The Vampire Book of the Month Club

 

 

Scarlet Stain takes a deep breath, kicks out the vent cover with her thick-soled boots, and before the heavy metal grate can clatter to the tile floor—thus alerting her captors—she reaches down to catch it with an expertly trained hand.

Years in the Afterlife Academy for the Exceptional Dark Arts have trained her well, and she quietly slides the grate to the side even as she pokes her long, slender legs through the small opening.

The drop is far, but she's been trained on much higher assaults, though it doesn't help that the floor is slippery. She lands silently, feeling a pinch in her left knee.

She looks at the old scar, resting there just between her long, knee-high boots and short, thigh-high black skirt: an old war wound, left by her archnemesis himself, the dreaded and powerful Count Victus.

She slaps her hands together, rubs them briskly as her martial arts instructor back at the Academy trained her to, and applies them to her wound. Once the healing warmth spreads through her knee, she stands, defenseless, looking around for something to use on her appointed mission. Fortunately, her escape route has dropped her right into the kitchen area.

She grabs a paring knife and shoves it into the waistband of her short skirt, slips one more into the heel of her boot, and makes quick work of carving the tip of a spare rolling pin into a stake fit for Count Victus himself.

She stands, ready to do battle, and skulks to the kitchen door.
Outside the greasy circular window a conclave rages, the annual
meeting of vampire royalty. Fifty of the world's most powerful vampires are seated in one ultrasecret room deep underground.

This is the Council of Ancients, the best of the best, the most influential, wealthy, powerful, and lethal gathering of vampires ever held. And she is here to slaughter them.

All of them.

Every last stinking, bloodsucking, life-draining one of them!

That Scarlet was able to find the location of this year's conclave means little compared to the fact that she was captured so soon after arriving. The thought that it might have been a trap set by Count Victus has naturally entered her mind, but . . . what of it? She has a job to do, and—trap or no trap—the time is at hand. Now she has overpowered her captors, leaving them lying in pools of their own vampire blood, and has found the heart of the party in record time.

On the other side of the kitchen door, Count Victus sits at
the head of a regal table filled with devastatingly handsome vampires.
All are well over six hundred years old. All look striking enough to lounge around in tuxedos swilling scotch out of crystal glasses in some fancy cigarette ad.

But these men are lethal, and it is Scarlet's job to wipe them
out, one by one. She knows it's a suicide mission to attack one such Ancient, but all fifty of them—in the same room—at one time?

Suicide: there's simply no other word for it.

She takes another deep breath, grabs her stake, and pushes through the kitchen doorway, odds be damned . . .

I sigh, frown, and make some other woefully pitiful and decidedly self-indulgent author-type noises before closing the sleek silver laptop without saving the document.

Ugh, another one bites the dust!

Half an hour of work, a whole page of manuscript, flushed down the toilet. Or, in this case, that little bulging trash can in the lower right-hand corner of my laptop screen.

But it's the only thing to do.

It just doesn't . . .
feel
right, you know?

And it hasn't for some time.

I can already imagine the irate user comments on my latest book blog if the page I just deleted were ever to make it to print:

How did Scarlet find the conclave so easily? In book four you said Count Victus used his “cloaking scent” to mask his true presence. Have you forgotten so quickly, Nora?

How could Scarlet grab the air-conditioning vent before it clattered to the floor? Wouldn't a little thing we call “gravity” make that impossible, if not highly improbable? I mean, what's next? Are we going to find out her father is really Stretch Armstrong in book six?

Wow, Nora, some coincidence her escape route led her straight to the kitchen, a kitchen full of . . . weapons. Hmm, coincidence much? Next time, why not just have her drop into an armory and load up on machine guns? Try harder!

Where were all the kitchen workers while Scarlet was stealing knives and whittling down rolling pins into lethal stakes? Surely with fifty hungry vampires to feed, there must have been some hustling and bustling going on in that kitchen when she dropped in unannounced? I work as a waitress at the local diner part-time after school, and I can tell you the only time the kitchen is that empty is before we're open—or after we're closed.

How, if she hasn't been able to kill Count Victus in your first four books, will Scarlet Stain be able to kill him
and
forty-nine other equally powerful vampires at the same time?

How come you used the word
conclave
twelve times on the same page?

And you know what?

They'd be right.

My publisher doesn't understand why I can't just “whip out another Scarlet Stain” adventure, but . . . it's not so easy.

After four books, it's like I'm running out of plotlines, using too many coincidences to put the heroine of my books, Scarlet Stain, in just the right place at the right time.

Sure, it's easier on me, but these girls today are so sophisticated. They hop on those kinds of things in a hot minute.

For instance, in book three I made the mistake of introducing a new character to my Better off Bled series, a mysterious and (of course) handsome runaway who rescues Scarlet Stain from Count Victus in a weak moment.

That was all well and good, except that it just so happened this particularly mysterious and handsome runaway was a—wait for it—
zombie
who couldn't feel pain, who couldn't die, and who couldn't be turned into a vampire, and let me tell you . . .

Chicks.

Went.

Absolutely.

Vine-swinging.

Hair-pulling.

Fist-pumping.

Nuts!

They flocked to my book blog and called me a cheater, a phony, and threatened to never read another Scarlet Stain adventure again unless I killed off the character. I did, on the very first page of my next book.

At last they were happy, but that happiness came with a price (at least for me, anyway). Now it's like I'm too paralyzed to finish the book, afraid to make another mistake like that again. I sigh and look out the coffee shop window, where I see the sun has set (like, hours ago!).

I check my heart-shaped watch and curse under my breath.

If I don't skedaddle,
tout de suite
, I'm about to be late to yet another book signing.

I slide the cursed laptop into my messenger bag, nosh on the last wedge of stale biscotti that's been sitting unattended for the last few hours while I wrote my latest misguided scene, and toss the wrapper and my empty hot chocolate cup in the trash on my way out the door.

The evening air is crisp and cool this time of year, and I pull my jacket closer to my throat to keep out the chill.

My publisher, Hemoglobin Press (get it?), always makes sure to release the latest Better off Bled title in October, just in time for plenty of brisk sales before Halloween.

I check my watch again and do the mental math: the Books 'n Beans megastore is on the corner of Maple Drive, which is two blocks away.

I can usually make it in ten minutes, walking at a comfortable pace, which is about all I can do with these stupid stiff black heels I always wear to these signings, but I have only eight minutes if I want to make it on time.

I shrug, pull the messenger bag closer for warmth, and settle on being fashionably late. (Hey, it's an author's prerogative.)

The heels click loudly on the pristine sidewalk of another spotless Beverly Hills side street, where I'm surrounded by clean trash cans and shiny No Parking at ANY Time signs every few steps.

During the day this street—more like an alley, really—would be bustling with Porsches and BMWs and all types of delivery vehicles, but now it's disturbingly deserted and all kinds of spooky.

Well, I shouldn't be surprised.

It's late for a school night, but the girls love these nighttime book signings, so as usual, I have to give the fans what they want.

Forget the fact that I've already put in a full day of school, done my homework
and
my laundry, and would love nothing more than to crash in my dorm suite and chill.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I couldn't afford to go to Nightshade Academy if it weren't for the fans.

The street is dim and quiet, with fall leaves blowing in the vacant road and crinkling underneath my scraping heels. I think, for the first time, that I should have walked the main drag, just to be under some better streetlamps and, you know, around other living people who might hear me shout if something bad actually happened.

This backstreet might be empty and cold, but it's the shortest route, and I
hate
to be late.

When I stop to adjust my messenger bag, I hear the footsteps. They stop moments later.

I turn, see nothing, and smile.

Ah, if only my fans could see me now, the horror writer spooked by the age-old Case of the Phantom Footsteps!

How many times have I written this very scene in one of my books, some thoughtless teenager walking carelessly down a deserted alley in some gritty city, being stalked by an unseen force that leaves—insert scary movie announcer voice here—
phantom footsteps
?

But this time it's different. I'm not some thoughtless teenager; I'm not exactly careless; this is a perfectly desirable street in the middle of Beverly Hills—pretty much the safest place on earth—and no one is stalking me. (I wish!)