Read Online A Vampire's Christmas Carol by Cynthia Eden - Free Book Online Page A

you make it…or haven’t you realized the point of this shit-forsaken night yet?”
    Ben blinked.
    “And it’s not like I’m doing it on my own. We’ve got a special magic working for you. Courtesy of our angel girl.” Jamison’s gaze hardened. “For the record, I don’t think you’re worth what she’s done, even if you did save my hide ten years ago.”
    What she’s done…
“What do you mean?” Ben demanded.
    “I mean I’d let you rot.” Jamison stalked forward. “If I had been given the choice between—”
    “What has she done?” Ben caught the shifter’s shoulder and whirled the guy around.
    And he heard a scream. A loud, desperate scream. 
    “There it is,” Jamison drawled. “Right on time.” He gazed at Ben. “Do you even react when you hear screams anymore? Or do you just not care?”
    Ben threw him back and ran toward that sound. As he raced ahead, Ben realized that he could smell…blood…in the air.  The scent was too tempting for a vampire.  Ben rushed through the trees.  He shoved the branches out of his way and he found—
    Blood in the snow.
    A boy, broken on the ground.
    Ben stumbled to a stop. He knew that boy. It was the kid that Simone had shown him in the alley. Cale. The boy’s torn, old shoes had fallen off his feet.  They lay several feet away in the snow.
    “Told you,” Jamison said as he slowly approached. The guy seemed to be taking his time. “The future can be a nightmare.”
    Ben swallowed and managed to ask, “Is this…is this what will really happen in the boy’s future?” 
    “It’s the future planned now, what
can
happen.”  Jamison’s voice held sadness as he said, “He tried to run, but he wasn’t fast enough.” 
    Ben leaned over the boy. The kid’s eyes stared sightlessly ahead.  Two deep puncture wounds lined the boy’s throat. The kid had screamed—and now Ben knew why the scream had been cut off so abruptly. A vampire had fed on the boy, and when the vamp finished his meal, he’d backed away.
    You let him scream, didn’t you?
    Then the vamp had broken the boy’s neck.
    “He won’t rise, so you don’t have to worry about that,” Jamison told him, voice cold and hard. “He’s just going to get buried by the snow out here. It will be days before anyone finds the body.”
    Ben’s gaze snapped toward the shifter.
    “The snow plow will eventually come through.” Jamison shrugged. “That’s the way it is for some people. They die, and no one even notices.”
    Ben was noticing. The poor kid. Broken in the snow.  He turned his head and looked back down at the boy.  Just a teen.  In someone else’s cast-off clothes. No socks on his feet.
    “If he’d stayed in the alley, he would have survived the night,” Jamison said.  “I thought you might like to know that bit…”
    Ben’s shoulders tensed.
    “The restaurant over there had a broken back window. Cale lived in that alley because he could sneak in the restaurant on cold nights. He could fill his belly and stay warm. But the boy was too afraid you might come back, so he ran tonight.” 
    “I
wasn’t
the vampire who did this.”
    “No, you weren’t. There’s another vamp in town, and you didn’t even notice him.  Seems like that happens with you a lot. The whole not-noticing-routine.” 
    “This future sucks.” Ben’s hands were hard fists.  The kid’s eyes were so blank.  Ben swallowed and asked, “What was his full name?” Simone had just called him Cale. 
    “Why? It’s not like knowing will change anything.” The shifter’s hand pushed into Ben’s back. “There’s more to see.  We don’t have all night to stare at the dead.”
    Ben knocked his hand aside. “We’re not just leaving him in the snow.”  
    “Sure we are.” That hand came right back to his shoulder.
    Ben shoved it off again.  “No, we’re not.” Ben looked down at the ground. “He’s—”
      
Gone.
    “We’re looking at the future, vamp.  He’s not dead. Not