Lucy's Wish: A Christmas Vampire Romance

By Anna Winter

Lucy has one great wish – she wants to find the vampire of her dreams. So it’s obvious she would put this heartfelt desire right at the top of her Christmas wish list… again. It’s annoying Santa hasn’t been very helpful up till now and apart from Lucy no one seems to know of the existence of vampires.  But she saw him with her own eyes – when she was a child and he saved her from drowning.

After Lucy’s first boyfriend turns out to be a complete loser, it seems like there can only be one real man for her – her guardian angel. But how on earth is she supposed to find him?

On top of that, her best friend Pia keeps trying to interest her in normal men. And then there’s Adam, an incredibly sweet guy she can’t get out of her head since he almost kissed her.

Really, life could be a lot simpler, and Christmas is right around the corner…

Interview with the Author

How would you describe Lucy’s Wish?

Lucy’s Wish is a humorous love story which captures the hopeful atmosphere and romance of Christmastime. Anything is possible...isn’t it?

And how do we envision the world in which Lucy lives?

A bit like our world. So it isn’t ruled by vampires, but they exist in secret: vampires, werewolves, ghosts and a few other types of creatures. So in the midst of the magic of Christmas, there is also another ‘magic’. A touch a fantasy in our midst.

Is it part of a series or a standalone novel?

Both. Lucy’s Wish is complete in its own right, but I have two more winter romances planned for the coming winters, in which the reader will again encounter Lucy’s friends and the affairs of their hearts. They will all be characterized by wishes, dreams and hopes.

What made you write Lucy’s Wish?

My readers. I made a survey and a whole lot of people took part. In the responses, a Christmas vampire romance was frequently requested. Vampires still just fascinate us. Nothing about that has changed, which I’m glad about of course, because I love to write books about them and to allow them to come across differently time and again in the various stories.

And your readers appreciate that.

Yes, I’m really pleased to be among the All-Star Authors month after month. The response on Facebook has also been huge. In celebration of the Frankfurt Book Fair a large readers group of around 14,000 members held a meet and greet party for readers and authors. I was excited to be awarded the title of Favorite Author in the Fantasy Category.

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

I myself love Christmas more than anything, and I like books and films set at that time of year. Now I’ve written my own winter romance. I really enjoyed writing it and I hope all the readers will have just as much fun reading it.

I also wish you all lots of luck with your own wishes and magical Christmas holidays in the circle of love.

And a bit more about myself:

Even as a little girl I was enthralled by fairytales and other stories. Before I knew the alphabet I was already drawing picture books. At eight years old I ended up finding my love of writing through an old typewriter. I love constantly thinking up new stories, which are always about love. And I’m a big fan of happy endings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Dec 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781507126639

Book preview

Prologue

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Dear Santa,

You can’t be serious!

Woolen socks? Really? But you knew full well what I wanted.

I’ve been asking for it for two years now, and I’m sure you’ve been getting my messages, even if they always come back with: Return to sender, address unknown. But your mail must get through; the normal rules don’t apply to you. And I know you exist, because HE exists.

So, once more, and this is extremely important: For the coming Christmas, my most heartfelt wish is to find my vampire. And when I say find, I mean it in the way people do when they say ‘find my true love’. I want us to be together finally.

I want to fall deeply, madly in love, complete with butterflies in my stomach and everything. All the magic, you know?

So I need your help now.

Warmest regards,

Your Lucy

P.S.: I won’t give up.

Chapter 1

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There I sat, watching as the last leaves fell from the trees. One landed right in my face, and because it had rained the night before, it was wet. I brushed it from my mouth, sputtering. That must be how it feels to be kissed by a Yeti. Definitely.

My friend Pia looked up, alarmed, and turned up the collar of her coat.

Ugh, it’s so cold. Can we go now? she grumbled next to me.

Having wiped away all traces of the leaf, I let my gaze wander over the trees in the park, which wore only a skimpy cloak of leaves. The grass and footpaths on the other hand were all the more red and yellow, covered in maple-leaf flecks as they were, and they offered an enchanting contrast to the gray sky. The cold weather had arrived late this year, which was why even now, just before Christmas, beautiful foliage still brightened the park.

But it’s so pretty here, isn’t it?

Yeah, pretty cold. C’mon, let’s go.

She pulled me by the sleeve and I almost tripped over my own feet; I was so lost in my thoughts. This was the last colorful costume the park would wear before winter came and snow covered the ground. And with the snow would come Christmas. My heart raced – from tripping, sure, but also from wondering whether my one big wish would finally be granted this year.

Whoa, Lucy, you okay? You must have slipped on all the leaves. Pia grabbed my arm to steady me.

Thanks. I picked up the newspapers I had spread over the bench to keep my butt dry and together we ran back to the university campus, our footsteps crunching on the gravel path.

My Cosmo’s all wet thanks to you, Pia moaned and tried to smooth out the now wavy cover.

Ah well, at least with all the dimples on her legs the model looks like a normal woman for once.

Giggling, Pia slapped me on the arm with her women's Bible. God, I’m freezing. Remind me, why didn’t we stay in the dining hall?

Because we love fresh air. I took a deep breath in and sighed audibly.

Nope, count me out. I much prefer the stuffy coffee aroma in the cafeteria.

Well, then, because you’re such a nature-lover and...

Yeah, right, she said sarcastically. If by nature, you mean shopping malls. She groaned at her wasted inspiration. Aw, man! Why didn’t we go shopping?

Because there are no shops in McCrory Garden.

I let you talk me into things way too often. It really has to stop. After all, I’m the sensible one. She nodded energetically.

When I tried to protest, she stared at me, eyes wide.

Oh come on! Who’s the one who believes in mythical creatures?

I was already used to my friends and family treating my greatest desire like a painfully long-lasting phase. The whole world saw people who believed in ‘supernatural’ phenomena like vampires this way. I knew that; I’d been on the internet.

They really do exist.

Here we go again. She gave me a nudge with her shoulder as she walked, and nodded toward the male students who were running on the field nearby. Why don’t you go out with a normal guy? Then you’d at least have a date for once. Look at you! You’re so pretty. I’d give up a kidney to look like you.

That was so not necessary. Pia was a fiery brunette and I loved her widow’s peak which made her face look like a love-heart.

It’s not as if I’ve been saving my virginity for a vampire or something, I reminded her. I was with Trevor, you know, but a normal guy just isn’t for me.

No, no, no! She shook her head. "Trevor just isn’t for anyone. Lucy, one boyfriend doesn’t mean a thing. I’ve already had a few, and I can tell you from experience, as soon as there’s an ex in front of the boyfriend you’ll swear up and down that they weren’t for you."

I was constantly around young men, after all I went to university with Pia. It was just that none of them interested me. "This year it’s going to happen. I’m sure of it. I’m not going to start something with a normal guy now, only to break up with him when he arrives."

A cold wind brushed the back of my neck and battered my coat about. Next to me, Pia shuddered like a startled, wet cat.

Gah, the only thing arriving is freezing arctic air. She stuffed her hands into her pockets and only the tip of her nose peeked out from under her buttoned-up collar. It was more of a mumble when she went on, Lucy, I really wish you weren’t so set on vampires. How can you possibly know it’s finally going to happen this year?

I shrugged helplessly and kicked a few leaves with the toe of my shoe. They flew away like a pile of bright socks. It’s just a gut feeling.

She groaned. You wrote to Santa again, didn’t you?

Lots of people do that.

Yeah, she admitted and nodded. But most of them can barely write the letter themselves.

We stepped inside the university building and warm air streamed down on us from the vents like a snuggly blanket. The expression on Pia’s face was pure bliss. She sighed happily and wrapped her arms around herself with a grin, as if she wanted to envelop herself in the warmth.

Oh yes, she moaned, it’s warm here. I’m staying here.

I unbuttoned my coat and stepped out of the way of another student passing by. We’re standing right in the doorway.

Oh, whatever. They should all find another way in. She shot me a resentful look. It’s your fault I’m an ice-block. I swear, snowmen are warmer than I am right now. You owe me a Peppermint-Mocha-Macchiato at the very least.

You can have cream on top too, but please, let’s get out of the doorway. I’d almost been trampled twice already in the short time we’d been standing there.

At the word cream, her eyes lit up like a cat’s. Okay.

We strolled into the cafeteria, ordered two of the macchiatos and sat down at our usual booth. Pia sprinkled sugar over her mountain of cream and set about polishing it off with great relish.

So, back to the question at hand, she said and crunched the sugar between her teeth. That would be what... the third letter you’ve sent to Santa about this? It didn’t work the last two times either.

I sipped my coffee carefully and placed it back on the table. It was still too hot. Yeah, but the third time’s a charm, I said and dabbed my near-scalded lips.

Pia rolled her eyes and helped herself to more sugar. And next year, you’ll be telling me the fourth time’s a charm.

I stirred my Peppermint-Mocha-Macchiato and glanced around the cafeteria.

Pia did the same, then gave me a nudge. Look, there’s Ethan. Isn’t he gorgeous? Yummy!

Of course, Ethan just happened to look over right as Pia was saying that. He ran his hand through his blond hair as if it were a sunny day, the campus a beach and the nearest surfboard no further away than my coffee cup. Then he waved in our direction. Pia and I were perched so close to one another that I couldn’t tell which of us he was actually flirting with.

Probably neither. Someone like that only saw his own reflection wherever he looked. He was like Narcissus: gorgeous and in love with himself.

I don’t think he’s my type. Besides, I didn’t want a man that reminded me of summer when winter and the Christmas holidays were finally almost in reach.

What? Pia gaped at me horrified. How can he not be anyone’s type?

He’s so... so... argh, he’d probably give you a sugar rush. I surveyed the gleaming grains of sugar Pia had again sprinkled over her remaining cream. But I guess you like it sweet.

She nodded enthusiastically and gazed over at him again, a look of yearning in her eyes. Ethan had long since turned his attention elsewhere.

He’s sweet, and I like it sweet. I get it.

Pia must have been away the day they taught healthy eating in school.

If he got to know you the way I did, he’d be head over heels.

Oh, you’re sweet too. Pia patted me on the hand and snuggled her head into my shoulder.

No, seriously. Your voice is magic. You could melt snow with that voice; make a person lose themselves in the song. Only problem is, how do we get Ethan into a karaoke bar?

He wouldn’t go near one. Not cool enough.

I first met Pia about three years ago. We were both college freshmen at the time. I had wandered into a karaoke bar when I didn’t feel like sitting alone in my apartment. There was some kind of rush event taking place there that night for the Rho Gamma Rho sorority, which Pia wanted to join. One of the challenges was to get up and sing karaoke. There was an ulterior motive, because Rho Gamma Rho had devoted itself to a new cause: The Autism Association of South Dakota. It was about giving a voice to autistic people; bringing attention to autism and making more people aware of it. A newly embraced aspect of that was, to literally raise your voice for the cause. Even today they still hold an annual Sing Out for Autism and I was there when it all began in that bar, without ever having wanted to be a part of any rush event. To this day I wasn’t a member of a sorority.

When I heard Pia sing, it was as if time itself stopped in rapture. Everything came to a standstill. I forgot that I’d just spilt my drink all down my front after being bumped as I was lifting my glass. I forgot the resulting anger in my stomach, which I had felt only moments before. She was singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ and by the end of the song I had tears in my eyes. Pia’s voice was even more beautiful than Eva Cassidy’s. So pure. So clear. She left the stage to thunderous applause and I rushed straight over to speak to her. Of course, she had passed the pledge challenge with flying colors.

Hello? Anybody home? she asked and waved her hand around in front of my face, as if to check whether I’d fallen into a trance.

Sorry, I was just thinking about freshman year.

Don’t think about the past, think about this evening! We’re having a house party at the sorority and I’ll be annoyed if you don’t come.

Gradually I was getting to know all her friends there and none of them had a problem with her inviting me to parties. It wasn’t like it was only sorority sisters at the party anyway; if it had been, it would have been an all-girls party.

Is Ethan coming? I asked.

Yup. She emptied her coffee cup cheerfully.

I noticed I’d hardly touched mine. By now it had cooled enough to drink, and I enjoyed the wintery aroma. Next time I’d try the gingerbread flavored one.

I have to get to rehearsals, Pia said as she looked at her watch. She was in the middle of preparations for the Christmas pageant.

I’ve got art history, we’re studying the French Impressionists.

Those are the ones with the pictures full of lines and dots, right?

That was a cute way of summing it up. Pretty much, yeah.

With waterlilies?

I had to grin. There are more than just paintings of waterlilies in Impressionism, but some of them are, and one is very famous. Claude Monet painted it. I like him.

Pia rested her chin on her hand and nodded. Yeah, I like those paintings too.

Not just the paintings, I said winking, and thought of my deepest wish. Have you ever seen a picture of Monet himself? He had this long bushy beard. With a red hat and coat he would have looked like Santa.

Pia groaned and rolled her eyes. Of course, you see Christmas wherever you go.

What could I say to that? I just loved Christmas, more than anything else in the world. The whole package: the first snow; the sparkling frost on the ground, bushes and trees; the crowing ravens, their appearance like an inkblot on the white landscape; baking; punch; presents. Oh, and most importantly, a beautifully decorated Christmas tree.

The butterflies in my stomach from thinking about whether I might get closer to my wish this year accompanied me to my lecture. I sat in the back row and the light from the projector, shining pictures on the wall in front of me, gave the room a surreal glow. Meanwhile I was drawing my very own picture, one which came from a world almost just as surreal: my dreams.

I always carried the little leather pencil case containing my artists’ charcoals on me. With a steady hand, I brought the tip of the charcoal to the paper. I always started with the eyes. Eyelids, irises and black pupils with a delicate spot of light reflected in them. Eyelashes and brows. As I turned my attention to the nose, a slide of the waterlily painting shone on the wall.

Claude Monet found particular inspiration in his garden in Giverny, said the lecturer. It was divided into a flower garden and a water garden. The waterlily pond in the latter was depicted in this painting from 1906 and also in this later work from 1915. Monet knew how to draw the attention to reflections in the water. These are paintings without horizon, in which the sky and trees are only seen mirrored on the surface of the water. Monet called them ‘Landscapes of Reflection’.

I was only half listening. Anyway I had already worked my way through most of this topic. Since I wasn’t in a sorority, nor did I live in a dorm, and I wasn’t nearly as sociable as Pia, I had a lot of time for my studies. I was an only child; I had my little apartment all to myself and I was happy to keep myself occupied. Above all I loved drawing. I could lose myself in art; it allowed me to bring my dreams to life. When I emerged from the drawings that my memories compelled me to produce, I could see before me, black on white, what was going on in the deepest parts of my soul. No, I didn’t paint landscapes of reflection; I painted my dreams – reflections of my subconscious.

I gave his mouth a full, sensuous shape. I used hatching to add some shadows, which I worked in with particular care. Mouth and eyes. Always the same two key elements. I smudged the contours of his chin, nose, cheeks and hair with my hand. My picture wasn’t very impressionistic. It wasn’t made up of delicate spots, pale colors or reflections of light in landscapes. When the lecture ended, staring right at me from the paper were two coal-black eyes. Mirrors to the soul. To his and to mine. His whole face was lost in a veil of sketched lines. Only his sensual mouth and those unbelievable eyes stood out clearly. They burned into me; they had found me again, even in the relentless reality of the lecture theater. And there was one other striking element to my picture. They were the reason I’d spent my whole life hearing that I had an overactive imagination: two long fangs.

Chapter 2

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At the last census a few years back, Brookings had a population of 22,056. At the same time, as home to the largest university in all of South Dakota, it hosted more than twelve thousand students. So, as you can well imagine, the campus seemed like its own little village in the middle of town. As I wandered home after class, most of the people I passed on the street were students, but the sight of the young men didn’t arouse my interest. I preferred to look at the chapter houses, which stood in splendor between colorful trees like enchanted villas, perfectly picturesque. Today the spicy scent of damp earth and leaves hung in the air and the cawing of crows accompanied me on the way to my apartment, which was just around the corner from campus.

I unlocked the door and peeled off my winter warmies. Then I pulled the new picture out of my folder and tacked it up amidst the other hundred or so drawings and sketches that adorned my walls. Pia called it my little obsession. Yet I was only combining the two things dearest to my heart: art and my guardian angel. Because that’s what he was to me.

If he had never saved me back then, when I fell through the ice at only seven years old, I would have drowned. I didn’t even know his name, nor anything else about him. He fished me out of the water, called an ambulance and stayed with me until the sirens got closer and closer, almost numbing my ears as much as the cold had numbed my body. Only seconds before the emergency services arrived did he finally vanish.

I sighed and opened a window to let fresh air flood the room. If only I hadn’t had that head injury, I would be able to remember him more clearly. I knew his eyes, because they were the first thing I had seen when I opened mine. And I knew his teeth, because I had stared at them as if in a trance. Those were no human teeth. Like someone who is attacked and in the end can only describe the knife they were threatened with, I only noticed his fangs. I should have taken a better look at the whole man.

We never met again. My parents didn’t buy my story about a vampiric guardian angel. They put it down to the head injury I’d sustained, as if it were all simply a by-product of my concussion. In the end even I wanted to believe I had imagined him, if only to be able to let it go and not seem so weird to everyone around me. So I had stopped talking about him and my parents were able to rest easy, for quite a few years anyway.

But it wasn’t the images of the encounter fourteen years ago that were problematic. No, trying to suppress them, that was the mistake. To go on with my life as if nothing had ever happened felt empty and unwaveringly fake. After my unfortunate relationship with Trevor I realized there could only ever be one man for me. I just couldn’t stop thinking about my vampire. I dreamed about him almost every night; had to paint him; wanted to find him. The memory of him returned to me with such power, I became obsessed.

My parents were downright shocked when I suddenly brought it up again after all that time. They had truly believed all that nonsense was long forgotten. But that wasn’t my problem. I was much more concerned with the question of what his life might be like. He must have been somewhere between seventeen and twenty-two at the time. Maybe by now he was married. Did vampires even get married?

While I made myself a coffee, I skimmed through a recipe book. I was determined to learn how to make the winter cakes I so adored. Luckily I had found help for my undertaking, something even better than just a baking tutorial from the internet.

Right on cue, the doorbell rang. I left the coffee and dashed over to open the door. My neighbor Lennox stood leaning in the doorway. His real name wasn’t Lennox, actually it was Paul Bower, but he found that so terribly ordinary that he preferred to use a stage name. As an art student that was nothing new to me and I found it amusing he had chosen Annie Lennox of all people to name himself after. ‘She’s awesome,’ he was always saying, and he absolutely worshiped her voice.

Lennox was always immaculately presented, smelled heavenly - one of the best aftershaves I’d ever smelled – and he was also quite attractive. His blue eyes were definitely nothing to be ashamed of. They reminded me of those gorgeous dogs, Huskies, with how clear and pale they were. His hands, however, were less of an asset, to put it in the nicest way possible, and even now he was waving them around flamboyantly.

Hey sweetie! he greeted me. Shall we get going? Take the old cookbook for a spin?

I smiled and gave him a kiss on each cheek. Wow, look at you! You’re really a bit overdressed for baking.

He might not have been standing there in a suit – not quite – but the clothes he was wearing would have been more appropriate for heading out on the town.

Lennox gave me a charming wink. I’m dressed up for you, not the kitchen scales. Shopping bag under his arm, he entered my apartment. He noticed the new picture right away. Actually there were three new drawings since his last visit.

Sighing, he turned to me. "When I look at this guy on your wall, well, I just can’t compete. But I could ask my dentist if he could make me a