Love Bites (27 page)

The rest of the lighting came from above. Hundreds of tiny ceiling lights that changed color constantly. Made the orchids look even more beautiful. Didn’t do much for the guests, though. Especially not the green.

The party was in full swing, people crowding the dance floor. The disc jockey, a six-foot-two-inch transsexual dressed like Wonder Woman, moved back and forth between two turntables, keeping the music going, loud and fast. Maroon 5’s “Wake Up Call” was playing when we walked in. S/he followed it with Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie” and Lady GaGa’s “Bad Romance.” By the time Enrique Iglesias’s “Bailamos” came on, I couldn’t stop myself. I took Peter’s hand and pulled him to one corner of the dance floor.

I grew up dancing. I’ve never met an Armenian who didn’t, man or woman, human or vampyre. My earliest memories are of the men in the village forming a circle, each holding on to one end of a white handkerchief, stomping and kicking and dipping as they snaked around a fire pit to the sound of the dumbek and the oud. Even my father came down out of the mountain when he heard the music. He wouldn’t dance with the others, but for hours on end he’d leave the valley unguarded while he twirled around by himself in the shadows. Then my mother would join him and they’d disappear back into the trees, satisfying urges the music gave rise to. Music affects me the same way, almost as much as the Thirst. The right music. Primal . . . minor . . . a driving beat. It sets up a longing in me, an aching, a need for release that only gets satisfied by movement. Or coupling. Someone’s hands on my body, down my breasts, between my legs. That’s what the right kind of music does to me.

“Bailamos” did that for me. I turned my back on Peter and moved my hips against him, keeping beat to the music with my ass against his groin. He kept the beat right back. I danced away so I could turn around and watch him. The man could move, even in a tuxedo. If it hadn’t been for Frank Sinatra, I might have ravaged him right on the dance floor. But Wonder Woman changed CDs, and Ol’ Blue Eyes started singing. I calmed down. Frank Sinatra doesn’t do it for me.

Peter likes him, though. He took me in his arms and we finished “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.”

“Mick Erzatz is definitely a were, Peter. I can smell him. And all that dialogue about me not aging. He knows exactly what I am,” I said as the DJ segued into Nickelback. We stood there embracing each other without moving.

“Look, Ovsanna, you still don’t know if he’s the one who’s trying to kill you. These fucking things are multiplying like rabbits. The rougarou, the boxenwolves, the woman we torched. They’re all over the place. You don’t know for sure he’s the one. Just enjoy the party and we’ll see what else we can find out. ”

I could feel Mick watching us. He was by the bar, talking to a short brunette with huge breasts and a huge ass. I blocked out the music so I could eavesdrop.

“I’m telling you, Kimmie, you gotta release another tape. Your STARmeter’s dropping. You can only get so much mileage outta the breakup with the boyfriend. Believe me, I got plenty of clients who’ll be willing to bang your brains out on camera. Then we fake the tape getting stolen and file a lawsuit and you’ll be right back on ‘Page Six,’ and your show’s guaranteed another season. You just let me handle the details.”

I stopped listening.

The invitation had said black tie. Most of the men were in tuxedos, except our host, who was wearing a brown kimono over silk pajama pants. All the waitstaff were dressed as circus performers. That’s what some of them must have been, because a fellow in a harlequin outfit came tumbling across the floor to present me with a rose. A green rose, under the lights. He took our drink order. Five minutes later, a clown on a unicycle delivered Peter his Guinness.

There was a seminude woman covered in silver body paint and black feathers, sitting at a harp to the left of the bar. She played when the disc jockey took a break. The waiters, passing trays of hors d’oeuvres, and the chefs, standing at the food stations serving designer pastas, lobster salad, and individual filet mignons, were dressed in red-and-yellow unitards. They looked ready to tightrope walk at a moment’s notice.

I left Peter waiting at one of the food stations and walked from the banquet hall into a long, low-ceilinged corridor that had rooms opening off both sides. A woman stepped out of the first one, leaving the door ajar. She was dressed like the Philip Morris bellhop from the Hotel New Yorker, and she had a cigarette tray in her hands. Inside the room, I saw two men and a woman on a bed. One of the men was tying off his arm. He looked familiar, an actor who’d walked off that show
Celebrity Rehab,
claiming his faith in God was all he needed to get straight. He must have stopped praying. The other man was licking cocaine off the woman’s nipples. She raised her head to look at me and smiled.

“Would you like some enhancement for your festivities this evening?” It was the cigarette girl. She turned so I could examine her tray. There were cigarettes nestled in a black-lacquered bowl, next to a matching bowl of cocaine. A small mountain of cocaine. Three more bowls held what looked like ecstasy, oxy, and acid-laced sugar cubes.

Vampyres are immune to the effects of alcohol or drugs. But if we take blood tainted with either, we feel it. I fed on Rimbaud once when he was drunk on absinthe. We were celebrating his birthday in Abyssinia. Over a hundred years ago and I still remember how ghastly I felt. One of those times when I wished I could vomit.

The Philip Morris girl was feeling no pain; she’d obviously been sampling her wares. She wasn’t going to see the new year if she kept it up. I put both my hands on either side of her face and stared into her oh-so-tiny pupils. Blocked out the images I got before they became too clear. Someone had burned her as a child; I didn’t want to see it. She closed her eyes and sank to the ground, quite gracefully for someone so loaded. I took the tray from her and proceeded down the hallway, trying doorknobs. Two of the rooms were locked; I could hear the sounds of sex coming from within. The third was a meditation room, complete with altar and jade Buddhas. There was a fire in the fireplace. Perfect. I tossed the pills in first and then a few cigarettes at a time. On the altar, a dish of sand held sticks of incense. I replaced some of the sand with the cocaine, mixing it to disguise the color a bit, and stood the sticks up again. Set the empty tray on a low table, decorated it with a candle and one of the Buddhas, and stepped into the hallway.

“Oh, Ms. Moore, I’m such a fan!”

She was a tall blonde in a short dress, with feet big enough for a circus clown. I couldn’t think of her name. One of those skinny girls who are always in the gossip magazines. There are two or three of them who seem interchangeable to me; I can never keep them straight. Celebutantes. All wealthy, all cadaverous, all completely devoid of talent. But incredibly successful, if you measure success by notoriety. Her picture is everywhere, even on a DUI report.
She’s
everywhere. Of course she’d be at this party.

“I can’t believe you’re here, that is just so cool,” she continued. “Are you getting a kickback from the paparazzi? Mick didn’t pay you to come, did he? That lady, Madelaine, who works for him? Told me I was the only celebrity he could afford, and then I showed up and I can’t believe it, Tori Spelling’s husband is here. I wonder what he’s getting paid. I haven’t seen Tori, though. Are you actually a friend of Mick’s? You must be. Oh, I know, I’ll bet you were his client when he was big.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

I found Ovsanna in a hallway, with the cigarette girl stretched out on the floor in front of her. The girl had that same dazed expression my aunt Addie had on Christmas Eve after Ovsanna took her outside to talk to her. I wondered what was going on, but I didn’t take the time to ask. Instead, I guided Ovsanna farther down the hall and through an open door into some sort of meditation room. It smelled as if someone had been in there, smoking.

“Charlie just called me,” I said. “I was waiting at the seafood station. The chef there has peacock feathers attached to his crotch. You ought to see him trying to sear tuna.”

“Where was he?” Ovsanna asked.

“Next to the smoothie station with the papayas and bananas, which is where he should have been to begin with—with his feathers away from the flames. Whoever designed these costumes didn’t have cooking in mind.”

“No, I mean Charlie. Where was he when he called? Did you just have another Guinness?”

“Yes. And you don’t have to worry. I’m half Welsh, remember. We have saints who turned water into beer to cure the plague and feed the multitudes. And my other half is Italian. I was drinking watered-down wine when I was nine. Believe me, I can hold my own.”

“Peter! What about Charlie?”

“Charlie said he and Tyrone and James had gotten to the wild animal preserve. It starts about ten miles up the mountain. They took an electric train that circles the property. There was no one else on it.”

“Are they still up there?”

“No. He couldn’t get phone reception on the mountain. They came back down about halfway and they’re exploring the property around the castle. He said to tell you Erzatz has all kinds of beasts on the preserve and some of them aren’t human. I mean, they aren’t mammal. You know what I mean. Some of them are werebeasts.”

“I suspected as much. They’re probably the surviving weres Lilith had with her in Palm Springs. We killed a lot of them before she died, but once her gooey body dribbled into the pool, the remaining weres and
dhampirs
disappeared into the desert. You didn’t get there in time to see that.”

“I saw enough, believe me. I don’t ever want to see anything like that again. Olive Thomas, nude, with snakes coming out of her skull and goat haunches for legs, is an image I’ll never forget.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

Peter and I went back into the ballroom to tell Solgar what Charlie and the others had found out. Ernst had set Mary on one of the cocktail tables with a bowl of water in front of her for verisimilitude. It’s one of the reasons he’s such a good lawyer, his attention to detail. I didn’t expect to see Mary lapping at the bowl, though. When we shift to another form, we don’t necessarily take on the needs of that being. I can become a bat, but I won’t spend my time searching for insects.

I wanted to get away from Peter. What I really wanted was to get Mick Erzatz off by himself so I could confront him, but Peter must have known that—he was on me like white on rice. He wouldn’t leave my side. He kept me with him while he got a bite to eat, and then we went downstairs to watch the female mud wrestlers battle it out in the nude.

We ended up outside by the pool, watching six synchronized swimmers in abbreviated fish costumes do an Esther Williams extravaganza. Mary jumped out of Solgar’s arms, landed in the pool, and, before we could stop her, peed in the shallow end. Fortunately, no one noticed. It was almost midnight and most of the guests couldn’t see through a ladder.

“Ah, here you are.” Mick Erzatz approached us with a young woman on his arm and a paparazzo in tow. I looked for a talisman around the pap’s neck, but he had on a hoodie and I couldn’t tell what it might be hiding. The woman looked slightly familiar. She had short orange hair, truly orange, like a Satsuma mandarin. Her top was cut loose and low, and without a bra, when she leaned forward to shake my hand, I could see both breasts and her stomach. That’s what I recognized. She was the girl from the threesome I’d seen in the bedroom earlier. “I’ve got a client who wanted to meet you. This little hottie is Nicky.” He turned to Miss Tangerine. “Say hello, sweetheart.”

“Oh, Ms. Moore,” she said, staring at Peter the entire time she spoke, “I’ve been watching you since I was a kid. And I can’t believe you’re here with the detective who solved the Cinema Slayer case.” She turned to Peter, offering both hands and an even better view of the previously cocaine-laden nipples. “You’re Detective Peter King, aren’t you? You saved that boy from being drowned last year. Oh, my God, I can’t believe I’m meeting a real-life hero. Could I have my picture taken with you? Oh, please?”

I stepped to the side, like the chopped liver Miss Nicky obviously thought I was, and the paparazzo moved forward to snap a couple of stills. Nicky had her arm around Peter for the photos. Somehow she managed, with her free hand, to pull a business card out of her purse and hand it to the photographer, begging him to e-mail them to her as soon as possible. She never let go of Peter, just kept flirting her little heart out.

“Jeez, I think she’s gonna offer to blow him right in front of us,” Mick said, pulling me away from the two of them. “Let’s get outta here, I want to show you my pets.”

He was my attacker, all right. As soon as he touched me, I saw an ancient old woman with dessicated skin and a short black tongue, her teeth worn down to nubs by thousands of years spent devouring human flesh. It was Lilith, the Night Hag. In my vision, Mick was fucking her.

I pulled my arm away from his hand and followed him outside.