Read Online MidnightSolace by Rosalie Stanton - Free Book Online

Chapter One
     
    It was a testament to time how much the same tavern could
flash a thousand different faces over the course of three hundred years. While
the drunken barflies never seemed to leave, the atmosphere itself was on a
nonstop course to full evolution. It had been a pub for half a century before
it was bought and turned into a diner. There was a six-month stint in which it
was a ladies’ hat store, but the lingering scent of alcohol could not help but
reemerge every three years or so.
    No matter what facelift the tavern received, it was the
place Jael visited every December. Every December since 1697.
    Here she would wait, as she did every year on the night
known commonly as Christmas Eve. She would wait until he came in and her year
met fruition.
    Even in the life prior to her nocturnal rebirth, Jael could
not fathom living without the thrill of the winter season pushing her through
the common twelve-month cycle of every insufferable year. Gabriel met her here
every December 24, just as the old grandfather clock that had somehow survived
the years struck the hour of midnight. They would spend the holiday in each
other’s arms and wake up in separate beds in the morning.
    As walkers of the night, they could chance nothing more.
Such was the way of things between all vampire lovers. One night of the year,
maybe two. No connection beyond that. Nothing that anyone in either their dark
existence or the other world bathed in sunlight would ever call a relationship.
    Vampires couldn’t have relationships. It was as simple as
that.
    Gabriel was her maker. He had been in her corner from the
very beginning. Her protector since childhood. In the absence of vampiric
relations, most vampires turned to humans to satisfy carnal desires. Claiming
humans as mates for eternity was not taboo, not like turning to other vampires
was. Human mates would live for eternity, tied to the lifeline of their mate.
Still, the connection did not run as deeply. When a human female was sad, her
vampire mate did not cry. When a human male was cut, his vampire mate did not
bleed. They were different. Separate. One could die and the other would live.
    It was not like that between walkers of the night.
    Among vampires, those tied together beyond the blood of
sires felt everything. Shared everything. Their fate was the same. Always the
same.
    Every society had its great tragedies. Romeo and Juliet.
Napoleon and Josephine. Vampires had a tragedy as well. Well-known to them, a
well-kept secret among the humans they protected. Unlike the tale of Dracula,
the one among them that had established the grisly stereotype of their kind,
the story of Lazarus and Anna remained shrouded from the world of humans, a
cautionary tale that kept all those who belonged to the night in line. For the
sake of a species. For the sake of an entire way of life.
    As with many cautionary tales, Lazarus and Anna’s story had
several assumed points of origin. In some tellings, they lived in Ancient Rome.
Others had their first meeting documented in Greece. Jerusalem, India, even
parts of North and Central America all claimed to be the homeland of
vampirekind’s most infamous lovers, as well as the most boasted tragedians of a
culture. In any event, where Lazarus and Anna had first met remained
unimportant compared to their impact on their kind. The story of a passionate
love affair, during which, overcome with zeal, Lazarus and Anna sealed their
lifelines together in blood. Once mated, they had but a few weeks together
before angry villagers fingered Anna for the death of a beloved elderly man.
This was back in the day when vampires and humans lived side by side, when
vampires were accepted as the guardians of the human race. In that time,
vampires were more likely to feed from cattle to acquire what they needed, and
they did so while humans rested. When the monstrosity of their dependence on
blood could be hidden in the shadow of night.
    They were careful, but ultimately