Vampyres of Hollywood (23 page)

I looked at the photo again, staring into those dark liquid eyes. I’d stood less than ten inches away from that face and looked into the same eyes just a couple of hours ago. The resemblance was astonishing; the mother’s eyes were identical…in fact, I could have sworn I was looking at Ovsanna Moore.

The second envelope held a trio of color eight-by-tens. The first showed a partially clad Ovsanna wearing some sort of barbarian chain-mail costume. She was holding a bloody Japanese
katana
above her head in one hand and a thick leash in the other. Attached to the leash were two snarling white lionesses.

“Now
that’s
Ovsanna, the daughter. They’re from
Bride of the Snake God,
” my mother said.

The name rang a bell. “My friend SuzieQ was the snake wrangler on that movie.”

“Check out the next picture.”

The second picture showed Ovsanna even less partially clad. This time it was some sort of art deco headdress and bra and bikini number made out of a shiny gold metallic fabric. She was standing on one leg, both hands pressed palms flat together over her head. A huge snake was coiled around her body.

“I think that’s Spiro Agnew, SuzieQ’s boa constrictor,” I said. “All her snakes are named after asshole politicians,” I added, forgetting to watch my language in front of my mother. She just gave me The Look.

“Yeah? Has she got a Nixon?” my father asked.

“That’s the first one she named. A Texas indigo.”

“Shoulda been a viper,” he muttered. He despised Nixon.

The final image was from a movie I didn’t recognize. It showed Ovsanna Moore clad in either black paint or a very sheer body stocking, holding aloft what looked like a bloody heart which she’d obviously just torn from the unfortunate stud lying on the slab before her. Tendrils of steam were coming off the heart.

“That’s from
Satan’s Succubus
.”

I kept going back to the first image, the black-and-white of her mother. “What’s this from, do you know? Any idea of the date?”

“It’s a generic head shot. Not a studio head shot, though, which means it’s something she had done herself. Probably late-thirties, around the time Colman was doing
Prisoner of Zenda
and
Lost Horizon
.”

“You said you met Anna Moore when you were in the business…,” I prompted. “What was she like?”

“Very sweet, very down-to-earth. It was before you were born and I don’t know how old she was then, but she looked amazing. She did a guest appearance on
The Twilight Zone
and I remember Rod Serling asking her how she kept so young. She said she used royal jelly. I thought it was some face cream she imported from England. It was years later when I discovered it’s a nutritional supplement made by bees.”

“What happened to her?”

“Died sometime in the mid-sixties, I believe. A few years later, Ovsanna appeared. She’d been in school in Europe. I heard she’d had a couple of proposals of marriage over there, including one from a royal, but she refused and came to Hollywood to do what her mother and grandmother had done and keep the dynasty alive.”

I rubbed the surface of the picture with my white-gloved hands. “I don’t suppose I could hold on to this, could I?”

“No! This is an eighty-dollar picture. But I’ll make you a copy.” She picked up the photographs and headed back into the house. The larger bedroom was entirely given over to my mother’s office. She amazes me. I bought her an iMac for her fiftieth birthday and now she’s a high-tech freak. Knows more about computers and scanners and Adobe Photoshop than I ever will. Maybe that’s what I could get her for Christmas—a subscription to
MacLife
, or one of those huge widescreen monitors.

My father waited until she was out of earshot before he said, “Ovsanna Moore is tied up in all your murders, isn’t she?”

I took a moment to answer. Then I nodded. “Yes…yes, she is.”

“What does she have to say? Is she talking?”

“She spun me a yarn this morning that, no matter how I examine it, just doesn’t hold up.”

“Is there a boyfriend in the picture?”

“Girlfriend.”

“And money?”

“Lots of money.”

“Then she’s involved. Or she knows who is. It all comes down to sex and money, Son. This town was built on it, thrives on it. It’s the fuel for just about every crime committed here. Just ask yourself the basic question—who stands to benefit?”

Maral was driving, which might have been a mistake because she was obviously distracted, but at least she was keeping her eyes on the road. She talked to me over her shoulder. “This friend of the family…is she…related to you?” Maral still didn’t know the right term to use.

“Yes. By blood.”

“Is she one of your clan?”

“No, this woman belongs to no clan. But all my race are related by blood,” I said, without a trace of irony. “You really don’t understand much about me, do you?” She shook her head and I went on, “You’ve never asked. I’ve always gotten the feeling you were more comfortable not knowing.”

I had stretched out on the backseat of the SUV and was staring up at the sky through the tinted sunroof. Wisps of high clouds were beginning to gather as we drove south. Now I sat up behind the driver’s seat and leaned forward, my lips just inches from Maral’s ear. Adding to her distraction, I pulled her hair back and licked her neck in lazy circles with the tip of my tongue, ending with a gentle kiss before I spoke again. “Does it bother you? My…nature?”

“No, it never has. I’m sure you would know if it did. We both would.”

“But why not?” I asked. I was genuinely curious. In all the years we’d been together, we’d never talked about it. “Most people would run screaming in terror once they knew the truth. Yet, you accepted me right from the start.”

“Because I love you,” she said simply.

“And the fact that I am…different. Vampyre. You can still love me in spite of that?”

“I love you for who you are, not what you are,” she said simply.

The simple statement shocked me to silence. I am not celibate as some of my kind are. I have had lovers through the centuries—sometimes not so many as I wished and sometimes more than I wanted. Ultimately many of them came to know my true nature. A few left, terrified by what I was and what they might become, while those who remained proclaimed fervently that it didn’t matter. But it did—in the end, it always mattered. Until just this moment. Looking over Maral’s shoulder, watching the reflection of her face in the rearview mirror, hearing the truth in her voice, I knew that it truly did not matter to her: she did indeed love me.

The 10 freeway was at a standstill, not surprising for L.A. in the middle of the day. Maral kept her foot on the brake and drove past downtown doing twenty miles an hour. “I think I started loving you the day I met you—in that coffee shop in the Valley where you bought me breakfast and listened to my story and hired Solgar to defend me. You were so strong and in control and kind, and beautiful on top of that. I wanted to
be
you. I sure didn’t wanna be me—poor white trash runaway tryin’ to make it in the promised land. And facing a jail sentence just for doin’ what I had to do to save my life.” Maral’s accent slipped when she got emotional.

“All I done was gut that fucker before he got my legs spread, but the cops wouldn’t believe me—they didn’t like it that I’d tried to slice his head off—and if you hadn’t been in that crappy producer’s house that morning, tryin’ to beat him up—”

“And succeeding, if I remember correctly. Until he pulled the gun on me.”

“Well…if we hadn’t met and you hadn’t offered to help, I’d probably still be in jail.” Maral kept her eyes on the road, invisible behind her big D&G glasses, but her lips held back the emotion I heard in her voice. “I remember lookin’ at you that morning and you were everything I wanted to be: strong and beautiful, confident and kind. I think that was the moment I fell in love with you. You didn’t even know me and you did so much for me.”

“I knew enough,” I said softly. I kissed her lightly again, just behind her ear, feeling the thud of her heartbeat through her entire body.

“You didn’t ask anything in return. Just gave me a job and watched over me.”

“I’m glad I did.”

“Me, too.”

“When did you realize there was something different about me?”

“I knew fairly early on that something was amiss….” Her voice trailed away as she remembered. “I think I thought you were a junkie. I remember being so disappointed with that. I very rarely saw you eat; you barely slept and yet were capable of incredible energy throughout the day. I’d seen a lot of that type of behavior when I was growing up. I was convinced you were doing speed or coke or E. When I discovered the truth, as hard as
that
was to believe, it was still a relief.” She tilted her head to look sidelong at me. “And believe me, it
was
hard to believe. Remember?”

I nodded. Of course I remembered.

I was doing the damn banshee movie. That was a mistake right from the start.

I didn’t want to shoot in L.A. because we didn’t want to spend the money. Two million dollars goes a lot further with European crews, especially in the countries that offer tax breaks to lure in foreign production. And somehow I couldn’t see banshees living in Simi Valley.

I could see them in Ireland, however, since that’s where their legend originated.

In all my years of travel, I’d never been to Ireland; it was too small, too isolated, too Catholic for my tastes. Like my Armenian homeland, it was a country in touch with its folklore; tales of the
Sidhe, selkies, pookas
, and
dullahans
were as accepted as those of the more widely known leprechauns and banshees. The Irish knew my race and called us Bobhan Sith and Dearg Due. This was also Stoker’s country, and although I may have shaped the vampyre myth, he was instrumental in creating it. I suppose I never went there for fear of being recognized for what I am.

When I thought of Ireland, I thought of
Ryan’s Daughter
and the harsh magnificence of the vistas David Lean captured as his backdrop. That would work fabulously well for
Banshee,
my cheap little Celtic horror film. So when the Irish Film Board agreed to provide partial funding and let me claim their Section 481 tax breaks, we packed our bags and headed for Dublin.

I discovered then why Ireland is green. It rains there. A lot.

That year, Ireland was cold and miserable, struggling through the wettest summer in a decade, according to the weather forecasters, who seemed to take a particular delight in the reports of rain followed by more rain, with added rain. The unrelenting daily storms gave new meaning to the word “deluge.” Forget getting any gorgeous Irish exteriors, we couldn’t even shoot in the studio—you couldn’t hear dialogue over the sleet pounding on the roof.

The studio just south of Dublin was grim beyond belief, with two inches of standing water on the floors. But that didn’t matter because the road to the studio had been washed away and we couldn’t get the equipment loaded in anyway.

I was almost ready to close the production and move to a drier climate—like the rain forest—when I remembered Roger Corman’s studio in the west of Ireland. I’d worked with Roger before and called him, wondering if I could use the facilities. Roger had produced my first three screenplays and once again he came through like the sweetheart he is. I never got a chance to ask him how he ended up with a studio in the mainly Irish-speaking west of Ireland. I knew it was hard to get to, in the far west of the country, miles from any airport, rail line, or even a good road, but if I left Ireland, I’d lose my funding and have to shut down the production.

We started filming only two days later than scheduled. The facilities were perfect and the scenery was extraordinary: dramatic, breathtaking, and gothic. I immediately rewrote some of the interior scenes to shoot them as exteriors.

A few miles west of Roger’s place was Achill Island, one of the most westerly points in Europe. Once I saw it I was determined to work it into the climax of the script. The view of the Atlantic Ocean from Achill is wondrous beyond belief and the island itself is spectacular, though technically I suppose it’s not entirely an island. It is joined to the mainland by a bridge and is dominated by two mountains, Slieve Croaghaun and Slieve More.

And according to the locals, it’s also banshee country.

I don’t believe in portents and I never read my horoscope. Maral insists on reading mine to me every day. I keep reminding her that since astrology lost the Thirteenth House all astrology is fatally flawed. But when I learned that this part of the country was where banshees were regularly sighted and heard, I remember thinking that it boded well for the shoot.

I heard a banshee story the very first day I walked on set. The local crew was worried that the script was mocking one of the
Sidhe
. Banshee comes from the Gaelic
bean-sidhe,
woman of the
Sidhe,
a fairy woman. Irish fairy folk are not the cuddly three-wishes type Tinker Bells from children’s stories. They’re dark, savage creatures who share a lot in common with their East European and Nordic ancestors. As far as the crew was concerned, the banshees were responsible for the failure of the De Lorean car factory—the place where they’d made the
Back to the Future
car. Apparently its fate was doomed from the moment two ancient fairy thornbushes were uprooted from in front of the manufacturing plant. Maral did a little research and discovered that it was actually true: John De Lorean ended up bankrupt and the factory in Dunmurry had closed eighteen months after it opened.

I’ve never encountered a ghost or felt a presence, never seen a demon or a spirit. I’ve met plenty of people who have, and much of what they claimed they saw was either natural causes…or they’d had an encounter with my race or one of the other clans that walk the shadows of this earth. As Hamlet says, “There are more things…” and blood drinkers are not the only other evolution of man. Every myth and legend has its roots in a reality, and on that island in the west of Ireland I came to believe that perhaps the
Sidhe,
like the vampyre, really do exist. Maybe they are simply another evolutionary branch on mankind’s tree.

We’d had production problems from the moment we arrived in Ireland, but once we started shooting on Achill they increased tenfold. Despite the best movie mythology, there are no such things as
cursed
sets. Put upwards of a hundred people together, with wires, electricity, machinery in unfamiliar surroundings, and you’ll find that a few accidents happen.

But on the
Banshee
shoot, there were more than a few.

We lost one entire set to a fire…a fire that started at dead of night and the security cameras show nothing. The leading man drank himself into a stupor and sat down on a straight razor…which was open at the time. I’m told his scream would have done justice to the legendary banshee. Two stuntmen were injured in what should have been a simple car jump. The car flew farther than expected and ended up sinking in a chunk of bogland. The two men were dragged from the windows just moments before the car disappeared. My leading lady’s husband turned up on set and discovered his wife in bed with a woman—his mistress. One accusation led to another, which led to the truth, and a three-way brawl. My star was so bruised I had to shoot his close-ups in the dark.

Anything—no, everything—that could go wrong did. Continuity went out the window—the weather never stayed the same long enough to complete an exterior scene. I’d be delivering my lines in a downpour and when we came in for coverage we’d have cloudless skies and blazing sun. The house we were using for exteriors lost all its roof tiles in a howling wind and we had to wait a week for matching tiles to come in from Shannon. The ones that arrived were the wrong color.

And then I had the accident.

In a life as long as mine, accidents occur. I’ve broken my left leg twice, my right arm twice, left wrist once, cracked my ribs innumerable times, been stretched on the rack, burned, scalded, and drowned. Luckily, my race is tough and our heightened metabolism ensures that we heal far more quickly than the human kind. That knowledge sometimes makes us arrogant…and foolish.

It was our day off, a Sunday morning. The location manager had told me about a spot he’d found halfway up Slieve More—which in English means “the Big Mountain”—and I wanted to see it for myself before I decided on using it for a scene we’d be shooting at the end of the week. He’d drawn me a map and said it was an easy climb once I got to the car park. The weather was perfect, the sky the palest of pale blues. I threw on some jeans, a thermal tee, and my hiking boots and drove to the base of the mountain.

By noon I’d climbed about a thousand feet, almost halfway to the peak. The view across the island towards the Atlantic was extraordinary. I could imagine the early Irish standing there looking out over the ocean and wondering what lay on the other side. Suddenly the stories of monks and sailors discovering America centuries before Columbus were credible.

And then the weather changed.

From brilliant cloudless sunshine without a breath of wind it turned cool, then cloudy, then cold. Then it started to rain. Not the fine misty “soft rain” that the Irish like to brag about, but cold, bitter, steel needles that beat on me like a carpenter’s nail gun. In seconds I was as drenched as if I’d walked into the ocean fully clothed. And then the flesh-stinging hail began.

I should have stayed where I was. I should have hunkered down against one of the stone boulders and spent a miserable couple of hours wet and shivering. That’s what I should have done.

But life is full of should-haves.

And most accidents are caused by should-haves and insteads.

I thought about shape-shifting. I wouldn’t have had any trouble getting down the hill as a wolf or large dog, even with the downpour washing the path away down the side of the mountain. But the Change would have exhausted me, left me with muscles cramping and back spasms. I had to work the next day; I couldn’t very well do a balls-out fight scene against my mythical celluloid banshees while I was bent over in pain. And the last time I’d taken on a lupine form, I’d had to wax a residual moustache twice in a week.