Vampires of Hollywood: Dante’s Awakening

By Devon Marshall

Copyright 2012 by Devon Marshall

Cover Copyright 2012 by Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing

The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

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This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.

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Vampires of Hollywood:

Dante’s Awakening

By Devon Marshall

CHAPTER ONE

My name is Dante Sonnier and I am not a movie star. I’m an agent. I’m not paranoid, I don’t think the entire world revolves around me, and I know my clients are too savvy to their own careers to even think about stalking me. Therefore I don’t live behind high fences and locked gates. Most of the time I don’t even bother to close the gates to my Hollywood Hills property. There are, however, certain events that could make me rethink this open-living policy, such as being dragged out of bed by a vampire at six o’clock in the morning.

Don’t get me wrong—waking up to Ellis Kovacs is not entirely unpleasant either, since she is rather attractive. For the Undead, I mean. I’m just so not a morning person that having anyone—even the gorgeous vampire Ellis—drag me out of my bed at six a.m. is annoying.

The reason for the disruption of my (much needed) beauty sleep was Voshki Kevorkian. Voshki is the vampire community leader. She wanted a meeting with me.

“At six a.m.?” I demanded.

Ellis shrugged. “It’s important.”

It had better be. There I was, attired in boxer shorts and a scruffy NYU t-shirt that some ex or other had left in my closet maybe a million years ago, my hair going every which way to Sunday, trying to claw the sleep from my brain and make sense of what was going on, and what wisdom does Ellis impart to me?

That my t-shirt has seen better days.

Well, shit, hold the front page. I shook my head at her crap and wandered off toward the bathroom. Over my shoulder I yelled, “I’m taking a shower! I don’t care if Vosh has to wait an extra fucking five minutes! Am I making myself clear?”

“Crystal,” Ellis replied dryly.

I stood under the hot jets of water, letting them massage my body and brain into wakefulness, and rested my forehead against the cool wall tiles, all the while trying to ignore the fact there were two vampires making themselves at home in my house. Ellis had brought Samson with her, Voshki’s driver and occasional enforcer. Or something. There are vampire affairs into which even a curious person like me just will not poke her nose. Slowly I felt myself come to resemble something actually belonging to the human race and not the Undead, and at that point I turned the water cold on and let that shock the last dregs of nighttime from my system. A cup of extremely strong black coffee and I’d be good to go. As I stepped out of the shower, eyes closed because my hair was running rivulets of water down my face, I put out my hand to grab my towel only to have it thrust into my groping fingers.

My eyelids flew open. Water blurred my vision and I swiped the towel across my face. Then remembered I was naked. I hastily wrapped the towel around me, fumbling because my fingers had become as useful as bananas.

“For Chrissakes, haven’t you guys heard of knocking?” I demanded.

Ellis gave me a devastatingly sexy smile that also somehow contrived to be innocent. It made me want to run away and throw myself at her feet, both at the same time. I’ve known Ellis for a while, and the whole time I have noticed that her smile can make my knees turn to water. And I hate her for that. Vampires confuse me much of the time. “Sorry,” she said, sounding like she really wasn’t. She jerked her chin toward the open bathroom door and the upstairs hallway beyond. “Samson is in the kitchen. He’s making up some juice for you. And there’s a pot of coffee on.”

I raised an eyebrow. “No bagels?”

“Get dressed, Dante. We don’t want to keep Vosh waiting that long,” Ellis told me.

No. That would never do.

* * *

I should explain. First of all, yes, vampires do exist. Secondly, no, I don’t know whether this means other supernatural creatures also exist. I certainly never have met anything remotely resembling a werewolf or a fairy or a troll, although how would I know, right? The vampires don’t look like vampires, and they have been living amongst humans undetected for millennia, so there should be no reason a werewolf or a fairy or a troll ought not be able to do the same. If the vampires know about any supernatural cousins, they are keeping it under their collective hats. And thirdly, I don’t really care if the world is teeming with werewolves, fairies and trolls—I had a hard enough time just wrapping my head around the fact that vampires are real when I found that out. Occasionally I still have trouble with it.

Vampires are very little like their media portrayals. Sorry, but the fiction-mongers have been way off for decades. All of that not being able to go out in sunlight, being allergic to garlic and crosses and running water, being able to turn into bats—it’s all moonshine. Most of it perpetrated by the vampires themselves. The very reason they have been able to coexist with humans unnoticed for thousands of years has been a fortuitous mix of their own ability to adapt and blend in, and the limitless capacity of we humans to be deluded. Of course, there have always been some humans in the know, since the vampires do need us for things beyond the obvious feeding requirements. A vampire’s genetic makeup is somewhat different to that of a human—shocker, huh? Having people in strategic places to keep things like this from coming to light is a necessary evil for them.

They are choosy about who they let in on their existence. I suppose I am honored then—not that it often feels much like an honor.

As for feeding, they drink human blood from willing human donors. Not victims, donors. Vampires can also go out in daylight just fine—they would hardly have lasted as a race if they could not go out in daylight—although they must take certain precautions if they are going to be in direct sunlight for a prolonged time. A very strong sun block and very dark sunglasses will suffice. In fact, once you really start to think about most of the “vampire legends,” you also start to realize that they, like most legends, just don’t stand up to close scrutiny.

I know about vampires because I belong to a family made up of the kind of people whom they have always found helpful.

I mentioned before that I’m an agent. An entertainment agent. I reside in LA, in Hollywood. I’m very successful. Why be falsely modest about it? I can get my A-list clients an audience with Stephen Spielberg just by lifting the phone. My father is a criminal lawyer who switched to entertainment law, and I’ll leave it to your imagination the ways in which he has often found himself mixing those two disciplines on behalf of both his actors and vampire clients. My mother was a movie producer. I say “was” because she retired from doing much of anything some years ago. Her heyday was during the 1970s and 1980s. Throughout those decades, trying to avoid drugs in Hollywood was a bit like trying not to get sunstroke walking naked across the Sahara, and my mother was spectacularly unsuccessful at avoiding anything she could swallow, inhale, or smoke. The years of drug and alcohol abuse have fried her brain. Before that, however, she was a close friend and respected colleague of many top movie people, including Spielberg. Which is how I can command a personal audience with the man so easily.

So that’s how I got involved with the vampires.

After I had drunk my juice and my coffee and scarfed down a schizoid breakfast of All-Bran and Cheerios, I let myself be herded outside and into the car Ellis had waiting. A 1950s Cadillac stretch limousine, all black gleaming metallic paintwork and oceans of chrome so bright it made your eyes hurt, with smoked-out windows and a hood ornament big enough to impale an average-sized man. Voshki Kevorkian collects cars the way normal people might collect baseball cards. She favors classic cars and the kind of high-performance cars with price tickets attached that render them prohibitive to all but a handful of oil billionaires and crown princes. I happen to know that Voshki owns one of the few remaining roadworthy Lamborghini Countaches still in existence. In our vehemently eco-aware world, just owning a car like that could get you arrested by the Fun Police, which, I think, is part of the attraction of owning it in the first place.

The Caddy featured a fully stocked mini bar and a color TV, both set amidst acres of leather and mahogany. It also boasted a superlative sound system, unfortunately. Vampires love music. The louder the better. I sat in back with Ellis, worrying about my eardrums as Aerosmith pounded out of the superlative sound system. Up front, Samson drove with only cursory regard for the rules of the road.

“So what the blue fuck is so urgent Vosh has to send you to haul me out of bed in the middle of the damn night?” I shouted above Steve Tyler.

Ellis gave me a bland look. “She didn’t share that information with me. And it’s after six a.m. Hardly the middle of the night.”

I blew air noisily, leaned my head back against the kitten-soft leather upholstery and thought nasty thoughts about Voshki Kevorkian. Which would have been a seriously dumb thing to do if the vampires could read my mind the way they can most human minds. I can block them out. It’s a skill all we Sonnier’s possess. None of us knows why.

“She’s been very agitated for days now,” Ellis said and I cracked an eye open, rolled my head onto one side to look at her. “I think she got bad news of some kind. She’s been making a lot of telephone calls to various high muck-a-mucks within our community. Yesterday she sent Armin down to New Orleans right after she got a call from her representatives down there.”

Armin Bedrosian is Voshki’s right-hand man, or lieutenant, or whatever. He is also very, very scary. Armin is one vampire I dislike being in the same room with. Hell, I would prefer not to be in the same county as him. Voshki upset enough to send Armin away from her side was not a good thing. It meant whatever was going on—and presumably whatever the vampires needed my help with—was bound to be nasty and messy, and probably would end up with someone or two getting dead. My breakfast began to churn through my guts.

“Fantastic,” I muttered.

CHAPTER TWO

Voshki Kevorkian has the appearance of a twenty-something, drop-dead gorgeous movie starlet. She has a body to die for, including an ass you try hard not to stare at because it would be rude but you end up doing it anyway, and if Ellis has a smile that can make your knees turn to water, Voshki’s can have your brain running out of your ears. She is also 846 years old. Which is young by vampire standards, but Voshki is a vampire blue blood. Her ancestry goes all the way back to the very first vampire leaders. Whoever they were. I have never felt any overwhelming inclination to inquire. Voshki is charming and funny and as seductive as a vampire can get, which is to say very seductive indeed, but she is also quite capable of killing you without even batting a beautiful black eyelash. Afterwards she would likely step casually over your body and head off to Neiman Marcus to shop for some new boots. I tread carefully around her, then. That said, there is a part of me which finds Voshki frighteningly irresistible.

The problem is that Voshki knows this and is always looking for a way to seduce me, making it clear to me that she wants me as her human. So far she has not succeeded. There are issues involved in being a vampire’s pet human, issues I don’t feel equipped to deal with. God only knows how my brother does it. Milton is married to a vampire woman. His marriage would not be legal, of course, if it were known that his wife is a vampire, but I don’t think either Milt or Corinne, his wife, are too concerned with that nit-picking detail.

Voshki lives on a gazillion-acre, billion-dollar estate in the Hollywood Hills, purchased from an aging movie producer. She had everything on the estate razed to the ground and completely rebuilt to her specifications. Now the whole place is turrets and towers and red-tile roofs, and a courtyard that would not look out of place on an English country estate, all of it looming at the top of a driveway that snakes through her own imported mini-Black Forest. This schizophrenic architecture continues on the inside too. The whole is testament to the fact that vampires, just like humans, can be very, very rich, and yet be unable to buy even the smallest amount of good taste.

I entered her office in the company of Ellis. Voshki’s office is a thousand square feet of look-at-how-rich-I-am. Samson had taken the car to wax, or whatever he does when he isn’t guarding his boss. I had my game face in place and my thoughts tamped down. This is a must with Voshki, her reading skills being so much greater than those of most vampires. She often can get the gist of my thoughts, if not the letter.

“Dante. How nice to see you, as always. You look…edible.”

The vampire leader sprawled in a leather swivel chair behind a walnut desk only slightly smaller than a football field. Clad in black leather from neck to toe, all of it clinging to her like a lover, chestnut hair falling to her shoulders, nails perfectly manicured, teeth gleaming white and even, she really was a vision. I could have got her any part in any movie. Of course, she is a horrible actress. I know this because I once talked her into taking a private screen test. I was curious. Fortunately she knew she sucked, sparing me the obvious terror of having to tell her, but I still reckon I could get her any part, based on her looks and my influence. Hollywood is nothing if it is not a shallow, seedy place motivated solely by the twin gods of profit and sex.

There are some vampire actors around at the moment. I’m not at liberty to say who, although I can tell you that Bela Lugosi is a real vampire and is still going strong, running a bar in Detroit, and very happy doing so. And not all of those sightings of The King are down to the wishful thinking of obsessed fans either. I have a few vampire clients myself, at least one of whom is an A-list actor, but don’t even imagine I’m going to tell you who it is. On the whole though, vampires prefer to be behind the scenes. There is only so much you can use “I have a very good plastic surgeon” to explain away, even in LA.

I made a mocking bow. “Vosh. As ungodly early as it is, I am delighted as always to be summoned to your presence.”

If she caught my sarcasm, she ignored it. She sat sideways in the chair, one leg draped casually over the arm, letting her leather-booted foot bob up and down slowly. She smiled a lazy, cat-like, utterly sexy smile at me. I felt an idiot’s grin spread across my flaming cheeks. I felt other things too, a little further south, but I won’t get into that. I cleared my throat.

“So, uh, what can I do for you this early morn?” I inquired, since we did not appear to be doing the “can-I-get-you-anything?” routine. Vampires do not always bother to observe the politely pointless social rituals of humans.

Ellis moved to one side of the room and took a seat in silence. I darted a glance at her but her face was a mask. Voshki regarded me from her own relaxed position for a moment before telling me to come sit. I went and I sat. I was close enough now to see the amber flecks deep in her dark brown eyes. Ellis has dark eyes too, only hers are dark enough to seem like they might actually be black. Voshki has that amber fleck to lighten hers. I could drown happily in the eyes of either of them. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have both of them at once make love to me and feed from me. Vampires inevitably bite when they have sex. The feeding is supposed to be almost as orgasmic an experience as the sex.

Whoops. My thoughts had strayed dangerously. I fought to re-erect the mental barriers I can usually put up without effort to keep them out of my head. But the idiotic grin still stretched my facial muscles, rather giving it all away. It would probably be there in a lesser form for most of the rest of the day.

“I need your assistance with something,” Voshki announced.

Okay, so this was to be the day for the vampires to state the completely fucking obvious. I nodded, waited to be enlightened. Voshki frowned. Even that was sexy. I suspect it might have been scary if she had been displeased with me. I would prefer Voshki not be displeased with me.

“My sister is working on a TV show shooting upstate,” she told me. Voshki’s sister, Amelia, also a vampire, is older than Voshki in human years but younger than her in vampire years, which, I could only suppose, is a bit of a weird set-up to deal with. Amelia is a makeup artist. She has worked on a clutch of movies, including a few of the better teen slasher flicks, and she has had some longer-running gigs on TV shows. Voshki peered at me, one eyebrow raised. “The Right Guy. Have you heard of it?”

Of course I had. I would have had to be living on the dark side of the moon with no access to media of any kind not to have heard of network television’s current most successful weekly cop show. One of my clients had landed a supporting role, something of which I was sure Voshki was aware. I also know the lead actress. Once I knew her very personally. I didn’t burden Voshki with any of these details, however, just nodded to her to go on.

“Well, Amelia tells me that there has been some tension on the set. It’s apparently being caused by the presence of a peeper. And the suicide of a crew member.”

I blinked, frowned. This I had not heard. “Say again?” I begged.

Voshki actually smiled. “There has been someone going around peeping at the actresses, and some of the female crew have been bothered also. Then a wardrobe assistant committed suicide three days ago,” she explained. She flicked her long, slim fingers at the air a couple times. “You know how actors are. They are…” more finger flicking as Voshki sought an appropriate word.

“Squirrelly,” Ellis supplied helpfully. It was as good as any word I could have come up with to describe the nature of most actors.

Voshki liked it too. She nodded. “Squirrelly, yes.”

“Okay. So I assume the local cops have been notified?” I wanted to know.

“Oh yes. The local sheriff investigated the peeper business and came up with precisely zip.”

Voshki did not seem to find this surprising. Mind you, neither did I. Very often, movies and TV shows will shoot in small towns. Small towns are picturesque, so they show up well on film. They are also very often eager to take the generous amounts of money offered to them for allowing a production to take over their town, not to mention reap the ongoing rewards from tourism if the movie or show is a hit. Extras are easily found, and don’t need to be paid either since the locals will perform walk-through parts for the hell of getting their faces on screen. The kind of small towns we are talking about are also lucky if they have a retired city cop for a sheriff and maybe a couple of the brighter local lights acting as his deputies.

I still was unsure, however, what had got Voshki in such a tizzy. With show business comes behind-the-scenes drama. She must have read the confusion in my face.

“You know I have invested heavily in the show,” she stated, and I nodded. I was getting real good at the nodding thing. “Well, I also convinced several other people to do likewise…” the scowl made another appearance… “and I really would not like for them to get wind of this. They invested because they trust my judgment.”

Now I was starting to get the fuller picture. Investors in movies and TV shows are almost as squirrelly as the actors—only for a damn sight better reason. A single investor may have several millions dollars sunk into a high-concept, ratings-dependent TV show like The Right Guy. Naturally they wish to see good returns on money as serious as this. What they do not want to see is a show go down the toilet because someone committed suicide and the superstitious nut-bags that are most Hollywood people have started believing in some kind of curse on the damn show.

“You want me to go up there and smooth any ruffled feathers,” I guessed.

Voshki nodded. Then she added, “Amelia is of the opinion that the peeper might be a vampire,” and a dark cloud sailed across my horizon. Vampires, for the most part, do not do things that draw attention to themselves. Sure, there are vampire criminals, but you might be surprised at how few and far between they are. Vampire justice is swift and unpleasant.

“Do you think there is some connection between the suicide and the peeper?” I inquired.

Voshki poked her tongue into her cheek and rolled it around a few times whilst she scowled into middle distance. The tongue-rolling distracted my fervid little imagination. Finally she admitted to not knowing for sure whether there was any connection. “But I want to be sure, one way or the other,” she added. The scowl melted away into a dazzling smile. “And that’s where you come in, Dante.”

My brains were starting to leak out of my ears, I was pretty damn sure of that. I frowned at her, however. I’m not that easy a sell. “Wouldn’t you be better to send a private detective up to poke around? I’m just an agent,” I reminded the vampire in case she had forgotten this. It wouldn’t be the first time, or the second, third, or fourth either, I had performed some kind trouble-shooting for the vampires that went strictly beyond my purview as an agent. They always pay me generously for my services, but still, I don’t like them to think I’m an easy sell.

“A private detective would draw attention,” Voshki argued. This made sense, I supposed. Rumors and TV or movie shoots are kind of like dogs and fleas. Where you find one, you’re gonna find the other eventually. An agent on site would seem much more natural.

Then Voshki turned the wattage right up on her smile. My brain fried itself trying to imagine all the wicked, delicious, naughty things I would be willing to do for that smile. I wondered suddenly if I were drooling. God, that would be embarrassing. I was just rethinking my adversity to being Voshki’s pet human when I heard her say, “I have the utmost faith in you, Dante,” and I knew that I would be heading upstate to play amateur detective before the day’s end. So I really am an easy sell where Voshki is concerned. You try resisting her. I dare you.

“You can take Ellis and Samson with you,” Voshki added helpfully.

Great. Samson I might be able to use, but what exactly was I supposed to do with Ellis Kovacs? Then Voshki looked at Ellis and inquired if she had booked the hotel rooms. I know my mouth fell open. I could feel the rush of air over my back teeth. I had closed it again before Voshki’s gaze swung back around to me.

“You were that sure I’d agree to go up there?” I asked in a strangled voice that I would not have recognized as coming from me had I not felt my lips and tongue moving.

Voshki just nodded. “Indeed. Why? Is there some problem, Dante?”

Yes, I thought, I’m not your bitch to order around. I said, “No. There’s no problem at all.”

Coward.

* * *

It’s fortunate for me that I have an exceptionally good staff that can cover me at the slightest notice when I have to run these errands for Voshki. In particular there is my personal assistant, a highly capable young woman named Roz Black. Roz is a devout Mormon, she is married to a very nice and equally devout Mormon man, they have two young children who are very lovely as children go, and without her I doubt my office would run half as smoothly as it does, even when I am there. Roz also happens to be quite beautiful, in that freshly scrubbed, utterly wholesome, apples-and-oatmeal complexioned way you expect of corn-fed Midwesterners, and indeed Mormons. I have always been a little dazzled by Roz and her extreme capableness. I think I have always been a little in love with her too. Hell, she’s such a dreamboat, who wouldn’t be? And besides, there are always cell phones and video conferencing for those clients who simply refuse to have anyone but me soothe their egos—of which I have a few.

Let me tell you something about the people I represent. Mostly they are actors, and actors are all fucking insane. They manage to be insecure and egotistical all at once, and they specialize in meltdowns. Actors are self-centered, self-absorbed creatures who think the world really does exist solely for the purpose of hanging onto their every word and gesture, and that said world should be eternally grateful for this privilege. Anything which perturbs in any way this delusion of self-grandeur, no matter how small or how trivial it may seem to the rest of us, can be enough to send them spiraling into a meltdown of Chernobyl-like proportions. Ditto directors and writers. Writers perhaps are the lesser evil. At least writers tend only to go off on sex-and-alcohol benders in Vegas when things go bad for them. I have only ever represented one writer who needed to go into rehab, and he only did that because the judge gave him a choice—rehab or jail. Actually, I hate most actors and nearly all of the directors and producers I have met, but I rather like writers.

Oh, by the way, I do not represent singers, rappers, or anyone else involved with the music industry. The music industry is whole other kettle of crazy.

The Right Guy was a lucrative show to have a client appearing on. I’d made a nice buck out of getting my client the gig anyway. The male and female leads both were hot tips for Emmys next go-around, meaning my ex-girlfriend would be an Emmy winner soon. How about that?

I don’t make it a habit to date people in the business. The occasional writer, if she’s not a raving alcoholic, even a director once. Producers I avoid like the plague. My mother was a producer, remember, so I’ve seen too much of that particular brand of nuts, and besides, it just feels creepy. Caitlin Harris was the first actress I ever dated. And so far she has been the last. The experience was really that not good. She was deep inside of the glass closet and I rapidly grew weary with pretending to E! News and Entertainment Tonight that we were “in negotiations for representation” when in fact we were fucking like bunnies. After three months of “negotiations,” I called it quits. She had the requisite mini meltdown, went off to a spa someplace to recover, and I vowed never to date another actress even if everyone else vanished from the face of the earth tomorrow.

Seeing her again was going to be fun.

I should mention here that vampires dislike flying. They will fly if they absolutely have to, but generally they prefer to remain on terra firma, or to travel by boat if that can be arranged. This means I had to endure being driven all the way to the unlikely named Holly Bush Junction, the small-town slice of upstate California where The Right Guy was shooting location scenes, and I had to do so with Ellis and Samson, in a house-sized SUV supplied by Voshki. Samson was not so bad, being a rather taciturn fellow, but Ellis was a nightmare. She talked non-stop and she played music by a variety of ’80’s “hair bands” the whole way. By the time we reached our destination I was ready to stab Jon Bon Jovi in the eyeball with a steak knife for having ever recorded Bad Medicine.

As if the journey had not been bad enough, there was the hotel. Not so much a hotel as a converted one-time brothel-cum-saloon, complete with cheesy red lights and lurid purple velvet swag curtains in all the windows that made me think about the Edgar Allan Poe poem The Raven. Indeed, I would hardly have been surprised if a big black bird had been perched someplace nearby croaking “Nevermore!” The front parlor displayed yet more purple velvet, red carpeting, chintz furniture, imitation gas lamps and much dark wood paneling, all looking like a madam and her girls might come sashaying in at any moment. There were paintings of naked people adorning the walls in various poses I assumed were meant to be provocative, but which just looked as though they had been borrowed from a medical dictionary. There was even a honky-tonk piano. I wanted to run screaming from the place. Preferably before Al Swearingen and Sheriff Bullock showed up for a quick shoot-out.

Ellis had booked two rooms. One for Samson to have all to himself, and one for her and me to share. I wasn’t the least bit comfortable with that idea. However, upon inquiring, I learned that, with the circus that is a TV shoot in town, there were no more rooms at this inn, nor any other in town. I would either have to hike five miles out of town to find a vacant room at the nearest fleabag motel, or grit my teeth and share with the hyperactive hair-band-loving Ellis.

“Cheer up, Dante…” she elbowed me in the side as we lugged our bags upstairs, nearly cracking a couple of my ribs… “If you can’t sleep, you don’t need to worry about waking your roomie up!”

I gave her a sickly smile. “Great. We can roast marshmallows and have a pillow fight.”

The room itself was much as I had been expecting—18th century New Orleans brothel meets Ramada Inn, with one glaring exception: a double bed.

“I was expecting twin beds,” I stated.

The proprietor gave me a look of befuddlement. He scratched his bald head, eyes darting between me and Ellis in a way that made me suspicious.

“Well, I thought you were, like, together?” he said. I must have looked incredibly blank because he frowned and added: “Like, a couple, you know?”

I wanted to shove a stake through Ellis’s heart right there and then. Who knows—if I’d had one handy, I might have. I could feel the burn of outrage rushing up from the pit of my stomach, erupting into my neck and banging around inside of my skull. Words refused to form themselves in my mouth, however, and that gave Ellis an opportunity to step right in and compound both my outrage and my desire to kill her.

“Oh, we are…” she trilled. She looped her arm through mine, fingers squeezing my elbow without letting the hotel proprietor see it. I hid my wince of pain behind a reflex smile. “It’s just that we haven’t been…getting along so well, you know? I thought this would be a romantic surprise for my sweetie!”

“Oh, it’s a surprise alright,” I grated. “I couldn’t have been more surprised if I’d woken up this morning with my head sewn to the carpet.”

Ellis squeezed a little tighter. I felt faint. “You’re a card, Dante!” she cooed.

The proprietor gave us both a grin now that told us exactly how proud he was that he and his cheesy hotel could be a part of this romantic matchmaking. If I’d had a spare stake I’d have shoved one through his fucking heart too.

“Well, you ladies get yourselves all settled in,” he told us, and I swear he winked at us. Or maybe I was just having a stress hallucination. Either way I wanted to scream, die, kill somebody and run away. In no particular order. The proprietor added that the bar was always open if we wished a refreshment, and that room service snacks were available from seven to eleven p.m. He could also recommend some restaurants for eating out at.

“Thank you,” Ellis cooed at him, and she did wink, “but I think we have all the eating we need right here!”

I jerked my arm free and ran into the room. The proprietor went away chuckling and Ellis followed me in, closed the door behind her.

“What the fuck are you playing at?” I demanded.

She gave me an innocent look. “I was just having fun with him.”

“You called me your sweetie. If you ever do that again, I swear I’ll sharpen a railway tie and drive it through your fucking heart.”

Ellis smirked. “Do you know that you’re adorable when you’re angry?” she asked.

I threw my hands up in defeat and stomped into the bathroom, slammed the door shut behind me hard enough to set the cheesy pictures on the walls downstairs to rattling.

It was going to be a long fucking night.

CHAPTER THREE

We headed off to visit the location set, there to talk to Amelia Kevorkian. Voshki had called her sister to let her know we’d be arriving and Amelia had arranged to have the makeup trailer to herself for an hour. Amelia is only alike her sister insofar as they both have dark eyes. Amelia is attractive in her own right, but she has none of Voshki’s traffic-stopping beauty. In a way it makes her, for want of a better word, more human. Less intimidating anyway. Amelia had an assistant fetch us coffees and we sat around in makeup chairs to hear firsthand what had been happening.

There was a peeper alright. Several of the actresses, including my ex-girlfriend, had seen a face peering in the windows of their trailers when they were getting undressed, as had at least a dozen female crew members. Always the peeper was gone before anyone got to the scene, usually responding to the hysterical screams of an actress absolutely convinced she was about to be knifed to death by a crazed stalker fan. The local sheriff had conducted, in Amelia’s words, “an impressively thorough investigation.” I thought maybe we should pay this sheriff a visit soonest. I didn’t know how she would take to having a Hollywood agent asking her questions. Not very well, I suspected. Still, it would be wise to visit, introduce ourselves and at least try to get into her good graces. Failing that, I could always have Ellis glamour her. I can resist that too, by the way, but most other humans cannot.

“You don’t think it’s anyone working on the show?” I asked, and Amelia shook her head. Of course that would have been just too damned easy. Besides, Amelia had already said she though the peeper was a vampire, and, as far as I knew, Amelia was the only vampire currently working on The Right Guy.

“A local vampire then?” Ellis asked. Again Amelia nodded. Grimly. I understood why. The vampire was seriously risking exposure, especially if the local sheriff were not vampire-friendly. And exposing one vampire could too easily lead to exposing the whole community.

“Do you think the sheriff is in the know?” I asked Amelia. She considered this, then gave her head a slow shake. Strictly speaking, Voshki, as the community leader, should be aware of all humans who are in the loop. But like so many things, that makes a better theory than it does a reality. “But it’s possible?” I persisted.

“I guess,” Amelia agreed reluctantly.

“We’ll find out,” Ellis said.

Amelia then told us about the wardrobe assistant that had topped herself. The woman’s name had been Cherie Dunlop, she was twenty-eight, and as far as anyone had known, she had not appeared to be suicidal. Of course, most of those who commit suicide for real give no indication of their intent beforehand. It’s what makes suicide such a puzzling and horrifying thing to those the deceased leave behind. I asked what had been Ms. Dunlop’s chosen method and Amelia told me she slashed her wrists. Unusual for a woman, but not completely unheard of. The body was being held at the local morgue. I knew we would probably have to visit, get a look, and I was not looking forward to that.

Eventually we ran out of details to discuss and Amelia inquired after her sister. Ellis told her that Voshki was fine, and then Amelia thanked me for coming up here to do this favor, and I said it was no problem. Liar that I am. Ellis beamed at me.

“Dante is a tad upset because I booked us a room with a double bed,” she crowed.

Amelia gave me a puzzled look. “I thought you wanted to sleep with Ellis? That’s what Voshki says anyway,” she remarked.

I added Voshki to the ever-growing list of those I was going to kill. And I told Amelia that no, I did not wish to sleep with Ellis, Voshki was wrong about that. I am such a fucking liar, really I am. As afraid and conflicted as I often am about Voshki’s interest in me, I have secretly been crushing on Ellis Kovacs for a long time. Or maybe not so secretly, judging by the dubious looks Amelia and Ellis both gave me. As we were leaving I paused and inquired after the sheriff’s name, and whether she seemed to Amelia to be a Hollywood fan or not?

“Her name is Bartlett. Lois Bartlett,” Amelia told us. She smiled. “And I would say no, she’s not a fan. She maintains a politely cooperative façade but I think she’d be glad if all the freaks and lunatics were to just leave her little town.”

Some small towns visited by the Hollywood circus are so star-struck by the event that they tend to accept and forgive just about anything we do, short of actually blowing up the town. Not so Holly Bush Junction, however. Sheriff Bartlett mightn’t have been entirely wrong about the “freaks and lunatics,” but it did scupper my plans to bribe her with some tickets to the next Academy Awards ceremony. You have no idea how often that works.

Of course, it had to happen that leaving the makeup trailer we ran into my ex-girlfriend, Caitlin Harris. She stopped when she saw me, stared for a moment like she was seeing something very out of place—a giraffe in the grocery aisle of Wal-Mart for instance—and then she scowled.

“Dante,” she said. She made my name sound remarkably like “turd.”

I smiled. “Caitlin. Hi there.”

Witty repartee indeed. Caitlin scowled some more. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

I could hardly tell her the real reason, so I simply said, “Negotiating” and let her chew on that. It’s a catch-all word in Hollywood. It can mean anything from buying drugs from the madam who also supplies you with high-class call girls to hanging around the back lot of some studio hoping to get within throwing distance of Jerry Bruckheimer with your screenplay.

“Oh. I see,” Caitlin responded. She looked at Ellis, let her gaze linger there for a moment too long, and then she went back to scowling at me. I think she had just decided that Ellis must be my latest girlfriend. Great. Caitlin is the insanely jealous type. She’s redheaded, green-eyed, five-feet-two, wiry, she can throw an unearthly fuck even when she is stoned off her tits, and she has a very ugly temper indeed. It would not be beyond the realm of possibility that Caitlin could work her imaginings about Ellis and me into a scenario where she became the wronged lover and had a suitably dramatic meltdown. Fucking actors. Caitlin said, “Well, that’s nice for you. I suppose I’ll be seeing you around then.”

“I expect so,” I agreed.

She stalked past us and went into the makeup trailer, letting the door bang behind her. We carried on our way. I could feel Ellis’s eyes on me. “You know her pretty well,” she said. I shrugged. Ellis added, “You were romantically involved with her, I take it?”

“If by that you mean staying home and screwing because she’s in the closet and doesn’t want to risk being seen with me anywhere that can’t be easily explained, then yes, we were ‘romantically’ involved, I suppose,” I replied.

“Bad break-up?”

“She threatened to pour bleach into my fish tank.”

Ellis snickered. I glared and she held up a palm in apology. “Human women tend toward the emotional,” she pronounced.

I eyed her, wondering where this was going.

“Vampire women aren’t like that,” Ellis assured me.

I stared at her. “Right,” I said. Vampires are crazy, insanely, deadly jealous as lovers. They don’t just go out with a human—they own a human. You are their possession in every sense of that word. It’s why I have continually rebuffed Voshki’s advances, however appealing I might find her sexually, and also why I have never gotten involved with any vampire. Not even the very appealing Ellis. I don’t do well in those kind of smothering, intense relationships.

“What I meant was, I’m not like that,” Ellis clarified for me.

That sickly smile made a return. “Good to know,” I told her. Then: “Let’s go talk to the sheriff. See if we can’t convince her we’re not all freaks and lunatics here to destroy her town. It might be difficult, but we can always try.”

* * *

The sheriff’s office was a one-story, ugly red brick building in what passed for Holly Bush Junction’s town center—a square of grass with a bandstand in the center and some old geezers sitting around on benches, smoking and jawing. The sheriff’s office had a tin roof that I would bet was noisy as all hell when it rained and left you baking in summer, and there was a little gravel square of parking lot out front. A cruiser was parked there, and an SUV with sheriff’s markings. There was also a beat-to-hell rusty pickup with fly-speckled windows and a grungy-looking dog chained in the bed. It barked us all the way into the building.

“I hate dogs,” Ellis said. She considered. “Don’t much like cats either. Fish are okay.”

“That’s only because fish don’t bark or hiss at you,” I pointed out dryly. Dogs and cats are none too keen on vampires. They can smell something is not quite right and they get hostile. Vampires dislike dogs and cats for that reason, and because, well, they don’t taste very nice. Apparently. I don’t like to even think about that.

Inside, the sheriff’s office was as plain and down-home as its outward appearance suggested. Beige walls, beige vinyl flooring much gouged and scored, chunky wood furniture and that universal police station smell: stale coffee, staler sweat and human fear. Someone had stuck a potted plant on a windowsill in an attempt to cheer the place up. The plant looked forlorn beside the grey bars. An overweight, ruddy-faced deputy straight from Central Casting leaned on a front desk, reading a newspaper and munching on a pastry. He had no hair and substantial man-tits. He looked up as we entered, peered at us for several seconds as we traversed the short distance from door to desk, and seemed to come to the decision that we must be Movie People. Ellis’s good looks and the dark shades she was wearing probably added a good deal to his coming to that conclusion. The deputy’s lip curled.

“Help ya?” he inquired, not sounding much like he wanted to do anything of the sort.

I put on my best swimming-with-sharks smile. I’m an agent, I spend practically every working hour schmoozing people, so if I could not charm a small-town deputy with pastry crumbs on his uniform shirt, I might as well pack up and go home to East Bumfuck, Idaho.

“Hi there,” I oozed, “we’re with the studio? They sent us up here to iron out some difficulties?” I was using the California Question. End every sentence with your voice on an upswing, as though you were asking a question, even when you are making a statement. The practice originated in Australia, quickly infected the West Coast of America, and was perfected by the Valley Girls of California. Naturally.

“Uh-huh,” Mayberry RFD responded. He was still giving us the fish-eye.

“Yeah. There’s been some problems with a peeper? The actors—you know how they are, kinda squirrelly, right?” Okay, so I was pinching lines from Voshki. It’s a Hollywood tradition to steal your best lines from someone else. Imitation, highest form of flattery, blah blah bullshit. I shrugged around a chuckle. “Anyway, the studio likes to protect its investment, you know? So they sent us up here to smooth the wrinkles out, if you like?” I had a sense that Deputy Dawg here very much did not like. I should care? I just wanted to get past him to see the sheriff. If I had to have Ellis glamour him in order to achieve that, I would.

“We’d love to talk to Sheriff Bartlett?” I persisted. Deputy Dawg was harder work than I’d expected.

Ellis would tell me later that she had been able to peer inside the deputy’s head as easily as if his forehead were plate glass. Mostly his thoughts revolved around food and whether he would be able to convince his wife to have sex with him this weekend. Sans shades now so that he got the full benefit of her flashing dark eyes, Ellis gave the deputy a dazzling smile. “I think Sheriff Bartlett would be very displeased if you didn’t let us see her,” she lied smoothly.

Deputy Dawg’s face had gone slack. Well, slacker than before. His eyes had a dreamy, faraway look in them. Ellis was glamouring him. “Uh, yeah,” he mumbled. He moved aside, lifted a section of the desk to allow us to pass through into the inner sanctum. The bullpen, they call it. On TV, anyway. However, unlike the bustling, noisy bullpens of TV cops shows, no one was in this bullpen. Not even a telephone rang to shatter the silence. Either Holly Bush Junction was the most crime free place in America or everyone there had realized the cops were too damn ineffective to even bother calling on and were busily taking justice into their own hands. I filed that, too, under stuff best not thought about.

“Her office is right back there,” Deputy Dawg told us, pointing with a fat finger that had pastry icing on it. Ellis smiled and winked at him. I swear I saw his brains—what there was of them—turn to sawdust.

We left Deputy Dawg staring cow-like into space. He would recover in a while and not remember a thing except that some Movie People came by to see the sheriff. He might also recall that one of them was terrifically hot. He would have very little recollection of me, on the other hand. We found Sheriff Bartlett’s office, marked by a door with a frosted glass panel and her name in black letters. Sheriff Lois Bartlett.

I knocked. A female voice from within told us to come on in. I figured Sheriff Bartlett probably thought it was her deputy knocking. She was about to get a surprise.

She was not the only one. If asked, I would have denied having any such preconceptions, but really I had been expecting a small-town female sheriff to be pretty much a twin of her deputy, except maybe with more hair and breasts that were intended to be, and maybe a shade smarter, or else she would not have been sheriff. What I got was a tall, sleek, Norwegian-looking blonde, with blue eyes and very nice breasts indeed. Everything about her figure was very nice. She looked up at us from behind a modestly sized desk, frowning but not unduly alarmed. I suppose with that giant hand cannon she had strapped to her right hip she could afford to be a bit calm. Too bad it would have been as effective against a vampire as throwing bean bags at a herd of charging buffalo. You can kill vampires. You can shove a stake through their heart, or cut off their head, or set them on fire. Any of those will work. Very little else does. Shooting them, stabbing them (anywhere but in the heart), poisoning them—those things might all hurt them, slow them down for a short while, but it won’t kill them. And you can be assured they’ll be spitting mad with you when they recover.

“And you would be…?” Sheriff Lois Bartlett raised a blonde eyebrow at us.

I stepped forward, biggest, most shit-eating grin on my face. “My name’s Dante Sonnier. Sorry for the intrusion, Sheriff Bartlett. Your deputy showed us through? We might rather have conned him into doing so. My apologies.”

Sheriff Bartlett twitched the tiniest of smiles. “That right?” I sensed Deputy Dawg was going to be in a shitload of trouble later.

“Yes, ma’am. As I said, I’m Dante, and this is my associate, Ellis Kovacs. The studio sent us to see what exactly is the rumpus going on…” I gave a hearty laugh just to show that things were not that serious. If Sheriff Bartlett found me funny at all, she did a damn good job of hiding it. I could feel the grin starting to strain. “So, we figured our first stop ought to be to talk to your good self,” I added smarmily.

She was not to be bought. Her blue eyes filled with the kind of denigration you got used to seeing from non-movie-business types. She regarded me, then Ellis. I thanked God we had left Samson with the car. I had a feeling Sheriff Bartlett would have arrested him just for looking like someone who ought to be arrested. The blue eyes came back to me. “Well, thank you for including me,” she drawled. The sheriff was leaning back in her chair, looking all relaxed and friendly, but I could see the tension coiled in her body. Athletic, sturdy. Nice. Like I said.

“You’ll be talking about the peeper, of course,” she guessed. I nodded. Finally she indicated that we should sit, having decided that since we were in her office already we might as well be spoken to. “I checked it out. Couldn’t find anything that suggested there’d been a peeper at work. Not even a footprint in the dirt below anyone’s trailer windows.”

“You think all those women may have been imagining it?” I asked. I gave her another grin, a sort of conspiratorial one this time. “I mean, the actresses, now I’d be willing enough to believe it of them… But some of the reports were coming from crew members. In my experience, they’re usually pretty hard-headed and sensible sorts.”

Sheriff Bartlett gave a ponderous nod. Her eyes strayed from me to Ellis. But it was to me that she spoke once again. I wondered about that. Usually having a vampire in the room overshadows everyone else. And besides, Ellis is too damn gorgeous to ignore for long. “That’s pretty much the way I figured it, Mizz Sonnier. If not for the crew, I’d have called it ‘overactive imagination.’”

“Dante, please. Call me Dante,” I urged her.

“Okay. Then that’s pretty much the way I figured it, Dante.”

“But you do believe there was a peeper?”

Sheriff Bartlett nodded.

I counted off thirty seconds in my head before I spoke again. Just the act of letting a little silence into the room can be effective in negotiations. It makes people think you are a careful and considerate person, one who does not rush easily into things, who weighs all the options. Blah blah blah. In fact, you are just psyching them out. I could soon see, however, that that tactic was not going to work with Sheriff Bartlett either. God, the woman was hard work! I rather liked that.

“So how would you explain it?” I asked, deferring to the law enforcement official in the room.

Instead of answering she treated me to a bit of her own silent treatment. It worked better on me than it had her, I have got to say. I squirmed. Ellis might as well have been made out of stone—something which did not escape the sheriff’s notice. I saw her frown slightly, as though she were trying to put her finger on what it was about Ellis that perturbed her. Then she asked me: “So what exactly is it that you do for the studio, Dante?”

Shit. I smiled. “I’m an agent,” I confessed. That raised both of her eyebrows. I shrugged. “Studio sent me up because I don’t look out of place here. Any media sniffing around are just going to assume I’m here to negotiate something with someone, not to calm a bunch of superstitious and hysterical actors.”

Sheriff Bartlett nodded, gave me a cynical smile. “No need to have the investors infected by the actor’s unease, right?” she guessed.

I nodded, actually impressed by her cynicism. “That’s about the size of it.”

The trick to telling a good lie is to take a kernel of truth and concoct the simplest recipe you can around that. And the truth here is, sometimes agents do get called upon to calm a location situation down. As far as actors go, there is a rule of thumb regarding any crisis. If they throw a tantrum—and most of them will do at some time—the first person you call to try calming them down is their PA, if they have one. That doesn’t work, you call the director. Then the producer. If none of those are efficacious, you call the actor’s spouse or partner. Failing that, you try their Mom. Usually this is as far as it needs to go since an actor’s mom is often as egotistical and high-strung as they are, and because of this they know exactly what a ruffled ego wants to hear. However, just occasionally you will experience a truly recalcitrant soul who responds to none of the above. It is only at this point that you may call the agent to the set. Calling the agent to the set before, say, the director, would be a terrible breach of both professional protocol and personal regard. I have been called to sets on several occasions to deal with recalcitrant souls in the midst of spectacular meltdowns and tantrum-throwing. You can be assured none of them remained my clients for very long afterwards.

Whether or not Sheriff Bartlett bought into my story was not of great concern to me right now. All I needed was to know what she knew, preferably without having to resort to Ellis glamouring her.

“I think there is a peeper, yes,” Sheriff Bartlett admitted. She raised her shoulders in an elegant shrug. “But I’m damned if I can figure out how he’s doing it and not leaving any trace of himself behind. If you have any better luck, my congratulations.”

I asked the next question carefully. “Did you get any sense of where the peeper might have originated from?”

The sheriff’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. “If you’re asking do I think the peeper is a local rather than one of your lot, then yes, the thought had crossed my mind. But I just don’t know for sure.”

One of your lot. Dear me, Sheriff Bartlett really did not care for us Movie People invading her little town. I nodded, pretending to think this through. Then I told her how helpful she had been, that we would ask around at the shoot, maybe talk to some locals, if that was okay with her? Her eyes got narrow, but she didn’t object.

“I’d appreciate if you didn’t get folks all riled up,” she said.

I had no intention of riling any of the locals up and assured her so. She didn’t seem too convinced.

“The suicide,” I began tentatively, and once again Sheriff Bartlett’s eyebrows jogged for her hairline. I tried to look concerned. “Have her next of kin been informed yet?” I was not sure where I was going with this line, only that I was angling to get a look at that body without having to explain to this not-so-stupid sheriff why I wanted to see it.

The sheriff shook her head. “Seems Cherie Dunlop’s mother and father are dead and she doesn’t have any siblings. I can’t find anyone else yet.”

Excellent. Just what we needed. I put on my best look of sympathy. “Damn, that is so sad,” I murmured and Sheriff Bartlett nodded, looking at me for the first time like she actually thought Movie People could be human too. Under the circumstances I decided I had little compunction about deceiving her. I leaned forward to get the maximum effect. “Sheriff, I would like to offer to fund the poor woman’s funeral, if that would be okay with you to release the, um, the remains to me?”

Sheriff Bartlett seemed taken aback. So did Ellis. I felt the air around her stiffen. The sheriff might also have been a tad suspicious. But I was betting on the town morgue being pretty small, and that she probably would not want the corpse of a Movie Person lying around unclaimed in it for any prolonged period. My telling her that I wanted to take care of the funeral arrangements was one way to get access to the body. I bet right. She overcame her suspicion and gave a nod that only just succeeded in staying on the respectful side of “Boy, am I grateful to have that little problem off my hands!”

“I’ll call Roger at the morgue to let him know and see to the requisite papers being drawn up for you to sign,” she said, and I nodded my agreement. I actually did think that arranging a discreet funeral for Cherie Dunlop would keep whatever had happened to her under wraps and the studio free from lawsuits and jittery investors. A small price to pay. The deceitful part was that anyone at the studio actually cared about the deceased.

Ellis and I took a hurried leave then before Sheriff Bartlett got to thinking it might be an idea to call the studio and check us out. Of course she would get a runaround, simply because that’s what studios do—run you around, no matter who you are or what your inquiry is. They even give the guys that deliver the water coolers the runaround. It’s a hobby as much as a professional thing. In the car again, Ellis told me that the sheriff did not appear to be under any kind of glamour, but that she had surely known more than she said, or at least she suspected more. “I don’t know exactly what it is that she suspects, but there’s something telling her that all is not as it should be in her little town,” Ellis opined.

I considered this. “Could she suspect vampires?”

Ellis just shrugged. “Maybe. I couldn’t get all the way into her head, not without her noticing. She’s a very astute woman. More than she looks.”

And she looked pretty damn good. I tried to put the attractive Nordic sheriff out of my mind and concentrate on how we might find our vampire peeper and discourage him from continuing his unhealthy pastime.

“So where we going now?” Samson asked cheerfully from the driver’s seat. He had found a store nearby selling candy and chilled Cokes. His life was complete. Vampires love chocolate and candy almost as much as they do coffee. Some of them, like Samson, are caffeine junkies who guzzle coffees, sodas and anything else with caffeine in it. If they feed on top of a caffeine-binge, the result can be horrible and frightening. For a while they tried to ban caffeine in their community, but that was a bit like Ronald Reagan’s heroic but ultimately misguided attempt to corral drugs in the 1980s.

“The morgue, I guess,” I told him without the slightest trace of cheer.

* * *

The morgue was part of the town’s one and only funeral home. I would bet on the undertaker being the richest man in town. People are always going to die. The place, owned and run by a man named Roger Colton, had been built in a bright, lively Swiss cottage style, perhaps in an effort to make its business seem a little less depressing, although it made me wonder: if another less garish funeral home were to open in Holly Bush Junction, would Roger Colton still be the richest man in town?

People are funny about death. Some like it to be dull and depressing, seeming to equate those things with being respectful to the dead. It is as if they think being dead is not bad enough already, they have to rob it of all and any fun whatsoever. Unless they are New Orleanians. Or dwellers upon the strange planet called Hollywood, where even death is turned into a Technicolor production. Roger Colton could always open up in either of those places, I supposed.

Colton himself was a jolly, rotund little man, not at all what you tend to expect an undertaker to be. He had one of those high fluting that voices would likely get on your nerves after about, oh, say a week, and a tendency to giggle girlishly, especially when Ellis smiled at him. She had absolutely no trouble at all glamouring him into showing us Cherie Dunlop’s body and forgetting to tell the sheriff he had done so. He was only supposed to supply the requisite papers, after all.

Let me just state this for the record. Despite the fact that I deal with the Undead, I do not make a habit of hanging out in morgues. I am not freaked out by death, or by dead people—not in the slightest. It’s the living who more often worry me. But no one wants to hang around in the chilled atmosphere of a morgue with its underlying bad smell. I don’t care how many times they clean the damn place, or whether they do it with industrial-strength cleaner, I swear there is still a vague whiff of rotting flesh.

Roger Colton cheerfully took us to the morgue, slid open the drawer containing Cherie Dunlop’s body, and was happy to leave us to look whilst he fetched his autopsy notes for us to read.

“That glamouring thing sure does come in handy,” I murmured after Roger had bustled off, leaving Ellis and me alone with the dead bodies. Samson had remained outside with the car and his supply of candies and Cokes. The morgue was apparently full at the moment, which in Holly Bush Junction meant that there were a grand total of six dead people, including our girl. I once had occasion to visit the LA County Coroner Office on North Mission Road. The morgue there was packed to the gunwales. There were literally bodies stacked nine and ten deep on top of each other. And there were gurneys sitting in the corridors with more bodies on them. It had been like visiting the set of a zombie flick. Only six dead here. I think the LA Coroner would have rejoiced.

Ellis did not waste time. She yanked back the sheet covering Cherie Dunlop so that we could examine the dead woman’s arms. Cherie had bled out sitting in the bathtub in her hotel room. I bet they would be using some of Roger’s industrial-strength disinfectant on that room before they re-let it. I looked down at Cherie Dunlop’s naked body, at the skin marbled by the green of death, at the milky blankness of her eyes, and felt a little green around the gills myself.

“Jesus, let’s just do this, please,” I breathed.

Ellis lifted both of the deceased’s arms. At once we could see the cuts. Crude slash marks, but deep enough that she would have hit something vital. I imagined she bled out fairly quickly.

“This is weird,” Ellis remarked. She directed my attention to the left wrist, to some marks in the greenish marbled flesh that did not seem to fit somehow. I peered as closely as I wanted to get to a dead body, but still I was not sure what I was seeing.

“It looks like three X’s to me,” I suggested.

Ellis nodded. “That’s exactly what it is.”

Her tone made me look up. She gave me a grim smile that I did not like and wished would go away. A smile like that on anyone—not just a vampire—always means you are about to be told something you do not want to hear.

“It’s a calling card,” she told me. She let go of the arm and it thudded lifelessly onto the metal drawer. I felt a bit more queasy. “The three X’s represent the Roman numeral thirty, in this case meaning the thirty pieces of silver that Judas Iscariot was said to have sold Jesus out to the Romans for,” Ellis added.

I tilted a nod at her to go on even though I was already not liking what she was telling me. Only crazy serial killers leave calling cards on their victims.

“Have you ever heard of the Children of Judas?” Ellis asked me then. I shook my head. She grimaced. “They are a vampire clan. They’re vicious and dangerous and are outcasts to the rest of the vampire community. We need to call Voshki at once.”

“Wait…” I jerked a hand up… “are you telling me that this…” I gestured with the same hand at Cherie Dunlop’s body… “was not suicide? It was murder?”

Ellis shrugged. Her dark eyes were cold and hard as flint. “The Children of Judas have a special power, if you want to call it that. They can convince humans, and some vampires, to commit suicide.”

Oh, I really was not liking the hell out this now. Saying that someone had been convinced to commit suicide sounded an awful lot to me like just another way of saying murder.

The door crashed open behind us and we both whirled toward it, Ellis being a little quicker than me, but it was only Roger Colton returning with his notes. Ellis let her fangs retract discreetly. Not that Roger would have noticed their presence, I suspected. Some people are more susceptible to vampire glamouring than others, and I reckon Roger was amongst the top ten percent of the totally susceptible. He sauntered over to us, held the notes out with a cheery “There you go. Take as much time as you need, and if you want me to explain anything, I’ll be upstairs in my office. I suddenly feel the need to call my wife and have her talk dirty to me.” He winked at us and walked out again.

“Dear Lord,” I said, blinking at Ellis.

She shrugged again. “Glamouring makes some people a bit horny,” she explained and I swallowed bile. A horny undertaker having phone sex with his wife from the funeral home. You could not make this stuff up.

“Won’t his wife wonder about that?” I asked. Damn my curiosity!

Ellis paused flicking through the autopsy notes to shake her head. “He’s done it before. Lots of times. I read it in his thoughts,” she said casually.

I stopped asking questions. Ellis made humming noises as she read, then she abruptly stopped reading and frowned.

“What?” I asked.

“It says in here that Cherie Dunlop apparently got in the bathtub and ran the water with the plug out so that most of her blood ran down the drain…” Ellis sneered, shook her head. “How many suicides do you reckon ever do that, Dante?”

Not many, I would bet. You got in a tubful of hot water in order to raise your body temperature and bring the blood vessels closer to the skin’s surface. Bottom line, you bleed out quicker. It is also a fact that women are more concerned about not leaving too much of a mess behind when they top themselves than are men, hence very few female compared to male suicides use a shotgun or a sharp instrument. Blowing your brains out or cutting your wrists is very messy. Women most often use pills. It was possible that Cherie Dunlop had gotten in the tub with the plug left out and the water running to lessen the mess from slashing her wrists…but it wasn’t likely.

“The son-of-a-bitch killed her and fixed the scene so that it would look like her blood had drained away, and no one would realize he had fed from her,” Ellis said dully.

I said, “Oh,” and then, “That’s pretty fucking cold.”

Ellis gave me a look that said you have no idea. She flicked another page in Roger’s autopsy report, scowled at whatever she saw written there. “She had no alcohol or drugs in her system. How did no one even think this was not suicide?”

Again, most suicides will either take sleeping tablets or drink heavily beforehand, often both. Killing yourself is a hard thing to do, even if you are hell-bent on dying. Your natural human instinct for survival will fight you the whole way. It’s just easier to get drunk or doped to the gills to do it.

I shrugged. “I guess they just thought Cherie was another Hollywood flake,” I suggested sadly. I frowned. “These Children of Judas…how come I’ve never heard of them before?”

“We don’t talk about them,” Ellis said simply.

“And yet here they are, making a nuisance out of themselves.”

“Yes.”

“You must wonder why?”

Ellis looked at me with a strange expression. “I daresay it’s because they are violent by nature and can’t stay out of fucking trouble for very long.”

I wanted to get out of the morgue, and back into the warmth and sunshine and fresh air of the outdoors. I raised an eyebrow to Ellis. “Are we done here?”

We were. Ellis had read everything she needed to, and we had both seen everything we needed to. Ellis closed the drawer containing Cherie Dunlop’s body, dropped the autopsy report on a steel table, and we left the chilly confines of the morgue.

Upstairs Ellis told me to go ahead, she would take care of signing for the body and making it so that Roger Colton did not remember having allowed us such unrestricted access.

“Great idea of yours, claiming the body on the studio’s dime,” she said dryly.

I shrugged. “No one else is claiming her, and it gets her out of the way without embarrassing questions being asked, doesn’t it?”

After leaving the morgue, we decided to look for our vampire peeper. “So where are we gonna find a window-peeping Child of Judas hanging out in a one-stoplight town like this?” Samson wanted to know. When Ellis had explained to him that she thought Cherie Dunlop was murdered by a Child of Judas and that the same rogue vampire might be the peeper, Samson had frowned and remarked with a mildness which I suspected was deceptive, “Man, I hate those fuckers.”

We gave it some thought. Well, it appeared that Samson and I did. Ellis just looked out of the window. I got the feeling she would rather have been someplace else, doing someone else. I kind of both wished that were me and hoped it was not.

“He probably lives alone, somewhere on the outskirts of town, a trailer maybe, or a shack in the woods,” Samson suggested. He shrugged. “A vampire is peeping in windows, he isn’t going to want to be living someplace that his neighbors can see his comings and goings.”

That made sense. I suggested we take a spin around the town’s less salubrious outskirts. All small towns have insalubrious outskirts. Doesn’t matter how storybook-perfect they might be otherwise, those ugly fringe areas with their doublewides and rusted pickups, their weed-infested, broken-down empty lots and their chemical-spewing factories, their muddy semi-dried rivers and their burned-out trunks of trees, their old bald tires, door-less refrigerators, crumbling piles of bricks and their hollow-eyed, toothless residents—they will be lurking in the background, just beyond sight of the good burghers, but always present in their nightmares and at town council meetings. Samson drove us to Holly Bush Junction’s own version of this fringe nightmare and we drove around for an hour, stopping a couple times to observe likely habitats. The likeliest abode was a shack on the edge of some straggly woodland. The shack leaned so far to one side it looked like it was just about to sit down. The roof was tarpaper, warped and mildewed, the yard an incongruous mix of rubble and rusted bits of iron, all of it overgrown with weeds. If you had wanted to build a set featuring a shack that a vampire with a dirty little peeping habit might be living in, you could not have done better.

We figured on swinging by again at dusk. Maybe our vampire peeper would be up and about by then. All of the peeping incidents had taken place after dark. He either worked during the day, or, more likely, holed up in his shack and slept. I shuddered to even imagine his sleeping quarters. I’d pretty much decided it was a “he.” To hell with equality. How many women do you know that would live in a hovel like this?

“What now then?” Samson asked as he steered us back toward town. Some of the roads were so narrow that the enormous SUV barely fit between the curbs. I wondered what would happen if we encountered another vehicle coming in the opposite direction? Samson was not the kind to politely give way to another driver. The radio was on again, another of those nostalgic rock stations. I wondered how Ellis kept finding them. This one was belting out Bad Company’s Feel Like Making Love and Ellis exercised her not inconsiderable lungs along to it. How in hell could Samson be so apparently oblivious to the caterwauling? My ears were ready to start bleeding.

“Ellis! Knock it off,” I snapped.

She stopped yodeling and gave me a curious look. “Someone hasn’t been getting enough love lately,” she cooed. I wanted to scream. Hit something. Someone. Ellis patted my knee, winked at me in a way that went straight to places it should not have and proceeded to do bad things there. “Maybe we can fix that tonight,” she added.

“Maybe not,” I told her in a strangled voice. I leaned abruptly between the front seats and yanked the volume knob all the way around. The vehicle filled with thundering silence.

It did not help as much as I had hoped.

CHAPTER FOUR

I returned to the hotel. Samson and Ellis took the SUV and went off someplace—I neither knew nor cared where. To feed, most likely. In the peaceful, vampire-less lull I lay on the double bed (I was still chafed about that), reading a book I had brought with me. I always take a book with me wherever I go. Reading helps me to unwind. I prefer horror or cop thrillers. Sometimes I’ll tackle a biography, or even something profoundly philosophical. I never read anything about movies, actors, or Hollywood in general.

You could say that my life has been privileged—if you are inclined to be impressed by ridiculous amounts of wealth and the mindless spending of it. My parents were both very successful, certainly very rich and pretty damn powerful. The Sonniers have always been considered part of the Hollywood hierarchy. My entry to the dizzy, nosebleed upper echelons of the glitzy world they inhabit was pretty much guaranteed, although I’ve never been one for schmoozing with the Hollywood set unless it is for work. I’m a loner when I’m not working. I like it that way. I don’t own a lot of fancy cars, nor do I own a jet, and although my house is comfortable and probably a little bigger than I need, it is by no means luxurious. I had my fill of conspicuous consumption growing up. At one time my parents were earning so much money between them that we were all flying to the bathroom by private jet.

With that kind of wealth and status come super-sized addictions and outrageously bad behavior. To illustrate: one day, in my thirteenth year, I came home early from school because I had bad period cramps. I could hear the rock music blaring from all the way down the drive and as soon as I stepped through the front door I smelled the marijuana. You could have got high off the smell coming out the front door alone. I found my mother in the living room, in the company of a young and very hirsute director, one whose star was on the rise in Hollywood at that time, both of them down on their knees on the floor, scrabbling frantically amongst the carpet fur. They were giggling madly.

My mom paused giggling and scrabbling when she realized I was standing in the doorway, watching them. “Oh. Dante. Hi.” She gave me a stoned smile, made some gestures in the vague direction of the floor. “Contact lens. Lost. Looking for it.”

I just nodded and continued on my way to my bedroom upstairs, leaving them to carry on genuflecting to the carpet. I didn’t bother to point out that they were both wearing eyeglasses.

Hence I have no desire to read about the life I grew up living.

I lay on the bed then in our brothel-cum-hotel, in Holly Bush Junction, the ass end of California, and tried to concentrate on the latest Dean Koontz novel. My mind, however, kept drifting into thoughts about Ellis, most of them centering around the fact that we would be sharing this very bed in a few hours. Like I said, I was still chafed about that, but I was also kind of excited in a way that seriously disturbed me. When Amelia Kevorkian said she thought I wanted to sleep with Ellis, she had hit on an uncomfortable truth. I do find Ellis attractive…oh hell, let’s face it, you would have to be a nun not to be fired up by Ellis Kovacs. The woman could be covered in road kill and wearing a cabbage for a hat and she’d still have a sex appeal that you could see from outer space…and if I were to be really honest with myself, then hell yes, I would really like to sleep with her. There’s just one niggling problem. Well, one other than vampires being possessive and jealous and stifling in a relationship. Vampires also have a fairly rigid hierarchy. Their leader is deferred to in nearly every matter, much in the way a king or queen—or a president—would be deferred to by human subjects. Except without even the pretense of democracy.

This means the vampire leader also has first dibs on anything that takes his or her fancy, including humans. As I said, sometime ago Voshki made it clear she has a fancy for me, and although I declined the invitation to become her human companion—politely of course—that only bought me time. So long as she retains an interest in me, no other vampire is allowed to make overtures to me. Even Ellis’s joking around with me could get her into trouble, which made me wonder why Ellis was taking that risk. I didn’t flatter myself that it was because she found me so irresistible. Power is everything with vampires. Ellis’s flirting with me would be linked in some way to a power play between her and Voshki, and that was something I did not want to get in the middle of.

Eventually I gave up any attempt to read and instead I took a shower and changed my clothes for dinner. If Ellis or Samson were not back before my stomach really began complaining, I would take a stroll into town, see if I could find one of those restaurants the hotel proprietor had recommended. Eating by yourself in a strange town is about as lame sauce as it gets, but hey, my companions didn’t exactly abide by human social rules, remember? If I had to endure the embarrassment of dining solo, so be it. Fuck the vampires.

Well, that might’ve been an unfortunate choice of terms.

Whilst I was in the shower, Ellis returned. I came out of the bathroom unawares, wrapped in a towel and otherwise naked, and found her lying on my side of the bed, reading my book. She raised her head and gave me an extended look of appreciation, which I pretended to ignore.

“When did you get back?” I asked.

“A few minutes ago. Are you going to ask me where I was?”

“You went to find someone to eat, I assumed.”

I grabbed underwear, socks and a fresh shirt from my bag and stomped back into the bathroom with those. Ellis’s voice drifted to me.

“I asked a few people around town about the guy that lives in that shack.”

“Good for you.” I dressed quickly, not certain that Ellis would stay put on the bed.

“His name is Derek McBride. He doesn’t seem to have a job. According to the people I spoke to, he gets by selling rabbit skins and fish.”

“An outdoorsman, eh?” That was putting it charitably.

“Hmm. The great outdoors.” I heard Ellis shift on the bed and held my breath briefly, but she stayed put. Disappointment mingled with relief. I brushed my teeth, ran a comb through my hair. Most days my hair can charitably be described as “devil-may-care.” At other times it looks like I got caught in a tsunami. Indoors. I listened to Ellis fiddling with the bedside radio as she pondered the mystery of the human attraction to the great outdoors.

“What’s so great about mud and mosquitoes and trying to sleep under a piece of canvas that keeps blowing down in the slightest breeze?”

She was asking the wrong human about that. As far as I am concerned, people who say they love the great outdoors are either liars or deluded. The truth is that, for most people, camping is something you do armed to the teeth with every gadget known to humankind designed to keep the outdoors at bay. All over America you can see these poor, deluded fools in their RV’s equipped with everything from satellite TV to walk-in refrigerators, lugging everything with them from inflatable lawns and insect-repellent flamethrowers to battery-operated microwave ovens and solar-powered tin openers. I have never gone camping in my entire life, so the attraction of sleeping under a piece of canvas and smothering yourself in bug-repellent was about as foreign to me as it was to Ellis.

I realized I had just found something in common with the vampire. Was that good or bad? I wondered.

I buttoned up my shirt, leaned into the mirror to take a critical look at myself. Dark brown, short hair, mid-blue eyes, a sprinkling of freckles across my nose and no discernible double chins yet. That matters in Hollywood, believe me. On the whole, not too bad looking—but no Helen of Troy either. I’m not deluded. I used my fingers to torture my hair a little more where the comb had failed. Then I walked back into the bedroom.

Ellis looked me up and down with more appreciation. “Did you get a date or something?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No. I just thought I’d go out and eat.”

“Alone?”

I nodded. Grabbed a jacket and my wallet.

“Want me to come with you?”

“Are you hungry?”

Oh, now that was a stupid thing to say. If I had scissors to hand I would have cut out my own tongue. I braced myself for Ellis’s response.

“It’s funny, but I’m always hungry when I’m around you,” she said in a low, husky voice that gave me chills. Exactly as it was designed to do, of course.

I was still standing with my back to her, which was stupid also. Vampires can move fast and move silently. I did not even know Ellis had left the bed until she was standing right behind me, her body pressed lightly to mine, leaning over my shoulder. I could feel her mouth against my neck as she murmured, “I get really hungry around you, Dante.”

I could think of nothing to say that would not turn this moment from an awkward one into a potentially deadly one. I heard Ellis’s fangs slide out with a soft snicking sound that gave me more chills. Then I felt her fangs touching the skin of my neck. That turned just about every bone in me to Jell-O. Nerves zinged, flesh quivered. I could not have been more turned on, or more terrified, and what a powerfully erotic combination that is. Ellis let her fangs graze across the soft part of my throat, drawing a deep shudder from me—but no blood—and then she used her tongue to trace my jugular vein. I could feel a pulse throbbing there that was echoed further south and closer to the warm center of my anatomy.

“Don’t, Ellis,” I managed to croak. “Voshki will kill both of us.”

Ellis sucked breath in. Here’s another little tidbit about vampires—they don’t need to breathe. Many of them have perfected the pretense of breathing for when they are in close enough proximity to humans for it to matter. Have you ever noticed how most of us go around never really thinking about other people breathing, let alone actually noticing them doing so? It’s only with lovers—or sick people—that we start to take notice of the act of breathing. A vampire can pretend to breathe by going through the motions, but there is never any actual breath—no feel of it, no smell of it. Ellis’s intake of air was purely for dramatic impact.

She stepped away from me. “I don’t know why Vosh keeps you like this,” she said, and I heard a note of anger in her voice. I turned curiously toward her. She was scowling at a point beyond my right shoulder. “You said no to her. She doesn’t usually keep a human dangling like this for so long.”

I shrugged. I didn’t know why Voshki kept me on ice like this either. What I did know was that my heart was pounding and the blood rushing through my veins felt like liquid fire. I had been dangerously close to letting Ellis carry on with what she had so obviously wanted to do. To hell with never wanting Voshki to become displeased with me. For Ellis, the risk might be worth it.

Then her black-eyed gaze came back into focus on me. I felt stripped naked by it. I could hardly swallow. My heart blocked my throat. “Sometimes I think you would be worth defying her,” Ellis purred.

I didn’t know what to say. But I knew what to do. Get the hell out of there.

* * *

I chose a roadside diner at random at which to eat. After my encounter with Ellis, the lure of food had waned some until all I could stomach was a burger and fries, with an ice-cold beer. I found that at Mame’s Diner in downtown Holly Bush Junction. Mame’s had red leather banquettes, black and white checkered vinyl flooring and a huge Wurlitzer jukebox stocked with only 1950’s tunes. I loved the place instantly, even if I was less hungry than I’d started out. I took a booth and ate whilst listening to Fats Domino and Eddie Cochrane and Bill Hailey. I had finished my burger and fries and was onto a chocolate ice cream sundae when someone stopped by my booth—who was not the waitress with the blonde beehive servicing my sector of the diner.

It was a blonde though. The blonde sheriff. I looked up, blinked, smiled. “Sheriff Bartlett,” I said pleasantly.

She nodded. “Mizz Sonnier…sorry. Dante. You found our town’s best-kept secret, I see.” She smiled. She was still in uniform, I noticed. Gun, badge, handcuffs and all. Awkwardly she made a gesture inquiring if she might sit. I nodded. The sheriff settled into the banquette.

“Something on your mind, Sheriff?” I inquired, still being pleasant. I ate my sundae steadily, hoping she would not mind. It was delicious, and I really did not want to let it melt.

Sheriff Bartlett shook her head. Changed her mind. Nodded. “I heard that your friend was asking around town about Derek McBride.”

Small town. Someone like Ellis being nosy was going to be memorable. I had more sense than to deny it, simply nodded instead, like it was really no big deal. It seemed to be just that to Sheriff Bartlett, however. She gave me a level stare. Lovely pale blue eyes, like falling water. More eyes for me to drown in. Too many new things were happening here. I wished suddenly I was back in La-La Land, where I at least was familiar with the shaky ground I stood on.

“Do you have reason to think Derek is the peeper?” she asked.

The direct approach. Refreshing. No one in Hollywood is direct. We all talk around things in a coded language. Well, except for the vampires. They can be a pretty direct lot. When they’re not being cryptic. I spooned sundae into my mouth, savored, swallowed. I shrugged. “Too early to say.”

“But you’ve been making inquiries?”

“Do you know something about Derek McBride that makes you think he could be the peeper, Sheriff?” I held the sheriff’s waterfall-gaze.

She shrugged but the gesture was anything except casual. “He hasn’t been in town long, and he doesn’t have a steady source of income, I know that much. I know he’s been in twelve bar fights since he got here, and on every occasion there have been no witnesses afterward. I’ve never been able to arrest him.”

“People drink, get into fights, forget what happened next day,” I pointed out. Of course it could also be a vampire glamouring people into forgetting.

Sheriff Bartlett was not convinced either. “This won’t sound professional, but the guy also gives me the creeps.”

I smiled at that. “I live and work in Hollywood, Sheriff. I deal with people who give me the creeps on a daily basis,” I said. “Hell, there are members of my own family give me the creeps. I guess what I’m saying is, you’ll have to give me something more to work with here.”

“Okay. I’ve talked to him, obviously, about the bar fights, and other stuff. Every time I have talked to him, I’ve come away from the experience feeling much like I suspect FBI agents have felt talking to serial killers. Tainted.”

Strong words. I pushed my empty plate away, leaned back against the soft leather back of the banquette and considered what to say next. “I know you want your town to continue to be safe and peaceful, Sheriff,” I began, and she frowned in a defensive way that I was ready for. I held up a hand to stall her protests. “I can assure you that no one at the location shoot, nor back at the studio, wants anything different. That’s why I’m here. To clear this problem up as quickly as possible and with as little fuss as possible.”

“Uh-huh. You indicated that before.”

“And I meant it before.”

A shadow loomed over both of us then. I had, from the corner of my eye, noticed a tall, distinguished-looking woman in a dark blue dress and matching jacket stand up from a table nearer to the counter and head in our direction. She had been hard to miss because she had flaming blood-red hair. Too red, surely, not to have had some artificial enhancement. Now, as the sheriff and I both craned our necks to look up at the interloper to our conversation, I saw it was the same redhead. Up close I could see that she was in her mid-forties, wearing well, but too angular to be called conventionally attractive. The dress and the jacket both were expensive in an understated way. She beamed a friendly smile at me but she addressed herself to the sheriff.

“Sheriff Bartlett…so sorry to interrupt your little tête-à-tête with our visitor.” She had the glacial intonations and the inbred look of pinched beauty, slightly off-kilter in a way that you just could not put your finger on, indigenous to the high-line WASP. A face that launched a thousand country clubs. I would bet on her origins being New England. Maine. Or maybe Boston.

“Marjorie,” the sheriff said stiffly.

“Is this one of our Hollywood friends then?” Marjorie extended a hand manicured within an inch of its life. I took it politely, held on as lightly as possible in case I might cut myself on a sharp edge.

“Dante Sonnier,” I told her. “I’m just an agent. None of the really exciting stuff.”

“Oh, an agent!” Marjorie sounded just so delighted. She leaned toward me, in no hurry to extricate her paw from mine either. Hazel eyes glittered at me. This woman was a barracuda. I know one of those when I’m faced with one. “I just adore having the movie people in town. It’s so exciting and different for our little backwater burg!” And off she went into a trill of laughter that I bet she practiced to perfection every day in front of the mirror.

“Well, you have a very nice little burg here indeed,” I oozed right back at her. I got my own paw free, resisted an urge to check it for blood.

Marjorie aimed a well-practiced smile in the sheriff’s direction once more. “Please don’t forget, Lois dear, that the Women’s Auxiliary meeting is this evening. Seven p.m. sharp,” she cooed.

“I’ll be there,” Lois Bartlett promised.

Marjorie bestowed more smiley niceness on me. “ So glad to have met you, Dante. I hope you enjoy our town.” She made a gracious little gesture with her head and upper body that was very nearly a bow and glided off. Heads turned and eyes followed her. I swear I heard awed whispering. Just before stepping outside she produced a pair of Prada shades from her matching handbag and settled those on her face with a practiced ease.

I looked at Lois Bartlett with a raised eyebrow. “Let me guess. She’s either the Lady Mayor or she’s the wife of the Mayor?”

The sheriff laughed. “Wife,” she confirmed. “Marjorie Tucker. I believe she hails from Boston.”

I’m rarely wrong about these things. I finished the last mouthful of my beer, wiped my lips with a napkin and looked across the table at Sheriff Lois Bartlett. “We’re not going to do anything to disrupt your town, Sheriff. We don’t need the hassle either, frankly. We’ll talk to Derek McBride and if he is the peeper, well, if I know anything at all about the Derek McBride’s of this world, it’s that they can be made an offer…” I flicked an eyebrow and the sheriff smiled. She knew Derek’s sort as well. “We’ll make him an offer to take his peeping elsewhere that he won’t be inclined to refuse, and everything can go back to normal. Fortunately we don’t have the burden of proof to concern us.”

Sheriff Bartlett chewed it over. Then she nodded. She stood up from the table. “If you need any help, you know where I am. My apologies for interrupting your dinner.” She managed another smile before walking away. That allowed me a few seconds to admire the rear view, which was every bit as good as the front view.

Plus, there was the added bonus that my attraction to the sheriff wouldn’t cost me my damned life.

So I enjoyed that for a few moments, and then it was back to business. Time to pay Derek McBride a little visit.

* * *

I may have stretched the truth somewhat about clearing things up with as little fuss as possible. If I have learned one thing in my life, it is that where actors and vampires are concerned, things rarely are sorted out without there being a whole lot of fuss indeed.

Around seven, with the sun setting on Holly Bush Junction, Samson drove Ellis and me back out to Derek McBride’s shack. We could hear some god-awful music coming from inside, sounded like thrash metal. We didn’t bother to knock—Ellis just shouldered the door off its hinges and we walked right in. That stuff about vampires needing to be invited in first time? More hogwash. That they are mighty strong—not so much hogwash.

Derek was also mighty surprised to see us, so surprised he immediately got his fangs out and tried to attack Ellis. That was his first mistake. It also pretty much confirmed that he was our peeper. If he hadn’t had something to hide, he would have hesitated before attacking an older, stronger vampire. Vampires can sense when they are in the presence of another older, stronger vampire. Ellis is around three hundred years old in vampire years, which makes her a baby in relation to someone like Voshki, but plenty old enough to not be concerned by someone like Derek. She was—she claims—turned at the age of forty-one. I didn’t know forty-one-year-olds could look so good three centuries ago. Anyway, she was older, faster and stronger than Derek McBride and he didn’t stand a chance. Ellis batted him aside like a bothersome fly, sending him crashing into a wall hard enough to splinter the wood. Then she calmly walked over to him, grabbed him around the throat and hoisted him into the air with one hand, letting him dangle there.

I found the off button on the stereo. Blessed silence descended. “Derek,” I said to him in the same pleasant voice I had used with the sheriff not a couple hours ago. His eyes darted from Ellis to me. “So pleased to make your acquaintance. So sorry it will be a short one.”

He struggled. Ellis’s grip on his neck was like steel. Just as well he did not need to breathe. I looked into his face. “Have you been peeping over at the TV shoot?” I inquired.

He frowned, tried to shake his head but Ellis’s hand was holding too tight to his neck to allow for movement. “No,” he spluttered instead.

“I think you have. Now would be a very good time to tell the truth. You see, Derek, word of your antics has reached the ears of your esteemed community leader and she is, well, she is displeased.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong!”

I shook my head, made a quiet tsk-tsk noise. “Voshki so dislikes liars. Isn’t that so, Ellis?” I looked at Ellis and she nodded. Her eyes were glowing red at the pupils. A vampire’s eyes glow whenever they are angry, about to feed, or sexually aroused. It’s like someone lit two fires deep inside their pupils. Sometimes the effect is alluring, hypnotic, but most of the time it’s just fucking scary.

Derek seethed. “Alright,” he snapped. “I’ve been…looking at some of the women over there, yeah.” His eyes dropped. No fires there. Derek was not a strong vampire—that I had already figured out—but this gesture made him weak in more ways than just physically. He licked his lower lip and shot me a pathetic look from under his lashes that did nothing to make me reevaluate his masculinity. “I like human women, okay? But they don’t seem to like me. So I look at them. It’s not a fucking crime!”

He was not a particularly smart vampire either. But I had already figured that out. If he was smart, he wouldn’t be anywhere near Holly Bush Junction. “Actually, Derek, it is a crime,” I explained. His forehead creased in surprise. “But we’ll give you a pass on that if you get out of town. Now. Tonight. And obviously we don’t want you ever coming back.”

Derek McBride’s eyes darted every which way. If he was looking for an escape route, he was wasting his time. Samson was outside, in the event that Derek did manage to slip our grasp, which I seriously doubted he was capable of doing anyway. Derek managed to scowl suspiciously at me. “So you’re gonna just let me leave town? Just like that?”

I nodded. Looked at Ellis. She nodded too. Derek McBride might have just confessed to being our peeper, but he was not our killer, nor was he one of the Children of Judas. This loser could not have convinced a toddler to give up its lollipop, let alone make a full-grown adult give up their life.

“One thing…” I said… “Do you know anything about the Children of Judas?”

His upper lip lifted. The expression was more like the fear snarl you will see on a dog than anything conveying disgust. “I know enough to stay the fuck away from those crazy-ass fuckers,” he spat.

Eloquent. Other vampires really did not like these Children of Judas, not even pathetic specimens like Derek here. I shrugged. “What brought you to Holly Bush Junction anyway?” I asked. I waved a hand vaguely. “It doesn’t seem like…your kind of town.”

He stared at me, darted a look at Ellis, who momentarily tightened her grip on his throat and urged him to answer.

“Some guy in a bar,” he croaked. “We got to talking. He told me there was a TV shoot going on in this town. I figured there’d be lotsa pretty women and maybe so many people they wouldn’t notice me…looking. Okay?”

I sighed. Some guy in a bar. Of course it was. How very much trouble comes a person’s way because they listened to what some guy in a bar told them. Derek was just a dumb loser of a vampire in the wrong place at the wrong time. “Okay. It’s time for you to pack whatever of your belongings you can carry and get the hell out of Dodge,” I told him. I waggled my fingers at him. “Time to go bye-bye, Derek.”

Ellis let him go. He crumpled to the floor, one hand going to his throat.

“Don’t come back,” I reminded him. We departed the shack but we didn’t go far, just sat in the SUV at the end of the road, waiting to see whether Derek really would leave or not.

He did. Around five minutes later he came hurrying down the road on foot, a backpack slung over one shoulder, headed toward the town limits.

“That part was easy, but why do I get the feeling the whole Children of Judas thing is going to be a hell of lot harder?” I remarked.

Ellis nodded agreement. “They won’t go so quietly,” she said.

Vampires and their fucking problems. Give me a whole army of actors and directors and writers any day. I nodded to Samson. “Let’s get out of here. Suddenly I’m feeling very tired. And I could do with a drink too.”

“The hotel has a very nice bar,” Ellis said brightly. “They have a piano and a guy who comes in every evening to play old honky-tonk tunes on it. I was talking to Mike, the proprietor.”

I gave her enthusiasm the fish-eye. “Does he hire women to dress up as whores and drape themselves over the furniture too?”

Ellis smirked. “No, but I bet that’d be something to see!”

CHAPTER FIVE

Let me share another little tidbit with you about vampires: if they want something, they usually end up getting it. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a Ferrari, or a particular human being. Ellis wanted me. That much was obvious. Voshki wanted me too. I had told both of them no and, to be fair to myself, I thought I meant no.

My resolve to not sleep with Ellis washed away on three bourbon shots and two beers. I spent the evening at the bar in the horrible brothel-like hotel, in the company of Ellis, Samson and Mike the proprietor, all four of us listening to a guy named Willie play honky-tonk on the piano. Mike the proprietor regaled us with tales of the hotel’s actual days as a brothel-cum-saloon. Apparently his great-great-granddaddy owned the place then. In the midst of one of Mike’s bawdy tales, I felt Ellis’s hand come to rest on my knee and squeeze there. Little electric sparks of desire traveled the length of my inner thigh.

I gave her a glare meant to warn her to back off, but it was lame sauce. She knew it. Her hand moved higher. The room immediately became several degrees warmer.

Less than an hour later we were back in the room and I was hanging by my last fingernail to any resolve whilst Ellis kissed me everywhere in ways that were intimate and erotic and frightening, and about the most thrilling thing I had ever known. My skin erupted into fire wherever her lips landed. I had no knees and my brain was gushing out of my ears. I felt my last fingernail-grip loosen, and then I no longer gave a damn whether Voshki or anyone else found out what we were doing, nor what the consequences of that might be.

We all but tore each other’s clothes off. I think my shirt lost a few buttons but I didn’t care about that either. I was way too busy getting drunk on the sight of Ellis without clothes. Three hundred-odd years old or not, she has a smoking hot body. When she backed me against a wall in one of those hungry, fingers-in-the-hair, who-needs-oxygen-anyway kisses, it felt to me like she had six hands, all of them able to work independently on different parts of me at once. I let her guide me to the double bed (which she had undoubtedly known all along we would end up using for exactly this purpose, damn her and bless her), and then I also let her go to work on my southern districts with the same talented lips, tongue and teeth that had just turned an ordinary kiss into something that makes you wonder if you’ve ever really been kissed before in your life. I could vouch that I’d never had that done before in the way Ellis did it.

I suppose I had always figured Ellis for one of those wild rides that you get on not because you know you are big enough and strong enough to take it, but because you are driven to get on it, and which you don’t come off without being changed in some major ways by it. In part, she enthralled me for much the same reason Voshki Kevorkian did, because I knew either of them could, in the words of Nietzsche, equally deftly wield a dagger against me. Or maybe, in their case, a set of fangs. The lure of a dangerous woman. So it’s corny, so shoot me. Hell yes, she also annoys me, drives me fucking crazy, but since when has that been a reason not to want to have sex with someone?

As for not wanting to get involved with all that possessiveness nonsense that earmarks a vampire relationship, well, that was a bridge I’d decided to cross later. Maybe around the same time I got to crossing the bridge of Voshki’s thinking she had any prior claim on me.

As I may have mentioned, vampires tend to bite when they are having sex. They usually bite on the neck, although if their human prefers someplace less conspicuous there are main arteries in other areas of the body that will suffice just as well. There is the femoral artery, for one. Having a pair of deft fangs sunk into you here is often even more pleasurable than getting it in the neck. It was to this southern artery that Ellis went, and I did nothing to even try to stop her. Actually, I just spread my legs wider for her, like the shameless hussy I had lately turned into. Maybe it was the effect of staying in a hotel that used to be a brothel.

Oh well. As my mother, the legendary addict, always says: If you’re gonna be bad, you may as well be bad to the best of your ability. Amen.

Ellis drank her fill of my blood, the warm viscous feel of it trickling down my inner thigh acting as an aphrodisiac on me as well as her. She returned to administering to me with her tongue, and soon I was clinging to the ceiling with my fingernails and eyebrows, on the brink of an orgasm that I just knew was going to be so shattering it would be a wonder if it didn’t cause a goddamn earthquake all the way back in LA. But instead of allowing me to tumble over the brink, she conspired to leave me on a plateau, gasping and shaking, while she slid up my body and kissed me on the mouth. I could taste my own sex and my own blood on her lips. Rather than being turned off by the latter, I liked it. I wished she would just devour me whole. As she kissed me, she played her hands over every inch of my flesh, leaving trails of fiery tingling everywhere she touched, my shoulders, neck, the little hollow at my throat, down between my breasts, across my ribs…my stomach muscles fluttered as she trailed her fingertips across there, moving south in no great hurry. Finally she slipped her hand between my legs and brought me to orgasm with her fingers, and it was without a shred of doubt the best orgasm I’d ever had. I think I may have passed out briefly from pleasure. There were bright colors and loud noise inside of my head, and there was a sensation like falling off a cliff into a velvet-lined abyss, tumbling and spinning downward, only to bounce back up and go soaring into air that was as soft and sweet as marshmallow.

Shattering. Like I said.

In the aftermath of this devastating encounter I lay breathing heavily and streaming sweat, sticking to the rumpled sheets, just trying to get my brain back from the outer stratosphere, whilst Ellis lay on her side, looking down at me, one hand still stroking my inner thigh. She was not even winded. Her eyes were still glowing red, like a sunset. And there was blood at each corner of her mouth. My blood. Now that she had drunk from me, she would form a sort of connection with me on the emotional and psychic level. It would have been stronger had she invited me to drink her blood. That she had refrained from doing this told me she was being at least a little cautious with regard to Voshki’s claims upon me. I was not quite sure how to feel about that.

“What happens now?” I asked once I had my breath back.

Ellis smiled, shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve never stolen a human from Voshki before.”

I was irked suddenly. I glared at her. “You didn’t steal me from anyone because I don’t belong to anyone. Least of all to Voshki Kevorkian.”

“Vosh laid a claim to you. We’re supposed to respect that.”

“And I told Vosh that I didn’t want to be her human.”

“It doesn’t matter…” Ellis’s smile was both wistful and amused… “I should still have respected her wishes. I should have at least asked her permission before I made a play for you.”

“For fuck’s sake…” I was getting properly annoyed now… “I’m not a fucking car that you have to ask your mom’s permission to take for a ride!”

The analogy amused her. It didn’t amuse me. I swatted her on the arm. “This is not fucking funny!” I carped. I turned away from her, sulking. Christ, but I hate women who sulk! Ellis apparently found my sulking amusing too. She snuggled up to me, wrapped her arms around me, sent exploratory fingers south again. I moaned.

“Oh God, not again. Not yet,” I begged her.

“Mmm…then when?”

“Gimme a while to recover.”

Ellis paused in her explorations, withdrew her hand from between my legs. I heard her fangs glide out, then, unexpectedly, the dull crunch of those fangs sinking into her own flesh. Warm blood dripped onto my upturned side. I whipped my head back to look at her. She held her bleeding wrist over my face. Blood dripped onto my cheeks, onto my chin and my lips. Instinctively I stuck out my tongue to lick it away. It tasted oddly sweet, not like regular blood should taste, and as soon as it touched my tongue I got a hit that would have sent any crack addict running for cover. It was like seeing every color of the spectrum all at once, like feeling every part of your entire body caressed by silken feathers, like being spun in a spider web of velvet and sugar, and washed clean by holy water. It was unlike anything I had ever known could exist in this world or any other. All I wanted to do was drink Ellis’s blood until I choked on it. I grabbed her wrist, pulled it down and fastened my mouth to the wound.

The glow in her eyes flared bright and hot. No longer was I looking at a sunset—I was looking into the heart of a conflagration could burn both of us to death. I sucked greedily. Blood washed down my throat. I swear there were angels singing, a whole blissed-out chorus of them, and maybe a couple minor gods playing in the orchestra.

At length Ellis gently but firmly tugged her wrist free of my greedy mouth. She licked the wound herself until it healed over. Then she looked down at me. No red glow now, just those dark eyes of hers that would not quit. “We’re bound now,” she told me, “and Voshki will sense that as soon as she sees us. I don’t know how she’s going to react.”

I shook my head. I knew there had to be a big, stupid, sloppy, happy-ass grin on my face. I felt filled up with light and wellbeing. “I don’t care,” I said.

Ellis rolled me toward her, kissed me for a moment. Then she told me; “You might care if Vosh is really, really angry about this. That can be an ugly, frightening thing.”

“So why did you do it?” I asked her.

Ellis didn’t answer. She just kept looking at me. She didn’t have to say anything out loud. I knew why she took the risk. It had nothing to do with power. She really did think I was worth it. I was flattered, pleased and scared all at once.

I slipped my hand between her legs, felt her wetness. I wanted to stay there, in that bed, in that hotel, for the next decade or so. To hell with Voshki, and with Hollywood, and with all that drama. Some part of me knew it was just the drug-like effect of Ellis’s blood making me think this way. But hey, it felt good. I slid a finger inside of Ellis, felt her respond immediately. “I don’t want to talk about Voshki. Not now. I want you to do to me what you did before.”

“As you wish,” Ellis murmured.

* * *

Something was ringing somewhere. At first I thought the sound emanated from inside my own head, maybe another of the crazy after-effects of drinking a vampire’s blood, or just the mind-blowingly great sex. Whatever, I tried to ignore the irritating sound. But it wouldn’t go away. That’s when I realized the ringing was a cell phone. Not mine though.

“Yes, Voshki?” I heard Ellis’s voice, hushed and respectful.

I came awake pretty quick. Everything about the past few hours came flooding back, in Technicolor, widescreen with Dolby Surround Sound. I fancied my thoughts must be vivid enough, and loud enough, for Voshki to catch them all the way on the other end of the line in Hollywood. That made me paranoid.

Beside me, Ellis sat up in bed, naked, cell phone at her ear. She gave me a quick meaningful look and I nodded. “Yes, Voshki,” she repeated. Her expression was grim in a way that I was liking less and less. “We’ll see to it,” she assured her leader. She snapped the phone closed.

“That was Voshki,” she said needlessly. I nodded equally without need. “There has been…a development.”

A serious one if Voshki was calling in the middle of the night. “What kind of development?” I asked.

Ellis was already throwing the sheets aside and swinging her long legs out of bed. I had to look away as she stood up. The rush of desire for her nearly knocked me out, and it panicked me a little, too, because this seemed like a very bad time to want to get jiggy again. Ellis gave me a smile over one shoulder that very nearly turned me inside out. “Oh, there’s never a bad time for that,” she cooed. She began picking her clothes off the floor.

Heat rushed into my face. “Oh Christ,” I groaned. “Tell me you can’t read my fucking mind now that we…now that… Can you read my mind?”

Ellis shook her head. “You’re still blocking me out for the most part, Dante, although I’ve got to say I wish you wouldn’t. I can pick up on some of your thoughts, just little hints here and there. But I can read your emotions rather better now. Desire is a particularly easy one to pick up on.”

Great. I wondered if Voshki would be able to pick up on it just as easily. Ellis shrugged and said, “She might” as though I had actually spoken the thought aloud.

“Don’t do that,” I told her sharply. I realized she still had not told me what the development was. “What’s happened anyway?”

“Someone attacked Caitlin Harris tonight,” Ellis said calmly.

Well, wasn’t that just typical of Caitlin to find a way to ruin my evening? “And I suppose we have to go check it out?” I scowled.

Ellis shrugged, nodded.

Great. Just fucking great.

* * *

The actors on The Right Guy were ensconced at a Ramada Inn on the town’s west side. Some of the principle crew was also there. The lesser crew members—those whom in the business we call “below the line” crew, meaning simply that their names come after the TV or movie title—were relegated to a local drive-in motel called The Ocean Crest, although there was neither ocean in the vicinity nor a crest visible from its location. I often think there must be a list kept someplace of motel names, and anyone opening an establishment must choose from this list, even if it means naming their establishment something completely inappropriate. Presumably failure to do so will result in some horrible forfeit being paid. As tonight had not been slotted for any nighttime shooting, the actors and crew had been given the night off. Some had gone into town in search of whatever passed for entertainment in Holly Bush Junction—an apple-pie tasting fair maybe, or carpet bowls at the local Y. Perhaps I was being unfair. The town might have a slew of strip joints, casinos and banging nightclubs hidden away. I doubted it though. Only a handful of people remained in their rooms, catching up on sleep or reading, or catching up with the all-important LA gossip on their cell phones with friends.

Inevitably there were some who took the chance to test out the soundproofing quality of the Ramada’s walls.

Let me explain a rule about location shooting: everyone sleeps around. Actors, crew—even the catering people. You can be on a location shoot for months at a time, away from your regular spouse or partner, inhabiting a make-believe world for that entire time. Given the self-dramatizing, over-imaginative types that actors and a lot of other movie people are, the bleed of fantasy and reality is inevitable. And so cheating happens. Location romances are common, and for the most part they are accepted. Caitlin Harris had been cheating when she was attacked. She was sleeping with a crew member, a wardrobe assistant named Deb, cheating on the writer girlfriend back home in the Hills. The location romance did not appear to have anything to do with the attack itself, however. According to Caitlin, she and her “friend” had ordered room service, and when it arrived Caitlin went to the door because it was her room they were cheating in and she didn’t want rumors getting started.

Everyone looked at each other when she said this, but no one even bothered to comment. What was the point?

The room service guy then wheeled a food cart in. Once he was inside, unprovoked, he lifted the lid off a silver platter of sandwiches and whacked Caitlin upside the head with it.

Okay, I admit it. I had a hard time not sniggering just a little when I heard that.

At this point Caitlin’s location squeeze had leaped from the bed and launched a gallant attack on the room service guy. He, however, displayed an extraordinary strength, shaking her off and sending her crashing into the wall, where she banged her head and wrenched her ankle. Caitlin assured us that Deb had up-to-date worker’s comp, so that was okay, wasn’t it?

I gave her a meaningless smile. I could see the distaste growing in Ellis’s expression although I didn’t look for too long at her. I couldn’t. I kept thinking about the sex we’d just had, and wanting more of it.

The attacker had then fled the room. Someone exiting the elevator further down the hallway heard the tail end of the commotion and came charging to the rescue, a tad late to be of any great assistance but not so late as to miss seeing the room service guy go tearing down the emergency stairs.

I made a perfunctory inquiry if Caitlin was okay, and that earned me a perfectly poisonous glare. “I could have died tonight,” she reminded me.

Boy, I had forgotten just how self-centered a specimen Caitlin Harris was. Nothing and no one existed in Caitlin’s world that did not relate directly to her in some way. Deb could have been lying dead in a dozen different pieces at the foot of the bed and still Caitlin would have been more concerned by her own broken fingernail. I looked to the manager, summoned by the would-be rescuer. Caitlin’s Personal Assistant and some female producer from the show whom I vaguely recognized by face, if not name, were also present.

“Did hotel security record this guy?”

The place had cameras—I had noted them on the way up. The manager shook his head, however, grimacing as he explained how none of the cameras had caught a clear image of the guy.

“He must have been aware of the position of all our cameras,” the manager added with a weak shrug. That got him a withering look from me and a sneer from Caitlin. It would be a miracle if she could be persuaded not to sue. I think the manager knew this. He was sweating profusely in anticipation of just this.

“How about you guys, did any of you get a good look?”

I turned to Caitlin and the would-be rescuer who had come running into the room to tackle the obviously fake room service guy. A traveling salesman by the name of Bill, he was husky like an ex-football player, with thinning brown hair and poor taste in shiny polyester suits.

“I didn’t get a good look at him,” Bill told me apologetically. He obviously knew who Caitlin Harris was—he kept stealing awed glances at her. He also was having a hard time not staring at Ellis. I might as well not have been in the room.

“Caitlin?” I prompted.

She looked up from where she sat on the still-rumpled bed, an ice pack pressed to one side of her head where she’d taken the ding, and all but snarled at me. I suppose her expression intended to convey to me what an insensitive brute I was being, asking her all these questions when all she wanted to do was make a drama out of a crisis. I ignored the look.

“All I know is he had red hair and he was a skinny freak,” she stated. She made a dramatic shrug. “He was probably some deranged fan. Maybe he thinks we’re having a relationship or something. There are lots of deranged people out there thinking things like that about people like me, Dante. You know that. They see us on TV and they think they know all about us. They think we’re sending them secret messages of love or some such nonsense. It’s such a dangerous world for people like me who are famous.”

She ended her tirade with a wide-eyed appeal to everyone in the room to understand her plight. The PA and the producer, and even Bill, all murmured soothing nothings. I clenched my teeth to trap a sigh. I noticed Ellis’s expression had changed to one of pitying curiosity.

“A really strong, skinny guy with red hair” was not much to go on. I glanced at Ellis, who gave me a faint shrug. I swiveled my gaze back to Caitlin. She was going to love me for my next question. “What about your friend that was with you…did she see the guy?”

Caitlin’s eyes narrowed. She darted a look in Bill’s direction. I took the hint and beamed at the guy. “Hey, you’ve been great, Bill,” I told him. I stuck my hand out. He took it, a little bewildered, probably because he had no idea who I was. His palm was sweaty. I had to resist the urge to wipe my own on my pants leg afterward. I held my smile in place. “You should let us give you something for your trouble, Bill. How do some free tickets for you and your family to the next Academy Awards Night sound?”

“It sounds awesome,” Bill enthused. Well, of course it did. He was just a rube from Fungus City, Iowa, or wherever.

“Great. Then let’s get you sorted out and you can go back to your room. You must be damn tired after all this, huh? Course you are!” I was herding him toward the door as I chattered on, and there I handed him off to the PA, who took him away to arrange those tickets for him. It would have disappointed Bill the salesman if he had known just how easy Awards ceremony tickets are to come by. People like me hand them out to the Bills of this world like doctors hand out candies to crying children after their flu shots. How else would we get asses on seats at those dreary, drawn-out festivals of industry self-congratulation? As far as we movie people are concerned, if there isn’t at least a chance of your own self being up for some of the love and congrats, why bother showing up to have someone else’s success shoved in your face?

With Bill safely out of the room, I asked Caitlin again if her friend had got any better a look at the guy? Caitlin shrugged, said she would not know, since Deb had left immediately afterward. I didn’t bother to remind Caitlin that Deb left because she had a knot on her head and a sprained wrist—it would have fallen on deaf ears. Instead I extracted Deb’s room number from her and Ellis and I headed off there. We left Samson guarding Caitlin’s door. Not that I really thought the attacker would come back to try again.

“What do you think, was it a vampire?” I asked as we walked.

Ellis nodded. She regarded me curiously. “How on earth did you ever get involved with that awful woman, Dante? Were you having some sort of breakdown at the time?”

I smiled grimly. “You’d think, right?”

“Humans are odd.”

“No shit. So, tell me, how did Voshki get to hear about this before we did?”

“Amelia called her.”

Why, I wondered, would Amelia call Voshki all the way in Hollywood rather than call Ellis or me right here in Holly Bush Junction? Come to think of it, how come no one had apparently called the local cops? Something may not have been rotten in Denmark, but it was definitely going sour in Holly Bush Junction.

“Where is Amelia?” I asked.

Ellis shrugged. “I guess she’s around someplace.”

I was tired. Physically, from all of our exertion. And I was mentally tired of the dancing around the subject that the vampires were doing. I stopped, swerved in front of Ellis, forcing her to a halt. She looked down at me with a puzzled frown. I’m five-foot-five, which is not tall by any standards and positively Munchkin-sized by the standards Hollywood likes to claim, but I like to think I carry my lack of height well. Ellis is five-seven and she tends to wear boots with precipitously high heels which carry her towards five-nine and beyond. Trying to make your point whilst you are craning your neck rather ruins the effect. I did my best anyway.

“What in fuck is going on?” I demanded.

“I don’t know,” she began. I stopped her with a shake of my head.

“You do know. Or you know something.”

She sighed. Folded her arms. “I only know what I told you already, Dante.”

Ellis either could not or would not tell me anything more. I wanted very much to believe that she really did not know anything more than she had already told me, but I had to keep it in mind that Ellis was a vampire, and vampires lie.

“Can we just go talk to this wardrobe assistant your ex was banging?” Ellis asked with another sigh.

Unsurprisingly, Deb’s impressions of the attacker were also vague, involving “red hair” and “wearing a room service guy’s uniform.” At least she cared enough to inquire whether Caitlin was okay.

“Oh, Caitlin will be just fine,” I told her. And she would be. My ex would dine out on this story for years. We left Deb and went to pick up Samson before heading back to the hotel. Ellis was fairly sure the attacker wouldn’t return, and there was no reason then to either stick around or leave Samson on guard duty. I think Ellis may have been actually hoping the attacker would come back and finish the job. She had taken that much of an instant dislike to Caitlin. It happens. On the way out we met Amelia. She looked as fresh and as bright as though it had been three o’clock in the afternoon and not the same time in the morning. That made me unreasonably annoyed.

“Ellis…Dante,” she greeted us. “You heard about our little drama here tonight then.”

“Yeah. Voshki called us. From Hollywood,” I said with a pointed raise of my eyebrows.

Amelia studied me for a moment. “You need to talk to Voshki,” she said, and I gritted my teeth. Amelia shrugged. “I know as much as Ellis does right now.”

“Yeah, that seems to be catching, nobody knowing nothing,” I huffed.

Amelia’s gazed flicked between Ellis and I. Her eyes narrowed, but she was smiling. “Aha. You did succumb to Ellis’s charms, then.”

Oh no. I attempted to feign ignorance but Amelia wagged a finger at me. “Voshki is going to be so put out,” she scolded.

That did it. I gave a wild shrug and scowled at all of them. “Well, shit. Stop the world. Vosh will be put out. And I’m supposed to give a flying fuck?”

“Oooh, such defiance. I like it. Voshki may not though,” Amelia remarked archly.

I turned and stomped away. “I’ll meet you at the car,” I snapped at Ellis over my shoulder.

Fucking vampires.

CHAPTER SIX

I didn’t want to have breakfast that next morning (well, later the same morning technically) with Ellis and Samson, but particularly not with Ellis. I was in a sulk with her again because I was sure she knew more about whatever was going on in Holly Bush Junction than she was letting on to knowing, and being kept in the dark by someone you have just had mind-blowingly great sex with is aggravating, to say the least. My aggravation with her hadn’t stopped me from having more of the mind-blowing sex with her, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t sulk. I got up before she woke, showered, dressed and went out to find someplace to eat by myself. I ended up back at Mame’s Diner. The burgers had been excellent so I figured the breakfast menu had to be at least as good.

Hardly anyone eats in LA. We have more restaurants and eating places per capita than most other cities in the US, barring perhaps Seattle, which is just wall-to-wall with food-oriented businesses, and yet we eat less per capita than any other state. In LA, going to a restaurant is all about seeing and being seen in the right places. It has very little to do with the actual consumption of edibles. Which is sometimes depressing if you are like me and actually enjoy eating. Breakfast at Mame’s did not disappoint. I even thought about selling up and moving to Holly Bush Junction, or some small town like it, just for the food.

I thought about it for five seconds anyway. Truth was I’d get bored in a small town like this. I like LA. I like Hollywood. If I moved away I would only end up going stir crazy missing the weirdoes and the lunatics and the huge egos and the massive amount of insecurity. I would miss the sound of LAPD airships flying over my house during the night. I would even miss some of my clients. Although I might eventually get over the latter. Whilst I ate pancakes, sausage and toast with real butter, I called Roz in La-La Land and caught up with what was going on there, and then I did some telephone conferencing with clients, and potential clients. God bless the technological age. I was able to get a “yes” on a deal with Disney to use one of my actors for a voice-over in a forthcoming children’s animation. A couple mil in the bank for me right there. Of course, the asking price for using my client’s talents was twenty million, of which the actor himself would probably see at least twelve. For maybe a week’s work. Who says Hollywood actors are overpaid? I was also able to smooth the ruffled feathers of a director who was having difficulties working with another client of mine. She’s an A-list actress married to an A-list actor, very high profile both of them. Problem is, her Earth Mother public image is often at odds with the screaming-psycho-bitch she is in reality. I promised the ruffled director that I would talk to her, buttered him up with vague promises about giving him another of my A-list clients to work on a little indie-prod he had been touting around town. Like that was going to happen. Still, let it never be said that lies, secrets and general bullshit have ever stood in the way of getting business done in Hollywood.

My business concluded, I munched my way through a second helping of toast, accepted a third refill of coffee from the waitress and tried to relax. It was not easy though. My thoughts were all crowding together and getting in each other’s way. I had Ellis in there, and Voshki, and whatever was going on here and how it related to whatever was going on in LA, and then there was also Sheriff Bartlett. I liked the blonde sheriff, even if she did not seem too impressed with us movie people. For that I could hardly blame her. Under different circumstances, I would have liked the chance to try to convince her mind that not all of us were crackpots. What the hell. Even under the present circumstances I wouldn’t say no to the chance.

You can see how disheveled my thoughts were right there. I’d just had mind-blowingly great sex with a vampire, and there I was, thinking about the very human sheriff instead of plotting how I was going to lure Ellis back into bed.

Speak of the devil. A shadow fell over me, and this time I did not even have to look up to know it belonged to the sheriff. I could smell the deodorant she used. And the extra-strong mint toothpaste. And the faint tang of gun oil and leather lingering around her. Which surprised me. Not the smells themselves, but the fact that I was able to detect them so clearly. Was this another effect of ingesting Ellis’s blood last night? Had it strengthened my senses? Fine, I guess, unless the person had poor personal hygiene. Also, I hadn’t noticed this effect with anyone else yet, just the sheriff. I figured I should ask Ellis about it. Later. Maybe much later, once all notion of sleeping with her again had worn off. And just how long would that take anyway?

“Good morning, Dante. You, uh, seem a little distracted?”

Dear God, were my thoughts suddenly tattooed on my forehead? I forced myself to attention. “Good morning, Sheriff,” I said, raising a smile. I saw immediately that Sheriff Bartlett was not in uniform this morning. Instead she wore a black leather motorcycle jacket over black jeans and a black t-shirt. Black suits blondes very well. Black leather suits them even better. The sheriff looked good enough to eat. She also wore dark shades, which gave me a momentary jolt. Then I reminded myself that she was definitely not a vampire and I felt my smile widening at the corners.

I indicated her attire with a nod. “Day off?”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” she responded dryly, removing the shades and tucking them into the neck of her t-shirt. “Even small-town sheriffs get a day off now and then.”

“Join me?” I asked on impulse.

She accepted with only the slightest hesitation, sliding into the booth and signaling the same waitress for a coffee. “I heard about the incident at the hotel last night,” she said after the coffee had been poured and small town pleasantries exchanged with the waitress, and we were alone again.

I blinked, suddenly uncertain whether she was talking about Ellis and me, or about Caitlin. “The actress who was attacked,” she clarified. I raised an eyebrow. Sheriff Bartlett sipped her coffee, smiled at me over the rim. “It’s a small town, Dante. That kind of news travels at the speed of light.”

“Bad news has that ability everywhere,” I agreed. “You get fired off a set one day in Hollywood, by next day you can’t find work on a TV advert unless it’s being shot in Japan.”

“What puzzles me is that nobody called for the police,” Sheriff Bartlett remarked with a tight little smile that owed nothing to humor.

“We movie people sometimes prefer to solve our problems in-house,” I explained.

“Uh-huh. Like running Derek McBride out of town?”

So word of that had reached her ears too. I wondered who the omnipresent witness was doing all the whispering in those ears. Small town or not, her information highway was super-fast. Sheriff Bartlett sipped more coffee, looked at me for a while. Then she said, “I don’t care much about the running Derek off thing… I told you what I thought of Derek already. But I am concerned about the attack.”

I had to tread very carefully here to avoid stepping in any dog shit. “The actress is fine, better than fine. Trust me, she’ll thrive on the attention this will get her,” I said. I made a moue. It’s a meaningless thing to do but it makes you look earnest and trustworthy. “Really, Sheriff, it’s all about money and protecting the investment.”

“Cold,” Sheriff Bartlett opined.

She had no idea. None at all. And better for her that she didn’t.

“Did she get a look at her attacker?”

“Red hair, tall, skinny. He was posing as a room service guy. It looks like he was probably a fan stalking her.” Kernels of truth again. I borrowed one this time from Caitlin’s recipe book.

The sheriff grimaced. “Doesn’t sound like anybody I know. Of course I don’t know absolutely everyone in town right now.”

“I doubt he’ll come back,” I offered. Actually I knew no such thing, but Ellis had seemed pretty sure of it.

The sheriff switched tack on me then so abruptly I had to do some mental jogging to catch up. She asked me if Ellis Kovacs and I were “an item.”

“No,” I told her. “We’re just colleagues.”

That got a nod and a smile, the first genuine one I’d seen from Sheriff Bartlett. Why, I wondered, did I just lie to her about my relationship with Ellis? Did I enjoy stripping naked, smothering myself in honey and taking a sharp stick to a hornet’s nest? Because that’s what I was doing. First sleeping with Ellis and drinking her blood in defiance of Voshki’s stupid claim on me, then willfully ignoring that relationship with Ellis because I wanted to see where this good-looking blonde sheriff was going. At least I was on a roll with doing stupid things.

“Do you think you’ll be in town for much longer?” Sheriff Bartlett inquired.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose that depends.”

“It’s just that I was wondering if you’d like to have dinner? With me.”

Okay. We had reached our destination. I felt my head nod. Lips smile. Heard my voice saying yes, that would be good.

“Great. Um, how about tomorrow night? I know a place outside of town that’s maybe a little more upscale than here. I could pick you up around seven?”

Sheriff Bartlett did not believe in wasting any time. On the other hand, I had to wonder if she had ulterior motives in asking me to dinner, like she wanted to pick my brain further on last night’s attack? I didn’t refuse her offer though. She stood, still faintly smiling. “I’ll see you then, Dante,” she said, and laid her fingers on top of my wrist for just a moment.

It was long enough for me to catch a fleeting impression of her emotions. That surprised the hell out of me, much more than the scent thing had done. Another effect of the blood-drinking, I supposed. Sheriff Bartlett was excited, apprehensive and something else too. Just a little bit angry—but not at me, at someone else. I had never experienced another person’s emotions this way before, the way vampires could experience them all the time, and it was as freaky as it was intriguing. I did wonder if the person Sheriff Bartlett was angry at could be a recent ex-girlfriend. Was I about to become Rebound Gal? I hoped not. I’ve been there before. I’ve spent entire dinners listening to tirades about exes, weepy and bitchy by turn, watching in horror as my date gets steadily sloshed on wine and grows exponentially more maudlin. Usually I end up driving them home as they cry all over my upholstery and tell me how sorry they are for ruining the evening…maybe next time will be better? There never is a next time.

“See you at seven tomorrow, Sheriff,” I smiled up at her.

“It’s Lois,” she told me.

“See you at seven tomorrow, Lois.”

I watched her ass walk away in those tight black jeans. To hell with the hornet’s nest. Being with the vampires was making me reckless and I figured getting stung might be worth it.

* * *

Before I could really enjoy thinking about my dinner with Lois Bartlett, I had another mini-crisis to deal with regarding The Right Guy. I received a call on my cell phone as I walked back to the hotel. It came from Lydia Diamond.

Lydia is a head of production with a major studio. Lydia is also what we in the business call a “screamer,” meaning she screams at everybody. She screams at assistants, at directors, at producers, frequently at actors. She will even scream at delivery boys. I’ve known Lydia to scream at furniture if there is not a human being around. Some people in Hollywood scream because they are over-grown spoiled children who know they can get away with it. Lydia screams because she enjoys scaring the living crap out of people. But she gets the job done.

She is also a long-time good friend of mine. She’s a few years older, in her mid-forties, but she can pass for mid-thirties. Partly this is the result of very good genetics, and partly an even better plastic surgeon. Lydia, unlike most women who have been under the knife but would sooner suffer having all their false fingernails pulled out with pliers than admit as much, embraces her surgical enhancements. She is very much in accordance with comedienne Joan Rivers where exercise is concerned, believing that if God had meant for women to do all that bending over He would have made gyms with diamond-encrusted floors, and that plastic surgeons are His way of affirming this. I cannot count the occasions on which Lydia has helped me extricate my mother from whatever drunken, drug-fueled predicament she has gotten herself into. Nor do I care to count the occasions when Lydia and I have enjoyed several drinks together, and had a good bemoan of the state of our relationships. She is heterosexual, by the way, has been married five times, and each time the husband has left because he got sick of being screamed at daily. I think Lydia gets married just to have someone around that she can scream at when she’s not at work and screaming at people there.

“Dante, darling, how the hell are you?” Lydia’s voice boomed down the line. On a good day she sounds like a foghorn heard from within. On a bad one, her voice takes on the quality and tone of a handful of nails thrown into a blender.

“Surviving against the odds,” I joked.

“And where the hell are you? I’ve been calling your office, but that prissy-assed Mormon you call an assistant keeps telling me that you’re out of town and unavailable? I’m bemused, darling.”

Of course such a concept would be utterly foreign to Lydia, who gets panic attacks if she leaves LA County. She is addicted to the Hollywood existence. I explained that I was indeed out of town, on business for Voshki Kevorkian. Yes, Lydia knows about the vampires. One of her husbands was a vampire. The third one, I think.

“I’ve been hearing things about that little production going on upstate,” Lydia told me then, her tone darkening.

Lots of hearing going on, very little sharing. I waited for Lydia to elaborate. “I’ve been hearing rumors that the investors in The Right Guy are getting antsy. They’ve been told there are problems on set and are having bad thoughts that the show is about to tank.”

I was stunned into speechlessness. The show was doing about as well as a show could without being Lost, and the investors surely could not have heard about last night’s attack on Caitlin Harris yet. I know the Hollywood grapevine has an Express Lane, but this news would have been traveling at warp speed with Captain Janeway at the helm to have arrived this fast.

Then Lydia suggested that someone on the inside might be whispering into the ears of the investors.

“Who?” I asked.

“I have no fucking idea, darling. I could do some digging though?”

“Please, Lyd. I’d appreciate that. And see if you can’t get word to these investors that the rumors they’re hearing are not true.”

“Consider it done, darling,” my friend promised. Then she added with a suspicious curiosity, “Is Ellis Kovacs up there with you?”

I didn’t even bother to ask how she knew this. I told her yes, Ellis was here, as was Samson, so what of it?

“Mmm, darling, you know how it goes…small town far away from LA, you and the delicious Ellis all alone together,” Lydia purred. I felt my jaw come unhinged. Did everyone expect that Ellis and I were going to sleep together? Had they all known how inevitable it was? Lydia cackled. “I know you’re going to tell me all the details when you get back! I can’t wait. Toodle-pip, darling!”

“Yeah, can’t wait,” I huffed and hung up.

I walked the rest of the way back to the hotel, the whole time pondering who might have told the show’s investors that things were not going well, and occasionally allowing my thoughts to stray in the direction of the sexy blonde sheriff with whom I was having dinner…and who knew what else later. Then I arrived at the hotel to find Ellis waiting for me, and that happy little bubble of anticipation popped audibly in my head. Ellis did not look happy, on the other hand.

“Voshki wants us back in LA,” she announced.

My heart fell. It collided with my stomach on its way to my throat, and both probably bumped into the word “Fuck!” as it flew out of my mouth.

“Why does she want us back in LA?” I asked. Of course I was convinced Voshki had already found out about Ellis and I, and she was planning to kill both of us—probably stake Ellis and eat me. And no, I do not mean that in the sexual sense. Far fucking from it.

Ellis blew air. “She’s getting her panties all up in a bunch about this red-haired freak that attacked your ex-girlfriend.”

“Will you please stop referring to Caitlin as my ex?” I demanded.

Ellis frowned. “But she is your ex.”

I sighed. “I know, but I don’t need to be reminded of the fact, okay? Wait, you mean it’s not about us?”

Ellis looked at me as though I had just spoken to her in Swahili. I made a flapping gesture with my hand in the air between us. “Us. You know…what we did.”

“Oh. Right. No. I mean, I expect she’ll be pissed about that…” Ellis actually found this something to smile about… “but that’s got nothing to do with her wanting us back in Loonyville ASAP.”

“Well, does she want us to come back here again?” I must have sounded worried because Ellis gave me a sharp look. I slammed the mental shutters down on all and any thoughts of Sheriff Bartlett, dinner or motorcycles. What did she ride anyway? I forgot to ask her. I could picture her on something big, sexy and Japanese.

“Why are you thinking about Kawasaki motorcycles?” Ellis wanted to know.

Damn. I shook my head, a well-practiced shit-eating grin popping out. “I have no idea,” I said cheerfully. “Maybe it’s the prospect of driving all the way back to LA with you and your ’80s cheese-rock that has me thinking about them. You know, Tom Cruise…Kelly McGillis…all that Take My Breath Away crap. So anyway, does Vosh expect us to come back here again or not?”

Ellis’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you would be dying to get out of Toy Town, USA and back to your comfort zone?” I could practically feel her mind reaching out for mine. Under other circumstances this new psychic connection might have been rather romantic. With Sheriff Bartlett in my head, it was just plain terrifying, not to mention intrusive and annoying.

I shrugged hard enough to nearly dislocate both shoulders. “It’s starting to grow on me,” I told her. I stepped around her and entered the hotel lobby. “I suppose Vosh expects us to leave immediately?”

Ellis followed me. “Of course she does. Dante, why are you thinking about blondes and motorcycles? I never thought Kelly McGillis was your sort?”

Screw romantic. The mind reading thing could get old real quick.

CHAPTER SEVEN

And so we got in the house-sized SUV again, and we drove all the way back to LA. The whole journey I kept wondering how was I going to explain to Lois Bartlett that I missed our dinner date because the goddamn vampire whose bitch I had very definitely become ordered me back to LA on short notice. Family emergency somehow just did not cut it. At least Ellis kept the radio low and did not sing along for quite the entire journey. I think she was trying to be nice to me. Too bad I was in no mood to appreciate it. I did ask her though about the heightened senses and the ability to read emotions. She smiled, shrugged, told me it would probably wear off soon.

“I didn’t think you’d had anywhere near enough of my blood to cause that,” she added, sounding a trifle puzzled.

“It doesn’t seem to happen with everyone. Just…one or two people,” I added carefully.

Ellis frowned at me. “That’s curious.”

Voshki was waiting in her office when we arrived, pacing the floor like a caged tiger, scowling and grinding her teeth practically loud enough to be heard from across the room. She stopped pacing as soon as we entered, and rounded on us.

She started to say, “That red-haired vampire attacked…” and then she stopped. She went very still. Her fangs came out. The red glow erupted in her eyes. It was not the warm, sultry glow of passion, however, this was the fiery blaze of anger. She took a single step toward us.

“You chose Ellis over me?” Voshki demanded. Her voice was low, even, but it deceived no one in the room for a moment. You could have cut the chill emanating from her with a chainsaw.

I swallowed. I did not dare look at Ellis.

“You have her blood in your veins,” Voshki hissed.

I wanted to run. Even though that would have been pointless. Voshki could have been on me before I even took a half step.

“I claimed you,” Voshki said then, and suddenly I’d had enough. Maybe it was the petulant tone I perceived in her words, or maybe it was just being discussed like some slave for sale in the Roman markets, but something inside me snapped anyway. I threw up my hands, glared at the vampire leader.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I yelled. “Will you both stop it? I do not belong to either one of you. Who I sleep with…and whose fucking blood I drink…is my choice! Time you guys got your heads around that.”

And no, I could hardly believe I was saying that either. Especially the blood-drinking bit.

Beside me, I felt Ellis first stiffen and then reach out to me with her mind, but I slammed those barriers down hard and firm. Ellis took a physical step closer to me. At once Voshki issued a loud hiss from between clenched fangs, red-blazing eyes locking on her love rival. Ellis, to her credit, did not flinch. But that was all the credit I was prepared to give her.

“I did not coerce Dante into being with me,” Ellis pronounced.

Coerce? I snapped a look at her that I fancied could have cut through several layers of steel. Ellis made a little half-shrug with her eyebrows. I shook my head. Coerce! I was properly insulted now. However, it seemed to mollify Voshki somewhat. The glow died to an ember and her fangs retracted.

“Very well,” she said grudgingly. She looked straight into my eyes and I had to struggle to keep her out of my head. “I will not punish either of you. I still want you, Dante, but I also want you to come to me of your own free will.”

“Gee thanks,” I said.

Ellis made a slight bow with her head, gracious both in accepting her leader’s benevolence and in not rubbing her triumph over Voshki in. Vampires! I wish it were werewolves.

“No, you really don’t,” Ellis murmured at my ear. I took a physical step away from her. Sooner these weird effects wore off, the better.

Voshki retreated to her desk where she leaned with a hip against the desk edge, arms folded. She looked all very brooding and commanding, and, well, just like a vampire leader ought to look, I suppose. But there remained an undercurrent of unease in her expression that worried me. “I should explain some things,” she began, and I thought Hallelujah! at last, someone willing to explain what the fuck was going on. Voshki twitched a smile utterly devoid of humor at me.

“I should tell you a little about the Children of Judas,” she began.

“That’d be nice,” I muttered.

“The story of their origins is shrouded in some mystery and therefore doubt, but as close as can be gathered it goes like this… Judas Iscariot was condemned by God to wander the earth spawning a unique race of vampire children after he betrayed Jesus. Judas is supposed to have wandered and spawned for many years until he was overcome with despair and returned to the temple in Rome, where he threw the thirty pieces of silver he received for betraying Jesus down at the feet of the Romans and begged for it to be taken back. When his request was refused, he hanged himself right there in the temple. And as a direct result of this action, which apparently pissed God off even more than betraying His only begotten Son… “Voshki’s lip curled and she shook her head, apparently baffled by the vagaries of God… “So, because God was pissed off at him now too, it became that suicides were the favorite victims of Judas’s cursed vampire children. The Children of Judas even developed the power to convince humans to commit suicide so that they would have a ready supply of victims.”

I frowned. “Ellis said they can do it to some vampires too?” I remarked and Voshki nodded.

“Unfortunately, yes,” she confirmed with some reluctance. Vampires are not keen to have their weaknesses known by humans. “The Children of Judas were cast out by the larger vampire community because their penchant for bringing misery and despair was only slightly less dangerous to us than their tendency to gorge upon humans wherever they found war, famine, natural disaster…anything that causes humans to plunge into the kind of despair that can lead to suicide. Such uncontrolled feeding risked exposure of our kind. So we distanced ourselves from them.”

“How did they take that?” I asked.

“Not well,” Voshki replied dryly. She perched upon the desk. “They were far fewer in number than the rest of us so waging war against us was out of the question. Instead they retreated to the shadows of the Old World, and that is where they have remained since. Until now, it seems.”

Two thousand years, give or take, and now they had apparently decided to come out of hiding and stir up some trouble. I would wager they hadn’t made that decision on the spur of any moment. “Why now?” I wanted to know.

Voshki shrugged, shook her head. “I don’t know. I can only guess that someone is leading them to this. They were always very loosely organized, never really a cohesive bunch. Perhaps a new leader has united them?” Her eyes glittered once more, but this time the anger was directed inward, to whatever thoughts she might have about her new enemies.

“There have been other incidents,” she added. I looked up in surprise.

Voshki nodded. “That’s why I have had Armin in New Orleans this past week.”

Armin Bedrosian, as I said, Voshki’s No. Two, or her lieutenant—whatever you wanted to call him. His loyalty to Voshki is unshakable.

“There have been…deaths in New Orleans,” Voshki added darkly.

Deaths. That was not a word I liked hearing. I wished Voshki had stuck with “incidents.” “Human or vampire?” I asked.

“Vampire,” she replied, “mostly.”

Mostly. I wished now that Voshki would stop being so fucking cryptic. “How many human deaths?” I ground out.

She sucked a breath in. Drama queens, every last one of them. “A dozen or so,” she said.

It could have been worse. Okay, it also could have been a whole lot better. I was nonetheless about to breathe one of those sighs of relief when Voshki added; “That would be a dozen or so in New Orleans. There have been other human deaths in other places. I’m concerned that if the death toll continues to mount, covering it up may become…let’s say difficult. Right now, suicide is explaining a lot, but too many of these ‘suicides’ all at once and eyebrows may start to raise.”

They may indeed. I stared at the vampire leader. She shrugged, reminded me rather crossly that vampires had been dying too. Oh, well then. Pardon me.

“So this modern day Charlie Manson gang is creating quite the bloodbath across America,” I remarked. I beamed like the fucking insane maniac I was beginning to feel I was for letting myself become mixed up in this shit. “That’s wonderful. And we have no idea what…or who…might be motivating these Children of Judas to lead a happy mass suicide drive. Fantastic.”

Voshki raised one perfectly manicured dark eyebrow. “Working on the assumption that the bloodthirsty little ginger bastards have indeed become united under a leader who intends to challenge us…challenge me… I would say that by killing both vampires and humans in my employ and making the investors I steered toward The Right Guy nervous about their investments, they are attempting to discredit me as an effective leader.”

“And draw you into a conflict,” I added. Voshki thought that over for a moment and then nodded. And worse begat dreadful begat fucking catastrophe. I scowled at the carpet, for no reason feeling a misplaced animosity toward it.

“We need to find out who is leading them,” Ellis suggested.

We both looked at her. Voshki nodded agreement. “Where in hell do we start doing that?” I asked. I shrugged. “I assume he…or she…isn’t going to be sitting around waiting to be found.” You can always trust in me to provide rain on the day of the parade.

Then something came to me, something Voshki had just said that reminded me of something. “You called them ‘bloodthirsty little ginger bastards?’” I said.

Voshki twitched a frown at me, and nodded. “The Children of Judas are said to be all red-haired. It’s a mark they must bear of their notorious father.”

“Judas Iscariot was a redhead?” I hadn’t known that. I suppose it could account for the often near-superstitious dislike and distrust people have of redheads. I don’t have anything against redheads, personally. Hell, I dated one—Caitlin Harris. For one awful moment then I did wonder if Caitlin could be one of these Children of Judas… But no. There was no way Caitlin was a vampire at all, let alone a murderous bloodthirsty one. She was a lot of things—including whiny, selfish, crazy, infuriating, none too bright, temperamental and eerily good in bed—but she was not one of the Undead. Trust me. I would have noticed that.

What had come to me a moment ago now returned, and Voshki must have seen it in my face. She leaned forward. “What is it, Dante?”

“Last night. I was eating dinner and the sheriff up in Holly Bush Junction joined me. A woman came by to talk to her, the wife of the Mayor. She had this blood-red hair…” I shook my head. I had no way of knowing for sure. There were literally tens of millions of redheads in America, in the world, and I had absolutely no reason—other than that she was redhead and she’d put on shades before leaving the diner, and let’s face it, this is California, everyone wears shades—to even imagine that Marjorie Tucker was a vampire. Besides, I had thought Marjorie’s hair was dyed.

“You had dinner with the sheriff?” Ellis demanded.

Trust her to pick up on that part. I sighed annoyance. “No. She just happened to come in while I was eating dinner. I had breakfast with her though.”

Ellis spluttered something unintelligible. I swear Voshki sniggered. I glared at both of them in an attempt to convey that now was so not the time. Ellis gave me a wounded expression. I rolled my eyes. She was going to love it when I announced that the sheriff had asked me to have dinner with her.

“This woman?” Voshki interrupted impatiently.

“Marjorie Tucker,” I told her. “High-line Boston WASP, looks like she’d have a nervous breakdown if the cutlery wasn’t shining to her satisfaction.”

Voshki smirked. “Did you have any reason to suspect she was a vampire—other than the fact she had red hair and a mania for perfection?”

“Not really,” I admitted. “But then I only spoke to her for a matter of seconds. And honestly, I wasn’t thinking about vampires at the time.”

“Hmm. The Children of Judas are very good at blending in. They have at least adapted that much.”

I decided to spill the last bean. “The sheriff, uh, asked me to have dinner with her tomorrow night,” I said. I felt rather than saw Ellis’s rage. So did Voshki. Although she was apparently a good deal more amused by it than I was. I was terrified. I did not dare to even glance at Ellis.

“Oh, put your fangs away, Ellis,” Voshki told her.

“You are not having dinner with the sheriff,” Ellis grated.

It took a moment for me to realize that she was addressing me and not Voshki, which confused me a little. I did look around at her then. Yes, her eyes were glowing, very brightly indeed, and her fangs were still out despite Voshki’s telling her to put them away. “Are you telling me what to do?” I inquired. From the corner of my eye I saw Voshki sit back, smiling, as though she were settling in to watch an episode of her favorite soap opera.

“You’re not having dinner with her,” Ellis repeated darkly. “You’re my girlfriend. You shouldn’t be having dinner with other…women.”

I smiled. “Since when am I your anything, Ellis? We had sex. Big difference.”

I was being deliberately cruel and I struck a bulls-eye with it. That made me feel bad. That annoyed me even more.

“I will not allow you,” Ellis stated.

Now I started to laugh. I know it was probably a foolish thing to do—well, okay, a suicidal thing to do—but I just had no control over it. Ellis was being all 1856 on me. What else was I going to do but laugh, since I didn’t have a sharpened stake handy? And laughter is very good at remedying terror. Better even than a stake. I hardly even saw Ellis move. There was just a blur of movement and the next thing I knew Ellis loomed a mere fraction of an inch from me, her eyes blazing red as a house fire and her fangs all the way out. I had not seen her move from the desk at all.

“Don’t be a fool, Ellis!” Voshki snapped. It might sound like a melodramatic thing to say but the cold in her voice as she uttered those words really was a visceral thing. If an iceberg had a voice it would probably sound like Voshki did right then. Had I not known the vampire leader so well and been pretty sure that she would not kill Ellis or otherwise do anything so rashly violent—well, not right then—I might have been a whole lot more terrified. I mean, between that and the rage that was coming off Ellis in radioactive waves. All the same, I quit laughing and stood very still, hardly even daring to breathe now.

“Stand down,” Voshki commanded her underling. Ellis was physically seething, the way an animal will seethe when it is cornered and either very, very scared or very, very angry. Either way, it is at its most dangerous at that moment.

Instead of doing any such thing, Ellis stubbornly pronounced that I was not having dinner with the sheriff. Unbelievable! A vampire’s jealousy could transcend even their survival instinct. An underling might get away with stealing the leader’s chosen human out from under their nose, by dint of that leader’s graciousness, but disobeying a direct command…and in front of a human? Frankly I did not know whether to pity Ellis or admire her right at that moment.

Then Ellis added, “If that sheriff is aware of vampires, and I think she just might be, Dante could be walking right into a fucking trap.”

I realized that her insistence that I should not dine with the sheriff was as much based in a concern for my welfare as sexual jealousy. Admiration won. Then I thought maybe she figured nobody would want to have dinner with me for any other reason and I got mad at her all over again. No, I wasn’t being rational at all.

“I am aware of that,” Voshki said. Although she had her fangs out and a glow in her eyes too—in reaction to her underling’s near loss of control—she was able to rein-in her emotions and remain calm and rational. Clearly I was of less personal value to Voshki, even if I was an asset to her. That did not win my admiration quite so much.

“Dante will keep her date with this small-town sheriff and you will be nearby the whole time,” Voshki explained. She cast a glance at me. I shivered. That mix of fear and lust again. Voshki saw it and her mouth curled in another quick smirk before she added; “Dante will never be out of your hearing, if not your sight, not even for a moment. Is that understood?”

Ellis thought it over. Nodded. I think I saw reluctance, however. I was still kind of admiring her.

“Now, stand down,” Voshki told her in that cold, quiet voice again. This time my shivering was all fear. I was beginning to get an idea of the scope of the risk Ellis had just taken. She might have almost attacked me, which was kind of disturbing obviously, but she had done it in the presence of her own leader who had made her interest in and prior claim to me well known. Attacking the vampire leader’s pet human in her presence is a bit like kicking one of the Queen’s corgis whilst she watches.

Ellis retracted her fangs. The boiling-lava glow of her eyes died to a simmer. She glanced briefly in my direction, then looked away, shoulders stiffening with tension as she said to Voshki, “Very well. I’m sorry about…that.”

“No harm done.” Voshki aimed a bright smile my way. I managed to raise a sickly one in return. She looked at the Rolex watch on her wrist. “You should get started if you want to get back to…where is it…Rose Bush Cross?”

“Holly Bush Junction,” I corrected.

She shrugged gaily. I frowned. “Do you really want us to go back there tonight?” I asked.

Voshki considered, then nodded. “I’m concerned about Amelia’s safety,” she explained vaguely.

I doubted that. Amelia is a very capable vampire. I tried to catch Ellis’s eye but she was resolutely looking everywhere but in my direction. At the moment some potted plants on the windowsill were apparently of great fascination to her.

“In fact, I may come with you,” Voshki announced then.

Ellis turned her head. I raised an eyebrow. Voshki beamed at both of us. “Yes. I think I’ll do that. You two should return to Flat Bush Bridge and I’ll follow you up there in the morning.”

“Holly Bush Junction,” I reminded her again. She waved it off. I shook my head. I was tired, frankly, and more than a little freaked out. I needed some time to compose myself, and maybe a few stiff drinks in human company. The kind of company Lydia Diamond could be relied on to provide.

“I’m sorry, Vosh,” I began, shaking my head, “but I am not going to drive all the way back there with Ellis and fucking Aerosmith. Not tonight.”

Ellis threw another glance at me but it skidded off again before I could catch it. I got a sense, however, that she was wounded. Well, boo fucking hoo. Voshki, on the other hand, seemed quite pleased with my decision.

“Then you can ride up there with me,” she decided. She beamed again at me and the protest I had been about to deliver died in my throat. That smile. Those eyes. Never mind that I was supposed to be with Ellis, never mind that Voshki had just volunteered me to walk into a potential Sheriff Bartlett-shaped trap, never mind that I wanted time on my own. Never fucking mind any of that. I could not have refused her right then if there had been a gun to my head. Hey, you can learn to live without a brain, right? Half of Hollywood has made a great success out of doing so. “We can take the Viper. It’s time I gave it an airing,” she added.

The Viper of which she spoke is a 1996 Dodge Viper, a truly classic muscle car. It has a metallic midnight-blue paintjob with a silver-white go-fast stripe from the hood grille to the rear bumper and custom-made tungsten headlights that make it look a bit like something out of Knight Rider. It can accelerate from zero to sixty in under ten seconds and reaches speeds of up to 180mph on straight roads. Riding in that beast with Voshki is either a truly terrifying or exhilarating experience, depending on how much you trust in her driving skills. I have ridden in it, and several other high-performance cars, with her on a number of occasions, and I am still alive.

“Fine,” I agreed. I could at least keep up the pretense of having a choice.

Ellis walked out of the office. She did not quite slam the door, but she did not close it quietly either.

In the aftermath of her departure I looked hard at Voshki Kevorkian. “You knew these Children of Judas were in Holly Bush Junction all the time, didn’t you?” I demanded.

She didn’t deny it. I was glad for that. It restored my respect for her. “Yes, I was pretty sure there were some of the ginger bastards around. I didn’t know for certain though.”

“Did Ellis know?”

Voshki raised an eyebrow. “Would it make a difference to how you feel about her if I told you that she did?” she inquired.

I glared at her until she sighed and shook her head. “Ellis may have had her suspicions but she didn’t know anything for sure,” she admitted.

“Tell me, Vosh…” I tilted a look at her… “Is there anything you won’t do to get what you want? Anyone you won’t use?”

If my accusation stung her in the least, she hid it well. She smiled. The tip of a fang protruded from the left corner of her mouth. I felt a moment of unease, wondering if I’d pushed too far. Voshki moved toward me until she stood close enough for me to see the amber flecks in her eyes and the tiniest pinpricks of red very faint at the dead center of her pupils. I could also feel the heat radiating off her body. It never fails to jolt me—vampires actually being warm to the touch. Sometimes they can be warmer to the touch than humans. I tried to hold Voshki’s unblinking stare and at the same time keep my mental barriers up. Not easy. Even less easy when she leaned in and put her lips close to my ear.

“I am very determined when I want something,” she whispered.

I had a feeling she wasn’t just talking about ridding herself of the Children of Judas either.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I called Lydia from home whilst I undressed to take a shower. She was still in her office, a rarity for Lydia who usually arrives for work around eleven and departs again around two. People as high up the food chain as she is do not need to work all the hours of the day. They have minions to do that for them. But there had been a series of new season show meetings with writers that ran late, and a problem in accounting, all of which required Lydia’s personal attention and kept the poor woman at the office past Bloody Mary o’clock.

“Fucking writers,” she carped to me whilst I shed my clothes, sticky from the road trip. “Tell me again, Dante, why do we have writers in the first fucking place?”

“Because producers are just not creative at all and directors are way too busy viewing the world from the perspective of halfway up their own backsides to write anything decent,” I told her. Raucous laughter blew down the line.

“I’ll come over in around two hours, how’d that be?” Lydia asked.

“That’d be fine.”

“What do you want I should bring? Vodka, gin, or scotch?” she asked.

“All of them,” I told her. I hung up on more raucous laughter.

I love Lydia. I truly do. There are very few genuine people in Hollywood, let me assure you. In this town everything from the images audiences see on the screen to the tits on most of the women are all fake. No one ever says what they really mean, and half of them don’t even know what they mean anyway because they are either too stupid, too self-involved, or too doped-up to know or care. Everyone, however, has an angle, and they will display a stunning breadth and depth of cunning in pushing that angle. Lydia is the real thing behind all the smoke and mirrors. She might scream at everyone, from her husbands to delivery boys, and enjoy scaring the crap out of them all, but she cares about the job she does, she cares about movies and TV, and she cares passionately about those she considers to be her real friends. Like me. I know there is nothing in this world that I could not ask Lydia to do for me, and nothing that I could not tell her and be sure it would remain forever in her confidence. Pliers and hot pokers would not pry it from her lips.

That said, Lydia is also a fantastic source of gossip. It is from Lydia that I have learned some of the most spectacular scandal. It was Lydia who told me about the impossibly handsome ’80’s brat-pack actor who got high in the company of a certain European royal with supermodel looks and a body to die for. And it was Lydia who told me about the beloved actress in a ’90’s family TV sitcom who was a closet dyke into serious S&M. Having a few drinks with Lydia is about the most fun you can have with your clothes on in this town.

My friend did not disappoint tonight either. She brought Messrs. Daniels, Gordon and Stolichnaya to the party, and a little bit of weed too. I know I said I dislike testing the inherited addiction thing, but there are times when you just have to let loose and damn the consequences. This was definitely one of those times. We enjoyed a few hours by my pool before it got too cold and we had to retreat indoors, taking our drinking, smoking and gossiping with us. No mention of vampires or Children of Judas, or warring vampire lovers. Just delicious, scandalous, human gossip. For a butch dyke, I can be such a girlie at times.

Eventually Lydia did get around to inquiring about the state of play with Ellis Kovacs and me. “That is one hot vampire,” she said, her eyes narrowing. She practically licked her lips. I looked at her in some surprise. Lydia is about the straightest heterosexual I know. In Hollywood, those are a rare find. Like real tits, or real emotions. She shrugged at my surprise. “I know it’s not my thing usually, but there’s just something about Ellis Kovacs. I certainly wouldn’t kick her outta bed for eating crackers, you know? So, where are you two at?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know…” I told her about Holly Bush Junction, and about the way Ellis had acted over my impending dinner date with someone else, or at least I told her some of it. I left out the blood drinking and the crazy-jealous tantrum Ellis had thrown, and the fact that the dinner could be a trap to lure me into the hands of the Children of Judas. I left them out too. I did mention that Ellis had called me her “girlfriend.”

“How’d you feel about that?” Lydia asked. She snickered, acknowledging the shrinky feel of the question.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I…guess I liked it. But it also kind of scared me. They can be so fucking possessive, vampires. And you know my commitment-phobia.”

Lydia mulled it over some, then asked succinctly, “But why would you even want to have dinner with someone else if you’ve got Ellis Kovacs wanting you to be her girlfriend?”

That was a question I had been avoiding asking myself ever since I had accepted Sheriff Bartlett’s invitation. Let me see…I really am scared shitless of commitment for one thing. My mom never cheated on my dad but that’s only because she found the love of her life in addiction. Dad cheated on Mom, I’m sure he did, probably lots of times, but he was always very discreet, and who could have blamed him anyway? He was coming home to a woman zoned out of her gourd on every shade of pill known to pharmacology. I think Milton is faithful to his vampire wife. Anyway, I’m pretty sure she would have killed him already if he had not been. So my commitment phobia is neither inherited nor a learned response. You could blame it on Hollywood not being the best place to date if you are looking for long-term loving commitment, I suppose, but that’s not it either. I don’t need to date in Hollywood after all.

“I think it’s because I kind of like Voshki too,” I confessed to Lydia.

Her eyebrows went all the way up. “But you keep turning her down?”

“I know!” I wailed.

“They’re two very different things, aren’t they?” Lydia said softly. I tilted a look at her, demanding an explanation. She sucked deeply on a joint first, handed it to me, and on the exhale she explained: “If neither of them were vampires, Vosh would be purely fun and froth. She’s the kinda gal that will take you for a spin up the PCH in her sexy sports car, screw you silly and then wave hasta la vista to you in the morning. Ellis, on the other hand, would be a keeper.”

Trust Lydia, she had nailed it. Ellis Kovacs, you fall in love with. Voshki Kevorkian, you lust after. Well, that’s the way it would be if they were human, and not possessive, jealous vampires who want you all to themselves. Even when they don’t want you, or have you. I smiled at my friend. “They’re Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardner, is that what you’re saying?”

Lydia cackled wildly. She nodded too, knowing exactly what I meant.

“Do you think Vosh is gonna drive straight to this Fuck Bush place tomorrow?” she asked then.

I didn’t bother to correct Lydia as I had Voshki. Lydia knew what the place was really called. I shook my head. “I don’t suppose she will,” I said dryly. I drained my glass, held it out for a refill. “She’ll probably make a detour to some out-of-the-way little eatery, kinda sexy in a shabby Hemingway sort of way, ply me with beers and seafood, and then try to take advantage of me in that sexy sports car of hers.”

“Will you resist?”

“I’ll try.”

Lydia snickered. “Good luck with that.”

I sighed, laid my head back and gazed up at the ceiling. Outside the French doors I could hear the breeze had gotten up, ruffling the water of my lap pool. Unlike most Hollywood denizens who have these lap pools added to the other accoutrements of their fame, I actually use mine for its intended purpose. I hate exercise in general, refuse to go within a mile of anything that has the name Nautilus on the side, and running, hiking, or even fast walking are all strictly for weirdoes—but I do enjoy swimming.

“If I have sex with Vosh, it’ll drive Ellis crazy,” I said quietly.

“You afraid of what she might do?”

“No. I mean, yes, but not that she would hurt me or anything. I’m afraid she’d back off from me because Vosh is their leader and…and…” I waved a hand in the air to indicate that I could not explain the whole vampire etiquette thing. I did not need to anyway. Lydia knows about it as much as I do. She grunted. I blinked… “I don’t want to lose Ellis. For all I keep telling her, and myself, that I’m not her human or anyone else’s, I don’t want to lose her either.”

“But you also want Vosh like a thirsty man in the desert wants water,” Lydia guessed.

I nodded.

“Ain’t life a bitch,” Lydia sighed. “One minute you’re getting none, and then the next you’ve got ’em all over you like bees round the pot and you don’t know which one to give your honey to first.”

Amen.

Much later, after copious amounts of coffee and orange juice to counteract the alcohol and weed I had consumed, I tossed and turned in my bed, unable to sleep due to a combination of the incipient hangover buzzing through my veins and the caffeine chasing it through there. I gave up the effort around three a.m. jerked out of bed and went outside onto the deck that adjoins my bedroom. It overlooks a steep canyon brimful of the kind of lush vegetation the Southern California climate was made for. Sometimes at night you can hear the coyotes howling down there, and night birds of prey screeching, and very occasionally you will hear a sound that is not animal—but you don’t think too much about that. I lay down on a lounger there, and just listened to the nighttime go on around me, and I thought about how much I love this wacky city that is LA.

I didn’t hear Ellis enter my house. I do lock my doors at night—I may not be paranoid enough to always close my gates, but I’m not suicidal either—but I’d left a window open on the second floor. I didn’t hear her walk out through the sliding doors behind me either. I only realized she was standing beside me because she cleared her throat.

I shot upright, a scream ratcheting its way up my throat, only to get locked behind my teeth when I saw Ellis standing there and not some ax-wielding, grinning psycho. I have as active an imagination as any actress sometimes. I mean, don’t we all when it’s three a.m. and we are still a wee bit high?

“Jesus H Christ on a bicycle!” I snapped. I glared and superfluously added, “You scared the living crap out of me!”

“Sorry,” Ellis said, sounding genuinely contrite. I narrowed a look at her.

“What the fuck are you doing here anyway?” I demanded. “I thought you went back to Holly Bush Junction?”

She shook her head. A faint smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. It set off tugging sensations in other parts of my anatomy which I gamely tried to ignore. “I sent Samson on ahead. I think Amelia will be okay with him around.” She gave me an unblinking, direct look so full of lust it threatened to start a meltdown of my insides. “I wanted to tell you that I was sorry for what I did today. In Vosh’s office. It was… I mean, I shouldn’t have lost it like that. Sorry, Dante.”

I shook my head. “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. I—I knew what vampires were like before I got involved with you.”

The smile tugged again. My insides caught fire. “Are we involved, Dante?” Ellis asked quietly.

I did not even have to think about it. Not with her standing there on my deck, in the middle of the night, looking at me with those big, black eyes so soulful and penetrating all at once, the sheer want rippling off her so that it practically caused a disturbance in the air. She could not have been more lovable to me right then if she had been covered in chocolate and puppies. Also, to be fair, there was that matter of still being a wee bit high.

“Yeah, we’re involved in something,” I told her. I smiled. “I’m not sure what it is exactly yet, but it’s…something. Maybe I am your girlfriend, after all.”

She nodded. And then she was kissing me and I was kissing her, and there was that liquid fire boiling under my skin again as she peeled off my robe and my t-shirt underneath it and skimmed down my boxers. I kicked them free and she climbed between my legs. “Is this contraption gonna hold?” she murmured as the lounger beneath us pinged and creaked in protest.

I nodded. Actually I didn’t know whether it would hold or not, but I didn’t care either. I could have cared less if the whole damn deck fell away and went careening down the canyon side. Just so long as Ellis did not stop what she was doing. She had a hand cupped to my crotch, lightly playing two fingers over my clit as she trailed her tongue languidly from my neck to between my breasts, down my stomach, probing with the tip against my clit until I squirmed and the lounger squalled. This time when she sank her fangs into me there was only a moment of pain before the head-spinning rush. She lapped up my blood whilst she kept me hovering on the brink of orgasm, not allowing me to get there until she was done feeding, and then she completed the job with her tongue. We moved inside then, mainly because I thought I felt a spring snap on the lounger and I really did not want the thing to collapse and me to have to spend the rest of the night in the ER, trying to figure out a way to explain my injuries. Or the fang marks. I also wanted to take a shower, as much to wash away the remnants of Lydia’s weed as the blood Ellis had left smeared all over my inner thighs. Sexy it might be getting bitten at the moment of screaming orgasm, but not so much seeing your own blood congealing on you afterwards.

Ellis decided to join me in the shower. She stripped, stepped into the stall behind me under the steaming hot jets of water, slipping both arms around me and taking the washcloth from me. She soaped it, draped it over one hand, and slowly rubbed the cloth down the outside of my right thigh, then up the inside, stopping when the side of her hand touched my crotch. I leaned back against her, feeling her breasts, the nipples erect, pressing against my shoulder blades. Her face came down over my left shoulder until her fangs touched my neck, but she did not bite. Instead she kissed my neck, the side of my jaw, all the way up to my earlobe, lightly nibbling there. I jumped, gasped a little. My hands went around her waist. I clutched at her taut, slippery-wet ass and pulled her hard against me. She rinsed the washcloth, soaped it once more, and repeated the slow, sensual rub down and up my left thigh. This time, however, she did not stop at my crotch but gently washed it too in a way that almost made me come again. I stepped abruptly around so that I could look right into the hot red glow of her eyes as I touched her. She dropped the washcloth, grabbed the wet hair at the back of my head in one fist and pulled me into a kiss, pushing one knee roughly between my thighs. I raised one leg, wrapped it around her waist, resting my weight on her hip, one hand on her ass whilst the other braced the wall behind me. Her other hand slipped between my legs and she rubbed my clit, slowly to begin with, getting faster and harder as I came closer to orgasm. Just as I was about to come, she broke our kiss, letting go of my hair, and whipped her head sideways. Her fangs tore a gash in the soft underside of her own wrist, which she then pressed to my mouth.

I drank her blood as greedily as a man in the desert would drink water whilst she fucked me like she both hated me and loved me.

“I promise I won’t let anything happen to you,” Ellis said a little later when we were both lying in my bed, naked, still damp, and in my case anyway, pleasantly sleepy.

I summoned the energy to turn my head on the pillow and look into her eyes. They were no longer glowing but that did not make them any less intense. Ellis was kind of intense all over. That scared me and thrilled me in equal amounts. Like I said, I am commitment-phobic and that means I try to avoid involvement with intense types. Too often “intense” is a metaphor for crazy, obsessive, stalker-type. Or at the very least the type who, after two dates, will be leaving magazines full of wedding pictures open on your coffee table.

“I mean with Sheriff Bartlett,” Ellis added.

I nodded. “I know what you meant. I’ll be fine. What can she do to me anyway? It isn’t as if she’s a vampire, is it?”

“No. But she could be acting under their influence.”

I frowned at that notion. “You didn’t feel anything like that from her, did you?”

“The Children of Judas have a…special kind of influence. They can glamour people in such a way that…” Ellis was frowning now too, which did not make me feel one bit better… “Whatever. It means other vampires can’t pick up anything from the human. Normally, we can at least tell if a human is under glamour.”

Terrific. A sheriff under the influence of a vicious vampire sect and normal vampires couldn’t tell whether she was under any such influence, and I was about to sit down to dinner with the woman. Hey, who knew—I could wind up being dinner. I wondered if Lydia would be interested in acquiring the rights to this, if I were to get someone to write it? It would make The Vampire Diaries look like Children’s Hour. I was also liking the sound of Judas’s godforsaken Children less and less.

“She won’t lay a hand on you, I promise, “Ellis said, and I believed her. She kissed me again briefly, too briefly, and got up from the bed to put her clothes back on, which I also wished she didn’t have to do.

“I need to get up to that crappy little town before Vosh,” she told me with a wry smile. “She would not be pleased if she knew I was here with you instead of there with her precious sister.”

“Amelia doesn’t need you and Samson both to look out for her, like you said. Vosh just wanted you away from me,” I said. Wow, how astute am I then?

Ellis laughed. “I’ll see you later, Dante,” she said. She paused buttoning her jacket and gave me a direct look that stabbed me in the heart. “When you’re with Vosh…try to resist if she makes any attempt to seduce you, please?”

It was already near dawn and the sun was peeking over the rim of the canyon, so there was enough light in the room for Ellis to see the blush that erupted into my face. She took a breath. I shook my head. “Don’t. I’ll try, okay?” I told her. There was no point in lying, telling her that I would resist, when I had no clear idea whether I could or not. My blush had given it away already that the thought of being seduced by Voshki was on my mind. Promising I would attempt to resist was the best I could give to Ellis. She knew it and nodded.

And then she was gone and I felt alone. And sad. Like you feel when the person you love is not there.

Oh boy. Falling in love with Ellis Kovacs was so not something I had planned on doing. Too bad though, because I thought I might just be.

CHAPTER NINE

After catching a few hours of much needed sleep, I called Roz again at the office, did some more catching up with her and gave her new instructions. There were no immediate crises that needed my attention, which is testimony to how efficient Roz is. That done, I made myself some breakfast. Surprisingly, the hangover that seemed incipient last night was gone completely, like I’d never touched a drop of alcohol or weed. I figured it had something to do with drinking Ellis’s blood. That could get pretty addictive in its own right.

As it turned out, Voshki did not try to put any moves on me during our journey. We drove straight to Holly Bush Junction in the Viper without stopping and she did not once attempt to so much as accidentally-on-purpose brush my knee with her hand as she was shifting gears. Frankly I did not know whether I should be more insulted, disappointed or relieved by this. When we got to Holly Bush Junction, she gave me an explanation…of sorts.

“You’ve chosen Ellis,” she said, leaning on the Viper’s low-slung roof with both forearms and smiling at me in a way that made me feel weak and wanton and imagine all kinds of wicked things. Voshki shrugged. “I respect that. If you change your mind and want me, I’ll be happy. But if you don’t, I’m not going to interfere with your and Ellis’s relationship.”

I stared at her for a moment. “Bullshit. You’re gonna interfere in every damn way you can think of,” I said.

She laughed. “Maybe. But it’s all you’re gonna get from me for now, Dante. Take it or leave it.”

I decided to take it. What the hell. A bellhop rushed out of the hotel and took Voshki’s luggage from the Viper to carry it to her room. He practically simpered over both the car and Voshki, and from the way Voshki encouraged his simpering, I wondered briefly if she had ever been into men at some point in her nearly nine hundred-year existence. That long, you’re going to start thinking about experimenting at least.

Inside, Samson, Ellis and Amelia all were waiting for us in the hotel bar where the proprietor had kindly, but pointlessly, furnished them with coffee and a Continental-style breakfast. They were drinking the coffee but, predictably, the food was untouched. As we entered Ellis’s gaze met mine and I felt her reach into my head, looking for any hint that Voshki and I might have indulged in a spot of wildly abandoned sex on the way here. That my promise had not been enough for her annoyed me, and deliberately I thought sexy thoughts about Voshki to give Ellis the wrong impression. Or I did until Voshki gave me such an odd look that I feared my fantasies were so strong even she might be picking up on them, the spirit if not the letter anyway.

Voshki greeted Amelia with a sisterly warmth touchingly human and, I think, quite genuine. I suppose there is no reason why vampires should not feel familial attachments every bit as strongly as we humans do. I mean, Milton and his wife are pretty cozy. When they had done hugging and catching up, Voshki slipped back into leader mode and we got down to the serious business of why we were here.

“So, we know the Children of Judas are here.” Voshki draped herself cat-like all over a wicker chair and I tried not to stare. Thinking those sexy thoughts about her had kind of got me started. Damn it. I was being fed to the lions later, perhaps more literally than I wanted to imagine, and the very vampire who had volunteered me as dish du jour was making me all hot and bothered. I let my gaze wander until it came to Ellis, who offered me a quick little smile. That did not do much to stop the sexy thoughts.

“We also know that the sheriff is probably under their influence, agreed?” Voshki asked.

The heads of the other vampires nodded. I didn’t feel the need to nod, or do anything much except await my fate. Voshki tapped long fingers on the arm of her chair, a faint frown on her face.

“I think our best course of action is to allow Dante to have dinner with this sheriff tonight as planned and see what happens,” she pronounced. This time only Samson and Amelia nodded. Ellis just stared at a spot somewhere to the left of Voshki’s head, her face impassive except for a tiny, tight tic at the corner of her mouth. Voshki glanced at me. “You’ll be protected at all times, Dante. All we need from you is to know whether the sheriff really is under the control of the Children and whether she knows anything of their intentions.”

I frowned. “How am I supposed to find any of that out? I can’t exactly come right out and ask her, if she doesn’t even know she’s being controlled.” It was a reasonable flaw in Voshki’s plan, I thought.

Apparently Voshki didn’t see it that way. She flapped a hand to indicate that this was a detail, a mere trifle. And something I should not therefore concern myself with. Too bad. I was concerned. I was very fucking concerned. “If she has an agenda being controlled by the Children, you can be sure it will come out,” Voshki explained grimly.

I felt my eyebrows go leaping up into my hairline. “How so?”

“She may bring the subject of vampires up, try to press you on your thoughts about it. Or she may even introduce you to one of their number…under the guise of introducing you to a human, of course.”

At once I thought again of the blood-red hair of Mrs. Mayor of Holly Bush Junction, the uber-WASP Marjorie Tucker. Could she be a Child of Judas after all? It would be an excellent position to have a vampire in, wife of the mayor…and did that mean her husband, Hizzoner, was also a vampire? If so, then Holly Bush Junction was a veritable cozy little nest of bad bloodsuckers.

Whilst I was woolgathering Voshki moved on to deliver the news that the Council were of a mind with her that the Children of Judas were planning an overthrow of Voshki’s leadership. The Council, it seemed, were not unduly concerned about this ever coming to fruition.

“Why not?” I could not help myself but ask.

Voshki gave me a long, level look that was replicated on the faces of the other three vampires. I was not quite certain what I ought to make of those looks and so I figured on not over-thinking it. Voshki said, “The Children of Judas know only one thing well…violence and death.”

“That’s two things,” I pointed out.

Voshki took a breath, let one eyebrow twitch. “One and the same thing to the Children of Judas,” she clarified. I swallowed. Suddenly I wished the obliging proprietor would open up the bar. Voshki gave a shrug. “They do not know how to organize at a level that would be necessary for a leadership takeover. Some member of their merry band of mayhem-makers has got an idea above his or her station and is riding it out. It won’t last long. We shall see to it.”

I was definitely not going to over-think that one either. I swung a look in Amelia’s direction. “How is Caitlin holding up after her ordeal?” I inquired, making sure to get plenty of sarcastic spin on the last word. Amelia grinned.

“Oh, she’s fine. Loving all the attention and the sympathy.”

I wondered how much attention and sympathy Deb, the wardrobe assistant, was getting out of it. Probably not much at all. None from Caitlin, that would be for sure. To Caitlin, the presence on this earth of Deb would already have been as forgotten as last year’s fashions. That reminded me of something else that had been bothering me. I turned to Voshki again. “Back in LA, you said you thought the Children of Judas were attempting to discredit you…by killing humans in your employ, right?”

Voshki nodded. I frowned at her. “Well, doesn’t that show a certain degree of planning on their part?”

Voshki returned my frown with interest. “Your point?” she demanded.

“Well, it does kind of contradict your claim just now that they only know how to do violence and death.”

Pointing out another flaw in her thinking did not endear me to the beleaguered vampire leader right at that moment. I think I might have been in rather more serious trouble had Ellis not been present. All the same, I was disturbed by the hard stare Voshki gave me.

Surprisingly, it was Amelia who came to my rescue by insisting that I had a point. I gave her a look caught between surprise and gratitude and she gave me a little wink in response. I could get to like Amelia Kevorkian, I decided.

Voshki thought it over and decided that yes, I did have a point, which was a relief for me. I didn’t like to think of Voshki carrying a grudge against me, however small or unimportant it might be. She steepled her fingers over her chest. Steepling can be so very pretentious on a lot of people, but it suits Voshki. “So whoever is organizing the Children is capable of planning,” she conceded. She shook her head. “It still does not mean that whatever they are planning will succeed. Far from it. But…we should probably not underestimate this person.”

“I’ll take Samson with me tonight,” Ellis put in.

Voshki looked at her for a long moment. Then she nodded.

I wish I could say the hours between arriving back in Holly Bush Junction with Voshki and my dinner date with the sheriff dragged on, but they did not. I spent the time in the local library with Ellis and Voshki, all three of us going through old editions of the town newspaper to see how many red-haired residents we could spot. It felt like busy-work to me, although Voshki assured me it was the least obtrusive way of finding out whether or not the town was a Children of Judas stronghold.

Busy-work. I don’t care what else she said it was.

The Holly Bush Junction Public Library was as old-fashioned as the rest of the town and kept its newspaper copies in paper files in the basement. The air in the basement smelled of mustiness and mouse turds. We didn’t find very much in the way of suspected vampires either. If anything, Holly Bush Junction seemed to have had a dearth of redheads before the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Hizzoner. Of course, only the editions from the late 1990s onwards had color photos. Before that it was all monochrome, so we might reasonably have missed a few. There were plenty of full-color photos in the more recent editions of the Tuckers, and Mr. was as ginger as Mrs.

“He has to be a Child of Judas, right?” I remarked and Voshki nodded. I squinted a closer look at the man in the photos with Marjorie Tucker. Tall, broad about the chest and shoulders, looked like he might have played college football many years ago but had let some of the muscle run to fat. Otherwise, James Aaron Tucker had the kind of nondescript looks you just could not hold in your memory. There was simply nothing to grab hold of.

I asked: “Do you think the Tuckers could be the ones leading the Children of Judas?”

Voshki first glanced at Ellis, then shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s possible.” She gave me a dazzling smile of the kind could have made nuns and priests throw away their habits and pick up some other, less spiritual habits. “Hopefully, Dante, you’ll be able to find that out tonight.”

Yes. Hopefully I could find that out in between avoiding being eaten by psychotic vampires, killed by anyone or anything else that might be undesirable to me.

* * *

The sheriff came to the hotel and picked me up at seven on the dot. I had chosen to wear a black suit and a plain white shirt, open at the neck. I considered a tie, but decided it looked too formal—and besides, I wasn’t sure how Lois Bartlett would feel about dining out with a woman in a tie, in her hometown. I succeeded in taming the worst excesses of my hair, not that I reckoned the taming would stick for very long. It just has a mind of its own. A perverse one.

I have got to say the sheriff scrubbed up pretty damn well, too, in a dark blue pants suit with a low-cut pale pink top underneath, wearing heels that took her over six feet and made me glad I was not the kind of person to be intimidated by a woman being taller than me. Neither apparently was she bothered by my being a good deal shorter than her. She arrived not on a motorcycle, as I had half-expected and maybe hoped she would, but in a late-model Chevy Impala that looked as though it had been very recently taken for a spin through the car wash.

“Hey,” she said when I came down to the reception to meet her. I did not want her coming up to the room I was still sharing with Ellis and getting the wrong idea. Well, the right idea. Hell, any ideas at all. She smiled broadly and I saw her Norwegian-blue eyes give me a quick once-over. I was doing the same to her. Except I might have gone over her figure three or four times.

“You look really good,” I told her. It’s not that I am not generous with compliments or that I get tongue-tied around good-looking women, it was more that I kept thinking about this particular good-looking woman playing an unwitting Renfield to a bunch of murderous vampires bent on toppling the leadership of Voshki Kevorkian and that kind of unnerved me. My powers of charm wane a little when I am unnerved.

Thankfully Lois Bartlett did not seem to notice. “I could say the same about you and I will,” she responded.

With this dizzying complimenting out of the way we adjourned to the restaurant where she had booked us a table. The journey was short, sparing me the strain of making small talk whilst wondering if Ellis and Samson were following and whether the sheriff would notice we were being followed… She was a law enforcement professional, after all—weren’t they trained to notice things like that? I was getting lost in these uneasy thoughts when Lois pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant and announced that we were there. “There” was a quiet little steak house restaurant, so crammed with wood paneling and stone flagging that it could have been an English country pub that became lost in the wrong century and on the wrong continent. The carpets, seat upholstery and curtains were all heavy red and gold brocade, and the lighting was provided by a multitude of wall sconces which looked at first to be real candles but on second glance turned out to be electric imitations. A waiter in proper livery showed us to our table and presented us with laminated menus done in the same red and gold as the fittings.

“Would the ladies care for a refreshment whilst they decide?” he inquired.

This lady did indeed care for a refreshment. I even briefly considered asking the obliging waiter to bring me a bottle of whatever was the strongest liquor they kept in stock, but I settled on asking for a beer instead. Safer to stay in control of my faculties, no matter how nerve-wracked those faculties might be. Lois Bartlett asked for a glass of white wine, whatever was the house wine. When the waiter departed to fetch our drinks, she smiled across the table at me.

“I thought I was going to get stood up tonight,” she said. Her tone was playful but her blue eyes were curious. “You and Miss Kovacs left the hotel in a bit of a rush.”

I smiled. “Urgent business back in Hollyweird,” I told her. I shrugged like it was something that happened every day in my crazy life and I was so used to dealing with it I was practically bored to tears by it. Actually that wasn’t so far from the truth. Sadly.

“Ah…” The curiosity was still in her eyes… “You’re an agent, of course. Did you get it worked out?”

I nodded. Did not elaborate. “How was your day?” I asked instead.

She took the hint, shrugging in response. “The life of a small town sheriff isn’t terribly exciting. A parking violation is a big deal. Nothing like Hollyweird, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, you should never be afraid of that,” I assured her and she smiled. I asked if she had lived in Holly Bush Junction long? It seemed a natural thing to do. She made a seesaw motion with her hand.

“About four years,” she said. “My dad was a small town sheriff and I kind of liked the idea.”

“Ah. Family of cops?”

“Me, my brother, our dad. My brother is a cop in San Diego. What about you, Dante? You a Hollywood brat?”

I nodded. “Born and bred. For my sins.”

She tilted a look at me that was part amusement, part curiosity again. “You don’t seem the typical Hollywood sort. You’re…fairly normal.”

The waiter returned bearing our drinks. We took them, Lois Bartlett pronounced her wine just fine, and the waiter left again, beaming, and with assurances that we should order whenever we were ready, that everything on the menu tonight was quite, quite special. That made me wonder if Lois Bartlett herself would be on the menu for me tonight? It had occurred to me this might not even be a trap, it might be simply a dinner date. The vampires could be paranoid. It was a nice fantasy anyway—that anything in my life at this point could be unrelated to the vampires.

I smiled at her. “I’ll take ‘normal’ as a compliment. But you wouldn’t think it if you knew my parents.”

“They are Hollywood sorts then?”

“Let’s say my mother has her own room at Betty Ford and leave it at that.”

We both ordered steaks. I know most of Hollywood is supposed to either be vegan or fruitarian or on some other weird macrobiotic or seaweed-and-sawdust-only diet, but I don’t have any truck with that New Age eating nonsense. I like real food. And if some of it wants to clog my arteries, then so be it. What’s the point of being able to afford the best medical care if you’re not going to use it? Whilst Lois and I ate we chatted. The usual small talk you do on a first date with a normal human being. You talk about your work, your family, your friends, what you do on your days off work, what kind of music/movies/books you like. Nary a word about vampires was mentioned. Lois did not bring up the incident with Caitlin Harris or the peeper either, and I felt disinclined to steer the conversation in any such direction. Hell, I was enjoying myself. I almost managed to forget that the entire evening could be the prelude to springing a trap. I just began to like being with a good-looking, apparently intelligent woman who was unlikely to have a vial of white powder stashed in her purse or to have a meltdown two weeks into our relationship, and who was not going to want to drink my blood after sex either. Although the latter thought was both ungenerous of me and two-faced, since I hadn’t exactly protested at Ellis’s blood-drinking.

Speaking of Ellis, she did not even once intrude upon my thoughts, which I suppose was thoughtful of her. She was watching out for me whilst giving me personal space. Perhaps trying to prove that vampires really were not crazy-jealous. Yeah. Right. I so wasn’t buying it. Ellis would be going out of her freaking mind with the effort of not spying on me.

Maybe if I had stayed on point, if I hadn’t allowed myself to be lulled by the cozy notion that this really was just a normal date, maybe then I might have had some inkling of what was going to happen next. But lulled I was, and quite without an inkling of the bleakness of my immediate future.

Between the main course and dessert, with two beers in me, I decided I needed to visit the ladies room. I politely excused myself from Lois’s company. I was kind of on a high, in a daze, and I entered the bathroom, turned right into a stall and went about my business without even noticing my surroundings. Which was my big mistake. I should have stayed alert. When I opened the stall door again the first thing I saw was a person standing there, blocking my way. I had a few seconds in which to realize three things.

Firstly, I realized I had not heard anyone come in after me, which meant the person now blocking my egress from the stall had already been here when I entered.

Secondly, I realized that the person blocking my egress was a man, and it crossed my mind to wonder what on earth a man was doing in the ladies’ room.

Finally, thirdly, I realized the man had red hair.

Then a very large, bunched fist smacked me upside the head and the lights all went out.

CHAPTER TEN

I came to slowly, like swimming upwards out of a sea of treacle, with my brain floating around somewhere separate from my body. Everything whirled and ached and throbbed and swayed. I broke the surface of the treacle, breathed air and saw red-tinted light through the backsides of my closed eyelids. Not daylight—artificial light from an unshaded bulb, shining directly on me. I didn’t want to open my eyes, not yet, because I knew it would hurt like all the bitches of Hades and I already had enough hurt going on. I felt groggy and couldn’t quite figure what felt so wrong about my physical position. I knew I was seated, on a wooden straight-backed chair I thought, like a kitchen chair, but my arms seemed to be on backward.

I remembered using the ladies bathroom in the restaurant during my dinner with Lois Bartlett. I remembered coming out of the stall, and walking into someone’s fucking fist.

A vampire.

A redheaded vampire.

I heard a voice from somewhere nearby. Male. Not familiar. “She’s coming ’round.”

Footsteps clacked across a cement floor. A second voice spoke up, this one female, and instantly recognizable. Those glacial intonations. “Please fetch Robin from upstairs.”

Marjorie Tucker. Mrs. Mayor of Holly Bush Junction.

A shadow moved through the red of my eyelids. “Dante? Are you with us?”

Curiosity won out over fear of pain. I opened my eyes. Oh God, big mistake! Twin needle-like beams of light stabbed me deep in each eyeball. I groaned, snapped my eyes shut again. I waited a few seconds, then tried again, slowly this time, first experimenting with various degrees of squinting before I ventured to open my eyes all the way. First thing I saw was Marjorie’s red hair. I wanted to pull it out by the roots.

“What the…” My throat was dry. I coughed, tried to muster some saliva… “What the fuck did you do to me? Where am I?”

“You’re safe,” Marjorie assured me. I was less reassured when she added: “For the moment anyway.”

First thing I realized was my hands were cuffed behind me. I briefly wondered if the cuffs belonged to Lois Bartlett and mourned that we had not been able to use them a little more creatively. Also, my neck ached. I could only turn my head a fraction in either direction. The bulk of the room was dark, my view of it limited to the dull yellow circle of light cast by the naked bulb hung from the ceiling above my head. I saw a grey concrete floor stained with oil and other unidentified substances, and the lower edge of a brick wall to my left. The air held a damp, stuffy smell of oil and spoiled vegetables that I usually would associate with basements.

Marjorie stood in front of me, at a distance that kept her safe from my kicking her in the shins, which was a great pity.

“Where the fuck am I?” I demanded.

If my coarse language offended Marjorie, she did a poor job of hiding it. Her mouth pursed up and her nostrils flared like a bad smell had just wafted under her nose. I squinted my best attempt at a glare. A sharp-toothed puppy of a headache was nipping at my temples. Soon it would grow into something big and nasty that would bark for hours and make me wish I could hack my own head right off. If I ever caught up with that bastard redheaded vampire I definitely would hack his head off.

Marjorie tried to smile with her pursed lips and came off looking constipated. “I am terribly sorry, Dante, that we had to do things this way,” she began, and I thought, oh yeah, you sound like it, you fucking bitch, but I didn’t say anything, just kept right on squinting Clint Eastwood-style at her. Marjorie gave a theatrical sigh. “We really did need to get you away from your escort, however.”

She meant Ellis and Samson. I wondered how she—or they—had orchestrated this. A worm of unease unrolled itself in my gut. Had Ellis been harmed in any way? I couldn’t think of another reason she would allow me to get snatched from under her nose. As much as I wished to know that Ellis was uninjured, I refused to give Marjorie and whoever else was in on this with her the satisfaction of knowing how worried I was.

“Our leader wishes to speak with you, Dante,” Marjorie said when she realized I was going to give her nothing but glare.

I frowned. In spite of myself I was now curious. Marjorie had just said that their leader wished to speak with me, not eat me or kill me. I wasn’t expecting that, and so I hazarded a guess. “So you’re not the leader of the Children of Judas then?”

Marjorie trilled laughter. She seemed genuinely delighted by my mistake. “Oh no, not at all.” She shook her head and I noted that her perfectly coiffed blood-red hair did not move an inch. “I am only a humble emissary. You will meet our leader very shortly.”

“Oh, can’t wait for that.” I gave my arms a jerk that made the bracelets rattle. “Where the fuck am I? And why do you have me handcuffed to this fucking chair?”

Marjorie winced at my continued poor language but refrained from making an issue out of it. Which was good for her. At some point I was going to get free, and then I was going to come after Lady Mayor of Shitsville Marjorie Tucker and shove the chainsaw I would first use to lop her head off up her tight ass. I hoped she appreciated her freedom, fleeting as I was certain it would be. Ellis, Voshki and the rest of the vampires must be closing in as we spoke.

“I am sorry for the restraints.” Again, Marjorie’s sincerity was underwhelming. She smiled. Cobras have probably managed to look warmer. “If you are cooperative, I’m sure we could remove them. But that is for our leader to decide. As for where you are, Dante, I’m afraid I cannot tell you that.”

“Uh-huh. And when might you be afraid your leader will get here so that I can tell him—or her—to go fuck themselves?” I inquired.

Marjorie just smiled and shook her head at me. She stepped out of the pool of yellow light and I heard her clacking footsteps retreat. A door opened, a cool draft swirling in and bringing an odd smell of cinnamon and fresh oranges.

“Robin,” Marjorie said, her tone reverent.

I turned my head as far to the right as I could make it go without the urge to scream overwhelming me.

A woman walked into the pool of yellow light—younger than Marjorie, smaller than her too, a brunette with pale skin and freckles, and the most startlingly green eyes I’d ever seen. Even though I knew straight away that she was a vampire, and probably a Child of Judas despite the lack of red hair, I couldn’t help but be drawn into her gaze. It was as cool and implacable as a pool of seawater. It tugged at you the same way that deep, clear water did, filling you with fascination and dread in equal amounts. Casually dressed in blue jeans and a man’s pale blue shirt under a loose-fitting navy jacket, she looked like someone you might pass on the street and perhaps glance a second time at—wonder who she was—but not somebody you would run over hot coals to meet again.

What she did not look like was the leader of a vicious and reviled sect of two thousand year-old vampires.

Her hair color really threw me. Hadn’t Voshki said all Children of Judas were redheads? Hair dye, Dante, I reminded myself. The only thing you can find more of swilling through the State of California than booze is hair dye.

This incongruous and somewhat insignificant leader of the Children of Judas flicked a glance at Marjorie and dismissed her with a curt, “You can go now.”

Marjorie practically bowed and curtsied her way out of the room and closed the door behind her. That left me utterly alone with the leader of the Children of Judas. She stood in front of my chair, studying me. I could sense her trying to probe my mind. I had to struggle to lock down the barriers before she pushed in too far for me to dislodge her, and the fact that I succeeded earned me some eyebrow action. I experienced a single moment’s smugness before vague terror grabbed the upper hand once again.

“Your resistance is strong,” she said.

I smirked. “Thank you, Seven of Nine.”

She understood the reference and actually laughed at my feeble attempt to be defiant. She was not unattractive, I realized, even though she was nowhere in the league of Voshki or Ellis. More kind of cute. In a kind of dangerous and deadly way.

“I’m sorry about the crude methods employed in getting you here,” she said.

I snorted. “Yeah. Margie already said as much. I didn’t believe it coming from her either. Who the fuck are you anyway?”

“Excuse my lack of manners. I’m Robin. Robin Shepherd.”

I couldn’t help what happened next. It was just such a wholly unexpected name for the leader of a sect of cursed and reviled two thousand year-old vampires. I mean, Robin Shepherd, seriously? I burst out laughing. But even as I was spluttering and hooting, I knew I might be having the very last laugh of my life. Yet I could not stop myself either. It’s amazing, and weird, the ways in which terror will fuck with your mind and your common sense.

“I’m sorry,” I hiccupped between snorts and sniggers, “it’s just that… Robin? Shepherd? I wasn’t…expecting that!”

She smiled. She looked even more deadly cute when she smiled. She had dimples, for chrissake! It was a disconcerting moment, realizing your vicious vampire captor has cute little dimples and a killer smile. Pun fully intended.

“You’re right,” she said. “Robin Shepherd isn’t what you would expect.”

My giggling fit finally succeeded in hiccupping to a halt. I swallowed, cleared my throat, and then I looked Robin Shepherd over with renewed interest. Somehow I felt she wasn’t an immediate danger to me. Hell, she’d just allowed me to laugh at her and pretty much tell her that her name was silly, and she hadn’t ripped my throat out yet. There had to be hope in that.

“No red hair?” I inquired.

Robin shook her head. “We’re really not all redheads. That’s just a myth.”

“Like garlic and running water?”

“Something like that.”

I lifted my arms and gave the cuffs another quick, hard rattle. “Any chance you could remove these? They’re chafing.”

Robin didn’t answer right away. Instead she walked away into the shadows for a moment and I heard something scrape. She returned bearing a second chair identical to mine, which she placed a couple feet in front of me. She sat down on the chair and leaned forward, forearms on her thighs. “Maybe I’ll take the cuffs off in a little while, Dante, if I feel that I can trust you.”

I frowned. “Pardon me for being Captain Obvious here, but you’re a vampire and I’m a human. It’s not exactly an equal match.”

She laughed. I pressed my case. “I don’t even know where in hell I am, and for all I know there are a hundred more vampires beyond that door all just peachy-keen to have me for breakfast. Or dinner. Whatever. See? I don’t even know what time it is. Or what day it is. Anyway, the handcuffs are superfluous is what I’m saying.”

Robin rose smoothly and walked around back of my chair. She bent down and I heard a key scratching on metal and then the ratchet of the bracelets being removed. I pulled my arms around, rubbed them vigorously as the blood started flowing again. The pins and needles stung me nearly to tears. Robin came around and stood in front of me, watching dispassionately as I suffered through the restoration of feeling in my fingers. After a moment, seeming satisfied that I was not going to turn into Wonder Woman and try to escape by drilling through the ceiling with my magic cape or whatever, she sat back down.

Once I was sure I could do so without causing myself more pain, I reached up and gingerly poked at my head with my fingertips, searching for cuts or knots there. Nothing. That was a plus, I supposed.

“Thanks,” I told Robin through gritted teeth. That human urge to be polite even to the person that has us locked up in a fucking basement. I jerked my chin to indicate my surroundings. “You seem to have gone to quite a lot of trouble to get me here. I’m disappointed my accommodations aren’t more five star.”

“You can stop fishing, Dante. I’m not going to reveal where we are. I do need to talk with you, however.”

“There are more conventional means of doing that, you know. I’m in the phone book. I have an office.”

Robin shook her head. “Voshki Kevorkian would never have allowed me to get within ten miles of you by any of those conventional means.”

I hadn’t the faintest clue what she was talking about. Apparently my confusion showed on my face because Robin tilted a curious look at me and added, “You are Voshki’s human, right? I can smell her all over you. A vampire leader will protect their chosen human fiercely indeed.”

Okay. That made absolutely no sense at all to me. If there was any vampire whose scent should have been all over me—and I’m not saying I was comfortable with the idea—it should have been Ellis. For now I set that aside, more intrigued by Robin’s assertion of the fierce protection awarded to a vampire leader’s human. Right about now it sounded like a damn good proposition.

“Frankly, some of this has had to be a little off-the-cuff,” Robin confessed. She grinned at me. “No pun intended!”

I smiled without enthusiasm.

“Anyway, not everything has gone exactly to plan. I engineered Derek McBride’s meeting with a guy in bar—one of my people—who told him about the location shoot. I knew Derek’s proclivities would make it an easy bet he’d come here, make a nuisance of himself and draw Voshki’s attention. I was betting she’d send you here, Dante—she’s taken similar steps before. An agent doesn’t raise suspicion on set.”

That meant Robin must have had people watching me for some time. There was a creepy thought to keep you awake at night. How much else did she know about me?

“So, if you were using Derek the Peeper to draw me up here,” I said, “why was the whole suicide thing…and attacking Caitlin Harris necessary at all?”

Robin tilted me a look which I found disturbingly hard to read. “Cherie Dunlop was a demonstration of how serious we are. The Harris woman…” she blew air in a hard, irritated sigh… “that was a mistake. One of my underlings got a bit carried away about being a fan. Someone will pay for that, I can assure you.”

“You guys are fans of Caitlin Harris?” I asked.

“Not specifically, but we do watch TV. Movies, too. What? You thought we lived in caves and amused ourselves by gnawing on the bones of squirrels?”

“I really hadn’t thought that much about it at all.”

Robin frowned. “Having Lois invite you to dinner seemed the best way to get you alone and, um, persuade you to come with us.”

“Kidnap me, you mean,” I corrected her.

“Semantics, Dante. I just didn’t expect you to be so heavily guarded. I was not expecting Samson and Ellis to be there outside of the restaurant. Oh, wait. Are you and Ellis…together?”

Okay, so absolutely everyone knew about Ellis and me, including the leader of a vampire sect whom I’d never met before in my life. I saw no point in lying and simply nodded.

“Hmm, that is very curious,” Robin mused. “A vampire leader who doesn’t mind sharing her human with her own creation.”

Once again I was back to being baffled. Robin explained it to me. “Ellis Kovacs is Voshki’s creature. Voshki sired her. Didn’t you know that?”

“No, I did not.” It hadn’t occurred to me to ask Ellis who sired her. In my wildest imaginings I wouldn’t have thought it might be Voshki, although it made a certain sense to me now. Voshki did like to keep Ellis close. I resolved to ask both of them about it just as soon as they arrived to rescue me from this predicament. Which hopefully would be very soon indeed.

Robin crossed one leg over the other, smoothed out an imaginary crease in her jeans and looked at me from under her long dark lashes. “I have a message for Voshki Kevorkian and I want you to deliver it.”

I wondered if I’d heard right. This was the vampire who had ordered the killings of those in Voshki’s employ, who had kidnapped me, and she wanted me to take a message to Voshki? I could think of a few things more pointless to do, but not many, and certainly none that did not involve some form of self-mutilation. Also, I was annoyed at being used as a messenger boy. Or girl.

“Do I look like your messenger?” I demanded.

Robin’s lips twitched in amusement. “Right now you look pretty much like my bitch, yes.”

Okay, I accept I probably walked into that one. I shook my head. “Voshki isn’t going to want to hear whatever you have to say. Won’t matter whether I deliver the message, or Santa Claus does.”

“Oh, she’ll listen,” Robin said.

She stood up and walked around a bit, arms folded. I wished she’d sit. I didn’t like her on the prowl like this.

“I think it’s time for vampires to come out of the closet,” she announced.

I blinked. Surely this was one of those bad ideas that only sounds like a good idea for about five seconds before the brain fart stops. The entire human world is in turmoil. People are either actively blaming someone somewhere for something that happened someplace else, or they’re looking for someone to blame. In such a climate, what chance did vampires stand of a warm and fuzzy reception to their coming-out of the coffin?

“I intend to bring the Children of Judas in from the cold under a new joint leadership between me and someone I will choose at a later date, and I intend to announce our existence to the whole human world,” Robin informed me.

I tried to find something to say. I really did. But words failed me at that moment.

“And Voshki Kevorkian will just have to go along with that. I’m willing to let her live if she does. If not, well, that would be her loss.” Robin made an eloquent shrug.

She seemed sure of her plan being a success. I couldn’t see how it would ever be so, and that made me wonder if she had some ace up her sleeve. Then I reminded myself of how psychos are often incredibly sure of themselves and their grandiose plans.

“Even if Voshki did step down, the Council would never get behind you,” I pointed out. I don’t know anything about the vampire Council, really—I was just taking shots in the dark. Something must have struck home. Robin stopped prowling and gave me a sad smile.

“Yes, we Children do rather have a bad reputation, don’t we?” she admitted. “I do realize that acceptance by the majority of our fellow ordinary vampires would entail certain persuasion.”

“I’ve heard you’re good at certain kinds of persuasion.”

“Be careful of what you hear from poisoned lips, Dante.”

It was true then—all vampires loved to be cryptic, even the outcasts. I rolled my eyes. Robin chuffed a quiet laugh. I scratched an itchy place on my left cheek. Felt like either something was biting me there or I was about to get a pimple. Really, my life was just sucking out loud right now.

“Part of this persuasion involves discrediting Voshki in the eyes of the Council, right?” I said. “Kill some vampires, make it look like Vosh can’t even protect her own. Kill some humans too, draw a lot of unwelcome attention. Then you walk in and offer everybody the magical solution. How warm am I?”

Robin gazed at me with something approaching admiration. “Dante, I knew you were smart. That you would understand.”

I’m also an agent. That means it’s my job to know how the power games are played. And to know how to be a player myself. Except at the moment I seemed to have been out-played by Robin Shepherd. I chafed at that. “So give me your message and I’ll take it to Voshki. But tell me first…what’s in it for me?”

Robin walked around back of my chair again and put a hand on each of my shoulders. She leaned close to my left ear and whispered to me.

“I like you, Dante. I think we have much, much more in common than you would ever guess at. Maybe one day I’ll tell you about that. For now…I’m sorry for what I’m about to do. I really am, you need to believe that. But it’s necessary. Tell Voshki to remember the promise of darkness.”

I heard the soft snick of fangs. Terror crawled all over my skin. My instinct made me try to run but Robin jerked me back down into the seat and held me there with her hands pressing down on my shoulders until I thought she would dislocate those. I twisted around to look at her. Her green eyes were now glowing red as boiling lava.

“Please…don’t hurt me,” I begged. Screw being a tough cookie.

“I’ll try,” she said.

Then her fangs were in my neck and my blood was pumping out thick and fast whilst I experienced more hurt than I ever thought possible for one human being to endure. There was none of the orgasmic rush that accompanied Ellis’s drinking my blood. Just blinding-white pain and begging all of the gods I could think of not to let me die, and wishing I could just fucking die rather than face this pain.

I think I may have screamed before I passed out.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

When I next came to I was no longer in a basement with Robin Shepherd’s fangs sunk into my neck, convinced I was either going to die or go insane. I was back in the double bed in the one-time-brothel-now-hotel in Holly Bush Junction, with Voshki on the bed next to me. I had no idea how I got from one place to another. All I knew was that I was alive.

My neck hurt. Not the end-of-the-world hurt of before, but still painful enough to make me want to drift back into the blessed darkness.

I tried to speak, to ask Voshki what the hell had happened, but my vocal chords felt as though they’d been severed. For a truly panicked moment I thought perhaps they had been. Robin’s bite sure had felt deep enough to sever something vital.

“You’re going to be fine,” Voshki soothed. She put a hand lightly on my chest as I tried to get up. It might as well have been a breezeblock on my chest for all I could have moved against it. So I lay still instead. Voshki smiled her approval. “You lost a lot of blood. That bitch bit you deep. But we found you in time to heal you.”

I started to frown. Doing so made my whole face ache and I smoothed the expression out quickly.

“I gave you some of my blood to drink,” Voshki explained.

Her blood. I had ingested Voshki’s blood. It explained why I was feeling a little bit horny in such close proximity to her when I should have been feeling like death warmed over and scared out of what was left of my fucking mind. In fact, I did feel both of those things, in abundance. It was just that the desire also to have wild, abandoned, filthy monkey sex with Voshki also was fully present.

And wouldn’t you know it, given my sucky luck of late—she read all this from my mind. Obviously, between the draining I’d been given by Robin Shepherd and ingesting Voshki’s blood, my usual defenses were down. Or I’d had enough of Voshki’s blood to open my mind up to her. Wait…Ellis had to drink my blood to create a connection between us. Did that mean…? Laughing, Voshki wagged a finger at me.

“Oooh, those are naughty thoughts, Dante. And no, I didn’t drink your blood. You were far too weak for that, although I was tempted.”

I heard a growl come from somewhere out of my eye-line, but I didn’t need to see to know it was Ellis that made the sound. She was right there in the room with us! And I was envisioning Voshki naked and myself naked and both of us doing the nasty. Together. In ways that hadn’t even made it into the most detailed of sex manuals. And did I mention we were both naked? Crap! I heard another low growl from the unseen Ellis and wished I could shoot myself in the head.

Voshki pouted. “Now that would be a terrible shame. Before we even got to try out any of those positions you’re thinking of.”

Fuck! I stared wildly at the vampire leader but she just grinned down at me. Her fangs were fully extended and I noticed a tiny droplet of blood on her lower lip.

“You should have let me feed her,” Ellis said disconsolately.

Voshki turned away for a moment. Her expression briefly tightened, then she shrugged. “Your blood was not strong enough to heal her,” she said in a tone that suggested it was not the first time she had explained this to Ellis.

I rolled my head carefully to one side on the pillow and Ellis juddered into my line of sight. She stood by the window, arms folded, a dark scowl on her face. The curtains were closed but I could see daylight coming through. How long had I been out? How long had I been missing? These and a host of other questions crowded into my head and got in each other’s way.

I also noticed, not without some shock, the fresh cuts on Ellis’s cheek, and the vague bruising around her jaw line. Christ on toast! Someone had beaten her up! I must have been staring, or maybe Voshki simply felt my heartbeat rising because she still had a hand on my chest, but she looked back down at me. Her mouth twitched in a grim gesture intended to be a smile. “Your honey over there managed to allow you to be snatched from under her nose. I was less than pleased with her performance.”

That was one of the questions jostling amongst the crowd in my head. I looked into Voshki’s amber-flecked brown eyes. She shook her head. “Ellis was supposed to protect you. She failed. I punished her accordingly.”

“You…” My voice came out a hoarse croak. But at least I had a voice. I made a limp gesture…” Water! Please!”

I expected Voshki to send Ellis for it but instead she nodded and stood up from the bed to go fetch it herself, thus affording me a few moments to speak to Ellis alone.

“Come over here,” I croaked.

She did so, reluctantly, and not able to meet my eyes. I could feel her emotions, all roiling and seething in her, a mixture of anger, shame, hurt, sadness and, oh Christ, lust. I reached up, snagged one of her hands in mine and summoned a strength from somewhere to pull her down onto the bed so that she was sitting beside me. She didn’t resist all that much. Still, she could not look at me.

“It wasn’t your fault. No matter what Vosh says.”

“It is my fault. I fucking failed and I let them take you.”

I gripped her hand. “Look at me.”

She did so.

“Tell me what happened,” I insisted.

The way Ellis told it, she and Samson had been in the parking lot outside of the restaurant, parked in a spot where Ellis could sense me inside, could read my thoughts if she chose to, and follow my emotions quite clearly.

“You were enjoying being with that sheriff woman,” she said. There was jealousy in her voice, and hurt too.

I sighed. Nodded. The anvil inside my skull slid from back to front. I winced, decided there’d be no more nodding for now. “It actually started to feel like a normal date,” I confessed. “Tell me the rest.”

When a truckload of redheaded vampires came rolling into the parking lot, Ellis and Samson were convinced they had come to snatch me away, and immediately took steps to prevent these Children of Judas from entering the restaurant. There was a fight. During it, Ellis lost track of me. I slipped from her mind whilst the bloodlust of battle had her in its grip.

“I shouldn’t have let that happen,” she stated, and now it was remorse plain and simple that I heard in her voice.

By the time Samson and Ellis had dispatched the mob from the parking lot and Ellis tried to reconnect with me, she realized my mind was blank, and already getting further away from her.

“I’m not surprised—that bastard hit me good,” I said.

“We ran into the restaurant but you had already gone, and so had that fucking sheriff,” Ellis told me. Anger burned in her eyes. I stared up at the twin red fires, mesmerized, feeling that little hitch in my breathing and the twinges down south. Ellis felt it too. She almost smiled. “The restaurant manager told us that she—the sheriff—had paid the bill and left shortly after you went to the ladies’ room. He just assumed you had left too. And now we can’t seem to find Sheriff Bartlett at all. And Voshki so does want to speak with her. Me too for that matter.”

I held back a shudder. I had some idea of what Voshki and Ellis both might have to say to Lois Bartlett. I did manage to feel a little sympathy for the woman. Just not enough that I felt like telling Ellis to leave her out of it. I had really, really liked Lois Bartlett, even allowed myself to imagine that our “date” really was a date, and so I felt a good deal of ill will toward her for betraying me to the Children of Judas. Even if she probably had no clear idea she was doing so. It didn’t seem like much of an excuse to me right then.

Soon as Ellis and Samson realized I was no longer at the restaurant or even in the vicinity, they called Voshki and a search of the town ensued. Amelia was roped in, as were several other vampires brought to Holly Bush on short notice to assist. I was nowhere to be found, however, having apparently vanished from the face of the earth temporarily. I was not the only disappearance from Holly Bush either. The sheriff was gone, and so were Marjorie Tucker and her husband. No one knew anything about where they were. Sheriff Bartlett’s colleagues were under the impression she had called in sick that morning.

I unwound my hand from Ellis’s and reached up to touch my fingertips lightly to the bruise on her jaw. “Does it hurt much?” I asked.

She shrugged. “It’ll sting for a while. Until it heals. I don’t care. Vosh was right that I screwed up. She could have killed me for it…” Ellis’s voice trailed off and her gaze went distant as she apparently stopped to think about that.

I thought about it too. And about a possible reason for why Voshki had not killed Ellis. It related to something Robin Shepherd mentioned whilst she had me captive in that basement.

“The Children of Judas’s leader said something about you being Vosh’s creature,” I said quietly. I saw Ellis wince and knew it was true.

“She’s my sire, yes,” Ellis confirmed.

I said, “Oh.”

Then, “Oh wow.”

And, “Oh my God.”

I was sticking with the classics because I had a brain-freeze and just couldn’t think of anything the hell else to say. I’d already figured it out, of course, but actually hearing it from Ellis—that threw me for a loop all over again. I wondered if it explained my attraction to both Ellis and Voshki? As Ellis’s sire, there would be some of Voshki’s blood running through her veins at all times. Of course the natural progression my mind made from wondering this was to also wonder if I really was attracted to Ellis, or was it the part of Voshki in her that attracted me? And did Voshki being Ellis’s sire also mean that Voshki had at some point been, ahem, intimate with Ellis? I decided I didn’t want to unwrap those thoughts further just now and put them carefully aside for a later time when thinking didn’t result in such tremendous pain in my head.

Voshki returned with a pitcher of water and ice, sparing me the need to either think or discuss Ellis’s origins any further with who rose from the bed and retreated, eyes still cast down, but for Voshki’s benefit now. Voshki poured me some ice water and I drank it all. I had to force myself not to lap at it like a dog. The water must have re-hydrated my brain as well as my throat because when I finished, a thought struck me. I looked up at the vampires.

“So where did you guys find me?” I asked.

They traded eyebrow shrugs. I began to get a bad feeling. “Oh for fuck’s sake, just tell me already!” I snapped.

Voshki managed a smile that did nothing to reassure me. “We found you out at Derek McBride’s, uh, cabin,” she confessed.

“You mean his shack.” I felt queasy.

Voshki shrugged. “Cabin. Shack. Whatever. We found you there.”

I wanted to shower. For the next three hours. In industrial-strength disinfectant.

“I have called the Council regarding this lunatic Robin Shepherd and her notions of dragging us all into the light, so to speak,” Voshki told us. She saw my frown and explained how I had told them everything Robin said to me shortly after I had fed from Voshki. I had no memory of that. However, it did remind me of something else Robin had said during our time together in the basement.

“She… Robin told me to “Tell Voshki to remember the promise of darkness.” What the hell is that?” I asked.

Voshki looked away, a frown knitting her brows. Her shoulders tensed too. Her whole posture became defensive, actually. “It’s a myth,” she snapped.

“I like myths,” I said.

Voshki heaved a sigh, like I was just another annoying human asking silly questions about stupid old vampire myths. Too bad if she didn’t want to tell me, she was gonna tell me. “The Promise of Darkness,” she began, and I distinctly heard the capitalization of the term, “is a myth perpetrated by the Children of Judas. It tells of a time when darkness will fall over the land and the vampires will be plunged into war. With each other and with the humans. The myth prophecies that the Children of Judas will triumph in this war and rule the world of both vampires and humans afterward.”

“It all sounds a bit biblical,” I remarked. It also sounded like all it needed were Kate Beckinsale in skin-tight Lycra and a lot of noisy shooting and explosions, and it could be an instant box-office smash.

Voshki made a grim nod. “It’s nonsense,” she said in a crisp dismissal that made me wonder if she really believed that or if she were covering up her own unease with scorn. If she could read my emotions after feeding me, I was finding I was able to pick up fleeting impressions of hers also. And she was definitely giving off an unease that hadn’t been discernible before I mentioned Robin’s “Promise of Darkness.”

“How does this war start?” I asked.

This time it was Ellis who answered. “The Children of Judas precipitate it by killing the current vampire leader.”

I shot a look at her, then frowned a question at Voshki. She nodded. Her upper lip curled and I caught a quick, bright gleam of fang. The glimpse sent shivers zipping down my spine and arcing across my shoulders. Not entirely unpleasant shivers either. Hell, would I ever stop feeling this way about her? It was disturbing.

“I told you both, it’s complete crap!” Voshki glared at Ellis, who lowered her head and averted her eyes. The vampire leader also glared at me, but I just kept staring back at her. She wasn’t the boss of me.

“Robin sounded pretty serious about it,” I said. I also had another question. “How long have I been out?”

“Nearly thirty-six hours.”

My stomach cartwheeled and collided with my heart. I struggled to sit up and that started my head swimming.

“Where are you going?” Voshki asked.

“I need to call my office if it’s been that long.” I threw back the covers intending to get out of bed and saw that I was naked. I grabbed the covers back in place, felt a furious blush rise in my cheeks. I glared at Voshki, who was smirking, and not looking at my face while she was doing so either, the audacious bitch!

“You could’ve put some fucking underwear on me at least!”

“And spoil such a wonderful view?” She shook her head.

“Damn it! Bring me my cell phone… I have to call Roz.”

“Relax…” Voshki placed a hand on my chest again, gently pushing me back down to the pillows. I started to protest but Voshki only shook her head again…” I’ve already called your office. I told Roz that you contracted a stomach bug…bad food, you know how it is in the sticks…and you’ll be out of touch for a couple days until you recover. She has everything under control, Dante. She told me to reassure you of that.”

Good old Roz. I lay back, kind of relieved that I didn’t need to call anyone or do anything. Especially since there were jackhammers working inside my skull. I wanted like hell to sleep another thirty-six hours solid. Then maybe I could think about getting up.

“You need to feed again,” Voshki said.

My eyelids had started to drift closed. They snapped open again at her words. I saw that her fangs were out. A tiny red glow had fired up deep in her eyes. She was aroused by the thought of feeding me. Hell, I was aroused by the thought of feeding from her. I was also scared and panicked to be feeling this way. I was supposed to be Ellis’s girlfriend, not Voshki’s—well, anything, for God’s sake.

“Can’t I take something from Ellis this time?” I asked hopefully.

But Voshki gave her head a firm shake. “Ellis’s blood is not potent enough to heal you of Robin Shepherd’s bite,” she explained.

I looked to Ellis for confirmation of this. She gave a miserable little nod. I sighed, closed my eyes again and muttered, “Oh alright then!” I heard a familiar dull crunch as Voshki sank her fangs into her own wrist.

Her blood tasted even sweeter than Ellis’s. It ran through me like a warm, silky current, filling my mind with colors and patterns and images of strange and wonderful things I could not begin to explain. I had a fancy I might be seeing the very nature of Heaven itself. I had no recollection of drinking Voshki’s blood before, but I was fully conscious of what I was doing now, and of what it was doing to me. I very much wanted to touch Voshki, and her to touch me—hell, I wanted to have that wild monkey sex with her, if I had been up to it, but a part of me remained aware of Ellis being present in the room. Only a part, mind you, and not a very strong part at that. On the contrary, the yearning ache for Voshki was something very strong indeed. When she felt I’d had enough of her sweet blood, she gently disengaged her wrist from my mouth, and then she ducked her face close to mine and licked the excess blood from around my lips. Just that quick, light touch of her tongue against my mouth started about a dozen fires in various parts of my anatomy.

“You should rest now,” she told me as she stood up once more from the bed. She glanced at Ellis, then back at me. “I have things to do. Ellis will stay with you. And she will not let you out of her sight for a single second this time, will you Ellis?”

“No,” Ellis said flatly.

I rolled my head on the pillow to look at my contrite vampire girlfriend. Glowing eyes there too. I felt a dreamy smile stretching my lips. Two gorgeous, sexy vampires fighting over me! Was I a lucky dyke or what?

Voshki snickered. “I think maybe you’ve had about as much of my blood for now as you need,” she remarked.

I blinked. “You read my mind?”

“We both did,” Ellis sighed. “Loud and clear.”

Huh. I was really gonna have to work on my barriers. Later.

* * *

Later turned out to be eight hours later. I know I have never slept as much before in my entire life, and I have a feeling I never will again. I didn’t even awake feeling all that refreshed either, which seemed a rotten trick. I awoke also with the certainty that if I didn’t have a shower right now I was going to come down with something truly horrible picked up from being in that toxic waste-dump Derek McBride had called home.

Ellis sat in a chair across from the bed. That she was watching me whilst I slept should have been at least a little creepy, and under other circumstances I guess it would have been, but given the present circumstances, it was reassuring. And touching. She moved to the bedside the instant she saw I was awake.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

I nodded. “Better,” I assured her. It was the truth. I still felt horrible, but horrible is a step up from deathly, right? I motioned to the empty glass on the nightstand. “I could use some more water.”

She fetched a fresh pitcher for me and sat on the bed, still watching me closely whilst I drank. Then, my thirst quenched, I made an attempt to sit up instead.

“Where are you going?” Ellis asked.

“You said you found me in Derek McBride’s shack. God knows what all sorts of fuckery that hovel was harboring. I’m taking a shower.”

Sensible vampire that she is, Ellis did not even try to argue with me. She just asked if I wished for her to accompany me…in case I felt giddy and fell down? I gave her a wry smile.

“I’m more likely to get giddy and fall down if you’re in there with me,” I pointed out.

She seemed pleased with the compliment. “I’ll come into the bathroom with you then, but I’ll stay outside of the shower,” she decided.

Fine by me. Well, not really. I would have loved for her to come into the shower with me, but I wasn’t exactly in any shape for shower sex.

One long, hot, luxurious but sexless shower later then, every inch of skin was scrubbed free of any potentially deadly bacteria or viruses from Derek’s shack. I wrapped myself in a big, fluffy towel and staggered, feeling slightly giddy anyway from the hot water but infinitely happier, back to bed. Only problem was, now that I was clean, I had no desire to slip back between the contaminated sheets. Ellis must have read my mind. Or maybe just the look of disdain on my face.

“Sit,” she commanded, pushing a chair against the backs of my knees so that I had no choice. “I’ll go fetch Housekeeping to change the bed. Don’t move, okay?”

“Not a muscle,” I assured her.

Twenty minutes later I had fresh laundry and Ellis had fetched some nightclothes for me to put on. She had the grace to look embarrassed.

“I’m sorry Vosh left you naked. Sometimes my esteemed sire forgets that humans don’t think the same way as vampires do.”

“You mean we get embarrassed by being naked in front of people we have the uncontrollable desire to fuck like bunnies with?” I asked. Vampires are not the only ones who can be blunt.

Ellis blinked. Nodded.

I let the smile stretch my mouth muscles to cracking point. “That’s okay. The odd thing is, I’d have been more embarrassed if it’d been a human. Somehow being a vampire makes it less…well, less of a big deal. Does that make sense?” I hoped I was making sense to Ellis, because I was making very little to myself.

She gave a careful nod. “I think so. You do want to…have sex with Vosh then?”

“Wild, abandoned, filthy monkey sex. Yes.”

“You did have a lot of her blood, and it’s powerful stuff. You could feel that way about her for some considerable time. Can you live with that?”

I knew the unspoken addition to that last question was, “can you live with it without doing something about it?” Truthfully, I wasn’t so sure I could. Or whether I wanted to be able to do nothing about it. But there was no way I was going to tell Ellis that. Not right now. Maybe not ever. I shrugged and bought myself time by pouring some more water to drink. At this rate I was going to be awake for the next thirty-six hours peeing all the time. “Since I know it’s the blood compelling me to feel this way, I think I can control it,” I answered carefully. Ellis looked at me for a long moment, then she nodded.

I was curious. “Why didn’t it happen like that when we shared blood?”

Ellis shrugged. “As I said, Vosh is vampire royalty, old blood if you like. And old vampire blood is extremely powerful. Mine is nowhere near old enough or powerful enough to create that kind of…visceral connection. I would have to…” she looked away, embarrassed, I thought… “I would have to sire you as a vampire to create that connection with you.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I’d already run through the “Oh. Wow. My God!” classics and I didn’t want to look dumb by repeating myself. So I said nothing. Ellis saved us both further discomfort by changing the subject.

“We still haven’t been able to locate Sheriff Bartlett or that Marjorie woman. Vosh has Samson and a bunch of other people working on finding them.”

I felt a small pang of lustful regret thinking about those blonde good looks and what was never going to be. Ellis fortunately was too preoccupied by brooding on the possible whereabouts of the Children of Judas and their tame humans to notice the naughty path my thoughts had just wandered down. I grabbed those thoughts by the scruff of the neck and hauled them back onto the straight and narrow.

“There’s no sign of the Tuckers either,” Ellis added darkly. “They’ve all gone to ground but good. Goddamned cowards.”

Cowardly, yes. Sensible, also yes. Robin Shepherd must have known that after she grabbed Voshki’s human—me—there would be a posse of angry vampires looking for her and anyone else associated with her. She had gotten everyone concerned out.

Without warning I realized I was hungry, and not for blood either, which was a good thing, I suppose. “I could really eat something,” I said to Ellis.

For a moment she just looked blankly at me, apparently having forgotten that humans require nourishment other than blood. Then she said, “Oh. Yes. You’re hungry. You want food, right?” As though such a notion were both quaint and utterly ridiculous, like Holland wanting mountains.

I managed not to let my smile become too patronizing. “Yeah, Ellis, I’m hungry. I would like something to eat that doesn’t involve biting into a vampire’s wrist.”

“You don’t like feeding from us?” She frowned.

Now did not feel like the time to be delving into an existential discussion about my feelings toward drinking vampire blood. Now felt like the time to be guzzling down a full English breakfast with a side order of bagels. I felt sure I could find a swimming pool somewhere in Holly Bush Junction to work it off, or if not that, then at least a treadmill. Failing that, there was always vampire sex.

“Please. Just find me some food. Before I start on the curtains,” I begged.

With Ellis out of the room (she assured me Samson was right outside in the corridor to come rushing in should anything happen) I took the opportunity to get out that fifth and vital limb all Hollywood inhabitants have surgically attached as part of their citizenship—my cell phone. I called Roz first at the office and was assured everything was ticking along, no crises that the ever-efficient Roz could not handle. When she inquired whether it had been seafood that gave me the poisoning I was momentarily confused. Then I remembered the reason Voshki gave her for my being temporarily incommunicado, and agreed that yes, it had indeed been bad seafood. When in doubt, blame the seafood.

After Roz, I called Lydia. I wanted to touch base with her, and to hear her tell me that everything would be alright. She was suitably sympathetic, promising much gin and weed to help me recover. I also wanted to know if she had been able to plug the leaks Robin Shepherd’s rumor-spreading had caused aboard the good ship The Right Guy. Lydia had indeed been doing a power of digging and plugging, and as a result I was in for a surprise. Another one. My life was just full of those. Most of them I could have lived without.

“This comes from someone who heard it from someone who heard it from someone whose friend told it to them, okay?” Lydia warned me. I heard the sound of a lighter being struck and a second later Lydia inhaled deeply. Of course, her office at the studio is as rabidly No-Smoking as everywhere else on the planet these days, but for Lydia, other people’s rules are mere guidelines. I have yet to meet the person brave enough, or hell-bent enough, to challenge her about lighting up anywhere she damn well pleases. I suspect the person doesn’t exist, because Lydia probably killed them soon as they opened their mouth.

What Lydia said next would have caused me to drop to the floor had I been standing up. I was glad I wasn’t.

“It’s Caitlin Harris who has been rumor-mongering.”

I took a moment just to process that. I was also sincerely glad that despite the fact that vampires can read your thoughts, they do not possess super-hearing. Otherwise Samson would have been able to hear every word of our conversation and he would have felt obliged to report it to Voshki. I might dislike Caitlin Harris, but I did not want to see her come to harm. Well, not the kind of harm Voshki would visit upon her if she found out what Caitlin had been up to.

“This is for sure?” I asked Lydia.

I could hear the shrug in her voice. “Like I said, someone who knows someone, and on and on. So, as sure as rumor ever can be in this town.”

It didn’t make sense. Caitlin was doing her very best work on The Right Guy—she was getting rave reviews, and she was being touted for a couple TV awards. I had heard that her take-home pay was none too shabby either, considering her pedigree was less than stellar. So why in the blue fuck would she try to sabotage all of this? As far as I was aware, Caitlin’s quota of mental health problems did not include the sort that might cause her to destroy her own career on purpose. She was all about her career.

“You gonna tell Vosh about this?” Lydia asked.

I told her no, I figured I’d keep it to myself just now, maybe have a quiet word with Caitlin first, see if I couldn’t find out what was going on with her. Before I even considered throwing her to the wolves.

“To the vampires, you mean!” Lydia cackled. She bid me ciao, get better soon and to call her again soon as I was back in civilization.

I was still pondering the Caitlin bombshell when Ellis returned with a room service cart laden with enough breakfast to feed a score of actresses for the next millennium.

“I wasn’t sure what you wanted,” she explained.

I smiled. “So you brought the entire kitchen. Bless you.”

I put the Caitlin problem to the back of my mind whilst I concentrated on eating. Not quite everything on the cart, but almost. Arteries be damned. If I was ever in any danger of a heart attack I could always have Ellis make me into a vampire. After all, if you can’t beat ’em, you may as well join ’em, right?

And there was always that visceral connection to make up for being Undead. I figured I could learn to live with that.

CHAPTER TWELVE

There was nothing more to keep us in Holly Bush Junction. The peeper problem had been solved, and we had no idea when, or even if, either Sheriff Bartlett or the Tuckers would return. In the case of the Tuckers, Voshki felt it was unlikely they would be foolish or arrogant enough to do so. However, if Sheriff Bartlett did chance to make a reappearance, Amelia needed only to call.

Besides, Voshki claimed she really needed to be back in LA. I figured she just got as antsy for skyscrapers, smog and ill-tempered traffic as did Lydia.

Before we left Holly Bush Junction, there was one small thing I needed to do. I told my vampire guardians that I had something to discuss with my actor client, and could they give me some privacy? Voshki was not keen, argued with me until I agreed at least to let Samson drive me to the set and back.

“He stays outside,” I insisted mulishly.

Voshki simmered, but she agreed.

I found Caitlin Harris in her trailer, resting between takes. Often that’s a euphemism for having sex with someone other than your legitimate partner, but in this case, Caitlin really was resting. She’d done a couple very physical scenes that morning during which she had sprained an ankle, and she was making all the expected hay out of it.

“Dante?” She was obviously nonplussed to see me. Not quite pleased either.

I stepped inside, closed the door, walked over to the couch and helped myself to taking a seat. Caitlin had herself draped all over the matching couch opposite me, a white fake fur blanket covering her, an ice pack clutched to her temples even though it was her ankle she’d sprained. The very picture of the actress suffering for her art. I wasn’t impressed. I’ve seen this skit a thousand times before. Some have even performed it to much better effect than Caitlin.

It wasn’t a big trailer. Maybe not even as big as I would have expected, but it was comfortably enough appointed. No doubt if Caitlin did win the awards she was tipped to, the trailer would get bigger and comfier still.

“Caitlin, I’m going to say something to you. I’m only going to say it this one time, and then I’m never going to bring it up again. So I need for you to listen carefully to me. Okay?” I leaned forward with my arms resting on my knees, and as serious an expression as I could muster. I saw Caitlin briefly trying to calculate what might be coming, draw a blank and nod at me to proceed.

“I know you have been spreading rumors to the investors that the show is in trouble,” I began. I saw Caitlin’s mouth open and I thrust a hand up and forward, shook my head at her. “Don’t bother with the denial, it’d just be embarrassing for both of us…” Her mouth closed and I nodded approval… “Don’t ask me either how I know this because you know I’m not going to tell you that. I don’t know why you would be trying to sabotage this show, and frankly, Caitlin, I don’t want to know, nor do I care. But please. Just heed this.”

My stare got hard. Hard enough to make Caitlin flinch. Good. She needed to be scared. I’m a damn sight less scary than Voshki would be if she caught on to what Caitlin was doing. “I know that you know Voshki Kevorkian is one of the major investors, but you don’t know Voshki anywhere near well enough to know that she can be an extremely dangerous…” I came close to saying “vampire” but managed to edit myself on the hoof… “person to cross. It is not something I would recommend anyone do. Whatever your reasons for doing what you did, Caitlin, you need to stop doing it right now. Before Voshki finds out.”

I shrugged, then stood up. “That’s it, Caitlin. That’s all I have to say. Goodbye. And good luck with your career.”

I made it all the way to the door before she spoke my name. I half-turned. She looked at me with unease in her green eyes. And the unmistakable sheen of incipient tears. “You wouldn’t understand why I was doing it,” she whispered.

I gave another shrug. I had already decided I didn’t want any part of this other than to give her fair warning to cease and desist. “You’re right. I wouldn’t,” I told her. I opened the door, stepped out of her trailer, and out of her life. Well, the last bit I could only hope and wish for, although I did have a bad feeling I wouldn’t be getting this wish. Once people like Caitlin Harris have inserted themselves into your life, ridding yourself of them can be as difficult as banishing termites from your house once and for all without actually demolishing the whole house and setting fire to the ground it stood on. But unless you are prepared to take such drastic steps, the bastards always come back.

Samson drove us back to the hotel where the rest of the vampires were packed up and ready to leave. Voshki asked me to ride with her in the Viper and I couldn’t see any reason to refuse. And although Ellis obviously wasn’t thrilled to bits with the idea, she didn’t exactly try to forbid me either. Like that would have stopped me anyway. Ellis was no more the boss of me than Voshki was.

During the drive, Voshki told me that the vampire Council wanted a meeting regarding Robin Shepherd.

“They’re concerned about the threat from the Children of Judas?” I asked.

Voshki shook her head. “Not exactly. They’re concerned about Robin Shepherd specifically. It seems she may be more powerful than I’ve been giving her credit for being.”

I scooted around in the passenger seat as comfortably as the bucket style permitted. I already was disliking the hell out of even the idea of Robin being powerful, but to hear that Voshki may have underestimated her gave me distinct pause. “How so?”

I liked the whole matter even less after Voshki explained how Robin was apparently a direct descendent of the Children of Judas’s first infernal father, Judas Iscariot himself, a lineage that awarded her extra-special abilities and extra-strength powers. Voshki was as yet unaware of the specifics. I thought about that and fell back on an old favorite. “Wow.”

“Yes,” Voshki agreed dryly. She threw me a sideways glance that started a slow burn in my blood. Hers was still thrumming through my veins, and although I hadn’t fed from her again, part of me wanted to. A bigger part of me was scared shitless that if I ever did so again I would not be able to come back. I had not had sex with Ellis, nor shared any blood with her either since I had fed from Voshki, in part because I simply hadn’t been up to it, but also because I couldn’t quite trust myself to get physical with Ellis yet. Not with even a few strays of those dirty little thoughts about Voshki continuing to roam free in my mind. I really didn’t wish to hurt Ellis, even though I knew she would have understood. Actually, that she would have understood made it worse for me. I had accepted Voshki’s offer of a ride home mostly to see if I could be in such close proximity with her and not break down begging her to fuck me.

Apparently determined to act oblivious to my lustful consternation, Voshki added a little more information regarding Robin Shepherd. “I do know it means she has extreme powers of persuasion over both humans and vampires. Probably why she was able to corral the ginger bastards into a cohesive group like they never have been before. Anyway, the Council are concerned she will be able to use these super-powers to effect a coming-out that will damage us all and have the humans hunting us down with pitchforks and flaming torches.”

“She told me she intended to choose a co-leader when she was ready,” I mused.

Voshki gave me a sharp look but she didn’t say anything to that.

I had never thought about Voshki not being the vampire leader, and trying to get my head around any such eventuality was difficult. I still could not even begin to imagine the vampires being openly welcomed by humans.

Voshki removed one hand from the wheel to reach over and pat my knee. That didn’t help me any with corralling those thoughts and feelings. Nerves ends fizzed and popped. Not all of them in my knee either. “You’ll get over it, Dante,” she said cheerfully.

I feigned innocence. “Get over what?”

A gleam danced in her dark eyes. “The desire to have wild, abandoned, filthy monkey sex with me,” she said.

I flushed brick red. Voshki cackled at my embarrassment. “And whilst we’re on that subject…” she added. I hadn’t known we were on that subject…” To answer something you’ve been wondering: yes, I was once on very intimate terms with Ellis. And yes, I thoroughly enjoyed those years with her. But it was only about the first eighty or ninety years of our acquaintance. So there really is no need for you to be jealous.”

You must get to know someone pretty damn well in eighty or ninety years. No human couples can even hope to spend such a length of time together. I couldn’t hope to spend that kind of time with Ellis. Not unless she did sire me as a vampire. No need to be jealous?

Right.

I studied the scenery going past at 180mph for the rest of the journey and tried very hard not to think about time.

* * *

It did feel good to be back in my comfort zone. I may not be phobic like Lydia about leaving Hollywood’s lunatic confines, but I don’t do so all that often either, and when I do I find myself invariably glad to be home. My life, however, did not settle down to its relatively uneventful pre-Holly Bush Junction and Children of Judas state. Not hardly.

To use one of my father’s favorite quotes, I was already hip-deep in snakes and alligators, and not going anyplace else anytime soon.

I did manage to squeeze in some normal activities. I checked in with the office, took some meetings rearranged by the efficient Roz (who remarked that I was looking quite well after my food poisoning adventure and advised me never to touch seafood anywhere but in Maine), and I powered through a good couple hours of telephoning and emailing. Then I went home and did some more normal stuff there. Swam laps in my pool. Cleaned my kitchen and bathroom. Called my brother and chatted. Normal shit. But the whole time I was thinking about decidedly abnormal shit such as vampires.

This hiatus of normal lasted almost one whole day before my life took another turn right back into Weirdsville when Sheriff Lois Bartlett showed up at my house.

Damn me for not having those high walls and locked gates. Damn me, too, for insisting Voshki remove Samson from guard duty. I told her I would be fine in my own home. Come to think of it, damn Voshki for it being the one time she actually listened to me.

I must have been wearing a really freaked-out expression when I answered the door because the erstwhile sheriff of Holly Bush Junction rushed to assure me that she was not armed, nor was she dangerous in any other way.

“At least I hope I’m not,” she added with a frown.

“Not encouraging,” I told her.

Lois pushed a hand through her Nordic blonde mane, which reminded me that I never got a chance to do that and now never would, and that was still a shame. Despite everything. She peered at me with mixed concern and bemusement. “Dante, I don’t recall much after leaving that restaurant. I know I paid the bill. I know I thought you had left, dumped me, and I know I was deeply saddened and hurt by that. But I have no recollection of where I went next. I…I woke up at a motel in Encino last night. Apparently I checked in there the night of our date, late on, but I don’t remember doing that either.”

I’m an agent, I work with actors and assorted other professional liars, and I could tell that either Lois Bartlett was definitely not lying, or she completely believed what she was saying was the truth.

Also, admitting vulnerability on this scale was hard for her. I didn’t need to be an agent to realize that. Just a human being.

“Dante, I think I might’ve had some kind of breakdown,” she said. Her waterfall-blue eyes beseeched me. “I must have, right? I went home and packed a bag and I drove all the way to Encino, but I don’t remember any of it. That’s got to be some kind of breakdown, hasn’t it?”

“How did you know where to find me?” I asked.

She blinked. Blushed. “Shit. Busted, huh? I did a bit of a background check on you before our date…” The blush went all the way to the roots of her hair… “I wanted to know more about you. I was interested. Your home address wasn’t hard to get. I’m sorry. That was kind of a creepy thing to do.”

I shook my head. “It’s fine,” I said. Then I decided to invite her inside. I don’t know why I took the risk, why I should have been willing to trust that she hadn’t led a squadron of Judas’s red-haired psycho children right to my front door. I just felt I could trust her at least this much.

“Thank you, Dante. Thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt,” she said, and gave me a wavering smile.

Mine was none too steady either. “You need to come sit down,” I told her. “There are some things I should tell you and they might come as, well, a bit of a shock.”

“I woke up in a motel, miles from home, with no recollection of how I got there or why I went there…” Lois tilted an inquiring eyebrow at me… “How much more crazy can it possibly get?”

If only she knew, I suspect she might have turned and fled right back to that Encino motel. Holed up there for the next forty years or so.

“By the way,” Lois said as she followed me through to the living room, “you really were remarkably easy to find. You don’t have the multiple layers of paranoid security I would normally associate with Hollywood people.”

“That’s because I’m not an actor or a director or any other of those crazy, paranoid Hollywood types,” I told her. I busied myself at the bar, fixing drinks as I talked over my shoulder. “I’m an agent, and that means I know how to negotiate the shark-infested waters of Hollywood better than anyone else. Because of that, even the nut bags who are my clients respect me enough not to try to harm me or stalk me or anything. Actors might be selfish, insane assholes, but they’re savvy enough to know I’m the one person here who is working for them, not against them.”

I fixed a scotch and ice for Lois, and one for myself, took both drinks to the couch where Lois had seated herself. I was talking a lot because I was a wee bit nervous. If Lois noticed that, however, she didn’t draw attention to it. She smiled as I handed her the drink.

“They know not to bite the hand that is feeding them?”

I nodded. “Pretty much.” I sat down on the matching couch facing her across a coffee table. Then I asked her what she knew about vampires.

She gave me a look that suggested she was already starting to regret her decision to come here, since I was apparently crazier than she thought she was. “Vampires,” she repeated slowly. She shook her head. “I know what I’ve read in books and seen on TV.”

I smiled. “Then forget all that. Hardly any of it’s even remotely accurate.”

Her expression was growing more concerned for my sanity and her safety by the moment. She put her glass down on my coffee table, placed both hands flat on her knees and looked carefully at me, gauging how dangerous I might be. I could have assured her the only danger to her would be from the very creatures I was going to tell her about.

“Vampires are real,” I stated. Best just to rip that plaster right off and get the pain and screaming over with. “You were glamoured by a very powerful one. That’s why you can’t remember shit.”

For several very long and tense moments Lois Bartlett said nothing. Her whole being went very still. Except for her unease. It was all over the place. Finally she managed to say, “Vampires glamoured me? Vampires? Are you fucking with me, Dante? Because I’m not in the mood.”

“Good. Neither am I. Vampires are real.”

“Shit.” Lois shifted on the couch. She scowled at me. Then she shifted her scowl to the wall behind me, and finally she scowled at the carpet. “Vampires, for fuck’s sake, they’re…figments of writers’ imaginations! How in hell can you claim they are real? Dante, this isn’t funny.”

“No, it’s not,” I agreed.

She decided to put the matter of vampires being real or imaginary to one side for the moment and zeroed in instead on my mention of glamouring. “You said I was glamoured by a vampire? What’s that?”

“Mind control,” I explained.

“Mind control,” she echoed.

I nodded. “They can make you do pretty much whatever they want whilst you’re under their influence. They, uh, made you think I’d walked out on our date.”

Lois frowned. “You didn’t?”

I shook my head, showed her a rueful smile. “I was kidnapped. By some of the same kind of vampires that glamoured you.”

“You mean there are different kinds of vampires?”

I nodded. “Sort of.”

“Kidnapped.” This word Lois could understand, being a cop, and she latched onto it for dear life. I saw the professional spring into her eyes. “Who kidnapped you? And why did they?”

“The vampires kidnapped me,” I repeated, and the professional in her winced. “To be specific…”

“…Oh yeah, let’s not forget specifics,” Lois muttered.

“It was the Children of Judas that kidnapped me, and they who glamoured you. They aren’t very nice vampires.”

“Oh, so there are nice ones and not-nice ones?”

“Sort of. Yes.”

“And the not-nice ones kidnapped you because—?”

“Their leader wanted me to take a message to Voshki Kevorkian. She’s the leader of the, uh, other vampires.”

“The nice ones?” Lois gave me a faint, bemused smile.

I laughed. Nodded. “Yeah. Voshki isn’t so bad, I guess. And Ellis…” I wanted to bite my tongue as soon as I saw the sheriff’s head snap up.

“Ellis? You mean Ellis Kovacs? The woman who was with you in Holly Bush?” she asked. I heard a note of curiosity in her voice now, as though she were coming around to the notion of vampires being real because she now realized she had met one, in the flesh so to speak. I didn’t want to start thinking about Ellis in the flesh, as that might lead to thinking about Voshki in the flesh and…oops. Too late. I grabbed my glass of scotch and gulped the fiery liquid down in an attempt to quench my overheated imagination. Before any other parts of me became overheated.

Lois sat quietly, turning it all over in her mind. Then she said, “You went to the bathroom and never came back. I seemed to be so certain you had walked out on me. It was like I already knew it. Does that sound insane?”

I smiled. “After what I’ve just told you? Hardly.”

“Yeah. You’re right. But it did seem too… I don’t know, scripted? It’s as though I were playing a part.”

“In a sense, you were.”

Lois gave her head a quick, hard shake. “This is nuts. It doesn’t even make sense, and yet I believe it. Well, almost. Vampires! Next you’ll be telling me werewolves and Bigfoot exist too?”

I shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Okay. Let’s assume for a moment I believe you, and I don’t think I’m actually lying in a mental ward after a complete nervous breakdown, doped to the back teeth and hallucinating all of this. Tell me more about these…nice and not-nice vampires.”

I told her a little of what I knew. I didn’t wish to overwhelm her, or she might end up in that mental ward yet, high on Thorazine and raving to anyone who would listen. Whilst I talked and Lois listened, it occurred to me that if Voshki knew I was doing this—taking such an enormous risk by allowing someone into my home that had been under the Children’s influence—she would be extremely displeased with me.

“So where is this Voshki?” Lois asked when I paused to refresh our glasses. She actually looked around my living room as she spoke, as though she expected the vampire leader to magically emerge from out of the wallpaper pattern.

“You probably don’t want to meet Vosh any time soon,” I told her. Lois looked at me, curious and alarmed at once. I tried a reassuring smile, but I’m not sure it came off as I intended. Lois frowned. “You set me up for the Children to kidnap me, even if you didn’t know you were doing it,” I explained to her. “And since Vosh kind of considers me to be her human, she’s not best pleased with you right now.”

Lois’s eyebrows rose. “Her human? What does that mean? You’re like her Renfield or something?”

“Or something,” I sighed. Lois’s eyes widened.

“Oh. Are you…romantically involved with her?”

Obviously she had read some vampire fiction. I shook my head. I thought I might have seen relief in the sheriff’s face. Too bad I was about to blow that away. “I’m not involved with Vosh, no. But I am involved with Ellis,” I confessed.

“Oh. And when you went on our, uh, date?” she asked.

I winced. This was impossible. “Yes. And no. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was with Ellis at that point.”

“I see.”

I really wished she did. I suspected, however, that until you have spent time around the vampires, you would never quite understand how it is with them. I was also too tired to explain it any more to Lois Bartlett.

She pondered a moment before asking me why Voshki would consider me to be her human if I were involved with Ellis?

I sighed and made an It’s complicated gesture. Lois sucked air in, shook her head, blew the air out, then went right back to frowning, which was apparently her default expression for now. “How long have you been dealing with this vampire stuff?” she asked.

“Too long,” I told her.

She went with another old standby favorite I had forgotten. “Well, fuck!”

Lois then she told me she was sorry for any part she had played in my being kidnapped and hurt. As she said this, she gestured to the bruising around my neck, still faintly visible despite my feeding from Voshki. I waved it off as nothing. Truthfully, I was never going to tell anyone about that. Except maybe Lydia.

“I didn’t mean to do it,” Lois said. She sounded miserable. “I had no idea what was happening. All I know is I wanted to ask you out for dinner and I did, and we were having a really nice time, and then you left and I thought I’d been dumped. After that I have no memory whatsoever until waking up in that fucking motel.” She raised her head and I saw her blue eyes harden in anger. “I’d like to kill whoever put me under that…what’d you call it…glamour? I’d like to kill them slowly. Vampire or whatever.”

Knowing you have been used and tossed aside like a dirty Kleenex will make you feel that way. Unless you live and work in Hollywood, of course, where it will be part of your everyday experience. Like drinking coffee and breathing smog.

Lois shook her head. “I like you, Dante. I really do. I gotta assume I’m not glamoured now, right?” She looked at me for confirmation and I gave a tentative nod. In truth, I didn’t know. I should’ve been scared by that but I wasn’t. Lois threw up her hands. “So at least it must be real that I like you. Why would I do something so god awful horrible to someone I like?”

“The vampires sensed your liking for me and they used it,” I surmised. I was flattered to know that she genuinely liked me, even if I remained a tad suspicious that she might be saying what she thought I wanted to hear to ease her own conscience, or even that she still was acting under glamour. The only way to know that for sure was to have a vampire check. However, that would mean turning Lois in, and I suddenly didn’t want whatever the vampires would do to her to be on my conscience. I didn’t want the vampires to do anything bad to her. But they would. I seriously doubted I could plead leniency for her with Voshki. With Ellis maybe, but not Voshki.

“So what happens now?” Lois asked.

What indeed? I had no idea what to do next. I finished my scotch, giving myself precious moments in which to think.

“I should get back to Holly Bush,” Lois announced.

“No!”

The sharpness of my tone alerted her. Her blue eyes narrowed. “Why should I not go home?”

I had to tell her the truth. “Voshki’s sister is working on the shoot. If she hears that you’re back in Holly Bush Junction, she’ll contact Voshki. Besides, we don’t know whether the Children of Judas are still watching the town or not, or even how they feel about you.”

Lois blew air hard down her nose. “So what? I’m stuck in some Encino motel? I don’t think that’s going to work for me.”

There seemed to me only one way out of Lois’s predicament. I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t see any other choices. I had to call Ellis.

I told the sheriff to stay where she was, help herself to another drink, and I retreated to the kitchen with my cell phone. I didn’t want to have the conversation in front of Lois because I suspected it would involve a lot of swearing, mostly by Ellis and directed at me.

Predictably, then, Ellis was furious when I told her who I had sat in my living room, drinking my scotch. Well, I didn’t tell her that bit. She might’ve fainted from fury. As it was, she ranted and raved and swore at me for a very long time until I remembered vampires don’t need to take a breath.

I interrupted her. “Ellis, for God’s sake, will you just come over here and tell me whether she really is being truthful or not? We can sort out blame afterwards.”

“You’re exasperating,” she snapped.

“I know,” I agreed. “Will you come over? And don’t tell Voshki.”

Ten minutes later Ellis was at my front door. With Voshki. The betraying bitch. I glared at both of them.

Ellis shrugged. “Don’t be an idiot, Dante. You must’ve known I wasn’t going to keep this from her.”

“I had hoped,” I muttered. But I let them both come in. As if I could have stopped them. I warned them to behave.

Voshki gave me an arch look. I shook my head at her. “Okay, so I couldn’t stop you if you decided not to behave…but, please?”

“This is the woman who got you hurt,” Voshki reminded me.

“She’s also a human being. And she was glamoured,” I argued.

“She might still be…and yet you invited her into your home,” Ellis pointed out, a touch hysterically I thought. I rolled my eyes at her, which made her even more furious at me. It also amused Voshki.

“You could have been killed,” Ellis insisted. Her dark eyes glittered at me, daring me to mock her angry concern one more time.

What was I thinking—involving myself with a vampire? With this particular vampire? Ellis was infuriating. I decided I probably needed a good kicking, but that I should also probably wait until later to administer it.

“Just don’t hurt her,” I sighed. Pretty much all of my earlier anger at Lois Bartlett had dissolved. Forgiving people their trespasses and not being angry at them anymore is part of being human, however, so I didn’t really expect the vampires to understand.

The vampires traded eyebrow shrugs, and then they preceded me into the living room, where Lois Bartlett had discovered the singularly fascinating joy of staring at your own ghostly reflection in the glass of the French doors leading to my deck. She caught sight of the vampires’ reflections behind her and started. Yes, they do cast a reflection. Hell, most of them are so vain that even if they didn’t cast a reflection they’d find a way to make it so. Lois turned around and regarded them with a mixture of fear and curiosity.

I rushed in to make introductions, since I knew the vampires wouldn’t bother to do so. “Lois, these are Voshki Kevorkian and Ellis Kovacs. Well, you’ve met Ellis already.”

Ellis nodded. “I’m pretty sure you weren’t under any glamour when I met you at the station,” she said. Her voice couldn’t have been colder if it had been dipped in liquid nitrogen. “But you were suspicious about something—you seemed to feel something was off in your little town. I should have paid more attention to that.”

“It was off alright,” Lois muttered in agreement.

“The Children have exceptionally good glamouring skills,” Voshki observed. Not much warmth there either, I noted. She shot Ellis a poisonous look. “And yes, you should have paid more attention to what the sheriff was thinking, instead of paying so much attention to what you were thinking about my human.”

Ellis flushed. I groaned. “Guys, this is so not the time. And I’m not your human, Vosh. I thought we established that already?”

Voshki huffed. Then she moved toward the sheriff, in that lightning-quick way of vampires. I was used to it, but it startled the hell out of Lois. Finding herself suddenly face-to-face with the vampire, Lois instinctively stepped back, and bumped up against my French doors. The glass shuddered gently. “Jesus,” the sheriff breathed. “Would it be pointless of me to ask how you do that?”

Voshki flicked a hand to indicate that yes, it would indeed be pointless. She reached out with the same hand and grabbed the sheriff’s chin, forcing Lois to look into her eyes. Like that was a chore to do.

“What are you doing?” Lois asked. She tried to jerk her head away but Voshki held on easily.

“Shut up,” she said.

As I watched, Voshki’s eyes began to glow a soft pinkish red, and Lois Bartlett fell under the vampire’s spell. I had never seen this intense mind reading before either. It was both fascinating and a little scary. Normally a vampire can read a human’s mind or glamour them without there being any outward sign of it—well, except maybe the human’s expression will start to look a little dreamy, but this was different. Voshki was delving into the subconscious of someone who’d already been glamoured and couldn’t recall what she might have done whilst glamoured. That took a lot of concentration on the vampire’s part. A lot of energy, too.

“Did you know you were leading Dante into a trap?” Voshki asked. Her voice was soft too, silky and seductive. It made me shiver, something which did not escape Ellis’s notice. I aimed a shrug in her direction. She pouted. Oh, fuck, really? I looked away and continued to watch Voshki probe the sheriff’s mind.

Lois answered her in a dreamy voice. “No.”

“What’s your connection to Robin Shepherd?”

Lois’s brow creased. “Robin,” she muttered.

“Yes. Robin. What’s your connection to her?”

“She…I…I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. It’s in your mind, Lois. You’ve blanked it out, is all. Just let me in and I’ll find it for you.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear whatever Lois had blanked out. I turned to leave the room, only to bump into Ellis. She kept her gaze on Voshki and the sheriff as she took my arm in a tight grip.

“Let me go,” I said. “I need to…”

“…You need to hear this.” She cut her gaze at me, dark eyes steady and expressionless.

I swallowed. But I stayed where I was and listened.

“Robin,” Lois murmured. She swayed once on her feet. “Robin and I…we were…I remember.”

“Yes, you do.” Voshki took one of those needless breaths and stepped back. But she held onto Lois’s chin as she looked over her shoulder in my direction. I thought I caught a flash of sympathy in her eyes. “She is…or she was Robin’s human.”

I thought I misheard. No, I hoped I misheard. I stared at Voshki. She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Sorry, Dante. It’s true though. Robin had sex with her and took blood from her, fed her blood. She made your sheriff her bitch.”

“She’s not my sheriff,” I said reflexively.

Voshki looked at me for a moment, made a suspicious hmm noise and turned back to the woman she held captive by the chin. “I’m not going to kill you, Sheriff Bartlett, but only because you weren’t acting under your own volition when you tried to harm my friend. Consider this a bullet you have dodged.”

“I’d kill her anyway,” Ellis muttered. I shot her a glare but she just returned it with a shrug.

Voshki let go of Lois’s chin. The glow died from her eyes. Lois jerked, blinked several times. She looked like a woman coming out of trance, or a very long sleep. She frowned in befuddlement at Voshki. “You said I…I had sex with this Robin person?”

Voshki nodded. “You shared blood with her too. That’s how she formed a connection with you.”

“Blood,” Lois groaned. She had turned quite pale. I worried she might throw up on my carpet. It wouldn’t be the first time it’d been thrown up upon, but I still didn’t want it to happen another time.

“But how can I not know I had sex with someone?” Lois demanded.

“And shared blood with them. Don’t forget that,” Ellis added sweetly.

Lois swallowed, closed her eyes. She shook her head. “This is too much. I need to get out of here.”

“What’s the big deal?” Voshki asked her, frowning. Voshki is incredibly sexy when she frowns. I shook that thought off quick. I’d never thought that before I shared her damned blood, had I? Had I? “Having sex with someone and not remembering it is a standard Saturday night for some people.”

“And sharing blood with them, is that standard too?” Lois demanded.

Even Voshki had to concede that point.

“Standard,” Lois seethed. “It isn’t even anywhere near fucking normal, never mind standard!”

I experienced a moment of discomfort as I recalled that drinking blood and having my blood drunk was sort of becoming normal for me. At least I didn’t find the idea of Lois and Robin together quite so hot as I did the idea of Voshki and Ellis together.

“You find that hot?” Voshki asked.

I jumped. I’d forgotten about Voshki and I having our own residual connection. “No,” I said too quickly. Voshki smirked.

Lois went and sat down on my couch, and there she dropped her head into her hands and started to cry. The rest of us stood around and looked at each other, none of us quite sure what we ought to do, or even if there was anything we ought to do. I confess I am uncomfortable with crying women. Crying children and puppies also make me uneasy.

“I’m gonna kill that fucking vampire,” Lois muttered from inside her hands.

Voshki laughed.

“That was funny?”

“You can’t kill a vampire with whom you have shared blood,” Voshki informed her.

Well. This was turning into yet another one of those days for learning a whole mess of new and interesting things. I glanced at Ellis. “So I can’t kill you?”

She smirked. “Nope.”

Apparently it didn’t stop you from having the desire to kill your vampire.

Lois raised a tear-stained face and scowled at Voshki. “So someone else will just have to the killing for me,” she said. Her clenched jaw moved from side to side as though she were chewing on her own anger. “It’s not like I couldn’t find someone willing to carry out a hit. I am a fucking sheriff after all.”

“A hit on a vampire?” Ellis asked dubiously.

“Nobody will be killing Robin Shepherd except me!” Voshki snapped. “And I have a plan as to how we can do just that.”

Lois sniffed, wiped the back of one hand across her eyes and nose. “Yeah? Well, I’m listening then.”

Voshki decided we would use Lois as bait to draw Robin to us. A vampire who took a human as their own incurred an obligation to that human. If said human were in trouble, their vampire had to come and help them. If we let it be known that we were holding Lois prisoner, Robin should be compelled to come rescue her.

“Does that work the same way with the Children of Judas?” I asked.

Voshki shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s worth a shot, right?”

“Yes it is,” Lois agreed.

I frowned at her. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

She gave me a sad little smile and a nod. “It’s okay for you, Dante—you like the vampire you’re with. In fact, I think you might even be in love with Ellis.” That got her surprised looks from all three of us. Lois shrugged. “It was hardly like that for me, was it? I wasn’t given any choice. So, yes, I’m sure I want to do this.”

Fair enough. I put the in-love-with-Ellis thing on a back burner that was becoming kind of crowded. “How do we let Robin Shepherd know that Lois is here when we don’t even know where to find Robin?”

“Leave that to me,” Voshki assured us.

“You can stay here until…whenever,” I offered Lois. I’m sure I felt Ellis tense, but I didn’t care. For no good reason, I was mad at her and I wanted to stay mad. Probably because Lois was right and being mad at Ellis made it easier for me to deny I was in love with her.

Shit. Why does my life have to be so complicated? Oh yes. It’s because of the fucking vampires that have gotten into it.

“You can’t let her stay here. She tried to kill you,” Ellis objected. So predictable. I stifled a sigh and instead silently appealed to Voshki for help.

“Ellis, let it be. No one will be killing anyone,” Voshki told her. “Besides, I’ll be leaving Samson outside. All night.”

I walked with the vampires to the door. Voshki told me not to worry, she would take care of everything, nothing bad would happen to me, and I nodded like I actually believed that. Ellis put a hand on each of my shoulders and searched my face with those beguiling dark eyes of hers. “Be careful,” she said.

I swallowed my free-floating anger and nodded.

“And don’t sleep with the sheriff,” she added.

I let my anger boil up. “Fuck off,” I snarled. “For that I just might!”

“Jesus, you two, enough with the drama,” Voshki sighed. I glared at her and she shrugged before stalking off down my driveway. I saw her car parked there, a silver Mercedes coupe. She was slumming tonight.

Maybe it was Voshki’s sarcasm, or maybe I just felt bad for what I’d said when I saw the wounded expression in Ellis’s puppy-dog eyes, but I held her back before she could follow Voshki out of the door. “I’m not going to sleep with the sheriff,” I told her.

Ellis gave me a smile that made my bones melt and my insides explode. I wished she could have stayed…But that would only have rubbed Lois’s face in it, and I didn’t want to do that. “Thank you,” Ellis said.

“And you know, you do irritate the hell out me, I could strangle you a lot of the time, and I think you…and Voshki too…keep shit from me all the time, which bugs me…but I think she was right…” I motioned with my chin to indicate the living room and Lois Bartlett… “I think I am in love with you.” There. I’d said it. I had declared myself in love with a vampire. The nice men in the white coats could come along anytime now and haul me off to join the rest of the loonies in their rubber bedrooms.

Then Ellis kissed me, just for a moment, and even though she kept her hands to herself when she did it (well, mostly), I swear there were sparks that came shooting out the top of my head.

“I think I might love you too,” she told me.

Okay, so it wasn’t Shakespeare, but at least she said she loved me back. It made me feel a bit less awkward about the whole thing. Ellis kissed me once more, then she stepped out of the door. She paused, winked at me. “Besides,” she added, “you couldn’t sleep with the sheriff. Once you’ve gone vampire, you never go back to plain old human.”

I hoped the door didn’t hit her in the ass when I slammed it.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I showed Lois where the guest bedroom and the bathroom were, told her to help herself to anything from the kitchen and then I took myself to bed. I was exhausted, but it took me a considerable while to fall asleep because my mind kept trudging back and forth over the matter of Ellis and me.

Was I really in love with a vampire? With a vampire as annoying and possessive as Ellis? Yes, she was gorgeous. Yes, she knew how to make love to you in a way made you feel all my-God shivery good. But there was no escaping the fact that she was possessive and jealous, like all vampires, and I don’t do well in smothering relationships. I don’t do well in closeted ones either, but given the choice I’d take that over smothering. Aggravating as all of that was, however, far more worrying was Ellis’s temper. I’d seen it once firsthand, directed at me, and I didn’t want to experience it in such close proximity ever again. But could I even expect any such restraint from a vampire? Of course, I knew before I got involved with Ellis that a relationship with a vampire was nearly always going to be a disturbing, aggravating pattern of two steps forward and eighteen steps upside-down and sideways.

And there was still the niggling issue of Voshki. In theory I should stop having thoughts about her once her blood left my system, but I had to admit to myself that the blood was only part of the problem. I’d always been somewhat attracted to her. Drinking her blood just brought my attraction into sharper focus.

And she was Ellis’s sire. Ellis had Voshki’s blood running in her own veins. Did that mean I had fed more on Voshki’s blood than Ellis’s? It was too confusing. And those two had been lovers. So what if it was over two hundred years ago? You try not thinking about that. I frowned at the ceiling. This was getting complicated. I fought an urge to call Lydia and ask her advice. Lydia hates being woken up in the middle of the night, unless it is by George Clooney. Or Matt Damon. Not that it has happened yet. But she lives in hope.

At some point amidst these mental meanderings I must have dozed off, because the next I knew I was waking from a dream in which George Clooney sat by my lap pool, drinking a glass of warm blood, wearing a jacket that looked suspiciously like one I had given Lydia as a Christmas present two years ago and dispensing advice to me on what to do about my little vampire love-triangle problem. I protested to George that I didn’t have a “love-triangle,” protested a little too much, frankly. Then I woke, certain something was wrong.

Something was.

Robin Shepherd sat on my bed.

My mouth opened, ready to emit the biggest girlie scream I could muster, only Robin clamped a hand over it that might as well have been a steel vise. She raised the forefinger of her other hand to her lips, smiled behind it.

“If you scream, Dante, I will kill you,” she said, and I believed her utterly. I blinked at her above the hand strangling the lower half of my face.

“Will you promise to behave?” she asked. I nodded. The hand went away. Robin’s smile widened and, God help me, I actually thought about how damned cute she was when she smiled! I definitely needed to give myself that kicking. And soon.

“How’d you get in here?” I croaked. “Samson is right outside.”

Realization dawned on me then with the shattering force of a hammer to my skull. She was right. There were spies, or one spy anyway. Samson. I shut my eyes, groaned softly. I was in a whole world of shit and trouble here.

“It’s okay, I’m not going to kill you, or bite you,” Robin’s voice said.

I opened my eyes and saw Robin was looking at me with amusement. “How long has Samson been with you?” I asked dully.

“Long enough,” Robin replied. She tilted her head. “You have my human here.”

I nodded. “Voshki figured it would bring you out of whatever hole you’d crawled into. I guess it worked.” My fingers crept involuntarily to the place on my neck where Robin had sunk her fangs a few days ago. The marks were fading and it hardly hurt at all. Forgetting what she’d done would not be so easy or so quick.

“You didn’t need to fucking well bite me before,” I accused.

Robin laughed. “Oh, but I did. It seemed like the best way of showing Voshki how serious I am. I didn’t plan on Lois finding her way to you…” She frowned… “You humans are very unpredictable. It’s just as well Voshki left Samson to guard you both, or else I might not have gotten in here so easily. Still, this has upset my plans somewhat.”

“Gee, sorry,” I said.

The hand she had covered my mouth with now rested against my chest. Last time a vampire had done that, I was excited by it. This time I was terrified.

“You know, you’re really a very special human, Dante Sonnier,” Robin told me.

I frowned. I enjoy receiving compliments as much as the next person, don’t get me wrong, but this one puzzled me, and it seemed somewhat inappropriate given the circumstances. I also had the feeling Robin meant something very particular by it, but if she did, she wasn’t telling just yet. She looked down at me, still smiling, only now her fangs were out and there was a glow building in her green eyes. “So where do we go from here?” she mused.

“You could take Lois and just go,” I suggested.

The bedroom door flew open and Voshki was inside the room. She had Lois Bartlett in front of her, one arm looped tight around the sheriff’s neck.

“You’re not going anywhere,” she told Robin.

Whatever Voshki’s plan was, I’d like to think it did not include what happened next, but with Voshki you never do know these things.

Robin snatched me out of bed as easily as though I’d been a stuffed toy and not a fully grown human. Whilst I squawked and kicked ineffectually, she swung me around in front of her and held me to her. Facing Voshki and the sheriff, she grabbed my hair and used that to yank my head to one side, leaving my neck exposed. Her fangs hovered less than an inch from the throbbing vein beneath my skin.

“Checkmate, Voshki,” she growled.

I don’t think I was breathing. I’m pretty sure I would also have been screaming if I had been breathing. I could feel my heart trying to dig its way out of my chest. The blood pounding in my head was making it hard to think. Not that I supposed thinking would have been a whole lot of use to me right then. A stake, about a gallon of gasoline and some flaming torches—those would have been a damn sight more useful than thinking.

“Put her down,” Robin ordered.

Voshki smiled. Shook her head.

“You know I’ll kill Dante if you don’t.”

“Yes, I know. And I’ll kill Lois.”

Oh this was not working for me at all! I struggled to force air into my lungs against the forearm pressing my throat. “Let’s not…kill anyone,” I wheezed. “I’m pretty sure there must be some way we can work this out peacefully?”

Thank heaven the agent in me was surfacing, reminding me of my own mad negotiating skills. They could be used here, right?

Wrong. Robin’s fangs grazed my neck. I felt warm blood on my skin. My own fucking blood. “Your time running the show has just run out, Voshki,” she snarled.

Well, that was a bit dramatic, wasn’t it? The agent in me unhelpfully wanted to ask Robin whether she’d ever considered a career in soap opera acting.

“It doesn’t matter whether you kill Dante, or even if you kill me—the Council will never accept you or your kind,” Voshki pointed out.

Did she have to put that idea back in Robin’s goddamned head? I glared at Voshki in an attempt to convey this but she ignored me, her focus on the other vampire.

“After I deliver the Promise of Darkness to them, your precious Council won’t be in any position to object,” Robin sneered.

Voshki smirked. “Ah yes. Your war against the oppressors…” She feigned a yawn and then snickered… “That’s a myth, Robin. Get over it. Get over yourself. And put my fucking human down!”

Rather than do as she was told, Robin let her fangs touch my neck and used the tip of her tongue to lick up the blood trickling down my neck. Unlike when Ellis or even Voshki had done the same, it didn’t feel the least bit sensual having Robin licking my blood. “Mmm, tasty,” she murmured. She threw a sly grin at Voshki. “But Dante isn’t your human, is she? She belongs to your creature, Ellis. Interesting that you should be so very willing to defend her, Voshki.”

“I don’t belong to anyone!” I squawked.

“Sparky one, isn’t she? How does Ellis control her?”

Mockery flickered in Voshki’s smile. Poking the angry, rabid vampire. The one with its fangs at my neck. That was such a good idea. “I suspect Ellis doesn’t control her, nor does she have any interest in doing so,” she said. “Unlike you and your filthy kind, we don’t have a need to control humans. Dante is her own woman. She doesn’t belong to either Ellis or me. She chose to be with Ellis of her own free will. And I expect when she realizes how much she wants me…” Voshki gave me a look that made me feel all rucked up inside…“she’ll come to me with just as much free will.”

Oh. Wow. My God. Even in a moment of crisis a vampire could find a way to indulge their own monstrous ego. It would have been fascinating from a sociological perspective, if I’d had even the slightest inclination to look at anything from any perspective except the I’m-about-to-die-horribly one. Whether by intention, or because Voshki’s poking was simply pissing her off, the pressure of Robin’s arm against my throat increased until my head began to pound painfully. I was sure two miniature versions of the creature from Alien were going to come bursting out of there, front and back simultaneously, in a shower of pulped brains and skull bone. I could taste my pulse in back of my throat. I thought, This is it. I’m going to die now. And in my night clothes too. How undignified.

Then Lois Bartlett decided the situation was not tense enough. It needed some inflammatory input from her.

“Yeah, Robin,” the sheriff sneered, “seems like some vampires actually remember their own humanity well enough to realize that controlling and coercing people is a poor fucking way to run an empire!”

Talk about coming over all unnecessary. I wondered if Lois had bad eyesight, if she couldn’t see the arm choking me, or the ripe aubergine shade my face must surely be turning? I would have asked her to shut the fuck up, but I needed the small amount of breath I had left to stay alive.

And then things took a turn toward the truly ugly as Voshki ducked her head toward Lois’s neck and ripped a chunk out of her throat. Blood spouted from the ragged wound in a bright red fountain. Lois slumped in Voshki’s arms and the vampire thrust her away. Lois crumpled to the floor.

What happened next seemed to happen in a place where time simultaneously sped up and slowed down. I heard a hissing, snarling noise close to my left ear, wondered briefly why there were angry bees and a big, angry dog in my room before realizing the noise emanated from Robin. Scary. Then I was thrown aside, my feet actually lifting from the floor briefly as I hurtled into the wall. My forehead broke my fall. Stars, entire constellations of them all colorful and twinkling, danced across my vision and the breath went whooshing out of me. Ears ringing, I also crumpled to the floor, where I lay immobile whilst chaos visited above me.

Soon as Robin threw me aside, she lunged forward. Torn between tending to her human who was bleeding from a sizeable hole in her neck, and killing the vampire that had done this to her, Robin was caught wrong-footed. Voshki took full advantage. She grabbed Robin, ran her into another of those handy walls, and sank her fangs into Robin’s throat. What came after was a bit of a blur between my incipient concussion and the speed at which the vampires were moving. Someone hit someone else and they retaliated, and, well, you know how these things catch fire.

I crawled across the carpet to where Lois Bartlett lay on her side, a pool of blood spreading beneath her. I figured that stain wasn’t coming out and wondered what in the name of everything cute and holy had possessed me to put down a pale beige carpet in here in the first place? I hate pale-colored carpets. They are so impractical. I needed to change that carpet pronto. Strange, the things that suddenly seem to matter when your life is in danger.

“You okay?” I asked. Stupid question. Lois had a hole in her neck from which she was bleeding to death.

She managed a wan smile despite her predicament and my stupid question. “I’ll be fine,” she wheezed. I winced at the wet, bubbling sound of her voice. I struggled over to the bed where I reached up and groped for a pillow, yanked it off the bed and dragged it back over to Lois. The vampires were slugging it out on the other side of the room, oblivious to us and our suffering for the moment. The pillow felt full of rocks.

“Actually…” Lois winced as the effort of talking caused more blood to pump out of the wound… “I agreed to Voshki doing this. She already knew that Samson guy was working with Robin. She was laying a trap.”

I frowned. Doing so made my head hurt. I was thoroughly sick and tired of being whacked in the head every time I was around the goddamned vampires. “And when did she let you in on all of this?” I inquired coldly.

“After she left. She came back… I didn’t know vampires could climb walls so easily?”

I gave her a sick smile. “They have many talents. Many of which should probably stay hidden. Go on. Please.”

“Voshki didn’t want you knowing what was going on in case Robin Shepherd could read it from you.”

I had nothing to say about that. I heaved the pillow at Lois. “Put this against the wound,” I advised. Like she wasn’t a law enforcement officer who probably knew more about first-aid than I ever would. She grabbed the pillow, pushed it hard against the bleeding wound. It wasn’t an ideal tourniquet, but it was the only item readily at hand.

At that moment Voshki grabbed Robin by her shirtfront and, with the most ungodly snarl I have ever heard or want to hear again, she heaved the Child of Judas through the sliding glass doors. The sound of shattering glass pierced my pounding head like millions of tiny, sharp daggers with bells attached. Before me, Lois swam in and out of focus. I blinked. My stomach roiled. Either I was about to faint, or throw up. I hoped not both at once. I tried breathing in and out steadily but that seemed just to hurt my head. Sound receded. I felt like I was sinking beneath the surface of a heavy, warm ocean.

Then blessed blackness swallowed me whole.

* * *

This time when I came around it was with both Ellis and Voshki looking down at me, Voshki perched on the bed in which I lay—clothed this time, I’m glad to say—and Ellis hovering beside it. I wasn’t in my own bed, however. I didn’t recognize my surroundings.

My last clear memory was of Voshki throwing Robin through the window in my bedroom.

“Where’s Robin?” I demanded.

Voshki had some scratches on her face and neck, and a bruise around her right eye of an interesting purplish-brownish-yellowish hue that I think didn’t actually have a name. She exchanged a look with Ellis that I took an immediate dislike to.

“Where are we?” I demanded.

I was vaguely aware of not quite making perfect sense.

“Robin managed to get away,” Voshki confessed. Then: “I brought you to my home. It was a tad drafty at your place. And possibly not safe.”

I closed my eyes. Terrific. Robin Shepherd was crazy, that much I did know. Vats and vats of crazy. And, oh deep fucking joy, she was on the loose again. Which meant we were back to square one.

“You set me up,” I grated. “Again.”

“Sorry. There was no other way. There is some good news though.”

I opened my eyes, looked at the vampire leader hopefully.

“Samson has been telling us all kinds of things, and we expect to have the Children of Judas under control again very soon.”

“Wonderful. But you’ll pardon me if I don’t hold my fucking breath. What about Lois Bartlett?” Last I remembered the sheriff was bleeding to death on my impractical beige carpet.

“Sheriff Bartlett is fine. The wound looked worse than it was.”

Not from where I’d been lying on the floor next to her, watching her bleed. I let it go for the moment, too damn weak to conduct yet another ultimately pointless argument with a vampire. “What about Samson? What will happen to him when he’s done talking?”

“Samson will be dealt with,” Voshki assured me in a cold voice.

I didn’t ask for details. I didn’t want details. I closed my eyes and lay back against the pillow. It felt cool and soft. Unlike the inside of my skull, where rocks were being pounded to shit by a road crew with jackhammers. “I need some aspirin. Actually, I need some Percocet. And Vicodin. Please, one of you call Lydia to come over.” Only person with a better supply of pharmaceuticals than Lydia is my mother, and I wasn’t about to call my mother.

“You won’t need pills if I feed you again,” Voshki offered.

I shook my head despite the pain. “No. I don’t want to feed from you again. If I’m going to feed from anyone, it’ll be Ellis this time.”

“Dante, you’re delirious. You have to feed from me,” Voshki coaxed. With her blood in my system preventing me from killing her or not, I nonetheless wanted very much to shove a sharpened railroad tie through her heart.

“I am not delirious,” I retorted, glaring at her. “I am in complete control, and I do not want to feed from you. I want…” my eyes slid over to Ellis and I hitched a smile onto my lips…“my own girlfriend to heal me this time. Is that okay with you? Not that I actually give a flying fuck even if it isn’t.”

I was surprised when Voshki stood up from the bed without further argument and stood aside to allow Ellis to take her place. Wordlessly, Ellis slid one arm under my shoulders and helped me sit upright. I rested in the crook of her arm. That felt good. Right then I was no longer in the least bit mad at Ellis. I just loved her. I think Voshki recognized this. A wince of pain fought its way through her smile.

“You’re a very special human, Dante,” she said softly.

I recalled Robin saying almost the exact thing. Before she tried to paper the walls with the contents of my skull. “What makes me so special?” I demanded. I glared at both vampires at once. “Why are you lot so keen to all have me for yourselves? What is it about me?”

But Voshki just shook her head. “You need to feed and to rest,” she said. “There will be time for all that later.”

All what? I wanted to ask. But I could see the glow building in my lover’s eyes and feel the heat radiating from her. I wouldn’t have believed it a couple days ago, but my own battered and bruised body was responding to her ardor. I sighed. As much as I wanted Voshki to tell me whatever it was being so rudely kept from me, I also wanted her to go away and allow Ellis and I some privacy.

“Vosh, fuck off, would you?” I said pleasantly.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The rest of that week felt like something dense and oppressive I had to hack my way through with a steak knife, and which I was glad to leave behind. Voshki insisted on replacing the glass in my bedroom windows. She also offered to throw in a new deck but I turned that down. I know Voshki would have gone over the top, spent lavishly, and the current deck is plenty big enough for my needs. Besides, I didn’t want to feel indebted to her, and allowing her to install a new deck felt like something you eventually would be expected to pay for in kind.

Lois Bartlett recovered from her neck wound. I suspected the psychological trauma would take somewhat longer to heal. Lois never told me whether drinking Voshki’s blood to help her heal left her also with the urge to have wild, abandoned, filthy monkey sex, and I didn’t ask. I talked with the sheriff just once before she went back to Holly Bush Junction, when she came by my house to apologize once again for all the shit she dragged into, and to thank me for rescuing her from Robin’s clutches.

“Are you sorry Voshki didn’t kill her?” I asked.

Lois nodded. “But I suspect Robin’s day will come,” she added grimly.

“Meantime she’s still out there. Doesn’t that worry you?”

Lois smiled, shook her head. “Voshki assures me that Robin Shepherd won’t come after me again. Apparently the fact that I now have Voshki’s blood in my system will leave me, ah, tainted as far as Robin is concerned.”

Hmm. Would that really be enough to stop the psychotic Robin from trying to kill Lois Bartlett? I decided to keep my doubts to myself—they wouldn’t help Lois feel any better. I asked if she would stay in Holly Bush after…everything.

“There might still be some Children of Judas there,” I suggested.

“Then I’ll deal with those if and when I need to. And if I have to, I can always call on you guys here for help. You know, something struck me…” Lois gazed out through my living room window at the smog-enshrouded vista of LA below us… “If the vampires are so concerned about Robin and the Children of Judas outing them, why are they not so concerned about the humans who already know about them? I mean, what’s to stop any one of us from doing the same?”

“You’ve met the vampires. Would you out them?” I asked.

Lois thought about that, gave an uneasy laugh and shook her head. “Hell, no. I like being alive and relatively in one piece.”

Exactly.

Something else nagged me about Lois Bartlett. Just before our date she had touched my wrist with her fingertips, and I had received a fleeting sense of her emotions. I thought it had something to do with my recent ingestion of Ellis’s blood, but now I wondered. I had touched plenty of people since and not once felt what I had with Lois. On impulse I grabbed her hand, held onto it.

I felt regret, sadness, anger, shame and confusion.

Lois eyed me dubiously. “Dante, what are you doing?” she asked.

I let go of her hand, suddenly self-conscious. “You didn’t feel that?” I asked her, but she only frowned harder at me and shook her head.

Why did I only seem to be able to get this sense of Lois Bartlett’s emotions? Why did it not work with anyone else? More fucking questions. Lois was staring at me and I forced a smile. “It’s nothing,” I said, waving it off. “Probably just an effect of the vampire blood.”

Color rushed into her face. “I’d just as soon not talk about any of that,” she stammered.

Well, now I knew Voshki’s blood definitely had the same electrifying, erotic effect on her.

Before she left my home and LA for the final time, I told her that the studio really would be paying for Cherie Dunlop’s funeral. I also confessed that it wouldn’t be out of any sense of responsibility or care for the poor woman. It would simply be expedient.

“Movie People, huh?” Lois said.

I shrugged. Yeah. Movie People.

“You know, Dante, I really did like you,” Lois said then, and I noted her use of the past tense. That stung. “It would’ve been nice if we had met under different circumstances.”

“Without the vampires to mess things up,” I said. She nodded. I gave a silent sigh as I looked, probably for the last time ever, into those gorgeous waterfall-blue eyes of hers. Damn. What a shame. “Take care of yourself, Lois.”

She gave me a wink. “You too.”

Then she left, and I made sure to take a lingering look at her ass as it walked out the door because I wanted to imprint it on my memory.

The traitorous Samson disappeared from Voshki’s employ. I didn’t ask what became of him. Truthfully, I didn’t care. A new driver-cum-whatever-don’t-ask appeared in his place. A tall, witch-skinny guy with blonde hair and a tan, named Oliver. He told me to call him Ollie. I managed not to laugh at the idea of a vampire named Ollie. It was even more ridiculous than Robin. Ollie seemed like a nice enough sort, though. Ellis did laugh when I mentioned Ollie’s seeming nice to her. She told me I might not want to see the other side of Nice Ollie then. I really need to bear in mind at all times that vampires have two very different sides to their personalities.

Armin Bedrosian became my driver and bodyguard. I have never been comfortable around Armin, and the days he spent shadowing me did nothing to resolve my unease. Perversely, though, I did feel safer for his presence. He was as loyal as a dog to Voshki, and if she told him to protect me, he would do so with his very life. His presence at my home led to an interesting encounter between him and Lydia when she came by with news of a new maybe-star that needed the kind of representation I could provide. Someone who would remove that maybe and make him a definite star. Before the encounter with Armin, however, Lydia and I talked a bit about The Right Guy, and the events surrounding the shoot. I eventually told my friend the full story. Including the blood drinking and Ellis’s rare temper tantrum.

“Vampires are possessive. You knew that,” was her casual response.

“Yeah, but it was kinda scary,” I argued.

Lydia frowned. “So? Scary can also be hot as fuck.”

Typical Lydia. Look on the bright side, and if you can’t find a bright side, look on the dirty-sexy side then. She asked what had I done about Caitlin Harris and her attempt to commit career suicide.

“Did you ask why she did it?”

I shook my head. “I advised her to quit spreading the rumors before Voshki found out. She said that I’d never understand why she had been doing it and I told her she was right. Then I left. Beyond that, I find I have precious little desire to know what might be going on in Caitlin’s head.”

“And what did you tell Vosh about it?”

This time I shrugged. “That whoever it was must have left the shoot. The rumors stopped. She was happy enough with that. And you, my sweet, helped by massaging the investor’s insecurities.”

Lydia beamed without pretense at modesty. “I am good at that, aren’t I? Five husbands will teach you some interesting life skills.”

Voshki was indeed happy enough to know the rumors had stopped, although I think she suspected that I knew more than I was saying.

As Lydia was leaving, Armin returned from patrolling the grounds, and the two met in the downstairs foyer. Lydia stopped cold in her tracks. I saw her eyes widen, her pupils dilate and a faint flush infuse her neck.

“Well…hello. And where has Dante been hiding you?” she purred.

Armin smiled. He actually smiled. I was stunned. I don’t think I’d ever seen Armin smile before. It made him almost handsome. In an Undead, psychopath way. I saw something flit through his dark, cold eyes could have been mutual interest, or maybe he’d just had a really big taco lunch and was passing gas.

“Lydia Diamond,” he rumbled. The smile spread outwards. White teeth glinted in the soft light of the foyer. I knew I was staring, and I didn’t care. This was history in the making right here. Armin Bedrosian smiling at a human. He extended a hand to my friend and she slipped her gnarly little paw into his, smiling and tilting her head at him in a coquettish way that made me cringe and marvel all at once. Lydia is usually as much of a barracuda in the bedroom as she is in the boardroom. It’s why she’s had five husbands.

“Your reputation precedes you, but does not do you justice,” the vampire intoned. I thought he sounded like a bad Bela Lugosi, but Lydia was entranced. He wasn’t even glamouring her. Then he actually raised Lydia’s hand to his lips and delicately kissed the backs of her fingers whilst she giggled and made eyes at him. I figured I wouldn’t be eating for the rest of the day. Maybe not ever again. “A pleasure to make your personal acquaintance at last. Armin Bedrosian. At your service.”

I swear he clicked his heels together.

“Well. My, my.” Apparently meeting this vampire had created a rare verbal constipation in my best friend. She practically simpered. Neither was she in any hurry to rescue her mitt from Armin’s. I was definitely going to yak very soon.

“I would be honored if you would have lunch with me sometime, Lydia,” Armin offered.

“Oh. Yes. Definitely,” Lydia stuttered. She beamed. Roses that had nothing to do with gin were blossoming in her cheeks.

Armin bowed as he finally relinquished Lydia’s hand to her. She looked at it like maybe she was contemplating never washing it again. “Then I shall most assuredly call you very soon,” Armin promised. He stepped aside to allow us both to pass. To me he added, “I’ll be right here for the rest of the day, Dante.”

I nodded. “Sure. Fine, Armin. Whatever.” I walked with Lydia to her car. She had left it parked haphazardly in the middle of my driveway. Most of the time Lydia has a driver to ferry her around because rarely is she sober enough to risk the angry bull-charge that is downtown LA rush hour traffic. Hence her driving skills are interesting, to say the least

“What was that all about?” I asked.

Lydia blinked at me. “Wow,” she said. She leaned toward me, eyes all a-glitter in a way made me worry about her for maybe the first time ever. “He is utterly gorgeous! Where did you find him?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t find him. I guess Voshki did. He’s her…right-hand man. Some such thing. I don’t ask too many questions when it comes to Armin. He scares me, frankly. You really like him?”

Lydia gave me a look that suggested not liking Armin would be akin to hating puppies and babies. “He’s delicious,” she purred. She waved a be-ringed hand in the air in front of her nose. “Sort of a pumped-up Bela Lugosi crossed with Robert Davi.”

Jeez, please. I held the door of Lydia’s two-seater sports coupe for her. “You need a drink, or therapy, Lyd,” I sighed. She climbed into the car, fished in her cavernous purse for the keys. “But hey, whatever makes you happy. Just be careful with him, okay? He belongs to Voshki.”

Lydia winked at me. “Darling, I am always careful with my toys, and I think we both know that Vosh is a sport about sharing hers!” And she sped off, leaving me fighting a grin.

As far as my own romantic entanglements were going, Ellis and I had pretty much become exclusive. We hadn’t exactly moved in together, but we were spending a good deal of our spare time either at her place or mine. Most often it was mine because there were less vampires. Ellis lives in a guesthouse on the grounds of Voshki’s architecturally schizophrenic home. I had started to accept that either I really was in love with Ellis, or heading down that road at a rapid clip. Where the whole thing would end up at, I didn’t know, and I wasn’t thinking too hard about it for now either. I wanted to just enjoy the ride. Didn’t stop me from occasionally daydreaming about Voshki though. And occasionally night-dreaming about her too. XXX-rated dreams.

Voshki and the Council worked closely to weed out as many of the remaining Children of Judas as they could find, using information gleaned from Samson. Many of the ginger-heads went to ground, however, including the erstwhile Mayor of Holly Bush Junction and his uptight Bostonian wife. Of Robin Shepherd there was no sign either. She had vanished completely off the grid. I had a feeling that sooner or later she would resurface. I just hoped she did so someplace far from me.

Sometimes in life we get what we wish for and wish we hadn’t, and other times we don’t get what we wish for and wish we had.

It was a Wednesday afternoon when Robin Shepherd came crashing into my life once more. I had left Armin at home, insisting that he needn’t accompany me to visit a friend who lived just a few blocks away, and he reluctantly agreed, but only after consulting with Voshki for so long it nearly made me late. I approached my car where I’d left it parked on the street outside of my friend’s home and fished my keys out of my pocket. As I did so I was thinking about taking Ellis out to dinner, and exactly what the protocol was for a dinner date with your vampire girlfriend. Distracted by these thoughts, I didn’t catch the quick flash of movement behind me until it was too late. Robin slammed me up against my own car.

“Hello, Dante.”

I fought to suck in some of the air pushed out of my lungs by the sudden meeting of solid metal and soft flesh. Then I turned around slowly, still crouched over, one arm clutching my midriff. I glared at the Child of Judas, although, with my eyes watering in pain and my face all red from the exertion of just trying to breathe, the effect was less than the intimidating I’d been going for.

“Get the fuck away from me,” I wheezed.

Robin grinned. I managed to notice once again that smiling made her cute and mentally kicked myself. She wore wraparound shades with black lenses, so I figured the Children of Judas must have the same problems with sunlight as other vampires. For just a second she tipped them down with a finger and I saw her vivid green eyes mocking me.

“So brave,” she cooed. She pushed the glasses back up her nose and wagged the same finger at me. “So stupid.”

I wasn’t afraid. There were a couple good reasons for this. Both of them were silver. The Children of Judas have another little problem—with silver. It burns their skin like a hot knife on butter. It was part of God’s curse laid upon them, a suitable punishment to reflect the thirty pieces of silver their infernal father sold God’s son out for. After my last encounter with Robin, Ellis had presented me with a solid silver ring and a silver chain to match.

“It doesn’t mean we’re engaged or anything,” she’d joked as she slipped the ring onto my finger. Still, I’d got a funny, confusing little flutter in my stomach watching her do so, especially as she put it on the third finger of my left hand. The silver would protect me from any Children of Judas that might turn up again.

I gave Robin a hard stare. “I’m told you guys don’t care for silver.” I showed her the ring on my finger and the pendant around my neck.

Her upper lip drew back. I saw a glint of fang. “I could probably still kill you before that crap burned me enough to even hurt,” she threatened.

I held both hands out at my sides, palms up, inviting her to try. She hesitated and I grinned at her in triumph. “What the fuck do you want, Robin? You played your hand, you lost.”

“Maybe I still have an ace up my sleeve.”

I couldn’t tell whether she was bluffing or not. She gave me that cute smile and told me she liked this new bold me. Then she added, “Too bad it isn’t going to do you the slightest bit of good.”

And she grabbed my left hand and twisted it. Hard. She kept twisting until I was forced onto my knees. The pain was incredible. Only a misguided butch stubbornness prevented me from screaming aloud. I should have. I should have screamed like a fucking banshee and drawn as much attention as I could. People screaming on the leafy, litter-less streets of Bel Air’s upmarket residential areas tend to draw attention in spades.

I heard the faint sizzle of burning flesh. Then I smelled it, like bacon fat spilled on a hot stovetop. The ring was burning Robin, and yet still she held on.

“There are things you don’t know…about the vampires, about yourself,” she told me. Her voice was cold, without inflection. I felt oddly compelled to listen to what she said even through my own pain, and it was considerable. Robin was moments away from breaking my wrist. “I am going to bring the Promise of Darkness to fruition. There will be war. You, Dante, will need to choose a side. I hope you choose the right side. I hope you realize who is worth being loyal to, and who will simply use you, then screw you over and dump your drained-out, dead carcass for the vultures to pick clean.”

That was some imagery I could do without.

Robin gave my wrist a sharp jerk to the left. The sound of bone grinding against bone set my teeth on edge, made me want to pass out, and sadly, I thought I might hear that sound in my nightmares for a long time to come. Starbursts of color dotted the sidewalk in front of me. Robin reached down with her free hand and grabbed my chin, forcing my head up. Her mouth curved in a cruel smile. “Do you recall that I told you how you are a very special human?” she asked.

I was taken aback but I managed a nod. I thought perhaps if I kept her talking, she might forget to snap my wrist in two and I could escape with merely the worst sprain ever.

“Your ability to resist our glamouring and mind reading, the way you probably reacted to Voshki feeding you, or even why so many of us are attracted to you in the powerful way we are…do you wonder how that can be?” she asked.

I nodded again. I’d been meaning to ask Voshki about it. The time just hadn’t seemed right yet. She was busy, I was busy. Blah blah blah. Apparently Robin was going to tell me now.

“It’s because you have vampire blood, Dante.”

To say this was a shock is to commit a heinous understatement. My mind reeled away from the very possibility. Somehow I knew instinctively that Robin did not simply mean I had vampire blood from drinking a few times from Voshki and Ellis. She meant I was part vampire myself. I stared at her, at the smirk twisting her lips, at the dark blanks of the sunglasses, and suddenly I needed to see her eyes. I needed to know she was telling me the truth and not just fucking with me.

“Take those glasses off,” I rasped.

Robin let go of my chin and removed the glasses from her face. I looked into her vivid green eyes. My stomach roiled. “How can I possibly have vampire blood?” I pronounced slowly.

“Your ancestry holds the answer to that question,” Robin answered. “In your lineage is someone who had children to a vampire man. Vampire females can’t get pregnant at all, but our males can impregnate human females. The offspring are born human but they can be sired easily. It’s how we replenish our bloodlines, so to speak. Just siring through blood exchange and killing a human isn’t always enough to keep things fresh. However, some born of the pairing elect to remain human, and sometimes there are residual effects on those humans. The ability to resist glamouring and mind reading, for example. And heightened reactions to feeding from a full vampire.”

I felt light-headed, nauseous, the urge to just lie down on the sidewalk for a while until my confusion cleared nearly overwhelming. I shook my head at Robin.

“Who was the vampire? You know, don’t you? And why are you telling me this anyway?”

She shrugged. “It’s time for you to know. You need to know the whole story before you choose your side in the coming war. As for the who, I suggest asking your mother about your lineage, Dante.”

“My mother?” I began. “I don’t think that’s a good idea—Argh!”

Robin gave my wrist a final hard jerk to the left and I heard…I felt…bone snap and tendons give way.

As Robin released me from her vice grip, I sank to the sidewalk, and there I lay, my broken wrist clutched to my chest, letting the waves of agony roll over me. Robin repeated, “Ask your mother. I’ll see you again sometime.” Then she walked calmly away. I heard a car door open and close and a powerful engine start up. After that I heard nothing for a while except the roaring of the pain in my wrist and the faint, far-off wail of a siren.

And my own thoughts churning over and over, one single sentence.

It’s because you have vampire blood, Dante.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Voshki was a whole lot less concerned with Robin’s dramatic re-declaration of war than she was livid about my getting hurt again. I was none too thrilled about it myself. I had managed to call Ellis from my prone position on the ground in Bel Air and she flew (not literally, vampires can’t turn into bats and fly either, that’s just more clever myth making) to collect me. She made me drink a large amount of her blood right there in the car. I had never been so grateful for tinted glass windows. Or vampire blood. Despite Ellis’s blood, however, a visit to the ER was called for since vampire blood can help to knit broken bones faster but it can’t set them properly. That still takes a trained physician.

Whilst I waited in the ER to have my wrist set, Ellis paced and scowled, muttering dark threats against Robin Shepherd and her redheaded cohorts. Eventually I had to insist that she sit the fuck down. Or go away.

“That’s three times now Robin has had ample opportunity to kill me. She hasn’t done it yet, so I don’t think she is going to,” I deduced.

Ellis stared at me. “You don’t actually believe that, do you?”

I sighed. “I don’t know. All I know is that right now I want you to go fetch me some coffee, please? Your aura is making me jittery.”

“My aura?”

“Yes.”

I hadn’t a clue what Ellis’s aura was doing or what it might be capable of doing. I wouldn’t know an aura if it jumped out of the bushes and tried to molest me. I just knew that I needed her to be gone for a few minutes. Her fussing and fretting was getting on my last nerve. Each time a nurse passed bearing a hypodermic needle I contemplated snatching it from her and using it to stake my overprotective vampire girlfriend.

“Coffee. Now. Please, Ellis.”

“Fine.” She started to move away in search of a vending machine and some of the truly horrible coffee only those can produce, but first she sent a parting shot winging at me. “You should know that me and my aura both think you are fucking insane to even imagine Robin Shepherd is done with you yet.”

Sadly, I supposed she could be right.

Voshki reassigned Armin to me on a permanent basis. I argued with her over it, of course. “That’s going to get old in a hurry, having Mr. Sunshine around,” I told her.

“I don’t care,” she told me.

So I was stuck then with the scary, brooding Armin hanging around my home and my office once again. At least he seemed a little lighter in mood thanks to his blossoming romance with Lydia. He was still Armin though.

I hadn’t mentioned Robin’s allegations regarding my having vampire ancestry to anyone but Lydia. She took the news with an equanimity that surprised me, and touched me too.

“So you might have some vampire blood,” she said with a shrug. She poured us both another drink. “Some people have Italian blood. Some have Irish blood. Your blood is just a wee bit more exotic than most.”

Good old Lydia. I swore her to secrecy, meaning she couldn’t even tell Armin. Especially not Armin. His loyalty to Voshki would demand he told her. I needed to keep the vampires out of this particular bit of my business for now. Even if that meant upsetting Ellis if and when she found out that I’d been holding out on her.

“What if the vampires already know?” Lydia asked.

I had thought of that. After all, Robin hadn’t been the only one to tell me that I was a special human. Voshki said it too. I just never had gotten around to asking her about it. Now that Robin had told me why I was special, I didn’t need to ask Voshki. But I did think about the possibility of her having known all along that I had vampire blood. I wondered, too, if Ellis knew? I shrugged in response to Lydia’s question. “I can’t deal with that right now. I need to deal with one revelation at a time.”

I had already decided that if I was going to tackle my mother on the subject of vampires, I needed a wingman, and who better than Lydia? Lydia has always been pretty good at handling my Mom. And Mom likes Lydia. At least she tends to remember who Lydia is without too much prompting, which amounts to liking in my mother’s wacky world.

We made the drive upstate a week after my encounter with Robin in Bel Air. My wrist was still in a cast. The bones would take maybe ten days to knit with the help of Ellis’s blood, but I’d have to wear the cast for a while longer to avoid raising unwelcome questions.

When my father made the decision to remove his pill- and booze-addled wife from the immediate dangers presented by the Hollywood environment, he had no idea that upstate California would become the pot-growing capital of the western hemisphere. My mother has a steady supply coming in. I know Irina, her live-in care worker, tries to stem the flow, but Mom, like most addicts, is wily, and poor old Irina is fighting a losing battle.

The drive was pretty. We stopped along the Pacific Coast Highway for lunch at a little wooden shack of a place where we drank cold milk shakes and ate fresh lobster while we listened to crackly, tinny music played on a radio old enough to have belonged to Marconi himself. If this had been an ordinary road trip, we could have had fun.

“So how’s it going with Armin?” I asked after lunch.

Lydia beamed. “He’s terrific,” she enthused. She waved her cigarette for emphasis, sending little red-glowing coals flying about. Another attraction of the little shack eatery—they had no truck with all that citified nonsense about smoking bans. When Lydia realized this I thought for a moment she might be seriously considering moving upstate. “He treats me like a real lady, you know? And he’s funny, and smart too. I like funny, smart men. And in bed… Whoo! But hell, honey, I don’t need to tell you about that, do I?”

She did not. I grinned. “Have you, uh, tasted his blood yet?” I inquired as delicately as the subject matter permitted.

Lydia shook her head. “We’re taking it slow, but you bet we’ll get around to it. My ex-husband…the vampire accountant? I used to share blood with him and it was scary fucking good at times. Especially if you smoke a little weed beforehand.”

I made a mental note to suggest this to Ellis. I had a feeling though that she might be a tad too straitlaced for any such revelry.

I called ahead to let Irina know we were en route. She promised to make Mom aware of the impending visit, but she could not guarantee sobriety.

“Irina, you’re a saint to work with her, but you’re not a miracle worker,” I sighed.

When we arrived at the cabin, Irina met us at the front door. She looked harried. Her gaze dropped immediately to the cast on my wrist and a frown creased her heavy Slavic features.

“I was mugged,” I explained shortly.

Irina’s eyebrows waggled. “Is dangerous place you live.”

If she only knew. Lydia and I followed Irina inside the neatly appointed cabin. It’s kept that way by Irina. What my mother knows about housekeeping you could print on Martha Stewart’s little fingernail and have room left over for a couple verses of the Bible. “Your mother is in sunroom,” Irina said. “She is water plants. And drunk.”

Of course she was.

“I try with her,” Irina insisted glumly.

I nodded. “I know you do. We all do. And we all appreciate the thankless task you have.”

The sunroom was, well, sunny. Large picture windows overlooked a cerulean blue lake ringed by emerald fir trees. Rattan furniture dotted the room amidst various types of flora, most of it either already dead or circling the drain. My mother pottered unsteadily between these withered specimens, tilting a red plastic watering can in their direction but largely missing the target each time.

“Mom,” I said.

She straightened up from her task and looked around. My stomach knotted when I saw the lack of recognition in her face.

“Mom, it’s me. Dante.”

The bemusement slowly cleared. My mother beamed. “Milton!”

“I’m Dante,” I told her again. “Milton is my brother.”

She just kept beaming, the action stretching her face to breaking point. Yeah, my mother has been down the plastic surgery road quite a number of times. Her chronological age may be fifty-eight, but her nose is fourteen and her tits are twelve. I cast a quick, help-me-out-here look at Lydia. She sprang into action.

“Hey, Mrs. S,” she greeted my mother enthusiastically as she gently pried the watering can from her hands and guided her into a seat. “You remember me, right? Lydia Diamond. Dante’s friend.”

“Oh yes. Yes, of course I remember you, dear,” my mother beamed. “You’re the one who always drank too much.”

Lydia gave her a brief fish-eye. Then she sat down and allowed me to take the lead. I wished I didn’t have to. My mother was lit like a fucking Christmas tree. I figured just getting straight to the point would be best. That way I had a chance at least of getting out of here before I was overcome with the urge to bash my mother’s head in with the watering can.

“I need you tell me about the Sonnier’s having vampire blood,” I stated.

My mother frowned. “We’ve always been friendly with the bloodsuckers,” she said.

I winced. Both at the non sequitur and the “bloodsuckers” reference. Vampires ever catch anyone calling them “bloodsuckers,” they tend to get very pissy about it.

“Yeah, Mom, I know that. But what about us having some vampire blood in our veins?” I persisted.

“Great great-grandma Alice. She had babies with a vampire man. My Great-great-grandma Alice,” Mom said. I threw a glance at Lydia. The vampire blood was on Mom’s side?

“You sure about that, Mom?” I asked.

She glared at me. “I’m your mother, Milton. Don’t question me.”

Right. I gritted my teeth whilst Lydia leaned forward and gave the scrawny strip of beef-jerky that was my mother’s arm a soothing pat. “Of course you’re sure, hon,” she cooed. “You remember anything else about Alice and her vampire beau?”

Mom did indeed. She couldn’t remember what she’d had for breakfast, or whether she’d even had breakfast in the past twenty fucking years, she couldn’t tell the difference between her own male and female children, but she could remember stories she was told as a girl about a woman who’d been dead for centuries. God bless the human mind.

“Great-great-grandma’s name was Alice Petersen. She married a chap called Bennett. He was from the Midwest…” Mom frowned… “I hate the Midwest.”

So I did have something in common with my mother then. As far as I am concerned, the Midwest is still a fucking dustbowl. There’s nothing there except miles and miles of restlessly fidgeting corn.

Mom gazed fondly at the memories on her own personal movie screen situated somewhere in the middle distance between my left shoulder and the doorway behind me. “Grandma Alice and Grandpa Mike had a brood of kids. She was a very fertile woman. That’s why the vampires chose her.”

I shuddered. Here was yet another of those revelations I could have lived long and happy without ever knowing, but was instead forced to listen to.

“She had four babies with a vampire man,” Mom went on, cheerfully oblivious to my squirming discomfort. Still, this was what I’d come here to find out, wasn’t it? No sense bitching because the details offended my suddenly delicate sensibilities. “One of the babies died as an infant. That happened a lot in those days. Poor postnatal care, you know.”

I knew. I didn’t want a history lesson either. “Get to the point, Mom, I need to be someplace,” I said.

“Don’t be rude, Miriam. I’m telling the story,” Mom scolded.

I looked at Lydia with both eyebrows raised in a question: Who the fuck is Miriam? But she had no more clue than I did. I let my mother go on uninterrupted.

“The other three babies were healthy and they survived right into adulthood. Two boys and a girl. Two of them became vampires, one boy and the girl, and the remaining boy chose to be human. That’s our ancestor. John Bennett, my great-grandfather.”

So there it was. My blood connection to the vampire race. It was an even bigger shock hearing my mother talk about it than it had been hearing it first from Robin. And she spoke of it so casually. I asked my mother if she recalled being told any details about the vampire man with whom Alice had her babies?

She nodded. “We didn’t talk about him so much. Except that he was quite the charmer apparently, and he was a redhead. I don’t like redheads. I prefer blondes.”

Which was weird because my father has jet dark hair. But I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking about Alice’s vampire beau being a redhead. Did that also mean he’d been a Child of Judas? My mother is a drunk and a drug addict, and hasn’t been reliable for at least twenty-five years, so it was entirely feasible that her memory was playing tricks. She often thought the CIA and the KGB, and probably the DMV too, were all coming down the chimney to get her.

On the other hand, if my ancestor really had been a Child of Judas, it might explain why Robin Shepherd was eager that I should know about my vampire blood. It might also explain why she hadn’t killed me, despite the three opportunities she’d had to do so. We could be related.

That was a singularly, deeply unpleasant notion.

Mom’s eyes were starting to become unfocused. She was already thinking about her next hit or drink, our presence slowly slipping from her consciousness. There would be little more of any import to be gained from her today. Anyway, I wanted to get away from here. It was depressing being around my mother. But first I wanted to know something.

“Mom, who is Miriam?” I asked.

She looked at me, startled apparently. “You know Miriam,” she insisted.

I shook my head.

“She’s Lucien’s wife.”

Well, that didn’t help me. “I don’t know who Lucien is,” I explained, slowly and clearly enough so that even my addled mother could understand.

“Voshki’s father,” she said.

Surprise heaped upon surprise. Mystery followed mystery. I looked to Lydia for assistance, found none there either.

“How do you know Voshki?” I asked.

My mother stared at me without recognition. My heart sank. “Milton, why are you here today? This isn’t your day to visit,” she said.

“See you later, Mom,” I told her as Lydia and I took our leave.

She looked blankly at me. “Sure, Miriam. And would you tell my daughter Milton to come see me sometime, if you run into her?”

Just as we were about to depart Irina, called us back. “There is thing. I forget almost to give you.” She opened up one of the pinewood cabinets hung on the kitchen walls and rummaged around in there. “Ah. Here it is. Woman come here, give to me and say give to you. Day before it is yesterday, she come.”

Irina handed me a pale cream envelope, my name written in a neat, ornate hand on the front. I frowned as I took it and slit the top with a kitchen knife from the sink. I caught Irina’s wince. My housekeeping skills were not much better than my mother’s.

“What woman?” I asked. I already had a nasty feeling, however, that I knew exactly what woman.

“Small woman, and skinny…” Irina held her hand palm at a level just below her own capacious bosom to indicate her visitor’s height… “and had dark hair. The brunette, yes? And green eye. Very green eye. Is she friend of you, Dante?”

Not a friend, no. A distant relation perhaps. But never a friend. Friends I tended not to want to kill with my bare hands.

I extracted the single sheet of notepaper from within the envelope, unfolded it and read with Lydia peering over my shoulder.

Remember, Dante, it read, I know where they ALL are.

I folded the notepaper back in half, stuffed it in the envelope again, and placed both in my jacket pocket. I smiled at Irina. “She’s not really a friend, no. But I doubt very much that she’ll ever come back. If she does, I want you to call me immediately. Or call Voshki Kevorkian.”

The Russian woman frowned. “I should call vampire for assistance?”

It would have been impossible to employ a live-in care worker for anyone in our family unless that person were aware of the existence of vampires. I nodded to Irina’s inquiry. “If you can’t get hold of me.”

“I need to worry, Dante?” she asked then.

Maybe. I wasn’t sure. I shook my head with more confidence than I felt. “No. You shouldn’t worry. Just take care, Irina. Of yourself and Mom. I’ll try to come by again in a couple weeks.”

As we walked back to the car, Lydia asked me if I was okay with this new information.

“I’m processing it,” I told her with a wan smile.

“Do you still intend to process it all on your own, or are you going to share with the vampires now?” she asked.

“I don’t know what to do,” I confessed. I leaned on the hood of the coupe and frowned toward the distant lake where the blue water sparkled under the bright California sun. For a brief moment I entertained a desire to go down there and take a swim. I find swimming helps me to forget for a little while whatever shit is going on in my life. “I mean, what if Voshki already knew about this too? That my vampire ancestor was a redhead and maybe a Child of Judas? That’s a pretty big fucking thing to keep from someone. And how in hell does my mother know Voshki?”

“That I might be able to help you with,” Lydia sighed. I stopped and glared at her. She held up a conciliatory hand. “Your parents worked for the vampires too, Dante, you know that. I think Voshki may have visited your home once or twice when you were a kid.”

“You only think?” I echoed.

Lydia shrugged. “I really can’t remember. Sorry, Dante. Your mom isn’t the only one that embraced the ’80s excess, you know. As for your ancestor, honey, there must be some way of checking out who this vampire dude was?”

I smiled wryly at her. “You mean like the Vampire Hall of Records? I doubt it. The vampires themselves might be my only chance.”

“How about your father?”

I frowned. Started to shake my head, but Lydia interrupted me. “Why don’t you give it a try with him first? He might surprise you.”

Well, he never was as wasted as my mother. I figured it might be worth the shot. I pushed away from the hood and walked around the coupe, opened up the passenger door. “I’ll call him soon as we get back and arrange a lunch date,” I decided. I gave Lydia an arch look as I slid into the bucket seat. “Do I even need to ask whether you want to come along?”

She cackled and gunned the engine. Dust spewed from under the tires. “Just be sure to make those lunch reservations someplace that serves a good vodka Collins,” she told me.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It’s not just every day that a daughter goes to her father to ask him about her vampire ancestors, but this was exactly the question I took to my father three days after Lydia and I visited my mother. Before that, however, an odd little package arrived for me at my office, delivered there by a courier who had no return address for it. Just a PO box in upstate California.

I unwrapped the package and removed a single item: a small, silver, rectangular pendant attached to a silver chain. Carved into the pendant were strange symbols and words that made no sense to me. I turned it this way and that, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Then, unable to make sense of it, I laid the pendant down on my desk. I took out the note that accompanied it and unfolded that.

My eyebrows hurtled up my forehead. I’d thought I was done with shocks and surprises for a little while at least. But no. The note—and I assumed then the gift too—was from Samson. Voshki’s traitorous driver, vanquished to who knew where and what fate.

The note began:

Dear Dante, I know you probably don’t much like me right now, and part of that is because you don’t know everything.

Well, he could say that again without fear of contradiction. I was already pretty sure I didn’t know even half of everything. Curiosity made me continue to read Samson’s note.

Please believe me, Dante, when I say I’m real sorry for what happened. It wasn’t meant to be like that. I mean, I didn’t want it to happen that way. There were reasons for it…but I can’t tell you those yet. I hope someday I will be able to explain my actions to you.

Another vampire who couldn’t or wouldn’t explain themselves. Gee. There was a shocker. My patience was thinning with Samson, but I figured since I’d started I may as well finish reading.

For now, just know that I’m sorry. Voshki is our leader and I am loyal to her. I want you to know that anything I did, I did it for Voshki. You also should know that I’ll always be here if you need me. Just ask Ollie to contact me, he knows where to find me. In the meantime, I’d like for you to accept the enclosed gift. It’s made from pure silver and has been blessed by the Shamans of Light. It will protect you against the Children of Judas’s glamouring and mind reading abilities, and maybe it’ll do some other stuff too. It works differently with different people. Sorry, but I don’t know the specifics of what it can do for you. Once again, I’m sorry for what I did, Dante, and I hope you can forgive me. Yours, Samson.

I put the note down on my desk alongside the pendant and breathed in and out deeply a few times. I didn’t quite know what to think. Ollie knew where to find Samson? I had imagined Samson was dead. I hadn’t wanted to think about his fate, nor allowed myself to think about it, but in my heart I’d imagined he was dead. Why would Voshki allow a traitor to live?

Except Samson’s words didn’t sound like those of a traitor. My gut lurched with the impact of this thought. I stared at the note and the pendant, my eyes flicking rapidly between the two. What in hell did it all mean?

I folded the note, tucked the strange gift back into its box and stuffed both in a drawer of my desk. Right now, I couldn’t think clearly about this. Ellis’s gifts of silver rings and pendants hadn’t worked very well against Robin Shepherd, so I had no tangible reason to think anything Samson could come up with might fare better. The whole “Shamans of Light” matter I filed for consideration at a later time. I had more pressing concerns today. Meeting my father and asking him about our vampire lineage being top of that list.

Lydia and I met with my father at midday, at a small, out of the way, family-run restaurant in West Hollywood where he liked to lunch. My father rarely had joined in the Hollywood lifestyle with anything but reluctance.

“Hey,” he said when I arrived. He stood up from the table to give me an awkward hug and then air-kissed a couple times with Lydia. “How are you gals?”

“I’m good, Dad,” I told him. I felt as awkward as he looked. My family is not close.

My father waited until we were seated and then resumed his own seat. Two empty beer bottles sat in front of him. He must’ve been really nervous, I thought. My father rarely drinks alcohol. “So, uh, to what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked.

Despite their differences, my parents had few secrets from one another during their marriage. Maybe it was this lack of secrecy that led to their ultimate parting of the ways, who knows? A little mystery might’ve gone a long way. There was a decent possibility my father would have heard and recalled things about her Great-great grandma Alice forgotten by my mother.

I smiled. “What? I can’t just want to have lunch with my old Dad?”

He eyed me as he sipped a fresh beer. “When was the last time we had lunch and I didn’t need to spend three weeks having my people call your people in an attempt just to set it up?”

Okay, he had a point. I’m not exactly Daughter of The Year either. I waited until we had ordered lunch before bringing up my reason for being here. I ordered club sandwiches and my father asked for the same. Lydia politely declined to partake in food since she was only here for the vodka Collinses.

“What do you know about Mom’s vampire ancestor?” I asked.

My father frowned. “Robert Shepherd,” he said.

I blinked. I hadn’t expected him to be so direct. I looked at Lydia. She gave me a quick eyebrow shrug. “Shepherd?” I echoed and Dad nodded. He seemed oblivious to the fact I was staring and breathing hard. Shepherd. It had to be a coincidence.

“Yeah, that was definitely his name. I know he didn’t just use your Great-great-grandma Alice, he actually had quite a thing for her. She refused his offer of, um, anything permanent.”

I raised an eyebrow. Dad nodded. “Way I heard it, he would’ve kept her with him as his, um, human, except Alice wanted no part of that. Vampires are possessive and Alice was a bit of a free spirit.”

I knew all about that. “Mom says he was a redhead,” I said hesitantly.

My father bobbed his head once more, and in that single gesture he shattered forever any illusions I might have succeeded in clinging to that I wasn’t related to Robin Shepherd. I gripped my fork in one hand as I listened to him describe what he knew about Robert Shepherd.

Robert Shepherd was a businessman, as many vampires tend to be. They like power, and power is easiest got with money, so they gravitate towards fields in which they can make a lot of money. My ancestor also was very fond of humans, too fond some said. That he had relations with, and children with, a human woman was no surprise to anyone who knew him.

A Child of Judas who was fond of humans? That was different.

“What about the children?” I asked.

My father bit into his steak sandwich. He chewed, swallowed. “Four. They had four. One died. Two became vampires and one remained human. His name was, uh, John Bennett. He became a farmer someplace in the Midwest…Iowa maybe. Who knows? He led a pretty quiet life, by all accounts.”

Right. Except that he may have been the offspring of a Child of Judas.

“Did he have any weird talents?” I asked, thinking about my own ability to resist glamouring and mind reading.

My father shrugged. “Who knows? He was your mom’s ancestor and I never saw any weird talents in her—did you?”

No, I never had. Mom’s premier talent was for finding new and exciting uses for aluminum foil and spoons. That wasn’t weird, just sad.

“How is your mom these days?” My father spoke hesitantly, as though he were ashamed to have me know he didn’t keep in close touch with his wife’s well-being. I gave him a quick smile.

“I visited her a couple days ago. She thought I was Milton to begin with. Then she called me Miriam. I don’t even know anyone named Miriam.”

My father’s gaze became momentarily distant and troubled.

“What?” I demanded.

He shook his head. “It’s…nothing,” he said.

It was something. I was sure of it. I glared at him. “Dad. I already have vampires out the wazoo who aren’t telling me anything. Do I really have to add you to that roster?”

He sighed. “I don’t know for sure, Dante, but I assume she must mean Miriam Kevorkian,” he said.

I nodded. “Voshki’s mother. Right. Mom mentioned that. What does Voshki’s family have to do with us? Or me?”

My father shook his head again, this time with a determination that told me that I wasn’t going to get any further helpful information out of him. “Poor Irina,” he remarked instead. “That woman is a saint to put up with what she does. God knows I couldn’t do it.” He bit into his sandwich, chewed thoughtfully for a few seconds then swallowed and washed it all down with a swig of beer. “You know I had to do what I did with your mom, right? You don’t think bad of me for it, do you?”

I had no idea my father even cared what his kids thought of him. And frankly, my parents’ problems were their own. I had enough problems to be concerned with. I shrugged. “I think you did what you had to,” I said and my father looked relieved.

“She wasn’t always like that,” he said wistfully.

I eyed him. I certainly couldn’t recall a time in my life when my mother had been anything other than a doped-up, wigged-out semi-lunatic. Sure, she’d continued to be a terrific movie producer even during her worst times, and the respect her industry peers had for her ability to get the job done was about all that had stood between her and oblivion at those times. But as a mother she had stunk up the room. Always.

“She was a firecracker—in every way—when I married her.” Dad grinned.

I couldn’t get a picture of that. Which was probably a good thing. “So you don’t know anything else about my vampire ancestor?” I asked. Then, because I wasn’t letting him off the hook about that either: “And you need to tell me what connection the Kevorkians have to us.”

He sighed. He also glanced at his watch. Wanting me to know he had places to be. What a wonderful, close-knit family we were. No wonder I didn’t find dating a vampire to be all that goddamned weird. Maybe Great-great-grandma Alice had felt the same way.

“The Kevorkians,” I said stubbornly. I caught Lydia eyeing me, and she gave me a quick atta-girl wink.

“We’ve known the Kevorkians for a while,” my father began. “Your great-grandmother on your mother’s side married a Sonnier. That’s the first I heard of the Kevorkians being involved with our family. As for us, well you know we’ve always worked with them, Dante.” He gave his watch another pointed glance. “I’m sorry, sweetie, but I gotta go. I’ll, uh, see you again sometime?”

I wanted to love him. I really did. Just as I wanted to love my mother. I gave a stiff little nod instead. “Sure, Dad. And if you remember anything else about that vampire guy…”

“…I’ll call you,” he finished hastily. He exchanged more air kisses with Lydia, who I realized hadn’t said a word the whole time, and that worried me. My father then bent down swiftly and kissed me on the cheek. “Bye, Dante. You take care.”

“Yeah, you too,” I told him.

Once he was gone, Lydia laid a hand lightly on my wrist and looked at me with concern. “Honey, are you okay?” she asked. She waggled her brows at me. “That’s a helluva revelation. You could be related to Robin Shepherd. I don’t know what to say. For once.”

That was alright. I didn’t know what to think of it yet. “Do you think that explains why she didn’t kill me?” I asked Lydia and she shrugged.

“Might be that’s a question you’ll have to ask someone who knows…someone like Voshki?” she suggested gently.

I sighed. Picked up my drink and downed the remainder of it. Then I signaled to a passing waiter for another round. Sometimes all there is to soothe a mind troubled is the balm of booze. I didn’t need to ask if Lydia wanted another.

“Sorry, sweetie, but you’re going to have to tell Voshki what you know.” Lydia patted my arm again.

I knew what she was saying was true. If I really was related to Robin Shepherd and the Children of Judas, even distantly, the only people who could help me deal with that, and all it implied, were the vampires. Even though I suspected more than ever that they had been keeping things from me.

“Fuck me,” I sighed. “Why can’t things in my life be even vaguely as they seem?”

Lydia raised her glass in a mocking toast. “Welcome to Hollywood, baby. Land of smoke and mirrors.”

I smiled as I raised my own glass. “And vampires. Don’t forget those.”