Bite (Vampire Hunter 8.5)

There was a time when I thought being a vampire was worse than death, but now, I just wasn’t sure. I just didn’t have enough room to cast stones. “She won’t lose the leg if she’s a vampire.”

“But she’ll lose her soul.”

I didn’t even try to argue that one. I wasn’t sure if vampires had souls, or not; I just didn’t know. I’d known good ones and bad ones, just like good and bad people, but one thing was true: vampires had to feed off of humans to survive. No matter what you see in the movies, animal blood will not do the job. We are their food, no getting around that. Out loud, I said, “She’s seventeen, Ms. Mackenzie, I think she probably believes in her leg more than her soul.”

The woman nodded, too rapidly, head bobbing. “And that’s my fault.”

I sighed. I so did not want to get involved in this, but I believed Ms. Mackenzie would do exactly what she said she would do. It wasn’t the girl I was worried about so much as the vampire that would be bringing her over. She was underage and that meant if he turned her, it was an automatic death sentence. Death sentences for humans usually mean life imprisonment, but for a vamp, it means death within days, weeks at the most. Some of the civil rights groups were complaining that the vampire trials were too quick to be fair. And maybe someday the Supreme Court would reverse some of the decisions, but that wouldn’t make the vampire “alive” again. Once a vamp is staked, beheaded and the heart cut out, all the parts are burned and scattered on running water. There is no coming back from the grave if you are itty-bits of ashy fish food.

“Does the friend know what the vampire looks like, maybe a name?”

She shook her head. “Barbara says that it’s Amy’s choice.” Ms. Mackenzie shook her head. “It isn’t, not until she’s eighteen.”

I sort of agreed with Barbara, but I wasn’t a mother, so maybe my sympathies would have been elsewhere if I was. “So you don’t know if the vampire is male or female.”

“Male,” she said, very firm, too firm.

“Amy’s friend told you it was a guy vampire?”

Ms. Mackenzie shook her head, but too rapid, too jerky. “Amy would never let another girl do that to her, not…down there.”

I was beginning not to like Ms. Mackenzie. There’s something about someone who is so against all that is different that sets my teeth on edge. “If I knew for sure it was a guy, then that would narrow down the search.”

“It was a male vampire, I’m sure of that.” She was working too hard at this, which meant she wasn’t sure at all.

I let it go; she wasn’t going to budge. “I need to talk to Barbara, Amy’s friend, without you or her parents present, and we need to start searching the clubs for Amy. Do you have a picture of her?”

She did, hallelujah, she’d come prepared. It was one of those standard yearbook shots. Amy had long straight hair in a rather nondescript brown color, neither dark enough to be rich, or pale enough to be anything else. She was smiling, face open, eyes sparkling; the picture of health and bright promise.

“The picture was taken last year,” her mother said, as if she needed to explain why the picture looked the way it did.

“Nothing more recent?”

She drew another picture out of her purse. It was of two women in black with kohl eyeliner and full, pouting lips, one with purple lipstick and the other with black. It took me a second to recognize the girl on the right as Amy. The nondescript hair was piled on top of her head in a casual mass of loose curls that left the clean, high bone structure other face like an unadorned painting, something to be admired. The dramatic makeup suited her coloring. Her friend was blond and it didn’t match her skin tone as well. The picture seemed more poised than the other one had, as if they were playing dress-up and knew it, but they both looked older, dramatic, seductive, lovely but almost indistinguishable from a thousand other teenage Goths.

I put the two pictures beside each other and looked from one to the other. “Which picture did she go out looking like?”

I don’t know. She’s got so much Goth clothing, I can’t tell what’s missing.” She looked uncomfortable with that last remark, as if she should have known.

“You did good bringing both pictures, Ms. Mackenzie, most people wouldn’t have thought of it.”

She looked up at that, almost managed a smile. “She looks so different depending on what she wears.”

“Most of us do,” I said.

She nodded, not like she was agreeing, but as if it were polite.

“How old is Barbara, her friend?”

“Eighteen, why?”

“I’ll send my friend, the private investigator over to talk to her, maybe meet me at the clubs.”

“Barbara won’t tell us who it is that’s been…” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

“My friend can be very persuasive, but if you think Barbara will be a problem I might know someone who could help us out.”

“She’s very stubborn, just like my Amy.”

I nodded and reached for the phone. I called Veronica (Ronnie) Sims, private detective and good friend first. Ms. Mackenzie gave me Barbara’s address, which I gave to Ronnie over the phone. Ronnie said she’d page me when she had any news, or when she arrived at the club district.

I dialed Zerbrowski next. He was a police detective and really had no reason to get involved, but he had two kids and he didn’t like the monsters, and he was my friend. He was actually at work, since he belonged to the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team and worked a lot of nights.

I explained the situation, and that I needed a little official muscle to flex. He said it was a slow night, and he’d be there.

“Thanks, Zerbrowski.”

“You owe me.”

“On this one, yeah.”

“Hmm,” he said, “I know how you could pay me back.” His voice had dropped low and mock seductive. It had been a game with us since we met.

“Be careful what you say next, Zerbrowski, or I’ll tell Katie on you.”

“My darling wife knows I’m a letch.”

“Don’t we all. Thanks again, Zerbrowski.”

“I’ve got kids, don’t mention it,” he said, and he hung up.

I left Ms. Mackenzie in the capable hands of our nighttime secretary Craig, and I went out to see if I could save her daughter’s life, and the “life” of the vampire that was a close enough personal friend to have bitten Amy twice on the very upper thigh.

THE vampire district in St. Louis was one of the hottest tourist areas in the country. Some people credit the undead with the boom we’ve experienced in the last five years since vampires were declared living citizens with all the rights and privileges that entailed, except voting. There was a bill floating around Washington that would give them the vote, and another bill floating around that would take away their new status and make it legal to kill them on sight again, just because they were vampires. To say that the United States was not exactly united in its attitude toward the undead was an understatement.

Danse Macabre was one of the newest of the vampire-run clubs. It was the hottest dance spot in St. Louis. We’d had actors fly from the West Coast to grace the club with their presence. It had become chic to hob-knob with vampires, especially the beautiful ones, and St. Louis did have more than its fair share of gorgeous corpses.

The most gorgeous corpse of them all was dancing on the main floor of his newest club. The floor was so crowded there was barely room to dance, but somehow my gaze found Jean-Claude, picked him out of the crowd.

When I first spotted him, his long pale hands were above his head, the graceful movement of those hands brought my gaze down to the whirl of his black curls as they slid over his shoulders. From the back with all that long hair the shirt was just scarlet, eye-catching but nothing too special, then he turned and I caught a glimpse of the front.

The red satin scooped over his bare shoulders as if someone had cut out the shoulders with scissors; the sleeves were long, tight to his wrists. The high red collar framed his face, made his skin, his hair, his dark eyes look brighter, more alive.

The music turned him away from me, and I got to watch him dance. He was always graceful, but the pounding beat of the music demanded movements that were not graceful but powerful, provocative.