Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, MaryJanice Davidson, Angela Knight, Vickie Taylor - Bite (v1.0)

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BITE

Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris,

MaryJanice Davidson, Angela Knight, Vickie

Taylor

Contents

The Girl Who Was Infatuated with Death

LAURELL K. HAMILTON

One Word Answer

CHARLAINE HARRIS

Biting in Plain Sight

MARYJANICE DAVIDSON

Galahad

ANGELA KNIGHT

Blood Lust

VICKIE TAYLOR

SIZZLING PRAISE FOR THE AUTHORS OF

BITE

NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLING AUTHOR

LAURELL K. HAMILTON

"… just keeps getting better and better."

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Anita Blake is one of the most fascinating fictional heroines since Scarlett O'Hara—and a hell of a lot

more fun than most."—Publishers Weekly(starred review)

NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLING AUTHOR

CHARLAINE HARRIS

"… [has] the sure touch of a master."—Crescent Blues

"Harris weaves storytelling magic."—Lynn Hightower

USA TODAYBESTSELLING AUTHOR

MARYJANICE DAVIDSON

"… is irresistible."—New York Timesbestselling author

Lori Foster

"Erotically passionate, absolute delightful wicked fun!"

—Christine Feehan

AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR

ANGELA KNIGHT

"… is a new writing talent heading for the stars… exhilarating."—Midwest Book Review

"Chills [and] thrills… a sexy tale. The future belongs to Knight!"—Emma Holly

AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR

VICKIE TAYLOR

"… delivers sensuous sizzle and… mystery certain to thrill."—Romantic Times

BITE

Laurell K. Hamilton

Charlaine Harris

MaryJanice Davidson

Angela Knight

Vickie Taylor

JOVE BOOKS, NEW YORK

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M4V 3B2, Canada (a division of

Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.); Penguin Books. Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England;

Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.);

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of

Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.); Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel

Park, New Delhi—110 017, India; Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr. Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany,

Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.); Penguin Books (South Africa)

(Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's

imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

BITE

A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the authors.

PRINTING HISTORY

Jove mass-market edition / January 2005

Book design by Kristin del Rosario.

ISBN:0-515-1397O-X

JOVE®

Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

JOVE is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

The "J" design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

THE GIRL WHO WAS INFATUATED

WITH DEATH

Laurell K. Hamilton

This short story occurs in the interval betweenBLUE MOONand OBSIDIAN BUTTERFLY.

IT was five days before Christmas, a quarter 'til midnight. I should have been asnooze in my bed

dreaming of sugarplums, whatever the hell they were, but I wasn't. I was sitting across my desk sipping

coffee and offering a box of Kleenexes to my client, Ms. Rhonda Mackenzie. She'd been crying for

nearly the entire meeting, so that she'd wiped most of her careful eye makeup away, leaving her eyes pale

and unfinished, younger, like what she must have looked like when she was in high school. The dark,

perfect lipstick made the eyes look emptier, more vulnerable.

"I'm not usually like this, Ms. Blake. I am a very strong woman." Her voice took on a tone that said she

believed this, and it might even be true. She raised those naked brown eyes to me and there was

fierceness in them that might have made a weaker person flinch. Even I, tough-as-nails vampire-hunter

that I am, had trouble meeting the rage in those eyes.

"It's alright, Ms. Mackenzie, you're not the first client that's cried. It's hard when you've lost someone."

She looked up startled. "I haven't lost anyone, not yet."

I sat my coffee cup back down without drinking from it and stared at her. "I'm an animator, Ms.

Mackenzie. I raise the dead if the reason is good enough. I assumed this amount of grief was because

you'd come to ask me to raise someone close to you."

She shook her head, her deep brown curls in disarray around her face as if she'd been running her hands

through what was once a perfect perm. "My daughter, Amy, is very much alive and I want her to stay

that way."

Now I was just plain confused. "I raise the dead and am a legal vampire executioner, Ms. Mackenzie.

How do either of those jobs help you keep your daughter alive?"

"I want you to help me find her before she commits suicide."

I just stared at her, my face professionally blank, but inwardly, I was cursing my boss. He and I had had

discussions about exactly what my job description was, and suicidal daughters weren't part of that

description.

"Have you gone to the police?" I asked.

"They won't do anything for twenty-four hours, but by then it will be too late."

"I have a friend who is a private detective. This sounds much more up her alley than mine, Ms.

Mackenzie." I was already reaching for the phone. "I'll call her at home for you."

"No," she said, "only you can help me."

I sighed and clasped my hands across the clean top of my desk. Most of my work wasn't indoor office

work, so the desk didn't really see much use. "You're daughter is alive, Ms. Mackenzie, so you don't

need me to raise her. She's not a rogue vampire, so you don't need an executioner. How can I be of any

help to you?"

She leaned forward; the Kleenex waded in her hands, her eyes fierce again. "If you don't help me by

morning she will be a vampire."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"She's determined to become one of them tonight."

"It takes three bites to become a vampire, Ms. Mackenzie, and they all have to be from the same

vampire. You can't become one in a single night, and you can't become one if you're just being casual

with more than one."

"She has two bites on her thighs. I accidentally walked in on her when she was getting out of the shower

and I saw them."

"Are you sure they were vampire bites?" I asked.

She nodded. "I made a scene. I grabbed her, wrestled with her so I could see them clearly. They are

vampire bites, just like the pictures they passed around at the last PTA meeting so we could recognize it.

You know one of those people lecturing on how to know if your kids are involved with the monsters."

I nodded. I knew the kind of person she meant. Some of it was valuable information, some of it was just

scare tactics, and some of it was racist, if that was the term. Prejudiced at least.

"How old is your daughter?"

"She's seventeen."

"That's only a year away from being legal, Ms. Mackenzie. Once she turns eighteen, if she wants to

become a vampire, you can't stop her legally."

"You say that so calmly. Do you approve?"

I took in a deep breath and let it out, slow. "I'd be willing to talk to your daughter, try to talk her out of

it. But how do you know that tonight is the night? It has to be three bites within a very short space of time

or the body fights off the infection, or whatever the hell it is." Scientists were still arguing about exactly

what made someone become a vampire. There were biological differences before and after, but there

was also a certain level of mysticism involved, and science has always been bad at deciphering that kind

of thing.

"The bites were fresh, Ms. Blake. I called the man who gave the lecture at our school and he said to

come to you."

"Who was he?"

"Jeremy Ruebens."

I frowned now. "I didn't know he'd gotten out of jail," I said.

Her eyes went wide. "Jail?"

"He didn't mention in his talk that he was jailed for conspiracy to commit murder—over a dozen counts,

maybe hundreds. He was head of Humans First when they tried to wipe out all the vampires and some of

the shape-shifters in St. Louis."

"He talked about that," she said. "He said he would never have condoned such violence and that it was

done without his knowledge."

I smiled and knew from the feel of it that it was unpleasant. "Jeremy Ruebens once sat in the chair you're

in now and told me that Humans First's goal was to destroy every vampire in the United States."

She just looked at me, and I let it go. She would believe what she wanted to believe, most people did.

"Ms. Mackenzie, whether you, or I, or Jeremy Ruebens, approve, or not, vampires are legal citizens

with legal rights in this country. That's just the way it is."

"Amy is seventeen, if that thing brings her over underage it's murder and I will prosecute him for murder.

If he kills my Amy, I will see him dead."

"You know for certain that it is a he?"

"The bites were very, very high up on her thigh." She looked down at her lap. "Her inner thigh."

I would have liked to have let the female vamp angle go, but I couldn't because I was finally beginning to

see what Ms. Mackenzie wanted me to do, and why Jeremy Ruebens had sent her to me. "You want me

to find your daughter before she's got that third bite, right?"

She nodded. "Mr. Ruebens seemed to think if anyone could find her in time, it would be you."

Since Humans First had also tried to kill me during their great cleansing of the city, Rueben's faith in me

was a little odd. Accurate probably, but odd. "How long has she been missing?"

"Since nine, a little after. She was taking a shower to get ready to go out with friends tonight. We had an

awful fight and she stormed up to her room. I grounded her until she got over this crazy idea about

becoming a vampire."

"Then you went up to check on her and she was gone?" I made it a question.

"Yes." She sat back in her chair, smoothing her skirt. It looked like a nervous habit. "I called the friends

she was supposed to be going out with and they wouldn't talk to me on the phone, so I went to her best

friend's house in person and she talked to me." She smoothed the skirt down again, hands touching her

knees as if the hose needed attention; everything looked in place to me. "They've got fake ID that says

they're both over twenty-one. They've been going to the vampire clubs for weeks."

Ms. Mackenzie looked down at her lap, hands clasped tight. "My daughter has bone cancer. To save

her life they're going to take her left leg from the knee down, next week. But this week she started having

pains in her other leg just like the pains that started all this." She looked up then, and I expected tears, but

her eyes were empty, not just of tears, but of everything. It was as if the horror of it all, the enormity of it,

had drained her.

"I am sorry, Ms. Mackenzie, for both of you."

She shook her head. "Don't be sorry for me. She's seventeen, beautiful, intelligent, honor society, and, at

the very least, she's going to lose a leg next week. She has to use a cane now. Her friends chipped in and

got her this amazing Goth cane, black wood and a silver skull on top. She loves it, but you can't use a

cane if you don't have any legs at all."

There was a time when I thought being a vampire was worse than death, but now, I just wasn't sure. I

just didn't have enough room to cast stones. "She won't lose the leg if she's a vampire."

"But she'll lose her soul."

I didn't even try to argue that one. I wasn't sure if vampires had souls, or not; I just didn't know. I'd

known good ones and bad ones, just like good and bad people, but one thing was true: vampires had to

feed off of humans to survive. No matter what you see in the movies, animal blood will not do the job.

We are their food, no getting around that. Out loud, I said, "She's seventeen, Ms. Mackenzie, I think she

probably believes in her leg more than her soul."

The woman nodded, too rapidly, head bobbing. "And that's my fault."

I sighed. I so did not want to get involved in this, but I believed Ms. Mackenzie would do exactly what

she said she would do. It wasn't the girl I was worried about so much as the vampire that would be

bringing her over. She was underage and that meant if he turned her, it was an automatic death sentence.

Death sentences for humans usually mean life imprisonment, but for a vamp, it means death within days,

weeks at the most. Some of the civil rights groups were complaining that the vampire trials were too

quick to be fair. And maybe someday the Supreme Court would reverse some of the decisions, but that

wouldn't make the vampire "alive" again. Once a vamp is staked, beheaded and the heart cut out, all the

parts are burned and scattered on running water. There is no coming back from the grave if you are

itty-bits of ashy fish food.

"Does the friend know what the vampire looks like, maybe a name?"

She shook her head. "Barbara says that it's Amy's choice." Ms. Mackenzie shook her head. "It isn't, not

until she's eighteen."

I sort of agreed with Barbara, but I wasn't a mother, so maybe my sympathies would have been

elsewhere if I was. "So you don't know if the vampire is male or female."

"Male," she said, very firm, too firm.

"Amy's friend told you it was a guy vampire?"

Ms. Mackenzie shook her head, but too rapid, too jerky. "Amy would never let another girl do that to

her, not… down there."

I was beginning not to like Ms. Mackenzie. There's something about someone who is so against all that

is different that sets my teeth on edge. "If I knew for sure it was a guy, then that would narrow down the

search."

"It was a male vampire, I'm sure of that." She was working too hard at this, which meant she wasn't sure

at all.

I let it go; she wasn't going to budge. "I need to talk to Barbara, Amy's friend, without you or her

parents present, and we need to start searching the clubs for Amy. Do you have a picture of her?"

She did, hallelujah, she'd come prepared. It was one of those standard yearbook shots. Amy had long

straight hair in a rather nondescript brown color, neither dark enough to be rich, or pale enough to be

anything else. She was smiling, face open, eyes sparkling; the picture of health and bright promise.

"The picture was taken last year," her mother said, as if she needed to explain why the picture looked

the way it did.

"Nothing more recent?"

She drew another picture out of her purse. It was of two women in black with kohl eyeliner and full,

pouting lips, one with purple lipstick and the other with black. It took me a second to recognize the girl

on the right as Amy. The nondescript hair was piled on top of her head in a casual mass of loose curls

that left the clean, high bone structure of her face like an unadorned painting, something to be admired.

The dramatic makeup suited her coloring. Her friend was blond and it didn't match her skin tone as well.

The picture seemed more poised than the other one had, as if they were playing dress-up and knew it,

but they both looked older, dramatic, seductive, lovely but almost indistinguishable from a thousand other

teenage Goths.

I put the two pictures beside each other and looked from one to the other. "Which picture did she go out

looking like?"

"I don't know. She's got so much Goth clothing, I can't tell what's missing." She looked uncomfortable

with that last remark, as if she should have known.

"You did good bringing both pictures, Ms. Mackenzie, most people wouldn't have thought of it."

She looked up at that, almost managed a smile. "She looks so different depending on what she wears."

"Most of us do," I said.

She nodded, not like she was agreeing, but as if it were polite.

"How old is Barbara, her friend?"

"Eighteen, why?"

"I'll send my friend, the private investigator over to talk to her, maybe meet me at the clubs."

"Barbara won't tell us who it is that's been…" She couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence.

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BITEByLaurellK.Hamilton,CharlaineHarris,MaryJaniceDavidson,AngelaKnight,VickieTaylor Contents TheGirlWhoWasInfatuatedwithDeathLAURELLK.HAMILTON OneWordAnswerCHARLAINEHARRIS BitinginPlainSightMARYJANICEDAVIDSON GalahadANGELAKNIGHT BloodLustVICKIETAYLOR SIZZLINGPRAISEFORTHEAUTHORSOFBITE NEWYORKTIMESB...

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