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 | Meljean Brook, Chris Marie Green, Erin McCarthy, Susan Sizemore |
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 | Claudia Dain, Allyson James, Robin Schone, Shiloh Walker |
Fantasy Excerpt FANTASY (Anthology) "Luisa's Desire" by Emma Holly An exotic vampire romance set in Renaissance Tibet. Will Luisa's desire prove too much for a humble monk? ONE Tibet, 1600 The sun filled the air with diamond knives, its merciless brilliance shooting spires of brightness off the ice-locked Himalayan peaks. Beneath, on the precipitous path that circled the tallest mountain, Luisa del Fiore huddled deeper into her mink- lined hood. Black sheathed her from head to toe: her kidskin gloves, her yakhide boots, even the veil that draped her face was black as ink. Despite these precautions, the effect of the sun was barely muffled. This was Tibet, the roof of the world, and far closer to heaven than a child of midnight ought to go. The sun was a drug to her kind, a pleasure beyond compare. Like all drugs, however, too large a dose could kill. Indeed, she would not have risked this journey had her need not been so great. Unaware of her predicament, Dorje, her cheerful native guide, beckoned her forward on the trail. The mere thought of the drop to his right was enough to make her dizzy. The fall might not kill her, but even an upyr could break her bones. "Come," he urged. "Only little way more." He spoke the pidgin Chinese they used to communicate, the language of the traders to whom he sold yak butter and from whom he bought bricks of tea. A nomadic herdsman, Dorje was one of six whose pilgrimage to this lamasery she had joined. She knew she was lucky to have fallen in with them even though, had she been alone, she could have traveled in the sunless safety of the night. Getting lost was not safe, of course, no more than freezing to death, a hazard to which she had not known she was vulnerable. Her first night in the mountains had taught her that hard truth. Thankfully, on the second night, she'd stumbled into Dorje's camp. He and his companions had offered her the foulest tea she'd ever pretended to drink and welcomed her to their fire. When she divulged her destination, they volunteered to guide her. Never mind she was a stranger, and a foreigner, and very outlandishly garbed. Never mind she posed a danger they could not begin to understand. They had heard that the gompa--the lamasery--at Shisharovar was holy. Anyone who helped her would gain merit from the trip. At the moment, Luisa cared more for her next step than she cared for merit. Her exhaustion seemed a living thing, like one of the demons Dorje told tales of around the fire. She had no words for her hunger. She had not fed since she'd left the ship. She had not dared. It was not discovery she feared, nor others' violence against herself. Instead, she feared she would feed until she slew these people who had saved her. This was the crux of her dilemma, that she might kill when she had no wish to. Lately the urge had been getting stronger. She genuinely loved her life. The challenge of doing business among the humans kept her engaged. But with her years came an emptiness only blood seemed to fill, and only for a little while. When she had begun to drink from criminals--just in case she lost control--she knew she could not trust herself anymore. She was not the hand of justice. Better to starve than to act as if she were. As much as she believed in her choice, she could have wept for the intensity of her hunger. To drink . . . to be strong again . . . But strength was the object of her journey: true strength, not the strength that came from theft. Ahead of her, Dorje's crude felt boots punched holes in the snow that she strove to follow. Like his fellows, he seemed to notice neither the cold nor the thinness of the air. Luisa felt both, her feet leaden, her blood-starved veins like overstretched wires of brass. She had not thought a mortal could be so strong. Forging steadily before her, Dorje seemed as tough as the grumbling yaks they had left in the spring green valley far below. When she lagged, he laughed and urged her onward like a father exhorting a child to walk. She felt a child, so sun-addled she could scarcely stand. All around her the light was slow, sure poison, a wine of gold and blue, a scent as sweet and fragile as mountain flowers. It had been days now, weeks mayhap, that this deadly radiance had been seeping through her clothes. Drunk with it, she clung to reason by a thread. Sleep, the sunshine whispered. Pull off your cloak and bask in my golden rays. Be one with the beauty of the waking world. Luisa cursed and grit her teeth. She knew she must not listen. The waking world was not her rightful sphere. They came to a turning. Dorje pointed higher and ahead. "See," he said. "Lamas here!" As she rounded the scarp, the path widened into a table of land as flat as if it had been carved. Beyond this small plateau the mountain rose again, craggy and sharp, a final heavenward thrust of stone. Shisharovar nestled at its base. The lamasery was bigger than she had expected, many floors of white-limed walls and narrow, defensive windows. Lines of prayer flags fluttered against the sky. The jewel is in the lotus, she deciphered, the sum of what Tibetan she could read. A flash of silver drew her eye to men standing on the roof, tall brown men in flowing russet robes. She squinted. They held what appeared to be long trumpets. The low bleating the instruments made a moment later confirmed the guess. "O‚!" Dorje exclaimed. With a sigh of resignation, he and his companions dropped their packs. "Lamas pray now. We wait." He gestured for her to sit but she could not. Within those walls lay darkness and warmth and quite possibly an end to her travails. She was walking before she even knew she meant to, crossing the trampled snow like a woman in a trance. "Wait!" Dorje cried. "No can go. Lama here very holy. Very big power. Luisa make naljorpa angry. Luisa be sorry." He had her arm and was trying to drag her back. Anger rising, she spun around. Dorje's jaw dropped. Her hood had fallen with the movement and the light shone clearly through her veil. She caught a glimpse of how she looked through his eyes: pale, porcelain skin and hair as gold as new-minted florins. Her expression was startled, even innocent. But she was too perfect, her eyes too vividly green, her mouth too carnally red. Beauty like hers was dangerous. His interest shimmered in the air between them. A sound filled her head: his heart pumping harder with desire, forcing the life-giving fluid through it, forcing his sex to rise. For a moment she felt faint. Blood, she thought, seeing it, tasting it. She closed her eyes at the power of her hunger--not just for food but to destroy. She didn't realize she had moved. When her eyes snapped open, her hand was wrapped behind his neck, already pulling him into biting range. Her gums were stinging where her teeth had broken through. She shook herself, then shook him. He seemed not to notice the unfeminine force with which she did it. "You go," she said, sternly, huskily. "You no stop me." He stared at her, still under the spell of her foreign beauty. He licked his lips and she knew she'd done the same. Her mouth was watering, her eyeteeth razor sharp. "You go," she repeated. "Me no want hurt you." He grinned at that, as if he did not believe she could. "Haha," he laughed with a Tibetan's unpredictable humor. "No wonder you wear veil. You show face, you get too many husband!" Her own laugh was weak but it allowed her to uncurl her fingers from his neck. His countrymen, she had learned, were polyandrists. "Yes," she agreed. "Me no want too many husband." She backed away, gesturing him to stay. He looked worried but this time he did not try to stop her. Perhaps he judged her a match for the terrible naljorpa, whatever in Creation that was. Steps led to the lamasery entrance, stone beneath the snow. She climbed them--one dozen, two--her eyes holding Dorje in his place. At last she reached the top. Two large rings hung from the iron that bound the double door. Wincing at the bite of the frozen metal, she set her heels on the step and pulled. The hinges groaned. The door was too heavy for human hands, but impatience prevented her from pretending she could not move it. She was going in. Nothing, not prayers, not fears, not even her failing strength, was going to stop her now. With a last grunt of effort, she heaved it open and slipped inside. The shadows folded around her like a blessing, smoky and sweet and warm. Butter lamps, the ubiquitous Tibetan illumination, flickered on various altars along the walls. She had entered a towering hall, its roof supported by heavy columns, its walls hung with banners of colored silk. Through clouds of incense she made out the hazy forms of many Buddhas praying, teaching, and looking much like those she had encountered in Calcutta. A group of monks, young and old, were crossing the passage as she came in--presumably headed to their worship. As one, they turned to gape. Luisa did not care. She was too elated to be inside. Her head was pounding, sun-drunk still, but at least it did not ache. Giddy with relief, she threw back her veil and grinned. It was a mistake she would not have made had her mind been clear. Two of the monks cried out and the larger of them rushed her. She barely had time to brace before his weight crashed her over into the floor. "Towo!" he cried as she struggled to free herself. "Tsem shes tsem!" Luisa realized she must have bared her fangs. He had taken her for a demon. "I pilgrim," she protested in her limited Tibetan. "I come pray." Unimpressed, the monk took her head in both hands and smashed it against the floor. He must have been very strong. Like the crackle of early winter ice, she felt a tiny fracture in her skull. The break healed almost as soon as it formed but, however ineffective, the injury snapped her control. Instinct took over, the remorseless drive for survival that marked her kind. Taking his head in the same splay-fingered grip, she stunned the monk by coshing his brow against her own. Then, before he could recover, before she herself could think better of it, she rolled him beneath her and drove her teeth through the wind- roughened skin of his neck. His blood filled her mouth, hot, rich, a feast for her starving veins. Her head cleared at the first swallow. The second was just for greed. But she had to stop. She could not kill within arm's reach of her goal. When he moaned, she shoved off him and got up. She might not be sated but she was sane. "I am not a demon," she said, even as she drew her fine Spanish glove across her mouth. "Not towo." The monk who had attacked her was on his knees, too shaken to rise. "No," he agreed, his eyes wide and locked to hers. "You are not a demon." He sounded almost normal, almost, but she knew her bite had thralled him. He was hers to command, for an hour or a day, though she could not see what good that would do. The rest of the monks had closed around her, many of them as big as the one she'd bitten. She knew she could not overpower them all. "I have come to learn your ways," she said, switching to her more fluent Mandarin. Pray God, someone here would speak it. "I beg the favor of studying with your abbot." Silence met her plea as she turned from one implacable visage to the next. "Look." Careful to move slowly, she reached into the folds of her fur-lined cloak. "I bring a gift for him, for Geshe Rinpoche, the holy lama of Shisharovar." She held out her offering, wrapped as Dorje had advised in a white silk scarf. A rustle moved through the crowd, which suddenly parted to reveal another monk. Everything seemed to hush as he approached--breath, heart, thought--as if the world itself had stopped turning on its axis. Even the terrible emptiness inside her stilled. Sun-drunk nonsense, she scoffed, but the sensation did not fade. Here was a man to weaken knees. *** Excerpt from "The Widow's Auction" in Fantasy Lord Warbrooke tossed his gloves on the opposite seat of the carriage. "I thought our first order of business should be dinner. We’ll dine in private at the Clarendon." Isobel relaxed against the squabs. "You mean you don’t want to throw me down and ravish me right here?" "Is that what you expected?" "Actually, I did. You paid a lot of money for only the one night, after all." "True." He shifted on the seat to see her better. "But I’m not foolish enough to guzzle an expensive wine the moment it’s set before me. Especially when it’s so very fine." An unwarranted thrill coursed down to her toes. She ought to take insult at being compared to a bottle of wine. But a fine bottle of wine . . . well, that was another matter entirely, wasn’t it? He leaned closer, his features shadowy in the faint gaslight trickling into the carriage. Lifting his hand, he traced the lower border of her mask with one finger, grazing her cheek, then the tip of her nose, then making a detour down to her lip. Idly, he outlined her mouth. "Before I indulge in a superior bottle of wine, I prefer to take a moment and admire its beautiful color." She tried to breathe and failed miserably. And had she imagined his emphasis on "superior"? "Then," he rasped, bending in to nuzzle her hair, "I sniff its bouquet and savor its scent." He breathed in deeply, and she thought she’d shatter right then and there. He loomed so close, and this felt so intimate. She almost wished he had thrown her down and ravished her. She could have endured that easier than this inch-by-inch assault on her senses. With the faintest touch of his finger, he tipped her face up to his. His eyes glittered at her like shards of silver. "Only after that do I allow myself the first sip . . ." That was all the warning he gave before his mouth covered hers, warm and sensuous and soft. His kiss blotted out the black night and the carriage and all her silly fears. It sent her pulse racing and startled a quiver in her belly. If this was a sip, God help her when he got around to drinking. As if he’d read her mind, he did the most astonishing thing. He slipped his tongue between her lips. Her late husband Henry had never done that, to be sure. And Lord Warbrooke mustn’t guess that she had no idea what he was doing. So she mimicked his actions and slid her own tongue into his mouth. He halted, but only for a moment. Then with a groan, he caught her to him and thrust his tongue inside with a boldness that took her off guard. She was still reeling from the intimacy of it when he repeated the motion . . . again and again, his tongue caressing the inside of her mouth, tangling with her own tongue until she was dizzy from the dance. What an odd way to kiss . . . seductive and maddening all at once. It made her hot in strange places . . . in her breasts . . . her belly . . . in that wicked place between her legs that Henry had so rudely assaulted every time they’d coupled. She tore her mouth free long enough to catch her breath. "Dear heaven, Lord Warbrooke. This is . . . all very . . . interesting." Chuckling, he pressed an open-mouthed kiss to her cheek. "Do you like it?" "Oh, yes," she breathed. "Then call me Justin." "Justin," she whispered and slid her hands about his neck. With a guttural sound of approval, he took her mouth again, hard and deep, invading her as surely as any Roman conqueror. Scents of brandy and musk drifted through her senses as he dug his fingers into her arms to keep her close. Which was entirely unnecessary. She wasn’t going anywhere, not when he was kissing her so deliciously. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe for fear that any movement might make it all end. And she didn’t want it to end yet. Not when she was beginning to realize how very little her late husband had known about kissing. Henry’s kisses had tickled her curiosity, then failed to satisfy it. But Lord Warbrooke’s kisses made naughty, exciting promises that he clearly intended to satisfy in spades. The very thought made her sway against him. He tore his mouth from hers to murmur, "Ah, Bella, you’re not what you seem . . ." |
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