Bride of the Rat God (28 page)

“Alec!” called a soft southern voice from behind them. “Alec, Billy’s been dying to meet you.”

Norah recognized the tall, slightly stooping form of D. W. Griffith, with a burly man at his side who had Alec’s way of angling his head to look at lights. While Alec was speaking to them, Blake Fallon appeared, fair hair smoothed back and blue eyes questing over the room in search of Christine, and introduced Norah to a handsome man whose name—Ken Vidal—she thought she recognized as that of a well-known director. “I’m
so
pleased to meet you,” she said, holding out her hand to him as Fallon was absorbed once more into the crowd. “I’ve admired your work.” A politic lie since, other than
Kiss of Darkness
and
Guns of the Sunset,
she hadn’t seen a movie in four years.

“Have you, my dear?” he purred, looking her up and down. Then he smiled graciously and took her by the arm and for the next half hour escorted her assiduously around the room, introducing her to men she recognized as the owners of studios or to somewhat more elderly and substantial gentlemen whom he described as “financial backers.” The only one she knew to talk to was the frail, gracious septuagenarian Ambrose Conklin, who had sent a thousand red roses to Chrysanda Flamande’s dressing room at Colossus three days earlier, to the profound annoyance of A. F. Brown.

Christine, naturally, had immediately telephoned the film columnists of all six major newspapers in Los Angeles to have photographs taken of herself and the Pekes reclining in a sea of crimson blossoms. “Darling, it’s absolutely
fabulous
publicity for the picture,” she’d reassured Brown, passing a hand over his beefy shoulder. “And fabulous publicity for me,” she’d added to Norah later as they packed up the flowers to be carried by the carload to Ivarene Street. “I mean, just between the two of us, I’m
not
getting any younger, so if I can get a really big contract from Triangle or Lassky out of this, I’ll do it.”

Conklin patted Norah’s hand and said, “Really, dear child, I didn’t know you knew Ken,” with a doubtful glance at the suave, dark man.

Only later, when Alec had finally extricated himself from conversation with an almost incoherent Dale Wilmer, did he ask, “Do you know who that is?”

Norah shook her head. “Vidal... isn’t he a director?”

“That’s
King Vidor...
Ken arranges meetings between wealthy producers and beautiful would-be stars for the mutual benefit of all three parties. I hope you didn’t give any of those financial backers your telephone number.”

Norah rolled her eyes. “What a childish piece of malice! Mr. Fallon introduced us—getting back at me for playing gooseberry, I suppose.” She looked quickly around but saw nothing of his fair head and broad black shoulders. Christine, slightly drunk, was leaning on the piano, raptly engaged in conversation with a tuxedoed and extremely shy-looking Monty, the stuntman from Red Bluff. Even more than Alec, she seemed to have acquired her outfit at Western Costume instead of I. Magnin, with an eye toward Mr. Brown’s decor: diaphanous silver tissue exquisitely pleated and caught together by a massive appliqué of Egyptian beadwork—turquoise, crimson, and bronze—on the left hip, trailing a cascade of bronze fringe almost to the floor. A similarly Egyptian jewel gleamed on her brow, supporting a tassel of peacock feathers, and the cold whiteness of the Chinese necklace shimmered on her half-bared breast.

“Don’t be silly, darling,” she’d said earlier, when—only an hour late for the party, which for Christine was good—Norah had uneasily tried to talk her out of wearing the Moon of Rats. “Ambrose is going to be there, and what with him sending me all those roses and the way Blake has been following me around, I think Frank needs to see where my affections still lie.”

Short on sleep from dinner with Brown the previous night and weary from a day’s filming, Christine had clearly dosed herself with “razzle-dazzle” and had the dangerously brittle brightness that brooked no argument. Watching her now, Norah guessed by her languid amorousness toward the young horse wrangler and her restless, flippant, provocative glances in Frank Brown’s direction that she’d had another dose of the same at some point in the evening, on top of copious quantities of gin and champagne—far from the only person in the room to have done so. Dale Wilmer had already been escorted off the premises, stumbling into pillars as he went. In the harsh electric glare the shadow in the central jewel didn’t seem to move at all until one took one’s eyes off it.

Norah sighed.
I’m not her mother,
she thought wearily.
If she disappears upstairs for half the evening
—Flindy McColl was on her third trip—
it isn’t any of my business.
She wondered if Alec would mind giving her a lift home.

Then Christine’s voice cut into her consciousness over the din of the crowd, “Well, I always thought there was something fishy about it,” she said, now holding on to the boy’s hand and gesturing with the other hand in a line of cigarette smoke. “I could
swear
I saw Charlie in Venice a week ago, getting off a streetcar...”

“My dear Norah,” a voice said behind her, and a small, bony hand closed like a shackle on her wrist just as she was heading in Christine’s direction. Turning, she saw Mrs. Violet, severely robed in mauve and pearls and quite clearly not about to have a good time.

“Excuse me,” she began, but Mrs. Violet kept her grip.

“Now, my dear, I know you’re from a foreign country and don’t know all the ins and outs of Hollywood, so surely you won’t take it amiss that I warn you against men like that dreadful Ken Vidal...”

Norah cast a despairing glance back at Christine, just in time to see her and the stuntman vanish, through a very tall bronze door into some other room. She thought she heard someone ask, “What would Charlie be doing in Venice, Chris?”

“Looking for a drink, darling, what else?”

That little idiot...

“...mansions on Adams Avenue and disgraceful carryings-on designed to turn the heads of good girls like yourself, let alone girls like Christine, and believe me, I hold nothing against Christine, but...”

Damn it, thought Norah. There was literally no telling who was here tonight. But if Aaron Jesperson had been telephoning the police as well as the newspapers—a logical assumption—it stood to reason that they would have sent some well-dressed informer to circulate at the Colossus Christmas party.

“Ah, my dearest Madame Blackstone!” cried Hraldy, edging his way through the crowd and completely ignoring the still-fulminating Mrs. Violet. He led a tall and extremely queenly woman in purple chiffon, irresistibly reminding Norah of an overly eager poodle dragging its mistress on a leash. “All evening I am look for you to introduce you to so-fabulous Miss Glyn.”

Apparently the distractedness of her replies and her increasingly obvious efforts to conclude the conversations and leave went unperceived. Quite possibly, she reflected, neither Mrs. Violet, Elinor Glyn, nor Mikos Hraldy could conceive of anyone wanting to escape from their company. It was ten minutes before Alec cut ruthlessly into the little group, caught Norah by the arm and said, “Norah, Mr. Brown wants to see you right away,” and steered her out of the nearest door—fortunately, the bronze monolith through which Christine and the stuntman had disappeared.

The room was a sort of study, its low ceiling painted dark blue and studded with stars a la early dynastic paintings. Monkey-faced gods peered out from between massive bookcases and lotus-headed columns flanking French windows whose curtains—printed with papyrus and more hieroglyphics—belled gently with the cold influx of the night wind.

“The idiot!” sighed Norah, flinging open the curtains and stepping out onto an expanse of granite terrace beyond. Sphinxes, their necks wreathed in ivy and mistletoe, guarded steps leading down into a darkness of grass still wet from two days of rain. The full moon hung cold in midheaven, flooding the lawn with a nacreous light and turning the grass to a carpet of quicksilver beads. Beyond a thin line of trees the parked autos gleamed like polished steel eggs.

Against those distant trees Christine’s silvery dress glimmered fairylike, blending with the black shape of the young man upon whose shoulder she leaned.

“You going after her?” Alec perched on the back of a sphinx as Norah paused irresolutely. His glasses flashed as he turned his head to look across the acre of lawn, where the far-off shapes made their leisured way toward the darkness of the woods.

Then he said “What the...?” and sprang to his feet. Norah, following his eyes, saw the white gleam of Christine’s dress as it wavered and fluttered with sudden movement like a lily in the wind. Against the dark of the trees it was hard to tell, but there was blurred movement; it was quite clear when Christine fell—or was thrown—to the ground.

Both she and Alec were halfway across the lawn when they heard her scream.

Sign of sacrifice.

Auspicious to take a bride...

Ill omens—it is better to stay home...

L
ATER,
N
ORAH SUPPOSED
that she or Alec should have run back into the house for help, though she suspected that Christine would have been dead before enough sober guests were found to undertake a rescue. Even while she and Alec were racing across the sodden grass, she guessed the scream wouldn’t be heard over the din of the party.

It was only when Alec yelled “BLAKE!” that Norah realized who it was bending over Christine’s body.

Norah had stopped to pull off her shoes. She had a blurred impression of Fallon straddling Christine and thought for one furious second that in a drunken rage he was trying to rape her. The next moment she realized his hands were around Christine’s throat. Christine’s body bucked and heaved, trying to twist free of him, and Norah, still running madly across what seemed dreamlike miles of lawn, saw a white arm snake up past the black one and rip at the down-bent face.

The next second Alec reached the two struggling figures and seized Fallon by the shoulders, heaving at him like a man trying to thrust over a great weight. Christine clawed at Fallon’s hands, and Norah glimpsed blood, huge gouts of it splashing everywhere—she could smell the heavy stink of it—far more than fingernails could have drawn. Then Fallon turned his head.

Christine had gouged out his left eye.

And he didn’t seem to notice.

Blood covered Christine’s hand, ran down her arm, dribbled thickly onto her white dress; the whole side of Fallon’s face was masked in it. He wore no expression of pain, no expression whatsoever.

Alec sprang back, unable to break the insane strength of the larger man’s grip, and delivered a kick to the side of Fallon’s head with all the strength in his body. Norah saw the head whip sideways and heard, small but very clear, a sound that had to be the spine snapping. At the same instant Christine wrenched her arm around and rolled with the whole of her weight against the hands upon her throat. Fallon fell sideways, Christine slithering from under him, up onto her hands and knees, long hair dragging down over her face, stockings torn, and white gown a tangle of grass and mud and gore.

Head lolling like a half-decapitated doll’s, Fallon lunged at her again.

By that time Norah was looking around for a weapon, cursing the fact that she’d left her high-heeled shoes somewhere behind. For the first time she saw the body of the boy Monty in the velvet shadows of the shrubbery, head covered with blood, the stubby glint of a tire iron nearby. Everything seemed to be taking place on film that had been cranked very high so that it moved cold-treacle slow when shown at normal camera speed: Christine’s struggles against the hands that tore at her breasts, her face, her clothing, trying to reach her throat again; Alec on Fallon’s back, ignored as if he weren’t there. Norah caught up the tire iron and strode forward, raising it above her head like a navvy driving a rail spike. “Alec!” she screamed, and Alec dropped aside as she brought the bar down with all the strength in her arms.

The skull caved like a split melon, the sound and smell hideous, blood, hair, and worse things splattering everywhere. Alec grabbed Christine, pulled her free, and held her while she hung on to him with her bloody hand, sobbing, and Norah stepped back, trembling, staring down at what she had done and feeling that she was about to be sick.

The tire iron dropped from hands that suddenly seemed to have no strength left. Absurdly, she remembered Jim’s first letter to her from the front:
I never killed a man before. I didn’t know if I could. And now I’ve killed two, three... And those only the ones I could see. I didn’t even ask myself what I was doing. When some total stranger is coming at you with a bayonet, you don’t ask.

Archipelagoes of blood and matter strung the shimmer of her dress, soaking through like warm glue against her legs.

Alec started to gasp, “Are you all right?” but even that sentence wasn’t finished.

Fallon rolled over and started to get up.

For one second Norah thought—probably they all thought, she reflected—that it was only some bizarre motor reflex. But when he gathered his hands under him and stood, brains and gore leaking down his tuxedo-clad shoulders, when he picked up the tire iron with a hand dark with his own blood, when he looked at them with his single remaining eye reflecting red in the glare of the parking lot lights on the other side of the tennis court, they knew.

He shouted something, Norah didn’t know what. Tire iron in hand, he came at them, but she and Alec were already running, dragging the exhausted Christine between them. Fallon—Fallon’s corpse, murder like the cold blaze of the moon in his face under the black striping of blood—was between them and the house. Trees scraped at Norah’s bare arms as they crashed through the woods toward the temporary parking lot, and Norah could hear the whip and hiss of the foliage around another body shambling just behind her. She could smell the blood and the waste his body had voided when life had left it. She wasn’t even conscious of a sense of nightmare, only that she had to escape, whatever the cost, that she
must not
let the thing behind them touch her.