The Vampire's Protector

by Michele Hauf

  “Not for long,” she said and slapped a hand aside his face, tilting back his head.

  She sank in her fangs and felt the knife blade dig in at her waist, but it didn’t puncture skin as her teeth pierced his body. Vile cologne wafted into her senses, but was quickly muffled by the surprising richness of his blood.

  The man’s knees bent and he went down. Summer followed, drinking of him greedily and straddling his leg as she held firm to his chest to keep his neck at her mouth. Across the Seine the glint of a bonfire sparked in her peripheral vision, and the shouts echoed from late-night revelers, who were unaware of her stolen meal. Of the stolen life.

  She could feel the man’s heartbeats course through her, fast and then slower. His hand slapped the cobblestones. He moaned, falling into the overwhelming swoon. The Soul Piercer gave pleasure with a promise of everlasting madness.

  She pushed him away. Blood spattered her chin and shirt. He fell in a splay of limbs onto the sidewalk and into the shadow of the overhead bridge.

  Had she killed him? She’d drunk with incautious abandon. She’d only wanted to satisfy her dark hunger. Had not paid attention to his life slipping away. If he was truly dead then she’d take his nightmares into her and the macabre dreams would give her a taste of the madness she had gifted him.

  To check for life, she pressed her fingers over his bloody neck. That reminded her she’d not licked the bite wounds. She bent and dashed her tongue over the two punctures, and in that moment felt the pulse of life.

  “Mercy,” she whispered. “Rest well. I’m sorry.”

  And she got up and ran off. She needed to get her head on straight. She needed...

  Him.

  * * *

  The next afternoon Summer settled onto the couch in her parents’ living room. Her mother was reading a cookbook for reasons Summer could not comprehend. They often sat in silence with one another, her mother browsing through photos on the iPad or working out new routines for her acrobatic skills act she performed with the Demon Arts Troupe.

  After a few minutes, with a heavy sigh, Summer tilted to the left and collapsed in an angst-filled sprawl across the couch.

  “Hey, sweetie,” Lyric said, setting the cookbook aside and pulling up her knees in the chair where she sat opposite her daughter. “What’s the big sigh for? I haven’t seen you like this before. Ever. It must be a man.”

  Summer smirked. “Seriously? Am I that much an open book?”

  “It was a good guess.” Lyric pulled back her straight blond hair and then released it in a swish over her shoulders. “I remember man troubles. I’m not that old, you know.”

  “I can’t imagine you and dad ever having troubles.”

  “I knew many a man before your father.”

  Summer thrust up a hand. “I don’t want to hear about it.”

  Lyric chuckled. “Oh, the stories I could tell.”

  Her mother had grown up in a sort of Mafioso family that had been filthy rich and greedy. Fortunately, Lyric had gotten free from her mother’s control and had managed to create a good life for herself.

  Summer asked, “What’s with the cookbook?”

  “Baby food,” Lyric said.

  “What? Who’s pregnant? What baby?”

  “Just wishful thinking. I saw it in the bookstore and couldn’t resist. Kambriel and Johnny have to have a baby soon. I want to do the grandma thing.”

  “Seriously?”

  “You don’t think I’d be good at it?” Her glamorous-without-any-makeup mother rubbed her knuckles against her shoulder. “I might be a damn bit better at it than Grandma Viviane.”

  Lyric had never gotten along with her mother-in-law, the vampiress Viviane. A woman who had gone mad after being buried in a glass coffin beneath the streets of Paris, alive, for over two hundred years. When she’d been rescued, she’d been pregnant with Vaillant—Summer’s dad—and Trystan, his twin brother. Although they both had different dads. And Trystan was a werewolf. Long story.

  “You’d be great at the grandmother thing, Mom.” She did have a weird domestic bone that had put Summer in curls all through her childhood and even a few hand-sown dresses. Ugh.

  “So when can I start dreaming about you giving me grandchildren?”

  “I have to get married first. And you know me.”

  Lyric sighed. “That long? I could be waiting centuries.”

  “I don’t know what tomorrow will even bring. Right now there’s Nicolo.”

  “The musician Johnny mentioned? He plays violin? I’ve always had a thing for musicians.”

  “Did Johnny also tell you he’s Nicolo Paganini, raised from the dead?”

  Now Lyric stood and crossed the room to sit beside Summer. She stroked her fingers through her daughter’s hair and shuffled back to allow Summer to prop her head in her lap.

  “I think I’ve fallen in love,” Summer offered. “He doesn’t have a soul, Mom. Do you know what that means?”

  “I’d never make a judgment. You tell me what you think it means.”

  “It means I can drink his blood and it doesn’t affect him at all. He is clear and sane and isn’t at all mad.”

  “Wow.”

  “Right? But Himself said I would go mad if I kept drinking from the soulless.”

  “You spoke to— Summer?”

  Summer sat up and turned to face her mom, whose beautiful green eyes had never looked more worried. “Nicolo is Himself’s son. We had a run-in with the Big Guy the other day.”

  “Oh, Summer, what have you done?”

  * * *

  “I’ve fallen in love,” Summer said later as she looked down over the Seine, twinkling with street lights reflecting on the water’s surface.

  She’d climbed to the top of Notre Dame and sat at the base of one of the buttresses along the nave. A favorite place for her to escape and get away from reality. But when her phone jingled, she checked the text. It was from Johnny. You know Himself almost destroyed Kambriel. Nicolo will do the same to you. Walk away.

  Word traveled fast in the Santiago family.

  She didn’t send a return text. Instead she broke the phone in two and tossed it into the river.

  “I will never walk away.”

  She just didn’t know how to find him. If she called Himself to her would Nicolo follow? An insane desperation made her whisper Himself’s name.

  With the devil’s name on her tongue for a second time she caught her head in her hands—and then said the name out loud.

  Heartbeats racing, she imagined a reunion with her soulless lover and how they would live together ever after. Years. Decades. She growing mad with every drop of blood she took from him. Just like her grandmother Viviane.

  Shaking her head, Summer did not say Himself’s name a third time. Instead she jumped from the roof and landed in the pebbled back courtyard behind the cathedral and walked through the formal garden. A homeless woman sat against the stone wall connecting the Île de la Cité to the Île Saint-Louis.

  Running her tongue along a descending fang, Summer advanced on the sleeping woman.

  * * *

  Summer wandered into her home and left the lights off. Normally she would feel refreshed and alive after drinking blood. And sure, she could sense that her body had received the vital nutrients it craved, but she was too down to care. She missed Nicolo. She wanted him at her mouth, not the neck of some stranger.

  Pulling her shirt off as she wandered into the bedroom, she eyed the open bedroom window and couldn’t even care that she’d left it open. The curtains blew in the breeze, lifting like gentle white faery wings. She tossed her shirt on the bed then sensed—she was not alone.

  Spinning to take in the room, her eyes landed on the chair beside the window. A man sat there, palm to his forehead, obs
erving her silently. No smile, or frown. But within his eyes worlds spoke. No, they screamed for the tragedy he’d had to endure and then wept for the nightmare that had resulted.

  “Nicolo,” she said on a gasp. A smile stretched her cheeks, but too quickly she calmed herself with a hand to her racing heart.

  When she rushed toward him, he said, “No. Stay there. Back by the bed. Sit, please.”

  Summer slowly stepped back until her legs hit the bed and she sat. He merely looked at her. So she returned the curiosity. Dressed in velvet and lace, he looked well. Handsome and sexy, as usual. Not...evil. Or demonic. Or as if he’d been through hell the past few days. She could only imagine that he had been.

  And she hadn’t sneezed. Curious.

  In an elegant glide of masculine strength, he stood and crossed the room, then stopped before her. He cupped her head with his hands and tilted it up to kiss her mouth. He kissed her deeply, seeking the core of her in that moment. And she let him inside willingly, desperately.

  “You taste of near death,” he said and then pulled her up to stand, and in a move she didn’t even see coming, lifted her by the thighs and turned to press her against the wall. “Delicious.”

  As he kissed her hard, she wrapped her legs about him. His hands moved up to her bare breasts and tweaked her nipples. She moaned into his kiss. His intensity was urgent, wanting. He could take anything he wished. She would give him everything.

  If only she could give him her soul.

  She sucked his lower lip than gave it a playful bite. His eyes met hers in a defiant question. She smirked and dove to kiss his jaw, then bit there, without breaking the skin. He bent to kiss her breast and to roughly suckle at her nipple. Long fingers moved over her other breast, creating a symphony of moans and pleading murmurs in Summer’s throat.

  Tearing open his button-down shirt, she pushed it down his arms, her fingers clutching his hard biceps. He was solid and so hot. And it seemed he could not get enough of her in his mouth, for he fed greedily upon her skin, her lips, her breasts.

  Summer rocked her hips, and he groaned with pleasure. Slipping down a hand, he unzipped and shimmied down his pants and then helped her off with hers. Cupping his hand between her thighs, his fingers danced over her folds. She gasped, encouraging him as he slickened her moistness over the head of his penis. The thick, hot intrusion of him within her burst as a shivering sigh. He hilted himself, thrusting rhythmically, quickly, faster and deeper.

  She clung to his hair, head tilted back and sucking in her bottom lip. He burned her with his fiery desire, his incessant want. An insatiable quest to drive himself into her, to own her. She loved it. She loved him. She had to have him.

  All of him.

  Summer bent forward to bite his neck, fangs piercing deeply. Nicolo cried out a wanting shout as he held her to him, allowing her to feed as he continued to thrust within her. His cock rubbed her clit. His blood spilled down her throat. His fingers dug into her flesh, holding her to him, keeping her there. Wanting. Needing. Owning.

  His body began to shudder, and he slammed himself deep within her, holding her head to his neck. As she took in his wickedly dark, thick blood, Nicolo tremored and came inside her. He pushed her back against the wall, meeting her forehead to forehead. Gasping, hissing, he moved a hand down to slick his fingers over her clit.

  That simple move stirred her over the edge, and she shouted a cry of joy as the orgasm shimmered through her being. And then she clutched her head and laughed an unrecognizable and fearful chatter of madness.

  “Yes, mine,” he said against her eyelid. He kissed her there. She giggled and purred for him to give her more. More blood. More, more, more.

  His body pulsed one more time, jerking his hard, muscular form against her, and then he pulled her from the wall and spun to lay her on the bed. Crawling over her gasping, sighing form, he studied her face. “You are mine?”

  She nodded and huffed out eagerly, “Yes. Always. But, Nicolo, I felt—”

  “You felt my darkness. The exquisite prick of your own soul falling apart. Get used to it.”

  “More,” she pleaded. “Drive me mad, lover.”

  * * *

  Nicolo stood before the open window, catching the rising sun on his naked body. The curtains wafted about his legs and thighs, tickling his erection. The neighbors may see him. He didn’t care. He wanted to enjoy the light he had been without for what had seemed like years. Ages.

  A monster’s lifetime.

  After playing the black violin he had descended to Beneath at his father’s beckon. Himself had shown him his throne. Indeed, the vile thing existed. Metal and bone, and sheened with the dark lacquer of lost and abandoned souls. He had sat upon it and felt immense power surge up and fill his body.

  And it had felt right.

  And oh, so wrong.

  He’d gotten back to Summer as quickly as possible, but though it may have been days for her on this realm, she might never fathom how long he had been away from her. And he would never tell her the horrors he had witnessed or that he had come to participate in. Because he could not bear to fall in her eyes. It was a hope he had clung to. So long.

  Of course, he had allowed her to bite him last night. He only hoped she would not learn all the evils that had been born of his hands through his blood. And if his knowledge of the Soul Piercer had any validity he hoped the giggles had not been a precursor to her soul losing grip on reality.

  For as long as he could remain here, in her presence, he felt he could fight the call to serve his wicked father. But already that skin-tightening buzz that moved across his scalp warned he had work to do. Tonight. It would begin onstage. He had a few hours yet.

  A few hours of bliss that he would never take for granted and would commit to memory for all his days when he must be away from his Brightness.

  She rolled over on the bed, one arm outstretched. Her pale skin was as marble, and her breasts were topped with hard, rosy buds. He’d pushed himself inside her relentlessly. Still he wanted more. He needed to fix her scent inside him, inoculate his blood with hers...

  Yes, perhaps he could do just that. Take the taste of her with him. Because he had the fangs. He could do whatever he wished with them. And he’d used them to snarl, cut and defile so many times. Ah! He mustn’t think of it when in Summer’s presence.

  Without opening her eyes, she smiled. Her fingers curled, gesturing him to come to her. And Nicolo followed, a willing sycophant. He knelt on the floor before the bed, looking over her gorgeous figure. With a finger he traced from her wrist, up to her elbow. Her smile clued him it must tickle her. He’d been rough with her earlier. He’d forgotten softness. Now, he was compelled to know her softness. For just a moment.

  And then forever.

  Up her arm he glided his fingertip, memorizing the silken fabric of her skin, the hard dash of her collarbone and sweet rise of her breast. And when he touched the rough, ruched nipple, he could no longer hold back the urgent desire to have her inside him.

  Willing down the vile fangs that had initially frustrated him—how to speak and open his mouth?—now he was expert with them. With first a gentle kiss, he then bit into her breast.

  Summer lifted her head. “Goddess, I didn’t know you could— Oh...”

  Her erotic murmur played music in his ears. As did her blood perform music in his veins. It danced into him hot and slick and rushing. No souls with this taste, a respite for him. Simply Summer. He could not compose a finer melody. Greedily he fed upon her, squeezing her other breast and kneading at it. He moved onto the bed, and his erection fit against her thigh. She spread her legs and directed him inside her. Pierced at breast and between the legs, she was his, pinned and taken.

  “Nicolo,” she cried as a brutal orgasm rocked her body beneath him.

  He pushed up with one hand, blood
dripping from his mouth to land on her pale breast. The air felt light. His cock was engorged. The high of her blood dizzied him. He didn’t need to come. For her essence running through him gave him so much more. It bonded him to her. He felt he would always know her now. Wherever she went, her heartbeats belonged to him.

  And perhaps even...her soul. Had he taken part of it into him?

  “I’ve never been bitten,” she said as she came down from the shuddering orgasm. “That was so freakin’ good.”

  A virgin to the bite? And it had been his first bite, too. The first one performed out of love and not evil. Poetic, for the Dark Lord’s son.

  He’d been crowned the Dark Prince by his father. It was a title that reviled him. Yet at the same time, he’d worn it well and would continue to do so. He must. For if he did not Summer Santiago would die at his father’s hand.

  Chapter 24

  They’d showered together, and with but a shake of his head as he wandered into the bedroom to gather his clothes, Nicolo’s hair dried.

  “Now that’s a trick I would love to have,” Summer said. She pulled on a black silk robe, and her wet hair clung to her upper back.

  He smiled briefly as he pulled up his pants. She suspected smiles were not easy for him anymore. He seemed so serious. Didn’t say much. Just...took. Which had been entirely all right for her, the past hours of wild and adventurous sex.

  Oh man. Being bitten. That was fifty kinds of all right. And maybe they had bonded. She hoped so. The brief moments when she’d lost a handle on herself and wasn’t sure to laugh, cry or shout, had passed. She felt sane. She would remain so.

  Fingers crossed.

  She sat on the end of the bed and watched Nicolo button up the black shirt, wanting to pull aside his hair for him, but really she just felt exhausted and relaxed and so deliciously worn out.

  “You going to stay?” she asked.

  “I’ve a concert at the opera house in a few hours. You will come.”