Longfellow Series: Books 1-4 (4-Book Bundle) (Erotic Romance - Vampire Romance)

by Hart, Melissa F.

  He had warned her that the fence would not protect them, but she had thought it was worth a try anyway.

  Logan smiled at her gently. “Don’t worry, we still have a lot more tricks they haven’t seen yet. Activate the lights!”

  Sophia flipped the switch that turned on a series of extremely bright lights. The horde of advancing vampires screamed out in pain and staggered backward from the lights, fearing it was sunlight, which was lethal to them.

  “It’s working!” Sophia cried out happily, but the trick didn’t last for long. The vampires quickly discovered how to knock out the lights by throwing rocks at them and breaking the bulbs. Once again, it was dark enough for them to continue their assault.

  “Keep going!” Peter screamed to his army, urging them forward. “The blood you crave waits inside. Kill them!”

  Within moments, they had reached the walls of the castle’s exterior and began trying to break their way inside. The doors and windows had been sealed shut by magical enchantments Logan had learned from his grandmother long ago, but Peter knew there was no way to work the magic on the roof and commanded his army to scale the castle’s walls and enter it from above.

  “They’re climbing up the sides of the castle!” Sophia cried out.

  “Stay here and release the wooden stakes!” Logan said to Sophia. “I’m going to the roof in case any of them reach the top. I’ll fight them off hand to hand if I have to!”

  Sophia stared, trembling, at a control panel of levers and prayed that they would work. Each lever was a trigger for a catapult, armed with sharp wooden stakes and deadly silver spikes. Sophia began to systematically push the buttons, releasing the weapons with deadly force into the mob of advancing vampires. As they were struck, the vampires fell to the ground dead, but there was always another vampire ready to take his place and continue the advancing assault. Within moments, it became clear that she would run out of weapons to launch well before she ran out of enemies.

  Meanwhile, Logan climbed to the roof of the castle, armed with a pile of sharp wooden spears and began launching them at the vampires with the strength of his powerful arms.

  “Make a ladder with the dead and use their bodies to climb to the roof. Whatever it takes, get him!” Peter ordered and the vampires began to stack the bodies of their dead comrades, climbing higher with each moment.

  Clyde and Michelle made eye contact with each other and nodded, signaling that it was time to enact Sophia’s plan.

  “Push us up to the top of the pile! Lift us onto the roof!” Michelle called out loudly and positioned the small band of vampires who were secretly allied with Logan to be the ones lifted by the mob to the top of the roof.

  Clyde reached the top first, and began helping the allied vampires onto the roof beside him, while Michelle stayed on the ground below and made sure only good vampires climbed to the top of the heap. As they were pulled onto the roof by Clyde, they joined beside Logan and began fighting the evil vampires below, casting wooden stakes at them with incredible speed and strength. The evil vampires weren’t expecting an attack from within their ranks, and turned viciously toward Clyde and the others, but the allied vampires had the advantage of the high ground and were able to beat them back easily.

  Peter grabbed Michelle by the arm, pulled her away from the heap and cried out, “Clyde has turned against us! Tell our army to fall back and regroup against the traitor!”

  Michelle did as she had been told and screamed at their remaining forces to pull back. Only a small portion of Peter’s army now remained, and it seemed he did not yet suspect her for being responsible for the ones who had betrayed him.

  Peter looked grief stricken beside her. Clearly his army had been beaten and there was no way they could overwhelm the defenses of the castle now. He needed a different strategy to breach the castle. As Peter looked at Michelle, he did not see the same look of despair in her eyes, but a twinkle of victory and his eyes narrowed into a glare.

  “You!” he hissed angrily. “You are the one who trained all the vampires who have betrayed me and aligned themselves with Logan! You may have thought you were responsible for my defeat, but now you’ll be the key to my victory!”

  Peter grabbed Michelle by the throat and held her in front of him like a shield.

  “Drop your defenses, Logan, and come outside!” Peter shouted as Michelle struggled and gasped for breath. Peter pulled a sharp silver spike from the sheath at his belt and held it like a dagger over Michelle’s heart. “Come out and settle this like a man, in a duel to the death. Just me against you! The winner gets Longfellow Castle and the loser gets death! Otherwise, I will stab this girl right through the heart and you will have her death on your conscience!”

  Sophia gasped in terror and her hands flew to cover her mouth, stifling her cry. She couldn’t bear to watch the murder of her dearest friend. Up on the roof, Clyde picked up a wooden spear with a look of love and determination in his eyes and ran toward the edge of the roof, preparing to leap to the ground and save the woman he loved.

  “Wait!” Logan stopped him by grabbing his arm. “It’s me he wants. I will go down to fight him. As soon as he releases Michelle, take her far away from here and go to a place where you can both live in peace together.”

  “It’s a trick. He won’t fight fair. Let us help you,” Clyde said, but Logan shook his head. He commanded the rest of the vampires who remained allied with him on the roof to leave, urging them to escape and find safe places where they could live gentle lives.

  “You won’t ever be truly alone. I will always be watching you and taking care of you,” Logan said to the departing vampires, hoping he’d live long enough to uphold his promise to them.

  As the allied vampires disappeared into the darkness, Clyde said, “You can’t beat Peter alone. I’ll stay and help. It’s the least I can do after everything you’ve done for me and Michelle.”

  Logan clasped him on the shoulder, in a friendly gesture of goodbye. “The best thing you can do to help me is to take Michelle someplace safe. If you’re really my friend, that’s what you’ll do.”

  “What about Sophia?” he asked furtively.

  “I’ll make sure she’ll stay safe, no matter if I win or lose,” Logan assured him.

  Clyde shook Logan’s hand in a pact of friendship and watched him leave. He wanted to stop him, but he knew he couldn’t.

  Chapter Five

  Peter’s blood-red eyes glittered with excitement as the front door to Longfellow Castle opened wide and Logan Longfellow stepped out. He felt his pulse quicken, as his cousin strode purposefully across the grounds toward him. The small cluster of vampires that was all that remained of Peter’s army stood in a circle around him.

  “Okay, Peter. Let’s settle this,” Logan said, his voice forceful and powerful. “This fight is just between me and you. No one else is involved and nobody else gets hurt!”

  “Agreed,” Peter sneered. He nodded his head and his remaining army disappeared into the darkness.

  “Okay, now let the girl go and let the game begin!” Logan cried out. He spread his arms wide and crouched low in a defensive posture. Peter saw that in each of his hands Logan gripped a silver spike. Peter knew that if a vampire were pierced in the heart by silver or wood that it would kill him, and he smiled evilly.

  “I’ll let her go. Here!” Peter said. He gave Michelle a sudden and violent shove toward Logan. When Logan moved his hands forward to catch her, she became impaled upon the silver spikes, just as Peter had hoped she would.

  “NO!” Logan screamed out in heartbreak as Michelle cried out in pain from her wounds. Logan laid her down gently on the ground and gave a grateful sigh. The spikes had impaled her shoulders and not her heart. The wound was no doubt extremely painfully, but at least it was not fatal. With proper medical care, she would be fine.

  Peter laughed cruelly and inwardly congratulated himself on a brilliant move. Not only had he hurt the girl who had betrayed him, but he had successfully disarmed
his opponent, for Logan now stood weaponless before him, while Michelle writhed on the ground in pain.

  Without giving Logan a chance to recover from the shock of what had just happened, Peter flung himself at Logan, knocking him to the ground and rolling across the dirt in an effort to get the upper hand.

  Peter came out on top, pinning Logan beneath him and raised his own silver spike high above his head in preparation of impaling Logan through the heart. The action gave Logan all the time he needed, and with a burst of speed, he flipped his legs up and grabbed Peter with them. Kicking as hard as he could, he sent Peter flying with the force of his legs. The action caused Peter to lose his grip on his weapon, and it went flying from his hand and landed on the ground.

  The two vampires both dove for the weapon at the exact same time, but Peter reached it first.

  “Nice try, cousin, but you were always too slow,” Peter taunted, twirling the weapon expertly in his hand.

  Logan searched desperately for something he could use as a weapon or a shield. Suddenly his gaze stopped as he saw something. Not very far behind Peter, Clyde and Sophia had reached Michelle and were treating her wounds. As soon as she was properly bandaged, Clyde scooped her into his arms and disappeared into the night. Logan breathed a short sigh of relief that Clyde had obeyed his wishes and taken Michelle away. His emotions quickly turned to fear, however, as he noticed that Sophia now stood outside, alone and unarmed.

  Peter could not help but notice Logan’s intense gaze and followed his line of sight to see the object of his focus. With a flash of movement, Peter grabbed Sophia before she even had time to blink and pinned her tightly against his chest.

  “Let her go!” Logan shouted. “You agreed to the rules. This fight is just between you and me! No one else can be hurt!”

  Peter pointed the tip of his silver spike against Sophia’s throat, pushing the tip harder and harder against her delicate skin until it seemed the hard metal might pierce it.

  “I always like to change the rules of the game to keep things interesting,” Peter said, his eyes twinkling with amusement.

  “You mean you always liked to cheat!” Logan snapped.

  Peter’s eyes turned hard and he glared at Logan. “I don’t need to cheat to beat you. You were always so boring. Even when we children you never wanted to have any fun.”

  Peter’s voice became mocking, as he imitated a child’s voice. “Don’t kill humans! Don’t hurt the innocent!” Then he returned to his natural voice and shouted, “Well, I like hurting people! Most of all, I want to hurt you and I think killing this girl is the perfect way to do it!”

  Peter pushed the spike downward against Sophia’s throat with all the power and strength he possessed. Logan was too far away to stop him and could only trust that things would work out as he had hoped.

  To Peter’s surprise, the silver spike did not penetrate Sophia’s delicate skin. No matter how hard he pushed, nothing happened. He could not hurt her, even though he could feel how soft and vulnerable her flesh was, the spike would not stab her.

  Confused and angry, Peter cast the useless weapon onto the ground and wrapped his strong hands around Sophia’s delicate throat and began to squeeze, wanting to choke the life out of her with his own hands. Again, nothing happened. As strong as he was, he could not choke her. She didn’t even become breathless in his hands. He released her and stood staring at her in wonder. Logan picked up the silver spike Peter had thrown down and faced his cousin.

  “I knew you would cheat, so I gave her one of our grandmother’s jewels to protect her. Nothing can harm her now.” Logan grinned and Sophia opened her hand to reveal that she held a small, glittering jewel within her grip.

  Screaming in anger, Peter lunged at Sophia and ripped the jewel from her hand, making her vulnerable once more. He cast it into the dirt and raised his hands to choke her to death, but before he could, he gasped out in pain and fell to the ground. Logan had thrust the silver spike deep into Peter’s heart from behind, killing the evil vampire instantly.

  As Peter’s dead body slumped to the ground, Logan took Sophia into his arms and held her close.

  “Are you alright?” he asked her, worriedly.

  “I am now.” She smiled and they kissed each other passionately, holding each other tightly, as if they never wanted to let the other go. Although surrounded by the devastation of the night’s battle, with nearly two hundred dead vampires littering his front yard, and the home of his ancestors broken and damaged, Logan realized that he’d never felt happier or more content in his entire life.

  He looked deep into Sophia’s bright blue eyes and whispered softly, “Marry me?”

  Sophia’s eyes flew open wide. “Did you just say what I thought you did?”

  Logan knelt on one knee, picked up the protective jewel off the ground and held it up to her like an offering. “In the hundreds of years that I’ve been alive, I’ve never loved another girl like I love you. Sophia Marshall, will you be my bride?”

  Sophia felt tears of joy spilling on her cheeks. She took the jewel from his hand, pulled him to a standing position and kissed him passionately on the lips.

  “Yes!” she cried out happily. “Yes!”

  Chapter Six

  As the morning sun came over the horizon, it quickly disintegrated the bodies of all the vampires, leaving nothing but dust, which blew away in the morning breeze. Logan and Sophia locked themselves happily within the mansion known as Longfellow Castle and slept peacefully in each other’s arms. It was the exhausted sleep of two people who had long been made weary from fear of the impending battle, and could at last rest now that their enemy had been killed. Neither one of them had realized what a toll it had been on them to constantly be worried about Peter, and now that he was finally gone, it was an immense relief and they both finally felt at peace.

  That fall, Sophia finally graduated from the university, although it was a bittersweet ceremony with so many students from her class having mysteriously disappeared earlier in the year. Included amongst the missing students were two of her dearest friends, Michelle and Clyde. Police in the town had investigated all the mysterious disappearances of the students, but with no dead bodies to be found and all of the students being legal adults, they eventually determined that they must have left to start a commune together somewhere, and closed the case.

  Eventually, life at the university returned to normal, and the students and professors resumed their daily lives. The graduation ceremony was an affirmation that life goes on and all of the students looked so happy in their caps and gowns, with their bright and hopeful futures ahead of them.

  Most bright and hopeful of all was Sophia. With her diploma in her hand, she had been offered a job at the Institute of Societal History, just liked she had always wanted.

  “Thank you so much! I gladly accept the position!” she cried out happily, when the job offer had been presented to her by the director of personnel at the institute, Mr. Hemsworth himself. “However, I’m afraid I can’t start until next month. Will that be problem?”

  “You said in your interview that you’ve longed to work here since you were a child. Why the delay?” Mr. Hemsworth had asked.

  Sophia blushed. “Because I’m getting married the day after tomorrow and then I’m taking a month-long honeymoon across Europe.”

  Mr. Hemsworth smiled and shook her hand. “Well, that is an acceptable excuse. Enjoy your honeymoon, and we’ll see you for your first day of work after you get back. There is a lot of amazing history in this town for you to research.”

  “I’m so glad he was willing to hold the job for me for a month!” Sophia had exclaimed when she told the story to Logan that night.

  “We can shorten the honeymoon if you want,” Logan offered, seeing how anxious she felt about the job. “I don’t want to jeopardize your biggest dream just for my own self-gratification.”

  Sophia kissed him and said, “It’s okay. The director promised he’d wait for me to get back. Besid
es, that job isn’t my biggest dream.”

  “Oh? What is?” Logan arched his brow at her curiously.

  “Being Mrs. Longfellow and spending a month-long honeymoon with my husband is,” Sophia said. Then she flung herself into Logan’s arms and began kissing him all over.

  “Good, because that’s my biggest dream too.” He laughed playfully, and they took turns removing each other’s clothing as they kissed, massaged, licked, and suckled every part of each other. They made love for hours that night and then slept most of the next morning.

  When the evening came, it was at long last time for their wedding. It was to be held right in the backyard of Longfellow Castle with just the officiate and two very special guests, who would act as witnesses to the wedding. Clyde Mason would be the best man and the witness for the groom, and Michelle Greene would be the maid of honor and the witness for the bride.

  It was a beautiful ceremony, filled with love and understanding. When at last the officiate said, “I now pronounce you man and wife,” Logan and Sophia were already kissing passionately in each other’s arms.

  “That’s an unusual ring,” the officiate stated when the ceremony was over, and he looked admiringly at the jewel that was now placed on Sophia’s left hand.

  “It belonged to my grandmother,” Logan stated, matter-of-factly. “I had it fitted onto a ring setting so that it can always keep Sophia safe.”

  “I see,” the Officiate nodded, although clearly he had no idea what they were talking about. “It matches the jewels on her necklace, although I’m afraid one them is missing.”

  All eyes turned to stare at the necklace that hung around Sophia’s throat. It was a rare and beautiful piece fitted with many glittering jewels that sparkled in the moonlight. Suddenly it began to glow and an image appeared within the jewels.

  “What’s this?” the officiate cried out in alarm. Logan pushed him aside and stared at the jewels of his grandmother’s enchanted necklace. It showed a vampire with a hungry look in his eyes. He was following a young boy across an empty field.