A Foreword
Usually, I take this time to thank everyone who supports me while I go on this crazy-train journey toward of being a writer. And to all the usual folks—Lori, Evan, Kristin, Michelle, Sylvia, you readers—thank you. But I thought I might take a second to do something a little different.
I know many of you who read this are aspiring authors yourselves. I know you haven’t finished that manuscript, or you aren’t brave enough to hit “submit,” or you don’t think you can handle the aftermath.
Do it.
Write that thing. Publish that thing. Yes, you’ll get bad reviews. Yes, you’ll have to deal with your friends and family reading something you wrote and the embarrassment that comes with that.
My father has read “the desk scene” in Steel Rose. Process that for a moment.
But it’ll also be something you get to hold up to the world and say, “I did this.”
I mention this in the beginning of my Dracula duet for a reason. I began writing, like few people would likely want to admit, with fanfiction.
I know, I know.
The horror.
Stay with me.
I started writing Dracula fanfiction when I was young. I did it because nobody was writing the fiction I wanted to read. I wanted to read stories where the villain got the girl for a change. Where they got to win for once. They are always the better and more interesting character.
I also wrote stories because I daydreamed them in my head and needed to get it all out on paper to make it stop. It only freed up space for my head to move on to the next one.
It was many, many years before I was brave enough to post my silly stories online. I made a few fans—Sylvia, I’m looking at you—and I slowly realized I was spending so much time building my own world within someone else’s that it was time to break free and do my own thing.
I took the leap and put my stuff out there. And it’s been a wild ride. It’s had ups and downs. And it’s a slow climb. But it is absolutely worth it.
Now, here’s a simple fact for you.
I’m not special.
You can do it too.
My writing story began with Dracula, and here we are coming back around to him. I’ve made friends, garnered a few fans, and have had a blast. And I hope to continue for many years to come.
So to you, the one sitting on the manuscript you’re afraid to put out into the world, I say push the button. Send the email. Hit submit. Be brave. Be silly. Tell the stories you want to tell. Get the things out of your head and share them with the world.
This story is for you.
1
Maxine Parker’s life ended with the sound of a knock on her front door.
Squeak. Clack, clack, clack.
A brass ring in bad need of oiling let out its preemptive squeak before the figure on the other side rapped it against its plate. Not urgently, not impolitely, and with nothing except simple social propriety.
It did not help the sense of dread she felt as she sat on the stairs of her home, gathering the skirts of her long navy dress around herself as she stared at the back of her front door, wondering if she should simply ignore the call of those on the other side. She did not know who was standing there, summoning her to answer, but she could sense one thing from them—death.
Maxine was very good at sensing death. Especially as of late, considering what had befallen Boston. Murder came to the city on the inky wings of the night, summoned by a crimson moon that never wavered and, by some means, defied the motion of the Earth to remain full.
Most of the residents of the city ignored the screams and howls in the darkness, the sounds that belied what hunted its prey was not human. The papers attributed the disappearances and remaining gore to a pack of wolves or coyotes that had taken up residence in the Boston Common and the Public Gardens.
But wolves could not leave a man’s head impaled on the wrought-iron railing of the Granary Burying Ground. But the papers kindly skipped over the details of that particular night. No need to incite a panic. People might run for their lives.
Many had already done exactly that, but many either believed they had no reason to fear or they had nowhere to go. As for her? She fit in neither category. Her excuse for remaining within her walls was far less valid. Or far less sane, at any rate.
It was the whispers she heard in the night’s calls that inspired her to remain. There was an intelligence behind the death, and it was calling to her. She could not understand why, or for what purpose it bade her stay, but she felt compelled.
Spirits whispered often to Maxine, and she always listened. They had successfully guided her through her life up until this point, and she would never refuse their council. She had some part to play in what had befallen her city. She believed in fate without question. Perhaps not that all choices were immutable, but that some were inevitable, like death.
Death came for all, no matter the choices that were made. No matter the circuitous path a mortal might take to escape, all roads must someday cease. And whoever knocked upon her door felt like such things. The end of one journey, and the beginning of another.
Her life, as she knew it, was now over.
Squeak. Clack, clack, clack.
The soul that stood on the other side of her door was still patient and wonderfully polite. That was the first indication that it was not a ravager from the gates of Hell come to rend her asunder. More importantly, it was barely before noon and the sun was out, and therefore that meant those who waited for her—and they were plural, she now realized as she felt three distinct emotions on the other side of her door—were not a pack of the demons that now stalked the night.
But that did not mean they did not her bring danger all the same.
Rubbing her hand over the back of her neck, she shut her eyes and let herself reach out through her mind’s eye instead to focus on those standing on her stoop. Two men and a woman. The older of the two men caught her attention first. He was stern, resolute, dignified, and felt every inch a soldier. The younger man was easily distracted, his emotions flitting from one to another with little hesitation. He was bored and nervous in the same breath. The woman was eager, excited, and anticipated greatly the answering of the door.
Standing from the stairs, she brushed her hands down the folds of her dress and reached for the black silk gloves she always kept tucked into her bodice, even while inside her own home. She slipped them on before heading to the front door to answer it. The gloves were necessary. Immensely so.
Unfortunate as they may be, they were for the benefit of everyone.
Taking a breath, she let it out, steeling herself for what might come. She sensed a magnitude about this moment. This was why the spirits had called her to stay.
My life is about to change.
She was not a psychic in the truest form of the word. She could not see the future. She could only see the present and past—often in rather excruciating detail—and it was easy enough to see the strings of where she stood and predict the next thread that was to fall in the loom.
And a black stitch fell into place in front of her.
Fate was fate. It could not be avoided.
Maxine opened the door.
Upon seeing her, the older man who had been the source of the knocking pulled his hat off, and a young, beautiful blonde woman elbowed the other man beside him. The young man jumped and nearly ripped a wide-brimmed leather hat, a style rarely seen on the east side of the Mississippi, off his head. The over-eager action knocked a hand-rolled cigarette from behind his ear. He scrambled after it, and the woman rolled her eyes.