Page 2 of Snowed in with the Vampire Prince

Even as a newborn vampire, when we are at our most vicious and uncontrollable, I’ve never really struggled with the urge to kill. Which was for the best, considering the fact most of the vampires who do completely lose all trace of their humanity and become the sorts of killing machines horror movies are made about are usually taught by their makers to kill early on, while they’re still newly turned. The first month or so after becoming a vampire is crucial for our kind. If we don’t become killers while our vampiric nature is still being hardwired, generally we don’t tend to enjoy killing people indiscriminately later on either. And apart from the fact that Nathaniel never once let me into a position early on where I was out of his sight long enough to even have an accident while feeding for about the first decade, I’ve always more or less understood that, while humans weren't really anything special, they’re still people.

“Pierce, did you hear me?” Nathaniel asked, after I had been silent longer than was probably reasonable. “If you want someone, perhaps a donor…”

He trailed off, letting that hang between us.

“No,” I told him flatly. “Thank you. Besides, whoever you would send would have a hell of a time getting here anyway. It looks like I’m going to be snowed in.”

The scene outside my window told me that was an increasing possibility, but it didn’t worry me in the slightest. My cabin is pretty remote—several miles from the nearest road and more than a two-hour drive from the city—so I hadn’t even bothered taking a car to get here. I had run the entire way instead and made it in about half the time it would have taken me to drive.

“I’d be happy to send someone in a chopper if that’s what it took,” he told me, and I rolled my eyes when I heard how serious he was.

It was almost funny, actually, to imagine him trying to send out a chopper in the middle of a snowstorm. While Nathaniel controlled a sizeable portfolio of assets, he chose to live in the four-story apartment building he owned. He operated a neighborhood bar on the ground floor, which was open at pretty much all hours to sympathetic humans and vampires alike. He wasn’t exactly the ‘sending a chopper’ type of guy.

But then a wistful note entered his voice and he added, “I wish you’d find someone.”

Impossible.

I definitely wasn’t into doing the horizontal mambo with most other breeds of the supernatural. Shifters and weres could be really hot, but they got weird and clingy after just one shag. They were quite literally into falling in love at first sight and all that other romantic, fanciful nonsense. You didn’t even need to talk to one of them to get them to fall for you. You just needed to look at them the right way. Or the wrong way, I guess. Whichever. I’ve always thought it was the animal in them. They were pretty much always secretly looking for their mate, even if they claimed they only wanted to get naughty. Vampires were usually fine, so long as they didn’t try talking to me before, during, or after. And warlocks…Well, fuck. Everyone knew you couldn’t trust a witch—and warlocks were basically just male witches—even long enough to bang them senseless. The danger aspect was sexy, but it just wasn’t worth it.

And then there were humans.

Some vampires were into that kind of thing, I guess. It’s not even technically frowned upon. And it’s not even like being with a human would be all that impractical, either. Humans who regularly drink our blood stop aging altogether, and they become way more resilient to things like illness and injury, so it’s entirely possible to keep a human lover for as long as you want, for hundreds or even thousands of years, if that’s the kind of thing you’re into. You don’t even need to turn them into a vampire to do it.

As you might imagine, plenty of immortals do exactly this. I mean, the benefits are obvious—blood and sex whenever you want. Eternal companionship.

But that’s not my jam. I’m not into keeping pets. I want an equal, someone every bit as strong as me. It doesn’t need to be physical strength, but it sure as hell needs to be inner strength. And humans just don’t have that. They’re emotional, weak creatures. They’re good for feeding on and occasionally for sex, but not for much else. Besides, nine times out of ten, they’re scared to death of us anyway, even if they swear up and down that they’re not. That, or they’re all the way on the other end of the spectrum—which is even worse if you ask me—and they’re all about getting fed on. Like it’s some kind of kink for them. I guess the rush of fear when we bite them is as good a drug as any.

So where exactly did that leave me?

Alone. Which is how I preferred it.

“I worry about you,” he added softly when I had gone quiet for too long again. “Just because you’re a vampire, it doesn’t mean you need to spend an eternity alone.”

I grimaced, glaring at the phone in my hand. I decided then and there to shut the conversation down. Real talk with him might get in the way of all the wallowing I still had planned for the rest of the night.

“Thanks for the extra time off from my duties,” I said flatly, a conversation-stopper if there ever was one. “I’ll be back on Monday.”

He sighed but remained patient and controlled when he spoke next. “I mean it. If you need anything at all—or if you change your mind about my sending someone—call me.”

With that, we hung up.

He was one to talk. He was more than twice my age, and he had never found a mate either. Or even a dalliance that had lasted beyond the second date, for that matter.

I didn’t know what he was looking for and I very seriously doubted that he did either. He had last tried to find someone about a hundred years ago. He’d been intentionally scouring the discrete hole-in-the wall big-city gay bars and speakeasies, looking for someone he might want to spend eternity with.

But he had found me instead.

A son, not a lover.

I might have stayed there until sunrise, frozen beside the fireplace, contemplating the empty eternity yawning before me, on the one day a year I allowed myself to have such thoughts, except that something very strange and unexpected happened right then.

Miles from anything remotely resembling civilization, in the middle of a snowstorm that was fast on its way to becoming a blizzard, I smelled something very strange.

Freshly spilled human blood.

Chapter 2

James

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