by Leigh Kelsey
WARNING
Vampire Game is reverse harem, which means Elara doesn’t have to choose between her many lovers. This book contains sexual scenes and some f/f and m/m romance.
This book was written, produced, and edited in the UK where some spelling, grammar and word usage will vary from US English.
Copyright © Leigh Kelsey 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the author
The right of Leigh Kelsey to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
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PREVIOUSLY IN THE VAMPIRE GAME SERIES…
Fully recovered from the attack of Fear Doirche, Elara hunts down Oisin, Finn’s son. Not everyone is happy to see him but they have bigger problems: someone is hunting vampires in Whitby Bay. When a body washes up at their feet—Abriana, Oisin’s best friend—it becomes personal. Clenched in her dead hand is a nursery rhyme threat.
If Oisin doesn’t return, Graham Harrington, another of Fear Doirche’s hunters, will kill his last remaining friend, Rosa. But Elara finds a third option—find Harrington first, free Rosa, and remove any reason for Oisin to return.
Elara’s family agree to help and together they come up with a plan to free Rosa, minus Scarlett who is increasingly absent. The next night, they all head to the Church of Saint Mary to confront Harrington, save Rosa, and free Oisin of his master once and for all. But Elara is stunned to discover Scarlett has betrayed them, that Harrington has threatened her girlfriend Janna—and Scarlett has handed over Oisin.
Icy with rage, Elara sets out to get him back, travelling through a portal, fighting monstrous guards, and falling painfully into a stone pit in a gatehouse of a pocket world. There, broken and agonised, she finds Oisin. They battle their way free of the pocket world only to find Rosa unharmed and free in the Church of Saint Mary. Finn subdues her. Harrington has escaped, Scarlett is gone, and Elara and her vampires return home, weary and aching.
VAMPIRE LEGACY
“What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature is it in the semblance of man?”
Bram Stoker
VISITING
I hesitated on the front step of the nursing home, the wind whipping my dark hair into my face. I shouldn’t have—this place was full of happy memories, full of love—but I still paused. Because everything I thought I knew about my gran had shifted. She wasn’t just a writer, or a wife, or a mother. She wasn’t just the woman who swaddled me up in a hug when I was sick as a child, even though she’d caught chicken pox too because of it. She wasn’t just the woman who could beat anyone at cards, who ran the book club at the community centre.
She was Mina Harker. And she wasn’t just the wife of a man who’d unwittingly become a vampire hunter. She’d taught herself to hunt them to protect him, had learned from Van Helsing—who turned out to be a vampire hunting vampire and best friend of my Oisìn. My gran, gentle and clever, had hunted vampires. Had touched a stake and filled it with enough mystical power to take out even the oldest of them.
And yesterday, after a soul-rending fight through a pocket world to save my sire and the man I had serious feelings for, after that … I had touched a stake that belonged to a hunter like Van Helsing. And something had happened.
Oisìn, even torn with grief over the loss of one friend and the betrayal of another, had seen my reaction to touching the stake.
He was part of the reason I was here in front of this door. If he could be brave enough to tell us Fear Doirche’s secrets later tonight when everyone got together, I could be brave enough to do this.
“You don’t have to do this,” Finn said beside me, his Irish accent weaving through his soft voice in a way that was so familiar to me by now. Hearing him was a comfort that allowed me to straighten up, clear the pain from my face, and open the door.
“I do, Finn.” I looked at him, my Viking-like protector. “She might know something about Harrington and the hunters. And Fear Doirche.” Janna had sent word that he’d fully recovered his power just this morning. I didn’t want to think about her though—all roads led to Scarlett. “Besides,” I added, “this conversation is overdue.”
He folded his warm, dry fingers around mine, holding tight. “My brave Elara.”
My stomach did a little flip-flop at the look in his eye, that tone of his voice, but I made myself glance away as I stepped over the threshold. I needed to be clear headed.
We signed in at the front desk, followed the familiar corridor, and in a too-fast minute I was edging the white door open into a room decorated in pink and gold flowers. The woman reading a magazine in front of the TV looked up, her grey eyes clever and clear as always.
“Hello, Gran.”
MINA
“You’re dead,” she said without preamble, scanning me from head to toe before her focus sharpened on Finn, then confusion lit her eyes at our linked hands. Her mouth pursed. Unlike some of the residents here, Gran was as sharp and collected as she’d ever been, her plum dress immaculate and not a silver strand falling from the hair piled on her head. “Close the door.”
I did as she said, and Finn and I sat in the one of the puffy, chintz armchairs arranged for visitors, the scent of rosewater thick in the air.
“So, Elara. You’ve met a gentleman and fallen in love, and instead of running a mile when he told you he was a vampire, you allowed yourself to be changed.” She sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Why do I feel like I’ve lived this before?”
“That’s—” That’s not what happened, I was going to say, but what was the alternative? Actually, I was turned without my consent because a fae god wanted me as leverage for the stake you supercharged. Oh, and my killer? I accidentally love him now.
Love.
I hadn’t meant to think that, but there it was.
“Yeah, that’s what happened,” I finished lamely.
“And you’re married?” she guessed.
“No,” I said instantly, confused.
“Well. That’s something. Honestly, twenty-three years later and I still can’t believe it. Married to a vampire.”
I glanced at Finn, trying to convey all my worries. That it had been too long since I’d come to see her, that maybe her mind had started losing its edge.
“Well,” she said again, folding her hands in the lap of her dress. “What’s done is done. Did you come here just to see me, to introduce me to your young man?” She squinted at Finn. “Though I suppose young doesn’t apply to him. He looks old enough to be your father and I’m assuming he’s a hundred years old.”
Finn’s blue eyes flickered with amusement.
“Um,” I said.
“Mrs. Harker allow me to introduce myself,” Finn said with a flourish. “I am Fionn Mac Cumhaill, known more recently as Finn, and I have been alive for over two thousand years.”
Gran harrumphed. She looked between me and Finn, though she didn’t look scared. More ruffled than anything else. “If you were playing a game of top trumps, Elara, you certainly won on age.
I frowned. “Gran, what are you talking about?”
She looked at me then, understanding flashing through her grey
eyes. “She hasn’t told you. Bloody coward. Fine. I’m not doing it.”
Was I supposed to know what she was going on about? “Gran,” I sighed. “I need your help. Can you tell me everything you know about the hunters, and a man called Fear Doirche?”
“I don’t know that name,” she replied, setting her magazine aside on a lace-covered table. “But I can certainly tell you about my glory days.”
WEAKNESS
We didn’t get out of the nursing home until late evening, and despite all my gran’s stories, we had nothing useful. I could tell you anything you wanted to know about Abriana, the woman who’d been Van Helsing, but my gran only heard little bits of information about the others, and nothing that would help us.
All our hope rested on Oisìn.
“All I know,” Oisìn said, his pale hands twisting together where he sat in one of the chairs in the living room, “is that Fear Doirche is following orders from his Mistress. I don’t know her name, or even if she’s a vampire or faerie.”
I leant forward in my seat, my stomach twisting as I looked at him. This was the uncertain, fearful man I had rescued from an island outside of Whitby where he’d been torturing himself—for stopping the fae god who had called himself Oisìn’s master from killing Finn, my friend, lover, and Oisìn’s father. As I watched Oisìn now, pale and hesitant, his red hair in a messy ponytail, gone was the confident warrior who had stormed with us into the Church of Saint Mary to rescue his friend. Gone was my steadfast knight, protecting me from nightmarish guards in a pocket world hidden by witchcraft. All I wanted was to throw myself out of this chair and crawl into his lap, wrapping my arms around him and holding him tight. But this was serious, and he was already struggling to stay composed.
This was a thousand miles from easy—telling us Fear Doirche’s secrets, betraying the man he’d served for a millennium. The man who had punished and manipulated and brainwashed him, who’d turned him against his own vampire kind, who had forced Oisìn to leave behind his fae nature and become undead because it served his plans, who’d forced him to go without the touch of another vampire for seven hundred years.
With everything he had suffered, no wonder it went against Oisìn’s very nature to confess Fear Doirche’s secrets and plans.
“In the past year something changed. We were held back from missions. The vampires we were sent after were caught, not killed. And the command to turn a human…” His pained eyes slid to me; I held them, pouring every ounce of pride and encouragement and love into the look. I forgave him, for my death, for all of it. “That was not normal. We killed vampires—we didn’t create them.”
He glanced away, looking instead to Finn whose golden face was drawn and angry. Even Allen, his brawny body squashed beside him on the sofa, his dark eyes sad and worried as he rubbed Finn’s arm, couldn’t keep the murder off Finn’s face. I knew the way he felt. If we saw Fear Doirche again—when we saw him again—he was going to suffer.
“That was the first sign,” Oisìn said, “and the second. The third … he kept disappearing, for longer and longer periods of time, going to see her. I—” He bit off the words, his teeth grinding together. He glanced at me, for comfort, for reassurance. I nodded encouragingly. “I think she’s his sire somehow.”
“But Fear Doirche isn’t a vampire,” Finn said, his voice trying very hard to be gentle. It was so strange to hear Finn, the comforter, the protector, sounding on the verge of violence. The velvet burr of his voice had a dangerously sharp edge.
“I know,” Oisìn agreed, his shoulders curling inward. “I don’t know how it would be possible, but there’s a connection between them. I think she has power over him.”
“That’s why he wants to please her so badly?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Could he simply be in love with her?” Allen asked.
I blinked, trying to picture the cold, cruel man I had met in the catacombs of Whitby Abbey loving someone. “He isn’t capable of love,” I said in a voice as hard as a whip. “The things that man has done—he is not capable of love, or sympathy, or any soft emotion.” I looked to Finn, who had known him two thousand years ago, whose mate had known him even longer. “What happened to make him into this? Something must have broken him.”
“I don’t know,” Finn sighed. “I wish I did, Ellie.”
Because we could use it against him.
At least we knew a bit more about him than we had the last time he hurt us. I knew he was desperate to please his Mistress, that he had a short temper where she was concerned, that she was a weak spot to poke and prod.
“I know,” Oisìn said quietly. His eyes were downcast, his face half-hidden by his dark red hair. “He said it to me once. Only once. There was a woman he wanted. Not loved; he never said loved. But he wanted her—was supposed to have her—and she defied him. She didn’t want a husband. She chose to hunt instead. She was supposed to love him and instead she loved hunting, killing deer to support her family. That’s all I know.”
“It’s something,” I said gently.
Finn stood, unceremoniously pushing away from Allen and stalking towards the kitchen. I heard the back door open and shut and frowned, glancing at Allen. “What’s wrong—” I began and stopped suddenly as comprehension hit. “Oh, no.”
I got to my feet.
Allen followed me with his eyes, and I could tell by the sadness drawing his bronze face down that he’d put two and two together too.
“What did I do?” Oisìn asked, a scrape of panic in his voice. I paused, on the threshold of the kitchen, torn between comforting Finn and giving Oisìn the truth.
“It’s not you,” I said, my heart squeezing tight. I held his green eyes, Sadhbh’s eyes, and said, “Your mother, his mate … Fear Doirche turned her into a deer. Cursed her. Twice—once when Finn met her, and once before she died.” I forced my voice not to break. “I don’t think Finn knew that about her. I don’t think he knew why she’d been cursed to be a deer.”
Devastation shone in Oisìn’s gaze.
“You didn’t do anything wrong.” I said it with enough sharpness that he paid attention. “You did nothing wrong, Oisìn.”
I hesitated, on the verge of taking a step, and he saw. “Go,” he said, “I’ll be fine.” He tipped his chin up, a look of the steely fighter coming into his eyes. As if being left alone was the same thing as walking into battle. God, that hurt. But Finn needed me.
“You can tell me the rest of Fear Doirche’s plans,” Allen said, his smile setting both of us at ease. “What do you think everything is building towards?”
“I don’t know,” Oisìn answered as I padded through the kitchen. “I can only guess.”
WHATEVER IT TAKES
“Hey,” I said softly, approaching Finn in the garden. He was sat hunched over on the bench beneath the timber pagoda at the bottom, trees shivering above him. I shuddered in the crisp sea wind, that same sharp air rustling bright pink peonies, sunshine-hued chrysanthemums, the proud, many-petaled lupins, and the ivy and honeysuckle creeping up the pagoda. With the garden wild and beautiful around him, for the first time I saw him as fae.
“Sorry,” he said when I sat beside him, taking his hand in mine. His face was still fixed and hard. Furious. I’d expected tears but not this steel. I didn’t know how to comfort him when he was like this. “I just needed to get away for a second.”
“It’s fine.” I leant my shoulder against his, hoping the contact eased his pain, a least a little. “What do you think we should do? Try to find Fear Doirche before he comes to us? Use his weakness, his Mistress, to make him snap?”
“No,” Finn answered roughly, taking my chin to turn my face towards him. “Never, never make that man snap, Elara. If he lost an inch of his control, you would be dead.”
I swallowed, glancing at the trees on the edge of the garden. “I don’t know anything about faerie magic,” I said. “It’s hard to be scared of something when I don’t know what I’m supposed to be scared o
f.”
“You’ve seen Oisìn heal,” he said, a little reluctantly. “You’ve seen the power he has, even muted by death. Isn’t that enough to scare you?”
I paused, thinking it over. I’d seen Oisìn bring Finn back from the brink of death, felt his healing warmth wash over my own skin, mending a twisted ankle. “Nothing about him could scare me now,” I answered honestly.
Finn looked at me for a long time, searching for something in my eyes. When he glanced away, I wasn’t sure if he’d found it or not. “Don’t hurt him, Ellie. Please.”
I recoiled, my face going red as my heart twisted. “Why would I?”
“I don’t know,” he sighed. “But Oisìn can’t take another break. It would shatter him beyond all hope of repair. To be rejected by—it would ruin him.”
I stared at the garden, my face tight and warning of oncoming tears. “What about me?” I said, my voice a weak whine. “You don’t think he could ruin me so damn easily?”
I stood, my throat tightening now.
“Ellie,” Finn said as I crossed the pagoda. “Ellie, I’m sorry. Wait.”
He caught my hand, and the comfort in the touch was enough to make my bottom lip wobble. “I’m sorry,” he whispered again.
“You have no idea what it did to me when Scarlett took him. No idea,” I hissed. It rushed back, the freezing terror, that howling silence inside me, bleak and hopeless.
“Then tell me,” he said gently. He sounded sorry but something had snapped in me, a vulnerable spot poked with a red-hot iron. I didn’t want his apology. I didn’t know why I was so angry, so upset—we were safe now. But then, we weren’t. This was only a brief respite.