Fatalis

Chapter Sixty-Six

There was a time, early in the twentieth century, when the long and winding Sunset Boulevard offered spectacular views of the sun as it disappeared into the Pacific. That was before the avenue became so built-up that it was impossible to see the horizon over the homes, trees, and buildings in Beverly Hills and in the Pacific Palisades.

To see breathtaking sunsets, one of the best vantage points in the Los Angeles region is high in the Hollywood Hills. Located north of Los Angeles, the Hollywood Hills are a terminus of the sprawling Coast Ranges, a system comprised of the Sierra Madre Mountains, the San Rafael Mountains, the Santa Ynez Mountains, and many others.

One of the highest and most scenic spots in the Hollywood Hills is the high area where Coldwater Canyon Drive and twisting Mulholland Drive intersect Not only are the sunsets awe-inspiring as they turn the hills and valleys from forest green to flame red, then from brown to black, they're followed by lights winking on across the wide, flat floor of the San Fernando Valley. Rippling heat gives a distinctive shimmer to the tiny white lights as they spread out for miles, more plentiful and brighter than the stars in the skies above.

Six-foot-four-inch Jason Broughton stole a moment from his guests. He pretended to be on his cell phone but what he really wanted was to look across his backyard and savor the view of the valley. He used to be daunted by those lights. When the unemployed actor worked as a valet for a Japanese restaurant on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, he would drive into the hills at night and see the lights as places he didn't want to be: the boulevard where he worked, which was a commercial drag that had nothing to do with movies; an apartment he shared on Kester with two other aspiring actors; the valet job at night and clerking at a video store during the day.

Now the thirty-seven-year-old saw the lights as something magnificent. They were the map of a place he owned. After years of clawing his way up from bit parts, Jason Broughton was the star of the smash hour-long adventure series The Legendary Adventures of Mighty Samson. He was the new owner of this sprawling house that once belonged to one of the founders of Hollywood.

He had arrived. Those lights were his now. So much was his.

Jason turned. He looked at his sprawling, all-white Mediterranean-style home and his three-quarter-acre yard. The grounds were surrounded by ten-foot-high hedges, stonework, and poplar trees. Iron torches with flickering electric lights were mounted on the trees, house, and cabana and gave the small estate a Greco-Roman look. He had had those put in, replacing the garish spotlights that had been buried about the property.

A small pool in the center of the yard was lit by candles floating on miniature wooden barges. Jason looked at the tents arrayed around the pool. The sheer fabric blew lightly in the soft early-evening breeze. The tents were supported by columns and surrounded by statues that had been used on his show. The meats and vegetables roasted on open fires in stone pits. The waitstaff, dressed in Philistine attire, offered beverages in real silver goblets. He knew that guests were chatting with each other but looking at him and smiling. Actors and actresses. Agents and managers. The press.

They were his now, too.

Life was good.

Jason closed up his phone. He tucked it back into his white dinner jacket. It was time to return to his guests.

Suddenly, something leaped over the hedge, landed on the actor's back, and pounded him face-first into the lush green grass. Jason's spine and both of his lungs were crushed. In the moment of life that remained he saw a monstrous golden thing jump to the ground in front of him, jag suddenly to the left, and launch itself at Lizz Hirsch-Horn, his Delilah.

At the same time, the hedges and walls of the estate were being breached on all sides by other giants, some of them nine and ten feet long and standing five feet high at the shoulder. They flew down into the perimeter like dark angels, drawn by the smell of meat and the shimmering water of the pool. They tore into the fresh game that was standing around the yard, bounding one way and then the other, thick claws and fangs savagely pulling down prey by an arm or leg. Some cats would twist their prey by the head to break its spine, while others simply left it crippled where it fell so it couldn't get away. Then they would turn on another victim. Half the forty-odd guests were down in a matter of seconds.

The initial charge was followed by the choked screams and panicked flight of a disoriented mob. Guests who had been networking seconds before were now trying vainly to survive. The flame pits filled with stumbling waitstaff and panicked producers, the tents were splashed with the blood of actors and agents, and the pool filled quickly with reporters and managers who sought safety in the water. But the cats followed them in. Some of the saber-tooths jumped while others slid into the pool like crocodiles. The water turned cherry-red as the cats bit into their victims and shook them violently from side to side. The guests flailed and gurgled, groping hands and looks of wide-eyed terror occasionally bursting through the surface. Before long the cats climbed back onto the tile, dripping water and blood from their dead prey. The bodies were dropped on the edge of the pool while the cats pursued the few who had managed to get as far as the driveway.

Soon everything was silence. As the flickering fires threw distorted shadows on the hedges, the cats speared the party-goers with their fangs and began carrying them through the hedges to the valley whence they'd come.

He watched from a hilltop that overlooked the preying ground. On either side were two golden warriors whose yellow-white eyes, like his, were focused on the attack. A brown creeper clung to the back of one of them, using its long, curved bill to dig insects from the fur of one of the subordinate animals. Their fur rippled in the wind, the three of them sniffing the air as it gusted by. They ignored the strange smells, of which there were many. Only the familiar ones mattered, and one in particular.

Like the smells, the landscape itself had changed. The hills were different. They were smoother, with many caves above ground and creatures dwelling inside them. There was more water than before, clear and bright and collected in small ponds like the one below. There were tiny fires everywhere, including lights that moved through the sky-

Suddenly, he detected something on the wind.

His great silver head turned slowly in the direction from which they'd come. It wasn't a smell he'd sensed but a presence. He'd sensed it before only it was nearer now, more powerful.

More dangerous.

He didn't wait for those below to finish. They would follow soon enough. Moving quickly and resolutely, but not with haste or fear-never with fear-he strode down the hill followed by the two at his side.

Soon they would be home. He could smell that too. And when they reached it, they would make a stand against the thing that hunted them.

Death.