by Rowan Casey
Strains of jazz funk fusion drifted across the water. More revelers came. It started as a dance–a reflection of the larger dance of society–as they felt their way around, judging their place within the party. Later it wouldn’t matter, they’d change places and interchange private bits like Lego models, but for now there was a delicate balance to be maintained.
Right up until a screaming queen with a belly the size of a butterball roared in an impeccable Oxbridge English accent, "Come here you little cock tease," and made a grab for a much smaller Latino boy, who, if I remembered right seen as a corpse on CBS last week. There was a giggle and a grunt, and when I looked around there was more flesh than I felt comfortable seeing, and I think we’ve established I’m no prude.
The next twenty minutes changed my perception of what a good party was. Everywhere I turned some moment of indulgence and debauchery played out. There were twins in the pool running lines. I saw two guys and a very flexible young lady trying to disprove the old math saying, two into one doesn’t go. Two guys frotting. Two girls doing the sapphic thing. And moving through the middle of it, untouched, but drinking in the sexual essence sweating off each and every one of her guests, Evienne Nemi in her black feathered mask. Like the blackbird she pretended to be she moved from bent back and spread legs to bent legs and arched back, tracing fingers through the perspiration matted tangle of hair, tracing fingertips down the sweat-glistening ladders of bare backs and lingering on the flushed skin as heads tossed back and breathing came in shallow gasps. This was her kingdom. And one by one her subjects were coming.
The problem was, no superstar, and no Holm.
Someone tried to touch me and as god is my witness, I brushed them off. I had work to do. That’s a major step for me. Talk about delayed gratification. It made me almost nostalgic for the old days. You know, like yesterday, when my only concerns were primal, and this place would have been nirvana. What can I say? I’ve grown.
"Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?" a well-known actor who’d spent the last forty years denying rumors about his sexuality said to me, leaning in close to whisper in my ear as he reached down to stroke what he thought was my cock.
"Right first time," I said, moving his hand. "We wouldn’t want it going off prematurely and wasting the money shot, now would we?"
He backed off, hands up like he thought I really was going to shoot him. I just shook my head.
"Your secret’s safe with me," I promised him, which was another major advancement in the whole character department. I mean, seriously, concrete proof the world’s favorite is-he or isn’t-he action hero was, and I wasn’t thinking about how to exploit that knowledge for a quick buck? Who is this imposter and what have you done with the real Sam Lake?
I looked around the party. There must have been two hundred people now, all of them naked or in various fetish gear, all masked. Plenty of the guests were so famous they were recognizable even in their masks. A couple of them I knew intimately–or at least their sex vids after the whole Fappening thing a few years back.
Still no sign of Holm, but I did think I’d spied his psycho PA amid the writhing bodies. But it was only when the naked man beside me said, "So which one do you want? I’ve got us one of the villas," and held up a key that I realized Benedict Merchant had arrived and seemed intent on cementing our new friendship with a devil’s threesome. Great. There’s only so many times a weak man can resist temptation. I looked at my watch. I still had three hours until I died. What could it hurt? Holm wasn’t here yet, after all. And our superstar was obviously hanging back to make an entrance.
"I think the very least I can do is let you decide," I said, not really paying attention because someone had caught my eye through the mass of flesh.
"You like?" Merchant said.
Like wasn’t the right word.
I’d always wondered what he looked like naked, but I should never have been able to find out, given he died fifty odd years ago. But there was no mistaking who I was looking at. We’re talking one of the original heartthrobs of the silver screen. One of the first sex symbols so lusted after his face was, for a while, the most recognizable face in the whole world. That was the power of cinema. Everybody everywhere got to look at that face and think…fuck…
He couldn’t be here.
And neither could the woman on his arm.
Was this what Evienne had meant by a very special guest?
"Do you know who that is?"
"Of course I do. This is my town, Sam," Merchant said, completely unthrown by the sight of two long dead sex symbols touching each other in front of a crowd of onlookers.
"How did she do this?"
Because there had to be some sort of trick, didn’t there? This was Hollywood, land of illusion. It was all about making lies look like truths, and there couldn’t have been a bigger lie than these two, here, now, drinking in our hungry eyes.
"It’s the Garden Encantada," Merchant said, like that explained everything. "Magic happens here."
I looked from our dead entertainment for Evienne but her feathered mask was nowhere to be seen, which only reinforced my suspicion that she was behind all of this. Somehow.
"She said she was expecting a special someone, but seriously, are you telling me you are used to seeing ghosts get their rocks off so you can get yours off?"
"It’s the garden," he said again, but this time I got the feeling he was talking about a much more banal solution to the impossible couple than ghosts and sex magic. Body doubles. He was right. It’s Hollywood. This is the kind of crap they’ve been pulling for as long as they’ve been making films, making cinemagoers believe the impossible with clever camera tricks and makeup. I had to admit, they looked the part.
And as I heard them offer a few of their famous catchphrases, sounded the part, too.
I looked–and I mean properly looked–trying to see the differences, because there were always differences when a studio brought in a body double, but for the life of me I couldn’t see any. The two of them were exactly as I remembered Gabriel Valesquez and Missy Deschamps. And I mean exactly. As in uncanny valley territory.
Without thinking, I moved closer.
Merchant came with me. Obviously he figured we were a package deal and because he thought he'd gotten me access to the garden and therefore had some sort of ownership claim on me.
I wasn’t thinking about it, I was trying to get a look in either Missy's or Gabriel’s eyes. Windows to the soul, right? But what if there’s no soul in there? Because that’s what I was looking at: two empty vessels.
The butterfly girl materialized at my side. She had another colorful drink for me, complements of Evienne. I drank it, not wanting to be rude.
I’d only had two, and I was buzzed.
That wasn’t normal.
I watched Gabriel and Missy put on a spook show at the side of the pool, and after a few minutes noticed one of the original live fast die young beautiful corpses slip into the water beside them. Three ghosts caught up in the carnal memory of the flesh. I suppose if I was going to be locked into an eternity of torment, living out my forever forced to replay nights of twisted sex with some Hollywood hotties wouldn’t be the worst form of hell.
Merchant dropped into the pool beside the dead man and didn’t have any problem bringing him back to life, if you know what I mean.
I left him to it and went back into the main house.
There were more people in there, mainly serving staff and hostesses that Evienne had put on for night, but the mistress was there, too. She sat in a high-backed winged armchair, and had her left hand open, palm up, on her lap, with her right hand tracing patterns across the palm. Her lips twitched. She only had eyes for what she was doing. I watched her for a full minute and realized those twitches corresponded to a very crude lip-reading of our three dead stars putting on their show.
So this was her trick; a grand illusion.
I should have been terrified. I mean ball-clen
chingly terrified. Here was a woman every bit as adept at illusion as Grimm had ever been, making the dead dance to her tune for the amusement of her guests, and why? What did she get out of it beyond the most superficial?
Power.
That had to be the answer. Like everything else in Hollywood, it came down to money and power, and power always gave you money. It didn’t matter if you were a Weinstein or a Miscavige, it was always about power, just different kinds of power. And Evienne was every bit as power hungry as the worst of them. I knew that. I’d known it by reputation long before I’d woken up. And I’d known it personally from our first meeting this morning. But I was only beginning to grasp the nature of the power she craved.
But she was on my side.
I needed to focus on that.
She looked up at me and smiled a killer smile. "He’s here," she told me.
I shook my head. I’d covered every inch of the place and hadn’t seen him.
"He is preparing the sacrifice," she assured me, which was about the last thing I’d wanted to hear.
"Where?"
"Upstairs. In my chamber."
"If you knew that all along, why didn’t you tell me?"
"It wasn’t time," she said, and with a circle of the fingertip on her palm made the dead do some unspeakable things to each other for the sake of entertainment.
This place, these people, it was all seriously fucked up.
I climbed the marble stairs, knowing I still had a couple of hours left until I died, which made me think however this went down it wasn’t going to be the final showdown that actually killed me.
Looking back over my shoulder I wondered how that particular end was going to go down, and if Evienne would make my bones dance for her amusement when I was gone.
14
How many of the bold and the beautiful had walked up these same stairs to these old bedrooms down the years?
A lot.
One thing Hollywood was good at was lying about its true nature.
I could almost smell the ghosts of orgies past as I walked toward Evienne’s mistress suite.
I was buzzed, more so than two fancy cocktails should ever have managed, meaning I’d been drugged. I wasn’t necessarily against getting high before a big showdown, if it’s the right kind of high, something that focused the mind. This didn’t. I felt vague. And vague wasn’t good.
The landing was like some pseudo-plantation house form the deep south, replete with all of the draperies and soft furnishings you’d expect of somewhere slave-chic. There was a vase on a walnut table that together cost more than my apartment, and individually were both more than the trusty Mustang. This woman had money. Lots and lots of it. Dirty money. Money made from other people’s secrets. Money earned from the power of guilt and that all too human urge to hide ones perversions. And good for her.
I walked down a passageway with art on the walls that could have funded the formation of a small religion. There was a lot of modern stuff that wasn’t really my bag. I saw a couple of Rothkos and a Kandinsky that would have paid for a desert compound replete with hole for the pesky faithful who needed to be reminded which god on earth they were devoted to for the next billion years.
The double doors to Evienne’s suite were closed.
I didn’t knock.
I was expected.
I struggled to take it all in at once. First there was the bed, and the dead priest on it. I say priest, it was a naked man in stockings and suspenders, so priest was my go-to assumption. His throat had been cut. There was a lot of blood. Most of it had been daubed on the walls, replicating the sigil Holm had painted on my chest. This was never about me cornering him. Evienne had delivered me to him, and I’d fallen for it hook, line, and bloody sinker.
The blood dripped in streaks down the wall. In the middle was Holm’s bloody handprint where he’d sealed the incantation and marked this room for his sacrifice.
The incubus himself sat in an armchair, smoking a thin licorice paper cigarette and nursing a very expensive single malt like hanging out with a dead transvestite was a pretty average kinda night for him.
I didn’t know much about incubuses–incubi?–as forms of demonic entity, but the little I did know revolved around them crouching on their victim’s chests while they slept, draining them of their vitality in return for some pretty out there sexual experiences. There was something else though, in the back of my mind, to do with Grimm. I couldn’t remember it. I tried. But the more I tried the more elusive that memory became. Though in chasing it I did remember Grimm’s voice and hearing the words, "The beast does not obey druids or holy men. It does not fear the crosses or other symbols of faith, nor show any reverence for the old ways."
He looked up at me, supping at the whiskey before setting the tumbler aside. And in that moment, I saw it, and knew how Grimm knew about the beast.
"I know you," I said.
"I should hope so, it was only this afternoon, after all."
I shook my head. "No. I know you. I know you. I know what you are."
"Well, good for you."
"And I know your son," I said, making the connection. I knew he looked familiar–eerily so–but it was familiar in the most literal sense of the word, because the metaphorical apple really hadn’t fallen far from the tree here. "Myrddin Embrys," I named him. "Child of demons. That was the legend, wasn’t it? That Merlin was a cambion? A man born from the bodily exchange of a demonic sire and a mortal woman. That was how he got his magic. I know you, beast. You are Grimm’s father."
"My, my, my, we underestimated you, Lancelot. Truly, we did. Not that it matters, as my son’s sacrifice will open the way for my people to escape the netherworld of the Demimonde he banished them to, and the balance of nature shall be forever restored. His death is a small price to pay for such harmony."
"I am not going to let you kill him," I said.
"Oh, you won’t be in a position to stop me as you shall be the bait to lure him in. And, to be brutally honest, it doesn’t matter if the bait is alive or dead, it will work just the same. You’ll bring him to me."
"No, I won’t," I promised him.
"You will, because you already did. Because more important than you knowing how I am, I know who you are. I know where your loyalties lie, and how far you have fallen from the noble soul you once were. I know what failure cost you back then, boy. I know how it felt to not be worthy, to be denied even the most fleeting dream of god’s cup while your brother knights saw and understood. I know what your weakness for sex did to you, how it unmade you. And I know that even hiding out until the end of your first miserable life as a monk wasn’t enough to save you. I know that in this life sickness has rotted you to the core and that you will do anything, like the junkie you are, to feel truly alive again. I know you, Lancelot du Lac. Sam Lake. I know you. So, what if you know me?"
Without thinking I reached around for the Colt. My mind was fuzzy. I felt my focus slipping and the edges of my vision blurring. But that didn’t matter. I could put a bullet between his eyes from this range with mine closed.
"So, here’s what you are going to do, you’re going to forget about trying to shoot me. Instead, you’re going to take your cell phone out of your pocket and you are going to call Myrddin and tell him to meet you."
I shook my head, but even as I did my hand was reaching for my phone and thumbing through my contacts.
"Stop trying to fight me, it’s pointless. Now, call him."
I hit the call button and pressed the phone to my ear. It rang through five cycles before Grimm answered. He did not sound pleased to hear from me.
"What?"
I didn’t want to say anything. I clenched my teeth, grinding them as I fought to maintain my silence.
"What, Sam? I don’t have all night."
"I need your help," I said, then gasped as the words were gone. I couldn’t take them back. "I’m in trouble. I’m at Evienne’s place. Upstairs. This is how I die…isn’t it?"
"I can’t help you. I can’t interfere. You need to find a way to save yourself, Sam."
"You really should come. It will be a family reunion," the incubus said through me. He was enjoying himself. All he needed was an egg to roll across a place and he’d be a perfect DeNiro. If that made me Mickey Rourke I was in trouble.
I wanted to say something, find a word, even if it was only one, to warn Grimm what was waiting for him, but all I could manage was, "Avalon."
My rebellion surprised Holm, and to be honest, me too.
"What about it?" Grimm asked, caution creeping into his voice.
"The weakness is there. You rebuilt the table around the weakness in the Veil. That’s where they are going to attack us. They are going to take Avalon." And it sounded plausible. The creature was fast on its feet, but then it had had a long time playing prince of lies.
"Over my cold, dead body," Grimm said.
"Oh, that’s very much the idea, son. Very much," Holm said to me, outside Grimm's hearing. "Come to the Garden to save Arthur’s first knight, and then we can ride together to Avalon with all of the Round Table. In full flight nothing can stand against us."
But the image planted in my head was very different. It was no glorious charge, but rather the ultimate betrayal, Holm manipulating my body to draw Arondight and pull the trigger, setting everything in motion with Grimm’s death.
"I won’t do it," I said. It didn’t matter. Grimm didn’t hear my second rebellion, the call was already dead.
"It doesn’t have to be this way," Holm crooned. "No, I’m lying. It does. It has to be this way. Because here is the one universal truth, everybody dies. It has been fifteen hundred years, but now it is time. The veil must fall if both worlds are to survive. and you are going to help me. Do you know how I know that?" I didn’t say anything. "Because you still think you are the good guy. And the good guy will do anything to save the day. Now, I want you to take your clothes off. Yes, all of them. I don’t want any nasty surprises. Remember I have been inside your mind. I know what you are going to try, and I’m not going to let that happen. So, off."