Portrait of a Vampire: A True Romance

By Alyne de Winter

When Goth girl, Gina, meets the gorgeous, aristocratic Laurence, (who she affectionately calls Lorenzo), in a Seattle nightclub, he literally sweeps her off her feet. She knows it's love, but he will not take their relationship where she, and her friends, Amylie and Jen, long for it to go. Frustrated by his holding out on her, Gina becomes obsessed with painting Lorenzo's portrait only to fall deep into a mystery she could never have imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alyne de Winter
• Release date: Mar 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386469414

Book preview

Portrait of a Vampire

"I'm Gentleman Death in silk and lace, come to put out the candles.

The canker in the heart of the rose." ― Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

GINA ALWAYS DRESSED for the occasion: vintage evening dress of gleaming black satin, Czech crystal beads, magenta hair teased rock star high. A good bottle of Corvina always stood on a small table at her side, with two gold-leaf goblets, both filled, one for her and one for her model. The walls of her small studio were covered with black drapes that kept all natural light out. Only rings of candles flaring from two Baroque candelabra were permitted. In that spectral glow, Gina sat painting, with small, careful strokes, so as not to make a mess, the single image that obsessed her: the face of her beloved Laurence, whom she affectionately called Lorenzo.

Portraits of Lorenzo hung all over Gina’s apartment. She couldn’t bear to part with them.  She set them like jewels in elaborate golden frames, hanging them sequentially on her slate-blue walls like a gallery of ghostly ancestors. Lorenzo’s image changed subtly with the years, as if he were still alive rather than frozen in perpetual youth under the earth. At first, Gina preferred to think of him living, far away in some exotic country like Illyria or Bohemia, rather than where he really was. 

She’d met him in a club, of course. Where else? That’s where she always was with Amylie (Emily really) of the black velvet hair (dyed of course) and