Vamparazzi (19 page)

Ignoring the reporter, the detective said to her colleague, “Get those two bottles from the fridge over to the lab. We need both of their contents analyzed as soon as possible.”

“Both?” I repeated with a frown. “Two?”

There'd been about half a dozen bottles in that fridge at the start of the evening. I had dropped only one, so there certainly ought to be more than two bottles still in there now. Unless ... My gaze flew to Daemon and my jaw dropped.

“My God,” I said in disgust. “You really
do
drink blood between shows!”

“You're not helping, either,” he said darkly.

Detective Branson gestured to my neck. “How exactly did you get this bite mark, Miss Diamond?”

I met the cop's intent gaze as Rachel howled from behind the closed door,
“We're all going to DIE!”

Branson's cell phone rang, and he reached inside his coat pocket. “Excuse me for moment.”

He winced at Rachel's next piercing shriek and put one hand over his ear as he pressed his cell phone against the other ear. He spoke with his caller only long enough to tersely exchange some information. Then he nodded to the female detective as he ended the call. “They've found more of those bottles at his home. They've also found, er, a coffin.”

She absorbed this, then said to Daemon, “All right. Let's go, sir.”

I looked at Daemon again. “Are you under arrest?”

“Not yet,” he said wearily. “But the night is young.”

“Actually, it's nearly four o'clock in the morning,” said the lady detective. “And we still have quite a lot to talk about. So let's get moving.”

Daemon's shoulders sagged. “Victor.”

“Yes?” The hand-wringing personal assistant looked like he was trying not to cry.

“Call my lawyer.”

“Of course! Right away.”

“No, better still, go to his place, get him out of bed, and bring him to ... to . . .” Daemon looked at the detective.

“Manhattan South.” She handed a business card to Victor as she said, “Your employer has declined to answer any more questions without a lawyer present. The sooner the attorney meets us there, the sooner we can proceed.” Then she gestured in the direction of the stage door. “Is it still a madhouse out there?”

“Yes,”
Branson and a uniformed officer said simultaneously.

“Is there a less conspicuous exit from this place?” she asked with a touch of exasperation.

I thought of the tunnels, but I doubted that was the sort of exit she meant.

Bill offered to show her to the fire exit, which was on the other side of the stage. She spoke into a police radio, asking for an unmarked car to come collect Daemon outside that door. For the first time since I'd met him, the celebrity vampire seemed to favor a discreet departure, too. Although not under arrest—not yet, anyhow—he nonetheless looked like a prisoner as he was escorted out of here by the woman detective and two stern-faced patrolmen.

As Rachel continued sobbing at full volume, I squirmed uncomfortably, trying to relieve the irritation of the corset wires poking into my breasts. I turned toward my dressing room, anxious, exhausted, and eager to go home. Then I saw Detective Branson's face and realized I'd be here a while longer.

Indeed, another hour passed before Leischneudel and I finally made our way to the stage door, wearing our street clothes and carrying our belongings. Detective Branson had agreed, at my request, to have a squad car take us home. My bruised face was scrubbed clean, and I was limp with fatigue. Leischneudel was still so overwrought by the news of the murder, he was hollow-eyed and babbling nervously.

Detective Branson had asked me a lot of questions about Daemon, his behavior, and the biting incident onstage. He'd also asked me a lot about the murder victim, focusing so much on my “interaction” with her and my “attitude” to her that I got exasperated. I discovered, not for the first time, that I was less sensitive and caring than a man expected me to be. For all that I readily acknowledged that the murder of a young woman was a dreadful tragedy, I nonetheless found the detective's implications that I ought to feel more emotionally invested in Angeline's death nonsensical—and also annoying.

“My entire ‘relationship' with the victim,” I'd wound up snapping at him, “consisted of her knocking me down and punching me. Yes,
obviously,
I'm sorry that she died young, and I find the manner of her death extremely disturbing. But, no, of course I'm not
upset,
detective. Why would I get emotional over the death of total stranger who assaulted me during the two whole minutes that I was acquainted with her?”

Well, after that outburst, the rest of the interview was tense, even hostile. I sincerely hoped Branson wouldn't follow through on his threat to question me again at a later date.

With my nerves frayed, my eyes stinging with fatigue, and my shoulders drooping, I followed Leischneudel through the stage door and was immediately greeted outside by the staccato brightness of flashing bulbs and the excited cries of vamparazzi.

I squinted against the camera lights going off in my face and making my tired eyes water. “They're still here? It's nearly five in the morning!”

“Where's Daemon?” someone in the crowd shouted. “We want Daemon!”

A uniformed cop approached me. “Miss Diamond?”

“Yes.”

“There's a squad car coming to take you home. It'll pull up to the curb any minute now.”

“Thank you, officer.”

There were police barricades blocking off this area now, providing us with a mercifully clear path to where the car would collect us. Eager fans leaned forward, hanging over the barricades, some of them smiling and shouting at Leischneudel, clamoring for his autograph. He seized my arm, clutching me tightly and avoiding eye contact with the vamparazzi.

Despite the predawn chill of early November, many of the women out here were in revealing outfits, with deep V-necks, slit skirts, bare shoulders, and lacy sleeves. I wondered if their ghostly white faces and dark-blue lips were due to goth makeup or to hypothermia. Predictably, there were also a number of Janes waiting out here—but at least one of them had given in to a shred of common sense and donned a coat over her flimsy white gown. There were also scary-monster creatures, guys in leather jackets, women in velvet capes, photographers, and more cops than usual. I looked around for Dr. Hal's little trio, but they seemed to have gone. All things considered, that was a relief.

Neither of the uniformed cops stationed at the stage door looked familiar to me. They weren't the two officers who had declined to arrest Angeline last night. I wondered if those men had been taken off this assignment because of the tragic outcome of that decision. However, for all that Angeline might indeed still be alive now if she'd been locked up after assaulting me, the cops on the scene couldn't possibly have foreseen what would happen when they let her go. No one could.

No one but the killer.

I shivered as a dark chill swept through me.

The crowd was now chanting, “Dae-mon! Dae-mon! Dae-mon!”

The cop who had previously spoken to me said, “We tried to tell these people that Mr. Ravel is gone.” He shook his head. “Like reasoning with the sea.”

“Welcome to my world, officer,” I replied. “I don't suppose you've seen the play?”

“At three-fifty a ticket? Are you kidding?”

Leischneudel, who was still clinging anxiously to me, heard this. “
That's
what the scalpers are getting now?”

“It was, as of midnight tonight.” The cop added cynically, “If the show doesn't close, the price will go even higher.”

Leischneudel and I exchanged a glance, both suddenly realizing that
The Vampyre
's remaining run depended entirely on whether Daemon was arrested or released. This obvious fact hadn't occurred to me before now. We didn't even know if we still had jobs.

“Ah, here's your ride,” said the cop as a squad car pulled up to the curb. He took my elbow to escort me to the vehicle, while Leischneudel stuck like a burr to my other side.

“Wait, Aubrey!” someone cried.

“They're leaving!”

“
Aubrey!
Over here!”

In their eagerness to claim his attention before he got into the car, several shouting fans leaned precariously far over the police barricade while reaching for Leischneudel. Then one of them, perhaps so sleep-deprived by now that all sense of reality had deserted her, started trying to climb over the dense crowd, apparently intent on hurdling the barricade. She flung herself forward, her weight and momentum carrying the whole mass of bodies beneath her forward, too. The angle of their combined, top-heavy weight toppled the barricade, which fell over with a thunderous crash. The noise was accompanied by the shrieks and howls of tumbling vamparazzi, some of them probably in a bit of pain now, others just startled or alarmed.

The two cops with us rushed forward to help the fallen fans and sort out the writhing heap of arms, legs, wings, fangs, and leather. While their attention was wholly focused on that, several Janes scrambled over the pile of bodies and rushed straight at me with maddened expressions on their faces.

“Esther!” Leischneudel cried in alarm. “Watch out!”

I barely had time to drop my tote bag and cover my head with my arms before the well-dressed Regency ladies started pummeling me. Too stunned to scream for help, I uttered breathless grunts of fear and confusion as I fell to the dirty ground and curled up in a defensive ball while they punched and kicked me.

I heard Leischneudel shouting, and I sensed he was scuffling with the Janes. I risked opening my eyes and peeking through my elbows, which where positioned to shield my face. I saw more daintily slippered feet running toward me—and then I felt even more weight piling on top of me.

“Stop!” Leischneudel shouted at them.
“Stop!”

“Get her!
Get
her!” one of the Janes cried.

Get me? Why? WHY? What have
I
done?
I thought.

“Out of my way!” To my relief, a sturdy Jane plucked a skinny one off me and shoved her aside. But then Sturdy Jane took her place and started pummeling me.

“Go away! She's mine!” another Jane cried. “
I'm
the one going home with Daemon tonight!”

“No,
I'm
going home with him!”

Sitting on top of me, these two Janes starting shoving furiously at each other.

Oh, good God, Leischneudel had been
right
. After last night's incident, now these girls thought that attacking me was the way to get laid by Daemon! Maniacally deluded about the link between cause and effect,
that
was why they had suddenly jumped me when they saw their chance tonight.

This was all Daemon's fault. If he wasn't arrested for murder, then I would have to kill him.

But I could only do that, it occurred to me as someone tried to pound my head into the pavement, if I lived through this.

“
I'm
going home with him!” another Jane shrieked, trying to bite my left knee.

I found it hard to believe that sex with
anyone
could be worth all this, let alone sex with a self-absorbed actor.

I kneed that girl in the face—and I found that I felt much better when I heard her shriek in pain.

Okay, my interval as a cowering victim was officially
over
now.

“
Off!
Get off!” I barked at the Janes. Or I tried. I could barely breathe.

Utterly enraged now, and finding this feeling vastly preferable to being frightened and bewildered, I started trying to uncurl from my defensive posture so I could fight back and give these lunatic girls the black eyes and bloody lips they damn well deserved. However, getting out of my fetal position was harder than I had anticipated, since I was by now at the bottom of a pile-on that, as near as I could tell, consisted of half the female population of New York.

I still couldn't breathe, and I realized that I was going to faint—or worse—if I didn't get some air pretty soon.

The prospect of suffocating to death beneath a bunch of squealing, lust-crazed vampire groupies all wearing
my
costume was so appalling, it lent unholy strength to my limbs. I started heaving, kicking, and elbowing the girls, grunting with effort, desperately sucking in quick gasps of air when possible, as I struggled to fling the Janes off me.

“Ow! She's like an
animal!
” one of them complained when my elbow hit her in the gut.

“Off!” I snarled—though it came out more like an inarticulate gurgle.

“Help! Officers!” Leischneudel shouted, still trying to fight off my attackers. Then I heard a fleshy thudding sound. Leischneudel grunted in pain, collapsed, and fell down next to me, his hands clutching his groin reflexively as he lay on his back.
“Ow.”

“Lei . . .” I croaked breathlessly.

A plump Jane fell on top of him, her butt landing squarely on his solar plexus. He appeared to black out then.

To my relief, I heard a shrill police whistle pierce through the cacophony. Then male voices shouted with reassuring force and authority. I saw large, sensibly shod feet approaching me swiftly, then I felt heavy weights being removed from my body. I was gratefully drawing in huge gulps of air when a pair of strong hands seized me by the shoulders and helped me sit up.

“Miss Diamond! Are you all right?” the rescuing cop asked me anxiously.

I nodded, still gulping down air.

“Are you sure?” he prodded.