HOTM: Colin Ames-Beaumont

Name: Colin Ames-Beaumont
Classification: Supernatural Stud
Subclass: Bloodsucker

Found In: Meljean Brook’s Demon Angel and Demon Moon (the latter of which is slavishly devoted to him).

The Meet Cute: Savi first encounters Colin at her granny’s restaurant, at which time she assumes he’s gay because he’s too pretty and well dressed to be available.

The Catch: Colin sticks more than his fangs into the women he feeds from, a side effect of bloodlust that he has no control over. A single human can’t produce enough blood to sustain him. Ergo, survival and fidelity are mutually exclusive concepts.

The Pretty: Not only is he pretty, he is unabashedly vain about it and insists upon being told how beautiful he is at every turn.

His features were impossible to forget: his short hair, like burnished gold; the darker, slashing brows; thick lashes around wintry gray eyes. A blond god, with a deity’s careless cruelty; the firm line of his mouth suggested it, and his smile was a predator’s.

He’s aged well, for a 200-year-old.

He’d been only twenty-two at his transformation, but his features usually gave the impression of ageless youth; he could have been a man of eighteen or forty.

He can also pull off what’s deemed “great and terrible beauty” when he’s really, really pissed, at which point merely gazing upon his glorious visage reduces the recipient to a quivering gelatinous blob of terror.

You get more of a sense of his allure from the way others respond to him (rapt, drooling, instant orgasm, etc.) than from actual description, which is cleverly kept minimal because, really, it’s more effective to leave ridiculously beautiful to the imagination.

Endearing Qualities

• He’s funny. If you want a moody vampire, look elsewhere. He even says, “Brooding is so very tedious, don’t you agree?”
• He defines barbarism as polyester, reality television, and mullets.
• He’s close to his extended family and regales the children with the adventures of “their beloved blood-drinking Uncle Colin,” even if the little ingrates are more interested in tales of demons and angels.
• He dances and flirts with little old ladies.
• He has the manners of a proper British gentleman… when he’s not being a vicious bastard… and also usually when he is.
• He makes no apologies for his behavior. He says, “I am a second son, Agent Milton. I drink. I fuck. I remain useless. It is not just my birthright, it is my preference.” Which sounds terrible, but at least he’s honest.
• He has a damn nice house Victorian mansion, which is always an endearing quality in a man.
• He is an artiste (artsy = swoon).
• This is the thing that killed me: the incessant need for attention is more than just vanity (although he gleefully admits to an abundance of that quality). He has no reflection, and his blood donors, for all their adoration in the heat of the moment, forget him as if he never existed when the moment has passed. He’s lived most of his 200 years with a desperate sense of impermanence and unreality. “Tell me I’m beautiful” is Colinspeak for “Tell me I’m really here and promise you’ll remember me.”

Handy Skills

• Swings a mean sword
• Will make fresh-squeezed orange juice if asked nicely
• ADDED: Can get you a great deal on a new car…
• Can support a woman in any style to which she would care to become accustomed, as he describes the $17 million stolen from him as merely “pin money” (yes, being ridiculously wealthy is a “skill”)

In Colin’s Words: This was a difficult choice because he’s consistently witty and provocative and often profound, but I chose the following, after which I will tell you why:

“Anything you want, sweet, and it’s yours,” he said, his voice rough. Anything but fidelity and immortality; devastating, that the two things she wanted most he could not offer. Yet it was more important than ever not to give her false hope; he would not dangle anything in front of her only to take it away. But the first—there must be a way, even if he had to cut off his dick each night he fed from anyone other than Savi.

Okay, that is true love right there. Happily, devotedly married men quail at the very thought of a vasectomy, a procedure that can be performed right in the doctor’s office in about 2 minutes with no bleeding and all the painkillers the crybabies can beg for, but Colin is willing to hack the whole thing off rather than betray the woman he loves.

Of course, his will grow back, but still, it’s not going to be fun in the meantime.

Get Your Hands On Colin:

Demon Moon (Colin and Savi’s story)

Also monopolizing a fair bit of attention in Demon Angel