Vamparazzi

by Laura Resnick

  “Not yet,” he pointed out. “I’ve still got my double-tasty treat to finish down here before I get the hell out of Dodge.”

  “Your double-tasty . . . Oh, dear God.”

  Rachel heard this exchange and responded accordingly. “We’re gonna die! No, no, no!” The echoes bounced all over the chamber.

  I started backing away from Tarr. “Or you could just flee now, Al. Killing two more people would slow you down. Is that really a good idea? After all, there are vampire hunters and a whole team of cops after you—”

  “The cops got no idea about me, and no idea where you are,” Tarr said, his faintly illuminated expression eerily amused as he watched me sloshing backward, trying to put distance between us. “And the vampire hunters are gonna be slowed down for a while, with the cave-in down here and the stampeding vamparazzi everywhere else.” He chuckled. “Hey, I love that word, by the way. You’re fun, Esther. I’ll miss you.”

  “Because you’re getting out the hell of Dodge and we won’t meet again?” I prodded, hoping for the best.

  “I like you,” he said kindly. “So I’ll try to make this quick.”

  I was shocked by how fast he moved. One moment, he was about ten feet away; the next, his arms were wrapped tightly around me and he was breathing in my ear. The chamber went pitch black as my light fell out of my hand and into the water at my feet.

  Rachel started screaming her head off. All out of other ideas, so did I. Trapped underground in total darkness, wrapped in the deadly embrace of someone who was a blood-addicted, murdering vampire and a tabloid leech, I pitched my screams with the deliberate intention of shattering Tarr’s supersonic eardrums.

  His whole short, stocky body stiffened, and for a moment, I thought maybe the combined screaming of two hysterically terrified women was more powerful than I had seriously hoped. But then he clamped a hand over my mouth, trying to shut me up, and I realized from his alert posture that he was listening to something.

  “What the fuck is that?” He snapped at Rachel, “Shut up!” This had no effect of course. She kept screaming and wailing.

  Since he evidently wanted us to be quiet, I—naturally—wanted to be as noisy as possible. He intended to kill me anyhow, so not annoying him seemed pretty pointless. I bit down as hard as I could on his hand, and although blood addiction had made him enhanced and powerful, it had not, I was pleased to discover, made him completely impervious to pain. He yelped and snatched his hand away. I started screaming again.

  Tarr picked me up as easily as if I were a paperweight and threw me across the chamber. I flew through the dark, bounced hard off a stone wall, and then hit the cement floor of the tunnel with a lung-emptying thud. The filthy water didn’t do much to break my fall, and I laid there, disoriented and gasping with pain, trying to figure out if anything was broken.

  A moment later, Rachel’s entire body weight fell on top of me with unerring accuracy, nearly making me pass out. That was when I realized that seeing in the dark was one of Tarr’s enhancements.

  I also realized I saw faint streams of light flashing through this chamber and, even above Rachel’s shrieking, I heard voices echoing through the tunnels.

  “Someone’s down here!” I gasped, shoving at Rachel, trying to get her weight off me. “On this side of the cave-in. Someone’s here! Help! Help!”

  “Esther! Is that you?” called a blessedly familiar voice.

  I was climbing to my feet in the dark, dragging Rachel with me. I couldn’t see a thing except for the lights flashing around the chamber.

  “Lopez!” I cried with relief. “Yes! I’m here! I’m here!” I clamped my hand over Rachel’s mouth to stifle the noise of her wailing. “Lopez!

  “I’m coming! Stay right where you are!”

  He wasn’t alone. Multiple lights were flashing into this chamber now, and I could hear a number of voices echoing along the tunnel where his voice came from.

  I was huddling in terror with Rachel, expecting Tarr to pounce on us at any moment. But as the beams of light got stronger and the voices drew near, I realized that he must have decided to flee rather than stand and fight. And he could disappear much more quickly down here without dragging along a noisy hostage or two.

  Emboldened by my conviction that our vampire captor had run off without us, I dragged Rachel with me and stepped into the beams of light now pouring into the chamber. I squinted and raised my hand to shield my stinging eyes as the flashlights shone directly on me. Sobbing, Rachel clutched me and huddled against me.

  “Esther!”

  Lopez ran the final length of the tunnel he was in, then sloshed quickly through the water of this chamber, his headlamp beaming in my face. With Rachel still clinging to me, I staggered into his arms, and—by default—he embraced us both. I clutched him tightly, digging my fingers into the fabric of the sweater he wore.

  “Are you okay?” he asked against my hair.

  I nodded, feeling too emotional to speak for a moment.

  That was really, really close.

  I had nearly been the next exsanguination victim.

  Four more men entered the chamber. I lifted my head and took a look at them. They were uniformed cops, carrying flashlights.

  I found my voice. “Oh, thank God.”

  Rachel switched from clinging to me to clinging to Lopez. She sobbed against his chest and hugged him tightly around the waist—elbowing me out of her way to get a better grip.

  “Do I know her?” Lopez asked me uncertainly.

  “Mad Rachel.”

  “Whoa.” Apparently he hadn’t recognized her. Given her horror-movie appearance right now, and the fact that they’d only met once before, that was understandable. “What happened to you two? What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing here?” His presence seemed miraculous.

  “I heard what’s happening at the Hamburg. Everybody heard. The whole block is a madhouse above ground,” he said. “I thought we could get inside faster and help out if I brought in a few cops through the basement—since you haven’t had that door sealed yet, Esther.”

  “Is this really the time to criticize me for that?” I said shrilly.

  He grinned and hugged me again—using the arm Rachel had left free. “Since you made your escape that way, I stand corrected.”

  “We didn’t just escape,” I said urgently. “We wound up as hostages!”

  He looked bemused. “What?”

  “Al Tarr is the killer! He was just here! I think he ran off a minute ago when he heard you coming.”

  “Tarr’s here?” Lopez quickly set aside Rachel, ignoring her shrieks of protest and fervent attempt to cling to him, and handed her over to an officer who accepted her with noticeable reluctance. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Lopez took my shoulders and spoke calmly. “There are only two tunnels here besides the one we just came in. Did you see which way—Oh, no, of course not. Were you able to hear which way he went?”

  “No, I didn’t.” I was panting with a riot of agitated emotions. But his firm hold on my shoulders and his calm voice brought my careening thoughts into focus. “Wait! I think I know. The tunnel that goes near the theater caved in a little while ago. Almost on top of me, actually.”

  “Jesus.” His grip tightened.

  “Tarr knows that. He wouldn’t go that way. It’s a trap now.”

  Lopez gave my shoulders a squeeze, then said to the four men. “We’ve got him. He must have gone that way.” He gestured to the remaining tunnel. “And it’s a dead end.”

  “What?” I blurted. “You’re sure?”

  “Yep. Sealed off a long time ago.” He pointed at two of the men—including the one already burdened with Rachel. “You two, get these ladies out of here. And you two—” He gestured to the other two. “On me. Let’s bring this guy in.”

  “No! Wait!” I grabbed him. “Lopez, he’s very dangerous!”

  “I know.” He firmly set me away from him. “It
’ll be all right, Esther. Go with the officers now.”

  “No, you don’t know! Really dangerous! No! Don’t go! No!”

  I spiraled into hysterics at the prospect of Lopez confronting a cornered rogue vampire.

  The cop who’d been assigned to escort me out of here was, in fact, forcibly restraining me and dragging me through the exit tunnel as Lopez and two cops went after Tarr down the dead-end tunnel.

  “No! You don’t know what you’re dealing with!” Bullets wouldn’t work. Lopez didn’t know that! While being dragged to safety, I kept screaming, “Fire or decapitation! Nothing else will work! Fire or decapitation!”

  “Miss, you must calm down!” said the beleaguered cop who was restraining me.

  Oh, must I?

  Realizing there was no other choice, I went limp in his arms.

  Fire or decapitation.

  The cop relaxed and said in a relieved voice, “Thank you, miss. Now let’s get you out of here, and—Agh!”

  I poked him in the eye—just enough to disorient him. Then I grabbed his flashlight, saying, “Sorry, sorry, sorry!” I ran back down the tunnel, tripping on my long skirts, and re-entered the chamber he’d dragged me out of moments ago.

  Fire or decapitation.

  I had no idea how we could manage either of those things now, down here, without a vampire hunter; but I at least had to warn Lopez that nothing else would work.

  I ran across the main chamber, sloshing through the water, my long skirts dragging on me. Then I entered the dead-end tunnel, which curved around and turned a corner up ahead. Even with a good flashlight in my hand now, I couldn’t see any of the men who were somewhere up ahead of me. I staggered forward as fast as I could move, slipping on the damp brick floor in my flimsy, ruined shoes, my legs tangling with my long, wet skirts.

  I heard two shots fired and a lot of shouting coming from farther down this tunnel. There was a horrible roaring sound, like an explosion. I paused, and then I heard Lopez’s voice—heading back in this direction.

  “Move!” he shouted. “Move!”

  A bright glow emerged ahead of me—and Lopez and the two cops appeared, all racing straight toward me, trying to outrun the wall of fire that was right behind them, spreading fast in this direction.

  A wall of fire.

  I stopped in my tracks and stared, dumbfounded.

  “Run! Go! Go!” Lopez was shouting at me.

  I turned to run back the way I had come, my wet skirts a burden, my slippers sliding on the bricks. Then something heavy hit me like a speeding train, and I went flying headfirst into the central chamber, where I landed facedown in the water ... with Lopez’s entire body weight on top of me as he shielded me from the fiery blast that roared into the chamber over our heads and then withdrew.

  Lopez rolled off me and hauled my head and shoulders out of the filthy water we had plunged into. I immediately looked over my shoulder. The tunnel behind us was smoking and a little charred, but the fire was gone.

  “Are you all right?” he asked me frantically, breathing hard.

  “Yes,” I choked out. I still had the wind knocked out of me.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” He seized me by the shoulders and shook me. Hard. “When I tell you to go to safety, go to safety!”

  “Is he dead?” I croaked.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  Fire or decapitation.

  “Is he dead?” I asked again.

  One of the cops said. “Oh, yeah. He’s dead. Oh, yeah. Dead.”

  Lopez’s gaze dropped to my chest. He drew in a sharp breath as his eyes widened, and he grabbed me again, this time to turn me away from the other two cops. He grimaced anxiously and made a frantic gesture with his hand. I looked down and saw that I had fallen out of my precarious neckline during that headlong dive into the chamber to escape the fire. I tucked myself in, tugged the filthy and tattered neckline upward as best I could, then looked over my shoulder at the cops.

  “You’re sure he’s dead?” I asked again.

  “In that explosion? Burned to a crispy critter,” said the younger of the two uniformed cops. “Sorry, miss. Sorry. But, yes, he’s dead, all right. Oh, yeah.”

  In the light of Lopez’s headlamp, the young officer’s face was wide-eyed with shock as he continued babbling. “I shot him. I know I shot him. I could swear I shot him. And then he took my gun away. Just took it away! And grabbed me like a rag doll—my God, he was strong. He was about to kill me! He was going to rip my head off! I know it. I saw it in his eyes. He took my head and ... And then ... Jesus, that explosion. Jesus.” He looked at Lopez. “How did we get out of there alive?”

  The other cop asked, “How did we get out there alive, detective?”

  Lopez looked at me. “And you wonder why I go to Mass every week.”

  22

  We emerged from the tunnels by ascending through a manhole in a street that was only a few blocks away from the theater. I was surprised; while underground, I had felt as if we were so much farther away than that. The dark, chilly night was wonderfully breezy and fresh. The city’s familiar skyline glowed glamorously against the endlessly high vault of the open sky. I decided I wasn’t even going into a subway tunnel for quite some time to come. After tonight’s experiences, I was strictly an above-ground person for the foreseeable future.

  My injuries were all superficial, but Lopez insisted I let a paramedic examine me. This turned out to be a good idea, since the guy had very nice painkillers and was generous with them. He also insisted on giving me a shot of antibiotics, since I’d been wandering around in filthy water with cuts and scrapes. This was less fun than the painkillers, but nonetheless appreciated.

  Mad Rachel was resilient, if nothing else. She got someone to loan her a cell phone barely ten minutes after we emerged into the chilly November night; and a mere ten minutes after that, she was screaming into the borrowed phone, “Goddamn you, Eric, you fucking bastard!” So all was well there. Lopez predicted wedding bells.

  I was worried about Leischneudel, Bill, Victor, and even Daemon, as well as Thack and Max—who were each on their way to the Hamburg, at my request, when the riot broke out. So Lopez agreed to take me back to the theater—where, according to the information he was receiving now, order had been restored.

  The crowds around the Hamburg were still being dispersed, but the atmosphere was subdued now. The cops who drove us to the stage door told me and Lopez that a lot of people had been arrested, but very few were injured—and none seriously. There was some property damage, but the immediate post-riot estimate was that it wasn’t serious, either. The theater would reopen within a few days, and The Vampyre would complete its run.

  The cop riding shotgun said, “Seems like the whole thing was more like a block party for nerds that got out of control for about an hour rather than a riot.”

  But I, for one, would not readily forget the sight of lust-crazed Janes and lunatic vamparazzi stampeding directly toward me while Dr. Hal screamed, “No prisoners!” and the Caped Crusaders provided their own captions while battling the wannabe undead. All of it accompanied by Lithuanian vampire hunters shooting crossbow bolts at me.

  “I guess you had to be there,” I said wanly to the cops.

  Lopez squeezed my hand.

  While our squad car rolled slowly through the crowded but no longer chaotically crazy streets, he explained to me that he’d entered the tunnels knowing—or, at least, feeling convinced—that Tarr was the killer.

  “I started with the name you gave me last night, Benas Novicki. I tracked his movements. He was in LA for a few months before he came to New York. So I checked with LAPD, and they had an open case file.” He paused. “Several murders with one unusual feature in common. A detail that was never released to the public.”

  “Exsanguination,” I said, wishing I could see his facial expression, but the car was
too dark.

  He nodded. “The last one was in July. None since then. Then your friend Novicki, who thinks he’s chasing a vampire—”

  “He wasn’t my friend,” I said. “I never met him.”

  “—leaves LA and winds up dead here sometime in August. After which, several murders occur here, similar to the LA file.” He shrugged. “So I started looking for a match between someone who’d been in LA until this summer, and someone Adele Olson had contact with on her final night.”

  I gasped. “‘When I was out in Hollywood . . .’”

  “Huh?”

  “All of Tarr’s anecdotes began that way. He talked all the time about his glory days in Hollywood. I didn’t know him or his work, and I vaguely assumed it was a few years ago. But I guess it was recent?”

  “Yep. He resigned from his job in LA in June and got hired by the Exposé when he came here in July—the rag was glad to get him. I gather he had what passed for a great résumé in that line of work.” Lopez added, “He’s another one who wasn’t using his real name, like the Vampire Ravel and—don’t tell me I’m wrong on this one?—Sir Shackleton.”

  “What was his real name?”

  “Algis Taurus.”

  “That sounds Lithuanian.” Of course. He said he’d been born a vampire.

  Lopez mused. “I don’t understand why he didn’t use it. It’s more interesting than ‘Al Tarr,’ don’t you think?”

  “I guess this clears Daemon of the murder?” I asked.

  “Yeah. And it closes my case, too. Thank God. I was starting to feel like a troll in a bad fairy tale, living underground and lurking in damp, murky places.”

  “Speaking of which, what exactly happened in the damp murky place that caught fire?” I asked. “That cop’s account was ... a little confusing.”

  “I get the impression he might decide police work isn’t for him,” Lopez said tactfully.

  “Well?” I said. “What happened?”

  “I think it was a methane gas explosion.”

  “Seriously?”

  “You smelled the sewage, right?”

  “Thank you for reminding me.”