Vampire Dreams 02 Night Bites

  NIGHT BITES

  By Angela Knight

  Copyright 1990

  Beau Gabriel introduced me to the vampire hunter. Which was damned inconsiderate of him, since I am a vampire. Then again, so's Beau; he's the one who made me a vamp in the first place.

  Me? I'm Amanda Carlton. Used to write a mildly popular series of vampire horror novels --until I got a visit from the real thing. Who, as it happens, had thought my portrayal of the undead a bit bigoted and decided to give me a taste of reality.

  Beau? Okay, picture a vampire. Got it? Wel, he doesn't look anything like that.

  Now, look in the mental cliché file that reads "cowboy." That's Beau. He's got an open, thoroughly American face, handsome in a weather-beaten kind of way, with wheat-blond hair and honest eyes that are very, very blue. He's the only man I know who can wear cowboy boots and a black Stetson without looking self-conscious. That's because it's no costume to him. He is a cowboy. Or was, from 1870 to 1881.

  But on July 8, 1881, he ran into this dance hall girl who was a little long in the tooth...

  Which is why, when I met him a hundred years later, I mistook him for a timber wolf. It was an easy enough mistake to make. He was rearing at the foot of my bed at the time, narrow forepaws on the mattress, gray ears pricked and jaws gaped so that every fang in his head gleamed white in the moonlight.

  Now, that was a hell of a sight to wake up to at two in the morning.

  But you know the one that goes, "his bark is worse than his bite"? It's certainly true in Beau's case. His bite is wonderful.

  As a result, I soon found myself haunting bars with him, searching for somebody for us both to bite. Which is what we were doing in Bottoms Up the night the vampire hunter walked in.

  Bottoms Up was one of our favorite hunting grounds that year. The clientele was decent and clean and mostly composed of lonely yuppies on the make, and the decor was heavy on the mahogany and brass. The rock that boomed out of the bar's big amps leaned more toward mellow than metal, which suited us just fine. Vampires have very sensitive hearing, and a good obnoxious head-banging band will run us off quicker than garlic any day. (For one thing, I like garlic, all my vampire novels notwithstanding. Which just goes to prove: don't believe everything you read.)

  At that moment, I was carrying on a silent flirtation with a cute yuppie couple, trying to tempt them into a game of sexual doubles. They were sitting two tables away, with the husband eyeing me and the wife eyeing Beau, both with some idea of enlivening their love lives. I was eyeing the pulse in hubby's throat with some idea of enlivening it a lot more than they had in mind.

  By way of baiting the hook, I leaned back in my chair and stretched out my long legs, black silk stockings whispering. The move made the hem of my clinging red dress creep another inch upward -- and hubby's eyes slowly glaze.

  I was thinking about reeling in my fish when Beau said, "Shye-eee-it." I jerked around. When he starts pronouncing "shit" as a three-syllable word, it's a sure sign he's disturbed about something. His southern accent only comes out under stress.

  "What?" I demanded.

  "It's Jim Decker. How in the hell did that psycho track me here?" His blue eyes, narrowed to irritated slits, were directed toward a man leaning against the long brass-and-mahogany bar.

  Interested, I turned to study the object of Beau's wrath. Decker was a big man, 6'4" at least. The height alone made him look formidable, but adding to the menace was the sheer muscle you could see bulking under his leather jacket and tight blue jeans. It's hard for a man that tall to build up so big, and I knew he must have spent a lot of time at the gym to do it.

  "Who unlocked the booby hatch and let him out?" Beau growled. "He should be drooling in a padded cell somewhere. Damn, too bad I wasn't able to show up for day court. If I'd testified at the bastard's trial..."

  "Trial? For what?"

  "Trying to shove nine inches of seasoned pine through my heart."

  I turned to eye him with astonishment. "He tried to kill you?" I was surprised Decker had survived to get to trial.

  I shook my head. "I don't get it. Big as he is, you're at least twenty times stronger."

  "Sure. At night. Thing is, Decker doesn't come around at night. He waits until daylight and sneaks up on you."

  I shuddered. Talk about your basic vampire nightmare. "What happened?"

  "I woke up one morning to see ol' Deck standing over me with a hammer and stake. It was all I could do to get out of there without getting a two-by-four shoved somewhere painful. If the hotel manager hadn't seen us going at it and called the cops..." Beau shrugged. "Decker made the mistake of telling them I was a vampire, which pretty well convinced everybody he was crazy. The court-ordered psychiatrist swore he'd be locked up for good, so I didn't go after him later. Guess that was a mistake."

  I stared hard at him. "What got him ticked off to begin with? No, don't tell me, let me guess. You screwed his wife, right?"

  Beau cut his eyes toward me. "Actually no."

  "Oh." If I could have, I would have blushed.

  "It was his sister. He noticed the bites and came hunting. He's convinced he saved her from eternal damnation."

  "Must be a Southern Baptist."

  "I think so, yeah. Anyway, he thinks he's on a holy quest to rid the world of a satanic scourge. Namely me. And you too, once he figures out you're one of the 'accursed undead'."

  I looked over at Decker's long, muscled body. He'd turned around to order a drink, and I eyed his butt, admiring the way the faded denim hugged those taut male contours. "Well, if he's got any doubts about that, I'll just stroll over and show him my fangs. He looks like my type of guy." I dropped into a phony French accent. "A nice '66 type O, ze very good year for ze hemoglobin."

  "Do that and you might be surprised at who winds up with the blood loss. Not all the bulges under that jacket are muscle. See the one under his arm?"

  "What, you mean the shoulder-holster? Since when do guns worry us?"

  "That one damn well better worry you, because it doesn't fire lead. It's a dart gun adapted for eight-inch wooden spikes. And he's reeeal good with it. Fast, too."

  "Well, what are we going to do about him, then?" Decker was watching us again, a narrow, blue-eyed stare cold enough to give me a chill. Even so, he was a handsome devil, with the kind of sharp, clean face you see on the cover of GQ, - except his was just battered enough to keep from being too pretty. His hair was a dark, rich chestnut, scraped hard back and tied into a ponytail that curled against the rich brown leather of his jacket.

  At the moment, he was leaning on the bar, calling attention to the width of his shoulders and the powerful, corded column of his throat. My fangs ached just looking at it. God, I'd love to nibble on that strong masculine neck.

  Among other things.

  "I'm killing the sonofabitch," Beau growled. "I played it legal the last time, but I'm not taking chances with that psycho again. He's toast."

  I looked at him, surprised at that cold-blooded announcement. It was one thing to kill an attacker in a fight to the death, but murder wasn't Beau's style. Hell, he actively went out of his way not to hurt anybody. With his strength, he didn't need to.

  As for his "victims," he never took more than a pint or so. And they were usually moaning too loudly to notice.

  "I know this is a radical idea," I suggested after a pause, "but how about just talking to him? I realize that may not be macho enough for you, but..."

  "Talk?" Beau looked incredulous. "Amanda, you can't reason with a homicidal fanatic. The only way I'm going to get Jim Decker off my ass is to drain him like a six-pack."

  I glanced back over at all that luscious, smoldering vampire hunter and saw his
point. Which didn't mean I liked the idea. There had to be a way to avoid this.

  "How about just beating the living daylights out of him? That might convince him to give you a wide berth."

  Beau was staring murderously at Decker, who stared right back with eyes that were just as homicidal. "Anybody else, maybe, but not him. One thing I'll give the son of a bitch, he's not a coward."

  I cut another glance toward the subject of our discussion. He'd shifted his full attention to me, staring with a fixed and unpleasant gleam. I had the feeling that he'd made me for a vamp. "Well," I said, "how about seduction?"

  "He's not my type," Beau said dryly.

  "I wasn't talking about you."

  "You really do have a yen for that beefy bastard, don't you? Well, forget it. He'd be happy to screw you, but then you'd wake up in the morning to find him impaling you with something that would leave splinters."

  I shuddered. "You've got a way with charming imagery, you know that? Anyway, I'll bet I could mellow him out a little -- especially if I used psi."

  "Yeaaaah," he said slowly, studying me with calculation, "you probably could, at that." Beau considered the idea a moment, and then reluctantly shook his head.

  "No, it'd never work. You'd have to put the bite on him to make a psilink, and he's too paranoid to let you get close enough for that."

  "Well," I said slowly, eying the way Decker's jeans hugged his lean hips. That denim cupped a really interesting bulge I wouldn't mind investigating. "I could always just jump him."

  "No way," Beau snapped. Was that a note of jealousy in his voice? "That bastard is dangerous, Amanda. If he got the drop on you, you could end up staked. And I'm not talking about the stake you're staring at. No, I'm going to have to do this the hard way..."

  "Whoops. Here he comes," I said, watching Decker start toward us. Flicking a glance toward Beau, I noticed his fangs peeking under his upper lip, a sure sign that he was definitely ticked off.

  When Decker got close enough to loom over us, Beau grinned, giving him a good look at those teeth. "What are you doing here, Deck? The sun isn't up yet. You don't usually show your cowardly face before dawn."

  Decker may have lacked the fang, but his smile was just as lethal in its own way. "I wanted to meet your pretty little friend here. What's your name, sweetheart?" He turned the menace in my direction, but I managed not to flinch.

  Instead, I breathed in once through my nose, deeply enough to pick up his scent, then gave him a smile of my own, putting as much seductive taunt into it as possible. Lips still parted, I let my fangs slowly extend into my mouth. "You can call me Draculette," I said, and licked my teeth.

  Okay, it was a cheap thing to do, but he unnerved me.

  It was mutual. Decker's head rocked back and the smile faded.

  "Wishing you'd brought along your garlic, Deck?" Beau sneered. "Or have you finally stopped doing your research at horror flicks?"

  To me he added, "First time he came around, he smelled of so much garlic I thought he was delivering pizza. I found out I was wrong the hard way. So when I got a whiff of Italian outside my door the next night, I barreled out meaning to beat the hell out of him. It was a Dominos deliveryman. Kid almost had a seizure..."

  I was still snickering when Decker leaned over and braced his powerful arms on the table. His eyes cold, flat and level, he looked at Beau and said, "Maybe you'd like to step outside." I quit giggling and stared. He might be cute, but he was dumb.

  Beau, being better at hiding his feelings, didn't even blink. "Why not?" he said easily, and got to his feet. I followed them as they pushed through the crowd, heading for the door.

  Without even looking back, Decker led us out and around into the alley that ran beside the bar. Watching his tight behind and long, striding legs, I thought it was a damn shame to waste anything that looked that good.

  It must have been pitch black in the alley to human eyes, though Beau and I could see pretty well. We just weren't paying attention; Beau was getting ready to kill Decker, and I was trying to think of a way to talk him out of it. I barely even noticed the tall, rickety tripod standing in the middle of the alley.

  Then the sun went off in my face.

  Actually, the blast of illumination seemed even brighter than sunlight, and it blinded me instantly. I threw both arms over my face just as a hand grabbed my shoulder and shoved me into the wall. There was a loud crack, then the clack of wood bouncing off brick. It took me a second to realize that Decker had shot his spike gun at us, but luckily missed.

  Beau - it was Beau that had me, I could tell by his scent -- jerked me, stumbling, back in the direction we came. "Let's get the hell out of here before he reloads!"

  As he was dragging me around the corner, I heard the sputtering roar of a motorcycle started up back in the alley. A moment later, the bike screamed by. Decker, making good his getaway before our eyes recovered.

  "What the hell was that?" I cried, rubbing at my eyelids and trying to blink away the purple explosions that blocked my vision.

  "Some kind of camera flash. Didn't you see the tripod? He must have rigged it for an extended burst somehow ... Goddamn it, why couldn't he have stuck with the garlic and crosses?"

  "Apparently he wised up," I said, still blinking. "A lot wiser than us, evidently. I should have known this was a trap..."

  "Yeah, I kind of figured it was, I just thought I could handle it. How's your eyes? Mine are starting to clear."

  But by the time our respective eyesight had recovered, ten minutes had passed, and Decker was long gone. We loaded into Beau's black Ferrari and searched for him for a while, but I was getting a headache and finally called it a night.

  Beau dropped me off at my apartment complex and roared off to hunt Decker again. I staggered up to my apartment and reeled into my bedroom. Peeling out of the tight red dress, I dropped it on the floor and fell on the bed. Just before I drifted off, I reflected that Decker would probably be surprised I didn't sleep in a coffin.

  Imagine the worst hangover you've ever had. Now cube it. Now cube that. Your head bongs like the Liberty Bell -- and feels just as cracked. Your stomach is making violent attempts to turn itself inside out and dump its contents into your abdominal cavity, and your mouth feels like Death Valley ...complete with the buzzard droppings.

  That's pretty much the way I feel when somebody wakes me up at three o'clock in the afternoon by letting the daylight blast into my face.

  It's not true that the sun kills vampires. It just feels like it.

  "Close the curtains, dammit!" I yelled, trying to throw both hands over my face. Something clicked on the brass headboard, and my arms jerked to a stop. Eyes squeezed shut to protect them from the burning light; I tugged and heard that clicking again. There was something tight and cold on my wrists.

  "Okay," I said, really irritated now, "who handcuffed me to the bed?" Normally, I'd have snapped the cuffs like strands of wet pasta, but daylight had rendered me pretty close to helpless.

  "You're not a morning person, are you?" It took me a minute to identify that cold, deep voice, but once I had, I wished I hadn't.

  "Decker?"

  "Right on the money, Amanda. Or should I say 'Draculette'?'"

  Amanda? How had he found out my real name? I never use it when I'm hunting.

  "I recognized you from the picture on the dust jacket of your book," he explained, reading my puzzlement. He sounded as if he were enjoying himself. "I really liked Shadowmaster, by the way. It gave me a lot of ideas..."

  Great, just great. That damn book keeps coming back to haunt me -- Beau found me the same way. Suddenly I realized something. "The bit with the flash. You got that from the camera scene in the book, didn't you?" The heroine had triggered her instamatic off in the vampire's face, and he'd beat a quick retreat.

  "As a matter of fact, I did," he said. His voice was moving closer, and I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck. "But at the moment, I'm more interested in the location of your master..." "My mas
ter?" I choked, and began to hoot with laughter. It made my head hurt, so I quit.

  Big hands grabbed my shoulders. "Where is he? He's not at his townhouse, and he's not in any of the hotels..."

  Jesus. He knew about the townhouse? Beau wouldn't like that at all.

  "Where?" He shook me. It felt as though my skull were about to fall off.

  "I...I don't know." That was true, as far as it went, but I did have some idea. Beau, paranoid after our run-in with Decker, was probably sleeping in one of the nondescript vans he kept parked around the city. I wished I'd had the sense to join him last night, instead of pleading a headache and coming home. Now I really had a headache.

  And if the headache didn't quit shaking me, I was going to bite him on his over-muscled forearms. He must have noticed my lips peeling back, because he let go hastily.

  "You're going to tell me where Beau Gabriel is," Decker said, his voice low and threatening, "or I'm going to leave you in the sun to cook."

  And I'd do just that, damn it. In half an hour at most, I'd have second-degree burns.

  "All right, all right, just don't hurt me. First," I rasped, "go to the door and down the stairs. Got that?"

  "Yeah." He sounded a little surprised that I was giving in so easily.

  "There's a big elm tree by the door outside. Dig there. It'll take a while, but keep digging. Eventually you'll fall right through in this real hot place inhabited by lots of red guys with horns. When you see the brimstone start freezing over, come back and I'll tell you where Beau is."

  For a minute there was dead silence, and I wondered if I was about to get belted. Normally, of course, a mere human fist couldn't have hurt me, but the sun was up now, and all bets were off.

  Suddenly I felt cold metal press between my breasts. I realized with a chill that it must be Decker's spike gun. "Tell me where he is," he gritted.

  "Go to hell," I told him, and grimaced in expectation of taking a spike. Instead, he started cursing with amazing creativity. I heard something that sounded like the gun slamming into the wall across the room. Decker had a temper.

  After awhile he ran out of expletives, so he began firing questions and threats instead. Though my skin was beginning to sting in the hot sun, I set my jaw and said nothing, much to his rising fury.