Incubus Moon Read online

  One of the paramedics, a tall, muscular African-American, snapped latex gloves into place and knelt down to shine a penlight into my eyes. He asked that I follow the bright spot of light up and down, and then from side to side. “How do you feel, Sir? Any dizziness or nausea?”

  “Some,” I told him. “The light hurt my eyes, too.”

  “Probable concussion,” he said to his partner, a wiry, buzzed-cut white guy, who retrieved a pair of scissors from his tackle box and went to town on the back of my shirt. A hint of barbed wire tattoo encircling his bicep peeked out from beneath his short-sleeved uniform.

  Amazing the trivial things one focuses on when his life is hanging in the balance.

  “Trev,” he said to the black guy. “From the look of this swelling back here, he’s gonna need more medical attention than we can give him.” To me he said, “Hard to believe you can move at all, Sir.”

  I nodded with a wince toward the bottle of tequila. “God bless Mexico.”

  The young paramedic laughed and continued to cut away at my now defunct designer denim. Caulfield’s face registered a decided lack of amusement.

  The two paramedics conferred with one another, and then Trev got on the phone to call in the extent of my injuries. He documented the instructions on his chart.

  The second EMT continued to tend to my wounds, while Caulfield grilled me about every detail of the past twenty-four hours—from seeing Dimitri with Andrea at the party last night, to visiting his home earlier today, to the ensuing scuffle and, ultimately, to my landing on that red-tipped finger poking out of the earth. The most significant detail, the one about my neighbor being a vampire, I opted to leave out. If I was having an issue getting past the idea, I could only imagine what the L.A.P.D. would have to say about it.

  “Where are your landlords?”

  “Out of town,” I told her.

  “I’ll need their phone numbers.” Renewed skepticism furrowed her brow. “That’s it? There’s nothing else you’d care to report?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing that I can think of, Detective.”

  Caulfield wasn’t buying it. Maybe that was because I wasn’t buying any of it.

  “Davis. You and Atwell go next door and question this…” she flipped through to her previous notes, “Dimitri Ravello. I’ll finish up here with Mr. Iverson.”

  “That’s not such a great idea,” I told them.

  Caulfield and the two officers turned to scrutinize me. “Why’s that?” she asked.

  Because Dimitri Ravello will rip their goddamn heads off with his bare hands, that’s why. “It’s not like he’s going to confess to murder,” I said instead.

  “You let us worry about the neighbor, Mr. Iverson.” Caulfield nodded at Davis, at which point he and Atwell headed for the door.

  “Detective?” the African-American paramedic said. “We need to get him to the hospital.”

  “Gimmie a few more minutes with him, will ya, guys?”

  The EMT wasn’t happy with her request, but he and his coworker finished dressing the last of my deeper wounds, removed their gloves, and then packed up their med boxes.

  “We’ll wait downstairs,” he told Caulfield.

  She retrained alert eyes on me, narrowing them now as she examined the left side of my neck. “Did you get those punctures climbing over the wall, too?”

  She knew I hadn’t. Trouble was I didn’t have a good answer for her. “Sorry, Detective. A lot of terrible stuff happened today. I don’t remember how I got them.”

  She cocked her head to the side and gave me her best cop stare, the one reserved for intimidating uncooperative criminals. “I want to believe you, Mr. Iverson, but frankly, that wound looks like a bite mark to me, and far too severe for you not to remember getting it.”

  “Maybe it’s the concussion? I wish I could be more helpful.”

  “Allow me to be blunt. You’re talking to a woman who owns dogs, Mr. Iverson. Big dogs. The shape and bite radius of your wound are too human to be animal.” She leaned in again to drive her message home. “So are you absolutely certain there’s nothing more you’d like me to add to this report?”

  Oh, there was plenty. But spilling the beans would win me an indefinite stay at the Hotel Padded Cell, along with all the other loonies in Los Angeles. No way was I telling her the whole truth. I just couldn’t.

  Instead, I took in a deep breath (mistake!) and said, “Look, Detective. Isn’t it enough to be attacked by a man who buried someone in his backyard? The very same man who threatened my life an hour ago?”

  “Allegedly,” she corrected me.

  “Come again?”

  “The man who allegedly buried someone in his backyard.”

  Heavy footsteps on the stairs diverted our attention to the front door. Trev, the muscular African-American paramedic, poked his head in. “We gotta move, Detective.”

  Caulfield smiled at him. “One more minute.”

  He folded his arms and leaned against the low stucco wall of the landing.

  “Now,” she resumed, “I think you’ll find this next bit interesting.” I regarded her with as much cool as I could muster, given the current set of circumstances, and waited for the Detective to elaborate. “We received a call earlier today from your neighbor, Mr. Ravello. The gentleman claims that you broke into his home not once, but twice, and threatened him with bodily harm.”

  Oh shit.

  CHAPTER 20

  “Really, I’m fine,” I told the doctor.

  The man regarded me over the rim of his bifocals and repeated how lucky I was that the injury to my spine wasn’t more acute. X-rays and a computerized tomography had revealed no fractures or internal bleeding. “You’ll also be staying with us overnight for observation.” He then added with a sterner tone, “And absolutely no strenuous activities of any kind for at least a solid month. That means no sports, heavy lifting or sex. Am I understood?”

  “Crystal.” I said it with a tight smile.

  What I couldn’t tell the doctor was that lust came with the incubus package. It struck whenever it damned well pleased. But then I had bigger problems to worry about, like a psychotic vampire hell bent on sucking me dry.

  At least the painkillers had kicked in. I was starting to feel more relaxed and wonderfully floaty. Besides, it did make sense for me to stay here at the hospital, where I’d be conceivably safe through the night. In the morning I could figure out what to do next.

  “Make sure he gets some rest,” the doctor instructed the woman sitting next to my hospital bed on his way out. Her presence here was throwing a damper on my sweet narcotic drip.

  “We didn’t turn anything up in your neighbor’s backyard,” Caulfield began, looking none too happy. She probably never looked happy. “We did take soil samples from the area you described. They’ve been sent to the lab for analysis. If there’s any trace of human tissue or fiber content, we’ll know about it.”

  Dimitri removed the evidence. Why did this surprise me?

  “There’s still the matter of your trespassing onto Mr. Ravello’s property,” she pressed, undeterred by my silence. “Twice.”

  “He invited me in, Detective, I swear.”

  She folded her arms and gave me her best cop stare. “Why would he lie?”

  I stared back at her in floaty disbelief. “Because he’s a psychotic killer!”

  My back sent me a not-so-gentle reminder of its unhappiness in the form of an electric-hot spasm o’gram. I bit down on the pain and waited for it to subside. So much for narcotic drips replacing tequila shooters. Thankfully, there was a little black gizmo near my right hand on the bed. Depressing the button once with my thumb took me back to Happy Land.

  Caulfield sucked in an aggravated breath and exhaled, closing her notepad with a snap and stuffing it impatiently into her inner jacket pocket. She wore irritated well.

  “Look, I get that shock can do strange things to a person’s memory. I’m not saying you’re intentionally leaving something out
, Mr. Iverson, but—”

  “Call me Austin.” My words came out in a slow, wonderful slur.

  “Will that help to jog your memory?”

  Ooh, floaty again. I definitely had to get me one of these black buttons.

  “Fine, Austin.” She sat at the edge of her chair and looked fixedly at me. “I’m not on board with your story. Not all of it, anyway. That you thought you saw something in Ravello’s backyard and have been roughed up isn’t in question. But there are two puncture wounds in your neck,” she continued undaunted, “and Ravello has no dogs.”

  I gazed out the hospital window at the nighttime sky. The Hollywood Hills twinkled back at me in the near distance, the lights blurring and streaking into a pretty watercolor. The fortress-like Beverly Center shopping complex and a mirrored, high-rise hotel rounded out the view across the street. And somewhere in those hills was my little guesthouse.

  The one right next door to a fairytale monster’s castle.

  “Furthermore, Austin, I’d like to know how the vast majority of cuts and bruises on your face and arms have either healed or are barely visible. Can you explain that much for me?”

  I didn’t have to respond with another lame answer. The door to my hospital room opened and a new doctor stepped inside.

  “Good evening, Julia,” he said. “And you, Austin. You’ve been a very naughty boy.”

  No narcotic drip in the world could take away the sharp stab of fear that cut through me, as I stared back at the fairytale monster himself. “That’s him, Detective!”

  Dimitri grinned at me, sharp incisors brilliant white under the fluorescent light.

  Caulfield whipped out her gun and took the standard two-handed firing position. She looked almost as terrified as I felt. Although, behind the fear in her eyes there burned something else, something that looked a lot like hatred.

  “Move and I’ll blow your head off.”

  “And I shall snap your pretty neck before the bullet leaves the barrel.”

  Caulfield snorted. “My trigger finger’s improved since our last encounter. So has my choice in friends. Meet Mr. Smith & Wesson, my new nine-millimeter best bud,” she said, referring to the seriously menacing handgun she was pointing at him.

  My words came out in a strangled croak. “You know each other?”

  Caulfield’s voice was steadier now, her fear seemingly in check. “He’s the piece of shit who slaughtered my family. I’ve been tracking this sonofabitch for years.”

  Dimitri grinned again, moving closer to my bed.

  Caulfield recalibrated her firing position. “Not. Another. Step.”

  “Your bravura grows tiresome, Julia. Now, be a good lass and let me have what I’ve come for this night.”

  I could feel my eyes go wide with terror. “Please, Detective, he’s gonna kill me!”

  Caulfield stood a few feet from the foot of my bed and returned the vampire’s cool smirk, focusing on the hollow of his throat instead of his eyes. “Not on my watch.”

  Dimitri’s grin disappeared and his eyes burned like glowing green embers. “Your bullets have no effect on me.”

  “Along with an improved trigger finger, you’ll find I carry new-and-improved bullets. Every head tipped in silver and blessed by my local parish priest, Father Nelson. They cost a bundle, but they’ll get the job done. Not such a big, scary vampire now, are you?”

  Dimitri intensified his gaze and Caulfield who lowered her eyes just enough to keep him in her line of sight, the barrel of her gun still pointed at his chest.

  “Never make eye contact with him,” she called over to me. “Ever. It’s over if you do. He can mess with your mind, some kinda hypnosis bullshit.”

  “Which worked so well on your little sister, if memory serves. She glided over my tongue like warm honey.”

  Caulfield’s gun quivered in her hand for an instant, and then became steady again. “I hope you choked on her, you sick fuck.”

  “In my day, women dared not speak to a man in such a fashion. Beyond unladylike, it carried the punishment of death. Is that what you seek, Julia, some peace in the grave?”

  “Dream on, Count Fuckface. Now, I won’t ask again. Step away from him.”

  “No,” Dimitri responded flatly.

  Caulfield took quick aim. I swear I could both hear and see her start to pull back on the trigger, the entire scenario unwinding in surreal slow motion.

  But before she could get the shot off, her small frame lifted from the linoleum floor, as though weightless, and hovered there for a few seconds, the look in her eyes a mix of fear and disbelief. Then reason kicked back in and she sought to fire her weapon.

  I called out to Caulfield, but it was too late.

  She doubled over and hurtled back against the hospital wall at a dizzying speed, taking a food tray table and plastic pitcher of water with her. The impact of her body made a loud thwacking sound and split the drywall, before she slumped motionless to the floor.

  Had the force landed her any closer to the plate-glass window, someone would have had to scrape her body off the pavement seven floors below.

  Shouts issued from out in the hallway, followed by the sound of running footsteps.

  Dimitri trained incandescent eyes on me and reached over, snatching me effortlessly from the bed with one hand. “Check out time, my incubus friend.”

  He jerked me forward and I yelped, my back shot through with white-hot spasms. The I.V. in my hand tore loose, ripping the tiny needle from it, a cool trickle of blood running down to my fingertips, just as two orderlies burst through the door.

  Dimitri half-hissed, half-growled at them, and they staggered backwards.

  The next thing I knew glass was shattering around me, bits of it piercing my clammy skin, the cool night air whipping through my hair and licking across my bloodied skin, as I plummeted to the street below.

  CHAPTER 21

  The last thing I remembered was falling seven stories on my way to becoming sidewalk goo. Correction. My last vivid memory was of a crazed vampire tossing my terrified ass through a seventh-floor hospital window.

  Dissatisfied with letting me die right then and there, Dimitri Ravello clearly had torture and slow death in mind for me. Why else would I be bound naked to the top of a cold, stone slab? Also, why were the twelve blonde women from my dreams here?

  Dressed in long, silver and white gowns, they surrounded my stone prison with linked hands, their expressions filled with mounting anticipation. Above us, flames flickered and danced within large, ornate braziers suspended by chains from a towering dome that cast dramatic silhouettes up and over the temple’s vaulted ceiling. Francesca, the pretty young woman from the portrait at Dimitri’s, stood closest to me and offered a wistful smile.

  “It is not the vampire you should fear, brother.”

  A thirteenth female came into view behind her now.

  In contrast to the terrifying, raven-haired being who’d once appeared to me, this woman possessed no sinister air to her regal beauty. Silver-white hair caressed her ivory shoulders in soft waves as she drew closer. “Time to wake up, dear boy…”

  I stretched beneath soft bedding, the inevitable stab of pain along my spine mercifully absent. Gone, too, were the thirteen women and massive temple structure. I’d actually woken refreshed and feeling like my old self again. As if this past year of misery and horror had somehow been little more than a bad dream already retreating from memory.

  If I got out of bed right now and headed downstairs, would Laura be sitting on the living room sofa of our Monrovia Craftsman, arguing about politics with Mark and Christie? Would Dimitri Ravello simply be their new neighbor and that Andrea person not be lying somewhere cold and dead?

  “The delusions of a fragile mind.”

  I scrambled from beneath the covers and pressed back against the arched headboard. If I could have willed myself through the padded fabric, through the very wall itself and into whatever lay beyond, I would have. The nightmare, it turned out, w
as horribly real.

  The vampire emerged from the shadows, the sole light source in the room coming from a dim table lamp positioned on the nightstand next to me. He paused at the foot of the enormous bed, no doubt here to make good on his promise.

  I searched frantically for a route of escape.

  The vampire’s eyes blazed with eerie green light, his gaze traveling up the length of my crouched body to fix on my throat. He offered a chilling smile. “There is no escape for you.”

  That was all I needed to hear.

  Fixing on the set of double doors at the end of a long corridor behind him, I experienced an acute pulling at the center of my chest, similar to what had happened when he attacked me at his mansion. I zeroed in on my target and the room around me became a blur, the ivory carpet fibers seemingly alive against the bottoms of my bare feet and propelling me toward safety, or so I hoped.

  Then I did something incredibly stupid.

  I turned to look back at the monster.

  One moment Dimitri was standing at the foot of the bed. In the next he was beside me, fangs bared, an arm hooked around my neck and dragging me back toward it.

  If this was it. If I was truly going to die, then I was determined to take a piece of the monster with me. It didn’t matter that I possessed a fraction of his physical strength. I could do what years of martial arts training had taught me and use my entire body weight to throw him off balance. Which is exactly what I did.

  Twisting sharply in his grip, I pushed straight back with my legs. The move paid off. Dimitri stumbled, giving me enough of an opening to make a break for it.

  He was on me in an instant.

  We crashed through the set of double doors and into a wider hallway in a shower of splintering wood and jagged metal bits. The crazier thing than fighting an honest-to-goodness vampire? I’d been knocked through a goddamn door and hardly felt a thing!

  No time to consider how this was even possible. Dimitri and I were tumbling over each other in an avalanche of tangled arms and legs, until we slammed against a wall, where he grabbed hold of my calf and gave it a crushing squeeze.