Downbeat (Biting Love) (25 page)

She eyed the balls through her lorgnette. “What are those?”

“Cheese balls, Mama.” A slender young woman in pink silk and crystal beads had followed the matronly woman. She was the epitome of debutante heiress, even pronouncing “mama” mah-MAH. Her pink-gloved hand rested on the sleeve of a somewhat stiff-looking young man with a middle part and bottle brush blond mustache straight out of the 1800s. I hoped it was a costume.

“I would enjoy a sample,” the matron said.

The heiress’s escort reached onto a table to snare a spoon and offered it to “Mama”.

“Lovely.” The matron dipped the small silver spoon into a ball and brought it to her mouth.

“No!” I lunged for her.

Just as Mrs. Blau stepped between us to say helpfully, “That particular ball is cheddar and creamed braunschweiger.”

The spoon disappeared between coral-painted lips which smacked. “Piquant. A mellow tang of cheddar, with overtones of…of…”

Her eyes widened and her bosom started heaving.

“Incoming!” I grabbed a napkin from the cart and shouldered by Mrs. Blau to shove it under the matron’s chin.

She grabbed it with both hands and pressed it to her mouth, then spun and ran heaving for the doors. The heiress and her escort exchanged a worried look, and followed.

I turned to Mrs. Blau. “Thanks for coming to help. But I don’t think these cheese balls are what society people are used to.”

“Oh, but you heard her. They’re piquant!”

And potentially deadly to elite digestions, since they didn’t have the years of sauerbraten, beer and
blutwurst
which had given Corners people cast iron stomachs.

A flash of purple near the appetizers distracted me. Mom? But the woman wasn’t a matron floating in an amethyst dress. She was a black-haired bombshell bouncing along in shrink-wrapped purple cellophane with four strategically placed postage stamps.

I straightened in surprise. What the hell was Camille doing here? “Dragan.” I pointed.

“On it.” He strode away. I watched him. He moved like sex. I tingled pleasantly, wondering if that would ever get old.

“Oh, here you are,” someone called cheerfully.

Even cast iron stomachs can drop painfully. I turned to behold Mrs. Weiss in her Liberty hair and star-spangled dress, wheeling in another cart with a jumbo fondue pot. I tensed, but this one smelled good. It smelled like…

Melted chocolate. Damn.

Memories of a hot stove will make a child recoil. That dance with Todd was as traumatic. Time kaleidoscoped and I was fourteen and immersed in splashing liquid, my heart thudding painfully, my very cells quaking in shame—“No!” I jerked back. I really think I expected to be drenched any second.

I trod on a lady behind me.

“Hey.” She shoved me off her. Hands flailing, I rebounded into another lady wearing an ostrich headdress with two plumes, a chunky necklace and a lot of cleavage. My fingers caught in her necklace, pulling her head down at the same time I dived toward the floor.

We clunked heads.

“Ow.” I reeled back, slapping my hand to my forehead—adding concussion to the mix.

Ostrich lady reeled back with the same force…right into the chocolate fondue cart.

She hit at an angle. Instead of rebounding, the cart spun under her and she went sprawling. She landed on the floor on her back, arms and legs in the air…just as the cart tipped. The pot emptied warm chocolate all over her. It coated the two antennae of ostrich feathers, her face, and ran down to pool in her cleavage.

“You…you are a menace!” She blinked up at me through glossy rivers, the only thing not coated the tip of her now-pink nose. With the feathers, she looked like a chocolate bunny.

It wasn’t a helpful image. “Sorry.” I backed away, cringing from the daggers in her eyes, hoping she didn’t go psycho killer rabbit on me. “I didn’t mean…I couldn’t help—”

“Raquel.” Dragan snared my elbow and pulled me away from bunnihilation. “Shall we give the waiters room to help this poor unfortunate creature?”

He smoothly propelled me out of the ballroom. He kept going until we were in a corridor with nobody else around us.

My roiling belly changed its tune to something more seductive. I wondered if Dragan was going to teach me something new.

But he only straightened my dress and smoothed my hair. I smiled tentatively at him.

Then
he twirled me into a corner and kissed me senseless and I forgot cheese balls and chocolate baths and even that woman screeching.

Until Camille drawled, “Hello, darlings.”

Dragan spun, his body between me and the vampire woman, his shoulders flaring like an enraged cobra. “What do you want?”

“We’re just saying hello.”

We
? I peeked out from behind Dragan.

Camille stood on the arm of what first appeared to be an elderly man, with a bent body, a lined, bespectacled face, and an almost bald head sporting a long fringe of white hair.

But on closer inspection, the pate was a bald cap and the lines in his face were painted on. It was an obvious disguise and, having played pit orchestra for a hundred musicals and seeing a lot of stage makeup, not a very good one.

The man’s blue eyes shifted to me. They twinkled as if he knew exactly what I was thinking, and it amused him.

Dragan stood pumped up and tense in front of me, as far from the elegant conductor as I’d ever seen. He growled, “Who are you?” I could practically feel the rough vibrations coming off his back.

“Giuseppe Marrone.” The man gave a short, ironic bow. “At your service.”

From Dragan’s still-flared back and clenching fists, he wasn’t reassured. “Why are you here?”

Bushy gray brows rose. “Like you, I am merely checking out rumors of a new colleague.”

Dragan’s body stiffened with an almost audible crack. “I’m not here for any rumors. I’m here to conduct the community orchestra.”

“My mistake.” The old man’s smirk said he knew otherwise. “Then you won’t be interested to know the rumors say a megavamp will be here tonight.”

Megavamp. That was Triana’s code word for the bigger-than-big, badder-than-bad vampire who had supposedly come to Chicago to be Nosferatu’s new first lieutenant. And if he was Giuseppe’s colleague, Giuseppe was a Coterie vampire.

I said, “Does this über-vamp have a real name?”

“Yes, as the matter of fact.” The old man/vampire appraised me from behind his half-moon glasses. “Gravloth.”

That sounded sinister.

“Herbert Gravloth.”

Herbie, not so much.

Camille said, “What I don’t understand is, why now? The position has been vacant since February. Why is Nosferatu so intent on filling it now, and why from the outside?”

The pseudo-old man turned a slightly mean smile on her. “You expected it to be you?”

“Of course.” She stiffened. “You did too. I’m second, after all.”

“Dear Camille. You know Nosferatu has limited tolerance for mistakes. Your defeat at the hands of your old amour in May was your first strike and your complete fuckup in July—”

“Yes, all right!” She held up both hands.

The music—the fear—in her voice shook me. I slid back behind Dragan, my hands fisted in his tux. What did Nosferatu do on the third strike that had her so terrified?

She said, “You’ll help me, Giuseppe, won’t you?”

“As I ever do, my dear.”

I peeked. His smile was that small, mean expression. And the music in his voice was a symphony of sarcasm.

But she glowed at him, not seeming to catch that he wasn’t going to help her at all. I wanted to shout the truth at her.

She turned to Dragan. “What about you, Zajicek? Have you discovered any weaknesses?” She’d dropped all her “darlings”. She must have been even more panicked than I thought.

“Weren’t you going to use your allure?” he drawled.

“I was. I still can, if I could find the bastard! Nosferatu won’t help and time is running out. Gravloth may claim my spot before I get within pheromone spitting distance. I’m reduced to chasing rumors to find him.”

A blood-curdling scream came from the ballroom.

“My dear, I think you can stop chasing.” Giuseppe snickered. “It sounds like your chance is here.”

Chapter Fifteen

Dragan grabbed my wrist and took off for the ballroom. I scrambled as best I could in his wake, but honestly if he wasn’t towing me like a water skier I’d have fallen within the first steps. Camille followed close behind, Giuseppe sauntering after with that nasty smile on his face.

As we ran, I admit I was hoping the scream was because LLAMA had started a cheese ball fight, or even that they’d brought out the nuclear pistachio fluff.

But no. The entire ballroom was staring at the stage.

A tank of a vampire dominated center stage, his four-lane back to the room. Around him, musicians leaped off the edge like grasshoppers fleeing a lawn mower. He was head and shoulders taller than the few poor souls left cowering.

The megavamp had crashed the Grand Vienna Woods Ball.

Dragan skidded to a stop. I piled into him, my heart rattling my ribs.

Even from the back Gravloth wasn’t like any of the graceful, perfectly proportioned vampires I’d seen. His fists were bigger than his head, he had a torso like a Winnebago and he stomped around the stage in boots like crash cymbals, scaring off the rest of the wildlife. He was a giant caricature of a vampire, but there was nothing funny about the sheer menace raging from him.

Heart in my throat, I scanned the area for Mom.

She was clutching Luke’s biceps in one of the hall doorways. Luke stood with dangerous ease, eyes narrowed at the vampire on the stage. Okay, she was in good hands.

Gravloth spun. My attention snapped front, my heart diving from my throat into my bowels. His skin was plated like a triceratops, his eyes red coals glowing from low-hanging brow plates. The fangs of a walrus jutted from his open mouth. Facing the frozen audience in his combat fatigue knock-offs, arms raised to show off muscles the size of trucks in his thin ribbed tank shirt, he roared until the whole room rang.

He leaped off the stage, shaking the floor when he landed.

He nearly squashed the young heiress and her escort, trembling near the foot of the stage. The megavamp’s head turned to them with a weird reptilian fluidity. I clutched Dragan’s fingers, my skin prickling.

The vampire reached for the cowering humans with his huge taloned hands. My stomach hollowed out. He grabbed the heiress by the neck and yanked her in. Her appetizers dropped from her hand with a shatter of plate followed by an alarming
splut
-sizzle. She’d been eating LLAMA cheese balls.

A gasp rose from the frozen crowd. The heiress whimpered.

The escort cleared his throat. “Ex-excuse me. You c-can’t do that.”

Gravloth’s head swiveled toward the young man. My palms slicked. The huge vampire roared right into the escort’s face, so hard the man’s hair streamed and shuddered with the force of it.

The young woman screamed. Her escort fainted with a
whump
.

There was dead silence—

Someone in the back started clapping. “Bravo.”

“Very nice,” someone else drawled.

More people clapped. The woman in front of me leaned over and murmured to her companion, “Riveting performance piece.”

The companion nodded. “Though a bit unoriginal.”

I nearly choked. They thought it was “performance art”.

In the vampire’s taloned grip, the heiress started heaving. Naturally—she’d been eating cheese balls. I couldn’t hear her
erk
over the polite applause.

But I saw clearly when she let loose over the monster vampire.

With an offended roar he tossed her away like dirty garbage. She stumbled, then staggered to where her mother folded her into the maternal bosom.

“My turn,” Camille murmured.

“Camille, don’t,” Dragan whispered sharply. “We haven’t got enough information on the Soul Stealer to effectively fight him—”

“No. I want this over.” She sauntered through the tables, hips swiveling seductively, the tail of her hair twitching in counterpoint.

Behind us, Giuseppe sniggered. “This should be interesting.”

Both Dragan and I glared at him. He quirked a shrug and smiled nastily.

Camille reached the front of the room where Gravloth had grabbed a handful of napkins and was wiping disgustedly at himself. His expression was easier to read since his face plate and fangs had softened and shrunk. “Hello,” she purred. “You’re new in town.”

His eyes rose to her and fired red. He jabbed out with his hand, almost too fast to follow, grabbed her throat and yanked her in.

Giuseppe
tsked
. “Such a one trick pony.”

“That trick is pretty effective.” Dragan’s fists balled.

Camille’s fingers plucked at the megavamp’s ringing hand, to no effect. She started making choking noises.