I dreamt I was on a mountain, going very fast down a mountainside covered with snow. I was tied up, gagged, my mouth stuffed with dry, shit-tasting cotton rags; and I was trying to scream. I twisted and turned on the toboggan I was lashed to, trying to open my eyes and loosen my bonds or stop the horrible, rapid, shaking slide. I couldn't do any of those things. I gave up and let everything go black, convinced that I was going to hit the bottom and be crushed into a pulpy mess. I was afraid of the pain.

I was... darkness. Swift motions passing over me, voices;, I couldn't hear what they were saying. It sounded like someone laughing, or having an asthma attack, one or the other. I was still in my body, I could tell that much; my feet flopped to each side heavily, and I tried to move them, but I was too tired. It hurt to breathe. "Am I dead?" I managed to say, my voice like rubber dragged over concrete.

Definitely laughing. "What'd she say?" A girl's voice.

"She said, 'Am I dead?' That, my little victim, is a matter of opinion." A man's voice, accompanied by the feel of moist cool fingers stroking my forehead. "Now, stop worrying over matters of existential philosophy, and go back to sleep. You're in your bed at home. Can't you smell it?"

I could smell it. The sweat from my head, the synthetic tang of cheap pillowcases, even the faintest hint of... John? No matter; I was suddenly too comfortable to resist anything, remember anything, and I had to do as I was told.

Then I was awake.

I rolled over and felt for my bedside table, my alarm clock, but my hand instead knocked over something that fell with a small plastic clatter to the floor. I opened my eyes and looked down at the floor-a plastic thermometer lay there, on an unfamiliar linoleum floor, a smooth pattern of brown dots and seams in squares. Not my room. Not my bed either. I lay on a narrow bed with one metal rail on the side, a hospital bed. There was not enough light for me to be in a hospital, even late at night; also missing were the busy hospital sounds, the humming of fluorescent lights, beepers, the quiet but distinct hurrying of nurses. I shrugged off layers of cheap flannel blankets and half sat up.

I was wearing a white T-shirt with the collar and sleeves cut out, the front of it dotted with brown droplets of dried blood. I touched my chest. It seemed whole. I was in no pain whatsoever anywhere. I peeked down the front of the T-shirt to see. There were four tiny pink seams that ran from the base of the throat down to where the tits became ribs, lines as fine as plastic surgery scars.

I was not alone in the room. A dark-haired young man slouched languidly in a folding chair across from me, maybe ten feet away, as if waiting for me to wake up. His skin shone eggshell-pale in the umbrous darkness of the room, bright in contrast with his dark clothes-a fishnet blouse and black, glistening, reptile-patterned jeans. He pushed black hair off his brow, leaned forward, and smiled at me. "Hello at last," he said.

"Where am I?" I asked. My voice was full of mucus, and I coughed and spat into a fold I made in the soft, old bedsheet.

"You're at my place," the man said. He had the same voice that had, long ago, commanded me to sleep in my own bed. "My name's Daniel. You're in Hollywood."

I sat very still and blinked at him. "Daniel?" I said. The one and only? The black-hearted demon of Berlin, this, a quiet-voiced, jaunty California Goth boy?

"You may have heard of me," he replied with a straight face.

"How did I get here?"

"You may ask yourself-well, how did I get here?" he quoted the Talking Heads, smiling at last. "In fact, you were sent. Do you remember?"

"Remember what?"

"You arrived here four days ago, in a San Francisco Yellow Cab. You were slashed and unconscious, bleeding very badly. You had a note stuck to your chest with your own blood. I've got it on me-do you want to see it? I think it explains a lot."

I nodded jerkily, and he reached into his pocket and withdrew a slip of paper. He stood up to give it to me. He had an exquisite form, bones and sleekness, grace sliding through every joint and each lean, smooth muscle. The skintight jeans creaked as he walked over to me and bent down to give me the note. Then he sat back down in his chair and watched me unfold it.

On grainy cream-brown paper, in black ballpoint, was written in an unbalanced, florid script: A little present from me to you. You are welcome to her; she is just like you in so many ways. If I keep her, I'll kill her or I'll lose my mind. Always and ever your slave, O.V.R.

The note was crisp with old blood, dried a darker shade of brown than the paper. I folded it back up and set it down on the blankets in front of me. "Oh," I said. "Yeah, that explains a lot..."

"You're all right now," said Daniel calmly. "Tell me your name."

"Ariane."

He grinned, and I saw his fangs glisten wetly in what light there was. He had rather long, ostentatious fangs, as if age wore them down to smoother stubs. "You look," he said, half laughing, "so pissed off."

"I don't know whether I'm dead or alive," I said. "It doesn't make any sense. It feels like this has all been a dream."

"Yeah," he agreed. "You are alive, though, I can vouch for that." He regarded me with bright eyes ringed with messy black pencil.

I touched my chest, checking to be sure a heart still beat underneath. "So he did know where you were all along," I murmured.

"Of course he did. Did he lie and say he didn't know?" He didn't wait for a response from me, snorting faintly. "Candy-ass. When it comes down to it, it's 'Let Daniel deal with it, let's send evil into evil,' blah-de-blah. I get so sick of that Catholic bullshit."

"I loved him," I said numbly.

"And he probably loved you. Or he still loves you. Did he ever try that dying thing on you?"

"What dying thing?"

"Oh, you know, climbs into a coffin, 'bury me in my best suit,' et cetera."

"He did want me to kill him," I admitted. "I was going to incinerate him."

Daniel made a face. "Yuck. Ever smelled a burning vampire? Stinks like shit." He was gazing at me with some concern. "You should be OK now. We fixed you right up. Do you feel all right? Does anything hurt?"

"I have to pee," I murmured.

"I don't doubt it. Bathroom's through there." He angled his head towards a half-closed door. "You can take a shower too, if you want. I'll have some clothes when you come out. I got it under control."

I got out of bed gingerly. If anything, I was simply tired, as if I'd been fasting or running marathons. The T-shirt slid aside indecently, exposing my bare ass and the dark crescent of my pubic hair, but he didn't look away or even pretend he hadn't seen. I pulled a blanket around myself and tiptoed across the chilly tiles to the bathroom.

I felt too fragile to shower, but I used a grainy hotel-issue washcloth to scrub my face, my pits, my cunt and ass (I remembered losing control of my bowels and my bladder as I looked down at the gaping wounds in my chest, as the blood sprang out in glorious spurts, lit by the amber streetlights). I washed my hair with a little bottle of shampoo (Pert Plus, yet more hotel pickings, from the Hollywood Hilton), pulled the T-shirt back over me, and came back into the room.

He was still there, and laid out on the bed was a sleeveless dress of warm-gray silk, brand-new cotton panties, and black silk socks. "Wow," I said, quietly impressed. "Silk socks." I looked at him, sitting there, smiling crookedly. "You gonna sit there while I dress?"

"Unless you insist. I've seen you naked before."

I sighed, and began to pull the clothes on with my back to him. The silk enclosed me warmly and I realized that I had been shaking, and now I had stopped. "So... where... exactly am I, besides Hollywood?"

"My headquarters, sort of." Up till this point, his accent had been a completely normal American one, a little crisper than usual; here a slight accent crept through. "I almost live here. I have my own place too. This is where you can usually find me. I have a cell phone too. I get calls at all hours." He looked around him. "You are in what we call the Rotting Hall, in the basement. That's why it's so cold in here. It's a nice evening outside-the sun's just going down. You hungry? I'm hungry."

"What do you mean?"

He shrugged. "I'm hungry," he repeated. "Do you want to go out to dinner?" He held out shoes to me-black elastic flats, size eight. "You like Greek? It's California Greek, but it's still all right, especially if you actually eat meat."

I put on the shoes. "You-eat?"

"Of course I do. Don't you?"

"Orfeo doesn't," I explained.

He looked away, rubbing his thick eyebrow with his forefinger. "Oh, yeah," he said with a faint grimace. "He's too special for that. I eat." He held out his hand and helped me stand up. We began to walk from the room.

"Do you shit?" I asked in a slightly embarrassed murmur.

"Yes, don't you? You are one strange kid."

Outside the room with the hospital bed was a long, dark, empty hall that smelled of cobwebs and soil. At the end of the hall were wooden stairs, and at the top of the stairs a doorless jamb yawned into a vast room.

It was the lobby, I supposed; huge and littered with old dusty couches, broken end tables with lamps, crates, spatters of wax. A few candles were lit in a massive candelabra that stood bristling by a spiral staircase. It was nearly the only light in the room; the windows were covered with black plastic trash bags, boards, or haphazard squares of red felt. A little light struggled against the red felt, warming the color of the atmosphere. The air reeked sweetly of marijuana smoke, incense, and the sweet sticky smell of burned opium. "Smells, uh, good in here," I commented.

Daniel looked round and smiled at me. "I can get you that too, of course," he said. "As much as you want, whenever you want."

"Right now I need a cigarette."

"In your shape? Allow me to be maternal-no smoking until after you've eaten something. I don't want you puking in my car. I have some Nat Shermans. You're welcome to them after dinner."

I followed Daniel out. A glorious sky greeted us over the ragged brick tops of the buildings-furious orange and sleepy violet, streaks of an ineffable azure. The sun was gone, as if swallowed by the murky Los Angeles skyline, only beginning to light up for the night. There were only a couple of cars on the narrow street outside, no pedestrians, no discernible human activity. I took a look behind me at the building we'd just come out of. It looked deserted from outside-sagging and cracked like an old wedding cake, mottled with graffiti, the windows blocked off with dust. "My God," I said, "what happened to this place?"

"Northridge quake," he said. "Just enough to shift the ground under the foundation. It's mostly safe. The ceiling's only fallen in on about three rooms."

I was aghast. "This ought to be condemned," I said.

"It is," Daniel said with great pride and affection. "Der Verfaulenhalle. I have a friend in city planning who makes sure that no wrecking balls ruin my palace. Well, I mean, look at it. It's about average for this neighborhood. There's plenty of money in L.A.-but none of it's here, that's for damn sure. It's easier to ignore than to fix up-there's plenty of space." He said this without a trace of irony. "For them, and for me."

Across the street was the back exit of a rock club-a young woman with big blond heavy-metal hair stood outside emptying the trash, and she looked up without emotion as we walked past. At this time of the evening, the parking lot was still largely deserted. On the far corner as the block ended, a huge black gas-guzzling monster Cadillac Coupe de Ville waited, gleaming, whitewall tires and tiny-spoked hubcaps shining purple in the dying light. "Please tell me that's not your car," I said, smiling helplessly. This was getting better by the minute.

"What's the matter with my car? I think she's beautiful." Daniel brandished a ring of keys and unlocked the driver's side.

"I bet you have a name for your car, don't you," I said.

"Dolores," Daniel said, climbing in.

I shook my head.

He unlocked and opened the door. "Get in, already."

The interior was even better-red glitter vinyl upholstery, bucket seats, a rearview-mirror mobile made up of rosaries, Playboy garters, Mardi Gras beads, and what looked like a dismembered Barbie. I laughed until I felt the healed rips in my chest start to stretch. I leaned back and tried to catch my breath, wiping my eyes. Daniel was smiling at me. "What? You think I'm a big goober, don't you?" he said.

I shook my head. "I just didn't expect you to be like this," I said. "I expected... you know, Klaus Kinski. Some kind of baby-chomping monster." I fell silent and he started the car, smoothly peeling out of the parking lot and joining the artery of traffic. He turned the stereo on, quietly playing some harsh industrial music I'd never heard before. "I didn't... Daniel, tell me why I'm alive right now."

"I saved you," Daniel said, eyes on the road. His eyes were narrow, heavily shaded with thick sparkling eyelashes, a brilliant dark green color like liqueur. "You were bleeding all over the place, in the back of that cab. You were wearing some awful lavender suit and it was completely black, dripping. The cabbie up front was dead-brain fried, bleeding out his eyes. Good thing too. Your fare came to nine hundred bucks."

"He drove me all the way here?"

"It's not like he had a choice. Once somebody as old as Ricari puts that mojo on your ass, you do it even after you're brain-dead. I wish I knew how he did it."

"I can't believe he let me live," I marveled. "I was pretty sure I died. How did you save me?"

"Fluids," he said. "We brought you inside, and we gave you some plasma, and then I kissed your wounds. I sweated into you. I masturbated, and smeared you with my semen." He darted me a sly, unsmiling glance. "By the end of the night you were starting to heal up. They put you on an IV with glucose and saline, just to keep you up till you regained consciousness. In the meantime I kept you asleep with my mind, so you'd heal faster. Worked out all right, don't you think?"

"You jerked off on me?"

"No, I jerked off, then I caught it in my hand, then I put it on you. Why?"

I didn't have an immediate reply. I looked at him for a while. Then I looked at the strip malls and palms and costume shops of Hollywood Boulevard streaking past. "I guess I should thank you," I murmured.

"I can jerk off on you if you want," Daniel said. He caught me staring at him again. "Just kidding," he amended. "Tell me about Ricari. How is the old son of a bitch?"

"Pious," I said. "Confusing."

"Repressed? He hasn't changed. I bet he's worse now."

"I can't believe he sent me away like that," I said.

"Hmm, I can't either. Anybody with good sense would have just killed you instead of going through all the trouble to hail a taxi, do a Jedi Mind Trick on some poor cab driver, and write me a nice note explaining his reasoning. He must really like you." He pulled the tape out of the stereo and replaced it with one that sounded almost identical. "He damn well didn't leave me a note when he ran away from me."

"He had nothing nice to say about you," I said. "He said, for one thing, that you were no great beauty."

"I'm not," Daniel said. His features, each alone, were well-formed, even classic, but put together they did not quite form a coherent whole. He had a long, large-nostrilled, noble nose, cheekbones for days, narrow almond-shaped eyes, and a wide, pointed, wicked mouth painted blood red. He was a perfect incubus. All he needed were horns and a lion's tail.

"I think you're OK-looking," I commented.

Daniel's jaw dropped with wounded vanity. "Oh, geez, come now, you will smother me with praise. Stop it this instant. You're OK-looking too, honey, especially now that we've gotten the puke out of your hair."

"Thank you for stimulating my appetite."

"Go on and tell me I'm beautiful," he said. "It's OK. My ego can't get any bigger than it already is." He glanced over at me and continued driving without looking where he was going. He was still going twenty miles over the speed limit, changing lanes like a man determined to win the Indy 500. "Would it help if I told you that you were a knockout even covered in blood and puke and all I could think about was how much I really wanted to-"

"Daniel, could you maybe please look at the road?" I said through my teeth.

At length we arrived at a typical Cali restaurant with big ferns outside and little ones inside. I felt like my belly had been left somewhere back there, eight or nine lane changes ago. Daniel, in his fishnet shirt and alligator vinyl jeans, stalked in like a supermodel and worked the place. Everyone stared at him, with dislike or lust or simple incomprehension, and by extension, at me too. I wanted to throw a tablecloth over my face. What a change from Ricari, who slipped into places so quietly that waiters were startled to see him! Daniel eventually stopped prancing back and forth as if looking for more beautiful people, and we got settled into a booth in the back of the restaurant.

"Are you crazy?" I whispered.

"What?" Daniel guzzled water from his drinking glass, licking his red lips.

"You just don't care, do you?"

"I like to give people something to look at," he said, running his fingers through his shock of thick, spiky, jet-black hair, hanging uncut down to the nape of his neck.

"But what if they guess... ?" I darted my eyes around the room, my heart hammering in my chest. I could feel it against the scars too, from inside.

"Guess? Oh, please!" Daniel shook his head patiently. "No one'll guess. This is Los Angeles. I look less undead than half the producers' wives in town. Look..." He stretched out his hands to me. His fingers were not as exaggeratedly long as Ricari's, but they were bright and bony and tipped with long, slightly curved fingernails, painted with black lacquer. The effect was extremely freaky. "Does this look human to you? No, it doesn't. But people don't care one way or the other. They wouldn't care if Jesus Christ himself came staggering through that door, nor Satan neither. Half the kids in Burbank have fangs. Dental porcelain. Looks just like the real thing." To demonstrate, he touched the tip of his tongue to one shining ivory spike.

"How do I know you're the real thing?" I asked as a matter of course.

He smiled at me, and instantly I felt the seat and the floor and the earth drop out from under me. I was falling at a thousand miles per hour without moving at all, without the jade coins of Daniel's eyes ever leaving mine. I would have thrown up, had there been anything in my stomach; as it was, I let out a little scream and gripped the table with my arms.

In another second everything was normal again. I almost began to cry in relief. "What the fuck was that?" I moaned.

"Very simple. I just fiddled with the part of your inner ear that handles your feeling of falling. Vertigo. A child could do it."

"That's bullshit!"

"So am I real?" Daniel pressed, his smile like that of a wicked child giving Indian burns.

"Yeah, yeah, OK. I believe you." My heart had barely had a chance to stop galloping after the experience of driving there.