Biting Holiday Honeymoons

by Mary Hughes

  A killing machine. I shuddered. “So you bury him? Why not just leave him out for the sun to do its thing?”

  Glynn said, “He seeps into the ground and spreads like a plant. Then we don’t know where to find him. So we bury him where we know where he is. It used to be London since so many of us lived there. But after the Ripper debacle the Ancient One tasked us to find a better way. I figured out the cave angle.”

  “Cave angle?”

  “Caves are at a constant temperature year-round. Without temperature fluctuation we can calculate how long until Dracula regenerates. We picked Cave of the Mounds here. Crystal Lake Cave is closer to the Ancient One, but Wisconsin is cooler. Although now we have motion sensors, which is how we knew the monster rose early.”

  “So what happened that he’s up early?”

  “Maybe global climate change affected the cave?” Glynn shrugged as he jogged. “Whatever, the sensors alerted us and I was deputized to come after him. I’m a tracker, among other things. Ah, here is his spoor. He went northwest.”

  We picked up the pace and ran over open fields, not seeing anything until we crossed another highway, and corn husks and hay gave way to the shorn grass of a small subdivision.

  Just gliding up the walkway of a ranch-style home was a slim pale man.

  “Dracula,” I hissed. We leaped after him. The bastard was mounting the stoop, actually daring to ring the doorbell. Bo set me down and I wished again for my gun. But police work had taught me to make do with what I could find. In this case it was a broomstick yanked from the butt of a straw witch.

  I shouldered the broom like a rifle, counting on darkness and a bit of theater to carry me. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  Dracula spun. His white face gleamed eerily in the porch light, bloody fangs exposed. Both hands shot into the air, a bag dangling from one. “You want my candy, lady? Here, take it.” He shoved the bag at me, paper crackling with his shivers.

  October 31. Just face-smack me with a Mauser. This was a kid in a trick-or-treat costume. “Sorry. We’re not muggers.”

  His hands slowly came down. “What are you then? Are you guys even wearing costumes?”

  We exchanged a glance. “Sure we are,” I said. “We’re…we’re…uh…”

  Glynn said, “We’re undercover police. We were on our way to a costume party—but we got lost. Can you tell me where we are?”

  “Mount Horeb,” the boy said.

  “Thank you. We’ll be on our way.” He paused. “Good luck with your candy.”

  We hit the trail again. Drac’s spoor crisscrossed the village like a drunk’s. Following it, we surprised maybe a hundred Draculas, each impostor jacking up our adrenaline. Considering the entire population was less than seven thousand people, a hundred’s saying something. Maybe a sale on Dracula costumes, or they knew subconsciously that the original was buried nearby.

  That made me remember he wasn’t buried any more, which started me worrying. Where was he? And why did he have to get loose tonight, when all these kids were walking around outside with their vampire-tempting blood?

  “Who are you?” A deep voice interrupted my thoughts.

  I looked up to see a dad with big ears and narrowed suspicious green eyes blocking us. He pulled a couple little Dracs with similar big ears and green eyes closer to him. “You’re not from around here.”

  Jumping jelly donuts. All these kids, and here we were, freaky looking kidless adults wandering around like perverts. This could be disastrous.

  Glynn nudged Bo. “I can’t shift yet. Do your thing.”

  Bo glared at him but dutifully passed his hand over his face. A moment later my husband’s skin was white, his nose was red and bulbous, and his beautiful ash-blond waves were crinkly red springs. “We’re the entertainment.”

  “Clown!” The youngest child burst out crying.

  “It’s all right, little one. I’ll protect you.” Glynn’s eyes went blood red, his face plated. His fangs emerged and he hissed, as if a child being scared was a danger he could fight.

  The child’s sobs died. “Dracula!” He tore loose from his father—to give Glynn a hug. “Look, Daddy. Dracula’s come back to save us.”

  “Thank you.” Both the father and older boy looked at Glynn with respect.

  Glynn flushed red.

  Burnish my bullets, Drac was their hero. Which explained all the Drac costumes but not how pure vampire hunger could have inspired the gifts of candy and hugs the trio gave Glynn.

  So after they’d gone on their way I asked, “What was all that about?”

  Flags of color stained Glynn’s sculpted cheeks. “I fought a couple rogues here a few years ago. Some kids saw me with fangs and claws so I pretended to be Dracula as a cover.”

  “You what?” Bo’s clown look was gone, but his eyebrows winged so high they could’ve been painted on.

  Glynn shrugged one shoulder. “I never thought they’d tell about it. Or if they told they wouldn’t be believed. At least this makes our job easier.”

  I planted fists on hips. “This makes our job harder. All these people, instead of running from Drac, will walk right up to him.”

  “No, that’s a good thing,” Bo said. “Running people are prey. Even semi-awake, Dracula would pursue them automatically.”

  Glynn’s nostrils flared. He knelt on the ground. “He’s been here.”

  Bo drew in a sharp breath. “You smell blood?”

  “Not human, thank goodness. But he’s moving less erratically. We need to go faster.” Glynn rose. “Carrying your wife will draw attention. Maybe you should leave her here.”

  I bared teeth like I had fangs. “Ain’t happening.”

  “We’ll need her,” Bo said. “She’ll help with the humans. Fortunately, I have a solution.”

  And we were on Drac’s trail again.

  “I wish I had my gun,” I said for the umpteen zillionth time as I jounced on my husband’s broad shoulders. “But no, you insisted I wouldn’t need it on our honeymoon. That all I’d need was lingerie and nightwear.” I thumped his hard muscles. “Which you’ll just keep taking off.”

  “And you’ll love it,” he replied smugly, which shut me up. Not because it was a great comeback, although it was. But because Bo’s velvet voice was coming from the velvet muzzle of a horse.

  I was riding a golden stallion, playing my version of a G-rated Irish-Latina Lady Godiva. Kids and parents saw us and waved. Would have been fun if not for the very real threat of Dracula.

  “When we catch him, how are we going to handle it?” Glynn said. “He’s certain to be surrounded by people. Cutting off his head will be a bit obvious. Not to mention, what if he tries to escape? If we have to run after him, how will we explain our preternatural speed?”

  “Elena will figure it out. That’s her specialty, keeping humans unaware of us.” Bo’s pride was obvious in how he swished his tail. “She makes it look easy.”

  Oh, sure, easy. Stop a vampire from using his super speed or misting ability while I mass-hypnotized a bunch of people. Easy.

  And then I thought, heck, it is easy. Given that said vamp was more monster than human.

  Glynn stopped with a low growl. “There he is.”

  A slim and pale man floated down the main street. He looked like a hundred other kid-Dracs, except for the eerie way he moved, like a nun on wheels. Dracula, the real deal, was no taller than me. Way smaller than my massive Viking. I wondered what all the fuss was about.

  Then he turned and saw me. Our eyes met.

  An ice-cold shiver ran down my neck. Dracula’s ruby eyes were dead. Not blank, but ghastly, as if the imps of hell danced in his brain. This guy could kill me like I’d kill a mosquito. No, not even with that much emotion. He’d kill me like he’d pull the wings off a fly.

  Death walked skeletal fingers down my spine. I didn’t scare easily but at that I slid off Bo’s back and ran away.

  Dracula’s vampire circuits snapped on. He blew into mist and came after me, so fa
st even Bo and Glynn couldn’t catch him.

  Before I could draw breath to scream he solidified around me, trapping me. As if I was under his spell, my chin lifted; I felt my pulse beating like a beacon.

  He opened his mouth, fangs dripping. His breath wafted into my nose, stale but sweet, like rotting food.

  His eyes bored into me, demanding my complete surrender.

  Yeah, right. He was a fifteenth-century male who’d been out of touch for a while. I was a twenty-first-century cop.

  I kneed him in the groin. He wasn’t expecting it, women having come a long way in the past few hundred years. He howled, unable to do anything but bend over and hurt. So he couldn’t mist out when Bo and his patrol blade misted in. Glynn ran up a moment later, drew a huge, gleaming-bright blade etched with writing. I stepped back while they chopped off Drac’s head and dug out his heart.

  There was a collective gasp from around us. My vision had gone narrow and focused while I dealt with Drac, but now I realized we had an audience. Sweet cream-filled donuts, this could be trouble.

  Thinking fast, I scooped up the head. I held it out and bowed. “Thank you! This reenactment of Dracula’s Doom has been brought to you by Dawn Truck Lines—‘When It Absolutely Has To Be There By Dawn’.”

  There was a spatter of applause. Glynn retrieved a jack o’ lantern from someone’s front porch and plopped it on Drac’s shoulders (the body still reeling around, ugh), and the applause strengthened. Bo snatched a hat off someone’s head and started passing it around. That made us golden.

  We also got fifty bucks. Sweet.

  “Someone stole all my sexy nighties.” I stood with Bo next to the wrecked Maybach. Glynn was off reburying Dracula for another hundred years’ nap.

  “You complained that I’d just peel them off you anyway.” Bo pulled me to his massive body, purring.

  “True.” I snuggled in. But still no bed, so I opened my eyes and considered the car’s smashed front end. “How are we going to get to the Dells now?”

  “Well…” Bo shimmered. A golden stallion pawed the ground in front of me.

  “Okay then.” I climbed on. No saddle so when he galloped and trotted I had to weave fingers into his mane and clamp hard with my thighs, and by the time we reached our bed and breakfast, my vulva had been rubbed to two drenching climaxes.

  Which only meant that when Bo tumbled me at last into the king-sized bed, I was starving for him inside me. He braced himself on muscular arms above me, his erection tickling my curls. I spread my thighs so welcoming-wide I was doing the splits. His chest pumped and flushed over me, and his nostrils flared. “Damn, Elena, you smell wonderful.”

  Since I’d been running all night, it wasn’t my perfume, but for Bo, it never was. “I taste even better.” I turned my head, offering my pulse.

  He grunted. “I’m not Dracula. I still have a human brain, human emotions.”

  “Thank goodness for that. How else could you love me? But you’re also a vampire.” I arched my neck, baring jugular. “How else can I love you?”

  “Elena,” he breathed, and buried his fangs in my throat. At the same instant he drove his cock deep. My starving pussy sucked him deeper still.

  I gave myself over to the intense sexual power of my vampire, the dark pleasure of his love. And it was love. My fiery creature of the night was tempered by his humanity. The deep, rhythmic thrusts, the sharp bite that drove me to a powerful climax also branded me to the core. To my heart, to my soul.

  Soul. At one time I’d accused Bo of being a soulless monster. His reply was to question me. “Are you so sure that I’m soulless, Detective? Have you proof? Ever actually seen a soul to know I’m without one?”

  That Halloween I had my answer. Because as we made love, I stared into his eyes, the vast and stormy blue of a northern sea, and saw his profound love for me.

  And I knew he had a soul because I saw our love branded there.

  Biting Christmas

  This story takes place between Biting Nixie and The Bite of Silence.

  I slid into the fizzing steam of the suite’s hot tub. Excitement effervesced in my blood as I waited for the naked man of my dreams.

  Any moment now, a strong thigh would appear in the doorway, prelude to Julian’s killer bod and square competent hands bringing champagne to toast our first night together as man and wife. Well, not man, exactly. Husband and wife, then, but with all the physical goodies that entailed. I sank lower into the tub’s wet heat in anticipation.

  Naturally, “Home on the Range” blasted from the bedroom instead. My cell phone.

  Worse yet, my mother.

  “Spucatum!” I gave it extra explosive consonants. Julian had been teaching me Latin, not his uptight lawyer words, but the good ones. “Asinus.”

  The phone continued to ring. I slid straight, sloshing water in my agitation.

  Tonight was my wedding night, for fuzznuck’s sake. After a six-week engagement (translation: no sex) I was crawling the walls. Some German mothers were protective. Mine was an armored tank. She’d let us kiss a time or two but shut it down the instant there was the slightest hint of tongue.

  “Nixie.” The naked man of my dreams glided through the doorway with two flutes of Sec champagne. He was six-foot plus of lean, muscular power with stunning blue eyes framed by sweeping coal-black eyelashes, smooth bronzed skin begging to be tasted and below, a jutting twelve-inch gavel demanding it.

  Julian Emerson. High-powered attorney, master vampire, and as of today, all mine.

  “Sweetheart.” His silky, Boston-cultured voice caressed me. “Shall I fetch your phone?”

  Okay, that didn’t caress. With a groan, I sank deeper into the water, but not in anticipation this time. If it had been anybody but Mom I’d have said abso-fucking-lutely not. My most pressing question should have been what to do to him first. Kiss or nibble? Lick my name over his massive pecs? Suck little hickeys down his riptide abs?

  But with Mom… “I suppose. Otherwise, she’ll just call back. Hourly. We’d never get anything started.”

  He raised sleek black brows. “I can do quite a bit in fifty-nine minutes.”

  Whoo-boy. Fan me—with a tornado. When it came to sex, Julian had a supernatural advantage. He not only had a vampire’s orgasmic bite, he’d had over a thousand years to perfect his technique. So let me tell you, his technique was pretty damn perfect. “You could,” I said. “But I’d be distracted, bracing myself for the maternal Armageddon. I’d better answer.”

  “That’s my brave Nixie.” He set the flutes on the edge of the Jacuzzi and dropped into mist.

  I don’t mean he fell into a fog. He became a river of quicksilver that flowed out of the room. Moments later he glided back with my Juke, deer and antelope still playing.

  Jukes swivel open; I took out my no-nooky frustrations by cranking it open like a cheap hand fan. “Go.”

  “Fröhliche Weihnachten, Dietlinde.” My mother insists on using the name she christened me with. Still hoping it’d morph me from a punk musician to something more respectable—like a hooker.

  “Merry Christmas to you too, Mom.” My eyes flitted over Julian, leaning his big muscular frame against the door jamb. “But I’m a little busy. If that’s all…?”

  “I’m calling to remind you about dinner tomorrow. Turkey and ham. Two o’clock. Don’t be late—like last time.”

  “I wasn’t late last time.” My mother could guilt St. Nicholas…wait. “What do you mean, dinner?”

  “Christmas dinner,” she said, like she was reasonable and sane.

  “I’m on my honeymoon! I’m not coming to dinner at my parents.”

  “You are still in town, ja?” Mom somehow managed to retain her German accent despite being second-generation American.

  “Because you insisted we stay at Otto’s Bed and Breakfast Smorgasbord.” I’d wanted to jet off immediately. Somewhere warm, like Aruba or Hawaii, or even just southern Indiana. Instead we were braving the Illinois cold in Meiers Corners.
My hometown burg, like living in a year-round Oktoberfest, is just west of Chicago in miles but its own tiny country in mindset.

  “Tomorrow is Christmas Day. A time for family.” Her tone turned stiff. “Would it kill you to spend one day with your aging parents?”

  I winced. “Mom…”

  “I made pumpkin pie. Cinnamon whipped cream.”

  Ow. The old one-two—guilt jab, temptation KO. “Mom, I would, but…Julian and I had plans to stay in bed all day. To relax.”

  Really to try to top our personal best of seven ways in seven hours, but I didn’t say that out loud. Not only would it be weird talking sex with my mom, I’m pretty sure she still thinks I’m eight years old, which would make it weirder. Although where she thinks the grandkids she wants are coming from, I don’t know. Maybe she imagines I’ll find them under cabbage leaves or by sprinkling fairy dust in my morning cereal.

  Sure enough, she said, “Relaxing plans for the whole day? Oh! You are watching the old Christmas specials?”

  I eyed Julian. A Christmas special? Well, if I draped his arms with tinsel, put a light in his navel and hung an ornament on his big branch… I cleared my throat. “Sort of.”

  “It is not Christmas without the Grinch and Charlie Brown. Do you remember spending whole evenings watching them with the family?”

  She made me watch them. “Yes, Mother.”

  “You noticed I packed the DVDs for you. Good. I had to take out some ratty old undergarments to make room. I am surprised at you, Dietlinde. Those undies were so worn you could see right through them. Practically strings. Aren’t you worried about getting in an accident? What would the doctors think?”

  I groaned. Spank me with a Stratocaster. My thongs, sheer camisoles and sexy nighties. Ejected to make room for the Grinch. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “You’re welcome.” She never got sarcasm, for which I was eternally grateful. “Well, Dietlinde, I will let you get back to It’s a Wonderful Life. Goodbye.”

  I shut the phone. “And that will be the last interruption of the night, if I have anything to say about it.”