Holiday with a Vampire

by Maureen Child

  Chapter 11

  W hen she woke, she was tied to the bedposts again.

  Her body was sore, but not from being tied. The ache was from their earlier lovemaking. Mortification rose up within her as she recalled all that she had done. All that she had let him do.

  She should have known better than to trust a demon.

  The last things she remembered were his apologetic words and a barely uttered promise as he bit her—“I’ll never let you go.”

  She knew she was alive. She wondered if the fact that she was still tied to the bedposts meant he hadn’t turned her, that he was keeping her around for another meal. And then another and another—because he didn’t intend to release her.

  Connie couldn’t let that happen.

  He wasn’t in bed with her although she could tell it was daytime by the strong light filtering around the edges of the curtains. They had been drawn this time and as her eyes focused, she finally saw him, sprawled on a small sofa across the room. Probably the reason why the curtains had been closed. Otherwise the rays of the sun would have been bathing his body as he slept.

  She wondered for only a moment why he wasn’t beside her in bed.

  Guilt perhaps?

  She didn’t consider it further, opting to focus on how to either undo the ties or…

  The bindings were still as secure as they had been the night before, but the other ends of the ties were higher up on the bedposts. High enough that she might be able to snap it off.

  Connie turned so that her feet were up against the wooden headboard, forcing her to curl into a tight ball. All the better, she thought as she pushed off with both her legs and arms, the ornate wood carvings digging into the balls of her feet.

  The post and headboard swayed a bit, but held fast.

  Sharp, intense pressure was what she needed.

  Risking a glance to see if she had disturbed him, she realized that Hadrian slept on, apparently unaware of her escape attempt.

  Bunching her thighs, she secured the position of her feet against the headboard once again and drew in a deep breath. With an intense surge of power, she jerked with all her might.

  The crack of wood splintering was sweet, but the bedpost didn’t completely give way.

  She looked toward Hadrian again. No sign that he had heard a thing.

  Her arms and legs strained as she pulled, but the groan of the wood spurred her onward. With one final tug, the post snapped and landed in her lap.

  With the sharp ragged point of the bedpost, she sawed through the thinnest part of the ties. She never gave a thought to the bindings at her wrists. They were too tight and she risked slicing open her wrists if she tried. All she needed was to have her hands free.

  A second later she had that wish.

  During all that time, Hadrian hadn’t stirred.

  Quietly she crept toward the door, the pointed bedpost stake in hand for defense. But as she neared the door, she realized that she was buck naked. She couldn’t leave like this. There were two doors before her and George had come and gone through one of them. She hoped the other was a closet.

  Gingerly she turned the knob and peered within. Sure enough it was a large walk-in closet. She went in and closed the door behind her, turning on a light as she did so. The room was filled with an assortment of clothing. From the jeans to the suits, all of it was of the highest quality.

  He was tall and she was round. His jeans barely fit across her hips, but she had to cuff them repeatedly so she wouldn’t trip over them. Snagging a black sweater from a shelf, she slipped it on over her head.

  It smelled like him. Something woodsy and indefinably masculine.

  Her body sprang to painful life, worrying her. Would she never be free of his presence after this chance encounter?

  I will never let you go.

  His words echoed in her head and she imagined him stalking her. Always present. The fear she would live with forever unless she found a way to…

  Be rid of him? she wondered.

  She eased out of the closet and peered toward the sofa, but he wasn’t there.

  A second later someone grabbed her from behind and she reacted, seizing his arm and shifting her weight.

  Hadrian went up and over her shoulder to land with a thud on the floor. Before he could move, she was straddling him, the sharp point of the stake directly above his heart. An angry red scratch marred his flesh where she had scraped the bedpost stake against his skin.

  She would only have to place her weight on the stake and it would pierce his heart. Just a little more pressure and…

  “I can smell your fear. You want to do this, so do it.”

  Connie couldn’t ignore the pain in his voice. “Promise you’ll leave me be—”

  “Do it, Connie. I’m a monster, remember. Doesn’t that make it easier?”

  She met his gaze and his regret slammed into her. Was it because of what he had done last night? Because he had broken his promise? So what good would his promise do now? she thought and yet she asked again.

  “Promise to leave me be, Hadrian.”

  To emphasize her point, she pressed a little harder on the stake and the flesh beneath it grew white from the pressure.

  Hadrian thought about never seeing her again. About the spirit and excitement she had brought into his life in just two short days. He might be better off to have her stake him rather than go back to his drab and empty existence.

  He laid his hand over hers as it rested on the stake and pressed downward, experiencing the first pinch of pain as the wood pierced his flesh.

  “Do it. Prove to me you are no different than all those others. The ones who killed my family and vowed to destroy my kind.”

  Her hand trembled beneath his and suddenly she was in motion, fleeing the room.

  Her bare feet slapped against the wood of the stairs as she made her flight to freedom. The crash of the front door told him she had made her escape.

  He still held the stake in his hand and for a moment, he considered driving it home. But then hope rose, stronger than it ever had before. He released the stake and sat up, staring out the open door to his bedroom.

  She had asked him to make a promise. One he couldn’t make. But he suspected that if he had asked her to make the same promise, she could not.

  Connie would be back.

  By the time Connie got home, she was ice cold. Running around barefoot and with no coat had been the only option, but the chill of the day had gotten into her bones along with another chill—that of fear.

  She took a hot bath to get rid of the first, but it also helped to wipe away the smell of him on her body.

  She wondered how long it would be before she could drive Hadrian out of her brain.

  The hot bath made her feel lethargic. Or maybe it was the events of the past two days. The physical and mental strain. The drain Hadrian had put on her system by feeding from her.

  He had broken his promise. She could never trust his word again, she thought, but just as suddenly it occurred to her that she wouldn’t have to worry about that.

  She never intended to see him again.

  To rid herself of the tiredness in her mind and limbs, she slipped under the covers for a long nap. She only had a few hours before she would have to decide whether to go back to the Santa stint in front of the library.

  Whether she dared to confront him once more.

  Sleep came quickly beneath the soft embrace of the heavy covers and the heat that developed within her little cocoon. But it wasn’t untroubled sleep. Over and over Hadrian’s words came again as he told her about his life. She experienced his loss and sorrow, recreating the well of sympathy within her that she had experienced before he had made her his dinner.

  She drove away that sympathy, wanting to maintain her anger. She needed that to deal with the conflicting emotions that continued to war within her as images slowly crept into her consciousness. Somehow she knew they weren’t dream images. They were Hadrian’s memories,
playing out like a movie in her brain.

  Showing her his final Christmas torment.

  Chapter 12

  Rome, 312 A.D.

  December 21, Julian Calendar

  December 25, Gregorian Calendar

  Winter Solstice

  Sol Invictus

  Christmas Day

  F or weeks after the murder of his family, Hadrian hid where he could during the day, emerging at night only long enough to find something or someone on which to feed. He moved constantly to avoid the extremists within Constantine’s fold that were still terrorizing vampires everywhere.

  Then one day he took shelter in an underground tunnel used for burying the human dead. In the catacombs below the outskirts of Rome, he had stumbled upon a meeting of a vampire resistance group. They were tired of having their families murdered and hiding like animals. They were organizing. Planning a way to rid themselves of Constantine and the thugs who killed in his name.

  Hadrian had no doubt he would join them. He was tired of hiding like a whipped dog and had wanted vengeance against those who had killed his family.

  After months of training and waiting, their day finally arrived. Hadrian marched along with hundreds of other vampires through the catacombs to the natural caves, which would open up outside of the city.

  The Red Rocks were just miles beyond Rome, surrounded by various hills and the Tiber.

  Maxentius was camped there already, ready to face Constantine for control of the Western portions of the Roman Empire. The vampires had thrown in their lot with him, hopeful that Maxentius would offer them a peaceful existence within his realm.

  Because of their participation, Maxentius and the vampire leaders had chosen the day of the winter solstice for their attack. The longest night of the year would give the vampire warriors more time to fight and hopefully secure a victory for Constantine’s challenger.

  The battle was already raging by the time the vampires streamed from below ground at dusk.

  Hadrian charged out, sword and shield in hand. Cutting and slashing his way through the legions of Constantine’s soldiers, he quickly realized they were greatly outnumbered. It would take all of their number and then some to win the day before the sun rose and they would have to retreat.

  The ground beneath his feet was sloppy from the blood spilled during the battle. His arm grew weary, but he kept on fighting, even when blow after blow landed on him. One particularly nasty sword thrust nearly ran him through, dropping him to his knees. Excruciating pain erupted through his body as Constantine’s soldier pulled his sword out, intending to complete his mission by decapitating Hadrian—one of the best ways of ensuring that Hadrian would not rise again to join the battle.

  Somehow he managed to block the soldier’s blow and counter with one of his own, driving the blade of his sword deep into the soldier’s belly.

  As the man dropped to the ground before him, Hadrian crawled to rest against a nearby rock, waiting for his vampire body to heal so he could resume the fight. Those few minutes gave him time to fully see the panorama before him. The masses of men and vampires, fighting one another. Blood spewing from wounds as body parts went flying and men dropped to the ground, either dead or dying.

  Many of Maxentius’s men already lay there beside their vampire comrades, killed by the hundreds of soldiers under Constantine’s command. There were so many of them, Hadrian thought, dragging in a painful breath and realizing that beside the wound in his abdomen, another deep sword thrust had pierced his side. It was why he was taking so long to heal.

  But he could not linger. If not for the advent of the vampires, the battle would have been lost long ago.

  Slowly rising to his feet, he lunged forward to meet yet another charge from Constantine’s men. Their shields sported the Greek letters chi and rho—the abbreviation for Christos, Constantine’s new god. The two letters were superimposed on one another, recreating the martyred god on his cross.

  Although pain and weariness dragged at his every move, Hadrian battled on beside others of the vampire underground. They understood this might be their last stand, but if they were going to live in freedom, they had to take this chance.

  The battle raged long into the night and the vampires managed to hold their own, possibly even advance.

  If Maxentius could rally his remaining human troops behind them, victory would be theirs. But even as Hadrian held on through the long solstice night, battling for his life, he knew that once the sun began to rise, he and his compatriots would need to retreat.

  He told himself that was some time away, even as the faintest signs of dawn slowly crept into the sky, but then the first of those rays was caught on the bright shield of one of Constantine’s men. He watched as the vampire standing before that man reeled away, the sign of the cross burned across his skin as the sun’s rays were amplified by the mirror-shiny shields.

  A low roar gathered strength amongst Constantine’s sun worshippers, who interpreted the branding of the vampire as a sign. As if one, they turned their shields to the nascent rays of the dawn and before Hadrian’s eyes, vampire after vampire turned away in pain or ran for the cover of the darkness only to be struck down even as they retreated.

  Hadrian slashed his way past one soldier and held up his shield to avoid the reflected rays another was directing his way.

  A blow came across his back, driving him to his knees, but he rolled away from the next killing thrust and managed to rise and slay his attacker.

  But he was weakening from a combination of blood loss and the rising rays of the sun.

  He would not have his vengeance, he realized as before him vampire after vampire fell dead at the hands of the sun-worshippers. Dozens of others fled the sun and the symbol of the cross, streaming back into the caves from where they had emerged, Constantine’s men in hot pursuit.

  His skin began to tingle from the rising sun’s rays, but he was too far away from the entrance to the caves and even if he got there, only death awaited him.

  Constantine’s men would not leave any of them alive.

  He searched around wildly, looking for shelter, but the only things around him were death and destruction. Hundreds of humans, their blood steaming in the chill of the morning. Half as many vampires, their bodies slowly cooking beneath the sun’s rays. His own skin starting to redden and ache as the sun rose higher.

  A dozen feet away a small crevasse cut deeply into the hillside. He made a run for it, slashing and killing the few soldiers who had remained behind on the field. He dived into a small and narrow piece of the crevasse and pulled the bodies of the fallen above him to shield him from the sun.

  It would take days for them to get to clearing the field of battle.

  All he needed was a half a dozen hours or so until the sun was weaker and he could attempt an escape.

  But first, he needed to feed so that he would heal. He reached for the closest body. It was still warm with life.

  He sank his fangs into the dead human’s neck and fed.

  Connie bolted upright in bed, breathing as heavily as if she had just fought the battle for her life.

  In her mind’s eye came the scenes of death Hadrian had witnessed over a millennia of Christmas holidays.

  No wonder he hated the festival. It had cost him so much.

  So much and yet…

  She recalled the tenderness of his touch and tried to reconcile it with his bloodthirstiness. Somehow it wasn’t as hard to do as she might have thought.

  Which made her reconsider whether she would don the Santa suit that night and remind him of his torment.

  The loud buzz of the intercom made her jump.

  She slipped from bed and padded to the door of her apartment, where she buzzed the doorman.

  “There’s a messenger for you, Ms. Morales. He says his name is George.”

  George. She wondered if he had come to fetch her for his master, but she wasn’t about to hide out in fear.

  “Please send him up.”
<
br />   She slipped on a robe and when the knock came, she opened the door.

  George stood there, a wrapped packaged in hand. “Your things, miss. Hadrian thought you would want them.”

  With trembling hands she reached for the package and took it from his hands. She murmured her thanks and George tipped his head and began to walk away, but before she could close her door, he pivoted and faced her once again.

  “He’s not a bad sort, you know. Takes care of me and my family just fine.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a card, handed it to her. “Just in case you change your mind.”

  He left after that and she closed the door, staring at the card that had only a phone number on it.

  Hadrian’s? she wondered.

  She tucked the card into the pocket of her robe, walked to her sofa and placed the package on the coffee table. The package was wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with twine.

  A simple pull undid the knot, unlike the ties that had bound her. Unwrapping the paper revealed her shoes, purse and the clothing she had been wearing when Hadrian had taken her. Beneath that was another simply wrapped package.

  She unwrapped it to find the Santa suit and beard, freshly laundered and smelling way better than when she had last donned them.

  A message from him? she pondered. Or an apology?

  There was only one way to find out.

  Chapter 13

  H adrian woke to the peal of the bell and the softly whispered greeting to a passerby. It brought a smile to his lips before regret ripped into him.

  He stretched as he rose and rubbed his hand over the center of his chest. Pain lingered there, but no scar. The angry scratch and cut from the bedpost stake were long gone.

  Vampires healed fairly quickly if they were healthy and well-fed. He was certainly the latter, he thought, and glanced up at the bedpost she had snapped off during her escape.

  George had already started repairs. The top of the post was back in place and a lighter rim of color identified where the keeper had used some kind of wood filler to hide the damage.