Table of Contents
Copyright
Dante's Awakening
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Vampires of Hollywood: Dante’s Awakening
By Devon Marshall
Copyright 2012 by Devon Marshall
Cover Copyright 2012 by Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.
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Vampires of Hollywood:
Dante’s Awakening
By Devon Marshall
CHAPTER ONE
My name is Dante Sonnier and I am not a movie star. I’m an agent. I’m not paranoid, I don’t think the entire world revolves around me, and I know my clients are too savvy to their own careers to even think about stalking me. Therefore I don’t live behind high fences and locked gates. Most of the time I don’t even bother to close the gates to my Hollywood Hills property. There are, however, certain events that could make me rethink this open-living policy, such as being dragged out of bed by a vampire at six o’clock in the morning.
Don’t get me wrong—waking up to Ellis Kovacs is not entirely unpleasant either, since she is rather attractive. For the Undead, I mean. I’m just so not a morning person that having anyone—even the gorgeous vampire Ellis—drag me out of my bed at six a.m. is annoying.
The reason for the disruption of my (much needed) beauty sleep was Voshki Kevorkian. Voshki is the vampire community leader. She wanted a meeting with me.
“At six a.m.?” I demanded.
Ellis shrugged. “It’s important.”
It had better be. There I was, attired in boxer shorts and a scruffy NYU t-shirt that some ex or other had left in my closet maybe a million years ago, my hair going every which way to Sunday, trying to claw the sleep from my brain and make sense of what was going on, and what wisdom does Ellis impart to me?
That my t-shirt has seen better days.
Well, shit, hold the front page. I shook my head at her crap and wandered off toward the bathroom. Over my shoulder I yelled, “I’m taking a shower! I don’t care if Vosh has to wait an extra fucking five minutes! Am I making myself clear?”
“Crystal,” Ellis replied dryly.
I stood under the hot jets of water, letting them massage my body and brain into wakefulness, and rested my forehead against the cool wall tiles, all the while trying to ignore the fact there were two vampires making themselves at home in my house. Ellis had brought Samson with her, Voshki’s driver and occasional enforcer. Or something. There are vampire affairs into which even a curious person like me just will not poke her nose. Slowly I felt myself come to resemble something actually belonging to the human race and not the Undead, and at that point I turned the water cold on and let that shock the last dregs of nighttime from my system. A cup of extremely strong black coffee and I’d be good to go. As I stepped out of the shower, eyes closed because my hair was running rivulets of water down my face, I put out my hand to grab my towel only to have it thrust into my groping fingers.
My eyelids flew open. Water blurred my vision and I swiped the towel across my face. Then remembered I was naked. I hastily wrapped the towel around me, fumbling because my fingers had become as useful as bananas.
“For Chrissakes, haven’t you guys heard of knocking?” I demanded.
Ellis gave me a devastatingly sexy smile that also somehow contrived to be innocent. It made me want to run away and throw myself at her feet, both at the same time. I’ve known Ellis for a while, and the whole time I have noticed that her smile can make my knees turn to water. And I hate her for that. Vampires confuse me much of the time. “Sorry,” she said, sounding like she really wasn’t. She jerked her chin toward the open bathroom door and the upstairs hallway beyond. “Samson is in the kitchen. He’s making up some juice for you. And there’s a pot of coffee on.”
I raised an eyebrow. “No bagels?”
“Get dressed, Dante. We don’t want to keep Vosh waiting that long,” Ellis told me.
No. That would never do.
* * *
I should explain. First of all, yes, vampires do exist. Secondly, no, I don’t know whether this means other supernatural creatures also exist. I certainly never have met anything remotely resembling a werewolf or a fairy or a troll, although how would I know, right? The vampires don’t look like vampires, and they have been living amongst humans undetected for millennia, so there should be no reason a werewolf or a fairy or a troll ought not be able to do the same. If the vampires know about any supernatural cousins, they are keeping it under their collective hats. And thirdly, I don’t really care if the world is teeming with werewolves, fairies and trolls—I had a hard enough time just wrapping my head around the fact that vampires are real when I found that out. Occasionally I still have trouble with it.
Vampires are very little like their media portrayals. Sorry, but the fiction-mongers have been way off for decades. All of that not being able to go out in sunlight, being allergic to garlic and crosses and running water, being able to turn into bats—it’s all moonshine. Most of it perpetrated by the vampires themselves. The very reason they have been able to coexist with humans unnoticed for thousands of years has been a fortuitous mix of their own ability to adapt and blend in, and the limitless capacity of we humans to be deluded. Of course, there have always been some humans in the know, since the vampires do need us for things beyond the obvious feeding requirements. A vampire’s genetic makeup is somewhat different to that of a human—shocker, huh? Having people in strategic places to keep things like this from coming to light is a necessary evil for them.
They are choosy about who they let in on their existence. I suppose I am honored then—not that it often feels much like an honor.
As for feeding, they drink human blood from willing human donors. Not victims, donors. Vampires can also go out in daylight just fine—they would hardly have lasted as a race if they could not go out in daylight—although they must take certain precautions if they are going to be in direct sunlight for a prolonged time. A very strong sun block and very dark sunglasses will suffice. In fact, once you really start to think about most of the “vampire legends,” you also start to realize that they, like most legends, just don’t stand up to close scrutiny.
I know about vampires because I belong to a family made up of the kind of people whom they have always found helpful.
I mentioned before that I’m an agent. An entertainment agent. I reside in LA, in Hollywood. I’m very successful. Why be falsely modest about it? I can get my A-list clients an audience with Stephen
Spielberg just by lifting the phone. My father is a criminal lawyer who switched to entertainment law, and I’ll leave it to your imagination the ways in which he has often found himself mixing those two disciplines on behalf of both his actors and vampire clients. My mother was a movie producer. I say “was” because she retired from doing much of anything some years ago. Her heyday was during the 1970s and 1980s. Throughout those decades, trying to avoid drugs in Hollywood was a bit like trying not to get sunstroke walking naked across the Sahara, and my mother was spectacularly unsuccessful at avoiding anything she could swallow, inhale, or smoke. The years of drug and alcohol abuse have fried her brain. Before that, however, she was a close friend and respected colleague of many top movie people, including Spielberg. Which is how I can command a personal audience with the man so easily.
So that’s how I got involved with the vampires.
After I had drunk my juice and my coffee and scarfed down a schizoid breakfast of All-Bran and Cheerios, I let myself be herded outside and into the car Ellis had waiting. A 1950s Cadillac stretch limousine, all black gleaming metallic paintwork and oceans of chrome so bright it made your eyes hurt, with smoked-out windows and a hood ornament big enough to impale an average-sized man. Voshki Kevorkian collects cars the way normal people might collect baseball cards. She favors classic cars and the kind of high-performance cars with price tickets attached that render them prohibitive to all but a handful of oil billionaires and crown princes. I happen to know that Voshki owns one of the few remaining roadworthy Lamborghini Countaches still in existence. In our vehemently eco-aware world, just owning a car like that could get you arrested by the Fun Police, which, I think, is part of the attraction of owning it in the first place.
The Caddy featured a fully stocked mini bar and a color TV, both set amidst acres of leather and mahogany. It also boasted a superlative sound system, unfortunately. Vampires love music. The louder the better. I sat in back with Ellis, worrying about my eardrums as Aerosmith pounded out of the superlative sound system. Up front, Samson drove with only cursory regard for the rules of the road.
“So what the blue fuck is so urgent Vosh has to send you to haul me out of bed in the middle of the damn night?” I shouted above Steve Tyler.
Ellis gave me a bland look. “She didn’t share that information with me. And it’s after six a.m. Hardly the middle of the night.”
I blew air noisily, leaned my head back against the kitten-soft leather upholstery and thought nasty thoughts about Voshki Kevorkian. Which would have been a seriously dumb thing to do if the vampires could read my mind the way they can most human minds. I can block them out. It’s a skill all we Sonnier’s possess. None of us knows why.
“She’s been very agitated for days now,” Ellis said and I cracked an eye open, rolled my head onto one side to look at her. “I think she got bad news of some kind. She’s been making a lot of telephone calls to various high muck-a-mucks within our community. Yesterday she sent Armin down to New Orleans right after she got a call from her representatives down there.”
Armin Bedrosian is Voshki’s right-hand man, or lieutenant, or whatever. He is also very, very scary. Armin is one vampire I dislike being in the same room with. Hell, I would prefer not to be in the same county as him. Voshki upset enough to send Armin away from her side was not a good thing. It meant whatever was going on—and presumably whatever the vampires needed my help with—was bound to be nasty and messy, and probably would end up with someone or two getting dead. My breakfast began to churn through my guts.
“Fantastic,” I muttered.
CHAPTER TWO
Voshki Kevorkian has the appearance of a twenty-something, drop-dead gorgeous movie starlet. She has a body to die for, including an ass you try hard not to stare at because it would be rude but you end up doing it anyway, and if Ellis has a smile that can make your knees turn to water, Voshki’s can have your brain running out of your ears. She is also 846 years old. Which is young by vampire standards, but Voshki is a vampire blue blood. Her ancestry goes all the way back to the very first vampire leaders. Whoever they were. I have never felt any overwhelming inclination to inquire. Voshki is charming and funny and as seductive as a vampire can get, which is to say very seductive indeed, but she is also quite capable of killing you without even batting a beautiful black eyelash. Afterwards she would likely step casually over your body and head off to Neiman Marcus to shop for some new boots. I tread carefully around her, then. That said, there is a part of me which finds Voshki frighteningly irresistible.
The problem is that Voshki knows this and is always looking for a way to seduce me, making it clear to me that she wants me as her human. So far she has not succeeded. There are issues involved in being a vampire’s pet human, issues I don’t feel equipped to deal with. God only knows how my brother does it. Milton is married to a vampire woman. His marriage would not be legal, of course, if it were known that his wife is a vampire, but I don’t think either Milt or Corinne, his wife, are too concerned with that nit-picking detail.
Voshki lives on a gazillion-acre, billion-dollar estate in the Hollywood Hills, purchased from an aging movie producer. She had everything on the estate razed to the ground and completely rebuilt to her specifications. Now the whole place is turrets and towers and red-tile roofs, and a courtyard that would not look out of place on an English country estate, all of it looming at the top of a driveway that snakes through her own imported mini-Black Forest. This schizophrenic architecture continues on the inside too. The whole is testament to the fact that vampires, just like humans, can be very, very rich, and yet be unable to buy even the smallest amount of good taste.
I entered her office in the company of Ellis. Voshki’s office is a thousand square feet of look-at-how-rich-I-am. Samson had taken the car to wax, or whatever he does when he isn’t guarding his boss. I had my game face in place and my thoughts tamped down. This is a must with Voshki, her reading skills being so much greater than those of most vampires. She often can get the gist of my thoughts, if not the letter.
“Dante. How nice to see you, as always. You look…edible.”
The vampire leader sprawled in a leather swivel chair behind a walnut desk only slightly smaller than a football field. Clad in black leather from neck to toe, all of it clinging to her like a lover, chestnut hair falling to her shoulders, nails perfectly manicured, teeth gleaming white and even, she really was a vision. I could have got her any part in any movie. Of course, she is a horrible actress. I know this because I once talked her into taking a private screen test. I was curious. Fortunately she knew she sucked, sparing me the obvious terror of having to tell her, but I still reckon I could get her any part, based on her looks and my influence. Hollywood is nothing if it is not a shallow, seedy place motivated solely by the twin gods of profit and sex.
There are some vampire actors around at the moment. I’m not at liberty to say who, although I can tell you that Bela Lugosi is a real vampire and is still going strong, running a bar in Detroit, and very happy doing so. And not all of those sightings of The King are down to the wishful thinking of obsessed fans either. I have a few vampire clients myself, at least one of whom is an A-list actor, but don’t even imagine I’m going to tell you who it is. On the whole though, vampires prefer to be behind the scenes. There is only so much you can use “I have a very good plastic surgeon” to explain away, even in LA.
I made a mocking bow. “Vosh. As ungodly early as it is, I am delighted as always to be summoned to your presence.”
If she caught my sarcasm, she ignored it. She sat sideways in the chair, one leg draped casually over the arm, letting her leather-booted foot bob up and down slowly. She smiled a lazy, cat-like, utterly sexy smile at me. I felt an idiot’s grin spread across my flaming cheeks. I felt other things too, a little further south, but I won’t get into that. I cleared my throat.
“So, uh, what can I do for you this early morn?” I inquired, since we did not appear to be doing the “can-I-get-you-anythi
ng?” routine. Vampires do not always bother to observe the politely pointless social rituals of humans.
Ellis moved to one side of the room and took a seat in silence. I darted a glance at her but her face was a mask. Voshki regarded me from her own relaxed position for a moment before telling me to come sit. I went and I sat. I was close enough now to see the amber flecks deep in her dark brown eyes. Ellis has dark eyes too, only hers are dark enough to seem like they might actually be black. Voshki has that amber fleck to lighten hers. I could drown happily in the eyes of either of them. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have both of them at once make love to me and feed from me. Vampires inevitably bite when they have sex. The feeding is supposed to be almost as orgasmic an experience as the sex.
Whoops. My thoughts had strayed dangerously. I fought to re-erect the mental barriers I can usually put up without effort to keep them out of my head. But the idiotic grin still stretched my facial muscles, rather giving it all away. It would probably be there in a lesser form for most of the rest of the day.
“I need your assistance with something,” Voshki announced.
Okay, so this was to be the day for the vampires to state the completely fucking obvious. I nodded, waited to be enlightened. Voshki frowned. Even that was sexy. I suspect it might have been scary if she had been displeased with me. I would prefer Voshki not be displeased with me.
“My sister is working on a TV show shooting upstate,” she told me. Voshki’s sister, Amelia, also a vampire, is older than Voshki in human years but younger than her in vampire years, which, I could only suppose, is a bit of a weird set-up to deal with. Amelia is a makeup artist. She has worked on a clutch of movies, including a few of the better teen slasher flicks, and she has had some longer-running gigs on TV shows. Voshki peered at me, one eyebrow raised. “The Right Guy. Have you heard of it?”
Of course I had. I would have had to be living on the dark side of the moon with no access to media of any kind not to have heard of network television’s current most successful weekly cop show. One of my clients had landed a supporting role, something of which I was sure Voshki was aware. I also know the lead actress. Once I knew her very personally. I didn’t burden Voshki with any of these details, however, just nodded to her to go on.
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