The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance 2

by Trisha Telep

  “Newly-made?” Gillian grasped onto the one thing in all that which made sense. “How new?”

  He licked his lips. “A few years.”

  “A few years?”

  “If you round up.”

  Gillian felt her stomach plummeting. “You’re telling me you’ve never Changed anyone before?”

  “I never had cause,” he said, looking defensive.

  “Didn’t they train you?” she demanded, suddenly furious. She had found a way out of this, against all the odds, she had found a way. And he didn’t know how?

  “It is rather like sex,” he snapped. “The theory and the practice being somewhat different!”

  “You have to try!”

  “You don’t understand. It is a little-known fact that newly-minted masters, even those who took centuries to reach that mark, often have . . . mishaps . . . before they succeed in making their first Child. If I do this incorrectly—”

  “Then I’ll be dead,” she said harshly. “Which is what I will be when the Circle finishes with me in any case.” She took off her kerchief, baring her neck before she could talk herself out of this. “Do it.”

  For a moment, she was certain he would refuse. And why shouldn’t he, she thought bitterly. It sounded like masters changed only those who could be helpful to them in some way, and she’d been little enough use to anyone alive. Why should being dead be any different?

  But then he swallowed and stepped closer, his hands coming up to rest on her shoulders. There was fear in his eyes, and it looked odd on that previously self-assured face. Like the bruises purpling along his jaw and cheek, wounds his kind weren’t supposed to get. Her hand instinctively lifted to touch them, and found his skin smooth and blood warm, nothing like the stories said.

  She stared at him, wondering if his kind felt pain, if they felt love, if they felt. She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything about them but rumours and stories, most of which, she was beginning to realize, had likely been fabricated by people who knew even less than she.

  “Try to relax,” he murmured, and she wasn’t sure whether he was talking to her or himself. But then his eyes lightened to a rich, honey-gold, as if a candle had been lit behind them. The pounding on the door receded, fading into nothingness, and the cool breeze flowing through the window turned warm. Incredibly, she felt some of the stiffness leave her shoulders.

  For a moment – until his lips found her neck and she faltered in cold panic, the soft touch causing her heart to kick violently against her ribs. Her hands tightened on his sleeves, instinct warring with instinct – to push him away, to pull him closer, the will to live fighting with the need to die.

  “I’m not doing this correctly,” he said, feeling her tremble. “You should not feel fear.”

  “Everyone fears death, unless they have nothing to live for.”

  “And you have much.”

  She nodded, mutely. She hadn’t realized until that moment how focused she’d been on all that she’d lost, instead of on what remained. She didn’t want to die. She wasn’t supposed to die, not here, not now. She knew it with a certainty that was at war with all reason.

  “I cannot do this if you fight me,” he told her simply. “Humans tell stories of us forcibly Changing them against their will, but that rarely happens. It is difficult enough when the subjects are willing, when they want what we have to offer.”

  “And what is that?” she asked, trying for calm despite the panic ringing in her bones.

  “For most? Power, or the possibility of it. Wealth – few masters are poor, and their servants want for nothing. And, of course, the chance to cheat death. Quite a few transition in middle age, when their bodies begin to show wear, when they realize how short a mortal life really is.”

  Gillian shook her head in amazement, that anyone would throw away something so precious for such scant reward. “But few become masters, isn’t that right?” He nodded. “So the power is in another’s hands, as is the wealth, to give or withhold as he chooses. And as for death—” This didn’t feel like a cheat to her. It felt like giving up. It felt like the end.

  The vampire smiled, softly, sadly. “You are a poor subject, Mistress Urswick. You are not grasping enough. What you want, you already have; you merely wish to keep it.”

  “But I’m not going to keep it, am I?” The terror faded as that certainty settled into her bones. She had one chance, here and now, and it would never come again. She could let fear rob her of it and die, or she could master herself and live. A strange life, to be sure, but a life, nonetheless.

  “Do you wish to proceed?” he asked her, watching her face.

  Gillian took a deep breath, and then she nodded.

  Chapter Eight

  He didn’t tell her again that this might not work. He didn’t tell her anything at all. But golden threads of a magic she didn’t know suddenly curled around her hands where they rested on his arms. She had always thought vampires were creatures of the dark, but the same bright magic shone around him as his hands came up to bracket her face.

  “I don’t know your first name,” he whispered, against her lips.

  “Gillian,” she told him, hearing her voice tremble.

  “Gillian,” he repeated, and her name in his voice was full of so much longing that it coiled in her belly, dark and liquid, like her own emotion. And perhaps it was. Because when he suddenly bit down on her lower lip, the sensation left her trembling, but not with fear.

  He made a low noise in his throat and pulled her close. The same strange magic that twisted around them sparked off his fingers wherever they touched her, like rubbed wool in winter. The tiny flashes of sensation had her arching helplessly against him, one hand clenched on his shoulder, the other buried in the heavy silk of his hair.

  She could taste her own blood, hot and coppery, on his tongue as he drove the kiss deep, and it drew a sound from her, something animal and desperate. She gulped for air when he pulled back, almost a sob. She wanted – she wanted more than this; his hands on her body, his skin against hers, his tongue tracing the tiny wound he’d made—

  But when he returned, it wasn’t to her lips.

  A brilliant flash of pain went through her, like a shock of cold water, as his fangs slid into the flesh of her neck. She drew in a stuttering breath, but before she could cry out, a rush of rich, strong magic flooded her senses, spreading heat through every fibre of her body. She’d always thought of vampires as taking, but this was giving, too, an impossibly intimate sharing that she’d never even dreamed was—

  He didn’t move, but it suddenly felt like he was inside her, thrusting all that power into her very core. She shuddered and opened to him, helpless to resist, the vampire shining on her and in her, elemental and blazing and gone past human. The pain was gone, the magic driving that and everything else away, crashing over her like ocean waves, an unrelenting and unending tide. She screamed beneath it, because it couldn’t be borne and had to be; because there was no bracing to meet it and no escape; and because it would end, and that would be even harder to bear.

  “Gillian.” It took her a moment to realize he had drawn back, with the tide of magic still surging through her veins. It felt like the sea, ebbing and flowing in pounding waves that shook the very foundations of—

  She blinked, and realized that it wasn’t just the vampire’s magic making the room shake. It wasn’t even the pounding on the door, which seemed to have stopped in any case. She frowned and watched as the few remaining charms jittered and danced off the table, all on their own.

  “What is it?” she asked, bemused. The vampire pulled her to the window, and leaned out, dangerously far. “What are you doing?” she tried to pull him back. “They’ll kill you!”

  “I don’t think so,” he said, his voice sounding as stunned as she felt.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I believe you may have completed that ward, after all.”

  He backed away from the window and she moved forward, in
time to see what looked like a black wave crash into the side of the tower, shaking it to its very foundation. She blinked, dizzy from blood loss and still burning with strange energy. And then another wave started for them, rising out of the earth of the courtyard, and she understood.

  “In defence of your life,” the vampire said, with quiet irony.

  Gillian looked down to see the third spiral of the triskelion, glowing bright against her wrist. She traced it with a finger and power shivered in the air for a moment, before melting back into her skin, joining the tide swelling within her.

  “I think it might be best if it didn’t hit,” he said, glancing from the approaching wave to the cracks spidering up the old walls. “Can you stop it?”

  “I don’t want to stop it,” she told him, flexing her fingers and feeling the warmth of deep rich soil beneath her hands, the whisper of the age old magic of the earth in her ears. But there was something else there, too, alien and strange, but powerful, all the same. It wasn’t the vampire’s rich, golden energy, but colder, more metallic, more—

  She laughed, suddenly understanding what the old Mother had meant. “You’ll have all the power you need,” she repeated.

  “What?”

  “The Mother didn’t just link the witches into her coven,” she told him delightedly. “She linked the mages, too!”

  He stared at her, and then back at the awesome power of the land rising to meet them. “That’s . . . very interesting, but I think we had better jump before the next wave hits.”

  “Let the Circle jump!” she said, and pushed out.

  The magic flowing along her limbs followed the motion – and so did the earthen tide. It paused almost at the tower base, trembling on the edge of breaking like a wave about to crest. And then it surged back in the other direction.

  Masses of black soil rippled out in concentric circles from the base of the tower, flowing like water towards the old fortress walls. They hit like the surf on the beach, crashing into stone and old mortar already riddled with tiny fissures from years of neglect. The fissures became cracks, the cracks became gaps, and still the waves came. Until the earth shifted beneath the foundations and the stones slipped loose from each other and the walls crumbled away.

  There were shouts and curses from the guards who fell with the walls, and from the bewildered mages who suddenly found themselves at the centre of a pile of spread-out rubble. But the witches were eerily silent, turning as one to look up at the tower for a long, drawn-out moment. And then they gave an ancient battle cry that raised the hair on Gillian’s arms.

  And charged as one.

  Chapter Nine

  “Nope, nothing.” The distant, muffled voice came from somewhere above him, right before something was slammed down through the dirt, barely missing his head.

  Kit swivelled his eyes to the side to stare at it. It was wood, as thick around as his wrist and pointed slightly at one end. A fine specimen of a stake, he thought, with blank terror.

  “Are you sure you saw him over here?”

  That was the witch, Gillian. He tensed at her voice, trying to force something, anything past his lips. He wasn’t sure if he succeeded, but the stake was removed.

  “Aye, although I don’t know why ye care,” the other voice said. “He’s a vampire. He’ll just feed off ye again.”

  “He didn’t feed off me the first time,” the witch said. “I told you, he was helping me.”

  “Strange kind ’o help that leaves ye pale and sweating,” the other voice grumbled, right before the stake was slammed down again – between his legs.

  His alarmed grunt must have been audible that time, because the witch’s voice came again, closer this time. “Don’t move, Winnie.”

  Kit lay there, his heart hammering in his chest in the rapid beats that his kind weren’t supposed to have. But then, they weren’t supposed to panic, either. And that was clearly a bunch of—

  “Found him!” Gillian’s excited voice came from just above him, and there was a sudden lessening of the weight of the earth pressing down on his limp body.

  It took ten minutes for them to haul him out, either because the witches had expended their magic destroying the jailers, or because no one cared to waste any on a vampire. Certainly the sour-faced dwarf who finally uncovered his head looked like she’d much rather just heap the dirt back where she’d found it, possibly after using her massive stake one more time. But the Gillian got hands under his arms and pulled him out of the hole in a series of sharp tugs.

  She laid him on the ground and bent over him, her unbound hair falling on to his filthy face. “Are you all right?” she asked distinctly.

  Kit tried to answer, but only succeeded in causing his tongue to loll out of his mouth. He tasted dirt. She pushed it back in, looking worried.

  “What’s wrong with him?” she asked the dwarf, who was suddenly looking more cheerful.

  “One too many stun spells, looks like to me,” she said cheerfully. “And he didn’t get out ’o the way fast enough when the tower came down.” She poked at him with her toe. “Be out of it for a while, he will.”

  She moved away, probably off to terrorize someone else, and Gillian knelt by his side. “We can’t stay,” she told him, trying to brush a little of the caked dirt off him. “The Circle probably knows about this already, or if they don’t, they soon will. We have to go while we still have a head start.”

  Kit coughed up a clod of dirt from lungs that felt bone dry. He strongly suspected that he’d swallowed a good deal of it, too, but mercifully, the witch had found his flask and filled it with water. He gulped it gratefully, despite the unpleasant sensation of mud churning in his stomach.

  It managed to rinse enough soil loose from his vocal chords for a dry whisper. “You . . . came back,” he croaked.

  She brushed dirty hair out of his eyes, causing a little cascade down the back of his ruined shirt. “Of course. What did you expect?”

  “I . . . wasn’t sure.” He licked his lips and drank a little more with her help. “We . . . had a deal, but . . . many people . . .”

  She frowned slightly. “What deal?”

  “I help you . . . you . . . help me.”

  “I did help you,” she said, the frown growing. “Winnie wasn’t the only one who wanted to stake you.”

  He shook his head, sending a cloud of dust into the air. “No. You promised . . .”

  “I’m not going with you,” she told him flatly. “I have a child to think about. I have to get her out of England.”

  “You . . . you’re Great Mother now,” he protested. “You can’t leave.”

  “Watch me,” she said viciously. She gestured around at the tumbled rubble. “This is what the Circle brings. Nothing but ruin and destruction, everywhere they go. I’m not raising a child in constant peril!”

  If he’d had any saliva, Kit would have pointed out that the Circle hadn’t turned a perfectly good, if slightly dilapidated castle into a pile of rocks. But he didn’t, and she didn’t give him the chance in any case.

  “And as for the other, you cannot have a coven of one. And I’m shortly going to be the only one left. Everyone else is going back to their own people, to regroup, to plan, to hide . . .” she shrugged. “It’s a new world, now that the covens are gone. And we each have to find our own role in it.”

  He lay there, watching the last rays of the setting sun blaze through her glorious hair. And wished his damn throat would unfreeze. He had a thousand things to say and no time to say them. “If you’re not . . . going to stay. Why look for me?” he finally managed.

  She bent down, her face softening, sweet lips just grazing his. “To say thank you,” she whispered. “Winnie will never understand but . . . I was there. I know. You could have finished what you started.”

  “Not . . . unwilling.”

  She smiled, a little tearfully. “And if ever anyone was to convince me . . .”

  He caught her hand as she started to rise. “Stay,” he said
urgently. “You don’t . . . I can show you things . . . wonders—”

  “You already have.”

  She kissed him, with feeling this time, until his head was spinning from more than just the spells. She didn’t say anything when she drew back, but she pushed his hanging mouth closed with a little pop. Then she jumped to her feet and ran for the distant tree line.

  But after only a few yards, she stopped, paused for a moment, and then ran back. And relieved him of his ring. “Travelling money,” she said, with a faintly apologetic look. And then she took off again.

  Kit stared after her until the gathering shadows swallowed her up. Witches. He’d been right all along. They were completely mad.

  He smiled slightly, his lips still tingling from her final touch. But what glorious madness.

  The Getaway

  Sonya Bateman

  If there was one thing Jazz hated more than birthdays, at the moment, it was Gavyn Donatti – ex-thief, current boyfriend, and completely hopeless co-navigator.

  She nosed the sedan to the top of the rise, tyres spinning in the muck. How they’d gotten on to a dirt road was beyond her. Rain battered the roof and sheeted down the windshield, the wipers at top speed barely affording a glance at the few feet of desolate nothing the headlights picked out. No signs, no lights, no goddamn asphalt. No miracle turn-off to this supposed dream cabin.

  Only Donatti could get them this lost with a map and detailed directions. Hell, he’d get lost with a GPS and a personal tour guide.

  “Your car’s a piece of crap,” she said.

  Donatti slouched in the passenger seat. “Sorry, babe,” he muttered. “Haven’t had time to upgrade lately.”

  “Don’t ‘babe’ me. We’re lost.”

  “No, we’re—” He straightened and peered out the windshield. For a long time. “Okay. We’re lost.”

  “How perceptive.” Jazz nudged the shivering car through a series of deep ruts, fighting the jerks and tugs of the wheel. Christ. She’d driven getaway cars at a hundred miles an hour with bullets tearing through the back end and had less trouble than this. The four-banger under the hood ground its gears and let out a couple of disconcerting clacks. “When’s the last time you changed the oil in this thing?”