Kerry Allen

They say you never forget your first vampire love (particularly when you keep the journal containing the unabashedly Mary Sue-ish your-eyes-only fanfic in which you are his very reason for living, which you tell people you can’t very well throw away because it’s bound in leather and cost a lot of money, not to mention penned in calligraphy because you had a lot of free time back then so it’s practically collector-grade art, but really you keep it because it’s an enduring fantasy and damn well written, if you do say so yourself every time you sneak it off the shelf and reminisce). They’re right, for a change. I re-read recently and was just as seduced by Lestat as I was the first time, when I was but a tender adolescent. 

Name: Lestat de Lioncourt
Classification: Supernatural stud
Subclass: Bloodsucker

Found In: Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles (everything to follow comes specifically from his “autobiography,” The Vampire Lestat)

Introduced In: Interview with the Vampire, as narrated by Louis, undoubtedly Lestat’s most annoying creation. There’s a reason Louis got only one book to narrate—namely, he’s a whiny, spineless, self-pitying douche, the original emo posterboy. I couldn’t stand him even in his own telling and recognized Lestat as the true figure of interest even then. Here’s the abridged version of Interview: ”Lestat is so mean. I wish I was as cool as him. The end.”

The Pretty: (Forget the movie, which only reinforced my existing dislike of Tom Cruise.) Even as a mortal, Lestat was beautiful. His looks were a large part of the reason he was chosen to receive the Dark Gift. He’s kind enough to describe his own magnificence at the start of his story.

I’m six feet tall, which was fairly impressive in the 1780s when I was a young mortal man. It’s not bad now. I have thick blond hair, not quite shoulder length, and rather curly, which appears white under fluorescent light. My eyes are gray, but they absorb the colors blue or violet easily from surfaces around them. And I have a fairly short narrow nose, and a mouth that is well shaped but just a little too big for my face. It can look very mean, or extremely generous, my mouth. It always looks sensual. But emotions and attitudes are always reflected in my entire expression. I have a continously animated face.

My vampire nature reveals itself in extremely white and highly reflective skin that has to be powdered down for cameras of any kind.

And if I’m starved for blood, I look a perfect horror—skin shrunken, veins like ropes over the contours of my bones. But I don’t let that happen now. And the only consistent indication that I am not human is my fingernails. It’s the same with all vampires. Our fingernails look like glass. And some people notice that when they don’t notice anything else. [p. 3]

Yes, of course he’s vain, but better that than one of those pretty people who blush and stammer and insist they are nothing special to look at, which invariably leads to more of the compliments they claim not to want (yeah, right). Some people have every right to be proud of their appearance. More power to them for being honest about it, I say.

Upon seeing his reflection as a vampire for the first time:

He could have been an angel, in fact, this creature, except that when his tears did rise, they were red, and the entire image was tinted red because his vision was red. And he had these evil little teeth that he could press into his lower lip when he smiled that made him look absolutely terrifying. A good enough face with one thing horribly, horribly wrong with it!

Darling, there is nothing unsightly about fangs. Be glad you don’t have beaver’s teeth.

He’s always ashamed to be seen when he’s not looking his best (disheveled, scarred, starved), as if being gorgeous is his gift to the world and he’s delivered it wrapped in a Hefty bag and looking like it’s been run over by a garbage truck. This, I think, is not so much vanity as his belief that beauty is a universal good and therefore insults against it must be inherently evil. Although he embraces being an evil creature, he clings to the remnants of his humanity and his need to be good.

Endearing Qualities

• He’s a rock star (musician = swoon)
• He’s on a murderer-only diet (and when he cheats on his diet, it’s only the ill and elderly who are going to die soon anyway, honest)
• Even after 200 years, he maintains a childlike sense of wonder and enthusiasm about all things new
• He dreams big and then lives the dream—even when he was mortal, he set his sights on an impossible feat and proceeded to do it
• He’s a daredevil—I get a charge from those bold enough to do what I consider too reckless and unsafe and insane to attempt myself
• He’ll forgive anything of those he loves, including abandonment, betrayal, and attempted murder
• He’s a people person, and not only because they’re a food source—he takes pleasure in watching them, talking to them, being among them, and being adored by them
• He’s a book addict, even if he doesn’t take proper care of them (the water damage—the horror!)
• He has a marvelous sense of humor and absurdity

And my worst problem was laughter. I would go into fits of laughter and I couldn’t stop. Anything could set me off. The sheer madness of my own position might set me off.

This can still happen to me fairly easily. No loss, no pain, no deepening understanding of my predicament changes it. Something strikes me as funny. I begin to laugh and I can’t stop.

It makes other vampires furious, by the way. [p. 125]

• He quickly embraced his change of circumstances as a vampire in his typical dramatic and grandiose fashion. To hell with slinking around graveyards and living like ghouls, as the Parisian coven insisted was tradition.

“It is a new age. It requires a new evil. And I am that new evil. … I am the vampire for these times.” [p. 228]

Handy Skills

• Possesses “breathtaking sums of money,” which he spends with abandon (saving up a fortune is a skill, I say!)
• Makes the world a safer place and reduces prison overcrowding and the burden on the judicial system by relieving vicious criminals of their lives
• Can leap moderately tall buildings (four stories) in a single bound
• Can effortlessly bend iron bars (hey, wait a minute… holy shit, does this mean Superman is a vampire?!)

In Lestat’s Words: Well, they’re all his words and therefore witty and insightful and amusing, but here is a selection of my favorites that don’t require a lot of context to be fully appreciated.

Well, it has been great fun pretending you will be this vampire creature, I thought, wearing these splendid clothes, running your fingers through all that glorious lucre. But you can’t live as this! You can’t feed on living beings! Even if you are a monster, you have a conscience in you, natural to you… Good and Evil, good and evil. You cannot live without believing in— You cannot abide the acts that— Tomorrow you will… you will… you will what?

You will drink blood, won’t you? [p. 105]

“I don’t know how to be bad at being bad.” [p. 336]

“You sense my loneliness,” I answered, “my bitterness at being shut out of life. My bitterness that I’m evil, that I don’t deserve to be loved and yet I need love hungrily. My horror that I can never reveal myself to mortals. But these things don’t stop me, Mother. I’m too strong for them to stop me. As you said yourself once, I am very good at being what I am. These things merely now and then make me suffer, that’s all.” [p. 355]

Oh, Lestat, you deserve everything that ever happened to you. You’d better not die. You might actually go to hell. [p. 501]

Get Your Hands on Lestat: These are the only books of which I have multiple copies: hardcover and two sets of paperbacks, one in pristine condition and one with highlights and scribbling in the margins and dog-eared pages, abuses I have never before or since inflicted upon a book.

The Vampire Lestat

The Queen of the Damned

The Tale of the Body Thief

I obviously have little enthusiasm for Interview. I know I read Memnoch the Devil, but since I can’t remember a thing about it, it’s clearly not a rush-right-out-and-get-it-now book. I didn’t read any further because, if I remember correctly, the next book was about Armand, whom I dislike even more intensely than Louis, and Rice then proceeded to mix her vampires and witches together, which was too great a violation of my expectations for me to get on board with it. I suppose it’s an indicator of stand-aloneability that I don’t feel left hanging after stopping mid-series.

Name: Anthony Malory
Classification: Regency Rake

Found In: Johanna Lindsey’s Tender Rebel 

The Meet Cute: Anthony’s keeping an eye on his niece, who is attending a ball he wouldn’t be caught dead at, from the safety of the garden when Roslynn sneaks out to escape another dance with a toe-masher headed her way. It’s lust at first sight, but she tells him right away, no matter how tempting he is, she’s looking for a husband, not a boy toy. Ah, the tantalizing aroma of a challenge…

The Catch: Her very life depends on finding a husband in a big hurry, so his determination to thwart her goal long enough get into her knickers could literally be the death of her.

The Pretty: Anthony is one of the rare blue-eyed, black-haired misfits in a family that has produced generations of green-eyed blonds, purportedly the influence of his gypsy grandmother popping up in the DNA from time to time.

There was a wide mouth gently turned at the corners, a strong, arrogant line of jaw. The nose was chiseled sharply, aquiline*, proud. The skin was darkly tanned, swarthy, yet still a sharp contrast to the ebony hair that crowned his head in thick waves. The eyes—God protect the innocent from such eyes—were purest blue, heavy-lidded, with the barest suggestion of a slant. They were exotic, hypnotic, framed by black lashes and slashing brows. They were assessing, probing, boldly sensual—warm, too warm.

Please note this assessment was made at night, outdoors, with only the aid of a stray beam of light from an upstairs window. Every time I look at somebody in the dark with a limited light source, they’re shades of gray. Roslynn evidently possesses some kind of vampiric night vision.

* And don’t get me started on “aquiline.” I learned to ignore the ol’ hooked beak every time some unfortunate hero was afflicted with that Word of the Decade. Anyone find “eagle schnoz” particularly attractive imagery?

Everything about him proclaimed him an avid outdoorsman, athletic, a bloody Corinthian, which was so contrary to the reputation that would have him a debauched creature of the night, devoted to sensual pleasures and late hours of dissipation.

Wait a minute. Vampiric night vision? Debauched creature of the night? I do believe we’ve discovered the seed from which paranormal romance germinated…

Endearing Qualities

• Fiercely loyal to his family.
• Engages in scandalous displays of public affection.
• When his intended makes keeping a mistress (or several) a condition of marriage, he agrees… if she will fill the role.
• Plays matchmaker for long-lost loves torn asunder by misunderstanding.
• Even when pissed off at his judgmental wife, he’s what we call a “considerate” lover.
• Upon a quick skim to refresh my memory, I couldn’t help but notice he threatens to tie Ros to a chair one time and spank her another. It took me only 19 years to realize Tony’s just a little kinky.

Handy Skills

• Inventive use of a chair
• Inventive use of his bride’s cleavage to distract highwaymen so he can dispatch the brigands forthwith
• Able to hunt down stalkers and beat into them the necessity of forgetting the stalkee’s existence
• Despite being a fourth son, he’s rich (still a skill)

In Anthony’s Words: Upon informing Ros that her potential husbands are all out of the question (gay, engaged, sadist, banging his sister, bound to gamble her into the poor house within a year) and destroying all her hopes and dreams:

Her woebegone expression struck right to his heart. He was responsible, with his half-truths and fabrications. He had interfered with her life with the most selfish of motives. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to push her toward another man. And it wasn’t only that he wanted her himself. The thought of another man touching her had the strangest, gut-wrenching effect on him.

Tony gets to have his say twice so I can mock him.

“You didn’t want to marry me, sweetheart,” he reminded her. “I practically had to twist your arm. And even when you agreed, you did everything possible to keep a distance between us. Would you have believed me then if I had told you I loved you? Roslynn, why else would I marry you?”

Suuuuuure he knew it was love when he proposed. He thought only that his guts were wrenched. He probably attributed it to eating some bad chicken.

The Drawbacks: Honesty-is-the-best-policy types might take issue with the amount of lying Anthony does, but I assure you, every falsehood is uttered with the best of intentions toward himself.

Get Your Hands on Anthony

Tender Rebel by Johanna Lindsey, currently available with the completely irrelevant castle cover.

Also appearing in several other Malory family novels, but honestly, don’t bother beyond James. I believe Jeremy’s book prompted my decade-long hiatus from romance. So much Bad Boy potential, tragically gone to waste…

And now behold my beloved 1988 cover.

Note the absence of Fabio, and not a mullet in sight. Is it any wonder I have fought to preserve my ownership of this copy?

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

Name: David
Classification: Supernatural Stud
Subclass: Djinn

Found In: Rachel Caine’s Weather Warden series (all books listed below). For the sake of performing the introductions, I’ve excerpted from Ill Wind, the first book in the series, but I assure you, David gets even better over time.

The Meet Cute: Joanne picks up a hitchhiker while fleeing for her life.

The Catch: David’s kinda sorta responsible for the circumstances necessitating the fleeing and wants to make amends, not that he confesses this, and by the time Joanne figures it out, she’s too in love with him to hold a grudge.

The Pretty: When Joanne first sees David, she describes him as “just a guy.”

A guy with brown hair that needed trimming and some silly-looking round glasses that reflected blazing sunlight. A nice face, with smile lines around the eyes that said he was older than first glance would take him for. He was wearing a patched olive-green trench coat that for some reason reminded me of World War I—a vintage clothing enthusiast, or somebody who could afford only Salvation Army couture.

(David almost always wears that coat. It has sentimental value. He also has a fondness for flannel shirts, jeans, and hiking boots.)

He had really dark eyes, but dark in a warm, earthy kind of way. If he were a season, he’d be fall.

(I love that line about fall.)

Skin like burnished gold, and under it the best kind of muscles on a man—long, lean, defined without bulging.

(Damn, I cut out the part where he was wet and wrapped in a towel. Use your imagination. Is lickalicious a word?) (This was later, by the way. She didn’t pick him up on the side of the road, wet and wrapped in a towel, though that would be an effective way to get a ride…)

Djinn tend to look like humans because blending in is safer. Once Joanne knows he’s Djinn and not “just a guy,” David lets his appearance slip enough to reveal his real eyes, always a dramatic feature in Djinn.

His eyes were deep, beautiful, and entirely alien. Copper-colored with flecks of bright gold. They flared brighter as I watched, then faded into something that was nearly human-brown.

(That’s how my imagination paints David: copper and gold.)

Endearing Qualities

• His dietary indiscretions include cheese doodles, Twinkies, and diet soda.
• He’s keenly focused on the object of his affection, as if her every word, every gesture, every breath is something he treasures.
• He smells like a cookie: “something cinnamon, exotic, warm.”
• He’s quiet, enigmatic, and wry.
• He reads popular fiction and likes The X-Files.
• He’s a rescuer. Car breaks down, demon incubating in your chest gets riled up, somebody tries to kill you—David to the rescue.
• And while he’s at it, why doesn’t he offer to sacrifice his freedom and his sanity to get that demon out of you because he loves you that damn much.

Handy Skills

• Magically hotwire a car when a quick getaway is called for
• Magically clothe you in the latest designer fashions
• Keep your spirit alive when your body has burned to bones and ash while you were out of it, trying to save the day
• Conceal you from prying eyes so you can make like bunnies in public

In David’s Words

“I don’t like you,” he said. “Like has no pulse. No fever. No fire.” His right hand came out of the water now, joined the left in gliding up my shoulders, my neck. I could feel my pulse pounding wildly. Both my hands on his chest now, mapping the golden territory of his body. “Like isn’t what I feel for you. It never was.”

The Drawbacks: David spends a lot of time as someone else’s property. As such, he’s often treated about as well as you would expect someone who would keep a slave to treat that slave. I know people who have stopped reading the series because they couldn’t stand the abuse he suffers.

The Up Side: If you stick with it, there’s a Djinn rebellion, and pity the fool who messes with David after that.

Get Your Hands On David: Linkage goes to B&N search page containing all the Weather Warden books, penned by Rachel Caine. (For a refreshing change, they’re actually listed as Book One, Book Two, etc. in the search, but I’ve also put them in order below if you choose to browse elsewhere.)

Ill Wind: Book One
Heat Stroke: Book Two
Chill Factor: Book Three
Windfall: Book Four
Firestorm: Book Five
Thin Air: Book Six

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Or don’t sign anything and don’t send me $94,789,219.99 (although, if you could, that would be great). Just check back here at the beginning of the month and behold the wondrousness of my favorite fictional men.

Of course, I’m doing David first. (Hee… I’m doing David! The maturity around here is staggering drunkenly and giggling like a fifth grader after learning about Lake Titicaca, is it not?)

Not only will it be an easy post since these are the guys who keep me coming back for more (so I know them quite well **lecherous grin**), but it’s also educational. I certainly want to write heroes readers fall in love with, so examining how other writers got me hooked should be a valuable exercise.

Feel free to chip in at any time with the heroes/hunks/hotties who have made you want to rip your bodice and scream, “Take me!”—or tackle them, rip their bodices, and scream, “I’m taking you!”, if that’s more your speed.

Don’t be shy. It’s all in the name of research.