“How did you cheat me? What did you do?” says Vincent.
She looks through him like he’s not there.
“I’m a medium. I was. I lost most of my power when I gave up a mortal life. There were several of us in the groups with the gift back then.”
“What groups?” says Candy.
“The two in which I was involved were the Thule-Gesellschaft and the Vril Society. There were two main mediums in those days. Myself and Maria. Maria Orsic. We worked with other women who claimed to have the gift. I don’t know if they were telling the truth, but what I do know is that one day I saw Death coming for me. So I did something about it.”
“You went out and found yourself a vampire,” I say.
She pours herself more wine.
“We knew many vampires in Munich. All the occult groups did. When I saw Death’s shadow, I wasn’t ready to go, so it was a simple matter to offer myself to a willing vampir.”
Vincent stands up.
“You unbalanced the universe by what you did. The whole line of life and death was disrupted. Innocent people died before their time because of you.”
“I don’t care,” she says. “I just knew that I wasn’t ready to go.”
“Tell us about the groups,” says Candy. “What did Thule and Vril do?”
“They were merely occult study groups. Very esoteric stuff. You wouldn’t be interested.”
“I am if it has to do with the Murphy Ranch ritual,” I say.
“What if I say no?”
“Then I’ll kill you. And you’ll be gone and this little empire you’ve built will fall apart because—you’re right—there will be a war. But not between shroud eaters and civilians. The bloodsucker factions will all want to take your place and all the world will have to do is sit back and let you rip each other apart. There won’t be enough left of your kind to knock over a taco stand.”
“You’re more right than you probably know,” she says. “All right—I joined the Thule-Gesellschaft in 1919, the Vril Society a year or two later.”
“Tell us about Thule,” says Candy.
“The Thule Society was simply an occult study group, looking into the origins of the Aryan race. The name Thule comes from a region far to the north. The top of the world. The capital of ancient Hyperborea. Many in the society believed that this was the origin of the Aryan people.”
Candy types furiously on her phone.
I say, “Bullshit. Thule was into all kinds of baleful magic. Demonology. Murder hexes. Possessions.”
Candy studies her phone.
“The Thule Society had a lot of connections to the early Nazi Party. How does that square with an innocent study group?”
“Baleful magic never interested me. I was curious about history. When I joined the group it was believed that the Hyperborean race was a peaceful, enlightened people of advanced philosophy and technology. As for the other point, sadly some in the group became involved in right-wing politics. Like baleful magic, I found it all a bore.”
“Let me get this straight,” I say. “You weren’t into magic. You weren’t into politics. All you wanted to do was exercise your library card. Those must have been some short fucking meetings.”
Tykho sips her wine, ignoring the comment.
“What is Vril?” says Candy.
Tykho sets down her glass.
“Members of Thule and Vril had known each other for some time. When a handful of Vril members joined Thule, we formed an inner circle for more serious and intense study.”
“Studying what?”
Tykho takes her time getting a cigarette from a drawer, tapping it on the desk. I lean across and spark the smoke with Mason’s lighter.
“Studying what?”
Tykho takes a puff and blows smoke my way. I’m used to Maledictions, so her puny smog barely registers.
“There was a theory that some catastrophe destroyed Hyperborea and that the ancient Aryans took refuge underground. They lost most of their culture and technology in the disaster, but in their caverns they developed tremendous mental powers.”
“Like a ‘May the Force be with you’ kind of thing?”
“That’s how an idiot would describe it. Vril was and is believed to be a kind of mental energy that can be directed to create or destroy, sicken or heal, with a thought.”
“What does that have to do with the ritual that bound me to this body?” says Vincent.
“Let her talk,” I say. “I want to hear the whole tall tale. So, you’re trying to find a Nazi Obi-Wan Kenobi at the center of the earth. What next? How does this hook you up with the White Light Legion?”
“When the more insufferably right-wing members of the society turned our work increasingly into propaganda for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, some of us broke away and formed a smaller study group. But things became harder for organizations like ours to function as the Nazis came to power. Hitler was always paranoid about the influence of the occult and all so-called secret societies and began dissolving them.”
“Wait,” says Candy. “Did the people in your group know you’re a vampire?”
“Of course,” says Tykho. “That’s why it was easy to form our own study group. Many believed that my vampiric powers were a crude example of Vril energy.”
“What happened next?”
“Even before Hitler became chancellor, it was clear that the group could no longer function. Several high-ranking members were arrested and thrown in prison. By 1934, many of us were emigrating to France and Switzerland.”
“Get to the White Lights,” I say.
“The White Light Legion wouldn’t exist for many years. Have you heard of William Dudley?”
“Yes,” Candy says. “Julie gave me some background on him. He was a California fascist back in the twenties. He had some kind of supernatural experience that convinced him he had super mental powers.”
“That sounds kind of like Vril,” I say.
Tykho smiles, puffs her smoke.
“And that’s why in 1935, when members of the society came to the States using forged French passports, they eventually came into contact with like-minded members of the Pelley’s Silver Legion in New York. One of the Legion members they met was Edison Elijah McCarthy, the man who would go on to found the White Light Legion, based on the occult principles he learned at the feet of William Pelley.”
“How did you end up in California?” says Candy.
“The group wanted to meet Pelley and to get as far away from Europe and the stink of the continent as possible. So they went west.”
I say, “But you weren’t with them, were you?”
“No. They didn’t know that I’d made it to America. When the SA began attacking Lurkers right along with Jews and communists, I left the group and eventually Germany, wanting nothing to do with either ever again.”
“Where were you?”
“I was already in L.A. I ran all the way across America for the same reason they did. I’d been taking elocution lessons, trying to lose my accent and erase my past. I kept my distance from the local German expatriate community, but when I heard about a powerful occult group coming west, I knew who it was.”
“When did you meet them again?” I say.
She taps her cigarette ash into her wineglass. I keep dropping mine on the floor.
“It was in the summer of 1935. Shuna, another medium from back in the Thule-Gesellschaft days, came with them. She sensed me nearby in the city. Back then, I had enough of my gift left that I sensed it when she found me, so I came out of hiding and contacted her.”
“What happened to them? Are they how you brought the vampire groups together?”
Tykho laughs.
“Hell no. I was done with their fascist nonsense. No, I met Shuna and the rest at th
e home of one of the Silver Legion’s inner circle.”
“Was it in Laurel Canyon?” I say.
She cocks her head.
“How did you guess? It’s a hell of a power spot. Of course, none of the other members of the group knew I was coming. I was to be a great surprise. A present from Shuna to the group. I suppose I was a surprise in the end. I came through an upstairs window instead of the door and slaughtered every single one of them.”
I crush out my cigarette on the bottom of my boot and drop it with the ashes, pull out Vincent’s knife, and bury it deep in the top of Tykho’s desk.
“Did you use this?”
She looks at it like she’s checking out an antique butter dish.
“Not that one in particular, but there was a knife. I mostly used my hands and teeth. That’s always more fun, isn’t it, dear?”
She looks at Candy. Candy doesn’t take the bait.
“What kind of knife is that?” Candy says.
“You haven’t figured it out?” Tykho says. “I’m disappointed.”
She plucks the knife from her desktop and removes a smaller one from her boot. Setting the big knife on its side, she scrapes away some of the tarry grit on the grip. Underneath is an eagle and an SS thunderbolt.
“It’s an SS officer’s dagger,” she says, “fitted with a witch’s athame blade, to create a National Socialist sacred object. Himmler loved these things. You could get a hell of a price for it on eBay.”
I snatch the knife out of her hand and point it at her.
“You cut up Vincent with this one and I bet you had another for the second body. Who the hell was it and why did you do it?”
Tykho pushes off from the desk and spins around in her office chair like a kid.
“Isn’t it clear by now? Who was the one man still alive with even more will and occult desire than William Pelley?”
She stops the chair and looks at us.
“And who now was old enough to fear death just like I did years ago in Munich? It was the head of the White Lights, Edison Elijah McCarthy. That’s who I killed at Murphy Ranch. McCarthy is the new Death.”
Vincent stares at her. I can’t read his expression. Is it shock and anger, wonder and loss, maybe a mix of all of them? What I know is if I don’t say something, he’ll go on staring at Tykho forever.
So I say, “Here’s what I don’t understand. You say you don’t like these Nazi fucks, or the White Lights, or any other occult bullshit artists, and yet there you were. Out in the sticks with a knife in your hand helping with the ceremony like Suzie Sauerkraut. Why would you do that?”
She looks straight at Vincent.
“What lady doesn’t want Death to owe her a favor?”
Vincent slumps in his chair, his hands clasped together, letting his hands drop between his knees.
“The fascist movement had some power in L.A. in the thirties and early forties, but we’re long past that,” says Candy. “How does the White Light Legion keep going?”
But I know the answer. “Like any other crooks, right, Tykho? Protection. Loans. Easy cash crimes. We know from Wonderland Avenue that they shake down people and kill the ones who can’t pay. But with this occult angle there has to be more to it than that.”
“There is,” she says. “A lot more.”
“Want to let us in on some of it?”
“Why should I? You bring me this husk and call him Death? Yes, he was a powerful angel, but look at him now. Why should I say anything more than I’ve already said?”
“Because I’m going to kill the new Death, and when I do, Vincent is getting his old job back. Maybe Edison Elijah McFuckall owes you, but Vincent doesn’t. You might be a vampire now, but even vampires die, and Vincent can wait a long time. Plan all kinds of special surprises for you.”
Tykho spins around once in her chair.
“Fine. Why not? If it will get you out of here for good.”
“No promises. Tell us something charming.”
“How about wild-blue-yonder contracts?”
“I know all about those. I’ve been offered one more than once.”
“But do you know where they come from?”
“Where?”
“Right here.”
She throws out her arms.
“Sunny California. You see, a group of necromancers developed the original method after World War One, when death was on everyone’s mind. They sold a few, just enough to finance their own studies and research into deeper, darker arts. Later, other, more ambitious magicians, seeing the potential of the contracts, began working with the necromancers as brokers. This being L.A., they went to where the money and power lay. Hollywood. They started selling them to celebrities, who brought in other celebrities. And the money rolled in. Who do you think runs the blue-yonder racket now?”
“The White Light Legion,” says Candy.
Tykho nods.
“Through some of the more open-minded talent agencies around town.”
“Like Evermore Creatives?” I say.
“They’re one of the biggest,” says Tykho. “There’s one more thing I’ll tell you and then you have to go.”
“Make it something good.”
“The people you say you saw killed on Wonderland, and others who’ve died in the canyon, what do you think happens to them?”
“The nonfamous blue-yonders? They become flunkies for the big-name ghosts. Valets and butlers.”
“Not as many as you might think,” Tykho says. “Think bigger. There’s no profit in maid service for ghosts.”
I look at Candy and Vincent, but get nothing from them.
“I’m sick of smelling your shit wine. It reminds me of Hell and I don’t need that tonight. What else do the White Lights do with the dead?”
“Entertainment. Spectacle,” she says. “In a show-business town, the big money is in show business. What can ordinary people, with no singing or acting talent, no name and/or status do when they’re dead?”
“Ask me a lot of stupid questions?”
Tykho leans across the desk and speaks quietly.
“Did you hear of an online phenomenon years ago on the Web? It was called bum fights.”
Candy says, “Sure. Frat-boy assholes would pay homeless people to fight. They’d video it and put it online and charge to watch it.”
“Well, imagine what dead souls can do to each other in a dog pit,” Tykho says. “It’s quite a thing to see.”
I say, “Where? I want to see for myself. How do we get in?”
She opens a drawer and tosses an envelope on the desk.
“Here are some passes. They were supposed to be a raffle prize tonight, but you spoiled the party, so you might as well take them.”
I take the envelope and put it in my pocket with Vincent’s knife.
For a minute, I think very hard about killing Tykho. Candy puts a hand on mine.
“Let’s go home. Tykho is more useful with her head on her shoulders,” she says.
“Yes. I really am.”
I have to give it to Candy for keeping her cool. I was two seconds away from putting my Gladius through Tykho’s throat. But like she said, the new Death owes her a favor. How would killing her now hurt her?
I say, “Is there anything else you haven’t told us?”
“Lots,” says Tykho. “But that’s all you get now. You ruined my party and it will take days cleaning and ass-kissing to fix it. Go now and play save the world like you always do. But when you go to the fights and see the slaughter, remember that those people asked to be there. They volunteered their souls.”
“I doubt that,” I say. “No one is going to buy into something like that.”
“You’ve been to Hell. What horrors do you think ordinary people will endure on Earth so that they
don’t have to go into the Abyss? Go see the fights. Educate yourself.”
We leave Tykho’s office. Candy and I have our guns out, but none of the guards bother us. Vincent doesn’t say a word. Not on the drive back to the Beat Hotel or when we drop him off at his room.
“Good night,” Candy says.
He just stares at her with the thousand-yard stare of someone who’s been through Hell and knows that whatever happens, he’s never going home again.
CANDY CALLS JULIE and tells her what we found out at Tykho’s club, without going into details of how we got it. I think. I can only hear Candy’s side of the conversation, so I guess it depends on what questions Julie asks. Not much I can do about it either way. Candy tells her we’re going to check out the bum fights and asks if she wants to come with us. We could use the backup. While they’re talking, Candy looks at me and shakes her head. The last thing she says to Julie is “Okay. We’ll call when we get back. Be careful.”
I’m drinking coffee spiked with Aqua Regia.
“Be careful about what?”
“She says there was a car parked across the street all day, and when she left the office, it followed her.”
I hand Candy a nonspiked coffee.
“Should we go after her?”
“She says she’s got it under control. She took a couple of turns to lose the tail, then got behind the car. Now she’s following them.”
“Good for her. I hope she doesn’t do anything stupid.”
“So says the man who went into Death Rides a Horse like it was Omaha Beach. I might be able to cover you on what happened outside of Evermore Creatives, but the club? That’s going to be all over town.”
“It was a lot of noise, but no one got hurt.”
“You cut a guy’s arm off.”
“He’s a vampire. It’ll grow back. And we got a lot of useful information. Plus these.” I hold up the tickets.
“I agree. All I’m saying is that Julie might question the approach.”
“I’ll send Tykho roses and a pint of O negative. She’ll get over it.”
Candy blows on her coffee, sips it.
“Do you think it’s a good idea for us to use those fight tickets without backup?”
“Probably. But that’s half the fun.”
Killing Pretty Page 24