by Lora Leigh
Vampire’s Ball
Angela Knight
ONE
Christmas had come to Walsh Drive. Every house on the block was draped in swags of icicle lights that shone through the dancing swirl of snow. Firs, cedars, and pines stood framed in frosted windows, trimmed in glittering ornaments and twinkling lights. A plastic Santa waved from a neighbor’s yard, his recorded “Ho ho ho!” booming through the night, his painted face glowing.
God, she hated Christmas.
Kat Danilo pulled into her dark driveway, aching in every muscle. She’d taught three classes at the club today—two Healthy Groovin’ and one Kickbox to Fitness—and she was in desperate need of a long, hot soak and a cup of chamomile tea.
After she made sure her mother was okay. Mary Danilo never did well this close to Christmas.
One more week. All they had to do was get through one more week, and they’d be okay. There’d be dark days, yes, but at least there wouldn’t be Santas and Christmas trees everywhere you looked, triggering memories better left buried.
Kat’s stomach balled into its accustomed knot when she got out of her little red Ford Focus. Snow crunched loudly underfoot as she approached the front door. Her hand shook in the act of unlocking the dead bolt, making the keys jingle. “Mom?” She swallowed and licked dry lips, tried for a sunny tone. “Mom, I’m home.”
“In here, baby.” Her mother’s voice sounded bright, excited.
Kat slumped in relief. It was going to be a good night. She blew out a breath and entered the foyer.
The stranger rose as Kat walked into the living room. Shining blond hair curled around the woman’s shoulders, contrasting with a deep cobalt cable-knit sweater that accented the sapphire blue of her eyes. Dark jeans made the most of her impressive height and long legs. An athletic woman, Kat judged, fit and comfortable in her own skin.
Mary stood too, a head shorter than the blonde, a certain jittery excitement in her tired eyes. “Kat, this is Grace du Lac. She’s your stepmother.”
Kat froze. “I . . . don’t understand.”
Mary gave her a smile that was a trifle too bright, a bit too wide. “She’s your father’s wife.”
Kat rocked back on her heels and eyed Grace warily. The family dynamics here were potentially touchy, to say the least. As far as Kat knew, her father had been a drunken one-night stand shortly after Mary’s truly ugly divorce. Either the condom had broken, or too many rum and Cokes had blunted her mother’s sense of self-preservation. Either way, Kat had come along nine months later.
“Lance met Mary long before our marriage,” Grace explained. There was not even a flicker of jealousy on her elegant features. She looked no older than Kat herself; apparently John Lance had a taste for cradle robbing.
“Oh.” Kat slid her hands into her jacket pockets, struggling to figure out why the woman was here. “Has something happened to . . . my father?” It felt strange to say the words. “My father” was a phrase she’d rarely spoken.
“Oh, no. He’s just on a mission. I was deputized to explain things.”
Mission? “What things, exactly?” Kat took a step closer, studying Grace with a suspicion she didn’t bother to hide. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand any of this. My mother tried to contact John after she realized she was pregnant, but he’d vanished off the face of the earth. We never heard a single word from him all the time I was growing up. Now you pop up twenty-six years later. Why now? What do you want?”
“Sometimes I could kick my husband’s ass.” Grace shook her head in disgust. “The knights have always had a cavalier attitude toward their children.”
“Knights? I thought his last name was Lance.”
“Actually, it’s Lancelot du Lac, Knight of the Round Table.”
Kat laughed, amused by the sarcastic image. The chuckle died as she gazed into Grace’s utterly serious eyes. Good God, the woman meant it. Is she some kind of nut?
The blonde studied Kat for a long moment before her blue gaze hardened in resolution. “Time to quit stalling and get it over with.” She reached out and gently laid a hand against Kat’s cheek. Her palm felt seductively kind. Soothing.
Frowning, Kat started to pull back, only to discover she couldn’t move. She opened her mouth to demand what the woman was doing.
Which was when knowledge slammed into her brain in a hurricane of images, emotions, information that battered her senses until the room spun. She didn’t even feel herself hit the floor.
Kat lay flat on her back, staring at the ceiling. Her aching head swam—which was no surprise, since her world had violently realigned in the last five minutes. She felt as if someone had picked up her brain and shaken it like a snow globe.
“Kat!” Mary thumped to her knees beside her, eyes wide with panic. “Kat, are you all right?”
“Fine,” she mumbled, an automatic lie instilled by years of soothing her mother’s fears. “ ’M fine, Mom.”
A surprisingly strong hand closed over her forearm, pulled her easily into a sitting position. “You sure about that?” Grace knelt at her side, a frown of concern drawing her blond brows down. “I gave you the whole package. It’s a lot to deal with.”
Kat stared at her. “You’re a witch.” It wasn’t possible, yet she knew it was true. The knowledge felt utterly solid, as if it were something she’d always known, observed, believed. Objects fall down instead of up. Grace du Lac is a witch with fantastic magical powers.
“Yes.” Grace’s gaze didn’t even falter at the admission.
“My father is one of the Knights of the Round Table. And he’s a vampire.” She took a deep breath. “And the reason you’re here is because I could become a witch too.”
Grace nodded. “We could use someone like you right now. But that’s not my decision.” She rose, pulling Kat to her feet with an easy strength that was far from human. “Ridge is going to have to make that call.”
Two Days Later
He’d fought Nazi soldiers, communist spies, and demon-infected terrorists. Dealing with Kat Danilo should be a piece of cake. Yet somehow, Ridge Champion had an ugly feeling his newest mission wasn’t going to be that easy.
Ridge pulled his Porsche 911 into the driveway of 344 Walsh Drive and switched off its rumbling engine. Ice-crusted snow crackled under his Armani loafers as he stepped out of the car. Striding up the curving brick walkway, he eyed the three-story Victorian. Snow was rare in Charlotte, North Carolina, yet icicles hung from the gray-trimmed eaves. The house’s wooden siding was as white as the landscape, and more snow dusted its steeply pitched black roof. A very pretty house, solidly middle-class.
He stepped onto the porch and thumbed the doorbell, sending a cheery four-note chime ringing through the interior.
The gleaming black door swung open a moment later, revealing a woman who had to be Kat’s mother. The skimpy dossier he’d read said Mary Danilo was fifty-five, but she looked considerably older, her face gaunt, hollows under the blue eyes, lines of pain cutting grooves around her mouth. The beige slacks and sweater were too big for her thin body. Her smile looked forced as she opened the door wide and stepped back. “Come in, come in out of the cold.” She extended a hand as he stepped inside. “I’m Mary Danilo, Kat’s mother.”
“Ridge Champion.” Her fingers felt thin, fragile, and cold in his careful handshake. He wished he could do something about her obvious anxiety.
“May I take your coat?” She gestured toward the mass of heavy black wool that draped his shoulders.
“No, I’m fine.” They needed to get moving.
Mary nodded, and turned to lead the way through the tiled foyer and into the living room. “Kat’ll be down in a second. Last-minute primping. Not that she’s vain, but she likes to look nice, and . . .” As i
f losing track of where the sentence was going, Mary trailed off. “Grace said . . .” She broke off again and studied him anxiously. Finally she took a deep breath, as if gathering her courage. “Grace said you’re a vampire.”
He met her gaze steadily. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I didn’t want to believe her. It sounds crazy. There’s no such thing. But . . . I couldn’t not believe.”
“No,” Ridge said. “She wouldn’t let you do anything else.”
“Oh.” She twisted her hands together, staring up at him.
“Your daughter will be safe with me,” Ridge told her gently. “Most of what you’ve heard about vampires is myth. Crosses don’t bother us, we don’t drain people’s blood, and we’re not undead. We certainly don’t sleep in coffins. We’re the good guys. And I would never hurt an innocent.”
“Grace told me that. But Kat’s my only child.”
“I know, ma’am. She’ll be safe with me.”
The searching doubt didn’t fade from her eyes, though finally she nodded. “Thank you.”
Unfortunately, there wasn’t a hell of a lot more he could say to convince her. Unlike Grace du Lac, Ridge wasn’t a Maja, able to induce belief with a spell.
“Mom?” The voice came from somewhere upstairs, sounding far too sexy for a woman who still lived with her mother at the age of twenty-six. “Zip me up, please?”
“Coming.” Mary shot him a harried, apologetic smile and left the room. Her footsteps sounded on a stairway somewhere out of sight.
Ridge tucked his hands in his overcoat pockets and studied his surroundings. The walls were painted a soft, elegant cream, the couch and chairs were covered in pale gold slipcovers, and a potted palm occupied a woven basket in the corner. There wasn’t so much as a Santa figurine to be seen.
And why was that? He frowned slightly.
Idly, Ridge wandered over to the golden marble fireplace, where an eight-by-ten photo occupied the center of a white wooden mantel. From the center of a sterling silver frame the teenaged girl smiled in the kind of stiffly posed shot taken for senior yearbooks. A pretty blonde who looked vaguely like Mary Danilo, she wore a heart-shaped locket around her neck engraved with initials Ridge couldn’t quite make out. Candles stood to either side of the frame as though it were a shrine.
He frowned. Was this Kat?
“Mom, are you sure you’re going to be okay?” The woman’s voice carried clearly to his vampire hearing, surprisingly throaty, flavored with the South, smooth and rich as Kentucky bourbon.
Ridge shifted, uncomfortable at his involuntary eavesdropping.
“I’m fine, Kat.” The answer sounded too tense to be entirely honest.
“I can cancel.”
“No! No, this is too important.”
“Are you sure? I can tell him to forget it.”
“No. I need to know. If you can find out . . . I’d like to know. Maybe . . . I think it would help. Maybe.”
“This’ll work, Mom. I know it will. You saw what Grace could do.”
“But you’ve got to stay safe. Promise me you won’t endanger yourself. I couldn’t stand it if . . .”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me, Mom. I can take care of myself.”
Yeah, well, that’s what I’m here to find out, Ridge thought grimly.
High heels clicked on the stairs, followed by the softer pad of rubber soles. Ridge turned to greet his date.
And caught his breath.
Kat Danilo paused in the hall doorway, a long, slim candle of a woman. Cream silk skimmed down a lithe and graceful body, draped seductively over hips, trailed into a short train. The gown was strapless, its cleavage framing round, sun-kissed breasts. An artful slit permitted glimpses of a gently muscled calf and one spiked gold heel.
Kat advanced to meet him, extending a hand, her smile bright and easy. In contrast to the formality of her gown, her hair was a short, spiky blond ’do that framed delicately angular features with saucy wisps.
“Ridge, this is my daughter, Katherine Danilo,” Mary said with evident pride. “Kat, Ridge Champion.”
Some bone-deep instinct had him bowing over those slender fingers. Unlike her mother’s, her hand felt warm and surprisingly strong. Her eyes crinkled at the corners as she smiled, a clear and crystalline blue. He thought he saw a hint of indigo in their depths.
She wore the same gold heart locket as the girl in the picture, but her features were stronger, her gaze years wiser. So who was that in the photo? A sister?
That dossier he’d read was beginning to seem even thinner than he’d thought. Which made him wonder what had been kept from him, and why. The Majae’s Council often played inscrutable games, even with the vampires of Avalon.
“Hello, Ridge.” The girl’s lips looked full and tempting, slicked with bronze gloss. He wanted to taste them. That Kentucky bourbon voice sounded like an invitation to sin.
“It’s my pleasure, Kat.” Or it would be, if he wasn’t careful. How the hell was he supposed to maintain his objectivity with a woman who made his every cell thrum with need?
Unfortunately, he had no choice. There was too much at stake here—starting with Kat Danilo’s life.
TWO
The vampire drove a black Porsche. And what’s more, he looked like the kind of vampire who’d drive a black Porsche.
Kat eyed Ridge Champion in the dashboard lights as he drove with speed and skill. Hair that looked as darkly silky as Russian sable, thick brows slashing over cat-green eyes. A profile that could have been chiseled by Michelangelo. Lips a little sulky, a strong cleft chin, nose a Greco-Roman sweep. And, God help her, dimples that flashed when he smiled. What the hell kind of grown man had dimples? If he hadn’t been a vampire, she’d have figured he was gay.
Gay? Kat winced. Apparently, being really nervous brought out the catty bitch in her.
Her mouth tasted as if she’d eaten a bag of cotton balls. Animated cotton balls, currently tumbling around in her lurching stomach. She tried to work up enough spit to swallow.
He whipped the Porsche between a pair of stone columns. Kat blinked at the houses that rolled past. Middle-class suburbia, nice but decidedly down-market from the Porsche. “You live here?”
“Not exactly.”
He pulled into the driveway of a bland brick split-level. Garage doors opened and then closed again behind the car’s sleek taillights as he braked to a silken stop. Kat started to reach for the door handle. . . .
The universe twisted itself inside out, taking her stomach along for the ride. A hot white starburst exploded in front of her eyes, blinding her. Kat clung to the door, blinking furiously, as the world settled into some kind of weird new configuration. Her stomach settled with it. “What the hell was that?”
The vampire looked at her and smiled. “Magic.”
“Yeah, I kind of figured that from the psychic sucker punch.” Kat gazed out the windshield and her jaw dropped in astonishment.
They were now outside, surrounded by expensive cars in a rainbow of colors. Porches, BMWs, Cadillacs, Rolls-Royces. The only thing that kept the lot from looking like valet parking at the Academy Awards was three beaters: a rusting VW bug, a panel van that appeared to date from 1972, and an ancient Model T in serious need of a paint job.
Light exploded in the corner of her eye. She jerked around to look out the passenger window. A 1957 cherry red Thunderbird had appeared in the parking space next to them. The well-dressed driver got out and went around to open the door for his date.
Kat was still gaping when Ridge opened her own door and extended a hand to help her out. Cautious of her skirt’s silken train, she took his hand. It felt broad and warm under hers as he tugged her from her seat and threaded her fingers into the crook of his arm.
“Where are we?” Tilting her head back, Kat gazed upward. She couldn’t recall a sky quite so beautiful, so incredibly black, or strewn with so many glittering stars.
Ridge followed her dazzled stare, and a slight smile curved his abs
urdly beautiful mouth. “This is the Mageverse.”
“The what?” She searched the magical memories she’d acquired from Grace. Unfortunately, her knowledge apparently had some very large holes.
“The Mageverse. It’s a parallel universe where magic is a natural force, like gravity or magnetism back home.” He started down the row of cars, guiding her along. “This is where we live, where we draw on the magic that we use on Earth.”
His biceps felt round and firm under the warm wool of his coat sleeve. She looked up into his elegant profile, frowning. “But how did we get here?”
Ridge lifted one broad shoulder in a half shrug. “That house we stopped at. There’s a spell gate on the floor of the garage. When a car drives into it equipped with the trigger spell, it transports the car to the Mageverse.”
“Oh.” She tilted her head, eyeing him curiously. Her fingers stole unconsciously to her locket, absently rasped it back and forth over its chain. “I thought you did it.”
“Me?” He shot her a surprised look. “Vampires can’t do magic. Well, not that kind of magic. I can turn myself into a wolf or heal some really ugly gunshot wounds, but nothing outside my own body. You need a Maja for that.”
“Why? I mean, if you could turn yourself into an animal—which sounds pretty damn major to me—why not other kinds of magic?”
“Why does gravity pull down instead of push up? That’s just the way it works.”
They joined a stream of richly clad people leaving the parking lot. Kat hunched inside her overcoat and studied the crowd as they walked. About half wore tuxedos or gowns in some shade of white, from eggshell to cream. The remaining women were dressed in a rainbow of vivid colors in silk and velvet, the men in black tuxes. Come to think of it, Grace had provided her with the white gown she wore. Some kind of color coding?
They clipped around a stand of trees with the rest of the well-heeled herd. The sight that greeted them stopped Kat in her tracks.
The five-story castle looked as if it had been transported directly from medieval England, complete with moat and thick stone walls. She could almost see Merlin standing on the ramparts, magic pouring from his hands.
Ridge gave her arm a little tug to get her moving again. As they walked across the wooden drawbridge, Kat looked over the edge at the moat below. A reflection of the full moon danced on the water’s mirrored surface.
They passed under a portcullis into a courtyard decorated with rosebushes and topiary. Statues of medieval knights and ladies gleamed in the moonlight like graceful ghosts. A keep towered in the center of it all, soaring against the black sky, spotlights illuminating its massive cream stone walls.Heart hammering with nervous excitement, Kat let the vampire lead her through the keep’s towering oak doors.
They gave up their coats to a lovely young woman man ning a coat check in the foyer, then wandered into the huge ballroom beyond.
The first thing Kat saw when they entered was a Christmas tree that had to be fifty feet tall, a massive, noble fir draped in thousands of white lights. The ornaments—a glittering collection of balls in white, silver, and gold—were easily the size of Kat’s head. It was so damned impressive, she barely noticed the usual stab of Christmas agony.
Dancers swirled around the huge tree, to the strains of some hidden orchestra. Kat was instantly grateful for the magical knowledge of waltzing Grace had given her at the same time as the dress.
“Would you like something to drink?” Ridge asked over the buzz of voices and laughter.
Kat licked dry lips. “Yes, please.” Something with alcohol, if she was really lucky. She needed to numb her fluttering nervousness.
So damned much rested on this.
Ridge led her across the gleaming white and black checkerboard expanse of the marble floor to the other side of the room. Three huge tables stood lining the long wall, spread with a dazzling selection of appetizers. A towering ice sculpture stood on the central table, depicting a woman’s arm thrust upward, holding a sword that shone with condensation.
“The Lady in the Lake,” Ridge said. “Didn’t happen like that, but Arthur loves that story.”
“You know King Arthur?” Kat’s voice spiraled upward into an embarrassing squeak.
“Yep.” He nodded. “In fact, there he is.”
The man who stepped into the center of the room didn’t look like an immortal vampire knight. He was dressed in a tux, for one thing, though he wore his curling dark hair in a shoulder-length style, and a short, neatly trimmed beard framed his square jaw. Though not tall, he was as muscular as Ridge, and an air of power lingered around him like cologne. He lifted a hand, and the music stopped. “May I have your attention, please?”
Dancers stepped away from each other and turned to listen. The ones in white studied Arthur with the same staggered, wide-eyed fascination Kat felt. The rest listened with evident respect.
“As you’ve probably heard,” Arthur said, “we’re recruiting.”
This drew a dry chuckle from a few people, though others looked grim.
“Those of you in white are Latents—the mortal descendants of the knights and ladies of the Round Table. And like all Latents, you have inherited the genetic potential to become immortal. Vampires, in the case of the men, while the women could transform into Majae.”
“Please don’t call us witches,” a dark-haired woman in a red velvet gown called. “We don’t like it.”
“And believe me, you don’t want to piss Morgana Le Fay off.” Arthur smiled as the group chuckled. “Morgana and her fellow Majae worked a spell to find