The Vampire Book of the Month Club (22 page)

The room is filled with an eerie slick sound of thick, musky cream being worked into lukewarm skin, of slow and languid lathering.

I speak quietly, in honor of the stillness that fills the room. “Abby.”

Abby croaks, “Nora.”

“How are you, Abs?” I ask, eager to hide the shock I feel at the sound of her almost masculine voice. One thing Abby's always been is a girly-girl: heels and helpless giggles and French perfume and more eyeliner than she should wear during the daytime. To hear her sounding like a 360-pound wrestling announcer after a long night of smoking cigarettes and downing shots of whiskey has left me more shaken than I care to share with her. I wonder what her future, our future, will be like on the other side of mortality.

She shrugs and winces at the pain. Undeterred, she shrugs once more. “We'll see, Nora. The jury's still out on how normal I'll look once we get out of here.”

“Just be glad we
are
getting out of here,” I say, still shivering from my encounter with Lord Rothchild.

“Tell me about it. I've got reshoots all next week.”

“Abby,” I begin, tempted to lecture her about doing too much too soon.

“Nora, it's the best thing, for all of us. No matter how I look, no matter how cheesy they may be, the makeup crew on
Zombie Diaries
is the best. They'll get me in shape in no time.”

“It
is
for the best,” Reece says, and suddenly the mere sound of his voice fills me with an almost uncontrollable rage. “We can't have a world-famous actress like Abby going missing for too long. Whatever will the tabloids think?”

His distaste for what Abby does—for what I do—is obvious, but his words are reassuring nonetheless. There is a future, after all. We are getting out of this place . . . eventually.

What might happen then is anybody's guess, but if this experience has taught me anything, it's to be grateful for small favors—even when vampires are the ones handing them out!

Abby coughs up a load of phlegm that makes even Reece blanch, and suddenly the Healers shoot me dirty looks backed up by fangs and opaque eyes.

Reece puts a surprisingly gentle hand on my shoulder and tugs me away with a firmness that, despite our love-hate relationship, is impossible to resist.

Abby and I share a silent BFF wave with long, wriggling fingers as the Healers turn back to her with a vengeance, fingers dripping with lotion and goo, and I face the other new vampire in the room.

Wyatt sits in a modern black chair with a hole for his face, like those massage chairs they have in the middle of the mall that no one but pudgy businessmen ever really sit in, and only then to flirt with the pretty girls they always hire to massage their hairy (probably) backs. He's facing me and smiling mostly, wincing occasionally, as three female Healers (don't get all excited; they're twice as ugly as the guy Healers, which I didn't even think was possible) buff his back with circular loofah sponges slathered in thick white cream.

“Nora,” he says, his voice sounding energetic. I soon see why.

His left arm is hooked up to an IV dripping fresh, thick blood.

Instinctively I lick my lips, protruding now thanks to my dangling fangs as the hunger tingles at the edge of my nervous system.

“How they hanging?” he grunts as a grody old Healer digs deeper into his back with the palm of her gnarled, clawed hand.

“Charming as ever,” I say, walking to his side.

The Healers stop their scrubbing and pour a jug of clear water across his back to wash it dry. There are still scars, but I can see them fading, and they have come a long way from the open, exposed beef-jerky-strips look he was sporting when I shoved him into the backseat of Reece's Mercedes like a lifeless piece of bloody meat.

“Feeling OK?” I ask tentatively.

“Never better,” he bluffs, tilting his head in Abby's direction. “How's she doing?”

I tsk, amazed that even as a vampire, I can still feel such strong jealousy. “A few hours ago you were ready to dissolve her in a holy water bath, Wyatt. Now you're worried about how she is?” The betrayal stings more than any harm Reece and his immortal fangs could do.

“That was then, Nora; this is now.”

“It sure is,” I grumble as Reece shuffles away to consult with Abby's Healers.

“So,” Wyatt asks in a low voice as his Healers turn to add another helping of salve to their rough sponges before attacking his back once more, “what did the Ancients say?”

“I have to write vampire books,” I confess glumly.

“That's
it
?” He lifts his face out of the hole in the massage chair to see if I'm pulling his leg. His eyes look alive and alert, his already thick lips looking even puffier—and ultimately more kissable—thanks to the fangs hidden deep beneath and the lifeblood coursing through his veins.

“Forever.” I spit out the punch line.

“Oh,” he says. “Well, consider yourself lucky.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Ancients paid me a visit too,” he confesses quietly. “Well, one of them anyway.”

“Let me guess. Lord Rothchild?”

“One and the same.” He smiles, though I can tell he's still in pain. “He said—get this—he said my punishment was to be your personal . . .
bodyguard
.”

“Really?” I ask, a little too loudly, glad I can no longer blush. “What about Abby, though?”

“Let her get her own bodyguards,” he jokes. “Better yet, let the studio get her bodyguards.”

“Be serious,” I say, slugging his shoulder and instantly regretting it when I see the look of pain cross his handsome face. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, right. I dunno what Abby's punishment is. Lord Rothchild paid her a visit too and whispered something in her ear. She nodded and smiled, so it couldn't have been too bad. But honest, I have no idea. Ouch!”

One of his Healers has pinched his back, signaling visiting hours are over.

We stand there in silence for a few moments, his head slowly retreating into the turtle shell of his ancient massage chair, me watching the Healers work wonders on his young, smooth back.

I hear quiet footsteps falling across the tile floor of the Healing Room behind me.

“Bye, Wyatt,” I say as Reece tugs me away.

“Later,” Wyatt says, wriggling his fingers at me before cooing to one of his Healers, “Faster, ladies, faster. I've got a swim shoot later this week, so don't let me down.”

Outside the Healing Room the halls are quiet and, for the first time, quite empty.

I walk next to Reece for a while, assuming he's taking me somewhere.

Instead the halls turn into a maze of twists and turns.

I try to remember where we are, where we've been, to predict where we're going, but the walls Reece leads me past now are no longer sterile and white. Instead, they're varied colors, larger and then smaller, the floors wide and changing, and sooner than later I'm disoriented, at Reece's mercy to get me back to someplace safe.

When we are quite alone, without a Guardian in sight, he turns to me. “I know you think you've won.” His breath is hot and redolent of fresh blood as it spills across my chest in waves.

“I don't, Reece. I—”

“You haven't.” He takes a menacing step forward as I try, in vain, to hold my ground against his sudden ferociousness. “Maybe you're safe for now. Maybe you're safe until the new book comes out, until your book signings are all over, until the interviews are all done and the eyes of the vampire world are off you for a little while, but no vampire—least of all
you
—is irreplaceable.”

“But the Council.” I know I sound pathetic but am powerless to control the quivering in my voice.

Reece's rage is a physical thing, causing his already distorted face to curl into a mask of pure and unadulterated hatred: hatred of just one thing—me!

“The Council,” he spits back, “is outdated and impotent. My time is coming, Nora, and when it does, you and your friends back there are done for, finished, through. My power will be absolute, and there's nothing the Council—or you—will be able to do to stop me!”

His face is flushed, his fangs out, his claws eager and sharp, his head jutting forward as I back into a cold, stone surface that feels like exactly what it is—a prison wall.

“Fine,” I manage to bluff. “Do your worst.”

He laughs, an empty, broken sound that echoes through the gloomy chamber he's lured me into.

“Nora, my dear, I plan on it.”

And with that promise, he turns and leaves me alone, his footsteps echoing down the long, winding corridor as his pace quickens and his rage slowly dissipates in the foul air he's managed to leave behind.

But I am not alone, for from the shadows appears an Ancient. But not just any Ancient.

“Lord
Rothchild
,” I whisper, rushing to his side like a second grader who's just found his mom in the crowded mall.

“Nora,” he says, not shying away from my vulnerable embrace.

I hug him, gently, because although he is obviously quite powerful, he is just as obviously quite frail.

“Follow me,” he says after a time. He walks slowly but surely, as if his legs aren't as thin as broomsticks, as if his arms aren't trembling at his sides. Still, his body is firm, as if he's petrified, the organs long since withered and wasted away, and he's filled instead with solid granite.

The hallways seem brighter with his presence, and I realize that is because his Guardian walks behind us, a flickering torch in hand and a grim, unreadable expression on his face.

“Your young friends are almost ready for transport,” he says as we turn down the endless tunnels through which Reece lured me so easily, so carelessly. “For obvious reasons, Reece will not be accompanying you on your return journey to Nightshade Academy.”

“What will happen to him?” I ask, trying not to sound too concerned.

“To Reece? Nothing, I'm afraid. Laws are laws, and unless he breaks one more, we are powerless to stop him.”

I follow him in silence, and he finally turns, just before entering the main entrance to the building.

“Don't fear, Nora. You will not be alone on your journey through this afterlife.”

As if on cue, Wyatt and Abby are wheeled into the vast and glistening white foyer, smiling, though still pale and weak from their wounds. Abby is clearly the paler and weaker of the two.

“Safe travels,” Lord Rothchild says before leaving me with them. “And remember, Nora, you are one of us now. Write like one of us.”

T
he Creature crawls from the freshly dug grave, gray hands groping through the rich soil, pushing aside white maggots and earth to climb, one inch after the next, to the surface.

I stumble away from him, ridiculously high heels slowing my progress, getting stuck in the wet graveyard soil, tripping over broken, crooked headstones that snag at my black stockings and bruise my fair skin.

The Creature finally frees himself from the grave and begins his pursuit in earnest. His movements are slow but steady, his body a hulking shape of rotting flesh and gray bone, a face crammed with broken teeth and dark, empty eyeholes.

“Wyatt!” I cry, straining my voice, but I don't see him.

“Abby?” I yelp, limping backward as the Creature approaches and wrenching the small of my back against the top of yet another shattered headstone.

Abby too has abandoned me in my time of need.

Incredibly, I am alone again, running again.

Now the Creature stands to his full height of six feet or so, grave dirt still tumbling from his moldy, blue burial tux. (Why are they
always
buried in blue tuxes?) Mildew and decay waft off him like smoke from a raging fire.

Still on my feet, for now, I back carefully away as the Creature finally regains his bearings. His skin is more green than gray, the moonlight glinting off his rusty cuff links and the silver fillings where his teeth used to be.

His hands are half flesh, half bone, the fingers skeletal. From the second knuckle back, gray rotting flesh resembles one of those half gloves the guys at school will wear to play racquetball or to ride their hybrid scooters to the nearest Smoothie Shoppe.

He looks around at first, spying the headstones, the skin around his missing nose sniffing for flesh, sniffing, sniffing, until at last he spots me and growls, his dead, dry vocal cords emitting a ragged screech that sounds like four hundred pieces of broken chalk scraping the same big chalkboard all at once.

I turn now and run, scampering as a thick gray mist floods the graveyard and threatens to obscure the hundreds of headstones scattered across my path.

I cough on the thick fumes, the Creature at my back, dead lungs not affected by the mist. I stumble blindly forward, the dense fog crawling up my ankles, thighs, hips, waist, and stomach.

Grass crunches behind me, earth moving in front of me as I stop to gag, my hands on my knees, my lungs on fire, my eyes watering, tears running down my face, skin itching, muscles burning like I've just run a marathon.

A hand on my shoulder makes me scream as—

“Cut!” yells a disembodied voice. I can't see because the fog machine is going bonkers, causing my temporary blindness. Again.

“Harvey, what did I tell you about the mixture last time?” the voice is screaming, cutting through the fog and assaulting my ears as the tears continue to flow. “It's three parts water to one part fog juice, not the other way around. Didn't they teach you that at fog machine school? Let's regroup and start over. Nora, you all right?”

I laugh, taking the tissue Abby offers me as Wyatt pounds me on the back. “Yes, sir. Sorry. I just . . . couldn't . . . breathe!”

“Hey,” says the director, a portly man in cargo shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, scratching his beard out of habit as he holds his ever-present bullhorn by his side. “You did the right thing. Better we burn through a few minutes of dead film than kill our guest star, right, Abby?”