Taming the Vampire: Over 25 All New Paranormal Alpha Male Tales of Contemporary, Military, Shifters, Billionaires, Werewolves, Magic, Fae, Witches, Dragons, Demons & More

by Mandy M. Roth

  “You forgot one,” Tyr instructed, indicating he’d been listening to her the whole time. Damn vampire hearing.

  “Jiri of the Moroi who is standing in for sleeping beauty,” Olivia answered, not looking up. She didn’t like saying Vladamir’s name out loud, a part of her always worried that doing so would invoke his attention.

  “Do we need to move again?” the light angel asked, giving Olivia a concerned look. “She’s doing so well here, but it has been four years. Maybe we have overstayed?”

  “Not yet,” the dark angel answered. “But we give you a warning that they might send other knights.”

  Olivia flipped to a new page.

  Dark and light angels. They were her mothers now. Light could walk during the day. Dark could not. Dark understood the deep pit inside Olivia’s broken soul. Light could not. Light had hugged her during her nightmares and sang her lullabies. Dark had jerked her out of bed and handed her a sword to battle the imaginary demons head on. Both loved her, and that love caused them to be overprotective…and perhaps a bit delusional.

  Ok. So dark angel and light angel both had names. Olivia had called them that when she was young and confused. Hey, who wouldn’t be fucked up after seeing their human parents killed by a hungry, crazed monster? Dark angel was Jaden MacNaughton—dhampir turned full vampire, one of the elite knights, cursed by darkness, partnered with her manfriend Tyr, bound into servitude to the powerful vampire council, all that fun dark, and evil stuff. Light angel was Hathor Vinceti—a reincarnated goddess or so was claimed by her daywalker-slash-reformed vampire-slash-husband, Servaes.

  Lord Servaes, the Marquis de Normant used to run a vampire feeding club near Olivia’s childhood home. It was merely a coincidence that it was those same club vampires that had been dragged into the street to die. Thanks to Hathor—in a story Olivia never really learned the full scope of—he was now a daywalker with a slight addiction to cheeseburgers. He was the only one of his kind. That scared the elders.

  “Olivia has work being displayed at the local bookstore,” Hathor offered like a proud mother bragging to another parent. She pulled out her smartphone and brought up the photos to show Tyr and Jaden. “Her paintings are coming along beautifully.”

  “Are those…?” Tyr frowned and recoiled a little. “Kittens in a basket?”

  “I like kittens,” Hathor defended. “I told her to make me something pretty.”

  Vampires talking about kittens, Olivia thought. Yep, my life is a fucking freak show.

  All eyes turned to her like adults scolding a naughty child. Well, all but the dark angel who grinned in what could only be construed as approval. Olivia ignored them and turned back to her sketchpad. They shouldn’t have been reading her thoughts anyway. They knew she hated when they did that.

  “I prefer the landscapes you were doing,” Tyr stated. “The bonfires and ruins. The one with the little men carrying iron pikes. Fine detail in those. Reminds me of the old days.”

  “Those were demons marching out of hell,” Jaden said.

  “They were vampires,” Olivia corrected. And they had been in her nightmares. Putting them on canvas was the only way they seemed to get out of her head. Seriously, though, considering her life, could anyone really be surprised she was a little fucked up?

  “Yes, that one. I hung it in my cave home with my other possessions,” Tyr said in approval. “You should do more like that.”

  Tyr’s cave home was an isolated stronghold in the middle of the Jotunheimen mountain range of Norway. Olivia had been holed away there after Jaden and Tyr whisked her out of London. Had Jaden not insisted she be integrated with other human children somehow, she might still be in that rock fortress.

  “Kittens are much nicer,” Hathor maintained. “I think a human girl her age needs nicer influences.”

  “She paid me for the kittens,” Olivia revealed, not looking up from her pad.

  “Nicer?” Tyr was frowning when she glanced up at him. “What part of her existence makes you think kittens? She is a warrior, like us. A survivor. Her eyes are open.”

  “Hathor is the closest thing to a normal human, no offense Jaden, that we have,” Servaes defended his wife. “I say we defer to her on the topic of human girls.”

  “No offense taken.” Jaden shrugged. “I was raised by a sociopath who trained me to be a vampire hunter. I know nothing of,” she struggled to find an example, “of pink fluffy…bunnies and ballet shoes and—what do human girls do again?”

  “Very well,” Tyr said. He knew little of human children, especially girls, and had reminded Olivia of that fact often when he had clumsy interactions with her—like the time he let her watch horror movies well beyond what was age appropriate, or when he’d told her she could roam an inner city graveyard in the middle of the night at fifteen to attend a rave. Hathor had been furious. Jaden had saved her from that last one. Tyr still didn’t see what the harm in it was.

  “You pay me, too, I’ll paint demons for you,” Olivia said. “The angels won’t let me get a real job.”

  Tyr gave her a ghost of a smile and nodded in agreement.

  Something along the water’s edge drew Olivia’s notice, and she glanced down. Her breath caught in what could only be hope as she thought of Jaxon. It was foolish for her to want another vampire to visit her, especially one that was paid to protect her. She was up to her eyeballs in the undead and didn’t need any more, but there was a sadness to Jaxon that spoke to her. Not to mention, like most of his kind, he emitted a kind of sexual appeal that could easily fuel a late night fantasy. Not that anything would come of it. Well, not that anything would come of it again. She could just imagine what Tyr and Servaes would do if they learned she’d slept with…well, anyone. Around sixteen they had both tried their version of the maidenhead flower and the attacking sword talk. Hathor did birds and bees. Jaden handed her birth control and said to have fun.

  Even that first time they’d come together, Jaxon knew how to touch her. It was an instinct, a talent, a freaking vampire advantage—she didn’t know. It was a thousand times better than her first time with a boy, which had been groping and horrible. He’d been human, and she’d been desperate to escape reality. Needless to say, Robert Fumble-fingers What’s-his-name wasn’t love, and her guardians’ sex talk had come a little too late.

  The looks she imagined Jaxon directed at her were merely the illusion of feeling, a natural vampire trick to lure in prey. He never indicated that he cared beyond duty. Sometimes, she doubted vampires could care, at least not as deeply as humans, but then she saw the way Tyr and Jaden looked at each other when they thought no one noticed.

  No, it wasn’t Jaxon. Just some other night creature bent on ill intent. A shiver worked over Olivia, and she narrowed her gaze as fear tried to creep in.

  Olivia saw a flash out of the corner of her eye. Automatically her heartbeat quickened with an adrenaline-fueled response. Her arm lifted to block the attack to her neck. She dropped her sketchpad on the ground and heard her pencil rolling away. Jaden stood against her, fangs bared and face contorted. After a few seconds locked in the unmoving position, Olivia drawled, “Hungry?”

  “Your timing was a few seconds slower than last time,” Jaden said. “We were away too long. The instructors I left have been remiss in your training.”

  “Maybe because I was expecting you to attack me,” Olivia quipped. If a vampire wanted to eat her, she’d be eaten. And, if the council elders wanted her dead, she’d be dead.

  Within seconds she was on her back on a worn dirt path several hundred yards from the bridge. Tyr’s ice-blue eyes flashed as he pinned her down by her neck. His long blond hair was pulled back, so the moonlight easily illuminated his face. It only took the effort of one hand to subdue her. She glared up at him, even as his hand tightened.

  “Do you think death is all they can do?” Tyr growled angrily. She rarely saw the ancient one express any kind of emotion that was not tinged with boredom. “They can lock you in a moment of h
ell for an eternity, little girl.”

  Olivia hit his arm, knowing she would be helpless against his strength. “Then kill me and be done with it already, old man. Unless the elders can suddenly reanimate the dead? Necromancy anyone? No? I didn’t think so.”

  “You were more agreeable when you were twelve,” he grumbled. Tyr pulled her up by her arms and set her on her feet.

  “You were scarier when I was twelve,” she said.

  “I know Servaes and Hathor disagree with me on this, but if it is your wish, I will arrange for you to be changed,” Tyr said so that the others would not hear him. “Jaden and I have spoken on it. Your beauty will never fade, and your youth—”

  Olivia arched a brow.

  Tyr chuckled. “Fine. A poor argument. Think of how many museums you can visit and paintings you can create. The council would not see you as much of a threat if you were reborn. They will still want the name you refuse to give, but—”

  “Someone comes. We should go,” Jaden interrupted, jogging up the path to join them.

  Tyr narrowed his gaze on her. Olivia shook her head in denial of his question. No, she did not want to live forever.

  Chapter 3

  “What are you doing here? She needs protection.”

  At the cryptic tone, Jaxon looked up from his place on his leather couch. Vladamir did not need an introduction and often appeared and disappeared at will. Jaxon couldn’t complain. The man was an elder, one of the oldest and most powerful vampires he had ever come across. He led the Moroi tribe, which made him Jaxon’s great-great-something-vampire-grandfather. Funnily, Vladamir was the closest connection he had to his own maker—some bloody feral being that had fed on him, bled into him, and then left him to die in the sunlight before disappearing forever.

  The Spokane suburb apartment wasn’t anything special, besides the fact it was secluded and had very little daytime traffic to disturb Jaxon while he slept in his coffin bed. It was rare that he would get a visitor, let alone one who could show up without his hearing them coming.

  “I have been protecting her each night as you’ve asked. She is meeting with her guardians now. They sensed me when I came too close and whisked her away. You have no reason to worry. They will keep her safe,” Jaxon answered, “and when they are done Tyr and Servaes will call me back.”

  Jaxon’s eyes moved across the paintings on his wall. He’d bought every single one of Olivia’s pieces that had been for sale at the local bookstore’s art gallery. He even had the simple napkin sketch she’d made for him after they’d first met. She’d just moved to Spokane, and he’d known the local area. Most of them were disturbing images of death and chaos, and yet that was his reality since the night he’d been turned in October of 1868. Her artwork somehow managed to capture all the pain in his soul but none of the longing.

  The paintings faded from his vision as he remembered the look of her by the suspension bridge’s stone column. She’d had her head turned down to her sketchpad, pencil moving languidly over the paper. Blonde hair held the silver of the moonlight, delicate threads that lifted in the breeze. When he watched her, he heard piano music and violins filtering through his thoughts. It was an old song, one he’d heard long ago in his youth. It caused his soul to ache.

  Her cheeks flushed with life as only a human’s complexion could. Whenever she was nervous and trying to hide it, she’d bite the inside of her bottom lip. That humanity mesmerized him. She mesmerized him.

  “I chose you to protect her because you love her,” Vladamir stated, “and because you have managed to stay off the council’s radar since your initial turning. All you are to them is a name in a ledger, one of the thousands. You have no family, not even a vampire one, poor little orphan. All you have is your tribe and the memories of your disastrous rebirth.”

  Jaxon glanced at the tribal elder. The truth no longer stung. It was true that most vampires had some kind of guidance after being made. Once the bloodlust had subsided, Jaxon had figured out what he was on his own.

  “You are not an evil man, but you do evil things,” he’d used to tell himself.

  Vladamir chuckled as if reading the memory.

  “And I obey because you threatened to change her if I dared to tell her how I felt. I’ve stayed hidden in her shadows unless I am called to duty by her guardians.” Jaxon would gladly spend the rest of his days in her shadows, even though it tortured him. Time would fly quickly, too quickly, and she would finish out her mortal life. He would have to watch her live, and then he would watch her die. That is how a human life should be. She should not be submitted to the darkness. Already she walked on the edge.

  “Vincent will kill her for what was done to him,” Vladamir stated. “For the secret she will never tell.”

  “Why do you care so much?” Jaxon asked. “She is one mortal in a sea of many. No one knows who killed the London club vampires over a decade ago, and vampires are slowly beginning to no longer care. Vincent is the only one still holding a grudge because his foot was melted off. Eventually, it will grow back, and he will move on.”

  “There was something in her face the night I met her. A look.” Vladamir appeared lost in thought.

  “When did you meet her again?”

  “My daughter had that look when I attacked her mother in the fever of turning,” Vladamir continued, ignoring the questions as he always had, “such confusion and fear, and the smell of innocence. It happened so long ago, but it has always haunted the edge of my dreams. And when I looked at Olivia, I remember that one faint trace of what I was. I tasted her blood, and the ghosts became stronger. That ecstasy and that pain dances along my memory like a play whose lines I have forgotten but yearn to remember.”

  “Then kill Vincent.” Jaxon leaned forward on his knees. Hunger ate at his stomach, but he didn’t feel like hunting and blood bags tasted worse than sewer rats.

  “I cannot. The elders protect him, and I am not ready to make myself known to them. Let them think I sleep.” The old vampire blurred, appearing before one of Olivia’s paintings. It was a dark red blotch of smoke and what looked to be fiery pieces of ash falling like snow over a brick road. “I will keep this one.”

  Jaxon frowned. He did not wish to let the painting go. They were the only pieces of Olivia he could have, and he wanted them all.

  “You don’t even know what this one is.” It was no surprise the powerful creature disregarded what Jaxon thought of his stealing. “It’s my portrait.”

  Chapter 4

  Olivia awoke, startled by the feeling that someone was in her room. She jumped up in bed, half expecting that Jaden would be standing over her with a sword. Her skin prickled in warning. She stumbled around the twisted bedding, arms lifted, as she waited for an attack.

  “Hello, sunshine.”

  Olivia frowned at the soft words and pushed the long strands of blonde hair out of her face before she lowered her arms. “Jaxon? Dammit. Didn’t we have this talk? It’s creepy to come into people’s bedrooms in the middle of the night.”

  “It’s my duty to protect you.” The tall man eased out of the shadows to stand before her. Though over a century dead and in modernized clothes, he still had the gait and subtle mannerisms of a cowboy. The paleness of death may have lightened his skin, but his Italian features gave his heritage away. His mother had been an Italian immigrant that spoke little English and his father a trader who’d settled in Montana. Dark hair fell to his shoulders. For the longest time, he had it cut shorter, but vampire hair grew so quickly, and it appeared he’d given up the battle.

  Olivia grumbled under her breath a series of incoherent sounds that added up to nothing but the need to show her displeasure.

  “What was that? I didn’t quite understand,” Jaxon probed. His eyes flashed with green. “Did you say, hello my moonbeam, so happy to see you again?”

  “Stop trying to read me,” she grumbled. And Jaxon Sebastiano is a stupid name for a vampire. You sound like a 1920s wannabe mobster.

  �
�Would you rather I choose a cool nickname?” he asked. “Jaxon the Impaler? Jaxon the Magnificent? Jack Shadow-walker? God Jaxon? Lars?”

  “Jaxon Window-peeper?” she offered, looking down at him from her place standing on the bed.

  “I looked in your window once. You screamed,” he defended.

  “I screamed because a creepy guy was looking in my window,” Olivia retorted.

  “You were having nightmares and screamed. That is why I looked. Then you screamed a second time. Servaes and Tyr ordered me to protect you, or they’d decapitate me. You scream, and I come running. You don’t say no to the old ones.”

  She grumbled again and kicked at the blankets pooled around her feet on the mattress.

  “I seem to remember that is not the only reason I made you scream.” He grinned.

  “And they say men had more manners in the 1800s,” Olivia quipped. “I thought gentlemen didn’t speak of such things.”

  “You have clearly been misinformed about the 1800s.” Jaxon laughed.

  “What do you want, Jack the Impaler? You’ve been hanging around for months now, and this is the first time you’ve bothered even to speak to me.” At the reminder, Olivia’s shoulders slumped some, and she waved her hand dismissively. She sat down on the bed. Jaxon was just another paid friend, a bodyguard, another person focused on keeping her alive, there because he had to be. “Go away. Go patrol. All is safe and sound here in my bed.”

  “I don’t like the feelings I’m detecting in you.” Jaxon frowned and made his way to the end of the bed. He stood, beautiful and strong, in his black long sleeve shirt and denim jeans. Should she have seen him in the bookstore, she would have smiled at him, if in this scenario she were a normal girl and he was a normal boy, that is. He was a handsome specimen of male-kind. “Why are those brown eyes of yours so sad? Talk to me.”