Vampyres of Hollywood

by Adrienne Barbeau; Michael Scott

  “I’m not a kid—,” Maral began, smiling, but the smile faded when she realized I was serious.

  “—no matter what they look like—punk kid, old lady, high school cheerleader, or flaming queen. They will be vampyre, Maral. And not mine. They won’t want to cause a scene; the last thing they want is attention. But they may try and lure you out of the car. Ignore them; don’t even look at them—some of the vampyre clans possess the power of mesmerism. Do not talk to them. If they tell you that I’ve asked you to come in, you’ll know it’s a lie: I’m telling you now, I would never ask you to do that. Never.”

  “Because this person eats people.”

  “Literally.”

  “Are you going to take the gun with you?”

  “No point. You hang on to it. And if anyone does come near the car, shoot them in the throat: try and remove their head.”

  “What do I do if you’re not back in an hour?” Maral asked, glancing at the watch I’d given her last Christmas. I suddenly wondered what I was going to get her for this one and then realized that depending how the next thirty minutes went, the whole question might be academic.

  “If I’m not out in sixty minutes, then leave. Drive back to L.A. and tell Peter King that I got a call to come here. Let him handle it.” I kept my face neutral and tried not to look at Maral’s face as I spoke. “We’re probably being watched right now, so do not react to what I’m about to say. If I’m not out within the hour, it probably means I’m not coming out. And there’ll be no point in looking for a body, because there won’t be one. In the bottom of the big wall safe behind the Dalí you’ll find a padded buff envelope with an up-to-date version of my will. I just had it revised and I didn’t use Solgar. It leaves just about everything to you. There’s some cash in an envelope along with it. Take it, fly to Geneva, claim your inheritance. You’ll find some names and numbers on a sheet of paper. They are men and women who specialize in creating new identities. Avail yourself of their services, Maral, but, whatever you do, do not come back to Hollywood. In fact, it would be better if you did not come back to America.”

  “You’re scaring me, Ovsanna,” Maral said shakily. In the gloom, her eyes were huge gray beads behind unshed tears.

  “If the vampyre in there decides to destroy me, then she will kill you, too. She’s spent millennia protecting her identity and the true existence of the vampyre clans. She cannot afford to allow you to live.”

  “Who is she? Who is this Lilith?”

  “She is the mother of all vampyres.”

  Every vampyre knows the legend of Lilith.

  And everything they know is wrong.

  In her, legend, mythology, and religion come together to create a story that she took centuries and a great deal of delight in creating.

  I walked across the quiet street, heading straight for the low arched door, well aware that I was possibly walking into a trap. As the most senior vampyre in this country, only she could have authorized an attack on me and my clan.

  The Ancients called her Lilitu and the Night Hag, and she was certainly the oldest creature in North America and possibly the entire world. She claimed to have been the first wife of Adam—before Eve—and that she’d been cast out of the Garden because she refused to accede to Adam’s somewhat primitive sexual urges. On the banks of the Bosphorus, she consorted with demons and in time gave birth to the first of the vampyre and the were races.

  Most of that is bullshit.

  She’s ancient, all right. Solgar says she’s thousands of years old. I know she was around before Christ, but as for being Adam’s wife, I’ll leave that to the theologians to decide. All I know for sure is she’s not pure vampyre. She was part human once. Not Turned, either.

  I’ve spent years quietly researching her history, sorting through the myriad legends and fragmentary stories associated with her name. I believe that she was possessed by an Akhkharu serpent demon in ancient Sumeria who left her pregnant with a dhampir. The earliest dhampirs were incredibly powerful, possessing the best attributes of both their human and vampyre parents. I am sure that Gilgamesh was probably one of her dhampir sons. And I’ve no doubts that she slept with him, as well. She bred with the earliest and most powerful of the vampyre ancestors, and she was never Turned. But she could not have lain with them, slept with them and had their children, without some of their vampyre traits rubbing off on her. In time, she gave birth to more vampyres and a hybrid race of were-creatures. And God knows what else.

  Now…well, now no one knows what she is. Except quite mad and truly powerful. And capable of just about anything.

  The steel door opened before I’d even crossed the street, and a red-haired, green-eyed young woman appeared smiling the vampyre smile: lips tightly closed. Her coloring suggested that she was either Greek Strigae or Irish Dearg Due. “We’ve been expecting you,” she said in an accent that had never been heard in Ireland. “Follow me.”

  I’m not tall, but even I was forced to duck my head as I entered the arched gate. It’s an incredibly vulnerable position and I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek, preventing myself from looking up to check for the blade or swordsman that could be hidden in the shadows above my head.

  The grounds hadn’t changed at all since the last time I’d been here. Spanish daggers, agaves, prickly pear cactus, and jumping chollas formed a barrier on the far side of the moat, just waiting to slice any intruder who survived the piranhas. Devil’s Weed and Black Nightshade and Christmas Roses covered the ground up to the house, poisonous, hallucinogenic, and beautiful.

  Not so beautiful were the dhampirs patrolling the grounds. Armed with automatic weapons, with wolves and dogs by their side, the animals were were-creatures, that peculiar offshoot of vampyre that can only change into a specific beast form. Usually, they feel more comfortable that way and as they get older, stop reverting to their human shape completely. They end their lives as animals. Who knows, maybe Lilith had given birth to these.

  There was movement all around me, and I caught glimpses of nightmarish creatures that should have been carved in stone on Notre Dame. I managed to keep my face impassive as a creature Ray Harryhausen would have been proud of appeared at a window and stared at me. There was nothing even remotely human about it. It was joined by a second creature, which made the first look almost handsome. Their eyes, yellow and sulphurous, tracked my movement, and I swear I saw a forked tongue flicker.

  But vampyres are solitary creatures, especially the ancient ones. What were they doing here?

  I knew then that something was very wrong indeed: these were old vampyres—very old, the legendary Ancients. As vampyres age, they revert to something much more saurian looking, draconian even. Some turn completely black; others grow wings and tails; others shrink, hunch over, become troll-like. Mankind may have its roots in the great apes; perhaps ours lie in the great lizards. Whatever our genesis, in the end all of us become hideous to human eyes.

  Except Lilith. Lilith is unchanging. Maybe her human blood, maybe the demon’s possession, maybe bedding her own dhampir sons—who knows? She doesn’t change.

  The Dearg Due sashayed ahead of me, confident that I would follow her. Not that I had much choice. We crossed the bridge and entered the house through another steel door set into the main living area, which was on the second floor of the structure. I remembered the bedrooms being upstairs, seven of them, each with its own raised black marble tub and fireplace. Below, on what was actually the ground floor, were the kitchen, the gym, an office, and the maids’ quarters. Because the entire house was built into the side of a mountain, there were no windows in the back. Floor-to-ceiling bulletproof glass wrapped around the three-quarters of the house that faced the desert, but because of the surrounding fifteen-foot wall, the view was only visible from the top floor.

  Lilith’s foyer was bare save for a huge unlit Baccarat crystal chandelier. The lowering desert sun left the room in shadows and touched it with an icy chill.

  “Wait here.” The De
arg Due moved off into the dim light.

  I ignored her and stepped into the living room. I wanted to see as much of the house as possible. At the other end of the foyer, I could see out in a side garden, complete with the requisite swimming pool. The creature that was swimming lengths of the pool looked like something out of the Cretaceous—a mosasaur maybe. Light was fading fast, and it would soon be night—which was not a problem for my race. But I was guessing that more Ancients would appear with nightfall, those who are particularly sensitive to sunlight. I’d already counted maybe ten Ancients here, along with assorted dhampirs and were-creatures. Along with the Vampyres of Hollywood, I’d seen more of my race in the last two days than I’d seen in the previous century.

  Which begged the question, why was Lilith gathering so many vampyres together? And what did it have to do with me?

  Two more Dearg Due came into the living room and stood silently by each door, making sure I didn’t move any farther into the house. They were both beautiful in their way, and if I hadn’t had my mind on Lilith and my possible demise, I might have found some way to enjoy looking at them. Instead I stared out the windows and waited.

  And waited.

  The bitch kept me there almost ten minutes—the oldest power ploy in the book. I had to fight my rage to keep from Changing.

  And then something acrid drifted into the room, the scent of something long dead and mummified, of old blood and tainted meat, and I knew, even before she spoke, that Lilith was standing behind me.

  “Ah, the legendary Ovsanna Moore, the Scream Queen.” The voice was barely human, without cadence, without inflection or accent.

  I turned and looked at Lilith, the mother of all vampyres, the oldest living human, responsible for the dhampir and were clans, the source of all the evil in the world.

  She was the spitting image of Baby Jane Hudson in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  PALM SPRINGS

  3:00 P.M.

  Palm Springs.

  That made sense. If she and Maral really are lovers, Palm Springs is the place to be.

  I left the Jag in my spot, grabbed a squad car, and made the freeway doing eighty-five down La Cienega with my flashers on. I didn’t know where I was going exactly, but I needed to get there before anyone else lost his head. Literally.

  I reached Delaney at the office. “I need you to track down some property records for me, Del. Fast. In Palm Springs or maybe Palm Desert. See if Ovsanna Moore or Maral McKenzie owns anything down there.”

  “What about Rancho Mirage? Lady with Moore’s kind of money oughta be in Rancho Mirage.”

  “That’s good. And if that doesn’t work, start calling the hotels. See if there’s a reservation in either name for tonight. And put a BOLO into the system for Moore’s black Lexus SUV. License number’s in the Casale murder book. I’m heading down there and I’ve got to find them. I’ll be on my cell.”

  He was halfway through telling me to be careful when I cut him off. I was past being careful now. My every instinct was telling me that this case was rolling toward the endgame…and that was going to mean bodies. Probably lots of them.

  I made it to Banning in under an hour, probably some kind of record. The flashers come in handy. Del called back just as I passed the outlet stores. “Well, if either of those ladies owns property down there, it’s not in her own name. I couldn’t find a damn thing. And they’re not sleepin’ overnight in any of the big hotels, either. But I gotta tell you, the more I’m digging, the more I’m thinking something’s really wrong here, Pete.”

  I hate being called Pete, and he knows that. “Tell me something I don’t know,” I snapped.

  “Your Ms. Moore’s so squeaky clean, she’s suspicious.”

  “When did being innocent make you a suspect?” I asked.

  “We’re cops, Pete. We know that no one is entirely innocent or that clean. I mean there’s too many loose ends and not enough paperwork. She was born in Rome, Italy, in ’60, except there’re no hospital records for the birth, just that it was registered with the American Embassy there. Her mother, Anna Moore, didn’t spend much time with her and I can’t find anything at all about a father. Looks like she went to a lot of boarding schools. She’s registered with a dozen high-class ones all over Europe: London, Paris, Geneva, then back to Rome to start acting, then to London and RADA. Whatever that is,” he muttered.

  “Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Upscale acting school.”

  “Studied there for three years, then came over here when her mother’s increasing ill health forced her to give up acting.”

  “Sounds fine to me.”

  “If she was studying in RADA, why do they have a record of her finishing, and graduating with honors, but no record of her daily attendance? Where was she living in London? Where was her bank account? She must have taken public transport everywhere, because there is no evidence of a car registered in her name. I’ve no records of transatlantic calls to Mummy dearest, no evidence that Mummy ever sent her a dime. And if she came back here to look after a sick mother, why are there no hospital records?”

  “She wasn’t in a hospital?” I suggested.

  “I’m talking about no medical records of any kind. No doctor bills, no prescriptions, no insurance payout. No record of what the mother died of or when.”

  “The rich pay for their privacy,” I said.

  “No one is this private! You can’t move through the modern world without leaving a shitload of tracks and paperwork. There are big pieces missing from the Ovsanna Moore jigsaw. On the surface, it looks fine. She’s got all the paper here she needs: passport, driver’s license, Social Security, but when you start digging past twenty-five years ago, there’s nothing there.”

  “So…more to Miss Moore than meets the eye,” I said.

  “Less, I’d say. Much less.”

  “What about Maral McKenzie?”

  “Oh, she’s legit. I’ve got everything on her, right down to her shoe size. Her story is real movie-of-the-week stuff.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I checked on the Japanese connection: that turns out to be true. Three investors, ex-Sony, ex-Mitsubishi, ex-Toyota, with more money than sense, are deep in negotiations with Anticipation. It’s very hush-hush, but it’s legit.”

  “Thanks, Del. Keep digging. And patch me through if you get a hit on the BOLO.”

  Two minutes later, the phone rang again. I was reading the marquee at the Morongo Casino and I flipped it open without even looking at it.

  “That was fast, Delaney; did the car show up?”

  “Detective King?”

  “Yes?” It wasn’t Delaney.

  “This is Maral McKenzie.”

  “I’ve been trying to find you,” I said, deliberately allowing the snap of anger to show in my voice.

  “We’re in Palm Springs.”

  Well, at least I knew she wasn’t lying. And at least I knew now that I was driving in the right direction.

  Her words tumbled out in a rush. “Ovsanna doesn’t know I’m calling you—”

  “Hold on,” I said. “Where are you exactly? Where is she…?”

  “I don’t know the address. I’m in the car on a private drive off West Chino Canyon, a road that runs right into the foothills. But you can’t miss it—it’s the only house for miles and it’s built high up, right into the mountain. Ovsanna went inside to talk to someone about the murders. She wouldn’t let me go with her. She said—”

  Maral McKenzie never finished her sentence. I heard the shatter of safety glass and a truncated scream. Then the thud of the phone hitting the floor. A car door opened. Pressing my hand against my right ear, I concentrated intently on the sounds of fabric dragging against leather. A door slammed shut…and there was dead silence.

  Palm Springs is basically a small town. The PSPD officer who answered the phone knew exactly which house I was talking about. He said he had two men in the vicinity and he’d call me back when the
y got there. I took down the directions and guessed it was no more than fifteen miles from my present positon.

  Night falls fast in the desert, and it was almost dark by the time he got back to me. His men had found the phone and the SUV. The driver’s window was broken and Maral wasn’t in sight. So tell me something I didn’t know.

  I was on West Chino when an unmarked police cruiser flashed its lights. I pulled over to the side of the road and two plainclothes officers got out of their car and introduced themselves. Robert Montoya looked to be Native American and Robert Morales was Hispanic. With their black hair and desert tans, all I could see in the darkness were the whites of their eyes and their teeth when they talked. Which they didn’t do much of. Neither was happy.

  “What did you see beside the smashed window?”

  “Glass on the road, key in the ignition, phone on the floor. No signs of a struggle, no signs of blood. House is so walled in you’d need a low-flying plane to see if anything was going on inside.”

  “What do we know about the neighborhood?”

  “Closest neighbor is quite a ways away. Everybody’s got at least a couple of acres up there. Old money mostly. Lots of it. Lots of the houses show up in architectural magazines. Lotta weird houses. Elvis spent his honeymoon in one of ’em.”

  I turned and headed back to the car, calling over my shoulder, “I’ll follow you. Don’t announce our arrival.”

  The two Bobs turned onto a dirt road and killed their lights as soon as they parked. I pulled in behind them and did the same. Turned the dome light off and got out of the car as quietly I could. Ovsanna’s SUV was parked about fifty yards down on the right. In the dark, I could barely make out a huge stone wall surrounding a massive stone, steel, and glass structure that looked like it was growing out of the mountain. The top floor was lit, but the glass must have been electrochromic because I couldn’t see a damn thing inside. Someone really wanted his privacy.