Page 2 of My Big Fat Vampire Wedding

T he first rays of sunlight pierced the horizon, golden and amber shards slicing through the indigo of the fading night, like the day itself was unfurling, when Pandora finally made her way out of the coffee shop.

The rain had finally relented, but puddles dappled the pavement, making the orange, red, and yellow leaves too soggy to step on and get that satisfying crunch.

Pandora sighed as she took the stairs down to the Tube, her footsteps sounding as sluggish and heavy as her spirit felt right then.

It was bad enough that her parents had dropped this bomb on her right before her shift, but then Lucy had spent hours gushing about her happily ever after with Caramel Macchiato Cutie. A future that Pandora knew she could never have.

First, because he was a human. While Pandora was very much a modern vampire who thought the world was ready for vampires to “come out of the coffin”, the fact of the matter was that wasn’t the reality.

There were vampire laws and stuff. Most of them having to do with the fact that vampires couldn’t let the humans know they existed.

The Council wasn’t exactly clear on why.

And everyone was too scared of getting in trouble with them to question further.

Word on the street was that the Council members were ancient.

Almost primordial. With crazy powers. Sure, all vampires were super-fast and strong, and had acute senses.

But the rumors were that the oldest vampires could turn you to dust with their bare hands, could practically hear the whispers of your internal thoughts.

Though it was impossible to tell if that was just hearsay or based on any kind of truth.

Still, the rules existed. Humans couldn’t know. Or, at least, they couldn’t know for long .

If, for some reason, someone needed a human to know about vampires – for blood donation, for example – they had to be glamoured again afterwards. Which, basically, was some weird trick done with the eyes to make a human do or think whatever the vampire wanted.

And the Council wanted humans to only know about vampires momentarily.

Anything else was against their laws.

Caramel Macchiato Cutie could never know she was a vampire.

And, second, because, well, he had never shown any interest in simply interacting with her, let alone any desire to ask her out.

That idea, of course, brought with it a barrage of insecure thoughts.

She couldn’t help but pick herself apart.

The way her deep-auburn hair was always either frizzy or in a tangle; how her curves weren’t quite as pronounced as her mother’s were; how she was always kind of awkward and shy when she longed to be extroverted and bold.

“Enough,” Pandora mumbled to herself as she felt the vibration of the train making its way toward the platform.

She’d always liked the Underground in the wee hours of the morning – full of serious early risers ready to head out and seize the day, rubbing shoulders with the night owls who were stumbling home from clubs or parties in their short dresses and smudged make-up, all bleary-eyed yet punchy from lack of sleep.

“Repent!” a voice bellowed, making Pandora squeeze her eyes shut as she tilted her head back.

Not again.

“The day of reckoning has come!” His shouts startled the nearest commuters, making them scurry away from the man with the unruly beard and tattered clothes as he threw his arms in the air.

“The wicked must be cast into the fire! Demons walk among us. Do you hear me? Demons! You!” he hissed, his voice dropping to an eerie whisper.

Here we go , Pandora thought, pulling her jacket more tightly around her. She wasn’t cold. She couldn’t feel the cold. But she attempted to feel less exposed in the face of the man who saw her for what she really was.

“I see you, demon. How dare you wear the skin of the living?” he snarled at her. “You will burn in the fires of judgment.”

A ripple of discomfort passed through the small crowd, every one of them averting their eyes and pretending not to notice. Londoners were practiced in the art of avoidance.

Pandora set to ignoring him as well.

But the man kept approaching, holding out a Bible toward her that was making her skin start to crackle at its nearness.

“I see you, demon. You can’t have my soul!”

Like she wanted his soul.

Though she was getting hungry enough to want a little nip and sip.

But she didn’t eat people. No matter how ravenous she felt.

She ducked her head to avoid eye contact as the train pulled up, kicking up a cool wind.

“Be gone, demon!” he shouted from just behind her as the train doors opened and a crowd hurried inside, happy to be away from the man with the crazed eyes. “Back to hell!”

She was already there, she thought, as she moved with the rest of the crowd into the train, finding a seat and keeping her gaze down, paranoid that someone might look at her and see the truth of the man’s words.

“She will feast on you all!” he yelled through the doors, making a few people shift in their seats, likely hoping he wouldn’t come on the train with them. “May God have mercy on your souls!” The doors finally slid closed, silen-cing the man as he continued to rant.

Pandora leaned back in her seat as the train started to surge forward.

That had been the fourth time this month that someone had shouted at her from the train platform or in the street. Or, once, while she’d been passing a church as people had been leaving.

It was definitely on the rise. Pandora suspected that it was a sign the world was changing: people were becoming more aware of the fact that they weren’t alone, that the creatures they read about in their novels and watched in their films weren’t just figments of someone’s imagination, but actual beings who walked among them.

Though, so far, the only ones who seemed to spot her for who she really was were those that society considered crazy. That inclination worked in her favor.

Pandora reached into her purse, pulling out the well-worn paperback, its pages soft from time, its once crisp edges now rounded and frayed from countless hands.

The cover of the book, a bodice-ripper straight out of the late twentieth century, featuring a woman with a generous heaving bosom and a shirtless man with long, glorious hair, was faded and creased with a web of fine lines.

She lovingly stroked her hand over them, thinking of how the outside hinted at the countless stories of its travels that were just as vivid as the story within.

The spine was woefully cracked, each break a testament to a reader who’d been unable to put it down, who’d been too engrossed to treat it with care.

Pandora had picked it – and others just like it – from a box she’d found on the street, the previous owner’s family ready to just throw the goldmine away.

Once she finished it, she would use a specialized book tape to fix the spine as best she could.

Then it would go on the shelf with all of the others.

Ones she desperately hoped she could share with the masses, each one a little piece of a dream she wasn’t sure she could see becoming a reality.

At least not without the inheritance it now seemed unlikely she was going to be able to receive.

She forced the thoughts away, trying to concentrate on the story at hand. There was a kidnapped maiden to be found by the roguish hero, after all. Lucy said they had some of the best steam she’d read in a historical romance in ages.

And Pandora couldn’t help but keep inserting herself as the maiden and Caramel Macchiato Cutie as the moody, dirty-talking hero.

“Ugh.” Grumbling, she slipped the sugar packet functioning as a bookmark back in between the yellowed pages, then put the book in her handbag as the train came to a stop.

She had a long walk ahead of her.

Sure, she could grab a black cab. But it would cost precious money that she couldn’t quite afford.

Besides, the walk might help to clear her head before she got home to face her parents.

She definitely couldn’t talk to them when her emotions were high, or she would say something that would upgrade the cyclone to a category-five hurricane.

But why couldn’t they just adjust to the changing times? Her mother was a modern woman in many ways. Why was she OK with this ancient, patriarchal, vampire bullshit?

Clearly, the walk wasn’t helping at all.

Only to make her even hungrier. She had a nice pint of relatively fresh blood waiting for her in the fridge, hidden by several bottles of wine.

Because if her parents came across a container of pig’s blood, they would dump it down the drain.

They were purists. The only “good” blood was fresh from the vein of a human.

Them finding out she wasn’t consuming human blood would just lead to yet another argument.

An argument that she didn’t have the energy for.

Hopefully, a little sustenance would help the situation.

Then – then , she could sit her parents down and try to talk some sense into them.