Vampire Assassin (Jane #1), Page 3

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  The

  Beginning

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  ONE

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  By now you're probably wondering how I became a badass vampire assassin. Maybe I should tell you a little bit about myself. My name is Jane. Plain Jane. Everyone called me Janey when I was growing up. I hate the name Janey with a passion. Please do not call me Janey.

  I grew up in New York. No, not New York City. You assumed that right off the bat, didn't you? I'm from someplace in the far to the north of that where everyone knew everyone. I longed to leave that little town and see what lay beyond the hills.

  The day after graduation I left behind everything that wouldn't fit in my little two-door coup and drove until I couldn't afford anymore gas. I ended up down south and found myself a nice little apartment over the diner where I got a job. But I have a bit of a wanderer's spirit and I got bored after a year. So I packed up again and headed out west.

  After jumping from town to town, I finally ended up in the best place on earth: Los Angeles. I love Los Angeles. It's perfect. There’s so much to do and it's just plain beautiful. After years of trying to find my place in the world, I found it one day in Hollywood, on the set of a new movie. On a whim, I decided to audition for a part in a new independent film about a vampire living in Wisconsin. Believe it or not, that movie never saw the light of day. Ha! Sometimes I slay myself. So, yeah, anyway, I played my part beautifully, even if I do say so myself, and I really enjoyed every moment of it. It was on that film set that I met Steven.

  Steven was a lovely man. He was a bit older, very classy, and he played the lead role. For the first weeks, I didn't see him at all. During that time we focused on daylight scenes and, obviously, a vampire wouldn't be involved in daylight scenes. It was quite pleasant, regardless. I got to spend most of the day on set, playing a receptionist for a dentist's office. I became fast friends with one of my fellow actresses and we spent countless nights hopping from club to club, racing home before the sun came up. Then we would roll out of bed just in time to grab a double shot latte before we hit the set.

  Weekends were spent at the beach, rain or shine. It was at that beach where I learned to surf. My instructor was a handsome eighteen-year-old fresh out of high school. He had sun-bleached hair and was ridiculously tan. I spent so much time in the ocean next to surfer boy Danny, my skin began to darken noticeably despite my tendency to look like a Stoker-esque vampire when I was alive. For the record, real vampires aren't always pale. Their skin tends to hold on to the pigment color they had when they died. I may be plain, but my skin is so beautifully golden, it would make any material girl cry.

  I met Steven during my third week as an up-and-coming starlet. The new scenes would all take place at night, when my character's story line became intertwined with his. They met outside a grocery store one dark, dangerous night. She left the office a little late and had to stop for dinner. Mira, my character, adhered to the "park further away" notion and tended to leave her car on the far end of any parking lot she happened to enter. This evening, however, it wasn’t a decision that made her life healthier; it very nearly ended her existence.

  Mira headed into the grocery store and grabbed a cart. As she walked slowly down the aisles, she grabbed a whole chicken from the meat section and some vegetables from produce. Last but not least, she dropped by the alcohol aisle for a bottle of Cheap Red Wine. After she paid the generically saucy teenage grocery store clerk with way too many fake nose piercings, Mira made the trek out to her car. As she popped her trunk, a gang of street thugs surrounded her and she dropped her groceries, spilling them all over the parking lot. The thugs advanced on her, shouting suggestions about how she could save herself. Mira backed up until she bumped into her car and looked around for help that she never expected to come.

  Just before the first thug reached for her, Steven, her theoretical knight in shining armor, dropped down in front of her, appearing from out of nowhere. The thugs all took a step back, then advanced rapidly, laughing at Steven's attempt to be a hero. Some had small, blunt box cutter knives, one had a length of chain, and a few had those shiny brass knuckles. Steven got into a crouch, ready to defend both of our characters from this gang of ne’er-do-wellers.

  His character’s name was Jacobson, Maxwell Jacobson, a hundred-year-old vampire with a nice southern drawl—the screenwriter was obsessed with the Sookie Stackhouse novels and had a thing for Bill. In his past life, Max was a shoemaker back in the 1800s. According to the background story, he stayed in his shop late one night to finish a pair of shoes for the governor’s wife. A man entered, demanding Max repair his own shoes before Max left. When Max refused, he was attacked, bitten, and left for dead. He woke up before morning and knew immediately what had happened. He sought refuge from the daylight in a vault in the basement of his shop, and when the night fell he packed up everything he could and left, for he could not bear to terrorize his own townsmen and women. So the story goes on that he wandered alone, searching an entire century for the one person who could end his loneliness and make him feel love once again. That person was Mira, obviously.

  Based on the script, Max stood six feet tall with jet black hair, extremely pale skin, and burning red eyes. Steven was only 5’10” with blond hair and blue eyes, but the casting director did not seem too concerned about those minor details. They dyed Steven’s hair to match his character’s description, turning it so black it had a blue tinge under the bright bulbs they used to light the night scenes properly. The bulbs were so hot that our makeup had to be touched up after every take because it would start to melt. For me, that wasn’t so bad. But for Steven, that meant he ended up with layer upon layer of white mess on his face by the time we were finished filming for the day. And that stuff was not pleasant. It took me about half an hour to get the makeup off my face. It took Steven three times as long, and he usually left the set with some of it still in his hair and the creases around his eyes. He also occasionally would forget to take out his blood-red contacts, so he would hail a cab and totally freak the poor cab driver out. I think sometimes he did it on purpose.

  I actually met Steven about two days before we filmed that first scene. It was just before midnight when we got together to go over some of the lines. The director didn't seem to be too on top of things, so a lot of the scenes went without any initial walk-through, which might not have helped much anyway considering most of the actors and actresses were of the less-than-talented B-movie persuasion. But some of us tried to get together despite the lack of direction, and those scenes tended to come together much more smoothly and turned out to be some of the better scenes filmed.

  We met in a coffee shop that stayed open until 1 a.m. every night. It wasn’t a chain coffee shop and was quite popular with the “scene kids” in the area. He was waiting when I got there. He found a nice booth in the corner and already had a cup of coffee in front of him. As I walked in, he had the cup to his beautiful lips. I waved and went to the counter to order my own drink. I got a venti non-fat caramel macchiato with an extra shot of espresso. It was going to be a long night.

  Once my caramelly goodness was ready, I sat down opposite Steven and pulled my manuscript out of my messenger bag as I tried very carefully to not stare at his stunningly handsome face.

  "Hi," I said as I set the script on the table.

  When he smiled, his eyes lit up with a warmth I had rarely seen. "Hi." He extended his hand across the table.

  I slipped my fingers into his. "Nice to meet you."

  Why they hadn’t bothered to have us meet before filming, I have no idea. How were they to know if we had any chemistry at all? How could they be sure we wouldn’t totally hate each other and not work well together? But who was I to say anything. I was just an actress. Clearly, the powers that be know better than little ol’ me. Either they knew more than me, or they got lucky. Steven and I hit it off smashingly
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  We spent the next two hours going over our scenes in between chatting about the most random things. After the cranky Emo barista told us in no uncertain terms to get the heck out of her coffee shop, we headed to an all-night diner. Steven was a really cool guy. He lived all over the world and told me some neat stories about the places he'd been.

  I also learned quite a bit about Steven. He came from a very wealthy family, though he wouldn’t tell me which one that night. It was a long time before he was willing to share that little tidbit. We discussed books, music, and movies. Steven liked historical fiction and non-fiction, particularly stuff from or focusing on the seventeenth century. We discussed the trend of modern music and both of us agreed that, in general, it's mostly crap. I expressed my wish that someone would create something the caliber of Marley again. Steven mentioned that Marley was fantastic and said something to the effect of, “If you could only have met him. He was more amazing in person.” It was that phrase that triggered the first inkling of suspicion. Steven didn't look old enough to have ever met Bob Marley in person. But he didn't seem interested in talking about it at all, as he moved on to a completely different subject, so I let it pass.