Love Bites (28 page)

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

I couldn’t get away from the orange-haired girl. She pulled off her top and insisted I sign my name across her heart. Swore she was never going to shower again. By the time I caught up with Ovsanna and Mick, they were boarding the electric tram. I wasn’t going to let them go anywhere without me. Ovsanna had her own agenda, and I knew it.

Mick had the same paparazzo with him. He introduced him as Blink. Mick said he wanted a photograph of Ovsanna for his office wall, posing with his giraffes. Blink was along to take the shot. I checked his neck for a collar, one of those boxenwolf talismans, but I couldn’t tell; he was wearing a hoodie.

The tram was designed like a San Francisco cable car. Two open-air cars with wooden benches running back to back lengthwise, seating six on a bench. The cars weren’t attached to each other. I guessed Mick took one up at a time and left the other at the house in case someone needed to follow him.

Solgar and his Pomeranian were right behind me.

“May we join you, Mick?” he said. “I’ve heard so much about your vineyards and your animal preserve, I’d love to see them for myself.”

Mick pressed a couple of buttons on a control panel and the tram started up the mountain. He kept up a running commentary as we made the climb, peppered with
fucks
and
bitches
and
jerk me offs
. The guy must have had a lot of power to be able to get away with running a business using that kind of language. No wonder when he fell, he fell hard. He was an easy man to dislike.

The higher we climbed, the more we could see of the castle. It was twice as large as I’d originally thought. Mick pointed out the
onsen
—the hot baths. “You put your dick in there and you don’t need any bitches to make you feel good,” he said. There was a group of men near it, setting up fireworks for midnight. We passed the tennis courts and a lake, and then we were out of sight of the house. The terrain was high mountain, rocky, covered with chaparral and oaks, pines, and sycamores. The Pacific Ocean spread out in the distance like a roll of black velvet.

After about ten minutes, we came to the vineyards. Mick had low-wattage solar lights running down every row, so even without the moon and the stars, which were hidden by rain clouds, you could see all the vines. He didn’t have a lot of acreage planted, but what I could see looked healthy and thriving.

Ten minutes later, we came to the end of the line. Another station to match the one below, this time with a restroom attached. Beyond it, a chain-link fence, twenty feet tall.

“This is my fucking beautiful baby,” Mick said. He pressed a few buttons to shut down the engine and then stepped off the train. He must not have known about Ovsanna’s ability to read people when she touched them, because he offered her his hand to help her down. She didn’t take it, and I stepped between the two of them. I don’t think he noticed. He was at the fence, unlocking the gate. The five of us walked through.

There were peacocks roaming the preserve, dozens of them. They weren’t shy. They came within feet of us. Spider monkeys hung from the blue oaks. Nasty little buggers, hissing and spitting. One of them jumped down from a tree, squatted over his hand, and threw a steaming lump of feces at Solgar, just missing his tuxedo. Mary went nuts. She jumped out of Ernst’s arms and ran at the thing, teeth bared, snapping viciously. The monkey raced back up the tree, making that high-pitched monkey bark sound, and the rest of the monkeys joined in. Mary took off through the gate and raced down the hill, out of sight. Ovsanna caught my eye. I figured Mary was on her way to let the other vampyres know where we were.

“Sorry, Ernst,” said Mick, “I didn’t expect that. Good thing the little cocksucker can’t pitch. Blink, will you go after the dog? See if you can keep it in sight, at least. And call someone down below when you get in phone range; have them come up on the other tram to find it. You three come with me. I’ve got a herd of llamas to show you, and giraffes, bison. . . . I’ve even got an elephant. I get hard just thinking about him.”

Ernst took two more steps and got hit with another wad of shit.

I had to give him credit; he stayed a lot calmer than I would have.

“That’s it,” he said, backing away and staring at the brown glop running down his chest. “I’m not going any further. I don’t give a damn about seeing a bunch of animals. I’ve already seen their shit. I am going back to the restroom and I’ll wait for you on the tram.” With that, he walked through the gate and closed it behind himself, with a lot more dignity than I would have had. I clamped my lips shut to keep from laughing.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

Good. That just left Peter and Mick and me. And a collection of wild animals, none of whom appeared to be of my kind. I was certain I was right, though. These mountains were home to Lilith’s offspring. Mick might be showing off his lions and tigers and bears, oh my, but the real werebeasts were waiting in the wings.

I could smell them.

We walked about a half mile, down one hill and up a second, out of sight of the train station. The path was dimly lit, but my vision made it easy to see the zebras in the distance, drinking at a small vernal pool.

Suddenly the sky was filled with exploding red lights. Fireworks. The zebras spooked and ran. I heard the bellow of an elephant, and then the monkeys drowned it out with their howling. More explosions rocked the night and the sky turned white.

Mick screamed over the cacophony, “It’s midnight, bitches! We’re celebrating New Year’s! Top o’ the world, Ma! Happy fucking New Year!”

Green and gold fireworks topped each other, lighting the mountain like daylight. The noise was deafening. I turned to Peter to give him a kiss, but he had moved closer to the pool to watch the zebras. He was thirty feet away from me.

And tracking towards him, through the grasses and the underbrush, was a Bengal tiger.

I turned on Mick. He was smiling. “What the fuck, Ovsanna . . . are you frightened? It’s just a pet.”

“Peter!” I screamed, turning back to him.

He couldn’t hear me. The fireworks were too loud. Another display shot into the sky, the lights forming a blue champagne glass. At that, Peter started towards me, grinning and yelling, “Happy New Year!”

I had already begun the change. My eyes were red, my fangs in place. “Your gun, Peter!” I screamed. “Behind you!”

The cat was running. Five hundred pounds of death speeding towards Peter at forty miles an hour. This wasn’t a werebeast, this was one of Mick’s
Wild Kingdom
menagerie—the most powerful killer in the animal world. I shifted to put myself between Peter and his attacker. The Bengal was in midair when I appeared before him. He wrenched his body and his front paw swiped past me, mauling Peter’s shoulder, taking him down. I heard the crack of Peter’s skull against the rocks beneath him.

He moaned and rolled on his side. I couldn’t believe he was still conscious. His tuxedo was shredded from his collarbone to his ribs. His right arm looked useless. I knew his gun was trapped beneath him. He was trying to raise his body enough to get it with his left hand.

“Don’t move!” I yelled, and leapt over him to keep him behind me. The cat had landed fifteen feet away and turned to face us. He was growling at me. Pacing. He wanted to get at his prey, wanted to get his teeth into the neck of the two-legged creature on the ground, snap its spine, and carry it away to devour at leisure. But I was in the way, and he didn’t recognize my scent. I wasn’t like anything he’d ever tracked before. I stood with my talons ready and my fangs ready and I watched his mind work. Peter had stopped moving. He was silent. Probably unconscious. I couldn’t take my eyes off the tiger to check.

I called out to Mick, “A pet, huh? Are you going to do something?” He hadn’t moved from the spot he’d been standing in when the fireworks began. He was thirty feet from me, with the Bengal pacing between us. But the animal wasn’t interested in Mick; he was facing Peter and me.

“Oh yeah, bitch. I’m going to do something. I’m gonna pull out the big guns.” He pinched his lower lip between his thumb and middle finger and sucked in sharply. The air split with a deafening, high-pitched whistle. “I gotta lotta pets, Ovsanna. You met them in Palm Springs, remember? And you killed one of them in Silver Lake night before last—one of my favorites. They’re gonna make you fucking pay for what you did to Lilith.”

From out of the trees, Mick’s other menagerie began to emerge. Werebeasts—that hybrid race of vampyre that can only change into a specific beast shape. I was surrounded by Lilith’s progeny: hyenas, foxes, a dog, wolves, even an ape. There must have been twenty of them, at least. They were misshapen, grotesque looking, which told me they were old—so old, they could no longer change out of their beast form. But not so old as to be less of a threat. Weres grow more powerful as they age.

If Mary had reached my clan and if they got here anytime soon, we might be able to take down all of Mick’s beasts, but I wasn’t sure. We’d have to do it fast. Peter needed help. I could smell his blood draining into the dirt.

It was the Bengal tiger I wasn’t sure I could survive. He’d stopped pacing and was crouched, ready to spring.

The hyenas started whining, making that peculiar laughing sound. Mick yelled over them, “Don’t you need to take on another form, bitch? Like you did with Lilith? Maybe put on a strap-on? Well, forget about it, you could turn into Sasquatch and the Loch Ness monster and you wouldn’t survive. What a shame your Vampyres of Hollywood aren’t here to watch you die, you slimy cunt!”

“Language, old man, language! I wouldn’t talk to our chatelaine like that, if I were you.”

Orson appeared behind Mick, just long enough to be recognized, and then he was shifting to his favorite form. A werebull, twelve hundred pounds at least, with huge curling horns and iron hooves nine inches wide. Trust Orson to choose girth over fangs. The man who once said, “Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.”

The tiger saw the werebull and turned rabid. He sprang for me. Instead of leaping to meet him, I shifted out of the way—so fast that he landed off balance, inches from Peter’s head. He stumbled on his front paws and Orson came crashing down on his back with his hooves. I heard bones cracking as Orson jumped off him, away from the deadly swipe of his paws. His front paws, only. Orson’s attack had crippled his hind legs. He struggled to lift himself and only managed to roll over onto his back.

Mary came racing to Peter’s side. She’d changed to her she-devil form, with a gargoyle-shaped skull and the haunches of an emu. She grabbed what was left of Peter’s tuxedo jacket and pulled him out of reach of the Bengal’s flailing claws.

I had one split second of pity for the animal. He was beautiful, a regal beast with gorgeous black, white, and orange markings. And he was helpless. This wasn’t his fight; he’d just been following his nature. Mick Erzatz had penned him, in a parody of domestication, and then used him to try to kill me when Mick and his boxenwolves and his alpha female had failed. I wanted to put the tiger out of his misery. If I could use Peter’s gun . . .

But I didn’t have time. Ty and James and Charlie and Tod had all shifted. They were attacking the weres that Mick had gathered around him. Ernst had a
kirpan
in both hands and he was slashing at an ancient red werefox. The fox was fast, but Ernst was faster. Chunks of red fur scattered around him. He was using his sucker to toss pieces of cut flesh. Ty had morphed into a sleek black jaguar—twice the size of a real one and just as beautiful as you’d expect him to be. Leave it to a leading man to make sure he looked good in battle. Charlie, on the other hand, understood the value of special effects. He’d shifted into a monster with bat wings and a pig’s snout, his skin layered and crusted like a mangy Shar-pei. His black tongue was covered with spikes, and he had four sharp three-inch tusks protruding from his mouth. Ever the showman.

He was using them against an ape—a giant weregorilla who must have weighed four hundred pounds. The ape fought with its hands and its feet. Charlie locked his jaw around the beast’s leg, breaking its tibia with his tusks, and severed its tendons. The ape’s scream was unearthly.

Mick had backed away. “You should have signed with me, bubaleh!” he yelled at Orson. “I never would have let you make those wine commercials!” He scrambled onto a low boulder and made that whistling sound again.

James, half man and half bear, and Tod, a werejackal, tore into the beasts that surrounded them. Their fighting took them farther away from me, up the hill. I saw James crush the head of a massive dog and fling the entire carcass across the mountainside.

The noises the weres made belonged in Dante’s
Inferno
. Howling and shrieking and screams raged even louder than the fireworks. Mick whistled again, and this time I heard another sound, human voices whispering a mantra. And rubbing. The sound of flesh rubbing fur. Mick Erzatz had summoned the paparazzi who’d been waiting at his front door hours ago. The paparazzi with the wolf collar talismans hidden around their necks.

I was fighting alongside Ernst, chewing off a werehyena’s ear, when the pack of boxenwolves attacked. They cut me away from my clan the way an Aussie herds sheep. I was suddenly by myself, and I was surrounded.