Vampire Encounters - Second Chances Page 2

  Her friend laughed, but adjured Sam to think about finding a date just once in a while before she hurried out of the cube. Gratefully, she turned back to her computer and settled in to monitor the system and maybe sneak a bit of time with her novel once the nightshift kicked in.

  After Lurleen left, Sam spent several long and unproductive minutes just staring at her monitor. When the screensaver kicked in, she realized she’d sat for over five minutes doing nothing at all but thinking about her friend’s evaluation of what was wrong with Sam’s life. Lurleen was right, of course; she usually was. Sam was hung up on Cole Grayson. She wasn’t in love with him! That would be silly and more than a little crazy. But she did think far more about him than was healthy.

  It was hard not to; he was fascinating. He was beautiful and intelligent and sweet. And not real. With a sigh, Sam got up and wandered to the break room to refill her ‘Save a Horse—Ride a Cowboy’ mug. Lurleen had given it to Sam for Christmas saying she hoped it would give Sam ideas. It had, but they all involved bopping Lurleen on the head with the heavy porcelain cup. However, Sam liked the song the cup celebrated and it kept her coffee nicely hot, so she kept it. And right now she felt a serious need for coffee. Maybe some caffeine would help Sam’s headache.

  Two Tylenol and a fresh cup of heavily creamed coffee later, Sam returned to her desk and tried to lose herself in the last half of Volume Eight of The Vampire Encounters. After less than a chapter, Sam decided it might be the book exacerbating her headache rather than continued worries about Lurleen’s observations.

  Normally Sam adored the world of Marie Desiree’s vampires and their various tribulations. She had been a fan of the series since the first book. There was just something so compelling about the characters and world in the novels that she forgave its various and occasionally numerous literary shortcomings.

  Several of Ms. Desiree’s characters had a spark of life inside them that drew the reader to them and gave them a reason to actually care what happened in their lives. Sometimes Sam wanted them to succeed, and sometimes she wanted them to fail miserably. It depended on the character. It was pretty much how she reacted to people in real life. Sometimes she loved them, and sometimes she wanted to kick their asses.

  She grinned at the parallel. It was a pity she didn’t have some nice vampire to help forget some of the more irritating people in her life. It would be lovely to have someone as understanding as Cole Grayson to talk with.

  She wrinkled her nose. That sort of thinking led to long lectures from Lurleen. She firmly tried to put thoughts of how understanding and wonderful Cole was away, and didn’t entirely succeed.

  With that happy fantasy niggling unwanted at the back of her mind, she went back to her book and sank deeper into the world the author had created. As she read, the characters’ emotions and longings rolled off the page. Their fears and ambitions were real and something she could identify with—especially Cole Grayson’s. As the resident anti-hero, his ethics occasionally appeared ambiguous but there was a core of morality to the man that had grown as the series progressed.

  As his motivations and history were revealed, he progressed from the apparently cold, emotionless near-villain of the first book into a misunderstood hero with a soft heart whose popularity among fans of the series nearly eclipsed Wynnston Matthews’ appeal as the author-acknowledged hero of the books. All the fans agreed that Cole was a big marshmallow far more likely to rescue a kitten than drown it.

  There was controversy over whether the hardness portrayed in the first book was an act or just bad characterization and writing on the author’s part. Sam detected signs of the gentle and caring soul in the first book and personally thought Cole’s characterization had gotten out of Ms. Desiree’s control. The core character was just too nice a guy, and it kept showing through the veneer of iniquity she tried to cover him with.

  And Marie was too in love with Wynn to ever show her hero in an unflattering light, so those duties all fell to Cole. Whenever the author needed a backhanded good deed performed that was beneath Wynn’s exalted state and moral superiority, Cole was perfectly suited to do what was wrong for all the right reasons. When she needed someone to get their heart broken, Cole was a convenient choice for whipping boy and dupe. Wynn was never shown easily tricked just because he wanted to believe in someone. Wynn didn’t let his heart and emotions rule his good sense. But Cole did.

  In the process of saving Wynn from appearing as less than perfect in all ways, Marie Desiree had made Cole much more human than the other characters. He was flawed. He cared too much and sometimes did stupid, impulsive things because of it. His loyalty and capacity to love were immense. He was the nasty vampire with a classic heart of gold. And utterly beloved by hundreds of fans. They bought the novels for his sake.

  As Lurleen so frequently pointed out and Sam freely admitted, Sam was one of those who kept buying the books just to read about Cole.

  Normally a new Marie Desiree novel was a bright spot in Sam’s week, but this book was different than the ones that came before it. Sam frowned unhappily as she read. The writing quality was much the same as ever. Parts were almost lyrical while other bits seemed haphazard and thrown together. Sam could tell which passages really claimed the author’s passion as opposed to those that were tossed in just to link the sections that held Ms. Desiree’s interest.

  It wasn’t the quality that disturbed Sam. She was used to Marie Desiree’s style and literary shortcomings. It was nothing so easily ignored as that. This was much more troubling and struck Sam as insidious. It was the overall direction the novel was taking. The entire tone of the book struck Sam as sinister and the current plot line was not being particularly kind to her misunderstood hero.

  Estranged from Wynn and the rest of his vampire family, Cole had been forced to destroy the woman he loved in the previous installment of the saga. Now he was dealing with the fallout from that action, and no one in the story seemed to understand that he had no choice but to kill Falcon Matthews, Wynn’s evil daughter, to save a group of innocent people. Instead, the few people he’d counted as his friends and family deserted him, leaving him completely alone.

  Cole truly loved Falcon, and discovering that she was malicious and unfeeling was a horrible blow to him. Finding out that she never loved him and was simply using him to further her own plans devastated Cole. The previous book left him broken-hearted and alone. It was all just heartrending, and Sam sniffled a bit as she reached for a Kleenex. She felt so bad for him. It wasn’t fair that someone with so much goodness inside them was so utterly miserable.

  And now the author was completing the destruction of Sam’s favorite in high style and what Sam considered a completely malicious way. Sam was rapidly losing all patience and what little respect she’d once had for Marie Desiree.

  In Sam’s opinion, the most awful of the author’s actions was telling the book from Wynnston Matthews’ point of view. Marie Desiree had returned to the format of the first novel, showing Wynn as the flawless but tragic hero and Cole as the heartless ‘evil’ brother. It didn’t seem to matter that she was contradicting at least six of the previous books. She was probably hoping to lure back the readers she’d lost due to some of the stranger literary techniques she’d experimented with in later installments. She wanted Cole to be the villain. Sam mentally gagged at the very idea. She hated Wynn, and now Ms. Desiree had decided to show Cole as a monster and portray it all though Wynn’s eyes?

  Sam growled and swore softly before she sighed. Oh well, she’d just have to deal with it. It couldn’t get much worse.

  An hour later, she wasn’t so sure of that. Sam wiped her streaming eyes, took a sip of her now lukewarm coffee and began the final chapter reluctantly. She confessed silently that she was afraid of what might happen next. There had been nasty rumors for months that the author was planning to kill off Cole, since he was in danger of becoming more popular than Wynn. Ms. Desiree reportedly didn’t like writing for Cole and wanted to focus on her
beloved hero. She believed taking Cole out of the series would free her to pursue the plotlines she was really interested in and she felt the best way to do so was to kill the character permanently.

  Sam thought it the most demented idea she’d ever run across. She also believed it highly unlikely. Surely no one was that insane. But now she realized she was wrong and Ms. Desiree really was insane—stark raving mescal-drunk crazy!

  Sam certainly didn’t like what she’d read so far. The author spent the entire novel trying to show Cole in the worst possible light, attempting to return him to the villain of the original concept. Shown through Wynn’s eyes, Cole was meant to appear as a horrible person.

  But it wasn’t working. Well, perhaps he would look like a fiend to someone who’d not read any of the other novels, but to someone like Sam, who’d followed the whole series, it only made Wynn and the others look like complete monsters, blaming their own shortcomings and mistakes on an innocent man. That was some small comfort, but not much. Even portrayed as the bad guy, Cole was miserable. She snarled and sniffled and cursed Marie Desiree as a heartless bitch. How dare that woman say Cole was a self-serving user? Her eyes narrowed as she read.

  On top of trying to establish Cole as the villain, the author made Wynn and most of the other characters treat him worse than a stray dog. Sam hated them all. If they were not the monsters they appeared to be, then they were certainly blind and stupid at the very least.

  Can’t they see what he’s really like? Sam thought as she blew her nose. Heartless unfeeling bastards, every last one of them! And the ones who didn’t fit that description were idiots.

  She read on.

  By the end of the book Sam was quite ready to do Marie Desiree a lasting injury. What she’d done to Gilbert Martinez wouldn’t even compare to what she’d do to that crazy women if she could get her hands on the bitch.

  She snarled soundlessly as she reached the finale. Desiree had killed him! That cruel, uncaring, evil excuse for an author had killed Cole in an absolutely horrible way. And it was clear this wasn’t some cheap literary trick and he wouldn’t wake up in the next novel. There would be no Bobby Ewing shower scene, no returning from the dead to save this tragedy. It was obvious that Cole was permanently gone.

  Sam was a little taken aback by the intensity of her unhappiness. Still she couldn’t say she was completely surprised. Cole was her favorite character ever, and now he was dead. He’d been treated horribly for the whole book, and then cruelly killed. It just wasn’t fair.

  She sat staring at her own reflection in her window with the book still in her hand. This couldn’t be the way it ended. Anger ignited in her stomach and spread throughout her body. She stilled the trembling of her hands when she unconsciously clenched her fingers into fists.

  She’d be damned if she ever bought another book that woman wrote as long as she lived. What the hell was Marie Desiree thinking?

  As some of the rage dissipated and the intense sadness deepened, Sam started to cry again. She thought of all the ways she’d save Cole if she had an opportunity. In Marie’s place, Sam would write it very differently. She would see Cole got the sort of life he deserved, not the constant angst and pain Ms. Desiree doled out to him. Given the least chance, she’d make Cole’s life happy.

  Sam blew her nose again. It was silly to be this upset, of course. Cole Grayson was just a character in a book, but she couldn’t help feeling as though a dearly beloved friend had just died. Drops of sorrow spotted the pages of her novel, wrinkling the paper in neat, perfectly round circles. She cursed softly and blotted the pages of her book. Maybe Lurleen was right. Maybe Sam did love Cole Grayson just a little. Why else would she feel so devastated? She tried to get her emotions under control.

  Bereft and heartbroken, she wiped at the tears that wouldn’t stop flowing. “I wish there was something that would make this all better,” she murmured to the book. “Oh, Cole, I wish there was some way to change all this.”

  The usually quiet sound of equipment from the lab located just the other side of the wall from Sam’s cube increased suddenly. A violent shockwave rocked Sam’s cube, throwing her from her chair. A large binder fell from a shelf, landing painfully on top of her stomach before bouncing away. Her coffee mug shattered beside her head, sending sharp shards into her cheek. She felt the sudden coolness of blood evaporating on her skin and knew the broken porcelain had cut her face.

  Moaning and disoriented, she slowly raised her head and started to sit up. One moment she was lying on the carpet and the next she was falling off the floor toward the roof. Either gravity had reversed itself or the room had flipped. Whatever the case, she was now plummeting toward the ceiling. Instinctively she closed her eyes and threw out her arms to ward off the impact. She was completely startled when she hit something soft and yielding rather than crashing through the white fiberboard ceiling tiles into the concrete floor dividers above them.

  She blinked a couple of times as her brain sorted out that she was alive, relatively unhurt, and lying atop another human being. Sam struggled to retain some kind of composure as her mind fought to process what had just seemed to happen to her. She took several slow, deep breaths and looked directly into eyes of a peculiar shade of blue. The closest word to fit that color was lavender. She couldn’t see much of him—the body beneath her was definitely male—only those blue violet eyes ringed by long black lashes. Blood from the cut on her face dripped onto his pale skin and into his mouth as he opened it to speak.

  She presumed he was going to ask a question since that would be a sensible reaction to having a strange woman land on you but he never had the chance. The instant her blood touched his tongue the room turned upside down again, sending them both plummeting through space. Sam could do little more than cling to her companion, screaming into the void.

  Chapter Two

  Don’t be afraid.

  Speeding through nothingness, the gentle request wasn’t actual words. It was an impression, a thought flowing from the man Sam clutched so tightly.

  You aren’t alone. I’m here. Don’t be afraid.

  It was his thought inside her mind. And a dear, silly thing for him to project since he was every bit as afraid as she was. She could feel it. He was just trying to protect her. There was warmth surrounding that thought. She felt a smile inside her head…His smile. He was touched she didn’t find his comfort reprehensible or annoying. In the wake of that initial attempt to soothe her despite his shared fear, other thoughts and emotions flowed. Hidden little secrets and fears, prideful actions and devastating ones, all were revealed to Sam. Love, joy, hate, hurt, anger, everything he felt and had ever felt was there for her to experience. One man’s life opened before Samantha and became a part of her.

  In return, everything comprising Sam Bailey became his. She had no idea how long life and memory flowed between them, twining into a glowing cable tying them to each other. Unbreakable, it bound their minds together. Time didn’t really exist. There was only the two of them learning and experiencing everything the other ever had via the unknown energy flow. It was beautiful and glorious, and terrifying.

  For however long the incident lasted, there was no Cole and no Samantha, but some combined being who was both. There was no separation between them. Nothing was secret or withheld. She knew all his fears as intimately as he knew hers. There was nowhere to hide the sins and embarrassments each had. Regrets, faults, and mistakes brought a blush to both their faces; everything was revealed and shared.

  But just as there was nowhere to hide, there was no reason for mortification. Each shame or humiliation the one felt was immediately understood by the other. Forgiveness and comfort were given and reciprocated. Fear of rejection and hatred faded before it completely formed.

  How could she despise him for actions dictated by his search for love and acceptance when he didn’t despise her for being too cowardly to even begin such a search? At least he wasn’t afraid to live.

  I paid the price for that.
You may have been wiser.

  Wiser and alone.

  In the end, so was I.

  Alone. Joined now as they spun through nothingness, it seemed impossible to experience that state again. If they were all that was left of creation, at least they were together.

  Yes, together. Never alone again.

  Neither was sure in whose mind the thought originated.

  * * * *

  When the world stopped doing its impression of a blender, Samantha was lying on the floor with her lovely, lavender-eyed man on top of her.

  Cole Grayson…

  He held her tightly as lines of crackling purple energy flowed over both of them, brightening the darkness and fingering warm bands of memories between them with each pass it made through their entwined bodies.

  As the violet fire settled somewhat, Cole lifted his head.

  “That was extraordinary,” he said. His accent was smooth, educated British with a subtle Irish lilt as pleasing to the ear as his face was to the eye. Energy still crackled in his black hair, lifting individual strands to spark from his body to hers. A faint smear of her blood lingered on his lips where it had dripped from her cut cheek. They knew somehow it was the source of their joining.

  His arms were wrapped securely about her and he was smiling in pleasure when she lifted dazed eyes to meet his equally stunned ones.

  “It tingles.” Eldritch bands of energy raced from one strand of her brown hair to another, tickling across her scalp. “It feels nice.

  “Yes. I quite like it, too.” His smile was as bewildered as she felt. “You taste good. Very...soothing,” he added. He sighed in pure pleasure. “Peaceful. When I taste you, you make me feel peaceful.” He dipped his head, intent on licking the dark liquid still seeping from her wounded cheek.

  She sighed happily and clasped him closer to her. His comment made perfect sense to Sam’s slightly scrambled brain.