Not Another Vampire Book (7 page)

 “You’re
never gonna get Melessa is you keep up with this entitled attitude, Slade.”  Kara
retorted, hotly.  “I mean it.  She’ll just stay with the cowboys.”

Once
again, the hero of the tale pretended she wasn’t there.  “Give the woman back
to me, Damien, or we shall have a war like no other.  She isn’t yours and this
isn’t the way it’s supposed to go.”

 Damien’s
cruel mouth twisted up in a smirk.  “But, she’s chosen me, Slade.  I don’t
believe that’s ever happened before.  No one has ever chosen the
creatures
,
the evil Wizard Warlocks, over the Vampires.  I find it… Intriguing.”  His hand
stayed wrapped around Kara’s wrist, his finger sliding across her pulse in
something like a caress.  “And since very little intrigues me anymore, and
since I know it will eat at you every second she’s gone, I think I’ll keep the
woman.”

“The
woman
has a name, asshole.”  Kara put-in, sourly.  The gentle movement
of his thumb made her insides flip, but five minutes back in his company and
she already wanted to take off running, again.

He
turned to look at her.  “Kara Lynn.”  He said, gravely.  “Will you come with
me?”

“Do
not give your consent!”  Slade roared.  “If you do, he can transport you with
his magicks.  I will not be able to follow!”

Kara
hesitated.  That part was good news, but ‘magicks’ sounded kind of ominous.

Damien
arched a brow, waiting.  He didn’t expect her to agree.  She could tell.  And
his compete belief that she’d refuse him pretty much dared her to prove him
wrong.  Well, that and her total
un
desire to hang out with Slade for
next sixty-eight thousand words.

“Do
not screw me over on this, Damien.”  She warned.  “I’m pretty sure with some
White-Out and red ink I can erase right out of existence.”  Kara turned her own
hand so she could hold on to his wrist and braced herself for some kind of
Star
Trek
beam.  “Okay, go.”

Instead,
Damien just blinked at her as if waiting for the punch line.  “You’re actually
giving consent?  To me?”

“Yes.
 Just this once.  And don’t make me regret it.”

“Why
would you do this?”  He demanded, like she might be plotting something.

Good.
 He was as wary of her as she was of him.

That
boded well for their relationship.

Kara
hesitated and wound up telling him the truth.  “Because, I don’t belong here
and, on some level, you know it.  You’re the only one who sees.”

He
frowned.

“And
because I have nowhere else to go.”  Kara continued, candidly.  “I’m… lost.” 
Just saying the words made her eyes well.  She swallowed hard.  “We can help
each other, if you’d just hear me out with an open mind.  I swear.”

Damien
watched, a strange expression on his face, as a tear escaped Kara’s eye and
traced down her cheek.

“Something
is backwards about this entire situation.”  Slade groused.  “You should be
weeping prettily at
me
.  I am a hero of my noble people.  Damien is a
creature who cares for no one.”

Kara
sniffed and forced herself under control.  Crying was pointless.  Work the
problem, step by step.  Right.  She frowned over at Slade.  “This is a
trade
,
genius.  I’ll give Damien information, if he’ll…”

Damien
flashed her out of the room so suddenly that she never got to finish that
sentence.

One
second Kara was arguing with Slade.  The next she was pixilating into nothing
and then reforming in an entirely different location.  It as an unsettling
sensation.  Stomach churning and dizzying and kind of blue-ish, although she
had no idea how something could feel like a color, outside of a LSD trip.

“Holy
cow.”  Kara’s legs gave out and she hit the ground with a thud as the world
spun around her.  She fell down a lot in this reality.

Damien
released her hand and stared down at her as she tried not to throw-up.  “You
get accustomed to the trip after a while.”  He said, impassively.  “There’s no
way to avoid the disorientation the first time.”

“Thanks
for the warning.  God.”  Kara pulled her legs up and dropped her forehead to
her knees.  “If you wanted to kill me there are more humane methods.”

“I
have no desire to harm you, Kara Lynn.  Which is… strange.”  He stood over her
and cleared his throat.

Kara
realized that he was searching for something to say.  These characters really
weren’t used to ad-libbing their lines.  For a second, Damien looked almost as
lost as she did.

She
decided to help him out.  “Where are we?”  It looked like a hotel room.

Jeffery
Dahmer’s hotel room.

Gothic
furniture and gargoyles and creeping paintings with moving eyes.  Dark, velvet
drapes shrouded the windows and the canopy bed looked like a crypt.  The kind
of place you’d pose the body of your victim for a few candid shots before you
ate his skin.

“This
is my lair.”

“Oh
geez.”  His
lair
, for crying out loud?  Tanya seriously needed to lay
off the Dungeons and Dragons.

Damien
put his hands behind his back and adopted a superior sneer.  “Where did you
think
I was planning to take you, woman?  Back to the Vampire Isle?”

Kara
was riding the thin edge between mystified confusion and abject terror.  She
was trying to stay calm, but it was taking most of her energy to keep the manic
screaming at bay and now this.  She looked up at Damien, her mouth parting.  “The...Vampire…
Isle
.”

She
didn’t expect the crazed laughter that bubbled up in her throat.  Kara was just
suddenly struck by how…
stupid
this all was.  She wasn’t nuts, but the
entire world had gone insane around her.  Vampires had their own
island
? 
Kara had the sudden image of Count Chocula dressed in a cape and Bermuda
shorts, sitting on a beach somewhere.

She
lay her head down on her knees and positively howled at the idea.

She
was such a nice normal girl.  How could this possibly be happening to her?  How
could she possibly be stuck in a book where Vampires vacationed on Fiji?  What
was she going to do?!

Damien’s
eyebrows climbed up his forehead as he watched her rock back and forth caught
somewhere between laughter and tears.  “Are you alright?”

“No,
I’m really not.”  Kara wiped at her eyes and tried to get her wild emotions
under control.  “It’s been a bitch of a day, if you want to know the truth.” 
She glanced up at him, trying not to cry.  “I want to go home.”

He
scowled, obviously searching for his next line and coming up empty.  “I’ll get
you some water.”  Damien turned and headed for the door.

“Water?” 
Kara scrubbed her cheeks and fought for control.  Actually, that did sound
good.  Hopefully, it wasn’t full of 1892 bacteria.  Where did malaria come
from?  “Hey, if Tanya accidently wrote Dramamine into the story, bring that, too.” 
She still felt sort of seasick.

Staggering
to her feet, she looked around Damien’s
lair
.  Hard to believe that poor
guy actually lived in this cliché.  Out one of the cobwebby window, she saw
something blinking.  Not just blinking, flickering on and off.  An illuminated
sign.  “Oh, you’ve got to be
kidding
me.”  Tanya had added neon lights
to 1892?  Kara stalked over to the window and peered at the anachronism.

World’s
Fair Hotel
was spelled out in twisty red tubes.  The large
sign glowed brightly in the otherwise pitch black night.  As she watched, the
word ‘world’ shorted out, only to fizzle back on.  Then, off again.  Then, on. 
Kara let the heavy drape fall back into place and pinched the bridge of her
nose.

Donnelly
Publishing also printed some true crime stuff, so she instantly recognized the
name of the hotel.

It
was the home of America’s first serial killer, H.H. Holmes.

That
bastard had supposedly mutilated dozens of people, luring them to his hotel for
the Fair.  The place had secret doors and hidden rooms and all kinds of horror
show material.  Tanya St. Clair apparently saw no reason not borrow Holmes’
creepy murder motel for her book.  And she’d stuck Damien in it as resident bad
guy.

Which
meant that Kara was stuck in it, too.

Oh
no, no, no, no, no.

Anger
and frustration were a lot healthier than panic.  Kara seized onto them,
gratefully.

All
of this just
wasn’t
happening.  Not to her.  Not today.  No
way
was
she bunking down at Club Dead with a socially maladjusted sorcerer and his pet
raven.  How was she going to get out of here?  There had to be some rabbit hole
she could jump through to get back home, again.

Had
to be.

If
she just had a plan, she could get through anything.  Kara was a one step at a
time problem solver.  NASA went to the moon one circuit at a time.  People
built the Great Wall of China one brick at a time.  Taking it one page at a
time, she could get out of this book.

 Her
eyes narrowed, thoughtfully.  Maybe if she just sort of rewound the problem. 
Went back to where things went wrong and fixed the damage.  Maybe she needed to
get on the Donnelly Building’s elevator, again, and go… Up.

That
made sense.

Sort
of.

Problem: 
Where the hell was the Donnelly Building?

Kara
spent her life at the office.  Back in reality, she could have found it
blindfolded.  God-only-knew what a map of the Chicago streets looked like in
this stupid novel, though.  Tanya St. Clair obviously wasn’t going to let a
little thing like geography slow her down.

Damien
came sweeping back into the room, carrying a wine goblet full of water and no
Dramamine.  “Finished with your hysterics?”

“No.” 
Kara turned to glower at him.  “Have you ever heard of the Donnelly Building?”

His
brows arched, skeptically.  “You’re claiming to have your own building, now?” 
He held out the water glass.  “Is that where you keep the rest of your
clothes?”

“My
father and the bank own the building.  I just work there.  And there’s nothing
wrong with my clothes. 
Real
people wear
real
clothes, not
Halloween costumes, Vlad.”  Damien looked surprised by the nickname.  Kara
didn’t care.  “How far is Delaware Ave. from here?”

“Several
miles.”

“Right.” 
Her jaw firmed in determination.  “I need to go there.”  She took the water
glass from him and belted it back like it was straight scotch.  Setting the
empty glass down on a table that looked like it was made from crisscrossing human
bones, she held out her hand in farewell.  “Well, I’ll see you in the second
draft, Damien.”

He
regarded her outstretched palm like he had no idea what it was.  Black eyes
flicked from her fingers back up to her face.  “You think to go?”  He sounded
shocked.  “You think you
can
?”

“Well,
I’m not thrilled with hiking miles in these shoes.  But, yeah.  I think I can
do it.  Don’t worry.”  Kara gave up on the idea of shaking hands and started
around him.  Wizard Warlocks apparently didn’t do manners.  “Listen, I
appreciate your help with Slade.  I swear, I will give you the nicest edit
possible, when I get out of here.”

“You
can’t just go, Kara Lynn.”  The words were flat and final.

She
nearly rolled her eyes.  Men.  “Uh-huh.  I appreciate you trying to look out
for me, but I’m not sure you can do anything else to help.  I’d rather not do
the zappy thing, again, and you don’t have a comfy SUV in the garage, I’ll
bet.”

“A
what?”

“Exactly.” 
Kara strode out into the hall, her new plan giving her purpose.  Plans meant
stability.  Plans gave you something to hold onto.  When your world fell apart,
and your mom died and you just wanted to curl up into a ball, having a plan was
the only thing that got you through the darkness.  If you had a plan for your
future, you had hope.  Back then, it had been her plan to run Donnelly Publishing
and help it thrive.  Now, it was to escape this book and burn every page of the
manuscript.

She
glowered down at its blue plastic cover.

Eternal
Passion at Sunset
was not going to beat her.

Damien
made an incredulous sound, following her with long sweeping strides.  “You’re
not understanding this, woman.”  He caught hold of her arm, pulling her to a
halt.  “I can’t allow you to leave like this.”

“That’s
sweet, but I’m not your responsibility.  You’ve been…”  She hesitated.  “You’ve
actually been great.  Tanya must have screwed something up with you, because you’ve
been a real godsend.  I have no idea what I would have done without your help
this evening.  Slade was a nightmare
within
a nightmare.  Thank you for
being there to save me from him.”

Damien
blinked, his ominous scowl fading.  “I…”  His grip on her arm loosened, like
she’d caught him off guard.  “Well… You’re welcome.”  The bewildered expression
on his sinister face was almost endearing.