Vampyres of Hollywood (26 page)

Almost every house in Palm Springs has some tenuous claim to fame: Einstein slept there or Zanuck died there or that’s where Elvis shot up the TV with his gun. This house was originally owned by the King. At one time, he had four homes in Palm Springs—with a different girl in each of them. My “mother” had known Elvis in the fifties; he’d sung “Love Me Tender” to her at a birthday party in the Sands in Vegas once. I’d never been tempted to Turn him; he was just too damaged, and I’d learned by my mistake with Rudy.

This house was Elvis’s hideaway. The one not even the Memphis Mafia knew about.

It’s a fortress really. Three stories of rock and steel built into the side of a mountain, surrounded by a fifteen-foot stone wall with a moat on the other side. Elvis had kept an alligator in the moat. The last time I’d been here, it had been stocked with red-bellied piranhas.

The main two gates looked like the doors from a pueblo church; the distressed and sun-faded wood concealed the solid steel core. As far as I knew, it had been decades since the gates had last opened. To the left of the main gates, the stone wall had a single steel door opening onto a narrow rock bridge over the moat. The doorway was low, deliberately sized to allow only one person entry at a time, stooped over and vulnerable. I knew from previous visits that there would be guards, lots of guards…and none of them would be human. The creature I was going to see surrounded herself with the finest warriors in the vampyre world: the ferocious and exclusively female Dearg Due and Bobhan Sith. There would also be half-human
dhampirs
and maybe even some were-creatures.

I took my time climbing out of the car, knowing my every movement was being watched and recorded. I stepped up to the driver’s door and leaned in. “Lock the doors and stay in the car. I’ll be at least thirty minutes and no more than an hour. Do not get out under any circumstances. Do not talk to strangers—”

“I’m not a kid—,” Maral began, smiling, but the smile faded when she realized I was serious.

“—no matter what they look like—punk kid, old lady, high school cheerleader, or flaming queen. They will be vampyre, Maral. And not mine. They won’t want to cause a scene; the last thing they want is attention. But they may try and lure you out of the car. Ignore them; don’t even look at them—some of the vampyre clans possess the power of mesmerism. Do not talk to them. If they tell you that I’ve asked you to come in, you’ll know it’s a lie: I’m telling you now, I would never ask you to do that. Never.”

“Because this person eats people.”

“Literally.”

“Are you going to take the gun with you?”

“No point. You hang on to it. And if anyone does come near the car, shoot them in the throat: try and remove their head.”

“What do I do if you’re not back in an hour?” Maral asked, glancing at the watch I’d given her last Christmas. I suddenly wondered what I was going to get her for this one and then realized that depending how the next thirty minutes went, the whole question might be academic.

“If I’m not out in sixty minutes, then leave. Drive back to L.A. and tell Peter King that I got a call to come here. Let him handle it.” I kept my face neutral and tried not to look at Maral’s face as I spoke. “We’re probably being watched right now, so do not react to what I’m about to say. If I’m not out within the hour, it probably means I’m not coming out. And there’ll be no point in looking for a body, because there won’t be one. In the bottom of the big wall safe behind the Dalí you’ll find a padded buff envelope with an up-to-date version of my will. I just had it revised and I didn’t use Solgar. It leaves just about everything to you. There’s some cash in an envelope along with it. Take it, fly to Geneva, claim your inheritance. You’ll find some names and numbers on a sheet of paper. They are men and women who specialize in creating new identities. Avail yourself of their services, Maral, but, whatever you do, do not come back to Hollywood. In fact, it would be better if you did not come back to America.”

“You’re scaring me, Ovsanna,” Maral said shakily. In the gloom, her eyes were huge gray beads behind unshed tears.

“If the vampyre in there decides to destroy me, then she will kill you, too. She’s spent millennia protecting her identity and the true existence of the vampyre clans. She cannot afford to allow you to live.”

“Who is she? Who is this Lilith?”

“She is the mother of all vampyres.”

Every vampyre knows the legend of Lilith.

And everything they know is wrong.

In her, legend, mythology, and religion come together to create a story that she took centuries and a great deal of delight in creating.

I walked across the quiet street, heading straight for the low arched door, well aware that I was possibly walking into a trap. As the most senior vampyre in this country, only she could have authorized an attack on me and my clan.

The Ancients called her Lilitu and the Night Hag, and she was certainly the oldest creature in North America and possibly the entire world. She claimed to have been the first wife of Adam—before Eve—and that she’d been cast out of the Garden because she refused to accede to Adam’s somewhat primitive sexual urges. On the banks of the Bosphorus, she consorted with demons and in time gave birth to the first of the vampyre and the were races.

Most of that is bullshit.

She’s ancient, all right. Solgar says she’s thousands of years old. I know she was around before Christ, but as for being Adam’s wife, I’ll leave that to the theologians to decide. All I know for sure is she’s not pure vampyre. She was part human once. Not Turned, either.

I’ve spent years quietly researching her history, sorting through the myriad legends and fragmentary stories associated with her name. I believe that she was possessed by an Akhkharu serpent demon in ancient Sumeria who left her pregnant with a
dhampir.
The earliest
dhampirs
were incredibly powerful, possessing the best attributes of both their human and vampyre parents. I am sure that Gilgamesh was probably one of her
dhampir
sons. And I’ve no doubts that she slept with him, as well. She bred with the earliest and most powerful of the vampyre ancestors, and she was never Turned. But she could not have lain with them, slept with them and had their children, without some of their vampyre traits rubbing off on her. In time, she gave birth to more vampyres and a hybrid race of were-creatures. And God knows what else.

Now…well, now no one knows what she is. Except quite mad and truly powerful. And capable of just about anything.

The steel door opened before I’d even crossed the street, and a red-haired, green-eyed young woman appeared smiling the vampyre smile: lips tightly closed. Her coloring suggested that she was either Greek Strigae or Irish Dearg Due. “We’ve been expecting you,” she said in an accent that had never been heard in Ireland. “Follow me.”

I’m not tall, but even I was forced to duck my head as I entered the arched gate. It’s an incredibly vulnerable position and I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek, preventing myself from looking up to check for the blade or swordsman that could be hidden in the shadows above my head.

The grounds hadn’t changed at all since the last time I’d been here. Spanish daggers, agaves, prickly pear cactus, and jumping chollas formed a barrier on the far side of the moat, just waiting to slice any intruder who survived the piranhas. Devil’s Weed and Black Nightshade and Christmas Roses covered the ground up to the house, poisonous, hallucinogenic, and beautiful.

Not so beautiful were the
dhampirs
patrolling the grounds. Armed with automatic weapons, with wolves and dogs by their side, the animals were were-creatures, that peculiar offshoot of vampyre that can only change into a specific beast form. Usually, they feel more comfortable that way and as they get older, stop reverting to their human shape completely. They end their lives as animals. Who knows, maybe Lilith had given birth to these.

There was movement all around me, and I caught glimpses of nightmarish creatures that should have been carved in stone on Notre Dame. I managed to keep my face impassive as a creature Ray Harryhausen would have been proud of appeared at a window and stared at me. There was nothing even remotely human about it. It was joined by a second creature, which made the first look almost handsome. Their eyes, yellow and sulphurous, tracked my movement, and I swear I saw a forked tongue flicker.

But vampyres are solitary creatures, especially the ancient ones. What were they doing here?

I knew then that something was very wrong indeed: these were old vampyres—very old, the legendary Ancients. As vampyres age, they revert to something much more saurian looking, draconian even. Some turn completely black; others grow wings and tails; others shrink, hunch over, become troll-like. Mankind may have its roots in the great apes; perhaps ours lie in the great lizards. Whatever our genesis, in the end all of us become hideous to human eyes.

Except Lilith. Lilith is unchanging. Maybe her human blood, maybe the demon’s possession, maybe bedding her own
dhampir
sons—who knows? She doesn’t change.

The Dearg Due sashayed ahead of me, confident that I would follow her. Not that I had much choice. We crossed the bridge and entered the house through another steel door set into the main living area, which was on the second floor of the structure. I remembered the bedrooms being upstairs, seven of them, each with its own raised black marble tub and fireplace. Below, on what was actually the ground floor, were the kitchen, the gym, an office, and the maids’ quarters. Because the entire house was built into the side of a mountain, there were no windows in the back. Floor-to-ceiling bulletproof glass wrapped around the three-quarters of the house that faced the desert, but because of the surrounding fifteen-foot wall, the view was only visible from the top floor.

Lilith’s foyer was bare save for a huge unlit Baccarat crystal chandelier. The lowering desert sun left the room in shadows and touched it with an icy chill.

“Wait here.” The Dearg Due moved off into the dim light.

I ignored her and stepped into the living room. I wanted to see as much of the house as possible. At the other end of the foyer, I could see out in a side garden, complete with the requisite swimming pool. The creature that was swimming lengths of the pool looked like something out of the Cretaceous—a mosasaur maybe. Light was fading fast, and it would soon be night—which was not a problem for my race. But I was guessing that more Ancients would appear with nightfall, those who are particularly sensitive to sunlight. I’d already counted maybe ten Ancients here, along with assorted
dhampirs
and were-creatures. Along with the Vampyres of Hollywood, I’d seen more of my race in the last two days than I’d seen in the previous century.

Which begged the question, why was Lilith gathering so many vampyres together? And what did it have to do with me?

Two more Dearg Due came into the living room and stood silently by each door, making sure I didn’t move any farther into the house. They were both beautiful in their way, and if I hadn’t had my mind on Lilith and my possible demise, I might have found some way to enjoy looking at them. Instead I stared out the windows and waited.

And waited.

The bitch kept me there almost ten minutes—the oldest power ploy in the book. I had to fight my rage to keep from Changing.

And then something acrid drifted into the room, the scent of something long dead and mummified, of old blood and tainted meat, and I knew, even before she spoke, that Lilith was standing behind me.

“Ah, the legendary Ovsanna Moore, the Scream Queen.” The voice was barely human, without cadence, without inflection or accent.

I turned and looked at Lilith, the mother of all vampyres, the oldest living human, responsible for the
dhampir
and were clans, the source of all the evil in the world.

She was the spitting image of Baby Jane Hudson in
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?