Vamparazzi

by Laura Resnick

  “Esther, no, I won’t leave you—”

  “I’m not a vampire, and they know it. They won’t kill me.” I hoped I was right about that. “I’m going to try to reason with them. Go!”

  “No, Esther—”

  “Go!” Some brick dust fell on my head and into my eyes. I couldn’t see anyhow, but the stinging was painful and distracting, and it made my eyes water. As some bits of mortar fell on my head, I remembered Lopez telling me that intruding tree roots could cause structural instability in these old underground tunnels.

  I heard Leischneudel’s footsteps sloshing through the water as he fled into the dark. The tree root brushed me again, making me jump and gasp in frightened revulsion a second time. I backed well away from it, not wanting it to touch me again.

  I heard the Lithuanian voices getting closer.

  “Uncle Peter, can you hear me?” I called.

  “Who is that?” the old man called.

  I heard something all around me that sounded like sliding pebbles. I backed up a step further, my heart pounding with instinctive fear.

  “I’m a friend of Thack’s! Do not shoot me.”

  “Friend of who?”

  I heard rumbling like thunder, followed by cracking.

  “Your nephew! Thackeray Shackleton!”

  “Oh—that ridiculous name! What was the boy thinking?”

  “Do not come into the tunnel.” My chest was pounding with anxiety. “I think it’s in danger of caving in!”

  I moved forward, feeling my way along the wall. Something big fell in front of me, plummeting from the ceiling and hitting the water with a heavy thud and a splash. Pebbles hit me in the head.

  “Young woman! Come out of there!” The voice was frightened, not threatening.

  “I’m try—”

  Somewhere behind me, from the far, dark reaches of this long-abandoned tunnel, a woman screamed in bloodcurdling terror.

  The echo reverberated through the darkness and seemed to trigger the cave-in in earnest. The whole ceiling collapsed above me, and I threw myself backward just in time to avoid being buried by it. The long, echoing, thundering crash was deafening as the tunnel shook and I scrambled around in stygian darkness, screaming in blind, panic-stricken fear. I was coughing, holding my hand over my nose and mouth as I crawled through the water on my hands and knees, struggling to move in this ridiculous Regency costume while trying to escape from plummeting rocks and debris.

  When the bricks finally stopped falling and I stopped screaming in hysterical terror, I was alone, in the dark, with the exit to the Hamburg sealed off by an immense pile of ruined masonry.

  Behind me, trapped somewhere else in this tunnel with me, she screamed again.

  21

  For a moment, lying in absolute darkness, dazed, coughing, my head still reeling from the noise of the cave-in, and utterly alone except for those mad, terrified screams bouncing off the curved brick walls all around me, I thought I had died and gone to hell.

  Then I started to pull myself together.

  I felt something sharp poking me painfully in my breast, and I remembered that I had stuffed Tarr’s little key-chain flashlight into my bodice. I pulled it out, flicked the switch—and could have wept with relief when it worked. As soon as the tunnel was illuminated, my surroundings—though eerie—started to settle into a normal, prosaic pattern.

  Being able to see again calmed me down enough to start thinking rationally about other things.

  I realized that Mad Rachel must be the woman I’d heard screaming—and, knowing her, she was simply having a hysterical reaction to the frightening, implosive thunder of the cave-in.

  If she was up ahead in this tunnel, then so were my other colleagues. I just needed to catch up to them. And then we would find an exit.

  Now that I had survived the cave-in, the thick barrier of brick, rock, mortar, dirt, and sediment behind me mostly meant that I didn’t have to keep running from vamparazzi or vampire hunters now. And getting away from them had been the point of coming down here, after all.

  So I felt calm, collected, and optimistic as I painfully scraped myself off the wet tunnel floor and examined myself for injuries. I was scraped and bleeding in a few places, and feeling twinges of pain in others; but there was no serious damage.

  Well, not to me. My costume was another matter. No amount of cleaning and ironing would ever make this dress presentable again. It was utterly filthy and in tatters.

  I felt some anxiety about Fiona’s reaction when she saw it; but, after all, it wasn’t as if I had planned to be caught in an underground cave-in while wearing my costume. Sometimes these things just happen.

  To me, anyhow.

  Poor Leischneudel! He didn’t have a flashlight, he must be all alone wherever he was, and he was claustrophobic. I needed to get out of here quickly so I could call Lopez. He seemed to know this underground area well, so he’d come up with a good search strategy if Leischneudel hadn’t emerged by then. We needed to get him out of the tunnels.

  I started walking ahead, relieved that my limbs were in good working order. Still, I wouldn’t catch up to my colleagues unless I sprinted, so I’d better see if I could get them to wait for me.

  “Hello?” I called. Then louder. “Hello?”

  Rachel screamed her head off. For the first time since meeting her, I found that a reassuring sound.

  “Esther!” she shrieked. “Esther! Is that you?”

  I waited for the echo to stop bouncing off the walls. Then I responded.

  “Yes! Can you guys wait for me?”

  “Esther!” she screamed. “He’s mrgh vrungh oong!”

  “What?”

  “Esther?” Tarr called. “Are you okay? Did you hear that before?”

  More bouncing echoes.

  “Cave-in!” I called. “I’m fine, but Leischneudel and I got separated! Wait up! I’m coming!”

  “Okay!”

  “Esther!” Rachel screamed. “Hurry!”

  Yeah, yeah, whatever.

  Since I was sloshing through water, on uneven ground, in shoes that were never intended for this sort of thing, it seemed as if I walked a long way, though it was probably not more than two hundred yards.

  Mad Rachel was weeping and wailing hysterically now, howling inarticulate pleas, and babbling nonsense syllables. The noise floated and echoed eerily through the dark tunnel as my feeble little light guided me through the murky gloom of this old, abandoned, forgotten place ... until I reached what seemed to be some sort of underground intersection.

  There was a wide, high-ceilinged chamber, and the tunnel I was emerging from was one of three that met here, all coming from different directions. I smelled dirty water, wet old brick and cement, rotting garbage, a hint of sulfur ... and also a strong whiff of sewage.

  I choked a little, hoping the air quality wouldn’t get any worse before we found a way out of this system.

  I flashed my little light around, wondering which way to go from here. Rachel’s sobbing seemed very close now, almost as if I should be able to reach out and touch her. I was about to call out to my colleagues when I was startled to see Rachel appear in the beam of my light.

  What was she doing weeping here alone in the dark? Had the men abandoned her? I could understand the temptation, but it didn’t seem likely.

  She was sitting on a stony protrusion that had been worn smooth and shiny with time and erosion. Her gown was wet and filthy, though not as tattered as mine. Her eye makeup had turned into dark, thick, ugly streaks that flowed down her puffy, weeping face. She rocked back and forth, sobbing brokenheartedly, her eyes squeezed shut, apparently not even aware that I had emerged from the tunnel and was shining my light on her face.

  Unnerved by the sight of her huddled alone in the stygian darkness, wailing inconsolably, I flicked my light around the room—and fell back a step and gasped when I saw Tarr, standing perfectly still just a few feet away from me in the dark, staring at me in silence.

  “
Jesus, you scared me!” I snapped.

  “Esther!” Rachel stood up and stumbled through the water, which was deeper here than it had been in the tunnel, to reach me. She flung herself against me, making me stagger, shrieking and sobbing.

  Trying to hold Rachel away with one hand, I shone the feeble light around the chamber, looking for Victor, Daemon, and Bill. There was no sign of them. Which explained why mine was the only light here.

  Raising my voice to be heard above Rachel’s noisy sobbing as she clung insistently to me, I asked Tarr, “Where’s everyone else?”

  “They went the other way.” He nodded in the direction from which I had just come.

  I didn’t understand. “Why did you guys split up?”

  “I came this way on my own.” He shook his head and looked at Rachel in exasperation. “She followed me. I didn’t ask her to.”

  Rachel howled louder.

  Oh, great. I was stuck down here with the only two people I knew who could make me think fondly of Daemon’s company, by comparison. He, Bill, Victor, and Leischneudel were probably all discovering an exit and going topside right now, even as I remained lost underground with Rachel weeping hysterically on my shoulder and Tarr—I could have sworn it—ogling my tattered neckline.

  I was about to suggest we proceed and search for a way out of here when Tarr suddenly grabbed Rachel by the hair, yanked her away from me while she howled in pain and clutched her head, and then threw her across the chamber. With much more raw strength than I would have suspected he possessed.

  Rachel screamed loudly, then started crawling through the water on her hands and knees, scrambling to get farther away from Tarr.

  I shouted at him, “Have you gone insane?”

  “She’s just so noisy,” he said wearily.

  Rachel screeched, “He’s going to kill us!”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Tarr’s shout startled me so much I nearly dropped the light.

  Rachel curled up into a ball and started rocking back and forth again, sobbing with her eyes squeezed shut.

  “All right, you need to calm down,” I said sharply to Tarr, horrified by his behavior—and more than a little scared.

  “I’m hungry,” he said casually. “It’s making me cranky.”

  “It’s making you nuts,” I snapped. “Don’t touch her again!”

  “You are a tough one,” he said with admiration. “I’ve liked that about you since we met.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said coldly.

  “He’s gonna kill us!” Rachel shrieked at me. “Don’t you get it? He’s going to kill us!”

  “Of course he’s not,” I said firmly to her. I looked at Al again. “Er, right?”

  “Well, her I’m going to kill,” he said matter-of-factly. “But you and me . . . we could work something out.”

  I studied his face to see if this was another of his tasteless jokes—gone way too far in this case. But he wasn’t grinning now. His shadowed face was relaxed but humorless.

  “What do you mean you’re going to kill her?” I demanded.

  “I didn’t ask her to come. In fact, I told her not to. But she followed me instead of going with them.” He shrugged. “I could eat.”

  My head was spinning. I wondered if a rock had hit it during the cave-in and I just didn’t realize it. My eyes were stinging from the foul air, and my throat was starting to itch. There was a disgusting taste in my mouth.

  “Oh, my God,” I said slowly, feeling cold shoot through my bones. “You killed Angeline.”

  “I don’t really want to kill you,” he said. “I like you.”

  “I’m so flattered.”

  “You and me, we could have some fun together.”

  “No, we couldn’t.”

  “I thought for sure you’d stick with the others. I didn’t expect to see you here. And I don’t really want to drink you.” He grinned. “Well, okay, maybe I want it a little.”

  “A vampire lurking at the Hamburg,” I said, trying not to let him see how much his words frightened me. “And plenty of access to Daemon’s dressing room. You’ve been pilfering his blood supply since you started hanging around.”

  I also realized now why Nelli had sneezed so much in Daemon’s room; Tarr had been there.

  “You know, it’s funny—even Daemon’s blood tastes phony.” Tarr guffawed and added, “Oh, this is even funnier. He’s so stuck on himself, he thought the blood was disappearing because the cast and crew were sneaking ‘personal mementos’ of working with him. What an asshole.”

  I thought it would be unwise to comment on the irony of Tarr’s assessment. I said, “You know your way around underground, so you thought you could get away from the vampire hunters once we came down here tonight.”

  “Hey, you really impressed me with that one, Esther.” He sounded almost flirtatious. “I mean, whoa! I had no idea that entrance was there! This whole area here is new to me.”

  “You turned the opposite way and tried to go off on your own when everyone entered this tunnel because you know what a Lithuanian vampire hunter is—what he’s capable of,” I said. “You knew he’d recover, track us, and catch up. And you didn’t want to be with the rest of us when he did.”

  “You don’t mess around with a vampire hunter, toots,” he said. “They’re serious business.”

  “I’m told they also err on the side of thoroughness. Let’s say Edvardas does kill Daemon, just to be on the safe side, since you’ve worked so hard to smear him for Angeline’s death,” I said. “Do you really think a vampire hunter will just get on a plane and go back to Vilnius then? Come on, Al. Do you imagine he’ll be gullible enough to believe that Daemon killed Benas Novicki?”

  Certainly not after the way Daemon had cowered, flailed, and wailed “I’m an actor” in response to Edvardas’ attack.

  Tarr drew in a sharp breath. “How the fuck do you know about Novicki?”

  My supposition was now certainty. “I know that Novicki was murdered by the same vampire who killed Angeline and two local urban explorers.”

  “Hey, what’s with that tone, kiddo?” he said in a cajoling voice. “I’m just following the natural instincts of a predator. No reason to go all judgmental on me.”

  “Al,” I said in exasperation. “You’re a murderer! In fact, you’re a serial killer!” And I was trapped underground with him, and nobody knew it.

  “Oh, come on,” Tarr said. “People wander around beneath the city in tunnels and vaults that haven’t been used in a hundred years. What do they think is gonna happen to them?”

  “Probably they weren’t thinking they’d be eaten by a vampire,” I said coldly.

  “They got what they deserved.”

  “And what did Angeline deserve?” I said angrily.

  “Don’t try to pretend you’re grieving for her,” he said.

  “Why did you kill her?” I demanded.

  “I was hungry.” His tone suggested I was slow on the uptake. “Look, she bothered me at work around four in the morning to tell me she had a hot scoop about Daemon, so I met her—”

  “Why haven’t the cops traced that?”

  “Prepaid cell. I got rid of it.”

  Four in the morning. Dead time. No one knew Tarr had left the Exposé building, and no one saw him or Angeline.

  He said with disgust, “Her ‘scoop’ just turned out to be some time-wasting bullshit she was making up as she went along because she was mad that Daemon kicked her out.”

  So that’s what happened after she was last seen by witnesses. Following through on her threat to Daemon to ‘expose’ him, she connected with Tarr, the nosy tabloid reporter she’d met in Daemon’s car. “Jesus, Al, she didn’t deserve to die for wasting your time!”

  “She didn’t die for that. She died because I’m a vampire, and it’s what I do, baby.”

  “You were doing this in Hollywood, too, weren’t you?” I blurted as the realization hit me.

  “Things got a little hot there. It was time t
o leave. That jerk Novicki followed me here. Persistent bastard, but I took care of him.” He grinned, and it was disturbing to see that familiar, cheesy, tabloid reporter’s grin on this brutally amoral killer’s face.

  “How did you become a vampire?” I asked, wondering if he was an example of why the council was so stingy with permits.

  “Born that way. Really didn’t get into it that much until I turned forty, though.” He added with a guffaw, “What is that? A mid-unlife crisis?”

  Rachel continued wailing loudly as I said, “Can I just say, Al? A vampire becomes a tabloid writer? And here I thought Daemon was a walking cliché!”

  “Just going with my strengths.” He said with nauseating enthusiasm, “Hey, as long as you know about Novicki, which is something I don’t really get to talk about, can I just say? Killing a vampire hunter? What a rush! And the blood? Amazing.” He added after a pause, “To be honest, though, once was enough. They’re tough guys to kill. So I’d prefer if this one would just go back to Vilnius without bothering me. But if not ... we’ll see what happens.”

  “Do you think you can keep doing this and the Council of Gediminas will just allow it?” I said incredulously. “You’ve made it worth their while to end you.”

  “Hey, you do know a lot!” he said cheerfully. “That could be good. You know, it could be some common ground for us. Something for us to talk about.”

  “And do you think the cops will just walk away from this?” I said.

  “The cops think Daemon did it,” he said dismissively.

  “Not all of them,” I said. “And none of them think he killed the other victims.”

  Tarr went still. “What?”

  “They’re connecting the dots, Al. Maybe, if you got really lucky, you could’ve pinned one murder on some attention-seeking celebrity vampire.”

  “Did I ever tell you how much I really didn’t want this assignment? Me, covering that phony jerk pretending to be a vampire?”

  “But the cat’s out of the bag, and you’re not clever enough to smear all your murders on Daemon.”

  “You not making that up? The cops really know about the others? Shit.”

  “Game over,” I said triumphantly.