Dead By Dawn
Be careful where you stick your nose . . . somebody might try to bite it off.

            They fed with such casualness that one would think that they were wolfing down burgers and fries while sitting around a table at McDonald’s, as opposed to drinking the blood of a homeless man in an alley behind an abandoned factory.  I had a perfect vantage point from where I was sitting atop a sagging old apartment building, and I’m very thankful that I was three stories up, because if I were any closer to those . . . abominations, I probably would have ran, and wouldn’t have learned of the evil that walks among us.  It seems preposterous, doesn’t it?  This is the age of the internet, cell phones, and fast food.  This is Los Angeles, not a primitive village where typhus and the Black Plague run amuck, and yet it’s home to horrors that have walked out of some of mankind’s oldest myths.  It’s true, my friends: vampires are undead and well in Hollywood.

            Though these vampires aren’t the shambling monsters one sees in movies like Nosferatu, nor charming sophisticates like the ever-popular Count Dracula.  No, these vampires are quite the clever ones, because they look just like you and me.  As a matter of fact, as you read these very words, there could be one sitting right next to you, just waiting for a chance to make you into their midnight snack.  Disquieting, isn’t it?  Not nearly as disquieting as watching those two she-vampires drink the blood of that poor man, I assure you.

            Walter Barr, journalist not-so-extraordinaire, leaned back in his seat and eyed the green text glowing brightly in the blackness of his ancient computer screen, and he absently folded his arms over his chest as he mulled it over.  After a few moments, he plucked the VCR’s remote control, which was held together with duct tape, off the corner of his cluttered desk and started up the VCR, which sat on top of the dusty little TV a few feet away from the desk.  When the tape started up, he shuddered as he always did, though didn’t look away from the screen for a second.  At least he’d gotten used to the sight enough that he no longer wanted to puke every time he saw it; his stomach just churned sickeningly.

            On the TV, two females, who looked like they were college-age but could have been centuries old for all he knew, held a young man in a jogging outfit between them.  One of them was latched onto the jogger’s neck while the other one appeared to be standing guard, turning her head this way and that, as though scanning for potential threats; he’d seen similar behavior amongst predators in wildlife in documentaries.  Though the film was rather grainy and shaky, due to being shot through a night-sight filter from a long distance away, a viewer could see that the two vampires and their victim were sitting on a bench in a little gazebo located somewhere in one of the city’s parks.  To anybody passing by in the night, it might have appeared that the fellow was simply a very lucky soul who’d managed to bring two girlfriends along on a necking session, but to Walter, who’d been shooting the film while hidden in a bush, the sight had made his blood run cold.

After a few moments, the vampiress with the pink hair pulled away from the man’s neck, licking her lips like a dog after a good meal, and the vampiress with the blonde-streaked red hair leaned over to begin her feeding.  But the pink-haired one stopped her for a moment, pointing down towards the man’s waist with a sly smirk, and when the redhead looked down and saw the way that the man’s shorts were tented up over the crotch, she burst out laughing, which got the pink-haired one going as well.  Then Miss Pink, as Walter referred to her, reached down lifted up the man’s waistband, giving her and Miss Red a view of their victim’s unconscious arousal, and that got them both laughing even harder, as though they found the poor man’s predicament amusing.  He would’ve expected such callousness from male vampires, but he would have thought the females of the species to be a bit more sensitive to victimizing innocent people.  Apparently they were all bastards.  The sound of their laughter could faintly be heard on the tape, along with the rustling of the bushes as Walter shifted around uneasily.

After making a few jokes, Miss Red started to feed from the jogger’s neck while Miss Pink stood watch, her vigil sharper than Miss Red’s had been, as though she were wanting for somebody to stumble upon them, giving her an excuse to attack somebody else.  But then Miss Pink, who was dressed up much like the countless other gothic youth running around the city, glanced over at Miss Red, who was fully absorbed in the act of feeding and oblivious to everything else.  Smirking again, Miss Pink lifted up the man’s waistband with one hand, and then grabbed Miss Red’s hand and stuffed it down the front of his shorts, cackling with glee.

Miss Red, who was dressed in tight red and blue clothing that looked perfect for club-hopping, jumped away from the man’s neck with a sharp jolt, suddenly pulled from whatever little world she’d been lost in, clapping a hand over her bloody mouth while she pulled the other from the jogger’s shorts, looking torn between shock and hilarity.  Mirth won out, however, and the vampiress sprayed blood out of her nose, getting it all over the shirtless man’s chest and face, and what would have been a harmless schoolyard-style bit of absurdity in another context became a gruesome horror.  She started laughing hysterically and swatted Miss Pink with a bloody hand, and then the two started wrestling around, with the unconscious jogger stuck in between.

The image on the screen started to violently shake, and then it dipped down to a view of the ground, which then sharply wheeled about and went to black.  It was at that point he’d made his escape from the bushes, unable to stand seeing any more, and he’d ran out of the park as fast as he could, glancing back over his shoulder every other step, certain he was being chased, and he nearly ended up dropping the video camera several times before he’d made it back to his car.  Then he’d almost wrecked numerous times on the way back to his apartment, and he hadn’t been able to relax until the next day, especially after he’d watched the tape and realized that what he’d seen was very, very real.

It had been the second time he’d witnessed a vampire feeding, and though he clearly remembered catching sight of the two vampiresses feeding on the bum behind the factory, he hadn’t had any actual proof of it, so part of his mind could still deny what he’d seen.  But even though he wanted to deny it, and hoped that he’d just been seeing things, he’d started carting his video camera around with him everywhere, just in case.  The story on the victimization of the homeless in Los Angeles was largely forgotten as he started to roam the clubs, parks, and other dark places, wondering about what lurked in the shadows, half-hoping to find something, but also half-hoping he didn’t see a damned thing.  It became an obsession for him, and he honestly didn’t know how much of it came from a desire to find out whether or not he’d really seen two vampires in action, or from the hunger to finally make a breakthrough in the world of journalism.

After five years of barely being able to sell anything to magazines and newspapers, narrowly managing to scrape by on the scraps he was given, he had a chance of making his big payday at long last, proving that he truly was worth a shit as a writer.  For years he’d known that he was a good writer, a damned fine writer, actually, but he hadn’t had anything good to work with.  Every writer needed something, they needed a calling, a subject to wrap their minds and pens around and make their own, like Hunter S. Thompson and the corrosion of society or Edgar Allan Poe and the macabre.  Good writers were a dime a dozen, but the proper inspiration could raise a merely good writer to legendary proportions, and all he needed to ascend to that level was the right muse.  He’d thought that maybe he could make a mark for himself by writing a great piece on L.A.’s homeless population, and while he’d made a good start at that, he’d found something far more compelling the night he’d spied Miss Pink and Miss Red getting their evening meal.

Though horror-stricken and ready to puke, he’d been unable to drag himself away from the sightHHHHHHHadf, and had stayed bolted to his spot on the roof until the two vampires had picked up the body of the bum (who had been a rather large fellow) and carted it off to who-knew-where.  After that he’d been determined to either prove the existence of vampires in the city or otherwise ease his mind by proving that they didn’t exist.  But after a few months of investigation and several hours of videotape, there was no way that he could deny that vampires existed . . . he’d seen far too much.

He didn’t like the thought of vampires being real at all, but if they were, that meant he stood a good chance of making a nice paycheck off of them; with the way his luck went, it figured that something bad for humanity would be something he could profit from.  But if he was able to get the story out, he could not only profit, but also help humanity at the same time.  As a matter of fact, his big payoff could end up making him a hero; he’d not only be helping mankind, but he’d be getting rich at the same time!  That would definitely help his standing with Stella, especially after she realized what a risk he’d taken to get that footage and do his research.  With some of the things he’d seen, he knew without a doubt that Miss Pink, Miss Red, or any of the other vampires he’d observed could break him in half without a second thought.

He had footage of Miss Red knocking aside a man the size of a linebacker with a single swat of a slender hand, as well as Miss Pink leaping fifteen feet into the air, latching onto the side of a building, and clambering up it as though she were a monkey.  He’d also caught glimpses of two of their male friends, one white and one black, doing such things as shooting energy bolts from their hands and levitating objects like the telekinetics he’d seen in movies.  These creatures were far more powerful than the average human, and he’d lived in constant fear of being discovered by them, and had woke up screaming on more than one occasion.  He was constantly looking over his shoulder when he was out of his apartment, expecting to find Miss Pink or Miss Red stealthily creeping up behind him, fangs bared and ready to strike.

He scarcely felt safe in his own apartment, and there were times he’d nearly dropped the Vampire Investigation Project, as he called it, and fled the city altogether.  Those feelings usually came about after he’d managed to tape another incident of vampiric behavior, when he was looking at indisputable proof that mankind wasn’t the only game in town.  But if he were to do that, who would tell the world about the threat the vampires posed?  Was this his calling?  Was warning the world about the vampires the thing that he was born to do, the thing that would enable him to ascend to greatness?  He wondered about that a lot, especially when he lay awake in the small hours of the morning, unable to fully fall asleep until the sun was up.  And beyond that, if he ran from this, what hope had he of ever reconciling with Stella?  He realized that, at least on some level, he had a duty to humanity, and he felt compelled to see that through, but he was also man who missed his ex-wife terribly and was willing to do just about anything to get her back.  If this is what it took, then so be it.

He glanced over at the window of his apartment and saw that the sun had nearly set by now, and his heart beat a little faster at the thought of the night closing in, when the vampires would begin roaming the streets and shadows once more.

As his eyes moved away from the window, they came to rest on the portrait of Stella that sat atop the bookcase, which made his heart hitch in his chest.  It happened every single time, even after two years, and he looked over at the phone, wanting to get up and give Stella a call.  Just seven simple numbers and he’d be able to hear her voice again, if not live, then on her answering machine; it was a voice he’d taken for granted for four years, and he hadn’t realized just how much a part of his life it had become until she’d divorced him.  The legal papers had stated they separated because of “irreconcilable differences,” but the fact of the matter was that Stella left him because he was going nowhere fast.

When he’d been courting her in college he’d promised her the world, telling her that he was going to become an award-winning journalist, covering all kinds of topics and important events, and they’d be able to travel the country and the world, and she’d never have to work a day in her life.  After a few years of supporting the both of them with her secretary job, she’d grown tired of hearing the promises when it seemed like there was nothing on the horizon, and she’d divorced him because she was young and wanted a better life than what he could offer.  Or, as she’d very bluntly put it one night when he’d drunkenly called her up, she’d divorced him because he was a complete failure.  He would’ve been pissed with her over that if she hadn’t been right.

He’d made barely any money from his freelancing over the past five years, and the money he lived off now came mostly from working as a temp at newspapers and offices.  Some world-class journalist, eh?  He was a damned failure . . . so far.  His little Vampire Investigation Project could end up breaking him out of that rut, and if it was even half the success he hoped it would be, there was no way that Stella could ever call him a failure again.

But if he was going to stop being a failure, he had to complete the V.I.P. first, and he dragged his eyes away from Stella’s picture and focused on the TV screen again, where Miss Pink was leaping on the back of a man nearly three times her size and bringing him down with a single blow to the top of his head.  It was another incident he’d shot from a long distance away, so the video wasn’t the best in the world, but it was still clear enough to catch the fangs in her laughing mouth as she rode the big man to the alley floor.  The expensive video camera he’d spent all of his savings on had been well worth the price he’d paid, because even though all of the footage he’d shot was far from slick-looking, it was more than sufficient to add legitimacy to the article he was putting together.  While many would argue about the authenticity of the video footage, there was some stuff he had that would have been just too hard for him to fake with his meager means, and he knew if it came right down to testing the footage for editing, he’d come out in the clear, because he left everything on the tape just as he’d shot it.  The video footage was about as raw as it got.

In more ways than one, he thought as he watched Miss Pink latch onto the neck of the big man and drain his blood like a leech.  Unable to put up with the sight for any longer, he shut off the VCR and TV, though it really didn’t do him much good: he’d seen the footage so many times that it was seared into his brain.  He’d probably still be seeing the she-vampires feeding on their prey in his dreams for the rest of his life.  All of this had better be worth it in the end, because after what he’d seen over the course of the past several months, he didn’t think he’d ever feel truly safe again. After all, if there were real vampires in the world, what other horrors might there be roaming around out there?  “One thing at a time,” he muttered, shaking his head and running a hand through his shaggy brown hair.  “Vampires are all I can stand right now, and there’s too many of them as it is.”

Besides Miss Pink, Miss Red, Mr. Black, and Mr. White, there were a number of others in the city that he strongly suspected to be vampires, from what he’d been able to ascertain from his research and observations.  These other suspected vampires were people he’d seen Miss Pink or one of the others regularly interact with in clubs or bars, treating as equals and even deferring to them on several occasions.

First and foremost amongst these suspected vampires was the infamous Donita Lightning, a notorious figure in the local rock ‘n roll scene, that had fronted several notable bands over the past two decades, as well as causing a great deal of havoc wherever she went.  Despite all of this hellraising, Miss Lightning didn’t look any different than she did in early photos of her performing with the hard rock band called the Hollywood Vampires, a name that was far more apt than most people knew, if his suspicions were correct.

Miss Pink and the others could often be seen in the company of Miss Lightning and her longtime companion, Katheryne Black, who seemed to always be with the odd gypsy-styled woman.  While this in and of itself might not seem all that strange, as Miss Lightning certainly had her share of fans in Los Angeles and could often be seen speaking to and hanging out with them, it was the fact that Miss Pink and the other vampires treated Miss Lightning with the same respect and deference that a student treats a teacher.  Why would these obviously powerful beings defer to Miss Lightning unless she was one of them?  Indeed, she was likely an even more powerful and experienced vampire than Miss Pink and her bunch!  As for Miss Black (no relation to Mr. Black), he honestly didn’t know . . . she was so quiet during his observations that he often forgot she was even there.  But she was tremendously enamored of Miss Lightning, which was reciprocated by the gypsy, so he was willing to bet that she was a vampire as well.

He also had very strong suspicions about many of Miss Lightning’s other friends and associates, especially the rock ‘n roll types that openly flaunted their “vampiric” natures to anybody that would listen, letting everyone assume that it was just part of their gimmick as rock ‘n rollers.  Sometimes the best place to hide a dark secret was in plain sight.  But he had enough on his plate just with Miss Pink and the gang at the moment, and didn’t even want to get started with a vampiress that was probably even more powerful than them.  He was risking enough as it was, and he didn’t want to dig himself in any deeper at the moment.  Hell, he didn’t have his first article sold or even finished yet, so one thing at a time.

He checked the time and saw that it was nearly nine o’clock, and he was supposed to call in to his contact at Paradox Illustrated at nine-thirty, which gave him just enough time to get down to the corner diner and grab a bite to eat, before making the call from the payphone in the back.  Early on he decided he wanted to keep his identity a secret if he was going put this article together and get it published, due to the fact that he didn’t know just how many vampires there were in L.A. and how much danger he’d be in when they realized that he’d blown their secret to the rest of the world.  Though he eventually planned on becoming quite famous out of all of this, he was going to have to keep things as hush-hush as possible at first, at least until he was able to get some proper protection from those undead bastards.

Unfortunately, keeping his identity a secret for this sort of article meant that most “respectable” publications wouldn’t even give him a second glance, so he was going to have to start with an underground, new-age sort of magazine like Paradox Illustrated, which was far more used to weirdness on the part of its contributors than something like Time or Newsweek.  As “UFO-chaser” publications went, Paradox Illustrated was actually pretty respected in the field, and even “legit” publications usually refrained from taking shots at it.  It would be a perfect starting-point for him and a handy stepping-stone for bigger and better things, once word got out that he was reporting on the real deal.  But in the meantime, he was very grateful that Paradox Illustrated was willing to listen to him, even if he insisted upon calling from payphones and not giving his actual name.  Oh, they wouldn’t publish his article until he’d actually presented it to an editor along with the videotape of his findings, which he could understand, but at the very least they were quite happy to hear regular progress reports from him.

He saved his work on the computer, got up and stretched, then grabbed his worn hooded sweatshirt and headed out into the cool fall evening, though he made sure to stick his head out the door of his apartment and check up and down the corridor, just in case any pink-haired vampires might be lurking around.  It never hurt to be careful, especially in this line of work.

*     *     *

            “Paradox Illustrated, Julia speaking.”

            “This is Van Helsing.  Just calling to check in,” he said, leaning again the grimy wall the payphone was mounted on.  A few feet away was the door to the men’s room, where the sounds of someone alternating between angry muttering and being violently ill could be heard.  The poor bastard must have had the special.

            “Ah, our favorite vampire-seeker.  How goes it?” asked the junior editor.  After he’d called in and pitched the initial idea of the article to the magazine, they’d transferred him to Julia, who had since become his contact with the magazine.  She oversaw many of the articles dealing with unusual creatures like vampires, chupacabras, and other such things, and she’d been an extremely accommodating and considerate contact, always listening to him with great interest and never treating him like he was a hoax or scam-artist.  It was certainly something he appreciated, especially since he hadn’t gotten treated this nicely from editors he’d dealt with face-to-face.  He also liked the fact that there was at least one person at the Paradox Illustrated offices 24 hours a day, meaning he could call at odd hours, like right now.  There were definitely some things that the weird little magazines had over their bigger, more respectable brothers.

            “Not too shabby.  I think I’m pretty well finished with the information-gathering part, and I started up on the article itself tonight.  I’m hoping to have a first draft ready for you in about a week or so,” he said, his own stomach gurgling in sympathy with the guy in the bathroom.  The burger hadn’t been bad, but it hadn’t been great, either, but at least it was very cheap, which was the most important thing to him at the moment.

            “And are you actually going to bring it in to us, or just mail it like some mysterious secret agent?” asked Julia teasingly; very flirtatiously, actually.  She was like this much of the time, and he’d found himself talking to her about a lot more than just his article, something that vaguely bothered him, as it felt like he was cheating on Stella by talking personally to another woman, even though he did find comfort in a friendly ear.

            “I’ll probably be mailing it in to let you guys see what you think, and if the uppity-ups are still interested, I might just stop by the office with the tape of the footage.”

            “Ah yes, the famed tape with the exploits of your Miss Pink and her merry band of vampires in the wilderness of L.A.  I’ve been dying to see that one.  You know, you really ought to make backup copies of it and your other notes and send them here, just in case something happens to them, especially the tape.  If this is on the level, you went through a great deal of risk to get all of that footage, and I’d hate for you to have gone through all of that for nothing if something happens to it.  If you have to do it over again, you might not be so lucky next time,” Julia said, her voice lightly scolding, and Walter closed his eyes as he blushed.  It felt wonderful to have a woman show concern for his well-being, just like how Stella used to constantly dote over him.  If it weren’t for the fact that he still loved Stella dearly, he would have tried to pursue more than just a professional relationship with Julia a long time ago.

            “I know, Mom,” he replied jokingly, then chuckled.  “But that’s all right, I don’t mind.  It’s nice to have someone looking out for me.  Nobody’s really done that since Stella left me.”  He paused, feeling funny bringing up the name of his ex-wife to Julia, and he chuckled again, trying to get the mood light again.  “Anyway, the one tape I’ve got right now is all I need, and I don’t want to risk it falling into somebody else’s hands until I’ve delivered it to you guys personally.  This is my story, after all, and probably my one chance to really make something of myself.  I don’t want to take the risk of somebody else getting hold of it and trying to steal my thunder, or otherwise try to discredit me before I’ve even had a chance to finish my article.”

            “Now you know I wouldn’t do any such thing,” said Julia, mock-offense in her voice.

            “Of course not you, I know you wouldn’t even think of it,” he said, a little too urgently, he thought, as though afraid of actually offending the only woman he really spoke with on a regular basis these days.  Hell, he didn’t have the slightest idea of what she looked like, and he already had a kind of attachment to her.  He tried not to think of that as pathetic, and succeeded most of the time.  “But I don’t know about anybody else you work with . . .”

            “I know, I know, and though I can’t really say I blame you, it’s not going to stop me from trying.  I worry about you, you know, and I’m just trying to make sure that you don’t crash and burn on this.”  There was a soft insistence in her voice that made him want to run back home, make a backup copy of the vampire tape and send it to her right then and there.  But he resisted, because Stella was the only woman for him, and because he was doing this partly for her.

            “Thanks, but I can take care of myself.  I’ve made it this far on my own, after all, and I don’t have too much farther to go.  Just a little longer and you should be seeing that tape with your very own eyes.  Just gotta be patient, and it’ll all come through in the end,” he said, and he wondered if he was talking to Julia or himself on that last part.  Did it really matter?

            “And then I’ll finally get to call you something besides Van Helsing?”

            “Of course, madam.  But until then, I’ve got to play secret agent.”

            “Oh . . . all right, I guess,” Julia said playfully.  “I’ll let my uppers know that you’re still on the case and haven’t flipped out on us or anything of that sort.  You’d be amazed at how often that happens in this business.  Actually, no, you wouldn’t.”

            Grinning in spite of himself, Walter put on his best John Wayne voice and said, “Lady, I’ve watched wild vampires feed, and ain’t a thing in this godforsaken world that surprises me anymore.”

            There was laughter on the other end of the line, and it sounded like music to his ears.  Stella had always said that he could make her laugh no matter what, and it was nice to know that he still had a knack for it, even after being a nocturnal recluse that lurked in bushes and behind trash cans with a video camera for the past several months.

            “In that case, I’ll talk to you later, Secret Agent Van Helsing,” said Julia, and her tone softened again, this time almost unbearably so.  “You take care of yourself, okay?”

            “O-okay,” he said, mentally cursing himself for stumbling on the word.  “I’ll be in touch.”  He hung up the receiver with some reluctance, and then leaned against the wall for a time, looking up at the dusty ceiling tiles and flickering fluorescent lights, not really sure what to think at the moment.

On one hand he hated this job and the danger it presented, but on the other hand, what choice did he have?  If this all went well, he could be set for life, and probably even reconcile with Stella, who’d surely realize he wasn’t a failure when he exposed the hidden vampire underworld of Los Angeles.  And if it didn’t work out . . . he’d be dead and beyond caring about anything.  One way or another, things were going to be changing in his life, and he wouldn’t have to live with being a failure anymore.  That was worth it, wasn’t it?  He rubbed his face with his hands, wishing that he was in Stella’s arms right now, sitting in front of a roaring fireplace with his Pulitzer Prizes set up in a neat row on the mantle.  Maybe someday.

            The bathroom door opened and a short, angry-looking man with glasses shambled out into the hallway, nearly limping, cursing under his breath.  When he saw Walter leaning against the wall by the phone, he scowled.  “Whatever you do, don’t eat the fucking special.  Johnny Cash doesn’t know shit about any rings of fire until he’s eaten the fucking special.  Motherfuckers.”

            “I’ll keep that in mind,” said Walter, deciding it was time to stop moping around and get back to work, if only to avoid conducting business calls from outside men’s room doors.

*     *     *

            Walter ascended the rickety old steps to the second floor of his apartment building and treaded down the worn corridor carpet, mentally outlining what he was going to write next, wanting to keep the article lively and interesting while still maintaining an air of great importance to it.  He wanted people to take his article seriously, after all.  It was going to be tricky, though, as people were so used to thinking of vampires as mythical creatures only seen by weirdos and the overly-imaginative, and he had to approach things from an intelligent, coherent angle while still being persuasive enough to get the readers to accept what he was writing.  His journalism classes in college hadn’t prepared him for anything quite like this, and he’d had to do his studying on this particular style of writing with past issues of Paradox Illustrated and similar magazines.  He sighed.  This was probably something that was going to take him quite a while to get written properly.

            He was so absorbed in planning out his article that he didn’t notice the angry voice coming from within his room until he nearly had the knob in his hand.

            “Fuck!  Mary, look at this, he’s even got us on tape!  Fucking bastard!”

            “Oh bugger, that is us, isn’t it?” said a second female voice, and he had no doubts as to whom the two voices belonged to.  “We really stepped in it, didn’t we?”

            Walter stopped dead in the hallway in front of his door, his heart hammering away in his chest, and he stifled the urge to bolt and run.  Without even thinking, he reached out and pinched himself on his arm as hard as he could, digging his fingernails in as deeply into his flesh as he could, but no matter how much it hurt, he didn’t wake up.  He’d been afraid that this would happen: his nightmares had come true.

            Moving as silently as he could, he pressed up against the wall, his ear just inches from the doorframe, trying to hear everything that was said and trying even harder not to scream aloud.  He also took a moment to pray that they couldn’t hear his heartbeat like so many vampires in the books he’d read and the movies he’d seen, because if Miss Pink and Miss Red could, he was screwed.

            “Way to go . . . Miss Pink,” chuckled a new voice, this one sounding as though it belonged to a young black man, and Walter squeezed his eyes shut as he realized that his current problem was even bigger than he thought.

            “Don’t you even think about laughing, Richie,” snapped the first voice, who he assumed was Miss Pink.  “Or should I say . . . Mr. Black?”

            “Say what?!”

            “It says so right here in his notes.  Oh, and look, Mr. Black, there you are on the TV right now!  You fucked up as much as Mary and I did, so I’d shut my mouth if I were you!”

            “Shit.  And there’s Mick, too.  Man, this ain’t good.”

            “You’re telling me,” said a soft but firm voice, which almost certainly belonged to Mr. White.  “This guy’s got a lot of video of us.  Donita’s gonna kick our asses for this one.”  So, Miss Lightning was one of them, just like he’d suspected!  If he hadn’t been so utterly terrified, Walter would have been triumphantly patting himself on the back over his amateur detective skills.

            “Like hell she is,” hissed Miss Pink.  “She’s not gonna find out about this if I’ve got anything to say about it.”

            “You sure about that?  We’ve never gotten tangled up in anything like this, y’know,” said Mr. Black.  “We ought to at least give her a call and see what we should do about this.”

            “Oh come off it, Richie.  Good grief, are you ever going to cut the fucking apron strings?  I’m glad you don’t have to wipe your ass anymore, because you’d probably be checking with Donita over that, too,” snarled Miss Pink, sounding disgusted.  “I’m sick and tired of having to consult her over everything.”

            There was a pause, and then Mr. Black growled, “One of these days, I’m gonna forget that you’re a girl and just slug you one right to the chops.”

            “Go ahead and try it if you think you can do it.  At least I’ve got the guts to stand up to that domineering gypsy, and—“

Miss Red, who had a pronounced British accent, cleared her throat and spoke up, apparently trying to defuse the situation before it got ugly.  “If I’m reading right from the notes, it was Kimmie and I he saw first, and he saw you two while he was following us around, and—“

            “Fucking pervert,” interjected Miss Pink, or Kimmie, as it were.

            “We have a responsibility here, I think.  All of us.  Regardless of who he saw first, he’s got us all on tape and took notes on every single one of us, and none of us knew a thing about it.  Like what Fred and Lucille are telling me, we all screwed up, and now it’s up to us to fix it.”

            Walter shuddered slightly and nearly ran at that very moment.  Fred and Lucille?  How many of them were in there?!

            “Yeah, exactly!” barked Kimmie.  “I’m with Mary’s voices, we’ve got to fix this problem and fix it good.  It’s not gonna do us any good to just go running back to Donita like all of the other kids do whenever there’s trouble.  She and all of the elder vampires keep telling us we have to learn to do things on our own, and they’re not going to shut up about it until we prove we can take care of ourselves . . . and our problems.”  Her voice got harsher, and she growled, “Besides, I don’t want Donita or anybody else dealing with this little fucker for us.  I want to deal with him personally.”

            Mary, who he’d known only as Miss Red up until a few minutes ago, made a sound of agreement.  “Too right, that.  If this little prat blows the whistle on us, he’s going to be completely sodding up our way of life, not just for us, but also for all of the other vampires in the city.  This is probably the best place in the world for our kind, and I don’t want to be responsible for ruining it for them, especially after all everything they went through with the Crimson Order.  They deserve better than that.”

            “And I don’t even want to think about how much Donita’s going to bitch at me if this all goes to hell, because you all know she’s going to blame me first!  I’m so sick of her always busting my balls over everything, especially since I don’t even have any!” said Kimmie.  “This peeping fuckwad is trying to ruin my day with this bullshit, and I’m going to make sure he pays for it.”

            “Ditto for me, Fred, and Lucille,” said Mary.

            There was a grunt from Richie, and then he grudgingly said, “Yeah, me too.  Maybe you don’t like the gypsy much, but I do.  She’s done a lot for me, and I don’t wanna repay her by messin’ things up for her and Katheryne.  Besides, that motherfucker hasn’t got any right snoopin’ on us like this.  If I gotta choose between him or ruining things for the other vampires, he loses every time.”

            “He knows just a little too much for my comfort, and I don’t even want to imagine what happens if he walks,” said the fourth voice, Mick.  “He’s going down.”  Walter felt cold all over, like a convict that’s just received a death sentence, and he began to wish that he would’ve just gone into accounting like his parents had wanted.  What was he going to do?

            “So what next, oh fearless leader?” asked Richie sarcastically.

            “First off, you’re going to sit your ass down at his computer and go through everything on it.  I want to know everything he’s written or found out about us, both in his cute ‘lil article and his notes.  Mick can check out the rest of the apartment for any other damning stuff.”

            “You mean amidst the piles of vampire books?” asked Mick.  “This guy must’ve cleaned out the paperback vampire section of every bookstore in town.  Man, he’s got everybody here . . . Rice, Collins, Hamilton, Jones, Lum—“

            “Jones?  Fuck him, he’s a hack,” growled Kimmie derisively.  “All of his stuff sucks.”

            “Maybe he was using them for research,” offered Mary, and everybody, even Kimmie, snickered about that.  Despite his fear, Walter found himself flushing with embarrassment.

            “If he’s using that stuff for research, he really is an idiot,” said Kimmie.

            “What are you and Miss Swafford going to be doing while Mick’s rootin’ around in this guy’s stuff and I’m busy playin’ computer-nigga?” asked Richie, sounding slightly sarcastic.

            “We’re heading out to find the stupid bastard, now that we know what he looks and smells like.  Me and Mary’s senses of smell are a lot better than you guys, not to mention our sight and hearing.  Full-bloods are better hunters than halfsies, so we’re going to go out and hunt, while you two are going to stay home and have dinner ready for us when we get back,” said Kimmie, matching Richie’s sarcasm.

            “Why don’t we just wait here?  Julia said she just got done talkin’ to him a little while ago, and we know we’re in the right place, so why don’t—“

            Kimmie’s reply to the question and part of what Richie said next was lost to Walter, as it suddenly felt as though a giant were squeezing his stomach and his brain at the same time.  Julia?!

            “—damned lucky she’s been lookin’ out for our asses and got hold of us tonight after she’d finally figured out where he lived.  Good thing he spilled enough of his guts for her to do a little detective work.  I ain’t never makin’ fun of her for workin’ at that goofy magazine again, that’s for sure,” continued Richie, as though he was trying to rip Walter’s guts apart, and he nearly stumbled as the concept hit him straight between the eyes.

Julia had betrayed him?  Impossible, she was his friend!  He’d trusted her!  He even had a little crush on her, she was so sweet to him.  She was looking out for him, not them!  After all the times she’d listened to him, both about the vampires and his own life, she couldn’t have . . . shit.  Unfortunately, it made sense.

She’d listened to everything he had to say, probably gleaning as many details as she could, trying to figure out who he was and where he lived.  She’d wanted copies of the tape and his notes, “just in case,” likely wanting to see if he truly had a case for the existence of vampires in Los Angeles.  Hell, maybe she even hoped that he was dumb enough to have put a return address on the envelope if he mailed everything to Paradox Illustrated.  It all made so much sense it made him sick to think about it.  Put a vampire on the staffs of magazines like Paradox Illustrated, sitting and waiting for guys like him to find out about the city’s vampires, and once they stepped forward, the vampires were waiting for them.  Just like what would’ve happened if he’d blithely walked into his apartment, right into the midst of those undead killers!

That fucking bitch, how could she?  How could she have talked to him, flirted with him, and pretended to care about him?!  That fucking coldhearted, manipulative whore!  He clenched his hands into fists so hard that his nails started to cut into his palms, and he bit his lip to keep from shouting out loud in rage.  How could he have been so stupid?!

All of a sudden, Kimmie and Mary’s voices went silent in his apartment.

“Mary . . . do you—?” asked Kimmie, sounding almost breathless.

“Yup . . . outside,” replied the other vampiress, her voice excited.

“It’s him!” they both shrieked.

Oh shit.  Apparently the novels he’d read had been right about vampires having senses beyond the usual five.

He turned and ran back down the corridor like a sprinter, his entire body surging with heat as his body pumped adrenaline through his system as hard and fast as it could.  There was a tremendous crash behind him, followed immediately after by another one, and when he spared a glance back, he saw his worn old door, now free of its hinges, exploding into fragments against the door across the hallway from his apartment. 

Kimmie darted out into the hallway, her eyes blazing bright red and her ivory fangs fully extended; she looked like murder personified.  At the sight of her, Walter’s legs felt rubbery, and he staggered as he ran, nearly falling to the floor as panic nearly overtook him.  He turned away from Kimmie and concentrated on reaching the stairs without falling down and making an easy target of himself.  Secret insurance policy or not, he wasn’t going to risk sticking around if he didn’t have to.  “You’re dead, asshole!” roared the vampiress, “You’re so de—!”

“What the fuck’s going on out here?!” shouted a deep, baritone voice, which Walter recognized as belonging to his big, fat, perpetually angry neighbor from across the hall.  Any time there was noise of any kind, the fat bastard was always out in the hallway screaming about it, ultimately causing more noise than the person who’d offended him in the first place.  “Who the fuck are you?!”

Kimmie hissed like ruptured radiator, and there was a tremendous smacking sound, like Rocky Balboa punching a slab of beef, and his neighbor starting screaming with a horrifying shrillness that made the fleeing journalist run even harder, so that he was nearly flying down the stairs.  He didn’t know what the vampiress had done to his neighbor, and quite frankly, he didn’t want to know.

As he rounded the landing, he heard snarling and shouting as his neighbor kept squealing, and he simply leaped down the last leg of the stairs, landing hard on the uncarpeted wooden floor of the apartment building lobby and nearly colliding with a muttering drunk as he rolled back to his feet.  Though jarred from his rough touchdown, he stumbled back to his feet and galloped for the main doors, kicking them open hard enough to make their already-cracked glass shatter and tinkle to the concrete of the building’s front steps.  Walter bounded down the stairs, crossed the sidewalk, and charged out into the still-thick traffic, nearly getting run over by a furious taxi driver in the process.  He didn’t even bother to curse back at the driver as he ran, and even if he’d felt like it, he was huffing and puffing far too hard to make a coherent sentence.

He blindly ran down an alley, not knowing where he was going and not caring, either, just so long as it was away from them.  Why hadn’t he just become an accountant, dammit?!

*     *     *

            Shivering as much from fear as the cold wetness of the puddle he was crouched in, Walter peered out from behind the dumpster, looking up and down the alley he’d ended up in, looking for vampires.

            The alley was empty except for the usual detritus found in the manmade mini-canyons between buildings: garbage cans, newspapers, piles of trash, fat rats, and a couple of sleeping winos.  He had no idea where he was at, as he’d ran for far longer than he’d thought he was capable of, and he was sure he’d covered at least several miles as he’d zigzagged between buildings, side-streets, alleys, parking garages, and other features of the massive metropolis.  He’d finally ended up behind the dumpster, as his legs had decided they simply couldn’t take anymore, and he’d dropped to his knees in a puddle of rainwater, immediately puking his guts out as his body let him know that it didn’t appreciate the run he’d just made.  Well, fuck his body; at least it was still alive to be pissed off at him.

            He’d waited in that spot for over an hour, barely able to move and nearly blacking out in exhaustion, but his fear had kept him awake, and he’d strained his ears listening, praying that Kimmie or Mary wouldn’t suddenly appear and turn him into a midnight snack.  Speaking of which, he didn’t even know what time it was, as he’d lost his watch, as well as part of his sleeve, climbing over a wooden fence behind an empty lot.  He really wished he knew what time it was, because he wanted to know how long it was going to be until sunup.  If he could just last until then, he’d be safe, and he could hop a bus out of town and never come back.  Maybe he’d just keep on going until he hit sunny Mexico, and he’d just sit on the beach and make pottery all day, forgetting all about Los Angeles and its hateful vampire population.  But where would that leave him?  That would’ve made all of this for nothing, and he’d probably never see Stella again if he exiled himself . . . Stella.

            If those bastards knew about him, they probably knew about her!  What if they couldn’t find him and decided to just take it out on her?  He’d hate himself forever if anything happened to her because of him, especially since he’d gotten into this mess partially to try to win her back.  He was going to have to get out from behind this lousy dumpster and warn her, and maybe, just maybe, take her with him.  How wonderful would that be?  Just him and her fleeing the city and leaving the vampires behind, going down to Mexico and living like royalty on 25 bucks a week?  He allowed himself a smile at the very thought, which seemed so safe and warm, far away from this madness he’d stepped into.

But he had to get to Stella first.  Easier said than done, especially considering he didn’t really know where he was.  L.A. was a huge city, and even people who’d lived there all their lives didn’t know all of the little nooks and crannies contained within, and he’d only been in the city for ten years, after he’d moved in from Pasadena.  But even if he didn’t know where she was, he could call her and let her know what was going on and try to get her to believe it, no matter how ridiculous it may have sounded.

Ridiculous . . . that’s probably what the cops would tell him if he called them for protection.  Hell, that’s what everybody would tell him if he tried to warn him, except for people like those that worked at or read magazines like Paradox Illustrated.  Just the thought of that magazine, and its treacherous vampire junior editor, sent a wave of rage through him, which warmed him, but then another thought chilled him right to the bone.  If the vampires had hidden moles in just little weirdo magazines, why wouldn’t they put them in bigger and more important positions, like the police?  Shit, if he called the cops, a whole lot worse could end up happening than just them laughing at him!  No, he couldn’t rely on anybody but himself in this, because he had no idea how far the vampires’ reach went.

A sudden loud hissing made him jolt and nearly fall over in the puddle, fear gripping his heart for several long seconds, paralyzing him, which was the only thing that stopped him from running away as fast as he could.  His head darting around like a bird’s, he searched the alley for the source of the sound, which had come from above him somewhere, and he looked up at the dumpster fearfully, certain he’d see Kimmie or Mary crouched on the top of it like a human vulture, ready to pounce.  But he saw nothing, and was becoming sure that it had been his imagination when the hiss sounded again, even louder this time, and he leapt to his feet, turning his head in the direction of the noise.

He moaned when he saw what it was that had him so frightened: two big alley cats were slowly pacing around one another on a fire escape on the building across from the dumpster.  When one of the cats got too close to the other, the latter let fly with a ferocious, angry-sounding hiss and batted at its opponent with a big, meaty paw, claws extended.  Walter put a hand to his thundering heart, feeling faint from relief, and he shook off his lightheadedness a few moments later.  “Fucking cats,” he muttered just as the two big felines started brawling in earnest, their snarls echoing up and down the length of the alley.

Even if there weren’t any vampires around, he wasn’t going to hang around behind the dumpster any longer.  He’d hidden long enough: it was time to get out of here and see about warning Stella and making good his escape from those damned vampires.  His legs stiff, he started up the alley, his head constantly swiveling as he kept an eye out for vampires, nervous sweat pouring off his body despite the chill he still carried from the puddle.

            An hour passed and he still didn’t know exactly where in the city he was, and he’d had absolute shit luck in finding a phone.  Well, he’d found plenty of phones, but they were either in establishments that didn’t let the public use them, or were broken payphones.  In an age where one couldn’t escape the incessant ringing of phones, there was a sick irony in not being able to find one to make a quick call on, especially in a city the size of Los Angeles.   Of course, that just figured in to the already-wonderful night he was having, so he wasn’t really surprised.  That was in addition to being scared to death of being spotted by Kimmie, Mary, or one of the other vampires with every step he took, especially whenever he was in plain view out on a sidewalk.  He hugged walls and tried to stay in the shadows as much as possible, though he doubted it would do him any good, considering the vampires’ heightened senses.  At least it made him feel like he wasn’t quite so exposed.

            Whenever a police car cruised by, he was torn between the impulse to run away from it and run over to it, still not able to bring himself to trust them after the way Julia had betrayed him.  The city itself felt like an enemy, as though its twists, turns, and lack of usable phones were contriving to keep him busy and slowed down long enough for his pursuers to find him.  Yesterday L.A. had seemed enormous, but tonight it seemed like a prison cell with a death sentence hanging over it.

At least he’d found out that it was past 3am, with sunrise in reaching distance, and he’d nearly decided to find another dumpster to hide behind and just wait until the life-giving star slipped up over the horizon, but his concern for Stella overrode his sense of self-preservation.  He wanted very much to live and make sure the world knew about the undead horrors scampering around Los Angeles, and possibly countless other cities, but his love for Stella came first and foremost.

Unable to stand being on the sidewalk any longer, he turned off into an alley, immediately feeling safer in the dimness, and he hurried along the uneven pavement, not heading in any particular direction, simply trolling around until he found a phone.  Then things got complicated.

Just when he’d turned the corner of an intersection in the alley network he heard the echo of soft female voices coming from behind him, and he immediately pressed against the wall and dropped low, his heart returning to its now-familiar frantic pace.  The voices stopped, and after a few seconds he couldn’t stand it anymore, and he just barely peeked around the corner of the damp brick wall he was clinging to like a lifeline, and he nearly threw up right then and there.  It was them.  They’d found him.

Kimmie and Mary stood a few steps into the alley, intently looking around and actually sniffing at the air, just like a pair of cats on the hunt.  Mary even dropped down to the ground, crouching and leaning low, her nose rapidly twitching not even an inch from the pavement as she searched for him.  The pink-haired vampiress remained standing, motionless, with her head cocked to one side like a dog trying to catch a distant sound, and he remained completely still, barely even breathing, not knowing how sharp Kimmie’s hearing was and not wanting to find out the hard way.  He prayed that the shadows were deep enough and that there was enough debris in the alley to conceal him from view.

Finally Mary looked up at Kimmie and said, “Give me a refresh, would you?  Too bloody many scents in this city, I get ‘em confused after awhile.”

With a nod, Kimmie reached into one of the pockets of her long, jet-black dress and pulled out a ragged piece of cloth and handed it to Mary, who held it to her nose and inhaled deeply, shutting her eyes.  He was willing to bet anything the cloth had been ripped from one of the shirts back in his apartment so they could take his scent with them, just like a hunter bringing along an item that would help his bloodhound keep the scent of their quarry clear.  As if in a trance, the redheaded vampiress gave it back to Kimmie and put her nose back to the ground, sniffed for a few moments, and then got back to her feet, looking satisfied.  “He just passed through here.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” asked Kimmie, and the two of them immediately started up the alley.

“Fuck,” he hissed, leaping to his feet and starting to run down the side alley he was hiding in, and made it two steps before he plowed right into a brick wall.

Walter fell onto his ass and cried out in fear and pent-up frustration, and when he looked up, he did a double-take.  He’d been expecting Mick or Richie, but instead it was a group of very big guys that looked like the security contingent at a rap concert.  The one he’d ran into, a muscular bear of a man decked out in gold chains and baggy street clothing, grinned down at him with teeth that were either gold-plated or rotting away and said, “Wassup, whitebread?  You in the wrong neighborhood, knowwhati’msayin’?”  The rest of his crew, made up of other black guys, white guys, Mexicans, and the biggest Oriental guy Walter had ever seen outside of a sumo wrestler, chuckled in agreement with their pal and made a few comments of their own, none of them very nice.

“Run, you idiots!” Walter shrieked, panicking and springing to his feet.  “They’re coming this way!  Vampires!”  The entire bunch were clearly surprised by this particular reaction to their presence, as they were used to cowering and kowtowing, not crazy white guys screaming about vampires.  But they weren’t so surprised that they didn’t catch him when he tried to make his escape by running through them.

“Now hold on, hold on there, whitebread!” exclaimed the leader, knocking Walter back on his ass with a fist the size of a ham.  “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, knowwhati’msayin’?  You just gonna sit yo’ narrow ass down there ‘n show us what you got in your pockets, ‘n then we might do some talkin’ ‘bout lettin’ y’all go, aight?”

“Fuck you!” howled Walter, getting upright again, not feeling a thing from the rough blow the big man had given him.  “They’re coming, they’re—“

“Right here,” said Kimmie, her voice directly behind Walter, horrifyingly close.  He shut his eyes and started to pray to God, Allah, Buddha, and anybody else that might have had an interest in his well-being.

“Now who the fuck you be, bitch?” demanded the big guy, apparently not very happy with the way the situation was unfolding.

“Your worst fucking nightmare, asshole,” growled Kimmie, and Walter squeaked as a hand with a steely grip clamped down on his shoulder.  “He’s coming with us, and if you don’t like it, you can all eat shit.”

“Oh, izzat right?”  There was a definite edge of danger in the big man’s voice, and his crew was grumbling and gnashing their teeth behind him, spoiling for either a fight or something worse.

“Yeah,” said Kimmie, amping up the menace in her voice to match his.

“I suggest you sods go take a powder,” Mary added cheerfully.  “It’s much safer.”

“You are in so much trouble right now you can’t even comprehend it,” Kimmie hissed into Walter’s ear, her breath feeling unnaturally hot against his flesh, which crawled at being so close to the undead girl.  “You have no idea who you’ve managed to piss off.”  He shuddered violently.

“Hey bitch!  Don’t you be disrespectin’ me!  Pay attention me when I’m talkin’ to ya!” roared the big man.  When he lunged forward and slapped Kimmie, all hell broke loose.

Screams (from the guys) and hisses (from the girls) filled the tight confines of the side alley, and he was roughly jostled around as the burly gang took on two female vampires that were in no mood for screwing around.  All of a sudden the ground came flying up at him and stars exploded in front of his eyes.  It was probably one of the thugs tripping over him and digging a big foot into his ribs that kept him from blacking out.  Of course, if the kick hadn’t kept him conscious, a high, gargling shriek followed by a loud, meaty gushing noise probably would have . . . it was a truly awful combination of sounds.

As he rolled over and moved to crawl away, he saw Mary spin through the air above him like a supernatural ballerina, except that she was wearing big platform shoes, one of which slammed into a thug’s neck with a tremendous crack, nearly ripping his head completely off.  He put his head down and started scrambling forward, trying to get away from the writhing, slashing mass of humanity and inhumanity before he, the weakest of all those assembled, got demolished by one of the heavy hitters.

A vice-like grip clamped down on his shoulder again, yanked him to his feet, and spun him around to face an enraged pink-haired vampiress, her eyes blazing red and her fangs fully-extended.  Her breath hot on his face, Kimmie snarled, “Oh no you don’t!”

Mary screamed, “Kimmie, look out, he’s got a—!”

            The sound of shots being fired seemed impossibly loud in the alley, and Kimmie’s face contorted in pain as she jolted from the force of several slugs tearing through her skin.  Her grip on his shoulder tightened up terribly, ripping his clothes and flesh.  The shots were suddenly cut off, replaced by an agonized shriek, and he saw a furious Mary ram a fist clean through the armed thug.  As Walter struggled against the vampiress’ grasping fingers he saw that it wasn’t pain on Kimmie’s face, not entirely: she was pissed.  He pulled against her hand as hard as he could, further shredding his shoulder, and he broke free just as more shots rang out.  He bolted down the alley as more screams, not to mention bullets, ricocheted down the walls in his wake.

Kimmie roared at him, her voice thick with rage, and she sounded more like an animal than anything that walked upright, “You’re dead, you’re fucking dead!”

There was a splattering sound, and that propelled him along even harder, and he nearly fell as he pulled a sharp turn and galloped up another alley branch, so scared that he couldn’t even feel any pain in his mangled shoulder, which dripped blood down his arm like liquid fire, soaking his sleeve and fingers with gore.  His lungs burnt as though they were made of paper and he’d just inhaled a match, and while he was still able to run all-out, he didn’t know how much longer his body was going to be able to take this punishment, especially now that he was losing blood.  He clamped a hand to his shoulder, gasping at the sudden pain that shot through him, as though his body had suddenly realized that it was hurt, and he pressed on the wound as his run turned into a stagger, trying to stop the flow of blood.

The bedraggled journalist made it to the end of the alley and stumbled out onto a sidewalk that was full of people that looked like they’d just stepped out of a music video from the 1980’s or those weird fetish magazines one sometimes saw on gas station book racks.  They barely spared him a glance as he flopped against a wall and simply stood there for a few moments, gasping like mad, taking in his new surroundings as he ripped at his bloodsoaked sleeve, working on turning it into a makeshift tourniquet.  Probably the worst thing that one could do when being pursued by a vampire was leave a trail of blood and he was desperate to put a stop to it.  Nobody even looked at him as he feverishly worked on his shoulder, and it still amazed him how blasé the people of Los Angeles could be when they were faced with something out of the ordinary: they simply stepped out of its way and went on about its business, barely ever giving it a second thought.  It was no wonder the mortal population hadn’t noticed the vampires roaming around the city . . . they ignored the vampires just like they did everything else.

Having patched himself up as best he could with pieces torn from his shirt, he grasped his shoulder again and started down the sidewalk, wanting to keep moving while the adrenaline was still pumping through his veins.  If he let himself lose any momentum out in the open, he was as good as dead by dawn, easy prey for angry vampires.  He had to keep moving until he was safe, and that wasn’t going to happen until the sun was up.  Just an hour or two longer, that’s all he had to last and he’d be safe.  But how was he going to make it until dawn?  He was already starting to feel the effects of blood-loss and exhaustion, and there was no way that he was going to be able to keep running for that long.  And dammit, he still had to call Stella and warn her!

            He made it around the corner and found himself looking at a big crowd gathered around the front of a shabby-looking old building emitting some very loud and grating sounds.  It took him a few moments to realize that the sounds were actually music and that he was looking at a nightclub of some sort, which was a pretty hopping place despite the late hour.

But then again, L.A. never slept, and the night was as busy as the day, just in different and often strange ways, such as the guy painted green popping up out of a nearby garbage can and declaring himself to be the almighty Grouch King while trying to stab passers-by with a syringe full of who-knew-what.  Then there was a group of acid-heads racing go-karts around the club’s parking lot, running an obstacle course only they could see.  In the daytime, L.A. was merely surreal, but at night it was another world, as though an alternate dimension took up residence in the city during the dark hours.  In this environment, a bloody guy stumbling around on the sidewalk, or even a vampire chasing the bloody guy, for that matter, was no big deal.  Compared to the Grouch King, Kimmie was positively mundane.

But if vampires could use this nighttime madness to hide themselves, maybe he could, too.

He remembered seeing the vampiresses stopping to sniff for him in the alley before they found him, and how Mary had needed a “refresh” from Kimmie because of all the conflicting scents floating around Los Angeles.  Maybe if he went into a place that was completely packed with a wild variety of people and myriad odors, not to mention sights and sounds, he could simply hide beneath that extra layer of sensory overload and wait out his pursuers.  Not only that, it’d be a place where he could sit and bide his time, instead of having to run himself completely ragged.  It’d probably help him out a great deal to be able to stop and catch his breath in a safe environment, not to mention the fact that he could likely find a phone inside the club.

Lurching past a couple dressed up like a priest and a nun, he walked up towards the big double-doors of the club, which were cracked open to let forth a cacophony of musical racket to entice people to come in and sample what the club offered.  Above the club was a flickering neon sign that read “Hellmouth” in blood-red letters.  “How very appropriate,” he muttered as he went up the steps and moved to push one of the doors open.

A big beefy hand slapped his chest, almost knocking him over, and he frantically grabbed at it and moved to shove it away before he even realized what was happening.  “Get away from me!” he screamed, coming very close to falling backwards down the steps.

“Hey!  You ain’t goin’ in until you cough up the five bucks, fucko!” barked an enormous bald-headed man dressed in an old cop outfit, complete with a nametag that proclaimed him as “Bull” to one and all.  The huge man leaned over until he was nose-to-nose with Walter, looking terribly imposing.  “Well?  You got the money, or you just gonna waste my time?  My time’s very valuable, by the way, and I hate to have it wasted.”

It took him a few moments of fumbling around in his pockets to produce some cash, and he gave Bull a sodden twenty-dollar bill.  “If anybody asks, you didn’t see me,” he said, keeping his voice very calm and confident, not too worried about Bull, considering what was currently chasing him.  Actually, he was more concerned about Bull slowing down the process of getting under cover than about getting his ass kicked by the strapping bouncer.

Bull’s scowl suddenly broke into a huge grin and he took the money with a gracious nod of his head.  “Thankyouverymuch, sir!” he exclaimed, pushing a big door open and giving Walter a theatrical bow as he tapped his head with a finger as big around as a sausage.  “I didn’t see a thing.  Had a problem with my short-term memory since taking a shell-casing in my head in ‘Nam, you understand.  Welcome to the Hellmouth, sir!”

“Thanks,” said Walter, marching forward into the thick, smoky air of the club, looking to get himself good and lost.

Getting lost within the red-lit club was easy enough, as it was huge on the inside, with a stage dominating one end of it and a second level wrapping around the walls overhead, with people of all shapes, sizes, and descriptions leaning against or hanging over the rails, engaged in all manner of activities.  The air was thick with sweat, smoke, and carnality, like that of some hellish jungle.  Normally he would’ve been disgusted, but now he was grateful for it; the worse things smelled, the better.  To add to Walter’s delight, the club was absolutely stuffed to the gills, and he had a hard time simply moving towards one of the corners, the people were packed so deep.

Nobody gave him a single look as he pushed through the hordes, as everybody’s attention was either focused on the leather-clad band shrieking away on the stage or on each other.  Despite himself, he stopped several times just to gawk, as there were things going on that he’d only heard about and had never actually witnessed; this place was like a strip club, whorehouse, and concert hall all rolled into one.  All the better, because the more chaos he was hidden within, the harder it would be for the vampires to find him.

He found an overturned table in a dark corner, a few feet away from a couple engaged in an act usually reserved for the bedroom, and he tiredly set the table and chair upright then sank into the latter, politely declining an offer from the couple to join them.  Instead he simply sat there, staring at the crowd and letting himself calm down a little before looking for a phone.

He ran a hand through his hair, letting the other rest on the table, as it belonged to the arm connected to his aching shoulder, which didn’t much feel like moving at the moment.  It was hard to believe he’d come to a place like this to find solace, but when the alternative was facing some angry vampires, he’d gladly take a decadent, messed-up place like the Hellmouth.

The journalist started to pull back the cloth roughly covering his wound, to see just how badly Kimmie’s nails had hurt him, but just jostling it around was enough to make it sting like crazy, and he hissed in pain, wondering if vampire nails were tinged with some kind of poison.  That had been the case in some of the stories he’d read for his research, at least.  His ears burned slightly at the thought of how the vampires had laughed at his efforts to study up on them; what the hell else was he supposed to do?  But regardless, his shoulder hurt like hell, and he got the feeling that the pain was minor compared to what it was going to be whenever the adrenaline had totally worn off, but hopefully by that time he’d be well on his way out of town, possibly even with Stella.

The band, all females dressed in black-and-red leather outfits, finally reached the end of the horrid mockery of a song they’d been savaging their way through, giving his ears a momentary respite, though the sounds of the freaks and weirdos cheering weren’t much better.  “Thank you, thank you!” bellowed the diminutive singer, holding a jagged-looking guitar over her head.  “Our eternal hatred for you all, our legions of the damned!  Now bow before your mistresses, we who are the creatures of the night!”  With that, the band launched into a scorching cover of the Kiss classic, “Creatures of the Night,” and Walter nearly fell out of his seat as he turned and looked at the band in horror.

The singer was none other than Donita Lightning.

The drummer was Katheryne Black.

The Amazonian redhead wielding the bass was Kali, otherwise known as Brandi.

The smaller redhead with the guitar was Venus d’Morte, also known as Clarisse.

Collectively, they referred to themselves as Rapture, and they were the most popular band in the local heavy metal scene, loved and adored by hundreds of music-lovers, and they were all vampires, he was sure of it.  As if it wasn’t obvious . . .

Every single one of them had their fangs openly bared on the stage as they crashed their way through the song, and their eyes burnt with the same unholy light that he’d seen in Kimmie’s.  The crowd loved it, thinking it was only an act, their minds so used to rationalizing everything out of the ordinary that they did all the cover-up work for the vampires on the stage.  A number of fans in the crowd were even aping their undead heroines with fangs of their own, gnashing and flashing them with gleeful abandon, some of them even nibbling on each other.  Then he caught sight of more than a few sets of eyes glowing in the crowd, and a cold sweat broke out on his tired flesh.  Some of them weren’t pretending to be vampires, not at all.

They were everywhere.

He bolted to his feet, knocking his chair over onto the carnal couple, who both yowled in surprise, and as a fresh surge of adrenaline shot through his system, Walter went haywire and started frantically pushing through the crowd, the pain in his shoulder completely forgotten.  Nobody gave him a second thought as he struggled through the writhing knots of people, as the sight of someone going crazy in a club like this wasn’t unusual.  Everybody figured that he was yet another acid-head or crack addict and tried to get out of his way as best they could.

The screeching journalist shoved aside several patrons as he leaped down the stairs of the Hellmouth and ran back out into the street, nearly getting run over yet again, and Bull yelled after him, “I still didn’t see a thing, sir!  Your secret’s safe with me!”

*     *     *

            “Hmmmello?”

            Walter’s heart, already exhausted from the workout it had gotten tonight, nearly sprang out of his chest at the sound of his ex-wife’s voice, which he hadn’t heard in over a year.  He silently thanked the universe that she was still living at their old place, whose number he had permanently etched into his brain.  “Stella?  Thank God!  Stella, you’ve got to listen to me, please, because it’s very important!”

            “Walter?  Do you have any idea what time it is?” her voice was thick with sleep, but the annoyance was apparent.

            “Actually no, but you’ve gotta listen to me, okay?  This is gonna sound crazy, but—“

            “Oh, don’t give me that line, Walter,” hissed the woman he loved, her voice icy.  “I know exactly what your game is.”

            Now this was something he hadn’t expected.  Off-balance and still scared as hell, he rapidly glanced at his surroundings, bathed in the faint light of a dawn that was only a short while away.  All he saw was a laundromat and gas station, both abandoned, on either side of the broken-down old deli the payphone was situated in front of.  Fortunately, nobody was around save for a stray dog nosing around a rusty storm grating. 

After leaving the Hellmouth, he’d jumped a bus and rode it around town for a brief while, until he’d gotten so jittery that he’d demanded to be dropped off immediately, which had been a few blocks from where he currently was.  He’d fearfully darted from alley to alley and doorway to doorway until he’d finally found this payphone, which, believe it or not, actually worked.  A few coins deposited and seven digits later, he was in touch with his ex-wife at long last, but it already wasn’t going as he’d hoped. 

“Say what?  Stella, listen to me, this is—“

            “About your girlfriend?  I already talked to her today, Walter, and I know ALL about it, you miserable piece of shit.”

            He pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it in disbelief for a moment, and then put it back.  “My girlfriend?  You don’t mean Julia, do you?  How could—“

            “JULIA?!  You’ve got another one besides poor Kimmie?  What the hell’s wrong with you?”

            “KIMMIE?!” Walter shouted.  That fucking bitch!  Kimmie had already gotten to her, but instead of just killing her, she did something worse: she’d turned his ex-wife against him.  “Stella, you’ve got to—“

            “Shut the fuck up, Walter.  Kimmie and her friend stopped by tonight and told me all about how you got her pregnant last month and then disappeared on her.  She didn’t know where you lived, so I went ahead and told her everything I could about her, so you can’t disappear on her again.  You’re a bastard, Walter, you really are.  My God, how could you do that to that poor girl?  You can just tell by the way she dresses that she’s got problems, and you’re not helping her any.”  The harshness in Stella’s voice gave way to something that was a lot worse: utter disappointment in him.  “You used to be such a good guy, Walter.  What happened to you?”

            Stammering, trying to keep from screaming at her for telling that vampire bitch where he lived, the trembling journalist said, “You don’t understand, Stella.  This isn’t at all what you think, trust me.”

            “No, I’m afraid that it’s even worse than I think.  I don’t want to know any more than I already do.  Kimmie felt terrible about getting me involved at all, but I can understand why she did it.  But I can’t understand why you did what you did.  Is this what you’ve been doing in your spare time since we ended things?  No, don’t tell me, because I don’t want to know.”  Stella’s voice was shaky now, as though she was on the verge of tears, and that gave him a little hope, as odd as that may have sounded, because at least she actually still gave a shit about him, even if she had the completely wrong ideas in her head.

            He took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.  He couldn’t afford to screw this up, because he doubted he’d have another chance.  Not only that, he had serious doubts that the vampires would let Stella live once her usefulness to them had ended.  Why would they?  That would just be one more loose end to deal with, wouldn’t it?  Or was he just being paranoid?  If Stella didn’t know Kimmie was a vampire, what would the point be in killing her?  Did there even need to be a point?  He didn’t really know what to think anymore.  He just wanted to be safe with Stella, someplace warm, sunny, and vampire-free.  He had to make that happen.

            “Stella, if you’ve ever cared about me at all, give me five minutes and listen to what I have to say.  We were married, baby, and I still love you, very, very much, and I’m in the middle of something that has nothing at all to do with getting anybody pregnant.  Just please let me explain it to you, and if you don’t like or believe it, then you can hang up and I’ll go on my way and never bother you again, all right?” he asked, his voice firm, not sounding the least bit pleading, no matter how much he was mentally begging her to listen to him.  But if this was the last time she was ever going to speak with him, he at least wanted her to remember him as being strong instead of whiny.

            There was a long pause, and finally she whispered, “All right, Walter.  Tell me what you have to tell me.  I owe you that much, at least.”

            “Thanks, baby,” he said, letting the warmth flow into his voice as a grin spread across his face.  “This is going to sound crazy, but just bear with me, okay?”

Before Stella could answer, a slender hand with long, black-painted nails reached over his shoulder and pressed the payphone’s hangup lever into place with a loud, metallic click.

He stared at the hand uncomprehendingly, his mind running around in circles, suddenly too scared to process what it was seeing.  He felt the phone’s receiver being lifted from his grasp, and then another slender hand, this one with nails painted a faded blue, carefully placed it back onto the cradle, the first hand smoothly moving out of the way.  He noticed that the tips of the black nails were crusted with blood, and he had a pretty good idea where it had come from.

“We’ll bear with you just fine,” hissed a familiar voice in his ear, but this one was a great deal more unwelcome than the last.  “And we’ll believe you, don’t worry.”

A hand came down on his shoulder and spun him around, and he was facing both Kimmie and Mary once again.  The redheaded vampiress merely looked grim, while the pink-haired one had an expression that was both triumphant and utterly hateful.  “Tell us everything you know,” said Kimmie, not even trying to hide her fangs.  “I insist.”

He said nothing, and simply stared at Kimmie.  As a matter of fact, he couldn’t say anything.  He’d heard the phrase “choking on one’s own rage” before, but had never realized that it was actually possible.  It felt like hands were closing around his throat, cutting off his oxygen and speech, and he could do nothing save glare at the pink-haired vampiress, wishing he had the strength to kill her with his bare hands.  How dare she lie to Stella and use her against him!

Kimmie gave him a bitter smile and laughed harshly.  “Oh, is the little mortal getting mad?  Is he upset that I used his pretty little ex-wife to find out where he lives?”  She kept her eyes on his, boring into them, and now that they weren’t glowing he saw that they were a rather brilliant shade of blue.  Like ice.  Like cold.  Like the hateful bitch’s heart.

Without warning, her fist shot forward, whizzing past his face and missing it by less than an inch, and it smashed into the payphone, shattering the receiver and caving in the sturdy metal construction.  To his shame, he shut his eyes when she threw the punch, and the sound of the payphone being crushed made him cringe.

“Tough shit,” sneered Kimmie, and he opened his eyes to see her pull her fist away from the payphone, which fell off the brick wall it was mounted on to the sidewalk with a tremendous crash.  “Maybe you should have thought about what happens whenever you fuck around with stuff that’s beyond you.”  She leaned closer, and though it was a struggle, he managed to keep his eyes open.  Oddly enough, her breath didn’t smell like death or blood as he’d imagined it would; it smelled like cinnamon, actually.  As a matter of fact, it had smelled like that earlier, too, but it just hadn’t registered until now.  Not that it really mattered.

“I was like you, not too long ago, believe it or not,” said the vampiress.  “I went hunting around for vampires, certain of their existence, but not knowing anything else.  I looked in the shadows for them, went to clubs, tried to sneak into secluded places to see if I could catch one feeding, and sure enough, just like you did, I found them.  But unlike you, I embraced them, and I became one of them.”  There was a definite pride in her voice, and she sounded like a girl that had just been accepted into an exclusive club and was lording it over the world in general.  “Then there’s you, who thinks that he’s got to tell the whole world about us, so that the rest of the mortal world will swoop down upon Los Angeles and crush us, wipe us out, and make the world safe for all of you sun-walking fuckheads.  You wanna be the big hero of humanity; oh so noble!  You know what?  Fuck you.”

He jumped as Kimmie jabbed her middle finger up right in front of his face and waggled it.  He wasn’t having a hard time maintaining eye-contact with her now, because he was so pissed off that he was hoping that he could vaporize the vampiress with just a steady stream of enraged thoughts.  Unfortunately, instead of reducing her to ash, his ire just seemed to work up the little tyrant even further.  “You don’t even know the first thing about us, but you condemn all of us as monsters.”  She laughed sharply.  “Monsters?  Sorry, pal, but you mortals are way ahead of us in the monster category.  Hitler, Stalin, and Mengele were all completely mortal, and that’s just for starters.”

“Kimmie?”  Mary spoke aloud for the first time in this encounter, and neither Walter nor the other vampiress paid her any mind, especially Kimmie, who was apparently getting on a roll now that she’d finally caught him.

“You know what the difference between you and me is?  I’m going to live forever, and you’re dead meat.  You know why?  Because I recognized something wonderful when I saw it and I capitalized on it, where you were going to try to piss all over it for us.  You thought you were going to fight an entire legion of immortals and win simply by writing your dumb little articles, didn’t you?  I know your kind when I see it.  You know what the problem with you regular mortals is, Walter?  You really overestimate yourselves,” sneered Kimmie, clucking her tongue at him.

“Kimmie!”  The British vampiress tugged on her friend’s sleeve insistently.  Walter looked past Kimmie, up over her shoulder, and did his best to stay angry at the evil bitch crowing in his face.

“Not now, Mary!  Let me enjoy the moment.  If you’re not comfortable with this, you don’t have to watch.”  Her voice impudent and bratty, Kimmie brushed the other vampiress off, then grabbed Walter’s chin in her hand.  Her flesh was very soft and very warm, not at all cold and hard like in so many vampire books, but he shuddered nonetheless.  That was good, though, because it kept him good and mad.  Just a little bit longer . . .  “Now, you’re going to tell me every little thing you learned about us.”

He tried to shake his head, but her hand held his head firmly in place.  “Not a chance,” he growled.

“Kimmie!  Dammit!”

Kimmie laughed again, ignoring Mary.  “Oh, you’re going to tell me everything, whether you want to or not.  You don’t exactly have a choice in this.  You see, if me biting your fingers off one at a time doesn’t do it,” she said, pausing a moment to run her tongue over her ivory fangs, “Then I’ll just simply get into your head and see what’s in there for myself.  All of those books on vampires back in your apartment may be so much shit in most aspects, but one thing most of them got right was how—“

“Kimmie!  The sun, the bloody sun!” Mary screamed, spinning the other vampiress around and pointing up at the lightening sky, where the first rays of the sun were peeking over the tops of the buildings in the distance.

It was exactly what he’d been waiting for, and if it weren’t for the fact that Mary was on the ball, Kimmie wouldn’t have even noticed at all.  Shoving against her with all of his might, using strength born of utter desperation, he knocked the startled vampiress backwards and kicked her between the legs as hard as he could.  Pushing past her, he decked Mary squarely in the nose just as the morning’s initial shafts of sunlight shot through the air and made contact with vampiric flesh.  A smell disgustingly similar to hot dogs filled the air as both vampiresses shrieked and hissed at dawn’s warming touch, and he darted away from them as they writhed around in the sunlight for a few moments,