Though they were, of course, frightened and disoriented by what they had seen, their stories were clear enough. Most of the descriptions involved great numbers of the walking dead—and there was no doubt that’s what they were, considering the way the survivors wrote of stink and rot—shoving them aside to reach their vampire masters. The accounts didn’t include the handwritten notes of what happened after. The pages were missing, or had been deliberately removed. Instead, there were a couple of photos clipped to the back of the folder, standing mute testament to the massacre that must have taken place.
I’d never seen a body torn apart before. Though I’d been in the room while a pack of werewolves had torn apart a vampire and a mage, feasting on their remains, I had kept my eyes closed so I wouldn’t see anything I’d never be able to unsee.
And now, nightmares of those pictures—the chunks of missing flesh, the shredded flaps of skin, and the gleam of white bone set in a pool of crimson—would haunt me for the rest of my days.
Sara grew very pale next to me, but we both somehow managed to keep from barfing.
We quickly shoved the pictures and accounts of the survivors back into the folder, then moved on to the note-covered maps. If not for all the assurances in the folder that no one but vampires had died, I would have said to hell with the case then and there.
Instead, we soldiered on, spending about an hour going over maps of Los Angeles that had notations about where the bodies of dead vampires had been discovered. We needed to get to know the lay of the land and the places we would have to explore. Though all the attacks had occurred within LA County, no two had happened in the same place.
When she saw what we were doing, Florencia gave us some help figuring out where we were and the limits of Clyde’s dominion. His territory, though it included major cities like Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, and Hollywood, was quite a lot smaller than I was expecting. Considering Royce controlled multiple states, it was a bit anticlimactic to find out Clyde had such a small amount of land to call his own. When we asked about the areas that fell outside of his purview but were still in Los Angeles County, Florencia didn’t have any answers.
The one common thread we could see was that many of the attacks took place close to properties Clyde owned on the fringes of his territory. Whoever or whatever was controlling the zombies appeared to be situated somewhere just beyond the borders. We couldn’t be sure since we didn’t know this area like we did New York, but hiding that many decomposing bodies meant they had to have a damned good place to store them in this heat to keep any neighbors from finding them. My guess was a morgue, a climate-controlled warehouse, or perhaps they were kept somewhere outside of the city—maybe in the Angeles Crest Forest?—until they were needed and then transported wherever the next attack was supposed to take place.
There were problems with each of those theories, but until we had a chance to examine some of the locations of the attacks in person, I had the feeling that we wouldn’t be able to narrow this search down any more than we already had. More than anything, I wanted to know what the survivors’ notes didn’t say. Who were Clyde’s enemies? Who in the supernatural community around here had the kind of power it must take to command a small army of the walking dead?
Arnold might be able to help with that end of things, though I wasn’t sure how much he’d know about Others in California.
Sara and I decided to put off further speculation until after we’d spoken to Clyde. We spent the rest of our day mostly bored and occasionally shuddering when the memories of those pictures resurfaced during our discussions about where to start our search.
The most likely place appeared to be near Burbank and Glendale, where three attacks had occurred close together.
Shortly after sundown, I had a nosebleed tinged with the black stuff again. It was far less intense than it had been back in New York, and most of it was in my nose and throat instead of everywhere else, but it was still awfully unpleasant. Sara helped me to the bathroom and sat with me while I spat out ropy strings of blackish liquid, washed it from the corners of my eyes, and blew it out my nose. It was disgusting, yes, but nowhere near as painful as it had been the other times. There wasn’t as much of the crud as there had been that first night, or even in the shower with Royce the night before last.
Sara said nothing as she held my hair off the back of my neck while I washed the crud out of my mouth, though I know she must have had questions. She knew I’d tell her when I was ready.
Unfortunately, it was going to be awhile before I could bring myself to explain. She might have been my best friend, but the memories of those hours of helplessness, of pain and blood and knowing I was no longer quite human, were too close.
Before I could help her come to terms with it, I needed to do something about that myself.
Not long after I finished cleaning myself up and we returned to the kitchen, a knock on the door frame startled us. A new security guard—a woman, one I didn’t recall seeing last night—was examining us with dark, narrowed eyes.
“Ladies. Clyde would like to see you now.”
Sara and I exchanged a look before rising and following the guard to the main house. I was annoyed to note she was quite a bit taller than me, so perfectly beautiful and graceful with her high cheekbones and sleek, braided hair that I knew she must have been another vampire. Her dress was like that of the security guards I’d seen last night, though she had guns holstered on either hip. Her deadly grace reminded me strongly of Mouse, though there wasn’t much other resemblance.
We entered through the door near the pool deck. She took us through some hallways to a room full of weird paintings and strange sculptures and told us to wait.
There wasn’t any place to sit, so we just stood awkwardly, staring around the room. Separately, the pieces were just . . . well . . . weird. Together, they made a strange kind of sense. The swirl of colors and clashing styles made me dizzy, so I made a point of focusing on one piece. Of course. It had to be a Warhol.
My feet were starting to hurt by the time Clyde swept into the room, a bevy of buzzing sycophants trailing in his wake. His hair was a different color this evening, no longer black, but a deep chocolate color with frosted tips, making for a striking, punk-rocker look that fit with the bare chest and drawstring leather pants slung low on his hips. He waved a hand airily and the people surrounding him backed off, mumbling reassurances about his hair, his clothes, something about appointments and a TV spot, and a few other things I didn’t quite catch.
As the others backed away, he snapped his fingers at the security guard who had escorted us. She froze, hovering near the door.
Once he was across the room, he turned to face us, and I could have sworn that his eyes were a solid black. Like fathomless pools of pure hunger sucking me deep into a cold, lonely place.
It might have been the space between breaths or an eternity before he looked away, his attention fixing on a granite statue of a robed angel with sweeping wings, the tracks of tears permanently etched across the cheeks of that androgynous face. Air seeped out between my teeth in a hiss as tension ran out of me. Gut instinct told me we were on the verge of experiencing something very nasty by his hands if we didn’t watch our step. Made me wonder just how well that little charm around my throat—the one that was supposed to prevent vampires and magi from messing with my head—was working.