Blood Therapy (Kismet Knight, Ph.D., Vampire Psychologist) (34 page)

BOOK: Blood Therapy (Kismet Knight, Ph.D., Vampire Psychologist)
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“You’re a real sack of shit, Parker.” Alan raked his fingers through his hair and slouched back into the cushions. “I knew there was something phony about you.”

Other customers were looking at us again, so it was clearly time to take our discussion elsewhere.

Michael half-rose out of his seat, preparing to launch himself over the table at Alan or do something equally stupid.

I scooted toward the end of the booth, pushing at Alan. “Move!” I stomped out, wanting to get away from them as much as to leave the restaurant.

They followed me.

“Where are you going?” Michael asked. “I’m serious about getting some answers from you.”

I looked back at him over my shoulder. “Yeah, so you said. Where’s this so-called proof?”

Michael lifted his laptop carrying case into the air. “Right here.”

“All right. We’ll go to my room, and you can show us.”

“No way!” Alan trotted up next to me. “Why are you indulging this guy, Kismet? He’s obviously fucked up. And he lied.”

“Yes, he did, and he’s confused. The least we can do is listen to him and educate him about the fallacies of his beliefs.” I shifted my eyes to his, silently asking him to play along. He obviously hadn’t thought about the likelihood of Michael being a target for Lucifer. Or maybe he just didn’t care.

Obviously pissed, he thrust his hands into his pockets and kicked an imaginary can down the hall. “Whatever.”

We waited for the elevator in silence, and when the door opened several people walked out. Alan and Michael stepped inside. I froze at the entrance. The doors started to close, and Alan grabbed the edge and forced it open. “What’s wrong? You look like you just saw a ghost. Did you?”

“Uh-huh.”

Stretched out on the floor of the elevator was a partially dressed couple wrapped in a passionate embrace. Her fur coat lay crumpled in the corner and her light-brown hair flowed under Michael’s shoes. Her companion’s white navy uniform shirt hung from one of the handrails. Alan was standing on his arm. They were moaning and groaning. Loudly.

“Hey, lady—are you getting on or not?” asked a man waiting behind me.

“Sorry.” I stepped in, trying to find a spot to stand where I wouldn’t interrupt the phantom reenactment.

“That was weird,” Michael said after we stepped off the elevator.

“Yeah. Welcome to my world.”

“There was a ghost in there? Are there really ghosts, too?”

“Shut up, Parker,” snapped Alan. “What are you, twelve? You’re really getting on my nerves.”

Michael spun toward Alan and raised a fist. “Yeah? Why don’t you try to make me shut up, ass-wipe.” He moved toward Alan.

“Bring it!” Alan raised his fists.

I quickly wedged myself between them and pushed them apart. “Stop it, you two! I’m not spending one more minute with either one of you if you don’t get a grip.”

I studied Michael’s contorted, angry face, looking for any signs of the person I thought I knew, and found nothing. Who the hell
was
this stranger?

They backed away from each other, and I pulled my keycard from my pocket, opened the door, and we silently filed in. The atmosphere was thick with anger.

“Okay.” I set my briefcase on my bed and walked to the sitting area under the window. “Let’s see what you’ve got.” I sat, waiting for Michael to unveil the mysterious proof on his laptop.

As Michael started to sit next to me, Alan raised the corner of his lip and actually snarled.

“Fuck you, G-Man,” said Michael, but he took the chair instead. He opened his laptop, clicked some keys, and a video began playing. He turned the screen toward us.

The first thing I noticed was the building in the background. Devereux’s club, the Crypt.

Uh-oh. What could he have seen?

Michael stopped the film and looked at me. “Over several months, I paid hundreds of individuals for accounts of vampire encounters. The project started as a lark after I met with a few clients who swore they’d met real vampires. Of course, like you, I thought they were nuts. Then I began visiting known goth hangouts. Most of the people I talked to were full of shit, but there were a few stories I couldn’t ignore. I kept hearing about the Crypt, so I decided to zero in on those people. The first night I was there, the staff confiscated my phone, and I was unceremoniously tossed out. How the hell had they known what I was doing? But that only made me more curious, so I started talking to people as they left the club. And then I saw your classified ads, offering therapy for vampires, and actually met a couple of your clients in front of the club.” He started the video again.

We watched for a few minutes, then Alan laughed.

“What feces, Parker.” He slapped his thighs. “Are you so stupid that you don’t recognize when people are playing you? You offer them money and they’ll say whatever you want to hear.”

“It’s not feces! I know when people are lying to me, and they weren’t. It’s good research. You’re not even a
real
psychologist, so what the fuck do you know about collecting data?”

“Well,” Alan laughed again, “if you’re an example of a
real
psychologist, I’m glad I took a different road.”

“Stop it, both of you!” I said, relieved and surprised that Michael’s
proof
was so lame. “Michael, is that all you have? There’s no evidence on the video that proves such things as vampires exist. It’s all hearsay and drug- and alcohol-fueled fabrications.”

He looked so disappointed I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. He’d lied and tried to use me, so I couldn’t work up any real sympathy.

“What about the guy who admitted to being a vampire? His fangs were real.”

“Well, not so much. But they were pretty good fakes …” I said, trying to be kind.

Alan leaped off the couch and danced across the room with his index fingers jammed up under his upper lip. “I’m a vampire, I’m a vampire. Look at my long pointy fangs.”

I had to cover my mouth to keep from laughing.

Michael slammed the lid down on his laptop and rose. “Oh yeah, asshole. You and me. Right now.” He strode toward Alan, who was holding his hands out in front of him now, making “come on” gestures.

Shit.

Michael leaped on Alan and they hit the floor, flailing and pounding on each other. They smashed into the entertainment center, sending all the hotel materials flying and a water pitcher sailing through the air.

“Fucking asshole!” Alan yelled as they tumbled into the desk.

“Cocksucker!” Michael said with a bloody lip.

“You wish—”

The pitcher gave me an idea, so I scooped it off the floor, bolted across the nearest bed, and headed for the bathroom. I knew it would piss them off, but a faceful of water might slow down the mayhem. I’d just crossed the bed again with my liquid weapon, preparing to take aim, when a young voice said, “Doctor Knight?”

I stopped, and turned toward the speaker, my heart in my throat. “Esther?”

“Esther?” Alan said, raising his head.

Michael punched him in the jaw. “Pus-head.”

“Ow!” Alan said, sitting up. He pushed Michael off him and wiped away a trickle of blood that was flowing into his eye.

“What?” Michael also sat up and looked at the visitor.

Esther was barely recognizable, and she smelled horrible. Her fruit-scented hair gel had hardened into a foul, nauseating paste that was flaking off in chunks. The glittery white body paint had cracked, exposing several areas of her naked body. Dried blood covered her lips and chin, and dribbled down her chest.

“Esther! What happened to your sparkle?” I set the water pitcher on the bedside table and moved toward her, my pulse hammering. “Did somebody hurt you?”

She thrust out her lower lip in a trembling pout. “No—I found out the sparkle paint comes off with water, so I bought some shimmer body lotion to cover up the cracked places in the paint, and it just made everything worse. It really made me stink. But I didn’t want to take a shower, ’cause I’ve waited so long to sparkle. I didn’t want to ruin it. I want to be a
real
vampire.”

Holy crap.

“How did she get in here?” Michael asked as he slowly, and apparently painfully, rose from the floor. Blood trailed down his face from a cut on his cheek.

Damn! So much for there being no such things as vampires.

Alan moved to stand beside me.

“What should I do, Doctor Knight?” Esther sniffed at the two men. “Blood—oh, wow. I’ve been on a feeding frenzy ’cause of being so upset.” She cocked her head. “They’re human.” She took a step toward Michael. “They smell so good, and I’m hungry.”

My stomach clenched, and I shot Alan a frightened look. What the hell were we supposed to do now? Neither of us could fight off a vampire.

“Esther!” I stepped in front of her. “Look at me! These are my guests. You can’t drink from them.”

Her irises had morphed to glassy black, showing little of their usual brown. She was lost in bloodlust, a very dangerous situation for humans.

“Esther! Come back!” I wanted to shake her, but if I did she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from attacking me.

Attacking me? Wait!

I remembered the pentagram necklace and reached into the neckline of my blouse to tug it free.

Esther kept inching toward Michael, who clearly had no idea what was going on.

I jumped in front of her and bared my neck.

“Kismet! What the hell are you doing?” Alan made an attempt to grab my arm.

“Wait, Alan.” I jerked out of his reach. “Esther!” I yelled as loudly as I could.

She shifted her gaze from Michael to me and leaned in, her fangs elongating.

I forced myself to hold still, to ignore all the primal voices in my head urging me to run, and clutched the pentagram in my hand.

As I hoped, when she bent to pierce my skin with her teeth, she raised a hand to steady my jaw. Just as her hand closed in, I pressed the pentagram against her palm, and the protective talisman flared as she touched it, causing an almost electrical burst.

“Hey!” Roused by the shock and moving vampire-quick, she dropped her hand and backed up. “That hurts!” Immediately her eyes returned to their usual brown, and she woke from her blood-trance, transforming back into her familiar self.

Alan and Michael closed ranks around me. Michael’s eyes couldn’t have been any bigger.

Esther slumped. Her shoulders caved in, she dropped her head, and she began to cry. “I didn’t mean to bite you, Doctor Knight. Now Devereux’s going to kill me.”

Shaking off Alan’s new grip on my wrist, I took a step toward my client. “Esther, look at me.”

Sobbing louder, she wiped her eyes with the sides of her fingers, making herself look even more like a decomposing zombie. “No. I’m bad.”

“You’re not bad, Esther. And you didn’t bite me. See?” I bared my neck again, this time hopefully just to make my point.

She blinked and studied my neck. “I didn’t bite you? But I really wanted to.”

“I know, but you touched the necklace Devereux gave me to protect myself, and it kept you from harming me. So everything is okay.”

Everything is okay? In what universe?

“She’s a vampire,” Michael whispered. Then his lips curled in a wide grin. “I
knew
they existed.”

Alan gave me a look. “Fuck it.”

I needed to get Esther out of the room, so dealing with Michael had to wait.

“Esther, I’ll be back home soon and we can make an appointment to talk about the sparkling vampires again. But in the meantime, I think it would be a good idea for you to take a shower, wash your hair, let your feeding frenzy calm down, and be the non-sparkling kind of vampire for a while. Are you willing to do that?”

“But Doctor Knight, I want to be a
real
vampire like Alice Cullen.”

“I know, and I promise we’ll look at the options. But right now I’d like you to go home and do as I asked.”

She stuck out her bottom lip again, then whispered. “Okay.”

With a tiny
pop
, she was gone.

I threw myself back onto the bed, not sure if I wanted to scream or cry.

Alan and Michael stood looking down at me. Michael’s grin still stretched across his face. An equally big frown filled Alan’s.

Michael crossed his arms. “You tried to convince me there are no vampires. I don’t think you can give me grief about my little pretense after you lied so blatantly! In fact, I think you owe me an apology!” He pursed his lips.

“Yeah, jerk-ass. Why don’t you go ahead and hold your breath until one of us apologizes to you?” Alan stroked his puffy lower lip. “I wouldn’t mind picking up exactly where we left off.”

Michael spun toward him, lifting his fists. “I’m ready, butt-wipe.”

“Jesus!” I sat upright. “Stop it—I mean it. Stop. It. Now.” Too much insanity! I grabbed my head to keep it from exploding. “Michael, if you want to hear anything about vampires, you’re going to have to talk to Alan. I’m done. Finished. Wiped out. So go away, both of you. Kill each other if you must. Just give me some peace!”

“No fucking way! I don’t want to talk to this FBI idiot. You owe me an explanation, and I’m staying here until you give me one.” Michael plopped down on the edge of the bed and re-crossed his arms. “And if you don’t, I’ll just have to chat with the media and tell them what I’ve seen tonight.” He smirked.

Alan leaned his face close to Michael’s. “I knew there was something off about you and your cover story, Parker. I’m not nearly as nice as Doctor Knight. I’m not sure I’m willing to spend one more moment with you, so you’d better shut up and stop being a dick, or you’ll find yourself neck-deep in vampires. I have a lot of friends of that persuasion.”

“Are you threatening me?” Michael jutted his chin into the air.

“Fuckin-A I am!” Alan straightened. “So what’s it gonna be? You can politely talk to me, or you can be dinner for my undead pals. I’ll tell them exactly where to find you, and since some vampire is already draining psychologists, another dead one would be no mystery.”

“It’s a
vampire
who’s killing psychologists?” Michael went pale.

“Yeah, how about that?” Alan moved over to me, leaned down, and kissed my forehead. “Are you sure you want to be alone? It’s been a crazy day.”

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