Vampires Romance to Rippers an Anthology of Tasty Stories

by D'Noire, Scarlette

  Penelope pulled away and swatted at him with her other hand, but he ducked and pushed her hard, knocking her to the floor. In a second, he was on top of her, pinning her down. He smirked. She could almost taste the blood on his lips.

  Cameron’s smile widened, exposing his fangs, and he lunged as if he were going to bite her. It would be one more law broken, but her brother did not care for the laws set down by the oldest of their kind. He did whatever he wanted. The decrepit elders with all their wisdom would not save her from him.

  She pulled on her inner strength, reached one hand up towards the massive chandelier, and willed it to fall. The crystal beast shattered against Cameron’s back, stunning him. Penelope took her opportunity and shoved him away. She found her footing quickly and darted out the door.

  Down the hall and into the ballroom she ran, sensing Cameron at her heels. The ballroom was lit with small candles flickering around the outside of the dance floor. Overhead, the moon could be seen dancing in and out of the clouds through the huge glass ceiling. The dance floor was barren, but several chairs lined the walls. Penelope didn’t hesitate; she skidded across the floor, grabbed a chair, turned, and swung it into Cameron’s shoulder.

  The chair crumbled, but Cameron barely flinched. Penelope stood there, gasping and looking at her brother, searching his eyes for a hint of salvation. He had been evil since they were children so long ago. She should know better than to think he had changed, or grown up. Their father had spoiled him rotten, yet the first thing Cameron did upon being turned into a vampire was to return and kill him. It had been as if the man had meant nothing to him. The only way to fight Cameron was to become a vampire herself. It was in their lineage, nothing to be feared, but she might have otherwise chosen something else. She could not let Cameron take the land. There were many people dependent on their estate. Leaving it to Cameron was not an option.

  Her hands held the broken stubs of wood and she swung them at her brother. He sidestepped and smirked at her. He knew he had her beat. “You’re going to hurt yourself with those things.”

  “No, I’m going to kill you.” She lunged forward, stabbing at him. Grunting, Cameron grabbed the stakes and yanked them from her hands. He tossed them across the dance floor, and backhanded Penelope. She fell backwards, face stinging. She smashed against the sidewall and slid to the floor.

  “The house and everything in it are mine. That includes you, and you know it. Why keep fighting it?”

  Penelope ignored his words and shook herself off. She took off, running down another hallway. Again, she sensed that he followed her.

  She ran across the external bridge-way that connected the two main sections of the house. It was a long, narrow road with a massive drop-off that spanned a ravine hundreds of feet below. Penelope ran across; she did not look down.

  “Stop it, Penelope. Stop. I mean now. The more you fight me, the harder this is going to be... on you.”

  Penelope stopped and turned to face Cameron. He stood at the other end of the bridge.

  “Brother, evil possesses you. Have you no heart left? Why can’t you just leave me alone? I’ll never serve you.”

  “My heart? Evil? Morals and laws are meant for lesser beings, sister. They do not apply to me.”

  She had been right. There could be no hope for him. She had to end this. Without another thought, she ran towards him, faster than she had run before. She put all of her inner power into the speed of her run; like lightning. At the last second, she pulled her shoulder inward, smashing into Cameron. He fell back, leaning against the railing. She grabbed his legs and flipped him, shoving him over the bridge, busting the railing. He fell.

  Penelope watched as he fell, his body illuminated only by the light of the moon. “That’s way too much evil for one person.” She relaxed as he fell out of sight.

  She saw movement under the bridge. An oddly swaying mass undulated upward. Dark and swirling, the mass rose. As it came higher, Penelope could see a cloud of bats flying erratically, yet there strangely seemed to be a pattern to the madness. As the mass rose higher, she could see Cameron in the center of the bats; they flew higher into the air above the bridge. Laughter rang out through the night, and Cameron landed in front of her on the bridge.

  He stood there, staring at her with glowing eyes, and a good three feet taller than he had been before he fell. The bats flew towards the moon and disappeared.

  “I am not so easily killed. I have more power than you can imagine, Penelope.”

  “I see.” Penelope sunk to her knees, her skirts wrapping around her feet. She put her hands in her lap, palms up. “I give up.”

  “I knew you would. I knew you would give in when you saw just how powerful I am.” He took a step closer to her. “You can’t run. You can’t fight this.” He stepped closer still until he was directly over her, looking down. “You are mine now, sister.”

  Penelope looked up at him, aware that tears trailed down her cheeks, but ignoring them. “Yes. Yes, Cameron. I’m yours. You were right.” She raised her arms invitingly.

  Cameron grabbed her by the shoulders, lifting her to her feet. He leaned in and started kissing her, down her neck, across her chest. He touched her hair, gently, as if admiring his precious belongings. He pulled her in close, smelling her hair.

  Penelope bared her fangs and leaned in, sinking them into the artery in his neck. Cameron’s scream broke into the air, but Penelope’s hold was strong. As she sucked his blood, the life and power slowly drained from Cameron, and Penelope became stronger. Finally, she held him up. He had no strength of his own and he was nothing more than a husk. She released her hold and blood squirted everywhere, dripping down her chin and chest and over her bodice. “Yes. That is too much power for someone as weak as you. You can’t handle it.”

  Cameron barely shook his head and croaked out one last word, “Why?”

  “I can handle it. That was always your problem. Not that you were evil, but that you were weak. Well, I’m not. You made me strong, all these years of fighting you. I can handle the responsibility that comes with the power, Cameron.” She laughed. “You ignored the laws, but the laws are there to keep us sane.”

  Penelope stretched one arm out, willing a slender piece of railing to pop into it. She stabbed Cameron in the chest. This time her aim was perfect, and Cameron dissolved to dust in her arms.

  Penelope slid to the ground, alone. Blood and tears covered her face. She regretted not having made this decision earlier, but he was her brother, and she knew how horribly sad she would feel, and she did. She allowed herself to feel it all. She needed to remember the pain and the loss. She didn’t regret killing Cameron, though. It had to be done. Her relief followed the sad regret like salve on a burn.

  About The Author

  Sherri Jordan-Asble lives with her family in Tampa, Florida. They enjoy kayaking, great movies, and drinking coffee. Sherri has a collection of short stories, Stories to Fight Demons By, published as an eBook, and Summer Blood is Sherri's first novel. She is currently hard at work on her next novel and finishing her Master's Degree in Creative Writing.

  Sherri Jordan-Asble's Books on Amazon

  https://www.facebook.com/summerbloodvampires

  Twitter: @sljasble

  VAMPIRE ONSLAUGHT

  By

  Charles E. Butler

  Banging. Dull thuds and screams. Moaning. Souls in pain and torment.

  Can’t sleep now.

  More shouting.

  Hell! Better get up. Every other century or so, it always comes down to this. It sounds like we’ll have to move on again. Damn!

  Peeking through the lid. Chaos. Hunters with crosses and mallets. Wielding stakes and logs of fire. Family members perishing under the onslaught. Unadulterated carnage!

  Ouch! There goes the Baroness!

  The lid suddenly wrenched from his grasp as an old man stared down at him, gritting yellowed teeth through a gray beard.

  “You’re next, vampire scum!”

&
nbsp; The stake raised high. He had to do something and quick. Reaching out, he grasped the old man’s throat and felt the blood beneath the skin rush to a sudden halt. Now to think of a worthy one-liner. Got to take control here and quick.

  The Count DeVille moaned way back in the catacombs of the cellar and flame illuminated his resting place. One hunter stepped back as the flames from the coffin licked out savagely at him. The bastards! They’ve used kerosene!

  The old man, eyes bulging under the powerful grip, licked out his tongue involuntarily, knocking his top set of dentures out. They landed just shy of Reed’s left shoulder. Reed stared at them in disgust for a second as the phlegm spilled through the old man’s lips, soaking his hand as it trickled down the chin.

  Gross!

  It left sparkling droplets on the gray beard. Disgusted, Reed bent the neck between his fingers and felt the hunter’s bones pop. He flung the corpse to one side and stood up tall in his coffin, surveying the carnage around him. Smelling the burning bodies of his family. Long dead by human standards already. Now, they were decimated.

  Three hunters ventured into the darkness of the cellar. Their flaming torches illuminated their path as Reed stepped out of his resting place and set off in pursuit. He didn’t feel the heat of the flames; his body had become immune to such trifles centuries ago. But he knew that they could destroy his earthbound shell if they took hold.

  He glanced briefly into the burning sarcophagi as he passed. Twelve family members cruelly dispatched because of a human belief in old wives’ tales. VAMPIRE! That was the word that had everyone reaching for the garlic and carrying out these maddening attacks. One coffin held the corpse of Victoria. As he stared through the flames with his one good eye, she reached out a charred arm to him. The wooden stake had missed its mark and her flesh was melting from her body. That beautiful vivacious creature stared at him. God in Heaven, she was aware! One eye, rimmed in its hollowed-out skull by a salty tear, exploded. Then the other, making a kind of squishy pop as the liquid dampened flames around it. Her bony arm collapsed and reduced to ash before it came to rest back in her coffin. The dissolution had barely taken a few seconds, but Cranwell Reed would carry the memory with him forever. He gritted his teeth and ventured into the tunnels of the cellar in search of the hunters.

  He could hear them as they stealthily made their way further into the darkness. But they could never hear his own footfalls. He could make the hunters out in the blackness, their shapes illuminated by their dying torchlight. There were no more vampires in this area. His family had been savagely pummelled by four whiskey-breathed old men who carried mistrust and hatred for his kind in their hearts. No. There were no vampires. Only rats. A few mice too. And a few mutations.

  Cranwell called on the vermin allies with his mind. His concentration sent a small wind to extinguish their torches. His eye twinkled and the lid closed over it as he latched onto the mind of his furry army. As the last torchlight died, chittering and scrabbling noises could be heard.

  Something woke in the darkness.

  He opened his eyes and could see clearly in the inky blackness as his three foes stumbled around frantically for each other, grasping at the air. When they let out panicked warnings, he realized that they were all English. As the rats circled their feet, Cranwell turned and made his way out of the cellar, passing the burning coffins again, but this time not glancing inside them. He heard shrieks as the old men felt small teeth bite at their legs and furred bodies attaching to their arms. Rope tails lashed around their faces. The men screamed like girls in a playground as the might of the rats pulled them down into the faeces and then began to eat.

  Outside, the night was just beginning as the sky had turned a deep navy blue. Stars dotted here and there, but the moon wouldn’t be visible on this side of the world for another three or four hours. However, astronomy was the last thing on Reed’s mind. He scoured the bleak landscape with an eye that an eagle would envy. Searching. Peering through gloom and breaks in the bountiful hedging. There. He spotted the car just a few metres up the road, parked incongruously at the side of the road, masked by a large tree. Cranwell could only glimpse the front fender, but he knew that it held a getaway driver. The humans were so predictable.

  The chauffer was a heavyset man with a large beard, but his throat tore easily enough. Reed placed the body in the boot and drove the car to the very edge of the cliff that overlooked the beginnings of the Danube. Water lashed at the rocks below. Inky and fathomless in the early light, but that would bleach out in three hours to become the brightest blue waters on Earth. As he pushed the car over the cliff, his transformation had already begun. The car crashed sixty feet below the cliff as a blood-coloured bat took to the skies and headed North.

  About The Author

  Charles E Butler was born and raised in the Yorkshire town of Leeds in the UK. He is a writer, actor, and an artist of independent comic books. He quickly developed a taste for the fantastic through comic books and the movies. His own short films under his Su Asti banner are submitted to festivals and have been viewed as far afield as New Orleans. He has written vampire essays for various sites on the Internet and he has been published in notable horror magazines (Diabolique, We Belong Dead, and The Eerie Digest) and vampire anthology books. His special tribute to Count Dracula, Werewolf, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and the Monsters of Frankenstein pages can be found on Facebook. His first book, The Romance of Dracula (2010), fast became an internet sensation. It chronicled all fourteen major adaptations of the celluloid Count, with a scene-by-scene breakdown of each film, followed by a personal review of that film. Not only did Butler painstakingly research and write the book, he also illustrated, edited, and published the book. Vampires Everywhere; the Rise of the Movie UnDead followed in 2012 and Vampires Under the Hammer in 2013. His next book in the quadriology concentrates on the hairy creatures of the night in movies. Werewolves: the Children of the Full Moon is in preparation.

  Vampires Everywhere; the Rise of the Movie UnDead

  https://www.createspace.com/3928848

  The Romance of Dracula; A Personal Journey of the Count on Celluloid

  https://www.createspace.com/3573229

  Vampires Everywhere Facebook page:

  https://www.facebook.com/VampiresEverywhereTheRiseOfTheMovieUnDead

  The Romance of Dracula Facebook page

  https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Romance-of-Dracula/157273041028907

  Charles E Butler on Amazon UK

  Books by Charles E. Butler on Amazon

  THE FOURTH BRIDE

  An Excerpt from the Novel

  By

  Carole Gill

  We left the castle in the light of a full moon. I moved faster than I ever had before. In a moment, it seemed that I went from the castle grounds to the edge of the forest. How magical it felt. The great height of the mountain was meaningless when vampire prowess was involved. If I flew, Dracula did as well, soaring even more quickly in his bat form.

  Just as we reached the base of the mountain, I slowed down so that I merely floated. It was a strange but pleasant feeling. If I thought we’d feed on wildlife, Dracula did not. He said we were bound for a village.

  “The village is not far,” he said. “But we must be careful, for we will not have the aid of the Szgany here.”

  That had a great many implications, all of them serious. Still, we were not deterred; in fact, we were exhilarated, for there is pleasure in the hunt, an indescribable thrill in the stalking.

  We came at last upon a small village. There were but a few whitewashed cottages and an inn. The latter drew our attention for it was full of chatter. The people sounded merry possibly the worse for drink.

  I was excited. Their perceived vulnerability was like an aphrodisiac. I wondered where we would lie in wait, but then Dracula gestured toward a small courtyard. The place would fit our purpose, bathed as it was in dark, shadowy depths. I crept into a space to await my bounty.

  “
If you close your eyes, you can smell their blood,” he whispered.

  As I did this, I realized I could distinguish different sorts of people from one another: men from women and so on. I could even discern their ages. As I have come to think of it since, this blood scent is unique to each human being. Some were more interesting than others, and I told him so.

  “They are drunk on wine...” he said.

  I nodded and smiled, for it was a heady scent I could almost taste.

  He asked me then if I could smell the passion in the blood. This surprised me. I hadn’t noticed anything, nor had I thought of it that way. But when he said it, I realized I could!

  “It’s tangy and salty all at once. I have often been led to people coupling just by that scent alone. Of course, there are other scents along with that!” He waved me off. “Shh, they are coming.”

  Suddenly, I heard the sound of a man’s and a woman’s voices. The girl giggled while the man whispered endearments to her. He then began to tease and coax her into coming along with him. Soon, they started to walk toward a house.

  I heard the woman ask, “Is this where you live?”

  The man replied, “Of course; I wouldn’t go to a stranger’s house.”

  They thought that immensely funny and began to laugh. Just as they crossed the road, we rushed forward. Dracula grabbed the man and pulled him into the shadows as I took the woman. Neither cried out. They were too stunned. This was an early lesson I was to learn. “You can paralyze your prey,” Dracula had said. “Just be quick and feed well.”

  This I did. I sank my teeth into the woman’s soft flesh. She began to shake as I sucked her blood – and I sucked a lot. It was good and sweet and tasted of spiced wine. She did try to pull away a few times, but I held her in an iron grip.