Bite Club

by Hal Bodner

  Troy’s brow furrowed in concentration. “Well, he’s male, obviously.”

  “Why?”

  Troy rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. “I didn’t get a chance to read everything because someone without any patience pulled me away, but...” Chris glared at him and, recognizing that he shouldn’t push any more of Chris’s buttons, Troy became abruptly serious. “Look at the victims,” he said. “Do you honestly think three tricks, a hustler, and a porn star would allow themselves to be alone with a woman? In West Hollywood?”

  “She could have lured them away or something,” Chris suggested.

  “No way,” Troy snorted. “Gimme that.”

  He grabbed the file from Chris and halted under a street lamp. “Look here. First stiff, West Hollywood Park; second, behind The Pleasure Chest and a hustler; number three, the alley behind the Gold Coast; four, behind Rage; and five, get this, coming home from 24-Hour Fitness. All of them with their weenies waving in the wind.” He thrust the file back at Chris with a look of incredulity at his boyfriend’s obtuseness. “Get serious, Maude. It doesn’t take a Damron Guide to tell you they were looking for sex.”

  “All right. All right.” Chris threw up his hands in surrender as they continued walking. “I happen to agree with you. I just wondered what conclusions you’d come to on your own.”

  Troy shot him a withering glare. “And the one behind Rage? I know his type—typical twink. Attitude city.”

  “How could you possibly know his type?” Chris asked impatiently. “You only skimmed the bloody file for two minutes.”

  “I looked at the pictures,” Troy said proudly. “Even though the bodies were a little damaged, you can see the victims were all really cute—especially the Asian kid. Did you get a look at the size of—?” Troy brought his mind back to the subject at hand in response to another glare from Chris. “Anyway, I know the types. Trust me,” he continued. “So your killer’s got to be either very fast, physically, that is, or a total stud. Otherwise the Copperman kid wouldn’t have given him the time of night. As for the hustler and the porn star, those kind of guys aren’t in the habit of doing it for free unless it’s really worthwhile.”

  They walked in silence for a moment.

  “So?” asked Troy archly, “What do you think, your Highness?”

  “Well, I’d say the killer’s legit. One of us. Gustav and Hanna agree with me.”

  Troy looked pained. “What us?” He hunched over, lifting one shoulder and resurrected his bad Peter Lorre, limping along and dragging one foot behind himself. “Ah no, Master, please! You cannot grant me eternal life in this wretched condition. No, Master! Do not doom me to spend eternity a vile and depraved hunchback!”

  “Stop that!” Chris commanded. “Someone’ll see!”

  Troy straightened. “And do what? Arrest us? Get over it, Martha. This is L.A. We’re practically normal here.”

  “Sorry.”

  At the corner, they caught the West Hollywood City Shuttle and Chris plunked some change into the clear plastic box to pay their fares. The shuttle was empty and the driver was listening to rock music over her headphones so Chris felt it was safe to continue their discussion.

  “I’m worried about her lab tests, though.”

  Troy arched an eyebrow in query.

  “She’s too good not to have found something. She’s got a few notes that are troubling, but she’s put it down to possible specimen contamination.” Chris frowned and opened the report. “If she re-runs the tests on this last one and gets the same results...” He held the report out so Troy could see.

  “Saliva? Teeth marks? Mommy did not teach this guy good table manners.”

  They traveled the rest of the way without speaking, Chris absorbed in thought while Troy pressed his face against the windows and made kissy faces at anyone they passed he thought was cute. The shuttle stopped several minutes later. They disembarked and walked up the street in silence.

  They reached the apartment building and Troy opened the front gate. As they walked up the stairs, Troy broke Chris’s concentration by commenting, “So the killer sucks, eh?”

  “Yeah, I’m fairly sure.”

  “Think it’s anyone we know?” Troy opened the door and turned on the lights. The rush of crimson made Chris momentarily dizzy.

  As Troy locked up, Chris sank down on the couch. “No,” he said, tiredly. “At least I don’t think so.”

  “You mean you hope not.”

  Chris nodded as he opened up the autopsy reports again. “No, my first guess is a newborn.”

  Troy flopped down next to Chris, sideways, his legs crossing Chris’s lap, one arm flung out on the back of the couch behind Chris’ head.

  “What makes you say that?”

  Chris, trying to see the report through a lapful of Troy, shrugged him off the couch, dumping him onto the floor.

  “Cut it out. You’re too big to be a lapdog.”

  Troy panted and made puppy noises as he settled on the couch again, snuggled up at Chris’s side.

  “Sometimes younger vampires, especially if they were created by accident, don’t realize they don’t have to kill their victims to feed.”

  “OK, I’ll buy that,” Troy offered. “But what about that woman in Georgia that had to be put down? Sometime before the war, I think.”

  “Yeah? What about her?”

  “Well, wouldn’t the throats be all torn up? Blood everywhere? This guy was practically Emily Post.”

  “True,” Chris replied, thoughtfully. “The younger ones do that. Very messy sometimes.”

  “Are we bragging about our technique, dear?”

  Chris ignored the comment and continued, “You’re right. If the killer’s young, between newborn and, oh let’s say, fifty or so, and untrained, the murders would be more violent.” He stared off into space.

  “So?” Troy urged, “What do you think’s going on?”

  “Maybe,” Chris began slowly, “the killer is old, very old.”

  “Why?” Troy’s attention was focused now.

  “Sometimes, when we get old, and I’m talking four or five centuries, boredom sets in.”

  “Boredom?” Troy commented, emotionless.

  “It could be our killer has a distinct purpose he’s unaware of.”

  “And that is...?”

  “To leave clues.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Troy exclaimed. “We know people who are positively ancient. Sylvia can be tiresome sometimes with her Miss Ennui shit, and Max is always doing his I’m-So-Tired-of-It-All bit, but there’s no way either of them would go around leaving a trail of bodies behind them.”

  “Someone else might. A rogue, maybe,” cut in Chris. “What worries me even more is the cutting out of the skin.”

  “Why?”

  “It may mean he’s trying not to be caught.”

  Troy was puzzled. “Of course he doesn’t want to get caught.”

  “Not necessarily. Some rogues are just tired of living. But they don’t have the inner strength to kill themselves. The only alternative is to get the normals to do it for them. That’s when you get the torn throats, the dead victims. It’s an unconscious way of self-destructing. I remember once, in Paris, we had to put down a rogue. He’d killed an artist, a painter, and left so many clues that even the French didn’t have any doubt about what he was. When a group of us caught up with him, only hours ahead of the police, we staked him.”

  Chris was silent, until Troy prompted him, gently. “And...?”

  “When the stake was in, just before he died, he...well, he seemed almost relieved.” Suddenly Chris slammed the autopsy report on the coffee table, stood up and began pacing. “That’s what bothers me, damn it! If this guy is old, he’s intentionally covering up. He doesn’t want to be caught. Consciously or unconsciously. But then, why do it?”

  “Calm down,” Troy cautioned. “You’ll have a conniption or something.” He thought for a moment while Chris continued to pace, running his han
ds through his hair in thought as he marched back and forth across the living room.

  “I’ve never seen you like this,” Troy said. “Scared.”

  “Damn right, I’m scared!” Chris exclaimed. “The other, final possibility terrifies me.”

  Troy said nothing. He just sat with an expectant look on his face.

  “Look,” said Chris, finally stopping and kneeling in front of the sofa to meet Troy’s gaze, “I’ve never known this to happen, but I’ve heard stories. Once in a while, when someone’s really old, like from before Christ, they get this god complex. They begin to think they can’t die, that they’re not only more than human but also more than vampire. That they’re I don’t know, somehow better than humans and better than vampires.”

  “No one is that old.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’ve met one and I know of at least two others. They don’t come out much, but they’re there.”

  Troy was now very concerned. “So, what can we do? It isn’t that easy to put someone like that down, is it?”

  “I don’t know. But if I’m right, we’re going to have to try.”

  Chris moved over to the telephone and picked up the receiver, holding the scarlet plastic in his hand gingerly. “The last thing I need,” he told Troy, “is this lurid decor. Anyone who walks in here’ll be convinced we killed those kids and mixed their blood in with a couple of gallons of Sherwin-Williams.”

  “I like it,” Troy said, miffed at Chris’ criticism.

  “I don’t,” Chris replied. He started to dial the telephone. “Change it.”

  “Excuse me, oh Great and Powerful Oz!” Troy sniffed. He considered pulling what Chris called his Star is Born routine, complete with tears, an obvious display of hurt feelings and thinly veiled threats to load his pocket with rocks and walk into Santa Monica Bay. However, his curiosity got the better of him. In any case, Chris’s comments about his decorating skills were sure to be repeated; he’d save the James Mason bit until then.

  “Who’re you calling?” he asked.

  “Sylvia. Who else?” Chris frowned as the telephone rang four times without being answered. “Damn. She’s out.” He replaced the receiver and began pacing the room.

  “Maybe, if my hunch is right, we can figure out who this guy is.”

  “And what if we can’t?” Troy asked innocently

  “Monkey,” Chris began with great patience, “sometimes you say things that make even me want to strangle you!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was scarcely an hour after dawn in Manhattan when Sylvia Gabrelli stumbled from her bedroom into the living room, wincing at the faint traces of sunlight leaking through minuscule cracks in the shutters covering the windows over her writing desk. One part of her mind silently cursed modern communication systems, capable of interrupting her day’s sleep with an emergency call from Chris at this ungodly hour, barely after she’d managed to drift off. Scarcely two hundred years ago, the urgent message would have reached her only after several days on horseback, allowing her not only to sleep in peace, but also providing a home-delivered meal in the form of the messenger himself. The other part of her mind firmly resisted panic at the news Chris had managed to drowsily impart as his own bedtime fast approached. She had helped put down rogue vampires several times during her long life; it was a task she did not relish undertaking again.

  Sylvia’s creamy pale olive skin and long raven hair allowed strangers no doubt as to her Italian ancestry even before she spoke with the faint, musical accent she’d unsuccessfully been trying to lose for more than four centuries. A statuesque woman who appeared to be in her early thirties, she could easily have become a successful matinee seductress, giving even Sophia Loren a run for her money. However, given the fact that Sylvia’s image on film, like that of most members of her race, appeared only as a blotchy smear, Ms. Loren was doubtless comfortably ensconced in some Tuscan estate, secure in the knowledge that her career on the silver screen was unthreatened.

  An inherently social woman, over the past few centuries or so, Sylvia had become the unofficial grand dame of the vampire community. Vampires from all over the world would inevitably make their way to New York, clutching an introduction from some old friend, to be welcomed with open arms into Sylvia’s magnificent home and invited to partake of her famous hospitality. When the time came for the guest to leave, days—or sometimes years—later, his or her name would be added to Sylvia’s voluminous address book, and since Sylvia had been a compulsive letter writer since her breathing days, a course of correspondence would ensue. By the time Chris’s call had so rudely awakened her, Sylvia was on friendly, if not intimate, terms with practically every vampire still walking the earth.

  She sat at her writing table, looking at the thick book in front of her, wishing she had restrained her love of company slightly but knowing that most of those listed in the book would have to be contacted sooner or later if they were to locate the rogue before the normals realized they shared the planet with several other species, almost all of which preyed on them in one form or another. Sylvia hoped the search would not take long and she would come across someone, somewhere, who might have heard a rumor as to the rogue’s identity. If Chris’s theory about the rogue’s advanced age was correct, it was probable he’d only recently arrived in America; someone in Europe or Asia might have witnessed an earlier murder that had been previously unreported.

  Sylvia adored Chris, and the intensity of her feeling for him had through the years been returned. He was one of the few members of her race that she would quite willingly risk the true death for; in fact, she had done so several times. The two had met in London not long after the turn of the 19th century, although they had corresponded for several decades prior to their first face-to-face meeting. She had been there, providing emotional support, when his mother had died of consumption in 1812, and he, in turn, had always been the first with condolences, sagacious advice, or one of his wryly clever jokes to cheer her up whenever one of her numerous mortal lovers passed on to his higher reward as they inevitably did.

  As Sylvia leafed through her book, wondering where to begin, she reflected that Troy, his faults notwithstanding, had indeed proved through the years to be the perfect mate for her friend. She could not honestly admit that she liked Troy. She was frequently amused by him and found him often endearing, but his selfishness where anything but Chris was concerned and his uncanny ability to sense the exact inappropriate word, comment or action that would send tempers flaring through the roof was sometimes difficult to take. No, she thought to herself, although she loved the little imp as Chris’s other half, had she met him independently she doubted that Troy Raleigh’s name would be on the “must invite” list for any one of her monthly social gatherings.

  But, given her own failings in the amour department, she chided herself, she really couldn’t be too judgmental about Chris’s choice of a mate.

  Fifteenth century Florence had been a marvelous time and place. Sylvia had been born to poor parents of the peasant class, but her incredible beauty had helped her overcome, not only the rigid social structures of the time, but also the inevitability of death. Early in Sylvia’s breathing life, she had developed a passion for beautiful things, things which she had resigned herself to never being able to possess. Her change had opened up new opportunities for a substantially increased income and, posing as a middle-aged widow, she had purchased a small estate and had set about filling it with paintings, fine furniture, sculpture and other objets d’art.

  Her meeting with Botticelli was inevitable and the attraction had been both immediate and intense. Botticelli had an ardent love for life and an impassioned creative drive Sylvia had found irresistible. During the decade they had intermittently spent together, she had posed for him several times, regretting only that, since she had been changed at the fairly advanced age of thirty-two, Sandro refused to use her as a model for any of the mythological young virgins which he was so fond of portraying. She contented her
self with the knowledge that, over time, she would retain her looks and figure long after the sweet young things Sandro bedded on occasion had turned into withered crones.

  Unfortunately, as the years passed and she grew more and more secure in her love for the artist, she became sloppy and began to skimp in the daily artful application of face paint which gave her the illusion of growing older. She failed to notice the rise of religious conservatism sweeping Florence until it was too late. Rumors surrounding Botticelli’s perpetually youthful mistress were growing. Eventually, even Sandro became suspicious and he finally confronted Sylvia with her “unnaturalness.” Erroneously trusting in his love for her, she confessed her nature and invited him to share immortality with her. His response was as unexpected as it was emotionally devastating.

  That very night, her former friends and neighbors burned her home to the ground. Sylvia barely escaped with her life and a few of her most precious possessions. Although she had managed to rescue them all, a century passed before she was once again able to gaze upon any of the gorgeous paintings that Botticelli had given her without bitterness and regret.

  Her psyche was scarred for years, and despite decades of analysis Sylvia continued to find herself irresistibly attracted to men with artistic temperaments. Unfortunately for her, the more driven by his art the artist was, the deeper in love with him Sylvia inevitably fell. To her dismay, while artistic passion served to drive her lovers to make more beauty to add to the world, it also made them lousy vampires.

  Sylvia tried converting several of the men whom she had most loved but none survived even a mortal lifetime. Sorrowfully, she’d given up, contenting herself with a few, brief, stolen years of passion, followed by endless grief and vows that she would never fall in love again. But then she would chance across a work of art breathtaking in its beauty and, against her better judgment, contrive a meeting with the creative mind responsible for it. And voilá! The vicious cycle would begin again.

  Sighing with mingled regret and amusement at her poor judgment in men, she continued idly flipping through the pages of her address book. Several of her past lovers had been vampires, but as far as she was concerned, they hadn’t had the stuff out of which lasting relationships were made. The problem was that members of her own kind were all too much alike. Those that managed to survive the first century had common traits, necessary to enable them to continue existing but frequently irritating as hell to the vampire with whom they were emotionally involved.