“I have a silenced Glock and a knife. Hang on a sec while I get my first aid kit and take a look at your neck. I really think it’s just a scratch. It shouldn’t hurt and the bleeding’s slowing down.”
“Maybe I should go to the nurse’s office,” I stammered, thinking to get away from this insane person. A vampire slice being tended by a demon? I didn’t think so.
“What nurse’s office?” Carlos looked honestly stumped.
“I found one last week when I got off on the wrong floor,” I mumbled. “It was in a corridor where I hadn’t been. It had some reclining chairs, IV stands, syringes, lots of medical stuff. The sign said it didn’t open until 5 p.m.”
Carlos shook his head. “SNAP doesn’t have a company nurse. You couldn’t have seen a medical office.”
CHAPTER TEN
A demon? I was being driven around L.A. by a demon? Sure, I‘d heard the rumors about urban vampires when I was at UCLA, everybody did. But they were just rumors. At least I’d thought so.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
What had Carlos said? The guy who attacked me was from the Huszar family. And they were enemies of the Kandeskys. Did that mean the Baron was a vampire, too?
The attack left me woozy and I wasn’t thinking straight. Just because the Huszars were vampires and enemies of the Baron’s family, didn’t mean he was one, too. I knew he came from Eastern Europe—whether Hungary or one of the Balkan countries I wasn’t sure—but lots of people were from there and they weren’t all vampires.
Carlos had swabbed something on my neck and stuck on a bandage so I started for my office. I had a lot to think about and a residue of fear. Whoever or whatever attacked me, had me spooked. I can stand up for myself in a business situation, but I’d never even been mugged, so my physical courage was untested. Judging from this morning, I didn’t have much to test.
I dropped my briefcase and Blackberry on the desk before heading to the restroom, fixed my smudged makeup, shook my hair forward to cover the bandage and struck a nonchalant pose back behind my desk.
“Some people...” Jazz muttered as she brought my coffee and the mail. She slid her eyes to my neck and I watched her struggle to keep the questions to herself. Beyond the bandage, I had no other signs of my weird morning in the garage and definitely needed the coffee.
“What now?”
“The rumor is that some people got invited to the Baron’s castle for a week” Her eyebrows were reaching for her hairline.
“Where do you hear these rumors?” I asked as I opened my email and gasped. “Oh, shit, you’re right.”
The email wasn’t so much an invitation as a command appearance at the Baron’s castle in Hungary. And on the top of the pile of mail was a heavy cream envelop addressed in calligraphy.
The invitations said that a company limo would pick me up at 8 that night and informed me that I should pack at least three formal dresses as well as casual and business clothes for a week. And shoes to match.
I had to get in gear and hit some shops, fast. LA wasn’t the place for formal clothes unless you were on the red carpet circuit and I for sure wasn’t. I looked at Jazz. She saw my stricken face and whirled out of my office. In a few minutes she was back with a piece of paper.
“I called the personal shoppers at both Saks and Neiman. You have appointments beginning in an hour. I told them you’d need a minimum of dresses, shoes, accessories and three business outfits. You better make an appointment for your hair this afternoon.”
Whatever Jazz was paid, it wasn’t enough. I’d have to make sure she got a raise as soon as I came back. That resolution jarred my memory and I said, “By the way, I came in through a different hall the other day and found a room I’d never seen before. It was medical looking. Is it the company nurse’s office?”
She gave me a very odd look and said, “You’ve never seen it before?”
“No, I usually take a different elevator. I drove that day and was on the third floor.”
“There’s no nurse’s office,” and she was off again.
My internal phone line gurgled and another driver announced he was waiting in the garage to take me to my shopping appointments.
“Where’s Carlos? He drove me in this morning.”
“He’s on another assignment,” the driver said. “I’ve been told to stay with you until you get on the plane for the Baron’s.”
I’d never had a personal shopper and the afternoon was a crash course in how our celebrity subjects lived. I had it a little easier because I got the treatment without the hordes of gawkers but I felt a little like Marie Antoinette waking up to find the French court waiting to watch her get dressed. At the end, though, I had three day dresses with Jimmy Choos and Charles Jourdans, one pair of casual silk slacks with contrasting silk shirt and blazer, and three stunning floor-length evening dresses with Stewart Weisman strappy sandals. My hair guy did magic with highlights and a gonzo cut and by 7 I was home, sorting underwear and packing bags.
The driver had waited in my living room and on the dot of 8, asked if I had my passport (I was carrying it all the time now), picked up my bags and headed for the airport. We took the usual ramp off the Harbor freeway but instead of taking the lane for departing flights, we looped around, came into a side entrance and drove into a hangar that housed a full-sized plane with the SNAP logo.
“Why are we here?” I asked.
“You’re taking the corporate plane,” he said. “Didn’t anybody tell you?”
This was only the first surprise. The second was coming into the 737’s cabin. It was an apartment. A living area had leather couches, armchairs and tables with a large flat-screen TV taking up part of one wall. Further back was an office and in the rear were two bedrooms.
“Let me take your bag,” a young woman said. “I’m Chrissy and I’ll be your flight attendant. We have two passengers this trip so we have the two-bedroom configuration. Do you have a preference?”
Chrissy looked like an SNAP girl. She was blonde, sleek and trim. Her hair was pulled back and twisted up on her head, her eyes were ringed in kohl and her black skirt and red blazer were set off with her Russian Red lipstick. Where did SNAP, or the Baron, find these clones?
“I’ll take the one on the right,” I said with as much panache as I could muster given that my chin kept hitting my chest. It was a small room and it looked as though a much larger sleeping area had been partitioned into two.
The third surprise was when I turned to go back to the living room and saw my traveling companion.
Jean-Louis smiled. “You look like you weren’t expecting me.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
This was going to be a hard trip.
I’d never spent much time alone with Jean-Louis. Well, there was that dance during our hunting trip, but we were still surrounded by several hundred of L.A.’s finest partiers.
“No, I didn’t expect you.” I managed not to stumble over my tongue. “Do you know what this invitation or summons is all about? And how come you got asked? You’re lower on the hiring ladder than I am.”
Chrissy came over to us. “I have to have you seated with seatbelts on as we take off. Once we’re up you can just move around except for landings.”
“What landings?” I asked.
“The first leg is to Newark,” she said. “We’ll refuel and you can stretch. We’ll be in the hangar for about an hour.”
In the hangar? I didn’t want to show my ignorance of private plane travel so I just nodded. Why would we stay in a hangar? Don’t most planes take on fuel outside? I can just watch and listen with the best of them when I need to, and I’d have to do this for the trip to be a learning experience instead of a freak-out.
“Which chair do you want?” Jean-Louis’ voice brought me back.
“”I don’t care. Does it matter? I’ll take this one,” I pointed at the black number next to me.
Jean-Louis nodded and buckled himself into one across the table from me. Chrissy disappeared into th
e cockpit area, the pilot started taxing out to the runway and the engine’s roar shook us.
Ten minutes later we were out over the Pacific, making the big turn that would take us east and five minutes after that Chrissy reappeared.
“Have you eaten? We have several meals I can get you. There’s a duck confit salad, Chilean sea bass, pork tenderloin with nectarines and, of course, steak tartre. Can I get you something to drink while you’re deciding?”
“I’d like a white wine, a Sauvignon Blanc, please,” I ordered. “And no, I haven’t eaten. I’ll take the sea bass.”
Chrissy turned to Jean-Louis and I could see she was taking his looks in stride. No fluttery eyelashes, no shy-sexy smile, just business with an ease that made me wonder what was going on. Did she know him? Did they have a past? Would I wrestle up the courage to ask him? We were pretty captive in an enclosed space for several hours.
“I’ll have Bull’s Blood,” he said and Chrissy headed off to get our orders.
He unbuckled his seat belt and moved over to the couch, patting a spot next to him. “We can have our drinks and eat here.”
Wait a minute, who died and put him in charge? “Why do you know so much about this? I’m senior to you and I’ve never been asked to Hungary. I haven’t even been invited to use the company plane.”
I hadn’t had much hardship so far at SNAP, though. All my travel had been first class, and I didn’t arrive looking like a sardine packed in oil.
He smiled. “I know. We’ve heard about your incident this morning. That’s why the Baron asked us both. I’m going to explain some things before we get to Budapest.”
Chrissy came back in with our drinks and set the glasses down on the table in front of us. “Your dinner will be done in a second,” she looked at me. I looked up at her and suddenly realized the dim lighting. As I looked around, I also realized all of the shades were drawn over the windows. I didn’t really matter to me, I’d been doing so much traveling that I didn’t even bother to look out the windows and besides, we were flying at night. We’d land in Newark before dawn.
After I finished dinner and after Jean-Louis had another glass of Bull’s Blood, the deep red wine leaving faint pink dregs in the glass, Chrissy came back and handed me a remote control.
“We have a DVD of tonight’s SNAP, as well as one from Munich and one from Rio,” she said. “I’ll go turn the beds down if you want to sleep. As I said, we’ll be in Newark only about an hour, and the flight to Budapest is another eight hours. I imagine you’d like a few hours’ sleep. The Baron usually expects his guests to be available as soon as they reach the castle.”
We watched the U.S. show and part of the Rio one. The adrenaline I’d generated from waiting for Jean-Louis’ secret was sapping all my energy and I was going to have to lie down for awhile. Even after Newark, we still had a long flight. I was asleep in minutes, not even spending the usual time reading over stuff for future issues or other planning papers.
CHAPTER TWELVE
We landed in Newark a little before five in the morning. It was still dark and dim lights in the hangar didn’t make much of a dent in the cavernous gloom.
I’d slept a couple of hours but Jean-Louis was still awake. “Let’s spend some time talking,” he said, “before I get some sleep.”
“OK, what’s so important that the Baron designated you as the official breaker-of-news?” I was cranky. Lack of sleep, the adrenaline hangover and resentment of whatever special status Jean-Louis had, made me snappish.
“Has anything struck you as different at SNAP?” Jean-Louis asked.
“A lot of things, but I’ve never had such a responsible job at such a rich company before. What specifically?”
“It’s not just the money, it’s that SNAP is a vampire company.”
“A lot of people think Murdoch is a vampire,” I started when he interrupted me.
“I’m not talking about the business practices, I mean real vampires,” his voice was deadly serious.
“Oh, come on. You mean the blood-sucking, flying-around-at-night-in-capes
kind? Like the guy who attacked me this morning? From the Huszar family? Like the demon, Carlos?”
“That’s a little over the top, but basically, yes. We don’t fly around at night in
capes or attack people and suck blood, but we do live on blood.” And at that he smiled fully for the first time since I’d met him. His canine teeth were pointed and fang-like and I recoiled.
“Get away from me! Don’t touch me!” I screamed, ran into my bedroom and slammed and locked the door. What the hell was this, some kind of sick joke? I’ve been dumped before but the guy didn’t show me fangs to chase me away.
Jean-Louis knocked lightly on the door. “Don’t be afraid, we knew you weren’t one of us. That’s one reason we recruited you.”
“Who’s ‘us?” I stammered. I was backed up on the bed, hugging my arms around my drawn-up legs and trying to keep my neck covered. The past day had just gone to the sublime. There weren’t vampires and demons, right? And they sure didn’t run international conglomerates.
After the attack in the garage, I knew I didn’t have much physical courage. Now I felt what moral courage I’d stored over the years up gush out. I was beyond scared, I was almost speechless with terror. With one of the nameless fears of the dark side facing me I felt myself blacking out.
Jean-Louis’ voice, calming in its everyday tone, came to me from the other side of the cabin door. “Well, starting with the Baron, there’s me and Carola and Chaz and Mira and several other production people. Some of the night crew, obviously.”
“How...what....why me?”
“We watched you for a couple of years. We, the Baron, really liked your charging right in and taking things on. Your understanding of the kind of journalism we do, your not being afraid to tackle the big people and the hard questions. There are tons of publications, emags, blogs, magazines, cable shows today. It’s not like Photoplay and Silver Screen anymore. Everybody covers celebrities and we need to keep our place at the front of the pack.
“We also needed a regular to be the door, the portal, between our world and yours. The person had to be quick, unafraid, knowledgeable, able to relate to both worlds. When I say we watched you, we were watching a few others, as well. But you’re the one we wanted. You’re the key that translates information for us. We want to expand into what were the Eastern Bloc countries, and especially into Asia. India, Southeast Asia, even China are economies on fire and more than three billion people live there. The advertising alone is staggering.
“That’s why the Huszars want you. They think they’re going into competition with us and they need you for instant credentials. They watched us become powerful and wealthy and realized they’d missed the boat. They stayed home and killed people for food. We went out and found power, and food, in other ways. Jealousy really riles the blood.”
I was reeling.
“You’ve heard that there’s a vampire colony in the Los Angeles area, right?” he asked.
“I’d always heard that. But I thought it was just one of those urban myths,” I managed between numb lips. “Like alligators in the sewers.”
“Don’t you remember a few years back when there was an alligator in that lake? He got there because somebody dumped him and he sure wasn’t a myth. We’re not either. The Baron will be telling you more of our history, but I’m supposed to get you acclimated to the idea that you’re working for vampires.”
At that point I didn’t think I’d ever be acclimated. This was just too big to wrap my mind around. At UCLA we had acquaintances who’d dressed all in black, wore cloaks, slept all day and partied all night. But there were just college kids, playing. Or so I’d thought. What if some of them were members of the colony? How big was the colony? Where did they live? How did they live?
I started to stammer a question but Jean-Louis’ voice overrode mine. “Open the door and come out and talk to me. I’m the same person you’ve wo
rked with and even the same person you’ve danced with. You weren’t afraid then.”
God, he was right! I’d danced with a vampire? How was that even possible? I got off the bed and sidled to the door. “If I come out you won’t grab me will you?” It came out through chattering teeth.
He gave his throaty laugh. “No, I won’t grab you. You’re far too valuable to us as you are. Besides, if I was going to grab you, I’d had plenty of opportunities before this.”
SNAP: The World Unfolds Page 4