Love Bites Read online

  The host turned out to be the owner of the restaurant. He arrived at the table with a bottle in his hand. SuzieQ introduced him as Kerop Shamshoian.

  “Ahman asdvatz. You’re the movie star, aren’t you? In my restaurant! Parev! Welcome, welcome. Have some raki. It’s good! We make it ourselves.” He pulled three shot glasses out of his pocket and set them on the table.

  Raki is Armenian moonshine. If Kerop made it himself, it was probably two-hundred-proof alcohol. I shot Peter a look that said, “Help me out here,” and hoped he remembered that drinking anything but blood wasn’t high on my list of favorite things to do. Kerop uncorked the bottle and filled the glasses. Peter distracted him with a question about the menu, and while he was raving about his shish kebab, I emptied my shot glass under the table. Then we all said, “Kenats’t,” and Peter and SuzieQ downed the raki while I pretended to do the same. Even SuzieQ didn’t notice my sleight of hand. It helps, being an actress.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The raki was having an effect on me. Or else it was Ovsanna. She actually got up and danced with Suzie in the middle of the room, doing one of those chain dances where everyone holds hands and snakes through the tables, stomping and kicking their feet. I scanned the restaurant, worried about photographers or somebody from the job recognizing one of us, but I didn’t see anyone I knew. A birthday celebration was taking up one side of the room, and all the attendees were speaking Chinese. I don’t think anyone there recognized Ovsanna at all. I could tell from the head nods and whispers at a couple of the other tables that some of the patrons knew who she was. Two teenage boys, twins, came over to ask for her autograph. One of them gave her his baseball cap to sign and the other his skateboard.

  She was gracious with both of them. Not like some of the jerks I have to ride herd on when I’m working. It seems to me these celebrities are where they are because of their fans; it doesn’t take much for them to be courteous, at least. Of course, I haven’t been on the receiving end of the obnoxious asshole fans who think it’s their right to demand the stars’ attention, either. Maybe hanging out with Ovsanna would change my mind.

  God knows I’d changed it more than once already, where she was concerned. Seeing her again, after the way she’d KFC’ed me on Sunday night, didn’t seem like the smartest choice I could have made. But I couldn’t stop myself. Even there in public, all I wanted to do was grab a handful of her black, curly hair, and pull her across the table and kiss her. I didn’t care who was watching, I just wanted to feel her under my lips, explore her mouth with my tongue. Hope I didn’t cut myself on any hidden canines.

  Instead, when she reached out to pull me on the dance floor, I flinched.

  She laughed and dropped SuzieQ’s hand. Suzie grabbed the next person, and the line danced on past us. “Ah-ha, afraid you’re going to get burned again, huh?”

  “Well,” I said, “can you blame me? You’ve never been on the receiving end of whatever that thing is that you do, have you?”

  “No, I haven’t. But I promise you, Peter, the next time I lay my hands on you, you won’t suffer.” She had a teasing smile in her eyes.

  “And when might that be? This laying on of hands?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. What did you have in mind for the rest of the night?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I had to give Peter credit: Any other man would have driven right back to my house to take me up on my offer (Casanova pounced on me within hours after we met). I wouldn’t have minded, either. Every cell in my body was bouncing around in anticipation.

  Instead, Peter said he’d planned one more stop, and he drove us to another street, this time in North Hollywood. It had only one house on it decorated for Christmas, but the decorations were unlike anything I’d ever seen. We parked across the street and walked over to stand on the sidewalk in front of it.

  It was a one-story suburban home, painted white, I think. I couldn’t tell for sure because every inch of the house was hidden behind the most incredible decorations. Movable miniature sleigh rides and ice-skaters on a rink. Santa’s Workshop, where elves pounded hammers and slid down a pole to deliver toys. The Elf Diner with red paper flames flickering in the fireplace. Thousands of lights formed icicles, candy canes, Christmas bells, Santa’s sleigh and reindeer on the roof. It must have taken a month to design.

  “How did you know about this, Peter? It’s exquisite.”

  “It’s my nephew’s teacher’s home. She and her husband decorate it like this every year. It’s been on the news. Pretty amazing, isn’t it?”

  I nodded, stepping in front of him to look more closely. He wrapped his arms around me. Tentatively at first, I think until he knew it was safe. I leaned back against his chest, my head fitting just under his chin. I could feel his heart pounding against my back, my own heart matching his in its rhythm; I could hear his blood running through his veins. And smell him—God, he smelled good. His hands were warm on top of mine. My body started to tingle, a weakness spreading up from between my legs to my breasts and down my arms. I was melting inside. I turned and looked into his eyes. I saw desire there, and acceptance. I raised up on my tiptoes to meet his mouth—

  And a car pulled up next to us. Five screeching kids slammed open the doors of a minivan. They shoved their way around us, pushing us back towards the curb, their parents yelling at them to keep their hands off the decorations.

  I almost released my fangs. Goddamn it to hell. I was so aroused that I was on the brink of a change. I had to close my eyes and concentrate to keep the whites from turning red. Those kids didn’t know how close they’d come to getting tossed down the block.

  Peter started laughing. He grabbed my hand and we ran to the car.

  “It could have been worse,” he said. “They could have recognized you and asked for your autograph. And then asked why your eyes were so bloodshot.”

  We got back to the house, and Maral’s car was gone. Good. I wanted to get Peter inside and pick up where we’d left off. He’d run his fingers down my arm while we were driving, and my whole body was vibrating.

  Until I saw movement at my bedroom window. Shit. Another werebeast? The same one? What the hell was going on?

  I grabbed Peter’s arm and whispered to him to stop the car. We were halfway up the drive.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  There wasn’t time to tell him much. “Someone’s here, Peter. In the house. Someone or some thing.” He gave me a look that said, “You’re kidding, right?” and then reached across me and took his Glock out of the glove compartment.

  I wished I were.

  My vision sharpened. There was a thick cloud cover, but I didn’t need moonlight to see. I sniffed the air and scanned the grounds. Nothing was out of place. The geese were quiet. That briny odor Maral had brought home with her was still in the air, but nothing else. Whoever—or whatever—it was had been inside for a while. If it was a vampyre, getting in wouldn’t have been a problem, but a were would have had to break something. All the front windows, at least, were intact.

  We got out of the car quietly. Peter didn’t have to tell me to leave my door open. He stepped in front of me, his gun held loosely in his hand, and led the way to the front door. I had to smile at his chivalry. Maybe it was just his cop’s nature, but it tickled me to know he thought he could protect a vampyre from danger.

  Silently he motioned me to unlock the door and check the alarm. It was off. Something was definitely wrong; Maral always armed the system when she left the house.

  We both heard the movement at the same time. Whatever it was was in my upstairs office. Something scraped across the wood floor. Peter took the stairs two at a time, and I was beside him in an instant. My claws were out; I let my fangs unsheathe. If it was the werewolf, Peter’s Glock wasn’t going to do us much good. I didn’t want to tell him that.

  “Police!” he yelled. “Come out of the room with your hands in the air.”

  That wasn’t going to do us much good, either, but
that was another thing I didn’t want to tell him.

  More scraping and then the weight of something moving across the room. I put my hand on the knob to tear the door off its hinges.

  Maral’s voice came from the other side. “Ovsanna?”

  “Oh, my God. Maral?”

  Peter pulled me away. He had his gun on the door. “It’s Peter King, Maral. Will you come out, please? With your hands above your head.”

  “Maral, are you alone? What are you doing in there?” My body was flooded with adrenaline.

  The door handle turned slowly. Maral pulled it open and stepped back into the office with her hands up. She looked terrified.

  “Come out, please. Are you alone?” Peter demanded.

  She nodded, her eyes wide with fear. “What is it? What’s going on?”

  Peter pushed past her and cleared my office. He passed through the adjoining doorway into my bedroom, cleared that and my dressing room, and ran down the stairs to check the rest of the house.

  I turned on Maral. She didn’t know about the incident with the werewolf and I didn’t want to frighten her, but boy, was I pissed. And frustrated as hell. My desire for Peter had brought on the Thirst big-time. I wanted to tear somebody apart. What the fuck was she doing still in the house?

  It was all I could do to retract my fangs. “Where’s your car, and why are you here?” I snapped. “You were supposed to go to the beach house.”

  “I gave my car to Jamie’s friend to go get something to eat. Then he was gonna check into the hotel and drive himself to the studio in the morning. I didn’t want him staying with me. And I just thought I should wait until you got home to make sure it was okay if I took the SUV to the beach.”

  That was a fucking lie. The media call me the Scream Queen because I’ve starred in so many horror films, but the people who know me well know there’s another reason for the name. You don’t want to piss me off. Maral knows that better than anyone. She also knows she doesn’t have to ask me to use one of the cars. She was pissing me off.

  “That’s bullshit, Maral,” I hissed. “I wanted you out of here and you stuck around on purpose. And now you’re lying about it. If something’s bothering you—”

  Peter walked into the room before I could say any more. Maral was cowering against the wall.

  “There’s nothing here, Ovsanna. Not in the garage or guesthouse. And I’m sorry, I’ve got to go. The Captain just called, I’ve got a dead body to look at. Will you be okay?”

  “Not as okay as I would have been if you could stay and everyone else would leave . . . but”—I turned to stare daggers at Maral—“we’ll be fine.”

  I walked him down the stairs and out to his car. He warned me to put the alarm on when I went back inside and gave me one of his business cards to give to Maral, so she’d have his number in case of a real threat. I’d made the right decision, not telling him about the were attack. I didn’t want him worrying about me. He drove away with a wave and nothing more. The mood had definitely been broken.

  But my Thirst hadn’t. I was so frustrated, if I could have bitten my own arm and satisfied myself on myself, I would have done it. But that doesn’t work. At least not for me. It’s impossible to concentrate on sucking while I’m being sucked, if I’m the one doing the sucking.

  I stomped back up the stairs and threw Peter’s card on the hallway table. Maral was in her bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the doorway. I was across the room in an instant, pushing her down on the satin coverlet, grabbing both her wrists, and holding them above her head. I straddled her body, kneeling with my legs on either side of her. I didn’t want her wrist this time. I was too angry to be seductive. I wanted blood. Right then. I wanted to feel her flesh split open as my fangs pierced her skin and sank into the wetness of her, all the way up to my gums.

  She stared at me. Tears welled in her eyes and spilled down the sides of her face. “I’m sorry,” she said, and she turned her head to the right, resting her dampened cheek on the sage-colored satin. I doubt if she meant it. After all, she was getting what she wanted.

  I jerked her head back and put my mouth on her throat and fed.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I drove over the hill thinking about what I’d just seen and overheard. The image of Ovsanna’s fangs, claws, and glowing red eyes burned into my brain. That didn’t bode well for romance. Not for me, at least. I know, I know, I’d already seen her shifting into another form completely, but that wasn’t when I was imagining her beneath me on a king-size bed. I don’t care what all those vampyre novels say, protruding cuspids don’t do it for me. Maybe that’s a female thing.

  Although I didn’t mind when she’d used my wrist as a protein shake. I felt her sucking, all the way down to the soles of my feet, and let me tell you, it was a whole new experience. I could definitely get into that.

  The Captain had me driving to the Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City. There was a woman’s mutilated body floating in the duck pond. One of the hotel bartenders had called it in.

  The mutilation sounded like the Cinema Slayer’s MO. He’d left a charnel house behind when he’d eviscerated nine people in an S&M club in Boys Town. I mean, body parts chopped up and strewn everywhere. Studio City isn’t Beverly Hills precinct, it’s North Hollywood, but I was lead detective on the Slayer case, and as far as everyone else knew, that case was still open. So my Captain wanted me in on this.

  I knew it wasn’t the Cinema Slayer. I knew the Cinema Slayer was dead. But I hadn’t come up with a plausible explanation I could spoon-feed to the department and the media. Lilith was the Cinema Slayer. Well, Lilith and her boy toy, Ghul. Somehow I couldn’t see releasing the news that three movie stars, a studio exec, and a makeup artist had been killed by some sort of vampyre beast, and that beast in turn had been killed by yours truly and another vampyre, who just happened to be a major Hollywood player. That’s a stretch, even for the Enquirer. So my Captain thinks whatever went down in Palm Springs had to do with some cult getting fried, and his Cinema Slayer is still on the loose.

  The parking lot was swarming with photographers, most of whom I knew. I bypassed the valet and left the Jag at the front of the hotel. It was the same scene that had played out nearly three weeks before, with paparazzi and reporters screaming out my name, asking if the Cinema Slayer had killed again. A couple even asked if Ovsanna were involved. The din lessened as I stepped over the crime scene tape and headed toward the pond in the back.

  A walkway divided the water into a large area on the left, bounded by the windows of the restaurant, and a smaller pond on the right, with a rocky plateau and a waterfall splashing into a short stream. There was a waist-high wooden rail fence keeping anyone from joining the ducks in the water. Four white swans and a black-and-white one squatted on the plateau, oblivious to the body resting ten feet away.

  A small crowd, hotel guests most likely, had gathered behind the crime scene tape in the parking lot at the back of the pond. A couple of officers from the North Hollywood division had their notebooks out, taking names. I badged my way in, climbing over the fence as quietly as I could so as not to spook the swans. The Coroner Investigator hadn’t arrived yet, so I couldn’t touch anything, but I pulled a pair of evidence gloves out of my pocket, just in case. I knelt down and stared at the corpse.

  Or what was left of it.

  The victim was a woman, Hispanic probably—from the texture of her hair and what few features were left to study. Her huge breasts popped up over the scooped neckline of the bloodied blue T-shirt she was wearing. The water had washed them clean. She looked like she was serving up two smooth-skinned casabas on a turquoise platter. She had on tight black capri pants and a single turquoise ankle-strap high heel. Its mate was floating against the side of the pond. It was going to take a while to get an ID—her mouth and lower jaw had been torn off, as though some kind of sharp-toothed tool had clamped onto her face and ripped her jawbone out of its socket. Man, it wasn’t pretty. Both her arms h
ad been severed, leaving jagged stubs above the elbows, and a huge chunk of her midsection was missing, along with the bottom of her T-shirt. No wonder the Captain thought it was the Cinema Slayer; the viciousness of the attack was right in the same league.

  It looked as if she’d been in the water a while, although the water wasn’t as bloody as I would have expected. Hard to tell in the dark. There were pole lights along the walkway and low-level up-lights staked into the ground. They didn’t throw enough light to search the scene. One of the North Hollywood cops said they’d ordered halogen lamps, but she didn’t know when they’d get there. She looked a little queasy. I don’t think she minded the wait.

  I made do with my flashlight. The walkway was clean; the grounds staff probably rinsed it every day. The sides of the pond were cement—no dirt to hold footprints. What little foliage there was hadn’t been disturbed. I didn’t see any sign of a struggle. I didn’t see anything out of place.

  Except for one of the swans. In the decorative lighting she’d looked black and white, but in the high beam of my flashlight, the black turned dark red. She was a white swan with blood on her back. Blood and something else, something about an inch long and a quarter inch wide, resting on her feathers. I didn’t want to take the chance she’d swim off and toss whatever it was into the water, so I pulled on my vinyl gloves and moved toward her very slowly. Carefully, I reached out to remove it.

  It was the tip of a fingernail. A long, unpolished nail, partially covered in blood. I dropped it into a Baggie and put it in my pocket. I’d hand it over to the evidence techs when they got there.