Michele Hauf - Seducing the Vampire

“You could not wait for me?” he wondered as he stroked the hair from her neck.

“I thought I was your favorite,” she pouted. “I saw you leaning so close to that wolf slayer.”

So she was jealous. “You are my favorite, Sabine.” For now.

He kissed her neck, grazing a fang along the vein. No passion required, only hunger for solace. Ever polite, only a small cry from her. She clutched his jabot and cooed as he extracted the hot blood from her vein. Laced with opium, it relaxed him and dizzied his world. Made him forget things.

He sucked the sweet wine of oblivion, yet she began to struggle. Normally she slipped into a weak reverie.

Constantine caught Sabine’s wrist. “Settle. I am not finished.”

“Oh!” Such a shriek could not be because of his ministrations. Sabine squirmed on his lap and slid off, landing on the floor, her head tucked. “It is like knives!”

Licking the blood from his fingers, Constantine stopped and noted what he was doing. He was never so messy. Where had it come from …?

A smear of blood across his lap trailed over the chaise longue. He startled. On the parquet floor, writhing in pain, Sabine bled from her loins.

“Richard!”

Jumping off the chaise and over his kin, Constantine wobbled to catch his balance. The opium hazed his perception. He wanted to recline and drift away, to annihilate the nasty foreboding Rhys Hawkes’s presence had embedded.

“Hell, she’s losing it,” Richard hissed. He plunged to the floor and lifted Sabine by the shoulders. “What should I do?”

“Get her out of here!”

Unwilling to look upon the wailing female, Constantine turned and smashed his fist across the candelabra. Half a dozen tapers clattered against the wall. Flame ignited the English paper but quickly burned out. “Damn it. Will I never have what I desire?”

RHYS HAD TO ADMIT THE HAWKER down the street offered excellent pheasant legs. Roasting for hours over applewood chips gave the meat a soft, sweet flavor. He set aside two cleaned bones on the paper they’d come wrapped in and started on his third.

He preferred meat to blood. Or rather, his werewolf did. And though he was vampire right now—and vampires could not abide meat—the werewolf ruled his thoughts. He would regret this when the vampire retaliated during the full moon.

But until then—his werewolf mind urged Rhys to tear another strip of savory meat from the bone.

Setting aside the cleaned pheasant bone, Rhys scanned the copy of Journal de Paris he’d unfolded on the table, yet found he wasn’t in the mood to read about the queen’s curious involvement with a priceless diamond necklace.

They’d been in Paris a week and William had not returned home. Montfalcon was young, strong and bold, yet he was also gentle and discerning.

Rhys could not figure what would have led a wolf to take Monsieur Chevalier’s life, and that of his wife.

Indeed, could it have been William? Certainly would give a man good reason not to be found.

No, he was forming conclusions with little basis in truth.

Nefarious deeds had occurred within the vampire and werewolf communities. Suspicion should point to the Order of the Stake, a covert organization of mortals intent on slaying all vampires.

Mortals or a werewolf? Rhys would rule out neither.

If she had been patroned by Chevalier, perhaps Mademoiselle LaMourette could provide some insight.

“Oh, did I tell you?” Orlando said, interrupting Rhys’s thoughts as he grabbed another pheasant leg from the diminishing stack. “I learned something about the slain vampires last evening after you went off to stalk the vampiress.”

He would hardly call it stalking. Mild interest, perhaps. “Yes?”

“Seems they were a husband and wife, and … the vampire …”

“Henri Chevalier.”

“Yes, he patroned only his wife and one other vampiress. Viviane LaMourette.”

“Yes, I know.”

“But did you know —” the boy leaned in dramatically “— she is bloodborn?”

Rhys sat back in his chair, stretching out his legs. Bloodborn female vampires were rare, a prize to snatch and hoard. If two bloodborn vampires were to procreate, the offspring would be very powerful.

Lord de Salignac was bloodborn. Rhys was also aware tribe Nava was desperate for new blood. The tribe was in danger of extinction for a mere dozen or so males remained.

“You are sure?”

“A faery told me. And then I stole a kiss from her.”

“You should be cautious of the Sidhe, Orlando.”

“But you—”

“Have a distinct relationship with their kind.” And not one he wished to cultivate. “A man unaccustomed to dealing with those who wield glamour had best stay as far from them as possible.”

“I kissed her once. Besides, I’ve my eye on the mortal pretties who prance about the Palais Royal and lift their skirts to show their unmentionables.”

Rhys shook his head. “Be careful there, too, boy.”

So Viviane LaMourette was a bloodborn vampiress. He’d thought only the created vampires required a patron. But then, this was the first existing bloodborn female vampire he had heard about in a long time.

“Bloodborn,” he whispered.

Constantine would be a fool to let so valuable a female slip from his clutches. Which would make Rhys’s successful seduction as a means to revenge all the more satisfying.

And aren’t you doing a spectacular job of that, man?

“I think the murders are in retaliation for the wolf slayer,” Orlando said.

“You do?”

A pack wolf had been murdered as spring had arrived. He had been found beside a toppled carriage, neck broken. Yet the killer had not been a mortal, for rumors whispered through the Salon Noir it was vampire.

The packs were careful to keep away from humans, yet the werewolf’s humanlike soul required a connection with the mortal world when the full moon insisted they mate.

Rhys, on the other hand, suffered moon madness. Normal werewolves sought to mate during the full moon; his werewolf—urged on by the vampire mind—hungered for murder.

“So how did it go with the vampiress? I thought you intended to seduce her?”

“We got on well enough.”

“Isn’t what I sensed.”

Cheeky boy. Rhys splayed out a hand. “Did you expect she would fall into my arms at first glance? I intend to call on her today. She must have information regarding her patron’s death.”

“I wager you are the only vampire who dares approach her.”

“Makes things more interesting, I suppose.”

“How will you take from Constantine the one thing he wants more than life? Will you kidnap and ravage her?”

“No.” Rhys chuckled. “It will be far sweeter to win her admiration, then see Constantine and know the woman he loves has been tainted by me.”

THE RAIN HAD STOPPED. Clouds blurred the moon.

Viviane navigated the slick cobblestones with airy steps. The women at Versailles had nothing on her balletic rush-walk.

A cat meowed. The creak of carriage wheels a street away slapped the hard stone.

The Dark Ones occupied these spare hours between the theatre and the dawn arrivals. Viviane mused the blood was fresher, healthier even, than from the languorous aristocrats.

A breath pulsed the night.

Viviane paused, but did not look over her shoulder. A survival trait, she never made herself obvious, be it walking through a crowd or alone.

Again a breath teased the air and tickled the base of her neck. Goose bumps tightened her skin. Normally she was the one to produce such a sensation in a victim.

She picked up her pace, clutching her skirt to keep it from the wet cobbles.