Dates From Hell: Four Otherworldly Tales of Paranormal Trysts

by Kim Harrison, Lori Handeland, Lynsay Sands, Kelley Armstrong

Overview

The search for love is spooky in these four paranormal tales of dating disasters from four great authors.

She thought her date was out of this world. Actually, he was not of this world . . .

We’ve all been on bad dates, nightmare dates, dreadful experiences that turned out to be uniquely memorable in the very worst way. But at least our partners for these detestable evenings were more or less . . . human!

Now Kim Harrison, Lynsay Sands, Kelley Armstrong, and Lori Handeland—four of the very best writers currently exploring the dangerous seduction of the supernatural—offer up dating disasters (and unexpected delights) of a completely different sort: dark, wicked, paranormally sensual assignations with werewolves, demon lovers, and the romantically challenged undead. Sexy, witty, chilling, and altogether remarkable, here is proof positive that some love matches are made someplace other than heaven.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061741920
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/11/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	415
File size:	756 KB

About the Author

Kim Harrison is best known as the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Hollows series, but she has written more than urban fantasy and has published more than two dozen books, spanning the gamut from young adult, accelerated-science thriller, and several anthologies and has scripted two original graphic novels set in the Hollows universe. She has also published traditional fantasy under the name Dawn Cook. Kim is currently working on a new Hollows book between other, nonrelated, urban fantasy projects.

Read an Excerpt

Dates From Hell

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By Kim Harrison

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2006 Kim Harrison
All right reserved.
ISBN: 006085409X

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Chapter One

Phone cradled between her shoulder and ear, Ivy Tamwood scooped another chunk of chili up with her fries, leaning over the patterned wax paper so it wouldn't drip onto her desk. Kisten was bitching about something or other, and she wasn't listening, knowing he could go on for half her lunch break before winding down. The guy was nice to wake up to in the afternoon, and a delight to play with before the sun came up, but he talked too much.

Which is why I put up with him, she mused, running her tongue across the inside of her teeth before swallowing. Her world had gone too quickly from alive to silent on that flight back home from California. My God, was it seven years now? It had been unusual to foster a high-blood living vampire child into a sympathetic camarilla, taking her from home and family for her last two years of high school, but Piscary, the master vampire her family looked to, had become too intense in his interest in her before she developed the mental tools to deal with it, and her parents had intervened at some cost, probably saving her sanity.

I could keep Freud in Havana cigars all by my lonesome, Ivy thought, taking another bite of carbs and protein. Twenty-three ought to be far enough away from that scaredsixteen-year-old on the sun-drenched tarmac to forget, but even now, after multiple blood and bed partners, a six-year degree in social sciences, and landing an excellent job where she could use her degree, she found her confidence was still tied to the very things that screwed her up.

She missed Skimmer and her reminder that life was more than waiting for it to end so she could get started living. And while Kisten was nothing like her high school roommate, he had filled the gap nicely these last few years.

Smiling wickedly, Ivy gazed through the plate-glass wall that looked out on the floor of open offices. Weight shifting, she crossed her legs at her knees and leaned farther across her desk, imagining just what gap she'd like Kisten to fill next.

"Damn vampire pheromones," she breathed, and pulled herself straight, not liking where her thoughts took her when she spent too much time in the lower levels of the Inderland Security tower. Working the homicide division of the I.S. got her a real office instead of a desk in the middle of the floor with the peons, but there were too many vamps -- both living and undead -- down here for the air circulation to handle.

Kisten's tirade about prank phone calls ended abruptly. "What do vamp pheromones have to do with humans attacking my pizza delivery crew?" he asked in a lousy British accent. It was his newest preoccupation, and one she hoped he'd tire of soon.

Rolling her chair closer to her desk, Ivy took a swig of her imported bottled water, eyes askance on the boss's closed door across the large room. "Nothing. You want me to pick up anything on the way home? I might be able to wing out of here early. Art's in the office, which means someone died and I have to go to work. Bet you first bite he's going to want to cut my lunch short" -- she took another sip -- "and I'm going to take it off the end of my day."

"No," Kisten said. "Danny is doing the shopping today."

One of the perks of living atop a restaurant, she thought, as Kisten started in on a shopping list she didn't care about. Pulling her plate of fries off her desk, she set them on her lap, being careful to not spill anything on her leather pants. The boss's door opened, catching her eye when Art came out, shaking hands with Mrs. Pendleton. He'd been in there a full half hour. There was a stapled pack of paper in his hands, and Ivy's pulse quickened. She'd been sitting on her ass going over Art's unsolved homicides for too long. The man had no business being in homicide. Dead did not equal smart.

Unless being smart was in manipulating us into giving the undead our blood. Ivy forced herself to keep eating, thinking the undead targeted their living vampire kin more out of jealousy than maintaining good human relations, as was claimed. Having been born with the vampire virus embedded into her genome, Ivy enjoyed a measure of the undeads' strengths without the drawbacks of light fatality and pain from religious artifacts. Though not in line with Art's abilities, her hearing and strength were beyond a human's, and her sense of smell was tuned to the softer flavors of sweat and pheromones. The undeads' need for blood had been muted from a biological necessity to a bloodlust that imparted a high like no other when sated . . . addictive when mixed with sex.

Her gaze went unbidden to Art, and he smiled from across the wide floor as if knowing her thoughts, his steady advance never shifting and the packet of paper in his hand moving like a banner of intent. Appetite gone, she swiveled her chair to put her back to the room. "Hey, Kist," she said, interrupting his comments about Danny's recent poor choice of mushrooms, "change of plans. By the amount of paperwork, it's one of Art's cleanup runs. I won't be home till sunup."

"Again?"

"Again?" she mocked, fiddling with a colored pen until she realized it telegraphed her mood and set it down with a sharp tap. "God, Kisten. You make it sound like it's every night."

Kisten sighed. "Leave the paperwork for tomorrow, love. I don't know why you bust your ass so hard. You're not moving up until you let Artie the Smarty go down on you."

Continues...

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Excerpted from Dates From Hell by Kim Harrison Copyright © 2006 by Kim Harrison. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

She thought her date was out of this world.

Actually, he was not of this world . . .

We've all been on bad dates, nightmare dates, dreadful experiences that turned out to be uniquely memorable in the very worst way. But at least our partners for these detestable evenings were more or less . . . human!

Now Kim Harrison, Lynsay Sands, Kelley Armstrong, and Lori Handeland -- four of the very best writers currently exploring the dangerous seduction of the supernatural -- offer up dating disasters (and unexpected delights) of a completely different sort: dark, wicked, paranormally sensual assignations with werewolves, demon lovers, and the romantically challenged undead. Sexy, witty, chilling, and altogether remarkable, here is proof positive that some love matches are made someplace other than heaven.

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
The cheapskate. The loud talker. The egomaniac. We've all had dates we'd rather forget, but nothing compares to those found in Dates from Hell, an explosive anthology featuring stories from four of the biggest names in supernatural fantasy: Kim Harrison, Lynsay Sands, Kelley Armstrong, and Lori Handeland.

Harrison, the author of the bestselling Rachel Morgan saga (Dead Witch Walking; The Good, the Bad, and the Undead; et al.) offers up a new story from the Hollows, a prequel of sorts that focuses on Morgan's vampiric friend, Ivy Tamwood, before the two met. In "Undead in the Garden of Good and Evil," Tamwood -- working as a homicide detective for Inderland Security -- must deal with an oversexed and undead boss who will do anything to taste her blood. In Armstrong's "Chaotic" (which takes place within her Otherworld universe), undercover operative and half demon Hope Adams is experiencing true hell, stuck with a boorish blind date at a museum charity gala. But when she catches a thief, who happens to be a werewolf, red-handed, the evening's festivities become unforgettable -- for all the wrong reasons.

Sexy, sharp-witted, and at times downright spooky, this quartet of novellas should appeal not only to the four authors' legions of dedicated fans but also to those who enjoy generous amounts of romance and eroticism mixed with their dark fantasy. Readers with a taste for genre-transcendent authors who blur the lines between fantasy, romance, and mystery -- like Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, and Madelyn Alt -- will find Dates from Hell absolutely heavenly. Paul Goat Allen

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