I was with some friends going on a vampire tour of Eastern Europe. It was organized by my friend Jon while he was visiting his folks in Arkansas (which was, of course, the gateway to Eastern Europe). We were also sort of a diplomatic mission to recruit vampires for our military.
Jon's mother was upset the morning we arrived to pick him up, because he'd only been home a couple of days, and she was leaving on a cruise the next morning, and she had thought she'd have all of today to spend with him, but we had to leave in two hours. So they went out to breakfast while I went over some maps with the team.
When Jon got back from breakfast we set off. The first stage was over water, so we went down to our boats and sailed into a sea of darkness. We had to navigate carefully to avoid islands we could barely see until we were right up on them, even with a strong searchlight in the bow. All at once there was a flicker of white, up above us, just caught by the light. We pointed the light up into the air, and hundreds of white robed shapes were hovering in the air in a state of deep sleep. These were vampires held in suspended animation by the power of their king, until it was their turn to walk the earth for a decade or two, or until he needed an army.
We sailed on to the biggest island, which held a vast complex that was both very expensive shopping mall and famous European football stadium, all owned by the vampires. I was engaged to the leader of the expedition, so to do some reconnaissance and make a friendly first impression, we decided the other women on the team and I would shop for clothing for the wedding.
I tried on a corset that fit, but had padding and cutouts in... unnecessary places. I tried on another, but it had a sort of flare below the waist that the sales girl and I agreed would not work with the lines of my dress. Then there was one in brown leather I was going to try, but we were suddenly called to the king's presence. Our group was rushed from wherever we'd been into a huge room that was a simulated beach, with sand and a wave pool and fake sunlight glimmering around in the dimness like reflections from a disco ball.
And everywhere around the hall, the same vampire, copied a hundred times, was enjoying the seaside. He was surfing, swimming, walking down a boardwalk with a pretty girl, or "sunning" on the beach with several others. His vampire king powers allowed him to project corporeal but secondary instances of himself so he could be many places at once. Suddenly the vampire sitting by the pool with a cocktail stood up, and all the other copies snapped back into him, and we stood before the vampire king.
It was, of course, Lestat. But he was played by James Marsters, not Tom Cruise. He caught sight of me, still in jeans and a corset, and laughed. He assured me the brown leather one would work much better, and sent me back with the sales girl to try it on. She led me to a different changing area, which was a framework of steel bars hung with black linen curtains for privacy, and said she was going to get the corset. Through the curtains I saw the store manager, a vampire who had been our ambassador to the king, start towards thick glass doors that would close me off alone in this area with him and two other vampires I could see coming out of the dark corners.
I scrambled into my own clothes, and tried to think of how to beat them to the glass doors, when we all were startled by a strange, deafening sound. A man was attending a game at the football stadium next door with his mentally impaired teenage son. He'd gotten separated from the boy, and texted him telling him to make his special sound, so his father could locate him. The special sound was a sort of ear-splitting "BAROOOOO" that echoed through the entire complex. When the vampires froze, I broke for the doors, and then I woke up.
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