Vampyres of Hollywood (32 page)

Lilith became the serpent.

Standing in the center of the circle behind the house in Palm Springs, surrounded by her followers while I was backed up by the Vampyres of Hollywood, she began the appalling transformation into a shape that is forbidden to my kind. Once Changed into a serpent, a vampyre can never change back; it is impossible to return to oneself. But Lilith is not one of us. The creature that had tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden had been no devil, no demon: it had been Lilith.

When I led my vampyres up from the basement, destroying all in our path, I had expected to find the Ancients arrayed against us. But when they saw us burst from the house, led by a dragul, I watched them melt back into the shadows. The Dearg Due, the Bobhan Sith, the
dhampirs
and were-creatures threw themselves at us, but we easily brushed them aside, reveling in their destruction, relishing the taste of their blood.

Douglas fought at my side. “Why aren’t the Ancients attacking?” he shouted.

I answered him in Armenian, finding it easier to shape the words using a throat never meant for human speech. “They know what happened to Rudy and Ghul. Suddenly Lilith is not so powerful as she would have them believe. The Ancients are fearful, they do not want to die—and they know if they go up against us, at least some of them will perish.”

“As old as time and still afraid to die,” Douglas said, a note of genuine wonder in his voice.

Bull-headed Orson strode up beside me, plucked a pair of
dhampirs
off the ground and flung them at the cowering Ancients. The broken half vampyres crashed to the ground at their feet and the Ancients fell snarling upon them. “Let’s kill the
dhampirs
and the were-creatures, then feed them to the Ancients,” he rasped. “They’ll feast upon them until they are too stuffed to move and then we’ll take them.”

“Enough!”

The voice, low and subsonic, rolled across the mountain. Stones and gravel tumbled down the hill and the water in the moat roiled.

“Enough!”

Lilith had appeared, standing in the living room door. Immediately the surviving
dhampirs
and were-creatures fell back.

“Enough.”

In the sudden and absolute silence, the tiny woman-child in her hideous makeup made her way outside. I was wearing the dragul form, impenetrable to sword or spear, strong enough to tear steel and pulverize stone, and even I felt the sour tendrils of fear at the back of my throat.

And as she approached, she changed.

Before humanity claimed this earth, the snake people ruled. Lilith bred with the last of them and created us and, in doing so, she became one with them. Now her features elongated: nose pushing forward, chin sliding back, eyes shrinking, moving higher on her head. Her wig slid away, revealing a scabrous scalp. I watched her arms shrivel up her sleeves, and then the filthy dress slid away. She was briefly—horrifyingly—naked and then she was no longer human.

“Ghul is dead,” I said. “Rudy, too.”

A black forked tongue flickered in her mouth. “Dear, sweet Ghul,” she hissed, sounding genuinely upset. She didn’t seemed too put out about Rudy, I noted. “You have no idea what he was. He was glorious, my Morningstar. Ah, the flesh he has eaten, the blood he has drunk. The meat of generations.” Her legs had fused, and her body was elongating and changing color as she moved closer.

I was aware that a circle had formed around us, the Ancients and the surviving
dhampirs
and were behind Lilith, the Vampyres of Hollywood behind me.

Lilith was almost completely serpentine now: huge and hideous, her yellow-veined body rippling with muscle, her mouth filled with enormous upper and lower fangs. If she wrapped those coils around me, dragul or not, I was just so much paste, and I was sure her fangs could penetrate my armored hide.

“We could all rush her?” Douglas suggested. “She might get some of us, but not all—”

I shook my massive head. “This is my fight. I must do it alone. If I defeat her, then the Ancients and the surviving
dhampirs
will owe me fealty.”

“And if she defeats you? And eats you?” Douglas said grimly. “Your flesh and blood alone would make her immeasurably more powerful.”

“If that happens, Douglas, then I suggest you run!”

Even as I was speaking, Lilith lunged. She was fifteen feet away, then she twisted and coiled and suddenly she was airborne above me. I threw myself down and forward and passed beneath her, feeling her stinking skin brush my wings. The serpent hit the ground hard enough to shatter the stones beneath. Without pausing she turned and spat at me—a huge gobbet of luminescent phlegm-colored slime. I spun away and most of it splashed onto an unfortunate
dhampir
. The venom ate through her flesh, revealing muscle, sinews, then bone. The unfortunate creature was still alive as it started to eat away at her internal organs. An Ancient put her out of her misery by snapping off her head. And eating it.

Lilith moved again, the upper part of her body turning in one direction, the lower half in another. I dodged her lunging, snapping teeth, but her armored tail caught me across the chest, driving me back into the arms of a tall, chitinous Ancient. His claws grabbed my arms, holding me, but I drove my head back and up and my pointed horns caught him in the soft flesh under the chin, penetrating mouth and tongue and driving up into his brain. He was dead before he hit the ground.

But the moment’s distraction was enough for Lilith. Her tail coiled around my ankles, slithering between my feet, and suddenly she was on top of me. I caught her massive throat in both hands before her fangs bit into my face, my six-inch-long claws digging deep into the thick skin. I felt her throat work in my hands and barely managed to turn her head to one side as she spat again. An Ancient fell writhing as the venom ate away its slablike face. A single drop caught the edge of my wing and hissed like acid through the skin. The pain was indescribable. I brought my wings around, encasing her serpent body in their leathery folds, using their hooks to rip and tear her yellow flesh.

“Too late, dragul Dakhanavar, too late.” Lilith’s voice was a foul whisper.

The coils of flesh around my legs tightened. If I fell, it was all over. My hands were still locked around her throat, keeping her teeth and spit away from my face. Drool was running down her chin, and even the diluted venom was burning my talons. It was only a matter of moments before she broke free and spat full in my face. Or bit it off.

So I bit her.

Opening my dragul jaws wide, I clamped down on the flesh of her neck and bit hard. The taste of her flesh in my mouth was disgusting, the feel abhorrent. The sudden burst of images, memories, and sensations overwhelmed me and I loosened my grip. Lilith erupted into a frenzy and flung me from her. I crashed onto the ground, shattering the flagstones, tearing my wings to paper on the cacti. Shakily, I got to my feet, spitting Lilith’s meat from my mouth. A stringy spray of phlegmy venom arched through the air towards me. I turned sharply, and then the ground shifted beneath my feet, and suddenly I was surrounded by huge fish in the filthy water of the moat.

Water is not the natural habitat of the dragul. We cannot swim.

Terror and Lilith’s abhorrent blood in my mouth gave me the strength to Change. There were a dozen shapes I could have taken if I’d thought about it, but I couldn’t think, so when I rose from the water I was Ovsanna Moore. Piranhas were tearing at me.

I scrambled out of the pool and stood up. I had fought as a dragul, but I would die as a human; there was something fitting about that.

And suddenly Lilith was towering over me and around me, jaws gaping. She wouldn’t use her venom on me this time, I knew. She’d want to taste my flesh and drink my blood. Maybe I could choke her on the way down. I was certainly determined to try. Her mouth opened, wider, wider, wider still as the bottom jaw unhinged.

“I am going to swallow you whole.”

I heard a pop and smelled the stink of gasoline, and the next instant a wash of superheated air detonated out from the center of the house. Half the house vaporized in the massive explosion. Huge stones rained down in lethal shrapnel. And then, in what seemed like slow motion, the front end of a Hummer hit Lilith full in the teeth and drove her head back into the ground.

“Swallow that, bitch.”

It took Lilith’s body mere seconds to liquefy and dribble into the pool.

PALM SPRINGS
6:50
P.M.

I’d just opened the front gate when the massive explosion ripped the heart out of the house. Maral and I stopped, then as one turned and ran back through the chaos. The house looked like the antechamber of hell. Piles of dead bodies burned like flaming torches; floorboards were warping and snapping in the intense heat. Huge swaths of the ceiling had bellied inward. Rooms had disappeared.

We raced through the dining room—I’ll never eat barbecue again—and burst out into the backyard. Flaming stones were falling like rockets, exploding all over the garden, cacti were alight, and flames shot up the palms, while ribbons of burning cloth spiraled slowly downward.

I’d expected to find monsters and the Vampyres of Hollywood, but instead the garden was deserted…save for the lone figure of a bloody and battered Ovsanna Moore leaning against the rear end of the Hummer. Its front was buried nose deep in the ground. Ovsanna turned. She had a slight smile on her face as we both came running up.

“When you said we ought to burn it to the ground, you really meant it, didn’t you.”

“I had some expert help,” I said, looking at Maral.

Ovsanna brought Maral’s hand to her lips and kissed it. Then she brought my lips to hers and kissed me. I wondered if there was a message there.

“Where’s Lilith?” I asked.

“I guess the whole thing was just too much to swallow,” Ovsanna said.

I was sitting on the side of the road, one arm around Ovsanna Moore, the other around Maral McKenzie, watching a prime example of Palm Springs real estate burn to the ground, when the first of the fire trucks arrived. Then the PSPD, Chief Barton, the paramedics, and the press. Lots and lots of press.

“What happened to the Ancients and the were-creatures?” I asked quickly, before they had a chance to descend on us.

“Fled into the desert. I think they’ve had enough to eat for a while.”

“And the Vampyres of Hollywood?”

Ovsanna turned her head and tilted her chin toward a long line of crows perched on the roof directly behind us, looking like something out of
The Jungle Book
. “A little singed about the feathers, but safe.”

After everything I’d seen, I didn’t even question her. “Say, do you think you can get me some autographs for my mother?”

“I think I can manage that.” Ovsanna smiled. “You rescued us, Peter,” she continued. “I think we were kidnapped by some sort of cannibal cult, don’t you? Doesn’t that sound like something the press will buy?”

“Sounds like a movie,” Maral drawled.

“Oh, it will be,” Ovsanna promised, leaning into me, putting her head on my shoulder. “This is going to make you a hero, Peter,” she added.

“I’ve been a hero before. It has its downside. The last person I rescued bit me on the ass. At least you haven’t done that.”

Ovsanna raised her head and smiled. I swear I saw fangs.

“Well…not yet anyway,” she said. And then she kissed me.

There Are Worse Things I Could Do

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