The Ultimate Bite Read online

  “What is your name, luv?” he asked, his foreign tone buzzing through every one of her awakened cells.

  “Kimberly. Kim.” It seemed as if he’d asked before, but it’d been an entire year. This time, though, she had the presence of mind to ask right back. “And yours?”

  He hesitated, and she thought she heard him laugh. “Stephen.”

  She sunk against the pole a bit. Finally, she knew who haunted her. Stephen.

  “So tell me, Kimberly. Why is it that there is a crucifix in your pocket?”

  Startled, Kim straightened, sliding up the pole. She grasped the silver object tighter, still keeping it hidden. “A crucifix?”

  “I discerned a flash of silver as you searched for me outside. Prepared, aren’t you?”

  Oh, had she been. “I’m a very devout girl, Stephen.”

  Even in the dark, she could feel, more than see, his gaze brush over her. Heavy sigh.

  “Devout in what way?” he asked, voice low and knowing.

  A spike of fear—a very mortal, stupid, why-am-I-doing-this-again sort of fear—thrust into her. But before she could react, he was using that voice on her, his eyes burning bright, tiger, tiger, in the night…

  “Tell me, Kimberly. Why the crucifix?”

  In spite of herself, she was manipulated into talking. “The League.” She slowly blinked. “We chase vampire rumors around Vegas. This place is a paradise for creatures of the night, you know. Twenty-four-hour, everything-is-always-open opportunity. What happens here stays here, and that makes for a bunch of willing victims who find themselves doing what they normally wouldn’t do at home.”

  “You’re a…hunter?” He didn’t sound panicked by that at all. Well, maybe a touch concerned, but that was it.

  “More of an enthusiast.”

  When he shifted, the light did, too. It brought Kim that much closer to reality, even though she still felt the need to spill everything to Stephen.

  Stephen.

  “Why,” he asked, “do you find this…investigation…necessary in life?”

  Boy, his voice. It ran over her like massage oil, aromatic and soothing. It primed her.

  “After my first bite,” she said, knowing he knew what she was talking about, “I…Well, sometimes I wondered if I’d imagined it.”

  “Your first bite,” he said, as if weighing the words.

  Hearing him say it sent a splinter of crazed yearning through her. “There were nights when I thought I was tetched, off my rocker, that it couldn’t have happened. But I felt the neck wound, every minute, before it healed.” Healed too quickly, within a couple of days. “And the texture of it was a reminder that it did happen.”

  “And when the injury disappeared?”

  “That’s when I started doubting myself for real. I didn’t know who to tell, who’d understand what had happened and accept it. There wasn’t anybody.” Not her parents, her friends, her coworkers at the bookstore. Definitely not recently departed Lori, who’d persuaded Kim to move to Vegas in the first place and then deserted her in the most permanent way imaginable.

  Not her beloved older sister who’d been taken from Kim in a meaningless, split-second accident.

  The thought brought Kim’s confession to a halt. Her heart clenched, as if undergoing the same shock she’d felt that day when the cops had called her from the diner where Lori had been grabbing a snack. Kim was supposed to meet her, but she’d been summoned to work early, so she’d left Lori there alone.

  Yes, Kim should’ve been there when the car smashed through the ceiling-to-floor window where Lori had been sitting in the booth, enjoying her apple pie. Kim should’ve been dead, too, instead of identifying Lori’s body that day.

  “You’re pained,” Stephen said, and, suddenly, his voice wasn’t as hypnotic. There was a sense of sympathy there, instead, as if he knew just what agony was.

  “I got over it.” The lie echoed against the bleachers.

  In her bag, she touched the hidden camcorder, wondering if she should turn it on and whip it out so she could capture just a glimpse of this vampire on film. So she could keep him solid instead of a figment of her restless longing.

  Then Stephen dropped down from the beams, arcing smoothly to the ground, where he crouched in the darkness. Now, the only hint of him were those green eyes.

  “Tell me more about why you joined this League, Kimberly.”

  “I…” She shut her mouth. It seemed prudent, even in her present talky state.

  Her greedy side disagreed. Keep him here, just long enough to film him.

  But that wasn’t right. Filming wasn’t first and foremost on her mind: She needed to get another bite out of him. Just one more….

  Would telling him about the League make him stay longer? she wondered. They weren’t a big old secret black ops group or anything. All you had to do was go on the Net or listen to the radio and there they were. What harm would there be in giving him a little of what he wanted?

  She went for it. “That first bite—that’s why I joined the Van Helsings. Because I needed people who would understand.”

  There. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Van Helsing, named after the most famed hunter in literature.” He sounded amused. “Are you a dangerous lot?”

  “We’ve had limited luck.”

  With deliberate ease, Stephen stood, so tall she could feel him hovering over her, his broad shoulders coming to block the light. “But your luck is not so limited tonight, Kimberly.”

  To have him calling her by name was almost too much. A deep tremble nested in her belly, spreading warmth.

  “This proof you seek,” he said, stepping nearer, soundless in his movements, “do you realize that it could erase my existence?”

  She tilted her head at him. Actually, it’d never occurred to her that a group like the League would have that sort of pull. They were a bunch of amateurs, that’s all. “We’re not out to kill you.”

  “Perhaps that’s not your intention.” Closer. “But this is where the persecution starts, with a few cries in the night. Then the real hunters come. That’s why we do not flaunt ourselves in society, that is why we remain discreet.”

  “Discreet? Someone’s sending women to the E.R. with a lot less blood than they started with.”

  Another pause. “And I’m here to put a stop to that. There is another—” He cut himself off.

  Something about the way he said it poked at her. She opened her mouth to pursue it, but he moved forward quickly and came to a stop right over her so that the words caught in her throat.

  His dark proximity rattled Kim, shook her until she couldn’t even gasp. She wilted against the pole, trembles consuming her entire body now. He loomed, bending nearer, his aroma a mélange of leafy scents masking a predator in the night.

  This was it—the culmination of all her waiting.

  He sniffed at her hair, traveled lower, leaving a path of tingling heat. Kim parted her lips, drinking in the seduction, her eyelids growing as heavy and thick as the blood dragging down her limbs.

  “A sweet drug,” he whispered, as if remembering her scent. “That’s what you…”

  He stopped, honing in on something, then slipped his hand into her big purse. His skin brushed hers as he lifted out the working minirecorder. He felt cool to the touch.

  Then he ran his hand over the device, crushed it to dust and casually allowed the matter to sift to the ground. Kim forced an innocent smile, thinking he had some kind of vampire night vision that would allow him to see her “oops” gesture.

  A low growling emanated from his throat. “I wouldn’t bother searching for any remains. What else do you have in your bag?”

  At the change in his tone—from charming to scary—Kim’s survival instinct took over. Her pulse raged to fight-or-flight speed, and she whipped the crucifix out of her pocket, forcing him to freeze as she backed out of the bleachers and into the moonlight. What had she been thinking? Dumb, dumb, dumb…

  His gro
wling continued as he stayed his ground, his green eyes burning at her.

  “Too bad,” she said, hoping to high heaven that Powder was somewhere nearby now. “I would’ve stuck my neck out for you, Stephen. So to speak.”

  With an animal flash, he forged his way forward, out of the bleachers’ shadows, one arm raised. But he could go no farther once she extended that crucifix at him, emphasizing its power.

  Thank goodness it worked, she thought. But why had it come to this when her wants had been so simple?

  In the better light, she could see all of him. Every gorgeous, furious inch. His black coat had opened to show her a wide chest tapering to slim hips. A fallen, darkly dressed outlaw.

  As they faced off, she thought she saw him smile, his fangs gleaming. But what sort of smile was it? Bitter? Respectful?

  What?

  A voice squealed from behind her, and she flinched. At the same time, Stephen whirled around, disappearing in a blur past the bleachers and into oblivion.

  “No!” she yelled, starting to go after him.

  What’d gone wrong?

  But when she heard a familiar voice behind her, she knew why Stephen had left in such a hurry.

  “What the hell was that?” screamed Powder. “What the friggin’ hell?”

  She turned around to find him wearing a panicked look, backed up by Darlene and another League investigator, Jeremy.

  “That,” Kim said, dropping her crucifix to her side, “was the vampire who got away, morons.”

  ACROSS THE TRAFFIC-CHOKED street from the Marrakech, the rogue vampire stood in a shadowed alley, watching.

  His heightened vision embraced the throbbing, neon bustle before him: the casino’s Arabian Nights architecture, the colored lights blazing from the roof to pierce the sky, the cars speeding up the drive to the porte cochere, the white-coated valets helping satin-swathed women and men out of their shiny vehicles.

  Here, the vampire’s eyesight sharpened to a point, closer, closer, until it focused on the line of one female’s neck. Her throat, though decorated with gleaming jewels, palpitated under his gaze. No, no he didn’t want the jewels this time, he wanted…there. Her jugular. Throbbing, singing in a stream of blood, just under the surface of her flesh.

  His jaw stung with hunger, but it was nothing next to the need. He didn’t want to sink himself into her for sustenance or pleasure so much as for another reason altogether—the same reason he had been heavily draining other women at the Mystique dance club recently. He was sending the women to hospitals and listening to the newscasts, hoping they would recognize what was happening and intervene.

  A thin shiver traveled up the vampire, coming to outline what was once a human heart. A heart that had beat in time to mortal thoughts and ethics. A heart that had initially been designed to give out after just so many years of living.

  Year by year, century by century, the vampire had come to learn that hearts—and a limited life span—were necessary. No one, not even a creature such as him, was meant to last for so long.

  It was unendurable.

  A keen, wonderful scent shook the vampire out of his musing. Skin, nearby.

  He closed his eyes, sniffing the otherwise stale, polluted air to take in the hint of lovely blood—his savior and his curse.

  When his sensitive hearing caught footsteps clicking on the alley pavement in back of him, the vampire went even stiller.

  High heels, delicate and echoing against the walls.

  Women walked in such a manner. Even in a surreal town such as Las Vegas, where everyone and everything was made to imitate the original, the creature could tell a born female from an impersonator.

  Nearer. She was coming nearer.

  The vampire opened his eyes, his vision now red with the excitement he had refused to unleash until recently, his fangs extending as the scent of her flesh—nearer, nearer—filtered into him. His immune system recognized the lack of disease in her smell, the purity.

  Her blood—it was everything. It was the key to being saved.

  Click, click, click.

  As she passed, the vampire stealthily reached out of the darkness, winding her into his arms before she could scream. With one hand over her mouth, he pressed her back against him, positioned his mouth against her ear, her hair stirring as he whispered in hypnotic serenity.

  You’re safe. You’re not afraid.

  He truly wished he meant it, too.

  Almost immediately, she went soft against him, her lips parting under his hand.

  I’m going to make you feel good, so relax.

  As she went limp, he held her, the juices flowing in his mouth as he reluctantly stroked her neck, priming her vein until it swelled, blue and neon under his preternatural gaze.

  A Las Vegas sign, he thought. And it’s advertising redemption if I enter.

  Opening his mouth wider, the vampire did just that, piercing into her as she moaned in ecstasy.

  2

  DAWN WAS STILL a couple of hours away when the investigators made off toward “headquarters,” which was basic geekspeak for where they all met every night to share rumors, study, read e-mails from the public, construct the Web site and broadcast from a highly illegal micro power station.

  As Kim drove her old mint-blue Chevy into the subdivision, she sighed for the hundredth time. Powder, sitting shotgun, seemed to understand.

  “We didn’t mean to scare him off, Kim. Darlene and Jeremy were just on fire to see what you found, so they busted through the door and—”

  “Please stop apologizing. My vamp was ready to leave, anyway. He didn’t exactly love having that crucifix in his face, so things were winding down.”

  She said it, but she wasn’t sure she meant it. Even now, miles away from the sighting, she was restless, wanting Stephen back.

  Dammit, she’d been so close.

  “Hee.” Powder laughed. “You drew a weapon on one of them. A weapon! On a vampire! Whoo, we’re just lucky the crucifix worked.” He leaned his head back against the car seat. “So you think crucifixes work on all of them, Kim? I mean, like, Anne Rice’s vampires wouldn’t care about that kind of thing, but Dracula—”

  “Oh, Powder, those are—” Kim stopped herself. It was on the tip of her tongue to say that his examples were fiction.

  But her partner actually had a good point when it came right down to it. Were all vampires the same? Did they have the same repellants? Did they all avoid sunlight?

  Unable to help it, Kim also wondered if they varied in biting technique, if every single vampire took wonderful, deliberate time and left all their victims mindless sex piglets like her.

  “At any rate,” Powder added, “I thought I’d wait until Darlene and Jer got in their car before I said anything about this, but…”

  “But, what? Spit it out.”

  “But Troy is gonna have a cow that you went outside alone to chase your vamp. Never leave your wing—”

  “Man. Yeah, I know. But the opportunity was there and I took it.”

  “You lost one of our tape recorders.”

  Kim thought of Stephen, effortlessly destroying the running tape recorder as if it were merely crackers for soup. His decisive reaction excited her. But, then again, what didn’t flip her skirt when it came to him?

  She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. Think, Kim, think. This is serious stuff. You’re about to get to the bottom of everything you’ve wanted to know about what the vampire—what death—really is and what happened to you after that bite.

  “I’ll pay for another damned recorder,” she said, steering into the driveway of a black-curtained house owned by their leader, Troy. Except for the blank eyes of the windows, the building resembled each and every other dwelling on the quiet block. Beige stucco with rocks and cactus in the yard. Cookie-cutter homes, she thought, like identical grains of sand in the desert.

  As she turned off the car’s engine, she noted that Darlene and Jeremy had already arrived, their silver pickup parked and co
oling. They were, no doubt, waiting for Kim and Powder inside. Heck, they were probably even securing front-row seats for Kim’s inevitable dressing-down from Troy.

  After Powder got out of the car, he slammed the door. The metallic sound reverberated through the lonely air. He seemed to read the direction of her thoughts when he said, “Good luck inside, Red.”

  Kim shut her own door more carefully. The Chevy was her ancient, rusting baby. “I can take Troy with one arm behind my back, so who needs luck?”

  She tossed a cocky smile at her partner as he began strolling toward the house. Powder grinned back, shaking his head. He knew General Troy wasn’t going to let her off easy.

  When her cell phone rang, it startled her. No one but her parents would have reason to call after midnight, so she tugged the phone out of her jeans pocket. “Don’t wait up for me,” she told Powder. If this was a family emergency, she didn’t want an audience.

  Her heartbeat sped up as the phone rang again and Powder continued on his way. She glanced at the LED screen, but there was no ID. No nothing.

  What?

  She heard Powder close the front door before she could even flip open her phone to find that it was silent.

  In that frozen second, Kim realized she was alone out here. Very alone, on a night when she’d found a vampire.

  A whipping breeze pushed against her, a burst of that leafy scent she’d caught earlier back at Mystique. Before she knew it, she’d been turned around, the cell phone flying out of her hand and the dim light over the garage guttering as she slammed toward the side of her car. Dizzy, discombobulated…

  A flash later, she struggled back to her senses, realizing she was pinned against the Chevy. Oddly, it occurred to her that the sudden attack should’ve hurt. But it hadn’t.

  As her vision cleared, she became aware of an arm cushioning the front of her, crushing her breasts. Then she felt a wide chest pressed against her back, and that chest was pounding like a hollow drum haunted by phantom sounds. The furious tempo beat in her own pulse.