Vampire Empress Read online

  So, my daughter is mildly traumatized, full of guilt over her stint as a surly teen. The guilt and trauma have caused her to get clingy. I don’t think she’s going to regress and become totally dependent on me. Sure, she will be brittle for a bit, but I’m certain she will get past it. Still, for the moment, I’m furious at Elizabeth for damn near breaking her.

  The second thing I’m mad at her for is what happened to Anthony. His situation is, admittedly, tamer than my daughter’s. Plus, Anthony is—no secret here—mentally tougher. Tammy’s a critter of emotion. Anthony’s more logical. He’s got plenty of emotions, too, but he’s not ruled by them. They do sometimes overpower him when real bad stuff happens, like death. Or loss. His experience in the eternity prison sent him to an alternate reality where he got to witness another version of our family where his seven-year-old self was about to die of the same illness he nearly died from in my reality.

  Danny, who’d been living inside my son as a sorta-dark master, decided he couldn’t bear to watch alternate Anthony die as a little boy… and made the leap, turning the kid into a sorta-vampire. My son accepted the loss of his father for a second time because he thought it would be selfish to cling to Danny and not let him help the other version of our family.

  So, there’s that. Danny’s finally gone. In a way, I’m relieved he’s no longer inside my son’s head. In another way, I’m pleased he’s not even in our reality anymore. In yet another way, I’m a tiny bit sad—mostly for Anthony. Since the day I changed him into a vampire and back again to keep him from dying at seven, he’s only cried three times: the first time Danny died, when Jacky died, and now… when Danny’s spirit left him. Not to say my son’s robotic. He has plenty of positive emotions. But it takes a lot to make him cry. And for doing it to him again, I’m angry with Elizabeth.

  Honestly, hearing Tammy talk about watching ‘alternate Danny’ sit on her bed and break down thinking he’d lost her and wanted ‘his little girl’ back, almost made me feel sorry for him. Almost. The fourteen-year-old version of her had a good point. He could have easily walked away from being a sleaze king if he really cared about her as much as he claimed.

  Speaking of the creators, I teleported them home already. It was kinda wild meeting Lance Blackburn, A-list Hollywood director, in person. In better circumstances, I’d have totally fangirled all over him. Also in better circumstances, Tammy would’ve been fangirling over Quentin Arnbury, the author of the Contest of Sovereignty novels, upon which the recent HBO drama series was based.

  She’s a bit too rattled to process things as trivial as adoring a fiction author. Well, perhaps more than simple fiction. See, Quentin’s a creator, so the stuff he writes comes into being in an alternate dimension. Guess where Elizabeth’s eternity prison sent him? Fortunately, we couldn’t die in the alternate worlds. If we failed to outwit the ‘scenario,’ it merely reset. Poor Quentin suffered the wrath of his characters once they realized who he was. Tammy, after peeking into his head, said they kept executing him in various ways characters in the books had died—some of which were horrendous.

  Quentin has since revised his opinion on character death, torture, inappropriate familial relationships, and such after experiencing that. However, I doubt he’s going to go too far in the other direction. It’s in him too deep to write his characters’ deaths for drama, but he probably won’t kill off twenty different beloved characters in each novel anymore.

  The third thing hanging heavy on my mind is Elizabeth herself.

  She originally kidnapped the creators in hopes of forcing them to make her an entire custom world out of thin air, suited to her whims in every way. She’d hoped to go there, bringing all her dark master allies, and live out her dream of being god-empress. At first, I’d been okay with this idea since the world wouldn’t have existed without her… but I found out she’d have needed to keep the creators imprisoned forever to preserve the reality’s existence. It didn’t matter though, the plan failed.

  So Elizabeth decided to jump to a ‘real’ alternate dimension, not one propped up by the imagination of creators. She apparently chose one like ours from about 2,000 years ago, before anyone invented modern weapons. Much easier to take over and dominate a primitive civilization than one capable of dropping atomic weapons on her vampire army.

  We almost stopped her from invading the other world. Almost.

  Stupid eternity prison.

  Maybe it’s partially my fault for killing the Red Rider and increasing the power level of magic in our world, but sorry… that monster needed to be destroyed. I get real funny about those who hurt children, and the majority of the Red Rider’s victims hadn’t turned eighteen yet. He’d been a witch hunter hundreds of years ago and, as they say, got a taste for the killing. The bastard also got a taste for siphoning off the magic from each of his victims. He even killed me in a prior mortal life, but I don’t remember it—mercifully. His killing methods were far from pleasant or quick.

  Elizabeth knew how I tend to go all mama bear about kids in trouble, so she—rightfully—figured I’d hunt down this Red Rider with great vengeance and furious anger, or whatever the saying is. And I did.

  Anyway, point is, magic is back on Earth, and it gave Elizabeth the power to fling us into the eternity prison at a critical moment when we attacked her. Max, a group of Light Warriors, myself, my kids, Allison, and Kingsley all did our best to stop her from invading the other reality—but we failed. Elizabeth slipped through and is already doing who-knows-what there.

  Max and about half his Light Warriors escaped the eternity prison due to protective spells they wear to guard against unwanted teleportation. When Elizabeth dropped the wormhole bomb on us—my word for it since I don’t understand it at all—Max and about sixteen of his people boomeranged across the aether and landed back in California at his library. The other dozen or so Light Warriors who survived fighting the ascendant dark masters made a separate escape from the eternity prison, but didn’t realize red portals went to other alternate dimensions belonging to other prisoners. So, it took Max a little longer to find and pull his people out of the alternate worlds they landed in.

  So, now… Max and the warlocks, witches, or whatever they call themselves, working with him, are trying to open an interdimensional gateway to the same place Elizabeth went by tracing the lingering magical strands or some such thing. When I said I’m resigned to the whims of fate, I meant this: if their portal works, I’m going to rush through it and try to stop Elizabeth. Doing so could result in me being stranded or permanently stuck in some other reality—assuming Elizabeth doesn’t destroy me entirely. If Max and his people fail to open the gateway and determine it’s impossible to find her… then we cede defeat and spend a while mourning all the people who will suffer under her rule.

  Alas, it will have been a ‘we did everything we could’ situation.

  Except I know me... I will continue looking for ways to stop her. After all, I got a hella long time to figure it out.

  For the time being, I sigh, pull out my phone, and glance at the time. In a normal life, I’d be sitting at home watching Judge Judy now. Even in my not-so-normal life, I’d be watching Judge Judy now if not for the need to chase the bitch across dimensions.

  Normal. What does that even mean anymore?

  I saw different versions of what my life might have been, like the one where I’m thirty-seven and Anthony’s dead because I never became a vampire and couldn’t save him. Danny’s also dead because he couldn’t handle the grief of losing our son… and I ended up raising my sister’s three kids because Elizabeth made her the vampire and she disappeared to protect us.

  No, I don’t wish my life had been different from what happened. But it doesn’t mean I can’t enviously daydream about an ideal reality where no vampire stuff happened, Anthony didn’t get sick at age seven, and the Moon family got to enjoy plain old boring, happy normal. My life has swerved so wildly off the tracks, I can’t even begin to guess what my kids would’ve been l
ike in such an ideal world. Anthony probably would’ve ended up in a career with computers or a mundane office job. Tammy… might’ve become a veterinarian or a vet tech. Maybe even a teacher or an artist. I could see her turning into that eccentric art or history teacher all the kids like but the parents keep questioning if she’s qualified.

  Gee, thanks, Mom.

  I chuckle.

  Tammy walks over and leans against me.

  I ask, “What do you think you’d have done if we had an ordinary life where nothing went wrong?”

  “Hmm.” She kicks her sneaker at the dirt. “I can’t even think of anything. Probably wouldn’t have been into goth stuff. I think it happened because my mom was a vampire. I wanted you to see me being into gloomy, dead stuff so you knew I wasn’t afraid of you and thought you were cool, not as lame as you thought.”

  “Wait. I thought I was lame?”

  Tammy laughs. “You’re lame because you’re a parent of a teenager, but you’re cool. And it’s false lameness. All teens call their parents lame. I don’t mean it as in you are actually lame.”

  “Right. I get it. I think. How are you doing?”

  “Still freaking out. But holding it in. Is it more abnormal for you to have wings or me to only be a week into being eighteen and thinking like I owe everything to my mother?”

  “Hard call. Usually, daughters and moms don’t become best friends until the kid’s in her early thirties. But there is always an outlier.”

  “Like you.” She rests her head on my shoulder. “You don’t even talk to your mother anymore.”

  “I didn’t really talk to her much as a child, either. Like I said, outlier.”

  “Aunt Mary Lou is more like your mom.”

  “I suppose. But she feels like my big sister.”

  “A good thing?”

  “Yes, a wonderful thing.”

  She nods, pauses. “Mom?”

  “Yeah?”

  Tammy looks me in the eye. “Ant thinks we’re gonna be okay.”

  I smile. “He’s a good kid.”

  “No, I mean he really thinks we’re going to be okay. He hasn’t seen what Elizabeth can do.”

  I narrow my eyes. “Elizabeth hasn’t seen what I can do.”

  Anthony walks up on my left side. “You guys doing okay?”

  “Yeah,” we say simultaneously, then, “Not really.”

  “Something wrong?” asks Anthony. I sense the kid’s need to protect us, to make things right.

  “Nerves mostly.” I exhale.

  “By the way,” says Tammy, “Elizabeth lied.”

  Anthony fake gasps. “Shocker.”

  I point at him, look at Tammy. “What he said. Specifics?”

  “What she told you before, about Max. She didn’t have the chance to kill him and hesitate because he’s her son. It went the other way. He had her on the steps of some big temple somewhere far back in time, a knife at her throat… but he couldn’t do it. She pretended to love him but almost killed him when he lowered his guard.”

  I shudder. “Damn. There I go having too much faith in a mother’s love.”

  “Umm, Mom?” asks Tammy, pulling her hair out of her eyes. “Speaking of crappy parents…”

  “Uh oh.” I fake cringe. “You wanna go see my folks?”

  Tammy bites her lip. “Not where I was gonna go with this, but if you think it’s a good idea, I’ll do it.”

  “We can cross that bridge later. What’s on your mind now?”

  “Ant and I were talking already, and… we’re totally cool with it if you wanna foster that Paxton kid.”

  “Say what?” I blink.

  “Sorry, you’ve been thinking about her a lot in the back of your mind.” Tammy exhales. “She’s scared and lonely.”

  “Um, wow. Yeah, I’m worried. That poor girl’s not in a good environment.”

  Tammy nods. “Yeah. When she said that thing about if she had a mom like you, she was actually hoping you’d want to adopt her because you didn’t freak out about her being, you know, into girls.”

  That poor kid. I’m so tempted to find her father and see how he likes being thrown down stairs. True, I’ve been worrying about her whenever I haven’t been flipping out over the Elizabeth craziness… which means there hasn’t been too much time spent worrying about her.

  “I don’t know if it’s fair to her,” I say. “Our lives are crazy.”

  “Yeah.” Anthony smiles. “But still fun.”

  Tammy rests a hand on my shoulder, staring into my eyes. “Mom, what’s unfair is leaving a vulnerable kid like her at the mercy of the system. If she gets a bad foster family, they’re going to mess her up for life. Being in a family who occasionally deals with demons, vampires, werewolves, and such is not a big deal at all compared to awful foster parents.”

  “And, we’re just saying it’s okay with us if you want to.” Anthony stretches, trying to act casual, like he doesn’t want to run straight back to Fullerton and play bodyguard for her.

  Tammy obviously knows how close I came to scooping Paxton up like a kitten at an animal shelter and walking out the door with her. As much as that girl yanked on my mom instincts, it’s not going to matter at all if we don’t survive this.

  “Mom…” Tammy cling-hugs me. “Don’t think like that. Stay positive.”

  Anthony puts an arm around my back. “I won’t let her hurt you, Ma.”

  I hate to say it—well, not really—but with Danny gone, Anthony seems visibly happier. His smile is wider, eyes brighter. No matter how much my very-ex-husband may have loved his son, he was still a dark master, a significant source of negative energy.

  Tammy nods at me. I see it, too. I’m sad for him his link to Dad’s gone, but he’s better off.

  Footsteps approach from behind us at a casual gait, no attempt to be stealthy. Since I don’t feel threatened, I don’t whirl around.

  “Are you three ready?” asks Max. “I believe we are prepared to open the gateway.”

  We all turn to face him more or less at the same time.

  “We’re ready,” I say.

  Chapter Two

  A Little Different

  It would be a lie for me to say I didn’t have a tiny bit of hope Max would fail.

  Seriously. Who wants to jump into another dimension? I’m not superhuman—well, okay, physically I am—but my psyche isn’t. Samantha Moon is every bit as susceptible to fear, self-doubt, pessimism, and dread something will happen to her children as any other mom. It’s not that I’m afraid of confronting Elizabeth, even though I really ought to be. If Max and his people can’t open this portal, we’re going to be stuck unable to get involved. Then, I won’t have to worry about my kids being hurt or ending up stranded in some other world where no one understands the concept of light bulbs.

  Anthony wouldn’t be able to go three days without his online game. I’d make a joke about Tammy and a world without cell phones, but she’s kinda tame in that regard compared to the stereotypical teenage girl. Not like she needs a phone to talk to her friends miles away. She never turned into one of those girls who spends hours on phones. Honestly, she could use telepathy but prefers to keep her psychic abilities secret from them.

  Tammy’s understandably scared. Considering she is the most normal person here, it also makes her the bravest for being willing to go. The Light Warriors have magic to defend themselves. Max has his alchemical creations, magic of his own, and centuries of experience. Allison has magic. Kingsley’s a freakin’ werewolf. I’m… something. Anthony’s got the Fire Warrior.

  My daughter can read minds. Not exactly going to protect her if a vampire gets in her face.

  However, her role here is both critical as well as one she can fulfill miles away. She’ll be hiding everyone from Elizabeth. Alchemists love using elemental magic… and surprise is an element.

  Okay, maybe it isn’t scientifically an element, but you know what I mean.

  A group of Light Warriors assemble in a circle around lines
and symbols they’ve etched in the ground. Max stands off to the side, talking to Allison like a professional musician giving another professional musician a rundown of the chord progression before they attempt playing a song they’ve never tried before. Her nodding along with him gives me confidence and worry in equal parts. Got a feeling this is going to work. Another feeling tells me we’re about to take a trip that will make our European vacation feel like an actual vacation. This won’t be as easy as stomping out a few fire imps.

  Anthony is pretty confident. Unlike me, who looks confident but has a bit of worry inside. Tammy is neither confident nor looks it. Kingsley seems bored. He’s got his hands on his hips, looking around at everyone with a ‘can we get this over with? I have a meeting at two’ expression.

  A young Light Warrior—and by young I mean the guy’s about twenty-two—rushes over to give Tammy a modern compound crossbow and a nylon bolt case. She takes them out of reflex, staring at the retreating man like ‘what the hell am I supposed to do with these?’

  I put an arm around her. Those are silver bolts, hon. If you—

  If an ascendant dark master finds me, I’ll never see them fast enough to use this thing. Besides, I have no idea how to fire a crossbow.

  “Easy,” says Anthony. “Crossbows are the first point-and-click interface.”

  “Video game reference?” I ask.

  My son sighs. “Yes, ma.”

  Meanwhile, Allison nods at Max, then runs halfway around the circle to take her position. I stand with the other non-magic people near the edge of the ring of Light Warrior mystics. Of the twenty-seven men and women left in Max’s ‘army,’ nine of them are skilled in magic. The rest are kinda like monks. They have magic, too, but channel it inward. When fighting demons, vampires, or other monsters, their spells make them stronger, faster, tougher… able to take on superhuman fiends and not be swatted aside like fleas.