"Still and all, you did get to dig up the casket and pry open the lid, didn't you?"
"Yes, but—"
"Tell me about it!" The ghoul's voice was a pleading, insistent whine, undignified yet commanding. His eyes glinted more madly than before. "It must have been beautiful — a rewarding experience, indeed! Ah, if only I could have been at your side!"
"Actually, it was rather awful," Jessie said.
"Tell me, tell me!" Willie Whitlock cried, leaning so far over the open casket that he seemed in danger of falling right into it.
"You're a deranged, white faced, dirty little man," Helena said, in a voice dripping with scorn. "You are perfectly disgusting. And your suit is a wrinkled mess."
Willie Whitlock jerked at each epithet, as if her words were physical blows against his head, and his face took on a grim expression. "Look here, lady, I am only what the damned myths say I am. A ghoul has to be deranged. And white-faced. And sunken-eyed, for that matter. You have noticed, I am sure, that I've a mad glint in my eye. Indeed, at times, it interferes with my sight. I don't want the damn glint, but I have it! And when you live midst glorious decay and incredibly lovely putrefaction, you can't help getting dirty." He looked down at his wrinkled clothes. "And this suit's a part of it, too. I take it to the cleaner's, one of those sonic-press places that does the job in two minutes, but it gets wrinkled again the instant that I put it back on." He looked at her, his expression uglier than ever, and said, "You think it's an easy life, you try it some time." Turning to Jessie, he said, "This woman you've got with you — she's a real bitch. I'd never dig her up and eat her, even if the law allowed it; she'd give me heartburn, sure as hell."
"Degenerate!" Helena snapped, stepping quickly away from the mausoleum door, bringing her small hands up before her in tight little fists, as if she were prepared to cross that coffin-dotted, dust-filmed room and give Willie Whitlock the soundest beating of his life — or of his non-life.
"That's the last straw!" the ghoul squealed. "Degenerate, am I? I was going to give you people a break, here. I was going to let you have a few more minutes of freedom while you told me all about digging up that grave. But that last insult just ruined everything for you!" He reached into the open coffin in front of him and lifted out a nether-world communications receiver. Before any of them realized quite what he was doing, the ghoul dialed a single number and said, into the receiver, "They're here, in the mausoleum. Call off the search."
"Stop him!" Jessie shouted.
The hell hound leaped, slid across the top of a black casket, leaped again from the end of it and landed on the ghoul, sent the small man crashing backwards into another coffin which fell from its pedestal with a roar that echoed about the room like thunder in a barrel. The nether-world communications receiver had fallen from the ghoul's hand, but the damage was done. The searchers knew where they were.
Outside, wolves howled maniacally.
Jessie imagined that he could hear the furious flapping of bat wings on the wet night air.
"Lock the door!" he shouted.
Helena whirled, groped around, found the lock and slipped it into place. She grabbed the doorknob in both hands, twisted it and yanked, just to be sure the lock worked. It did. But that really didn't mean too much, because Count Slavek and the others probably had keys…
Jessie reached the coffin where the nether-world receiver dangled on a lanky cord. He found there was also a regular telephone in that oblong box, resting on the mottled, water-spotted pink satin lining. That seemed odd. But he supposed that a ghoul living in a mausoleum with a couple of dozen vampires felt the need for contact with the outside world, once in a while….
"You can't win! You can't!" Willie Whitlock screamed. He was lying flat on his back, pinned under the hell hound who stood on his thighs and chest. Brutus snarled at the ghoul's outburst and snipped less than playfully at his neck.
"What are we going to do?" Helena asked, joining Jessie at the coffin full of telephones.
"Call the police," he said, dialing the emergency number.
"But what if the police are in on this?" she asked.
"I don't think they are. Flesh-and-blooders don't want us to find out what's behind the Tesserax disappearance — but they aren't ready to kill us to keep us quiet. Our only violent confrontation, so far, has been with the supernaturals."
Something struck the outside of the mausoleum door.
"They're here!" Helena said.
"L.A. Police Department," an efficient, cool voice answered on the other end of the line. "Sergeant Bode speaking."
"My name's Jessie Blake, and I'm a private investigator in the L.A. area. My secretary and I are trapped in the mausoleum of the maseni cemetery. We desperately need help."
"Locked yourself in?" the sergeant asked, perplexed.
"No, no. There are two dozen vampires outside trying to get in at us and execute an illegal bite."
"We haven't had a case of illegal bite in two years," the sergeant said. "And I've never heard of that many vampires getting together—"
"Neither have I," Jessie said. "But they're out there all right."
Sergeant Bode hesitated, then asked, "What number are you calling from, please?"
Jessie knew better than to waste time arguing; he read off the number.
Something crashed heavily against the closed door, again, and a hundred shrill voices rose up beyond the mausoleum walls.
"Two dozen vampires?" Sergeant Bode asked.
"Or more."
"Anyone harmed yet? Need an ambulance — or a priest?"
"Not yet," Jessie said. "But we will if you don't hurry!" He slammed down the phone, hard.
From beyond the imitation oak door, an inhuman voice cried: "Jessie Black, Jessie Black…"
"Jessie, the window!" Helena cried, pointing.
A shadow moved against the outside as some supernatural beast tried to peer in at them.
"Jessie Black… Jessie Black… Jessie Black…" The inhuman voice was moaning again, filled with an almost tangible evil, like an audible syrup.
"My name's not Black," Jessie shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth, to be sure his voice would carry through the thick door. "It's Jessie Blake, you idiots!"
Beyond the door, several voices rose in argument and consternation, gradually subsided. Then the haunting cry came again, hollow and far away, as if it echoed from the far shore of an infinitely wide sea… "Jessie Blake… Jessie Blake…"
"What do you want?" he asked.
"You can't escape us…. Why don't you open the door and let us in, make it easy for everyone…?"
"Never!"
"Be reasonable," the inhuman voice said. "What have you got to gain by being bullheaded in the face of such overwhelming opposition? Be sensible."
"You're a bunch of unprincipled hoodlums," Jessie said.
"If you force us to break in there, you can be certain we'll treat you twice as harshly as we otherwise might. And we will show no mercy at all for the lady."
Jessie felt like he was in a movie — the one in which the prison rioters are locked in a cell block with the warden as their hostage and the governor pleading with them to give up and come out without their weapons.
"Have it your own way, then," the inhuman voice said at last. Whatever the creature was — vampire, werewolf or something more strange than that — it sounded hurt, as if it were about to start pouting over his rebuke. "Well just have to come in the hard way, Mr. Black."
"Blake!" he roared.
Before the voice could correct itself, the mausoleum windows to their right and toward the front of the building shattered explosively. Thousands of pieces of dirty glass showered into the ranks of opened coffins, and glass tinkled on the gray cement floor. Both Jessie and Helena were unhurt, for the windows were too far forward to break over them.