Night Bites · Part 1

Night Bites · Part 1 (1/2)
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Beau Gabriel is the one who introduced me to the vampire hunter. Which was damn inconsiderate of him, since I am a vampire. And it was particularly thoughtless when you consider that Beau's the one who made me that way. 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? Well, he doesn't look anything like that. Now look in the mental cliche 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 in 1990, I mistook him for a timber wolf. It was an easy enough mistake to make.

He was rearing at the foot of my bed, narrow forepaws on the mattress, gray ears pricked and jaws gaped so that every fang in his head gleamed whitely in the moonlight. It was a hell of a sight to wake up to at 2 a.m., let me tell you. 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 that night, when 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. Especially considering that I kind of like garlic, all my vampire novels notwithstanding. Which just goes to prove: don't believe everything you read. At the 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 sex 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 wispering. That made the hem of my clinging red dress creep another inch upward, which in turn made 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 bastard 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 swiveled to study the object of Beau's wrath. Decker was a big guy, 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. "Damn. Who unlocked the booby hatch and let him out?" Beau growled.

"You'd think they'd fit a vampire hunter for nice a straight jacket. It's a damn shame I couldn't have shown up for day court to press that attempted murder charge…" I turned to eye him with astonishment. "Attempted murder? He tried to kill YOU? Anyway, what's the problem? 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 woke up one day a year ago just in time to see ol' Deck coming at me with a hammer and stake. It was all I could do to get out of there without getting two feet of wood shoved somewhere painful.

If the hotel manager hadn't seen us going at it and called the cops…" Beau shook his head and sighed. "That psychiatrist swore he'd be locked up for at least a couple of years, so I didn't go after him later. Guess that was a mistake." I rolled my eyes. It could only happen to me. First a cowboy Dracula, now Dr. Van Helsing on steroids. Suddenly a thought occurred to me, and 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'." "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 '58 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?" "They should worry us a lot when they don't fire lead. That one's a dart gun adapted for six-inch wooden spikes. And he's reeeal good with it. Fast, too." "Well, what are we going to do about him, then?" Decker was staring at us, a distinctly mean look in those dark eyes. 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 as dark as his eyes, scraped hard back and tied into a pony tail you could see when he turned his head. My fangs began to hurt just watching him. I'd only been half-joking in my offer to give him a nibble.

"I don't know what you're going to do, but 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 was rather surprised at that homicidal announcement. Beau usually 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, "but how about just talking to the silly sucker? It's not very macho, but…" "Talk?" Beau looked incredulous. "Amanda, you don't talk to men like that. When they make up their minds, they use cast iron sheets.

And Jim Decker's mind is made up." 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 caught onto my vampiric status. "Well," I said suddenly, "how about seduction?" "He's not my type," Beau said dryly. "I wasn't talking about you, fangs." "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, 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. 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 torqued 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," he purred. "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.

"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 so strongly of garlic I thought he was delivering pizza. I got a reeeal unpleasant surprise. So when I got a whiff of Italian outside my door the next night, I barrelled out meaning to beat the hell out of him. It was a Dominos delivery man.

Kid almost had a seizure…" I was still snickering when Decker said, "Maybe you'd like to step outside." I quit giggling and stared. I'd thought the man was smart. 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 muscled behind shift under his jeans, 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 that probably would have sounded like a soft phuit to a human, then the clack of wood bouncing off brick. It took me a second to realize that Decker had shot his damn spike gun at us, but had fortunately 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 a sharp sputtering roar as a motorcycle started up back in the alley. A moment later, the bike screamed by. Decker, apparently, was 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 2 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, goddamnit!" 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's the bastard that 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. If my heart had been beating, it would have stopped. "Decker?" "Right on the money, Amanda. Or should I say 'Draculette.'" Amanda?

Night Bites · Part 1 (1/2)
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