“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.
When the last of the glass had fallen, all was quiet as—a tomb. For a brief moment. The quiet was broken, this time, by the sound of wings as bats flapped through the windows into the musty room, banging into the wooden frame and into each other, in their eagerness to attack.
Jessie grabbed for his luminescent crucifix, caught it in the lining of his jacket pocket, tore his coat getting it out, then dropped it. He felt like Zeke Kanastorous: no thumbs. He bent and picked the cross up again, just in time to face Count Slavek who had metamorphosed from a bat into a man. The Count had stepped forward, reaching for them, grinning a grin that was crammed full of fangs.