His Vampyrrhic Bride Read Online Free PDF

feet.’
    ‘Who attacked me last night, Nicola?’
    ‘Have you heard about our dragon?’
    ‘Coincidentally, Chester Kenyon was telling me about it this morning.’
    ‘Let’s say the dragon gave you a flick of his tail.’
    That quirky sense of humour again – he liked it. ‘Chester said that the dragon was an invention of the adults to keep children away from the river.’
    ‘Don’t let my mother hear you saying that. She’s very particular about our dragon.’
    Tom fixed her with a serious look. ‘I don’t believe in dragons, Nicola.’
    ‘Suit yourself.’
    ‘So who knocked me clean off my feet?’
    ‘Thanks for the drink, Tom.’ She handed him the glass, then walked smartly away.
    ‘Wait!’
    ‘I’m expected home.’
    He followed her to the gate. When she started to run he ran, too. At that moment, he hated the idea of her slipping away.
    ‘Nicola. There’s a quiz at the George tomorrow. Do you want to come with me?’
    ‘The village pub isn’t for me.’
    ‘Oh.’ So there was the brush-off. He did what a twenty-three-year-old guy does with rejection. Tried to look cool about the snub. While feeling like crap inside.
    Nicola ran along the road. Her white cotton skirt and blouse resembled a bright flame against the shade of the trees. At the entrance to the woodland path she stopped.
    Then she sang out, ‘You could always come over to my house tomorrow?’
    ‘OK,’ he called back, trying to be nonchalant. Yet a fiery excitement flared up in his veins. Already, the erotic possibilities of Nicola flooded his mind. ‘How do I find your house?’
    An intimate meal for two at Nicola’s? Result!
    ‘No, I’ll pick you up at six. My mother wants to meet you.’
    She waved before vanishing into the wood.
    Her mother’s going to be there?
A chaperoned date wasn’t what he was hoping for.

SEVEN
    T his would be an easy robbery. The cottage in the forest was so remote it was a joke. The two men passed the can of beer between themselves and laughed.
    ‘Shit. That dump should be called The Last Place On Earth.’
    ‘World’s End.’
    ‘Middle Of Bastard Nowhere.’
    Zip Pearson lit a cigarette. This was going to be so bloody easy. They’d been staking out the cottage since early evening. The little crap-heap of stones that passed for a home was at the end of a path. There wasn’t so much as a frigging road. Even if the two bitches in the house could make a phone call it would take an hour for the police to reach here.
    He pulled on the cigarette. Runty, the rat-faced guy he was with, squinted at the burning tip of the cigarette in the darkness.
    ‘Should you be smoking, Zip?’ he wheezed. ‘In a place like this you can spot a cigarette from miles away.’
    ‘Who’s out there to see, Runty? Who’d give a damn? This place is the end of the world, isn’t it?’
    ‘Yeah, but if someone saw . . .’
    ‘Scared, Runty?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Then stop whining.’
    ‘I know I’ll end up back inside. I just don’t want it to be before my kid gets married.’
    Zip pretended to play a violin. ‘You’re breaking my heart, Runty. Just look at these tears pouring down my face.’
    ‘Yeah, it’s OK for a psycho like you. You don’t care whether you do time or not.’
    Zip and Runty were at the bottom of crime’s career ladder. They earned their cash by thieving copper cable from railway tracks or peeling lead off church roofs. The other easy picking for lowlifes like them was driving round the countryside, searching out remote farms and houses they could rob. What marked Zip out from the other rural burglary packs was that he liked to hit occupied houses. That way he could take the credit and debit cards. Of course, he had to get the pin numbers, too.
    That’s where the entertainment started. After he’d tied up the homeowners, he enjoyed making them give him the pin codes. Sometimes he’d even push them hard enough to reveal where they’d hidden their cash. It was surprising how many people kept