A Vampire for Christmas

chapter SIX





WIND RACED PAST HIM as he once again flew from his body and departed the vision he had been reliving. Long moments idled while a whirlwind of images raced by.



His abrupt landing on the floor before the Angelina of the present rattled his teeth and painfully jarred his bones. But Damien had only a moment to recover before the walls of his bedroom transformed once more, becoming the calm waters off the Jersey Shore. He recognized the precise moment in time and that less than a dozen hours had passed since his lunchtime tryst with Angelina.



A schooner was sailing parallel to the beachfront during a dark moonless night that hid its passage.



Ramirez’s ship—although Damien hadn’t known it at the time.



Damien had been given the details for the rum pickup and the money to make the purchase. As always, he had set off down the river inlet to meet the ship, collect the liquor and return it to shore for distribution. He made similar trips once or twice a week, managing to avoid the Coast Guard and others intent on stopping the flow of alcohol to the many clandestine bars and speakeasies that had sprung up during Prohibition.



After motoring his skiff up to the Cuban rumrunner, Damien had been shocked to see a familiar crew manning the schooner. A familiar crew with an infamous captain.



Although the transfer of the kegs had gone smoothly, vampire strength making the movement of so many loads go quickly, Damien had understood that this would not be the last time he would see Ramirez. There was too much bad blood between them for the other captain not to take advantage of their chance encounter.



After loading the skiff and paying Ramirez, Damien had snuck up the river inlet to the scattered sandbars where the locals and the Newark bosses would come ashore for their deliveries. Damien kept one keg for the owner of the small tavern where Angelina worked. Her boss was expecting Damien to hand deliver that rum when he came in for a bite of food later that night.



But Damien had errands to run before that delivery. First, he had to quench his hunger. He secured the keg in his skiff before returning to the small dock adjacent to the tavern. When he came ashore, luck was on his side as one of the local fishermen stumbled from the building, clearly having had a nip too much of the bootleg liquor supplied to the tavern’s clientele.



Damien rushed up to the man, eased an arm around him and helped him to a keg of nails sitting on the dock. The man plopped down, too drunk to continue home. He murmured his thanks, causing a momentary pang of guilt in Damien, but one that couldn’t quench his need to feed. The burst of vamp power he had used to help load the skiff had drained him. If Ramirez showed up tonight, he had to be at full strength.



And then there was Angelina. He had lost his control over the demon earlier because he had not fed in some time. He did not want to lose control again when they met later. It was Christmas Eve after all and he wanted to celebrate it with her. As a human—not as the demon he despised.



Bending toward the man, he held his breath to avoid the smell of cheap rum, cabbage and a body that had not seen a bar of soap for some time. Transforming, Damien sank his fangs into the man’s neck. The rush of blood brought a surge of power and painful desire. In another life he might have slaked that need on the next unsuspecting female that wandered by, but no longer.



He was in love with Angelina and her faith in him was far stronger than such base demon desire.



When the man moaned and slumped against him, nearly boneless from liquor and the loss of blood, Damien reared back. If he kept feeding he would kill the man. He had never done so in the century since he had become immortal and he would not kill tonight on such a Holy Night.



Sated, he paused to draw in a few bracing breaths of sea-kissed air and drive back the demon. After lowering the man to rest comfortably against the keg of nails, he rushed from behind the tavern to the main street in the tiny fishing village. Quickly, he finished his errands, stopping by the general store and paying off not only his accounts, but some of the debt owed by his housekeeper, dock hands and Angelina. They were too proud to take the money outright, but had yet to suspect why their credit was still good at the store.



I did not know, came Angelina’s heartfelt words in his head.



I did not want you to know, he silently replied and buried his head against his knees, unwilling to watch the scenes from the past any longer.



As their story unfolded on the walls of his bedroom, Angelina walked to his side and knelt behind him. She wrapped her arms around his body as the vision played on around them. Angelina understood this was meant to be his punishment: to relive her death yet again.



But the fact that he could not escape the visions did not mean that she could not comfort him, much as he had comforted her during her last moments on Earth.



The images around them blurred and spun until they arrived at the small tavern where she had worked during her last mortal visit.



Damien entered, a happy smile on his face, which broadened even further when he caught sight of her.



Angelina recalled how her heart had fluttered in her chest with his arrival. He was so handsome with his dark hair and silver-gray eyes. His body was lean and well-muscled from his many days at sea and his life as a vampire had not changed it much. If anything, his immortality had preserved his physical beauty, but Angelina’s role was to safeguard something much more important: his soul.



She had failed that first time a century ago when she had first been assigned to protect Damien. She had not perceived just how great a threat Ramirez could be. She had been too inexperienced a Guardian Angel, having no other experience on which to rely during that first assignment.



Nothing about Damien was easy, especially as she had found herself falling in love with him from the moment she’d first viewed his past life, a method Guardian Angels used to understand their charges.



She had been a little better prepared during this, her second visitation. The one that was now playing before her eyes and his, and yet she had still not understood what had been required of both her and Damien.



In the vision swirling around them, she saw their happiness and her heart swelled with the joy of it. It made her hope that this time—the third and very rare opportunity with which she had been gifted—would be the lucky one.



At a Christmas Eve so close to the present it could not really be called the past, Damien strode toward her, a sexy smile on his lips and the promise of so much more in his glittering gaze. As Angelina’s heart sped up, she suddenly experienced a strange sensation at her core. The draw was like the one she felt when coming down from Heaven to visit the mortal plain, but not quite the same. The feeling intensified and suddenly everything around her whirled, becoming a dizzying panorama until the images jarred to an abrupt halt.



She jerked back as Damien took another step toward her, his eyes gleaming with passion and joy. A small dimple peeked from the corner of his mouth as he headed straight to one of her tables, much as he had a year earlier.



Angelina unexpectedly realized that she, too, was reliving that fateful night.



Did you think Damien was the only one who had something to learn? came the voice of the Archangel Raphael in her head.



But before she could respond, the Angelina in the vision took control, forcing her into action as Damien sat down at one of the rough oak tables along with several of the town’s fishermen, sailors and laborers who frequented the tavern. She hurried to the bar and ladled up a bowl of the day’s chowder made from a mix of clams and fish fresh from the docks to feed him. She brought the chowder over to him along with a big hunk of bread she had baked that afternoon. Although vampires had no need of food, she now knew that Damien regularly ate with his human friends as a way to be part of their world.



Beside his plate she also placed a pint of rum-laced apple cider that was more rum than cider. The local police officers turned a blind eye to such activities, choosing to crack down on the more blatant speakeasies in the upscale parts of town.



The police left the common folk alone, seeming to understand they needed a nip to ease the chill of the sea and soothe muscles made sore by hard labor. Not to mention the value of a small diversion from the weariness of the Depression, where work, money and food were sometimes hard to find.



As she served him, Angelina made a point of grazing her breast along his arm. Her nipple beaded instantly from that simple contact and when he shot her a slumberous half glance that promised so much more, her sex throbbed and dampened in anticipation. Their encounter earlier that day had left her wanting him.



Angels were not meant to love humans, much less demons, the Archangel Raphael warned, offering her yet another reason why she had been thrust into reexperiencing the past. But despite Raphael’s warning, the Angelina of that Christmas Eve smiled at Damien and did as she had a year earlier.



She leaned down and whispered in her lover’s ear, “It is a Holy Night, you know. The Devil may take you for such wicked thoughts.”



Damien chuckled, wrapping his arm around her and teasing back, “The Devil can have me if it means being in your arms later.”



The Devil must have heard them for he chose that moment to interrupt their happiness.