Red Velvet and Absinthe Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Introduction

  SNOWLIGHT, MOONLIGHT

  COVER HIM WITH DARKNESS

  A ROSE IN THE WILLOW GARDEN

  THE BLOOD MOON KISS

  Savannah, Georgia

  Six Weeks Earlier

  Savannah

  Epilogue

  PAINTED

  DOLLY

  LA BELLE MORT

  THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

  SCRATCHED

  BITTER AND INTOXICATING

  TEA FOR TWO

  MILADY’S BATH

  THE WAY HOME

  THE QUEEN

  BENEDICTION

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  ABOUT THE EDITOR

  Copyright Page

  For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams …

  —“Annabel Lee,” Edgar Allan Poe

  FOREWORD

  The tradition of Gothic literature stretches back to the early days of the novel, with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, published in 1764. Anyone who has read Poe or Stoker or Daphne du Maurier would recognize the early gothic elements in Walpole’s story. The story begins with a tragedy—a lord’s son dies on his wedding day. The lord then decides to marry the girl himself. She flees to a church. The lord pursues and is about to kill her rescuer when a birthmark reveals that the young man is his own son. The lord locks him in a tower, but he escapes with the girl into the catacombs. And so it continues, a melodramatic tale of murder, betrayal and mistaken identity, with a bittersweet romantic ending. By the third edition, the book’s subtitle had changed from “A Story” to “A Gothic Story.” And so a genre was launched.

  Classic Gothic literature, with its stock elements—innocent heroine, mysterious hero, isolated setting, curses, madness, secrets—has gone in and out of fashion since Walpole. In the sixties and seventies, it saw a revival with Gothic romantic suspense, most notably in the books of Victoria Holt, Barbara Michaels and Mary Stewart. These novels often included an element of the supernatural, but it was usually subdued. A ghost might hold the key to a secret or a character might discover her ancestors were witches. The erotic elements were even more subdued. Rarely was there anything more explicit than kisses and longing. Even the erotic subtext was muted, far more than it had been in Gothic novels written a century earlier.

  In the late seventies, Gothic fiction began another turn, one that firmly embraced both the sensual and the supernatural. Leading this new era was Anne Rice, who returned to the early days of the genre, following in the footsteps of Bram Stoker and James Malcolm Rymer by putting vampires at the center of her work. Her sensual vampires were not the monsters, though, but the protagonists. Twenty-five years later, authors took Rice’s ideas even further, and the genre of paranormal romance was born, replete with sexy supernaturals of every variety, from vampires and werewolves to angels and demons. And these were not the chaste encounters seen in the Gothic romances of the sixties. These were erotic, often explicitly so, exploring every facet of sexuality from GLBT to poly relationships to S/M to fetish.

  Red Velvet and Absinthe celebrates the Gothic in all its forms and adds in the erotic elements that were often glossed over in the genre’s early incarnations. Here we do find traditional historical tales and exotic settings, but we’ll also find contemporary stories, and those with a magical surrealism that transcends time. The stock elements are well represented, too, often with an original twist, giving us delicious tales of family secrets and horrible curses, enchanted paintings and mysterious beverages.

  Those looking for the supernatural will not be disappointed. Stories feature not only recognizable creatures, such as werewolves and ghosts, but mysterious ones too, men whispered to be demons or golems, and new fantastical beasts born from the authors’ imaginations.

  Whatever the setting or the time period or the elements chosen, all these stories embrace the emotional and sensory richness integral to the Gothic tale. We don’t just read words on a page. We feel the red velvet. We taste the absinthe. We smell the flower and sweat. We hear the whispers and cries. And we experience the thrilling danger, the looming apprehension, the exquisite passion. That is the core of Gothic literature and this collection delivers.

  Kelley Armstrong

  INTRODUCTION

  The genre of paranormal romance has had a very respectable history, having taken shape from the Gothic novel, which falls solidly into the category of Romantic literature. To the uninitiated, this might seem a bit odd, considering that Gothic literature is most often associated with elements we might not consider particularly romantic or sexy. I don’t know many people who’d consider howls in the night, creaking staircases, rattling chains, and a madwoman locked in the attic the stuff of romance. But those of us readers who have enjoyed a long-term love affair with Gothic fiction can wholeheartedly attest to the fact that there is, indeed, a romantic theme running through these works, even in the darkest and grimmest of offerings. So too, are there elements of sensuality and eroticism. Anyone who’s read Bram Stoker’s Dracula will tell you that eroticism is alive and well on the pages. The impassioned torment taking place between Heathcliff and Catherine in Emily Brontë’s classic Wuthering Heights provides some steam as well, even if not overtly expressed in the prose.

  Perhaps it’s that delicious shiver we feel running down our spines when we read these works that keeps us coming back for more. Perhaps it’s that subtle sense of fear that thrills us and gives us a forbidden charge that’s ever so slightly erotic in nature. Whatever it is, Gothic literature is as popular now as it was in the past. Although the greats such as Bram Stoker, the Brontë sisters, Mary Shelley and Daphne du Maurier are long dead, we have a host of contemporary authors keeping the Gothic spirit alive and interpreting it in new and exciting ways. It is these writers past and present to whom I owe a debt of gratitude—both as a reader and as a writer.

  Red Velvet and Absinthe is a book I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Having enjoyed Gothic novels since childhood, it was inevitable I’d one day wish to do something along these lines myself. The fact that the paranormal has been experiencing an even further renaissance beyond the written word thanks to the recent output from the film and television industries finally gave me the impetus. My goal for Red Velvet and Absinthe was to offer readers a collection of unique and original stories that conjure up the rich atmospheric and romantic spirit of the Gothic masters (and mistresses), but take things further by adding to the brew a generous portion of eroticism that’s far less restrained than what transpired between Cathy and Heathcliff. I hope this will be a collection our literary predecessors would have enjoyed reading, had any of them been alive to witness its publication.

  So I’d like to invite you to lie back and relax and listen to the wind howling outside your window as you read these stories in the flickering light of a candle, the absinthe you’re sipping warming your body like the caressing touch of a lover’s fingers….

  Mitzi Szereto

  (Writing from a windswept moor somewhere in England)

  SNOWLIGHT, MOONLIGHT

  Rose de Fer

  She remembered the snow; the snow and the blood and the velvet night. She had lain gazing up at the icy indifferent moon as her strength slowly ebbed and at last the darkness claimed her. That was when she’d heard them start to sing. The wolves: the terrible, beautiful wolves.

  The full weight of the night pressed itself down on her but beneath her there was only softness, comfort. She couldn’t move, couldn’t even open her eyes. From far away she heard music. A piano, deep and resonant, soothing.

  She felt calm. No, that wasn’t quite true. She
felt as though she was meant to feel calm. As though she was somehow disconnected from whatever lay on the other side of the darkness. As though she’d been drugged.

  With great effort she finally managed to curl the fingers of her right hand, slowly breaking the spell that held her immobile. Her skin began to tingle with awareness. It seemed like years before she got the fingers to open again, and by then the tingling had begun to spread with nearly unbearable pleasure throughout her body. Tears pricked her eyes beneath the lids and her heart swelled with euphoria as the melody reached a climax. Was this death?

  She reached out in the darkness, feeling for the snow. Instead her hand encountered a hard unyielding surface and something crashed to the floor. The music stopped abruptly and a crescendo of sharp taps told her someone was coming.

  At last she managed to open her eyes and the room swam into being. She lifted her head and took in her surroundings. She was lying in a four-poster bed hung with heavy damask curtains that were tied back with braided cords. A fire roared in the hearth opposite the bed, and the room was lavishly decorated.

  A man stood over her, his blue eyes dancing in the light of the candle he placed on the bed table. He was elegantly dressed in a black frock coat and matching silk cravat. A gold watch chain hung across the front of his burgundy waistcoat.

  “You’re awake at last,” he said, in a soft cultured voice.

  “At last?”

  “You’ve been asleep for some time. Do you remember anything?”

  She searched her mind. The forest. The moon. “The carriage,” she said suddenly. “It overturned!”

  “Yes. You had crawled some distance off the road into the trees. When I found you, you were nearly dead. I’m afraid there was nothing I could do for your coachman.”

  “And you brought me here?”

  He nodded. “I patched you up and let you sleep.”

  “Patched me up?” Frightened, she raised her arms and gasped in horror at what she saw. The skin was crisscrossed with jagged wounds that had been expertly stitched together with black thread. Her hand fluttered to her throat where she could feel the evidence of an even worse injury—clearly a near-fatal one. Her eyes brimmed with tears. “Dear god, what happened to me?”

  “It was rather a nasty accident, I’m afraid. Still, you’re over the worst of it now. And no matter the unfortunate circumstances, I’m honored to have you as my guest, Miss…?”

  She opened her mouth to tell him her name, then frowned in confusion. “That’s strange. I can’t seem to remember.”

  He smiled and patted her hand. “You have had quite a time of it,” he said, “so I shouldn’t wonder if you’re a little confused. In the meantime I should be very pleased to have you recover your strength here with me.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t trespass any further on your hospitality!” She tried to lever herself up, but he easily pushed her back down.

  “No,” he said firmly. “You’re far too weak to be up and about. You were half frozen as it was when I found you.”

  “But I must—”

  “Must what? Must arrive for some appointment? How? Do you even know where you were going? Or who would know you there?”

  She lowered her head. He was right. She had no idea of anything.

  “Besides, you’ve nothing to wear. Your dress was torn to ribbons.”

  Heat flooded her face as she realized she must be naked beneath the bedclothes, that he must have seen—everything. He seemed amused by her embarrassment and she bit her lip, suddenly feeling foolish. He was a medical man, after all. And he had saved her life. Would she rather be lying fully clothed and dead in the snow? A tear slipped down her cheek as she murmured a confused mixture of apology and thanks.

  He waved his hand, dismissing her words. “My dear girl, there’s no sense in distressing yourself further. You just stay here and rest for now, and I’ll bring you something to eat later.”

  “I’m not very hungry.”

  “You will be.”

  With that he tucked her arms back beneath the covers and took the candle away. Shadows leapt and danced along the walls as he made his way to the door and closed it gently behind him. She thought she heard the sound of a key turning in the latch but before the idea—and its implications—could take root, she was asleep again.

  The fire had died down when next she woke. The sheets were soaked with sweat and she was burning with fever. She kicked away the blankets and lay wholly exposed on the bed: naked, brazen. Her host had drawn the curtains and a jagged stripe of pale light spilled through the trees and lay across the floor. She watched it make its slow way across the room as the moon rose in the sky.

  Hunger gnawed at her stomach and her mouth watered. He’d told her she would be hungry. He’d said he would bring her something to eat. Where was he? Should she call out? Knock something else to the floor?

  She couldn’t lie still. Her skin burned, ached, itched. And there was another kind of hunger, a deeper kind, a kind she’d never known before. She thought of his eyes, his kind smile, his gentle hands. Her skin tingled, weirdly alive and charged like the air before a storm. The blankets beneath her were a sensual pleasure too excruciating to bear and she found herself writhing wantonly, both to escape their caress and to intensify it.

  She remembered the wolfsong—the heartrending music of unnatural hunger and need. It had filled her with yearning even as she lay bleeding in the snow. Now she heard it in her mind and she found herself wishing she could join in.

  The moonlight had reached the bed, where it spilled over her splayed thighs like quicksilver. Her eyes pierced the darkness. Every detail of the room was discernible to her. She could see each tiny imperfection in the carved oak dressing table, hear the brittle leaves shivering in the trees outside. Most acute of all was her sense of smell. She could smell the rosewater in the washing bowl, the melted wax of the candles in a room farther down the corridor. And she could smell him—the hot musky scent of his flesh and his spicy blood beneath.

  Her own blood roared in her ears, echoing the surf from somewhere far away. Now she could see the moon fully through the trees—a beacon that drew strange growls from her throat the more she gazed at it. Her fingers clutched at the air, the nail beds burning and making her cry out in a voice that wasn’t her own, wasn’t even properly a voice.

  “Is the pain unbearable?”

  She was startled to see him beside her and she wondered how long he’d been there, watching. Time had no meaning. There was only the moonlight and the all-consuming hunger.

  She tried to speak, but it was as though her mouth had forgotten how to form words. She shook her head instead and strained toward him, angling her legs as far apart as she could to show him what was truly unbearable.

  “I brought you something to eat,” he said simply. “But first, you will forgive me but I must take some precautions.”

  He removed his coat and purposefully rolled up his sleeves. Then one by one he unfastened the braided cords that held back the curtains on the bed. He gripped her left wrist firmly and looped the cord around it, knotting it and securing it to the bedpost. Hot desire surged within her and she yanked at the knot, testing its strength. She moaned with pleasure as he bound each limb until she was splayed open on the bed. All the shame and fear she’d felt earlier were gone, and in its place was only hunger.

  Once she was immobilized he held up a slice of raw red meat for her to see. Blood dripped from the edges where it had been recently cut. Her heart pounded violently and she lunged for it, held fast by the cords.

  With an indulgent smile he held the meat out to her in the palm of his hand, where she tore it to pieces with her teeth, devouring it. Warm blood ran over her chin and down her throat and she was drunk on the pleasure. Nothing had ever tasted so delicious, so satisfying. He placed a hand on the side of her face and she pressed against it, biting gently at the meaty aspect of his palm, running her sharp teeth softly over his skin and licking away the juices.

&nbsp
; The moon spilled its icy blue glow into the room. It crawled over and inside her skin, filling her with desire so intense it made her light-headed. She wanted more. She also knew instinctively that more would never be enough.

  He stepped back and regarded her. “I don’t anticipate a full transformation tonight. It’s too soon since…” He paused, then asked, “Can you understand me?”

  His words made sense in a distant, abstract way, but she only heard his voice. She wanted to lose herself in its dulcet tones. What she understood more easily was his mood. Beneath his professional demeanor was a hunger of his own. A hunger he was denying.

  She strained against her bonds and whimpered, trying to convey her understanding. The ropes bit deeply into her ankles as she raised her hips, offering herself to him. She growled deep in her throat, a ferocious little sound of pure desperation. Beads of sweat stood out across her chest like jewels and her nails clawed at the headboard, carving deep furrows into the wood. She wanted him. And she knew that he wanted her just as much.

  But his will was stronger than hers. He pulled a blanket over her, smiling even as he covered her nudity. “You’ll sleep now,” he said.

  She shook her head but the motion made her dizzy. The room grew blurry and she realized that he must have put something in the meat. She fought to stay awake but it was no use; the last thing she registered before sinking into a dreamless sleep was the hope that he would still be there when she woke up.