Part 1 (1/2)

NIGHT RISING.

VAMPIRE BABYLON.

by Chris Marie Green.

THE RECOVERY.

I would like to acknowledge Sheree Whitefeather and Judy Duarte, two critique partners who keep their eyes wide open; Wally Lind and the crimescenewriter web loop for all their guidance (I'd like to add that all errors are my own.); Pamela Harty and Deidre Knight, who put such faith into me and my books; and Ginjer Buchanan, the one whose support allows the Underground to exist. Thank you, everyone, for everything you do.

ONE.

RISINGA red mist hung over Los Angeles at midnight, a mist so thick that it blocked the moon's glow.

One so dense it almost hid what would become another shocking Tinseltown legend by the time morning rolled around.

The damp air had been tinted with the crimson neon of a dingy alley's bar sign: Lenny's, it read in cursive beneath the tilt of a cartoon martini. As the wiring flickered on and off, so did the atmosphere, an apathetic heartbeat on the fringes of Hollywood Boulevard.

A police radio from one of the many black-and-whites blocking the entrances to the alley broke the silence with a burst of static, then buzzed to nothing. A hushed crowd was gathering on the slick pavement nearby, people craning their necks to gape through the fog and into the slender pa.s.sageway. And even though the cops were doing their d.a.m.nedest to contain the scene, they couldn't cover up the accident.

At least, that's what they'd called it at first.

An ”accident.”

From the looks of the Aston Martin, it was a fair a.s.sessment. The sleek machine was nothing more than wheezing, twisted steel embracing an electrical pole, an abstract sculpture you might find in the victim's own Malibu mansion. But that's where the ”accident” ended and the horror began.

Nothing made sense anymore after the cops looked past the car and toward the dead man.

The world's biggest action star had his back to the bar's door, his muscled arms spread wide, his hands pierced by shrapnel, pinning him down. His head, with that glorious fall of golden hair, hung to one side, a wedge of sparkling, jagged window gla.s.s embedded in his forehead. His million-dollar blue eyes were closed, his aging yet still bankable face bathed in red. He'd died just moments ago, unable to speak around the blood that was choking him.

Sure, freak accidents sometimes happened. Bodies flew from crashed cars, metal followed, people died.

But what the beat cops couldn't figure out was the rest of it: the way the victim's s.h.i.+rt had been torn open to reveal the bare chest so many women had swooned over.

The way shattered gla.s.s had cut into his skin, forming one word.

REPENT.

Soon, the detectives arrived. Overworked, underpaid, their clothing rumpled by long hours on the job and a lack of giving a s.h.i.+t about appearances. A detective, one who haunted the perimeter, took a long glance at Jesse Shane, Big-time Movie Star, and just nodded his head.

”You get what you ask for,” he said to himself, then ambled into the darkness.

There was so much gla.s.s and metal gouging Shane's legs that blood had pooled and trickled over the ground, heading toward a nearby square of sewer grating. The police merely walked around it as the star's life flowed away from him, leaking past the grating and into the echoing darkness of the underground.

Drip, drip...

They worked until their eyes glazed over from cynical exhaustion. But what the average cop wouldn't discover was a mouth, yawning open, just beneath the sewer grating. It was catching every drop of cooled liquid on its tongue.

Drip, drip...

Hidden from view, the creature swallowed, blocking out the noise from above, closing its eyes and shuddering in pure delight, in agonizing need.

Digging its claws into the skin of its palms, the thing leaned its head back again, blood splas.h.i.+ng onto its chin, then into its mouth.

A slant of wan light caught the gleam of iron fangs as it gulped down the taste of beautiful memory.

More, thought the thing while the blood wet its throat.

More.

As keen yearning tore through the creature, it licked its lips and opened its mouth again, whimpering from the hunger, the sharp craving. Waiting for the next drop to fall.

More.

Meanwhile, back up above in the streets, the cops went about their business, trying to solve the mystery of Jesse Shane, a man whose life had ended in its prime.

A man whose bizarre death would, oddly enough, keep him alive for years to come.

TWO.

ABOVE.

Eleven Years Later WHEN Dawn Madison got back to L.A., her dad had already been missing for four days.

That's right. Frank Madison, age forty-seven, a towering charmer with linebacker shoulders and hands strong enough to crack heads when his usual job as hired muscle called for it, was gone, just like that. A fading picture on a Wanted poster. Or maybe even an image on a milk carton or, more appropriately, a bottle of Ex-Lax or whatever geriatrics were gulping down these days.

Because in La-La Land, you might as well be dead if you were over thirty. Harsh, but true.

Not that Dawn really believed at this point that he was in actual trouble. Every so often, the man went off her radar, hopping on his Harley to take a spin up the California coast so he could carouse with the finest elements of society in roadside greasy spoons and bars. Or sometimes he went on mysterious fis.h.i.+ng trips near Mexico only to resurface a week later with crazy stories about mermaids or any variety of tall tales he could bulls.h.i.+t after drinking enough tequila to disable a small army.

It's just that, this time, someone else had contacted Dawn to tell her about his absence and, d.a.m.n it all, if they thought his MIA act was worth calling her about, she was compelled to check into it. p.r.o.nto. No matter where he'd gone off to this month.

As dusk mingled with the smog, she pulled to the curb of his latest place of employment-some kind of investigation agency- then cut the engine of her battered Corolla. For a full minute, she couldn't move. Didn't really want to.

What if all she found was bad news? Or what if...?

Thoughts of her mom crept along the edges of Dawn's memory, taunting her with the specter of death. The guarantee that nothing lasted forever, even if you spent long nights awake and alone, wis.h.i.+ng you had the power to make things different.

But...Dawn blocked out a sadness that'd dogged her for years. She'd never known her mom except through beautiful images and painful comparisons. So why did the emptiness still feel like it'd been inflicted only a second ago?

Shaking it off, Dawn threw open the car door, slammed it shut. Eva Claremont had nothing to do with Frank. He'd be okay. No need to get rattled. Come midnight, Dawn would probably find herself back on a plane zooming across the country, cussing at Frank and letting him run free again.So nix the worrywart act, she thought, walking toward the private investigation agency, a Spanish Revival house with the dubious t.i.tle of Limpet and a.s.sociates hand-painted on a small sign hanging from its hinges over the porch. It reeked of golden-age glamour: iron grating covering the large circular, curtained windows; red-tiled roof basking under the watch of a wors.h.i.+pful sky; tan stucco patching the aging face of the exterior. The only thing that didn't seem to go with the whole Black-Dahlia-dollhouse feel was a gothic iron cross poised over the doorway.

How very medieval chic. How terribly L.A.