Love Bites

by Adrienne Barbeau

  I’d torn open the beast’s stomach when I sliced her. I’d also gotten an image from the contact. I saw Lilith on her back, her legs spread, birthing this thing. I didn’t have time to think about it. She came at me again, gnashing and growling, and when she lunged, Peter kicked her in midair from the side. I grabbed the coffee table by its leg and swung it at her as she charged him, smashing her canines back into her throat. She staggered. I leapt on her back, my fangs tearing at her neck until I found her jugular and felt her boiling blood streaming down my throat. She continued to struggle, but I could feel the life pumping out of her. God, she tasted good. I’d just fed on Maral two nights before, but Maral’s blood always had a faint aftertaste of cannabis; this were was sweeter, more familiar. I held on, sucking and swallowing, until she was dead.

  Lying atop her, I was flooded with images. Split-second images that jumped like a movie preview. She was the paparazzo’s lover, all right. I saw him shift to a boxenwolf, the collar around his neck. Madelaine Sauvage was still in human form, standing half bent over, and he was mounting her from behind, his swollen wolf cock disappearing between her legs. Then I saw my battle with Lilith in Palm Springs, me in my dragon form and Lilith morphed into a serpent.

  Then Lilith was a woman again: Baby Jane giving birth to another were. He was huge. He was the werebeast who’d attacked me in my yard. Lilith forced him down on his back, climbed on top of him like he was a man, and rode herself on him. She came, and then the were shifted into a human form and mounted Madelaine Sauvage.

  I recognized him.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  “Ovsanna, get off her! She’s on fire!” Flames had moved up one of the mannequin’s clothes, melting its torso and flaring when they reached the acrylic wig. The form toppled over onto the hind legs of the dead werewolf, and its fur caught fire. Ovsanna had her teeth buried in its neck. She seemed to be in a daze, not aware of the heat or flames. I forced open her jaw, grabbed her by the shoulders, and pulled her off. She had blood running down her chin, her mouth was covered with it. She bared her fangs, snarling at me. Her eyes had turned; they were glowing red. There was no recognition in them, just rage. And something else—a primal urge to attack. I yelled her name again and they flickered, and I saw her humanity come back into them. If that’s what you call it. I saw understanding return, a realization of who I was and who she was—all in a split second.

  “Peter—,” she said, wiping the blood off her lips.

  The flames had spread to a second dummy. The clothes were burning, but whatever the mannequin was made of, it was melting instead. I grabbed an iron poker from the fireplace set and rolled the charring mess into the hearth. “Cover that one with that rug,” I yelled, and Ovsanna did, stomping on the embers that escaped from under the purple flokati.

  That just left the werewolf. It was blazing in the middle of the room, but the floor beneath it was concrete slab, so nothing else was on fire.

  “I can do this!” Ovsanna said, and she took two more tools from the set and began to push the burning body toward the hearth. I grabbed a spaghetti pot off the kitchen counter, filled it with water, and doused everything that was still burning. It took a couple of trips, but by the time Ovsanna had the carcass all the way in the fireplace, the danger was over. Except for the smoke and the smell. Like driving past the dairy farms on the way to Pacheco Pass.

  Talk about a mess. I’m a cop, goddamn it, and there I was helping to kill my second—what, victim? perp? beast?—in two days. Less than two days, if you want to be exact. Cyril Sinclair had been alive on the beach, attacking Ovsanna, just the night before. Now he and his girlfriend were both dead. At least we didn’t have another body to explain. Nothing was left of Madelaine Sauvage but a pile of sodden ash in the fireplace.

  We opened the remaining windows to let out some of the stench. Aside from the charring on the concrete and the burned rug, the fire hadn’t done any noticeable damage. The mannequin population had diminished, but unless the cops got a good friend of Madelaine’s to examine the room, they wouldn’t know that.

  I went outside and hunted around in the bushes until I found my gun. Made sure I had all the pieces of the shoulder harness. Ovsanna filled a garbage bag with most of the ash, and we burned another small log to mix with what remained. She said there wouldn’t be any human DNA in the pile, but I didn’t want any signs that a body had been burned at all, regardless of the species.

  We were both bloody, although most of the blood on Ovsanna was from the werewolf and not her. What had dripped on the floor had landed on the rug, and the rug had burned with the dummy, so there was no blood to clean.

  That left a little charred concrete and the broken window. With a dishcloth, I picked up Emilie’s martini shaker—Jesus, I was calling the mannequins by name now—and threw it through the window. It landed in the ice plant outside. Let the investigators think Madelaine had gotten drunk and let it fly. Hell, let them think whatever they wanted; there was no body, no sign of a break-in, nothing but a fire in a fireplace that may have gotten out of hand and a window broken out from the inside. Maybe she threw herself a raucous going-away party and then left town.

  The neighborhood was empty. No one seemed to have noticed the commotion. I slipped quietly out to my car and grabbed gloves from the evidence kit I keep in the trunk. Even though I could explain I’d had to interview Sauvage because of her relationship to Cyril Sinclair, there was no sense leaving our prints anywhere. Ovsanna mopped the concrete while I wiped down the window latches, the coffee table, and the fireplace tools, feeling more and more like a perp myself. Then we started a search of the rest of the house. I was looking for anything that would explain Madelaine Sauvage’s link to Cyril Sinclair or to the paparazzi-cum-boxenwolves or why Ovsanna had been attacked.

  There were two bedrooms upstairs, a bathroom, and a small office. And more dummies. One sat on a high stool at the end of the hall, in a tight black sheath with her legs crossed at the ankles, her knees swaying to the left and her toes pointed to the right in one of those fifties coquette poses. Her face was covered with a black veil attached to a wide-brimmed black hat. Another shy one, it looked like. I wondered what her name was—Gigi, maybe? Or Sabrina?

  Two more mannequins stood on either side of the master bedroom closet, with their arms motioning to the door the way Betty Furness used to in those refrigerator commercials. They were nude except for aprons around their waists. Creepy. I imagined some guy in the middle of screwing Madelaine looking up to see those two figures pointing like that. He’d probably jump out the window.

  There was a cell phone on the desk in the office. I made a note of the number to compare it with Smooch’s incoming calls. His name was number two on the speed dial. The only other name I recognized was the guy Sauvage said she had worked for, the head of WorldWide Talent, Mick Erzatz. He was number one on the speed dial.

  There were pictures of him and Madelaine in an album she had on a shelf in the closet. Pictures of Smooch and Madelaine, too. And Madelaine and several other guys, dating back fifteen years or so from the looks of the clothes and haircuts. She looked lovey-dovey with all of them. So maybe Mick Erzatz had been more than her boss. I wondered if he preceded Smooch or if she was screwing them simultaneously. From all the stories I’d heard about Erzatz, I was guessing she didn’t have much choice. He got off on having power. Rumor was if you wanted to work for him, you had to audition on tape. He had videos of every woman he’d hired giving him head. A lot of the actresses he represented, too.

  Ovsanna found one wolf-pelt collar. It was in a drawer with Madelaine’s lingerie, under her bras and panties. There was definitely a connection between her and the boxenwolves.

  We took the collar with us and put the garbage bag with the ashes in my trunk and tossed it in a Dumpster on Herkimer Street, where Ovsanna had parked her car. Then she followed me back to my house. She wanted to clean up before she went home to Maral.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Driving aw
ay from the woman’s house, following Peter, my body shivered with excitement. I wanted to tear off my clothes, free myself of anything touching my skin. Feeding on that werebitch had left me desperate for release. I rubbed my free hand across my breasts as I drove, barely able to concentrate on the road. My nipples were hard and warm, and each time I touched them, I got closer to the edge. I still had the were’s blood on my arms. I licked it off, reveling in the rich resin taste. It wasn’t until I parked next to Peter’s Jag that I forced myself to calm down and pull back from the passion that was threatening to bring on a change. He didn’t need a full-blown vampyre awakening the neighborhood. I sat in the car for a minute, breathing slowly, letting the energy flow away from me. Letting my nerves relax.

  It was the first time I’d seen his house. I concentrated on that. It was charming—a three-bedroom Spanish bungalow in a canyon off Beverly Glen, with a hot tub and a lap pool and a guesthouse in the back. While he was looking for something for me to wear, I walked through the rooms. He’d turned one of them into a combination office and workout space; free weights and a treadmill had been set up in front of a flat-screen TV, with a computer desk and bookshelves across from it. The other bedroom looked as if it was reserved for guests. And ironing. A full-size ironing board with an iron on it stood in the middle of the room. Made me smile; no wonder he always looked neat.

  We met up in the master bathroom. He’d removed his leather jacket and bloodied shirt. His blood had soaked through and was drying on his face and chest. The smell roused my need all over again. Forget oysters. Blood does it for me every time. He had a black terrycloth robe in his hands and he was turning on the shower.

  “Here,” he said, handing me the robe, “I’ll go over to SuzieQ’s and see if she’s got something you can wear to go home in. Her car’s here but her shades are up, so she’s probably out on a date. She won’t mind if I borrow something for you.”

  “I can wait, Peter,” I said. “Let’s get that glass out of your hair before we do anything else. You’ve got a bunch of cuts we need to clean.”

  He shook his head over the sink and slowly ran his fingers through his hair to flick out any remaining slivers. Then he opened the medicine cabinet and handed me a bottle of Bactine and some Q-tips. He leaned against the counter, watching my face while I dabbed each of his cuts with the medicine. His blood was still flooded with adrenaline from the attack. I wanted to lick off every drop. I said, “You know, the last time you cut yourself, it was all I could do to keep from jumping you.” It was the first day we’d met: I’d scratched him with my claws and convinced him it was a shurikan he’d cut himself on. I could probably tell him the truth now that he knew I was a vampyre.

  “Really? Well . . . if I’d known that,” he said, “I’d have been using a dull straight razor to shave with. Ouch!” I pulled a tiny sliver of glass out of his forehead. “Are you doing that to make me bleed?” he teased. “ ’Cause I’ll be happy to oblige the jumping me part without any more cuts or slicing.”

  I looked in his eyes. He was smiling, but he wasn’t teasing any longer. “All right,” I said. I put down the Bactine and the Q-tips, pulled my sweater over my head, and stepped into the shower in my boots and bra and black leather pants. He could do the rest. I turned around and stared at him. His chest was broad and muscled, with a layer of flesh that made him look solid and strong, not cut like a gym rat. His skin was smooth, just a trace of dark chest hair. I wanted to lick the strands that curled around his nipples.

  His eyes never left mine. He unbuckled his belt, pulled off his shoes and socks, worked his pants and briefs down over his body, and joined me.

  There was a tile bench along the back of the shower. I sat on the edge, arching my back against the wall, stretching my legs out straight under the stream of water. He straddled my hips, his cock hard and huge, inches from my mouth, and then he bent forward and reached around to unhook my bra. I scraped his chest lightly with my nails, circling his nipples. We kissed, our mouths only, while his hands moved down to unzip my pants. It took a while to peel the wet leather down my legs, especially since he’d buried his face in my body, but neither of us minded. The heat from the shower coupled with the heat from his flesh made it hard for me to breathe. I kicked the shower door open to let the cool bathroom air temper the steam. He put my pants and my boots on the rug outside the door. Then he knelt in front of me, and I stopped paying attention to anything else.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  I hadn’t fully trusted Ovsanna until I’d pulled her off Madelaine Sauvage. She’d seemed at the height of her full-blown vampyre self right then—completely instinctual and bloodthirsty—yet when I’d called her name and she looked at me, she came back from whatever she was, and she knew me. And I wasn’t fodder. That’s when I knew I was safe with her. I didn’t realize it at that moment, but that was the last piece that needed to fall into place for us to come together.

  Standing outside the shower, knowing we were finally going to make love, made me so hard—and huge, even if I have to say so myself—that I had trouble getting my shorts over my cock and off my body. I stood staring at Ovsanna in her black bra and boots and skintight leather pants. I felt like I’d walked through the screen into one of her movies. Nothing about it seemed real. Her skin, when I reached my arms around her to unleash her breasts, was as smooth as travertine and just as cool, in spite of the hot water pouring down on us. I wanted to get inside her to find out if she was cool there, too. I wanted to get inside her as deep as I possibly could. Not just to feel her body around me, her muscles sucking me in. No, I wanted to get all the way inside her, into her core. Connect with her, so I wouldn’t be able to tell where I stopped and she began. So it was all one. I didn’t even know what that meant; I just knew I had to get to her. It was an urge unlike anything I’d ever experienced. I mean it. And believe me, as a single man in urban L.A., I’ve had my share of experiences. Especially when the Times profiled me as a “hero” for saving that kid from drowning in the L.A. River—I had women throwing themselves at me for months. I didn’t throw too many of them back.

  But none of them was like Ovsanna.

  Of course, they were all human. That could be the difference.

  This vampyre scraped her nails over my chest, around my nipples, and I thought I was going to explode right then and there. Any ideas I’d had about going slowly or being tenderly romantic went out the shower door along with the steam. I concentrated on getting her pants peeled off and then lost myself in her, my mouth on her body. She thrust forward and met me, guiding my tongue. She set the rhythm and I followed, tracing the outline of her as she swelled, dipping inside her as I licked. And yes, she was cool inside. Cool like the water off a Caribbean island. Cool like the Santa Anas blowing in December. Cool like I didn’t mind a bit.

  She was on her knees with my cock in her mouth when the hot water ran out. I was trembling so hard I could barely stand up. I turned off the faucets. We dripped water all the way to the bed, and then I was inside her. We pounded against each other, driving to the brink, our mouths locked together. Then she wrapped her fingers in my hair and pulled my face away from her. She held me there, staring in my eyes, watching my reaction as her fangs unsheathed. “Please, Peter,” she whispered. I lifted my head in acquiescence and she slid her teeth into my neck.

  It was three A.M. when I looked at the clock. Ovsanna was lying on her side, tracing her nails lightly down my chest. Her nails, not her claws. Her fangs were nowhere in sight. And thank God, because I was spent. I couldn’t have come around again if my life depended on it. Not for another hour or so, at least. She brought her lips to my neck and licked the spot where she’d fed.

  “You realize,” I said, “you give a whole new meaning to the term suck me off.”

  She laughed and kept on licking. It had been less than an hour since she’d bitten me, but the cuts were barely visible. She’d licked my forehead, too, and the wounds there were almost gone.

  “How does t
hat heal so quickly?” I asked.

  “It’s my saliva. It closes the wound and fills in your cells to speed their regeneration. But I have to work at it. Some of my kind take great pride in leaving their mark, as though they are branding a pet. ‘You see what I can do?’ they seem to be saying, like humans geld their horses or chop off their dogs’ tails, ‘because you belong to me . . . and there’s the proof.’ I hate that.”

  “So they’re not all like you, even though you are their . . . what do you call it . . . chatelaine? Their boss?” I ran my hand down the curve of her body.

  “No. They’re members of my clan, the Vampyres of Hollywood, because they came here after I did, and they owe fealty to me as the one who was the first to establish myself here; but we don’t all share the same traits. Those of us who were born vampyre are from different parts of the world; hence Orson is Strigoi Vui, Douglas is Blautsauger, Theda Bara is Azeman, I am Dakhanavar. It’s sort of like you being Italian and Welsh, but you’re also an Angeleno because you live here. And then if I turn someone, he or she becomes like me, with my Dakhanavar instincts and capabilities.”

  “So you mean Rudolph Valentino and Jason Eddings and Mai Goulart and Tommy Gordon—all people you turned—they all could do what you do? Touch people and get images, see things so clearly, hear better, do that heat thing you did to me? And my aunt Adelaide, you did something to her, too, didn’t you? Some kind of mind-control thing? Could the others you turned do that, too?”

  “Well, Rudy, maybe. He was older. We get more powerful as we get older. My attorney, Ernst Solgar, is Clan Obour born, more than nine hundred years ago. You should see the things he can do. Just with his tongue. And you definitely don’t want to go up against him in a contract dispute. He gives new meaning to the term bloodsucker.”