Phaze Fantasies Volume 4

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  Phaze

  www.phaze.com

  Copyright ©2007 by Phaze Authors

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  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

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  Fantasies IV

  Four Tales of Erotic Romance

  by

  Vivien Dean, Eva Gale,

  Philippa Grey-Gerou, and Cat Johnson

  Phaze

  6470A Glenway Avenue, #109

  Cincinnati, OH 45211-5222

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  eBook ISBN 1-59426-922-X

  Fantasies IV © 2007 by Vivien Dean, Eva Gale, Philippa Grey-Gerou, Cat Johnson

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Cover art © 2007 by Alessia Brio

  Edited by Kathryn Lively

  Phaze is an imprint of Mundania Press, LLC.

  www.Phaze.com

  And Then There Were...

  by Vivien Dean

  Also by Vivien Dean

  The Canvas of Her Skin

  The Ice Butterfly

  Ryan Nixon had survived hunting vampires for the past decade for one very good reason. Looking at him, nobody would ever assume that the bookish façade, the clear eyes, and the unabashed grin that always made him seem like he was barely out of college—instead of in his mid-thirties—hid the heart of a killer. It was why vampires made the mistake of thinking he was easy prey before finding themselves crumbling to dust by the stake they never saw coming. It was why he was able to stroll through the nearly deserted Grand Central Station without even a casual glance from a passerby. It worked for him. Ryan wasn't one to argue with advantages when it meant life or his death.

  At nearly midnight on a Wednesday evening, only a few people dotted the main concourse. A security guard who looked older than the terminal stood near the ticketing booths, and for a moment Ryan frowned. The old ones were almost worse than the new. While young guards were usually quick on the trigger, older guards had a tendency to have antiquated notions about honor and doing the right thing. It was nice, really, but Ryan had seen too many good people lose their lives “doing the right thing.” Sometimes, survival meant you made decisions that made you unpopular or brought the demons out in your sleep. Ryan didn't worry about either anymore. He'd lived with demons nearly every day since Jeannie had been killed. Nothing his dreams conjured could scare him any longer.

  And being unpopular simply meant he didn't have people he cared about living in constant danger. That was equally acceptable.

  He glanced at the clock in the center of the terminal. Five minutes. Ryan had little doubt that the vampires would arrive precisely at midnight. There was supposed to be a meeting between the clans to discuss territorial boundaries, and the clan heads were notorious for their meticulous attention to detail. Whatever new war between them that might have sparked such a discussion didn't matter to Ryan. All he cared about was that five of the most deadly vampires in the United States were convening in a single place for one night. Such an opportunity could not be overlooked by any respectable demon hunter.

  With long, languorous strides, Ryan wandered around the terminal, his eyes constantly on the lookout for the vampires’ arrival. He meant to look as if he was just killing time as he waited for a train to pull in, but the way the old guard kept glancing at him made Ryan's neck itch. He shot him a friendly smile, hoping to put the guard at ease, but all it did was make the man's bushy brows draw together into a tight line and his hand go to his belt.

  Damn it. The last thing Ryan needed was to be distracted so close to the designated hour. Angling his body away from the guard, he pretended to look at a watch he wasn't wearing before walking toward the bathroom, whistling under his breath to enforce the picture of nonchalance. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the guard track his movement, but within a few feet of the bathroom door, the man dropped his hand from where it had been poised over his weapon.

  He went inside anyway. He'd wash his hands and be back out before the clock struck midnight. It might be worth it to do a quick weapons check as well.

  The sterile room was deserted, the walls echoing his footsteps back to his ears as he crossed to a sink. Turning on the water as hot as he could stand, Ryan ran his hands beneath it, warming his chilled skin as he tried not to notice his reflection in the mirror. There were slight shadows beneath his eyes, and his light brown hair could be labeled grunge chic by any reputable fashion magazine. For a brief moment, he considered running his damp fingers through it to try and make it a little more presentable, but quickly dismissed the vain notion. He wasn't here to look good. He was here to stake vampires who should have been killed long before now. His hair was only going to end up looking worse by the time the night was through.

  A swift pat-down of his clothing confirmed that everything was in place. Stakes were strapped to each calf and more tucked into his jacket. A bevy of sharpened pencils were hidden in an inside pocket, and the breath spray he always carried held holy water instead of minty freshness.

  He was armed. More importantly, he was ready.

  Resuming his low whistling, Ryan walked back out into the terminal, grateful that the old security guard had his back to him, giving directions to a slim, dark-haired woman. He had taken three more steps before his head snapped back to the pair.

  Ryan faltered.

  The angular lines of the woman's face were achingly familiar, and though her head was turned away from him, affording him only a profile shot, he knew her eyes would be such a dark brown that they would look almost black. The hair was the same, stick-straight and hanging down her back in a sleek ponytail. He couldn't attest to anything else. It had been ten years since he had last seen Tala Mamola, and then it had been under the worst possible circumstances.

  But it was her. He had seen her too often in his dreams, woken with the taste of her lingering on his lips and the touch of her ingrained in his fingertips, to have any doubts.

  His eyes shot to the clock. Less than two minutes to midnight. Another scan of the terminal didn't reveal the vampires he expected to arrive, but with Tala's presence Ryan was more certain than ever that they would. Somehow, she must have caught wind of the meeting as well. There was no other reason one of the world's most renowned vampire hunters—the one responsible for Ryan even being alive to become one himself—would be on the opposite side of the world, away from her home in Manila. Tala only left the Philippines for serious hunts.

  It didn't get any more serious than this.

  He took a seat that had all the major entrances in his line of sight, his hand slipping into his pocket to curl around the stake he had tucked there. His callused fingertips stroked the smooth wood, taking comfort in its familiarity.

  One minute.

  The guard finally turned away from Tala, resuming his post at the ticket booth. She was already walking, chin up as she crossed the terminal, when her dark eyes caught Ryan's in a random moment. It was
Tala's turn to hesitate, the smallest of lines appearing between her finely arched brows. She recognized him. He wasn't presumptuous enough to assume that it had anything to do with why he knew her so well, but his body reacted as if she'd touched him anyway, sharpening and hardening at the same time. Her attention jumped to the clock, dragging Ryan's with it.

  Midnight.

  A train's screech came from the platforms. It was high and piercing, much louder than anything Ryan had heard since his arrival, and he winced as it grew in volume, bringing a hand up to his ear to muffle the sound. Others were doing the same, but it was the blinding illumination from above that truly alarmed him. Just as he jerked his head up to look at the skylights, the ground shook, the screech a death rattle that made the air vibrate. He had to grip the bench at his side in order not to fall off.

  Then the terminal went black.

  The noises stopped.

  Everything stilled.

  Ryan sat there, with his blood roaring in his ears and his stomach in his throat, as he waited for something to shift back to normal. The air felt heavy without the tremors that had shaken it moments earlier, like a thick blanket being tucked around him in the height of summer. There was no sound either, not the whisper of breaths, not the scuffle of feet, not even the hum of electricity to indicate life of any sort. For one brief moment, the thought that he'd died in whatever event had occurred in the station made him want to giggle hysterically, but it was swiftly replaced by his more rational side.

  He didn't hurt. He was aware of sensation. When he tried to move his fingers, he could. If he was dead, surely all of that would be impossible.

  Maybe it was just a power failure. And everybody else was too frightened to do anything.

  Carefully, Ryan braced his hand on the bench, using it to steady himself as he rose to his feet. The urge to call out and find the others was strong. His mouth was open, the greeting already on his tongue, when the realization hit him that that would only draw the vampires straight to his throat if they had already arrived.

  His jaw clamped shut, and his fist tightened around his stake.

  They wouldn't get him that easily.

  Using the bench as a guide, he stepped noiselessly to its end, trying to remember how the scattered people in the room were positioned when the lights had gone out. Nobody had been near him. Tala was probably the closest, but she had been in the middle of the room with nothing solid between them. The guard and the ticket cashier were off to his right, but that would mean—again—walking through open spaces without any way of knowing for sure that he was going in a straight line.

  He needed lights, damn it. It wasn't like he could see in the dark like a...

  His blood ran cold.

  Vampires would be able to see perfectly well in this. They didn't need the illumination. They would be able to track the inhabitants of the terminal by scent or body heat.

  It was going to be a bloodbath. And Ryan had walked right into the middle of it.

  He took a tentative step forward. The sound of his sole scuffing along the floor seemed impossibly loud, and he froze before advancing any further. His ears strained to pick up any signs of an encroaching attack, but with his motions stilled, all he detected was the echoing silence.

  Until a gurgled cry cleaved the air.

  Ryan jerked toward the sound on instinct, the stake raised as his eyes scanned uselessly through the darkness. It was too low to be female and faded almost immediately. But it was the sucking that became audible with its dissipation that made the hairs stand up on the back of Ryan's neck. The vampires were attacking. They were going to pick victims off, one by one. Unless somebody did something soon, they were all sitting ducks.

  "Do you really think we're that easy?"

  The woman's voice rang out, the soft accent only heightening the disdain in the clear words. It was Tala, but before Ryan could wonder who it was she thought she was talking to, she shouted something in a language he didn't recognize. The sound of glass shattering immediately followed.

  Blinding light flooded the terminal, so bright that Ryan averted his head and squinted his eyes to mere slits to ward it away. From random spots around him, pained screams buffeted his senses, and the scent of charring flesh began to burn his nose. He turned in the direction of the loudest and strongest, and blinked against the brilliant illumination to see a scarred vampire burning only a few yards away. His arm jerked, the stake ready, but the vampire was already half-ash, its body dissolving long before the threat was in biting distance.

  Ryan blinked again. The world was a little bit clearer.

  When he turned around, the screams had mostly faded, only a single vampire who had been trying to duck into the bathroom for safety still burning. Tala stood where he had last seen her, a stake in her hand as well, with broken glass scattered across the floor at her feet. Her face was grim, but she was doing the same as he, scanning the room for signs of what had been going on.

  It didn't make sense.

  Most of the room seemed frozen, locked in some sort of catatonia, as if someone had put the world on pause. The old guard was in mid-scratch of his nose, and his lifeless eyes were fixed most determinedly on the clock. A woman with a baby asleep in a stroller was frozen in mid-reach as she bent over to pick up a stuffed animal that had fallen to the floor.

  But Ryan was moving freely. As were other figures around the room.

  There were five in total. Ryan. Tala. A young black girl with dreads down to her waist. A Japanese man in his forties, slim and small, with a bald head that gleamed in the artificial light. And another man, this one white, with a closely trimmed beard and black hair that hung down to his shoulders, built like a brick house.

  They all had something else in common, too. Each of them was clutching a stake.

  "What the fuck is going on here?” the black girl demanded. A strong New York accent masked some of the fear Ryan heard in her voice. “Who the fuck are all of you? And why does it look like high noon in the middle of fucking July in here?"

  Tala briefly met Ryan's eyes before turning to the girl. “It's a sunlight spell,” she said. “I use it in emergencies. It won't last."

  That explained why the vampires had gone up in flames. He should have known that Tala would have a trick like that up her sleeve.

  The Japanese man approached her, stopping a few feet short before giving Tala a curt bow. She returned the greeting, and the exchange that followed raised even more questions for Ryan, like how she knew the man and what they were saying. After a few words, however, both heads turned to him, and he distinctly heard Tala utter his name.

  The Japanese man bowed to Ryan.

  "This is Katsu,” she said, switching back to English. It was an introduction that was directed at everybody, and the others drew closer, gathering around Tala. “And it would appear that we are all here for a single purpose."

  The black girl snorted. “Yeah, to kill some fucking vamps."

  The outburst didn't ruffle Tala's calm composure. “You're the only one here I don't recognize,” she said. “But you're young, so you can't have been hunting for long."

  The girl straightened, her strong chin jutting out. “Long enough to have more than a few notches in my stake,” she proclaimed. “The name's Noni, and this is my fucking town."

  "To which we've been invited apparently. I'm Tala Mamola. Katsu, I've introduced already.” She nodded in Ryan's direction. “That is Ryan Nixon. And—"

  "Scott Ammadon.” He appeared suddenly at Tala's side, towering over all of them. Ryan had the irresistible urge to stand straighter. “And maybe you should have stayed home for this one, little girl. This isn't a party game."

  Ryan caught the tightening of Tala's jaw and frowned. The comment had been meant for Noni, but Tala had taken it more than a little personally. She'd also been prepared to introduce Scott, which meant she knew the man. There was history there, beyond the fact that she recognized him as a hunter.

  Soft words from Katsu d
iverted Tala's attention and she spoke with him for a moment while the others waited. He pointed toward one of the platform exits. All eyes turned to follow the path of his finger, and Ryan's stomach dropped when he saw the male body lying crumpled on the ground.

  It was another face he recognized, though now it was slack in death. Oliver Waits. The hunter who'd trained him. Ryan wanted to throw up, but shock had his system refusing to cooperate.

  Oliver's was the gurgled cry he had heard. The vampires had picked off the prey closest to the exits first.

  "This is a joke,” Scott muttered.

  Tala whirled to face him. Though he towered over her by at least a foot, the power in her muscular body made her bristle enough to make Scott take a half-step back. “You can always leave if you want,” she spat. “You are so good at that, after all."

  His lip curled into a sneer. “Only when I've got good reason."

  "Which would be just about anything, if I remember correctly."

  "Whoa, let's back it up here.” Though the last thing he wanted was to get into the middle of what was incontestably very personal business, Ryan stepped forward, placing himself between the pair. “Obviously, something's going on. Or am I the only one who thought there was a clan meeting going on here tonight?"

  Reluctantly, Tala tore her attention away, her glare softening only slightly as she met Ryan's eyes. “You're not the only one,” she conceded.

  "And there's magic at work, magic more powerful than your sunshine spell.” When it looked like she was going to argue again, he held his hands up in surrender. “Which was great, by the way. Very ingenious. Saved our asses, at least for now. But not the point."

  "Someone's put the whole joint in lockdown,” Noni commented, her dreads swinging around her shoulders as she looked around. “But how come the vamps only went for the one white dude?"

  "That one white dude was a hunter, too,” Ryan said tightly. “For some reason, the vampires aren't interested in just any prey tonight. They want us."