Bite Club

by Hal Bodner

  Maggie Trillum, however, was invaluable. A garrulous grandmotherly woman who still retained a slight British accent, she led a fairly solitary and exceedingly lonely life in San Diego, donating her time to various charities and desperately trying to fill her nights with constructive activity. She happily undertook the important duty of telephoning each of the people on Gustav’s original list. Fortunately, every one of them was still living at their last reported addresses and each was cautioned to immediately report any newcomers to Sylvia in New York. Maggie took the opportunity to entertain them all with stories of her youth in India and excitedly made plans to exchange visits with several of her new friends.

  The hunt for the rogue vampire continued as the net spread, the Halloween festivities grew nearer, the bodies that both Chris and Becky knew were accumulating refused to turn up, and the tension mounted.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  In New York, Sylvia had also had a busy week. The Manhattan vampire community was much more densely populated than any other and rivaled the vampires of Paris in their unending social whirl. Sylvia, not one to remain long discouraged by her frustration with the werewolves, clearly remembered having helped to put down the two vampires in Georgia and in Paris; she wasn’t looking forward to repeating the experience. She knew the increasing urgency of discovering the killer and put Clarence and Sally to work combing through records and tabulating the bits of information that were coming in from other species in Europe and Asia. Assisted by Gustav’s research, the three of them managed, not only to fill in some missing information in Sylvia’s quest for the complete, ultimate vampire genealogy, but to make some educated guesses and weed out an additional thirty-one names from th

  e master list.

  The rest of the community got busy on the telephones, calling old friends and acquaintances, some of whom they had not spoken to in lifetimes, in order to discover whether anyone had recently migrated to Los Angeles. No recent moves were reported, but for the first time in centuries members of the community began to draw together, motivated by their rogue brother in California. Old acquaintances were renewed and new friendships formed.

  Sylvia faxed the thirty-two remaining names to several older vampires she knew in Paris, Leningrad, Florence, Rome, London, and Hong Kong. The European community was mobilized and the hunt through history continued. Sylvia was saddened to note the fairly recent final passing of two old friends. But the list was further reduced to eighteen, and she and Chris both agreed they were getting closer to the killer’s identity.

  Finally, early Tuesday evening, Sylvia received a call from her old friend Max Ashcroft, a florid, pompous vampire born in Shakespeare’s time and currently living again in England.

  “Sylvia, old girl! Max here. “Terribly sorry I haven’t gotten back to you sooner, but I was on a brief tour. Chekhov, you know. Delightful notices. I must send them along to you. No matinees, you understand.” And Max bulldozed on, regaling his friend with so many extraneous details of his magnificent performance in Uncle Vanya that Sylvia resolved never to see the play again.

  After repeated tries, she was finally able to interrupt. “Max, darling, your play sounds fascinating and I’d adore hearing all about it. But I really do have to get back to this rogue thing. If you’d be a dear and come to the point...?” she suggested gently.

  “The point?” Max said, confused and then his tone brightened. “Ah, yes! The point!” He cleared his throat dramatically.

  “I say,” he said finally, “Have you thought about trying to find Katrine?”

  “Katrine?” Sylvia’s interest was piqued. The only person named Katrine she could think of was a nearly legendary, ancient vampiress, rumored to be still living in the ruins of a probably mythic castle somewhere in Hungary.

  “Hasn’t she been dead for years?” Sylvia asked cautiously, hardly daring to hope Max had stumbled upon a previously unknown source of information.

  “Dead?” Max huffed. “Certainly not. At least not before the Revolution. Now, let me see...”

  “Max, dear?”

  “Wait a minute. I’m thinking...”

  “Which revolution?”

  “Why, in the Russias, of course! That’s it! Must’ve been aught-eight or so.”

  “Did you know her?” asked Sylvia eagerly.

  “Heavens no!” was Max’s reply. “If the legends are true, we’d have to be much older than we are to have known her! Although,” Max said with a chuckle, “I understand she was quite the thing in her day.”

  “Max.” Sylvia was carefully patient. “What happened in aught-eight?”

  “Someone saw her: a fellow thespian. Playing in Marlowe, I believe. She didn’t see him, but I trust his word implicitly. Fellow did a marvelous Laertes in Stockholm in thirty-eight. Truly remarkable.”

  “Can you find her?” she asked eagerly.

  “I can surely try. I’m booked on the 8:30 in the a.m.—if you can believe it—out of Heathrow. Landing in Budapest late afternoon, God help me. I’ll call you from there. That is if I can get a trunk call through on those bloody commie lines. Ta!” And, so saying, he hung up, leaving Sylvia holding the receiver in confusion.

  Max arrived in Hungary as scheduled and spent the next three nights tramping about the countryside, cautiously interviewing peasants and baffling everyone he spoke to. Alive at a time when Britain ruled the world, Max was of the belief that since the Queen spoke English everyone ought to. He took up residence in a small country inn where the owner, more amused than frustrated by Max’s inability to communicate, took pity upon him and presented him with a battered Magyar-English dictionary. It helped, but not much. Fortunately, Max’s genial affability caused most of the villagers to go out of their way to try to figure out what the florid Englishman wanted. Max’s continued butchery of the language proved to be only a minor problem.

  The real problem was his hobby: photography. Max was an inveterate shutterbug and looked upon his visit to Hungary as an opportunity not to be squandered. He shot several dozen rolls of film to capture what he informed the innkeeper was “the local color.” Unfortunately for the other guests at the inn—not to mention the innkeeper’s family—Max had never entered the digital age. He insisted on developing his photos of ruined castles and little scenarios of rustic life himself. By the end of his first night’s stay, the entire premises reeked of developing fluid and toner, and Max was about to be tossed out into the elements.

  Unfortunately, Max had never practiced the subtle manipulation of mortal minds, an ability possessed by many of his race, and lacked the talent. Thus, he was forced to resort to bribes to keep his room, the chief of which was providing the innkeeper with an entire roll of pictures of his wife.

  “You will photograph her very sexy, yes?” the innkeeper insisted.

  So Max spent four hours with his camera, a very large Hungarian woman, and a trunk of “lingerie” which would have put Victoria’s Secret into immediate bankruptcy. Max considered it his penance for causing the smell.

  On the third night, Max met a young gypsy lass who succumbed to his infectious charm and was able to steer him in the direction of a huge, ancient crumbling chateau. The young lady proudly recited the local legend of the “White Lady” who was rumored to live there. When all the extraneous hyperbole was filtered out of the girl’s description, Max was fairly certain he’d reached his goal.

  The “White Lady” was indeed Katrine. Having retreated from the world in the early part of the sixteenth century, convinced she was one of the sole remaining vampires on earth, Katrine had carved a niche for herself with the help of the inhabitants of the small village near her home. She soon realized that country peasants would be more likely to stumble onto her vampirism than town folk. Thus, she used an artful bit of misdirection and set herself up as a reclusive wise woman. Rumors of “witch” trickled through the area. But Katrine had sensibly chosen a locale far enough out of the Church’s reach so that she would be reasonably safe. Besides, except for burning
at the stake—generally the Church’s last resort—she figured she’d be impervious to most of the more popular witch hunting techniques.

  For centuries, she had provided the villagers with herbal remedies and potions. And if every few weeks one of her customers awoke slightly fatigued, a bit anemic, and with the details of the previous evening a little fuzzy, no one was the wiser. Her stock in trade was mostly benevolent; she refused to deal in curses. And more often than not her philters were naught but water flavored with bitter herbs—accompanied by a healthy dose of common sense and advice to the lovelorn.

  Though uncivilized, the locals were far from stupid. As the years passed, many of them guessed her secret, especially after the Twentieth Century dawned. By that time, Katrine had become such an integral part of local life that few bore her any ill will. In fact, the villagers had become fiercely proud of her and even more fiercely protective of what they considered to be their very own pet vampire.

  Katrine was delighted to once again establish communication with her own kind. Fortunately, she and Max both spoke German and French, and although their respective accents—especially in the latter tongue—made it difficult to understand each other at first, they were soon conversing like old friends.

  Katrine was able to confirm some of Sylvia’s deletions from the list and added five more of her own. She also provided verbal descriptions of an even half dozen of the remainder as she’d either known them personally in her youth or had known of them by reputation. In addition, Katrine’s most prized possessions were a series of centuries-old oil paintings of various vampire acquaintances she had painted herself, frequently from memory.

  Confronted with Katrine’s fascination with his camera, Max spent almost a full night showing off and snapping and developing photo after photo of Katrine—none of which came out clearly—the chateau, the surrounding countryside and, of course, the paintings. It was on Sunday, a full twenty-four hours after he and Katrine had first met, that Max, slapping himself for his absentmindedness, finally remembered to try and get a call through to Sylvia to share his success.

  Unfortunately, the concept of a telephone was as alien to Katrine as it was to the surrounding village, the villagers having abandoned most forms of technologic progress at about the same time as Katrine began her own seclusion. Borrowing a small oxcart, the two set off for a town several hours to the south where Max had remembered seeing a single set of telephone wires two days earlier. Due to the incessant photo opportunities presented by their scenic surroundings, however, the journey, which should have taken a little over three hours, took almost eight. The ancient trunk lines and the necessity of gratifying Katrine’s intense curiosity as to how he could speak to someone thousands of leagues away without some sort of conjuring occasioned even further delay. Finally, however, he was able to get through to New York.

  Sylvia was delighted at Max’s success in finding Katrine and immediately extended to her an invitation to visit Manhattan. Katrine, who had only vaguely heard about the discovery of the New World, leapt at the chance to see it. Escorted by Max, she arrived in New York two days later, marveling at man’s ability to travel by air in what she persisted in calling “a giant metal casket with wings.” She quickly got over her culture shock at being thrust into the Twenty-First Century. At first slightly frightened, her fear quickly gave way to a childlike fascination with modern man’s ingenuity.

  On her first night in town, Sylvia took the pixie-like woman shopping for clothing as Katrine’s wardrobe was, conservatively, several hundred years out of style. Katrine was entranced at her ability to purchase clothing without having to hire seamstresses to make it. She became almost instantly addicted to Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys, and became slightly crazed upon being introduced to the concept of credit cards. Sylvia amusedly indulged her in gratitude for her help, and several tens of thousands of dollars in new dresses, skirts, and blouses were the result. Fortunately, Katrine refused to wear pants, which she considered blasphemous, and Sylvia breathed a sigh of relief at not having to add another five or six thousand dollars to her American Express bill.

  Unfortunately, they made the mistake of walking past Tiffany & Co. before retiring for the evening. Sylvia finally drew the line upon seeing the expression of unadulterated lust cross Katrine’s features as she pressed her nose against the glass, seeking a closer view of the luscious jewels displayed in the window. It took twenty minutes of attempted persuasion and, finally, the combined strength of both Sylvia and Max to drag her away.

  Sylvia faxed the thirteen remaining names to Chris, along with copies of six of the photographs Max had taken and Katrine’s descriptions of some of the others who she had known but had never gotten around to painting. At first Chris was distressed at the seemingly ominous fact that the list of possible suspects numbered thirteen. However, with the photos to assist them, Chris and Troy quickly managed to disqualify five of the thirteen as being either the wrong sex or appearing too old or too ugly to be attractive by modern standards.

  “My God!” Troy had exclaimed upon seeing the photograph of one particular gentleman. “This guy has a face that looks like something that should be served with a side of salsa!” He passed the photograph to Chris. “Maybe his nose caught fire and someone tried to put it out with a rake,” Troy giggled.

  “You know, monkey,” Chris said, kissing him on the forehead so as to mute the force of his reproach, “Not everyone was lucky enough to be born to be as pretty as you.”

  “I’m not pretty,” Troy quipped. “I’m beautiful.” He stood and paraded across the room, one arm outstretched in a parody of a Ziegfeld showgirl.

  “Nevertheless,” Chris scolded, “You should be thankful that you’re blessed and not make fun of others.”

  “You sound like my grandmother,” Troy said with mild distaste.

  “I’m serious. It’s not nice.”

  “I know,” Troy said with a sigh of sorrow. “But what can I do?” He threw himself onto the couch, arm covering his eyes, a veritable Bernhardt. “One day, God will have someone pour acid on my face to teach me humility. Then where will I be?”

  Chris couldn’t help grinning at his lover’s dramatics.

  “Oh, hush up and take a look at this one.”

  A moment later, Troy was squealing with laughter as Chris presented him with a photo of a painting depicting an extremely corpulent, luxuriously mustached and bearded vampire, lost since Attila’s time. The image of this pompous-looking gentleman attempting to pick up the unfortunate Charlie Copperman after dancing at Rage proved too much for him and, over the next several days, he developed the annoying habit of periodically bursting into fits of giggles at the thought.

  Thus the final count was eight. Eight vampires, some or all of whom, could have been dead for centuries. Although Chris acknowledged that their records were far from complete, he thought it very unlikely that a vampire had been made, at any time during recorded history, that someone hadn’t known somehow.

  “One of these is our guy,” Chris told Troy. “I’m almost certain of it.”

  “But which one?”

  “That,” Chris sighed, “is the million-dollar question.”

  “And even if we knew for certain which one it is,” Troy asked, “how are we gonna track him down?”

  “As to that question, monkey,” Chris said with a sigh, “I have no idea.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  With Halloween less than two weeks away, Chris and Troy spent every waking moment out on the streets and in the bars, shops, and restaurants of Boys’ Town, hoping to catch a glimpse of the rogue vampire. Although they had Katrine’s descriptions and photographs of the paintings to help them, what they didn’t have was luck. Night after night they continued their search until even Troy’s exuberance had dimmed.

  Back at City Hall, the current theory was that the murderer was suffering from a bizarre vampire fixation, and the hope was that he could be caught if law enforcement centered on his psychology. At Beck
y’s urging, Clive had finally broken down and enlisted the help of the Los Angeles Police Department who had reluctantly assigned two officers to patrol the Hollywood Memorial Cemetery on Melrose Avenue between dusk and dawn. On his own initiative, and feeling rather foolish, Clive contacted a local blood bank and pleaded with them to recheck their inventory. Nothing was missing.

  Becky made the rounds of the city’s four funeral parlors, asking the directors if they might have sold any coffins outside the usual course of business. One, an elderly Jewish man of Russian ancestry, was visibly amused and assured her he was quite certain that all of his recent clients had been quite dead. Another huffily informed her that his establishment was not in the habit of selling caskets to private parties as “packaged goods.”

  Desperate for ideas, Becky ordered Ty and Sara to contact every interior designer who lived in or had a shop within the city, hoping one would remember a client with rather odd tastes in decor. They enlisted the help of the manager of the Pacific Design Center, a huge glass, two-building complex of designer showrooms, known to the residents as “the blue whale” due to its distinctive color. No one had anything unusual to report in the way of sale of large boxes or trunks suitable for the hiding of a body.

  On a hunch, she telephoned the three local sex shops. Although the owner of one admitted that he did, in fact, carry coffins in his catalogue, it was an expensive item and the only one purchased in recent memory had been shipped to a heterosexual state senator from Wisconsin.

  Becky even went so far as to visit the Silver Screen Costume Museum on Hollywood Boulevard and managed to get a look at the original coffin from Bela Lugosi’s Dracula: It was empty.

  When she reported on her ingenuity to Chris, he simply snorted in disgust and said, “I’ve seen it. I’m sure it was a stunning piece of work once. Now, no self-respecting vampire would ever sleep in that thing! It’s got dry rot!”