactly what she’d been doing. Her heart kicked up a few beats, slamming away at her chest wall with a force that left her breathless.

  A faint grin tugged at his lips. “Fancy running into you here.” His gaze lingered on her crossbow. “Weird place for target practice.”

  “Ahhhh . . .”

  “I seem to recall you being a bit more talkative than this.” He cocked his head, still watching her with that faint, amused smile on his lips.

  “Yeah, well, you caught me a little off-guard. What are you doing here?”

  Wyatt shrugged. The cold wind’s knife-edge didn’t seem to bother him as it blew his hair back from his face.

  He looked incredibly out of place, she realized, but Wyatt was the kind of man who would always stand out. Under the open trench coat, he wore a dark shirt, which shimmered in the faint light, and dark trousers. During the one week they’d spent together, he always looked like he’d stepped off the pages of GQ.

  Well, when he hadn’t been naked and on top of her. Or under . . .

  His shoes were more suited to pacing the floors of a board-room than a busted-up, litter-strewn rooftop in the Chicago’s West Side. But he moved across that rooftop like he did every day of his life, unconcerned by the cold, by her weapons or the way she watched him.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He slid her a look as he approached the hip-high brick wall where she’d spent the last two hours. “Looking for you.”

  “Looking for me.” Shit. Alarm bells started to sound. Time to make a run for it. Her binoculars and one of her bags lay just a foot away. She could grab them. Grab them and get the hell out. “Why are you looking for me?”

  “I’ll answer that question after you answer one for me.” Crossing his arms over his chest, he stared down into the alley.

  From the corner of her eye, Sara followed his gaze. Her heart sank to her feet as she realized he’d distracted her at the worst possible time.

  Down in the alley, the vampire was feeding. The woman stood still, almost passive, in his arms and there was a look of utter rapture on her face.

  Damn it, damn it, damn it! Jerking the crossbow up, she aimed quickly, knowing she’d only have a second . . .

  Less. There was no time to aim before Wyatt moved, grabbing the crossbow out of her hands with uncanny strength.

  “Give it back!” Sara reached for it, but he slipped away. “He’s going to kill her.”

  If she thought her words might have had some sort of impact on him, she’d thought wrong. “No, Sara. He’s not. He isn’t going to hurt her.”

  “You don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about.” Fine. Screw the crossbow. She reached under her shirt, pulled out the Glock holstered at the base of her spine, watching him from the corner of her eye as she aimed. Again, she never even saw him move until he was pulling the gun away.

  “Unfortunately, Sara, I do.”

  Something cold and ugly moved through her and she lifted her head, watching as Wyatt moved to stand in front of her. He studied her face with grim eyes. If her instincts hadn’t already been screaming at her, they would have started, just from that look.

  “What are you doing here Wyatt?” she asked again, her voice hoarse. She asked – even though a part of her already knew the answer. “How did you know I was here?”

  Last year, just days after Joey had been buried, Sara had met a sexy stranger with eyes the colour of amber, silken black hair and a wicked smile. She wasn’t the type to pick up men in bars, wasn’t the type to go back to a hotel with a guy she’d known only hours. But she’d done so with Wyatt. And she remembered it all in vivid detail.

  She’d spent one week with him, one week in which they rarely left his hotel room. On the seventh day, she’d slipped out of the room while he’d been in the shower and she hadn’t seen him since.

  She’d thought about him way too often for her peace of mind and what few dreams she had that weren’t nightmares had been centred around him – hot, sweaty, dreams that left her aching and needy and lonely when she woke in her solitary bed. They left her wishing she could be different somehow, that she could move past the mission she’d set for herself.

  She thought of him – wondered if he ever thought of her and figured the uber-sexy man had long since forgotten her.

  But now he stood before her, watching her with that grim look on his face. “I’m here because of you, Sara.”

  “Why?” She inched backwards, deciding she’d forget about her bag. The gun. The crossbow. She could get new weapons.

  His lids drooped and, when he looked at her again, terror wrapped an icy fist around her heart. His amber eyes glowed.

  When he opened his mouth to speak, she barely heard him say, “I think you know why.”

  She was too busy staring at his fangs.

  Talk about taking one for the team, Wyatt thought with disgust as Sara back-pedalled away. Her pale-green eyes were wide with shock, her pretty face had gone pale with fear and he could hear the rapid beat of her heart from five feet away.

  Five feet and growing. Her hand slid to her waist and then fell back to her side as though she just remembered he’d taken her gun. A seriously mean-looking gun. Wyatt had little use for weapons, but he knew his way around them and the ones he’d taken from Sara weren’t the kind used for recreation purposes.

  They were a soldier’s weapons. A fighter’s. A killer’s.

  It hurt his heart to see what grief and rage had done to her. Wyatt’s memories of that one week last year were crystalline. He could recall it in such acute, exquisite detail. The way her lashes fluttered right before her eyes went wide as she came, a feline smile curling her lips as she cuddled into him afterwards.

  The way those pretty green eyes had misted over with tears she tried to hold back. The reluctant way she told him that her twin brother had been murdered, along with her best friend.

  Even then she’d had secrets in her eyes, some hidden knowledge she hadn’t given voice to. Thinking back, Wyatt knew he shouldn’t have let her slip away as she had. And not just because he could have happily spent the next 50 years in bed with the woman.

  When she slipped away from him, he had almost gone after her. Almost. But he’d been sent to make sure she would be all right – not fuck her brains out. He’d ended up doing both, and the guilt he carried was lightened only a little by the knowledge that she’d needed him. And he did prefer to think it was him she’d needed, and not just anonymous sex. A man was allowed a few delusions, after all.

  That guilt was back though. He’d been thinking with the wrong brain and now they were both caught in a mess.

  “You’re one of them,” she whispered. There was a stricken look in her eyes that was going to linger in his mind for a long, long time.

  “Sara, I’m not going to hurt you.”

  She laughed. It was an ugly, brittle sound that echoed through the night. As it faded, she stared at him with a mixture of disbelief, hurt, anger and fear. “Don’t give me that line, Wyatt. I know what your kind do. Hurting people is all you know.”

  “If I’d wanted to hurt you, I would have done so last year.”

  She flinched as though he’d slapped her. Wyatt held still, when all he wanted was reach for her, pull her to him.

  “If you don’t want to hurt me, then what in the hell do you want?” she demanded.

  Her voice dripped with sarcasm and he knew she didn’t believe him. It hurt. But he’d come into this knowing he’d get bloodied – figuratively speaking. Getting his
heart tipped out again, much like what happened when he realized she’d walked out on him, was much better than the alternative. That didn’t even bear thinking about.

  Focus on the problem, Wyatt, not the consequences of failure, he told himself.

  “I just want to keep you from making a mistake.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the alley but didn’t look at her face. “He wasn’t hurting her. He doesn’t believe in it.”

  Sara’s lips curled. “Yeah. I bet. You know, this vampire-with-a-soul bit has already been done. Buffy and Angel pretty much covered that storyline.”

  Despite himself, Wyatt grinned. “Buffy and Angel are Hollywood, love. This is real life.” His smile faded and he pushed a hand through his hair and sighed. “Sara, vampires aren’t demons any more than human’s are. Yes, some are monsters . . .” He slanted a look in her direction and added, “But then again, I’ve seen my share of human monsters, too.”

  “Human’s didn’t kill Joey and Darla.”

  “No.” Wyatt faced her levelly. “You aren’t mistaken in that. They were attacked by vampires. But not all vampires kill, Sara.”

  She gave him a hard smile. It matched the look in her eyes. Hard. Emotionless. Empty. “Sorry, not buying it.”

  “If all vampires kill – how come you’re still alive?”

  For a second, she looked unsure. Wyatt pressed his advantage. “Did I hurt you once, Sara? Do anything you didn’t want me to do?”

  “Just because you didn’t then doesn’t mean you never would, lover.”

  He gave her a narrow look. “Sara, darling, it’s a bit insulting to imply I’m a cold-blooded murderer and then call me ‘lover’ in the same breath.”

  She sneered at him. “Don’t tell me you’ve been harbouring fond memories, Wyatt.”

  “Fond?” His lids drooped over his eyes. Unable to stay away any more, he went to her, moving quicker than mortal eyes could track. Her eyes widened, her heartbeat kicked up and her apprehension scented the air.

  The predator in him stirred, the hunger rousing.

  But the man ached. He reached out and hooked a hand over her neck, moving against her so that their bodies were pressed together from chest to knee.