Not Another Vampire Book (24 page)

How
could one normal, reasonably smart book editor do so many stupid things?

She
wiped at her eyes again and tried to focus on locating Slade.  At least, she
could fix
something
that had gone wrong and get him back on Melessa’s
scent.  He shouldn’t be hard to find.  Just look for shrieking fangirls.

Right.

It
took her about five minutes to see that Mr. Popularity wasn’t there, yet.  No
doubt he was off swashbuckling somewhere.  Stupid unpunctual Vampire.

Kara
consoled herself in the time honored way of eating.  The ball had a full
buffet.  It was the first bright spot in her day.  Calories didn’t count when
you were depressed and angry and about to get your heart broken by a sorcerer.  She
polished off several thousand of them.

“Kara
Lynn.”  Damien came up beside her as she finished some kind of pastry thing.  He
looked more grim than normal.  “I...”  He stared down at her and seemed to lose
his train of thought.  Ebony eyes roamed her face and hair.  “I’m sorry.”  He
finally murmured.  “I found you too late to be the man you deserve.”

Kara
glowered at him, losing the remained of her appetite.  If Vlad was really
planning to dust off the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech she might not give
Slade a chance to kill him.  “Changed your mind about sleeping with me already,
huh?  I told you it was a bad idea.”

“You
were right.  I have been selfish.”

“Whatever.” 
She opened
Eternal Passion at Sunset
mainly because it gave her something
to do besides drown him in the punchbowl.  “We were late for the ball, you
know.  Shouldn’t you rush off to hunt To’kel, before he turns into a bat and flies
home?”

The
party was in full swing, full of French Revolution style dresses and disco
balls suspended from the solid glass ceiling.  It made Kara nostalgic for her
senior prom and she’d hated her senior prom.  Her idiot date had gotten drunk
and vomited on her shoes.  Still, she wished that she could will herself back
to that gym floor, right now.  Anything would be better than listening to
Damien let her down gently.

Damien
made an aggravated sound as she flipped through the manuscript hard enough to
rip one of the pages.  “Kara Lynn, stop.”  He took hold of her arm and guided
her towards a more secluded corner of the vast room.  No one else was getting
too close to him, anyway.  Damien’s dark aura was more pronounced than ever.  The
guy was like party kryptonite.  “Must you do that?”

“Do
what?”  If something was bugging him, she was about to make it her new hobby.

Asshole.

“The
book.  Must you continually turn to that damn thing, instead of listening to me?”

“Yep.” 
She scanned some random paragraph.  It was chapter seven again, Slade and
Melessa in the graveyard.  Nice and cheery.  As she pretended to read, the word
‘
cari
’ jumped out at her.  Kara frowned in surprise.  She’d
thought
she’d seen it before, but she hadn’t really noticed its context.  Why would
she?  Now though, she was a heck of a lot more interested.

Melessa
knelt by the grave her delicate hand fingering the carved words as she read.  “Joseph
cari
of Jasmina.”  She glanced up at him.  “You killed this man?  But, he had a
wife.  Someone who loved him.”

Wait
a second...

Kara
blinked, rapidly, her irritation fading into shock.

Wife?

“Damien?” 
Her voice sounded far away.  “What does that mean?”  She held it up for him to
see, her fingernail tapping the incriminating section.

He
flashed the page a distracted look and then did a visible double take.  His
face got taunt.  “It means Slade killed Joseph.”  He muttered, warily.  “I’m
not surprised.  He killed many...”

Kara
cut off the evasion.  “What does
cari
mean?  What’s the exact
translation?”

“Beloved.”

“That’s
it?”

Damien
hesitated for a long beat.  “That is the literal meaning, yes.”  He finally
reported, sounding resigned.  “The word signifies more, though.  In my language
‘
cari
’ is what we call our mates.  Humans would say ‘husband’ or ‘wife,’
but that’s not the real meaning.  It would be more like ‘other half.’”

Kara
swallowed.  Hard.  “But, you’re just calling me that as an endearment, right?”

Glowing
black eyes fixed on her with a flat expression.  “No.”

Her
jaw sagged open, as she tried to get oxygen to her lungs.

Slade
calling her his Eternal-One was idiotic.  Just about the stupidest thing ever
written.

Damien
deciding that she was his other half wasn’t nearly so funny.  In fact, it did
crazy things to the inside of her chest.  Where was he getting this?  It certainly
wasn’t part of Tanya’s script.  Why would he think Kara was this special
one-in-a-billion
cari
he’d been waiting for?

What
was going on?

”That’s
not right.”  She squeaked out.  “Something’s not... No.  I’m just not... I’m
not her.  I’m just not.”  Kara Donnelly hadn’t been made especially for
anybody,
especially
not anybody like Damien.  She barely even dated and
he was... magic.  No, no, no, no, no.  “There’s been a mistake.”

Damien
watched her silently.

“There
has.”  Kara bobbed her head.  “Seriously.  Slade was mistaken about my
Eternal-oneness and now you’re confused, too.  Me being here had crossed some
wires.  You want a different girl.  Thinner, with better hair and who’s from this
reality.”

“Do
you wish to invoke
cariNa
?”

The
phrasing was very calm and formal.  She had absolutely no idea what it meant.  “I
don’t know.  Do I?”  Her mind was buzzing and Damien was being no help at all. 
He just stood there with his jaw locked, like he didn’t care what she had to
say.  “What is Carrie-Nah?”

“It’s
where I let you go.”  He wasn’t looking at her, now.

“Like
breaking-up, you mean?”  Understanding dawned.  “Wait, you’re trying to
dump
me?”

His
face grew tighter.  “You would be free.  It would be best for you, Kara Lynn.”

Okay,
now that was just insulting.  “This is unbelievable.  One minute we’re almost
having sex, then
we’re cosmic soul mates, and now you’re dumping me?! 
Your mood swings give me whiplash.”

He
bit-off a series of words that could only be Wizard Warlock oaths.  “I am
trying
,
Kara Lynn.”  He shook his head.  “You have no idea how hard I’m trying to be
your mate right now, and give you what you need.”

“Right.” 
She crossed her arms over her chest, completely unimpressed with his self-
sacrificing tone.  Kara should be glad
he wanted to end things.  Getting
in any deeper with this jackass was
such
a bad idea.  “Ya know,
Slade
didn’t try to dump me two seconds after announcing I was his It Girl.”  She
snapped, anyway.

That
got a reaction.

“Of
course, he didn’t!”  Damien’s calm mask slipped and beneath it he was
out-of-control furious, edging into despair.  “Slade’s never cared about you or
anyone else!  He would take you for himself, no matter what the costs!  He’s a selfish,
oblivious oaf, but
he’s
your hero.  So fine.”  He waved a disgusted
hand.  “Go be with the fucking Vampire in his fucking palace.  When I kill him,
you’ll at least get the ruby furniture and a nice crown.”  Damien plowed a palm
through his hair and turned away, like he wanted to put distance between them.

Had
he lost his mind?  “Damien.”  She cut off his escape, stepping in front of
him.  “Why are you suddenly doing this?  After what happened in the cab, do you
really want me to go with Slade?”

“
No!
” 
He roared.  “I don’t fucking
want
it.  But, if I die and you are my
cari
,
you would be alone.  If Slade dies and you are his Eternal-One, you will be
safe on the Vampire Isle.  It would be better for
you
to be with him.”

Kara
blinked at that reasoning.  “So, when I asked you to give up your vengeance,
that’s
what you got out of the conversion?”

“You
were right.”  His mouth barely moved.  “I must see you cared for, after I am
gone.”

“Very
thoughtful.” 
Imbecile
.  “Only I won’t
be
here.  If all goes as
planned, I’m going home, so you don’t have to worry.  You’ll be dead and I’ll
be back in reality, writing Tanya’s rejection letter.”

His
lips compressed, like she’d just made him even angrier.  “And if I
don’t
die, will you still think to go back to your ‘reality?’  Your own time?”

“You
will die, Damien.”  And it would kill her.  Not that he cared.

“You
don’t know that.”  He insisted stubbornly, but he clearly believed it, too.

“Yes,
I do.  You’ll have died in some big showdown, just how you want it, and I’ll go
back home, just like I want.  A happy ending, all around.”  It made her want to
cry just thinking about it.

“I
don’t want to die and I don’t want you to go back to the future!”

One
of the braver waiters had been edging towards them with glasses of champagne. 
Damien’s bellow had him executing a quick U-turn and scurrying away.

Kara
barely noticed.  “Really, McFly?”  She challenged.  “What
do
you want,
then?  And don’t say vengeance or so help me...”

“I
want
you
, Kara Lynn.”  His voice was low and bleak.  He scrapped a hand
through his hair, looking defeated.  “I need you.”

Kara
started up into his tortured gaze… and realized she was completely in love with
this moron.  She listened to those short, desperate words and surrendered to
the inevitable.  She’d known him such a short time, and her life was upside
down, and he would break her heart…

But,
there was just no point in fighting it.

As
doomed and stupid as it seemed, she was completely in love with this
aggravating bastard.  “Oh God.  I’m such an
idiot
.”  She pressed her
palms into her eye sockets and fought the urge to laugh hysterically.  Falling
for Damien was so utterly insane that Kara nearly went back to wondering if she
was just imagining this whole misadventure.  Maybe she was locked up in a
padded cell somewhere for her own protection.

What
was she
thinking?
It was hopeless
to love a supernatural villain
from a romance novel.  Especially one who claimed he couldn’t feel any emotions
beyond revenge.  He wouldn’t love her back.  Not ever.  And ‘ever’ was a pretty
long time for someone immortal.  Damien was hardly going to want to plan a
dream wedding with some tiny life-spanned, mostly boring,
ranking-consistently-second-to-all-things-vengeance human from another
dimension of space and time.

What
could possibly come from this except misery?

“It’s
just so damn
hopeless.
”  She whispered that for her own benefit, but Damien
apparently agreed with her assessment.

His
jaw ticked.  “I know.”  He started to stalk off, then turned back with a curse. 
“You still need to say it.”  He snarled.

Kara
was close to hyperventilating.  “Say what?”  She asked, blankly.

“Say
you’re invoking fucking
cariNa!
”

“What? 
No.”  She still wasn’t sure what
cariNa
really
was
.  No way in hell
was she trusting his judgment about invoking it.  Not when he was acting like
this.  What if he tricked her into doing something she couldn’t take back? 
Kara wasn’t capable of making any decisions at the moment.  She was thinking
six million different thoughts.  “I’m not saying anything, right now.”

Damien
opened his mouth and then closed it, again.  “But, you have to.  You don’t
understand.  If you don’t do this, I would still be your mate under the Wizard
Warlock’s laws.”

Clearly,
a tragedy for him.

“So
what?”  Jesus, that was the least of her problems.  “There’s only one of you
guys left, anyway.  Who’s gonna care about your laws?”

“
I
care!
”  He shouted, looking wild.

Several
nearby partygoers flashed him concerned looks.

Kara
glowered at them, then turned back to Damien and lowered her voice.  “I thought
you didn’t care about anything except your vengeance?”  She challenged. 
“Remember that part?”

He
blinked, his face going blank in shock.  “I don’t.”  He sputtered.  “I can’t.”

“Right.” 
Kara sighed and wondered when that waiter was coming back with the drinks.  She
had the sudden urge to get plastered.  “Look, I don’t even think I
am
your
cari
.”  She was a pragmatic person.  Unrequitedly in love or not,
she knew she wasn’t Damien’s predestined bride.  There was no way he was right
about that.  “So, it’s all kinda moot.”

“You’re
claiming we
aren’t
mates?  That fate is wrong or that I am lying?”  Now,
he sounded incensed.  “I’m a doctor.  I assure you, I know enough about biology
to definitively prove you’re my
cari
, if you think to test it.”