Vamparazzi (5 page)

“Indeed.” After a moment it occurred to me that Leischneudel was so terrified of the fans that (despite the touching promise he had made this evening to protect me from them) he usually hid behind me whenever we saw them. So I said, “Wait a minute. How do you know what the fans are saying?”

“Fan blogs,” he said. “I took my laptop to the vet's today. And I had a
lot
of time on my hands while they treated Mimi.”

“
This
is what the fans talk about online? Ruthven's hidden depths?”

Leischneudel laughed at my incredulous tone. “Among other things. They talk a lot about Daemon, too, of course. About his lifestyle, about his career, and about wanting to, um, meet him. They also talk about us—the other actors in the show—which is sometimes interesting . . . and sometimes embarrassing.”

“Let me guess,” I said dryly. “Your trousers?”

“Sometimes.” He cleared his throat.

Leischneudel was well-proportioned, and his costume fit him like a second skin.

He continued, “Mostly, they talk a lot about being vampires, or wanting to be vampires, or what they think vampires are like. They also talk about wanting to, um, get personal with a vampire.”

“No kidding?” I said dryly.

“They parse every scene in the play, particularly the ones with Daemon, analyzing every line, every movement, and every glance to a degree that's either scholarly or obsessive—I can't quite decide.”

“I'm voting for obsessive,” I said.

“And some of them talk about wishing they were Jane.”

“Not that I'd want to spoil a good blog discussion with finicky details,” I said, “but Jane gets murdered at the age of twenty-four.”

“Maybe some of the fans think it would be worth dying young, to get bitten by Ruthven—or Daemon—in the final embrace.” Leischneudel shrugged. “Or maybe they fantasize that he'd turn them, and they'd become his undead true love.”

“Good grief.” I thought over everything he had said. “Well, if those fans are so hot for Daemon—or the ‘vampire lifestyle,' or whatever—that they're idealizing a one-dimensional villain like Ruthven and interpreting him as a complex and tortured character ... I guess that explains a lot about the show's popularity.”

Leischneudel leaned forward to peer ahead, through the cab's windshield. “Speaking of which . . .”

“What's going on here?” the driver asked as we approached the street the theater was on.

I rolled down my window to look ahead and saw that the crowd was even bigger tonight than it had been on the previous two nights. As our cab pulled up to the police barricade blocking the side street, flashbulbs started going off in my face—making me glad I had taken the trouble to apply makeup to my bruised eye.

A thick crowd of people gathered around the taxi as soon as it came to a halt. Some of them were wearing ordinary street clothing, but others wore costumes so elaborate they would need special assistance to maneuver their butts into their theater seats later—if they'd been able to get tickets to one of tonight's sold-out performances. Some of the costumes were professional-looking creations that included fanciful wings, spiderwebs, hooves, or talons. Other fans were wearing all-purpose goth or bondage outfits—some of which were less than perfectly flattering to the wearers.

Our cab driver flinched and uttered a startled curse when two people whose costumes were disturbingly realistic imitations of bloodless corpses flung themselves across the windshield of the car to peer inside at all of us. I hastily rolled up my window when a toothy monster tried to reach into the car to grab me.

Another flashbulb went off in my face as someone tried to capture the moment. Since the fans surely knew the sight of Daemon's car by now, I supposed they were rushing our cab because they were just eager to catch a glimpse of anyone associated with the show.

A cape-clad creature with a rotting face thudded its fist on the hood of the car.

The cab driver sputtered, “Who are these ... these . . .”

A growling, hissing vampire suddenly tried to open Leischneudel's locked door. My startled companion scooted closer to me.

Our agitated driver said, “
What
are these ... these . . .”

“These,” I said wearily, “are the vamparazzi.”

“T
hey're
what?
”

“Vamparazzi,” I repeated.

It was the name that Leischneudel and I had given to the combination of paparazzi and vampire groupies that swarmed around Daemon Ravel and
The Vampyre
.

Our disoriented driver said, “I'm going to have to let you folks out here.”

“No, tell that cop who's coming this way now that we're cast members,” I said. “He'll let you through.”

Leischneudel said anxiously, “We'd like to be dropped off as close to the stage door as possible.” After another look at the bizarre crowd pressing their bodies up against the cab, he added, “If you could drive up onto the sidewalk and get right next to the door, that would be good.”

A uniformed cop approached the cab, making his way through the excited throng of wannabe vampires, tabloid photographers, and young women dressed as Miss Jane Aubrey.

“This is crazy,” said our driver.

“No one in this car is disputing that point,” I said.

A young woman wearing white body paint, a skimpy red outfit that had to be very uncomfortable on this chilly autumn night, and big red wings smiled at me through the window, revealing a row of sharp fangs. Ahead of us, a good-looking man dressed exactly like Daemon's character in
He of the Night
was escorting a woman across the crowded street, heading in the direction of the theater. His companion was wearing a long, hooded cloak. Although she tripped on her hem, she nonetheless seemed more sensibly garbed than the two women who crossed the street next, both wearing black corsets, fishnet stockings, and not much else.

The cab driver spoke to the cop, who recognized me and Leischneudel and agreed to let the car through the barricade. As we rolled slowly down the street, traveling toward the stage door, we passed far more people than could fit into the theater tonight—even over the course of two performances.

“The Janes look chilly tonight,” Leischneudel observed, nodding toward a group of bare-armed young women whose white Regency gowns were as low-cut as the one I wore onstage.

“Well, yes. It's
November,
” I said. “I think this is an example of natural selection in action.”

“Do you see her?” he asked. “The one who attacked you?”

I studied the women in the bright glow of the lights along this crowded street. “I don't know.”

It was hard to tell, since they all looked roughly the same—like me in my costume.

After a moment, I added, “Ah, but I do see some familiar faces.”

The vamparazzi didn't consist solely of Daemon's ardent fans. A few of them were his vehement detractors. My favorites among these were earnest protesters from the Society for the Scientific Study of Vampires (SSSV). The same three people from SSSV showed up outside the theater about once a week, and I suspected the bespectacled trio was the society's entire membership.

Spotting their picket signs in the crowd, Leischneudel said without enthusiasm, “They're back? I kind of hoped they had gone away for good.”

“Oh, I would be so disappointed if they did that,” I said.

The SSSV protesters challenged Daemon's claim of being a real vampire and demanded that he submit to scientific testing. Personally, I liked the idea of Daemon spending a couple of days being poked and prodded by skeptics. However, he brushed off their demands with a combination of smug dismissal and vapid vagueness that evidently satisfied his fans—who verbally abused the SSSV protesters whenever they showed up at the theater (which was perhaps why the trio didn't come more often).

I had originally supposed that, as critics of Daemon's behavior, the SSSVers would be natural allies with another group of detractors whom our taxi crept slowly past tonight.

“Hey, look, Vampire Recovery is here, too,” I said to Leischneudel, pointing them out. “It's a full house tonight. All the misfits are on board.”

Vampire Recovery (greater New York metropolitan area membership: seven) wanted to help Daemon transition to “inactive/dormant status” and thus embrace a lifestyle free of active vampirism (though not, I noted from their outfits, free of the ubiquitous black clothing).

Despite condemning Daemon's vampire lifestyle, VR had actually turned out to be the SSSV's most bitter enemy, since the former insisted that the actor's vampirism was a serious affliction while the latter declared it was baseless nonsense. This ideological chasm had led to a short-lived rumble between the two tiny groups on our opening night. It ended when one of the recovering vamps got a nosebleed and fled down the street, pursued by mad scientists eager to test his blood for proof of vampirism. Since then, both groups had been intimidated into somewhat subdued behavior—not by the exasperated cops, but by vamparazzi who insisted, with leather-clad aggression, that Daemon had every right to remain an active vampire and also to refuse to be scientifically tested like some lab rat.

Seeing several Vampire Recovery reps hovering near the theater, presumably planning to heckle Daemon when he arrived, Leischneudel said wanly, “I wish we could just beam into the theater via a transporter device, like they do on
Star Trek
.”

He was always fine once he was in costume, in character, and waiting in the wings for his first cue; onstage, he was a consummate, focused professional. But he found all
this
stuff a nerve-racking ordeal. I found it a distraction and a nuisance, but as long as I wasn't, oh, being
physically assaulted,
the bizarre nightly commotion didn't unravel my nerves the way it did Leischneudel's.

Then again, I'd been living in New York longer than he had. In this city, a person got used to almost anything after a while.

When the cab came to a halt outside the stage door, Leischneudel said to the driver, “Can you get closer to the door? I mean,
really
close?”

But the cabby, whose nerves were also frayed by now, emphatically refused to drive onto the densely populated sidewalk. Especially not in plain view of the cops assigned to crowd control tonight.

Then I saw Daemon's car pulling up behind us, and I squeezed Leischneudel's hand. “Hang in there. We'll slip inside when they all make a bee line for the vampire.”

“
Which
vampire?” the driver muttered.

“The real one.”

“Don't worry,” I said as I paid the fare. “He never eats eat right before a show.”

We waited until we saw Daemon's car door swing open, and then we made a dash for it. Leischneudel clung to me like a bad prom date as I shoved my way through the milling crowd.

“Daemon! Daemon! Over here!” a tabloid photographer shouted
right
into my ear.

His flash went off six inches from my face, momentarily blinding me. I stumbled a little, trying not to fall down as Leischneudel's feet tangled with mine. Seeing nothing but swimming spots, I reached for whatever support I could find, and I wound up clutching a tall, skinny man.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

While trying to regain my vision and my balance, I squinted up at my rescuer as Leischneudel panted anxiously in my ear. I saw spectacles, a beard, and brown hair, and then I saw the picket sign overhead:
UNDEAD —OR JUST UNTRUE?

“Science guy?” I blurted.

“Dr. Hal, with the Society for the Scientific Study of Vampires,” said my rescuer.

“Hi. Um, sorry.” Still blinking and seeing spots, I tried to extract myself from his embrace. “Esther Diamond. With
The Vampyre
.”

“I know.”

He helped me regain an upright posture—no easy task with half of Leischneudel's weight leaning against me now—and kept a firm grip on my shoulders.

“Close your eyes completely for a few seconds,” Dr. Hal instructed. “That'll help.”

Leischneudel's grip around my waist tightened while I did as the doctor suggested. “Esther?” he said nervously.

“Just a minute.” When I opened my eyes again, my vision was indeed better.

A busty Jane immediately thrust a hanky under my nose. “Can you give this to Daemon for me?”

“Huh?” I said.

“Not
you
.” Her hot glare of hatred made me remember Leischneudel's warning that obsessed female fans might now believe that punching me was the way to get laid by Daemon. But caught between Dr. Hal and Leischneudel, I couldn't move.

To my relief, Dr. Hal pushed the buxom Jane away. Then he said to me, “Miss Diamond, we need your help.”

“Huh?” I said again.

Miss Busty Jane shoved Dr. Hal aside and pressed her unwelcome bosom against me as she simpered at Leischneudel, who was clinging to me so tightly that I thought we might need medical assistance to be pried apart once we got inside.

“Personal bubble,” I said to Busty Jane as she smooshed her breasts into me while leaning closer to Leischneudel.
“Personal bubble.”

Ignoring me, she said sweetly to my companion, “
Please,
will you give this to Daemon for me? A token from a lady?”

I saw writing on the handkerchief and realized she'd scrawled her phone number on it. I could also tell that Leischneudel was starting to hyperventilate.

“We can end this madness, with your help!” cried Dr. Hal, trying to shove Busty Jane again.