Not Another Vampire Book (2 page)

How
could black eyes glow?

What
would that even look like?

Kara
dug into her bag, so she could start making corrections, right away.  Her
fingers had just closed around a pen when the elevator gave a sickening lurch. 
The overhead light sputtered, as if it had developed a short.  The car stopped
moving with a wavy jolt, like a bungee jumper at the end of his cord.

Kara’s
eyes flashed up, automatically going to the brass numbers above the door.  The
elevator had stopped between the ninth and tenth floors, trapping her.  Great. 
She gave the doors a few ineffectual pulls and found them stuck tight.  Just
great.  Sighing loudly, she leaned over to press the red alarm button.

How
was she going to get someone out there to rescue her on a Friday night?

And
where was the alarm?  The elevator remained eerily silent and motionless.  She
glanced up at the ceiling.  In movies there was always some kind of
super-helpful access panel that people could crawl through.  The top of the
elevator was an embossed copper dome.  Very pretty, but useless as an
escape-hatch.

Her
anxiety levels skyrocketed as she realized she was stuck in here.  Kara wasn’t
claustrophobic, but she absolutely had to get out of that elevator.  She knew
it.  She could feel the urgency of the situation in the pit of her stomach.

She
needed
out
.

And
that’s when the elevator dropped.

The
entire car just suddenly plummeted like the wires holding it had been clipped
by giant scissors.  Whatever breaking system
should
have kicked in
didn’t
. 
It was a massive free-fall that emptied her mind of everything for a few
endless heartbeats of time.  Kara didn’t even have time to flashback to her
life, or pray, or jump up in the air to avoid the impact, or whatever you were
supposed to do in the seconds before you were horribly splattered.  In fact,
the only thing she felt was… sad.

Like
she’d missed something or someone terribly important and now it was too late.

Then,
panic kicked in.  Kara opened her mouth and screamed as she felt the floor
rushing up to meet her.  She could feel the elevator about to make impact with
the ground and then…

…The
door swung open and Kara lunged for it.

It
didn’t even occur to her, in her desperate bid for freedom, that the door
hadn’t
slid
open like usual.  It had
swung
open, like an ordinary
household door.  And she hadn’t flung herself onto some rapidly passing office
floor.  Looking around, it seemed like she’d landed in a… garden?

Kara
couldn’t really process what had just happened for a moment.  She lay there, an
inexplicable gravel pathway under her body, breathing hard and trying to
understand.  How had she gotten clear of the elevator?  How could she possibly
survive its plummet?  How did she get outside?

And
why was it so hot?

Glancing
back the way she’d come, she tried to figure out what had happened.  Only
instead of the shattered, twisted remnants of elegant brass and copper, all she
saw was a French door leading into some kind of costume party.  Kara blinked as
women in long
Gone with the Wind
style gowns danced passed her on the
other side of the small windows.

Where
was the elevator?

Where
was the Donnelly building?

Where
was
she
?

Had
she hit her head in the crash?  She felt fine, but maybe this was –like-- a
hallucination.  A dream brought on by some medically induced sleep, while a nice
doctor worked to stitch her skull back together.  What other explanation could
there be? 

Was
she dying?

“You
have made a grave error in interrupting my long awaited vengeance.”  A deep voice
rasped from the shadows.  “Whatever sort of creature you are, your appearance
will not stop what must happen here tonight.”

Kara’s
head whipped around in the opposite direction.  Beneath some kind of fancy
looking tree stood… Jack the Ripper?

Holy
shit.

Just
how brain-injured was she?

A
really large, dangerous looking guy with a top hat and greatcoat loomed there
like death.  He stepped forward, the top half of his face shrouded in shadow.  A
lightning bolt shaped scar marred his cheek, from his temple to his chin, but
that did nothing to detract from the overall hotness of the man.  He was classically
stunning.  Super-duper, silent-movie matinee idol handsome.

Kara
blinked.

Right.

So,
on the plus side, at least she’d had the good sense to hallucinate a gorgeous
hallucination.  There was a patrician kind of air about the guy that shouldn’t
be nearly as attractive as it was.  Like the rich, handsome jock in high school
who didn’t talk to the huddled masses at the back of the lunchroom, but who all
the girls still fantasized would ask them to prom.  She could see dark hair
brushing the shoulders of his coat, emphasizing the chiseled angle to his jaw,
as he glowered at her.

Distracted
by ogling the impressive width of his chest, Kara actually missed the weirdest part
of his appearance, for a beat.  The weirdest part of this whole experience.  Possibly,
even weirder than the disappearing elevator.

There
was the bird perched on the stranger’s shoulder.

An
honest to God
bird
… perched… on his shoulder.

A
large, black,
alive
bird.

Kara’s
eyes narrowed into a baffled squint.  “Is that a raven?”  What kind of Freudian
imagery thing could ravens represent in her unconscious mind?  Whatever it was,
it couldn’t be good.

The
stranger hadn’t been expecting the question.  There was a startled pause, like
she’d gone off script or something.  “What?”  He finally demanded.  His voice
was dark and rusty, like he didn’t use it very much.

“Never
mind.”  Kara got to her feet, still looking around.  “You wanna play
Pirates
of the
Caribbean
with Polly there, it’s your thing.  Just let me get
my bearings and…”  She was having a hard time not hyperventilating in panic and
the sauna-like heat wasn’t helping.  “Let me just think.”  She fanned a hand at
her face.  “Aren’t hospitals usually cold?”  Focusing on the mundane helped a
bit.  Much better than hysterical screaming.

“You
have escaped from a hospital?”  The question was dry as sawdust.

Wiseass.

“No,
I’m obviously still
in
one.  And I’m asking why it’s so hot in here.”

“We’re
out
side.”  The stranger intoned, grudgingly.   “In July.  And you’re
wearing a woolen cap and a scarf.”  His tone suggested she was the stupidest
person in the world.  “If you’re hot it’s your own doing, woman.”

So
said the dummy in the full length coat.  Not that it mattered.  She had bigger
problems.  “July?”  It was October.  So, unless she’d been languishing in a
coma for months, that was odd.  Of course, given the day she was having…  Kara
blew out a long breath, trying to stay calm.  “Fine.  Have you seen an elevator
around here?”

“I
will be asking the questions.”  He snarled, snapping back into his Vlad the
Impaler tone.  “Why are you here?”

Good
question. 
“Bad luck and worse wiring, I think. 
Hopefully,
not
because of substandard medical care.”  God, what if she
was in a vegetative state or something?  Hadn’t there been a TV show where the
cop got stuck back in time and had to relive the ‘70s?

“Begin
making sense or you’ll regret it, woman.”

Kara
jabbed a finger at him.  “Just shut-up, alright?  I don’t have time for you.”

A
long, shocked pause.  “You can’t speak to me that way.”  The stranger finally sputtered. 
“No one speaks to me that way.  No one speaks to me, at all.”

“Gee,
I wonder why?”  Her dream man was incredibly hot, but he was also a condescending
jerk.  Typical.  Kara began moving along the gravel walkway.

“Why
are you not afraid of me?  Do you know who I am?  What I can do?”  He followed
her, keeping pace from the shadows of the garden.  “Or are you one of
them
,
come to stop my plans?  Because, I will not be thwarted.”

“Did
you just seriously say
thwarted
?”  Jesus, her unconscious mind liked the
SAT vocab words, didn’t it?

He
made a snarling sound.  “I’m warning you, woman…”

“Stop
calling me that.  God, it’s Kara, alright?  Karalynn Donnelly.”  See?  No brain
damage on that front.  She knew her name.  Her Social Security number.  Who the
president was.  All really, really good signs.

Probably.

“Kara.
 Lynn.  Donn.  El.  Lee?  Is that… human?”  He might as well have said leaper. 
“You’re a
human
?”  The idea obviously affronted him.  The astonishment in
his dark voice leaked away the sinister edge and left nothing but an elegant,
unidentifiable accent coated in surprise.  “A mere human thinks to speak to me
this way?”

“Whatever.” 
Kara wasn’t particularly intimidated by a figment of her own drugged
imagination.  She’d always had really vivid dreams, but this one took the
cake.  She pulled off her cap and shook out her jaw length brown curls.  They
were already frizzing in the humidity.  She could tell.  Even in a coma her
hair sucked.

Captain
Creepy made an odd sound, somewhere between a gasp and a groan and an animal
growling.

“What
now?”  One crack about her perpetual bad hair day and she’d deck him.

“I…
It is nothing.”  His voice was strained.

She
gave a skeptical snort.  “Uh-huh.  Look, no offense, but I think you’re just –like--
a morphine induced amalgam of Alex Murphy from my junior year and some bad
horror films I never should have watched in the first place.  I might be in
surgery, here.  So, I don’t have a lot of time to be sensitive to your
feelings.”

He
cleared his throat.  “I have no feelings beyond my thirst for revenge.”

“Uh-huh.” 
Kara tucked her hat into her pocket and began rooting around in the darkness
for her stuff.  She never remembered seeing a night so dark and clear.  It was
like all the stars were tuned up to their highest settings.  No light
pollution.  No streetlights.  It would have been an astronomers dream.

If
it wasn’t
already
a dream.

She
stepped on something and bent down to pick it up.  The manuscript.  Perfect. 
She couldn’t find her cell phone or keys, but she’d fantasized herself a copy
of
Eternal Passion at Sunset
.

God,
could this coma get any worse?

The
stranger watched her, broodingly.  “What is an Alex Murphy?”  He demanded, as
if searching for an insult.  The way he said it, poor Alex’s name might as well
have been dipped in slime.

Under
other circumstances, Kara would have laughed.  “Alex was the spoiled, but
lust-worthy, punk who ignored me in AP English.  We read a lot of Poe in that
class, so the bird is just a repressed memory thing.”  She shook her head.  “Now,
don’t talk to me.  I need to concentrate on waking up.”

“Something
is wrong here.”  The Captain Jack wannabe murmured.

“Yeah,
no kidding.”  Kara tucked the book under her arm, again, even as she shrugged
off her coat.  The heavy fabric fell to the ground and her body temperature
dropped about twenty degrees.  For once, her conservative business suit felt
like a kicky summer dress.  She might be stuck in this nightmare, but at least
she wasn’t going into heatstroke, now.  She slipped off her suit jacket, too,
and untucked the pink silk shirt from her waistband of her skirt, fanning it
against her midsection.  “It’s also really dark, isn’t it?”

The
stranger cleared his throat, again.  “What?”  Even in the pitch blackness she
could feel the intensity of his eyes on her.

Kara
arched a brow.  Was he checking out her body?  Something warm twisted in her
stomach at the idea, even though it seemed likely that he was just plotting how
to dismember her corpse.  She had a lot more
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
dreams than sex ones.  Unfortunately.  She glanced away.  “I said, it’s really
dark, don’t you think?”  It wasn’t just absence of streetlights.  Now that she
thought about it, there were no electric lights.  At all.  The ballroom was lit
by flickering candles.  “Why is it so dark around here?”

“Well,
it is
night
.”

Kara
disregarded the snarking.  Her mind went to the time traveling cop show, again,
and she groaned as finally put all the pieces together.

Apparently,
it
could
get worse.

This
was a period piece coma.

The
dresses should have been a dead giveaway.  Through the French doors, they
swooped about in full, hoop skirted glory, while men in dorky looking coats and
tails, twirled the women wearing them around the floor.  Kara squeezed her eyes
shut.  She hated historical crap.  She’d never even been able to sit through
Titanic
without getting a migraine.  “Oh, no.”  She looked over at the stranger.  “What
year is it?”