Night Bites

Beau Gabriel is the one who introduced me to the vampire hunter. Which was damn inconsiderate of him, since I am a vampire. And it was particularly thoughtless when you consider that Beau's the one who made me that way. Me? I'm Amanda Carlton. Used to write a mildly popular series of vampire horror novels--until I got a visit from the real thing. Who, as it happens, had thought my portrayal of the undead a bit bigoted and decided to give me a taste of reality. Beau? Okay, picture a vampire. Got it? Well, he doesn't look anything like that. Now look in the mental cliche file that reads "cowboy." That's Beau. He's got an open, thoroughly American face, handsome in a weather beaten kind of way, with wheat blond hair and honest eyes that are very, very blue. He's the only man I know who can wear cowboy boots and a black Stetson without looking self-conscious. That's because it's no costume to him. He is a cowboy. Or was, from 1870 to 1881. But on July 8, 1881, he ran into this dance hall girl who was a little long in the tooth... Which is why, when I met him in 1990, I mistook him for a timber wolf. It was an easy enough mistake to make. He was rearing at the foot of my bed, narrow forepaws on the mattress, gray ears pricked and jaws gaped so that every fang in his head gleamed whitely in the moonlight. It was a hell of a sight to wake up to at 2 a.m., let me tell you. But you know the one that goes, "his bark is worse than his bite?" It's certainly true in Beau's case. His bite is wonderful. As a result, I soon found myself haunting bars with him, searching for somebody for us both to bite. Which is what we were doing in Bottoms Up that night, when the vampire hunter walked in. Bottoms Up was one of our favorite hunting grounds that year. The clientele was decent and clean and mostly composed of lonely yuppies on the make, and the decor was heavy on the mahogany and brass. The rock that boomed out of the bar's big amps leaned more toward mellow than metal, which suited us just fine. Vampires have very sensitive hearing, and a good obnoxious head banging band will run us off quicker than garlic any day. Especially considering that I kind of like garlic, all my vampire novels notwithstanding. Which just goes to prove: don't believe everything you read. At the moment, I was carrying on a silent flirtation with a cute yuppie couple, trying to tempt them into a game of sexual doubles. They were sitting two tables away, with the husband eyeing me and the wife eyeing Beau, both with some idea of enlivening their sex lives. I was eyeing the pulse in hubby's throat with some idea of enlivening it a lot more than they had in mind. By way of baiting the hook, I leaned back in my chair and stretched out my long legs, black silk stockings wispering. That made the hem of my clinging red dress creep another inch upward, which in turn made hubby's eyes slowly glaze. I was thinking about reeling in my fish when Beau said, "Shye-eee-it." I jerked around. When he starts pronouncing "shit" as a three-syllable word, it's a sure sign he's disturbed about something. His southern accent only comes out under stress. "What?" I demanded. "It's Jim Decker. How in the hell did that bastard track me here?" His blue eyes, narrowed to irritated slits, were directed toward a man leaning against the long brass-and-mahogany bar. Interested, I swiveled to study the object of Beau's wrath. Decker was a big guy, 6'4" at least. The height alone made him look formidable, but adding to the menace was the sheer muscle you could see bulking under his leather jacket and tight blue jeans. It's hard for a man that tall to build up so big, and I knew he must have spent a lot of time at the gym to do it. "Damn. Who unlocked the booby hatch and let him out?" Beau growled. "You'd think they'd fit a vampire hunter for nice a straight jacket. It's a damn shame I couldn't have shown up for day court to press that attempted murder charge..." I turned to eye him with astonishment. "Attempted murder? He tried to kill YOU? Anyway, what's the problem? Big as he is, you're at least twenty times stronger." "Sure. At night. Thing is, Decker doesn't come around at night. He waits until daylight and sneaks up on you. I woke up one day a year ago just in time to see ol' Deck coming at me with a hammer and stake. It was all I could do to get out of there without getting two feet of wood shoved somewhere painful. If the hotel manager hadn't seen us going at it and called the cops..." Beau shook his head and sighed. "That psychiatrist swore he'd be locked up for at least a couple of years, so I didn't go after him later. Guess that was a mistake." I rolled my eyes. It could only happen to me. First a cowboy Dracula, now Dr. Van Helsing on steroids. Suddenly a thought occurred to me, and I stared hard at him. "What got him ticked off to begin with? No, don't tell me, let me guess. You screwed his wife, right?" Beau cut his eyes toward me. "Actually no." "Oh." If I could have, I would have blushed. "It was his sister. He noticed the bites and came hunting. He's convinced he saved her from eternal damnation." "Must be a Southern Baptist." "I think so, yeah. Anyway, he thinks he's on a holy quest to rid the world of a satanic scourge. Namely me. And you too, once he figures out you're one of the 'accursed undead'." "Well, if he's got any doubts about that, I'll just stroll over and show him my fangs. He looks like my type of guy." I dropped into a phony French accent. "A nice '58 type O, ze very good year for ze hemoglobin..." "Do that and you might be surprised at who winds up with the blood loss. Not all the bulges under that jacket are muscle. See the one under his arm?" "What, you mean the shoulder-holster? Since when do guns worry us?" "They should worry us a lot when they don't fire lead. That one's a dart gun adapted for six-inch wooden spikes. And he's reeeal good with it. Fast, too." "Well, what are we going to do about him, then?" Decker was staring at us, a distinctly mean look in those dark eyes. Even so, he was a handsome devil, with the kind of sharp, clean face you see on the cover of GQ--except his was just battered enough to keep from being too pretty. His hair was as dark as his eyes, scraped hard back and tied into a pony tail you could see when he turned his head. My fangs began to hurt just watching him. I'd only been half-joking in my offer to give him a nibble. "I don't know what you're going to do, but I'm killing the sonofabitch," Beau growled. "I played it legal the last time, but I'm not taking chances with that psycho again. He's toast." I was rather surprised at that homicidal announcement. Beau usually went out of his way not to hurt anybody; with his strength, he didn't need to. As for his "victims," he never took more than a pint or so. And they were usually moaning too loudly to notice. "I know this is a radical idea," I suggested, "but how about just talking to the silly sucker? It's not very macho, but..." "Talk?" Beau looked incredulous. "Amanda, you don't talk to men like that. When they make up their minds, they use cast iron sheets. And Jim Decker's mind is made up." I cut another glance toward the subject of our discussion. He'd shifted his full attention to me, staring with a fixed and unpleasant gleam. I had the feeling that he'd caught onto my vampiric status. "Well," I said suddenly, "how about seduction?" "He's not my type," Beau said dryly. "I wasn't talking about you, fangs." "You really do have a yen for that beefy bastard, don't you? Well, forget it. He'd be happy to screw you, but then you'd wake up in the morning to find him impaling you with something that would leave splinters." I shuddered. "You've got a way with charming imagery, you know that? Anyway, I'll bet I could mellow him out a little-- especially if I used psi." "Yeaaaah," he said slowly, studying me with calculation, "you probably could, at that." Beau considered the idea a moment, then reluctantly shook his head. "No, it'd never work. You'd have to put the bite on him to make a psilink, and he's too paranoid to let you get close enough for that. I'm going to have to do this the hard way..." "Whoops. Here he comes," I said, watching Decker start toward us. Flicking a glance toward Beau, I noticed his fangs peeking under his upper lip, a sure sign that he was definitely torqued off. When Decker got close enough to loom over us, Beau grinned, giving him a good look at those teeth. "What are you doing here, Deck? The sun isn't up yet," he purred. "You don't usually show your cowardly face before dawn." Decker may have lacked the fang, but his smile was just as lethal in its own way. "I wanted to meet your pretty little friend here. What's your name, sweetheart?" He turned the menace in my direction, but I managed not to flinch. Instead, I breathed in once through my nose, deeply enough to pick up his scent, then gave him a smile of my own, putting as much seductive taunt into it as possible. Lips still parted, I let my fangs slowly extend into my mouth. "Draculette," I said, and licked my teeth. Okay, it was a cheap thing to do, but he unnerved me. It was mutual. Decker's head rocked back and the smile faded. "Wishing you'd brought along your garlic, Deck?" Beau sneered. "Or have you finally stopped doing your research at horror flicks?" To me he added, "First time he came around, he smelled so strongly of garlic I thought he was delivering pizza. I got a reeeal unpleasant surprise. So when I got a whiff of Italian outside my door the next night, I barrelled out meaning to beat the hell out of him. It was a Dominos delivery man. Kid almost had a seizure..." I was still snickering when Decker said, "Maybe you'd like to step outside." I quit giggling and stared. I'd thought the man was smart. Beau, being better at hiding his feelings, didn't even blink. "Why not?" he said easily, and got to his feet. I followed them as they pushed through the crowd, heading for the door. Without even looking back, Decker led us out and around into the alley that ran beside the bar. Watching his tight muscled behind shift under his jeans, I thought it was a damn shame to waste anything that looked that good. It must have been pitch black in the alley to human eyes, though Beau and I could see pretty well. We just weren't paying attention; Beau was getting ready to kill Decker, and I was trying to think of a way to talk him out of it. I barely even noticed the tall, rickety tripod standing in the middle of the alley. Then the sun went off in my face. Actually, the blast of illumination seemed even brighter than sunlight, and it blinded me instantly. I threw both arms over my face just as a hand grabbed my shoulder and shoved me into the wall. There was a loud crack that probably would have sounded like a soft phuit to a human, then the clack of wood bouncing off brick. It took me a second to realize that Decker had shot his damn spike gun at us, but had fortunately missed. Beau--it was Beau that had me, I could tell by his scent --jerked me, stumbling, back in the direction we came. "Let's get the hell out of here before he reloads!" As he was dragging me around the corner, I heard a sharp sputtering roar as a motorcycle started up back in the alley. A moment later, the bike screamed by. Decker, apparently, was making good his getaway before our eyes recovered. "What the hell was that?" I cried, rubbing at my eyelids and trying to blink away the purple explosions that blocked my vision. "Some kind of camera flash. Didn't you see the tripod? He must have rigged it for an extended burst somehow...Goddamn it, why couldn't he have stuck with the garlic and crosses?" "Apparently he wised up," I said, still blinking. "A lot wiser than us, evidently. I should have known this was a trap..." "Yeah, I kind of figured it was, I just thought I could handle it. How's your eyes? Mine are starting to clear." But by the time our respective eyesight had recovered, ten minutes had passed, and Decker was long gone. We loaded into Beau's black Ferrari and searched for him for a while, but I was getting a headache and finally called it a night. Beau dropped me off at my apartment complex and roared off to hunt Decker again. I staggered up to my apartment and reeled into my bedroom. Peeling out of the tight red dress, I dropped it on the floor and fell on the bed. Just before I drifted off, I reflected that Decker would probably be surprised I didn't sleep in a coffin. Imagine the worst hangover you've ever had. Now cube it. Now cube that. Your head bongs like the Liberty Bell--and feels just as cracked. Your stomach is making violent attempts to turn itself inside out and dump its contents into your abdominal cavity, and your mouth feels like Death Valley...complete with the buzzard droppings. That's pretty much the way I feel when somebody wakes me up at 2 o'clock in the afternoon by letting the daylight blast into my face. It's not true that the sun kills vampires. It just feels like it. "Close the curtains, goddamnit!" I yelled, trying to throw both hands over my face. Something clicked on the brass headboard, and my arms jerked to a stop. Eyes squeezed shut to protect them from the burning light, I tugged and heard that clicking again. There was something tight and cold on my wrists. "Okay," I said, really irritated now, "who's the bastard that handcuffed me to the bed?" Normally, I'd have snapped the cuffs like strands of wet pasta, but daylight had rendered me pretty close to helpless. "You're not a morning person, are you?" It took me a minute to identify that cold, deep voice, but once I had, I wished I hadn't. If my heart had been beating, it would have stopped. "Decker?" "Right on the money, Amanda. Or should I say 'Draculette.'" Amanda? How had he found out my real name? I never use it when I'm hunting. "I recognized you from the picture on the dust jacket of your book," he explained, reading my puzzlement. He sounded as if he were enjoying himself. "I really liked Shadowmaster, by the way. It gave me a lot of ideas..." Great, just great. That damn book keeps coming back to haunt me--Beau found me the same way. Suddenly I realized something. "The bit with the flash. You got that from the camera scene in the book, didn't you?" The heroine had triggered her instamatic off in the vampire's face, and he'd beat a quick retreat. "Forget that. I'm more interested in the location of your master..." "My master?" I choked, and began to hoot with laughter. It made my head hurt, so I quit. Big hands grabbed my shoulders. "Where is he? He's not at his townhouse, and he's not in any of the hotels..." Jesus. He knew about the townhouse? Beau wouldn't like that at all. "Where?" He shook me. It felt as though my skull were about to fall off. "I...I don't know." That was true, as far as it went, but I did have some idea. Beau, paranoid after our run-in with Decker, was probably sleeping in one of the nondescript vans he kept parked around the city. I wished I'd had the sense to join him last night, instead of pleading a headache and coming home. Now I really had a headache. And if the headache didn't quit shaking me, I was going to bite him on his over-muscled forearms. He must have noticed my lips peeling back, because he let go hastily. "You're going to tell me where Beau Gabriel is," Decker said, his voice low and threatening, "or I'm going to leave you in the sun to cook." "Alright, alright, just don't hurt me. First," I rasped. "go to the door and down the stairs. Got that?" "Right." He sounded a little surprised that I was giving in so easily. "There's a big elm tree by the door outside. Dig there. It'll take a while, but keep digging. Eventually you'll fall right through in this real hot place inhabited by lots of red guys with horns. When you see the brimstone start freezing over, come back and I'll tell you where Beau is." For a minute there was dead silence, and I wondered if I was about to get belted. Normally, of course, a mere human fist couldn't have hurt me, but the sun was up now, and all bets were off. Suddenly I felt cold metal press between my breasts. I realized with a chill that it must be Decker's spike gun. "Tell me where he is," he gritted. "Fuck off," I told him, and grimaced in expectation of taking a spike. Instead he started cursing with amazing creativity. I heard something that sounded like the gun slamming into the wall across the room. Decker had a temper. After awhile he ran out of expletives, so he began firing questions and threats instead. He kept at it for the next hour, but I just set my jaw and said nothing, much to his rising fury. By that point, my head was throbbing so badly that I desperately wanted to scream, but didn't, since that would only have made it hurt more. Finally he gave up on the questioning and shut up, breathing heavily from sheer rage. He stewed in ominous silence for somewhere around fifteen minutes, at which time I started getting nervous. What was going through that square head of his? Fortunately for the state of my nerves, there was a way I could find out. I forced myself to calm, despite the nasty situation, and...well, REACHED. That's the best way I can explain psi in human terms. You REACH, straining outward without moving, until you sense something, a thin membrane like a balloon, and then you push, push until you're in. In another mind. It was hard linking with Decker. The connection was weak and mostly one-way, partly because of the sun, partly because it's easier when you do it during the bite. But I managed; I was that damn scared. Linking with somebody is always strange--a mind is never what you expect based on the surface the person projects --but it was particularly weird in Decker's case. I'd expected a grim, single minded man, self-righteous and supremely sure of himself. What I found was something else again. Guilt. The same upbringing that had sent him on a religious crusade against vampires was giving him a hard time about abusing a woman. Never mind that the woman was a vampire, and at night ten times stronger than he was. Decker knew the daylight was hurting me, and he had a nagging impulse to close the heavy black curtains he'd opened to the sun. So far, though, he'd managed to hold out against his conscience by reminding himself I was an "undead killer." Which, of course, I'm not. What I am is a ruthless opportunist. I needed the physical and emotional contact of a bite to influence his thinking directly, but I could, by God, intensify whatever emotions he was already feeling. So I bought Jim Decker tickets for a guilt trip and sent him on his way. He was bloody well going to close those curtains before I got through with him. Luckily, he'd been well on the road to doing it anyway, having rationalized that I was too stubborn to tell him anything. It took me only about five minutes to get him to the window. As I watched through slitted lids, he pulled the shade down and closed the thick curtains, shutting off the blinding assault. My body is tough; the headache and nausea began to fade almost instantly as the room fell into shadow. Of course, I was still weak as a wine cooler, so I wouldn't be breaking any handcuffs anytime soon. So, for lack of anything better to do, I went back to probing him as he hovered by the window. And almost wished I hadn't. Decker was regretting the impulse to close the curtains and wondering what the hell he was going to do with me now, especially considering how late it was. Worse, he was thinking about a videotape of Dracula he rented recently. And specifically about the scene where Dr. Van Helsing and Jonathan Harker gave Lucy the vampire a two-by-four surprise. Ugh. Now, why it was okay to drive a stake through my heart but not torture me with sunlight, I don't know. In any case, he was also harboring another emotion I found almost as chilling. He wanted to fuck me. Not make love to me, or even have sex with me, but fuck me. When I'd gone to bed this morning, I'd peeled off everything but my camisole and a pair of lacy bikini panties, and Decker definitely approved of the view. Usually when I link with somebody, I'm dominant; it was disconcerting to feel the predatory cast to his thought when I was so helpless. My breasts, Decker was thinking, had the kind of full shape that had always turned him on, and he could see the little peaks of my nipples tenting the silk of the camisole. My legs looked impossibly long and white to him, and he liked the curving muscle that came from all the running I'd done. He remembered standing over me earlier when he'd cuffed me, remembered seeing the dark curls of my pussy through the panties. The sight had made his mouth go dry. Decker liked my hair too--he'd always liked women with long curly hair, and mine was a shade of black he thought exotic. And though the vulnerable, worried look in my brown eyes made him feel guilty, it aroused him too, somehow. He'd never had a woman in his power like this--his other sexual relationships had been with girls he'd cared about--and he was a little shocked at how much it excited him. As that last part came through, I relaxed a little, realizing that Decker wasn't going to rape me after all. He might think about it, but, like an all-American boyscout in an unattended candy store, he'd never do it. Now, whether he'd shoot me was a different story. So, after I got over my knee-jerk panic at the threat of rape, I started thinking about Decker's yen for me. It sounded like something I could use to get out of this mess. A glance over at the clock beside my bed told me it was 3:45. p.m. Nightfall was two hours away. If I could get him into bed, distract him, I could make him forget how close sunset was. Until it was too late. Sex is one of the main lures a vampire uses, so encouraging his lust with my psi was no problem. I expected him to jump me in ten minutes, tops, particularly considering how fast I'd gotten him to close those curtains. Thing was, I'd underestimated him. It was easy to get Decker to quit torturing me because he thought it was wrong, but he knew raping me was equally wrong, and he had no intention of doing it. And his will was incredibly strong. So though I soon had him so hard his balls were aching, he did nothing. He just started pacing the floor, faster and faster, with his cock straining the chaffing fabric of his jeans. I kept working on him, but no matter how mercilessly I stoked his lust, he continued to resist. Then my ploy began to backfire. I started getting aroused myself as I experienced the feedback of the desire I was working to build. I could see his hard-on plainly, bulging against the fabric of his jeans as a thick, long shape, and I couldn't help imagining how it would feel shuttling in and out of me. A heated trickling began low in my belly. Without really intending to, I spread my legs. He saw that tempting motion just as he was pivoting to pace toward me. And that was the straw that broke him. Decker crossed to me in one long pace and snatched me up off the bed, making the cuffs ring on the brass headboard. "Where is he?" he bellowed. "Fuck off," I hissed back, excited because I knew what he'd do. "That's it!" he exploded, and he flung me back down and fell on top of me. Instead of fighting, instead of screaming as he'd expected, I flung my legs around his waist and ground up against his erection. Growling, Decker started to kiss me, thought better of it, and lowered his head to my breasts, simultaneously wrapping a big hand in my hair in case I got the idea to bite him. Feeling his mouth suck my nipple through the silk camisole was so delicious I couldn't help but moan. With his free hand, he awkwardly tugged my panties down, then drove a finger into me. Then it was his turn to moan at the way I felt, at the cream that filled my pussy for him. He went a little nuts then, going just rough enough to make me even hotter as he bit at my nipples, squeezed my ass and thighs, plunged thick fingers into me. It was incredibly frustrating, not being able to get my own hands on that big, lushly virile body. Suddenly I couldn't wait for the sunset--and not just so I could turn the tables on him. Decker jerked up off me and began to strip. He didn't even look at what he was doing; his eyes were on me, glittering and black with his excitement. As I watched hungrily, his long cock sprang free, bobbing as he dragged his tight jeans off his legs. Then he was on me and in me, and I was pumping up at him as fast and hard as he was thrusting into me. I loved it, the thickness, the penetration, the maddening hunger of it. And adding to my excitement, I could feel in his mind how I felt to him, tight around his shaft, but wet, so wet. The double stimulation made me come within just a few strokes, and without meaning to, I fed my pleasure to him so that he climaxed too, bellowing. We rocked together through the last of it. But as the final quivers of delight died and sanity crept back in, it occurred to me that I'd made a mistake. We'd been too quick. If I was going to make him hang around, I had to get him going again. Fortunately, he'd been so excited by the long buildup that his erection hadn't completely wilted. Decker was already eager for another round, and I was more than happy to accommodate him. The handcuffs that secured me to the headboard were pretty close together, so he was able to flip me over without too much trouble. Then, as I watched hungrily over my shoulder, he slipped one of the pillows under my belly and mounted me from behind. The different angle put more pressure on my clit, and I writhed as he ground into me. It was just as good the second time as it had been the first. His cock felt even thicker because of the angle, and we pounded at each other, me shoving up, him shoving down. I could see in his mind that his eyes were fixed on my hands, twisted in the cuffs, and the sight of them excited him unbearably. I looked at them myself, and, much to my astonishment, began to share his delight in the situation, in my helplessness. And spicing my enjoyment was the thought that I'd soon have him in the same situation. Even as excited as we were, it took us much longer to come, and when we did, it was long and glorious. Luckily, he was tired after that. I, of course, fed his exhaustion as much as I could, until he shot a look at the bedside clock and decided he could afford to close his eyes for fifteen minutes; it was still more than an hour to sunset. I guess I don't even need to tell you I made sure he overslept. When he woke up, there were bits of broken handcuff on the floor, and I was the one on top. Decker's dark eyes, still a little vague with sleep, got very wide as he saw me straddling his hips, both his thick wrists held in my now-supernatural hands. His cock, erect again with a little telepathic encouragement, was buried deep. Then, as soon as I knew I had his full attention, I began riding him ruthlessly, grinding against him as hard as he'd ground against me earlier. Stroking up and down, loving the feeling of that wonderful thick shaft pulsing between my tight slick walls. Loving the fact that I was raping him now. Making sure with my psi that he shared my excitement, that he felt it and the pleasure he was giving me, felt them too strongly to be afraid. Just as he started coming, I let him see my fangs. I was never a Boyscout. That was the end of the trouble with Decker. My psi had reached its full strength when the rest of my abilities kicked in, and as I took his blood I let him see my mind as clearly as I saw his. Sharing my mind, he realized we aren't the soulless damned after all. But I have to admit, I did take a certain evil glee in his surprise when he discovered what fun it was to be a vampire's victim. "It certainly puts a whole new spin on sex," he later told me between puffs on a cigarette as we lay tangled in the sheets, enjoying the laziness of aftermath. Decker got quite a few chances to enjoy my variation on sex in the months to come. Eventually, I shared my own blood with him, and he became one of us. Of course, he and Beau still hate each other's guts, but I'm working on that. I've got this fantasy about a menage a trois...