Vampires: The Recent Undead

by Harris, Charlaine; Russell, Karen; Kiernan, Caitlin R. ; Smith, Michael Marshall; Armstrong, Kelley; Caine, Rachel; Sizemore, Susan; Vaughn, Carrie; Black, Holly

  Sarah took the box into the living room with her and waited. Hours passed; she felt herself become more and more peaceful. She loved her daughter and she hoped Laura knew that. As dawn began to brush away the soot from the sky, Sarah leaned over and touched the lid. She wanted so much to open it and say a few words, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  In the end, she didn’t need to. Whatever remained inside the box managed to do it for her.

  Dancing with the Star

  Susan Sizemore

  New York Times best-selling author Susan Sizemore’s debut novel was a time-travel romance, Wings of the Storm (1992). She continued writing romance, but after penning a media tie-in novel based on the television series Forever Knight, she was inspired her to create an original vampire world. The result was the five-book The Laws of the Blood dark fantasy series. She later created an entirely different vampire world for the Vampire Prime paranormal romance series. The eleventh in this series, Primal Instincts, was published in 2010. The vampires in both series deal with the challenges of undeath much as humans deal with life, but otherwise are quite distinct: the Laws vamps are still monsters, the Primes are romantic fun. “Dancing With the Star” is definitely an example of the author in her lighter romantic vein. Sizemore lives in the Midwest and knits when she’s not writing. She’s the author of over thirty novels and more than a dozen short stories—a great many of them are about vampires.

  There are plenty of people who come into the Alhambra Club for the things we regulars can offer. It’s a nice place, not flashy on the inside, hard to spot from the outside. You have to want to find the place and search for it through friends of friends of friends. If you’re a mortal, that is. The rest of us have used it as a hangout for the better part of a century.

  There’s a television set over the bar, a big, flat-panel model, always playing with the sound off. I wasn’t paying attention to it because I was engaged in seducing a handsome young man with far too many body piercings for my usual taste. I mean, if you want piercings I’m perfectly capable of providing them for you. But, he had nice eyes and a lovely voice, and the place wasn’t all that full of human patrons this evening. A girl goes with what she can sometimes. I wasn’t all that hungry, so I wasn’t trying too hard.

  I wasn’t paying attention to the TV but my friend Tiana was. I was surprised when she came up and put her cold hand on my shoulder, cause she isn’t normally rude enough to interrupt me when I’m working a fresh feed.

  “Did you hear? There’s been a twelve car pile up on Mulholland.”

  This isn’t the sort of thing that would normally interest me, but her excitement got my attention. I shifted my gaze to the television. It showed a scene of fire and carnage spotlighted in beams of white light shooting down from circling helicopters. A crawl on the bottom of the screen was showing statistics about dead and injured and the amount of emergency rescue equipment called to the scene. A windblown blond girl reporter was excitedly talking about the same things.

  Beside me, Tiana was starting to breath heavily. I wasn’t sure who was getting off on the disaster more, my friend or the reporter.

  I looked back at Tiana. “So?”

  Her eyes were glowing, not quite the death-eating electric blue she gets when she’s feeding, but her pupils held pinprick sparks of anticipation. “You want to go have a look, Serephena?” she asked.

  Normally I wouldn’t have been interested, but the pleading in her voice got to me. Tiana’s been my best friend for a very long time. If you know what we are you wouldn’t think she and I would have that much in common. I’m a vampire, and she’s—well, all right—she’s my ghoul friend. I feed on the living, she feeds on the energy of the dying. But we both like to shop.

  “Maybe there’s a dying movie star out there I can latch onto,” she said. She rubbed her hands together. “A producer would be even better.”

  I know what that sounds like, but it really had more to do with psychic power levels than celebrity stalking. There are a lot of high energy types in show business, a lot of people who are psychic and don’t even know it.

  I got up and telepathically told the pierced boy that we’d never met. “Sure,” I said to Tiana. “It’s been a slow night. Let’s go have a look.”

  It was gruesome up on Mulholland Drive. Tiana ate it up—literally soaking the energy of fear and pain in through her pores. It was the scent of blood that got to me, but not in a good way. There’s no fun in spilled blood. I need to take blood from the living, breathing source, to taste it fresh and hot, with the heartbeat still pulsing through it. And preferably from a volunteer because we live in modern, humane times. Unlike some of my notorious forebears I do not get off on pain. The blood on the crash victims gave off a sick scent that roiled my stomach, but I did find hiding in the shadows and watching the emergency crews work exciting. Hey, I’m as interested in all that forensics and rescue stuff as anyone else who watches the geek TV channels, but this was live and direct like Max Headroom used to say on the television show nobody but me probably remembers.

  It was interesting, but after a while I glanced at the sky and sighed. The night was getting on. “Had enough yet?” I asked Tiana. “You’ll outgrow your size 2 clothes if you feed much longer. Besides, it’s an hour to sunrise.”

  Tiana came out of her happy trance and turned glowing blue eyes on me. “Oh, Sorry, I lost track of the time.”

  “No problem,” I said, and took her arm to help her walk away, knowing from experience that she was drunk and dizzy from feeding.

  Help me! Where are you?

  Here! I shouted to the voice in my head. Where—

  “Serephena!”

  I looked up into pinpoints of blue light. Tiana. I was on my knees, and she was standing over me. The fierce pain in my head block out most thought, but I knew that our positions were all wrong. I was supposed to be helping her.

  I wanted to run into the wreckage behind us. But when I stood my legs were too shaky. I glanced back. “I—”

  Tiana shook my shoulders. “We have to go. Sunrise,” she added.

  That was one word I understood in all of its myriad implications of pain, suffering, death. I had to go. Now. Whatever had just happened I had to get home.

  I took Tiana’s hand, and we ran together.

  I have a nice studio apartment, where I sleep on a daybed in the huge windowless bathroom. The bathroom door is reinforced and has a strong lock, panic-room style and the building, which I own and rent mostly to my sort of people, has state of the art security. So, normally I have no reason not to sleep very well. Normally I don’t dream, either. I go to sleep. I wake up. It all happens so quickly . . . normally . . .

  The path was made of brick, laid out in a chevron pattern. It was lined with rose bushes and night blooming jasmine. The air was so fragrant I could taste it. The stars overhead formed a thick blanket of light brighter than I’d seen them for a very long time.

  “I need to get out of the city more,” I said, and continued walking toward the music in the distance.

  I was wearing a dress, the skirt long and floaty and pale blue sprinkled with a pattern of glittering crystals that mirrored the sky. This was not the slinky black sort of garment I favored, but it felt right, feminine, beautiful.

  I was wearing honest to god glass slippers. Cinderella? Me? Well, it was a dream.

  And my feet—my whole body—wanted nothing more than to dance.

  When the gazebo came into sight, as pretty as a white confection on top of a wedding cake, I ran toward it. Something more than wonderful waited for me there.

  “You!” I said, skidding to a halt at the entrance as I spied the man leaning with his arms crossed against a pillar.

  “Me,” he replied, a stranger with a familiar voice.

  “But—you’re a movie star!”

  It was an accusation. I didn’t expect my very rare dreams to go off on such grandiose tangents.

  “And I worked very hard to become a genuine
movie star,” he answered, totally unashamed for showing up in my fantasy. “Would you prefer meeting a celebrity?” His gesture took in the small building. “Here? In our space?”

  Our space? Yeah, it was, wasn’t it?

  I turned around, my skirts belling out around my legs. I could see my reflection in the highly polished white marble floor. And his reflection as he came to join me. He moved with the grace of Fred Astaire—I’ve been around long enough to see Fred and his sister Estelle dance on the stage, I know what I’m talking about.

  His hands touched me, one at my waist, one gently gripping my fingers. His warmth against my coolness. The next thing I knew we were circling the room, caught up in the music.

  “We’re waltzing,” I said. “I don’t know how to waltz.”

  “I learned it when I auditioned for Mr. Darcy. Didn’t get the role, though.”

  “But you learned how to dance.”

  “Silver linings,” he said.

  I studied his face. There was a sweep of dark hair across his brow, high arching eyebrows over penetrating green eyes, severe high cheekbones softened by a lush, full mouth. “You would have made a great Darcy,” I told him.

  Of course he had the body of a god—or at least of a man who spent a fortune working long hours with a personal trainer—and now that body was pressed to mine. I liked it. A lot. The longer we danced the more I liked it.

  My skin wasn’t cool anymore.

  “This is—nice,” he said.

  “In a strange way,” I answered.

  “You’ve noticed that, have you?”

  I nodded. His green eyes twinkled at me. We danced around in circles for a long, long time, caught up in the music and the flow of energy between us. That’s what it was all about for me—flow and energy, give and take. For once I knew that I was giving as much as I was taking, and it felt—nice.

  “What are you—we—doing here?” I asked.

  “Dreaming about dancing,” he answered. His smile devastated me. “I’m as surprised by this as you are. One moment I was floating in gray clouds. I think I was screaming, but there was no one to hear me, not even me. Then I was here with you.”

  “I was in blackness,” I said. “That’s normal for me.”

  “The gray was terrifying,” he said. He whirled me around faster, until we both laughed. “This is much better,” he said. He pulled me closer. We weren’t dancing anymore, but the music played on and the world continued to spin.

  “No one should be in darkness,” he said. “Gray or black or any other kind, especially not alone.”

  I started to say that I didn’t mind being alone, but being with him made me realize that I did mind. “I’ve been lonely and didn’t know it.” Though I was looking into his eyes, I was talking more to myself.

  Neither of us spoke for an unknowable time after that but we continued to look into each others’ eyes and shared. What? Our emotions, our souls, the essences of our beings? All of the above, I guess.

  “This is such bullshit,” I finally said.

  “But you like it.”

  My gaze flicked away from his, but I couldn’t stand the loss of contact for long. “If I could blush, I’d be blushing,” I told him when our gazes locked again.

  “We live in a time and place that’s cynical about love.”

  “Darlin’, I come from New York. People in L.A. are amateurs about cynicism.”

  He shook his head. “I used to live in New York,” he said. “Where I tended bar while I went to drama school. I saw plenty of broken hearts there.”

  “Broke a few, too, I bet.”

  “Too bad I didn’t meet you there.”

  I laughed. “I left long before you were born.”

  “Really? When were you there? How did you get to be—?” He looked puzzled for a moment, then said it. “A vampire?”

  Those in the know generally don’t ask. Maybe they think it’s rude, or mystery is part of the mystique, or are afraid of getting their throats ripped out. I hadn’t told this story for a long time. “I worked at the Plaza back in the 1930s.”

  “The hotel?”

  I nodded. “I was a telephone operator. There was a mob boss that lived there.”

  “Lucky Luciano?”

  “You’ve heard of him?”

  “I’ve been doing research to play him in a film.”

  “Too bad. I hate seeing that bastard glamorized.”

  “He did bad things to you,” he guessed.

  “He had me killed. He wrongfully thought I’d overheard some conversations and might testify about them in court. A hitman was sent after me. It turned out that the killer was a hungry vampire. He drained me and left me for dead.”

  “But—”

  “But the vampire didn’t realize I was one of his bloodline.”

  “You were already a vampire?”

  “No, no! My family came from Walachia. There’s some sort of genetic mutation that kicks in when a vampire bites us. Old Vlad the Impaler really is Dracula, and the king of us all.”

  “That’s amazing. I’m part Hungarian, could I be a vampire?”

  “Depends on if your grandmas got raped by the right sort of invaders, I guess. Do you want to be a vampire?”

  He shrugged. “I want to hear more about you.”

  “Nice answer. The gist of it is I woke up dead and had to start over from there.”

  “Did you go after the one who turned you?”

  “You’ve been watching vampire movies.”

  “Been in one.”

  “I saw it, had nothing to do with my world. But you were good,” I added.

  “You’re lovely when you’re bullshitting. What happened to the evil one who turned you?”

  “I don’t know if he was evil.”

  “He was a mob hitman.”

  His indignation was adorable. “I’ll concede his profession was evil.”

  “You’ve never done anything like that.”

  His certainty of my goodness was even more adorable. “No, I haven’t,” I assured him. “But after a while of wrestling with all the implications of immortality you get some perspective on good, evil, expediency, stuff like that. And no, I haven’t seen him again, at least, not that I know of. I didn’t get a good look at him while he was sucking the lifeblood out of me.”

  “But—how did you survive? Didn’t you have to have a teacher, a mentor? Didn’t another vampire bring you into the dark world?”

  I laughed and stroked his cheek. “I suppose there’s melodrama somewhere, but I’ve never been involved in any—other than being rubbed out by a mobster, which I did find pretty melodramatic at the time.”

  He traced his hand up and down my back, sending tingling shivers all through me. His sympathy warmed me even more than his touch. “I’m sorry you went through such trauma. How did you survive?”

  “I found the right bar and ordered a beer. Getting all the blood drained out of you makes you thirsty.”

  “It was a vampire bar?”

  I nodded.

  “Did some instinct kick in that drew you to your own kind and they taught you how to survive?”

  I nodded again. He was smart and quick on the uptake. The man had many great qualities. And he could dance in a way that made me feel like I was having sex standing up, fully clothed and not ruffling a hair or breaking a sweat. Not that vampires sweat.

  “I’ve explained me,” I said. “How about you? How did you get here? Wherever here is.”

  “That is the problem isn’t it? We seem to be dancing in limbo. Though I like being here with you.”

  From anyone else, any other time, I would have considered that a line. But his eyes held genuine pleasure, genuine sincerity.

  “I’m falling like a rock, you know,” I told him.

  “Me, too. Is that a bad thing?”

  We both shrugged, and that became part of the dance. We laughed together, and that was part of the music.

  “As for me,” he went on. “I remember be
ing with friends at their house. We played Scrabble.”

  I love word games. “Scrabble? Is that any way for a movie star to spend an evening?”

  “Now you know why the paparazzi hate me. I lead a quiet life.”

  “Me too. But how did you get here?”

  We danced in silence for a while. I watched as every possible emotion crossed his face. He finally said, “It has something to do with ice cream.” He looked deep into my eyes. “Is that crazy?”

  “Probably,” I told him. “But much of life makes no sense.”

  “Life and death? Am I dead?”

  I pulled him close and we stood still in the center of the gazebo for a long time, holding each other tight, giving comfort for the frightening questions that had no answers.

  “You’re so good for me,” he said at last. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “Everyone knows yours.” I gave a faint, sad laugh. “No one really knows mine anymore. I became Serephena back in my hippie phase.”

  It was his turn to laugh, at me, but not mocking. “Oh, no, that won’t do. That name isn’t you. It’s a flighty name. You’re solid and strong and grounded.”

  It was like he was giving me back myself. “Stella,” I admitted. “My name is Stella.”

  His smile was a blessing. It was sunshine. It was—

  I awoke as I always did, at the moment the sun went down. It was normally the most pleasant moment of the night. This time I woke with an anguished shout. I lay on my back with my eyes squeezed shut and tried to will myself back to sleep. That didn’t work, of course. All I ended up doing was crying and the tears that rolled down onto the pillowcase made a disgusting mess—vampire tears having blood mixed in with the salt water.

  I stripped the bed and threw the sheets in the laundry and paced around restlessly for a while wondering what the hell was going on in my head. Was I going senile? Worst of all loneliness well up in me and grief shook me and the heartache—

  The heartache was a very real sensation. Physical pain radiated out of the core of my being where my shattered soul ached for the loss of half my being.