Night's Pleasure by Amanda Ashley

don’t know if I’ll be able to control the hunger when I rise. New Vampires sometimes go mad with the lust for blood. I don’t want to be a monster. I won’t put your life, or Savanah’s, in danger. I won’t live half a life. I don’t ever want Savanah to know….”
    In the end, he had agreed to do as she asked. Against the advice and wishes of the hospital staff, he had taken her home that evening. He had covered the bedroom window with a heavy quilt to ensure no light could find her. Holding back his tears, he had washed her, dressed her in her favorite lavender-and-white dress, brushed her hair until it gleamed, and then he had sat beside their bed, holding her hand.
    As the sun came up, she had whispered that she loved him, and then she had fallen into the deep, deathlike sleep of the Undead.
    Early the next morning, a doctor had pronounced her dead and signed the necessary papers. William had called in a few favors and arranged to have her buried that afternoon.
    He had sat at her graveside the rest of the day, slowly consuming a bottle of Irish whiskey. Just before sunset, with tears streaming down his cheeks, he had dug up the coffin and looked on the face of his beloved one last time. And then, using Barb’s stake and mallet, he had taken the grisly steps required to assure that when the sun set, she would not rise as a newly made Vampire.
    William swallowed the hot bitter bile that rose in his throat as he remembered that horrible night, a night forever imprinted on his heart and soul as he had destroyed the woman who had been his wife. If he lived to be a hundred, he would never understand how the gentle woman who had shared his bed and borne their daughter could have spent her adult life doing what he had done that night—not just once, but dozens of times in her career as a hunter.
    In spite of his revulsion, he had become a Vampire hunter that night, though his kills had been few. The war between the Vampires and the Werewolves had ended soon after Barbara’s death and his life had returned to normal until a hit-and-run driver put him in a wheelchair. The police had never found the man who hit him, but Will was pretty sure he knew who had been behind the wheel, or at least who had ordered the hit. He had been working on a story about government corruption in the city, and had taken the accident as a sign that he was getting too close to the man behind the money. He knew he was supposed to die that night. By the time he recovered enough to get back to work, the money trail had dried up. All things considered, he supposed someone in the Vampire community might have been behind the attempt on his life, but hit-and-runs really weren’t their style.
    Will had never been able to prove who had been driving the car that hit him, nor had he ever learned who had attacked Barbara, but he hadn’t given up. Hopefully, he would live long enough to solve both mysteries.
    Sipping his drink, Will stared up at the stars wheeling across the midnight sky. “I’ll find him, Barb,” he murmured. “I’ll find him, and I’ll make him pay if it’s the last thing I do, I promise.”

Chapter Six
    Rane stopped by to pick up Savanah on his way to the theater the following night, and thoughtfully arranged for her to have the best seat in the house—front row center.
    She was mesmerized, as always, while she watched Santoro the Magnificent do his act. Even though she had seen his show several times, she was just as fascinated as she had been the first time. Now and then, she wondered what her friends at the newspaper would think if they knew she had a date with him after the show. She had dressed with care that evening, choosing a pair of black slacks and a deep blue sweater that made her eyes seem darker than they were.
    Savanah felt a strange sense of satisfaction every time the audience applauded, a kind of proprietary pride in Rane’s