Hollywood Monsters, page 21
I didn’t want to admire anything about him right now, after he’d as much as admitted he’d kept secrets from me about things that could have dangerous—possibly fatal—consequences.
“Unless you need anything else, Doran-san…?”
“Thank you, Kana, we’re good.”
I don’t think so, I thought as Kana nodded and left the study. Cayden cradled his now-full wine glass between his hands. Stared into it.
“Tell me more about these wards,” I said, holding my temper. “Like, what kind of wards are we talking about?”
He sighed. “The kind that keep homicidal revenants locked up. While I can deal with angry ghosts, I prefer peace and quiet. Unfortunately, some of them have been removed during my absence.”
“What the actual fuck?” So much for keeping my cool. “You’re saying they’re not in place anymore?” My voice rose in outrage. “And homicidal revenants? Why the hell didn’t you think to tell me about this?”
“I had no reason to believe they’d be tampered with. As soon as I felt the first one go down, I changed my flight and headed home.”
“First one?” My head hurt. “How many are there?”
“Four inside, four on the grounds outside.”
“And they’re all down?”
“If they were all down,” he said with a patience that just made me want to punch him, “you’d know it. Three of the ones I placed inside the mansion are definitely gone, but the most important one is still in place.”
“You’re sure about that?” When he didn’t reply, I stared. “How about we go check. Now.”
Cayden’s jaw clenched. Without a word, he stood up and strode out of the study, down the hall to the kitchen. Following closely, I didn’t bother asking any more questions—there were too many people still roaming about, prepping for tomorrow’s shoot.
Once in the kitchen Cayden went into the pantry, shutting the door behind us. Then he went to the back wall, where Donald had been nosing around earlier. With a few muttered words and a wave of one hand, Cayden knocked sharply on the wall and a door suddenly appeared, the outline and knob hazy at first, like heat lines in the desert. Then it solidified.
“Clever,” I said.
“I’m not stupid,” he said as he opened the door, revealing a wooden staircase going down into darkness. I gave a noncommittal grunt in response.
The flick of a switch turned on a succession of bare lightbulbs set into the ceiling along a hallway that stretched off into shadows. At the bottom of those stairs was another staircase descending even further.
“Here.” Cayden stopped in front of what looked to be to be just another rough section of wall made from crumbing concrete blocks. The difference from the rest of the dank corridor was how it jutted from the rest of the wall by a few inches. There was a nail driven into mortar about five feet above the floor, and something hung there on a silver chain—a bronze or copper disk with what looked like gemstones. It looked somehow familiar.
Curious, I touched it and almost immediately felt energy running into my fingertips, like a low-level electrical current. It didn’t hurt, but it was weird. I took my hand away and turned to Cayden, who observed me with a small smile playing about his lips. By this point I wanted to belt it off his face.
“You can feel it, can’t you?”
I nodded. “What is it, exactly?”
His smile widened. “Aside from—”
“Let me rephrase that,” I cut in before he could finish. “What is this?” I tapped the disk of bejeweled metal.
“A ward of containment,” he said simply.
“What’s it trying to contain?” I asked, even though I damned well knew the answer.
“Ned DuShane.”
Give this girl a prize.
* * *
The mansion’s “owner” and the bitchy woman vanished into the pantry. Gil and Donald waited just as he instructed.
After what seemed like enough time, they looked inside the pantry to see that there was a door, cracked open ever so slightly. Gil used her phone to take a picture so they could find it again later. They didn’t want to get caught—the man, Cayden Doran, was scary, and they had no doubt that he’d kick them off the property.
“What if it’s gone when we come back?” Donald said in an undertone.
“Then we’ll get an axe.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Cayden and I had exited the subbasement, and we hardly said another word. He didn’t seem to want to disclose anything more, and I was too angry to trust myself to speak. I was torn between curiosity and the increasingly familiar urge to belt him.
I went up to my room but wasn’t about to fall asleep. There was so much to untangle, knowing there was a homicidal revenant imprisoned several floors below me. Was all the weirdness connected—the missing people, Jada’s disappearance, the flying ashtray, the apocalyptic-level flood of animals at the Ranch?
If it was all connected, then how?
I couldn’t stop thinking about the Silver Screamers, and how they were obviously hunting for something in the mansion. I’d lay odds they had removed the first three wards. How they knew about them was another matter altogether.
Then there was the matter of Cayden. While there was an undeniable attraction between us, more than ever I had no idea if I could or should trust him. At the moment it seemed like a very bad idea.
I finally fell asleep around 2:30 A.M., waking up three hours later to roll out of bed and stumble downstairs for some much-needed coffee. Call time was 6:00 A.M., and there were extras trickling in for makeup and wardrobe. It was going to be a very full house.
Eden emerged from wardrobe and makeup looking resplendent in a clingy floor-length gown of silver satin, blonde hair curled lightly against her face. Nigri, along with half the crew, couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Crazy Casa had spared no expense for this scene. There were at least fifty or sixty extras milling about in twenties garb—flappers in fringe and feathers, jeweled bands around bobbed hair, crystal beads hanging down to the drop waists of their dresses. Sophisticated women in long gowns of silk and velvet. Men in suits, looking like they’d stepped out of a speakeasy.
One particularly large, broad-shouldered fellow stood out above the crowd, looking like a hired thug—Drift, who at Shaina’s urging had agreed to come back and play a partygoer. Which was kinda weird, but it felt good to have him there should anything else happen. His curly brown hair was slicked back, and makeup had given him a pencil mustache. He saw me and waved, grinning from ear to ear.
The servers, on the other hand, could have been refugees from the set of Spartacus, dressed as Roman servants with knee-high gladiator sandals and short tunics for the women. Each man wore leather strips attached to a waistband via metal studs, their oiled bodies glistening in the lights.
Authentic 1920s music played softly in the background.
I turned to Eden, who was carefully sipping water through a straw to avoid smudging her carefully applied lipstick. Followed her line of sight directly to a well-muscled if somewhat hairy male extra in leather war skirt and sandals, talking to two darkly good-looking men in suits—Eduardo and Skeet. There were no stunts, but Shaina had drafted everyone she could for the scene.
Sidling up to Eden, I said, “Say, Jimmy, do you like gladiator movies?”
She choked, nearly spitting the straw out. Grinning, I headed off to do one last check around the mansion before filming started, and make sure all was as it should be. At least to the best of my ability.
Cayden hadn’t appeared yet, which was fine by me.
Donald passed me in the hallway, gave me a nasty look, and kept going toward the Great Room. Gil, on the other hand, was nowhere in sight. I took a quick peek in the pantry, but there was no sign of her. Heaving a sigh of relief, I went back to get another cup of coffee, and watch the party scene being filmed.
When I got back to the Great Room, Cayden was standing in the back with Kana, near Shaina and her bank of monitors. I drank my coffee and stood next to Shaina, stubbornly ignoring him even though I could feel his gaze burning into me.
Why couldn’t I feel this way about Randy?
Life would be so much less complicated.
They did several takes of general party atmosphere, the “guests” laughing, drinking, eating, and in some cases getting PG-13 frisky. Toby Hissong owned the room as Ned DuShane, clapping men on the shoulders, putting a more-than-avuncular arm around the women, pinching a cheek here, a derriere there, and all in all doing a great job playing the larger-than-life producer of Silver Scream.
When Eden made her entrance as Dawn Jardine with her escort, “DuShane” descended on them, wrapping a proprietary arm around her waist and leading her off to get a flute of champagne, leaving her escort standing by himself. I couldn’t help but notice that the server looked more put out than Eden’s escort.
Then I saw his face—fer chrissake, it was Nigri.
“Pretty tame for one of DuShane’s orgy-fests,” Cayden whispered in my ear. “Most of the racier action happened in the spillover area next door. And upstairs, of course.”
“It is a little mild,” I said. “I mean, given their audience they can’t exactly go all Caligula, but still…”
“Disappointed?”
I elbowed him in the ribs without turning around and heard his low, rumbling chuckle.
“Asshat,” I muttered.
After a few takes with sound to catch the ambiance of the crowd, the music, and a few lines of dialogue from the actors with lines, Shaina called a ten-minute bathroom break and conferred with John, the DP. I moved to talk to Eden, but Nigri got there first and I didn’t think he’d thank me for interrupting their conversation. I didn’t like it, but Eden was a grownup and could handle herself.
Glancing around, I scanned for the Silver Screamers. They were over by the craft service tables against the back wall of the Great Room, Gil nibbling on a cookie while Donald stuffed handfuls of tortilla chips into his mouth. They caught me looking their way and gave me synchronized death-ray stares. That helped my mood—I hid a grin.
“Okay, Dax, time for places,” Shaina called. Dax, otherwise known as Han Shot First, didn’t answer. “Where the hell did he go off to?” Shaina sounded understandably irritated.
“Maybe he’s in the bathroom…?” a crewmember suggested.
“Oh, for chrissake. How long does it take?” Shaina waited another thirty seconds, then yelled, “Places, people!”
The actors and extras slowly returned to their marks. Picked up small plates of food, champagne flutes filled with sparkling cider, whatever props they’d been given to work with. Nigri reluctantly left Eden’s side to retrieve his serving tray. I was surprised he’d agreed to play one of the waiters until I saw him subtly but deliberately flex his arm and back muscles. He knew he looked good and wanted to make sure Eden saw it.
“Party scene, take six!” The sharp clack of the clapperboard echoed through the room, followed by a muffled pounding.
Cayden glanced up sharply.
The scar on the back of my neck itched and my amulet began to heat up against my chest.
Uh-oh.
Once again guests circulated, had vivacious conversations that most likely had nothing to do with the characters or time period they were supposed to be portraying.
“I swear, this is the last extra gig I’m going to take,” one toga-clad server said as she handed glasses of “champagne” to a group of suit-clad men. “I spend enough time as a waitress—I don’t need to play one on TV.”
“Can I offer you some champagne?” a voice said almost immediately. The extra looked around, the movement so sudden she sloshed some of the sparkling cider onto the floor. As I watched, another toga-clad woman, looking like an art nouveau nymph, superimposed herself over the extra.
Blinking to clear my eyes, I looked around. The same thing was happening all over the Great Room, which had suddenly become twice as crowded as it had been seconds before. It was like watching shadows take form, loosely attached to the actors and extras. The shadows looked more authentic, even though they were transparent.
Holy shit.
My amulet was full-on burning. The muffled pounding sound reached my ears again. Instead of stopping this time, though, it repeated itself. Once. Twice. Then again in a rapid frenzy of what sounded like blows. I turned, looking for Cayden, who was rapidly moving through the Great Room toward the main hall. Before I could follow him, a muffled explosion shook the house.
Someone screamed.
The specters gained substance. They weren’t all DuShane’s guests from parties past—there were people in clothing that spanned a hundred years, and some of them had died badly. Bettina and Dougie Patton were there, dressed in the clothes they’d died in. Skin rotted. Nothing of the glamor remained. Many of the other new party guests were much the same—and they all looked pissed off.
As I watched, Bettina drifted over to Cherry, put her spectral hands over the actress’s face…
…and ripped it off.
Things went quickly south after that.
More screams, a lot of them in pain, many of them abruptly cut off.
Threading my way through the panicking cast and crew members, I dashed down the hall to the kitchen. The door was flung wide, as was the entrance to the pantry. Someone had smashed open the door Cayden had concealed with his magic. The lights were on in the hallway below. Bolting down two flights of stairs, I ran to where Cayden had taken me the night before. I found him standing in front of that section of wall, Kana next to him.
The ward was gone. Concrete and wood lay shattered on the floor, leaving a hole in the wall. Something had burst through from the chamber beyond.
“Well, this is bad,” Cayden said.
“No shit.”
We dashed back the way we had come, and when we got back upstairs, the truth of his words became horribly evident. The screaming was louder with every step. Revenants were caught up in the party, attacking the people unlucky enough to be within their grasp. Cast and crew members were doing the screaming, but some of it was delight as they snatched up lighting fixtures, knives, bottles, whatever was close at hand… and started butchering those who were trying to get away.
I looked around for Eden—she was nowhere in sight. I hoped to god she’d found a safe place to hide.
Shaina was huddled in a corner by the terrace, Drift standing guard over her, deflecting would-be attackers with massive fists. He was bleeding from several cuts on his arms and face, but still looked okay.
“We need to get out of here,” Cayden said.
“Where?” I asked.
“The Ranch. It’s safe there.”
“Drift!” I hollered. He looked up at the sound of my voice. “Get Shaina to the front gate! We need to get back to the Ranch!”
Giving a thumbs-up, Drift scooped Shaina into his arms and dashed out through the terrace doors.
“Let’s go,” Cayden said as people boiled around the arched entrance between the Great Room and the main hall. Without waiting, I nodded and dashed forward, right arm outstretched to knock people and revenants aside. Half the time I was hitting rotten flesh. Cayden did the same, Kana ghosting behind us as a swarm of crazy people turned to follow.
The three of us reached the terrace and leapt over the balustrade. Shaina and Drift were waiting for us underneath the cover of the terrace, Drift panting like he’d run a marathon.
“You okay?” I asked, putting a hand on his massive shoulder.
“I…” He dipped his head down, chin resting on his chest. Could he be having a heart attack? “I’m fine,” he muttered. Then he lifted his head up. “I’m… I’m… I’m…” I looked into his eyes—they were veined with red. “Get me to the Ranch, Lee.” Drift’s voice was desperate. He dropped his head again, hyperventilating.
All the production vehicles were parked in the grass and side areas. “Hang on,” I said, and ran over to a grip truck, hoping the driver hadn’t thought it necessary to take the keys out in a place as isolated as this. They hadn’t.
Thank you, I thought to no one in particular.
Waving at Cayden, I pointed at the truck. Then I opened the tailgate as Drift staggered up with Cayden’s help. He looked into the back, clear of lighting equipment.
“Yeah, okay,” he muttered. “Just get me there fast. I can feel things changing inside.”
As soon as Drift was settled, I slammed shut the back gate, latching it in place before jumping into the cab next to Shaina. Kana was squished into the space in back of the seat, looking as comfortable and content as if she were riding in a limo.
Cayden put pedal to the metal and ripped down the drive, not bothering to avoid any of the crazies trying to stop us. One of them, a PA, bounced off the truck’s front bumper as Cayden careened through the front gates. A look in the passenger-side mirror showed the unwelcome sight of least a dozen shrieking cast and crew members pelting after us. Every shred of sanity had left the building.
“Shit,” I muttered. Eden…
“What?” Cayden glanced at me.
“Just drive as fast as you can.”
He shot a look into the rearview mirror and hit the gas, taking the turn onto the dirt road at a speed that would have made a sane Drift proud. A dust cloud rose behind us.
“Holy fuck,” I muttered, hanging on to the handle.
“Is there such a thing?” Cayden grinned at me and kept driving.
The distance from the mansion to the Ranch was maybe a mile as the crow flies, but we weren’t crows and had to take the road, so it was at least two and change. The grip truck wasn’t meant to be driven much above 50mph, but Cayden drove like it was headed to NASCAR. This was both good and bad, because the road was strewn with some truly nasty potholes, and if the truck bottomed out and we lost a strut or blew a tire, we were seriously screwed.
