Vamparazzi (33 page)

Having made Aubrey's day, I urged him to get some rest, and I exited stage left again. He promptly had a horrible half-waking nightmare in which Ianthe came back from the dead to accuse him of letting Lord Ruthven murder her. This guilt-ridden vision forced Aubrey to contemplate leaving his sickroom to warn his sister that she was about to go to bed with a supernatural serial killer. But then Ruthven made his dramatic entrance and yammered at Aubrey about his promise to keep silent, the meaning of honor, and so on.

Watching this scene now from the wings, I realized that the dialogue had awkward ramifications, given the current circumstances. Daemon seemed to realize it, too, and his performance grew increasingly awkward as he uttered flowery dialogue implying that he had a
right
to take lives without interference or consequences.

I didn't know whether he was feeling so self-conscious that he deliberately started omitting lines, or whether he was just so distracted that he was fumbling and forgetting them again but, either way, Daemon wound up skipping whole chunks of his dialogue. This shortened the scene so much that a startled Leischneudel had to leap over several emotional transitions that he usually played while Lord Ruthven blathered on, and he wound up simply diving straight into the catatonic stupor in which Ruthven left his new brother-in-law at the end of the scene.

Waiting in the wings for my final scene, I heard a woman in the audience say, “Oh, come
on
.” And no one shushed her.

The hypnotic spell Daemon had held over the vamparazzi ever since opening night seemed to be crumbling.

It was during the wedding night scene that this abysmal performance of
The Vampyre
took an unexpected turn from gothic melodrama to farce.

As usual, Daemon and I began circling each other while exchanging our dialogue, gradually reducing the distance between us. A spark of Daemon's usual performance level started to return now, and the openly disenchanted audience actually began paying attention as the sexual tension built between Jane and Ruthven.

But then, as soon as he got within arm's reach of me, Daemon's reddened eyes started watering and his pink nose began running.

At the point where he was supposed to seize me by the shoulders, pull me backward against his chest, and start taking down my hair, Daemon instead backed away from me and turned upstage for a moment to sniff and wipe his nose.

After that, he wouldn't come near me. He just kept circling me while Jane gazed at him in wary but rapt fascination, and
I
wondered how we were going to perform the rest of the scene if he wouldn't touch me.

The audience began losing interest again, and I could hear their rustling, shuffling, and muttering. I didn't really blame them. Now that Ruthven wasn't pawing and seducing Jane, there was no concealing just how boring and pretentious his speech was. Obviously aware of this, Daemon suddenly walked over to a neoclassical statue of a half-naked woman that was part of the set décor, and he fondled it.

This created a wave of surprised laughter. Obviously not having expected amusement, Daemon froze and stared at the audience like a deer caught in headlights. That produced a burst of hilarity.

I kept gazing at him, my eyes trying to telegraph the message,
We have to get this scene back on track.

Daemon pulled himself together enough to say his next few lines, twitching a bit as the audience continued giggling. I heard my next cue, but I really wasn't sure, under the circumstances, that I should say my line.

I stared at Daemon helplessly, willing him to understand my dilemma.

He finally looked at me, with his hand still planted on the statue's naked breast, and gave me an exasperated scowl.

So I uttered my dialogue: “You shouldn't touch me there.”

The audience howled with laughter.

Daemon snatched his hand away from the stony breast as if he'd been burned. The audience laughed even harder.

“Why not?” he said. “After all, we were wed today.”

Beyond Daemon, in the wings, I could see Mad Rachel gaping at us as if we'd both lost our minds.

Daemon scowled at me again, clearly waiting for me to say my next line.

I didn't
have
a next line. Normally, by now, Ruthven was boldly fondling Jane. Glaring at Daemon, I gave a deep moan of sexual arousal, which was what I always did at this point in Ruthven's yammering. Daemon looked startled.

More laughter.

Then I lifted my brows at him, indicating it was his turn to speak.

Remembering his next line, he fondled the statue again and said, “You like that, my pet?”

Still more laughter.

This would be terrific, if we were actually performing a comedy.

Enough already. I just wanted to get exsanguinated and get the hell out of here. And I didn't see how Daemon could possibly bite Jane and suck her blood if he wouldn't get within five feet of me.

I walked over to Ruthven, seized his hands, and hauled my heel-dragging groom over to my mark, where the white spotlight would find me when Jane died. Then I boldly put his hand on my breast. He gaped at me in astonishment, then gaped at my breast.

The audience found this so hilarious, it was a few moments before either of us could deliver more dialogue. By then, a surprised Daemon had adjusted to my taking charge of the scene. He seemed relieved to be back in a familiar position, and he said his next few lines with almost credible gravity, though his reddened eyes were tearing up and his nostrils were quivering.

I swooned in his arms, right on cue, more than ready by now to die. Daemon leaned over to place his mouth against my tender neck with ravenous ardor—and then he sneezed so violently that he dropped me.

I gasped and reflexively grabbed him to keep from falling. He kept sneezing convulsively—which was probably why he lost his footing and fell on top of me. We hit the hard stage floor with a resounding thud, accompanied by gales of laughter from the audience and a scattering of applause. With the wind knocked out of me by the fall and Daemon's weight on top of me, I couldn't catch my breath and was afraid I would black out.

From my prone position, I could see the curtain starting to come down. Actually, it was jerkily starting and stopping, as if the crew couldn't decide what to do.

Daemon rolled off me and sat up, sniffing and sneezing while the audience continued howling with merriment. I drew in a gulp of air. High overhead, I saw the lowering curtain stop again, hovering indecisively.

“Ah, my lord!” I cried in mingled agony and ecstasy.

Despite not having been bitten or drained, I gave a noisy dying gurgle and a quick body-stiffening shudder of death throes, then I closed my eyes and went limp.

I heard the audience chuckling, but nothing else. I opened my upstage eye and saw Daemon staring at me in consternation. Frantically gesturing only with my eye, I tried to indicate that Leischneudel would enter any moment and they could finish the scene. However, my right eye was apparently not as self-explanatory as I hoped. Daemon just sat there wheezing as he gaped openmouthed at me, clearly dumbfounded.

Bill, however, was on the ball. He recognized what passed for my lighting cue in these unprecedented circumstances, and the white spotlight came on, glaring down on me with bloodless intensity. I shut my right eye and lay there dead, feeling relieved to effectively be out of this scene.

Leischneudel came on a moment later, and Daemon staggered to his feet to finish the performance, such as it was. I could hear the vampire sniffing and clearing his irritated throat throughout the rest of the scene. Leischneudel did a creditable job, all things considered, but I could tell he was making a heroic effort not to burst out laughing. When he fell down dead, just outside the white pool of my spotlight, I held my breath to conquer my own impulse to start laughing. We both lay there in tense silence, waiting for Daemon to finish his final monologue—which he rushed through like a man desperate to finish the job and go find his private hoard of Nocturne.

The stage went dark, the curtain came down, and a wave of uncertain applause spread through the audience, as if they weren't quite sure the play was over. I let out my breath on a relieved sigh, then Leischneudel and I convulsed simultaneously with hysterical laughter.

“Get up!” Mad Rachel insisted. “Get
up,
you guys!”

I couldn't. I was laughing too hard.

“Come on, goddamn it!” Rachel, who
hadn't
just had a spotlight shining against her eyelids, readily found me lying on the darkened stage and started tugging on my arm.

“Ow, that
hurts
.” That heavy fall to the stage a few minutes ago, combined with my other injuries, ensured that I was just one big ache by now.

“And where are
you
going?” Rachel cried.

I couldn't see yet, but I could hear Leischneudel still laughing helplessly as he lay near me, so I knew Rachel must be speaking to Daemon.

“I'm not taking a bow after
that,
” he said.

“No!” Rachel cried. “Stop!”

The curtain rose on me and Leischneudel still lying on the stage, while Rachel clung desperately to Daemon's arm, her full body weight dragging on him as he tried to make his escape. Leischneudel and I hopped to our feet, and we all fell into line for our curtain call—though Daemon declined to hold my hand this evening.

Half of the audience members were already out of their seats and leaving, ignoring us as they gathered their belongings and streamed toward the exits, talking about where they would go for dinner—or perhaps about how bizarre this show was. Some of the people who were still in their seats applauded enthusiastically—most of them, I noticed, were die-hard fans, dressed as vampires, Janes, or bondage babes. The rest of the stillseated crowd applauded politely, but their expressions suggested they were thinking of asking for their money back.

As soon as the curtain came down on what would clearly be our only bow today, Rachel gave Daemon a hard shove and cried, “You
ruined
the show!”

He ignored her and said angrily to me, “Don't you
ever
wear that stuff onstage again!”

“Watch your tone!” I snapped back. I pointed to the covered-up welt on my neck. “
You
did this to me, you jerk!” I touched my injured cheek. “And you
encouraged your fans
to do
this
to me! I am the walking wounded because of you! So don't you
dare
take that tone with me!”

Daemon sneezed and gave a little groan. “Oh, fine.
Whatever.
Just don't wear it again.”

“I won't,” I said. “I certainly don't want to be stranded onstage with you like that
again.
”

“Oh, I don't know,” said Leischneudel. “That final scene today was the first time I've ever liked this play.”

“Fuck
all
of you.” Rachel stormed off in search of her cell phone.

Daemon stalked off to his dressing room, followed by Victor, who was unwisely telling him the show hadn't really been
that
bad.

Still laughing, Leischneudel and I staggered together toward our dressing rooms.

When we reached his door, his eyes widened as he said, “Oh, no!
That
was the performance Thack saw.”

“Oh, God.” I put my hand over my mouth. “He'll kill me for making him sit through that.”

“Well, I can kiss
that
opportunity good-bye.” Leischneudel's smile faded.

“No, you were fine in the first act, and you rescued a couple of scenes as best you could in the second act. I'm sure Thack saw that,” I said truthfully. “I'm sure he also recognized that
no one
could have rescued the final scene.”

We both burst out laughing again.

“Esther?” a familiar voice called.

I looked over my shoulder to see Thack being escorted down the hallway by the house manager, who had brought him backstage.

Thackeray Shackleton was slim, blond, nice looking, always impeccably dressed, and (as I had found was so often the case with attractive, well-dressed men who loved the theater) gay. He thanked the house manager, greeted me warmly, and presented me with a bottle of champagne.

“I'm
so
glad you brought alcohol,” I said honestly.

“After sitting through that play,” Thack said, “I think I need something stronger than bubbly.”

Although it wasn't the most propitious moment, I introduced him to Leischneudel.

“Congratulations,” Thack said to him, “on being the only actor in the cast who can hold his head up after that performance.”

“Oh, er . . . thank you, sir.”

“Thack!” I said.

“Oh, you did as well as anyone possibly could, darling,” Thack assured me. “But even
you
couldn't save yourself when you were stranded out there with a demented marionette puppet whose strings had snapped.”

Leischneudel and I both laughed again.

“Tell me, is this show always quite that ... odd?” Thack asked.

Daemon's door opened and he came out of his dressing room just in time to hear Thack say this.

He looked at us. We looked back.

I cleared my throat and introduced Thack to Daemon. Their civil greetings were followed by an awkward silence.

Thack broke it by saying, “I saw the show today. You offered your audience . . . a unique interpretation of the role. That's the hallmark of a great actor.”

Nice save.

“Thanks,” Daemon said morosely. “Does anyone know where Victor went?”