A Vampire for Christmas

by Laurie London

  “Christmas with the new boyfriend,” the cameraman recited as he continued to click pictures of Daniel. “This one will make the cover of the Daily Tattle for sure. Pop singer’s angry boyfriend is a handful and wounds cameraman.”

  “Oh, bull crap.” Daniel fisted the guy about the collar and held him up until his feet dangled.

  “Think, Daniel,” Olivia said behind him. “You’re only giving him more ammunition.”

  “But he knows your secret hideaway now. You going to tell anyone where Olivia lives?”

  “Hell, yes,” the guy croaked. “And I’m suing your pants off. Let me down!”

  Daniel glanced to Olivia, who stood with arms crossed over her chest and a frantic look pleading with him to stop. Right. He’d gone too far. He’d reacted. Exactly what these crazy reporters fed on. He’d failed her.

  “Sorry.” Daniel set the man down to stumble against the brick wall.

  Without a word, Olivia walked around the corner.

  “I’m sorry, Olivia!” he called.

  No reply.

  The cameraman sank to a crouch, scrambling in the snow to retrieve the dropped camera. “I got your picture, buddy. I will find out who you are. This story is going front page, I promise you that.”

  Daniel snatched the camera from the man’s grasp, flicked open the card holder and broke the digital storage card in two. The man protested and when he pulled a punch, Daniel caught the fist with his palm. He narrowed his eyes on the man’s gaze and peered into his soul. It was dark in there. The guy didn’t care who he trampled to earn a buck. He made a living by tracking down celebrity dirt and plastering it all over the tabloid rags without a care for the lives he was damaging and the secrets he exposed.

  Daniel spoke slowly and deeply. “You dropped your camera and when you try to remember what happened, you’ll recall it was as you were crossing a busy intersection. You were not here. Yes?”

  The man nodded, his gaze lost in Daniel’s vampiric thrall.

  “You have no desire to take a picture of Olivia Adorata again. You’re going to get in your car and drive away, and forget you were ever in this neighborhood. And me? Just a friendly guy who pointed you in the right direction. Now go.”

  The cameraman blinked, and looked about as if he’d surfaced from a coma. He asked Daniel, “Which way?”

  “North.” Daniel pointed down the street.

  “Thanks, man.” He got in his Volkswagen and drove away.

  Watching until the car was out of sight, Daniel decided the thrall was a handy tool that he didn’t use often enough. But could he use it every time he and Olivia were caught out by the paparazzi? Those bastards swarmed in hoards. He could only work his thrall on one person at a time.

  Not like it should matter. He’d proven how unworthy he was of a relationship with the gorgeous singer who depended on the public’s interest to survive.

  He hung his head. He’d come here to see if they stood a chance. The answer was all too obvious.

  “Daniel,” she whispered from the corner of the building.

  He didn’t look at her. Couldn’t. Not when he’d shown her yet another dark side of the monster within him.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I don’t know what you did, but I think it worked.”

  “Vampire tricks,” he muttered. “I’m sorry.”

  She plunged against his body and nuzzled her face alongside his neck.

  “Daniel, I need you. I love you. Parker means nothing to me. It was a stupid publicity stunt.”

  “I know that now. I made an assumption that was wrong. That’s why I had to come here today. Hadn’t expected to show you my inner asshole with the cameraman, though. Can you forgive me?”

  She nodded and snuggled closer to him, and he opened his jacket and pulled her against his chest. God, that felt great. Like Christmas should feel. “There’s nothing to forgive,” she said. “We both have issues. Big ones.”

  “I’d argue my issues are bigger than yours,” he said, “but we both know that’s not necessarily true.”

  Nothing needed to be said. Everything needed to be spoken. He would always be this way, dark of soul and heart. He had to do things now to survive that mortals could never fathom, not the good ones, anyway.

  “Can we work, Olivia? I don’t do the media and camera flashes and television interviews. I don’t even think I can follow you around on red carpets or stand in dressing rooms waiting for you to find me.”

  “I don’t want you to do that. I want you to be my normal.”

  He smirked, and revealed a fang. “Normal?”

  “You know what I mean. Music is my life. It is where my heart belongs. I won’t ever stop doing what I’m doing. But you, Daniel, only you make my heart sing. I want to sway with you. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, God help us both.”

  “And remember I said I wanted a slow relationship? Well, we’ve plunged in and know what we’re dealing with—a pop star and a vampire. Now let’s learn about each other, inside. Take things slow.”

  “Like seeing each other only when you’re on vacation?”

  “Can you do that? I can’t. I do have a private life away from the stage. But I can’t promise we’ll never run into another photographer together.”

  “He got me so angry the way he acted as if it was his right to invade your privacy.”

  “That was a strange situation. Normally they find me when I’ve got my monster on and expect the flashing bulbs. This was private. I don’t know how he found this place, but they go to extreme measures sometimes.”

  “I can’t promise the need to protect you won’t make me smash in another photographer’s face, Olivia. It’s too strong. You mean too much to me.”

  “We’ll figure things out.” She tapped his lip and kissed the corner of his mouth right over the fang. “Monsters get to love—you can’t tell me otherwise.”

  “I won’t try to.”

  “Let’s go inside.

  “You go up. I’m going to peek around the corner and make sure ole snap-happy didn’t return.”

  The coast was clear. Daniel felt vindicated having used his thrall to protect his woman. His woman.

  Yes, he could get behind that one hundred percent. It wouldn’t be easy, but like she’d said, they’d figure things out.

  Turning the corner, his heart jumped to his throat. At the sight of the nasty werewolf holding his woman, he charged. The wolf backed down the alleyway, clutching Olivia in front of him, a knife to her neck.

  “Let her go. It’s me you want,” Daniel tried cautiously. “You okay, Olivia?”

  She nodded minutely, but the blade kept her from speaking.

  “I think I want to play with this one awhile,” the guy said on a growl. It was his favorite werewolf, Punch. “You had your chance, vampire.”

  “Seriously? Because I didn’t leap into your twisted death ring, now you’re going to punish me by hurting an innocent mortal?”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “You’re an idiot.” Daniel approached but sensed the wolf would pull the blade across Olivia’s neck out of spite, so he had to play this right. “You’ll get more enjoyment out of starving me and feeding me to another hungry vampire.”

  Olivia’s eyes widened. So his life was dark and fucked up. Did she really want him? Because if she did, he was ready, willing and able.

  “Let her go.” Daniel started backing down the sidewalk, hoping the wolf would see who was the better snatch. “And I swear you got me. Dude, you know you’re stronger than me. Come on. Catch me if you can.” He splayed out his arms in surrender.

  With a hungry growl, the wolf shoved Olivia against the wall below the iron stairway and charged after him.

  Daniel took off in a run, hoping to lure the wolf as far from Olivia as possible. “You don’t follow!” he called to her. “Go inside and lock your doors!”

  “Or the big bad wolf will eat you,” his pursuer said as he leaped and landed on Daniel’s b
ack.

  They went down in a snowbank plowed up at the edge of a small city garden lot. Daniel felt the icy scrape of the knife over his hand, but it didn’t feel as if the wolf wielded it. Instead, it must have fallen from his grip. He grasped the handle and groaned as the impact of a fist pummeled his gut.

  The knife slid down the snowbank and the werewolf began to choke Daniel. He couldn’t go down now that he had the perfect reason to survive. An angel had looked into his soul and proclaimed it worthy of her love.

  God, he loved her.

  And then he remembered he had one weapon yet to hand, but it was a long shot. Reaching in his pocket, he palmed the snowflake ornament, then dragged it roughly across the wolf’s neck. Blood spotted his chin and the wolf grabbed his throat.

  Daniel scrambled to stand and step away as the wolf staggered and fell to his knees, gagging on its blood.

  “You’re lucky that wasn’t real silver,” he muttered. If silver entered the wolf’s bloodstream, it wouldn’t take long for a grisly death. “I’ll defend her to my death—or yours, if it comes to that.”

  The werewolf met his eyes with bright gold irises. “You’re wasting your time on a mortal,” he growled, then choked up blood. “Especially that one.” The wolf collapsed upon the snowbank.

  Wincing, Daniel stepped away. Especially that one. No, it wasn’t a waste of time. Couldn’t be. He wouldn’t allow it to be. Any second he got to spend in Olivia’s arms was one less second he stood alone.

  Daniel clutched his chest and someone grabbed him from behind. Olivia’s hopeful green eyes connected to his. “Come with me,” she said, and he grabbed her hand and rushed down the street. A limo waited at the curb, and she opened the back door. “No questions asked from this moment forward. We leave our strange Christmas normal behind,” she said. “If you want to be my monster lover, then come with me.”

  Every fiber in Daniel’s soul felt Olivia’s bright star touch it, and he dived into the back of the limo and drew her in beside him.

  He kissed her deeply. “To monster love,” he whispered. “We can do this.”

  “Of course we can. But can we make a stop before going to my other place?”

  “Where?”

  She tugged out a set of keys from her pocket. “I think I know a family who could use my apartment until their mother can find a job.”

  “Did I tell you I love you?”

  “You did. Merry Christmas, my monster lover.”

  WHEN HERALD ANGELS SING

  To my mother, Carmen Piñeiro,

  who always believed that anything was possible

  as long as you reached for it with all your heart.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Jersey Shore, December 23, 1931

  THE GALE-DRIVEN SNOW lashed at his skin, tearing into his flesh like stinging nettles, but Damien did not budge from his position high atop the lighthouse tower. Even when the nor’easter threatened to rip him from the narrow ledge, Damien held his ground.

  The force of the wind was such that each gust delivered a punishing body blow, but he relished the pain. He deserved it. The physical discomfort was nothing compared to the anguish in his heart.

  Tomorrow was Christmas Eve. Tomorrow it would be a year that he’d lost Angelina. For the second time.

  The first time he’d lost her, it had taken over a century for her to return to him.

  The woman he had come to know as Angelina had looked slightly different each time they’d met, although there had been strong physical similarities with each of her apparitions. The raven hair and jewel-like green eyes. The voluptuous figure any man would want to touch. Full lips with a Cupid’s bow meant to be kissed.

  What hadn’t changed was Angelina’s spirit. Her inherent goodness brought light to his soul. Her kindness had called to him on two occasions over the past century and on two occasions he had failed her.

  And his failure had killed her.

  Damien raised his head into the wind and howled with the pain of her loss and his guilt, but the storm was such that his cry blended with the screeching winds. Only he heard his anguished voice.

  How much longer will I have to wait for her? Will she ever return to me? Damien wondered, peering into an after noon sky made so dark by the storm it seemed almost as if night had already descended. Perfect for a vampire like him, but not so good for any poor wretch who might be caught in the tempest.

  He had battled such dangerous gales in his earlier life as a ship’s captain. Dared the sea and Poseidon himself in those misspent hell-raising days before he’d lost his mortal life.

  His father—the one who had not even deigned to claim the bastard son who had slipped from his lover’s womb—had heard of those adventures and proclaimed Damien was not his, but rather the Devil’s spawn. The old man had never had a kind word for him nor had he ever believed that Damien would make something of himself. With each and every overture Damien had made, his father had rebuked him.

  So Damien had stopped trying to please the old man. Instead, he had pleased himself—in every conceivable way with any available woman in every port in which he had ever set foot.

  Until he met Angelina…the first time.

  His gut fisted into a knot once more as he thought of her. Acknowledged all that he had lost because of his own ego. He tightened his grip on the edge of the railing as a particularly powerful squall nearly cost him his precarious footing on the slim ledge around the beacon of the lighthouse. He was tempted to let the wind take him. On occasion lately he had thought about tossing himself over the side, down onto the rocks below. As a vampire, the fall would likely not kill him, but it would break his body and Lord knew he deserved to suffer. Maybe after, the kiss of the morning sun would finish him off and end his insufferable existence.

  But Damien would not embrace death tonight.

  Angelina had come to him just before Christmas Eve on both of the other occasions. In his heart, he prayed that she might somehow return to him again soon.

  There had been a sense of anticipation building for days, warning him that something unexpected approached. Some would have said it was the excitement of the upcoming holiday, but Christmas had never had any special appeal for Damien. His mother had tried her best to make it special, but with their meager existence, that had been difficult. She always somehow managed to scrape together a little gift and roast a scrawny chicken to perfection.

  Sadly, Damien had not realized that his mother’s love had been what had made the holidays bearable. Much like it had been Angelina and her love that had first brought joy into his life.

  If by some miracle she did return this Christmas, Damien vowed that he would not fail her again.

  He was about to return to his home at the base of the lighthouse when the sweep of the beacon highlighted a dim shape on the water. He squinted and looked hard against the driving snow. With another turn of the light he noted the hazy outline on the surface of the ocean. Scrutinizing the horizon more intently, he confirmed that there was a ship at sea, battling the immense surges caused by the winds.

  He wondered what would possess someone to be out on a day like today, but as the vessel drew closer, the vague outline sharpened and he recognized its shape.

  Fury rose up in him at the sight of the rumrunner manned by his nemesis, Captain Pedro Ramirez. No wonder the boat was out tonight. The vampire captain and his immortal crew would have little fear of death in the churning waters any mortal man would avoid.

  As Damien watched, the crew struggled with something cumbersome along the schooner’s deck. To his surprise, they raised a skiff over the lip of the starboard side and lowered the small vessel into the rough seas. The boat pushed away from the schooner, manned by two crewmen who furiously rowed through the surging waves. Time and time again the sea tossed the meager skiff up into the air before crashing it back down against the water’s surface.

  Still the vampire crew pushed ahead, unmindful of the dangerous ocean.

  Damien wondered anew
why they would be out in such weather and why they were headed directly toward his lighthouse. But Damien understood that Ramirez delighted in torturing him. In taking Angelina from him, time and time again. With Christmas Eve arriving tomorrow, maybe Ramirez wanted to remind Damien of what he had lost last year.

  As the skiff hit the shore, the two crewmen jumped overboard into the pounding surf and hauled the vessel up onto the sand to beach it. Then they reached in and dragged out a long, lumpy roll of canvas clumsily bound with rope. They tossed the package onto the sand and then dragged it upward until it was well beyond the reach of the angry surf.

  Then they pulled the skiff off the beach and back into the waves for a return trip to the rumrunner.

  A present from Ramirez? Not likely, but Damien couldn’t resist the temptation of the package. Curiosity might have killed the cat, but he was already dead, both physically and spiritually, so who cared what danger lurked within the bundle?

  With a surge of vampire speed, he nearly flew down the spiral staircase and out the lighthouse door, racing over the sand and snow to the package not far from the water’s edge. As he approached, he could see the brownish-red blotches along the outside of the canvas. Even with the wind, his vampire senses picked up the smell of blood and the hushed heartbeat pulsing beneath the fabric.

  Damien dropped to his knees and swiftly undid the thick ropes wrapped tightly around the rough bloodstained canvas. His fingers shook as he wondered who was trapped within. As he both hoped and feared that it was Angelina.

  The wind picked up one edge of the cloth, what he now saw had once been a sail, as he finished untying the rope. Freed, the sail flew upward into Damien’s face, strong enough to open a gash along his cheek.

  Ignoring the wound, which his vampire body would heal in the space of a few heartbeats, he ripped the canvas sheet away from his face and held it down with one knee. But before he could undo the rest of the bundle, a hand fell from beneath the other edge of the canvas.