Carole Douglas - Vampire Sunrise

The fanged handmaidens fluttered at the edges of the pool, laying out clothes and jewels. Yes! I so deserved this, and besides, I thought I had the whole scene figured out. Liz wasn’t the only foxy chick on the planet.

I stepped out to be wrapped in white linen like the young cowboy on the streets of Laredo, only it was fine-woven white linen as sheer as silk and was a dressing gown, not a winding sheet.

The handmaidens outlined my eyes with kohl and painted my lips red and tinted my finger and toe nails. Just like a free makeover at Macy’s.

They scented me with oils and perfumes and smoothed my tangled hair with an ivory comb carved with hyenas and elephants treading on really big snakes. (That ivory kinda bothered me. I used only cruelty-free beauty products at home, what few I had.) And why weren’t the elephants treading on those really lethal hyenas?

I wondered which Hollywood Egyptian outfit I’d get and nearly swooned when they produced a filmy skirt and-truly a rare early film artifact-Theda Bara’s gold metal bra with coiled serpents for cups and chain strap behind the neck

Okay, I’d been known to decry Princess Leia for having to wear a chain metal bikini in Return of the Jedi . Carrie Fisher had objected to her neck-high, wrist-and-ankle-long outfits in the first two Star Wars movies, I’d read, but she hadn’t warmed up to the gold metal bikini: “When they took my clothes off, put me in a bikini and shut me up, I thought it was a strong indication of what the third film was.”

Still, this funky bra was vintage history! Theda Bara hadn’t had any such costume nudity or exploitation scruples. If she had, her Cleopatra film wouldn’t be missing in action to this day. Besides, Ric with his boyhood belly dancer fetish would go berserk if he could see me now!

Sadly for us both, he was safe at home this time, and this was my solo film fantasy expedition. What a kick! I felt like Flash Gordon’s girlfriend, Dale Arden, in the hands of the evil emperor Ming. (Look them up; those old movie serials rocked.)

And those thirties action babes always got an extreme makeover before being presented to the Main Man of Power for vague, sinister purposes… and then saved by the good guy. A little like Dorothy in the Emerald City, no? Kinda a male female fantasy. Like me sacrificing myself to Snow’s Brimstone Kiss before I turned the tables and became Biker Babe and saved Ric.

Maybe I felt so safe running through the clichéd routine because a woman was in charge. Probably a mistake. Women could be soul sisters, then they could turn on a dime like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis and become rival bitches. Maybe like Lilith. Flip a coin and hope it’s not silver.

Everything felt and smelled so good, though. I was full-bore me again with my in-board allies-the silver familiar and Irma-operative once more. I was beginning to get what was going on, big time, and who the players were, big time.

I tucked my precious blood vial into the only safe place in this scanty outfit and woman’s ally since Eden-my tightly packed cleavage. Ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.

If I played along, I would learn much more.

CLEOPATRA WAS WAITING for me in the suite’s lavish main room, arrayed on one sofa, but I greeted her again as “Theda” because a film buff knows several things.

One, “Theda Bara” is an anagram for “Arab Death,” which was exotic fodder for film magazines in the last century’s teens. Today it reflects international terrorism, but that’s accidental.

She’d been born not-quite-plain Theodosia Goodman in Cincinnati. She’d made herself into the very first and supreme female film “vamp” to counter those Mary Pickford curly-topped blondes of the day.

Brunette, with Cupid-bow lips and heavy-lidded smoldering eyes, she always played heroines, or villainesses, who thirsted for men’s bodies, blood, and/or soul. She was a century ahead of her time, and it’s only fitting that most of her film footage is “lost” to this day.

All that remain are fading black-and-white photos of her in gowns so risqué they went down in film history, even if she herself is just a fading footnote now. And here I was sitting in a duplicate of one of the most scandalous, a metal bra.

As femmes fatales go, Theda was definitely out of style. She was wearing the most revealing Cleopatra outfit ever, an exquisitely embroidered transparent silk robe that covered the three major juicy bits with stars that radiated five gilt bands of decorative ribbon. I couldn’t help gaping at the decorations.

Her figure was not twenty-first-century. She was small up top with most of her weight between waist and knees, a leftover of the Rubenesque days of yore we women all longed for, when thighs were queen instead of liposuctioned.

Me, I was better balanced, but no skeleton, and I intended to stay that way.

“Would you like some beer?” those bee-stung lips asked.

I knew the ancient Egyptians relished the stuff as much as NASCAR fans-in that searing climate, you’d be crazy not to. Thanks to Shezmou, I also knew that Egypt also had vineyards of the gods.

“Wine, if you have it.”

“White, or red?”

Shezmou’s bloodwine of pharaohs had intrigued me. White sounded common. I decided to stand out.

“Red.”

I wouldn’t drink it if it was really blood. We sat atop a giant ant hill of vampires, after all. Somehow, though, I felt secure up here, as if it was neutral territory.

Theda waved a serpent-braceleted hand. I heard the bare feet of my fanged nannies padding away.

My silver familiar transformed into twin upper-arm-twining cobras to duel her golden jewelry. Theda and I gave each other our most mysterious, serene gazes.

I waited for my well-earned wine.

EVER HEAR THE saying, “Pride goeth before a fall?”

That really seemed tailor-made for Snow with his internationally successful rock band, his swooning fans and groupies, his Lucifer-ambitious Vegas hotel and subterranean kingdom of CinSims and dragon ashes.

Well, this time my pride was about to “goeth,” and fast.

I heard the padding bare footsteps of the returning handmaiden nurses. I lifted a languid hand for my goblet of wine.

And got a Lalique angel glass in my hot little palm, glowing cherry-dark with red, red wine.

I reared back to regard my server because across from me Theda’s Silver Screen pale gray complexion had become parchment white from diademed forehead to sandaled toes. Not to mention the midsection cellulite.

He was an Egyptian hunk in the burnished terra-cotta flesh, with that Michael Phelps Olympic hero of the Nile build, broad-shouldered and slim-hipped, hairless and muscled from collarbone to bare sandaled foot, except for his gorgeously bewigged head.

I accepted the wineglass from the proffered tray, of course, and watched Theda do likewise. If anything, she looked more surprised than I did.

I took it Shezmou was not the usual wine steward in these parts. I was happy to see him slipping into his other, less drastic role.

He greeted me with the same steady, flattering courtesy I could expect from Godfrey.

“These garments you wear are modern and overgaudy but they become you, Deliverer of Shezmou, though they would not much serve you when facing the abased immortal servants of the fallen pharaohs.”

“You know each other?” Theda sat up to take notice. I was getting the house sommelier service while Shez ignored Her Royal Aspness.

“Were you responsible for the sublime scents and silky oils of my bath?” I asked him.

Shez bowed his godly head. “While I am indispensable to the rites of embalming and the judgment of the dead, I most enjoy serving the living with the soothing administrations of my sweet wines and rare oils. How do you find the wine?”