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Book Cover |
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Excerpt |
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"Look, Ovsanna, you
know I'm attracted to you.
"Every minute we've been together since
Christmas has been leading up to this. It was all I could think about,
driving up here. I want to make love to you. I have the feeling if I do,
I'll never want to stop. And that would be great, if I didn't have a job
to do. But I do." Peter stood up and walked back to the window. "I mean,
I've already done it, but no one knows that except you and your . . .
fucking vampyres! No one else knows the Cinema Slayer is dead. So I
can't close the case. And you were involved in the case. Hell, Maral was
even a suspect for a while. So as long as the case is open, I can't
sleep with you! I can't even see you without a good excuse for the
Captain. Do you understand that?" He turned back and looked at me with
such pleading in his eyes that I couldn't let my anger overwhelm me.
But I couldn't keep it under control,
either. My fangs unsheathed and my eyes turned red. I was royally
pissed. I'd been imagining this night for days now, and this was not
what I'd imagined. My vision sharpened, but the color leached out of
everything. Peter's face was defined in shades of black and gray. I
looked past him out the window at the photographer on the beach, and my
frustration and rage found an immediate target for release. Fuck Peter
King and this explanations. Fuck his attack of conscience and his
integrity. I wanted to tear something apart. I wanted blood.
In an instant I was in the sand,
screaming at the poor bastard with the camera. He stared at me with his
mouth hanging open, stunned at my sudden appearance from nowhere. "What
the fuck are your doing out here?" I screamed. "You're trespassing, you
son of a bitch!" Talk about misplaced anger. I tore the strap from
around his neck and hurled his camera into the water. It was heavy, but
I tossed it like a pebble.
I turned back, expecting to see him
cowering. My fangs hadn't dropped yet, but even in the dark, he'd seen
my red eyes. And my voice, when I'm angry, can level a baseball stadium.
They don't call me the Scream Queen for nothing.
He wasn't cowering. He had something
around his neck, some sort of fur band, and he was rubbing it, muttering
to himself. His human scent dissipated, replaced with something lupine
and feral, and I knew in an instant what was happening. That band was a
talisman; he was using black magic. His clothes ripped apart and his
body changed shape, his shirt and jacket shredded at the seams. His
haunches tore through his jeans as if they were tissue paper. The smell
of wolf was eye-watering.
The paparazzo was a fucking boxenwolf.
He'd used the talisman around his neck to shape-shift, and he was coming
at me. What was it with me and wolves these days? First the monster were
at the house in Bel Air and now this prick bastard. You'd think I was in
heat or something.
The boxenwolf was big. Not as big as the
werewolf from Saturday night, but big enough to give me trouble. Bigger
than a Grey and a lot more vicious. He circled me, snarling and
snapping. I extended my claws and dropped my fangs. Wolves are very
expressive; you can see their emotions in their eyes. This one wasn't
surprised I was a vampyre.
He backed away from me and started
howling. I moved in on him, slashing at his throat. The fur talisman
protected his neck. I came away with clumps of mangy hair under my nails
but no flesh. He backed away again, his hinds legs in the tide. I didn't
understand why he was retreating--until fangs clamped around my bare leg
and something powerful struck me from behind. I went down in the surf,
and the rest of the pack attacked.
There were five of them. All wearing
fur-pelt talismans around their necks. All boxenwolves. Powerful.
Ferocious. I shoved myself up from the waves, used one hand to throw one
of them--a gray-coated female--father into the ocean, and sank my teeth
into the snout of the male who had me by the leg. I shook him loose; he
came away with a chunk of my calf in his mouth. The smell of my blood
and his blood together worked on me like a shot of meth. I crushed his
muzzle between my teeth.
The gray female was fighting the undertow
twenty feet from shore. That left my buddy the photographer and his
three pack mates. We had a moment's standoff while the four of them
circled me and I held down the fifth in the sand. The pain in his snout
left him barely struggling. He was yipping instead.
And then they attacked again.
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Synopsis |
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A couple of weeks after the Cinema Slayer
was killed, see Vampyres of Hollywood,
Ovsanna Moore, the Charelaine of the Clan Dakhanavar of the First
Bloodline, the Scream Queen of Hollywood, is at her Bel Air home when
she smells a werewolf outside. After she goes outside to investigate,
the large were creature attacks her, but she is able to drive him off.
She is a mess, but knowing that she heals fast, realizes that she only
has an hour before Peter King shows up to escort her to his mother's
Christmas Eve dinner party.
Detective Peter King met Ovsanna about three of weeks ago when he was
investigating the Cinema Slayer murders. After tracking her to Palm
Springs, he witnessed her transforming into some kind of winged dragon
creature to fight off Lilith and her minions. Peter then joined the
battle and helped the Vampyres of Hollywood kill Lilith and drive the
survivors away. Since then, Peter and Ovsanna have been spending a fair
amount of time together because both of them are sexually attracted to
each other.
A couple of day later, Maral McKenzie,
Ovsanna's assistant, returns from Florida with a "friend" of her
brother. Maral claims that DeWayne Cater had been selling her brother,
Jaime, drugs and since she wanted to protect Jaime, she brought DeWayne
back to California with her to he can do a commercial and make a lot of
money. Ovsanna can smell the man's odor in the house and she does not
like it one bit . . . it is a strange smell. She tells Maral to get
DeWayne out of her house. When Maral finds out that Ovsanna is going out
on a date with Peter that night, she become instantly jealous. Ovsanna
tells Maral to go the beach house so the Bel Air house will be empty
when Ovsanna and Peter return. But Maral is home when the two return
from their date and Ovsanna is totally pissed at Maral. Peter has to
leave anyway to go to a murder scene.
At the Sportman's Lodge in Studio City, a
woman's body has been found. Both of Graciella de la Garza's arms are
missing along with a chunk out of her stomach and side. It almost looks
like an alligator attack. Peter's boss thinks it is another Cinema
Slayer killing, but Peter knows better. He doesn't know who killed this
poor woman, only that it wasn't the Lilith, because she was dead.
The sexual tension between Peter and
Ovsanna continues to build. Peter finds a way to close the Cinema Slayer
case, but he has to lie to do it. Since the case is closed, Peter and
Ovsanna are now relatively free to see each other, but Maral is
constantly getting in the way. Ovsanna observes Maral performing black
magic and assumes that it is to make DeWayne stay away from her brother.
During the next few days, some of
Ovsanna's Vampyres of Hollywood friends show up in her office wanting
the vacant job left by the death of Thomas DeWitte, Ovsanna's former
partner at Anticipation Studios. First,
Orson
Wells makes an appearance, followed by
Mary
Pickford, and then
Pola Negri.
Later,
Tyrone Powers shows up and is followed by
Tod
Browning. Ovsanna tries to convince all of them that they have very
well known faces, and since all of them are supposed to be dead, she
can't hire any of them to be her partner.
Meanwhile, Peter is making some headway
in tracking down the killer of Graciella. When Peter's friend, SuzieQ,
calls her and tells her to meet him at a pond, he finds out that she has
been kidnapped by DeWayne. After saving SuzieQ, the pieces of the puzzle
start to fall into place and Peter figures out some things that he fears
may drive a wedge between he and Ovsanna. He only hopes that she will
believe him.
The question still remains as to who the
werewolf is that attacked Ovsanna at her Bel Air home. Why did the
boxenwolves attack Ovsanna on the beach and what did they want? Who out
there knows Ovsanna's secret that she is a vampyre and who is it that
wants her dead?
Love Bites is a fictional book
about vampyres living in Hollywood and a detective involved them. It is
the second book in the Vampyres of Hollywood series and is written by
Adrienne Barbeau.
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Review |
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I was very excited to read
Love Bites, the second book in the Vampyres of Hollywood series
by Adrienne Barbeau. I wasn't sure what happened to Michael Scott, as he
co-wrote the first first book in this series, but I think I missed him.
Michael Scott has written a ton of Fantasy and Horror books for both
Adults and Young Readers, and I think that his missing talent was
something that slightly hurt this book.
I found the continuing
sexual tension be Peter King and Ovsanna Moore to be something I really
wanted to read about. I really liked both of these well-though out
characters and couldn't wait for them to get together. As the story
progressed, I was frustrated that outside events always seemed to keep
them apart. As I was reading the book, I seriously wondered whether I
was going to have to wait for the third book in this series for these
two exciting and interesting characters to get together. Luckily, that
was not the case.
With the first book in this
series, there was a lot of tension in the story because of the horrific
murders, and that kept me heavily involved. Whereas, with the second
book, the story focuses more on the relationship between Peter and
Ovsanna, while the werewolf story takes a back seat. I think I was a
little disappointed in this. To me, this book started to feel more like
a romance book rather than a detective, paranormal book. I guess I was
expecting a book more like Vampyres
of Hollywood with a lot of action and massive murders with Peter and
Ovsanna working together to solve.
Another thing I was
disappointed in was the abrupt conclusion of the big battle at the end
of the book. Here I was thinking, "Ahh, Ovsanna is finally going to
attack the bad guy. I cannot wait to read this!" And then it was over.
The fight was one paragraph long. That is not to say there there wasn't
a lot of battling going on around her with other creatures and some of
the Vampyres of Hollywood, but I expected the final battle to be a
little more climactic than it was. I know that the movie Van Helsing
wasn't a very successful movie monetarily, but at least the final battle
between the vampire and the werewolf was pretty frickin' awesome. I
wanted that kind of explosive conclusion to the final battle in this
book, but it just wasn't there.
Still, even thought his book
wasn't exactly what I had hoped, I had a wonderful fun time reading it.
It was great witnessing the relationship between Peter and Ovsanna grow
and change as the book progressed. The story involving Maral and DeWayne
was fascinating and ended the way I hoped . . . but I'm sure it isn't
over yet. As for the werewolf part of the story, that seemed to reside
on the back burner to the relationship part of the book came to a full
boil.
Overall, Love Bites
is a great story and a nice addition to the Vampyres of Hollywood
series. I am looking forward to seeing what will happen in the third
book in this terrific series. I'm sure that it will be bloody delicious.
I rated this book an 8 out of
10. |
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