Holiday with a Vampire

by Maureen Child

  One. Two. Three.

  Reaching up, he cupped the back of her head in his palm and drew her down to him. His mouth met hers. She tasted of life, of love, of promise. And for a heartbeat of time, he lost himself in all that she was.

  Four. Five. Six.

  “I will love you always,” Tessa sighed, her tears raining down on his face.

  Seven. Eight. Nine.

  He pushed himself up, drew her into his arms and held her close.

  Ten. Eleven.

  The wind died.

  The snow sighed to a stop.

  The world took a breath and held it.

  Twelve.

  Grayson gasped, whipped his head back and groaned as pain took root within him and swelled until every fingertip, every cell, every muscle and bone in his body ached and shone with an electrifying agony.

  “Grayson?” Tessa’s voice. So close. Yet she sounded miles away. “Grayson? Are you all right?”

  He hardly heard her over a startling new sound. One he hadn’t heard in a century and a half. One he’d never thought to hear again.

  His own heart.

  Beating.

  Grayson drew a breath and then another. He felt his lungs expand. Felt the cold beneath him and the warmth of Tessa’s touch on his face. The rhythm of his heartbeat shuddered through him and when he turned to look into Tessa’s eyes, he could hardly see her through the sheen of tears clouding his own.

  “What is it? Grayson—what?”

  Wordlessly, he captured her hand in his and held it to his chest. Her gaze filled with wonder, with amazement, and he shared it with her. Knew that it only meant something because of her. That this miracle had happened to them—for them—because of the strength of what they had found together.

  “You’re alive?” She grinned, cried a bit more and then threw herself into his arms.

  The snow began to fly again. The wind sang around them and the world continued to turn.

  Staggering to his feet, Grayson winced at the aches and pains that seemed so much more real to him—now that he was real again. But none of it meant anything. Nothing could mar this moment.

  And nothing in his life would ever mean so much.

  “I love you, Tessa,” he said, cupping her face in his palms. “I’m alive again. I can say the words and mean them. I can give you what you need and try to be all that you want. Marry me. Love me and let me love you.”

  “Oh, Grayson, yes!” She threw her arms around his neck and clung to him as if half-afraid to let him go—in case this Christmas miracle should disappear.

  But he knew it wouldn’t.

  For whatever reason…someone had granted him another chance. A miracle.

  And in the blush of a new Christmas morning, Grayson kissed the woman he would love forever and vowed that he would never waste a moment of the new life he’d found.

  FATE CALLS

  CARIDAD PIÑEIRO

  To my sister, Carmen, for all her support

  and our discussions about the Pagan backgrounds

  of some of our traditional Christmas celebrations.

  Chapter 1

  D eath and destruction were the only Christmas gifts that Fate had ever brought Hadrian Aurelius.

  Now Fate had delivered him yet one more Christmas calamity—a group of bell-ringing do-gooders who had set up camp across the way from his brownstone, disturbing his daytime slumber and a good chunk of his nights.

  The clang-clang-clang of the bell would begin midmorning, slipping into his brain as he rested after a long night of prowling the Manhattan streets. Low and sporadic, he could drive the noise out of his head for most of the day, until dusk came and with it, the ringing rose, insistent. Demanding. Followed too often by a cheery greeting laced with enough sweetness to curdle the meal his keeper brought him at rising.

  For weeks Hadrian had told himself he could outlast them. After all, he was a vampire elder and had survived nearly two thousand years of even greater challenges.

  But there was just something about that damned bell.

  Hadrian jerked off the bedcovers, strode to the window and glanced at the Santa suit-wearing tormentor standing in front of the public library. There was little to discover about the Santa as he stood next to a collection kettle, arm merrily shifting up and down, calling to the passersby to leave a small donation for the homeless.

  The soft rasp of knuckles came at his bedroom door—his keeper, George, bringing a snack to help drive away the lethargy of his daytime respite.

  “Come in,” Hadrian called out, but as George wheeled in the cart bearing the gold chalice filled with warmed blood, Hadrian waved him off.

  “Thank you, George, but you may take it away.”

  He smiled as he peered down at the Santa again. “I think I may be dining out tonight.”

  The itchy polyester beard chafed her skin. The rough fabric of the suit, a cloth of indeterminate nature, rubbed at a variety of spots, creating discomfort at assorted locations. She wouldn’t think about the rank smell that she hadn’t been able to get rid of despite careful laundering.

  Connie Morales fidgeted—again—with the costume that swam on her petite body, defying the “one size fits all” claims of the manufacturer. With a shrug, she shifted the lopsided shoulders of the suit in an attempt to make it sit better. She ignored the lingering odor and rang her bell, forcing a merry tone to her voice as she called out to the smartly dressed businesswoman walking toward her.

  Connie flashed her best smile, uncertain it would be visible beneath the cumbersome beard. Satisfaction came as the lady returned the smile and dropped some change into the collection kettle.

  “Thank you for helping the homeless,” Connie chimed with false cheer, her words in tune with the rise and fall of her arm and the crisp bright tones of the bell ringing in the chill of the winter air.

  Each clang of the coins into the collection kettle brought Connie satisfaction. The silent slip of a bill into the pot was even more rewarding. Each donation meant more for the downtown shelter her upscale, midtown law firm had adopted this holiday season.

  As an up-and-coming associate, her decision to participate in the head partner’s pet Christmas project had a number of motivations. Self-interest being the primary one, since the time spent at the shelter and a nice sum in the collection pot would earn her major brownie points with the head man.

  Points that might push her toward the partnership she had been working hard to achieve for the last four years. But she had to acknowledge that mixed in with that self-interest was something else that had been awakened within her, forcing her to consider that what she was doing was important to a lot of people who had far less than she did.

  The holiday spirit maybe? Connie put renewed fervor into her smile and the swing of her arm.

  Her current situation reignited memories of her own Christmases past. The simple gifts beneath the tree, made special by the love with which they were given. Dinners around a table laden with food and blessed with an assortment of her siblings, their children and her parents.

  It had been too long since she had allowed that spirit into her holiday season.

  Just one more day and her Christmas vacation would start. She would do her best to enjoy this holiday season. In the morning she would start her shopping and prepare herself for a visit to her family.

  “Merry Christmas to you as well,” she said with a nod and a broad smile at one man who slipped a five-dollar bill into her pot. As she tracked the passage of the alms giver, she noted a well-dressed man step out of the brownstone across the way.

  It would have been impossible not to notice him.

  Tall. Lean. A fine-boned face that might have been handsome if there had been any hint of life there.

  But there was none.

  The chiseled lines of his features were harsh. Unyielding. Fashionably tousled shoulder-length dark brown hair framed that austere face. His lips were drawn into a thin slash. She imagined that if he might smile…

>   Only he didn’t.

  Instead he shot her a glare that sent a shiver down her spine. He trained dark, almost soulless, eyes on her.

  He was the kind of man you didn’t want to piss off. His gaze drifted to the bell in her hand, and it occurred to her that it angered him. She had somehow run afoul of him.

  Such scrutiny or disdain didn’t bother her, however.

  She was a lawyer, after all.

  Pasting a determined smile on her face, she raised her hand higher and brought the bell down forcefully.

  It rang with a resounding peal in the winter night, letting the handsome stranger know that he would not dissuade her from her mission.

  Hadrian fisted his hands at his sides, resisting the urge to throttle the obstinate Santa who defiantly rang the bell as if Hadrian hadn’t just shot him an irate glare.

  With the power his long vampire age provided him, it wouldn’t be difficult to take care of the Santa. In fact, he could do it from here and no one would be the wiser.

  But as the Santa imbued his ringing with a more fervent sweep of his arm, Hadrian realized that satisfaction required a more personal approach.

  Later, he thought, ripping his gaze from the slight frame of the Santa. It was the first night of Saturnalia and he intended to spend it the way he had when he had been a young man.

  When he had been alive.

  A night of merriment and other carnal pleasures would be just the thing to drive away the annoyance created by the bell-ringing Santa. Maybe, if he enjoyed himself sufficiently during his revelry, he’d forego ripping out the throat of his red-suited tormentor.

  And if he didn’t?

  A midnight snack always helped put him in a better mood.

  Chapter 2

  H adrian sipped at his glass of wine, eyeing the nubile young women parading through the Puck Building, courtesy of his old friend Maximillian.

  As one of the city’s hottest fashion designers, Maximillian always had the choicest young men and women—along with some of the most powerful vampires in town—at all his affairs.

  Tonight was no different.

  Tall, lean women bypassed the table laden with food and sashayed to the bar, where they were joined by equally tall and lean men, eager for an opportunity with one of the women or with each other.

  Hadrian usually avoided both of those types. Their blood was weak from their constant fasting and he got no satisfaction from a sexual encounter with a bag of bones.

  Not that he got much satisfaction from any sexual encounters lately, he thought, eyeing the crowd and looking for the hangers-on to the Beautiful People. The stylists, PR people and others were closer to his tastes and easy to charm into a quick tryst.

  He spied one attractive young woman by the buffet table, loading up a plate with delicacies. She was of average height, with doe-brown eyes and a bob of chocolate brown hair that framed a pleasant face.

  Her body was also pleasant, Hadrian thought. Full breasts—real, if he were any judge—with an average waist and boyish hips. While he liked his women more rounded, there was something pleasing about this young lady’s overall appearance.

  “Pleasing” being the most emotion a woman could rouse in him after his long existence filled with countless unnamed partners.

  After nearly two thousand years, there was nothing that brought satisfaction anymore. And in those moments after, when he put his fangs to a woman’s throat and fed, anger rose sharply, obliterating all other emotions, dampening the fulfillment of all other demands.

  Anger that a vampire had turned him.

  Anger that the humans had destroyed the life he had made for himself after being sired.

  Hadrian drew in a sharp breath, controlling the fury that surged through him as he took note of the humans and vampires unwittingly milling together in the crowd. The humans had no awareness of the immortals circulating amongst them while the demons were sizing up the mortals the way a diner might pick a lobster out of a tank.

  He didn’t rightly know who he hated more.

  The largest part of the crowd was gathered in the grand ballroom of the Puck Building, where Maximillian had decided to hold his “little” gathering to celebrate the holiday season and a recent launch of a line specially designed for one of the country’s leading department stores.

  Close to five hundred people circulated inside the ballroom and adjacent gallery. A long line of party-goers waited outside in the cold, eager to be part of tonight’s festivities.

  “Stop glowering so,” Maximillian said as he approached and draped an arm around Hadrian’s shoulders.

  He shot a glance out of the corner of his eye at his flamboyant friend. Disregarding the no-white-after-Labor-Day rule, Maximillian was in a loose-fitting white tunic embroidered with ornate golden lace along the sleeves, hem and neckline. Equally loose-fitting white pants flowed beneath the tunic.

  It reminded Hadrian of the togas the two had worn in their youth—before a Saturnalian tryst with a newfound love had ended both their lives.

  Hadrian gestured to the decorations. “Did you choose all this as a lark?”

  “Do you not find it festive?” Maximillian replied with a flippant wave of his hand and a girlish trill in his voice.

  Boughs of greenery and wreaths adorned the various walls and arches. Golden suns and stars decorated the boughs of pine and holly. Scattered here and there were small pine trees, also laden with golden ornaments and trimmed with rich purple ribbons. The aroma of fresh evergreens and the decorations brought a memory of his holidays back in Rome. With that memory came intense pain.

  “I find it torturous.”

  Maximillian leaned close, as a lover might, and whispered in his ear, “Maybe because you are unable to forgive and enjoy, mio amico.”

  Before Hadrian could reply, Maximillian flounced to the bar, where a young man and woman appeared to be waiting for him. As Maximillian placed an arm around each of their waists, he shot a wink and a broad smile at Hadrian as if in invitation.

  Maybe Maximillian can find callow joy in their arms, but I cannot, Hadrian thought, declining the invitation with a slight bow of his head.

  A waiter paused before him and he snagged a glass of red wine from the serving tray. Another server drifted close, offering an assortment of appetizers, some gilded in gold as was the Roman custom. Hadrian waved for the man to leave and peered through the crowd for the woman he had spotted earlier, intending to introduce himself and seduce her into a quiet nook where he could sate his hunger.

  He slowly walked through the crowd, battling the scents and noises that grated on his heightened vampire senses. A band played loudly from one corner, forcing an escalation in the volume of those attempting to converse.

  As he passed through the crowd, more than one woman attempted to snare his attention with a welcoming look, but he was immune to such entreaties. Only if he failed with his intended target would he settle for someone else. In retrospect, the chase had become the only fun part of the game for him since the end of the hunt usually brought so little fulfillment.

  He continued onward and finally found her, looking forlorn and slightly out-of-place in a far corner of the adjacent room. She held a half-empty glass of wine in her hand. As he approached and flashed her a smile, the hand holding the glass wavered.

  It was not as noisy in the corner she had chosen, but still he sat beside her on the ledge of the window and leaned close. “It’s nice to find a quiet spot, isn’t it?”

  “I’m supposed to be meeting people, but this is my first big event. It’s a little overwhelming.” She shot him a shy smile and brought her glass up for a shaky sip.

  “Maximillian is known for overdoing it.” He drank from his own glass before stammering, “So sorry. I’m Hadrian and you are…?”

  “Patricia. Do you know Maximillian personally?” An awed tone flavored her question.

  “We’ve been friends for a very long time, but these gatherings can be…tiresome. Would you like to go somew
here quieter? Maybe get a bite to eat?”

  Her hand trembled again before she faced him and examined him carefully, clearly attempting to first determine if he were serious, and then if he were trustworthy. Her priorities were reversed, much as his had been so long ago.

  Maybe if he’d had his priorities straight, his life would have turned out differently.

  He must have passed muster since she asked, “Where would you like to go?”

  Humans were sometimes too easy, Hadrian thought as he slipped his arm through hers and led her from the building.

  Connie’s arm ached from the many swings of the bell. As she surreptitiously glanced at her watch, she realized it was late, time to go home, especially since the residential street had become nearly deserted.

  They had chosen the spot in front of the library in a tony East Side neighborhood both for safety’s sake and because of the possibility of increased profit. Despite the relative safety of the area, she knew staying anywhere too late could prove risky. Besides, the library had closed nearly an hour earlier and foot traffic was virtually gone, minimizing the possibility of donations.

  She grabbed the collection kettle, intending to put it in the small office to which the library had so generously given them access. As she did so she caught a glimpse of a man across the way. He was hidden in the shadows cast by the stoop of the brownstone.

  For a moment she wondered if it was the handsome man she had seen earlier, but he remained in the shadows, making her uneasy. With the key the librarian had provided, she opened the door, slipped inside and locked it behind her. Moving quickly, she safely stored that night’s donations and the kettle. Removing her purse from the drawer of a nearby desk, she walked back to the main glass doors of the library.

  Still slightly unnerved by the man in the shadows, she scanned the street for any sign of him. It appeared clear. As a police car paused just past the door of the library, she left, heading toward Lexington Avenue and the subway line that would take her home to her small studio in Chelsea.