Helping Vampires to Save the World

Here’s what Lisabet Sarai has to say about Coming Together: In Vein, the new anthology she’s edited for the Coming Together charity anthology series. And at the end, I’ve posted an excerpt from my own story in the book, Jessebel, narrated by a transgender character in a western town a few years after the end of the Civil War. Sorry, all the sex comes at the end of the story; you’ll have to get the book for that, and so much more by the other terrific authors.

Now to quote Lisabet:

Let's face it. Vampires are sexy. Something about the undead stirs up our juices. Perhaps it's their irresistible power. Even when we know the danger, we're so very tempted to surrender to their all-consuming lust. Maybe we want to comfort them, to save them a lonely, bloody eternity. Maybe we secretly crave immortality ourselves.

Vampires are frequently portrayed as evil or at least amoral, viewing humanity from the jaded perspective of centuries. Now, though, vampires are doing their part to save the world.

Coming Together: In Vein is a brand new collection of vampire-themed erotica and erotic romance edited by Lisabet Sarai. All sales of this novel-length volume support Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières). MSF works in nearly 70 countries providing medical aid to those most in need regardless of their race, religion, or political affiliation. Right now, despite being barred from the country, MSF doctors and nurses are in Syria, working with patients from both sides of the civil war. They're performing surgery in caves and sneaking into refugee camps to distribute desperately needed medications.

You can help MSF in its life-saving mission, simply by indulging your passion for vampires. Buy a copy of Coming Together: In Vein in ebook , Kindle format, or print.

Enjoy! Then help spread the word! Every copy we sell has the potential to save someone's life.

The list of contributors  includes many names you'll recognize. Every one of these authors has provided his or her work free of charge, to support the charitable aims of the project. Furthermore, the editor is giving away a free copy of her short story collection Body Electric  to everyone who buys a copy of Coming Together: In Vein. (For details of this offer, click here)

You'll find an excerpt below – just to whet your appetite.

Sink your teeth into Coming Together: In Vein. Help our vampires save the world.


JESSEBEL

Sacchi Green

“See there, Cap’n, ain’t she somethin’? Jezebel, they calls ‘er, but most likely she’s just plain Mabel or Hildy underneath it all.”
I looked through the drifting cigar smoke and shifting bodies. Maybe three or four of those figures were recognizably female—for damned sure not counting my own well-concealed form—but there was no doubt as to which one had sparked the old stable hand’s enthusiasm. I couldn’t see much; her back was to the door, and a rancher’s burly arms enveloped her in a most unchaste fashion as they danced, but even so there seemed to be a glow about her that drew the eye. Chestnut curls tumbled across slender shoulders, and emerald silk clung to rounded, swaying hips that promised the uttermost in carnal delights without sacrificing the least degree of elegance.
“Sure is, Bill,” I agreed, “but what’s a fine piece like that doing in a place like this?”
“Plenty of business, that’s what.” Bill elbowed me in the ribs. I only just managed to pivot enough to keep my bound-up tender bits from taking the full impact. When I turned back the girl swung around so that for a moment, before her partner’s bulk blocked the view, I saw her face, beautiful in spite of all its paint, not because of it.
The room swirled around me. The floor tilted. I clutched at the back of a chair, muttered an apology to the card player occupying it, and lurched back out through the swinging doors.
The last time I’d kissed that face it had been ashen, dirt-smeared, streaked with blood and my tears. The last time I’d held that dear body in my arms, life and warmth had seeped away.
The last time I’d seen her, she’d been dead.

Great gulps of cool autumn air revived me a bit. The dizziness subsided, and common sense got a foothold. I’d been mistaken, addled by smoke and old grief and going far too long without the pleasures of the flesh. Maybe the name, as well, far too close to the one I remembered. That painted, seductive, brazen whore looked nothing like Jessebel. Not my Jess. My Jess, who was gone forever. I knew that.
I was only too well acquainted with death. I knew it when I saw it, and all the savage ways war could rip the soul out of the body. War, and its aftermath. Jess and I had been together since Vicksburg, when I’d found her huddling in a farmer’s root cellar, gray uniform in such tatters that it scarcely hid her private parts. She’d been running away not just from capture but from something else she could never bring herself to speak of. I’d scrounged her a blue uniform small enough to fit, and watched over her for the last two years of the War, only to lose her to a looter’s bullet before we could start west to make a real life for ourselves.      
“Cap’n?” Old Bill poked his head out. “You okay?”
“I’ll be right fine in a minute or two. Town crowds take some getting used to when a fellow’s been up in the mountains so long.”
“I s’pose that’s so,” Bill said doubtfully.
I fished out a coin from my pocket and sent it spinning. He forgot anything else in the catching of it. “You go on and order that drink,” I said, “and if you’ve downed it before I get to the bar, I’ll just be obliged to buy you another one to go with mine.”
The old fellow was my habitual bridge to human society on my twice-yearly expeditions out of the mountains. In the spring I’d be bringing in the fruits of my traplines to the fur traders, and in the autumn I’d stock up on whatever winter needs my gun wouldn’t supply.
He’d always taken me at face value, too, never questioning the shabby Union Captain’s uniform I’d ridden in with three years ago, and neither had anybody else.
The Union part was right enough, and I’d worn a uniform throughout the war, as had a fair number of other females I’d encountered or heard tell of, besides Jess. But the clothes I’d worn at the last had come from an officer who would never need them again. Leather and fur and two new flannel shirts a year suited me better now.
Bill’s big news this time had been the new girl at the Hard Ride Saloon. The girl who… I got a firm grip on my wandering mind. She wasn’t Jess. And she wasn’t for me. The tawdry regulars at the Hard Ride were good enough old girls, but I’d never yet trusted one of them with my personal…eccentricities, and I wasn’t about to start now with a flashy stranger who’d look more at home in New Orleans or San Francisco.
As I pushed through the saloon door I did, however, wish fleetingly that I’d bought my semiannual new shirt already, and gone to the trouble of visiting the local bathhouse out behind the barber shop.
Bill wiped his sleeve across his mouth, ready to take a short pause from knocking back his liquor. “See? Ain’t she a corker, just like I said? I s’pose she’ll move on soon’s she’s emptied the pockets ‘round here, and wore out a few more big spenders.”
“A few more?” The man with her was perspiring, but hardly looked worn out. More like pumped up fit to burst, which was entirely understandable. Her dress was so fancy and fine a fellow might be afraid to touch it, but the way her body moved roused a powerful urge to rip her clothing right off. I was in as bad a case as any, but in my own way, with damp heat throbbing between my thighs and a maddening pressure building in my bound breasts.