The ferret skittered past the wailing orphans littering the street and between the wheels of the speeding ambulance with preternaturally unrodent grace and charged the double doors of Prescott’s Ascott’s Ford’s Theater and House of Flapjacks. Jakob resumed his true form and pushed through the double doors with more haste and less cool than he would have liked, regretting not having morphed into a fleeter form.
As he had hoped — make that feared, he amended mentally — Edwood had stumbled into a trap. The undeniably cool vampire for whom Bela had left him stood mesmerized in the recently renovated yet nostalgic lobby of the movie theatre çûm car dealership çûm flapjack house (Jakob smirked as he always did when he worked dirty-sounding words into his internal monologs) staring into a mesmerizing montage of movie images even more dazzling than his sequined jacket. An apprentice wizard, disguised as a bored usher, held a sharpened and butter-slicked wooden wand over Edwood’s heart while the other usher çûm wizard (did it again) drew back his cell phone like a Nokian mallet, ready to drive the stake home.
Jakob’s only regret was that Bela wasn’t here to witness his daring and ultra-cool rescue of the vampire she’d spurned him for. His other regret was that he could not think of any way to not save the vampire she’d spurned him for if they were to defeat the Potatoe King. Thus filled with angst-laden regret, he stumbled into the two boys, knocking them to the ground and breaking their spell.
“Quickly,” Jakob said, relishing the opportunity to give Edwood an order, and shoved the vampire toward the door.
As they skirted the carnage in the street a woman with a microphone and trailing a cameraman rushed up to them.
“Annie Price, Six O’clock News,” she said breathlessly “Did you see –”
“No interviews,” Edwood cut her off with effortless cool.
In unspoken accord the pair headed into the forest, seeking shelter in its dark shadows.
“Mr. Sullen?” a woman’s voice asked out of the dark shadows.
Jakob spun, more quickly than the coolly languid Edwood, and found himself facing a dark-haired beauty dressed from throat to boots in a form-fitting leather body suit. The bright golden polyester sports coat barely concealed the brace of pistols at her belt and the emphatic evidence she was a mammal.
“Mr. Sullen,” she repeated smoothly, ignoring Jakob as she focused on Edwood — a situation the werewolf found familiar. “I heard about the destruction of Sullen Manor. I know how attached you are to this region, but I was wondering if you’ve considered a final resting place further south? We have some lovely mausoleums that have recently come open in the San Francisco Bay area…”
“Miss Soft, you know that this is the home of my people,” Edwood said with cool finality. “We shall never leave.”
“Of course,” Miss Soft agreed, fishing a business card out of the pocket of her golden polyester sports coat. “But if you should ever change your mind, remember Tomb Traders is always ready to help.”
“More awkward cameos than a whole site of bad fanfic,” Edwood murmured in thoughtful cool as they watched the golden sports coat fade among the shadows of the dismally dreary yet hinting of magic forest. “There must be a hidden significance to this.”
Jakob nodded knowingly, having no idea what Edwood was on about. Struggling to decide whether to focus on his angst over his unrequited love of Bela or his angst over his melancholy jealousy of Edwood or his angst over his disturbingly pedophilic bonding to Woeisme, Jakob almost missed Edwood suddenly standing another millimeter taller in languid alarm.
Looking closely at the mate of his love and father of his mate closely in the light of a convenient shaft of moonlight that lit only Edwood’s face, he saw that Edwood’s face was contorted in a ghastly manner that indicated he was considering having an expression. Both eyebrows had risen nearly a full centimeter.
“What?” Jakob asked. Then kicked himself for not being cool enough to cover the fact he didn’t know; or so cool he didn’t care that he didn’t know. How would Bela every admire someone so uncool they asked questions?
“Jakob, quickly, choose a direction that is directly away from me,” Edwood said in a steely murmur. “Fix it in your mind. Hurry.”
Jakob glanced around uncertainly, a sense of foreboding rise up, jostling so roughly against his assorted angsts that he nearly lost his balance. Suddenly he realized that every direction except one led away from Edwood and relaxed enough to dare speak.
“Got it,” he said. “Now what?”
“If you hear the sound of a slash,” Edwood said, passion nearly inflecting his voice “Run!”
No sooner had the last echo of his murmur faded then the darkness of the dismal yet infused with magic forest was slashed with a blood curdling Slash!
• 
They then embraced each other passionately and…
Oh, not THAT kind of slash. Nevermind. WHEW. (whistles innocently)
Please don’t give the next writer ideas.
You can’t; I’ve already turned in my chapter. 🙂
We are trying to keep this PG. Fear not the slash! (But yeah, my mind went that way at that word too.)
There was never going to be any slash slash.
But you gotta admit, it’s the logical segue from crossover cameos.
Before I became worried about going too far over the word count (a momentary pause while anyone who’s ever edited me says “Wait. Kevin worries about going over word count?”) I’d intended a confrontation with Wolverine before they got to the forest. (“Stop with the howling and growling, man. You’re a species of badger. The occasional grunt and a yip or two, yes, but for the most part it’s an annoying chittering sound.”)
In the end I tossed the unnamed but mutton-chopped beast-man with the áwdámņìŧ blades out and kept Laura Soft, Tomb Trader and (I have to admit my favorite throw-away gag) the vampire refusing to give Anne Rice an interview.
If I’d had any idea Allyn would go so far over the word count, I would have thrown in at least four iterations of Star Trek and Arthur Dent.
“The ferret skittered past the wailing orphans littering the street”
That’s an absolutely genius way to start the chapter. It gets funnier the more you read it. More throaway references to the busload of injured orphans, please.
Thank you, sir.
I had been wondering about the small boy born in Europe, myself. I mean, did anyone notice he wasn’t born an infant? If the cycle comes back round to you, you’ll have to clear that up.
I think somewhere further along the tale there’s room for a mob of formerly injured orphans bent on revenge to overrun a castle using their Completely Safe Spiderman kits, but let’s leave that to other writers.
Nice segue there. The irrelevant cameos are piling up, but they are still fitting.