One Must Hide

Prologue

The oily swell surged up the beach in a rush. Foam-tipped tongues lapped ahead of the inky waves that strove to gulp down the sand, licking higher and higher, before the implacable shore sent them slithering back.

An obsidian sky presided sullenly over the man-made monstrosity that sketched a luminous scar between land and sea. A thousand points of brilliance challenged the heavens in white and red and green, outshining the envious stars. And the lure of the light drew people to that dark place in their multitudes.

The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk pulsed with the lifeblood of the town. The whole strip backing onto the ocean enticed the unwary with the seductive ease of decades: a heady mix of fairground rides and buskers, bars and traders, stores and restaurants, all crawling with tourists who didn't know better and locals who should have. Young and old flung themselves into the pursuit of pleasure without pause for thought, and Santa Cruz thrived on their hedonism.

But one point of darkness moved through the light and life, aimless yet purposeful, apparent yet unobserved. Whole crowds parted for her, but few of those who moved to let her pass could have said why they had stood aside, or for whom. She walked in a time and place of her own choosing and making, and none could stand in her way. Rings gleamed on her fingers – poorly disguised knuckledusters – and the spiked bracelets on her wrists were not threat so much as promise. Many predators cruised the summer nights of Santa Cruz , but none so deadly as she.

The thought made her want to laugh.

The Driftwood could have been any of the hundred and one bars that jostled for position near the Boardwalk: a little grimier than most, darker, stickier underfoot. Its regular complement of locals ostentatiously ignored each other, and the nervous tourists who had strayed in by mistake looked only at their glasses, as though afraid to let their eyes linger anywhere else. Robin breathed deeply of the cool night breeze, pushing stray locks of hair off her face, and regarded the bar with a steady gaze. She glanced only once at the motorcycle rank before stepping inside.

Tonight, a Friday in high summer, the Driftwood was packed from wall to wall, but the avenue that opened between Robin and the bar owed nothing to chance. Her reputation here had been made years ago, and the regulars deferred to it. Now, even alone as she had not been then, she still commanded that wary respect.

By the time she reached the bar her drink was waiting on the counter: double vodka, no ice. Robin picked up the shot glass, acknowledging the barman with the briefest of looks, and drank, feeling the liquor burn coldly all the way to her stomach.

It never helped. Drunk or stone cold sober, nothing did, and no amount of alcohol let her forget, even for a short while. Memories waited around every corner, and Robin had long since recognised the futility of denying their existence. They would not leave her, and she could not leave them. She simply endured.

She turned her attention back on the room, letting her senses track from person to person, narrowing down the bar's clientele to those with potential. The sharp, acrid smell of cocaine alerted her to the presence of a dealer in one of the smoky booths near the back: new in town, small-time. His customers ranged out in a predictable pattern, made conspicuous by their studied indifference. One of them had a gun, recently discharged. They were all expendable. None would be missed. Robin swallowed convulsively and put her glass back on the bar, welcoming the caustic shock of the alcohol. When she looked again the glass had been refilled, and the bartender stood with the bottle in one hand, watching her silently.

“I haven't paid for the first one yet,” she said.

“You will,” he replied.

Robin looked at the sign propped up against one of the draught taps. Don't drink and drive. “Trying to put me over the limit, Ben?”

“Were you planning on driving?” he countered. Then, without waiting for a reply, he continued. “Thought you'd need a buffer.”

Robin just looked at him.

Ben glanced across the room and then back at her. “You'd better have a care to that booth.”

“Why?”

The barman shrugged. “Someone's lost.” And he moved away to serve another customer.

Robin sipped her new drink contemplatively for a moment, lethargy warring with intrigue. The latter won. She looked, and her heart leapt to her throat.

She found herself tightening her fingers dangerously hard on the shot glass in her hand as she tried to reconcile what her senses insisted with what her eyes could see. Someone stepped in front of her: she pushed him aside, but now it seemed as if everyone in the bar had decided to stand up, to get in her way, to obscure her view. She clenched her free hand, and dark splinters of light shattered off the wicked points of her wristlets.

And then the room cleared, and the jolt of relief was edged with disappointment.

He looked up at her: older, darker, out of place. Lost indeed. “Can I help you?”

Robin didn't wait to be invited. She slipped into the booth opposite him, setting down her glass and noticing the imprint it had left on her hand. “You remind me of someone.”

His expression betrayed a vague distraction, as though he'd suddenly forgotten something he had meant to say. “Do I?”

Robin stared at him, and felt a familiar prescient chill.

He shifted uneasily in his seat. “My name's Kiefer,” he said, and with that the premonition was sealed.

“I know,” she replied, without a trace of inflection.

Kiefer studied her cautiously, wondering what to make of the girl. Woman? Her age was indeterminate: somewhere between twenty and twenty-five, at a guess, but her self-possession spoke of someone much older. “You are…?” he asked at last.

“Robin.”

He repeated the name. “I was born in England ,” he added, taking a chance on the soft accent.

“Amazing.” She hinted at the smallest of smiles. “So was I.”

Her tone wasn't hostile – almost pleasant, in fact – but it suggested an implacability that would not be pushed. But Kiefer noticed how rapidly her gaze moved, from her drink to the table to a point over his left shoulder, never lingering in one place for very long, and least of all on him. Her eyes, he observed, were a grey that almost seemed silver in the half-light of the bar, and her skin seemed very fair against the solid black of her clothes. Not a Goth, though, despite the abundance of jewellery on her hands and wrists: more focused, less affected. Her presence in this distinctly seedy bar baffled him, but then so did his own.

“Are you here with someone?” he asked.

Robin shook her head. Something that might have been amusement twitched at the corner of her mouth, and Kiefer wondered if this guessing game were a test. “Waiting for someone?” he hazarded. There was a ring on the fourth finger of her left hand. “Your husband?”

“I don't have one of those.”

“Friends? Family?”

And as suddenly as that, the almost-smile vanished. “I lost my family.”

No amount of wit or eloquence could fashion a retort to that. “I'm sorry,” Kiefer said.

“So am I,” Robin replied simply.

Kiefer picked up his bottle and noticed it was empty. Robin's glass looked low, too. “Can I get you another drink?” he offered, glad for the distraction.

“Thank you.” Robin downed what was left in her glass and held it out to him. “Ben knows what I'll have.”

Kiefer eased himself out from the confines of the booth and went to the bar. He had to make space for himself between a couple of big guys in leather jackets, but they didn't seem to see him.

“Same again,” he said to the barman. “And for her.”

The bartender pulled down another beer from the fridge behind the bar, and then refilled Robin's shot glass from a bottle of Absolut. “Six-eighty.”

Kiefer paid. Robin must be a regular here, then. He puzzled over the mystery as he carried his beer and her vodka back to the booth.

“What brings you back to Santa Cruz ?” she asked when he returned.

“Good question.” Kiefer took a pack of Camels out of his jacket pocket and offered it to Robin. She took one and waited for his light. “Just wanted to go somewhere and relax. I have a few days off.”

“Here?”

“This place has some good memories,” he admitted. “The Boardwalk hasn't changed much in twenty years.”

“That's part of its charm,” Robin said.

“Have you been here long, then?”

Robin examined her cigarette curiously, as if unfamiliar with the brand. “Seven or eight years.”

“We made a movie out here one summer in the Eighties,” Kiefer went on. “There were about ten of us guys. We had a lot of good times here.”

“And now you're back.”

Kiefer opened his mouth to explain and then stopped as the reasoning behind his decision to come here eluded him completely.

Robin leaned forwards, eyes like silvery steel somehow looking not at, but into him. “Why are you here?” she asked in a voice as hard and as brittle as flint. “Who sent you?“

Kiefer had no answers. He couldn't even speak; his thoughts seemed frozen by that demanding stare. Then Robin looked away, and he found he could breathe.

“All right,” she said, calm again. She pushed her hair back off her face and flicked with one finger the single earring that hung from her left ear. “Recognise this?”

“I….” Kiefer hesitated, frowning. “It's like the one I wore in the movie, isn't it?”

“The one you wore in the movie was like this one. This one is the original.” Robin rearranged her hair to conceal the ornament again. “Yours was silver,” she added. “This is white gold.”

“Did you get it on eBay or something?” Kiefer asked, feeling lost.

“No,” she said. “Not exactly.”

“I don't understand.”

Robin tossed back the last of her Absolut as if it were water, and stubbed out the cigarette. “Come with me and I'll show you.”

When in conflict with curiosity, Kiefer's better judgement usually won out, but on this occasion he moved to obey even as he doubted the wisdom of following this woman whose eyes were so much older than the rest of her.

Robin led the way out of the bar without looking back to see if he had followed, and seemed unsurprised that he had when she stopped by the last motorcycle in the rank outside. It was a serious piece of hardware: large and obviously powerful but not remotely flashy, all burnished steel and dull black paintwork, with no obvious manufacturer's badge – and no licence plates.

“Yours?” he asked, raising his voice over the noise from the Boardwalk.

Robin swung her leg over the seat of that monster of a bike with incongruous ease. “Mine.”

She started it up and the engine erupted snarling and spitting into life: gloriously primal. She let it rev back down to a resentful growl and then looked back at him with more than the hint of a challenge in her eyes.

Kiefer knew it was stupid. He should have walked away long before now – from Robin, from Santa Cruz .

He crossed to the bike and climbed on behind her, powerless to resist.

“Where are we going?” he asked, as Robin flipped back the kickstand.

“Just don't fall off,” she said, and Kiefer had to grab on as the bike leapt forwards.

Robin accelerated away from the Driftwood, the squeal of tyres lost beneath the sound of the engine, straight along the broad planked veranda of the Boardwalk: scattering crowds, weaving between those too slow to move, and never letting up on the throttle. She raced her bike down half the length of the Boardwalk with consummate self-assurance, magnificently unconcerned by the lives she put at risk.

She leaned into a turn, and Kiefer quickly shifted his weight to match. He couldn't remember the last time he'd ridden pillion on a motorcycle. He could remember breaking his wrist when fooling around on one. And he tightened his grip as he saw the steps leading from the Boardwalk onto the beach, because it didn't feel like Robin was going to slow down for a moment.

Robin just leaned back. Her bike handled the steps as though they weren't there and landed on the beach. The rear tyre dug into the soft sand, scrabbling for grip, and then the power took over again.

People and more people thronged the beach. Robin dodged and swerved them almost lazily, leaving a plume of dust in her wake, until the lights of the Boardwalk fell behind, the sand flattened out, and only the steady beam of her headlight showed the way. When she raised her head her hair streamed behind her like a banner, and the moon above cast her in silver and shadow.

She turned into the dunes, slowing at last, and powered up a long slope. A left turn at the top led onto a firmer surface: an unmade road. Robin maintained the moderate pace, and Kiefer was able to relax. The cool night wind cleared the vagueness from his mind, and the reality of his situation dawned on him at last like a slap in the face. “Stop the bike.”

Robin glanced back over her shoulder, but gave no indication that she'd heard him, neither braking nor accelerating.

“Stop the bike!” Kiefer shouted the words, trying for authority and hearing desperation. “I want to get off!” He reached forward, going for the handbrake.

It seemed to him that Robin did no more than shrug him off, but something struck his wrist with a force that numbed his forearm from fingertips to elbow. Kiefer flinched back, seizing his suddenly limp left arm in his right hand.

Robin braked, bringing the bike to a sweeping stop that gouged a broad arc on the dusty track. In the quiet that rushed to fill the space where the roar of the engine had been, Kiefer could hear his own harsh breathing. With inexplicable nonchalance, Robin toed down the kickstand and slid easily off the seat.

“Get off, then,” she said.

Kiefer climbed gingerly off the bike, still cradling his arm. The track went on, but in the darkness he couldn't see where. Far behind, the lights of the Boardwalk still lit up the sky, and he could hear the boom of surf against rocks. Slowly, very slowly, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. An intense chill seemed to suffuse every part of his body, and the desire to run bubbled up with frightening speed: he had to get away from here, anywhere but here, he couldn't stay another moment….

“Coming?” Robin asked, and the rising tide of panic paused.

She had crossed to the edge of the cliff – Kiefer could see it now, his eyes adjusting to the dark – and stood waiting with her hand on some sort of railing, looking back at him. Kiefer swallowed hard, his throat suddenly painfully dry. “What is this place?”

She just smiled cryptically and began to descend – steps, Kiefer realised, there must be steps down the cliff.

“Don't,” he said, feeling sweat break out on his brow. “We have to leave. It's not safe.”

“Of course it's not safe,” said Robin. “Third step down is a death-trap.” And with that she vanished below the level of the cliff, leaving Kiefer alone in the dark.

The wind whistled around him, chill and unfriendly. The incandescent beam of the motorcycle's headlamp still shone out: crazily, Kiefer found himself thinking that it would wear the battery down. But Robin had taken the keys. He had no way of getting away from here. No option but to follow her.

Kiefer made himself walk to the handrail, though his legs felt like water. A wooden staircase descended in a zigzag from the edge of the cliff, down and down, until far below a walkway crossed the narrowest point between this cliff and the next. Black water swirled beneath that fragile-looking gantry, and rocks below the surface ripped the brine to a rabid froth. The sight made his stomach lurch.

He wiped sweaty hands on his jeans and grabbed hold of the railing. The first step was the hardest. The staircase groaned when he set his foot on it, and he hesitated, halfway between land and stairs, before forcing himself on. One foot down, then the other. One foot, then the other. He remembered in time to avoid the third step. One then the other, one then the other, all the way down that precarious stair. It seemed an age before he stepped onto the planks of the walkway, but the moment he did, the irrational fear of before vanished. Only the vertigo remained, and the sweat, cooling on his brow.

Robin waited there, a black shape in the shadows. Kiefer didn't know how she had climbed down so quickly. “Have to time this right,” she said. On cue, a wave broke across the gantry, leaving it treacherously wet. “Come on.”

She led the way, sure-footed, across the slippery boards. Kiefer barely made it. The splash back from the next wave just caught him: a cold shock. Robin didn't notice, or didn't care. She went on, following the walkway where it hugged the base of the cliff, until it culminated in the boarded-over opening of a cave. The planks looked solid, but Robin put her hand in one place and a whole section swung easily open to admit her.

Part of Kiefer knew what to expect. But when he ducked through the narrow entrance and beheld what lay within he just stood and stared.

The ruined hotel lobby sprawled before him, lit by half a dozen burning oil drums. The circular fountain, long dry, dominated the centre, decorated with an ancient, dusty chandelier. Armchairs and couches decades out of fashion had faded but showed hints of their former opulence in worn gold embroidery. The rugs on the floor seemed newer, and most of the curtains that hid areas of the shattered hotel from sight. But this place was impossible. It couldn't be real.

“Did they never tell you about this?” Robin asked lightly, as though reading his mind. “It's a local legend. The lost hotel.”

“This was a set,” Kiefer said. The protest sounded feeble to his own ears.

“This is the legend,” Robin corrected, walking unhurriedly around the circumference of the fountain. “Although I'll grant they did a good job with the replica they built for the film.”

Then she stopped, and turned her head to look at him, and whatever she saw made her regard molten with yearning and loathing, fear and desire, vulnerability and bale. “But not nearly as good as the one they did on you.”

Robin moved towards him, a single stride, and Kiefer wanted to step back, but those eyes rooted him to the spot. “What are you talking about?” he demanded. “What is this place? Who the hell are you?”

“I'm all that's left, and this is my home. And you know what I'm talking about.”

“Right,” Kiefer said. “That damn film.”

“Not the film.”

“It was twenty years ago….”

“It wasn't a film.”

“Jesus Christ, Robin, it was just a stupid story!”

She moved so fast he never saw her spring, never knew what was coming until the back of her hand struck his mouth and his head snapped around on his neck and a streak of fire blossomed as the blow split his lip. He could barely hear through the ringing in his ears, but still he heard her speak, a low hiss. “It wasn't a story.”

Kiefer closed his eyes and shook his head. The slow dribble of blood tickled, and he wiped at his mouth, half outraged, half grudgingly impressed.

Robin was staring at her hand.

The least smear of blood darkened the shine of one of her rings. She gazed at it, transfixed, trembling visibly as her eyes devoured the smudge of crimson. She looked up at Kiefer, and fascination turned to hunger. Kiefer's senses screamed at him with the instincts of prey, fight or flee.

But it was Robin who fled.

She bounded up onto the fountain with impossible energy, cleared the broken chandelier in a fluid leap, and vanished through a set of heavy drapes that flared out behind her like a pair of wings.

Now, Kiefer thought, would be a good time to leave. He didn't remember scrambling down the steep incline to the floor of the old hotel. He studied it, looking for the easiest way back up. As he started to climb he heard the musical tinkle of glass breaking from somewhere behind and ignored it, stifling the curiosity that had got him into this mess in the first place. But he couldn't ignore the next sound: a dull thud, the sickening impact of flesh against stone.

“Damn it,” he said under his breath, and turned back.

The long curtains blew in a nonexistent breeze that sent chill fingers creeping up Kiefer's spine. He approached cautiously, step by step, straining to listen, but all he could hear was the thunder of his own heartbeat, pulsing in time with the throbbing of his lip. The flavour of his own blood tasted metallic in his mouth. “Robin,” he said, surprised at the hoarseness of his own voice. “Robin, are you all right?”

She didn't answer. Kiefer thought he could hear her breathing, harsh and slow. He took hold of the curtain. The ornate embroidered fabric felt rough and thick in his hand. He hauled it back.

Robin lay where she had fallen, sprawling half in light and half in darkness. One outstretched hand twitched fitfully, perilously close to a twinkling scatter of glass shards. Something seemed odd about her fingernails. Kiefer reached down to help her raise her head. “Christ, Robin, what's happened….”

Then the light revealed her face, and though the words died in his mouth, the scream came out soundless. She had changed: silver eyes to red-rimmed gold, fine features to angular cheekbones, and worst, worst of all, teeth to murderous fangs. Kiefer reeled back but her hand shot out to seize his arm in a crushing grip, and the talons that her fingernails had become dug painfully into his wrist. “Get away from me!”

“I'm not going to hurt you, Kiefer.” Even her voice was difference: thicker, almost slurred.

Kiefer tried to free his arm from her grip, in vain. “Oh, Christ, what are you?”

Robin released his wrist suddenly. Kiefer staggered backwards, and she flowed to her feet with terrifying grace. “I won't hurt you,” she repeated. “I didn't want you to see this.”

“What are you?” Kiefer pleaded again.

“I'm…this.” And as he watched, the terrible colour drained from her eyes, and the prominent bone structure of her face softened, and the wickedly lengthened fangs reverted to normal canine teeth.

“You're a vampire,” Kiefer breathed.

“And more.” Robin's voice had returned to normal too. “And less.”

“You're crazy,” Kiefer said, and wondered if he was, too.

She ignored that. “I'm half a vampire. Not all.”

“This isn't happening.”

“Yes,” said Robin. “It is.” She paused. “I just don't understand why.”

She sounded tired and sad and confused, but something of the tightly wound edge had gone. Robin pushed past Kiefer and crossed to an ancient chest. She rummaged through the debris on top of it and came up with half a pack of Marlboro Lights. “Smoke?”

“Sure,” said Kiefer, feeling helpless.

Robin lit his cigarette, then her own, and took a long pull. “I don't know why you're here,” she said at last. “I don't know who called you. If it was David, or…someone else.”

“David?” Kiefer asked. The nicotine was definitely steadying his nerves.

She smiled sadly. “The leader of the Lost Boys.”

“It was just a film…”

“Don't start, Kiefer. The film was their creation, their statement. They had it made…because they could.”

“You're saying it was a true story?”

“No. Not a true story. Based in truth.”

“And the vampires…?”

“The Boys. The Lost Boys.” A self-mocking smile twisted Robin's mouth. “They were real. They were here.”

Kiefer looked at his cigarette. It was easier than looking at her. “What happened to them?”

Robin didn't reply for a long time; so long that Kiefer raised his gaze back to her face, fearing she hadn't heard him. But her expression had stilled; the cigarette burned forgotten in her hand, and her eyes were lost.

“They died,” she said.

“How?”

“How?” Robin said the word as if asking it of herself, softly, even tenderly. “A big question.”

Then she slumped bonelessly into the closest chair, closing her eyes. “Sit down,” she said. “Sit down, Kiefer, and I'll tell you.”