Not Another Vampire Book (4 page)

“
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 constellations 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. 
Lady 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.