“What did you think of Moore?”
“I liked her,” she said. “And she’s strong, too. Whoa, is that girl strong. She carried Spiro around like he was a little bit of a thing and he’s getting to be a big boy now. He must weigh thirty pounds. That’s a good size for a python.” She whipped a flat silver PDA out of her shoulder bag and made a quick note. “Have to stop at the pet store for more mice.”
“What about the assistant, Maral McKenzie?” I persisted. “Did you come across her?”
“Once or twice. I sure didn’t like her. She’s a real pain in the ass,” she added dismissively.
“Any particular reason why?”
“Always hoverin’ round Ovsanna, gettin’ between her and ev’ryone else.” SuzieQ’s bright blue eyes snapped open. “Ooh, you think she done it, don’t you? You think she killed that girl.”
“I’m not thinking anything yet. I’m just asking questions. And I’m interested in her.” The blue eyes got even bigger; pencil-thin eyebrows rose a fraction. “Not in that way.”
“Well, you’d be wasting your time if you were, honey. That girl is gayer than an Apache dancer. She is definitely not interested in men.”
“And what about Ovsanna?”
“Not sure. I saw her lookin’ at men. She might go both ways. But I think she’s interested in a lot of things. Not that I can say from personal experience, she was all business with me, but there was somethin’ goin’ on with her and that McKenzie woman. Maybe not fuckin’ exactly, but somethin’…” She straightened one leg in front of her, crossed the other over it with her knee bent and did another yoga pose, the Twist. Her back cracked all the way up her spine. “So how come you think she did it?” she asked.
“I didn’t say that, SuzieQ, I said I was interested in her.”
“Oh fiddlesticks. It’s damn near the same thing, sugar. Somethin’s got you askin’ questions. What is it?”
“In confidence…?” I asked.
“Cross my heart!” She made an X over her impressive bosom.
I flipped open the file. “Miss McKenzie’s got a jacket. Stabbed a man in the gut and damn near beheaded him.”
“My kind of girl. He musta really pissed her off.” She came to her feet and moved around to peer over my shoulder at the file. She smelled good, honeysuckle or something. She tapped the file photo with her fingertip. “Don’t look like a killer.” It showed a wide-eyed, wild-haired young teen, frightened, disheveled, with bruises darkening her cheek and jaw.
“They never do.” I quickly flipped through the file. Most of it was public knowledge anyway and I couldn’t let SuzieQ read any specifics, but over the years I’ve come to rely on her as a sounding board when I’m mulling over a case. “Not sure if you remember this case. Twelve years ago—”
“I’ve only been in L.A. six,” SuzieQ reminded me.
“Well, twelve years ago we had a series of break-ins in expensive homes in the canyons and along Mulholland. The guy got off on getting past the alarm systems. It was like he deliberately chose houses with great security so he could laugh at us. Twice he found women at home and raped them, but neither of them could give us a description that was worth anything. He was on them before they even woke up and held a pillow over their faces while he was doing his business. Used a condom, so there was no DNA.
“Maral McKenzie was house-sitting for friends in a big home set off the road on Mulholland, sleeping in a guest room. She wakes up, finds the guy about to climb on top, grabs the knife and does him. She told the detectives she kept the knife on the night table because it was spooky staying in the big house alone.”
“Sounds like one smart cookie to me. So she used it and saved herself a whole mess a trouble. What’s your problem with it?”
“Ms. McKenzie claimed in her statement that she was lying in the bed when he walked in. Somehow she managed to eviscerate him and almost slice his head clean off. I’m not sure I could do that if I were standing in wait and the guy was immobile.”
SuzieQ was smart. She got it. “Remind me again about the Cinema Slayer: how did the vics die?”
“Disembowelment, decapitation, impalement, and drowning.”
“Wow, she’s done two out of four. What do you think? I knew there was a reason I didn’t like her.”
“I don’t know, Suze, it’s all a bit too easy. Maral McKenzie kills three movie stars and a special effects artist in a way that vaguely mirrors her manslaughter beef a decade earlier?”
“She’s an obsessive. She’s killing anyone with an interest in Ovsanna,” SuzieQ suggested.
“Too neat. Too obvious. What’s her motive?”
“Who knows? Maybe she didn’t like their work.”
Chapter Fifteen
There were five rounds in the .357 with an empty chamber under the hammer. The gun was loaded with blue-tipped Glazer safety bullets; designed primarily for air marshals, they shatter upon entering a body and don’t pass through—useful when you’re on a plane. Once you get hit with one of these, you stay hit.
I wasn’t sure how effective they would be against the vampyre in the house, though.
I’d recognized the scent: the unforgettable essence of old blood that only the very ancient exude. I haven’t got it yet, but as vampyres go, I’m not exactly that old. Solgar has it, but he keeps it disguised with Old Spice. Stand too close to him and your eyes water; he must bathe in the stuff.
I moved towards the house, alert for any movement. I’d left all the doors locked and the alarm system on, but I wasn’t surprised nothing had been tripped. Whoever had invaded the house had probably shape-shifted into something small enough to get through an open upstairs window or flown down the chimney, which was how I used to do it in my housebreaking days in Berlin. I thought about doing it now—taking on the shape of a bird or a bat and slipping into the house—but the effort would leave me in agony, wracked with muscle spasms and vulnerable to whatever waited within.
There was no point in trying for the element of surprise: the vampyre knew I was outside, in the same way that I knew it was inside. Standing outside the front door, I breathed deeply. The scent of old blood was stronger now, mingled with exotic spices and bitter herbs. I frowned; the scent was too strong.
Much too strong.
And I realized then that there was more than one vampyre inside.
Contrary to popular lore, vampyres do not run in packs.
There are many reasons, but primarily, I think it’s because we don’t like leftovers. Most of us are rather selfish and no one wants to share a meal. Second, we need to protect our anonymity and the likelihood of raising questions about our habits and idiosyncrasies increases if we’re seen together. And our elders must stay out of sight; the physical changes that take place as we move into great age are almost impossible to conceal. Our skin thickens; our fingers harden and become clawlike. Some clans grow wings and their spines extend into tails. Now you know why Orson Welles wore capes towards the “end” of his life. I am convinced that the legends of devils and demons have their genesis in sightings of the Elders.
So smelling more than one vampyre inside my house added confusion to my fear.
Standing at the main entrance, I unlocked both locks, pressed the black iron thumb latch on the scrolled door handle, and pushed open the heavy wooden door. My alarm techs tried to sell me on biometrics—using fingerprints and retina scans to allow access to the house—but since I don’t have any fingerprints to scan and my irises are subject to change I had to dissuade them. I’m sure they think I’m old-fashioned. Or cheap. Silently I keyed in the alarm combination—1550, the year of my birth—and watched the light change from red to green. With the gun held tightly in my right hand, I stepped farther into the cool foyer and listened.
The house was silent. But the smell of vampyre was stronger.
I’d kept the exterior of the house more or less as it was when “my mother” originally bought it. The foyer, library, music room, living room, and my office all op
en onto an outdoor courtyard and I’d replaced the floor-to-ceiling windows with UV bulletproof glass. The fountain in the middle of the courtyard was carved from stone I’d imported from the Tenochtitlán ruins. The interior walls are a pale buttercream, the floors are handmade terra-cotta pavers, the ceiling high and arched with exposed wooden beams. The wall directly to the right of the door is decorated with a selection of bladed weapons: knives, swords, axes, and halberds arranged in a pattern around the centerpiece, Hernando Cortés’s original suite of armor. No, I didn’t know him; he was dead before I was born. I just bought it in a junk shop in Tenochtitlán from a shopkeeper who didn’t know what he had.
I ignored the swords—forget that rubbish about vampyres fighting with swords: give me a projectile weapon any day. Reaching into Cortés’s armor, I pulled out the four-barreled derringer concealed there. Call me paranoid, but there are guns hidden all over the house. Paranoia has kept me alive. I’d have been happier with the AK-47, but that was upstairs under the bed.
A sound broke the silence. It took me a moment to make sense of what I was hearing: someone was playing my piano.
I slipped off my boots and socks and padded barefoot down the hall, making no sound on the tile. I had the silver Magnum in my right hand and the tiny derringer in my left. The music room is at the end of the west wing. That’s where I keep the instruments I’ve collected over the years: Caruso’s rehearsal piano, Glenn Miller’s trombone, and one of Elvis’s guitars. I’ve also got Bix Beiderbecke’s cornet and two Stradivari—a mandolin Antonio gave me during his Brescian period and a violin I bought on a London stall for ten shillings.
Stopping outside the door, I pressed my face against the smooth wood and listened. The smell of blood, of ancient power, was stronger now. There were at least three, possibly even more, Elders inside. They must have smelled me by now, but the strains of “Time Is on My Side” continued to emanate from the Steinway. There’s only one vampyre I know who likes the Stones and has a sense of humor. I loosened my grip on the .357, pushed open the door, strode inside.
And stopped.
Here were the Vampyres of Hollywood.
Not only was Orson there but Olive Thomas and Mary and Douglas, Theda and her husband, Charles, and James Whale and Peter Lorre. Rudy Valentino was talking to Pola Negri. Ten of the most powerful vampyres in Hollywood and I’d never seen them all in one room together. The only ones missing were Tod and Charlie.
“God damn it, Orson. You scared the shit out of me.”
He looked up from the piano. “Oh, I thought that was physically impossible, my dear, unless your clan has devolved in some way I’m not aware of. And really, Ovsanna, you’ve been in Hollywood too long. You’ve got the mouth of a guttersnipe.”
I hadn’t seen Orson since a month after his funeral. He’d been brilliant at arranging his death, using the conjuring tricks he’d learned as a child to deceive his mourners and choosing the same day Yul Brynner passed to diffuse the media attention. He even went so far as to have his ashes scattered at the famous Plaza de Toros de Ronda, in between bullfights. Ever the showman.
“You’ve lost weight, Orson. You look good.” I’d never understood how he managed to consume two steaks, a half pint of scotch, and a pineapple every evening. The Strigoi Vui Clan are not solely blood drinkers, but still…
“I had no choice. I rarely venture out except in animal form; I can’t take the chance of being recognized. The perils of being a celebrity,” he sighed dramatically. “Even the young people pose a threat. They hear my voice and start screaming, ‘Unicron! Unicron!’”
“Oh pish, Orson, stop bragging.” Olive Thomas was seated on my sofa, looking as beautiful as when she’d taken the mercury bichloride tablets in 1920. Obviously her vocal cords had healed from the burns. I hadn’t seen her since the night she invited Douglas and Mary and me to see Beatrice Fairfax on her home projector in 1916. Mary brought her dreadful brother along and the next thing we knew he and Olive were married. Four years later she used the pills he was taking for his syphilis to stage her “death.” It was convenient but I always thought untimely. She could have continued acting for years and no one would have questioned her unfading beauty.
“It’s not my fault, you sweet young thing,” replied Orson. “They just rereleased the movie in some twentieth-anniversary edition and they’ve made a sequel to boot. That damn thing was a huge success. It still galls me to think my last work was some big-screen animated advertisement for Japanese toys. Transformers: The Movie. What was I thinking?”
“Don’t worry, it’s being remade. Your version will soon be forgotten,” James Whale muttered. No one had dared remake James’s original Frankenstein until years after he “drowned,” but it still pained him that they had. He’s never forgiven Mel Brooks.
“Ovsanna…,” Peter Lorre lisped. He came towards me with his arms outstretched and then they were all around me, enveloping me in the eye-watering taint of old blood. The fear I’d experienced out on the driveway gave way to a more subtle anxiety: only the gravest danger could entice these vampyres to come out of hiding.
We moved into the dining room. I don’t entertain often. I don’t want to deal with having to eat in front of people, but I have the requisite fifteen-foot-long dining table to keep up appearances. Orson sat at one end of the thick slab of macassar ebony and I sat at the other. Douglas and Mary stayed as far from each other as possible; he’d obviously not been forgiven for the affair with Lady Sylvia. Pola draped herself over Rudy, voracious as ever. Peter Lorre wouldn’t sit; he stalked the room back and forth behind Theda and Charles. James and Olive sat opposite them.
“This is madness,” Peter said, his accent still terrible after all these years in the States, “so many of us together. Madness.”
I was inclined to agree with him. “Who called this meeting?” I asked. As Chatelaine, it fell to me to call the Vampyres of Hollywood together, something I hadn’t done since Sharon Tate was killed.
“I did,” Douglas said gravely, in his wonderfully cultured accent. The room immediately fell silent. He brushed at his moustache with a forefinger, a sure sign that he was nervous. “You need our help, Ovsanna, and I didn’t want to wait until you asked. Ernst called me as soon as you left his office and I reached the others. I hope you will forgive me.”
I nodded and smiled. I could forgive Douglas Fairbanks anything; Mary glared at me.
“Tell us what is going on, Chatelaine,” said James. “Douglas didn’t have time to explain anything.”
“I have lost three Creations,” I said. “There was another killing today—one of my staff at the studio, not one of us.”
“A mistake?” Olive asked.
“Not likely,” Peter answered.
“I believe I am being deliberately targeted.”
“Why?” Theda asked bluntly. “Who’ve you irritated this century?” She still resented me for wiping out her clan.
“I have no idea. The three deaths were all in the traditional ways. The death today was by disembowelment.”
The Vampyres of Hollywood murmured together, a base animal sound.
I looked over at Rudy. I hadn’t seen him since he’d re-created himself as Rolph Valenti and started a mid-level theatrical agency in London. He handled a couple of good Brits and an Irish actor who showed up as a regular on the BBC, some American expats, and that Scotsman I liked so much on Murphy’s Law but no one else worth mentioning. Rudy was as dissolute as ever, skin pale and flawless, though there were deep bruise-colored circles under his eyes and his usually firm smile seemed loose, while an almost black tongue flickered between his lips. Creating him had been a mistake. Whenever I’d made mistakes before, I’d usually cleaned them up, but I’d let Rudy live and even I didn’t know why…or maybe I did and just didn’t want to admit it. “Rudy, Ernst said you lost someone. Could it be connected?”
Rudy sighed dramatically and brushed his overlong hair back off his high forehead. “One of my newly Turned drowned in a p
ool in Palm Springs in September. But he had drunk some tainted blood.” His smile was ice. “I’ve no idea where he got it from.” He stalked away from the table and struck a pose before the window.
I could only imagine; vampyres are immune to the effects of alcohol and drugs, but if we ingest blood recently tainted by either, we can get drunk or high. Some vampyres—and I suspected Rudy was amongst them—deliberately feed off drunken or drugged humans.
“I didn’t authorize a Creation.”
“I’ve been so busy.” Rudy smiled, not even bothering to hide the lie. “I meant to get around to asking you.”
It was a deliberate affront to my authority. Not his first, either. One of these days I was going to have to deal with it.
Mary smiled her sad little-girl smile—she was still using her own Mary Pickford line of cosmetics, for God’s sake—and looked down the table at me. “I was talking to Tod Browning at a Sabbath night recently. One of his new Creations, just beyond dhampir, died in a skiing accident. He was very cut up about it.”
Somehow I doubted it. I’d worked with Tod on Dracula in 1931, the movie that essentially created the modern vampyre legend. He was brilliant. And completely unsentimental.
James Whale stood up, his depression apparent still in the slump of his shoulders and the slowness with which he rose. “There have been whispers—nothing more,” he said, a trace of his English accent still in his voice, “of some unusual activity in New York. An extraordinary number of Creations,” he added.
“I’ve heard that,” Theda said. Theda and Charles live in a penthouse on Central Park West with every room overlooking the park. She uses the name Theodosia de Coppet, which I’ve suggested she change, but as usual, she doesn’t listen to me. The other residents in the building believe she was something in the cinema; they have no idea that she once was the cinema: the original femme fatale whose nickname was The Vamp. Yes, short for “vampyre.” She was always putting us at risk. Fortunately, these days, without her signature eye makeup, she’s unrecognizable. “There are so many young people wanting to become vampyres…or at least the cinema version of vampyres,” she added with a sly smile.
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