Hunting Karoly

All this vampire talk over the last week has got me thinking of the very first vampire story I wrote - a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the genre I loved :). A novella originally published as Undead Men Wear Plaid, and is now expanded a bit and reissued by Ellora's Cave as Hunting Karoly.

My vampire hero is lazy, bored and lonely - and mouth-wateringly gorgeous. In search of pastures new, he's rolled up in Glasgow, Scotland, where, dressed in an antique kilt, he hangs around wedding receptions, imagining he blends in with the locals. Jenny, my no-nonsesne heroine, is struggling to believe she has the psychic powers she's been told she has. Until she runs into Karoly and recognizes him instantly as a vampire. Anyway, here's a snippet to entertain you!

HUNTING KAROLY  By MARIE TREANOR,
Now available from Ellora's Cave

Also available in the paperback anthology: SEDUCING SCOTS

By MARIE TREANOR, from Ellora's Cave.

You’re not meant to fall for the bad guy…are you?

On the rain-soaked, famously mean streets of Glasgow, Jenny, a reluctant psychic, hunts Karoly, a dangerous but incredibly sexy vampire. Clad only in his antique kilt, he hangs around wedding receptions, biting the guests and seducing an unsuspecting vampire hunter—Jenny in particular. Half ready to stake him, half ready to beg him to have sex with her again, Jenny sets out to hunt Karoly.

After amazing, intense sex and a dramatic exit from Glasgow, he follows Jenny to London, fueling both her growing awareness of her psychic powers and the hot, sexy dreams that fill her nights, leaving.  When he shows up at Jenny’s workplace, cooking for her friends and apparently determined to share her life, Jenny has to figure out who’s hunting whom—and if she’s ready to share her life with the evil, sexy, gorgeous undead.   

Excerpt:

    He knew that I knew. Slowly, a smile began to form on his full, sensual lips and the terror galloped through me till I thought I would be completely crushed.

    Then a lamp clicked on by the window, causing both me and the vampire to look across the room. Bathed in light, Maggie got up from a sofa, still in her fine white wedding gown—not quite spotless, since someone had spilled red wine on the sleeve, but still looking pretty regal.

    “Hi Jenny.” She walked straight past me. If she noticed her best man clutched in the arms of the kilted vampire, she didn’t mention it. “Back to the guests, I suppose…”

    Fear for her finally broke through my torpor. Why had she been sitting there motionless in the dark, unless…? My mouth opened to demand if he had hurt her, but something—the dull, objectionable training perhaps?—stopped me. Maggie was walking and talking and leaving the source of the danger. Davie was not.

    I turned back to the vampire.

    “Let him go,” I said hoarsely. I was surprised any words came out at all. I was even more surprised when the vampire obeyed, casually releasing the best man so that he slumped gracefully to the floor, revealing a long expanse of muscled thigh. I just wished I’d seen in it in other circumstances. A thin trickle of blood ran down the side of Davie’s neck into his collar.

    “Is he dead?” I whispered in horror. I don’t know why. It wasn’t as if the vampire was about to call an ambulance.

    Astonishingly enough, the evil one answered me.

    “Of course not,” he said irritably. “Why would I leave dead bodies lying around?”

    His voice was another shock. Smooth, deep in timbre, curiously beautiful and yet with accents that came perilously close to Bela Lugosi.

    “Oh please!” I said, rolling my eyes. “How gullible do you think I am?”

    The vampire misunderstood. Frowning, he said, “For your information, he’s asleep because he is dead drunk. And he tastes disgusting!”

    He kept the accent. More worrying, he started to walk toward me, his kilt swinging subtly with his graceful, cat-like movements, for all the world confusing evil demon with noble Highland warrior.

    His words, however, were merely carping. “What is the matter with the people in this town? What do they eat, for God’s sake?”

    “Meat and cakes,” I said, surprising myself as much as him. He actually paused in his stride to stare at me.

    “What?”

    “And chips,” I babbled. “Lots of chips. No fresh fruit or vegetables. Curry.”

    For a second, a frown puckered his smooth, pale brow. Then, to my amazement, a definite glint of amusement sparked in his inhumanly cold eyes. They shifted to my throat. “Thank you for taking the trouble to answer me. Do you eat your vegetables?”

:) Marie