Single Vampire Seeks Consort Read online

  SINGLE VAMPIRE SEEKS CONSORT

  by

  Jade Astor

  Published by Jade Astor at Kindle Direct Publishing

  Copyright 2019 Jade Astor

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is strictly coincidental.

  Other titles by Jade Astor:

  Snow Bite, Blood Red

  Bachelor and the Beast

  Pete and His Werewolf

  The Werewolf Tutor

  Night of the Satyr

  Ebb Tide

  The Baron’s Gargoyle

  Artemis Gardens

  Passionate Lessons

  Passion Unmasked

  Kiss of the Dark Prince

  The House on the Cliff

  Chapter 1

  “Okay, so this is the main area, where the regular staff members work and make copies and so forth.” The middle-aged bearded guy who’d introduced himself as David motioned Brandon through the makeshift newsroom. Once a stately Victorian home, the building had been converted into the headquarters of the Rainbow Rag, a free gay weekly distributed at local bars. “You’ll probably spend most of your time back here, though, in the mailroom.” Brandon tried not to show his disappointment as they headed for a dingy little area at the rear.

  Not that he had much right to complain. He’d answered the ad for a minimum-wage mail clerk, and he’d been both grateful and relieved when they’d awarded him the job. It wasn’t exactly the career in journalism he’d hoped for, but it was a start, and no better offers were forthcoming.

  “One of your duties will be sorting out the Classifieds,” David went on. “That means you’ll be working with Leverett, who manages the ads department. He’s off today, but you’ll meet him soon.” He pointed to a row of pigeon-hole message boxes on the opposite wall. A teller’s window, like one might find at a bank or a post office, opened onto a small lobby that faced the back parking lot. “The personals are the reason most guys read our paper. They can either rent an email address or pick up their replies here. They come up to the window and give their box number. If there are any letters in the box, you can hand them over. If there aren’t ... well, you can check out the guy and decide the reason for yourself.” He laughed.

  “Personals? You mean like lonely-hearts ads?” Brandon asked, incredulous. “I thought people used email and phone for that kind of thing nowadays.”

  “You’d think so, but not everyone is into Internet dating, especially the older guys. They’re afraid of scams, or maybe they just like getting real letters.”

  “Maybe.” Brandon tried to remember the last time he’d gotten a letter on paper and couldn’t, outside of bills and certain documents related to his college loans. He found it kind of sweet that men of whatever age might be able to connect romantically through the written word. He imagined curling letters formed with fountain pens on fancy stationery, though the reality was no doubt less charming.

  “We make most of our money on ads, and to be honest there isn’t much left over after we put out each issue,” David told him, as though he had suddenly realized just how dingy the small mail room was. “So you won’t get rich here, but you’ll have fun at the Rainbow Rag. I can assure you of that.” He winked. “Plus you get first crack at the personal ads if any promising prospects roll in.”

  “Thanks. I’ll do my best.”

  “I’m only kidding, of course. Better not to mix business and pleasure, if you know what I mean. Leverett has a lot of tedious rules he’ll spend hours filling you in on. Just smile and nod and agree with whatever he says. It’s easier in the long run.”

  “No problem, but I didn’t take this job in order to find love. That’s something I really don’t have time for just now.”

  “You say that, but you’ll be tempted, I guarantee,” another voice broke in. Brandon looked around to see a guy standing in the doorway to the mailroom. He was an earnest-looking man about thirty years old, with short blond hair and thick glasses. He seemed cute in a nerdy way, Brandon had to admit. “As far as letters go, I know I’d like to see if a guy had decent writing skills and grammar. If he does, I’m a goner. But of course, I’m a writer, so I guess it stands to reason. I’m Chuck, by the way.” He stuck out his hand.

  “Chuck is our staff reporter,” David explained. “We use a lot of freelancers, but we depend on Chuck for the big stories.”

  “Such as they are in a little bar throwaway like ours,” Chuck said with a shrug. Brandon detected a touch of bitterness in the pronouncement.

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Brandon Flynn.” Brandon grasped Chuck’s sturdy fingers.

  “I’ll leave you get started, then.” David pointed at a huge mountain of letters, flyers, and bills that someone had tossed in a cardboard box and left on the workbench. “Sad to say, no one’s been through that stuff for a couple of weeks, when the last guy quit. For now, just open the envelopes and put the sheets in piles depending whom it’s meant for. Once that’s done, we’ll give you some other tasks. Any questions, just holler for Chuck. Leverett will want to talk to you when he comes back tomorrow, too.”

  Chuck waited until David had returned to his corner office and closed the door. “Did you come on board because you want to be a journalist? You know, work your way up from the bottom?”

  Brandon blushed, hesitant to admit that had been his initial thought upon joining the paper. However, it now seemed clear to him, given the small scale of the operation, that such a hope was a fantasy at best. Turning away, he busied himself with shuffling through the avalanche of mail on the counter. From what he could see, many were bills and ads, and a lot of them were indeed for the personals column. The numbers on the envelopes were a giveaway, though they also reminded him of letters meant for prison inmates. Brandon put those in a separate pile to deal with later, after the mysterious Leverett arrived.

  “Nah,” he fibbed, since Chuck was waiting for an answer. “I did major in journalism, but you know how it is after you first graduate from college. Any job, even in a related field, will do when you’ve got loans to pay back.”

  “Well, it’ll take a while, I’m afraid. The newspaper business is a dying one in these days of the Internet and cable, my friend. Pursue marketing instead. That’s where the future of our capitalist society lies.”

  “I don’t know. Working on a progressive paper seems like fun. I can get more involved in the community and actually be paid for it.”

  “Ah, an idealist. I had such dreams once upon a time. Anyway, don’t let my cynicism discourage you. I hope you’ll be happy here. The last guy took off without an explanation. We weren’t what he was looking for, I guess.”

  “I wouldn’t do that. I’d at least give proper notice.”

  Chuck laughed and went back to his computer.

  The hours passed quickly. Brandon learned all about sorting the mail, though in fairness it wasn’t exactly difficult. Outside the windows of the lobby, which he glanced up at now and again, the parking lot grew dark and gloomy as another crisp fall afternoon slowly came to an end.

  Just before quitting time, he heard tires rumble into the gravel lot. Looking up, he saw a silhouetted figure get out of a black sports car and walk toward the lobby entrance. A moment later, he stepped up
to the window.

  Instinctively, Brandon glanced into the newsroom to ask if he should deal with the late customer himself or if David or Chuck wanted to do it, but both of them seemed to have disappeared. When Brandon looked back at the service window, he was glad they had.

  To say the guy standing there was attractive would have been the understatement of the decade. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, he wore a black leather coat and gloves with silver snaps at the wrists. After tapping once, he rested his long fingers on the glass while he waited for Brandon to walk over.

  “I’ve come to place an ad,” he said. While Brandon watched, he reached inside his coat, withdrew a sheet of paper neatly folded into thirds, and slid it through slot in the partition. When Brandon unfolded it, he found a quantity of cash tucked inside. “That should cover the first issue. If my initial foray proves unsuccessful, I will return and renew it.”

  “Most people mail this kind of stuff in,” Brandon said, placing the cash on the counter and scanning the contents of the ad. As he’d suspected, it was for the personals column. What he couldn’t have predicted was the content. He gaped, open-mouthed, while his customer waited patiently for him to look up again.

  “I don’t trust the mail,” he continued when Brandon raised his head. “I tried to submit the same ad once before, but it apparently got lost before it could actually be published. Do you know what I mean?”

  Was he implying someone at the paper had deliberately lost it? Still, maybe there was a reason for that. Glancing down, Brandon perused the text again to be sure he hadn’t been hallucinating.

  No—no mistake. Single Vampire Seeks Consort, he read. Must be comfortable with vampire lore and lifestyle and willing to indulge in safe, consensual bloodletting sessions.

  Brandon cleared his throat. “Well, to be honest, I don’t know if ... “ he began, but he never had to finish his sentence. When he looked up at the window, the guy was gone. The cash and the ad remained, which was a good thing, or else he would have begun to question his sanity. He could almost hear creepy soundtrack music ringing inside his head.

  Fortunately, Chuck and David chose that moment to stroll out of David’s office with their coats over their arms.

  “What happened to you?” Chuck asked, seeing Brandon’s stunned expression. “Did you just see a ghost back there?”

  “Pretty close,” Brandon muttered. He didn’t object when Chuck approached and took the unfolded sheet of paper from his hand. A smile crossed his face as he read it and then handed it to David, who laughed out loud.

  “Is that ... you know, is that all right to print?” Brandon asked, feeling stupid and naïve. “I mean ... I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

  “Oh, we get all kinds,” David reassured him. “Nothing illegal about it. It’s really up to Leverett, but my opinion would be that we should go ahead and run it.”

  “A little controversy never hurt a paper like this one,” Chuck pointed out. “If it gains us a few new readers, even outraged ones, that’s all to the good.”

  “It’s probably not that controversial in today’s world,” David said. “Just some lonely guy role-playing. I wouldn’t worry about it. What they do in the privacy of their own bedrooms doesn’t concern us as long as he pays the monthly fee.”

  “He left it in cash.” Brandon duly handed the bills over.

  “Ah. Anonymity. Probably the safest thing for a vampire,” Chuck said, starting to laugh again. “You never know if some budding van Helsing is reading the man-to-man personals on the sly.”

  They were still chortling as they walked out to the parking lot with Brandon and got into their cars while he climbed onto his bike. He was so absorbed in thinking about the ad—and the man who had dropped it off—that he barely felt the chilly air whipping around him as he pedaled down the dingy city streets toward his equally dingy apartment house. Of course, he’d assumed the Rainbow Rag took kinky ads, like all of them did nowadays, but guys claiming to be vampires, looking for people to donate blood for them to drink? The entire concept shocked and unnerved him, so much that he found himself glancing over his shoulder as he unlocked the front door to his house.

  At the same time, he felt intrigued by the idea of surrendering his body and his blood. Giving himself utterly and completely to the man who had dropped off the ad turned him on more than he cared to admit. A bond like that, whether the guy was really a vampire or was just pretending to be one, would go way beyond any casual hookup or experimental blind date. It was like something out of a weird novel or a horror movie ... and yet, on some level at least, the whole bizarre scenario was real. There really was a guy out there in the city waiting for someone to answer his ad and offer his blood.

  Brandon fell asleep thinking about just who that someone might turn out to be.

  The following day, Brandon finally got a chance to meet the mysterious Leverett, who turned out to be a thin, fifty-something man with a silver crew cut, a gold pince-nez, and a sarcastic attitude. As predicted, he gave Brandon not only complete instructions on how to organize and distribute the responses to the various personal ads that came through the mail, but a lecture on not interfering with or intercepting any of the letters.

  “It’s not our place to help them find romance or—heaven forbid—offer it to them ourselves,” he insisted, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling at the absurdity of the very idea. “The respondents send their letters in two envelopes. I want you to do nothing more than open the outside one, read the number on the front of the inside one, and put it in the appropriate cubby. If they’ve paid for mail forwarding, that’s what we do. If they’re picking them up in person, we hand them over without comment. And under no circumstances are you to compose your own response and stick it in the pile. I’ll find out if you do, and the result won’t be pretty. You got that?”

  “Yes, sir,” Brandon said a bit morosely. He wondered if his predecessor had left so suddenly because he had dared to flout Leverett’s rules.

  “Oh, heavens, don’t call me ‘sir.’ You make me feel a hundred years old!” Leverett pressed the back of his hand to his forehead in a theatrical gesture of despair. “Anyhow, I’m sure you don’t need to comb newspaper ads to find a fellow for yourself. You probably have them lining up for dates all weekend. Off with you, then, and get back to work!”

  Though Brandon was relieved to get away from Leverett and his domineering manner, he returned to the mailroom in dejection. Of course, he hadn’t seriously entertained the prospect of answering the vampire ad himself, but for some reason being expressly forbidden to do so only made him more curious. How did one offer his blood to another man in writing, anyway? What would be the right tone, the right words? Would a vampire prefer humor, deference, or an attitude of fear and subservience?

  Well, he’d never know, he supposed. Setting his mouth in a grim, determined line, he got back to work.

  Chapter 2

  Brandon’s first week at the paper passed without incident, and with only a few chastising speeches from Leverett, none of them related to compromising the integrity of the personals column. Left to himself in the mail room for the most part, Brandon concentrated on filing and sorting along with matching up the new responses with the box numbers assigned to each ad. He put the odd request for a vampire-lover out of his mind, even when the newest issue of the Rainbow Rag came out with the ad in the center of the personals page. He glanced at it just once to be sure it had been printed correctly and to verify the box number.

  After a few days, he wondered if his curiosity had been misplaced. No one had sent in a single reply. It might as well have been a prank or the act of a harmless crackpot making a futile bid for attention. The guy who had placed it might not even bother to come back, satisfied that his little joke had run its course.

  Then, almost a week after the ad first appeared, a single response arrived.

  At first, he decided not to speculate about the contents of the ordinary white envelope and simply slid it into the ap
propriate cubby. Every now and then, however, he sneaked a look back, as if to check that it was still there. Before long, he began thinking about nothing else. What kind of letter did one send a supposed vampire, after all? What sort of person would sit down to write one?

  Later that same afternoon, when the letter had sat undisturbed for several hours, Brandon found himself alone and unwatched. Leverett had gone out to recruit retail advertisements in person, Chuck was out following up on a story, and David had left early to get his car serviced.

  Brandon knew it was wrong, but the quiet atmosphere of the deserted office, the lack of stimulating work to keep his mind busy, and the sheer temptation grew too difficult to bear. Snatching it from the cubby, he held the envelope up to the light bulb so he could see through the paper. He couldn’t make out much, since the paper had been folded over—the name “Underground Lounge,” which was presumably a bar, and the words “Saturday night at 9 PM.” Apparently the vampire and his willing victim would meet then, assuming he ever returned to pick up his mail.

  Casting a guilty look around to be doubly sure no one had witnessed his transgression, Brandon noticed that outside the window, a gloomy veil had once again descended over the parking lot. It got dark so early these days—before long the first snow would arrive and make it impossible to ride his bike to work and on errands. He only hoped he’d have enough money saved up by then to buy at least a beater car with some semblance of a heating system.

  Quickly he stuffed the envelope back inside the numbered cubby, ashamed of himself and his weakness. What happened between the two, assuming anything ever did, was none of his business.

  When he turned from the mail slot, his heart briefly froze in his chest. The so-called vampire himself was standing at the teller’s window. His hand was raised as though he were about to tap on the glass to get Brandon’s attention. When he saw Brandon staring at him, he let his arm drop and smiled.