“Does it surprise you?”
“He is a big-son-of-bitch.”
“And hairy,” I added.
“There is a lot of weird going on,” said Sanchez, whistling lightly.
“I would say welcome to my world...”
“But it’s my world, too,” he said. “Now.”
I didn’t say anything about that, and as we sat here together, I focused on something that had been troubling me since I’d first met the LAPD detective in Sherbet’s office.
“Tell me again why you first approached Sherbet?”
Sanchez looked at me, blinked, and as he did so, I noted something very curious in his memory. It was blank. He said, “You guys dealt with a similar incident. It seemed obvious to approach Detective Sherbet.”
Except, of course, I knew that the official records had been stricken of any connection that had anything to do with vampires. Officially, the murders taking place under the Fullerton Theater were the result of a serial killer. Unofficially, the murders were the result of a blood ring—mortals who supplied human blood to vampires. Any of that evidence had been destroyed and memories erased by another vampire named Hanner.
Sanchez, who had been following my train of thought, shook his head. “No, I remember reading something in the newspaper.”
“Details of the crimes were not reported in the paper. Try again.”
“I...I thought I had read it in the paper.”
“The details of the crimes were covered up, Detective. Anyone and everyone associated with the Fullerton Blood Ring have been dealt with.”
“What do you mean dealt with?”
“Memories altered.”
“So, then, how did I know to call Sherbet?”
“That’s the million-dollar question, Detective.”
Chapter Sixteen
Sanchez left me there at the park.
He didn’t like it, but I told him it was part of my process. He had asked what process that was and I told him I hadn’t a clue. He liked that even less, but he also sensed I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. And then, finally, I gave him a small glimpse of the creature that I would soon become.
“Holy shit,” he said.
“That about sums it up,” I said as I stood outside the driver’s side door of his squad car. “Go home to your family, Detective, and forget about vampires and ghosts and giant flying bats.”
“I couldn’t if I tried.”
“I could help you.”
“No, please.”
He gave me a lingering look, then looked out over the dark park, shook his head, then drove off, his tires crunching over the gravel parking lot.
I set off along the same trail, the same trail where a young lady had been killed recently, where she had bled to death. Where a quarter of her blood had gone missing.
Enough to feed a hungry vampire.
Perhaps even two.
* * *
The park was mostly empty.
Sometimes, I heard the rustling of smaller animals and the rarer mid-sized animal. Raccoons and skunks, mostly. Griffith Park was famous for its observatory and zoo and Greek Theatre, all of which have been featured in movies and TV shows ranging from Rebel Without a Cause to Three’s Company.
Yes, we were directly above Hollywood, and Hollywood loved to film in its own back yard. Griffith Park was, quite literally, Hollywood’s back yard.
I passed the crime scene again, and was pleased to see that the young lady’s spirit was gone, although I saw residual energy, energy that would never go away. A murder scarred the land, perhaps forever. And what I saw, as I moved past that same boulder where I’d seen the ghost of the young woman sitting, was a chaotic collection of light that formed and reformed, swirling and dispersing, over and over again. Perhaps throughout all eternity. Playing out the scene of her murder, at least at an energetic level, forever.
The world might forget this young jogger, but the earth never would. Perhaps this was its way of remembering the dead. Or not, I don’t know. I was just a mom. Albeit a freaky mom.
I stepped into the frenzied energy, and, as I did so, I caught a faint feeling of fear, of pain, of confusion...and of excitement. The excitement was not from the victim. It was from the killer.
I paused on the trail, turning slightly, feeling the mass of energy around me. Psychics can tap into such energy, read it like a book. I was not a real psychic. Refer back to my mom comment. But I am real freaky, and sometimes I get psychic hits with the best of them. The hair along my arms and back of my neck prickled. I kept turning slowly, tuning in, locking in.
I knew the girl had no memory of what had happened to her. Her last memories were, in fact, a crazy mess of pain and fear and dying. Whatever had hit her, she couldn’t see it, or never had a chance to see it.
My inner alarm system remained quiet. Whatever had been out here a few nights ago wasn’t around now. Perhaps it was time to take another look around. So, I closed my eyes and reached out around me, expanding my inner sight as far as it would go.
I saw nothing human, although I saw plenty of glowing life forms, ranging from mice to a young deer. That I suddenly imagined myself pursuing the deer and feasting upon it might have had more to do with my recent viewing of the Twilight movies, than any bloodlust.
Still, I idly wondered what the deer’s blood would taste like. Probably warm and delicious. I rarely, if ever, feasted on a living animal, and wasn’t about to start tonight—Oh yes, I’d almost forgotten that time I had gone to a castle in Switzerland on a business trip and was accommodated, but I hadn’t killed for my supper...someone had done it for me.
Try it, came a sudden thought. A very distant, faint, small thought at the far reaches of awareness. It sounded like my own thoughts, admittedly. Like something that had originated within me, but I knew, somehow, that it wasn’t mine. It was too firm. Too controlling. Too evil.
It was her.
The entity that lived within me. I was sure of it, and it was, I was certain, the first time she had ever directly communicated with me.
I snapped back into my body, as a cold shiver came over me. The image of the grazing deer disappeared in a literal blink. I rubbed my arms and then my temples and wished like hell I hadn’t just heard those two words. I wished like hell she would stay far away, or stay buried. I did not want to have to listen to her, too.
Indeed, hearing her now, her words rising up from the depths of my subconscious, hit too close to home.
Now she was pissing me off.
More importantly, though, hearing a second set of thoughts in my head, thoughts that sounded far too similar to my own, felt a bit like I was going insane.