I could see she was concerned, but my masculine pride wouldn’t allow me to acknowledge my unmasculine behavior.

“We need to go back to the library,” I told her.  “I have a plan and it includes Homeland Security ID for Lilly.”

She raised an eyebrow, handed me my own ID and said, “Let’s go.”

Brianna drove us back to the library and as we descended the long dark steps I knew what was coming, but there was no avoiding it.  Rounding the corner and pushing open the door to Sugar’s office, I steeled myself for the inevitable.

Sure enough, she threw her arms around me and burst into tears against my chest.  I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes in an attempt to stop myself joining in.

“How very, very touching.”  The voice was like a stab in the back and I didn’t need to look around to know whose long, ugly arm the thrust had come from.

“Get the hell out of my office, Steiner,” snapped Sugar through her tears.

“I vill overlook your insubordination thees time,” replied Steiner his haughty German accent creeping in.  He turned and stalked out.

“What a jerk,” said Brianna.

Sugar agreed and added a few more, rather colorful pejoratives.

“Who was he?” Brianna asked.

“The director of the library,” I replied.  “And suspect number one.”

Brianna raised both her eyebrows this time.

“It’s a long story.”  I said.

“The short version?”

“Steiner was in LA before World War II.  He was involved in a Nazi plan to persuade some low life in Hollywood to include Nazi propaganda in their movies.  Lilly and I buggered him with an elephant’s …”

“I get the picture,” said Brianna before I could finish, which was a shame because I detested Steiner and I relished the image.

“So how’d he become director of the library?”

“He’s a covert little weasel,” I said.  “After the war he recanted his evil ways and begged forgiveness.  When compared with the horrendous crimes committed by other Vampires during the war, his acts looked like minor mischief, so he was given a slap on the wrist.  Then over the next 50 years he crawled his way up the library ladder to the exalted position he now holds.”

“So you think he could have done it?” asked Sugar.

“I won’t really know until I see the body and find out how she was killed.”

I told Sugar what we needed.  “I’m sorry to cut in on your night like this,” I said.

“The hell with that,” she said. “Lilly was my friend and my inspiration. Anything that helps find the $%#@ that killed her is my priority.”  And she turned to her work bench and got busy.

Brianna and I left her in peace and began walking towards Geo’s office.  When we reached the door I turned and said, “I need to speak to him privately.”

Brianna’s eyebrow when up again.  It was beginning to annoy me.  I think I preferred her wise-cracks.

“Okay,” she said and headed off to one of the reading rooms.

I turned back to the door and knocked.

“Come in.”

I took a deep breath and, turning the door handle, took the plunge.

He won’t tell anyone if he’s the original Seneca from back in Roman times, but I know for a fact that he was alive back then – Francesca met him in the third or second century, or something.  Ya know, way back in the day. So, it’s really possible he was or is the same guy.  Plus, he talks like a philosopher or something.

Anyway, Seneca told me about the murder and the situation at the LAPD .  He also told me who to contact at the LA Vampire Library and how to get credentials that Al and I need to get in and find where they were keeping the body.  I felt like I was a spy or something, trying to break in to CSI.

I had no idea the dead woman was a friend of Al’s, so when I picked him up at the airport I was surprised at how quiet he was.  When he burst into tears – I had no idea what to do.  So, I just looked ahead at the road and the lights of LA as I drove along the 105 towards the 110 and Pasadena where I live.

By the time we got to my house, Al looked exhausted.   I led him to the guest room and he collapsed onto the bed and fell asleep.  I didn’t know what to do.  I’d never seen him like that.  After watching him for a couple of minutes I decided I was NOT going to undress him and put him to bed.  So I just left him lying there on top of the covers.

I left the house and drove over to the LA Vampire Library where I called on Sugar, the expert on documentation.  I don’t think her name is really Sugar, but that’s what everybody calls her.  She’s a very serious African lady with a long face and sharp eyes.

“This must be pretty god-damn serious,” she said,  “I got this encrypted, super-important, god-damn email from Seneca himself.”

She threw a large manila envelope onto the desk in front of me.  “It’s all there.  Homeland god-damn Security ID with clearance high enough to get you into the President’s john at the god-damn White House while he’s takin’ a dump.”

“I don’t think I’ll need it for that,” I said.

“So what do you need it for?”

I rolled my eyes, “Thanks Sugar,” was all I said

“God-damn secrecy.” She sniffed in disgust and turned back to a passport she was forging.

Next stop was Geo.  His real name was something from an old Persian language that nobody speaks anymore, and I’m not surprised they gave it up since his name is so impossible to pronounce.   Anyway, Geo is the local apothecary/alchemist/pharmacist.

“Good evening, Brianna,” he said, peering at me through a pair of tiny spectacles.  His glasses are so tiny – you have to shrink John Lennon’s by 75%.   I don’t know why he wears them, he’s a Vampire for god’s sake and he has perfect vision.  I guess he thinks they make him look distinguished or something?  A lot of the old vampires are pretty weird.  It makes them more interesting.

“Hey Geo,” I greeted.  “I need some sun juice.  Enough for two people for a couple of days.”

He raised one of his bushy black eyebrows and scratched at the side of his long thin nose.  “That’s an awful lot.  That much could cause nasty side-effects.”

“I know,” I said, “we probably won’t need it all, but we have to be outside during the day so we need it handy just in case.”

He turned to a huge glass case that filled one side of the room, dug out a tiny key from a large pocket of his old brown smock and opened one of the large doors.  He handed me six small vials of black liquid.

“Don’t take them within twenty four hours of each other unless it’s a real emergency.  And don’t ever take more than three in a month.”

I took the vials from him and held one up to the light.  I moved the vial around and the thick black goop inside reminded me of something I’d seen on the Adams Family – it was lumpy and slimy.

“It looks gross,” I said.

“And it tastes no better,” he replied with a cackle that made me jump.  I gave him an embarrassed smile and then left as quickly as possible.

So we had everything we needed to infiltrate the LAPD: sun juice to protect us from the UV and ID to get us into their HQ.  Everything except Alistair.  As I headed back home I wondered if he’d pulled himself together yet.

The plane was approaching Los Angeles International Airport and my remembrances of Lilly would have to wait for another time.

I fastened my seat belt like a good little boy and watched a nervous passenger biting his nails as the plane bumped in for an average sort of landing.

I hadn’t brought much with me, just a carry-on, so once we had disembarked I headed for the departures area.  I stood outside in the warm LA night and wondered, impatiently, were my ride was.  

“You know, Al,” said a familiar voice behind me, “if you turned on your cell phone then you might actually get a call now and again.”

It was Brianna.  I turned and grunted a hello.

“Sheesh,” she said, “No hug?  No ‘hello Brianna, so nice to see you’?  Not even a ‘My name is Alistair, not Al’?”

I really wasn’t in the mood for the usual repartee, so I just shrugged and asked, “Where is your car?”

She must have picked up my mood because she said nothing and instead motioned toward a sporty looking Scion tC.  I dumped my bag in the back and climbed into the passenger seat.

After we left the airport and were on the freeway, she glanced a couple of times as if trying to judge when the time was right.  Finally after quite some time had passed and I think we were about half-way to her home, she said, “I guess the woman who was killed was a good friend.”

“Yes,” I said and then I burst into tears.

It was really embarrassing but I didn’t care.

I swept my arm to the right like a magician introducing his next trick.  “If you would care to step this way, my car is just around the corner.”

“Your car?”

“Yes.  I can either drive you home or I can take you dancing.  Which would you prefer?”

Her right eyebrow raised suspiciously then she gave a snort of a laugh and smiled and the moon up in the clear Los Angeles night paled in comparison.  “What the hell,” she said.  “Take me dancing.”

After exchanging names, we drove in silence for a while and I was trying to think of something to say when she beat me to it.

“So how was Hamlet?”

“How did you know I was reading Hamlet?”

“There was a party downstairs full of the beautiful people of Hollywood and you were sitting upstairs in the library in the dark reading Shakespeare. What else could it have been?”

Then before I could reply she launched into, “To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?”

She didn’t stop there.  She went through the entire monologue.  She gave it the correct cadence, the correct emotion and the perfect voice tones.  I stared at her in astonishment and almost drove off the road.

Now you must forgive me, dear reader, but this was 1936, a less enlightened age, and I was a product of an even less enlightened age (after all it wasn’t called the “dark-ages” for nothing), so my attitude at the time towards this “negro” woman, was what nowadays would be called “racist”.

You see, we white people of European decent were clearly superior to the other races of the world and we knew it.  (I blush to write it, but honestly that is how most white people of the day thought.)  So this dark skinned woman who was quick witted, smart, observant and could quote Shakespeare like Laurence Olivier totally bemused me.  She didn’t fit my racist preconceptions at all.

I’ve never been any good at poker and my thoughts must have shown themselves for when she had finished the monologue she sighed a deep resigned sigh and said, “Maybe you’d better just take me home.”  The spark had left her eyes and she stared down at her hands in her lap.  ”What the hell was I thinking?”

If she had attacked me or been aggressive I would have probably justified my “white-man” ideas about “non-whites”, gotten into a huff, driven her home and never seen her again.  But her defeated reaction made me feel ashamed.

It was actually a turning point in my life.  It was the last time I ever judged someone by their race, sex, religion or anything other than their actions.

“No,” I said.  ”You are coming dancing.”

“So you can show off your pet nigger to your rich friends?”

“No,  so I can show off a beautiful, intelligent and talented woman to my friends and make them jealous as hell.”

She gave me that suspicious look again, but at least the sparkle was back in her eyes.

“That’s better,” I said.  ”It must be tough being …”

“A nigger?”

“… a non-white in Hollywood.”

“It’s god-damned impossible,” she said.  ”It’s not just negros, the chinks have a helluva time too.”

“And I thought I had it tough,” I said.  ”My situation is nothing compared to yours.”

“Gee,” she said, “thanks for those inspiring words of encouragement.”

“Sorry, it didn’t come out quite the way I intended.”

She put her hand on my arm and squeezed it gently.  ”I appreciate the thought.”

She gave me another of her dazzling smiles and it was at that instant that the idea came to me.

“Put him in his chair behind the desk,” she said in a calm and authoritative voice.  Apparently the fact that I’d helped her by rendering Mr. Big Time unconscious put her in charge.  Well, I didn’t mind.  I was finding this all very amusing.

I tried arranging his body as best I could but when I laid him back against the chair, he slid out onto the floor.  So I sat him up and then he flopped forward.  So I pulled his butt forward a little and he slid out of the chair.

“Jam the chair against the desk, you idiot.” the girl snapped.  I guess she was a little stressed and didn’t see the humor in it.

At last I had him sitting up, wedged in by the desk, not sliding and not flopping.  The girl pushed me aside and handed me a whiskey bottle.  I was about to say that I wasn’t thirsty when she grabbed hold of Mr. Big Time’s face and after manipulating the nose and jaw she said, “Pour a slug down his throat.”

I expected him to cough or gag, but to my surprise he glugged it down.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you later,” she replied.  “Give him some more.”

After a couple more slugs she took the bottle and poured out a glass which she put onto the desk before him.

She stood back to survey the scene.  Apparently unsatisfied, she stepped forward, reached down and unbuttoned his pants.  I watched, bemused, trying to figure out what on earth she was doing.

She pulled out his … how shall I put it?  This is a family blog after all … eh … his member and then taking his right hand, wrapped his fist around it.

She stepped back again, nodded and muttered, “That should do it.”

“Should do what?” I asked.

“I’m hoping when he comes round that he’ll think he had too much to drink and dreamed the whole thing up.”

“It might work,” I said, appreciating her quick thinking.  “Did anyone see you come in?”

“No,” she said.  “He insisted on it.  That was a big red flag that I should have seen, but they don’t call it blind ambition for nothing.”

“So you’re ambitious but unwilling to go so far as to sacrifice your virtue?”

“Are you mocking me?”  Her eyes flashed with a fire I had rarely seen in this decadent age.

“Not at all.  It’s refreshing.”  And I meant it.  “I have grown tired of the crowd downstairs.  The men and women who are willing to become whores in order to step onto the next rung of the Hollywood ladder to specious glory.”

There was a noise from the desk.  Mr. Big Time was coming round.

I put my finger to my lips again and motioned her to follow me.  I led her back into the library and was half way over to the window when she whispered, “I can’t see a damn thing.” 

I went back and, giving her my hand, guided her through the room.

“What the hell were you doing, sitting here in the dark?” she asked.

“Reading Shakespeare.”

We had reached the window and I opened it onto a small balcony which overlooked the lawn at the side of the house.  There was no one in sight.

“I can get you out unseen,” I said.  “But I use a rather unconventional method so you’re going to have to close your eyes and trust me.”

She gave me a “what the hell are you talking about?” look.

“You know,  you’re not at all pretty when you frown like that,” I said.  Her eyes flashed with that angry fire.  “And you could really do with a sense of humor,”  Well at least that got a smile out of her.

I picked her up, one arm at her back, the other under her knees.  I ignored the look of alarm that broke out on her face.  “Close your eyes like a good little girl.”  Reluctantly, she did and I jumped off the balcony onto the thick, well watered lawn.  “Keep ‘em closed,” I said then ran across the grass and jumped the ten foot high brick wall that ran along the west side of the garden.

I put her down.  “You can look now.”

I was gratified to see her eyes grow wide.

“How did you do that?” she asked.

I smiled my best Sphinx smile and threw back the no-answer she’d used earlier.  “I’ll tell you later.”

The red-eye wasn’t very crowded and I had the row to myself.  The other passengers were curling up or stretching out and attempting to get an hour or so of sleep before we reached LA, but not me.  Apart from the fact that the night was my day, I couldn’t have fallen asleep if I’d wanted to: The news of Lilly’s death had taken hold of me and I couldn’t get thoughts of her out of my mind.

It was July 1936 when I met her.  I was sitting in the library of a big time Hollywood producer, reading Shakespeare while downstairs a party was going at full blast.  Earlier that night,  I’d walked into the party and looked around at the pretty young aspiring stars and starlets who were desperately attempting to get noticed by sundry producers and directors who in turn were eyeing the previously mentioned pretty young bodies.

One strikingly beautiful girl came up to me with an inviting smile and asked me who I was.  I opened my mouth to give her the usual spiel that would end up with her in my bed, but then I stopped.  I was so sick of the whole charade.  It had been creeping up on me for years.  I’d left Germany after my fall from grace and taken up a life of hedonism in a vain attempt to forget what was going on in the world, but it was no use.  I saw the news reports, I knew what was going on in Germany and worse still there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

As I looking into the face of beauty, saw the lovely eyes, the smooth skin, heard, as only a Vampire can, the flow of the blood through her veins and thought of what was likely to happen to her when the Kuks came to power, the futility of my existence crashed down upon me like the Malibu surf.  Without answering her question I turned and headed upstairs to the library.

An hour later, I was reading Hamlet’s famous monologue, “to be or not to be, that is the question.”  Shakespeare’s words meant more to me that night than any words had ever meant. 

To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d.

As I sat there in the dark, reading the words of a brilliant man I had known three hundred and fifty years before, I was seriously considering that “consummation”.  I knew how to kill a Vampire.  I’d done it many times to others.  Could I do it to myself?

My thoughts were just touching on the how, when a commotion from the room next door disturbed my morose ponderings.

“Get your dirty hands off me!” Thud, gasp, crash.

I looked at what I was reading, thought of what I was thinking and shook my head.  ”Get a grip man.” I snapped at myself.

I put Shakespeare aside, got up and walked over to the door.  Opening it I beheld a most interesting sight.

There was Mr. Big Time Hollywood Producer lying on the floor clutching his groin and standing over him was a pint sized black girl in a torn evening dress, with fire in her eyes and a foot poised to deliver another kick.

She looked up at me and her predicament crashed down upon her like my earlier Malibu wave – she was in the study of Mr. Big Time, she had kicked him where a man can least take a kick and here was a witness.

She opened her mouth to speak, but I held up a finger for silence.

I walked over to Mr. Big Time, who was lying with his back to me, bent down, applied a little pressure to a couple of important points on his neck and he lost consciousness.  Step one of my brilliant plan was a success.  Now what was step two?

My butler brought me my breakfast blood and I sipped it meditatively as I perused the SF Chronicle.  Call me old fashioned, but turning on a computer and browsing to a news site just doesn’t feel right to me.  There is something real and comforting about newsprint and ink.  (Although given the murder and mayhem that is usually printed in newspapers, “comforting” may not be the best choice of adjective.)

I showered and dressed and was preparing for the night ahead when my red phone rang.  I have two lines coming into my bedroom, one phone is blue and the other is red – nothing to do with the Matrix, I had those old phone installed long before Keanu Reeves was swallowing the blue pill or was it the red one – I can’t remember.  Anyway, the blue phone is my ordinary line and the red phone is, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, my important or “hot” line.

I picked it up with a certain amount of apprehension, considering the trouble I’d gotten into the last time it rang.

“Hello, Alistair here.”

“Hello my friend.”  It was the quiet voice of Seneca and he sounded sad, not his usual emotion, so I knew I was about to receive bad news.

“Can we video conference?”

“Of course.”

I hung up the phone and turned on my computer.  I may be an old fashioned Vampire who clings to the past in many ways, but there are some modern conveniences that I am perfectly willing to avail myself of and video conferencing is one of them.  I much prefer seeing who I am talking to over merely hearing their voice.  It’s much more … comforting (there’s that word again).

I finished off my afternoon blood as the computer went through its various machinations of starting up and after a few minutes there was the face of Seneca to accompany his voice.

“It is good to see you my friend,” he began, “it has been too long since we have met face-to-face.”

He paused for a moment then took a deep breath as if preparing to jump into the deep end.

“I wish I was calling with good news, but I’m afraid not.   I won’t beat about the bush.  Lilly Tyler is dead.”

I felt the blood drain from my face and there was the beginning of a roaring in my ears.  Breathing became difficult and it took a while before I could get a grip on my senses.  Seneca waited patiently, watching me master my emotions.  At last I managed to get out, “How?”

“She was murdered.  We don’t know how or by whom.  We have very little data and worse still, the LAPD have her body.”

Catastrophe upon catastrophe, but the LAPD was a minor issue compared with finding out who did it.

“I called you, Alistair,” continued Seneca, “because I know you were close to Lilly …” Close?  I had turned her. “… and I knew that you above all others would want to avenger her.”

My mind was numb from the news, but that last sentence broke through.

“You want me to find out who did it?”

“Yes.  Frist I need you to go to LA and retrieve her body.  We cannot let it fall into the hands of humans.  With modern DNA testing that would be a disaster.  I have a team ready to snatch the body but I need to know where it is.  They must already suspect something because the body is not in their normal morge.”

“Sure,” I acknowledged his “first” but it was not my priority.  “And second?”

“Then you can find the bastard who did it and … well, I’m sure I don’t need to draw you a picture.”

No he didn’t.

It’s a bit gory at times, but quite interesting overall.  Anne Rice got a couple of things very right:

First was how Vampires can fall out of time.  Armand said something to Louis about needing Louis to help him attune to the age they were in.  I’ve experienced that feeling of being out-of-sync.  It wasn’t too bad in the first few hundred years but about half way through the 19th century the rate of change accelerated and for a couple of decades I was feeling very antiquated.  I got some help and have managed to keep up with the frenetic pace of civilization since then, but as a character in Alice in Wonderland says: “You have to run just to keep up.”

I’ve known several Vampires over the centuries who just couldn’t take it anymore and did away with themselves.  I only hit that nadir once and, as you can tell from the fact that I’m writing this, I recovered.

The other thing Anne got right was the cruel impulses that can grow in some Vampires.  When you are forced to use humans for food, it is very easy to lose your humanity and begin to treat them as cattle.  That is the reason for many of the rules we now follow.  For example, hunting humans is forbidden.  We have an institution called the “Network” that delivers the blood we need to survive, so the need to hunt humans is gone. 

But there are Vampires in existence who have, to steal a line from Star Wars, gone over to the dark side and who still hunt humans.  When they are caught, as the invariably are, they are dealt with, sometimes by imprisonment and sometimes by execution.  It’s not just that they are evil or that they have gone insane, it’s also the fact that they endanger our existence.  Finding bodies drained of blood lying around all over the place is going to raise a lot of questions and with the DNA and other CSI style technology that exists today it would not take long for someone to catch the perpetrator and find out that Vampires exist and, because the guy they caught is a blood sucking nut-job, think that they are dangerous and should be wiped out.

Anyway, I just wanted to make that comment about the movie and I wanted also to say that I thought Kristen Dunst was amazing as Claudia.  I don’t know how old she was when the movie was made but she was very convincing as the 30 year old Vampire in the 8 year old body.

Probably not what you wanted to here, Angel, but life isn’t always easy.

A paltry excuse, but mine own.

The situation was not conducive to eloquence and as it involved the death of a very good friend I did not feel like posting.  Now that it’s over and I am back home, I will tell you all about it.  Or at least I will as soon as I “arrive” and get my home and life back to normal.  So please bear with me.

Of course, you can continue to post and ask questions and I’ll do my best to answer.

P.S.  I want to personally apologize to “kristin” who posted a very good comment over a week ago and only just got a reply.  I can only beg her forgiveness and hope that my reply is worthy of her most excellent words.