Must Love Vampires

by Heidi Betts

  “I sure could use a change of clothes, though,” she muttered. “This outfit is starting to get a little breezy.”

  High Card

  The first thing Chuck did was get out of the bear trap shoes that were well on their way to cutting off her circulation and sending out an engraved invitation to gangrenous amputation. It took some major unbuckling, and then major prying that would have gone faster if she’d had a shoehorn. Or a crowbar.

  Once she had them off, she began to pace along the length of the low, chrome-and-glass table in front of the plush, L-shaped sofa. Thankfully, she’d ensured that all of her toes still wiggled and possessed feeling, which made pacing easier.

  So where should she start? If she were a true investigative reporter instead of one who simply wrote up the details of stories that someone else handed her—or that she pulled out of her more-than-vivid imagination—what would she do? Where would she start her search for proof that Sebastian Raines was sporting a pair of razor-sharp fangs?

  Her gaze swept the room. Well, since she was here . . . She hurried over to the bookshelves and cocked her head to peruse the spines. It was an odd collection of well-worn paperbacks and older, leather-bound editions.

  Interesting. The Inferno’s intrepid leader apparently appreciated the classics, as well as more modern mainstream fiction. But there was nothing incriminating here. No Guy’s Guide to Being a Modern-Day Bloodsucker or Embracing Your Inner Immortality.

  The few DVDs neatly arranged near the giant plasma television were no more illuminating. They were, however, boring ! No Hancock or Die Hard or even the X-Men quartet, just documentaries on everything from the two World Wars to the Wright Brothers’ invention of the very first flying machine.

  The rest of the room was nothing but expensive paintings, vases (pronounced vah-zez, she was sure), and even a couple of small sculptures displayed on their own Grecian—possibly left over from his days in actual Ancient Greece—pedestals. One of them probably cost more than she made at the Tattler in a year.

  But it wasn’t the pricey bric-a-brac that bothered her, it was the fact that none of it seemed like vampire bric-a-brac. Weren’t the undead supposed to live in crypts, sleep in coffins, and decorate with things like chains and swords and suits of armor? Not to mention spider webs and wax-covered candelabras.

  Then again, Sebastian Raines was a modern-day vampire—if he truly was a vampire at all—so maybe he’d adapted. Maybe he kept all of his booty, acquired over the thousands of years of his life, somewhere else. A storage facility, maybe. Or a mausoleum at the local cemetery.

  She should have checked for something like that while she was trying to dig up dirt on him, she realized belatedly, wishing she still had Chloe’s torture shoes on so she could kick herself in the butt.

  But even here, in this amazing apartment where Sebastian probably hosted dozens of fancy parties and upscale soirees with all of his wealthy and influential human friends—human, most likely, but maybe a few fellow vamps, too—there had to be some sign of his bloodsucking tendencies. A pint of blood in the refrigerator . . . a box of soil from his homeland . . . a complete and total lack of mirrors.

  Well, there were no mirrors in this room, that was for sure. Just a lot of very highly polished reflective surfaces. Did that count?

  She wanted to check the rest of the penthouse, but once she got into the other rooms, she was afraid she would get distracted and forget to come back to the kitchen. So first she headed there.

  The cat, who’d been watching her curiously this whole time, hopped down from the armchair and followed.

  Wow, if the living room had been impressive, the kitchen was a foodie’s wet dream. Top-of-the-line appliances, gleaming silver in the overhead light. Obsidian marble countertops and central island. And two racks hanging from the ceiling at opposite ends of the large space—one holding a variety of wine and cocktail glasses, the other a variety of cookware.

  Chuck’s idea of a gourmet meal was Hamburger Helper, so most of what she was looking at was lost on her. But on behalf of culinary students everywhere, she could certainly appreciate Raines’s taste and attention to detail.

  She wondered if he actually used this part of the penthouse, of if it was just for show. Or maybe he had a personal chef. Or a stable of women who stayed the night and then cooked breakfast for him in the morning.

  Wait. With a shake of her head, she asked herself what the heck she was doing thinking semi-jealous thoughts. That wasn’t like her at all. She’d never even met Sebastian Raines—unless she had, indeed, fainted at his feet. But even that couldn’t be considered meeting-meeting him.

  She’d been following him, sure, but in a purely investigative capacity. Like a scientist observing gorillas in their natural habitat. The fact that she found him moderately attractive was beside the point.

  And wait times two. What was she doing wondering about his eating habits, when her whole hypothesis was that he was a vampire, and therefore didn’t eat regular food? Or didn’t need to, at any rate. She wasn’t entirely clear on the whole do they?/don’t they? thing when it came to the food issue.

  Her research had uncovered differing opinions on the topic. Some claimed vampires became deathly ill if they consumed anything but fresh (meaning straight from the source) human blood. Others said they could eat and drink anything they liked, but it didn’t nourish them the way blood did. Which meant that they could take human food or leave it, but they couldn’t forgo true feeding (i.e. blood—gack!).

  So the kitchen—as outstanding as it was—could be just for show, too. To which she offered a hearty Bravo, Mr. Raines!

  Noticing that the cat was once again staring at her from its perch on one corner of the marble counter, she cleared her throat and dragged her mind back to the matter at hand. She wasn’t here to get orgasmic over Raines’s plush, multimilliondollar digs.

  But, oh, it would be so easy.

  Before her knees went any weaker, she began a thorough search of the kitchen. Cupboards and drawers, refrigerator, oven, dishwasher.

  “Okay,” she muttered to herself, “this is not helpful. The cupboards and refrigerator are all full, and he even has three kinds of garlic on hand.” Garlic! What kind of vampire was he, dammit?

  She slammed a jar of the stuff down on the counter, making the cat jump.

  “Sorry,” she apologized with a wince. “But this flies in the face of everything we’ve been told, little black kitty cat. Either I’m wrong, or hundreds of years of myths and legends are.”

  Stepping back, she looked around, trying to decide where to dig around next. “But I’m not wrong. I can’t be. I need this story, and I’m going to find my proof.”

  Her gaze snagged on the glass-fronted, floor-to-ceiling wine cabinet beside the fridge. “Ah-ha! I’ll bet this is it,” she continued talking to herself—or, if anyone ever asked, Raines’s cat.

  Yanking open the narrow door, she started pulling out one bottle after another, lining them up on the counter. There had to be three dozen, at least. And judging by the labels, some of them were old.

  Old enough to have been brought over from the “old country”? (Wherever that was.) Old enough to have been bottled by Sebastian himself, if he’d been some seventeenthcentury vintner?

  Or maybe he’d simply been carrying some of these around with him since he’d been turned. That was certainly one way to get your hands on a bottle of uber-valuable wine without falling victim to its equally staggering price tag.

  She studied them each for several long seconds. If she were a vampire stocking her kitchen with human food for appearances’ sake, the perfect hiding place for her supply of blood would be in with the wine. The question was: Which bottles were blood and which were actually grape by-products?

  Sebastian would know, of course. He probably had them marked, or had a system for arranging them so he wouldn’t grab the wrong one when humans were around. But she was going to have to find his secret stash by trial and error.

&n
bsp; Picking up a bottle at random, she turned it from side to side, struggling to see through the dark glass to the liquid inside. She was not looking forward to this, but it was the only way to discover Sebastian’s private source of nourishment and get one step closer to proving that he truly was one of the walking dead. Undead. Whatever.

  Retrieving a corkscrew from one of the drawers she’d ransacked earlier, she went to work on the bottle in her hand. No sooner did she get it open with a small pop than the cat—who had been sitting quite peacefully at the end of the counter—jumped up on all fours. He moved so quickly, he actually startled her for a second.

  If that’s how the poor thing reacted to a simple bottle of wine being opened, she wondered how he’d deal with the even louder sound of a champagne cork being popped.

  “It’s all right, kitty. I just need to check some of these to make sure they’re actually wine.”

  She reached for a glass from the rack hanging over her head and poured a small sample from the open bottle. It was red, but only wine red, not human-blood-leeched-from-anunwilling-victim red. And it swished like wine. (Blood, she assumed, would be thicker.) And smelled like wine.

  Her nose crinkled at the thought of what she had to do next. Not only was she taking the chance of ingesting actual, gack-tual blood—yuck!—but even if it wasn’t, she didn’t particularly like wine to begin with.

  Sigh. The things she was willing to do for a story.

  She might be in one of the most luxurious penthouses in all of Las Vegas instead of a dark, dank, drippy cave that smelled like guano, but she still couldn’t say yet that this little research trip was much better than the night she’d spent camped out in hopes of catching a glimpse of Bat Boy.

  Taking a deep breath, she brought the glass to her lips, squeezed her eyes closed, and tossed back the mouthful of liquid.

  Huh. Her chin came down as she swallowed. Wine. It was just wine. Pretty darn good wine, if she did say so herself, but still just smashed and fermented grapes, not strangled and fresh-squeezed vagrant.

  Re-corking the first bottle, she moved to the next. Poured an inch and went through the whole swirl, sniff, swallow thing again.

  More wine.

  Bottle number three. (Swirl, sniff, swallow.)

  Bottle number four.

  Raines’s cat moved closer, up on all fours now, back arched. Its long, black whiskers twitched as it raised its lips and hissed, baring tiny little white teeth. Well, except for those two long canines at the sides—those looked kind of big. And sharp. As sharp as any vampire’s fangs could be.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked the obviously upset feline. Chuck glanced over her shoulder, checked the suite’s front door and the portion of hallway that she could see from the kitchen. Nothing.

  With a shrug, she went back to her systematic re-corking of bottle number four and testing with bottle number five. (Swirl, sniff, swallow.)

  Bottle number six. Seven. Eight.

  The cat hissed again, and again, growling low in its throat between bouts of trying to spit her to death. She didn’t know what the heck its problem was; she was the one having to slug down gulp after gulp of stinky alcohol. Although, come to think of it, it wasn’t really that bad. The first few sips had been a little hard to get down, but things were moving much more smoothly now. She was even beginning to enjoy this, though it was disappointing not to have found her quarry’s stash of fresh blood yet.

  But she wasn’t a quitter. She’d uncork and taste every one of these bottles, if she had to. And, hey, she only had about four to go, anyway, so she might as well.

  While she worked to open yet another of the unopened bottles, the cat jumped down from the counter and sprinted past her as it raced out of the kitchen. As small as the animal was, the impact of it brushing past her in her current state—yeah, yeah, so she suspected she was well on her way to being tipsy—sent her teetering slightly, even in bare feet.

  She reached out, catching herself against the edge of the counter with her free hand while she carefully balanced the glass of wine in the other. It might only have an inch and a half of crimson liquid floating around at the bottom, but she wasn’t going to risk spilling a drop.

  “Kitty,” she called out, wondering what had gotten into the unfriendly feline.

  Still clasping her glass, she tiptoed around the corner and into the long hallway leading to the rear of the apartment. She knew she should finish up—and probably clean up—in the kitchen before she went snooping around elsewhere, but the idea of following the cat was too tempting.

  Cats were notoriously sneaky and stealthy. They knew all kinds of dark, secret places where they could hide or nap . . . and where their vampiric guardians could hide all kinds of evidence of their blood-sipping, sun-avoiding tendencies.

  Her bare toes dug into the plush, ocean-blue carpeting as she hustled past a couple of closed doorways, one on either side of the hall, and toward the one that was slightly ajar at the far end of the wide corridor.

  “Here, kitty, kitty,” she crooned just above a whisper. “Where did you go, sweetheart?”

  She didn’t know why she was suddenly so concerned about being overheard. She’d just spent thirty minutes, maybe an hour, popping the corks of every bottle of wine in Sebastian Raines’s kitchen stash. At any point during that little exercise in futility, someone could have walked in and caught her in the act. Sebastian himself, or one of his giant, no-neck bodyguards.

  So either the penthouse was empty and she truly was completely alone—not counting the only cat in the world who apparently didn’t think she bathed in tuna juice on a daily basis—or her captor(s) were hiding away, leaving her to her own devices until they were ready to jump out and start giving her the old rubber hose treatment.

  She was sure rubber hoses hurt . . . along with all of the other five hundred methods of torture she could think of off the top of her head. And the ten thousand more that got added to the list if she started thinking about vampires torturing humans.

  Gads, she’d read too many horrific novels and watched too many shows about appalling myths and legends while researching this story. She had fangs and bloodletting and torn jugulars on the brain.

  The door at the end of this particular hall was open a couple of inches . . . just enough for an eight-pound laze-about cat to slip through. Bending at the waist, she put her fingers on the knob and pushed lightly, taking baby steps inside in the slow, hunched-over position she thought would be most nonthreatening to Mr. Hissy-Pants.

  “Come on now, kitty,” she continued to cajole. “There’s nothing to be scared of, and I need you to show me where your master’s bodies are buried. Not literally,” she added with a shiver, mumbling the aside to herself more than the still-missing feline.

  She seriously hoped there were no actual bodies piled up around here. That would be just . . . gross.

  Of course, for all she knew, the billionaire Raines could have a harem of blood slaves chained up in one of these back bedrooms. Or willing ones lazing about on silk sheets all day, simply awaiting the moment he would return to drain them nearly dry—with an accompanying orgasm brought on by sudden blood loss. Or so she’d read about somewhere along the way.

  Must be nice. Even she might be willing to let a vampire bite her if it included a free Big O for every pint she donated. Lord knew she wasn’t getting the Os—big or otherwise—from anyone else.

  She scanned the dark room, but saw nothing more than darkness and the vague outlines of really nice furniture.

  The good news: She was pretty sure she’d just found the Big Kahuna’s bedroom. His secret lair within his secret lair.

  It surprised her a little that the room didn’t seem to be decorated in Transylvania chic. There were no flickering candelabras. No long strips of sheer white linen draped from the ceiling and over the windows, fluttering in a faux dramatic breeze. And no large, black lacquer coffin—or better yet, one of those ancient pine-box types that was wider at the shoulder end than at
the ankle end—where the ghoulish undead took his respite during daylight hours.

  It looked to her as though there was just a bed—a really big, “just right” Goldilocks bed, wider than any king-size she’d ever seen—and a bureau, and average Martha Stewart drapes open at the windows.

  The view was spectacular, no doubt about it. Just like in the living room, Sebastian Raines’s penthouse offered probably one of the best vantage points in the city. Every floor-to-ceiling window—of which there were many—overlooked some portion of Las Vegas, with its bustling streets, sparkling lights, and bright neon signs. During the day, she knew she would be able to make out mountains and people and the rippling desert heat reflecting off of the surrounding rooftops.

  So what did Sebastian do during the day? Vampires couldn’t tolerate sunlight, that was a given. She’d read conflicting reports about their reactions to garlic or reflective surfaces (i.e. mirrors), but all of the “experts” definitely agreed that sunlight was a giant no-no for the descendants of Count Dracula. Or Vlad the Impaler, depending on which bloodsucking origin you wanted to believe.

  Which made her wonder why he insisted on occupying the Inferno’s penthouse suite to begin with. He could have just as easily built his empire with a nice, cozy living space far underground in the sub-sub-basement. That’s where she would live, if she were mortally “allergic” to the sun.

  But she was sure he had a system. Maybe he made it a point to be tucked safely inside his closet every day before dawn. Or maybe the entire penthouse was just for show and he really did live in the sub-sub-basement. There might even be an express elevator somewhere that connected the two—penthouse to crypt—that he used to zip from one to the other just before the sun began its red-gold climb into the morning sky.

  Oh, yeah, she was cookin’ now. She’d have to remember that line for her story; it sounded very deep and impressive and drew a great picture of the rich but reclusive hero (that would be Sebastian) dashing off to his secret, underground lair where he slept alone and lonely, hidden away from the rays of light that could so easily claim his life.