Free MidnightSolace by Rosalie Stanton Page A

accidents did happen. One
cow would die. Then another, then another. Respect for the Nightly Ones turned
into fear. Fear turned into blame. And when the elderly man died of anemia,
fear manifested fully into violence. Anna was seized from Lazarus’ loving arms,
imprisoned in a local church and tortured.
    At night she was beaten for information. On occasion, she
was bled and burned, and every time her skin was marred, inhuman howls ripped
through the ground, shattering the quiet of night as her mate endured the agony
of her pain. Some said he died crawling in the sunlight to reach his beloved,
others said the pain he suffered was too much, and he drew his last breath the
second the villagers burned Anna at the stake. Others said his moniker of
Lazarus guaranteed that he would return, and those who still lived in the
village swore he haunted the grounds he died upon.
    The tale had evolved dramatically over the last several
centuries.
    The tragedy of Lazarus and Anna had established the law.
Never could vampires mate. Never could vampires claim each other, only to
become subject to that sort of torment. If vampires mated they became
liabilities, even to each other. Such had been the law for centuries. Such was
the reason Jael came to the same tavern every year and waited for Gabriel to
arrive. Tonight was the only night they had because they were both vampires,
and that was simply the way of things.
    It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Her death had been
sudden, at a time when her town was overwhelmed by an epidemic of scarlet
fever. She and Gabriel had been planning to mate for two years when she became
ill. As he sobbed over her on what she was sure would have been her last day,
she begged him to turn her.
    He had. Through his tears, he had given her new life.
    She hadn’t known becoming what he was meant that she
couldn’t have the life they’d planned together. She hadn’t known until she
breathed life for the first time as something other than human.
    Jael shuddered, her eyes falling shut. No matter how hard
she tried, she couldn’t repress the memory of the night she had clawed to
freedom. The first night she had opened her eyes swimming in the soft glow of
starlight. Gabriel was waiting for her, his eyes heavy with sorrow, his skin
bathed in the scent of tears. His soft blue gaze had found hers and he had
taken her into his arms, murmured his love and begged her forgiveness.
    Then he had told her the story. The reason vampires couldn’t
be together, even as casual lovers. The urge to claim each other, he said,
would grow unbearable. There were several who succumbed to the temptation, and
they were expelled from the Vampire Order. And expulsion wasn’t as nice as it
sounded. Rather, it pretty much guaranteed a death certificate. The Order would
track down dissenters and destroy them. Weakness was not tolerated among their
kind—survival of the race came above earthly concerns or desires. Above love.
    Gabriel had taught her everything about being a vampire
before setting her loose into the world. They had attempted to stop seeing each
other altogether but that proved disastrous. If she didn’t follow him, he
followed her. They would meet in a tearful passion and make love until the sun
came up. Ultimately, Gabriel suggested that this place—this tavern—would mark
their reunion every Christmas Eve. They could be together the one night of the
year that the world had decided loved ones should spend with each other.
    One night though. Only one.
    It ate her up. For more than three hundred years, she had
survived simply to get to Christmas Eve. She went to movies, she occasionally
worked with authorities on cases as a visiting detective with forged
credentials and she read more books than writers could produce in a year. She
adopted the last name Winter in silent homage to the single night for which she
spent the entire year waiting. She did anything she could think of to lose
herself to time, to ignore the nagging