Read Online Vampyres of Hollywood by Adrienne & Scott Barbeau - Free Book Online Page B

sidewalk outside my office, waiting for Jesus to bring the car around, when Maral’s phone rang. My kind don’t have premonitions—well, no more than humans do, I suppose. But when you’ve lived as long as I have you do develop your sixth sense: I knew it was trouble. Maral slipped her Bluetooth receiver over her ear as she glanced at her phone screen. “It’s the production office,” she murmured, “Bobby Wise’s line.” Bobby is the unit manager on Hallowed Night . “This is Maral, Bobby, what’s up?”
    The last time I’d seen the color drain from someone’s face like that was when I was feeding and lost track of time. I love the description, though; it’s so apt. At moments of stress blood is drawn away from the non-essential parts of the body and pushed to the extremities, readying to fight or flight. The face pales. Maral’s face turned waxen, her eyes and lips bruise purple. She pulled the receiver off her ear and closed the phone.
    “Eva Casale was found dead in the effects hut,” she said.
    “Murdered?”
    “She was nailed to the wall, partially decapitated, and her insides scooped out.”
    “That’s murder, all right,” I said grimly. Maral didn’t respond; she knows my gallows humor.
    We didn’t speak again until we were in the car. Without asking me, Maral headed back towards the studio. We drove in silence for a few minutes; then, sitting at the light at Sunset and Coldwater, she finally said, “I think we need to talk about this.”
    “About Eva?” I asked, though I knew that was not what she was talking about.
    “About Jason and Mai and Tommy. And now Eva.” A frown creased her unlined forehead. “But Eva’s different, isn’t she? She’s not part of the pattern, is she?”
    “The pattern?”
    “Jason, Mai, and Tommy were your… creations, ” Maral said flatly. It wasn’t a question.
    “They were.”
    Maral knows what I am, and accepts it. But she’s never questioned my past; what she knows about me and my kind she’s picked up over the past ten years of our association. We don’t discuss it. Maybe that’s why we’ve been together for so long. She knows that I have what might be called Creations . I call them kin—though never children—but she’s never exhibited any desire to be one of them or enquired into the actual process of creating one. She also knows that everything she’s seen on the screen or read about my race is just so much bullshit.
    “Eve was not one of yours.” Again it was a statement, not a question.
    “No, not one of my kind.” Most of my kind are in front of the camera, although I make it a rule never to have more than two in any one movie. For purely selfish reasons. If I’m starring, I want the audience looking at me.
    The light changed and we pulled away.
    “So why was she killed?”
    “Two possibilities—accident or design,” I said quickly.
    “This was no accident. You don’t get nailed to a wall by accident.”
    “So it was planned. Again, we’re down to two choices: is this murder a coincidence or somehow connected to the other deaths?”
    Maral glanced sharply at me. “It has to be connected.”
    I nodded, absently picking strips of polish off my abused nails. I knew damn well it wasn’t a coincidence.
    “Maybe someone mistook her for one of your…kin,” Maral suggested.
    “Unlikely. Whoever picked off the other three knew what they were and knew the tried and trusted methods of killing them: impalement, decapitation, dismemberment, and drowning. We don’t die easy, you know.” Something icy and old ran down along my back, a bitter memory of another place and another century.
    “Well, her neck was cut almost clean through—that’s close to decapitation. Maybe someone’s trying to let you know they know what you are. Maybe Eva’s death was meant to frighten you.”
    I laughed, a sharp barking sound. Even to my own ears, it sounded ugly. “Death does not frighten me. You would not believe the number of deaths