Keeper of the Dawn

Chapter 2

Mark prided himself on being alert and wary of danger at all times, but the thunderous attack on the Mustang had taken him completely by surprise.

He gripped the wheel in a death lock and swung the car around, barely saving them from a fatal fall into the canyon below. As he jerked the car to a halt, he knew that something evil was out there with them on the road where the houses were few, far between and built into the cliff at all angles.

He looked over at Alessande; to her credit, she hadn’t screamed, didn’t seem to be in a panic and was staring at him as if ready to follow his lead.

“Go,” he told her softly. “Teleport, but not home. Go back to the House of the Rising Sun.”

“I can help—”

“Please...go. I think they’re after you.”

She didn’t need to ask him why he had told her to return to the Gryffald estate. They both knew that teleporting took a vast amount of energy, and that she would be in a weakened state once she reached her goal, so the best place to be was among friends with supernatural strengths of their own.

He got a good look at her in the split second when she nodded before teleporting.

She really was stunning. Of course the Elven came that way. But her face was as perfect as a fairy-tale princess, her eyes as deep and mercurial and enchanting as the sea, and the spun white-gold of her hair framed her classic features.

Then she was gone.

And when he looked up, a giant eagle was ripping the roof off his car.

Shapeshifter!

At least Alessande had listened to him; she was gone, and she would be safe.

As the top of his car went flying over the canyon, Mark leaped out. He was excellent at transformation himself; in an instant he was airborne in the guise of a vampire bat. After a few seconds of intense concentration, he had increased his own size to that of the eagle. Flying ever upward, he avoided the sharp talons of his foe. Soaring above the gargantuan bird, he dive-bombed and caught the thing at the back of the neck, careful to hold it without inflicting a crucial bite.

But even as he did his best not to kill it, he rued his own stupidity in getting this close to an Other with this size and power.

It must have taken a lot for the shapeshifter to become such a mammoth creature, but it hadn’t been the end of the shifter’s strength. Now the thing turned into a gnat and slipped easily out of Mark’s grasp.

Swearing, he concentrated on his own body, shrinking, then changing back into his human form. He stood next to his car, staring with disgust at the ruined vehicle.

He’d lost his attacker.

And he’d lost his car. Materialistic and shallow as it might be, he had loved that car.

He swore, dug his cell phone out of his pocket and called Brodie. “Did Alessande make it back all right?” he asked anxiously.

“Yes, she’s here,” Brodie told him. “She’s exhausted, though. Sailor has given her tea and gotten her up to bed. What happened? Did you catch him? Alessande said it was as if a two-ton crane smacked down on the car.”

“Shapeshifter, definitely,” Mark said. “And no, I was trying to keep it alive, so—thanks to my own stupidity—it went into gnat form and disappeared. You’re sure that Alessande is all right?”

“Yes, she’s fine. She really needs sleep. It’s a good thing she’s in exceptional shape—eats the right food, exercises, hones her skills to perfection—because the last twenty-four hours have taken a lot out of her. I’ll call impound and let them know the car needs to be towed in. I’m sure they’ll want to know what the hell happened to it. Is it fixable?”

Mark looked at his car. “No,” he said sadly. Still on the phone, he walked over to it. With an angry shove of his foot, he used his supernatural strength and sent it over the edge, crashing down into the bracken in the valley below.

“Don’t worry about the car. I got rid of it. It would have been too hard to explain. Come get me—I’m about two miles away on Mulholland—and we’ll head to the old studio, check it out, see what we can find.”

“Be there in five,” Brodie told him.

As Mark waited for Brodie’s arrival, he was worried, really worried. Someone knew that Alessande was on to something.

And that someone seriously wanted her out of the way.

* * *

“I know it’s nothing like your house, Alessande,” Sailor said apologetically as she got her friend settled. “I mean, Castle House is kind of Goth-gone-bad compared to your place. But it’s safer for you to stay here.”

Alessande was comfortably stretched out on the bed in the guest room, with the cousins keeping her company. She hadn’t had much strength when she had started to teleport, already exhausted from everything she’d been through, so she’d more or less crash-landed on the Castle House stairs, startling everyone who was still there. And before Sailor had led her up here, they’d been talking about her staying for days, maybe even weeks—and they hadn’t bothered consulting her. Worst of all, Mark Valiente wasn’t even around for her to blame anything on.

“You drank enough water, right?” Sailor asked, breaking into Alessande’s thoughts.

Teleporting could dehydrate the body to a dangerous extent. Alessande had consumed nearly a gallon of water since she’d arrived.

“I’m good, thank you,” she said.

“Alessande, we believe that you’re marked for extinction,” Brodie said firmly as he stepped into the room.

She shook her head, wanting to deny the possibility. “Have you heard from Mark?” she asked. He was a jerk, but he was the jerk who had worried about her safety first. And she’d never experienced anything like the feel of being in that car when it was attacked by a ten-ton taloned something.

“I’m on my way to get him,” Brodie said. He looked at Sailor. “You all sit tight and be careful. I don’t know if they will dare to attack this place, or if they’ve exhausted their resources for another night.”

Barrie, sitting in a chair by the window, rose. “I’ve got to call an emergency meeting of the shapeshifters. I know it’s a rogue individual or group behind this—most of my Others would be horrified by what’s happening.”

Rhiannon, rising from the foot of the bed, set a hand on Barrie’s shoulder. “Barrie, don’t take this on as if the weight of the world is yours and yours alone. We all know that Others, no matter what their race, are just like people. Most are law abiding and want nothing more than to lead good lives with decent people around them. No one is going to think that all shapeshifters are bad. We know better in this day and age.”

“And,” Declan said, walking into the room, “no meeting tonight, Barrie.” He walked over to stand behind Sailor, setting his hands on her shoulders. “I just talked to Mark. He wants people here, keeping Alessande safe tonight. I’ll stay with the women. Brodie, you and Mark can rest assured that everyone here will be protected while you check out the studio.”

“What about the Snake Pit?” Barrie asked Declan.

Declan owned one of the hottest nightspots in the city. It was very popular with the Others, especially vampires. Since Declan was a shapeshifter Keeper, they often stayed to enjoy it after-hours, when only Others were welcome. But the rest of the time both locals and tourists were free to enjoy themselves there. Declan had a talent for getting the next up-and-coming bands to play, and Rhiannon, who was a singer as well as a Keeper, performed there regularly. She also performed at the Mystic Café, where her boss was a werewolf Keeper.

“The Snake Pit can survive one night without me,” Declan said firmly.

Jonquil was waiting at the foot of the bed. He barked as if to reaffirm Declan’s statement.

“I’ll follow you down in a minute and lock the door behind you,” Sailor said. “The compound will be safe. Jonquil knows better than any alarm when someone gets near Castle House.”

“Don’t forget Wizard,” Rhiannon said. “He guards the grounds like a hellhound. We’ll be all right.”

Wizard did look like a hellhound, Alessande reflected. He was a mix of Scottish deerhound and something else humongous. If anyone even looked cross-eyed at Rhiannon, Wizard would take them down in a heartbeat.

Rhiannon left the room, presumably to give Wizard his instructions, and Barrie rose, as well. “Get some rest,” she told Alessande. “I’m going online to read the news reports and try to get a better grip on this.”

Sailor patted Alessande’s pillow. “Can I get you anything else?” she asked.

“I have tea and a lovely bed, and I’m being protected by some of the finest women in L.A., a ghost and two ferocious dogs. I feel like a hothouse flower,” Alessande admitted.

Sailor grinned. “Uncomfortable for you, I know. But even Achilles had his damned heel. I learned—with a lot of help from you—to handle responsibility and be brave. Now, from me, you can learn to trust in others and let them be your strength sometimes.”

Alessande smiled and nodded. “Okay. I think I’ll try to sleep. That teleporting thing is...draining.”

It was. Sailor left her, telling Jonquil to stay and stand watch, and Alessande found herself falling almost instantly to sleep.

It was strange, though. She was asleep, yet she still seemed to be aware of her surroundings. At first she knew that she was in bed in the guest room at Castle House. But then the bed seemed to grow hard beneath her, and the dust motes dancing in the air turned into a mixture of ash and fog.

She could hear music, something from an old movie she had caught on cable. She couldn’t quite place it, though—and then she did. It was from Franco Zeffirelli’s version of Romeo and Juliet.

There was movement all around her. She wanted to rise and see what was going on, but she couldn’t. Something was weighing her down, refusing to let her up.

The music was beautiful, and she tried to open her eyes. She managed to raise her lids far enough to see that she seemed to be in a church. There was a wedding going on, she thought. The Gryffald cousins were there, standing around where she lay. Handsome men in tuxes were seating the guests, and she saw that Father Gunderson—an Elven himself—was ready to officiate at the ceremony.

She couldn’t turn her head, but she caught sight of the long white sleeve on her arm.

She was wearing a wedding dress.

It was her wedding!

But something was very wrong. She should have been walking down the aisle, not lying on the altar. And everyone was beginning to scream in horror and shout to one another. And above all the noise, she could hear one voice.

It was the vampire cop. Mark Valiente. And he was screaming her name as if...as if he thought that if he shouted loudly enough he could wake her and save her from the horror that was about to take place.

Warned by his shouting, she realized that she had to break free from whatever was holding her there, frozen to the altar. She managed to turn her head and saw the red velvet runner than stretched from the altar to the door. Except that it wasn’t a runner. It was a river of blood.

She jerked herself awake. She was in the guest bedroom at Castle House. She’d had a nightmare and nothing more.

It was night, and she was safe.... She closed her eyes again.

She could hear the cousins and Declan Wainwright talking downstairs. They were joined by another male voice: Mick Townsend, Barrie’s love—and a shapeshifter.

Shapeshifters, vampires... Were more of the Other races involved in the evil, as well? Leprechauns, gnomes, weres?

Elven?

No, she couldn’t believe that the male Elven population would ever accept the sacrifice of Elven women. Her own people couldn’t be involved.

She hadn’t realized that she was prejudiced before all this began, but the truth was, she did think of her kind as more ethical, far less violent, and...a cut above.

“Wrong,” she murmured.

The truth was that Elven could be involved; she had to acknowledge that. Evil was evil—and it came in all guises.

Just as good came in all forms. She had to accept help and be grateful—and learn not to judge.

Jonquil whined and licked her fingers. “Good dog,” she told him.

She lay there, knowing that she desperately needed rest, but she was afraid to sleep again, afraid of her dreams. She was tempted to run downstairs so that she could be with people.

Jonquil whined softly again. He nudged her hand and wagged his tail.

The dog was with her, standing guard so closely, she dared to shut her eyes again.

And when she slept next, it was deeply.

* * *

Mark and Brodie pulled up two blocks from the old Hildegard Studio.

They weren’t there on official police business. Alessande had been right about one thing: to be official, they would need a search warrant. They didn’t have that kind of time.

They went through the hole in the gate that Alessande had told them about, rather than using their powers. Mark was only at half strength, having used up his reserves becoming a giant bat earlier. And it would just be a waste of energy he might need later should Brodie need to teleport and Mark make one more transformation into a bat.

There were five long soundstages that comprised the studio. Abandoned and neglected, they were dark and dangerous. Brodie had come prepared with large flashlights so they could see their way around.

They went cautiously and methodically from one stage to the next. The first three were empty, and it didn’t appear that anyone had been there for years. Cameras, lighting, sets, props—nothing remained.

The fourth soundstage was different.

The last thing filmed in it might well have been during the 1940s. Huge old cameras stood sentinel, along with recording equipment that could have housed elephants. Two sets remained; one was a cemetery at night. Walking around it, they found cardboard headstones, rubber hatchets and plastic guns and knives. There were fake corpses sticking out of graves—most of them truly rotting by this point.

Brodie found a film marker. “It was called The Awakening of Dr. Evil. A classic, I’m sure. Did you ever see it?”

“Can’t say that I caught it,” Mark told him.

The second set was equally sad—like something lost in time. It was also filthy and decaying. “I’m surprised all this wasn’t broken down, like on the other soundstages. With the cost of things these days, I would think someone would snap this place up and start a new studio. Everything here is outdated,” Brodie said.

“Yeah, but...just the real estate.”

“True,” Brodie agreed.

“I wonder if the dead women were ever here, or whether the killer—or killers—hid here, sneaking out to snatch the women as they passed by,” Mark said thoughtfully.

“Doesn’t seem that we’ve found anything to give us that answer yet,” Brodie said.

“Anyway, we have one more soundstage to go,” Mark reminded him.

They headed to the fifth building.

Like the fourth, it had not been completely stripped. This set looked as if it had been meant for a Victorian-era film. The facades of houses decorated with gingerbread porches and window trim stood to one side, while the other half of the soundstage had been dressed to resemble a series of businesses from the same time period. One of them had a huge sign that read Wax Works! Enter if Ye Dare!

“Hildegard seems to have been doing a lot of horror movies,” Brodie commented.

“Maybe he was living a horror movie,” Mark said. “I don’t really know anything about him, other than that he was a famous magician.”

“He booked himself as ‘Sebastian the Magnificent,’” Brodie said. “I remember one of my dad’s old friends talking about him one night when my father first took me to the House of Illusion. He was good—today he’d be all over TV, I imagine. But Sebastian also loved movies—making them, that is—and I imagine that’s why he founded the studio. But onstage, he was pretty amazing.” He paused and looked at Mark. “He liked to tell the crowds that he could even defy death.”

“As far as I know, he’s been buried for years,” Mark said.

“Has been buried...”

“Apparently now someone wants to see if the illusionist really can defy death,” Mark said.

“So—do we start with the Hildegard family?” Brodie asked.

“As good a place as any,” Mark said. He walked over to the wax works, aiming his flashlight as he went.

Behind the facade he saw a love seat with a script on it. Moving closer, he noticed that there was no dust on the wood or upholstery—or the end table next to it.

He slipped on a latex glove and picked up the script. He flipped it over to read the title aloud. “Death in the Bowery, by Greg Swayze.” It was new, by an up-and-coming scriptwriter whose name Mark thought he recognized. He looked up as Brodie joined him. “Someone’s been here,” he said. “Could be Swayze himself, or maybe someone else with access to his script.”

“Is he an Other? I don’t know the name,” Brodie said.

“He’s fairly new to L.A. I don’t know—we can ask the women if they’ve heard about him. Sailor’s in the business, so she might know,” Mark said.

L.A. was a hard place to be a Keeper, he reflected. Someone was always shooting a horror movie somewhere in town, and that made it very difficult to discern the real from the feigned.

Truth from illusion.

“Just because the guy’s screenplay is here doesn’t make him guilty. One or both of the dead women might have been an aspiring actress. They could have been given a copy to read, and they might even have been lured here on the pretext of an audition,” Brodie said.

“Newcomers to the area—yeah, they might have been here for the Hollywood dream,” Mark said. “We could go back to the station and find out about our murder victims, and then have a visit with the reigning Hildegard.” He grimaced. “Ah, hell. I forgot that I have to go in and do paperwork over the car incident.”

“I reported that someone drove you off the road, and that you barely escaped with your life,” Brodie told him. “I bought us the time to do this, but, yeah—the lieutenant is going to want a report.”

“Paperwork,” Mark groaned.

“Happens to the best of us,” Brodie said. “Let’s head on out. We didn’t find anyone—but so far no one has found us, either.”

* * *

Alessande awoke to the gentle touch of a hand on her shoulder. She expected Sailor or Rhiannon or Barrie. She jerked when she saw the face of an elderly man.

Merlin!

“I’m so, so sorry, my dear. I didn’t mean to startle you. You were whimpering in your sleep. I knocked, but you didn’t answer, so... But I didn’t wish to scare you.”

Merlin was an extremely polite ghost. He’d been a lovely man in life, and he was a lovely man in death.

Without being an Other, he’d been a spectacular magician.

“It’s okay, Merlin,” she said quickly. “You just surprised me. I was whimpering? I had no idea. I thought I was out like a light.”

“The mind is a mysterious machine, my dear,” he said. “May I?” he asked, indicating the chair near the window.

“Of course.”

Merlin was a talented ghost. He’d learned to use his ectoplasmic strength to great effect. He drew the chair over to her bedside and sat. “I’ve just heard about the events at the Hildegard tomb.”

She winced. “Merlin, I’ve listened to a dozen lectures already.”

“Oh, I’m not here to lecture you, Alessande.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m here to warn you,” he said gravely.

“About?”

“Sebastian Hildegard,” he said.

She frowned at that. “Sebastian Hildegard must be pretty well decayed by now—even if he was embalmed. Dead and buried, as they say. It’s his heirs—or whoever is using his tomb—that we need to fear.”

Merlin shook his head. She smiled, watching him. He was white-headed and distinguished; he would have made the perfect grandfather.

“No, you don’t understand. I knew Sebastian Hildegard. He wasn’t just an illusionist and a shapeshifter—he was a man dedicated to achieving immortality.”

“But he’s dead.”

He shook his head at her naïveté. “Perhaps he can be resurrected. He certainly thought so.”

Alessande chose her words carefully. “Merlin, we’re all aware of the different powers we have, but even vampires can die. And shapeshifters don’t have the life span that vampires do. Shapeshifters die.”

“Sebastian did die,” Merlin said. “Look, I know this is hard to believe, but it’s true. Sebastian was into the occult—he studied ancient texts from dawn to dusk. I believe that part of him is still...is still in the atmosphere. Caught somewhere in time and space. And I believe that this cult intends to use the deaths of more young women to bring him back to life.”

“Merlin, I just can’t believe that’s possible,” Alessande said.

“Does it really matter if it’s possible so long as people believe it’s possible?”

Alessande murmured, “I guess not. So we should start by talking with his heirs, right?”

Merlin wagged a finger at her. “Not you, my dear. The police. The police need to start with the family.”

“Merlin...”

“Alessande, you’ve angered the wrong people. You need to stay safe.”

“I can’t sit around when a girl is missing.”

“You feel sorry for her,” Merlin said. “And it makes you feel that you need to get involved. Forgive me—I have been eavesdropping. I know what you did.”

“I really am capable, Merlin. I just wanted to see who was behind the mask before I acted. If I could have gotten to the truth, I—”

“What truth, Alessande? You’re dealing with shapeshifters. You could have seen anyone—a young mother. A politician. A—”

She shook her head. “Under the mask and cowl, the leader was showing his—or her—true face. I’m sure of it.”

“Maybe. And maybe not. He—or she—got away, right?”

“So you suggest that I just sit here and do nothing?”

“Yes.”

Alessande sat up. “Merlin, I don’t intend to endanger anyone else, but I won’t just sit here. When the Celebrity Virus went around, every single Elven out there was susceptible—and the only way to stop it was to go out and do something. I won’t spend the rest of my life being afraid.”

She was startled to see that he was leaning away from her in his chair and staring at her strangely.

“What?” she demanded.

“You, uh, you’ve changed,” he told her.

“What are you talking about?” she asked sharply.

He indicated the mirror. She hopped from the bed and walked over to the guest room’s full-length swivel mirror...

...where she stared at her own reflection and gasped softly.