by Jason Tucker
It seemed to take forever to reach the house up in Laurel Canyon, and dealing with Carlos muttering about God and the Devil didn’t help the trip move along any faster. She thought it funny that a man who killed people for her would suddenly develop a fear of higher powers.
They cruised up the canyon until the gates of the house came into view. The Giovanni Estate was one of the larger homes in the area. It was high on a hill overlooking what she’d always assumed were the lesser people in lesser homes with lesser ambitions. Part of her wanted to be one of those lesser people now, someone who didn’t have to live in the world she’d build for herself. Someone who didn’t have to think about a double-crossing vampire.
She almost laughed when she thought about it. She was born into this life of blood, money, and murder. She’d been the one to find the vampire - a legend that surely couldn’t exist, except of course it did. She’d been the one to hold the creature captive for nearly six months, trying to learn more about it and how she might be able to use it. Robens and Joey were to be the first, the test subjects. Then the vampire lied. Had it ever truly been a captive, or was it just screwing with her? The mess she was in was her fault, and she had to find a way out.
It really was as simple as that. Rachelle just didn’t know where to begin.
They pulled through the gates and up the driveway to the large house. All the lights were burning bright, and two armed men came out to the circular driveway when Carlos turned off the engine.
“You okay, Miss Giovanni?” asked one of the guards. He opened the door to let her out.
“Peachy,” she replied. “Call in our reserves and make sure you arm them all with UV flashlights. Get more of those big UV units out too. I don’t give a shit if the neighbors complain. Our monster is loose and we don’t want her coming back.”
The guard paled. “Yes, ma’am, I’ll do that.”
She and Carlos headed inside, dripping water onto the marble foyer floor. In addition to the regular lighting, standing UV lamps had been placed everywhere in the house. The lights made the place look gaudy, and they certainly didn’t match the rest of the house, which had a classic old Hollywood feel that her father had loved. If things worked out, she’d go ahead with her plans to remodel the home with more of a modern look, something that matched the current Hollywood elite and not the stodgy tastes of yesteryear. Who did she think she was kidding? Things were definitely not working out.
“You really think she’s going to come back here?” Carlos asked, as he stripped out of his rain-soaked jacket. He had the look of a cornered animal with pupils wide and eyes darting, ready to flee if given the opportunity.
“She’s free. She doesn’t have any need to come back here. We don’t have anything she needs. She was toying with us and making promises so we would let her out. But we’ve taken enough stupid chances lately, so that’s why I’m doubling out guys here,” Rachelle said. She surprised herself by admitting to mistakes. It was something her father never would have done. Of course, he probably wouldn’t have tried to bargain with a monster either. Or if he had, he’d have done it differently, better and smarter. She was just her father’s shadow. Everyone who was working for her now knew that. “Why, Carlos? You scared of a little girl?”
“Damn straight I am. And you and I both know that it isn’t a little girl. But she’s only part of the reason I don’t feel too happy right now. I’m concerned about him,” Carlos said. “He knows what we tried to do.”
“The vampire didn’t get to him, otherwise he would’ve been part of our welcoming committee at the unit. I imagine Joey figured out we were going to do something, so he locked up Vincent and Robens inside and took off. I imagine that he’s already out of town.”
“Maybe,” Carlos said.
“If he has half a brain left in his head, he’s going to forget all about Los Angeles for a good long time.”
“Yeah, well, I never pegged Joey as being overly bright,” said Carlos. He unsnapped the clasp on his shoulder rig. “If he comes back, I’m just gonna kill him before he has a chance to open his mouth.”
Rachelle noted the inflection of Carlos’s words. He seemed to be asking a question more than making a statement. Carlos wanted to know if it was okay to kill Joey. More people than she thought must’ve known about her and Joey’s past. Either that of he was questioning his own skill. If it came down to a fight with either bullets or fists, Rachelle wasn’t sure if Carlos could take Joey.
“Hope you’re lucky,” she said.
Chapter Eight
The sun was death.
Vincent had no idea how he could know such a thing. It was instinct maybe. It must be. Everything felt like instinct now. His movements and even his thoughts were no longer completely his own. It was as if there was some kind of entity living inside his brain. Perhaps it was just his darker urges coming to power. He hadn’t even realized he’d hard darker urges. Whatever resided within him now was taking over. Vincent didn’t have the will to fight. He didn’t want to.
He huddled in a dark corner of his trash-strewn studio apartment. Robens was next to him. Together they watched as a beam of dawn’s first light crept across the floor. The light fascinated as much as frightened him. It moved slowly, a sickly yellow haze of death sliding across the food wrappers, fallen change and a cracked bong.
When the light hit the pool of blood still soaking into the carpet, desire pulsed through him. Vincent didn’t need the blood. He was full. He simply wanted it. A growl rose in his throat, but a sudden gasp from the bed caught his attention. He snapped his head toward the form beneath the bloodstained sheets.
He’d almost forgotten about her. The dog. The woman he lived with, the woman who had become a shared meal for him and Robens last night. What was her name… perhaps it was Melanie. His jumbled mind couldn’t quite recall. Her body - Melanie’s body - writhed beneath the sheets and blankets. Vincent watched as she clawed her way out of the gore-soaked cotton prison like a deadly butterfly emerging from a cocoon. It was beautiful in a way. He remembered the concept of beauty and fought to find a voice to say as much to Robens. Nothing but a guttural sound emerged. That angered him.
Melanie threw off the covers and tossed them to the floor. Vincent watched as her hands sought out her throat in the near darkness. They roamed to her breast and thighs next, the other places where he and Robens had torn into and drank from her. The wounds were gone but the flaking, dried blood remained. Vincent knew that she was like him now.
Naked, the painfully skinny woman rolled off the bed and away from the encroaching sunlight. Her head wobbled back and forth, and then she gave a slight hiss. Then a glimmer of recognition flashed across her eyes. She crawled toward Vincent and Robens and sat between them. Each of them tried to speak in turn, but Vincent saw that the others were having as much trouble forming the words as he was.
Dawn was breaking and the light outside was getting brighter by the minute. They would have to retreat to the bathroom soon, where the light wouldn’t reach. Vincent started to get to his feet when he felt a presence outside his front door. Melanie and Robens were quickly on their feet. It seemed they could feel it too.
The door swung open and standing in the hallway was a little girl along with the two thugs that he and Robens had killed the night before outside the storage unit, Freddy and a guy he thought was called Hester. The three of them came into the room uninvited.
Vincent could feel the power within the girl, just as he could feel a kinship with her. She was the one who made and changed Robens. All of them in this room were one big family. Vincent thought about the word. He opened his mouth to greet her, half-expecting another one of those animalistic growls to emerge.
“Mother,” he said. The sound of the word surprised him.
The girl smiled. “So, your mind is not broken. That’s good.”
“What are we?” Vincent asked. Melanie and Robens stared at him, trying to mouth the words of their own but could only produce whimpers and gro
wls. Vincent was proud that he’d found his voice again, and he wondered if the others would find theirs as well.
“What do you think we are?” she asked.
Vincent thought for a moment. “Dead?”
“You’ve died your first death.” She took a seat on the grubby floor near the edge of the bed. The two thugs sat down near her. They were just as silent as Robens and Melanie.
“I don’t understand.”
“My name is Nicolette,” she said. “We’re the reason for nightmares. Demons made flesh. Vampires. God, from the stink in this place you’ve drunk enough blood that you should’ve been able to figure that out.”
Vincent nodded. Vampires made sense. Well, it didn’t make sense at all. But all he had were his actions and Nicolette’s word. “How did you find us?”
“Last night, I returned to the place of my escape and found these two. Getting the two brutes to understand me was no easy feat. Their minds are not fully functional, at least not yet. They may never be. That’s one of the dangers of giving the first death. Only a handful of those bitten retain their minds.”
“Like me,” Vincent said.
“Yes, like you,” she returned, rolling her eyes. “I was finally able to Glean their minds to find out what happened to them. It took time to make them understand that I needed to find you, and even longer to get them to lead me to the Big Man’s home and then yours when you weren’t there. We barely beat the sun.”
“You needed us?”
“I have to keep track of the progeny and make sure the numbers do not grow too large,” she said. The girl looked around the room with what Vincent interpreted as disgust. He was suddenly shamed that he was not able to provide her with a better place.
“How did this happen?” he asked.
“How did what happen?” Nicolette got up and walked toward the window where the beam of light entered the apartment. It was still creeping closer as the sun rose higher and higher. She closed the curtains and the sunlight disappeared.
“Why were you with Rachelle Giovanni?” he asked.
“Do you really care?”
Vincent shrugged.
“The Giovanni family was familiar to me. Humans… humans that I knew did business with them, and now I needed information about a man who once worked for the Giovanni family and who I intend to destroy piece by bloody piece. I promised Giovanni things to get that information, put thoughts into her head and made her believe that I would give her what she wanted. Your large black friend was in the way tonight. You were both accidents derived from Giovanni’s plan.”
“You lied to her? To Rachelle Giovanni?”
“Of course. You say that as though it is a name to fear. It is not. I let her think she had double-crossed and captured me. She thought she was in control. I fed her the idea of how wickedly sweet it would be to make Joey Sanders into an immortal to be able to continue his torment for years. I used her while she thought she was using me. Using people is easy when you’ve had enough practice and don’t mind waiting to get what you want.”
“What about us?” Vincent said, gesturing to the others.
“You are like puppies that don’t know enough to stop eating. You’re feral things right now. My cabal would’ve killed most of you. You are the only one that can speak in anything that resembles full sentences. I see potential, at least in you. But I need to teach you the proper way to kill so that you do not breed more.”
“What about the others?”
“We will use them like work animals. Unless they gain their senses, we will kill them once they’ve outlived their usefulness.”
“Wouldn’t more of us be better?”
“Indiscriminate breeding would put too much of a strain on the sheep. And those same sheep would learn about us and then they would hunt us,” she said. “Live in the shadows, take the blood you need in any way that you can, but never reveal to humanity what you are. When you take the blood, you need to kill. You need to give the true death and sever the head or destroy the brain. Keep your cabal small and only add new members to replace those lost. If you create a feral, one who cannot relearn speech and how to fake humanity, then you must kill it.”
Her words made sense to Vincent. Though she had the appearance of a child, he knew that she was not. She was old, probably older than him. She knew more about this life too. They were family - he could feel that. And he would follow her. The other vampires listened to her as well. Vincent wondered if any of them were feral and what Nicolette might do to them when she was finished using them. He wondered too if they could fully understand what she was saying. Looks of awe and fear on their faces told him that they probably could, even though they could not respond.
“Now we sleep. Tonight, I will teach you how to kill your food properly,” she said. “And then we will stalk your old friend. I’ve already left a nice surprise for him.”
Chapter Nine
Joey opened his eyes and squinted against the sunlight streaming in through his bedroom window. For a moment, he thought the events of the previous night must have been a nightmare. Residual fear coursed through him, roiling in the pit of his stomach. The pain in his body, his location on the floor beside his bed and the disarray of his room told him that it was no mere bad dream. As otherworldly as they had been, the events of the previous night had happened. He just had to figure out what it all meant and what he was going to do about it.
He hauled himself up off the floor and sat on the edge of his bed to let a wave of nausea pass. The first thing he needed to do was get a hold of Del Whitman. Joey didn’t trust many people, but Del, along with Lou, had been something of a mentor to him back in the day. Del flew further under the radar than Joey did, and he figured Del’s place would be as good as any to hole up for a few days. It was likely the last place in the world that anyone would look for him.
Joey didn’t want to deal with the little girl, whatever she was. He didn’t want to deal with Giovanni either. Hiding at Del’s would do for now. He also wanted to talk to Del about that coffin or whatever the hell it was. If he was right, Del must’ve been the one to build it. He’d have more information, and that would at least give Joey a better idea of what to do next. Or at least what to expect. Once he figured out Rachelle’s game, he would just leave and stay as far ahead of her as possible.
Joey grabbed his duffle bag, finished packing his knives and a few clothes, and headed into the living room where he found his landlady Mrs. Golden waiting for him. At least, there were parts of her waiting for him. His head spun for a moment, but then he was finally able to take in the awfulness of the scene.
His landlady’s severed head sat atop the back of his tattered sofa. Empty sockets stared back at him from where her eyes should have been. Rivulets of blood had cascaded down the front of the sofa and formed a small, dark pool on the cushion. It looked mostly dry. One of her legs lay on the kitchen table and he could see one of her arms sticking out of the garbage disposal in the sink. Blood spatters painted the walls and the refrigerator. The girl had actually run part of the old woman’s arm through the disposal.
Joey didn’t want to find the rest of Mrs. Golden. She hadn’t had anything to do with his life of sin. But now she was dead because of him. He and death weren’t strangers, and he’d witnessed and even taken part in acts equally as disgusting as the atrocities laid out before him. The murder of a woman he hardly knew shouldn’t have meant anything to him. But it stung. He needed out in a big way.
Foregoing everything not already packed into his bag he started for the front door when he saw the bloody word painted on its off-white surface.
ONE
Before he could even attempt to contemplate what the word meant, he heard a soft knock at the door. His morning was getting worse by the minute. Maybe the visitor would just go away if he didn’t answer. Or maybe the little monster had tipped off the police about the body in his apartment.
He waited and listened to see if he could hear footsteps retreating.
>
The knock came again.
Joey approached the door slowly.
“Eloise,” said a weak voice on the other side. It was Mr. Golden. Emphysema riddled and hunched, he’d somehow managed to make his way upstairs to look for his wife. Shit. It wasn’t the cops. But somehow this felt worse.
Joey opened the door, slipped outside and closed up before Mr. Golden had a chance to knock again or get a glimpse inside.
“Hey,” Joey said. “What’s going on?”
“I thought my wife might be up here. She came up last night when she heard a ruckus. I would’ve come up with her, but I was already in bed and I don’t get around too well. I guess I fell asleep. When I woke up this morning, she wasn’t back.”
“No,” Joey said. “She didn’t come up here. At least, I didn’t see her. I didn’t get home until late though.”
“Well, where could she have gotten herself to?”
Joey shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she stepped out to go to the store. She does that some mornings, doesn’t she? Sometimes I see her coming in with bags of groceries.”
Mr. Golden seemed to be thinking this over. “Maybe that’s where she got off to. But it’s not Wednesday, and she usually leaves me a note on the door so I don’t worry. This isn’t like her.”
“I’m very sorry,” Joey said. And he meant it. Then he had to lie. “I haven’t seen her, but I’m sure she’ll be back soon.”
“I suppose,” he said. “You wouldn’t mind helping an old man down the stairs, would you? My knees and my back just aren’t what they used to be.”
“Not a problem,” Joey said.
Once he’d helped Mr. Golden down the stairs and into his own apartment, Joey stepped outside and into the brilliant light of the Los Angeles morning. Only a few quickly drying puddles remained from last night’s downpour and they would be gone within the hour. Joey wished he were a puddle that could just dry up and vanish. He slid behind the wheel of the Caddy and started the engine.