Love Bites UK (Mammoth Book Of Vampire Romance2)

by Telep, Trisha

  “So, what’s his problem?” She pretended it was a casual question while she inspected the list on her clipboard. They were far enough from the prep area that they wouldn’t be overheard. It turned out she liked working here. Liked Frank and the rest of the staff, and she liked Martin Harris. Hell, she felt like she’d drunk too much champagne whenever Martin Harris was in the room, which wasn’t a good idea but wouldn’t have been a disaster. She thought he felt the same way about her, and once she got her restaurant open again he wouldn’t be her boss. Except that she started to notice things. Like, he was never up before six.

  “Does he have a drinking problem? Drugs? I need to know if it’s going to blow up all over Helene DeCourcy’s party.” All over Rita DeLeone too, but Frank didn’t need to know that.

  “I don’t think Martin has ever taken anything stronger than an aspirin. For that matter, I don’t think he’s ever taken an aspirin. He isn’t drinking either.”

  It was the truth. She figured that out about Frank already. He always told her the truth and generally relied on her not to get it anyway. Like now. She was clearly missing the subtext, and tried again. Set down her clipboard and leaned on the butler’s table, a hand on each stack of napkins so that he couldn’t pretend they weren’t having this conversation.

  “But he did?”

  “Never to excess. The Harrises have always been excellent employers.”

  Time to back off and let Frank at the napkins. “So we can assume he will not dance naked on Mrs DeCourcy’s card tables.”

  “We can so assume.” Frank paused, thought a moment. “But Helene would pay extra if he did.”

  “She probably would.”

  “Would what?” Martin – shaved, showered, and in a dinner jacket with tails – wandered into the kitchen and threw an arm across Rita’s shoulders. She would have slipped away but thought he might fall if she did.

  “Pay extra to see you dance naked on her card tables.”

  “Ah.” For a moment he stared off into the distance, as if considering it. “If we lose any more clients I may have to take her up on the offer. But you’re here to save me from a fate worse than death, aren’t you, Rita, Rita, Rita?”

  “You are drunk, Mr Harris.” She pushed him upright, balancing him against the butler’s table, with a glare at Frank McCaffey. “We have to get him sober before the guests arrive.”

  But Frank was ignoring her, and her cooks had all stopped to watch. “Did you see Marcus Balfour today, Martin?” Frank took Martin’s weight, looked into his eyes like he was trying to gauge a truth that Martin might not give him.

  “Didn’t want him. Sent him home.”

  “Have you fed at all?”

  Martin smiled beatifically. “Does the carpaccio count?”

  “No, Martin, it doesn’t.”

  “That’s what Helene said.”

  The back door opened then and three new arrivals pushed their way into the kitchen. Frank looked relieved, though they were at least an hour early and the owner was drunk. Or stoned. Or possibly starving himself to death on beef carpaccio, which didn’t make sense at all.

  “Dani,” Frank said, and the woman with the blonde bun looked up, shot a questioning eyebrow just as Martin Harris fell to the floor, taking Rita with him.

  “Jesus Christ!” Rita said, and Frank followed them to his knees, got an arm under Martin’s head, and said to the room in general, “Does anybody know when he fed last?”

  “He paid me last week, and again on Monday, but he didn’t want to feed,” Dani answered. “I thought . . . He acted like he’d fixed on somebody else. I thought he was just being nice, paying out my contract.”

  Frank looked really scared. Angry too. And that scared the hell out of Rita. “What? What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s an idiot.” Frank caught his breath, started again. “He has a rare . . . chemical imbalance, you could call it. And right now it’s killing him.”

  Rita stared at him, trying to process what he’d said, but it didn’t make sense. Martin was not dying. She wouldn’t allow it. “I don’t have my cell on me. Somebody call nine-one-one!”

  “He doesn’t need a hospital.” Nobody picked up the phone and Rita scrambled, tried to get to her office where she had two of them. Frank grabbed her arm. “Wait. I know what’s wrong. We’ll handle it.”

  “People die of an overdose all the time, Frank. You can’t protect him from this—”

  “It’s nothing a hospital will help.” They were all listening to him, even Doug, who was down on the floor with his sleeve rolled up and his arm out. But Frank gave him a nudge, said, “Get Helene. Tell her he won’t feed.”

  Doug seemed to get more out of that than Rita did. He nodded, got up and ran.

  “You have to be kidding me.” Dani peered over his shoulder, glaring. “He fixed on her. And she won’t even feed him?!”

  “I’ve cooked for him all week. This isn’t about my cooking.”

  “No, it isn’t.” Frank sank back on his heels, rubbed his head. “You can leave now and not see any of this.”

  “I’m not leaving him!” Couldn’t. Wouldn’t, even though she knew Frank planned to turn her world on its head.

  “You’ll wish you had.”

  “I know that.” She figured they were going to give him more drugs, or an antagonist to the drugs he’d already taken, and she’d have to do something about it later. But right now they had to keep him alive. If Frank knew how to do that, she’d let him and say ‘thank you’.

  “Somebody give me a knife!” A blade came into view and he said, “Clean knife!” Took it when it came and pricked his finger, waited until a drop of blood formed.

  “Martin,” he said, softly, and smeared the welling blood on Martin’s lip.

  “What are you doing?”

  Martin stirred, tried to escape the blood, but it was movement, more than they’d had a moment ago.

  “Is he alive?” Helene DeCourcy had arrived, quite at home in a ruffled Gilded Age ball gown, and with a terrible, terrible expression on her face.

  “So far.” Frank stood up, deferred to her authority. “He needs to feed, but he won’t do it.”

  “Get him off this floor and put him to bed. We’ll have to make his excuses at the party.”

  The door to the basement apartment was still open and between them Frank and Doug got him down the stairs. Rita wanted to follow, but she had a kitchen to deal with first – and Helene DeCourcy. “We have to cancel,” Rita said, “he needs a hospital.”

  “Trust me to know what he needs, my dear. For his reputation, no one must know what has happened here.”

  Helene followed Martin to the stairs, with Rita right behind her. “This is not the nineteenth century. We don’t let people die to hide their problems.”

  Helene stopped. She turned on the stair and, for a moment, Rita saw something in her eyes that froze her like a stalked rabbit.

  “He’s a vampire, dear. It’s not like he’s snorting cocaine. And he nearly killed himself to keep you from finding out, so please do not lecture me on secrets and reputations.”

  “That’s insane!” Really, really insane. If the situation wasn’t so dire, Rita would have laughed. But Martin was unconscious and nobody else looked surprised.

  “I know, dear. If these were different times . . . ” Helene studied her for a full moment, waiting for something. Then her shoulders lifted. She grabbed Rita by the arm and tugged her down the stairs. “If these were different times, we’d lock you in a room together until you sorted it out between you.”

  Rita had a bad feeling about this, but it was getting her where she needed to be. So she let Helene lead her, through a tidy little kitchen and a living room with a big brown couch, all of it clean except for the dirt – not dust, but a scattering of soil like a flower pot had overturned – in a fine line across the bedroom doorway. Helene stepped over it and pulled Rita in after her.

  The room, like the rest of the apartment, was masculine a
nd clean except for a bit of soil across the hearth of the fireplace. On the mantelpiece sat three fat white candles, like the candles in the window and the ones at Helene DeCourcy’s house. But it was the bed that held all of Rita’s attention. They’d undressed him and covered him to the waist. His skin looked like marble, pale and blue veined, as still as death. Oh God, she thought. Oh God. She remembered the champagne fizz of excitement when he entered the room, and the dark pools of his eyes pushing back the blue with mysteries. Rita fell to her knees by the side of the bed, took his hand in hers, still soft, but cold, so cold. She almost didn’t hear it when Helene said, “We are going to do this the old-fashioned way.” Didn’t care when Frank said, “We can’t do that. Martin—”

  “Martin will die if we don’t. He is a foolish boy, but there we are. Do you want to tell his mother that you let him die?”

  Frank said nothing, but he left and took Doug with him. Rita was glad they were gone. She didn’t want anyone to see her cry. To hear her scream. Martin was dead, was dead, was dead.

  The door closed, leaving her alone with Helene DeCourcy and Martin’s body, but of the two, only Martin mattered. Until Helene crossed to the hearth and lit the three white candles. “Sanctuary, hearth and home,” she said. “Sanctuary stands highest to light the way for the lost. We have two choices here. If what I said upstairs is true, do you still love him?”

  Upstairs. She’d said that Martin was a vampire. Down here, she’d said they still had choices.

  “Will I die?” That was one kind of movie. Helene said, “We all die, eventually. But Martin would never hurt you. He would die first. He is dying rather than upset you. He’s a fool in that, but no, it will not kill you.”

  “Will I become like him?” Given his present state, that didn’t sound much better, but Helene said, “No, I’m sorry. That isn’t possible. It’s genetic.” Rita wasn’t sorry, but she thought Helene might see it differently.

  Helene waited, but Rita didn’t have anything else to say except, “Choices?” like Martin was on the menu – pick one, pay for ever.

  “He’s fixed on you. Loves you. Because he hasn’t fed yet, we can still stop it. I can wake him long enough for you to tell him ‘no’. But then you have to go, and never see him again. It won’t be comfortable, but he’ll survive. If you choose to stay, he will need to feed from you, a tablespoon or so of blood every few days. Like insulin, if you like, only it has to be drawn living from your body.”

  When put that way, it sounded clinical. Simple. Not obscenely personal at all. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

  Tears simmered in Helene’s eyes, but they didn’t fall, and she managed to smile fondly in spite of them. “Because he is a foolish boy and he loves this house almost as much as he loves you. If he told you too soon, he risked losing you both. So he kept silent.”

  Rita wondered how far she’d go to put Sophie’s back on its feet. The little restaurant meant a lot to her, but not this much. Not Martin’s life.

  “For ever.”

  “Until the day you die.”

  The thought terrified her. But Rita had learned all she needed to know about for ever watching Martin die. “Show me how,” she said, and scarcely noticed when Helene undid the buttons on her jacket – the white one. Frank had told her the black jackets with the little red hearts on the pockets were for the special service staff, but she hadn’t realized until now what that special service was. She supposed she’d be wearing a red-heart jacket after tonight.

  Rita’s jacket fell away, and then her shirt, her slacks, peeled down until she was naked in the warmth of the candles and reaching for Martin, sliding into the bed beside him as if in a dream, or a trance. She wondered if Helene had done something to her, but the thought didn’t shake her resolve.

  “Here,” Helene said, and took a lancet from a small purse at her waist. Rita had watched as Frank pricked his finger, so she already knew that much of what she had to do. She reached out her finger for Helene to prick, winced at the cut, but she’d done worse in the kitchen. A bubble of blood formed at the tip of her finger.

  “It’s always better when both people are conscious,” Helene remarked, “but this will have to do for now.”

  If Helene could make a joke, Rita figured, the worst was over. Her own sense of humour was still on hold. This close, she wanted him, wanted his eyes open and looking at her like they had when they danced together in his empty ballroom. She wanted his skin warm against hers, and she wondered about that; it almost stopped her, but just being close to her seemed to have warmed him. She remembered what Frank had done and touched his lip gently, let him sense the presence of her blood. His head followed her movement, reaching for it rather than escaping it. Frank couldn’t save him, but she could. She felt powerful, and it gave her courage. She needed that when he opened his eyes and moaned her name.

  “Your wrist will do for now. Let him hold your hand.”

  For a moment she’d forgotten that Helene DeCourcy was still there, and she blushed to her toes, knew Helene could see every fiery inch of her and blushed even more. But Martin was reaching for her, tugging at her arm, his lips soft on the inside of her wrist. A delicate lick and every muscle grew liquid and languorous. He found what he was looking for – her vein pulsed against his mouth.

  She cried out at the little pain, the fierce need, as the needles of his teeth pierced her flesh. She felt it down in her belly, to the ends of her toes, the tidal pull starting in her wrist and emptying her, her soul drawn out like a sigh. She closed her eyes, trying to absorb the sensation, focus on the pleasure of that deep motion, the awareness of heart and veins and arteries pulsing down to one point of existence in her wrist. When she opened her eyes again, Helene was gone, and Martin was blinking at her.

  “You’re warm,” Rita said, and Martin said, “You’re here.”

  Epilogue

  Martin was nervous. The food was packed, the trucks were waiting to head over to the Art Museum, but Frank had insisted that they make it official. So he was standing in his kitchen – Rita’s now – in his dinner jacket, with his staff in an anxious circle. Rita looked nervous, but they’d made it through the worst.

  “It’s time,” Frank said, and Martin took off Rita’s white coat, handed it to Dani, who folded it over her arm. Then Frank brought out a new black jacket and handed it to Martin. There were a dozen more in the closet now, but he made a ceremony of the first.

  “Two souls, one heart.” Martin touched the small red heart embroidered on the pocket over her breast, let his fingers linger. Through the heart wove a thin gold ring. “For ever.”

  Martin was giving her that killer smile, and the dark of his eyes had swallowed the blue in a way Rita had come to recognize. Might as well break in the new jacket. She pushed back the sleeve, offered her wrist and he nipped, just a promise for later. They’d found much more interesting places for sipping, and Martin Harris was completely alive, everywhere. But right now the mayor was waiting for dinner.

  Into the Mist For Ever

  Rosemary Laurey

  1

  There were only two of them, dressed as Romans and armed. Hunting, like her no doubt. Everyone was hungering for fresh meat at this point in the winter. As the boar broke from the brush and raced across the open meadow, the taller of the two let his spear fly. With a loud squeal the boar turned, the spear embedded in its flank, and charged for the trees, in a direct line to where she was concealed.

  Gwyltha let her own spear fly, with an accuracy that only a vampire possessed. It struck the animal between the eyes.

  It stopped in its tracks and lay twitching on the winter grass. She flicked her horse’s rump and sent horse and chariot flying out of the trees, towards the downed animal. The two Romans were already heading for it but it was her kill. She reached it before them. They raced towards her then stopped, one watching her, the other stepping towards the boar.

  “My kill, I believe, centurions.” She spoke in Latin, doubting they’d understand
her own tongue.

  “I hit it first,” the taller one said.

  “You did,” she agreed, “but mine was the killing blow.” Let them argue that, if they could. Or dared. She smiled. They no doubt thought her a lone, defenceless woman. This might be interesting.

  Gwyltha waited as the taller one viewed the downed animal, exchanged glances with his companion then looked up at her with dark eyes that didn’t hide his amazement.

  * * *

  Justin stared up at the woman. She was short, with the dark hair of the native Brigantes who inhabited this part of Northern Britain. But what she might lack in height, she more than made up for in presence. Hades! Seemed she was prepared to stare him down and fight over the kill. Understandable. Her people were no doubt half-starved at this point in the winter. But did she have no fear, facing two armed Romans as if they were barefoot peasants? Apparently not. “I hit it first.”

  “Indeed you did, centurion. You hit it and it veered in my direction. You made the kill easy for me. I thank you.” She inclined her head.

  “You know without doubt you killed it, Briton?” his companion, Marcus asked.

  “My spear did.” She glanced towards the barely twitching animal.

  “By Zeus!” Marcus muttered.

  Justin’s spear had pierced the creature’s haunch. Hers was embedded between its eyes so deeply that the metal point was barely visible.

  No question who’d made the kill.

  “You dispute the evidence of your own eyes, centurion?” she asked, with a little twist of a smile. “Or perhaps you think I placed my spear after the animal fell.” She raised a dark eyebrow and Justin found himself staring into the depths of her dark-blue eyes.