Grave Ambitions: Book 2 of the Grave Delights Series

By Victoria Cerises

The Sequel to Grave Delights, an Amazon LGBT Horror #1 New Release...

"A vampire with a soul who has had great achievements for both good and evil will end the Great War, and be rewarded."

Cavalier vampire and former coven darling Ledalus is haunted by a mysterious prophesy she thinks may be about herself. After a debilitating curse has reduced her to a shadow of her former self, it's all the humiliated vampire can do to protect her hybrid lycan-vampire daughter, Eve, from a world that would have her dead. Atop all of that, Ledalus is still trying desperately to fall out of love with Veruca, Eve's other mother, and leader of the local lycan clan.

All the while, Veruca struggles with her own feelings for the vampire she was once in love with while trying to convince herself that she's happy with her lycan mate, Adelle, and raise their teenage daughter to be heir of the clan. Little does she know that someone very close to her is looking to steal her title right out from under her...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Victoria Charlesworth
• Release date: Jun 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463686942

Book preview

Grave Ambitions

Victoria Cerises

Copyright © 2018 Victoria Cerises

All rights reserved.

Books in the Grave Delights Series:

Grave Delights [Book 1]

Grave Ambitions [Book 2]

Grave Deception [Book 3]

One

1957, Brussels

Julien, you can close up on your own? Remember: lights, freezer, door. Got it?

Sure, Thomas. Sure thing.

The shop was eerie at night, but Julien enjoyed it. The fluorescent lights gave the glinting slabs of meat beneath the glass a yellow-green look about them and the refrigerators buzzed like swarms of bugs. The dried sausages hanging from ceiling hooks made shadows across the cement floor that looked like monstrous alien life-forms. He once tried explaining the pleasant unearthly sensation of being alone in the butchery to his kid sister, likening it to being on a spaceship floating far above the earth, and she told him he would be a virgin for the rest of his life.

Lights, freezer, door, He murmured to himself, running a damp rag across a particularly stubborn blood-stain along the oak countertop. The sweat staining his collar and underarms had long since dried once the sun fell below the horizon and a dry breeze began filling the shop through its open windows. He had no plans after locking up the shop on this particular Friday night, but perhaps he would swing by Léopold Park on his way home to see if Peter and his brothers were still hanging around as they usually did.

His back was turned away from the front door of the shop when the sensation of being watched came over him like an enveloping shadow. Thomas had left a few minutes ago. He was sure he had heard the shuddering squeak of the back door being yanked shut, and he hadn’t heard the tinkling of the bell that announced when the front door was opened, but still the sensation hovered over him. He stopped sweeping and slowly turned to look over his shoulder.

Ah, Christ!

A woman stood in the shop’s entryway. How had he not heard her come in? Had the bell above the door not gone off? Impossible. He had only been turned around for a minute, maybe two, while he cleaned. His mouth dry and uncooperative, Julien swallowed and let out a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding. Um... you-you want the same as usual?

She was hard to forget, being tall and very, very thin. Every time she came into the butchery, it was the cold gray of her eyes that struck Julien most intensely. Perhaps it was just the fluorescent lights and the way they dangled down low from the ceiling, but her skin seemed to radiate sometimes, as if it were made of porcelain or coated in milk. She came in once every week and always right before closing.

The woman nodded once, looking bored or perhaps unamused with his discomfort. If you don’t mind. She muttered with disinterest.

Without missing a beat, he skittered away into the back of the shop. When he returned less than two minutes later, a new sheen of sweat marking his forehead, he held two lidded buckets, one in each hand, straining a little beneath their weight. He carried them around the display refrigerator and set them down beside her. Their eyes met for a single moment and Julien observed the cool swift grip of paralysis coming over him. She waved two folded up bills in front of him, which he took with trembling fingers, and lifted the buckets with ease.

Thank you, She muttered as she shouldered open the glass door and swept out of the shop.

Julien stood still for many moments, examining the empty spot where the mysterious woman had just been. He wondered what she did every week with two gallons of pig’s blood.

Are you sure she'll be alright on her own? You know how first transformations can be. They’re terrifying if you’ve got no idea what’s happening to you.

"Yes I know how frightening they can be if you’re unprepared, but Gwen has been preparing for this moment her entire life. I also know how coddled she feels always being followed by one of us. She’ll be fine, Veruca. It may not even happen tonight, anyway."

The Brussels clan-leader watched as her daughter darted away from the castle grounds in the looming dark. Even when the young lycan thought she was sneaking out on her own, Veruca was always close behind to make sure she never strayed too far from the clan castle.

Adelle, I'm going to follow her. I know I said I wouldn’t anymore, but it could happen tonight and I simply want to make sure everything goes alright. Veruca gave her mate a hurried kiss, leaving no time for the lycan to protest before she walked to the window behind the massive desk in her dim, untidy office. The three-tiered bay window overlooked the eastern gardens and part of the central courtyard, a sight that she often found herself lost in while working. A small, vine-covered balcony outside of the window allowed for two or three people to comfortably stand and observe the grounds.

She pushed open the window and in one swift motion vaulted over the balcony railing down to the lush grass some twenty feet below. As soon as her feet hit the ground, Veruca felt a sigh of contentment leave her at the silence and stillness of the night. As clan-leader, it was rare that she ever got a moment to herself. Someone was always knocking on her office door and throwing battle maps down in front of her, or grumbling in her direction about the state of the armory downstairs, or interrupting her precious little private time with Adelle for trivial clan-related matters.

Though she worried about her daughter’s impending first transformation to her lycan state, there was something else clouding Veruca’s mind tonight. Today marked a special occasion in the history of her long, storied existence. Three hundred years ago to the day she lost the love of her life to a vampire’s kiss. She had never forgotten how it felt to bury her deceased best friend and nascent lover by hand, nor how it felt to lose her child in the same manner two hundred and fifty years later. Though she lost Eve to vampirism much more recently, her and Leda’s deaths were one and the same to her. They were her failures.

The last time she saw her daughter Eve was fifty-six years ago. It had been perhaps the hardest thing she ever had to do: handing her daughter off to be raised by a vampire she once knew and loved. Veruca had no choice but to move on. Eve could not live at the clan castle being what she was, a true hybrid and the first vampire-lycan. And so she placed her under the care of Ledalus. It was enough to convince Adelle, one of the fiercest anti-vampire lycans Veruca had ever met, that Eve would one day be just like the ruthless and occasionally maniacal vampire.

Somehow, despite Ledalus’ history of violence, Veruca did not have the same worry. She was confident Ledalus would care for Eve and protect her from the dangers of the world if only because she had admitted that she was still in love with Veruca the last time they’d seen one another. What she feared the most was that Eve would have no memory of her first family. As leader of the clan, she lied to her people and told them she had sent away Eve in the name of safety to family in the United States. It was a lie, but it kept her, Adelle, and most importantly Eve safe. In reality, Eve was no more than a few miles away and had been ever since Veruca gave her up.

And then there was Gwendolyn. A perfect mix of both of her parents, she was headstrong and intuitive like Veruca, but as dedicated to knowledge and research as Adelle was. She was taken everywhere as a child, as opposed to left at the clan castle, while Veruca attended to her clan duties. Gwendolyn learned much about the politics and business of leading a clan in the short eighteen years of her life. Veruca groomed her with the intention of passing on her leadership to her daughter as soon as she went through her first transformation. While it typically happened to genetic lycans before their eighteenth birthdays, Gwendolyn had not yet had hers. Veruca could not help but fear that their daughter was human, a trait not seen often in children of two lycan parents.

About half a mile ahead of her mother, unaware she was once again being followed, Gwen relished in her self-gained freedom. Three times in the last month she had caught her mother following her away from the castle grounds. It was absolutely humiliating that Veruca thought her incapable of being alone even for a few hours.

The pressure to go through her first lycan transformation was high, not that she could control it, and that gave her more and more anxiety as each day passed. Because she had no more powers than a human, she constantly was being protected or doted on by clan members and rarely let out on her own despite how close she was to adulthood. This, naturally, resulted in some necessary rebellion.

Tonight, she was not going out to meet friends, nor to do something courageous or stupid to prove her own abilities. Tonight, she merely wanted to get away from the suffocating castle and its overbearing inhabitants. There was a cemetery a few miles away from the clan grounds, situated just outside the south-eastern quadrant of the city. A university surrounded it on one side and several parks on the other, and people always wandered through and around it as a shortcut back and forth across the sprawled campus. There was an abundance of street-lights and students were often sneaking in and out of the wrought iron gates at night.

Her mother, Adelle, had taught Gwen to avoid cemeteries as that’s where vampires supposedly frequented. Gwen was intuitive enough to recognize when her mother was being overprotective, and this characterization sounded more like a stereotype than a fact. But, just in case she were to encounter a vampire during her stroll, she brought a crucifix in her left pocket, a vial of holy water in her right, and a wooden stake stuffed into the waistband of her pants.

The walk down the isolated hilly road to the cemetery was peaceful and uneventful. The warm breeze was refreshing after a day spent within the gray walls of the castle. She wandered the perimeter of the cemetery once she arrived, feeling more than a little proud of herself for having successfully snuck out on her own. Not to mention, she was feeling quite confident that she was prepared were she to actually come upon a vampire. Gwen hoped that she would be a good clan-leader one day, but living up to the legend of her mother was going to be difficult.

Can I help you?

Gwen jumped, her heart