Cate Lawley - A Vegan Vamp Christmas: Vegan Vamp Holiday Collection

A Vegan Vamp Christmas

Vegan Vamp Holiday Collection

Cate Lawley

Kate Baray

Makin the List

About Makin the List

Not everyone makes Santa's nice list.

Mallory's having nightmares, except they feature a kindly bearded man in a red velvet suit. That's right, Mallory is dreaming about Santa Claus, and it's giving her the willies.

Everyone loves Santa! What can it possibly mean that the cheerful big guy makes her fangs chatter?

Find out whether Mallory's strange new Santa-phobia takes all the happy out of her holiday.

With a twinkle in his eye and a cookie in his belly, he gathered up his velvet sack and disappeared up the chimney. But before he left, he pointed at me and said, Ho-ho-ho, and a very merry Christmas to you, Mallory.

I woke up drenched in sweat. That couldnt be right. I was a vampire, and vampires didnt sweat.

Granted, I wasnt like most vampires. Blood made my stomach turn, my fangs were embarrassingly small and probably incapable of penetrating fleshnot that Id knowand I might have some suspiciously non-vampire-like powers. Maybe witchy. Maybe wizardy. Hard to say at this point. Point being, I wasnt your garden-variety sociopathic vampire.

One bonus to being turned was that Id lost allmost? of my, at-that-point-undiagnosed, anxiety disorders. Most vamps lost their humanityhence the sociopath titlebut not all did. And some even made their way back to being empathetic, though still bloodsucking, beings. My roommate fell into one of those two camps. Jefferson Wembley was a good guy.

But as atypical a vamp as I was, in one regard I was quite typical: I didnt sweat.

And that was about when I felt the hot, heavy breath of a beastly creature on my cheek. I cracked an eye.

Boone.

My bloodhound grinned at me with his tongue lolling out to the side.

Really funny. Freak out the sleeping vampire. Ha-ha. I wiped bloodhound drool from my cheek and arm onto my nightgown, except that had slobber on it, too. Ew. How long have you been standing here, drooling on me?

Unlike most dogs, my hound both understood me and could formulate replies. A djinn search-dog handler, who Id never met but had been well-liked, died suddenly and tragically, leaving behind Boone, a dog whod been altered by the magical connection shed forged between them. He could understand human speechat least, my human speech. He could even comprehend other peopleif I happened to be around.

Why me? And how had the ability survived his djinn partners death? No one knew, but Id gotten a monster-sized, red hound, roommate out of it. Fine by me, because when he wasnt drooling, he was excellent company. Oh, and he had a great bad-guy-sniffing talents.

Boone yawned, stretched, and then sauntered away. A few minutes later, I heard the thud of him jumping up and settling onto the guest bedroom bed. Who was I kidding? His bed.

Fine, dont answer. Thats nifty. Just wake me up with your funky slime and your bad breath. I glanced at the clock: three minutes past midnight. I groaned and pulled my pillow over my face.

No, I was not a nocturnal vampire. I slept at night. I was sure there were some night owls out there, but it was by choice. We didnt go up in flames when the sun touched our skin. How would vampires have survived this long if that were true, and where did people get that stuff?

I groaned again. As a day-dwelling and day-errand-running vampire, I had Christmas procrastination shopping to do in the morning. There were only five more days until Christmas. I lifted the pillow up. Five days till Christmas, Boone. Five. No Christmas doggie bones for you if I dont get to the store. At this rate, I wasnt making it out of bed in time for morning shopping.

A one-hundred-pound-bloodhound-generated snore was my only response.

24 hours later

Red-cheeked and merry, the man in the red suit retrieved a cookie from the plate on the mantel and took a big bite. Delicious! Tell that roommate of yours he has excellent taste.

I was suffocating. The weight of a thousand stones pressed down on my chest. I couldnt breathe. Someone was burying me alive.

A distinctly canine groan reached my ears.

I cracked an eye open to find Boone next to me on the bed, his front paws and head resting on my chest. Unsure whether this was better or worse than the slobber bath Id gotten last night, I decided now wasnt really the time to judge.

What time was it?

With a quick glance at the clock, I saw it was three minutes past midnight. Just like last night. Thats downright creepy.

A canine sigh had me turning to Boone. Not you, buddy.

If bloodhounds could roll their eyes, Boone did. And given his particular background, I was gonna say it was possible.

What? Okay, its not creepy, its a coincidence.

Boone groaned.

Its not a coincidence?

A solid thwack of his tail against my bedding confirmed that no, it was not a coincidence.

That was how Boone and I rolled. I tried to guess what he meant, and he kept sending what he probably thought were pretty clear communications my way. Wed have to agree to disagree on that one.

I massaged the base of his ears, and he groaned in canine delight. Mastering the basics of human speech aside, Boone was just a big old hound dog who liked to have his belly rubbed and his ears massaged.

I continued to rub his ears. I dont see how thats not creepy.

He shook his head, just enough to get his point across but not so hard that Id be scraping dried bloodhound slobber off my ceiling tomorrow. Then he hopped off my bed to return to his own.

Seriously? I have some freaky recurring dream about Santa at the same time every night, and youre telling me thats not creepy? But I was talking to the waddling hind end of my hound.

And now that Id said it aloud, perhaps dreams about jolly old Saint Nick shouldnt be labeled as creepy. First, it was Boone and his strange sense of humor with the smothering and the slobbering that had made the dreams nightmarish. Wasnt it?

And second, when was Santa creepy?

Santa was a happy guy who brought joy to world and generally did good things. Minus the breaking and entering. Oh, and if that stuff about the lump of coal was true, that wasnt really okay. Everybody had a bad day. You know, maybe stabbed the occasional non-human person who was trying to kill her. Possibly chopped off the head of a very bad, even murderous, bad guy.

It happened.

To me.

Nuts. I grabbed my pillow and pulled it over my head. I would not worry about whether I was on Santas naughty or nice list.

Except I was lying to myself, and sleep was not going to be my friend tonight.

Come on, Wembley. Do me a solid. All you have to do is head in to my room around eleven fifty-eight and see if anythingah, unusual happens. I took a sip of coffee, and Wembley followed the drink with a hungry gaze.

Maybe coffee this morning had been a bad idea. It acted basically like a drug for most vamps. I had to consume about ten times the quantity to have any effect, and it didnt work exactly the same way on me. But Wembley was susceptible to its effects and enjoyed the odd tipple. I set the mug off to the side, and his attention returned to me.

Pass, he said. Im not participating in whatever kinkiness is happening in your bedroom in the wee hours. Ask Alex.

How he got kinky out of recurring midnight dreams Oh. Hey, theyre not those kinds of dreams.