A red mist hung over Los Angeles at midnight, a mist so thick that it blocked the moon's glow.
One so dense it almost hid what would become another shocking Tinseltown legend by the time morning rolled around.
The Damp air had been tinted with the crimson neon of a dingy alley's bar sign: Lenny's, it read in cursive beneath the tilt of a cartoon martini. As the wiring flickered on and off, so did the atmosphere, an apathetic heartbeat on the fringes of Hollywood Boulevard.
A police radio from one of the many black-and whites blocking the entrances tot the alley broke the silence with a burst of static, then buzzed to nothing. A hushed crowd was gathering on the slick pavement nearby, people craning their necks to gape through the fog and into the slender passageway. An even though the cops were doing there damnedest to contain the scene, they couldn't cover up the accident.
At least, that's what they called it at first.
An "accident."
From the looks of the Aston Martin, it was a fair assessment. The sleek machine was nothing more that wheezing, twisted steel embracing and electrical pole, an abstract sculpture you might find in the victim's own Malibu mansion. But that's where the "accident" ended and the horror began.
Nothing made sense anymore after the cops looked past the car and toward the dead man.
The world's biggest action star had his back to the bars door, his muscled arms spread wide, his hands pierced by shrapnel, pinning him down. His head, with that glorious fall of golden hair, hung to one side, a wedge of sparkling, jagged window glass embedded in his forehead. His million dollar blue eyes were closed, his ageing yet still bankable face bathed in red. He'd died just moments ago, unable to speak around the blood that was choking him.
Sure, freak accidents sometimes happened. Bodies flew from crashed cars, metal followed, people died.
But what the beat cops couldn't figure out was the rest of it: the way the victim's shirt had been torn open to reveal the bare chest so many women had swooned over.
The way shattered glass had cut into his skin, forming one word.
REPENT.
Soon, the detectives arrived. Overworked, underpaid, their clothing rumpled by long hours on the job and a lack of giving a shit about appearances. A detective, one who haunted the perimeter, took a long glance at Jesse Shane, Big-time Movie Star, and just nodded his head.
"You get what you ask for," he said to himself, then ambled into the darkness.
There was so much glass and metal gouging Shane's legs that blood had pooled and trickled over the ground, heading toward a nearby square of sewer grating. The police merely walked around it as the stars life flowed away from him, leaking past the grating and into the echoing darkness of the underground.
Drip, drip…
They worked until there eyes glazed over from cynical exhaustion. But what the average cop wouldn't discover was a mouth, yawning open, just beneath the sewer grating. It was catching every drop of cooled liquid on its tongue.
Drip, drip…
Hidden from view, the creature swallowed, blocking out the noise from above, closing its eyes and shuddering in pure delight, in agonizing need.
Digging its claws into the skin of its palms, the thing leaned its head back again, blood splashing onto its chin, then into its mouth. A slant wan light caught the gleam of iron fangs as it gulped down the taste of beautiful memory.
More, thought the thing while blood wet its throat.
More.
As keen yearning tore through the creature, it licked its lips and opened it mouth again, whimpering from the hunger, the sharp craving. Waiting for the next drop to fall.
More.
Meanwhile, back up above in the streets, the cops went about their business, trying to solve the mystery of Jesse Shane, a man whose life had ended in its prime.
A man whose bizarre death would, oddly enough, keep him alive for years to come.