Shit. He was going to be difficult. “Yes. I have to go. If he doesn’t have a reason to stay in Chicago, I might not be able to find him, again.”
“Good.”
“No, it’s not good, Damien! I need a way out of here and that lunk-head is my ticket home.” She turned to wrench the door open and actually managed to turn the knob, before he caught her.
One elegant hand slammed it shut before she could slip out. “If you think I’ll let you leave this house alone to go and meet Slade, you really are insane.”
“Let me?” Wow, he did not just say that. Kara wrenched the door against his weight, trying to open it, anyway. When that didn’t work, she started to turn around and really lay into the son-of-a-bitch. “I’ll do whatever the hell I want and…” She stopped short as Damien’s other arm came up, trapping her body.
She couldn’t turn to face him because his body caged her against the mahogany surface. Kara’s heartbeat sped up, feeling something entirely different from anger. She faced the door, with Damien behind her and arousal rushed through her system. The evidence of his desire was pressed against her, his body dominating hers, and still… she felt powerful. He could try to intimidate her into surrendering her, but it wouldn’t work. They both knew he wouldn’t hurt her. Whatever happened between them, she had to green light. Heat spread at the primitive, sexual challenge.
Titling her head, Kara met Damien’s incensed gaze, knowingly.
His breathing was faster than usual, the glow to his eyes more intent. The predatory instincts of his species were in control, now. Wanting a feminine submission that he couldn’t just take. “You can’t go to Slade.” He growled. “You’re my prisoner and no, I won’t let you.”
“Your prisoner?” Was he really that dumb? “Are you kidding?”
“No.” He seemed to brace himself for a furious outburst. She could see his jaw setting in a stubborn line and his shoulders squaring. “You can’t leave.”
Kara kept staring at him. Honestly, she wasn’t sure whether to laugh or scream. “You were serious last night? I knew it! I thought you were saying that I wasn’t free to leave, but then you offered me a ride in your carriage and I…” She trailed off and slowly shook her head. “We were getting along so well. You really wanna do this to me?”
Damien gave something close to a flinch. “No!” He bit off, angrily. “I want you to stay here willingly, but you’ll never do that and I know it. You will rush into Slade’s waiting arms the minute I turn my back. I can’t have that.”
What book was Damien reading? Apparently the text was totally different from all the various realities Kara was dealing with, if he still thought she was lusting after Slade. “If I wanted Slade, I could have left with him last night.” She retorted. “I went with you, instead, didn’t I?”
Damien dropped his gaze, stepping back to give her room. Or maybe he was just getting out of range of her clenched fists. “You were confused last night. I told you, you make everything confused. With you around, my plans become confused.” He sounded frustrated with her and himself and the world in general.
“Yeah, let’s talk about your plans, Vlad. Good idea. What are you going to do with me? Use me as bait? Is that all I am to you?”
That hurt.
Really hurt.
He swore, viciously. “No, of course not.”
“Liar. You promised that you weren’t just pretending to be attracted to me. You promised that I wasn’t just a way to attack Slade. You promised you believed me about not being his bride and…”
Damien cut her off. “I didn’t lie!” He sounded furious, now. “All of that is true. You’re not supposed to be his and I will never accept that you are. That deluded bastard has nothing to do with you and me, Kara Lynn. Nothing, at all.”
“Bullshit. Just hearing the man’s –Vampire’s-- name pisses you off and now you tell me I can’t leave, because I’m the key to your stupid plan! You’re going to stake me out like a goat, aren’t you?”
“Slade will not get near you!” Damien bellowed. “The entire point of holding you captive is to keep him away from you. To stop what I know will happen if you’re near him for long. You think that I would risk losing you, now that I know what you are?”
“What I am? A book editor?”
“You are… special.” Damien wouldn’t meet her eyes. She could see his mouth tightening as he tried to regain control. “At one time, I thought to use Slade’s Eternal-One to trap him. Now, I just want to keep you away from the Vampire.”
“Why?” She wasn’t taking any of this at face value. In fact, she flat out didn’t believe any of his denials. He sure wasn’t “protecting” her out of the goodness of his heart. This was all about Slade for him.
Damien didn’t answer that. “You can leave later.” He temporized, instead. “Later, I will take you to your ball. I give you my word.”
“You can’t come to the ball, though. Note how I didn’t invite you. First of all, you’ll just start a fight and secondly, you need to watch Melessa for me. Who else can do it?”
He flashed Mel a distracted look. “I’ll find a servant to keep an eye on her.”
“You have servants? Where?”
“They come and go.” He muttered. “It doesn’t matter. I will solve all these problems for you later.”
“How much later?”
“I am expecting a telephone call soon, so at some point after that.”
“A phone call?” That actually diverted her, for a beat. Not just that somebody would call this nut, but that he even owned a telephone. Of course, the way things were going, Tanya had probably written in Blackberries for his evil networking needs. “What year were phones even invented?”
“1876.”
Typical that he would know that right off the top of his head. Jerk. Kara wasn’t a history buff, but Damien seemed pretty sure. So, maybe –maybe-- the phone wasn’t a complete anachronism. In theory. But, Kara wasn’t giving Eternal Passion at Sunset the benefit of the doubt, at this point. Vlad getting calls at home seemed pretty sketchy. “So, I’m only a prisoner because you’re waiting on a real important call? Why do I not believe that?”
“No, that’s not why you’re a prisoner. You’re a prisoner for your own safety. You are a target for the Vampires. How many times have they almost kidnapped you in the past twenty-four hours? Slade will try again at this party and, if I’m not there to stop him, you will be gone forever.”
“It’s a bad romance novel! There are lots of kidnappings in bad romance novels!” She crossed her arms over her chest, because the weakest part of her plan was the ‘keeping-Slade-from-abducting-her’ step. Vlad’s skeptical expression wasn’t helping with her confidence. “The ball will be nice and public, so he won’t try anything.”
One black eyebrow arched. “Oh, obviously. Because, the Wild West Show was such a small, private affair and he certainly didn’t attack you there.”
Damien had a point, but his snide tone made it impossible for Kara to acknowledge it. “You know, I’m suddenly not worrying too much about the Vampire Diaries gang stealing me away, since apparently they’d only be kidnapping me back from you.” That was a lie. Even pissed at Damien, she knew she was safe. The kidnapping thing was annoying her on general principles, but she certainly wasn’t terrified. She just didn’t have time for this craziness. “You abducted me first.”
Vlad was not happy with her assessment of things. “You asked to come with me last night.” He snarled.
“And now I’m asking to go.”
“No.” He stalked back towards his chair, clearly wanting the argument to end. His usual hostages probably didn’t talk back so much.
Kara wasn’t done, though. “How do you plan to hold me here against my will? Chain me to a radiator?”
“I’m a sorcerer. It should not be difficult to keep you within the hotel.” He stared at the dreary wallpaper, his jaw like granite. “I’ll just use my magicks to make it impossible for you to open any of the doo
rs or windows.”
Kara said the first thing that popped into her head. “What if there’s a fire?!” She’d seen more things burn over the past few day than in the whole rest of her life combined. The manuscript, her hand, the entire Wild West Show… Being trapped in an inescapable building didn’t fill her with confidence.
Besides, when someone said you were locked in a spooky hotel and couldn’t get out the doors and windows, burning a hole in the wall just instantly came to mind. Well that or using an ax to hack yourself an exit. Did Vlad even have an ax? She looked around to see if any were hanging menacingly from the weapon festooned walls. He must, if only to dismember the corpses of his victims.
“I would not allow my home to burn, Kara Lynn.” He tone suggested that was just crazy talk. “I would not allow anything to harm you. I wish you to feel safe here.”
“Well, using words like ‘captive’ and ‘kidnapped’ really don’t help that wish come true.”
“I know.” He still wasn’t looking at her, but she saw his shoulders slump forward. “It does not surprise me that you no longer feel secure in my company. It was only a matter of time, really. It’s best that it happened quickly.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
“That’s a copout and you know it. You chose to do this to me and you could undo it, if you wanted.”
Damien shook his head. “Some things are simple fate, cari. I cannot allow you go to Slade. I have no choice.”
He just wasn’t getting it. Something had set him off and sent him back into his full-on bad guy character. Even his words were more stilted and Eternal Passion at Sunset-ish. Was this all because she wanted to go talk to Slade? Why was he acting this way?
“Damien, you don’t want to do this.” Kara warned, quietly. “Be logical. Holding a girl captive is always a dead end. You’re thinking like a villain.”
Damien’s temper detonated, his ebony eyes glowing like burning coals. “I am not the fucking villain!”
Kara let a long silence answer that roar.
That seemed to say it all.
Damien ran a hand through his hair and swore. He glanced over at her and she could see something besides frustration in his gaze. He looked resigned, with hints of desperation showing around the edges. “I would not have you see me that way. I would have you see me… differently.”
“Well, I’ll give you a heads up when the Stockholm’s Syndrome kicks in. Until then, I don’t think I want to hang out with you anymore.” Turning, Kara headed for the door, again. It was either leave or start throwing stuff at his oblivious head. “I’ll be out here. Tell me when my cell in the dungeon is ready.”
“Kara Lynn…”
She slammed the door on whatever he was planning to say next. She stood in the lobby of the hotel, breathing hard. “Bastard.” Vlad had seriously underestimated her if he thought she the type of girl who’d put up with this crap. He wasn’t even real. None of this was.
Okay, well maybe Nestor the dragon guy.
He’d seemed pretty damn real when he’d been trying to kill her.
But, the rest of this psych-ward was just words on a page. She looked around the oppressive, cobwebby lobby.
Stupid words on a page.
It was a good thing that Damien didn’t seem to be running an actual business here, since the hotel’s entrance wouldn’t pull in many guests. The place screamed “run far, far away” right down to the creepy paintings on the wall. The front desk had handcuffs bolted to it. Tourists would be better off staying in that hotel from The Shining.
Kara stalked towards the double-doored entrance, testing just to make sure she couldn’t walk right out. Sadly, Vlad hadn’t been bluffing. Kara’s hand phased through the knob when she went to turn it. It had no substance, as if the door was made of nothing but mist.
How’d he do that?
“Kara Lynn.” Damien followed her out into the lobby. “If you would just try and see the bigger picture…”
“Not speaking to you.” She headed over to try the windows.
“Cari, I do not want you angry at me. Please just give me some time and I will take you anywhere you wish to go.”
How the hell did he shift it all around so she was the one being unreasonable? “A prison that has fieldtrips is still a prison.”
“This is not a prison! I merely want you and Slade kept separate.”
“Right.” The window locks wouldn’t work. Kara grabbed a particularly ugly gargoyle statue from a coffin shaped table and aimed for the glass.
Damien sighed as she tried to smash it in. “It won’t break. I can leave nothing to chance… Hey!” He ducked to the side, when she heaved the statue at him.
“You’re lucky I always sucked at sports. If I could aim, you’d be about a head shorter, right now. Your oh-so reasonable obsession with King Fang is getting really old!”
“I am not obsessed with Slade. That damn book you read twists my actions and you believe its lies! It makes me seem wrong, when --if you would just look at everything from my perspective-- you’d see that I am on the right side of this war.”
“You’re vowing vengeance every twenty minutes!” She shot back. “That’s an obsession and it’s taken over your life. I’m telling you, you need to let it go.”
“Not until Slade’s dead.” Damien hissed, in his most mustache-twirling tone, yet. “Not until he dies.”
“He won’t die, you idiot! He can’t! You won’t beat him.”
Damien’s expression darkened into something terrifying. People were afraid of this man for a reason. She saw it so clearly in that moment. “Oh, I will beat him.” It was a vow. “I’ll have my…” He paused. “Reckoning with the Vampires.”
He’d almost said vengeance, again. Kara could tell and it set her temper spiraling in a new direction. It made her unaccountably furious that he couldn’t just break free of Tanya’s hold and see how pointless this was.
“This Slade fixation will kill you!” She shouted. “You’re not the hero, Damien, and the bad guys never win in the end.”
He laughed, the sound devoid of any humor. “I’m not sure if I pity you or envy you for that naivety.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “How could you possibly exist in this world, Kara Lynn? How could you possibly be here with someone like me?”
“Well, it’s not like I can go anywhere else, now is it?” She snapped.
He dropped his hand on a sigh. “It wasn’t an insult.” He sounded tired. “My sister believed in good triumphing over evil, too. She died believing it, I’m sure.”
“And do you think this is what she’d want for you? This kind of life, mired in hate and destined for a gratuitous death scene? Is this what you’d want Amalie to do, if your situations were reversed? To kill herself for revenge?”
Damien’s jaw ticked. “I don’t want to speak about my sister.”
“We’re speaking about you.” Why couldn’t he see? Slade would win their final battle. That was inevitable. After all, how many romance novels ended with the hero dead and the bad guy living happily ever after? “If you never believe another word I say to you, trust me on this one thing.” She closed the distance between them, catching hold of his arm and giving him a shake. “If you confront Slade, you will lose.” She stared up into the sharp, beautiful angles of his sinister face. “You’ll die, Damien.”
Something like regret moved across his expression. “I know I will.” His hand came up to brush across the curve of her cheek as if he just couldn’t help himself. “I’ve felt that for a long time. But, it doesn’t matter if I die, just so I take him with me.”
“‘It doesn’t matter?’” Kara gasped. She responded automatically, the words instinctive and selfish. “What about me?”
She intended that to mean, “What about me? You’re the only thing in this reality I can depend on.” What would she do if she couldn’t get out of this dumb novel? What would she do if Damien didn’t help her?
There were a dozen innocuous meanings to the
words, all of which made perfect sense. But, as she blinked up at him in astonishment, Kara realized that what she really meant was so much more personal. She’d just met him, and he was a fictional character and a villain at that, but… What would she do without Damien?
“What about me?” She whispered, again, feeling betrayed and abandoned in ways that made no sense, at all.
The question seemed to cut Damien a lot deeper than her anger over the kidnapping had.
His eyes closed in something like guilt or shame. For the first time since she’d known him, Damien completely lost his sardonic mask. He moved away from her, looking anguished. “It’s too late.” The words were delivered like a eulogy. “I’m sorry, cari. You will never know how sorry I am. No matter what I tell myself, though, I know that I found you much too late. It’s better that you…”
A phone rang from somewhere in the house, a disturbingly modern sound that made them both start.
Kara looked off towards the noise in annoyance and decided ignored it. “Too late for what? What the hell is going on with you?”
It seemed like Damien wanted to say something else, but he couldn’t think of the words. He finally just turned sharply and stalked off through a door at the other end of the lobby. It slammed shut behind him, without the use of his hands. His powers, again. They should have freaked her out far more than they did. But, the man himself was a lot more unnerving than the magicks.
Karalynn scowled.
If Vlad was cooking up some plan of his own, it would lead straight to badness. He needed to listen to her before he got himself killed. In that second, all Kara’s efforts to restore the plot of the book meant nothing. If Damien was supposed to die in the original book, they’d just have to do a rewrite.
Fictional or not, she didn’t want Damien dead and that meant delaying his showdown with Slade. It meant escaping Castle Greyskull here and fixing the damn book so Damien lived at the end.
And Slade stopped being a jackass.
And Melessa woke up from her coma.
And no more dragons tried to kill her with acid blood.
Right.
Damien marched back into the lobby. “I’m going out.” He grabbed his hat off an ornate hat stand studded with animal antlers, not meeting her gaze. “Try not to get struck by lightning or carted off by zombies while I’m gone. God knows, you attract trouble like a magnet.” Obviously, he was back to being his normal sneering self.
Not Another Vampire Book Page 15