She rose from the floor, pulling on her robe, and went to her closet. She had her back to me. “You have a meeting with Solgar this evening. I need to take care of things. I need to take a shower and get dressed to go to the office.” The shaking hadn’t stopped completely. She reached for a hanger and knocked several to the floor.
“No, Maral. You’re not taking care of things any longer. I don’t want you back at the office. Now turn around.”
She wouldn’t. She bent down to pick up the clothes that had fallen and then stayed there, kneeling on the floor with her shoulders hunched, clutching her robe around her. I could tell she expected to cry, wanted to, probably, but she couldn’t. She never would again. My kind don’t.
“I don’t want to talk about this, Ovsanna. I just want things to be the same. I don’t . . . I don’t want to know anything else. I’ll just . . . be whatever you say I am and do whatever you tell me to do, but please, please don’t send me away. Please. I asked you to turn me so I could stay with you. You can’t send me away now. I do everything for you. And if I’m like you now, I can do even more.”
I’d had enough. I pulled her out of the closet and over to the bed. “You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. You betrayed me, Maral. I almost killed you because of it. I can’t keep you with me any longer. I can’t even let you stay in Los Angeles. You are one of mine and there is much I’m supposed to help you with, to adapt to your new existence, but I will not.”
“What do you mean? What do I need to know? What will happen to me?”
I pushed her down on the floor and held her face close to the dried blood on the carpet. “Smell that,” I said. “What do you feel? What do you want to do?”
She twisted her hair out of my hands. Her mouth was on the rug. She began licking the blood. Tentatively, at first, but then the more she licked, the more she wanted. She used her nails to scratch off flakes of it and shove them in her mouth. In seconds she was scrabbling across the dried puddle, tearing at the bloodied wool. I grabbed her by the hair to pull her up, sat her back down on the bed.
“There. You see? You’re a vampyre now. Everything you knew about yourself is no longer valid. Your body doesn’t work the way it did. Your hunger, your sex, your strength, your needs—all different. There are a thousand things you need to learn: how to control your appetites, how to use your abilities, how to live among humans without being discovered. And later, how to temper your emotions. Later still, how to deal with watching the people you care about age and die while you have to move on to someplace where you won’t be recognized so you can’t be questioned. Living in anonymity, or living as someone else—or something else—entirely.”
She grabbed on to me. “I can do that, Ovsanna, I can do that, but I need you to teach me. I need you. You can’t send me away.”
“You’ll go to New York, Maral. I want you as far away from here as possible. For your own sake as well. Peter knows you tried to have him killed. I don’t know what he intends to do about it, but he’s a cop, remember? I’ve already called Theda and Charles. They’ll take you in and guide you. Maybe you can work for them in one of their businesses.” Theda and Charles own a chain of boutiques specializing in Goth clothing and makeup. It would be a perfect place for Maral to begin to learn about herself.
“But I love you, Ovsanna.”
“That will change now, too. As a human, you loved me. You’ve loved me because I completed something in you; I provided whatever it was that you wanted in yourself and couldn’t find. Fearlessness, maybe, or self-esteem. Stability. Emotional strength. Worthiness. The caretaking you needed. You’re vampyre now. Vampyres don’t need caretaking. We don’t need anything—except blood. We don’t need others to give us a sense of worth; we don’t need attention to make us feel valuable. We don’t need ‘things’ to show others what we’ve achieved. We don’t need like humans do, and so we don’t love like humans do. You’ll see.”
“But you’ve kept me with you all these years. You must love me.”
“It’s a word, Maral. And whatever it means to you, it’s not something I’m capable of. I can use it to mean I have enjoyed being with you, I have trusted you enough to expose myself to you. I would rather have had you in my life—close to me—than be alone. My life was easier with you in it, and I took pleasure in caring for you. If you want to call that love, then fine, you can use the word. But I’m telling you, and you will come to know this on your own, vampyres are ultimately solitary creatures. What humans classify as love doesn’t translate to our existence.”
“But Ovsanna—”
“You need to bathe and dress and pack. Now. You’re leaving for New York.”
Maral wouldn’t need to feed for several weeks, but I didn’t want her around people until she’d had time with Theda and Charles to adjust to her new self. She was going to have to come to terms with a lot, not the least of which was living without me. It’s one of the reasons I so rarely turn anyone. Helping a newly made vampyre find his way in the world is a greater responsibility than raising a baby. At least with a baby no one’s comparing the way things are with the way they were. Newly mades are not tabula rasa; they’ve got a whole list of expectations based on their past life. Like making plans for dinner. Well, she’d learn soon enough not to do that anymore.
I called Sveta and had her order a car to take Maral to LAX and then charter a Citation to get her to New York. Vampyres hate flying commercial jets—all those horrific human odors in a confined space with recirculated air. It’s torture. No need to expose her to that so early in her creation. I would continue to pay her living expenses until she no longer needed my help. “You’ll be fine, Maral. Theda is Azeman, and Charles is one of mine. I turned him years ago. He’ll know what you’re going through, and they’ll both be able to help you.”
“Will I see you again?” she asked. Already her emotions seemed subdued.
“Of course you will. You’re Dakhanavar now. We have a lot of years ahead of us.”
She handed the limo driver her suitcases, took one long, last look at me, and left—just minutes before Peter arrived.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
I drove SuzieQ home in the Jag. She showered and washed her hair while I cleaned up the mess in her bedroom. Dick Nixon was in pieces in the kitchen. I used a pair of barbecue tongs to drop him down the disposal. I was just going to hit the switch to grind him up when Suzie came into the room, wrapped in a towel, and saw what I was doing. She screamed, dropped the towel, and shoved me across the room. I landed on my ass, staring up at this six-foot-tall naked Amazon who was pulling chunks of dead snake out of the plumbing and wailing uncontrollably. She didn’t calm down until she’d laid out all his pieces on the counter and then rearranged them in the proper order, so they formed a sort of ragged-edged dead snake jigsaw puzzle. By that time, she’d stopped crying and was crooning James Taylor’s “You Can Close Your Eyes” to the chunks. At least it wasn’t “Black Snake Moan.” She covered them with a tea towel embroidered “Mondays Are for Ironing,” wrapped the whole thing in the towel she’d been wearing, and walked outside naked to lay him in the garden under the pansies. I’ve got to say she was quite a sight, especially from my vantage point on the floor. Especially when she bent down to deposit him. Then she came back in, put on pajamas and a robe, checked on the remaining reptiles, and walked with me to my place. I didn’t want her to be alone.
The sky was lightening. SuzieQ made decaf while I took a shower. She insisted the cuts on my back needed attention, so I let her play doctor with a box of Band-Aids. We stood in the kitchen drinking coffee and talked about what we’d just been through.
“What’re you gonna do, sugar? You can’t tell anybody ’bout what happened. Can you?”
“No, SuzieQ. Nobody would believe it. And you can’t, either.”
“Hell, Peter, who’m I gonna tell? You’re the only person I talk to in this town with any degree of trust, and I sure as hell ain’t gonna tell anyone back home. They t
hink I’m nuts the way it is. ’Sides, rougarou or not, we killed someone, didn’t we? How do we explain that?”
“We don’t. Whatever that thing was, nobody’s going to miss it. Except maybe Maral McKenzie. And I have a feeling she’s not going to want anyone searching for it, either.”
It was seven o’clock Friday morning by the time I fell asleep. I’d set Suzie up in my guest room and we both slept until one. So much for my day off. She made French roast espresso while I made mango smoothies. We took them with us when I drove her back to Franklin Canyon to get her car. After she left, I walked to the duck pond. There was no sign of the attack. No body parts floating on the water. No shredded clothes lying anywhere. Nothing.
I called Ovsanna at the office, but her receptionist said she hadn’t come in yet. Neither had Maral. I didn’t bother to call the house; Ovsanna would either be home or she wouldn’t, and I didn’t want to broadcast my arrival.
Graciella de la Garza was on my mind while I was driving. Maybe she’d gone to the hotel to sell DeWayne his drugs and he hadn’t liked the deal. Whatever it was, he must have shifted and drowned her and torn her apart. That would explain those tiny handprints on the ground. And what I thought were a large dog’s paw prints. Not dog at all. Wolf. Well . . . werewolf, Louisiana style.
“Peter?” Ovsanna must have been watching the monitor. Her voice came over the intercom before I pressed the button at the gate. I had to turn down the iPod to hear her. Robbie Robertson singing “Somewhere Down the Crazy River.”
She was waiting outside the front door, the way she always did. I couldn’t tell if she’d slept or not; she never looks bad, no matter what. She’d changed clothes, though. No Dallas Cowboys sweatshirt or rolled-up jeans. She was barefoot, in cutoff jeans and a man’s white shirt, the sleeves turned back.
She reached out for me. I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her and momentarily forgot what I was there for. I lifted her off her toes, our mouths still together, and carried her inside the foyer. Her fingers found the Band-Aids on my back.
“What happened?” she asked.
That brought me back to my job. “Where’s Maral?”
Ovsanna didn’t answer my question. She shook her head, took my hand, and led me back to her library, the same room we’d been in on Christmas Eve when I’d freaked out and left. That was six days ago. It seemed like months. This time she sat next to me on the sofa. She said, “I know why you’re here, Peter. I know what Maral did.”
“She told you?”
“No. I followed you last night. Now, don’t get mad. I was worried about SuzieQ. I had a feeling it was something more serious than a date gone bad and I wanted to see for myself.”
“You wanted to see for yourself. You didn’t think I could take care of it, huh? Whatever it was. Whatever it was that she had asked me to come alone for?” I was getting angry, and not just at Maral. “So you know what happened and you’re lying when you ask about the bandages. What the hell, Ovsanna? Why didn’t you just show yourself? Sweep in and save the day? You’re a vampyre. You’ve got superpowers. What the hell do we need the police for, anyway? We’ve got Ovsanna Moore!” I was off the sofa and yelling at her.
She didn’t raise her voice. “I’m sorry, Peter. I didn’t show myself because I knew you could handle it. And you did. But think about it. Think about what you’ve seen in the last month. You know now that there are things out there that are out of your control, things you can’t possibly go up against by yourself. We’re being stalked, Peter, and it’s not just your garden-variety attacker. If DeWayne Carter had been a true werebeast and not just a rougarou—if he’d been one of Lilith’s kind—you wouldn’t have had a chance in hell. You saw what they can do, in Palm Springs. And you know what you can’t. This isn’t about strength or training, or even marksmanship. It’s about reality—and your reality has just expanded way past anyone around you. We’ve got to stay together on this.”
“Yeah? Well, I don’t think our staying together is what Maral had in mind. Where is she? I’m taking her in.”
“For what? What can you arrest her for?”
“I’ll think of something. How about she tried to have me killed? How about she hired a fucking alligator to kidnap my friend and drown me? Conspiracy to commit murder by beast? You know that thing killed the woman at the Sportsmen’s Lodge, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know it. And you know you’re not going to be able to arrest Maral for hiring a fucking alligator to do anything. They’d have you committed before the ink dried on her fingerprints.”
“She can’t get away with this, Ovsanna. She’s unbalanced and she’s dangerous. Now where is she?”
“She’s gone. I took care of it. She’s not going to be a problem any longer.”
“What do you mean, gone? Gone like DeWayne Carter is gone? Like the rougarou is gone? What did you do, Ovsanna?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
I didn’t tell Peter what I’d done. Not exactly. I told him I’d sent Maral away and she wouldn’t be coming back. I started to say she’d never eat lunch in this town again, but he wouldn’t get it. He didn’t need to know I’d turned her. Not then, at least. We were already having issues about trust. I didn’t want him worrying he was next in line.
It took some time, but I calmed him down. “You don’t have a dead body; you don’t have any evidence. You can’t charge Maral with anything without sounding like you’ve lost your mind,” I told him. I convinced him she was no longer a problem for us, and then I convinced him we had better things to do than worry about Maral.
I took him upstairs, and we did them.
It was different this time. Maybe because I knew Maral was gone, maybe because I’d almost lost Peter to the rougarou. The need was different. Not driven by lust or Thirst. We took our time, exploring, exposing ourselves a bit. A different kind of intensity. A deeper pleasure. I never dropped my fangs until the very end.
__________
My reaction to Maral’s departure didn’t hit me until after Peter left. A wave of sadness washed over me when I walked into my office and saw her abandoned desk. I had to sit down for a minute.
She’d cleared off her papers. Her laptop was gone. The scripts she kept piled on the floor were missing. That corner of the room was bare. She’d removed the black-and-white candid Helmut Newton took of us on the set of Dying to Meet You and a publicity still of the two of us Santa D’Orazio shot for Vanity Fair. I could replace the Vanity Fair shot, but not the candid.
I couldn’t replace Maral. I wasn’t even going to try. She’d been working for me for ten years, living in my house for nine. She did everything for me. She was my Alfred. Not just at home, in my business as well. I guess as much as a vampyre can feel love, I loved her. It wasn’t any deep, wrenching pain settling on me—the kind I had to use my imagination for to write my screen roles—but it was a true sorrow. I missed her.
And she was my blood. My life source. I’d drained so much of her, I wouldn’t need to feed for a month or more, but I would eventually need to drink again. I thought about Peter and how our lovemaking had been this second time. I’d kept my fangs sheathed until the last minutes when he’d slid inside me, and then I’d only nicked his skin. I didn’t want to drink; I wanted to suck. I wanted to suck on him while he was inside me, pounding harder and harder until we both lost control. As intense as it had been, there’d been a tenderness there and the merest hint of vulnerability from both of us. Maybe because we trusted each other a bit more. I wondered what would come next.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
By the time I left Ovsanna’s, it was almost five. I was drained. Not literally this time, but I definitely needed some nourishment. I drove over the hill to see if my mother wanted to feed her favorite son. I didn’t have to ask. She saw my car in the driveway and the braciole was on the stove before I opened the screen door. She had pizza dough resting on the granite counter. While we talked, she formed a half dozen calzones and slipped them onto the baking stone
in the oven. I grabbed some bagged lettuce, cherry tomatoes, chi-chi beans, and avocado and made a salad. My dad came in to set the table. Start to finish, the food was on the table in fifteen minutes.
“So I’ve got a question,” my mother said. “What the heck did Ovsanna Moore do to my sister on Christmas Eve?”
“Aunt Addie, you mean? Why, what’s wrong with her?”
“There’s nothing wrong with her. That’s what I’m asking you about. She hasn’t been this easy to get along with since she ran for homecoming queen in twelfth grade.”
“I don’t know, Ma. Ovsanna’s just got a way about her. She can be pretty persuasive.”
“Yeah? Has she persuaded you into bed yet?”
“Ma!”
“Well, I wanna know. She’s a big-time movie star and a Hollywood producer. And she’s got to be at least ten years older than you, although she sure doesn’t look it. I wanna know what’s goin’ on. Are you sure you can take care of yourself?”
“Ma. What’s next? You’re gonna tell me to make sure I go to the bathroom before we leave the house?”
“Well, are you using protection, at least? You know what they say on those commercials—you’re not just sleepin’ with her, you’re sleepin’ with everybody she’s ever slept with. And she’s been around a long time.”
You don’t know the half of it, Ma. “Ah jeez, Ma, I skeeve when you talk about stuff like that. I’m a grown man. Just trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
And thank God, I thought, you don’t.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Peter left a little before five P.M. I hurried to shower and change clothes, missing Maral even more when I had to drive myself to Beverly Hills. Goddamn her and her jealousy.
At six o’clock in the evening on Friday, December 30, it was eleven in the morning the next day in Japan. Solgar and I had a date to meet at my office to fax the signed merger papers to Takeyama-san, Yoshiri-san, and Ito-san. The three gentlemen, waiting in their office in Tokyo on New Year’s Eve, would then sign them and fax them back. I would have new partners, and Anticipation Studios would have a lot more money. I was excited. I’d started the company ten years earlier with my own money and a 20 percent investment from a private equity firm. Initially, I was making low-budget horror films with limited theatrical release, aimed straight for the home entertainment market, but when The Milk Carton Murders and What the Orderly Saw grossed a hundred million each, I bought the production facilities in Santa Clarita and brought in Thomas DeWitte as my head of development. Once Thomas came on board, we started making six to eight features a year, along with several television films and a series pilot. Now I could push that number up. And not only could I do the deal with John Carpenter, but I’d be able to pursue George Romero and Sam Raimi and some of the hot young directors who’d been making a name in the genre, like Alex Horwitz. For years, I’d been wanting to film George R. R. Martin’s Fevre Dream—one of the few novels about my kind that I really loved—and I thought Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula would make a great cable series. Now I would have the money to do it.
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