Not Another Vampire Book

by Cassandra Gannon

  Awake or asleep, she had lousy taste in men.

  Kara made a ‘huh’ sound. “Well, he’s pretty.”

  Vlad impaled her with another scowl. “You still claim not to know him?”

  “Well, I think I’d remember that guy if we’d met on the L.” She snorted, as The Brad flashed a studied half-smile at one of his new groupies. “Jesus, I bet you can see his teeth shining from space.”

  “Oh, no doubt.” The stranger drawled, obviously still believing that she was in cahoots with The Brad or something. He gave a humorless snort as Handsome B. Wonderful slowly circled the ballroom. “Just as I thought. He searches for her. You see how predictable he is? Their entire race is like that. Pathetic drones to their biological instincts.”

  “Yeah, well, aren’t we all?” Kara mused. Not that she got to act on her biological urges very much. And why did this imaginary serial-killer make her reevaluate her priorities on that subject? Maybe he really had done something to her mind. Or maybe it was just general sexual frustration revealing itself in her dream.

  It must have been the wrong thought to share, though. “No!” The stranger snapped. “Perhaps the humans are controlled by their feelings, as the Vampires assuredly are. But, the Wizard Warlocks have never been slaves to their emotions. We were a strong race. And now I feel nothing but my need vengeance.”

  Kara froze.

  Her gaze very slowly swiveled around to stare at him. “What did you just say?” She whispered.

  “I said, I am nothing like Slade and I never will be. That is why I will win our battle in the end.” He leaned closer to her. “I don’t know what side you are on, but be warned, this is my victory. Slade has a weakness. A heart. A woman. And if I take her from him, it will destroy him.”

  Kara blinked. Her mind refused to process what she was suddenly suspected.

  She reached down and pinched her arm as hard as she could. “Ow!” It hurt. She could actually feel it hurt.

  “What in Gods’ name are you doing, woman?”

  Kara ignored that. She had to think, rationally. Concentrate and figure this out.

  She moved back from the window and looked around, again. Really looked. Everything was solid. No misty dream-like edges. No loss of detail. She could hear the insects buzzing in the flowers. Smell the jasmine. See each piece of gravel.

  When had a dream ever been this clear? Even one of her Technicolor style dreams? This really, really didn’t feel like a dream. But, it had to be...

  Because, the only other logical alternative was… crazy.

  “Damien?” She breathed. “Is your name Damien?”

  His attention stayed riveted on her. “So, you do know me.”

  “Oh, God.” Kara slapped a hand over her mouth and gaped at him in horror. “I’ve gone crazy!” It was the suddenly the most likely explanation for this madness. “How did that happen?!”

  “What are you yammering about…?”

  Kara cut him off. “Oh, just shut-up!” This was Damien, last of the Wizard Warlock’s. The stupid bad guy from the stupid book she hadn’t even wanted to read. There was no way this was happening. No. Way. And yet, there he stood. “You’re not even real, you know. I’m sorry to tell you that, but you’re not, and I’m having a shit day so just have some respect for my meltdown. Alright?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and watched her, broodingly. “You’ll attract attention with your ranting and I won’t let your hysteria ruin my plans. Your very presence is disruptive enough. I really should kill you and I have no idea why I don’t.”

  “Because, you don’t kill anybody this chapter, genius. It’s all about the foreshadowing, so far.”

  He made a frustrated sound. “If you think a lovely appearance and some nonsensical jabbering will distract me from my goal, you’re wrong. Nothing will stop me. Do you have any idea how long I’ve been awaiting this night?”

  Actually she did. “Six hundred and sixty-six years. Ever since the gypsy lady told you Slade’s Eternal-One would be come of age on this day and you vowed revenge for something-or-other. I forget the rest of the stupid back story. I only read the first chapter.”

  “The Vampires killed my baby sister!” Damien roared.

  Clearly a sore spot for him. Maybe it would help if she pointed out his baby sister was just a fictional plot-device.

  Or maybe not.

  He sounded really pissed as he loomed there. “The Vampires are vicious animals who destroy everything they touch. That is why I vowed revenge on Slade and why I will die getting it!”

  “Right. The flashback scene with the cross-vowing and the-cutting-your-hand-over-your-sister’s-gravesite-for-the-blood-oath thing. Fine. That’s totally ripping off Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, but fine. Brilliant motivation.” She pressed the heels of her palms into her eye sockets and struggled to hold back a hysterical laugh. “I usually publish movie novelizations, ya know. Supernatural romance is not my thing.”

  “Who are you?” He stomped towards her. “Answer me. How do you know things that no one else could possibly know? How do you know what I did at her funeral? How do you know of the gypsy woman? How?”

  Kara held up a hand to ward him off before he could grab her, again. “Stop! I told you, I’ve gone crazy. Have some compassion and stop yelling at me!” This was impossible. She’d been the soul of mental health this morning. Could you just catch insanity this fast? Kara felt like her heart was about to beat right out of her chest. Like she couldn’t breathe. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Damien actually stopped prowling forward. He took in her panic and confusion with a slight tilt of his head. Then, he sighed like he was the one suffering. “You must calm down or we’ll get nowhere with this.”

  God, his patronizing voice was just the final straw. “Go away! I told you, you’re not even real, so I don’t have to put up with your attitude, asshole.”

  “Look at me.” Damien’s voice got softer, as if he was afraid she was headed for an even bigger breakdown and he didn’t want to deal with the straightjacket. “Kara Lynn, look at me.”

  He said her name with two distinct syllables. The melodic sound of it, more than anything else, got her attention. She looked at him, still riding the thin edge of hysteria.

  “I am real.” He sounded convinced of it, poor man. “And whatever else you are, I don’t believe you’re crazy. I can’t read your mind, but I have touched it. You’re different, but you aren’t deranged. You have my word.”

  She swallowed hard. “Yeah, but you’re the villain. Villains lie.”

  Damien frowned. “The Vampires are the villains.”

  “Not in the version of the book I got.” But, in her heart, she knew he was at least partially right.

  She wasn’t crazy.

  Not really.

  The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that this situation was much, much worse than a psych ward. Kara gave herself a mental shake and started forward. “I need to check something.” Without waiting for permission, she reached up to knock the beaver skin hat off his head. “I need to see your eyes.”

  Damien didn’t try to dodge away. He just stood there, waiting, towering over her. Like he knew that he was strong, and untouchable, and already the winner of the argument.

  And Kara saw the truth.

  Ebony eyes stared down at her. Eyes that held all the secrets in the world. Eyes that had seen everything and cared for nothing. Cold and beautiful, they studied her as she studied him, with just as much mystification and suspicion.

  Damien.

  The only creature in the universe who could possibly have glowing, black eyes.

  “Oh.” The word came out on a rush of air. “Oh God.”

  “You aren’t crazy.” His voice was pitched low. “I truly don’t know what you are, Kara-Lynn. But, you aren’t crazy.”

  No, she wasn’t crazy. Crazy people didn’t remember details like ‘glowing, black eyes’ from bad novels. Crazy people didn’t create const
ellations in the night skies of their delusions, or think to add cricket chirps as background noise. Crazy people couldn’t look up at a man and know that he wasn’t human.

  Well, maybe they could, but they weren’t right about it.

  And Kara knew she was right. Damien really was a Wizard Warlock. She backed away from him, shaking her head, as she realized what had happened to her.

  She wasn’t stuck in some nightmare or hallucination.

  She was inside Eternal Passion at Sunset.

  Oh shit.

  Kara didn’t actually remember starting to run. It wasn’t a conscious decision, at all. She just took off, trying to escape the terrible reality suddenly facing her. Her practical, two inch heels slid on the gravel as she frantically dashed away from Damien.

  He reached out, trying to stop her, and caught hold of the striped scarf that was still looped around her shoulder. It pulled free of her neck and Kara didn’t even notice. She heard him shout her name or, at least, ‘Woman, stop!’ But, she was too far gone to really comprehend his words. Fight or flight mode kicked in and she instinctively ran.

  Kara rounded the corner of the building. Some blonde in a party dress stage whispered, “Melessa, where are you?” and then Kara plowed into her. The girl fell backwards with a cry. Kara stayed on her feet and kept going.

  Someone called, “Christine, darling, did you fall?” But, Kara ignored that, too.

  Everything was a blur, now.

  She dashed away from the mansion, her eyes darting everywhere. It was all Eternal Passion at Sunset. All of it. The exact setting of the book. The lush garden, the big brick house, the party. Like an elaborate practical joke gone horrible wrong. Maybe it was a movie set or a… Something. It had to be something.

  But there was one part of the first chapter that no one could fake. Not without a massive budget and a whole lotta permits. Kara headed for it, instinctively. It was the only part of the first chapter that she’d liked.

  And then she saw it.

  She crested the top of a small hill and, in the distance, she could see the Chicago World’s Fair lit up with white lights. It glowed for miles, the brightest spot on the entire globe. Beautiful, temporary buildings bathed in the first electric lights most visitors had ever seen. There was even a Ferris wheel. Another first. The original giant dominated the Chicago skyline.

  Kara just gaped at it.

  The 1893 Columbian Exposition was in full swing.

  Only it was a year ahead of schedule, because that idiot Tanya St. Clair screwed up the dates in her book. Kara was stuck in 1892. Stuck in the stupidest story ever written. Stuck in a place where men carried around birds, and vampires were real, and people were just now seeing moving pictures for the first time, down at the Fair.

  She bent over, her hands on her knees, and just tried to digest this horrible new reality. It did no good to pretend that it wasn’t there. But, at the same time…

  She was inside a fucking book.

  Spending her existence in a romance novel was just flat-out, not going to work for her. Especially when she wasn’t the heroine and it had a really suck-y plot. She had to get out of this nightmare and back home to her life. She just had to. Somehow.

  Kara swallowed hard.

  Alright.

  Okay.

  Deep yoga-y breaths.

  Shit.

  Why hadn’t she ever learned yoga?

  Kara pressed her lips together and stifled a sob. How could this even have happened? Why did it have to happen? Especially, why did it happen to her?

  Or actually, no.

  She shook her head and tried to get a grip. The whys and hows were all sidetrack stuff. None of it mattered. This was like something out of Delirious with John Candy. Or Stay Tuned. Or that Supernatural episode. She’d seen all those. She could do this. Everything had been all nicely documented on film screens and DVDs. Not so incredibly, mind-blowingly weird that she needed to freak out about it. Not something she had to sit around and figure out all the details of.

  Right.

  Focus on what you can do to solve the problem.

  Right.

  All she cared about was correcting whatever went wrong. Undoing the impossible and returning to her peaceful life of crazy writers and movie marathons. So, she needed to develop a plan. Reach the goal. Be practical about confronting the lunacy. That made sense. Good, solid sense.

  Right.

  So, what started this mess?

  The book.

  So, maybe the book could fix it.

  That seemed like a logical plan. Way better than rocking in a corner somewhere, crying for lithium. Find the book.

  Right.

  Kara was actually heading back to the garden to look for the manuscript when she realized she was still holding it. Right. Good. Step one: Find book. Check. All very ordinary.

  She yanked the pages open, trying to read in the dark. “Damn it!” Kara couldn’t see the words. She looked around and spotted a barn, or some kind of barn-like, outbuilding a dozen yards away. It had to have candles. And if it didn’t, she’d light the whole friggin’ thing on fire and see if that created some light. She was in a ‘don’t screw with me mood,’ at the moment.

  Her jaw firmed determinedly as she marched across the grass. Whatever else happened in the book, it was sure to be moronic and she needed to be prepared. What did she know for certain? Chapter one had started with the party. Damien had been hiding in shrubs, rehashing his past. Slade had been mysterious and muscular, scanning the dance floor for his one and only. Melessa had… Wait, where the hell was Melessa?

  Kara was too upset to remember the exact sequence of events. She tried to think. Tried to reassemble the chapter one piece at a time in her mind. How had it gone?

  Mel was the prettiest girl at the dance, but she was unhappy with her fate. Right, right. Father making her marry Eugene the accountant, who was not mysterious and muscular. Very boring crap about Melessa trying to be a dutiful daughter, even though her wild spirit yearned to break free. Blah, blah, blah. Horses.

  There had definitely been something about going out to see the horses, because –of course-- Melessa was also a champion rider and lover of animals. Oh yeah! And running away. Melessa was going to run away and join the Wild West Show. She’d change her name and disguise her trademark beauty, though, so as not to be discovered and embarrass her noble family.

  Right.

  God, no wonder Kara had tried to block it out.

  She dashed into the outbuilding, and saw that there was indeed a lantern glowing. Good. No need for arson. The whole place smelled like horses and hay. Kara didn’t care. She headed over to the light, folding back the plasticized cover of Eternal Passion at Sunset and squinting to read the single-spaced type. Tanya St. Clair hadn’t even formatted it right. They sooo weren’t publishing this thing. If this Pleasantville crap happened to anybody else who read it, it would be a legal nightmare.

  Kara gave a high-pitched laugh at the idea. She really was losing her mind. Maybe she should just skip right to the end of the book. That made sense. See where they were headed or… Kara stopped short.

  The pages were blank.

  She’d thought she’d hit the maximum payload on her stress levels, but that just ratcheted things up to a new level of anxiety. Desperately flipping backwards through the plain white sheets of nothing, she felt herself growing light headed. The entire book had been there earlier. She was sure of it. It really did exist. But now, the only thing in her hand was a lot of empty paper.

  …And the first chapter.

  “Oh, thank God.” The first ten pages still had writing on them. Chapter one was still there. It was a miracle. The only thing that had gone right all evening. Kara sank down onto the wooden floor of the barn and nearly cried in relief. She never would have thought she’d be so happy to re-read any part of Eternal Passion at Sunset. “Please, please, please tell me how to fix this.”

  Her brown eyes skimmed the now familiar opening line. Lad
y Melessa Fairfax was the most beautiful woman at the party. “Right. Beautiful. Got it.” Kara wrinkled the page in her effort to turn it faster, skimming frantically. Slade and all his fans. Damien’s dead sister.

  That actually made her pause for a beat. His younger sister had been killed in the Vampire Wars. Whatever the hell those were. It was still a clichéd reason for vengeance, but it seemed much less stupid now that she’d heard the agony in Damien’s voice when he spoke of her. Bad guy or not –fictional or not-- he’d loved his family. So far, he was the best character in the book.

  “Who are you?” A feminine voice demanded.

  Kara flashed her a distracted glance and snorted. “Oh, you’ve got to be Melessa.” The girl looked like Liz Taylor circa A Place in the Sun. The double X-chromosomed version of Slade’s he-man beauty. The unanimously voted for title holder of ‘Miss Prettiest Girl Who Ever Lived, 1892.’ Of course, she wasn’t really ‘alive.’ No one alive had a body like that, outside of a plastic surgeon’s office. But, if she’d been really real, she’d be paparazzi and red carpet famous. Dressed in a white ball gown, her black hair framing her heartbreaking face and violet eyes shining, Melessa could have made about a billion dollars in Hollywood.

  If only Hollywood wasn’t currently an empty orange grove. Edison might have been showing moving pictures down at the Fair, but the age of movie premiers and US Magazine was still a long way off.

  “I’m Lady Melessa. Are you a servant here?” One dark eyebrow rose imperiously as she took in Kara’s position on the floor and non-ridiculous, modern clothing.

  “No. I’m…” Shit. Kara didn’t have time for this. Who could she say she was? Her eyes flicked back down to the book. “I’m a drunken party guest.” That seemed sort of reasonable. “Sorry. Just do what you were doing and ignore me.”

  “Oh.” Melessa didn’t seem to know what to say to that. She stared at Kara blankly for a moment. Then she drew in a deep breath and launched into a dramatic monologue. “I’m running away from my marriage and no one can stop me. I can no longer pretend that I belong in this world. Eugene will never make me happy. I must be free of the stifling confines of society and be true to my restless heart.”