Kiss of the Vampire (The Vanderlind Realm Book 2) (2 page)

His head bobbed up and down. “Yeah,” he told me, his voice all slurry.

“Okay,” I said, releasing him. “Now go home and get a good night’s sleep. In the morning you’re going to take some iron tablets and then start making the world a better place.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, taking a few shaky steps back up the alley.

I watched him until he disappeared around the corner.

“Is that how you’ve been spending your time?” I heard an amused male voice say. “Playing vigilante while filling your belly.”

I swung my head around to see who was speaking. If my heart had still pumped in my chest, it would have skipped a beat. There he was, leaning against a brick wall, looking devilishly handsome as the night breeze tugged at his blond hair. He was my maker, Dorian Vanderlind.

Chapter 2

Dorian

I wasn’t used to being rejected by women. That had never been a problem for me, even when I was mortal. If anything, I usually had the exact opposite problem. I frequently found that a lovely vampiress didn’t want to call it quits, even after I thought that our relationship had run its course. So when Haley Scott rejected me, I felt it deeply. And it wasn’t just my ego that had been bruised. Although I was sure there were quite a few ladies in the undead world who would have been delighted to disagree with me. I felt a longing for Haley that I had never experienced with any other woman. It seemed I couldn’t stop thinking about her, no matter how I tried to distract myself.

At first I didn’t care much for the girl. I’d really only turned her because of a foolish impulse; I’d felt sorry for her. And maybe I’d done it a bit out of a vague envy that I felt toward my cousin’s relationship that he had with a young mortal. But that feeling was horribly misplaced. Haley flat out refused to obey me as her maker, or even listen to me when I tried to explain that she was no longer a member of the living. And I had to keep chasing after her to stop her from feeding wherever she pleased and bringing the scrutiny of the mortal world crashing down on our heads. It got so bad that I considered putting an end to her nonsense with the point of a stake.

Now it seemed impossible to me that such a thought had ever entered my head. It was our kiss that sealed my fate. Just one solitary kiss had caused my world to crumble, leaving me to live in the ruins. I don’t know what it was about the simple act of Haley’s lips pressing against mine, but it somehow changed everything. I felt connected to her in a way that I had never felt with another being, living or undead. I could see spending eternity with her, wrapped in each other’s arms. And much to my surprise, I found the idea actually enticing. And I’m the man who used to have a panic attack if a vampiress suggested we spend two weeks together in the Baltics.

But Haley didn’t want me. Not even the least little bit. As far as I could tell, she wasn’t even willing to use me for sex, let alone spend any length of time with me. Before Haley, I’d had very little experience with love. After Haley, the only kind of love I knew was unrequited. And besides lost love, unrequited really had to be the worst kind.

I’d offered to be Haley’s mentor. Even if she didn’t love me, I could at least protect her from the surprising perils of being a vampire. But she didn’t even want that. She wanted absolutely nothing to do with me. She said she preferred to spend her time taking revenge on some youths in the small town where she lived. I’d offered her the world, but she preferred to stay in Tiburon, Ohio. My company was that repellant to her.

Her rejection was so painful that I slunk away like a kicked dog, not even bothering to tell my family that I was leaving. It was rather an ill-bred thing to do, but personal heartache had blinded me to good manners. Instead I flew to Europe to pick up my old life where I’d left it. I avoided Paris, of course. I didn’t want to plunge that deeply back into my old life. But I began attending parties and masquerades with a new vigor. I made conquests of every vampiress who batted her eyes in my direction. I behaved like a bigger scoundrel than I had ever done before. But it was no good. None of it helped.

No matter how delightful the company I found, no female could erase the memory of Haley and our one life-altering kiss. I would lie in my coffin all day, staring at the lid and thinking about her, wondering how she was surviving. Had she found a discreet way to feed herself? What if she was being reckless with her appetite and the Bishops found out? Our ruling family did not look kindly upon rogue vampires who drew unnecessary attention to the existence of the undead. Haley knew nothing about keeping herself safe. And even if I tried to tell her, she was so stubborn that she probably wouldn’t listen to me. It was infuriating.

“What’s wrong with you, Dorian?” a sultry voice asked as I slouched against a wall at a party, wishing I wasn’t there, but feeling unwilling to leave. “Why such a long face? You might as well turn in for the day if you’re that miserable.”

I lifted my head to see Ilona Firenze gazing at me with a concerned expression on her face. She was a striking woman with a head full of bright red, corkscrew curls and a figure that drew attention wherever she went. “Hello, Ilona,” I managed to say.

“Oh come on now,” she purred. “Are you really that world weary?”

“It’s nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”

She offered me a goblet. “Why don’t we have a drink and you can tell me all about it?”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Well let’s have a drink anyway,” she insisted. “I haven’t seen you in ages.”

I wasn’t in the mood to make small-talk with Ilona. She would expect me to flatter her and charm her with stories of my escapades, but I just didn’t have the energy to make genial chit-chat. Plus Ilona and I had a past that bordered on the edge of unsavory and I didn’t want to breathe new life into the relationship.

“I don’t think I’d be much good, as far as company,” I told her. “I’m not really up for conversation.”

Ilona cocked her head to one side and looked at me out of the corner of her lashes. “Maybe conversation isn’t what I had in mind.”

I went home with her. It was a foolish thing to do, but I couldn’t help myself. I was just so miserable that I was grasping at anything to help me forget. And Ilona was quite attractive, even by vampire standards.

I had meant to just have a bit of a romp with her, but I couldn’t go through with it. I ended up confessing everything to her about Haley in a giant glob of words. I knew it wasn’t the smartest thing I could do. And I knew listening to me pour out my heart wasn’t exactly what Ilona had had in mind when she’d invited me home. But once I’d started talking, I found I couldn’t stop.

“It’s getting close to dawn,” she said after I’d talked for a good, long time. There was still an hour or two left of the night, but I’d obviously worn out her patience. “You should probably be on your way.”

“Oh,” I said, stopping short. It wouldn’t have been unheard of for me to stay overday at her place, but that was obviously not what she had in mind. “I guess I should get going.” I got to my feet, feeling foolish. “Sorry for talking your ear off. But I appreciate you listening.”

An annoyed frown pulled at the corners of Ilona’s ruby red lips. “Just imagine, the notorious Dorian Vanderlind, felled by a fledgling vampire. I just feel so embarrassed for you,” she said, the gleam of malice in her eye. I guess listening to me whine all night had made her cross and a little bitter. “And you say you can’t even get control over your own progeny?” she asked as she walked me to the door. She shook her head. “I never would have imagined that you could sink so low.”

“Thank you for your hospitality,” I told her before fleeing into the night. Confessing anything to Ilona was a mistake and I don’t know what had possessed me. At the least she would spread malicious gossip about me. And at the worst… well, I couldn’t begin to imagine what she would do at her worst. I didn’t know what Ilona had been like as a mortal, but as a member of the undead, she was known as a ball-buster. A very hot ball-buster, but cruel nonetheless. I felt worse than I had in weeks as I crawled into my casket.

After that unfortunate evening I began to run with a more sordid crowd than I would normally associate. For many vampires life becomes an endless bacchanal and I thought that maybe one long party would blunt my feelings for my scion.

It didn’t work. The lower I sunk on the undead social ladder, the more I longed to be with Haley and share with her the finest things immortality had to offer. On one such evening of wild revelry, I had two lovely vampiresses vying for my attention. At first I thought there was going to be a fight and I wonder if I would find that a welcome distraction. But then they somehow agreed that they should unite and turn their aggression toward me.

I barely escaped their clutches with my dignity intact. Once I had returned home and was alone in my bed, I stared at the ceiling of my coffin, wishing for the sweet oblivion that was sleep. But I knew that even if I could have achieved such bliss, I would only dream of Haley. She had infected me and there was apparently no cure.

“The hell with it,” I growled, although there was no one in the room to hear me. “I just have to find a way to make her love me.”

Chapter 3

Dorian

The next nightfall I hurriedly threw a few things in a bag and took off for America. I didn’t even pause long enough to say goodbye to some of my old friends. Or any of my new ones, for that matter. All I cared about was seeing Haley again. She may not have loved me. ― And she obviously did not feel connected to me in the way most vampires felt toward their maker. ― But I had to see that she was alright. I had to at least try to teach her the things every vampire needed to know to stay hidden from the eyes of the mortal world. She may not have loved me, but I loved her and that was all that really mattered.

It took me a few days to get back to Tiburon. I had to fly in stages, spending the daylight hours in safe houses along the way. I probably took more risks than I should have while travelling, but I couldn’t help myself. I was too impatient to see Haley again.

By the time I reached my ancestral home on the outskirts of Tiburon, I was famished. I was so hungry that I could have easily lost control and slaked my thirst on the blood of a stranded motorist or a young deer wandering through the woods on the Vanderlind estate.

The Vanderlind Castle is an actual castle, built back when parapets and a portcullis were much more important in an abode than granite countertops and recessed lighting. My grandfather had the whole castle moved, stone-by-stone, from Budapest to the shores of the Tiburon River in the nineteen thirties when support for Hitler started gathering momentum. Vampires and battlefields should never mix. It was sometimes a challenge to maintain control around a perfectly healthy human, never mind a man with a limb blown off who was spilling blood all over the soil.

The exterior of the castle was rather gray and foreboding, but my aunt had done wonders with the interior. It was actually quite pretty, as far as fortresses go. I entered the building from the back patio. We’d had a large sliding-glass door installed. I had thought about ringing the bell and entering through the front door like a gentleman, but I was too miserable to stand around while my family made a fuss. I just wanted to fill my belly before going to bed. I would start searching for Haley immediately after the next sunset and I wanted to look my best. My family would want me to stay up late. They would draw the blackout curtains to keep out the sun and insist that I tell them about what I’d been up to since I had shamefully slipped into the night a few days after Christmas. I didn’t say goodbye or thank them for their hospitality. It was true that the castle was just as much mine as it was any of theirs, but I hadn’t lived there in so long that it always felt like I was a guest.