They Thirst (18 page)

And then they came to a chain across the road with a sign on it. PRIVATE PROPERTY—NO TRESPASSING.

"We'll see about that," Kobra said; he got off his chopper and moved toward a tree on the left side of the road. The chain had been wrapped around the trunk and secured with the kind of padlock you couldn't even shoot through. Kobra touched the chain and pulled at it. It was tighter than a cock ring, and there was no way to go around it either—the left side of the road pitched off into empty space, while the right was blocked by a boulder as big as a house. "Gonna have to walk the rest of the way," Kobra said and started to step over the chain. He heard a sudden, faint click, and the chain slithered to the road.

"Alllllright!" Viking said, revving his engine. "How'd you do that?"

"I . . . I don't know." He backed away a pace and bent to look at the open prongs of the lock. They were polished and new. "Rusty lock," he said and rose to his feet.
What's waiting for me up there, Fate or Death?
He went back to his bike and stepped on, his knees beginning to shake a little but damned if he was going to show it.

"You sure you want to go up there?" Dicko asked him; in this faint light there were deep, blue hollows beneath his eyes, and his mouth was twisted like a gray worm.

"Yeah. Why shouldn't I?"

"Roads tricky as hell higher up. I ain't been here in a long time. I hope I don't take us right over the edge and down to L.A."

"You want to turn back, Dicko?" Viking asked with a soft laugh, his eyes mocking.

"No," Dicko said quickly. "I'm able. But . . . you know . . . I think about that night a lot. It was a freak named Joey Tagg did the cutting."

"That's not what I hear," Viking said, but then he kept quiet. Dicko roared on across the chain, and Kobra followed closely. Higher up they had to swerve around slabs of rock that had fallen from ledges just above their heads. The road turned at an eighty-degree angle as they neared the top, and through a cut in the trees Kobra could see the whole glittering valley below from Topanga Canyon to Alhambra.

And then there it was, perched at the top like a stone vulture. The thing was enormous, much larger than Kobra had envisioned. He felt doused with ice water. This was the place, no doubt about it Black towers jutting into the sky, high pointed roofs like dunce caps, the soft glimmer of a blue window sixty feet off the ground. The whole place was surrounded by a ten-foot high stone wall with coils of barbed wire strung along the top. The huge wooden slab of a gate hung wide open, and Kobra could see along a weed-infested driveway that led across a barren courtyard to a series of stone steps. At the top of the steps was a front door as big as a drawbridge.
Should have a moat with fucking crocodiles,
Kobra thought. "Who built this bastard?" he asked Dicko.

Dicko cut his engine, and the others did the same. In the silence they could hear the wind rippling through the foliage below them; the wind touched Kobra's face like cold fingers exploring his features. "Crazy old movie star name of Kronsteen," Dicko replied softly, getting off his bike and letting it rest on its kickstand. "He brought this thing over from Europe piece by piece. You ever seen any of his flicks?"

Kobra shook his head.

"Monster flicks," Dicko went on, his gaze following the sharp angles of towers and parapets. "They drove the old dude crazy, I guess. You see all those dead trees we passed? Kronsteen hired a bunch of guys to spray them with black paint, just covered 'em with the shit, like something from a horror flick set."

"How long's it been here?" Kobra asked, stepping off his chopper.

"A long time. I think he built it back in the forties. But it's old. It must've been in Europe for hundreds of years."

"But old Kronsteen wasn't near as rich as you dudes thought he was, huh?" Viking asked, grinning; he belched and muttered.

Dicko didn't answer for a long time. Then he said, "Hardly had a stick of furniture in there. Wasn't no gold statues, wasn't no chests full of money. Wasn't nothing but a lot of empty rooms." He turned to Kobra. "You've seen it. Let's go."

Kobra had taken a few steps along the driveway, gravel crunching under his feet. "Wait a minute."
What's here?
he wondered.
What called me?

"Come on, bro," Viking said. "Let's git . . . HEY! YOU SEE THAT?" He pointed, and Kobra looked up to the right.

In one of the tower windows a candle was flickering, the light made orange by the stained glass. From the corner of his eye, Kobra saw another candle begin to burn off to the left behind another window. And now there were more candles glittering, from almost every window in the place. The tiny flames glowed green, blue, and white behind colored glass, candles burning like lanterns to welcome the hunter home.

The front door silently opened. Kobra felt a surge of joy and fear course through him, like a charge between opposite poles. His legs moved slowly, as if he were crawling across flypaper. "Where you going?" Viking called behind him. "Kobra? What you doin', man?"

"It wants me," he heard himself say and looked back at Viking and Dicko standing at the far end of the driveway. "Come on," Kobra said, a wild grin rippling across his face. "Come on with me. It wants us all."

Neither of them moved.

The castle loomed above Kobra, dwarfing him. Through the huge, open doorway he could smell the guts of the place—dry, cold, maybe as old as time itself. At the threshold he paused to look back at his friends, and a voice like a cool wind wafted through his brain—COME TO ME. As he stepped into the darkness, he heard Viking shout from a world away, "KOBRA!"

He stood in a womb of darkness, a place without ceiling or walls or floor. There was a distant noise like water dripping onto concrete, or muffled footsteps. When he started walking again, feeling his way, his boots clattered like a toss of bones across the floor of rough stone. Echoes converged and passed each other like riptides with Kobra at the center. His eyes were getting used to the blackness now, and he could see smooth stone walls around him, a geometric pattern of rough-hewn rafters perhaps twenty feet overhead. An old, rusted metal chandelier hung crookedly from that ceiling, still holding two light bulbs that looked like teardrops. From the depths of the place, a candle flame flickered, far away; Kobra followed its light, his fingertips grazing the wall. He was in a long, high corridor that seemed to go on forever, like the trick done with mirrors in the carnival funhouses. Half of him cowered in fear like a mongrel dog; the other half lurched with drunken glee, and it was this half that kept his legs moving.
I'm in a haunted house at the New Orleans fairgrounds,
he told himself;
I'm walking through the Madman's Maze. Going to feel cobwebs in my hair in a minute, going to see a dummy dressed up in an ape mask.

He reached the candle. It sat in a gleaming brass holder on a long table of dark, shining wood. He couldn't see beyond the range of the light, but he had a feeling the room was as large as a cavern, maybe with stone stairs that wound around and around and out of sight. He could hear the wind whistling through broken windows very high above him.

Off to his left he saw another candle, moving in midair, carried by a ghost. But then he saw the quick flicker of pale light on the face of a girl. She had a long sweep of ebony hair, sensual pouting lips, a face as beautiful as the moon. There was another candle now, on his other side. This one was held by a young man in a Kiss T-shirt. He had a lean, sharp-boned face and predatory eyes. Then a third candle, behind Kobra. A tall, smiling girl, her red hair cascading in disarray around her shoulders. Then the others: Kobra saw a couple of Chicano girls, a black dude wearing a headband, a middle-aged man and woman who looked at him lovingly, as if he might be their long lost son. Candles burned in a silent circle around him.

And then a hand as cold and hard as a chunk of ice touched Kobra's shoulder. He whirled, ready to go for his Mauser. But the hand moved in a white streak and caught his wrist, not hurting him but only holding him where he was. In the golden candlelight Kobra could see the face of someone who looked at once very young and very old.

There were no lines on the white face, but the eyes seemed ancient and wise, ablaze with powerful secrets. Where the hand touched him, Kobra tingled with electricity; the feeling slowly spread until he thought he must be plugged in to the same socket that supplied power to the universe. He felt like he was going to explode with fear and exhilaration, that he should kneel down there on that cold stone floor and kiss the wintry hand of Death.

Death smiled—a boyish smile—through an old man's eyes. "Welcome," he said.

For a long time Viking and Dicko waited outside, but Kobra didn't come back. The first tentative rays of gray light were creeping across the eastern horizon. After they had called him a few times, unsuccessfully, Viking unsheathed a hooked hunting blade from a leather holder at his side. "Somethin's happened to Kobra," he said to Dicko. "I'm gonna find out what. You comin'?"

Dicko paused, then reached to the small of his back and took out the .45 from its black holster. "Yeah," he replied. "I'm in."

They moved into the castle and were swallowed up by darkness.

The sun gradually strengthened its hold on the horizon, chasing shadows in its path. Sometime before dawn the door swung closed, and a bolt was thrown.

Sunday morning dawned bright and warm. Bells chimed from a hundred church steeples across L.A. The God of Light was worshipped in as many different ways, from formal services to the simple act of prayer on Malibu Beach by the Pacific Ocean Church. Incense cones were burned by the Holy Order of the Sun, Catholic masses were being said. Buddhists bowed before their altars. The city seemed quiet, at rest, the planet spinning in an ordered universe. 

From his Laurel Canyon terrace Mitch Gideon watched a flock of birds moving gracefully across the sky as if in slow-motion. He stood in a warm splash of sunlight, smoking a cigar and thinking about the dream of coffins on a conveyor belt. He'd had it again last night and had sat up in bed so violently Estelle almost had a heart attack. That dream had been peculiar at first, something to laugh about. Now it was terrifying, the details gradually becoming clearer and clearer. Last night he'd been able to see the faces of some of his co-workers. They'd looked like grinning dead men, and the cold whiteness of their flesh had been so real, so close, that Gideon had just fought his way out of the dream as if up from the bottom of a deep, green pond. He was playing golf this afternoon in a foursome at the Wilshire Country Club, and he hoped hacking at a Slazenger would take his mind off a dream that was really turning shitty.

Andy and Jo Palatazin sat in their usual places at the Hungarian Reformed Church on Melrose Avenue, just a few blocks from their house. She gripped his hand and squeezed it, sensing his preoccupation. He smiled and pretended to be paying attention, but his mind was seesawing back and forth between two dark concerns: the Roach, whose presence in the city now seemed as intangible as a ghost's; and whatever had ripped through the Hollywood Memorial Cemetery. The artist's composite of the man who had tried to lure Amy Hulsett had been printed up by the dozens for detectives and uniformed officers to use in their conversations with street people. Of course, the man might not have been the Roach after all, just a guy out to buy a good time, but it was an angle that had to be pursued. All that Brasher's hard work had turned up was one suspect who owned a dark blue Volkswagen, and the man was almost the total physical opposite of the young prostitute's description. Palatazin had put an officer on surveillance to be certain.

The second concern made him more uneasy. He'd driven past Hollywood Memorial on the way to church; everything had looked okay, and Palatazin had caught a quick glimpse of the watchman, Kelsen, unlocking the front gates for the Sunday morning visitors.
Had it only been mindless vandalism after all?
He was hoping it was. The other answer—the one that lurked deep in the back of his mind—might drive him mad.

And in a huge circular bed in his Bel Air home, Wes Richer stirred, reaching across to touch Solange's cool brown flesh. His fingers gripped the edge of the sheet where she should have been lying. He opened his eyes and winced; the light was buffered by thick beige curtains, but it was still bright enough to make his optic nerves sputter like severed live wires. He turned over on his back, his palms pressed against his eyes, and waited for the first wave of the crashing headache to pass. "Solange?" he called out, the sound of his voice making his eardrums throb. There was no answer, and finally Wes sat up on the edge of the bed. "Solange," he called again irritably.
Damn! Where is she?
he thought. His sinuses were clogged with the mingled odors of marijuana and jasmine incense with a cold dash of cocaine in there for good measure.
How was the show?
he wondered suddenly.
Was
I
good? "Sheer Luck" strikes again. Alimentary, Dr. Batson.
Wes stood up and struggled into his Fruit of the Looms.

When he walked into the living room and looked around, he swore loudly. He saw the ruined wall-to-wall carpet, a mahogany coffee table scarred like a K-Mart reject, a shattered piece of Inca pottery that he'd been too high to notice the night before, the empty hospitality bowls that had been brimming at least five times last night, the silver cocaine trays snorted clean, the bits of glass that glittered in the carpet between all the stains and crushed butts, the heel marks—
heel marks, for Chrissake?
—
atop the grand piano, the . . .
oh, to hell with it!
he thought. The wreckage was consummate.