Anno Dracula (14 page)

Her voice was soft and clear, with a long-ago ghost of an accent. Italian or Spanish or French.

‘R.D., you know we don’t accommodate vipers,’ said Mom. ‘No offence, ma’am, you seem nice enough, but we’ve had bad ones through here. And out at the castle.’

Mom nodded at the sign and the girl swivelled on her stool. She genuinely noticed it for the first time and the tiniest flush came to her cheeks.

Almost apologetically, she said, ‘You probably don’t have the fare I need?’

‘No, ma’am, we don’t.’

She slipped off her stool and stood up. Relief poured out of Mom like sweat.

R.D., the trucker, reached out for the viper’s slender, bare arm, for a reason I doubt he could explain. He was a big man, not slow on the draw. However, when his fingers got to where the girl had been when his brain sparked the impulse to touch, she was somewhere else.

‘Touchy,’ commented R.D.

‘No offence,’ she said.

‘I’ve got the
fare
you need,’ said the trucker, standing up. He scratched his throat through beard.

‘I’m not that thirsty.’

‘A man might take that unkindly.’

‘If you know such a man, give him my condolences.’

‘R.D.,’ said Mom. ‘Take this outside. I don’t want my place busted up.’

‘I’m leaving,’ said R.D., dropping dollars by his coffee cup and cleaned plate. ‘I’ll be honoured to see you in the parking lot, Missy Touchy.’

‘My name is Geneviève,’ she said, ‘accent grave on the third e.’

R.D. put on his cowboy hat. The viper darted close to him and lightning-touched his forehead. The effect was something like the Vulcan nerve pinch. The light in his eyes went out. She deftly sat him down at a table, like a floppy rag doll. A yellow toy duck squirted out of the top pocket of his denim jacket and thumped against a plastic ketchup tomato in an unheard of mating ritual.

‘I am sorry,’ she said to the room. ‘I have been driving for a long time and could not face having to cripple this man. I hope you will explain this to him when he wakes up. He’ll ache for a few days, but an icepack will help.’

Mom nodded. Pop had his hands out of sight, presumably on a shotgun or a baseball bat.

‘For whatever offence my kind has given you in the past, you have my apologies. One thing, though: your sign — the word “viper”. I hear it more and more as I travel west, and it strikes me as insulting. “No Vampire Fare on Offer” will convey your message, without provoking less gentle
vipers
than myself.’

She looked mock-sternly at the couple, with a hint of fang. Pop pulled his hold-out pacifier and I tensed, expecting fireworks. He raised a gaudy Day of the Dead crucifix on a lamp-flex, a glowing-eyed Christ crowned by thorny lightbulbs.

‘Hello, Jesus,’ said Geneviève, then added, to Pop, ‘Sorry, sir, but I’m not that kind of girl.’

She did the fast-flit thing again and was at the door.

‘Aren’t you going to take your trophy?’ I asked.

She turned, seeing me for the first time, and lowered her glasses. Green-red eyes like neons. I could see why she kept on the lens caps. Otherwise, she’d pick up a train of mesmerised conquests.

I held up the toy and squeezed. It gave a quack.

‘Rubber Duck,’ said Mom, with reverence. ‘That’s his CB handle.’

‘He’ll need new initials,’ I said.

I flew the duck across the room and Geneviève took it out of the air, an angel in the outfield. She made it quack, experimentally. When she laughed, she looked the way Racquel ought to have looked. Not just innocent, but solemn and funny at the same time.

R.D. began moaning in his sleep.

‘May I walk you to your car?’ I asked.

She thought a moment, sizing me up as a potential geriatric Duckman, and made a snap decision in my favour, the most encouragement I’d had since Kennedy was in the White House.

I made it across the diner to her without collapsing.

* * *

I had never had a conversation with a vampire before. She told me straight off she was over 550 years old. She had lived in the human world for hundreds of years before Dracula changed the rules. From her face, I’d have believed her if she said she was born under the shadow of Sputnik and that her ambition was to become one of Roger Vadim’s ex-wives.

We stood on Main Street, where her fire-engine-red Plymouth Fury was parked by my Chrysler. The few stores and homes in sight were shuttered up tight, as if an air raid was due. The only place to go in town was the diner and that seemed on the point of closing. I noticed more of those ornamental crucifixes, attached above every door as if it were a religious holiday. Mojave Wells was wary of its new neighbours.

Geneviève was coming from the East and going to the West. Meagre as it was, this was the first place she’d hit in hours that wasn’t a government proving ground. She knew nothing about the Anti-Life Equation, Manderley Castle or a viper named Khorda, let alone Racquel Ohlrig.

But she was a vampire and this was all about vampires.

‘Why all the questions?’ she asked.

I told her I was a detective. I showed my licence, kept up so I could at least do the sub-contract work, and she asked to see my gun. I opened my jacket to show the shoulder-holster. It was the first time I’d worn it in years, and the weight of the Smith & Wesson .38 Special had pulled an ache in my shoulder.

‘You are a private eye? Like in the movies.’

Everyone said that. She was no different.

‘We have movies in Europe, you know,’ she said. The desert wind was trying to get under her scarf, and she was doing things about it with her hands. ‘You can’t tell me why you’re asking questions because you have a client. Is that not so?’

‘Not so,’ I said. ‘I have a man who might think he’s a client, but I’m doing this for myself. And a woman who’s dead. Really dead.’

I told the whole story, including me and Linda. It was almost confessional. She listened well, asking only the smart questions.

‘Why are you here? In... what is the name of this village?’

‘Mojave Wells. It calls itself a town.’

We looked up and down the street and laughed. Even the tumbleweeds were taking it easy.

‘Out there in the desert,’ I explained, ‘is Manderley Castle, brought over stone by stone from England. Would you believe it’s the wrong house? Back in the ’20s, a robber baron named Noah Cross wanted to buy the famous Manderley - the one that later burned down - and sent agents over to Europe to do the deal. They came home with Manderley Castle, another place entirely. Cross still put the jigsaw together, but went into a sulk and sold it back to the original owners, who emigrated to stay out of the War. There was a murder case there in the ’40s, nothing to do with me. It was one of those locked-room things, with Borgia poisons and disputed wills. A funny little Chinaman from Hawaii solved it by gathering all the suspects in the library. The place was abandoned until a cult of moon-worshippers squatted it in the ’60s, founded a lunatic commune. Now, it’s where you go if you want to find the Anti-Life Equation.’

‘I don’t believe anyone would call themselves that.’

I liked this girl. She had the right attitude. I was also surprised to find myself admitting that. She was a bloodsucking viper, right? Wasn’t Racquel worried that she was to be sacrificed to a vampire elder? Someone born in 1416 presumably fitted the description. I wanted to trust her, but that could be part of her trick. I’ve been had before. Ask anyone.

‘I’ve been digging up dirt on the ALE for a few days,’ I said, ‘and they aren’t that much weirder than the rest of the local kooks. If they have a philosophy, this Khorda makes it all up as he goes along. He cut a folk rock album,
Deathmaster.
I found a copy for ninety-nine cents and feel rooked. “Drinking blood/Feels so good”, that sort of thing. People say he’s from Europe, but no one knows exactly where. The merry band at the ALE includes a Dragon Lady called Diane LeFanu, who may actually own the castle, and L. Keith Winton, who used to be a pulp writer for
Astounding Stories
but has founded a new religion that involves the faithful giving him all their money.’

‘That’s not a
new
religion.’

I believed her.

‘What will you do now?’ she asked.

‘This town’s dead as far as leads go. Dead as far as anything else, for that matter. I guess I’ll have to fall back on the dull old business of going out to the castle and knocking on the front door, asking if they happen to have my wife’s daughter in the dungeon. My guess is they’ll be long gone. With a body left back in Poodle Springs, they have to figure the law will snoop for them in the end.’

‘But we might find something that’ll tell us where they are. A clue?’

‘“We”?’

‘I’m a detective, too. Or have been. Maybe a detective’s assistant. I’m in no hurry to get to the Pacific. And you need someone who knows about vampires. You may need someone who knows about other things.’

‘Are you offering to be my muscle? I’m not that ancient I can’t take care of myself.’

‘I
am
that ancient, remember. It’s no reflection on you, but a new-born vampire could take you to pieces. And a new-born is more likely to be stupid enough to want to. They’re mostly like that Rubber Duck fellow, bursting with impulses and high on their new ability to get what they want. I was like that once myself, but now I’m a wise old lady.’

She quacked the duck at me.

‘We take your car,’ I said.

* * *

Manderley Castle was just what it sounded like. Crenellated turrets, arrow-slit windows, broken battlements, a drawbridge, even a stagnant artificial moat. It was sinking slowly into the sands and the tower was noticeably several degrees out of the vertical. Noah Cross had skimped on foundation concrete. I wouldn’t be surprised if the minion who mistook this pile for the real Manderley was down there somewhere, with a divot sticking out of his skull.

We drove across the bridge into the courtyard, home to a VW bus painted with glow-in-the-dark fanged devils, a couple of pick-up trucks with rifle racks, the inevitable Harley-Davidsons and a fleet of customised dune buggies with batwing trimmings and big red-eye lamps.

There was music playing. I recognised Khorda’s composition, ‘Big Black Bat in a Tall Dark Hat’.

The Anti-Life Equation was home.

I tried to get out of the Plymouth. Geneviève was out of her driver’s side door and around (over?) the car in a flash, opening the door for me as if I were her great-grandmama.

‘There’s a trick to the handle,’ she said, making me feel no better.

‘If you try and help me out, I’ll shoot you.’

She stood back, hands up. Just then, my lungs complained. I coughed a while and red lights went off behind my eyes. I hawked up something glistening and spat it at the ground. There was blood in it.

I looked at Geneviève. Her face was flat, all emotion contained.

It wasn’t pity. It was the blood. The smell did things to her personality.

I wiped off my mouth, did my best to shrug, and got out of the car like a champion. I even shut the door behind me, trick-handle or no.

To show how fearless I was, how unafraid of hideous death, I lit a Camel and punished my lungs for showing me up in front of a girl. I filled them with the smoke I’d been fanning their way since I was a kid.

Coffin nails, they called them then.

We fought our aesthetic impulses and went towards the music. I felt I should have brought a mob of Mojave Wells villagers with flaming torches, sharpened stakes and silvered scythes.

‘“What a magnificent pair of knockers,”’ said Geneviève, nodding at a large square door.

‘There’s only one,’ I said.

‘Didn’t you see
Young Frankenstein
?’

Though she’d said they had movies in Europe, somehow I didn’t believe vipers - vampires, I’d have to get used to calling them if I didn’t want Geneviève ripping my throat out one fine night — concerned themselves with dates at the local passion pit. Obviously, the undead read magazines, bought underwear, grumbled about taxes and did crossword puzzles like everyone else. I wondered if she played chess.

She took the knocker and hammered to wake the dead.

Eventually the door was opened by a skinny old bird dressed as an English butler. His hands were knots of arthritis and he could do with a shave.

The music was mercifully interrupted.

‘Who is it, George?’ boomed a voice from inside the castle.

‘Visitors,’ croaked George the butler. ‘You are visitors, aren’t you?’

I shrugged. Geneviève radiated a smile.

The butler was smitten. He trembled with awe.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’m a vampire. And I’m very, very old and very, very thirsty. Now, aren’t you going to invite me in? Can’t cross the threshold unless you do.’

I didn’t know if she was spoofing him.

George creaked his neck, indicating a sandy mat inside the doorway. It was lettered with the word ‘WELCOME’.

‘That counts,’ she admitted. ‘More people should have those.’

She stepped inside. I didn’t need the invite to follow.

George showed us into the big hall. Like all decent cults, the ALE had an altar and thrones for the bigwigs and cold flagstones with the occasional mercy rug for the devoted suckers.

In the blockiest throne sat Khorda, a vampire with curly fangs, the full long-hair-and-tangled-beard hippie look and an electric guitar. He wore a violent purple and orange kaftan, and his chest was covered by bead necklaces hung with diamond-eyed skulls, plastic novelty bats, Austro-Hungarian military medals, inverted crosses, a ‘Nixon in ’72’ button, gold marijuana leaves and a dried human finger. By his side was a wraith-thin vision in velvet I assumed to be Diane LeFanu, who claimed - like a lot of vipers - to be California’s earliest vampire settler. I noticed she wore discreet little ruby earplugs.

At the feet of these divines was a crowd of kids, of both varieties, all with long hair and fangs. Some wore white shifts, while others were naked. Some wore joke-shop plastic fangs, while others had real ones. I scanned the congregation, and spotted Racquel at once, eyes a red daze, kneeling on stone with her shift tucked under her, swaying her ripe upper body in time to the music Khorda had stopped playing.