Fangs for Nothing

Praise for

The Fangover

“Outrageously funny and romantic.”

—
Night Owl Reviews

“There is a lot of humor in this romance, and that is where the writers truly shine.
The Fangover
is the perfect story for readers looking for a more lighthearted vampire romance.”

—
Romance Junkies

“A new, hilarious romance version of
The Hangover,
with an erotic supernatural twist.”

—
Fresh Fiction

Praise for the novels of
USA Today
bestselling author

ERIN M
C
CARTHY

“Steamy . . . Fast paced and red-hot.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“A runaway winner! Ms. McCarthy has created a fun, sexy, and hilarious story that holds you spellbound from start to finish.”

—
Fallen Angel Reviews

“The searing passion between these two is explosive, and the action starts on page one and doesn’t stop until the last page. Erin McCarthy has written a fun, sexy read.”

—
Romance Reviews Today

“This is Erin McCarthy at her best. She is fabulous with smoking-hot romances!”

—
The Romance Readers Connection

Praise for the novels of
USA Today
bestselling author

KATHY LOVE

“Love has a way of expertly blending poignant narrative with wonderfully lovable flawed characters . . . She adds a suspense-filled, supersexy plot to keep her readers’ hearts racing in more ways than one.”

—
Booklist

“Supercharged with sexual tension, mind melding, and suspense . . . Love delivers, with her usual fast pace and witty style.”

—
RT Book Reviews

“A fast-paced, humorous book that dishes out satisfying romance as well as lighthearted laughs.”

—
Love Vampires

“Kathy Love has done the impossible: come up with an original idea for a vampire romance. A bloodsucker’s delight.”

—
The Best Reviews

ERIN M
C
CARTHY

and

KATHY LOVE

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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

USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

For more information about the Penguin Group, visit penguin.com.

This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

Copyright © 2013 by Erin McCarthy and Kathy Love.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

BERKLEY SENSATION
^®
is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-62456-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McCarthy, Erin, 1971–

Fangs for nothing / Erin McCarthy and Kathy Love.—Berkley Sensation trade paperback edition.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-425-25744-9

1. Vampires—Fiction. I. Love, Kathy. II. Title.

PS3613.C34575F38 2013

813'.6—dc23

2013007611

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley Sensation trade paperback edition / July 2013

Cover photography by Claudio Marinesco.

Cover design by Rita Frangie.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

This book is dedicated to The Outfield.

Wherever you are, whatever you may be doing now, please know that your song about trying to cheat on Josie while she’s on a vacation far away still has people dancing every night.

On Bourbon Street anyway.

Chapter One

AGAIN? SERIOUSLY?

W
HEN
Johnny Malone jerked out of sleep suddenly, he became aware of three things in rapid succession. One, his bandmate Drake Hanover’s butt was in a sling, literally, just a few feet away from Johnny’s face, cupped in assless leather chaps, his arms slack and head back as he snored loudly. Two, Johnny realized that there was a pale, petite hand spread across his crotch comfortably, like it had been there for quite some time. Three, he had no clue where in the hell he was and his head hurt like a bitch.

Okay, so maybe that was four things, but as he shifted a little from his slumped position on the floor of who the hell knows where, all seemed equally important. The dim room didn’t look familiar at all, not that he could see much with Drake blocking his view as he slept in what Johnny thought just might be a sex swing. There was a lot more of Drake dangling in front of him than he had ever wanted to see. Which made his usual stomach of steel more than a little queasy. He supposed he should be grateful he was behind Drake, not in front of him. Actually, neither was a great position to be in if you got right down to it. Struggling not to groan out loud, Johnny swallowed hard and blinked several times. He was clearly not dreaming and he was clearly hungover, which was a feeling he hadn’t had in damn near a century. It all came hurtling back to him why hangovers had sucked so bad. He felt like ass.

Speaking of ass, which seemed to be a theme for the night, he wondered if he had gotten any the night before, thus explaining the female hand on his junk. Which could be damn awkward, because he couldn’t remember a bleeding thing. The last thing he was aware of was enthusiastically dancing the Cupid Shuffle at his buddy Saxon’s wedding, then . . . nothing. Trying not to wake whoever she was, Johnny chanced a look to his left, praying she wasn’t hideous.

Oh. My.
God.

She wasn’t hideous. It was worse.

She was Lizette.

The uptight, paper-pushing French chick who had frozen his assets and was determined to make his life a living hell with her bureaucratic bullshit. She was a rep from the Vampire Alliance, she was beautiful, and she had all the warmth of an iceberg in Alaska during a blizzard. They had argued, he had ditched a meeting with her, and she had tracked him down at the wedding with a systematic determination that scared the shit out of him. One look from her, and his balls had shrunk.

She definitely gave a whole new meaning to the phrase freezing his assets.

He would never have had sex with her. Even if he had been crazy enough to try, she would have stamped a giant
DENIED
on his dick in red ink.

Yet not only was her sleeping head lying on his shoulder, her very staid and proper blouse mostly unbuttoned, but her right hand, the one that was splayed across his lap?

It was handcuffed to his left wrist.

Johnny practically swallowed his own tongue in an effort to keep his shock and horror from ringing out in the silent room.

Holy crap. This was not good.

Stretching his leg as far as he could without disturbing Lizette, he managed to get his foot on Drake’s ass and give him a shove, grateful he was still wearing his boots so there was no skin-on-skin contact.

But Johnny needed some serious help from his buddy.

And metal cutters.

He kicked Drake again, harder.

48 Hours Earlier

“I am here on behalf of the Vampire Alliance to collect the remains of Mr. Malone and dispose of his property in accordance with the Death Code. Please allow me full access to his personal belongings at this time. Your cooperation in resolving this matter is greatly appreciated.”

Johnny stared at the thin woman in front of him wearing a gray business suit, her hair in a tight bun, clipboard in hand. He listened to her speech, directed at his sister Stella, and was perhaps for the first time in his long life totally at a loss for words. “Um.”

“But he’s not dead,” Stella said with no small amount of bewilderment in her voice.

“I’m not dead,” Johnny parroted. Because he wasn’t. He may be dead like a vampire was dead, but he wasn’t for real dead, as in never-to-walk-the-earth-again dead.

“This is him,” Stella added, pointing to his living self. “Standing right here. Next to me.”

Stella had called Johnny over to the shotgun cottage on Burgundy Street in the French Quarter that she shared with his best friend, Wyatt Axelrod, because she had gotten a phone call requesting a meeting from the VA regarding Johnny’s death. Not the first death, back in ’28, but his second one, which he had faked six weeks earlier but had reneged on a few days later. Only it seemed the Vampire Alliance hadn’t gotten the memo that it was a joke. A lousy joke, he had to admit, but a joke nonetheless. And if this chick in front of them was any indication, the Vampire Alliance didn’t have much of a sense of humor.

“I am sorry, but that is not possible,” the woman said, her accent French, her manner calm and professionally polite. She wore designer glasses, and her dark brown eyes behind the lenses barely swept over him. Considering no vampire had bad eyesight, they were clearly intended to make a certain impression. “Johnny Malone is on the list, and so I must proceed accordingly.”

“I don’t care that he’s on ‘The List.’” Stella made air quotes as she spoke. “He’s not dead! It was just a simple misunderstanding.”

Nice of Stella to put it that way. Frankly, it had been a bumble-fuck on his part. Feeling pressured by a pregnant girlfriend, though he used
that
term loosely, and knowing full well that as a vampire he was shooting blanks and could not be the father, Johnny had gotten the incredibly stupid idea that it might be a spot of fun to fake his own death to shake her loose. Okay, so maybe it had been a bit cruel to put his sister and his friends through that, and maybe he would have been super pissed if someone had done that to him, but it had been an impulse. A very bad, very stupid impulse. He hadn’t thought it would result in all his friends getting shit-faced drunk at his wake and blacking out for an entire night. Nor had he thought it would result in Miss Paper Pusher showing up on Stella’s doorstep.

Not wanting to stress his sister out any more than he had already in the past few months, he decided he needed to be the one to deal with this little mix-up.

“I’m sorry, what was your name again?” he asked her.

“Lizette Chastain.”

It was a name for a silent film star, not this woman whose bun was wound too tight. Though she was attractive underneath the thick layer of boring, he had to admit that. She had long cheekbones and creamy skin that gave away her French heritage, and perfect, raspberry-stained lips that would form a perfect O while she was having an orgasm . . .

Whoa.
Where had that thought come from? Johnny shifted, suddenly aware of his dick, which hadn’t seen much action lately since the debacle with Bambi and her baby-daddy accusations. He couldn’t say that he missed Bambi, but he could use a little horizontal shuffle, clearly.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she continued, her delicate hand coming out to offer a handshake. “May I inquire as to your name?”

Johnny forgot about her bone structure and his boner and realized this was not going to be as easy to fix as he’d thought. So he said, “My name is Johnny Malone, and I’m very much alive. So why don’t we head down the street, sit somewhere quiet, and discuss how we can fix your list?” He figured Stella had earned the right to be exempt from mopping up his messes.

She hesitated. “I would prefer we take care of this as soon as possible.”

“We will,” he assured her. “But let’s do it with our butts on a barstool instead of standing in Stella’s doorway. We’re letting the cool air out of the house.”

Her lips pursed, and then she nodded. “I would prefer a coffee shop.”

Johnny shot Stella an amused look and waved to her. He indicated to Lizette that she should head out of the house in front of him. “We want to go right. We can go to a coffee shop if you’d like, but the walk will be longer. A lot longer. The closest one is on Dumaine, whereas the nearest bar is—here.” He pointed to the corner, which was only one house down from them. “I don’t mind walking, though, if you’d really prefer coffee.”

“I have no objection to walking,” she said. Right before the spiked heel of her shoe got caught in a giant, gravel-filled pockmark of a hole that characterized all the sidewalks in the Quarter.

She made a sound of distress, her ankle turning, and she would have gone down in a French fumble if he hadn’t grabbed her arm and managed to keep her upright.

“Oh,
pardon
!” she said, clearly flustered, straightening her glasses and adjusting her purse on her shoulder. Smoothing her hair, she eyed the crumbling walkway with suspicion and added, “Perhaps the bar is not such a bad idea after all. It is rather warm as well, yes, especially for the evening?”

“It’s hotter than a crotch,” he told her as they walked the few feet to the bar and the magic of air-conditioning. “It’s New Orleans in June. The only thing worse is New Orleans in July and August.”

“Hotter than a what? I do not recognize that word.”

Oops. Now that he had to define it, he realized that might not have been the classiest thing to say to a woman like Lizette. “Um, it refers to the area down south,” he said, trying to be vague.

“Geographically? Yes, this is the South, but I still do not understand.”

Geez. “I meant on your body. Below the waist. And between your thighs.” He pulled the door open and gestured for her to enter.

She nodded her thanks, clearly puzzling out his words. When understanding dawned, her head whipped back to look at him, cheeks suddenly flaming with color. “Oh! Oh, I see. Yes, well, I understand. So anyway, yes, let’s see, we are discussing the demise of Johnny Malone. Do you have any information regarding how he died?”

The broad was not listening to him. He no longer felt so bad for shocking her with crotch talk. “Yes, I can tell you exactly what happened because I’m him.”

As they approached the bar, he nodded to the bartender. “Hey, Nigel, what’s up?”

“Hey, Johnny, good to see you. Who is your friend here?”

“This is Lizette, from the VA. Apparently Paris thinks I’m dead for real.” He turned to her. “Lizette, this is Nigel, who will tell you the full story.”

“Dead, huh? Sure, I’ll tell you the story, Lizette,” Nigel said cheerfully, a British vamp who always remembered to add an extra lime to Johnny’s rum and coke. “Stella found a pile of ash and we all thought this bugger was dead. Even had a wake for him. But then he popped up the next day, unharmed and as devilishly handsome as ever. There was much rejoicing. So there you have it.”

Sounded about right to Johnny. It was clear and to the point.

Lizette. “So you are saying you really are Johnny Malone?”

At what point had he
not
said that? “Yes. Precisely. I am Johnny Malone and I am alive.” Just to clarify for the fifth time.

“But that is not possible. You are on the list.”

Johnny wanted to take that list and cram it up a French bureaucrat’s ass. “First of all, I need a drink. Nigel, my usual, please. Lizette, would you like something?” When she shook her head, he continued. “I can understand there was some confusion, but now that you know I’m alive, just stamp ‘Still Kicking’ on my file and send it back and we’re all good.”

“I am afraid it is not that simple. You see, until an investigation is launched and the decision is made conclusively that you are in fact Johnny Malone and you are in fact alive, you cannot be removed from the list. No one has the authority to do that.”

Was she for real? “Is it carved in stone? Written in blood?”

“Yes, it is written in blood, but that is only for the archival copy. Most of our files are on the computer, of course. Encrypted for privacy.”

Sarcasm clearly wasn’t her strong suit. Speaking of suits, Johnny marveled that she wasn’t sweating in that heavy jacket. She didn’t even unbutton it, nor did she look the least bit overheated, despite her comment about the weather. No dewy forehead, no shiny nose. He probably had armpit stains the size of grapefruits on his T-shirt, and he would give his left nut to dive into a swimming pool. Yet she was utterly unflappable.

“So do I have to take a blood test or something?” He honestly had no idea how the Vampire Alliance really worked. He just knew they were a bunch of uptight rule-makers whose mission it was to make sure humans didn’t figure out that vampires did in fact exist. Their secondary mission seemed to be pissing him off. He didn’t like the idea of just throwing around his DNA, but he didn’t want the VA on his back either.

“Yes, as well as a series of interviews with you and your cohorts.”

Cohorts? She knew
cohort
but not
crotch
? What the hell were they teaching those kids in Paris? “Fine, whatever you need to do, honey. I’m at your disposal.” This is what he got for pretending to commit suicide. So much paperwork, he might actually wish he were dead. He drained the rum and coke Nigel had brought him in two long swallows.

“Excellent. We just need to proceed with the confiscation of your property then while you are undergoing investigation.”

* * *

“WHAT?”

Lizette loved her job, but this was one aspect of it that she did not enjoy. It was difficult to deal with grieving friends of deceased vampires, who wanted to cling to the possessions of the departed. But in order to ensure their survival as a species and prevent detection by humans, it was VA policy that all personal belongings and property of dead vampires be obtained and disposed of appropriately. Photos and clothes were burned, along with locks of hair, furniture and draperies liquidated, and real estate quietly sold. But given that so many vampires reacted poorly to losing every last material bit of a friend, it wasn’t unusual for Lizette to show up only to find a friend who claimed the death hadn’t occurred at all in order to keep the goods.

Much like this gentleman next to her, consuming his alcohol far quicker than Lizette suspected was wise. He was halfway through his second drink.