Angel at Dawn (33 page)

Read Angel at Dawn Online

Authors: Emma Holly

Tags: #Ghost stories, #Vampires, #Horror, #Paranormal, #Fiction, #Romance, #Paranormal romance stories, #Motion picture producers and directors, #Occult fiction, #Ghosts, #Occult & Supernatural, #Love stories

“Is the girl all right?” Charlie asked Mary.
Mary stared at him blankly, then shook herself from the shock. “She’s safe for now.” She turned her dazed eyes to Joe. “Do you need help? Would drinking my blood help him?”
Joe’s love for her welled unstoppably up in him, a wave of emotion like nothing he’d felt before. His human sweetheart was very brave. She knew Charlie’s bite might kill her, and still she offered herself. His eyes spilled over at the same time as a tender smile cracked across his face.
“He needs my blood,” he said huskily. “I’m just not certain it’s strong enough to heal him.”
Knowing he had to make the attempt, Joe braced on Charlie’s chest and yanked out the branch. More blood welled from the hideous hole, prompting Mary to cry out. Charlie’s eyes rolled white, but Christian slapped him awake again. He bit his own wrist until it bled.
“Try,” he begged, shoving the gash against Charlie’s mouth. “Please try to stay with me.”
 
 
G
race’s heart was pounding as Christian’s plea faded.
“Tell me you got that,” Miss Wei said to Wade.
The cinematographer beamed angelically. “I’m pretty sure we got it on both cameras.”
Getting what they needed had taken a number of time-consuming resets for the various harness stunts, as well as multiple takes—one of which had been spoiled by an overactive blood-delivery device. That said, the confirmation of Christian’s star power was indisputably in the can.
Christian hadn’t run out of gas. Each take had drawn more emotion from him, as if the story were a spell that was strengthening. Those tears Christian had been crying weren’t supplied by makeup. Even better, a couple members of the crew were wiping their eyes, too.
For her part, Grace felt as shaken as if she’d lived through the scene herself. Christian wasn’t back yet from his immersion in the role of Joe. He was sitting balanced on his heels with his head hanging. Charlie punched his arm as the actor who played George pushed creakily off the floor. The visual effects department would have fun turning him to dust. For now, he was simply banged up and tired.
“Good work,” George said, the praise almost ungrudging. “Both of you.”
Charlie’s recuperative powers were more youthful. He sprang to his feet with the prosthetic wound plastered to his chest. Andy from wardrobe started freeing him from it.
Matthew had also risen from his unconscious sprawl. He walked a bit unsurely toward his colleague. “I thought you were going to lose it,” he said, “when that bladder started squirting blood in Joe’s eyes.”
“I almost did,” Charlie admitted. “I bit my cheek so hard to keep from laughing it’s swollen now.”
“You owe me a beer,” Matthew said.
“I owe the world a beer,” he agreed, grinning brilliantly. He clapped Christian’s shoulder and offered him a hand up. “Come on, Hamlet. We’ve got to celebrate your first triumph as a real actor. You, too, Grace. No excuses. Everybody gets drunk tonight.”
Not everybody would be celebrating. Someone shouted “wrap” and announced a six A.M. call for crew. Grace forgot to wince at the early hour when Christian’s gaze found hers. His eyes were different: still open and soulful from playing Joe. Grace felt mesmerized by what she saw in them.
“You coming?” he asked.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” she said lightly.
His lean chest went up and down.
“Oh, boy,” Charlie said. “I think we need to give the lovebirds a few minutes.”
“I’ll drive her,” Christian said, not looking away from her. “We’ll meet you at the Villa Nova, the place we drank in before.”
“Be sure you do,” Charlie warned. “You’re the man of the hour.”
Christian’s intent expression made Grace nervous—or maybe it was her reaction to it that unsettled her. He always affected her, of course, but tonight a little earthquake seemed to be quivering inside her, a longing so deep it shook her foundations. Christian had exposed himself today, in ways he’d probably spent his whole life avoiding. Every scrap of intuition she possessed said he’d done it for her.
Her feet took a step back from him. “I have to grab my things.”
He nodded, his eyes taking on the golden gleam she’d grown too familiar with. It was, without a doubt, his best bedroom look.
She spun away before her sex ran out in a hot puddle. She’d given him enough assurances of her interest. Give him more, and she’d never be safe again.
She told herself she didn’t love him as she strode to the store room where she’d left her sweater and purse. The shadows at the back of Stage Six were thick, lights shutting down here and there as crew packed up for the night. Her heels rang out on the cement floor. They reminded her of horses’ hooves on cobbles. A clanking like a crazy radiator came from her left.
“Viv?” Grace had lost track of the actress once they’d completed her coverage, though in truth she doubted Viv was making the sound. Light flashed above her head, and Grace looked up.
The ceiling with its struts and catwalks had turned to sky.
She was on a bridge above a river, and her limbs were encased in steel. She gripped a long, gory sword in her right gauntlet. Or, it wasn’t
her
gauntlet, it was Christian’s. She was in his consciousness, her energy joined to and strengthening his.
How natural this felt was ridiculous.
She—or they—were facing an armored man who looked about nine feet tall.
“Tell me, Lavaux,” she and Christian said, “did you really imagine only my father brought allies to this fight?”
The other man was afraid of how strong they were. He took to his heels and ran with a mouselike squeak. Christian wanted to give chase, but there were other, closer threats to counter. Hand-to-hand combat was taking place on every side of them.
Grace shrieked as a weight struck them. It was a severed head in a helmet. It bounced off Christian’s stomach and landed at his feet. His friend Charles’ wide green eyes stared up through the visor, his irises glazing as Christian gaped.
Charles was dead, not just Philippe and Matthaus. No matter what Christian did, he couldn’t save his men. His father and Nim Wei had stacked the odds too high against them. His chest tightened with what he feared this day’s end would be. The hope that he could save any of his friends seemed too cruel to cling to. Grace’s spirit was knotting inside of him, as if it couldn’t abide his dread. At least she was safe from Gregori. Even his sire couldn’t kill a ghost.
“Grace,” Christian said, shaking her shoulders between his hands.
She was back on the soundstage, but his face wasn’t his face when she blinked at it. It was too perfect, too buffed and shining and beautiful—more like a piece of jewelry than living flesh. Christian’s eyes were obsidian lit by flames, an effect far more
other
than what he brought to her bedroom. His lips moved and spoke, but they were chiseled from rose marble.
What had he meant when he referred to her as a ghost?
“
Grace
,” he repeated. “Why aren’t you answering me?”
Was he right to claim she ought to remember him? Were other things he’d hinted at true as well? The chance they were real was a sun she didn’t want to stare into.
“I don’t feel well,” she said numbly. “Please make my excuses to the others. I’m going to grab a cab and go home.”
Sixteen
G
race hurried off the studio lot as if Christian were chasing her—which might have been true. He was so protective of her . . . except that now he was the person she needed protection from.
A cab was idling outside the gate, her own mini-miracle.
“Hollywood Bowl,” she told the driver.
The Bowl was a natural amphitheater, set among the hills beneath the famous Hollywood sign. They were past the season for summer concerts, and now it served as a park. Grace slipped in the Highland entrance, under the Oscar-like statues of Music, Drama, and Dance. The outdoor theater was blissfully empty. She found a seat that faced the arching bandshell, near the new—and currently silent—reflecting pool and fountain.
It had been two years since she’d come here to think.
When she first arrived in Hollywood, this landmark had drawn her more strongly than any other. More than Grauman’s Chinese Theater. More than Schwab’s Drugstore. She’d never known why before.
Tonight she knew everything.
Her imagination had made a fantasy of this place, a little slice of heaven for her spirit to sojourn in when she’d died temporarily. She’d met her angel guide here and had been presented with the opportunity to travel back in time to meet her soul mate. Michael had called Christian the friend she always returned to, the one she cared for life after life.
She’d jumped at the chance to know him, even if she only went as a ghost. A friend was her holy grail. Before Christian, she’d never had the nerve to make one.
She closed her eyes and leaned back in the wooden seat. Tremors ran through her muscles, aftershocks from the earthquake that had begun earlier.
She’d died, and it hadn’t ended her existence. She’d been more
herself
as a spirit than she’d been when she was alive. She’d been fearless, for one thing, giving the medieval Christian her heart long before he’d thought to ask for it.
Where is that girl today?
she wondered.
How did I become so cautious again?
She should have remembered Christian the moment she spotted him in his barn. No, she should have remembered him the moment she read the script. All Christian’s friends had been in it. All Christian’s long-dead Swiss mercenary friends.
He wasn’t dead, though. She leaned forward, her hands like claws on her knees, as a new twist in the unfolding maze came clear.
Christian was more than the same spirit; he was the same man. For that matter, so was Miss Wei.
Christian had let Grace’s boss do something strange to him.
One hand flew up to her neck, where her skin was warm and unmarred. He’d bitten her. He’d drunk her blood. How on earth had Grace reasoned that away?
Christian was a vampire.
“Jeepers,” she said, though perhaps she should have chosen a stronger curse. Christian Durand, their new teen idol, was an actual vampire.
 
 
C
hristian should have moved faster to stop Grace. All he’d wanted after playing that scene was to hold her and close his eyes. Adam and Grace’s screenplay had caught the essence of Christian’s long-ago losses. Watching Charlie die, being engulfed by those very human emotions, shook his grip on reality. He hadn’t trusted how much he wanted Grace’s nearness to ground him.
He’d let her slip away because of it, though he knew she wasn’t in her right state of mind. When he caught up to her by the store room, she’d acted like she was dreaming with her eyes open. Not for the first time he cursed his inability to read what she was thinking.
Well, ask then,
he thought.
Go after her and ask.
He picked up her personal perfume on Vine Street. That much of a link between them he could rely on. The scent led him toward the freeway and then west. The sound of rustling leaves began to compete with traffic. He’d reached a large city park. There was a stage at its center, with thousands of seats fanning out underneath the stars. His heart gave a leap he couldn’t have stopped it from making. Grace was sitting in one of them.
Too eager to wait, he blurred to her. She didn’t startle, though he must have seemed to appear from thin air. Abruptly unsure of his welcome, he sat awkwardly. Her gaze remained on the graceful white bandshell in front of her.
“After my accident,” she said. “The one where I . . . died. I’d have these dreams, sometimes twice a week. In them, I met an angel here. His name was Michael, and he always wore a tuxedo.” She smiled slightly. “Even in my dreams, I was obsessed with Hollywood glamour.”
Christian didn’t miss the name she’d used, but he also didn’t want her to stop talking. Her face was different—more relaxed, as if she’d forgotten to maintain her guard against him.

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