The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance

by Trisha Telep

  “Does holy water work?”

  “As a matter of fact, it does. So make sure you aim that thing carefully. Assuming, of course, you get a shot off.” Shifting his weight, he pulled the briefcase I’d had on the seat out from beneath him. “I don’t suppose I can talk you into staying home where you’re relatively safe while I deal with this.”

  “No. Not really. I’ve got a job, bills to pay — a life. I refuse to cower in the corner.”

  Actually I’d thought about doing just that, but decided that the stress of worrying would probably do me in just as effectively as the monster hunting me. And then there was the worrying about Daniel. Because I did. Yes, he was a big, strong vampire, perfectly capable of taking care of himself. But I’d seen his expression in that fleeting instant when he’d realized I was up against Alexander. He’d been afraid.

  “You do realize how stupid that is.” He said it softly.

  “Yes. But it doesn’t matter.” I took the 120th street exit, heading for my next assignment. This should be an easy one: little suburban housewife getting divorce papers. She was even expecting them.

  “I could make you go home.”

  I thought about that for a moment. Maybe he could. I’d looked in his eyes last night, had felt the magic pulling me like an undertow. Could he use that same magic to bend me to his will? Probably. I just hoped he wouldn’t.

  “If you do, it’s over. I won’t be anybody’s meat puppet. Not yours, not anyone’s.”

  “Maybe I don’t care. Maybe having you alive matters more than whether or not you hate me.”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer that. So I didn’t. The silence stretched uncomfortably. I pretended to concentrate on driving, turning left and slowing, my eyes scanning the row of split-level houses for the correct address. When I found it, I pulled the car to the kerb and shut off the engine. I grabbed my briefcase and climbed out of the car. Daniel did the same, following a few steps behind as I strode up the sidewalk to the front porch.

  I rang the bell and Mrs West came to the door. She was pretty; a petite brunette that looked harried. In the background I could hear the sound of children fighting. She took the papers, thanked me and quickly closed the door.

  It was only when I turned to go back to the car that I noticed Daniel wasn’t behind me. Instead, he was standing in the middle of the Wests’ manicured lawn. In front of him was the most striking woman I’d ever seen. She was tall, taller even than Daniel, with a muscular build and harsh features. I didn’t know who she was, but I could guess what she was. And while she was distracting Daniel, Alexander was moving in from behind.

  “I cannot believe you are sleeping with a sheep. God, Daniel. How can you?”

  “Hey, you! Who are you calling a sheep?” I shouted the words as I reached into my jacket, my hand closing around the handle of the squirt gun.

  I had expected her to react, to attack me. She did turn, and would’ve charged, if Alexander’s magic hadn’t struck out at her like a lash.

  “The sheep is mine.” His voice was a harsh caw. His throat might’ve looked whole, but either it hadn’t healed completely, or there was permanent damage.

  I didn’t know what he was doing, but he somehow froze both the woman and Daniel in mid-motion. They stood, like statues, only their eyes moving. Those eyes followed Alexander’s gliding steps as his stalked me across the grass. I kept my head down, and began edging towards the car.

  “Stop right there.”

  I felt his power wash over me, felt him willing me to do as he said. But when the power hit the necklace Daniel had given me it scattered, leaving me in possession of my own mind, my own will.

  It was then that I had a flash of insight. Daniel hadn’t made the charm for me. There’d been no time. No, he’d given me his charm - the one thing that had protected him from Alexander’s power. He’d left himself completely vulnerable to protect me. I knew, too, that if I didn’t stop Alexander somehow, we’d both die.

  Time seemed to slow. Everything was preternaturally clear. I would have to let Alexander get close enough to use the squirt gun. But if he got that close, with his speed and strength, I’d have almost no chance of survival. I might just be able to wound him, maybe even badly enough for Daniel to finish him off. There’d still be the woman to deal with, but there was nothing I could do about that.

  I stayed utterly motionless, barely daring to breathe. He was close now. So close that I could see the glint of moonlight off the buttons of his shirt, smell the scent of old blood on his breath.

  “Look at me,” he ordered.

  I turned, stepping forwards, lifting my head as though to comply, giving him exactly what he expected, right up until the last instant. When I pulled the gun from its hiding place, I aimed for the place where his heart should be, spraying holy water directly into his chest.

  He screamed, an unearthly, high-pitched, keening wail that was nearly deafening. His body jerked back and flames erupted from a spreading hole the size of my fist, burning through his ribcage. I could see his lungs move as he tried to draw breath, then saw him raise his fist.

  I knew that if that blow landed, I would be dead. But it didn’t land. A last squeeze of the trigger took out what was left of his heart, and he collapsed. Flames leaped up from his corpse as though it had been doused in gasoline. The heat was horrendous, and I fell back from it, my arm thrown up to protect my eyes. The stench of burning flesh filled the night, gagging me. Dropping the empty squirt gun, I staggered back, horrified.

  By the light of the flickering flames I saw a battle raging. Magic and blows fell like rain, too many, too fast for me to follow.

  They were evenly matched - the perfect offence meeting an equally perfect defence. Neither had the upper hand.

  In the distance I heard sirens. We were running out of time. I stumbled towards the car, intending to go for the large water pistol in the back seat.

  The movement distracted her for barely an instant - just long enough for her to turn her head to make sure I wasn’t a threat.

  It was enough. Daniel used that moment to lunge forwards, claws extended. I heard the wet tearing of flesh, followed by her scream of rage and despair. She struggled, fought, as he tore the still-beating heart from her chest. She collapsed, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. With a roar of triumph, he threw it onto the still-burning thing that had been Alexander.

  Bathed in blood, lit by firelight, the creature that stood before me was completely inhuman. It couldn’t be Daniel. And yet, it was.

  He turned to me then, slowly, his movements those of a predator that spots easy prey. He took that first step forwards, and a second, and I felt my pulse speed - primal fear making the blood thunder through my veins. I couldn’t fight. I had no weapons. I couldn’t flee either. All I could do was stand my ground, face the inevitable.

  He stopped. I watched him swallow, saw him struggle against the beast that was so much a part of him. It wasn’t easy. But slowly, the beast retreated and Daniel returned. When he was fully himself, he disappeared.

  Three

  I doused the woman’s body with the holy water in the gun from the back seat. By the time the cops arrived, all that was left of the vampires was a pair of black burned spots on the grass. Normal human bodies do not burn that completely, nor that fast. But that didn’t keep the police from investigating.

  Eventually, I was cleared. But it took time: days and weeks. Long nights spent alone.

  Daniel was gone. Vanished.

  The sensible part of me knew it was for the best. The rest of me mourned his loss, hoped for him to return, if only to retrieve the charm necklace. I told myself I could go on without him - I didn’t need him. But I did.

  Nearly two months had passed. It was late. I was awake, staring out the window at the moonlight, unable to sleep. My mind was on the night I first met Daniel as I traced my hand absently over the charm I continued to wear around my neck.

  “I came to say goodbye. It will never work.” His vo
ice was soft. “You’re human. I feed on humans. I’m immortal. You’re so terribly fragile. Anything could take you, at any time. If any of my kind find out, they’ll kill us both. Alexander isn’t the only hunter out there. I want you to live.”

  I turned slowly, letting him see the tears that coursed down my cheeks. “There’s existing, and there’s living. Without you I’ll exist, but it won’t be living.”

  He looked at me then, and I took a chance, met his gaze full on. If the eyes are the windows of the soul, I let him see mine, without any hiding or pretence. “I’d rather have a day with you, than a lifetime without. If time is so precious, do we even dare waste a second?”

  It was a long time before he answered. Taking me into his arms, he pulled me close enough that his whisper was a breath of air against my hair. “No, we don’t.”

  Light Through Fog

  Holly Lisle

  “Can he still see us, Mama? Does he still miss us?”

  Sarah tried to keep breathing as she tucked the boys into bed. “Yes, Jim,” she whispered. “He’ll always be with us. I’ll leave the light on,” she added, and turned each of their nightstand lamps on low before she switched off the main light and stepped out into the hall. The feel of their hugs lingered around her neck.

  She had lost so much - more than she thought she would ever be able to bear. But she still had the boys.

  Sarah’s mother stood waiting at the top of the stairs. “They’re not ready. You’re not ready. Bring the boys and come back to our house. At least for a few more nights.”

  Sarah hugged her. “Mom, we’ll never be ready. But this is our life now. We have to start living it.”

  Her mother nodded. “I’m not sure how you’re making it through the day. And you know whenever you need your father and me, we’ll be there for you. We’re ... so proud of you.”

  Sarah watched her mother walk down the drive, get into her car, and back out. She stood in the doorway until the red glow of the tail lights faded away at the end of the block.

  And then she shuddered and went inside, locking the door behind her.

  She smelled flowers. Most of them would still be set out under the tree, but the funeral director and his crew had carried the indoor arrangements and plants into the house.

  Deepest Sympathies.

  In Remembrance of Sam.

  We love you, Sarah. You can count on us.

  You’re not alone.

  She had never seen so many flowers. Everyone had loved Sam, everyone knew him. He’d been a light in the town, someone who did well at everything but who brought everyone else with him in his triumphs.

  Including her.

  Everyone had loved Sam.

  She’d heard variations on the same theme from her friends and neighbours: as they put casseroles and baked goods into her fridge and her freezer; as they hugged her and wept; as they stood in the kitchen after the funeral and told stories about Sam and how wonderful he had been.

  For those short hours while the house was full, while people lingered, she’d thought, “I’ll be able to get through this.”

  But in the vacant rooms, the emptiness echoed. Sam was gone - he whom she had loved since the eighth grade - and this was her new life. She wanted to peek in on the boys. She wanted to cling to them. But Jim was twelve, almost as tall as Sam. Mike was ten, and already taller than her. Growing boys, soon to be grown. She had a few more years with them, and then they would move on to their own lives. She had friends; she had family. But she didn’t have Sam.

  She wished, when the drunk’s car jumped the median and came at him, that she had been in the driver’s seat. She could have been. She’d been going to pick up the boys from school and, at the last minute, he’d said he needed to run an errand so he would pick them up instead.

  He never made it to the school.

  She braved the living room and the flowers and plants, held her breath against the unwelcome sweetness in the air, and took Sam’s urn from the mantel.

  When darkness fell, when family and friends went home, when the boys went to sleep, the truth was that she was alone. But before she let herself sink back into the endless recrimination of how it could have been her and should have been her, she had a promise to keep.

  Sarah walked out of the back door, carrying Sam’s urn in her arms. She locked the door behind her, then walked through the tree-shadowed backyard, her arms dappled by the faint moonlight.

  She crossed over the stream that bisected the yard on the little wooden bridge Sam had built for her, and stepped onto their island. The tiny island in the tiny stream had been the reason the two of them had bought this piece of land and eventually built their house on it. The north point of the island was covered with the rest of the flowers from the funeral.

  On the island grew the tree under which they had first met, on an eighth-grade end-of-the-year picnic. It had to be 200 years old, a beautiful live oak with enormous spreading branches. Both had climbed the tree unaware of the other -they’d met in the upper branches.

  They’d known they were supposed to be together the moment they met. When after getting their bachelors’ degrees they got engaged, they bought the land and planned their future home there. They got married and moved into a tiny apartment, and Sam went on to graduate school in architecture. Sarah got a job as a draftsman for a local firm and supported the two of them.

  Built into those branches was the tree house Sam had designed and built for her as a belated wedding present (“because you never had one and you always wanted one”). It was his first solo architecture project. He modelled it on the small but exquisite cabins you find on yachts. He’d had friends help him build it on evenings and weekends, but he’d done all the woodwork himself. The result was art.

  They’d spent countless summer nights sleeping up there together, feeling the faint sway of the branches, hearing the rustle of the leaves. They’d played there, fought there, made love there. Mike and Jim had been conceived there, as well as the baby they’d lost.

  If she’d been forced to choose between living in the house they’d built together later or living in the tree house he’d created for her, she’d have picked the tree house. They’d promised each other that when one of them died, the survivor would place the other’s ashes beneath that tree. They’d thought they had another forty years before either of them would have to keep that promise.

  She put the urn on the ground and leaned against the oak’s rough bark. She’d cried when she identified him in the morgue, she’d cried when she met with the funeral director and she’d cried herself to sleep every night since his death. She had thought herself cried out.

  But she hadn’t been to the tree. Not until just that moment.

  The weight of everything they’d been to each other since the eighth grade hit her with full force; her knees gave way, and she collapsed. Sam’s death and her loss suddenly became terribly real. She sobbed and hugged herself. He was gone someplace where she couldn’t reach him, couldn’t find him, couldn’t hold him, and all she had left was ashes.

  “Oh, Sam,” she whispered. “Oh, Sam, I still need you.”

  “Oh, Sarah,” she heard Sam’s voice ask, as if from the other side of the tree, “how could you leave me?”

  She froze. A fog had come up and somehow she hadn’t noticed. She rose on shaky legs and picked up the urn with Sam’s ashes in it. Had she actually heard anything? Was she wishing Sam’s voice into the air around her, or was her mind playing tricks on her? Or was someone there?

  She gripped the urn tighter, grateful it had a screw-on cap rather than a lid. If someone was there, she didn’t want to hit the trespasser and send Sam’s ashes flying.

  In the moon-illuminated fog, she could make out a shape kneeling by the tree. Familiar, that shape. She slipped closer, soundless. Or so she thought.

  “Who’s there?” He sounded exactly like Sam. He couldn’t be Sam, but oh, God, she would have thought she could have recognized Sam’s voice out of all the vo
ices in the world. Was she just hearing what she wanted to hear?

  “Who are you?” she asked. Her voice quavered.

  The shape in the shadows froze. Like a deer in headlights, she thought.

  “You . . . sound like Sarah,” he said.

  “That’s because I am Sarah,” she said, “and you’re trespassing on private property. You need to leave. Now.”

  He stepped forwards, saying, “My wife died, and I don’t know who you are.”

  They saw each other’s faces at the same time as a gust of wind tattered the fog.

  The urn slipped from Sarah’s fingers and crashed to the ground. She heard the dull thud of something heavy hitting the ground by his feet too. She took a step towards him, not breathing - not daring to breathe - and reached out a hand to touch his cheek. It was warm. Rough with end-of-the-day stubble. Solid.

  In all the world, in all her life, there had only ever been him. She knew what was happening was impossible, but she also knew that this was Sam. Her Sam. Somehow . . . and she didn’t care how.

  Nor did he.

  He touched her hair, and his hand stroked it as it always had. She bowed her head and leaned into the pressure, willing the dream not to end, willing her confusion to stay because for that moment she had him again, even if she was hallucinating, even if she was going crazy.

  When he pulled her close and kissed her, she didn’t let herself ask questions. This was a gift. No matter how real it wasn’t, it was a gift. It was the goodbye she hadn’t got, the goodbye ripped from her by the telephone calls from the school where the boys wanted to know where she was, and from her RN friend Judy telling her that she needed to get to the hospital.