Of Love and Vampires: Wound of the Rose Trilogy, #1

By Avis Black

Of Love and Vampires -- Volume One:

In Victorian England, two young men cross paths in a public house.   Maurice Fitzpons, disgraced army officer and semi-professional rake, is in between careers.  Seth Keane is sick of his life as a shoemaker’s apprentice and at war with a malignant stepfather.  Both men are on the prowl.  A chance meeting becomes a carnal night, and then a love. 
 
But a stealthy horror glides along London’s somber streets, a fiend that stalks fresh blood.  A single bite can cause an ecstasy so great it will reduce a man’s soul to ashes, yet make him cry for more.
   
This is a tale of three vampires.  One lusts for men.  The second desires knowledge.  The third demands power--and slaves.  Maurice and Seth find themselves targets, and to outwit these monsters, they must learn the shocking and unwholesome lore of the supernatural.  

Of Love and Vampires is the first volume in the Wound of the Rose Trilogy, a gay romance and paranormal adventure series.

Excerpt:

When we woke the next morning, Maurice gazed at my unshaven face and bloodshot eyes and said with a grin, “I’ve never seen anyone appear so debauched before, not even myself in a mirror, and I’m stalwart competition for that award.”  He smiled fondly at me.
  
I became aware of an iron bedstead and stiff horsehair mattress, and of a room decorated with riding gear and hunting rifles, plus a few stray books from Maurice’s college days.
  
His comment was not the sort I cared to hear in my delicate condition.  “I feel like a corpse,” I replied numbly, “if they have headaches.”  My stomach was still queasy.  The walls were hung with a masculine red tartan, bright and blaring to my tender, blinking eyes.

We crept around each other painfully, our bare feet whispering on the wooden floor, washing our faces and hands in the basin and bumping into each other and groaning.  I had to borrow a hairbrush and straight razor from Maurice.  While I was shaving, I said, “Do you remember if we had sex last night?”

Maurice was changing his shirt for something less slept-in, and he wrinkled his brow.  “With whom?” he asked.

My razor paused against my soapy throat, just under the chin.  For an instant, I was tempted to use it for another purpose.  “With,” I hesitated, “each other.”

Maurice frowned.  “Did I ask you?”
 
This was awkward.  Awkward beyond awkward.  He didn’t remember?  I was glad I was hungover.  It helped dull the emotional blow.  “I was under the impression you had.  I lost a bet with you at pocket billiards.”

“Oh.  I don’t recall that we did anything.”  Maurice worked his buttons.  “Of course, the only evidence I have is the fact that we woke up with our clothes on.”  He came over, and after taking the razor from my hand, he wiped the soap from my face with a rag and regarded me for a moment.  “Now I remember.  You glided into that roomful of vultures like a swan.  Finish your shave, Mr. Keane.”  

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Slash Press
• Release date: May 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533756558

Avis Black

Avis Black is the author of several works of M/M romance, comedy, and erotica. She also writes under the name Monique Raimbaud.

Book preview

OF LOVE AND VAMPIRES

by

AVIS BLACK

Volume 1 of the Wound of the Rose Trilogy

Copyright © 2015 by Avis Black

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover photograph and design © 2015 by The Slash Press

PART 1

THE VILLAGE

CHAPTER 1

The Shoemaker’s Apprentice

My name is Seth Keane, and I write these pages to tell you my story. It is very hard for me to begin, and I must pause here to brush a hand off my shoulder. Someone is trying to distract me. The hair on the back of my head is being leafed by a fingertip. I sense a smile behind me. I should be vexed, for it took months to decide whether to record this narrative. But I cannot be angry. My tormentor is the one who persuaded me to begin this hideous task, and he will be curious to peruse the results.

I finally uncap the glistening silver inkwell--a gift from my lover, whom you will meet in these pages, God help me--and I scold myself as I dip my pen. Begin, Seth, begin. Make some sense of this insane mystery, of your life and your lover.

Let us go to a village just outside of London in the latter half of Queen Victoria’s reign. I will not tell you the exact year or the name of the village, for my stepfather’s name is recorded in the tax lists next to his profession as ‘shoemaker,’ and if you know his surname, then you know my village as well.

At the time my story begins, my mother was dead, and I was at war with my stepfather. I was nineteen and awash with madness. I dwelt in what I called the Black Pit.

You will return, worthless boy, my stepfather snarled at me from the doorway of my small bedroom. I was dressing by the light of my paraffin lamp, my fingers buttoning a waistcoat over my linen shirt. His eyes narrowed in suspicion when he saw me donning my Sunday best, instead of the black wool waumase preferred by workmen of our class.

I made no reply. This seemed to anger him further. He entered the room, a short, broad-faced fleshy man in a stained leather work apron, his face choleric beneath his balding pate. And do not make any of your smart remarks. Do you understand?

I was knotting a black silk tie around my collar. In those days, collars wrapped high around the neck, and the only thing to ease the discomfort was the pleasant softness of the linen. My chin sported an ugly bruise. Yesterday, my stepfather had sent me to obtain the measurements of the four sons of Lord Corbett.

I’d found the young beasts standing in a sullen row, their bodies corkscrewed with boredom while their mother talked shoes. As I knelt to trace the foot of the eldest boy with pencil and paper, the monster struck me in the chin with his knee.

Sorry, it was an accident.

He was laughing while his brothers howled and snorted.

Richard! exclaimed her ladyship. But her look encouraged as well as chided.

I’d seized my work bag and stormed out of their house without a word.

Now I was donning my frock coat, tugging angrily at the material. "If you are displeased with me, Father, do it yourself." He was not my real father, but he would have slapped my face for referring to him as ‘stepfather.’

In a flash, he had me by my bruised chin. "I said, none of your smart remarks. We cannot afford to anger his lordship. They are the wealthiest family in the village. You will go back and apologize for your disgusting temper and bad manners and complete the work. You will not disobey me further." He let go of my chin with a contemptuous flick.

Madness overcame me. I could have killed him in that instant. A hawkbill knife lay on my trunk, and I snatched it up. His eyes went to the sharp point, then back to my face.

I was taller than my stepfather, which irritated him. My mother had been short, and my height kept reminding my stepfather that I was another man's son. A taller man's son.

He straightened and plucked a peg hammer from his apron pocket. His bulky fist clenched it so hard his sinews bulged like a web. "If you try to use that, I’ll break your hands. See if you can find work, then."

I replied with a crazy smile. "Then I’ll give us what we both desire. I’ll break them for you—by beating you to death with them. So what if the police arrest me for killing my own father?"

My stepfather was taken aback. Then he recovered himself and shoved the hammer back inside his apron with a sneer of contempt.

Nonsense, he snorted. Go back to Lord Corbett’s. And visit the barber after your work is finished. Your hair is so long you look like an orangutan.

I felt the heat traveling through my flushed face and knew my expression must be completely wild. My stepfather’s eyes traveled to mine, and I could sense him on the verge of another vicious remark. But unexpectedly, he turned and left. I followed him into the main room of our shoe shop, a cramped place of low work benches strewn with worn hand tools, shoe pegs, and coils of sticky waxed thread. The air was filled with the feral animal stink of cured leather, a scent I loathed, and leather trimmings lay scattered about like dried worms. I kicked aside a stray shoe tree.

Go measure Lord Corbett’s louselings yourself! The orangutan is leaving. His eyes followed me as I strode from the cottage.

My thoughts were boiling as I hurried along the hard-packed dirt lane, passing unsightly cottages of mottled fieldstone. Do not imagine my village was a pleasant sight. It might have been that way many decades ago, but we lived too close to the belching cornucopia of London’s smoky chimneys. The window panes around me were etched with grime, and even the few flowers in the gardens looked dingy and shriveled. My breath was acrid and stinging in my throat, and the poisonous yellow air turned the setting sun into the color of amber bottle-glass.

A thousand insults agitated inside me, stabbing over and over. If I studied hard at school, he would say it was never enough to cure such a dullard. When I worked long hours in the shop, he scorned my efforts, calling me lazy. When I talked to customers, he corrected me sharply, saying my manners were provincial and crude. Even my appearance came in for much criticism, as you can tell from his words above. I had grown up thinking my looks possessed little value, for they had always brought nothing but abuse from him, and when you live in a place where everyone has known you all your life even beauty does not bring compliments, for the villagers have known it too long.

All relations between us as father and son had ceased long ago. But they had always been a syrupy deception he practiced before my mother’s eyes while she still lived. My stepfather did not understand the extent of our break and still thought he could make me obedient, but he was wrong.

I often wondered how it was that I, a young man of peaceful disposition, spent so much time in altercations with my stepfather. What our relations would have been had he been a kindly man, I do not know. I could not even imagine such.

Ahead lay the dirty yellow glow from our public house’s lamp. There was nowhere else for a bitter young man to go, other than wandering through the fields.

Our local hell-den was sunk below street level, directly under some cheap rooms for let, where, it was rumored, a man could fit himself into the slot of a woman’s body for an hour’s grinding. I ducked beneath the low lintel and entered a timbered chasm. The stone steps led to a sooty abyss of crude bellowing, drunken lurches, and pungent clouds of tobacco smoke that almost hid the occupants in the grim light of the paraffin lamps.

I hovered in the doorway, listening to the muted roar and clack of billiard balls while I tried to compose my features into an indifferent mask. A long row of workmen were taking their evening pint along the countertop. Many wore leather aprons over their work shirts or the thick waumase I knew too well. They looked like a race of degenerate trolls, and I could barely stand the thought of their company. I was sick of petty-minded men like my stepfather.

Gin, I demanded, resting my hands on the pitted mahogany countertop. Jenkins, the publican, turned towards me. Without any sign of warning on his lean, hard face, he snatched the knife from my hand. Pawn for your drink, Jenkins replied, tossing the knife backwards into his change box. For a moment, I was too confused to protest. I’d forgotten I’d been holding it.

He doesn’t want you stabbing someone after a few pints, called a voice.

I turned angrily, but failed to locate the speaker. A stranger stood at the billiard table. He wore a suit of midnight black and a blue silk ascot, the latter set with a pin of jet. He was leaning over as he lined up for a shot, swaying slightly. A glass rested on the edge of the billiard table, and he was obviously in the first stages of becoming drunk himself. He was