Glancing back the way she’d come, she tried to figure out what had happened. Only instead of the shattered, twisted remnants of elegant brass and copper, all she saw was a French door leading into some kind of costume party. Kara blinked as women in long Gone with the Wind style gowns danced passed her on the other side of the small windows.
Where was the elevator?
Where was the Donnelly building?
Where was she?
Had she hit her head in the crash? She felt fine, but maybe this was –like-- a hallucination. A dream brought on by some medically induced sleep, while a nice doctor worked to stitch her skull back together. What other explanation could there be?
Was she dying?
“You have made a grave error in interrupting my long awaited vengeance.” A deep voice rasped from the shadows. “Whatever sort of creature you are, your appearance will not stop what must happen here tonight.”
Kara’s head whipped around in the opposite direction. Beneath some kind of fancy looking tree stood… Jack the Ripper?
Holy shit.
Just how brain-injured was she?
A really large, dangerous looking guy with a top hat and greatcoat loomed there like death. He stepped forward, the top half of his face shrouded in shadow. A lightning bolt shaped scar marred his cheek, from his temple to his chin, but that did nothing to detract from the overall hotness of the man. He was classically stunning. Super-duper, silent-movie matinee idol handsome.
Kara blinked.
Right.
So, on the plus side, at least she’d had the good sense to hallucinate a gorgeous hallucination. There was a patrician kind of air about the guy that shouldn’t be nearly as attractive as it was. Like the rich, handsome jock in high school who didn’t talk to the huddled masses at the back of the lunchroom, but who all the girls still fantasized would ask them to prom. She could see dark hair brushing the shoulders of his coat, emphasizing the chiseled angle to his jaw, as he glowered at her.
Distracted by ogling the impressive width of his chest, Kara actually missed the weirdest part of his appearance, for a beat. The weirdest part of this whole experience. Possibly, even weirder than the disappearing elevator.
There was the bird perched on the stranger’s shoulder.
An honest to God bird… perched… on his shoulder.
A large, black, alive bird.
Kara’s eyes narrowed into a baffled squint. “Is that a raven?” What kind of Freudian imagery thing could ravens represent in her unconscious mind? Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.
The stranger hadn’t been expecting the question. There was a startled pause, like she’d gone off script or something. “What?” He finally demanded. His voice was dark and rusty, like he didn’t use it very much.
“Never mind.” Kara got to her feet, still looking around. “You wanna play Pirates of the Caribbean with Polly there, it’s your thing. Just let me get my bearings and…” She was having a hard time not hyperventilating in panic and the sauna-like heat wasn’t helping. “Let me just think.” She fanned a hand at her face. “Aren’t hospitals usually cold?” Focusing on the mundane helped a bit. Much better than hysterical screaming.
“You have escaped from a hospital?” The question was dry as sawdust.
Wiseass.
“No, I’m obviously still in one. And I’m asking why it’s so hot in here.”
“We’re outside.” The stranger intoned, grudgingly. “In July. And you’re wearing a woolen cap and a scarf.” His tone suggested she was the stupidest person in the world. “If you’re hot it’s your own doing, woman.”
So said the dummy in the full length coat. Not that it mattered. She had bigger problems. “July?” It was October. So, unless she’d been languishing in a coma for months, that was odd. Of course, given the day she was having… Kara blew out a long breath, trying to stay calm. “Fine. Have you seen an elevator around here?”
“I will be asking the questions.” He snarled, snapping back into his Vlad the Impaler tone. “Why are you here?”
Good question. “Bad luck and worse wiring, I think. Hopefully, not because of substandard medical care.” God, what if she was in a vegetative state or something? Hadn’t there been a TV show where the cop got stuck back in time and had to relive the ‘70s?
“Begin making sense or you’ll regret it, woman.”
Kara jabbed a finger at him. “Just shut-up, alright? I don’t have time for you.”
A long, shocked pause. “You can’t speak to me that way.” The stranger finally sputtered. “No one speaks to me that way. No one speaks to me, at all.”
“Gee, I wonder why?” Her dream man was incredibly hot, but he was also a condescending jerk. Typical. Kara began moving along the gravel walkway.
“Why are you not afraid of me? Do you know who I am? What I can do?” He followed her, keeping pace from the shadows of the garden. “Or are you one of them, come to stop my plans? Because, I will not be thwarted.”
“Did you just seriously say thwarted?” Jesus, her unconscious mind liked the SAT vocab words, didn’t it?
He made a snarling sound. “I’m warning you, woman…”
“Stop calling me that. God, it’s Kara, alright? Karalynn Donnelly.” See? No brain damage on that front. She knew her name. Her Social Security number. Who the president was. All really, really good signs.
Probably.
“Kara. Lynn. Donn. El. Lee? Is that… human?” He might as well have said leaper. “You’re a human?” The idea obviously affronted him. The astonishment in his dark voice leaked away the sinister edge and left nothing but an elegant, unidentifiable accent coated in surprise. “A mere human thinks to speak to me this way?”
“Whatever.” Kara wasn’t particularly intimidated by a figment of her own drugged imagination. She’d always had really vivid dreams, but this one took the cake. She pulled off her cap and shook out her jaw length brown curls. They were already frizzing in the humidity. She could tell. Even in a coma her hair sucked.
Captain Creepy made an odd sound, somewhere between a gasp and a groan and an animal growling.
“What now?” One crack about her perpetual bad hair day and she’d deck him.
“I… It is nothing.” His voice was strained.
She gave a skeptical snort. “Uh-huh. Look, no offense, but I think you’re just –like-- a morphine induced amalgam of Alex Murphy from my junior year and some bad horror films I never should have watched in the first place. I might be in surgery, here. So, I don’t have a lot of time to be sensitive to your feelings.”
He cleared his throat. “I have no feelings beyond my thirst for revenge.”
“Uh-huh.” Kara tucked her hat into her pocket and began rooting around in the darkness for her stuff. She never remembered seeing a night so dark and clear. It was like all the stars were tuned up to their highest settings. No light pollution. No streetlights. It would have been an astronomers dream.
If it wasn’t already a dream.
She stepped on something and bent down to pick it up. The manuscript. Perfect. She couldn’t find her cell phone or keys, but she’d fantasized herself a copy of Eternal Passion at Sunset.
God, could this coma get any worse?
The stranger watched her, broodingly. “What is an Alex Murphy?” He demanded, as if searching for an insult. The way he said it, poor Alex’s name might as well have been dipped in slime.
Under other circumstances, Kara would have laughed. “Alex was the spoiled, but lust-worthy, punk who ignored me in AP English. We read a lot of Poe in that class, so the bird is just a repressed memory thing.” She shook her head. “Now, don’t talk to me. I need to concentrate on waking up.”
“Something is wrong here.” The Captain Jack wannabe murmured.
“Yeah, no kidding.” Kara tucked the book under her arm, again, even as she shrugged off her coat. The heavy fabric fell to the ground and her body temperature dropped about twenty degrees. For once, her conservative
business suit felt like a kicky summer dress. She might be stuck in this nightmare, but at least she wasn’t going into heatstroke, now. She slipped off her suit jacket, too, and untucked the pink silk shirt from her waistband of her skirt, fanning it against her midsection. “It’s also really dark, isn’t it?”
The stranger cleared his throat, again. “What?” Even in the pitch blackness she could feel the intensity of his eyes on her.
Kara arched a brow. Was he checking out her body? Something warm twisted in her stomach at the idea, even though it seemed likely that he was just plotting how to dismember her corpse. She had a lot more Texas Chainsaw Massacre dreams than sex ones. Unfortunately. She glanced away. “I said, it’s really dark, don’t you think?” It wasn’t just absence of streetlights. Now that she thought about it, there were no electric lights. At all. The ballroom was lit by flickering candles. “Why is it so dark around here?”
“Well, it is night.”
Kara disregarded the snarking. Her mind went to the time traveling cop show, again, and she groaned as finally put all the pieces together.
Apparently, it could get worse.
This was a period piece coma.
The dresses should have been a dead giveaway. Through the French doors, they swooped about in full, hoop skirted glory, while men in dorky looking coats and tails, twirled the women wearing them around the floor. Kara squeezed her eyes shut. She hated historical crap. She’d never even been able to sit through Titanic without getting a migraine. “Oh, no.” She looked over at the stranger. “What year is it?”
Another, longer pause. Clearly, not a question Birdman wanted to hear. “It’s 1893. No. Two. It is 1892.”
“Aw, crap.” Kara tilted her head back and looked at the planetarium sky. Why, why, why, why, why? “I’m suing my father. He’s owns the damn elevator. He’s liable for all of this.” She ran a hand through her hair. Focus. She needed to focus. How could she wake herself up? “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home…”
“Enough.” The stranger obviously wasn’t a Wizard of Oz fan. His entire demeanor shifted into predator mode as he stalked forward. “I can discover your purpose without your cooperation, then. It will be more fun that way, anyway.
Chapter Two
Lady Melessa gasped as the rough hand jerked her around. A man stood there. Not just a man, but the most magnetic man she’d ever laid eyes on. He swamped her senses with his masculine power, as he pulled her against his massive chest. All thoughts of running away were gone. Even the horses stood silent, as his penetrating blue eyes swept over her quavering figure.
“I am Slade.” He whispered. “At last, I’ve found you my Eternal-One.” Then, he kissed her.
Passionately.
Eternal Passion at Sunset- Chapter Two
Kara couldn’t help taking a small step back as the stranger swept towards her. The guy was big, with a powerful body that dwarfed her own. On her best days, she wore a size twelve, so she’d never really seen herself as a petite girl, but next to him she was downright tiny. Helpless. More than just his physical presence, the stranger had an energy about him that had the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. An aura of darkness that permeated the air as he moved.
Wait a minute…
‘An aura of darkness?’
What the hell kind of melodramatic garbage was that? Why would she even think of something so stupid?
“For too long, I’ve waited for this day.” The stranger grabbed hold of Kara’s arm and dragged her closer. She could feel the heat coming off him, feel the muscles in his chest as he pulled her against him. “Is that why you’re here? To try and stop me?”
“What are you talking about?” She fought to get loose of his hold, but his fingers hung tight. It didn’t hurt, but… Wait. Should she be able to actually feel the pressure of his grip in a dream? The ramifications of that idea made her fight harder. “Look, I don’t even know where here is. Do whatever you want with the skulking and vengeance, okay? I don’t care. I just want to get out.”
“I don’t believe you. I saw you appear from nothing. I can feel that you’re different than the other humans. You don’t belong here with them.” He swung her around so her body was pinned between his and the wall of the house. “You don’t belong at this party or in this… place.”
“Yeah, tell it to my neurosurgeon, buddy.” Kara glared up at him, breathing hard.
He gave his head a slow shake. “Why do you fight me? Do you really think you can win? That I couldn’t already have killed you, if I so chose? Admit that you’re my enemy and be done with it.”
“If I had my purse right now, you’d already be maced, jerk-off. So, yeah. We’re enemies. I admit it. Now, let me go, before I start screaming.” She arched a brow. “Unless you have an invitation to this party and you’re just moonlighting as a peeping-tom for twisted reasons of your own, I don’t think anybody’s gonna be happy to see you out here.”
“Perhaps, but I suspect you weren’t on the guest list, either.” He leaned closer to her, the brim of his hat still shielding his eyes. For a guy carting around a live bird, he smelled really, really good. “And you can cease looking so attractive.” He hissed. “Your revealing clothes and soft curls will not sway me.”
“What?” Since when was a business suit revealing? Gemma’s pet peeve was Kara’s drab wardrobe.
“Why are you here? Tell me. Now.”
Kara felt a brush in her mind and she knew it was him. From out of nowhere, she had the bizarre realization that he was trying to read her thoughts. As ridiculous and X-Files as it sounded, she abruptly and completely believed that he was attempting to pry open her brain.
It was not going to happen.
“Son-of-a-bitch.” Kara shoved him with all of her strength and had the momentary satisfaction of seeing him stumble backwards a step. The bird flapped its wings. Lucky for both of them, the guy caught himself with a walking stick. The silver handle was shaped like a raven.
Where had that come from? Had he been carrying it before?
He gave his head a quick shake and touched the center of his chest. “Your thoughts are… different. How are you doing that? I can feel them, but I can’t focus them.”
“Aw, too bad.” Kara sneered. “You shouldn’t have even tried, ya pervert. What kind of creep goes peering into other people’s brains?”
“You aren’t an ordinary human and you aren’t one of them. So, how did you find me?” He straightened back up to his full, imposing height. The cane was gone, again. Somewhere. “Are you a Witch?”
“No, I’m not a Witch! And I am too a human. And, I’m serious, stay out of my mind.” Had she ever said any of those sentences before? This dream kept getting stranger. “I mean it. I probably have enough people poking around in there with scalpels, right now.”
He was losing patience. “How did you find me, woman?” It was a venomous snarl.
“I don’t know!” She shouted back. “I was just… dropped over there.” She pointed at the walkway. “I have no idea why I’m here, but I’m ready to leave, if you’ll just let me go.”
The stranger digested that silently for a long moment. “You must be here for a reason. Nothing happens without a purpose.”
Vocabulary words were one thing, but pithy zen talk was just taking it too far. “Oh yeah? Explain the reason for Jersey Shore, then, Confucius.”
She could feel him scowling at her. “You’re mocking me. I can tell and I don’t like it.” It was a warning, the words bit off, sharply.
Kara rolled her eyes. “Too bad.” Still, at least the threat hadn’t been delivered in Yoda-ese. That was progress. And it wasn’t all his fault. He was just a figment of her own imagination, lousy dialogue and all. He had to be. He couldn’t help what she made him say. “Look, it’s not really you I’m mocking, okay? It’s the whole situation. Don’t be so sensitive.”
“Sensitive?” Now, he sounded insulted.
“Yeah, get over it. Trust me. I
f you had my perspective on things, you’d be mocking, too.”
“So, you admit that you see more than you’re saying.” His voice turned thoughtful. “Perhaps, that’s why you’re here. To assist me, somehow.”
“Why would I do that? ‘Cause you’re such a nice guy?”
The raven made a sudden “craw-ing” noise. It was better than “nevermore,” but not by much. Kara gave a jolt and frowned at that creepy looking thing, trying to will it into a parrot or something. This was her dream, so it seemed like she should be able to fix the bad parts and she seriously detested that bird.
The man’s head snapped around to stare at the French doors. “He’s here. He’s finally come for her.” He grabbed Kara’s arm, again. His entire body tense as he gazed into the unfamiliar mansion. “Do you know that man? The truth.”
Now what?
She puffed out an agitated sigh and scanned the ballroom. “Which man?”
That earned her a glower. “Don’t play dumb. That one.” He pointed through the glass. “The large man, right there. The one who all the women are staring at.”
“Oh. Him.” Kara watched as Dr. Smooth oozed his way through the party. Sure enough, women were indeed falling all over themselves to get closer to him. And no wonder. The man looked like Brad Pitt’s sexier clone. The kind of guy who could battle sea-monsters and be home in time to ravage you on the kitchen table. The kind of guy who could fix your roof, and order off the menu in French, and make several billion on the Tokyo exchange, all in between his day job as a Top Secret Agent. The kind of guy who didn’t really exist, because he was perfect.
And this guy was perfect.
Perfect in every possible way. Perfect tousled sun-kissed hair. Perfect strapping body. Perfect cheekbones. Perfect lips. The only slightly imperfect thing about him was his eyes. A flat blue, they scanned the party with barely concealed impatience. But then, his elusive disinterestedness only made his perfection all the more perfect for the girls fluttering to his side.
Oddly enough, his golden majesty left Kara completely unmoved. Intellectually, she could see that he was a beautiful specimen, but she had no desire to take him home and study him one-on-one. Truthfully, she felt a lot more physically aware of the weirdo beside her, than of the underwear model strutting around on display.
Not Another Vampire Book Page 2