"Night Sighs" by Emma Meade (Paranormal Romance)

Genre:  Paranormal Romance

Summary:  It’s good to be alive, when you’re dead!

Meet Alex & Tristan, modern star-crossed lovers of the supernatural variety. Alex is running-on-empty, one year on from the death of her fiancé, and the only thing that keeps her going is her romance with the young vampire Tristan. Tristan, meanwhile has a serious obsession with Bruce Springsteen, and is battling a ‘can’t-live-without-you’ sort of love for Alex. He’s trying to persuade her to come over to the dark side, but so far she’s resisting his efforts.

So come and sing along to Tristan’s band, The Dead Beats, the hottest group in London right now, and walk with Alex as she teeters between this life and the next. Because when you’re around Tristan, you’ll see, how much fun it is to be alive when you’re dead….

Night Sighs is a sensual, adult paranormal romance, following the relationship & adventures of Alex and Tristan through five short stories: The Dead Beats, The Ancients, Until My Body is Dust, Bourbon & Jazz and West of Forever.

Excerpt:

Dawn rose, blazing hot. Standing by the attic window her skin looked pink and luminous. Heat and light were promised on her lips as the last shadows fell, leaving her naked and in full control. The London street outside was still quiet, its squalid alleyways no longer hidden under night’s friendly mask. Daylight was not everyone’s friend.

**************

“She left me that morning,” Tristan spoke to his avid audience. “Crept out into the light, knowing I couldn’t follow. Saving herself and me is how she put it. Because the night was too dark for her…”

A roar rose up from the 50,000 strong crowd in the rural landscape miles outside London. Tristan stepped back from the microphone and lowered his head. His long black mane had been cut into jagged spikes. Silver crosses hung from his ears and on a chain around his neck, gleaming brightly against his black t-shirt and dark ripped jeans. A glance behind at his band told him they were good to go.

The moon illuminated the five vampires on the roofless stage, spotlighting Tristan as the opening bars on the piano sounded. His fans screamed again. Some were crying, others fainting, many more were as high as the grey clouds overhead.

Because the Night was a favourite cover the band liked to perform. Another haunting note on the piano followed and then the first strum of Tristan’s guitar. His thumb scraping well used strings was met with the wild screams of teenage girls. He satisfied them with a few more twangs.

And then. Silence. The band stopped. The crowd was unsure, excited and dizzy with anticipation.

Tristan lifted his head and stared straight ahead. The cameras focused on him for a close up and his face appeared on the dozens of temporarily erected screens throughout the park. He blinked, deliberately, emphasising his sad, wicked eyes all the more. Several young women dropped to the grassy ground. And then he sang.

The screams were deafening yet Tristan’s gruff, melodic voice rose over their noise as he spoke of the night belonging to lovers. His mouth touched the mic as he sang, loud, strong and clear. Those closest to the stage broke out in goosebumps. The sweetness of the piano seeped into their pores and they were more aware and more alive than ever. Tristan knew what they were feeling; he shared it with them every night on tour. Haunted. He, the band and the fans were held together amidst something beautiful but fleeting, an intermingling of love with the divine. The band had been both Tristan’s salvation and damnation. For every night through the music he felt so much, too much for one being to stay sane. The loyal crowd shared his burden.

The audience sang along with him, their shouts mixing with the sultry tones that slid so seductively off his tongue and into the hearts of every woman listening to him, and some men too.

His music embodied him entirely; it was moody, sorrowful, artistic, compelling and ultimately self-destructive. And this song captured the beauty of his pain perfectly.

Tristan strolled across the stage, one bare foot stamping down hard in front of the other, feeling the wood beneath his feet and the splinters drawing blood. He moved gracefully but there was a predatory sway that always ensured the enthrallment of his spectators. He knelt on one leg and sang to a group of young girls in the first row. All four friends were weeping, screaming and laughing, and begging him to take them up on the makeshift stage.

He winked at them and returned to centre stage, grinning at his bandmates. The red and yellow lights beat hotly against his forehead and his pale visage became ivory and near transparent. Like a ghost. He played his guitar heavily in time with the drum beats and almost drowned out the soft romance of the piano.

The elation of the audience was building as the notes rose higher, rushing towards a crescendo that was not unlike sex. His voice, always husky deepened to an overt show of masculinity.

No one his age should possess a voice like that, Tristan recalled one New York music journalist writing. He smiled in amusement.

His voice portraying carnal hunger drifted to the furthest corners of the gathering.

She was at the rear of the crowd, standing close to a fifteen foot screen mounted next to a great oak. It wasn’t his true face she was looking at now but that was enough to swell her heart and tug the memories loose. Tristan was separated from her by thousands of crazed fans. Distance didn’t seem to matter. Alex was as enthralled and on fire as the girls she could see screaming in front of her. They all wanted him and knew nothing. Those big brown eyes filled the screen until some of his hair came free of its gelled spikes and fell across his eyelashes. Tristan blew it out of his vision and carried on singing.

Two years had passed since they had last set eyes on one another but it may as well have been two minutes. Nothing had changed, not his luminous vitality or her longing to be with him. She thought that he may still love her, definitely thought of her but also possibly despised her now. Alex shivered as she listened to him. A rock star, she thought with faint amusement.

Tristan had spent years hiding from the human world and now he was one of its most famous players. The Dead Beats finished their opening number to a storm of yelling, whistling and clapping.

Alex didn’t move. What was she doing here? Why this concert and why now? Time had moved painfully slowly since she had left Tristan but some old semblance of herself had returned and the days and the nights held beauty again, and loneliness.

Without conscious thought, her legs moved of their own accord and Alex found herself walking forward through the throngs. Eyes fixed on the dot that was the stage, she was wholly unaware of the nasty comments and the irritated looks on the faces of the girls she swept past. Her progress was gradual but effective. One song melded into another and then another as she approached the front few lines of dedicated groupies, and then finally she was at the foot of the stage.

Alex shut her eyes to truly hear him, and it was his real voice now that floated over her, not an imitation that blew through the loudspeakers across the park. Soft, sensual, erotic and deadly. Cobain, Morrison and now Tristan. A long line of powerful, doomed rock stars, too big to exist comfortably in a repressive world. Would Tristan fall to the same fate? She feared he was drawing too much attention to himself and that many in his secret society were already displeased. Then stop him Alex, her inner voice urged and she opened her eyes.

He had moved on to singing Secret Garden. He always did love Springsteen, she thought wryly, remembering how he would pop on a record many a time after sex. Raw, passionate and oozing sex appeal, Tristan was all these things and more. Up on that stage now, he even sounded more than a little like the Boss. Alex listened to the words. Was he singing about her?

Tristan was on the far side aiming his words directly at a particular young girl, perhaps only a teenager. Alex’s lips curled up in a smirk. Some things never changed. And then he was glancing across the crowd, and then at the front row. Alex’s breath stopped and she clutched her locket as a reflex.

At that moment he saw her and stared. His lips no longer moved and the crowd filled in the words instead. Alex met his shocked gaze and offered him a shrug to let him know she was as confused as him. He recovered himself and completed the song. A moment later Tristan announced a short break and disappeared back stage.

Lively chatter ascended from the concert goers and Alex slipped away to the sidelines, walking numbly through empty space away from the lights and friendly noise. Shadows enveloped her, removing her from the view of the crowd.

She felt his presence behind her but didn’t move, preparing herself for his questions. Finally Alex turned to face him.

“Tristan I- ”

He flew at her bird-like and she hit the soft ground silently. Falling over her, Tristan clamped a hand over her mouth.

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