“I’m sorry,” Grace said, giving his gawky arm a squeeze. “Miss Wei decided the scene would pull more from Christian if he played it opposite Charlie.”
Matthew had been sitting on the counter looking poleaxed, but now his face twisted bitterly. “That guy gets everything.”
“I know it seems that way—”
“It more than seems that way. He gets the girls, the laughs, and now he steals my big death scene.”
“Matt.” Grace’s voice was sharp enough that the actor focused on her. It wasn’t possible for Matthew to hide his feelings when surrounded by those brightly lit mirrors. Understandably, his eyes were welling with anger and self-pity. Grace recognized that what she said now might matter for a long time. “You know how crazy this business is. Sometimes one person gets a break; sometimes another does. Charlie is talented. Everyone on this movie is.”
“I would have killed that scene,” Matthew said.
“I know you would. You think people don’t notice you because you’re quieter than the others, but I’ve been watching, and I know someday you’re going to be a great actor.”
“Someday . . . ” Matthew blew a disparaging raspberry. Grace decided not to remind him he was just twenty-one.
“Listen to me. Charlie’s smart and funny and has an advantage because he’s good at thinking his part through. You, though, you feel things more than he does. You throw caution to the wind, and you’ve got an instinct for what will come across on camera. When I’m ready to direct, I hope you’ll be willing to work with me.”
“Really?” Matthew said. “You want to direct?”
Grace laughed. Apparently, she was playing her aspirations closer to her vest than she’d thought. “You could pretend to be flattered that I’d want to direct you.”
“Of course I am. I mean—” He stopped and really looked at her. “I bet you’ll be good, Grace. Maybe better than Miss Wei.”
“Thank you, though you might want to keep that under your hat.” She jerked her head toward the trailer door. “Ready to go out and face everyone?”
“I guess.” Matthew sounded glum as he scooted off the makeup counter, but he looked calmer—not on the brink of tears anymore. He took a deep breath and stood straighter. “Thanks for telling me, Grace. This was better coming from you.”
“I’m glad,” she said, feeling better herself.
Now all they had to do was pray that Christian could scale this Matterhorn.
C
hristian stood in the kitchen set of the Pryor mansion while the gaffer checked his reflective qualities with a handheld light meter—yet another test of Christian’s ability to calibrate his glamour.
They were filming a serious scene today, one that took place toward the end of the story. Joe, his boys, and Mary were on the run from Joe’s murderous father. Self-preservation said they ought to keep running, but Charlie had remembered the gang’s last human victim was still alive. Because they’d decided not to be bad vampires anymore, Charlie had begged them to return to the mansion and save the girl. His desire to play hero would get his friend Matthew killed. The requirements of drama being what they were, George Pryor would foil the rescue by showing up. He’d spear Matthew with a tree branch, then be killed by his son for his villainy.
The emotions of the scene were operatic, to say the least. Christian was trying not to dwell on whether he could drag them out of himself for other people to stare at.
Left with little to do but stand there, he watched the confab Nim Wei was having with Charlie, Viv, and Philip on the edge of the set. Something was going on there. All their body language was strange. Charlie in particular wore a mix of guilt and excitement. Christian searched for Matthew and discovered him leaning with his arms crossed against a scaffold, his attention narrowed on the others. Christian had to frown at his attitude. Matthew should have been “going deep inside himself,” or whatever Method acting hoo-ha he’d decided to use for this. A fragment of Matthew’s thoughts waved for his notice. The young actor was deeply resenting Charlie . . . and thinking Grace was the nicest, prettiest woman he’d ever met.
Grace was standing a short distance from him, talking to a grip. The means by which Matthew wanted to show his appreciation had Christian’s neck hairs bristling—at least until he deciphered what Grace had done to earn his devotion.
“Hell,” he said, his possessive anger changing directions.
The gaffer straightened from placing a tape mark on the antique kitchen’s convincingly grimy checkerboard tiles. “You can take a break now if you need to.”
Christian didn’t need a break. He needed an explanation. The gaffer took an instinctive step backward as Christian’s jaw tightened. Not wanting to alarm him, Christian patted his shoulder.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Just need to clear something up.”
Nim Wei’s head turned as he strode from the kitchen set and across Soundstage Six to her. She’d have done better to conceal her faint amusement. The cables that snaked over the floor between them tempted him to wind them around her neck. He could study what electrocution did to elderly vampires.
“Christian,” she said, once he was close enough. “I suppose you’d like the new pages for today.”
He looked at the sheaf she was holding out. They had to be the mimeographs Grace had rescued from the gutter.
“Grace knew about this?” he asked.
Nim Wei pursed her lovely mouth and shrugged. “I ordered her not to spill the beans. It appears she’s told Matthew, but I’ve learned to make allowances for her tender heart.”
“You mean as opposed to having no heart at all.”
Philip and Charlie widened their eyes at him, but Viv just smiled at her shoes. The actress knew the sort of bitch her director was.
“I don’t see why this bothers you,” Nim Wei said. “You like Charlie. You should be happy for him. And it’s not as if you’ll have trouble learning new lines. That quick brain of yours is one of your assets.”
“What bothers me,” Christian said icily, “is you playing games. Nor do I appreciate you telling Grace to keep important things from me.”
Nim Wei knew how to match him in haughtiness. “Grace is my employee. As are you. Or have you forgotten our agreement?”
“You know I haven’t.”
“Then honor your word. In any case, I played this game for your benefit. Imitating human feelings isn’t good enough for this scene. This is
Teen-Age Vampire
’s climax. You need to inhabit Joe Pryor’s skin. You need to be imbued with his spirit.”
Christian’s glare was met by the queen’s single raised eyebrow—which threw more coals on his temper.
She
dared to doubt his honor? To use it to twist the facts about which of them was right? The air between them began to vibrate with their warring energy, the effect almost strong enough to be perceived by mortals.
“I won’t let you down,” Charlie interrupted hesitantly.
It was an effort to break off his staring match with the queen, but as Christian looked into the boy’s hazel eyes, he saw Charlie’s soul laid bare: how excited he was, how nervous, how badly he felt for Matthew while at the same time being determined to make the most of his chance to shine. Charlie genuinely liked and admired Christian—and wanted Christian to do well for his own sake. He thought Christian would be a solid actor, if he’d let himself loosen up.
Even as this awareness ran through the front of Christian’s mind, the back was filled with memories of the real Charles dying on that bridge in Florence. Of all his friends, Charles had been the one who’d seemed too full of life to snuff out. To see him—or rather Adam—the other day, his haunted gaze watching Christian through the taxi window, had been a terrible shock. The Charles he used to know was gone. Nothing could bring him back.
“You can do this,” Charlie said softly.
Though it probably hurt Charlie’s feelings, Christian had to turn away. His palm was pressed to his stomach, a gesture he should have had too much self-control to use. All these threads winding together from the past and present were making him uneasy.
J
oe was in the garage with Mary, settling the injured mortal into the back of a decades-old limousine. They needed to drive the girl to the hospital, to get her a transfusion. Joe’s skin was all-over anxiety. Everyone was counting on him to pull this off, and he wasn’t sure he could. He was hoping the ancient Rolls would start when an awful cry rang out from the house.
“My father,” he breathed to Mary, both their eyes gone round. “He’s found us.”
“Go,” she urged. “I’ll watch out for her.”
Joe barely took a second to be grateful Mary had strong nerves. He ran at vampire speed through his father’s decrepit house. That tortured cry had come from one of his boys, their pain distorting the sound too much to identify who it was. He didn’t think he could bear to lose any of them, not when they’d risked their lives to switch allegiances to him.
His immortal heart was beating much too hard when he burst into the unused kitchen. It took a moment for his eyes to make sense of the shambles there. Matthew and Philip lay beneath the wreckage of a butcher block table. At first he feared they were dead, but then he heard faint pulse sounds. A small puppylike whimper drew his gaze toward the pantry door.
Charlie was on his back, sprawled across the pantry threshold amidst the dust and neglect. Joe gasped in disbelief. His friend had been stabbed clear through his sternum with a long tree branch. The thing was pinning him to the floor. Joe’s father crouched above him, fangs out, face twisted like a demon’s. Even as Joe watched, George shoved the branch deeper. Blood bubbled up in a pool from the entry wound.
“ ’ Bout time you got here,” George gloated to his son.
The noise Joe made was a mix of fury and anguish.
“It’s all right,” Charlie gasped before Joe could rush recklessly over. “It hurts, but he missed my heart.”
“Missed it on purpose,” his father crowed. “Wouldn’t be much fun if my Joe’s buddies died too quickly.”
Red flashed across Joe’s vision, blood and rage rising up in him. He didn’t care how much older and stronger his father was. He’d been bullying people too long, and Joe had been letting him. He catapulted himself at George, dragging him up and hurling him off Charlie. Joe and his father wrestled back and forth across the antique kitchen, turning even more of it into kindling. Pans swung on their hooks and clanged. Chairs broke and cabinets splintered. George threw his son into the iron stove with such force that its door buckled.
Temporarily stunned, Joe shook himself, struggled upward, then hunched forward like a linebacker. He barreled toward his father with all his unnatural speed. George crashed backward at the impact, falling beneath him. A broken chair leg lay close at hand. Joe seized it, his biceps bunching in preparation for staking his sire with it.
Despite the blood running down his face, his father began to laugh.
“You can’t dust me,” he wheezed. “Charlie’s dying. I’m the only one whose blood is strong enough to save him.”
Doubt assailed Joe, his hand hesitating on the fatal blow. His father was an old vampire, and his blood did have healing powers. All born vampires possessed that gift. The thing was, Joe was a born vampire, too. Maybe he . . .
“Ah-ah-ah,” taunted his father. “You won’t have the juice to save him for another century.”
Joe couldn’t tell if the bastard was lying.
“Kill him,” Charlie urged, drawing Joe’s eyes to where he was fixed gruesomely to the floor. “None of us is safe as long as he’s alive.”
Joe looked back at his father, reading the truth of this in George’s mocking expression. He would kill them—today, tomorrow—whenever Joe or the others let down their guard. George’s upper lip curled in a sneer.
“You always were a weakling. Just like your mo—”
Joe set his jaw and plunged the stake down with all his might, the strength of both arms forcing it in. His aim was true. He caught his father right in the heart. For an awful second, nothing happened. They simply stared at each other in horror. Then George’s skin sank into his face, his body skeletonizing before Joe’s eyes. In moments, Joe was squatting over a pile of ash.
The stake clattered from his hand. He’d done it. After all those years of abuse, he’d killed his father. George Pryor would never hurt anyone again.
Joe was panting from more than exertion.
“Charlie,” he said like a dreamer waking.
“Still here,” Charlie tried to joke.
Joe rushed to him, only then taking in the full ghastliness of his impalement. Though Charlie was a vampire, he was a lesser breed than Joe. Considering his injuries, survival seemed improbable. Joe felt wetness run down his face and knew he was crying.
“Just pull it out,” Charlie said, the knowledge of what that would do to him evident in his face. “I’m not sorry if it ends this way. At least I . . . did the right thing for once.”
Joe wanted to touch Charlie, to comfort him, but didn’t know where was safe. He choked back a sob as Mary came to the door. When she saw Charlie, she sucked in her breath sharply. It shouldn’t have mattered that Joe was crying, but he swept his cheeks dry with the back of his forearm.