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    Blood Sisters: Vampire Stories By Women
    Blood Sisters: Vampire Stories By Women
    Blood Sisters: Vampire Stories By Women
    Ebook692 pages11 hours

    Blood Sisters: Vampire Stories By Women

    By Paula Guran, Charlaine Harris, Kelley Armstrong and

    3.5/5

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    • Vampires

    • Supernatural

    • Survival

    • Betrayal

    • Revenge

    • Vampire Lore

    • Vampire Hunter

    • Chosen One

    • Secret Society

    • Supernatural Creatures

    • Family Curse

    • Female Protagonist

    • Vampire Romance

    • Supernatural Powers

    • Vampire Fiction

    • Power Dynamics

    • Fear

    • Family

    • Vampirism

    • Supernatural Beings

    About this ebook

    A tantalizing selection of stories from some of the best female authors who’ve helped define the modern vampire.

    Bram Stoker was hardly the first author—male or female—to fictionalize the folkloric vampire, but he defined the modern iconic vampire when Dracula appeared in 1897. Since then, many have reinterpreted the ever-versatile vampire over and over again—and female writers have played vital roles in proving that the vampire, as well as our perpetual fascination with it, is truly immortal. These authors have devised some of the most fascinating, popular, and entertaining of our many vampiric variations: suavely sensual . . . fascinating but fatal . . . sexy and smart . . . undead but prone to detection . . . tormented or terrifying . . . amusing or amoral . . . doomed or deadly . . . badass and beautiful . . . cutting-edge or classic . . .

    Blood Sisters collects a wide range of fantastical stories from New York Times bestsellers Holly Black, Nancy Holder, Catherynne M. Valente, and Carrie Vaughn, and critically acclaimed writers Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and Tanith Lee, all of whom have left their indelible and unique stamps on the vampire genre. Whether they are undeniably heroes and heroines or bloodthirsty monsters (or something in between), the undead are a lively lot. This anthology offers some of the best short fiction ever written by the “blood sisters” who know them best: stories you can really sink your teeth into.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNight Shade Books
    Release dateMay 5, 2015
    ISBN9781597805766
    Blood Sisters: Vampire Stories By Women

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    • 3/5
      Some of the stories I loved and some I really disliked. I prefer vampire stories that are a little horrific not those that are humorous. However, the good ones were very good.

    Book preview

    Blood Sisters - Paula Guran

    Acknowledgments

    INTRODUCTION:

    Welcome to My House! Enter Freely and of Your Own Free Will!

    Paula Guran

    There are many great reference books and essays about vampire literature. This is not one of them. It’s only an extremely brief, overly simplistic, and far from complete history of vampire fiction that is (meaning no disrespect to the innumerable fine and hugely important male authors of such fiction) intentionally shaped to highlight women’s authorial role in such. It is based, in part, on the introduction to Vampires: The Recent Undead (Prime Books, 2011), an anthology I edited that focused on short vampire fiction published 2000–2010. (You can read the entire essay from which I am recycling some bits here at paulaguran.com/vampires-the-recent-undead-intro.)

    ***

    The idea of the vampire has probably been around since humanity first began to ponder death. In Western culture the vampire has been a pervasive icon for more than two centuries now, but the image of the vampire as something other than a disgusting reanimated corpse was profoundly reshaped in the early nineteenth century by a group of British aristocrats.

    Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Percy Shelley, Matthew Lewis, Lord Byron, and Byron’s physician, Dr. John Polidori, decided to amuse themselves one damp summer 1816 evening in a villa on Lake Geneva by writing ghost stories. Mary Godwin (who later married Shelley) created a modern myth (and science fiction) with Frankenstein, or Prometheus Unbound. Polidori picked up a fragment of vampire fiction written by Byron on that fateful night and eventually produced a novelette based on it: The Vampyre. It featured the charismatic Lord Ruthven: a seductive refined noble as well as a blood-sucking monster who preyed on others. Ruthven was obviously based on the already notorious bad boy Byron.

    The Vampyre became wildly popular, particularly in Germany and France. The theatres of Paris were filled by the early 1820s with vampire-themed plays. Some of these returned to England in translated form. As for fiction: The Vampyre, Brian Stableford has written, was the most widely read vampire story of its era … To say that it was influential is something of an understatement; there was probably no one in England or France who attempted to write a vampire story in the nineteenth century who was not familiar with it, one way or another.

    Polidori’s story was certainly the inspiration for the serialized penny dreadful Varney the Vampire or, The Feast of Blood (1845-47) by (most likely) James Malcolm Rhymer. Varney appealed to the masses, but was of even less literary merit than the short story to which it owed so much.

    It took Sheridan le Fanu to craft a true literary gem with his novella Carmilla, published in 1872. The tale of a lonely girl and a beautiful aristocratic female vampire in an isolated castle also brought steamy sub-textual lesbian sexuality into the vampire mythos.

    But it was Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897) that became the basis of modern vampire lore: Dracula was a vampire king of indefinite lifespan who could not be seen in mirrors, had an affinity to bats and aversions to crucifixes and garlic. He had superhuman strength, could shapeshift and control human minds. Stoker’s vampires needed their native soil and the best way to kill one was with a stake through the heart followed by decapitation. There were humans who, like Abraham Van Helsing, hunted vampires … etc.

    Of course, Dracula did not leap solely from Stoker’s imagination to the page, nor did le Fanu’s Carmilla or Polidori’s earlier vampire. Their influences were many, but all were also products of the Gothic genre—the first truly popular literature … and the first genre to be written mostly by women.

    The Gothic mode originated with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764). Walpole, at first, published the novel as the translation of a medieval manuscript. This deception made the work critically acceptable. Once Walpole admitted authorship, however, the literati generally spurned it as superstitious romantic trash.

    Clara Reeve made the Gothic somewhat more tolerable to the pundits by introducing eighteenth-century realism and downplaying the more fantastic elements used by Walpole in her novel The Old English Barron (1798).

    Ann Radcliffe, used the technique of the explained supernatural—all sorts of scary uncanny things might occur, but most were ultimately revealed to have natural causes (rather like Scooby-Doo plots)—to write Gothic novels. With her fourth work, Radcliffe produced the first bestselling novel: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794).

    As with popular novels today, a flood of imitative novels followed and most of them were written by women. These may not have been vampiric, or even very good, but they still bit into the same public vein.

    As for the vamps—before Stoker (and possibly before le Fanu), there were vampire stories written by women as well as men. Some are lost due to pseudonyms and intentional anonymity, but known examples include:

    • Eliza Lynn Linton’s The Fate of Madame Cabanel, published in 1880. It portrays provincials who label a stranger among them—the innocent Fanny Cabanel—as a vampire due to their superstition, bigotry, and ignorance (of, among many other things, proper drainage and sanitation).

    • Let Loose (1890) by Mary Chomondeley is an odd, but effective, story of a man who wears high collars looking for a crypt in which there is a fresco painted by his father. Deaths coincide with his appearance and scars on his neck do not match those of the dog he claims bit him.

    • Good Lady Ducayne, published in 1896 by Mary Elizabeth Braddon is a scientific variant on the legend of Elizabeth Báthory, a Hungarian countess who allegedly killed hundreds of girls between 1585 and 1610 to obtain their virginal blood believing she would retain her youth if she bathed in the vital fluid. In Braddon’s novella, the wealthy aristocratic Lady Ducayne’s sinister doctor, Parravicini, performs experimental surgery on girls in her employ to obtain blood he then injects into her ladyship to prolong her already long life.

    • In A Mystery of the Campagna (1886) by Anne Crawford (Baroness von Rabe) the bloodless corpse of the narrator’s friend is found after being seen with a lovely woman. A sarcophagus is found in an ancient vault in which the remarkably healthy-looking occupant is the same woman. Helpfully, among the Latin inscriptions naming her as Vespertilia, is one in Greek that translates as The blood-drinker, the vampire woman. A wooden stake to the heart is inevitably employed.

    Stoker also acknowledged an 1885 essay by Emily Gerard on Transylvanian Superstitions—later part of her 1888 book The Land Beyond the Forest—as important to his research. He borrowed some elements: the term nosferatu and information about a "Devil’s school, the Scholomance, where the members of the Dracula family learned the secrets of the ‘Evil One.’"

    [Note: The claim that The Skeleton Count, or The Vampire Mistress, allegedly written by Elizabeth Caroline Grey and published in 1825 or 1828—thus supposedly making it the first known published story by a woman—has been, at best, debunked as unproven and, at worst, a complete hoax.]

    Having acknowledged some of the influence eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women had on Bram Stoker, we must now admit that the Dracula-type vampire popularized by the novel, as well as stage productions and films that followed, heavily dominated authors’ and readers’ minds for many years.

    Fantasy, the weird, and science fiction in the first half of the twentieth century was primarily written in the short form, so the vampire appeared in stories rather than novels. In those days genre writing of that type was produced predominately by men. But women managed to be published, and a few wrote vampiric prose.

    One of the most notable vampiric works by a woman in the early twentieth century is the ambiguous but eerie Luella Miller (1902) by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Freeman’s character was a type of psychic vampire, a schoolteacher who seemingly draws the life out of anyone close to her. No one, including Luella, is really sure this deadly effect is either intentional or evil.

    Whether C. L. (Catherine Lucille) Moore’s Shambleau (1933) is a vampire story may be open to question, but one can make a good argument that the alien Shambleau is a form of vampire. At first assumed by the hero to be an attractive human women unjustly victimized by a Martian mob, she turns out to be a creature who sucks the life-force out of others with her wormlike hair while placing her victims in an addictive ecstatic state.

    Various vampiric attributes and powers were added or subtracted in films and short stories produced during the first five decades of the last century. The vampire thrived in those two media, but no notable vampire novels were published until 1954 when Richard Matheson contributed the idea of vampirism as an infectious disease with apocalyptic consequence in his novel I Am Legend.

    By the 1960s, short form vampirism was also mixed with other science fiction tropes such as being an inherited genetic condition. Vampires were even rendered in a sympathetic light—as long as it was acknowledged they were, by nature, evil and chose (as humans could) to resist their monstrosity and to be good.

    Evelyn E. Smith’s vampire, Mr. Varri, in Softly While You’re Sleeping (1961) is courtly and gentle. Unlike her human beaus (and earlier fictional vampires) Varri neither attempts to force or compel Anna, the young woman in the story. However, she knows the vampire’s love will still destroy her, so she chooses to reject him.

    The early 1970s brought an onslaught of novel-length vampirism. Men wrote most of these novels but, again—in that era—the preponderance of any type of science fiction, fantasy, or what became the horror genre was authored by men.

    In one landmark work, Stephen King’s 1975 ’Salem’s Lot, the author downplayed vampiric eroticism, upped the level of terror, and focused on the vampire as a metaphor of corrupt power. King also updated vampirism by placing his vampires in small-town America.

    Fred Saberhagen’s novel The Dracula Tape was published the same year as ’Salem’s Lot. The Count himself narrated Saberhagen’s far more obscure, but still significant, novel. He relates his side of Bram Stoker’s story and, naturally, portrayed himself in a favorable light.

    About six months later, in May1976, Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire was published. Rice radically revised the icon of the vampire, albeit more fully with the second of what became her Vampire Chronicles, Lestat, which didn’t come along until 1985. The first novel was set among vampires of varying characters—who, unlike Dracula, sought out others of their kind to form communal and even family groups. The aristocratic Lestat de Lioncourt echoed Lord Ruthven more than the comparatively dreary Count Dracula; the middle-class Louis de Pointe du Lac clings to his bourgeois morality: a vampire with a conscience (and considerable angst).

    Interview was not an immediate success. It attained bestseller status a year after its first publication when Ballantine released a paperback edition.

    The second Vampire Chronicle novel, Lestat, proved how the audience for Interview had grown when it became an instant bestseller. In it, the character of Lestat refuted Louis’s claims and characterization presented in the initial novel; more of the vampire universe is revealed. The formerly androgynous characters became more sexualized and earlier subtler homoeroticism more overt. Lestat is not exactly evil, but rather a complex personality—even a rebellious antihero—whose complexity has grown over the course of (currently) eleven novels.

    Rice’s two New Tales of the Vampire novels (Pandora, 1998, and Vittorio the Vampire, 1999) and the six Lives of the Mayfair Witches novels also share and expand the vampire universe of the Chronicles.

    Interview with the Vampire revitalized interest in vampire fiction; Lestat did much to revise the archetype itself. Some have suggested that Rice has even supplanted Bram Stoker as the most important author of vampire fiction.

    Chelsea Quinn Yarbro is not as well known as Rice, but her vampire, the Count Saint-Germain, has had a profound influence on vampire fiction.

    Hôtel Transylvania (1978) introduced the character of Le Comte de Saint-Germain. Cultured, well traveled, articulate, elegant, and mysterious, he first appears in the court of France’s King Louis XV. Since then, Yarbro has presented—in a non-chronological manner and with name variations suitable to language, era, locale, and circumstance—the Count’s life and undeath from 2119 BC and (as with the novella included here) into the twenty-first century. (Roger, his servant in Renewal, became the vampire’s right-hand ghoul in Rome in AD 71.) The books and stories of the Saint-Germain Cycle—currently twenty-seven novels and shorter fiction enough to fill two collections—combine well-researched and detailed historical fiction, romance, and horror.

    Saint-Germain was the first genuinely romantic and heroic vampire. Although he must take blood to survive, it is an erotic experience for his partners and does no harm. And, though immortal, he seeks out the company of humans and assists them. During his long publishing life, Saint-Germain has been portrayed in many historical periods and settings; in each, it is humankind, its actions and prejudices, that provides the horror.

    In the 1980s and 1990s vampires appeared in all varieties in literature (and other media) as traditional monsters, heroes, detectives, aliens, rock stars, psychic predators, loners, tribal, erotic, sexless, violent, placed in alternate histories, present in contemporary settings … the vampire became a malleable metaphor of great diversity in many forms, even—first in Lori Herter’s Obsession (1991)—in the romance marketing category.

    A number of outstanding vampiric novels were published in the eighties and nineties, but Anne Rice continued to make the firmest impression on the masses as the bestselling queen of vampire novelists.

    Works by other women during this period may not have been as widely read as Rice’s, but they contributed a great deal to the expansion of the vampire mythos.

    Tanith Lee’s Sabella or The Blood Stone (1980) is a short but powerful—and often overlooked—science fiction vampire novel. The titular character is a vampire who lives on a future colonized planet. Sabella is unknowingly taken over by a member of an extinct alien race of bloodsuckers as a child. In Lee’s signature poetic and sensual style, Sabella gains knowledge of herself while the author metaphorically explores a number of issues including post-colonialism, religion, and ecology.

    Since Suzy Charnas McKee’s Nebula award-winning novella, The Unicorn Tapestry (1981), is re-published in this anthology, I’ll only note that it became part of an episodic novel, The Vampire Tapestry, featuring the unique vampire Dr. Edward Lewis Weyland, a vampire of biologic rather than supernatural genesis. This, coupled with Weyland’s social behavior, has led some critics to consider The Vampire Tapestry as a major work of feminist science fiction.

    Also in a science fictional vein: the alien vampire species explored in Jacqueline Lichtenberg’s Those of My Blood (1988) and Elaine Bergstrom’s vampires of alien origin in her six-book saga of the Austra family that began with Shattered Glass (1988). Bergstrom’s story, however, is modern Gothic and the Austras have been part of human history for thousands of years.

    Lee Killough’s Blood Hunt (1987) played a part in the establishment of the vampire detection novel. In it, Gareth Mikaelian, an honorable police detective, is transformed into a vampire—and retains his human personality. P. N. Elrod introduced Jack Fleming, a hard-boiled 1930 private investigator, who—transformed into a vampire with his murder—seeks his own killer in Bloodlist (1990), the first of twelve novels.

    Married Victorian-era investigators James and Lydia Asher are involved—at the instigation of the vampire aristocrat Don Simon Ysidro—in solving a vampiric crime in Those Who Hunt the Night (1988) by Barbara Hambly. In its sequel, Traveling With the Dead (1995), Ysidro joins forces with James Asher.

    Victoria Vicki Nelson (also known as Victory Nelson, for her success in solving crimes), a Toronto police officer forced to turn PI due to a degenerative eye disease, teamed up with Henry Fitzroy—a vampire born as the illegitimate son of Henry VIII—in Blood Price (1991), the first of Tanya Huff’s five Blood Books. (A 2007 Canadian TV series, Blood Ties, was based on the books.)

    Nancy A. Collins’s debut novel, the award-winning Sunglasses After Dark (1989), introduced punk vampire/vampire slayer Sonja Blue. The character begins as Denise Thorne, a human raped and left for dead by the vampire Morgan. Denise awakes in a mental hospital. As Collins has explained: … her identity had fragmented during the trauma, wiping out her memories and creating the persona of Sonja. Although Denise died in the operating room, she had been revived via modern medicine—but not before the vampire ‘seed’ planted in her took hold. Sonja is technically a living vampire, meaning she has their powers/attributes, but still possesses a soul. Unfortunately, the vampire side of her personality—called The Other—is constantly fighting for control of their shared body, and has a tendency to go on horrific rampages, killing foe and friend alike …. The world Sonja Blue inhabits can best be described as Vampire Noir. She lives on the fringes of society, hunting the supernatural creatures that pose as humans while preying on them—such as vampires, werewolves, ogres, and demons—known collectively as Pretenders. She uses her own unique Pretender abilities to identify them and hunt them down, as they are ‘invisible’ to average humans. Sonja views herself as a one-woman hit squad, determined to rid the world of those who prey on humanity—especially vampires. There is also a element of detection involved in the plotlines as Sonja seeks the truth about herself and the world and the vampire who unintentionally made her. Graphic and violent, Collins’s vampire fiction is action oriented. Although the now-influential character may return someday, the last Sonja Blue novel, Darkest Heart, was published in 2002.

    Lost Souls (1992), a debut novel by Poppy Z. Brite, may deserve a better description than its author has given it: …lush and passionate and energetic as hell … Basically, it’s about a bunch of kids: fifteen-year-old babygoth Nothing, who runs away from his suburban home to seek his … favorite band; the band members themselves, Steve and Ghost, a redneck and a psychic from Missing Mile, North Carolina; and Molochai, Twig, and Zillah, a roving band of freaks [vampires] who end up being Nothing’s real family. There’s a plot in there somewhere, involving trips to New Orleans during which the noxious green liqueur Chartreuse is consumed, love and betrayal, babies who eat their way out of the womb, and lots and lots of blood, sex, drugs, cheap wine, and Twinkies. But that’s also a pretty accurate description of what became a cult classic for a generation of alienated youth. The sex is bi- or homosexual, occasionally incestuous and usually graphic; the use of drugs may well have established a new metaphor for vampirism. Brite’s vampires were a separate species who do not turn humans into vampires, although they can interbreed with them. (Vampiric infants kill their mothers of either species at their gory births.) Most fed on blood, but some found sustenance otherwise. The oldest (close to four hundred years old) is fanged, is sensitive to sunlight, and cannot imbibe in human food or drink. Younger (only about a century old) vampires filed their otherwise normal teeth to points, could tolerate the sun, and eat and drink. Like more traditional vampires, they healed easily, were very strong, and had superhuman senses. They evidently lack other commonly portrayed paranormal powers. Destroying the heart or brain (or giving birth) could kill Brite’s vampires.

    In another debut novel, AfterAge (1993) by Yvonne Navarro, vampires took over the world and wiped out most of humanity. Running low on their food supply, the vamps started capturing and breeding people like cattle. Although the tropes of vampirism having a scientific basis and bloodsuckers conquering Earth echoed Matheson’s I Am Legend, Navarro played the plot more like a war novel with a stalwart band of survivors defeating conquering invaders with savvy, spunk, and science.

    Toward the end of the last century—sometime after the release of Laurell K. Hamilton’s fourth Anita Blake Vampire Hunter fantasy novel, The Lunatic Café (1996), perhaps during the second (1997-1998) or third (1998-1999) season of television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and just before Christine Feehan’s romance Dark Prince (1999)—the first of her Dark series—was published, vampires started getting hot.

    The good guy vampire—usually sexy, often romantic, sometimes redeemed or redeemable, sometimes ever-heroic—started to dominate pop culture. So did sexy-but-empowered female vamps and kick-ass vampire hunters.

    Paranormal romance and urban fantasy—the terms and their applications were not always clearly delineated—became extremely popular for about a decade. The demand for these types of books gave many women new opportunities to offer their versions of the vampire mythos to the public in both novels and short fiction.

    The romance genre is not really this anthology’s territory. One practical reason is that romance does not lend itself to short fiction well; another is that I intentionally wanted a diverse mix of stories. Yes, the romantic is definitely an element in some of these tales of speculative fiction, but it is not the central theme. And a romance is a romance—that is its theme.

    Novels—like those pioneered by Lee Killough and Tanya Huff—that mixed the supernatural with detection/mystery and romantic relationships are, however, our turf. Primarily fantasies, these plots are set in alternate versions of a contemporary or near-future world much like our own in which the supernatural (including vampires) is present either publicly or hidden from most of humankind. And, for practical purposes, you frequently find this type of fiction (often as extensions of or additions to novel series) in the short form.

    Anita Blake’s adventures, related in Laurel K. Hamilton’s series, assume a world in which vampires and were-creatures have gained legal rights. Beginning with Guilty Pleasures in 1993, the twenty-first Anita Blake novel will be published in 2015.

    Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mystery series (now usually referred to as the Sookie Stackhouse novels) also posits a world in which vampires have come out of the casket and established themselves legally. The central character, a psychic waitress, solves mysteries in each outing. Starting with Dead Until Dark (2001) and ending in 2013 with the thirteenth Sookie Stackhouse novel, Dead Ever After, the series gained even more widespread popularity when True Blood premiered on HBO in 2008. The television show, both a critical and financial success, ran seven seasons, ending in 2014.

    In the first decade of the twenty-first century, numerous series featuring vampires—both good and evil—became bestsellers. But Twilight (2005)—a vampire fantasy/romance for teens by Stephanie Meyer—its three sequels and consequent films, propelled the blandly romantic, pretty boy/man vampire hero to stratospheric levels of popularity.

    Although generally disdained critically and considered more of a romance than a fantasy, Twilight’s sparkly vampires—so named because her immortal bloodsuckers can live in sunlight; they avoid it because their cold, hard bodies sparkle like thousands of tiny diamonds in bright sunshine—may have served a vampiric purpose beyond the commercial. Meyerpires had a keen emotional affect on its multitude of fans. For better or worse, few vamps since Lord Ruthven have done that.

    The vampire archetype is immortal because it is so variable. Despite the sparklers, nasty vampires still survive here and there in all media. The occasional highly metaphorical vampire (like The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, 2005) rooted in Count Dracula is still part of our literary psyche, as are viral/apocalyptic vamps, the comedic vampire, the science-based, and the science fictional/sociological vampire (The Fledgling, Octavia Butler, 2007).

    And there are still adult vampire novels: Robin McKinley, long known for her children and teen fantasies, moved into the adult market with the witty Sunshine, in which the heroine must overcome the terrifying memories of being captured by vampires, and help defeat her fanged foes. The winner of the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature when first published in 2003, it was reissued in 2008. Gail Carringer’s Parasol Protectorate series—Soulless (2009), Changeless (2010), Blameless (2010), Heartless (2011), and Timeless (2012)—mixed a novel of manners, steampunk, vampire hunting, and madcap adventuring, while poking a bit of fun at paranormal romance.

    There is also a large amount of really adult vampire erotica around these days. Explicit and not always romantic, this vamp fiction has a wide audience.

    But, yes, the latest wave of vampire fiction has been fuelled by the young adult/teen market, which—although written for teens—is also read by preteens and adults. [The Twilight books/movies are not the sole impetus; fertile ground was laid by TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003) and its spin-off Angel (1999–2004); both mixed vampire fantasy with romance and horrific elements and were aimed at younger audiences. Other fantasy films and television series have added fecundity.] Although the majority of these works are either blandly romantic or center on a school milieu, some provide broader metaphors and much deeper meaning. Many writers of adult fiction have transferred their skills, at least for now, to this market. Older YA classics like The Silver Kiss by Annette Curtis Krause (originally published: 1990) have found new blood. Less classic, but entertaining, L.J. Smith’s The Vampire Diaries series (first four novels published 1991–1992) has not only returned from the grave, but become a television series (renewed, in 2014, for its sixth season.)

    As for short vampire fiction—which is, after all, why this anthology exists—2000–2010 brought opportunities for original urban and paranormal romance stories and both types of fiction written for the young adult market. Vamps also crept into many urban fantasy, paranormal romance, supernatural mystery, and cross-genre original anthologies without a specifically fanged theme. Even funny vampires found their way into anthologies in the oughts. There were fewer occasions, however, for writers with other vampiric ideas to show their talents.

    For Vampires: The Recent Undead, I compiled a list of two dozen selected anthologies from the first ten years of the twenty-first century. Four years later I can’t really think of any more to add other than Blood and Other Cravings, edited by Ellen Datlow; Evolve 2: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead, edited by Nancy Kilpatrick; and Teeth: Vampire Tales, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling—all published in 2011. There are, of course, still venues for a great vampire story—often, these days, in online magazines.

    Vampire fiction may return to its coffin at times, but it always seems to rise from the grave with renewed strength. After all, Anne Rice—who once stated she’d never return to writing her Vampire Chronicles—published the novel Prince Lestat in 2014 and Blood Paradise is expected in 2015. That Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment acquired the motion picture rights to the entire Vampire Chronicles series in August 2014 is another indication there is future life for Rice’s version of the icon.

    Where are we now circa 2015? Who knows? One way or another, you can bet fresh blood will be found.

    If you are an avid vampirist, you are sure to have come across some of these previously published stories before, but I think you’ll also make some new discoveries. You will find a wide variety of vampire stories, each written by a woman. In fact, the stories are so diverse, it was difficult to decide what order in which to present them. I opted to place them in, as closely as I could, in chronological order by the period in which each story is set, from the sixteenth century to the near future. It is an unusual editorial choice that, of course, can be completely disregarded by the reader. Feel free to bite into any story you please; you can even start at the end.

    As I noted back in 2011, such diversity is to be expected. Our times are marked more by division than cohesion. That new threats and new terrors have arisen seems to be even truer for 2015. How we face those fears—or escape them—has a lot to do with our preferences in vampires.

    As Nina Auerbach once stated: Every age embraces the vampire it needs, and gets the vampire it deserves.

    Only now, I think we need to make vampire plural.

    Paula Guran

    December 2014

    A PRINCESS OF SPAIN

    Carrie Vaughn

    Carrie Vaughn is the author of the New York Times bestselling series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty, the most recent installment of which is Low Midnight. She’s written several other contemporary fantasy and young adult novels, as well as upwards of seventy short stories. She’s a contributor to the Wild Cards series of shared world superhero books edited by George R. R. Martin. An Air Force brat, she survived her nomadic childhood and managed to put down roots in Boulder, Colorado. Visit her at www.carrievaughn.com.

    Vaughn’s most famous character, Kitty Norville, may not be a vampire, but they are part of her fictional world. A Princess of Spain, however, has nothing to do with supernatural modern life. The story instead offers an explanation for a key moment in sixteenth-century English history—the consequences of which changed the world forever …

    November 14, 1501, Baynard’s Castle

    Catherine of Aragon, sixteen years old, danced a pavane in the Spanish style before the royal court of England. Lutes, horns, and tabors played a slow, stately tempo, to which she stepped in time. The ladies of her court, who had traveled with her from Spain, danced with her, treading circles around one another—floating, graceful, without a wasted movement. Her body must have seemed like air, drifting with the heavy gown of velvet and gold. She did not even tip her head, framed within its gem-encrusted hood. She was a piece of artwork, a prize for the usurper of the English throne, so that his son’s succession would not be questioned. King Henry had the backing of Spain now.

    Henry VII watched with a quiet, smug smile on his creased face. Elizabeth of York, his wife, sat nearby, more demonstrative in her pride, smiling and laughing. At a nearby table sat their two sons and two daughters—an impressive household. All made legitimate by Catherine’s presence here, for she had been sent by Spain to marry the eldest son: Arthur, Prince of Wales, heir to the throne—thin and pale at fifteen years of age.

    All these English were pale past the point of fairness and well toward ill, for their skies were always laden with clouds. Arthur slouched in his chair and occasionally coughed into his sleeve. He had declined to dance with her, claiming that he preferred to gaze upon her beauty while he may, before he claimed it later that evening.

    Catherine’s heart ached, torn between anticipation and foreboding. But she must dance her best, as befitted an infanta of Spain. You must show the English what we Spanish are … superior, her mother, Reina Isabella, told her before Catherine departed. She would most likely never see her parents again.

    Arthur did not look at her. Catherine saw his gaze turn to the side of the hall, where one of the foreign envoys sat at a table. There, a woman gazed back at the prince. She was fair skinned with dark eyes and a lock of dark, curling hair hanging outside her hood. Her high-necked gown was elegant without being ostentatious, both modest and fashionable, calculated to not upstage the prince and princess on their wedding day. But it was she who drew the prince’s eye.

    Catherine saw this; long practice kept her steps in time until the music finished at last.

    The musicians struck up a livelier tune, and Prince Henry, the king’s younger son, grabbed his sister Margaret’s arm and pulled her to the middle of the hall, laughing. All of ten years old, he showed the promise of cutting a fine figure when he came of age—strong limbed, lanky, with a head of unruly ruddy hair. Already he was as tall as any of his siblings, including his elder brother Arthur. At this rate he would become a giant of a man. Word at court said he loved hunting, fighting, dancing, learning—all the pursuits worthy of any prince of Europe. But at this moment he was a boy.

    He said something—Catherine only had a few words of English, and did not understand. A moment later he pulled off his fine court coat, leaving only his bare shirt. The room was hot with torches and bodies. He must have been stifled in the finely wrought garment. Because he was a boy, the court thought the gesture amusing rather than immodest; everyone smiled indulgently.

    Catherine took her seat again, the place of honor at the king’s right hand. She gazed, though, at Arthur. She did not even know him. She did not know if she wanted to. Tonight would be better. Tonight, all would be well.

    He continued staring at the foreign woman.

    The evening drew on, and soon the momentous occasion would be upon them: Arthur and Catherine would be put to bed to consummate their marriage. To seal the alliance between England and Spain with their bodies. Her ladies fluttered, preparing to spirit her off to her chambers to prepare her.

    In the confusion, the lanky figure of a very tall boy slipped beside her. The young prince, Henry.

    He smiled at her, like a child would, earnestly wanting to be friends.

    You’ve seen it, too, he said in Latin. She could understand him. My brother, staring at that woman.

    "Sí. Yes. Do you know her?"

    She’s from the Low Countries, he said. Or so it’s put out at court, though it’s also well known that she speaks French with no accent. She’s a lady-in-waiting to the daughter of the Dutch ambassador. But the daughter kept to her apartments tonight, and the lady isn’t with her, which seems strange, doesn’t it?

    But she must have some reason to be here. And that reason might very well be the young groom who could not take his gaze from her.

    Certainly. Perhaps I’ll order someone to spy on her. Henry’s eyes gleamed.

    Catherine pressed her lips together but didn’t manage a smile. It is no matter. A passing fancy. It will mean nothing tomorrow.

    Arthur was her husband. Tonight would make that a fact and not simply a legality. With a sudden burning in her gut, she longed for that moment.

    In nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.

    The bishop sprinkled holy water over the bed, where Catherine and Arthur were tucked, dressed in costly nightclothes, put to bed in a most formal manner for their wedding night, so that all might know that the marriage was made complete. At last, the witnesses left them, and for the first time, Catherine was alone with her husband.

    All she could do was stare at him, his white face and lank ruddy hair, as her heart raced in her chest. He stared back, until she felt she should say something, but her voice failed. Words failed, when she couldn’t decide whether to speak French, Latin, or attempt a phrase in her still halting English. Why can he not understand Spanish?

    You are quite pretty, he said in Latin, and leaned forward on shaking arms to kiss her on the lips.

    She flushed with relief. Perhaps all would be well. He was her husband, she was his wife. She even felt married, lying here with him. Warm from her scalp to her toes—pleasant, illicit, yet sanctioned by God and Church. This was her wedding night, a most glorious night—

    Before she could kiss him back, before she could hold him as her body told her to do, he pulled away. Unbidden, her arm rose to reach for him. Quickly, she drew it back and folded her hands on her lap. Must she maintain her princess’s decorum, even here?

    Arthur coughed. He bent double with coughing, putting his fist to his mouth. His thin body shook.

    She left the bed and retrieved a goblet of wine from the table. Returning, she sat beside him and touched his hand, urging him to take a drink. His skin was cold, damp as the English winter she’d found herself in.

    Por Dios, she whispered. What had God brought her to? She said in Latin, I’ll send for a physician.

    Arthur shook his head. It is nothing. It will pass. It always does. He took a drink of wine, swallowing loudly, as if his throat were closing.

    But he had been this pale and sickly every time she’d seen him. This would not pass.

    If they could have a child, if he would live long enough for them to have a child, a son, a new heir, her place in this country would be assured.

    The wine would revive him. She touched his cheek. When he looked up, she hoped to see some fire in his eyes, some desire there to match her own. She hoped he would touch her back. But she only saw exhaustion from the day’s activities. He was a child on the verge of sleep.

    She was a princess of Spain, not made for seduction.

    He gave the goblet back to her. With a sigh, he settled back against the pillows. By his next breath, he was asleep.

    Catherine set the goblet on the table. The room was chilled. Every room in this country was chilled. Yet at this moment, while her skin burned, the cool tiles of the floor felt good against her bare feet.

    She knelt by the bed, clasped her hands tightly together, and prayed.

    December 15, 1501, Richmond

    Another feast lay spread before her. King Henry displayed his wealth in calculated presentations of food, music, entertainment. However much the politics and finances of his realm were strained, he would give no other appearance than that of a successful, stable monarch.

    Catherine did not dance, though the musicians played a pavane. She sat at the table, beside her husband, watching. Husband in name only. He had not once come to her chamber. He had not once summoned her to his. But appearances must be maintained.

    He slouched in his chair, leaning on one carved wooden arm, clutching a goblet in both hands. He had grown even more wan, even more sickly, if possible. Did no one else see it?

    She touched the arm of his chair. My husband, have you eaten enough? Should I call for more food?

    He shook his head and waved her off. It was not natural, to treat one’s wife so. He was in danger of failing his duty as a prince, and as a Christian husband.

    But what could she do? A princess was meant to serve her husband, not command or judge him.

    Your husband will take mistresses, her mother told her, in her final instructions before Catherine set sail. She told her that it was the way of things and she could not fight it. But Isabella also said that her husband would do his duty toward her, so that she might do her duty and bear him many children.

    Her duty was turning to dust in her hands, through no fault of her own.

    In the tiled space in the center of the hall, the young Prince Henry danced with the strange foreign woman. Catherine had no evidence that this woman was her husband’s mistress, except for the way Arthur watched her, desperately, with too bright eyes.

    The woman danced gracefully. She must have been a dozen years older than her partner, but she tolerated him with an air of amusement, wearing the thin and placid smile, as though sitting for a portrait. Henry was a lively enough partner that he made every step a joy. His father was training him for the clergy, it was said. He might be the greatest bishop in England someday—the crown’s voice in the Church.

    Catherine begged leave to retire early, before the music and dancing had finished. She claimed fatigue and a sensitive stomach. People nodded knowingly at the information and offered each other winks. They thought she was with child, as any young bride ought to be.

    But she wasn’t. Never would be, if things kept on in this manner.

    It was difficult to spy in the king’s house unless one had command of the guards and could order them to stay, or leave, or watch. She did not have command of anything except her own household, which the English court treated as the foreigners they were. Really, though, her duenna and stewards commanded her household—Catherine was too young for it, they said. Her parents had sent able guardians to look after her.

    Nevertheless, against all her instincts, after dark—well after the candles and lanterns had been snuffed—Catherine donned a black traveling cloak over her shift and set out, stepping quietly past her ladies-in-waiting who slept in the outer chamber. Very quietly she opened the heavy door, giving herself barely enough space to slip through. The iron hinges squeaked, but only once, softly, like a woman sighing in her sleep.

    Two more chambers, sitting rooms, lay between her and Arthur. The spaces were dark, chill. Thick windows let in very little of the already faint moonlight. Her slippered feet made no sound on the wood floors. She kept to the paneled walls and felt her way around, step by careful step.

    Guards walked their rounds. They passed from room to room, pikes resting on their shoulders. England had finished its wars of succession relatively recently; for the royal family, there was always danger.

    If she were very quiet, and moved very carefully, they would not see her. She hoped. If they found her, most likely nothing would happen to her, but she didn’t want to have to explain herself. This was very improper for a woman of her rank. She should go back to her own room and pray to God to make this right.

    Her knees were worn out with praying.

    She listened for booted footsteps and the rattle of armor. Heard nothing.

    She reached the chamber outside Arthur’s bedroom. A light shone under the door, faint, buttery—candlelight. A step away from the door she paused, listening. What did she think she might hear? Conversation? Laughter? Deep sighs? She had no idea.

    She touched the door. Surely it would be locked. It would be a relief to have to walk away, still ignorant. She touched the latch—

    It wasn’t locked.

    Softly, she pushed open the door and looked in.

    Looking like an ill child far younger than his years, Arthur lay propped up in bed, limp, his eyes half-closed, senseless. Beside him crouched the foreign woman, fully clothed, her hands on his shoulders, clutching his linen nightclothes. Her mouth was open, and her teeth shone dark with blood. A gash on Arthur’s neck bled.

    You’re killing him! Catherine cried. She stood, too shocked to scream—she ought to scream, to call for the guards. Even if they could not understand her Spanish, they would come at the sound of panic.

    In a moment, a scant heartbeat, the foreign woman appeared before Catherine. She might as well have flown; the princess didn’t see her move. This was some dream, some vision. Some devil had crept into her mind.

    The woman pressed her to the wall, closing Catherine’s mouth with one hand. Catherine kicked and writhed, trying to break away, but the woman was strong. Fantastically strong. Catherine swatted at her, pulled at a strand of her dark hair that had come loose from her hood. She might as well have been a fly in the woman’s grasp. With her free hand she grabbed Catherine’s wrists and held her arms still.

    Then she caught Catherine’s gaze.

    Her eyes were blue, the dark, clear blue of the twilight sky over Spain.

    I am not killing him. Be silent, say nothing of what you have seen, and you will keep your husband. Her voice was subdued, but clear. Later, Catherine could not recall what language she had spoken.

    Catherine nearly laughed. What husband? She might as well have chosen the convent. But she couldn’t speak, couldn’t move.

    The woman’s touch was cold. The fingers curled over Catherine’s face felt like marble.

    You are so young to be in this position. Poor girl.

    The woman smiled, kindly it seemed. For a moment, Catherine wanted to cling to her, to spill all her worries before this woman—she seemed to understand.

    Then she said, Sleep. You’ve had a dream. Go back to sleep.

    Catherine’s vision faded. She struggled again, tried to keep the woman’s face in sight, but she felt herself falling. Then, nothing.

    She awoke on the floor. She had fainted and lay curled at the foot of her own bed, wrapped in her cloak. Pale morning light shone through the window. It was a cold light, full of winter.

    She tried to recall last night—she had left her bed, obviously. But for what reason? If she’d wanted wine she could have called for one of her ladies.

    Her ladies would be mortified to find her like this. They would think her ill, keep her to bed, and send for physicians. Catherine quickly stood, collected herself, arranged her shift and untangled her hair. She was a princess. She ought to behave like one, despite her strange dreams of women with rich blue eyes.

    An ache in her belly made her pause. It was not like her to be so indecorous as to leave her bed before morning. As she smoothed the wrinkles from her dressing gown, her fingers tickled. She raised her hand, looked at it.

    A few silken black fibers—long, shining, so thin they were almost invisible—clung to her skin. Hair—but how had it come here? Her own hair was like honey, Arthur’s was colored amber—

    She had seen a dark-haired woman with Arthur. It was not a dream. The memory of what she had seen had not faded after all.

    That day, Catherine and Arthur attended Mass together. She studied him so intently that he raised his brow at her, inquiring. She couldn’t explain. He wore a high-necked doublet. She couldn’t see his neck to tell if he had a wound there. Perhaps he did, perhaps not. He made no mention of what had happened last night, made no recognition that he had even seen her. Could he not remember?

    Say nothing of what you have seen, and you will keep your husband. Catherine dared not speak at all. She would be called mad.

    This country was cursed, overrun with rain and plague. This king was cursed, haunted by all those who had died so he might have his crown, and so was his heir. Catherine could tell her parents, but what would that accomplish? She was not here for herself, but for the alliance between their kingdoms.

    She prayed, while the priest chanted. His words were Latin, which was familiar and comforting. The Church was constant. In that she could take comfort. Perhaps if she confessed, told her priest what she had seen, he would have counsel. Perhaps he could say what demon this was that was taking Arthur.

    A slip of paper, very small, as if it had been torn from the margin of a letter, fell out of her prayer book. She glanced quickly around—no one had seen it. Her ladies either stared ahead at the altar or bowed over their clasped hands. She was kneeling; the paper had landed on the velvet folds of her skirt. She picked it up.

    "Convene me horto. Henricus," written in a boy’s careful hand. Meet me in the garden.

    Catherine crumpled the paper and tucked it in her sleeve. She’d burn it later.

    She told her ladies she wished to walk in the air, to stretch her legs after the long Mass. They accompanied her—she could not go anywhere without them, but she was able to find a place where she might sit a little ways off. Henry would have to find her then.

    Here she was, in this country only two months and already playing at spying.

    Gravel paths wound around the lawn outside Richmond, the King’s favorite palace. Never had Catherine seen grass of such jewel-like green. Even in winter, the lawn stayed green. The dampness made it thrive. Her mother-in-law Elizabeth assured her that in the summer, flowers grew in glorious tangles. Around back, boxes outside the kitchens held forests of herbs. England was fertile, the queen said knowingly.

    Catherine and her ladies walked to where the path turned around a hedge. Some stone benches offered a place to rest.

    Doña Elvira, you and the ladies sit here. I wish to walk on a little. Do not worry, I will call if I need you. The concerned expression on her duenna’s face was not appeased, but Catherine was resolute.

    Doña Elvira sat and directed the others to do likewise.

    Catherine strolled on, carefully, slowly, not rushing. Around the shrubs and out of sight from her ladies, Henry arrived, stepping out from behind the other end of the hedge.

    Buenos días, hermana.

    She smiled in spite of herself. You learn my language.

    Henry blushed and looked at his feet. Only a little. Hello and thank you and the like.

    "Still, gracias. For the little."

    I have learned something of the foreign woman. I told the guards to watch her and listen.

    We should tell your father. It is not for us to command the guards—

    She is not from the Low Countries. Her name is Angeline. She is French, which means she is a spy, he said.

    Catherine wasn’t sure that one so naturally followed the other. It was too simple an explanation. The alliance between England and Spain presented far too strong an enemy for France. Of course they would send spies. But that was no spy she’d seen with Arthur.

    She shook her head. She is more than that.

    She hopes to break the alliance between England and Spain by distracting my brother. If you have no children, the succession will pass to another.

    To you and your children, yes? And perhaps a French queen for England, if they find one for you to marry?

    He pursed boyish lips. I am Duke of York. Why would I want to be king?

    But there was a light in his eyes, intelligent, glittering. He would not shy away from being king, if, God forbid, events came to that.

    He said, There is more. I touched her hand when we danced. It was cold. Colder than stone. Colder than anything.

    Catherine paced, just a little circle beside her brother-in-law. She ought to tell a priest. But he knew. So she told him.

    I have been spying as well, she said. I went to Arthur’s chamber last night. If she is his mistress—I had to see. I had to know.

    "What did you see? Is she his mistress?"

    Catherine wrung her hands. She did not have the words for this in any language. I do not know. She was there, yes. But Arthur was senseless. It was as if she had put a spell on him.

    Eagerly, Henry said, Then she is a witch?

    Catherine’s throat ached, but she would not cry. I do not know. I do not know of such things. She said strange things to me; that I must not interfere if I wish to keep Arthur alive. She—she cast a spell on me, I think. I fainted, then I awoke in my chamber—

    Henry considered thoughtfully, a serious expression that looked almost amusing on the face of a boy. So. A demon is trying to sink its claws into the throne of England through its heir. Perhaps it will possess him. Or devour him. We must kill it, of course.

    We must tell a priest! Catherine said, pleading. We must tell the archbishop!

    If we did, would they believe us? I, a boy, and you, a foreigner? They’ll say we are mad, or playing at games.

    She couldn’t argue because she’d thought the same. She said, This woman made me sleep with a glance. How would we kill such a thing?

    Even if they wanted to kill her. What if the woman was right, and if they acted against her she would find some way to kill Arthur? Perhaps they should bide their time.

    Highness? Are you there? Doña Elvira called to her.

    I must away, Catherine said, and curtsied to her brother-in-law. We must think on what to do. We must not be rash.

    He returned the respect with a bow. Surely. Farewell.

    She hoped he would not be rash. She feared he looked upon all this as a game.

    His Highness is not seeing visitors, the gentleman of Arthur’s chamber told her. He spoke apologetically and bowed respectfully, but he would not let her through the doors to see Arthur. She wanted to scream.

    You will tell him that I was here?

    Yes, Your Highness, the man said and bowed again.

    Catherine could do nothing more than turn around and walk away, trailed by her own attending ladies.

    What they must think of her. She caught the whispers among them, when they thought she couldn’t hear. Pobre Catalina. Poor Catherine, whose husband would not see her, who spent every night alone.

    That evening, she sent Doña Elvira and her ladies on an errand for wine. Once again, she crept from her chambers alone, furtive as a mouse.

    I will see my husband, Catherine thought. It is my right. It should not have been so difficult for her to see him alone. But as it was the palace swarmed with courtiers.

    She wanted to reach him before the woman arrived to work her spells on him.

    Quietly, she slipped through Arthur’s door and closed it behind her.

    The bed curtains were open. Arthur, in his nightclothes, sat on the edge of the bed, hunched over. She could hear his wheezing breaths across the room.

    Your Highness, she said, curtsying.

    Catherine? He looked up—and did he smile? Just a little? Why are you here?

    She said, Who is the woman who comes to you at night?

    No one comes to me at night. He said this flatly, as if she were to blame for his loneliness.

    She shook her head, fighting tears. She would keep her wits and not cry. Three nights ago I came, and she was here. You were bleeding, Arthur. She hurt you. She’s killing you!

    That isn’t true. No one has been here. And—what business is it of yours if a woman has been here?

    I am your wife. You have a duty to me.

    Catherine, I am so tired.

    She knelt at his side and dared to put her hand on his knee. Then you must grow strong. So that we may have children. Your heirs.

    He touched her hand. A thrill went through her flesh, like fire. So much feeling in a simple touch! But his skin was ice cold.

    I am telling the truth, said the boy who was her husband. I remember nothing of any woman coming here. I come to bed every night and fall into such a deep sleep that nothing rouses me but my own coughing. I do not know of what you speak.

    This woman had put a spell on them all.

    Your father is sending your household to Ludlow Castle, in Wales, she said.

    He set his lips in a thin, pale line. Then we shall go to Ludlow. You cannot travel so far, she said. The journey will kill you. If I were really so weak my father would not send me. His pride blinds him!

    You should not speak so of the king, my lady. He gave a tired sigh. What would have been an accusation of treason from fiery young Henry’s lips was weary observation from Arthur’s. Now please, Catherine. Let me sleep. If I sleep well tonight, perhaps I’ll be strong enough to see you tomorrow.

    It was an empty promise and they both knew it. He was as pale and wasted as he had ever been. She kissed his hand with as much passion as she had ever been allowed to show. She pressed her cheek to it, let tears fall on it. She would pray every day for him. Every hour.

    She stood, curtsied, and left him alone in the chamber.

    Outside, however, she waited, sitting on a chair in the corner normally reserved for pages or stewards. Doña Elvira would be scandalized to see her there.

    In an hour, the woman Angeline came. She moved like smoke. Catherine had been staring ahead so intently she thought her eyes played a trick on her. A shadow flickered where there was no flame. A draft blew where no window was open.

    Angeline did not approach, but all the same she appeared. She stood before the doors of Arthur’s bedchamber as regal as any queen.

    Catherine was still gathering the courage to stand when Angeline looked at her. Her face was alabaster, a statue draped with a gown of black velvet. She might as well have been stone, her gaze was so hard.

    Finally, Catherine stood.

    "Es

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