Possessing the rare ability to read the memories of dead, she volunteers to help catch the culprit behind the string of drained witches. Gwen has to team up with the one man who broke her heart, deal with a ghost who pulls her into the deathly realm at will, and a fight off the advances of sexy but frustrating vampire who not only craves what runs through her veins—he wants her heart.

    Snuggles... Stress. You would think December would be Ivy's ideal time of year. After all, festivities abound and witches everywhere are encouraged to put their feet up and relax. That's not quite the case when she has various Order members attempting to finagle her into Christmas activities and a special artefact from the top of the Christmas tree goes missing. Either someone is attempting to sabotage Winter or something very strange is afoot indeed. This is a short holiday novella.

    Some men want you not only for your body, but your brains. Especially your brains.It’s true! There are men out there who care—early-rising, down-to-earth, indefatigable men who’ll follow you for miles. They’ll take the time to surprise you, over and over. One sniff of that perfume, and you’ll have to use a shotgun to fight them off. And then, once you get together, all they want is to share a nice meal. And another. And another.Romeo and Juliet, eat your hearts out."Bring Out Your Dead" by Katie MacAlister"Gentlemen Prefer Voodoo" by Angie Fox"Zombiewood Confidential" by Marianne Mancusi"Every Part of You" by Lisa Cach

    Everyone calls her crazy and she believes she is too until the night she meets a vampire and for the first time in her life, the voices shut up.Zane just wants to enjoy his usual blood buffet, instead he runs into a wisp of a woman who makes him feel emotions he thought long dead. Rescuing her from the insane asylum, he brings her home, determined to seduce and feed from her, a plan that is foiled by ghostly voices determined to keep Ella untouched. But not even poltergeists can stand in the way of a vampire in love.

    She'll do whatever it takes to get his help, including a bit of rule-breaking and blackmail. As for the addictive attraction between them? She's ignoring it completely.Quinn is a little too busy and a lot too antisocial to help an interfering witch find her sister. But when he realizes the distractingly sexy siren might be the key to everything he wants, he's all in.Grace and Quinn are determined to stay single, but a centuries-old, match-making curse has other plans for the pair. Can an immortal warrior burned by love win the heart of the sexy witch meant to save his ever-lovin' soul?

    By vampires, creatures that can’t exist. But Sara knows better and she’s on a mission to kill as many as she can…until she comes across a man from her past.This short story was originally published in the Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance.

    Now, Lillim's half-demon ex-boyfriend is contacting her for help, she has somehow gotten herself mixed up in a kidnapping, and her long-dead rival has risen from the grave. So when a dragon plotting to take over the world offers her a choice: Work for him or else. Lillim Callina is going to choose else.

    At her sixteenth birthday party, held in the basement of her dad’s church, she finally finds the courage to talk to him. Turns out, the devastating crush is mutual.As Avery takes her hand and leads her out onto the makeshift dance floor, Zellie is overwhelmed by her first vision of his death; shocking because not only are they both covered in his blood, but they’re old, like thirty-five, and she is pregnant.Afraid to tell anyone about the vision, (she’d just be labeled a freaky black magic witch, right?) Zellie keeps the knowledge of Avery’s future to herself and tries to act like any other teenager in love. When they get caught on their way to a secret rendezvous by her mom and his dad, they are forbidden to see each other.Convinced that their parents are freaking out unnecessarily, Avery and Zellie vow to be together no matter what. They continue their relationship in secret until Zellie learns that their parents are just trying to prevent her and Avery from suffering like they did. The visions are hereditary, they’re dangerous, and if they stay together the visions will come true.Now Zellie must choose between severing all ties with Avery, like her mom did to prevent his father’s death, and finding a way to change Avery’s future.

    I want to make that perfectly clear. But after my life turned into a horror movie, I take fear a lot more seriously now. I finally became Dr. Carrie Ames just eight months ago. Then I was attacked in the hospital morgue by a vampire. Just my luck.So now I'm a vampire, and it turns out I have a blood tie to the monster who sired me. The tie works like an invisible leash and I'm bound to him no matter what I do. And of course he's one of the most evil vampires on earth. With my sire hell-bent on turning me into a soulless killer and his sworn enemy set to exterminate me, things couldn't get much worse--except I'm attracted to them both.Drinking blood, living as an immortal demon and being a pawn between two warring vampire factions isn't exactly how I'd imagined my future. But as my father used to say, the only way to conquer fear is to face it. So that's what I'll do. Fangs bared.

     Suspenseful, surprising, sometimes dark, sometimes humorous-these all-new stories will ensure that readers never think of vampires (or birthdays) in quite the same way again. In New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris's "Dracula Night," Sookie Stackhouse is the only human at the annual commemoration of Dracula's birth. But this year, the Prince of Darkness actually shows up-and finds Sookie to be a tasty-looking present. New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher's crime-solving wizard Harry Dresden, of the Dresden Files novels, heads to a role-playing party to give his vampire brother a birthday present in "It's My Birthday Too," only to discover there are some bloodthirsty party crashers who don't share their brotherly love. In "Twilight," Cassandra DuCharme, who appeared in New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong's Dime Store Magic, knows she has to kill to live as a vampire another year-but finds herself disturbingly disinterested in the hunt. Plus ten more bloody good birthday stories that take the cake.Contents xi • Preface: A Few Words (Many Bloody Returns) • (2007) • essay by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner1 • Dracula Night • [Sookie Stackhouse 4.3] • shortstory by Charlaine Harris21 • The Mournful Cry of Owls • novelette by Christopher Golden50 • I Was a Teenage Vampire • novelette by Bill Crider73 • Twilight • [Women of the Otherworld Short Fiction 7.2] • novelette by Kelley Armstrong100 • It's My Birthday, Too • [The Dresden Files 9.2] • novella by Jim Butcher146 • Grave-Robbed • [Vampire Files] • novelette by P. N. Elrod176 • The First Day of the Rest of Your Life • [The Morganville Vampires: Extras 2.5] • novelette by Rachel Caine201 • The Witch and the Wicked • novelette by Jeanne C. Stein230 • Blood Wrapped • [Henry Fitzroy] • novelette by Tanya Huff254 • The Wish • shortstory by Carolyn Haines265 • Fire Ice and Linguini for Two • [Garnet Lacey 2.5] • novelette by Lyda Morehouse [as by Tate Hallaway ]290 • Vampire Hours • novelette by Elaine Viets318 • How Stella Got Her Grave Back • novelette by Toni L. P. Kelner

    Convinced she'll never see him again, she joins the uber-popular vampire dating site, V-Date.com.What Silver doesn't know is that the site is more dangerous than she could ever imagined, and soon she's in over her head. When Logan returns, sparks fly and attraction sizzles, but they'll have to escape some very real demons if they have any chance of lasting forever.

     I have to keep it a secret. Everything was fine, until I met him. I can't stay away...Aurora Lockette has a supernatural ability she hides from the world. Gavyn Dhaval is a newly famous actor that shies away from the spotlight. When Aurora and Gavyn literally collide in a fender bender on her first day of law school, they are irresistibly drawn to each other.When Aurora's secret is revealed, she has no choice but to abandon Gavyn to go into hiding to escape the media frenzy. A secret society of gifted humans contacts her to warn of dark forces that seek to destroy her and everyone she loves. Aurora must try to understand who and what she is while she fights to protect herself and her loved ones from a hidden, sinister force.This is an alternate-cover edition for ASIN B00AFNO4ZE.

    But the city's magic is dying. The only person who can restore it? A beautiful woman from the mortal world...one who knows nothing of the power she wields.Quinn Lennox is searching for a missing friend when she stumbles into a dark otherworld that only she can see—and finds herself at the mercy of Arturo Mazza, a dangerously handsome vampire whose wicked kiss will save her, enslave her, bewitch her, and betray her. What Arturo can't do is forget about her—any more than Quinn can control her own feelings for him. Neither one can let desire get in the way of their mission—his to save his people, hers to save herself. But there is no escape from desire in a city built for seduction, where passion flows hot and blood-red.Welcome to Vamp City...

    A tiny house trailer. High school bullies and snarky drama queens. Bad-guy dudes with charming smiles. Allie has problems. And then there's that whole thing about fulfilling a magical prophecy and saving the world from evil. Geez. Welcome to the sad, funny, sometimes-scary world of fifteen-year-old Allie Emerson, who's struggling to keep her and her mom's act together in the small-town world of Peacock Flats, Washington. An electrical zap from a TV antenna sets off Allie's weird psychic powers. The next thing she knows she's being visited by a hippy-dippy guardian angel, and then her mysterious neighbor, the town "witch," gives her an incredible moonstone pendant that has powers only a good-hearted "Star Seeker" is meant to command. "Who, me?" is Allie's first reaction. But as sinister events begin to unfold, Allie realizes she's got a destiny to live up to. If she can just survive everyday life, in the meantime.

    Her foster parents have the emotional aptitude of robots and her classmates barely acknowledge her existence. About to turn eighteen and feeling like a social pariah, she is desperate to connect with someone. Anyone.When Evangeline meets Sofie after literally stumbling upon her café, she believes she’s found that connection. Willing to do anything to keep it, she accepts a job as Sofie’s assistant and drops everything to fly to Manhattan, where she is thrust into a luxurious world of Prada, diamonds, and limitless cash.With such generosity and kindness, it’s easy for Evangeline to dismiss certain oddities... like Sofie’s erratic and sometimes violent behavior, and the monstrous guard dogs. She’s even willing to dismiss her vivid dreams of mob-style murders, beautiful homeless people living in caves, and white-eyed demons that haunt her each night as figments of her imagination—especially when one of those figments is the gorgeous Caden. When she wakes up with bite marks on her neck, the fairy tale quickly turns into a nightmare. She slowly unravels the mystery surrounding Sofie and friends, and the reality of the bites and the “dreams.” What she discovers is far more mysterious and terrible than anything she could have imagined.In a world where everyone has motive to lie for personal gain, Evangeline must decide which deception is least likely to get her killed.