Page 1 of Snowed in with the Vampire Prince

Chapter 1

Pierce

Fair warning, I’ve never been what you’d call a happy vampire. Definitely not today, of all days. As of a few minutes ago, I’d been immortal for exactly one hundred years. It was midnight, the witching hour, so my death day had just officially begun. And I was milking the pain for everything it was worth. My pale hands were wrapped around a glass of red wine, and the cheerful orange light of the fire burning in the fireplace danced all around my one-room cabin, doing jack squat to dispel the sourness of my mood. Outside the single square window beside my front door, thick flakes of snow lazily fluttered past, but they fell faster and faster with each passing moment.

I’d been watching it since it had started. Within minutes, the snow had transformed the landscape beyond my cabin into a haunting vista of ghostly bluish-white and otherworldly violet. But that was to be expected. I was high up in the Cascade Mountain range, which separates the eastern part of Washington from the smaller but more well-populated western part of the state. It snowed here in the mountains all the time. Granted, it was early March, so it was a little late in the season for snow.

And yes, I was sulking. Sue me.

As if on cue, my phone rang, interrupting my wallowing.

“Pierce,” I answered, without even bothering to look at the screen. Only a handful of people had this number. “What’s happened? You know this is the one day?—”

“No,” Nathaniel, my maker, interrupted. “Nothing has happened. I’m calling to give you my condolences.”

Nathaniel is the vampire king of Seattle, and I am his only progeny, which technically made me a prince, if you wanted to get technical. But those are just the stuffy, antiquated titles our people should have—but haven’t—let go of. A vampire king—or queen, of course—is essentially just the ruler of their territory. They’re kind of like a combination of a mayor and a CEO.

Nathaniel’s territory included the entire Seattle Metropolitan area. So, nearly a million people. Granted, most of them were everyday mundane folks who had no idea vampires existed in the first place. Still, it was a lot of lives for him to be responsible for. And it was a lot of power, too, I suppose. In lesser hands, that power might have been a corrupting force.

But that wasn’t really who he was to me at all. Instead, Nathaniel was the one person in the world who knew me inside and out. I would gladly have given my life for him, and then I’d ask if he needed anything else.

But today was sacred, damn it.

“Are you being an ass right now?” I demanded, scandalized. “On my death day?”

“Guilty as charged.” He chuckled, and I could practically hear him rolling his eyes. I pictured a wide, indulgent smile on his face. “I’m also calling to let you know you can have the weekend if you want. You never take a day off, and I figured you might want some more time away.”

“On the eve of war?” I demanded, blinking in surprise.

Because Seattle witches had been turning up dead for several months, their bodies left on full public display for anyone—mainly humans—to see, and obviously murdered by vampires, we were about a half-inch from outright war with the Seattle coven. They believed we were allowing the killings to happen instead of what we were actually doing, which was scouring the city for the culprit day and night so we could put an end to it.

“The witches haven’t declared war yet. Maybe they won’t. Perhaps we’ll catch the vampire responsible for the killings before they do. Enjoy this while you can.” He paused. “And if you want more time, you can have it. You can have as much time as you need.”

I was his primary advisor and second in command in case something important came up—which was quite often. My responsibilities ranged from event planning to negotiations to judge and jury, depending on what the situation called for. Like all of his closest advisors, I was his everything man. Though, the one thing Nathaniel had never asked me to do was to kill for him. In fact, for a vampire king, he was practically a teddy bear. He almost never killed anyone, and the few times he did, it was because the vampire he was executing was an unrepentant murderer. I’d often wondered if Nathaniel even liked being king. It seemed more like he was only ruling the city to protect its inhabitants from other, more brutal, members of our kind.

What Nathaniel didn’t need to tell me was that he didn’t want me anywhere near the city when the fighting started. Though, that was just silly. While I had only been a vampire for a century, I was a skilled fighter. And I could be even more ruthless than him when the situation demanded it. Still, the concern in his voice aroused a hot lump of emotion in my throat.

“Thank you.” My voice got strangely thick. How unbecoming. It must have been the wine.

“Listen,” he said, his voice dropping the playfulness and sharpening into a tone that was far too serious for my liking. “I don’t feel the same way you do, but I understand you believe you’ve lost something that needs to be mourned. I’ll never regret saving your life—but I do regret that it causes you pain.”

“Only today,” I replied roughly.

That was the thing. I didn’t regret it either—most of the time. I had been a human, and my number had definitely been up before becoming a vampire. My mortal life had been over by the time Nathniel turned me. So I hadn’t really lost out on anything. If I hadn’t become a vampire, my life would have just been over, full stop.

I’ll never understand why Nathaniel had saved my life. I had been a total stranger to him at the time. I doubt he had even really stopped to consider the potential—and very eternal—consequences of his actions. I’ve always been grateful to him for it though, even if I’ve never outright said it before. But I didn’t want to get into any of that right then. Maybe I’d tell him someday. But not today. It wasn’t like either one of us was getting any older.

I added, “And thanks, by the way. I’ll take the weekend.”

He let out a breath that told me he’d been afraid I would say no.

“Good. If you want, I can send you some company.”

By that, he no doubt meant a human donor. I scowled at the thought of sharing my death day with a human being.

Though I sulked on the anniversary of my death, it wasn't like I had all these warm and fuzzy feelings for humans either. Three hundred and sixty-four days a year, I’m a vampire’s vampire. I’ve never had any qualms about my own hunger for blood or anything silly like that. I am what I am and I like what I like. There were very attractive and very willing donors who worked for the king, and I had—count them—zero problems feeding on one of them when he presented his neck to me. I took what I wanted, and then I put a few drops of my blood on the wound after I was done to heal them right back up and send them on their way with a smile on their faces, only about a pint or two worse for wear. And don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

I never killed people though. Admittedly, some of our kind did go a little crazy after a while and started getting a penchant for going all the way when feeding on someone. That, or they quite simply went mad and started killing people left, right, and center. Apart from the fact killing humans willy-nilly is punishable by death—in Seattle, at least—that’s never how I’ve gotten my rocks off.

---