Legends of the Damned: A Collection of Edgy Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  I haul the bodies to a dumpster with the intent of keeping the fire within the oversized trash bin. They'll burn quickly, and I don't want to draw any more attention.

  I dump the first one into the dumpster, not noticing the temperature drop or that my breath is coming out in little puffs of white clouds. It's already chilly, and my work has gotten me a little overheated.

  "Edie."

  I whip my head up at the sound of my name. Then I nearly drop the male vampire.

  The silhouette of a woman floats before me, her ethereal body translucent in the night. Her brunette hair floats around her like she's submerged underwater. Yet it's her eyes that are the most familiar to me, freezing me to my spot. They’re mirrors of my own eyes.

  "Meghan?" I choke in disbelief.

  It's the first time that I've ever seen a ghost, let alone seen a dear family member. The tide of emotions threatens to takeover me, and I have to bite back sobs of despair.

  I know some people who claim to see ghosts. Some are either lying or crazy. Some believe that they’re telling the truth. Few really are.

  An enigmatic smile touches Meghan's haunted pale lips and she holds out a gentle hand to me.

  "Hey, sis."

  So many things I want to tell her, so many apologies that freeze on the tip of my tongue, and nothing solid comes to mind. Tears well in the corners of my eyes as I struggle to maintain my composure.

  Meghan turns her back on me and floats down the alley away from the dumpsters. I follow after her, and when I get to the main road, she is nowhere to be found.

  "Meghan?" I call out into the darkness. I know it's futile.

  I let out a frustrated groan at her sudden departure.

  Why did she show up now, only to disappear? It makes no sense.

  Tears spill out onto my cheeks and I brush them away with my hoodie sleeve.

  "Damn it."

  I make my way back to the dumpsters. Frost, formed when Meghan appeared, is now melting from the metal trash bins and the bricks of the buildings surrounding me. A chill permeates all the way down to my bones, although I'm not sure if it's because of a supernatural occurrence of if it's because I blew my chance to apologize to Meghan.

  "So stupid!"

  There’s nothing I can do about it now, although there's so much that I wish I’d done differently. I let out a shuddering breath, still fighting back tears.

  I've got to get going, otherwise I'm going to be here all night and never get back home to Austin and real life before the sun comes up. I will have to think on this later. If I do that now, I'll never move from my spot.

  I stuff the last dead vampire into the bin, leave the lid up, and mutter the incantation to set the bodies on fire. They combust in a small explosion, throwing off a bit of heat for me to finally shake off the remainder of the chill.

  I take this moment to pull out my pack of cigarettes from my other back pocket and light one up. It's a fitting farewell, I think.

  "If you had just told me where Anthony is," I lecture their bonfire while exhaling a wisp of smoke, "we could have gotten along so much better."

  They were still attacking humans though, so the outcome would have been the same in the end. I have to take solace in that. Tonight didn’t go completely wrong; it's just a bust for me.

  Contrary to popular belief, vampire hunters don't kill every vampire we come across. The majority behave themselves and only drink from willing hosts or buy blood from blood banks. It isn't until they start killing people that I have to take action. I know from reading the news and my sources that these two vampires have been preying on as many as three humans a night for the past week. A blood binge, if you want to call it that. After being good little vampires for years, it seems like they'd finally snapped. The newspaper dubbed them serial murders. My network of hunters recognized exactly what it was.

  My vampy sense tingles again, alerting me to the presence of a familiar vampire behind me. I groan on the inside and flick my cigarette into the fire.

  “Really?” I ask, half playfully, half in a bad mood.

  I’m still wired from my fight with the other vampires and seeing Meghan, so I can use the excuse to pummel him a few times.

  I spin on him, throwing punches in a halfhearted warning. My right shoulder aches with the movement.

  As usual, whenever I do this, he matches each of my movements with the same intensity.

  We spar for a bit, Harker against vampire, before he pins me against the wall, pressing his strong body against mine.

  "You're chipper tonight, Harker," he tells me, a cheeky grin pulling at his lips. He raises an amused, pierced eyebrow.

  I roll my eyes at him and push him off me, trying to hide the blush from my cheeks. He was so close to me, I feel a bit too intimate with him at the moment. I turn my attention back to the mini-bonfire. Yes, he's a vampire, but I've known him for five months now and I know he won't hurt me.

  "Pissed off doesn't look good on you," he tells me.

  "I'm always kind of pissed off these days, Jude."

  "What, my lead wasn't good?" he asks.

  "That's what remains of them. In there." I nod to the dumpster, then I gesture to the college student still passed out against the wall. "They were having hemoglobin a la carte. And, no, I didn't get any information from either of them. They would rather die or do something stupid before they would ever want to help me."

  Jude curses under his breath. "Next time, Harker. You'll get something next time."

  I let out a shuddering breath. "You've been saying that for the past five months, Jude. It's not going to fucking happen. Anthony is like Bigfoot, except he hides better. I won't ever get to him in time."

  Because I'm dying and my expiration date is coming up.

  "You'll figure something out, Harker."

  "Not soon enough."

  Jude grabs my shoulder and I look back at him in surprise. "Yes. You. Will," he says, punctuating each word. His blue-eyed gaze keeps me rooted to my spot, even though I try to shrug off his empty promises.

  It's hard though. Jude isn’t someone you can "shrug off," no matter how hard you try. I'm not one to go for bloodsuckers, but Jude is possibly the best specimen of vampire or human to ever walk the Earth. When they warn girls about bad boys, they have someone like Jude in mind.

  At a little over six feet tall, he is slender with enough muscle to show that he's not a pussy in battle. Dark, curly hair falls onto his forehead and over his ears, a bit longer than what's in style, but it works for him. His unnaturally icy blue eyes are what you notice next, along with his unshaven strong jaw. A white scar runs up from his left eyebrow and disappears into his hairline.

  Vampires only scar when something horrible has happened. The fact that Jude has a scar like that hints at something in his past that made him lose his memory fifty years ago. Yes, he has amnesia, which is a first for me. I’ve never known a vampire who didn’t love to talk about the good old times. I can tell that not having a past bothers him, but he won't talk about it. I guess we're both alike in that we don't discuss our inner demons.

  He has silver piercings in his face: one in his right eyebrow, which is furrowed right now; both earlobes are gauged; and he has a piercing in his bottom lip. Vampires are allergic to silver, so the skin around each piercing is red and puckered, like it's been freshly pierced. I don't know why he leaves them in if they hurt, but I suspect it has to do with him wanting to feel the pain.

  And the tattoos… I stare at them sometimes. His arms are covered in black tattoos that look like chains. Be still my beating punk heart.

  I met him at Meghan's funeral. It was a rainy, overcast day and he was bundled in layers of clothing to protect him from any sunlight that might pierce the clouds. Only after scratching the surface did I learn more about him and his enigmatic ways. He has always come through for me with some leads and information regarding who Anthony is and the game he’s trying to play. He pokes around in the vampire underworld in places I can't g
o. No one thinks much of a vampire without a past, but they zip right up if the Harker asks the same question. We haven't been able to glean much from his sources; however, each one has been painting a vague picture.

  Also, he seems to have a cat-bell on me. It doesn't matter if I'm hunting in Dallas, Houston, or, like last week, San Francisco, he always shows up. I know he probably thinks from Twilight that girls love stalker vampires, but it does get on my nerves, especially knowing that he follows me so closely.

  The trashcan fire is running on empty now. Nearly time for me to head back home to Austin and my soft, warm bed that's waiting for me.

  "Why are you still here, Jude?" I ask, too tired to be polite.

  He chuckles. "I'm just making sure that you're all right." His voice is like liquid silk, and I bristle, brushing it off.

  He's trying to glamour me. My number one taboo.

  “Fuck you, Jude.”

  I refuse to be glamoured. It's a violation of my free will.

  I pull back the pyrokinetic power within the dumpster, like I’m inhaling the flame of a candle. The fire zaps out, leaving a pile of ash that isn't identifiable as anything remotely humanoid. I pick up the college student’s phone and dial 911.

  “Nine one one, what’s your—”

  “Times Boulevard and Kirby Drive,” I tell them in a low voice. Then I hang up and toss the phone in his lap.

  I turn on my heel and head down the alley towards the direction of my car.

  Jude keeps pace with me while I try to ignore him. "Come on, Harker," he says, not even breathless despite the fact that I'm nearly running. "If you let in a little glamour, it will make you feel better."

  "No, it wouldn't. That's crossing the line."

  He pouts. "You're always so serious."

  I have to be, don't I?

  I suck in a deep breath. "What would make me feel better is if you would help out every once in a while. One of the vampires threw me into the wall and dislocated my shoulder." My cheek where the male vampire punched me and my right shoulder throb as a reminder.

  "You had it under control."

  So he’d been watching me.

  "And I lost the lead."

  "There will be more. We will find Anthony, I promise you." He stops, and the abruptness causes me to stop as well. Damn, he knows me too well. "Speaking of, how's the scar?" The playful tone is gone from his voice.

  His gaze is on my left wrist, where I was bitten five months ago. Red, angry welts peek out from underneath my hoodie sleeve. The scar goes all the way up my arm to my shoulder, a testament to the war that’s raging inside my body as the vampire blood wreaks havoc.

  When Anthony combined his blood with my Harker blood, he infected me with a virus that is gradually killing me. It’s not a surprise. Whenever my ancestors have been bitten and turned by vampires, they died a slow, agonizing death.

  It’s one of the quirks of being a bit different than human, I guess.

  I shove the sleeve down to hide the evidence of my demise. "It's fine."

  Heat flushes my cheeks at my lie and I resume my near-jog. I can’t get away from him. He appears in front of me, blocking my way in the least threatening way possible, which at this point still feels too dominating. I set my jaw and cross my arms.

  "It's fine," I insist. Yet, even now, I can't stop the shudder that goes down my spine.

  He knows not to push it. That it has stressed me out. When he speaks next, it throws me off guard in a different way. "You look as though you've seen a ghost."

  I laugh bitterly. "I might have."

  "What do you mean?"

  "It doesn't matter."

  "It obviously does matter.”

  I hate that he's picking up on my distress.

  "Why are you so interested?"

  "I'm just trying to help."

  I feel my face redden, and I can barely contain my fury. "Then do me a favor and either help harder or don't help at all." I push past him. To my relief, my car is in sight, parallel parked in front of an apartment building.

  "As you wish," he replies from behind me.

  I turn back to make another retort to him, but he has disappeared like he always does. Always irritating. Always too prying.

  That's my life with Jude. I'm sure he's gone to whatever house he shacks up in and is working on his next lead. This kind of conversation between us is nothing new, but tonight, I do wish that it ended differently. Since becoming infected, I've pushed away all that are dear to me, including Jude on some weird level. I can’t ignore the flutter in my stomach or the quickening of my pulse when he’s near, but it can never be. After all, he’s a vampire and I’m the Harker, two things that aren’t supposed to go well together.

  I have to remember to keep my distance.

  What's done is done though. I know that better than anyone. Edie Mina Harker was never meant to have a happy ending.

  I open the door to my Lancer and turn the key in the ignition. The Clash greets me, keeping me company on my lonely trek back to Austin.

  3

  Jude

  She probably thinks I’m an asshole. I don’t blame her, not really. Regardless of who I want to be, there’s no escaping what I am. I’m most certainly a vampire, no matter how much I want to be something else.

  And vampire equates to asshole, any way you slice it.

  All I’d been trying to do was to make her forget, even if momentarily, all the shit that she has on her shoulders. I can’t even imagine what she’s going through. Her face looked so tired and overwhelmed I wanted to offer her a bit of respite. A little glamour would have helped ease that pain. Then she storms away, telling me to fuck off. It’s kind of fun to push her buttons sometimes, but I know that I crossed the line with her tonight.

  I only wanted to help.

  Thing is, Edie Harker is fiercely independent. She may say that she wants my help, but she really doesn’t. I know that if I help out too much, she’ll become skittish like a terrified pup and run away. I don’t want that to happen. Not when I know I can help her behind the scenes. If she was ever really in danger, I would have stepped in. Being the Harker, she had everything under control, dislocated shoulder and all.

  I have to remind myself that I can scare her off with glamouring her or reminding her too much that I’m the very thing she hunts. That boundary is now abundantly clear.

  I’d heard of the Harkers long before I ever met Edie, which is relative in vampire terms. Fifty years is a short amount of time when you have an eternity as a measuring stick.

  My first memory is waking up on a cot in a Chicago hospital one night in 1968, a John Doe with a horrible hit to the head that permanently marred my forehead. “Hey Jude” from the Beatles was playing on the loudspeaker, so I thought someone was speaking directly to me. Hence the name. I have no idea who or what I was before that. All I knew was that I had a feral hunger that I needed to address.

  I escaped from the hospital and into the night, terrified of the overwhelming urges, terrified that I was going to kill someone. I did; my victim was a homeless man that was too drunk to tell me no before I started.

  The thought of it still haunts my dreams.

  After trying to reintegrate myself into society, I quickly learned about the Harkers. Every vampire uses them as a reason to not stray too far towards our instincts to kill. Or, in the case of more fearless vampires, the Harkers are used as a reason to not get caught killing humans.

  I never had to worry about it. After that initial, terrifying night of waking up and killing a homeless man, I didn’t want to lose control like that again. Only willing hosts, blood bags, or animal blood. Not the best diet, but it’s sustainable, which is more than I deserve.

  Self-loathing is a terrible thing. Good thing I don’t have a reflection, because I would never be able to look at myself in the mirror. Pain is the only currency that I understand. Days no longer matter.

  That was, until I met her.

  When one Harker dies, it ripples throug
h the vampire community. I may not be the most active or popular member, but in fifty years, I’ve heard of six Harkers dying prematurely. The last one that died was significant, because the general consensus was that Anthony was behind the attack. That he’s planning something big.

  I’ve never met the fucker, but I do know that Anthony is like a powerful mob boss. He operates in the darkest corners of the vampire community, an exclusive group within a sect of society that requires you to be undead. You don’t want to mess with him if you value your extended vampire life.

  Well, I don’t value my life, so that’s not a problem.

  You could say I was intrigued about why Anthony had decided to make a move now, out of all the times in the past. Hell, I even attended the late Harker’s funeral during the daytime, which is a risky move for a vampire. To this day, I still don’t know why I did it. Yet that’s where I met Edie for the first time.

  It was raining, as if the sky itself was mourning the passing of another hunter. I stuck to the shadows, wearing a trench coat that shielded my skin from the sun. If you want to remain hidden from humans, it’s startlingly easy. They don’t look at you if you don’t think you’re significant. And I used a little glamour for those around me so they didn’t notice. It worked for the most part.

  A man in black with a toddler was mourning over the freshly dug grave as they lowered the casket into the ground. The Harker’s husband and daughter maybe? Was the toddler the newest Harker?

  I’d hoped not. That’s some fucked up shit. No one ever imagines that Harkers start out small, helpless. Like the rest of us.

  Then I saw a fragile-looking young woman sitting on the muddy ground on the crest of a hill overlooking the procession. Her hair was dyed blue, and her vintage black dress was dirty from sitting on the ground without an umbrella. She was soaked to the bone. Her left wrist was bound in gauze all the way up to her elbow. Even from a distance, I could smell the infection in her blood.