Killing Joy: A Vampire Tale of Love and Loss

By Elle Gilyard

A woman learns that the love of her life is a vampire whose feud with his sire caused her mother's death. Though she rejects him, she finds that her heart doesn't want to let him go. When her own life is in danger, she has to trust that God will cradle her soul or embrace the demonic darkness she was taught to shun.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brown Sugar Books
• Release date: Dec 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781954150003

Elle Gilyard

Elle Gilyard writes stories based on twisted dreams shaped by a love of fairytales and studies in mythology, religion, and history. Though she doesn't confine herself to one genre, she keeps one idea in mind while writing stories about love, lovers, and life. That is the idea of fated mates.    When she's not writing, she's reading, sewing, drawing, painting, cooking, singing, spending time with those she loves and/or laughing about inappropriate things.   You can explore her mind through her twitter account @ellegilyard, her blog, and her YouTube channel of the same name.

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 by Latina Gilyard

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

Brown Sugar Books LLC

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Killing Joy/ Elle Gilyard -- 1st ed.

ISBN 978-1-954150-00-3

To my parents, who encouraged my daydreaming

To my siblings, who put up with my wondering thoughts

To all those I’ve loved and lost

Roses want to move towards the sunshine

They want to put down stable roots

And live out days of plenty

I want to do what they do in simplicity

I want to put down some roots too

To show my delicate strength that will outlast time

I want to grow with someone

Have someone to lean towards the sunshine with

Someone who will help me soar my skies

Someone to understand the patterns

The raindrops in my eyes

I want to stretch my leaves out and shine

Sing with the caged bird

And tell everyone of my divine

I want to be me, be part of someone else

I want to live, love, feel, see, taste

I just don’t want to spend my whole life

Rotting away in someone else’s vase

Contents

[Mother]

[Suspicions]

[Demon]

[Malaise]

[Death]

[Life]

[Feeding]

[Love]

[His]

[Grave]

[Memory]

[Sheets]

[Commune]

[Mary]

[Made]

[Work]

[Rules]

[Conscience]

[Prayer]

[About the Author]

[Mother]

I kissed my mother’s grayish brown cheek. She trembled. She stilled before I pulled away. She gasped one final time before she sank into her bed coverings and slipped away from me. The energy in the room sank with her. Though her fingers fell from my hand, another gripped me, lent me his strength. That was one thing about August: he always had an abundance of the very thing I lacked. Why he remained with me, even clung to me, I didn’t know.

The collector is here, Joy, Mary whispered.

August and I moved out of the way. A man in a cloak swept past us, went to the bed, followed by another man who might have been his shadow. They wrapped my mother in a shroud, placed her on a stretcher, carried her out of the room and through the darkened hall with only their lanterns to see by. Soon, the sound of their shuffling feet disappeared. No one else approached.

They left us to our grief for once.

The Walters lost a valuable maid and I lost the one person who believed I was special, worthy of a life better than the one I had. The one person besides August. Even as I thought about him, his grip on me tightened. He slid his hands across my back, enveloped me in his embrace, enclosed me in what seemed a cocoon of warmth. If the world was fair, I would emerge as a butterfly without a hole the size of my mother in my soul.

Unfortunately, the world was not fair. No matter how hard he squeezed me, how much I pushed the past few weeks of her suffering away, the pain persisted.

Did you see the puncture marks on her neck? Do you know what they mean? Mary whispered from far away.

I saw no such thing, I said.

You saw them, didn’t you, August? Two small puncture marks near her collarbone.

They were there, love, August said even as he petted me. They were half obscured by her hair. I’m not sure you would have noticed as blinded as you were, still are, by your grief.

I’m not blind. I just hope the grave diggers don’t see what you saw. They’ll never give her a proper burial.

A proper burial. It was the best chance people like my mother, like August, like Mary, like me, like most people I knew had at something better than the lives we had. In the heaven we were taught about, we wouldn’t be relegated to the bottom of the social classes in a country that barely wanted to acknowledge that we were still there. We could rise above everyone on ivory and gold wings. An image interrupted my thoughts of my mother’s future, of mine.

Two small puncture wounds in my mother’s neck. They could be mistaken for droplets of blood from her own mouth, a symptom of the wasting disease that overtook her.

You did see them, August said as he kissed my neck.

I saw something, I admitted. I thought vampires didn’t leave evidence like that though. I thought they had to conceal their victims so people wouldn’t find out what they were.

A starving creature might not have time to hide the marks, love. His voice was so soft that I scarcely heard him.

I have to get back to the kitchen before Helena notices me gone, Mary said. She became a blur of dark skin and crinkling fabric as she rushed out of the room. and down the hall.

She didn’t hear what you said.

But you did.

Was I not supposed to?

Silence.

How do you know so much about what a vampire might do?

Again, nothing.

August?

He kissed my cheek, pecked my lips, let me go. I should get back to work too. I’ll come back and check on you later, my love.

Will you answer my questions later?

Instead of answering, August hurried out. He took the same path as the men who carried my mother out. Unlike them, he carried no lamp. After only a few steps, I could no longer see either his features or his uniform.

[Suspicions]

His footsteps disappeared a lot faster than those of the men. I shook my head. I had to work fast. I pulled my mother’s sheets from the bed, threw them into a small pot, and quickly lit a fire. It took much faster than any oven fire I ever lit. The Walters’ house was always chilled through no matter how many logs, or layers of clothes, one could afford. The threads of the sheets began to disintegrate into ash.

Soon, my mother’s sheets evaporated into smoke. What had affected her wouldn’t be spreading to the rest of us. The Walters would simply have to take the cost out of my pay. It wouldn’t be the first time they took from me simply because I was attempting to help others. I made an effort to push my thoughts of miasmas, vampires, puncture wounds, and even August’s reluctance to answer out of my mind.

My mother died of a type of consumption. My lover was a good man. My God would stop the people around me from dying and if they did die, even if I died, there was a reward to be gained from it all. If I repeated my sentiments enough times,