My Big Fat Bloodsucker Wedding (Bloodsucker #1) Read online

  My Big Fat Bloodsucker Wedding

  The Wonderfully Witches of Nightfall New Hampshire

  Bella Jacobs

  Contents

  MY BIG FAT BLOODSUCKER WEDDING

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Sneak Peek

  About the Author

  Also by Bella Jacobs

  MY BIG FAT BLOODSUCKER WEDDING

  By Bella Jacobs

  Copyright

  My Big Fat Bloodsucker Wedding © 2021 by Bella Jacobs

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This contemporary romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy sexy, fast-paced urban fantasy reads. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work. Edited by Sandra Shipman Editing. Cover font design by Kelley Lambert Greer.

  Created with Vellum

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  It’s all fun and games…until you stake your sister’s fiancé.

  * * *

  Okay, fine! I’m not really going to stake Colin or his brother, the insufferable, bossy-fanged Darcy Blackmore. At least not as long as I can find another way to stop our siblings from getting hitched.

  * * *

  My sister, Annie, won’t admit it, but she doesn’t love Colin. She’s sacrificing herself so we can stay in Nightfall, New Hampshire, and renew the magical shield keeping the paranormal creatures here, including witches like us, safe from human discovery.

  * * *

  I have ten days to find another way—aside from a bloodsucker wedding—to secure our legacy and not a lead in sight. So, imagine my surprise when the wretched, though admittedly smoking hot, Darcy comes to the rescue.

  * * *

  His scheme?

  * * *

  We pretend to be hot for each other, trick Annie and Colin into confessing they don’t really want to tie the knot, and sort out how to save the town once the wedding bells are silenced—permanently.

  * * *

  It’s not a bad plan. In theory.

  * * *

  If only Darcy wasn’t every bit as delicious as he is obnoxious. If only he’d kept his secret sweet side under wraps and kissing him wasn’t the most amazing thing to happen to my lips in my entire life. If only this fake love had stayed fake, instead of creeping into my heart on stealthy little vampire feet.

  * * *

  Now I have a decision to make—keep faking it with the world’s sexiest vampire until I lose big at love, yet again, or leave my new hometown and all the people I’m coming to love behind. Forever.

  For Allison N.

  Chapter One

  Blaire

  Wednesday, October 22nd

  * * *

  10 Days Until the Wedding that

  Shall Not Be Allowed to Proceed

  (Not if Blaire Belladonna Wonderfully has anything to say about it.)

  * * *

  Ten days.

  Ten days until my sweet, angelic sister, a woman who lives for books, babies, and late-night giggle sessions with her quilting club is forced to marry an evil, bloodsucking vampire with a plaid fetish and creepy teeth. (Yes, I’m aware that all vampire teeth are creepy, but Colin’s are especially stabby-looking when he’s cranky. And he’s cranky a lot.)

  I have to put a stop to this insanity.

  The sooner the better…

  I poke my head through the open kitchen door on the ground floor of Blackmore Manor, spying on the event-in-progress in the rose garden. My nose wrinkles as I spot Colin and Annie chatting with a few of our new neighbors by the bar.

  My sister looks beautiful in a long green dress that matches her eyes, with her brown hair gathered into a decorative pile of curls atop her head. Colin also looks okay, I guess—tonight’s plaid suit is a subdued mix of gray and light green, and his smile is fang-free at the moment—but I’m not fooled. He might be six feet, three inches of studly vampire with broad shoulders, a square jaw any comic book hero would covet, and dark blond hair that sets off his blue-gray eyes, but his savage, blood-sucky side is always there.

  It lurks just below the surface, waiting for the chance to drain my sister dry and leave her willowy, delicate librarian’s body in a ditch by the side of the road.

  Or, even worse, turn her into a vampire, too.

  According to what I’ve been able to glean since we arrived in Nightfall, New Hampshire a month ago, full-blooded witches aren’t supposed to be able to be turned against their will. But Annie and I haven’t come into our powers yet and we have no clue who our father was. Even if our mother is a witch and not the flighty, tree-hugging, but very human hippy we thought we knew before she disappeared last year, the chances that our father was a warlock are slim to none.

  Apparently, male witches are exceedingly rare.

  Which means Colin could probably turn Annie if he wanted to—with or without her permission. Vampires don’t usually worry about consent when it comes to turning other people into vampires. Most of the vamps in this bonkers town were turned against their will—including Colin.

  Though to be fair, it sounds like he was too busy frothing at the mouth from a bad case of arsenic poisoning for his maker to get a thumbs up or down before giving him the Blood Kiss, but still…

  Vampire culture is creepy. And rape-y. And absolutely not a good fit for any modern, self-respecting woman, let alone a sweetheart like Annie.

  Annie, who still reads Children’s Fantasy books, despite the fact that we both turned thirty-four last summer.

  Annie, who knits tiny caps for babies in the NICU to keep them warm.

  Annie, who has always wanted a big family of her own, despite the fact that our childhood was a literal dumpster fire that we and our four little sisters barely survived.

  And since he’s technically a walking corpse, Colin can never give her children. If she marries him, that dream, her biggest and brightest
, will be dead and buried for good.

  That’s another thing about vampire marriages—they’re until death do you part. Literally. There is no such thing as a vampire divorce. Couples are free to get pissed at each other and live separate lives, but their union can’t be dissolved.

  It’s some sort of magical thing I don’t fully understand because our scatter-brained mother didn’t bother telling us that all this shit is real—or that we’re witches. We had to find out at the reading of her will in late August, when her attorney explained that we’d inherited a Victorian mansion in a supernatural town hidden from human eyes, but that in order to keep it, the oldest Wonderfully of our generation would have to marry one of the Nightfall elders.

  It’s the only way to renew the town’s supernatural shield. Apparently, Annie is going to be able to zap that failing shield back to full strength as soon as she and Colin seal their union, even though neither of us seems to have naturally manifesting magic and we won’t start training with our witch teacher, Celeste, until she returns to town for the winter solstice.

  But by December, Annie will have been married for nearly two months. It will be too late to pick our tutor’s brain for alternatives to the sacrifice of my sister’s happiness.

  Like she hasn’t done enough sacrificing already…

  As the two oldest sisters—Annie and I are twins, born just three minutes apart—we both took up the slack for our sporadically maternal mother. But Annie was the one with a talent for the often-grueling work of keeping our sisters’ clothes and bodies relatively clean, defusing squabbles, and getting supper on the table every night. I was the one who chopped firewood for our neighbors and did odd jobs around town to earn grocery money when Mom disappeared for months at a time to do whatever it was that she did out in the wilds of Maine.

  By the time I was seven or eight, I’d learned to be grateful that Annie and I weren’t identical twins and that I’d emerged from the womb strong and solid to my sister’s delicate and slender. Yes, there were times when I wished I had her sea glass green eyes instead of my muddy brown ones and that my freckles were a cute little sprinkling across my nose instead of a full-body explosion. But all-in-all I was grateful for the fact that I could rip out carpeting and pound wood floors into place by the time I was ten.

  My self-taught handygirl skills kept my family fed and our cabin warm. No matter how bad things got, I never worried that we’d starve. I knew I could provide for my sisters with hard work and my own two hands.

  Well, I could back when we were kids and our cabin and forty acres were our entire world…

  Now, the others have scattered to the four winds and the only thing we have in common is the fact that our lives are headed nowhere fast.

  Casey is dating an asshole who refuses to help with their daughter, Delilah is partying way too hard, Everly just lost funding for her research project in Washington State and may soon be out of a job, and Felicity has probably been kidnapped by fairies.

  Or she spaced out and ended up in a foreign country without a cell phone or money to call home. My baby sister is as flighty as our mother and at only twenty, still needs a keeper. A room of her own in a mansion big enough to fit all six of us and a little stability would do wonders for Felicity.

  And the rest of us, too. Annie’s library in our hometown permanently closed last January and thanks to the shrinking local population in our part of Maine, my home renovation business was bringing in less and less money every year.

  We needed a change and had no choice but to evolve, but I never imagined we’d end up in a place like this, with Annie’s future on the line. Or that just a month after moving to this seaside town populated by vampires, shapeshifters, selkies, and other assorted supernatural creatures, I’d know enough about vampire digestion to be sneaking into an eighteenth-century kitchen to spike a bunch of blood goblets with lemon juice.

  Vampires are violently allergic to citrus.

  According to the book I slipped into my purse at our new library yesterday, it won’t kill them, but the oozing sores on their skin will last for weeks. And surely Colin won’t want to get hitched with leaking pustules all over his pretty face. He’ll push back the wedding for at least a month, giving me time to save my sister from his clutches.

  It’s not the most brilliant plan, and I’ll be in deep shit if I’m caught, but right now it’s all I’ve got.

  Turning away from the door, I tiptoe back to the massive wooden food prep station in the center of the room, where three dozen goblets full of blood and wine are sitting on silver trays, ready to be toted out by the servants currently passing hors d’oeuvres for the mortals and champagne for all.

  The first event of the ten day “Hallow-wedding” festivities is the “fealty toast.” The Blackmore vampires will pledge to protect our family, and Annie and I, the only Wonderfully sisters currently in Nightfall, will pledge to dedicate our magic to their service in return.

  Which would sound okay, I guess, if I needed protection from anyone other than the snotty, stuck-up vampires living in their giant estate on the bluffs above town.

  After only a month here, I hate every vamp I’ve had the displeasure to meet with the passion of a thousand, white-hot suns. Colin is a cranky jerk, Baron is a brooding psycho who lives in a swamp at the edge of town for reasons no one has bothered to explain, and Darcy…

  Well, Darcy is a grade A dick of the first order.

  And probably a bedwetter.

  Or he will be, once I spike his blood with citrus. In addition to the sores, lemon plays havoc with vampire digestion. The thought of Darcy, the tall, dark, and condescending trapped on a toilet with his perfectly pressed suit pants around his ankles gives me more joy than it probably should.

  But I never pretended to be a nice girl. I’m the defender of my family, the warrior, and I’m not handing my sister over to a bunch of creepy vampires without one hell of a fight.

  I lean in, giving the closest tray of glasses an experimental sniff and drawing back with a soft gag as the metallic, faintly sweet scent of human blood fills my nose.

  This tray is definitely for the vamps.

  Glancing over my shoulder to ensure I’m still alone, I pull my little squeeze bottle of lemon juice from my purse and lean in. But just as I’m about to pop the top, something whooshes past my face, close enough to ruffle my hair.

  I wince and duck, swallowing the startled sound rising in my throat in hopes that I might still avoid getting caught.

  But it’s too late. A part of me knows that, even before the bat flapping around by my head poofs into a man in a steel gray suit who wraps his massive hand around my neck.

  Chapter Two

  Darcy

  Darcy Blackmore, a vampire who

  doesn’t have time for this shit.

  (Though he will admit that witches, even half-blood witches, smell delicious.)

  * * *

  Ever stepped out of the bed into a puddle of warm piss that immediately soaked through your socks to squish between your toes?

  Well, I have—my cat is a jealous beast who leaves pee puddles on the floor as punishment when I have a lady friend over for an evening—and I can assure you the experience is identical to most interactions with Blair Wonderfully.

  Unpleasant. Distasteful. And vexing.

  Very vexing.

  Though admittedly, Blaire smells better than cat urine.

  As I lift her, kicking and struggling, into the air by her throat, her fresh-baked-cinnamon bread smell wafts around me, and my stomach growls. I haven’t had cinnamon bread in over two-hundred years or had a craving for anything but blood in nearly as long, but this witch…does things to me.

  Bad things.

  I can’t stand this woman, which makes the urge to lick her every time her mouth-watering scent hits my nose even more irritating.

  So, I let her dangle from my arm, spitting and cussing, for a few more moments before I press her up against the heavy plaster wall on the other side o
f the kitchen and let go, enjoying her “oof” of surprise as her boots reconnect with the floor.

  But she isn’t surprised for long. She recovers quickly, attempting to dive under my arm and bolt for the door, but I grip her shoulders and hold her fast.

  “Let me go,” she snaps, her face red with fury as she glares up at me, cursing like a sailor.

  Ugh. She’s so…objectionable.

  And nothing like her twin sister.

  Annie is a tall, elegant, well-read woman with flawless skin and a soft-spoken manner that reminds me of my own wife, the one I was forced to abandon, along with our two young children, when I was turned. In another age, Annie would have fit perfectly into high society, whereas this little goblin…

  With her explosion of freckles over every visible inch of skin, muscled arms, and skin that flushes a mottled red whenever she’s angry—which, as far as I can tell, is most of the time—she’s just…impossible. The very worst. Even if her arrival in town hadn’t set a string of highly undesirable events in motion, I would want to toss her off the nearest cliff.