The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

He started to talk sensibly about their committee, and asked Miss Massingberd her feelings on the Christmas bazaar, but Miss Massingberd simply crumbled the cake on her plate and smiled like Mona Lisa. It was not really very long before his stream of cheerful commonplace things to say began to run dry and he said, almost accusingly, "You're not eating your cake."

Miss Massingberd murmured that she was not very hungry. So the vicar, always a polite host, stood up to take the plate out of her way. Miss Massingberd, recalled to her proper social role, stood up too and smiled again and the vicar, lost and drowning in her blue eyes, kissed her.

And Miss Massingberd, having learned the trick of it, fell in love all over again.

She and the vicar were married, of course. They turned the dreadful, echoing barracks of a vicarage into a hostel for homeless families. And what with that, and the Youth Club and the Brownies and all the other parish duties, they never seemed to have a moment even to think.

Only sometimes, in the long green dusks of spring, or the short red twilights of autumn, Miss Massingberd would walk alone in the churchyard for a while. She would come back looking greatly refreshed, if a little pale, and wind a silk scarf around her throat before going to the Youth Club, or the Brownie meeting, or the Parish Council. And her husband would sigh a little, and remind her to take her iron tonic.

The Raven Bound

Freda Warrington

Beginning with A Blackbird in Silver in 1986, Freda Warrington is the author of sixteen novels exploring the realms of fantasy, vampires and the supernatural. Her vampire series A Taste of Blood Wine, A Dance in Blood Velvet and The Dark Blood of Poppies — was published by Macmillan to great acclaim in the UK, and will appear in the USA from Meisha Merlin, starting in 2001. Her 1997 sequel to Dracula, Dracula the Undead, won the Children of the Night Award for Best Gothic Novel, presented by the Dracula Society .

She has recently completed "The Jewelfire Trilogy" for Simon & Schuster's Earthlight imprint, comprising the British Fantasy Award-nominated The Amber Citadel, The Sapphire Throne and The Obsidian Tower. A new novel , Guiltless Blood, is scheduled for 2002 .

" I love the paradox of vampires," explains Warrington. " They personify things we dread, such as death or (horrors!) the dead coming back from the grave, yet also attributes we may covet, such as eternal youth, power over others, guilt-free sensuality. The possibilities offered by vampire characters are endless. Away with cardboard heroes chasing cardboard monsters! In A Taste of Blood Wine and its sequels, my characters Karl, Charlotte, Violette and their friends took me down many fascinating dark labyrinths exploring themes of love, pain, jealousy, psychology, philosophy, religion, sex I found no limit.

" ' The Raven Bound' came about when a French editor, Lea Silhol, asked me to write a story for her vampire anthology , De Sang et d'Encre. She hinted strongly that she would like to see an appearance of her favourite characters from the books, Karl and Charlotte. I had an idea all worked out until I actually put pen to paper, when something entirely unplanned came out instead! I don't know where Antoine came from, but I think he would smile at a quote in my desk diary by the writer Susan Ertz, which turned up in apposite fashion shortly after I'd written his story: 'Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon'"

I walk a tightrope above an abyss. The silver line of wire is all that keeps me from 1,000 feet of darkness yet I feel no fear. I flit across the rooftops of London like a cat, I lie flat on top of underground trains as they roar through sooty tunnels. I climb the ironwork of the Eiffel Tower and I dance upon the girders at its pinnacle, daring gravity to take me. And all of this is so dull.

Dull, because I can do it.

I move with the lightness and balance of a bird. I never fall, unless I throw myself wantonly at the ground. Then I may break bones, but my bones heal fast. It is not difficult. It will not kill me. All these wild feats bore me, for they hold no challenge, no excitement.

What is a vampire to do?

I see him in a nightclub. He could be my twin: a brooding young man with a lean and handsome face, dark hair hanging in his eyes; his eyes lovely miserable pools of shadow. How alone he looks, sitting there oblivious to the crush of bodies, the women glittering with beads and pearls. He is hunched over a glass of whisky and he raises a long, gaunt hand to his mouth, sucking hard on a cigarette stub. Dragging out its last hot rush of poisons.

"May I join you?" I say.

"If you must." His voice is a bored, English upper-class drawl. I love that.

"There is no free table." I wave to emphasize the obvious; the club is crowded, a sepia scene in a fog of smoke. "My name is Antoine Matisse."