Bound by Blood

One The stench of dead fish from yet another red tide permeated the muggy air along this deserted strip of Miami Beach. Bright lights blinked merrily in the distance, the multicolored lights on Christmas trees blending peacefully with white lights topping oversize menorahs and a huge blue neon Star of David. Too bad the goodwill of the season hadn’t rubbed off on whoever offed Nelson Iorio. Annabelle Grace “Aggie” Dupont, newly promoted lieutenant in homicide division of the Metro-Dade Police Department, stared down at the wreath of seaweed surrounding the dead gangster’s head. What might have done him in wasn’t readily apparent. As a matter of fact, old Nelson wore an almost orgasmic smile on his round, pale face. Oh, well, she’d leave figuring out the cause of death to the medical examiner. That was what he got paid for. Meanwhile, Aggie tried to ignore the trappings of a holiday season she’d been ignoring a year now, since losing Charles on Christmas Eve. Upset by the neon reminders of her loss, she left as soon as she’d set her crew to combing the area for clues. Back at the station a few minutes later, she began compiling lists of people who might have wanted Nelson Iorio dead. Disgusted, she watched the stack of profiles grow to an impressive height as they kept spitting out from her printer. It probably would have been easier to enumerate the ones who didn’t want the mobster dead. “Aggie?” Brian Smith, one of the new recruits the chief had assigned to her, stuck his head in the door. “You’re not gonna believe t his one.” “What am I not going to believe?” She set down the profile of a possible perp and motioned for Brian to come on in the cubicle that passed for her office. “The morgue attendant must be high on crack. He tried to tell me Nelson Iorio was killed by a vampire when I went down and picked this up.” Practically shaking with laughter, he handed her the coroner’s initial report. “Calm down. This is obviously somebody’s idea of a joke.” Pissed because this wasn’t the first trick played on her since her promotion six weeks earlier, she picked up the phone. “Get me the goddamn medical examiner.” A few minutes later she, too, was shaking, but not because she found this funny. It was no fucking joke. Aggie stared down at the report that detailed two fang marks found on Iorio’s fat neck...and an almost total lack of blood in his body. “Cause of death: massive hemorrhage secondary to two puncture wounds into left jugular vein, 2.3 cm. apart and 1.1 cm. in depth. Impression: bite wound from unknown assailant, inconsistent with human bite.”

Shit. If the assailant wasn’t human, and it was unlikely it had been a vicious dog since the body was found unscathed except for those two marks, then the morgue guy’s assumption might have been on the mark. Right. Vampires didn’t exist. Did they? Aggie sure as hell wasn’t anxious to go tell her boss a nonexistent creature from Transylvania or somewhere had rid Miami of Iorio. After ordering Brian to call around and find an expert on vampire legends, Aggie re-read the report. Damn it, nothing in it had changed in the past few minutes. “Got anything yet?” she asked Brian when he came back to her, a single sheet of paper in his hand. “Aleric Dunric. He’s an investment manager, lives over on Key Biscayne. Woman who runs that goth place over in Coral Gables said she met him once. Talked with him about supernatural stuff. She told me Dunric knew more about vampires than anybody else she knew.” Aggie got up, shrugged into her shoulder holster, and poked her arms into the sleeves of a beat-up blazer. “Guess I’d better go pay a visit to this Mr. Dunric. Think he’ll be up this time of day?” Might as well play along, pretend there might actually be such a thing as the legendary blood drinkers, and that one of them might have decided to make a meal on Nelson Iorio. After all, it wasn’t as if she had any real leads. Iorio’s Rolex watch and a fat wad of cash in his wallet had been on the corpse, apparently untouched. Aggie noted the yellow crime tape was still hanging around the spot where they’d found Iorio’s body as she drove down A1A toward the bridge to Key Biscayne. Not that it was cordoning off anything of value. The investigative team hadn’t found a shred of evidence, not even a footprint. Surfers braved the cool December breeze to ride piddly three-foot breakers, and less hardy tourists sipped drinks from coconut shells at the trendy sidewalk cafes on the other side of the road. Fat chance anyone had looked up from his or her own merrymaking to witness the murder. No one ever did. Once on the key famed for decades as home to politicians and celebrities, Aggie checked the address again. She turned off the main thoroughfare onto what seemed a quiet cul de sac. Dunric’s place was impossible to miss. It was the only house, partially hidden by a high stone wall and protected by a gate complete with sentry house. No sentry, though. Just an intercom and presumably a remote control for the iron gate. “Your name, if you please. And state your business.” The crackly voice could have been male or female, young or old. Aggie tried without success to place the strange accent. It wasn’t native, and it wasn’t the Spanish that was heard in Miami almost as often as English.

“I’m Annabelle Dupont. Metro-Dade Police. I need to speak with Mr. Dunric,” she yelled into the ancient looking speaker. “One moment. I will see if he will receive you.” Oh, yeah. Dunric would receive her all right, even if she had to scale his fucking eight-foot stone wall. She had to put to rest this stupid notion of a vampire on the loose, and find out who really did in Iorio. Perhaps if the commissioner and the mayor went on TV and offered a medal...?

***** Ignoring the burning sensation in his eyes, Aleric Dunric peered out around the blackout drapes in his bedroom and stared through the metal of the car at the gate at...at Grace? The woman’s auburn curls kissed cheeks like fresh, sweet cream, and her lips formed a delectable bow. “Show the lady in, Lucretia,” he said, tilting his head toward the intercom. “I will see her in my study.” Ms. Annabelle Dupont might have an agenda, but so did he: to see her up close, learn if she was the reincarnation of his Grace, the woman he’d been searching for all over the world. To end his quest that had now lasted almost two hundred years. He yawned, for feeding always made him lethargic and he’d found a willing victim late last night, but excitement overwhelmed his exhaustion. By the time he’d dressed and headed downstairs, his energy level was restored. She saw the resemblance, too. As though mesmerized, she stared at the portrait above the mantel. “My apologies, Ms. Dupont, for keeping you waiting.” Slowly she turned, her breathing ragged. When she saw him, she let out a little yelp. “I’m sorry. You startled me. You look just like the man in the portrait.” “I am the man. And you are the woman.” “But–the painting is from another time.” The pulse in her throat throbbed, full of rich red blood, inviting... “It was painted in 1813. The year Lady Grace made her debut in London. I partnered her in many a dance. Loved her.” Her pupils suddenly dilated, as though she’d stared into a blazing sun. Her knees buckled. Alric scooped her up as she fell and took her to his room. Laid out there, still as death but for the throbbing pulse he longed to taste, she didn’t stir until after he’d removed his garments and stripped her to the waist. “W-what?” His cold touch on her soft, warm breasts apparently startled her from her faint.

Determined to overcome any objection, to bend her to his will, Aleric held her gaze and lowered his voice. “Be silent. I will not harm you. I will love you as I did two hundred years ago. Lay your hands above your head and do not move them.” Good. She no longer resisted, but lay there, apparently mesmerized, as he intended. Methodically he unzipped her slacks and drew them down legs as silky and shapely as he remembered. He found her panties wet, her smooth crotch hot. Her aroma awakened not bloodlust but a lust that had laid dormant over several human lifetimes...a lust to take her, possess her. He lay beside her, stroking her satin skin. The rise and fall of her breasts with every breath fascinated him, made him take in the air he did not require to sustain his existence. Aggie’s eyes opened when he touched her, her gaze raking his pale, hairless body. He was Charles, yet he was not. Charles was dead, his Harrier jet shot down over some unpronounceable town in southern Afghanistan. But...Alaric had the same triangular shaped birthmark over his right hipbone...the same handsome face and buff, muscular body. The same long, thick cock that had given her so much pleasure. Except Charles had always been warm, his skin kissed by long lazy days in the south Florida sun. Alaric’s hands were cold as death, his skin chalky pale as though he never exposed even his face and hands to daylight. Damn. It was as though they each were reincarnations of lost lovers. When he bent and took her mouth, his lips softened, warmed as they molded over hers. His tongue felt like molten velvet when he slid it along the seam of her lips, then plunged inside. “I’m going to fuck you as I should have then, holding nothing back,” he muttered when he broke the kiss. His gaze seared her, as fiery hot as his hands were cold. “No, do not move. I’d learn every inch of you, taste your honey. Sliding down her body, he nuzzled her breasts, drew first one and then the other taut nipple between his teeth. He tongue-fucked her belly button the way Charles used to do before spreading her legs wide and finding her aching clit. Oh God. She was on fire. With every teasing flick of his tongue, he brought her closer to the edge. Her pussy twitched, longing to feel his cool, rock-hard cock stretching and filling the emptiness there. She wanted to touch him yet dared not move lest the spell be broken. Besides, he’d ordered her to stay still, let him pleasure her. And something about his voice, his gaze, had made refusing him impossible. Awareness sizzled in every nerve ending when he lifted his head, met her gaze with eyes as black as night, yet glittering with the heat of his desire. “Grace. My beautiful, brave Grace.” He sank into her hot, wet core, his huge cock stretching her, filling the void, awakening hot sensations too long dormant. “Warm me. Let me make

you come alive.” Lowering his body to rest lightly against hers, he took her mouth again. His heavy balls slapped her ass with every hard thrust, the cool taut flesh sliding sinuously against her hot, wet folds. The hard muscles in his arms bunched under the strain of supporting his weight while he sampled her lips, her throat, the surface of her nipples already swollen and elongated from his earlier attention. Charles? No, Charles was dead. This man was Aleric. She mustn’t forget, mustn’t lose sight of why she was here, what she needed from him. His musk and hers filled her nostrils. The cool, pale aura that had surrounded him began to dissipate, almost as though by fucking her he absorbed her heat, her very essence. Her pussy clenched. Her nipples tingled. Sensations poured through her like molten lava, building up... She raised her hands, only to have him clasp both wrists in one big hand and return them above her head. “Do not.” His voice was ragged, as though the words came from deep within his chest. “Please. I need to touch you, too.” “No.” His groan inflamed her more, and when he raised her legs and draped them over his broad, muscular shoulders it felt as though he’d entered her womb. The connection was too strong, too emotional to have formed in the space of a few passionate moments...so much more than two strangers fucking, relieving an itch. Frighteningly like the love she’d buried with Charles. The feelings churning in her were incredible in their intensity. Her skin felt fiery hot. All over, but especially where they touched. She wanted to savor every stroke, every heated kiss. Wanted to give him what he was giving her, but he wouldn’t allow it. “Love me. Love me, too.” “I do. I will.” His cock lengthened, thickened, filling her...triggering a series of explosions that began in her pussy and spread to her swollen clit, her belly, her breasts. Her mind and heart. One burst after another, each stronger than the last, washed over her as he took her...claimed her with his mind as well as his perfect, sculpted body. When he spurted his hot load deep in her womb and shuddered, she could resist no longer. Wrestling her hands free, she clutched his hard ass, took the last bursts of his come and claimed it for her own. His come? Aleric’s last ecstatic moan morphed into a groan. For the first time since he’d lost Grace a hundred ninety years ago this Christmas season, he’d climaxed.

Chapter Two What the fuck had she done? Aggie looked around a bedroom she’d have expected to see in a medieval castle, not a mansion on Biscayne Bay. And she looked at the naked, sleeping vampire beside her, holding her hand and looking for all the world as if he’d never let her go. Vampire? She had to be losing her mind. This was Aleric Dunric, millionaire financial manager and the best lover she’d ever experienced. Not that there had been that many. She’d come here why? To find out about vampires, that was it. To get some hints as to who might have offed mobster Nelson Iorio. Not to fuck his brains out. But somehow he’d taken over her mind, compelled her to do his bidding. It was as if he’d hypnotized her. Hell, she didn’t go fucking around on duty, and she didn’t fuck around at all with strangers even if they did look like the reincarnation of her dead lover. Closing her eyes, Aggie reconstructed the scene downstairs when she’d first arrived. The painting that looked eerily like her. Aleric, who looked even more eerily like Charles. The feeling of extreme passion that literally had taken her breath away. The rightness of lying in this man’s arms, her total disinclination to protest when he’d disrobed, baldly stating his intentions. I will love you as I did two hundred years ago. Focus, duPont, you’ve got a crime to solve, she reminded herself as she tried to ease out of Aleric’s hold. “You wanted to know about vampires. Stay, Grace, and I’ll tell you.” Grace? Oh, yeah, the woman in the portrait. That it was also her middle name was almost as scary as him apparently thinking she was the reincarnation of a two hundred year old woman. “I–I need to get dressed.” “Later. I like you best as you were made. Look at me. Why are the police sending beautiful detectives out looking for a blood-drinker?” She didn’t recall having mentioned her mission, but perhaps when she was out, she had. “Because the coroner says we’ve got a corpse that died from a vampire bite.” His expression changed, as though that news troubled him. “That sounds serious indeed. I’d say you’re not looking for an ordinary, everyday vampire. The kinds who kill are rare these days, when sustenance may so easily be achieved by taking less than all of the victim’s blood. Many mortals are willing to offer their blood in exchange for the sensual pleasure, the incredible orgasm it brings them. A vampire needs not take full sanguinity. He exerts control over himself when he goes to feed.” “You’re saying there are different kinds of vampires?” Aggie couldn’t believe she

actually was considering that there might be such creatures. In Miami, not some haunted medieval castle. “That the coroner may not have lost his fucking mind?” “Grace, I’m living proof that vampires exist. Look at me. Look at how I live in darkness. Do I breathe like you? Do I radiate warmth the way you do?” He laid her hand on his cool, hairless chest. His chest that didn’t rise and fall in the rhythmic pattern of life. When he smiled he showed his fangs. Incisors only a little longer, a little sharper than her own. Nothing she’d have noticed even in a lover unless...she snatched her hand off him, clutched her own throat, felt for– “You won’t find my mark on you. I’d not abuse your trust that way. Besides, I fed only yesterday. As I told you, I do not require so much sustenance that I must kill to get it. The vampires who do are outlaws–throwbacks, if you would, to another time and place. My guess is, your victim fell victim to one of them. I’ve heard a female vampire roams the strip on moonless nights, preying mostly on homeless men no one will miss and disposing of their empty carcasses out at sea. I’ve hoped to encounter her in my travels and destroy her.” What he said made Aggie’s blood run cold. “You’ve heard from where? From whom?” She had no idea if she should believe him, no idea why she still sat here stark naked, listening to a vampire who might as easily as not be spinning a pack of lies. Who might have been the very creature who’d offed Iorio. “Just who are you?” “Aleric Dunric. Born in 1603 on Christmas Eve, made immortal twenty-eight years later when I chose the wrong rope dancer to dally with at a friend’s Bacchanalian fuckfest in Cornwall.” Oh God. “You’ve gotta be kidding.” She looked at the tightly drawn drapes, his pale, almost translucent skin. The gleaming white fangs, and that chest that didn’t ripple when he breathed because he didn’t. Breathe, that is. “No. I’m not kidding. And I’m not the only one of my kind populating Miami Beach. Like you speak to your neighbors, we converse with each other.” He met her gaze, drew her in despite her determination to remain aloof. “I can help you. Wait until darkness falls, and we’ll go together and make some inquiries in the world of the undead. If your murderess is who I think she is, she’ll not be easy to apprehend by your methods. Not easy at all. I hate this, when one evil creature gives us all a bad name.” Aggie had heard that before, from her captain, the last time one of Metro Dade’s finest had gone down for stealing coke from the evidence room. She’d just never thought of vampires having a code of honor to break. Hell, she’d never thought of vampires, period. But now she’d slept with one. Fucked with him. Had the best orgasm of her life and taken his come deep into her body. Shit. “You came in me. Can vampires knock up humans?”

“It’s happened before, but so rarely it would be a miracle if you conceived. Now, we have to formulate a plan for tonight.” Soon, Aggie sat in the middle of Alaric’s big, heavily draped bed and called Brian, then turned to her otherworldly lover. “So now we’ve got half the homicide unit staked out around the site of Iorio’s murder. We’ve got us, going out to chase down this rogue vampire. What next?” “We catch her, and once she’s been slowed down, I will drive a wooden spike through her black heart.” He reached out and stroked her cheek, his hand surprisingly warm. “You can’t do that.” “No one will remember my acts, just as no one on whom I feed recalls how they came by the two neat fang marks on their throats. It’s a power we have, along with more or less eternal life, and an ability to withstand the effects of nearly every form of weapon but the wooden stake and long exposure to direct sunlight.” Aggie should have been terrified. Instead, she found herself drawn in, loving Aleric–loving him the way she’d loved Charles before his plane had gone down and he’d become one of the first American casualties of the War on Terror. She wondered... “Have you any alias?” “Alias? I’m afraid not in the sense you mean. Over the centuries I’ve been many men, assumed many identities. Taken the names and faces of men who died too young and made them my own. That is how, my beautiful Grace, I am able to sustain myself without taking the lives of those who provide my sustenance. You have lived in my soul forever, only to surface periodically. I’d begun to believe I’d seen the last of you in 1813. Until you arrived at my gate, full of questions and suspicion. ” Suddenly Aggie shivered from the cold. “Will you leave me once our mission is accomplished as you leave those on whom you feed, without even a memory of the pleasure we shared?” she asked, surprised how abhorrent she found that thought. “When this is done, I will give you two choices. Not now. Now, I want to love you until night falls and we must go.”

***** The moon shimmered over the Atlantic. Aleric waited in the shadows while Aggie and her team set the trap he’d devised: a seemingly drunken bum, actually a cop in disguise, his throat protected by a fleshlike bag loaded with human blood obtained from the local blood bank. The supposedly unconscious decoy had been laid out on the same stretch of beach where Aggie said Nelson Iorio had died.

Aleric sensed the presence of another blood-drinker. His anticipation rose. Yes. He hadn’t lost that sixth sense, while apparently he still could mask his own presence from his prey. She didn’t hesitate, but strolled purposefully along the beach, her eyes flashing fire in the night as his own must do when he anticipated feeding. She spied and fell upon her intended victim in one smooth motion, going for the jugular with singularity of purpose. “Police. Freeze!” She rose, blood dripping from her fangs, her ageless face contorted in a mask of horror. Gunshots rang out the moment she charged one of the officers. Staggering, she made for the sidewalk. Collapsed beneath the palm tree where Aleric waited. More gunshots. She lay twitching on the sand. Now. He had to destroy her before she regained her strength. Gripping a sharp-pointed stake in both hands, he charged her, then plunged it deep into her bloodless chest. Watched and waited until the twitching stopped before taking a scalpel from his jacket pocket and cutting out her heart. “There.” He turned, saw Aggie standing in the shadows, her short-cropped curls burnished in the moonlight, her eyes wide with horror. “It was this, or hacking off her head. Otherwise she’d have recovered. Now, she will kill no more.” “What is this? The body’s disappearing.” Her eyes widened as the destroyed vampire began to dissolve before their eyes as the bells at some distant church began to toll, a tinny rendition of “Silent Night.” “It will. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Come, Grace, your crime is solved, and one vampire will never strike again. Join me, and I will give you the choices you must make.”

***** Choices. In truth Aggie had no choice at all. They stood beneath the portrait from centuries gone by. Aleric spoke softly, as though asking, not compelling her acquiescence. “I will love you to eternity and beyond, whatever you do, for you are my soulmate. If you leave me now, I will continue my search and, if I’m lucky, you’ll come back to me some faraway day. If not, I will savor your memory and your portrait as I’ve done so many times...so many years.” He offered her eternal life...or a lifetime of loneliness and regret. Her throat tight, Aggie squeezed Aleric’s hand. “I choose you.” He drew her up the stairs, to his darkened room. His hand felt cool in hers, and his

handsome face appeared translucent in the darkness but for soft, adoring eyes and blood-red lips. “Look in the mirror, Grace. I’d have you know the consequences of your choice.” He propelled her forward, stood behind her with his hands at her waist. She gasped. There she was, her face radiant with desire for... He wasn’t there, though she felt the gentle pressure of his hands, the press of his hard cock against her buttocks. “I can’t see you,” she said, struggling against his hold, wanting to turn, confirm that he indeed was there. “You’ll not see yourself if you go through with this. Once I begin to turn you, your mortal life will be over. Your sacrifice for gaining eternal life...my eternal love.” Aggie bared her throat, offered it to him. “Make me yours.” The sting of his fangs lasted only a second as he carried her to the bed and began to suckle. She was getting drowsy. So drowsy. When she woke, the curtains blocked the noonday sun...yet the room seemed unduly bright. Aleric stirred beside her, then smiled lazily. “Good morning, my vampire bride.”

Epilogue Christmas Eve, two weeks later Stars twinkled brightly over Biscayne Bay as Aleric and Grace sat down for their weekly sustenance. Two pints of blood, purchased at the local blood bank, sat iced in a crystal bucket next to the round table in their bedroom. Aleric opened one bag, dividing its contents between two priceless antique goblets that once graced his childhood home. Grace shot the goblets a doubtful look, then watched Aleric lift his glass and take a sip, as a mortal might savor a fine vintage wine. “You know, it’s easier to drink from a throat than a glass,” he said once he’d drained his glass. “Here, let me help you.” It was a strange, new world, but loving and being loved made it wonderful. A miracle, some said. Her destiny, she knew. Smiling, she reached for Aleric’s hand. “Merry Christmas, my love. I have a gift for you, too,” she said, glancing down at the exquisite ring and bracelet Grace wore in the portrait downstairs. The one Aleric had given her after making her his own. Aleric grinned. “What is it? You’re gift enough for me.” “You’re a very rare vampire, and apparently so am I. We’ve been blessed this Christmas with a miracle. Come September, we’ll be welcoming a child.” “Thank you, sweetheart, for everything. Come here, I want to make love with my lady who’s given me the best gift I’ve had for four hundred years. Her love, and now our child.”